AMF? (in General)

I'm planning my next NCB, as my current bonus period finishes at the end of the month. I had a definite idea but at least two other people have come up with strats remarkably similar. Great minds think alike and all that...so I'm tweaking my ideas and seeing what else I can come up with.

Anyhow, the one thing that I've been thinking about is focusing xp spend. That is, if a character is training AS for instance then that is all they train. I'm trying to work out the best way of not spreading the xp into too many stats.

So, I'm thinking about AMF. From my own experience AMF is very useful at low to mid levels, but once I get to the area around a million score and upwards it seems to lose it's usefulness somewhat. After all when mages are hitting you with million+ level dd spells you need a lot of AMF to counter. The main use for me on single minion teams has been protecting from decay. Also, training a large focussed amount means that a lot of my xp would be useless against tank teams.

My thinking is that if I'm using a Toe, and AC and PL, and training a lot of HP I might not actually need to worry about cutting down enemy mage damage.

Any thoughts?

johnny if you want to look at Mokaba's character he has High PL/AC/HP.

but it is a good strat, all-round defends against Mages and Tanks.

I've seen Mokaba's strat. It's almost exactly what I was planning to do lol! Which is why I'm going to change my ideas!!!

But you're right it is a very very good strat!


Grrr..grumble....grumble..... :)

i still think AMF is okay even at the top.

i fought Mem's top character because he asked me to, and my AMF cast at (0.08) and his fireball did about 100k on each of my 4 minions.

my AMF made him do 20k damage to himself on that round.

if it was on one minion obviously 400k damage and still 20k backlash.

but that is against someone with a MPR 6x higher than mine.

AMf is a must have, period.

I don't think its a must have, if you have no other damage reduction its pretty inefficient. Equal DD versus AMF, you block 50% and return 40% so you are 10% down, add a ToE to the DD team and you are really behind (+ no effect on tank only teams)
"My thinking is that if I'm using a Toe, and AC and PL, and training a lot of HP I might not actually need to worry about cutting down enemy mage damage."

Perhaps you are right here but the only reason to not include it would be that it does nothing versus tanks.
With this kind of setup AMF is very useful, it helps keep DD attacks below your ToE cap and if you are training a lot of HP anyway its nice to turn those HP into damage.

"Equal DD versus AMF, you block 50% and return 40% so you are 10% down"

Actually you block 50% (if equal AMF-DD is still 50%...) and return 40% of that 50%.

So you Take 50% and return 20%. :)

Yea thats what the wiki says, but I'm not convinced ;)

I tested it in CB1 and at the Start of 2. The backlash is fixed and easy to figure out. It's 40% of the effect multiplied by the AMF backlsh (well effect multiplied by the number of targets the spell can hit...)

It's different for Decay though. :)

Reasons for AMF:

-- to stop pesky base Decays on the enemy
-- to slow down DD familiars (at high levels, tattoos are many times not as powerful as actual minions).
-- AMF's dual nature: by hitting the enemy back and lessening their damage, it really can swing the number of rounds in your favor (more crucial for lesser-minion teams).

As for needing a big AMF... Critical Fumble only lands a 0.16 on my FB (which means he actually must have a pretty large combined AMF). That 0.16 takes 320K of my HP (about a third) just in ranged rounds. Course, he is dead at the end of that, but that won't be for long (if he gets one more round on me he very nearly kills me).

I'm not convinced that AMF is a "must have" (though defending against base Decay is nice), but it is more useful to me than DM, and is much more set-it-and-forget-it. Mine has been only around 500K for the past two months, and it still turns tides here and there...

I still say DM helps FB more than having AMF on your team.

But of course, you can always go for both with a RoS... ;)

GL is right about AMF calculations.

I'm pretty sure that my current NCB strat is one of the 2 that you're citing. If it helps at all, I "designed" it with the specific intent to make some major changes at about 250-300k MPR or so, and then again when I hit "the big leagues". So if you went with something similar on your NCB, it wouldn't end up the same in the end, after all :P

By the way, it seems to be working pretty well so far, and no, I'm not telling what those intended changes are ;)

I had mine at about 450k on Jack Crow whilst I was doing UC. It helped me get a lot of draws against single mages for a while but then it really didn't help much once the dd spell went huge.

But, I guess if I'm working with multiple minions I'll be dealing a lot more backlash out. And as my aim is to diminish enemy fire as much as possible I guess it should be on my 'to do list'.....

Anybody using DM instead of AMF these days? Any comments on how well that works for you instead of AMF?

AMF is the balancing factor between linear damage doing mages, and tank (well at least the ones not wearing a tutu, and carrying a a glowing dinner plate strapped where a shield should be). The linear nature of both AMF and DD spells, combined with only a single possible method of damage reduction (ToE) for backlash, gives all the balance you need.

Barzooo??!?!?!? Somebody stop him, he went thataway!!! Quickly, he stole my strat before I'd even thought about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's just awesome! I'm going to rename one of my TSA "A Pink Tutu" and one of my MgS "A Glowing Dinner Plate"!

:D

*sigh* He has no shame.

I hope you're aware that I'm beating down your current NCB like it was an "extreme threat to my plan", JW.

*cough* NUB Noob *cough*