SMFB, important or impotent? (in General)

Well, due to the recent changes in weapons, mages are being forgotten. More and more people switch to Dispel Magic because, why not? So I tried to think of a way to get mages back into it. AC won't help much, neither will trying to kill them first, because I doubt any mage can match the damage a tank can pump out with their bows. So whats left besides going tank yourself?

A mage with DX.

I don't know how many times I told a new player that they should take off the DX on their tank. But maybe thats the way to go now. With less mages then before, and more tanks, just go defensive.

A simple set up would be all thats required. HP, DX, MM, DM, Evasion.
Expensive but PitSpawn made it worth with Night Spirit and why can't a mage? Now to address the using of ST and using weapons and taking off MM, the whole point is to give mages another route to go. This character should only need minimum HP, DM, and only a small amount of Magic Missle. Pump the rest of the experience into DX and evasion. Use elven gear and displacement boots.

Mages need to start using at least some NW if they want to have a chance against tanks. They also need to stop, in my opinion, trying to win before a tank can. They can't do it anymore.

So if a tank can't hit, then they lose. Mages can always hit, even if for small damage. So magic missle.

At the very least, and the real point of what I am saying, Change the mages, don't abandon them.

Good luck all you ickle mages out there. You are going to need it.

Deja Vu! ;)

:D

Don't train dex, train Evasion, does all dex does and more! :D

DB s don't stack well with Evasion, something to consider.

I had a mage/enchanter team and did pretty well untill I reached higher levels of competition. There are some pretty tough tanks out there! Your DX theory makes sense but I think it might be too expensive cause of the major exp dilution. There must be another way that'll be more efficient. This might sound a bit silly but I think if you insist on having a mage team a WWEM team could do the trick against tanks but I'm no expert. Alot of defence with GA and AS. I'm doing some strat tests, I'll try my theory out and let you know how it does.

Then listen to the QB.
Only evasion no DX. DB's may not stack very well, but without DX then you might as well, because only other choice would be EB's.

And for tattoo, ToA, if you decided to train DX, would actually be good here, to give you an added edge against the tanks who use them.

ToE would be an option, but not the automatic way to go, because the object is to avoid taking damage, not reduce it. But in the same way RoBF might be good to make them pay for when they DO damage to hit you.

RoS and a base AS would also be interesting, because you get tons of HP for free.

Just some more thoughts.

Listen to GL, evasion is so much better then DX when your not trying to hit something with a weapon. The usual armor set for a mage is AG, CoI, and DBs, but it seems you don't care if damage takes a hit. So maybe you could consider the elven armor set instead. On the plus side it would be far cheaper to own.

At the least you'll get respect from me for just trying something different.

http://carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001UHG


Great minds and all that......:)

Back when I was younger and foolish, instead of being simply foolish like I am now lol ;)

Forget my idea, it sucks.

Wish I had seen that thread, because it is definitely viable. People are so obsessed with mages REDUCING damage, they forgot they don't have to take it. The main advantage mages have is they ALWAYS hit, so why not make use of the main disadvantage of tanks... they can't.

There was a character over on CB1... Hejin was it? That was a mage with dex, and a very good one at that. He also had evasion. Excellent strat.

I want to reiterate this point, because a few people in chat don't get it. The point of this strategy is NOT the same of most mages up to this point. Not quick wins and damage absorption. It's to dodge as many hits as possible, and winning by slow death. You have 25 rounds for MM or 22 for CoC, so take your time. Don't pump exp into the DD or HP. Pump it into evasion and DX if you decide to go that way.

You would need huge DB's or a very large evasion against ToA tanks, especially the big ones because they get such a big bonus to PTH they're almost guaranteed to hit once a round. Unless you can overcome their PTH....but essentially what you're describing is the method UC uses to succeed only with a DD spell instead of the UC weapon...

yes, sort of, but instead of needing massive DX to hit, you only use DX ( in much smaller amounts) to dodge, because instead of trying to let Melee damage do it, and risk missing people with higher evasion, you use MM to make sure you do damage, while having DX or ToA, with Evasion and DB's to dodge. And now with the weapon change, people going with more X's because + raises NW faster. I not sure, because I haven't tried. But I think if all thoughts on old mages are stripped away, and people start anew, mages can still be very useful.

bump bump and bump.... If mages started going this route, I will have a great ammount of respect for you while I am (still) mashing you into the ground :)

DX: 882,696 / Weapon PTH 50+ / Named ToA lvl 1,349,000

Unless you are able to train dex/evasion to the lvls of the old nightspirt, I am still gonna be smacking you once a round with tons of str behind every blow...

