Anti-Tank/Tankbuster (And Repost of how GA works) (in General)

Hi all, NS thread about an anti-tank strat got me thinking. But first, a repost of my GA findings.

"Doing a very quick test with the (unknowing :P) help of Mr C. two fights and 4 results later;

FB Damage GA return GA%
[3929] (2357) 59.99%
[3879] (2327) 59.99%
[3728] (2236) 59.98%
[5895] (3537) 60%

So at max, GA returns 60% of the damage done to you.

My GA is 30,00 for this test, I don't know the size of Mr C's FB, but it was effected by a 53% AMF reduction before damage.

Mr C also had no armour, endurance or protection to throw out the returned damage figures."

Now on to the Anti-Tank setup.

Single minion, training HP, EC and your DD of choice (I'm leaning towards MM). Corn is necessary. And the icing, a ToBF.

The aim is to lower Str (Lowering Dex is just gravy) to lower damage output. Evasion isn't needed, as you want the tanks to hit you to take ToBF damage. It doesn't matter how much damage they do to you per hit, the ToBF will return it's damage to them every hit.

The DD is there just to be able to do damage. Also the ToBF helps when facing Single FB mages, but MM/CoC will still hurt. :)

I toyed with the idea of using a second minion, with PL, to stop Tanks haveing an VA leech (better than DM, as this also stops MH/Bth leech), but as leech is based off damage done, I don't think it would be necessary.

:)

ToBF doesn't work in ranged.. in other words you will get ELBified

And if your goal is to lower Str only with EC (assuming you don't care about Dex reduction since it won't matter if you have 20 dex and not too big an EC) then realize that you are doing this at double the cost to get strength

The dex reduction will help surviving until melee. :)

It might not be perfect, but I feel (bar having a stupidly expensive pair of DBs) that it will stop tanks effectively. :)

"then realize that you are doing this at double the cost to get strength"

It's not really double the cost. Tanks have to put XP into Str and Dex, you only have to put it into EC, therfore getting (just about...) the same reduction in both Str and Dex.

Unless they skew their expenditure to favour one stat over theother, but if they do, you're taking the other into negatives.

It's win/win really. :)

The Corn is to offset boosts from armour, and you;ll never reduce a single ToA tanks stats to nothing, but you will lower the amount of damage they put out.

I considered AC, but we're seeing how VBs can cut thorugh that like a hot knife... ;)

The only problem with EC is you would have to pump it pretty high. Because if you didn't after a certain level it wouldn't really make much of a dent into the tank's stats. And by doing that you're taking away from your DD spell. And, remember higher up ST has less impact on physical damage - or at least that was the case before the changes.

I like the PL minion addition to get rid of the leech, why do you think its not worth it? Morgs and BoThs are immensly popular and BoNEs and ELS are dirt cheap.

The best anti tank strat I've ever seen was SacredPeanut's - 4 minion team, one tank, three EC enchanters. Hopeless against mage teams but amazing against tanks. The huge amounts of EC reduced damage so much that it was the equivalent of equipping a really large ToE, enabling the quite small tank to just take his time mopping up the opposition.

Johnny, I'm tlaking about matching the tanks expenditure in Str/Dex with EC. Easy to don on a single minion. :)

Leech is based on damage done. If you reduce the attacks to doing hundreds of damage, the leech will be negligable. :)

That's the idea Johnny, I suppose if you could afford three corns, you'd get slightly more EC from EC on three minions each with Corns than on a single minion.

Plus the ToBF has an aura effect.

You could leave the E's with 20 HPs each and the tanks would still take full ToBF backlash damage, where GA would be based on the E actual HPs.

No GA for your strategy?

Well really the best anti tank strat is a nice large single minion UC guy....no contest!

The biggest problem with EC is that you need a lot of it. I've got 150k strength at the moment. I can still hit quite hard with half of that. You'd need to bring my strength down by more than 75k. Which means that you'd need at least 150k EC to compete with my little 190k MPR team. That's a huge investment for a small char, especially if they are to be able to deal damage of their own.

No GA. GA returns a percentage of the damage done to you, and this is trying to reduce that to tiny amounts. :)

Exactly Johnny! And if your RoBF doesn't do enough damage for you, swap it for a DD familiar. ;)

Johnny, you have ST: 150,912 DX: 129,257 on your tank. In a four minion team.

It would be more than possible to train a 300K EC on a single minion, with XP left over. That would (ignoring your ToA) make your tank worthless.

:)

I don't disagree it's possible GL, but when some of the tanks at higher levels have at least a million in st/dx...you would need an ec up there of 2 million....that's difficult to do if you want your guy to stay alive and deal damage.....

And you can't ignore ToAs when you're talking tank busting. (BTW, that st of mine is all TOA). I already know of several people, tank teams already, who are using ToEs and are thinking of switching to ToAs. It will be the most possible tattoo for the next couple of months....

"that's difficult to do if you want your guy to stay alive and deal damage....."

That's the point. They've spent 2 mil, 1 mil on Str and Dex. If you spend 2 mil on EC, they do no damage. There's your survivability.

Doing damage should be covered by either the RoBF or a DD familair. :)

If they're ToA, then they've probably not spent that much on ST/DX, so will have a lot of HP. If your damage is lowered because you've invested in EC, then you're looking at a good stalemate strategy.....

Returned damage from a massive RoBF though....

AMF will be a serious problem for you, ToE would be the tat of choice for this setup.
You'd likely die from AMF before the RoBF could kill any real tanks, save for the smallest HP Tutu of Augmentation wearing teams.