Strategy talk: 2-Hand and Crossbow + Shield (in General)

I have a Tattoo of Augmentation based Enchanter Tank build as many of you might know.

I have a Morgul-Hammer and an Assassin's Crossbow together with a Mithril Shield.

Some stats:

Without shield: DX: 850,553/400,000
With shield: DX: 664,977/400,000
Named shield: [20] (+38)


This makes the choice between 185,576 Dexterity and 61 AC total.


The AC makes blocks 12.81% physical damage and 8.4% magical damage.
The shield grants me some 21% less dexterity.


I have made a few small tests and I don't really see that much difference.
Is that because of the fact that there aren't many tank based teams in my fight range or the fact that it doesn't really matter?

Quick question not much difference in what, damage received or in hits you have inflicted?

in fights won or lost.

OK i was just wondering if the added DX would grant you extra hits or not, extra hits = extra damage = extra wins, we all know CB is really an offensive based game :)

it could help with your defense as in people farming you have a look at your log of people farming you and the number of rounds, with and without the shield.

see if more people can kill you with/without it...


that's all i got for now. G'night : )

Your total AC is also important, for making the choice...

Without: AC = 32
With: AC = 93

I assume that your AC without the shield is 32, and with the shield 93.
I'll only look at physical damage, calculations for magical are similar.

Without the shield: your AC blocks 6.72% damage. This can be rewritten as a 7.2% bonus to your HP [ 1/(1-0.0672) ]

With the shield: your AC blocks 19.53% damage. This can be rewritten as a 24.3% bonus to your HP

So, the shield alone increases your actual HP by 17.1%. I don't know for how much your AS casts, but this already is 140k extra from your real HP, plus 17% of whatever HP it gains from things like AS and VA.

Ablative Shield: 852,346/726,390 (426,183)

so basically what bart did was make you have a different choice:

HP or DX, figure it out :-)

You could lose the AoI and trade that in for a AoAC.
With this you can lose the shield and have high dex and AC from the AoACbut lose the evasion of the AoI.
Or you could lose the displacement boots and go for elven boots.
with this one you lose the evasion of the boots but gain dex.

Keep the AS. HP and doing damage is key for you.
Tricky.

Henk: I'll tell you right now that he shouldn't lose his AoI, I'll go back to beating him all the time.

You could get a mage shield or buckler of mandos for a much lower dex penalty, and the AoI is probably wasted with a low dex.

i think he just wants AC from it, or DX not a half way there scheme.

Henk: you are talking none sense, as novice explained

Gah: sorry to say but those shields don't work with my ToA

and regarding bart's helpful knowledge: perhaps my mithril shield needs some more +'es

ahh oops didn't notice it

Save your MS for a Wall. Use a Kite on a ToA Tank or none. Using a AoI is perfect on my Tank, it pushes physical damage to my other minions whilst I can put my Tank up front and avoid MM's coming in from the rear. I have 1.4 mil dex, I don't wear any shields on my Toa Tank, my ac is 38 and I do just fine even with out my huge MH. In my eyes, I wouldn't trade off the loss of extra hits for a little extra HP. You have AS, so use that to your advantage and dish out the max damage you can.

But he has his tank in the back, so he should just switch his minions

A Kite Shield [13] (+28) is the top kite shield. No idea what its NW is, but I guess a lot more than the +38 named MS Shade has.

Without the shield: your AC blocks 6.72% damage. This can be rewritten as a 7.2% bonus to your HP [ 1/(1-0.0672) ]

With the shield: your AC blocks 15.33% damage. This can be rewritten as a 18.1% bonus to your HP

So the top Kite shield will boost your HP by 11.0%, but reduce your DX by 12%. As Shade's tank uses more HP than DX, this sounds like a better choice, depending on how expensive such a kite is. Upgrading the MS is another option.

Flamey:
"HP or DX, figure it out :-)" - they both cost XP. So it's not a choice. Pick whatever armor that gives the most effective stats for the least amount of XP invested. If that happens to be light armor: train more HP, less DX. If it happens to be heavy armor: train less HP, more DX.

that's right bart, you make me seem dumb :P that's what i meant.

hey shade... I have the aforementioned kite shield... 13 +28. NW is 686k, and my next upgrade is 150k... equiping the shield raises my PR from 1,314,997 to 1,322,020 so roughly 7k or 1/2%

I am also using ToA, MH, and Axbow. With the shield my dex drops from 968,635 to 881,891 which is exponetially less than the dex drain you are seeing...

My feeling is that with the ToA's Pth, and some trained dex, you are going to be ahead of most other players in dex... now that the Axbow is working again, you should be well above other tanks, even axbow tanks after ranged rounds so you shoukd be faster than most other tanks in your MPR range.

The kite shield (although it dosen't seem most other players agree with me) offers the same dex penalty as a buckler or wooden shield with slightly better base AC... How the NW/AC compares to other shields I'm not sure, but my feeling was that a little extra PR is well offset by the dex increase....

Not sure if there is really a great difference either way, but saving dex only made sense to me... to get the extra 17 points of AC out of a kite though I'm sure would be a heck of an undertaking financially....

I think upgrading my Mithril Shield would get me to where I want to go.

A different shield would also just have a big 2-hand DX penalty so that won't change much.

Having no shield would make me absorb much less damage, would only be negative.

DX can be trained.

What is the NW on your Mith Shield?

Dex can be trained, so can HP.... AC can be bought.... doing all this at the lowest PR is really the key isn't it ;)

Ancalagon 'Mightiest of the Winged Dragons' [20] (+38) 1,439,163

For the same NW you can take a kite shield to 13+32 (45 AC) -vs- (58 AC) on the Mithril.... Someone would have to do the math to see what this equates to in HP, but I think it would outweigh the dex you are loosing with the MS.

Furthermore, I'm not exactly sure how the PR weight works, but from my rudementary math skills it appears you get charged an additional .1 PR weight on the MS over a kite meaning you would be at a lower PR (slightly better rewards if you keep the same fightlist) or you could almost double the NW of the Kite and keep the same PR you are at now.... meaning more AC/more dex to me that seems to be the no brainer, but someone has got to double check my mathamatics :)

On top of that, forge the last few points on the kite shield yourself, and you probably end up making money on the trade :) If it works out this way, I want half... make the check payable to VP inc.

Double check my math on the PR weights, but I am 90% sure what I posted is correct