My main character, just a simple ToJ + MM mage, had a rather high Dex until a few weeks ago. I tried untraining the DX (which was at about 80% the XP of the MM) and pumping it into the MM, and found that my score went up by 20%. I agree wholeheartedly with GentlemanLoser that you should forget the DX and pump the XP and cash into evasion and DBs instead.

blackshadowshade

Its not really a new idea. Like Wasp said, there was a mage with DX named Hejin at CB1, and this char also made it into CB2.

I never said it was new. Just giving my opinion on the subject of mages. But I could only see DX working if you went with a ToA and EG's. I am not giving a strategy, just rough ideas of what a mage could use.

I'm not sure why you'd waste XP on Dexterity, there's no point in absorbing or avoiding damage with tanks as big and bad as they are in the current climate. You aren't going to get your dexterity high enough to out move a tank, especially one with free Dex from a TOA. All that dex could go to more firepower. (If you want proof of how high dexterity isn't helping a tank, see the current setup for The Apocalypse Book). Pumping evasion isn't going to help much at the moment either. What difference does it make if someone takes three times your HP per round or twice your HP per round? You are still dead.

And ToEs aren't helping much against tanks (at least not without other types of defense set up to aid the ToE) when a medium sized weapon can do more damage than a max ToE could even dream to block. The only way to even stand half of a chance right now as a mage is to blow a tank clear out of the water by concentrating your XP on FB or MM (or maybe even GA).

This seems to be a much more offensive orientated game than it was a month ago, so maneuver all you want... it won't help. These tanks are going to hit you and hit you hard, best to hit them faster.

"There was a character over on CB1... Hejin was it? That was a mage with dex, and a very good one at that. He also had evasion. Excellent strat."

*cough*Kenneth Irons*cough* ;)

With low hp, you'd get massacred by normal mages...

Shake. With enough Dex and/or Evasion (pth reduction) you can lower a tnaks potential damage by one hit. That can e as much as half damage if they usually hit twice a round.

With the changes to Evasion and defensive dex, you get enough, and you can negate their chance to hit you totally. something that was impossible in CB1

In CB1, at best, you could reduce a tnak to a single hit per round.

Now, Evasion and Dex are much more important.

Just check out how much a UC tank dodges!

The other alternative is quick killing. Unless all tanks switch back to Archery, you have three rounds (by and large), and that's without even using a ToE. That's a lot of damage you can lay down. My own personal verdict isn't in yet (God, I just cry when I see Crisis and Alchemist)... But magic can't be "done".

For a mage, I am not a fan of Evasion, and even less of dexterity (except via Haste in a pre-DM CB world). DBs are great, sure. They are also expensive (exactly as expensive as the + on the big weapons, in fact). If you want to go blow for blow against the biggest tanks (powered by NUB or powered by USD, cha-ching), good luck. You will lose. For a time I thought Jonathan was letting the tanks equilibrate. With recent changes, I'm not waiting any more.

If you want to beat tanks at lower levels, then just outrun them. Fight more. If you aren't going to be a BA demon you aren't going to get that far anyway. If it is between DBs and buying BA and you opt for DBs, well, good luck. You'll build a nice piece of equipment, but you'll never build a Top Twenty character. Probably not even Top Fifty at the rate things are going.

Just my over-bearing two cents.

I agree that killing quickly is still the way to go... Tuff Bunny has enough exp trained into FB to kill me before I get to Melee, and she is one of the toughest mages for me to figure how to get past b/c I have no intention of switching to an ELB/Archery just to outrun a few rogue mages that can best me in ranged rounds...

GL, I'm not sure if you realize exactly how much damage these guys/gals are doing since the recent changes. A bloodlust tank with 800K strength can pretty much match my 1.1million MM or my 1.1million FB with a semi-affordable melee weapon and that is just in their first hit of three.

Its going to take ALOT of dex/evasion/DBs to get a 700-900K dexterity tank with a decent + on his/her melee weapon to only hit me once per round... or even to cut damage enough for me to live a round longer. I have a much better shot using that XP to bump my FB and force the tank to die a round earlier.

