Strat help for getting ready for my NCB (in General)

When I start my NCB in Sept. I am thinking of going with the same setup that I have now.

Enchanter with AS and EC
ToA Monk
Enchanter with AMF

I can beat most people around my PR, and am getting great fight rewards beating people up whose scores are about 3X my PR. However I was wondering one of two things;

Should I just keep renting good equipment and save my NUB cash for buying BA or save up for my own gear? Should I add a fourth minion to this team? I was thinking another enchanter with GA/AMF, and I would just rent an RoE for the monk for the first month or so.

The only problem I have right now are teams with a huge FB, since my AMF only covers about .2 of it and I dont last to melee :(

Thanks for replies and advice :)

if you go for a ToA, don't go for UC.

What do you aim to do with your team?

Shade - Why is that? and second should I rent or buy my weapon?

GL - Well, big mages kick my butt now so I thought if I had a big enough AMF then that would help. Also, the EC helps against tank teams since even right now, the tanks I am fighting most often miss the monk due to the gap it creates in DX. I figured I would add a GA just because it will hurt people who hack through the meat shield enchanters I have :)

Renting is great. Owning is better. You can never totally settle or build from a piece of equipment you rent, because you cannot be assured it will always be available, nor can you get it incrementally larger, because you should not forge or blacksmith something you do not own. I think you will have to balance the buying of gear and the buying of BA. I do not think you will be able to do one or the other exclusively.

My opinion on the number of minions is, more sooner than later, with this caveat. I think for me, 3 minions is optimal for early growth, the rewards you get are decent, but you get the full power of a multi minion team. At some point you will need to add a 4th minion. I firmly believe that a 4 minion team is necessary to compete at higher levels, if for no other reason than having multiple places to invest high levels of CB2 into NW efficiently. That's the long answer the short answer is I think an AMF/GA 4th minion would serve you well, just a matter of when you should add it. Start that way and you build the most powerful team possible, but you grow more slowly. The longer you wait to add him, the larger the disparity between your most experienced minion and your newly hired minion's available exp, and that disparity creates inefficiency in your cost to benefit ratio. Also that 4th minion will help with FB specifically as the damage gets more spread out to all your minions.

I personally feel to properly leverage an UC tank (or monk) you must use ALL or close to all of your Weapon Allowance (WA) in ranged weapons. Most likely one of the ex or ax bows, (most likely with UC an axbow). One could argue for a nice fat elbow, but training UC you will only get two ranged rounds instead of three if you trained archery, and that might make the elbow less attractive.

Lastly, one thing I have always wanted to try, and I just might for the fun of it, is UC with exbow (much lower demand, much lower cost than axbow) and a RoBF. Your set up with an enchanter in front and one in back might lend well to this, the idea being, you use your massive exbow to drop the ST of the attacking tank down low enough he wont hurt much when he hits, but your WANT him to hit, so the RoBF aura can activate. Ideally, he hits you with no damage, then takes a nice fat RoBF aura for his trouble.

Also consider a 4th minion wall with Trollskin and MgS, HP and PL. This will help greatly with those pesky DD teams ;) Stick him in front to absorb and mitigate those big CoC's, and PL the MM and FB damage. One thing I do is drop trollskins on my enchanters to keep the PL absorbed damage from DD spells down.

Do you want to be rounded, and try to beat everybody, or do you want to pick on specific things, like tank or mages?

Sefton - thanks for the advice. I guess I should start saving for some of the items I NEED to rent in order to compete, A couple Corns and some EBs to start I guess :)

GL - I think well rounded would be better, since I would be able to beat more teams then if I just focussed on one thing in particular. I know its innefficient to be ok at everything but it seems in my limited exp. so far that I would be able to beat more people that way.

Also, I have played around with forging a bit, and managed to upgrade my HGs to +10 at the expense of alot of BA...should I do the upgrading myself before I start the NCB? Since by the end of my NUB I guess it doesnt matter if this character is earning exp or not.

why not?

UC doesn't do as much damage as a real weapon, and training UC high will hurt your experience training.

aim for a Morgul-Hammer or Blade of Nan Elmoth

Shade - What about the extra evasion from UC? Should I ditch my EBs/UC for DBs and a big weapon instead? Would enemy minions still miss as much?

If you can avoid it you should never forge while enjoying any sort of bonus NUB or NCB. Certainly now and again, to bump your own gear one level or so is different, but massive long term forging should be done when you have no bonus.

Well just now I scrapped my UC for a weapon and BL, and I hit for about the same damage, if not more. I also take a bit more damage...but with the 2 mil exp I got for UC I just added some more HP :D

lol well now I mucked around with my strat too much and now I cant beat all the same people I could before :( Oh well thats how you learn what works and what doesn't lol

Shoot I didn't realize you were purification II heck you were one the characters that was frustrating my new NCB character. I am a big fan of if it is not broke don't fix it. Your DX is still pretty high, but with no evasion from UC anymore, I might be able to take you now, lets see....

heh, Seft, I was just about to say exactly the same thing!

Trained evasion (of the same level as your UC was) will give you better dodging abilites than training UC. If you get the same or better damage byusing a wepaon to your UC, then weapon + Evasion will be better for you. :)

Yah still can't get past your big DX, not yet at least, so you didn't break it too bad from a tank point of view. Now I need to get my DX up, and some more Plus on the VB, blacksmith here I come ;)

:O you're the guy that rented the +25 EBs I was renting for the past few weeks, but I'm trying to phase renting out now anyways, it's hurting my earning capability too much :(.

yes the second those boots came on I grabbed them :D

Sefton you were destroying my team when I had the fireball mage, so I decided to switch to this instead, which is working out much better against most opponents in my fight list anyways.

I trained evasion to go with my new weapon, and am hitting about the same but not dodging as much, so I am losing about half the time to people I could beat before. Though as my AS and EC get better I guess that will go away soon enough :)

Well Johnny seems I can't beat you consistantly anymore, so I guess you can get all those clan points back from me lol The fights between Sefton and myself are damn close now too, I keep winning with about ~20k left, but am still winning ;)

/me goes and rents +170 DBs for 20k and has fun when realizes that they only add 45k pr

Rentals FTW!!

OK so now I know what me new NCB is going to be.

ToA Tank training evasion (with an RoE for awhile to start)
Enchanter with EC and AS
Enchanter with AMF
Enchanter with GA and AMF

I have a few weeks of my NUB left, so I think I can scrounge up enough cash for 3 corns and a decent weapon. A pair of EBs would be nice too, but I do need some cash for BA. How many months of forging would it take for me to get 3 corns to +10 and my weapon to around 4 million NW?

:/ If your Evasion is the same size as your UC was (and you didn't use a Gi...) you should be dodging a lot more now.

If not, maybe something really is broken with UC? ;)

If you're going to run with 2 AMF's then maybe you should add a VA to one of them. VA with a Tank is very nice.

Ok I have some more questions:

What would be better for my team? A big pair of DBs and train BL instead of evasion or EBs with evasion and higher DX? Which would I dodge more with?

Should I get a BoT and forget about VA or should I still train it anyways? What about a bigger VA with a bigger weapon instead?

Again thanks for the help.

I vote BoNE and VA. Those two in combination make for a great deal of life suckin' in melee.

But if you go for a weapon with inherent VA, and you have a massive DX, then go MH.

Argus pounded zig [111664]
Argus draws strength from his weapon! [55392]

Argus clove zig with Frictulæs [101702]
Argus draws strength from his weapon! [37688]

The first one is with a MH I am renting and the second one is with a named ELS. Both are almost identicle NW so I guess VA plus auto VA kicks major butt lol :D