The death of mages (in General)

Well, my fight list is slowly shrinking as more and more folks go to Tanks.

I'm playing a AMF + CoC + Wall/BL tank + ToE strat. I'm getting chewed to pieces by Tanks with AMF and my battles rarely last beyond 5 rounds, even when I win. The damage escalation has really hurt the CoC and BL characters in my opinion. I do pretty good against fellow mages but they are a dying breed.

So, do I burn 5-10% of my experience and retrain, losing a months worth of work and removing yet another mage from the game or do I start over using the NCB?

If I do retrain, what would be the best way to convert to meet the new field out there without burning up too much MPR?


ATM, I'm leaning towards the NCB and leaving comics almost as is, gradually stripping equipment as the new character rises. Who knows, the ebb and flow may change again and I'd hoped to reach 1 million MPR with the char!

If stat drainers actually worked, I could come up with a good strat, or if a Tattoo of Balrog Flame actually did its job I could work with that. But it seems the only way to beat a tank nowadays is to be a better tank! Has anyone else got a good way to beat an AMF tank team other than building a better tank?

A FB or MM mage. You need to hit from ranged, and hit as hard as you can.

The changes just made it so you have to kill them before they get the chance to kill you. Most tanks don't have great ranged, but they just have hammers/swords that hit twice as hard as a larger Magic Missle or fireball.. and do so three times per round. Best not to let them get a chance.

EC won't help, so really, that leaves Evasion and DBs (And an AoI).

I think using and AoI would have helped when you had the CoC.

It did, but not enough. The tanks still did too much damage for me to last.

Well I just spent 800K messing with my tatoo and switching strats and am no more happy than I was before. I'm going to go with a new character I guess.

GL, the "quick kill" is dying too. Constant and Nymandus are examples of hard-hitters in ranged, and that's without even getting into the really high folks. There will be more, and they will destroy mages -- at least the single-minion mage teams.

I think a four-minion/RoS team using magic as offense can probably still be competitive... The shift to multiple-minion teams has been going on for suite some time now: aura affects on tattoos, RoS, PL... Hasn't been a lot of love for single minions, though now a single-minion tank can do pretty well, so that's cool, I guess.

In all honesty, should a single mage team be able to be competive? Its a game about strategy, and that would be an anti-strategy :).

I still say quick kill is the way to go with mage teams. A big FB can take out a four/five minion team in ranged, a big bow cannot. So even with the changes, no matter how uneven they make everything at the moment, mage teams can thrive. Its just going to take alot more work than it would to thrive with a big hammer/bow.

I don't disagree, I just see four-minion teams (especially with RoS) as being just as boring. AS, GA, and PL rules the defensive side, while you go with some sort of mage for offense... Boring with a capital "B", or at least as boring as a single-mage strategy. *shrug*

I think the ability of 1, 2, 3, or 4 minion teams to compete is key to making strategy choices as interesting as they are here. Single minions can be competitive but also have many drawbacks. There are still a few decisions to be made with the single mage, ratios, DM or AMF, Tattoo.

From Shake Some Action: "A big FB can take out a four/five minion team in ranged, a big bow cannot."
Obviously You haven't hit a real tank. I avg roughly 500k damage in Ranged per Hit... times 9, since I have archery trained, in many cases I squeeze in a 4th hit in the first and 3rd rounds. Easy Enough, I take out 3 minions in ranged. Then it's on with my MH and VA (to recover HP). Most of my fights are over in 3 rounds. Just look at my battle log. Some stretch to 6 max. (Unless it's Crisis, we stalemate quite a bit).

Here's a solution. Increase CoC damage by... I dunno, 10 times? Pretty please? =)

Mikel he means that you can't take out the whole team before ranged rounds are over...

Well, just look at Rangers top character. Lower powered (NW and PR) tank teams defeat him. It's pretty obvious that tanks have the advantage now. Finally, they'll all stop whining!

As Sutekh, stated, my single minion tank (Constant) has taken a big boost from the recent changes. Though, for the past 15 months, I've struggled. Starting out, I was lucky enough to snag an ELBOW, and for the first few months, I was fairly competitive. Though, without the time and financial resources, but most of all the steady decline in tanking efficiency, I started to lag behind. There were many times where I considered flip-flopping on my single minion tank and rolling over to a mage, but thought better of it. I continued to watch for Jonathan's love of the Tank to resurface. Of course, it took him over a year to do it, but now I'm starting to make up for lost ground.

So, for those of you thinking about scrapping your current strat... chances are it will eventually come back into vogue. Now, some of you may not be as patient as I was, but I'm glad I held onto that ELBOW (which was nearly worthless) even though there were many times where it seemed pointless to struggle on.

Anyway, the moral of the story: Good things come to those that wait... either that or I just plain missed a bunch of good opportunities!! :-)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.