I agree, Shake. By the way, you have a fine team. Even with 40-50% more PR, I can't beat you. I'm sure if I strapped Fred on I could beat you (I like Fred. I like whoever named him Fred), but it still says a lot for your team (and PL -- still the most overpowered and multi-minion stat in the game...I'm reaching "disgust" point with it). A job well done!

Shake, you are fighting an upper crust. An elite. It is hard to say this thread even applies to you. I am like you -- I tend to only see within my own blinders (an obviously redundant reference to the fact they are blinders). I couldn't possibly care less about the 500K-1000K score range. I didn't even mention anything below that since one can overcome that rabble after a week or two with an NCB/NUB. You are thinking big, and I like that.

And with that thinking, there is no way you will ever beat a Crisis or Alchemist with a two-minion team. I think that's sad, but that's the game. I get a good laugh when people lament the loss of CB1. CB2 is better at being CB1 than CB1 ever was. It's still about following the gitchy stats (PL's the flavor right now), about huge AS/GA (even with DM!), and, most of all, it's still about USD. I feel the pull myself. I've got "void stuff" on me because I used USD once to reach near the top. Now the ghost-shift is trying to pull me in again even though I am dead even right now and have no intention of giving in to the red.

And yet, nothing else has any taste.

Sorry to double post... but I'll give y'all one heavily weighted example:

Kate Village's familiar -1,206,463
Wayne Rogers -1,077,061

That's how many HP I have left after two melee rounds against Shade's character (we draw). Do I have a better shot at staying alive one more round or killing him a round sooner? Pumping the FB it is!

Yes, and good luck with that. The only reason it is even a choice in that scenario is because Shade is still trying to rock the Kasbah with two-minions. Add more, and you'll just be doing what I do: "Edit | Delete" off the fight list.

Sorry to double post again :).

Actually sutekh, PL really doesn't do much for me. I keep un-training it because it doesn't help one bit against anyone in my hitlist, then re-training it because my darn FB keeps taking out my familiar, then un-training it again because its not like that enchanter actually lives to melee anyway. In my secluded case, I've come to realize that AS is worth more than PL.. though i can certainly think of a few cases where PL would be far more effective than in my own.

It works against me, Hoss. *smile*

And you aren't double posting... You're doing what we like to refer to in CB as: "actually saying something intelligent."

We like that a lot. At least I do. *smile*

>_< Can't word my reply this morning. ;)

I want to offer the point that mages will never be able to out nuke tanks. Especially facing high AC, and with tanks getting multiple hits per round.

Hopefully we won't see many Tanks going back down the Archery + ELBow route, as that will become impossible to stop without Evasion.

Maybe we'll go back to seeing 4 minion teams, with three 20 HP enhancters just to die one per ranged round...

Nah, it will get more boring than that -- just tanks vs RoS teams with massive AS/GA. Yawn-o-rama.

Sut: how big an As could you muster with the XP on Joe?

granted it'd cost 30 mil + for minions, but with a monster (2 mil +) RoS and Joe's XP you could have one hack of a GA based killing machine. One tank training whatever it is you want, and one AMF minion and one GA minion. With 4 minions well into the 1.5 mil HP range, GA return after training it up (or use the RoS on it) would be monster during ranged. Killing many of the ToA tanks, and those whose seem to like to fight in pink paper party hats.

LOL more boring, heck on a single tank you now have many many options, it is those darn mages that are extremely boring. Nothing to it, fight, train the same old thing, fight, rinse repeat.

Now on tanks you get to decided tattoo or TSA, more ST, more DX, more HP, new enchantment, more enchantment, bump weapon, bump armor, get more ST from armor, get more DX from armor, take less damage with better AC. You get to worry bow vs. xbow, archery vs bloodlust. These are now all viable areas to investigate and tweak. When is the last time you broke out of your training pattern Sut? Mages are YAWN boring, they are safe and they are easy. If you want to rise in the ranks with little investment of CB2 and you want to have a formulated approach to training, then mages are for you.

I have to disagree strongly that the changes to the tank system have given less option and made more boredom, and I will say there are several people, my wife included, who may very well be enticed back to CB2 because of the new tank viability. Can't see how that equates to more boring, less choice.

As far as a mage with DX, the ONLY reason to put DX on your mage would be to counter that one guy who stuck 2K DX and 50K ST on his wall and you want to dodge him. You will not dodge a tank with it. You will not dodge a tank without DB's evasion and DX and probably a big EC to boot. If your strat is to dodge tanks with mages, it will take massive CB2 and most likley a loss of power when compared to other mages in your peer group.

"As far as a mage with DX, the ONLY reason to put DX on your mage would be to counter that one guy who stuck 2K DX and 50K ST on his wall and you want to dodge him. You will not dodge a tank with it. You will not dodge a tank without DB's evasion and DX and probably a big EC to boot. If your strat is to dodge tanks with mages, it will take massive CB2 and most likley a loss of power when compared to other mages in your peer group."

Yup. And the tanks in your peer group can equal your damage with one hit, but are able to land 2, 4 or more hits...

I am talking boredom as far as overall game diversity. I'm not referring to my own personal boredom. That's been entrenched in me for more than two years now. Tank, enchanter, wall, mage, blah, de-blah, de-blah. Running a team is mind-numbingly mind-numbing. Lots of clicking, decent fiscal management, and longevity. I can't think of a single top player who hasn't just done that. Some focus more on one facet or another, but those three items are what it all comes down to.

What DOES alleviate my boredom is the big picture -- the overall landscape of CB. Forums, chat, new players, Jonathan, team diversity, etc. St the high-end, all I am going to see are tanks.

As for what kind of AS could I pump out? Well, 3,300,000 plus probably around 1,100,000 plus around 500,000 plus around 75,000. That would be a total of something like a 5,000,000 level AS. The biggest AS currently is around 2.4 million and it yields around 973K HP on four minions. So, I would guess a 5 million level AS would be hitting around 1.75 million HP per minion?

with a reasonable GA, you could at that point own everyone.

I guess I am not seeing where the complaint is coming from, other than a switch from say mage to tank blender, how are things significantly different? I mean before, and yes I realize until you start over you do not care, but the lack of diversity simply funneled everyone starting out into mages. Hopefully this will now be counter balanced, ideally that is all it would do. I agree it will likely swing the other way now, and be more tank less mage instead of the reverse, but I cannot see how this changes to overall picture in anyway other than to say there will be more tanks at the top and you are currently within the top, you are not running a tank, and wont be seeing as many mages to fight.

I guess in the end all I see is hey now my mage strat does not rule anymore, dern, NOW its boring?

/me wonders when this conversation so drastically changed...

And you are correct to call me on it GW, so I will desist. This last tank change to me made a large step to restoring balance and diversity, and I was surprised Sut would think the opposite.

I thought that was the point, the restoration of balance. But people aren't (apparently) used to balance on this game, so they try to compensate, but over compensate, and then we get a bunch of weird stuff.

My point against tanks has never changed: at the high end, tanks rule because they can have USD spent on them. Yes, camping used to be the other way to get cash. Could I spend USD on massive DBs and an AoI for a mage? I suppose. But I doubt I would get back the same bang for buck in that scenario.

That is why I dislike tanks and dislike anything that makes CB more tank blenderish. I'm not freaking out or complaining, I am merely stating my opinion on the matter. I apologize for that resulting in a thread-hijack of sorts.

Sorry if this is getting off topic for the post.

Persoanlly I tohugh CB was becoming balanced before the physical damage change.

DD had to be toned down, and the reduction to lower level damage did that.

The restructure of physical damage has (in my opinion) swung the balance too far. Strategy and diversity is now going, as only a tank can compete with a tank.

I completely agree! The only two changes I really wanted to see before this weapons change was 1: a softening of the curve of weapon upgrades and 2: a steepening of the curve for DB upgrades. It is/was just too easy to stick on a pair of huge DBs and watch everyone swing and miss, while training evasion to have that effect takes millions and millions of exp.

I think we will see that mages can remain competitve in one of the two ways listed earlier in this forum....

Pumping a ton of Evasion...

Kililng before Melee...

Now wether or not existing mages can make that change and stay powerful is a different story, it may take a few NCB's training this way from scratch to get to the top, but thats the way of CB I guess.

We may also see the need for mages to have additional support minions (god forbid) to last the number of rounds they will need to to make the Eva, strat viable.... Heaven forbid mages should need to pump some NW into their teams lol