some evidence to mage / tank "imbalance" (in General)

It has been said in other threads that it is easy to cherry pick what characters to use for comparisions to prove your points. Please note, (and check for yourself) these mages were taken off the Stats>attributes page under Lorien (my realm) and I took ALL mages in the top 5 MM and FB that were near my PR. I'm sure that with a good deal of sorting through every character in the game I could find more examples to show my point, and a few to disprove it, but such is life.


My Stats

valenvail
Score / PR / MPR: 1,983,049 / 1,377,516 / 1,024,215
Net Worth: $49,502,670
Battles
Total*** Challenged*** Won
433,408 **218,575*** 205,109


Major Stars
Score / PR / MPR: 1,941,773 / 1,330,247 / 943,915
Net Worth: $34,325,463
Battles
Total ***Challenged *** Won
143,467** 91,526**** 87,322

FB mage with almost identical PR to my own....
please note he has almost identical Score/PR to my own while only using 3/4 (roughly) my networth, and HALF the number of winning battles as my own. Someone please explain to me again how hard mages have it?

Ohhh and not that it matters, he beats me in a fight, and has tanks on his fightlist that even I (an overpowered under PR'd tank) can't beat... for all those stating how overpowered tanks are now...


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Camelot Reborn
Score / PR / MPR: 1,837,714 / 1,181,999 / 960,775
Net Worth: $18,736,430
Battles
Total ***Challenged*** Won
290,782 **167,422** 161,569

FB mage slightly lower PR
I can beat him in a fight, but he is still pretty close in PR and Score with 1/3 my NW, and 3/4 the number of winning fights...


********************************************

Team AoD
Score / PR / MPR: 1,872,925 / 1,382,513 / 1,247,327
Net Worth: $13,977,762
Battles
Total**** Challenged ***Won
252,052 **153,546 ***154,155

MM mage
real close PR, slightly lower score. I beat him consistently due to dmg dealer in front. But once again note the less than 1/3 NW, and less than 3/4 won battles to my own.

***********************************************


All three characters listed above have similar Score/PR to my own, yet the highest NW among them is 15 million lower than my own, and the other two over 30 million lower. The highest number of fights won of the three characters is 40,000 less than my own, so it took them a full 40k (or 50k or 150k) fights less than me to achieve the same power rating. At 1200 fights a day that is between a month and 4 months less time to get to equal power!!!!!!

All the mages who have been griping about tank power, PR not truly reflecting power, and Weapon Allowance among tanks.... the above examples show without question you have been riding easy street for a good long time, and that has come to an end. It is time for you to start reaching in those deep pockets, and adding a little more to your strat than HP/DD and "which tat matches my purse better?"

I think the scores reflected above show that for the most part, equal PR mages are still inline with those of tanks, and although now it is mystically harder for you to defeat us it can be done.

Anyway I have brought up a multitude of facts and examples over the past few days in a gross number of threads, so I thought I would bring some specifics to the table in my own thread. Sorry if this comes off as harsh, but it is very frustrarting to hear woe is me from mages who have had it so easy from the day I started my char., the first time they are given some adversity.

blackmage

Battles Total *****Challenged***** Won
365,958 ***** 222,809 *****216,418

blackmage
Score / PR / MPR: 1,942,775 / 1,503,458 / 1,020,857
Net Worth: $43,808,830
*see battles above

Fairly comprable on all lvls (including NW what did you do wrong :) j/k) I got flamed last night for comparing myself to hubbles character who is 6% higher PR than my own, so I was trying to keep it closer tonight, but there is all the rest of his stats for those keeping score.

Another (somewhat) equally ballanced mage who maintains a similar score and PR to my own (and beats me consistently... jerk)

Reading anything onto battles won seems pretty shaky without a detailed comparison of NUB/NCB bonus, clan bonuses, % of fights bought in money/xp time, skill of owners at maximizing rewards.....

I am holding nothing back... I had a 138% NUB for a good portion of my lifespan, I was also a member of a top 5 clan for almost 2 months and my current clan is consistently 10% or more bonus. I know you can't say with any exactness, but 80k ----> 200k seems some disparity no matter what kind of bonus he could have been collecting.

How exactly does one build get more experience? Unless your saying they can beat warriors with a Score WAY over their own PR to gain more exp...

I dunno, I personally beat both single mages and warriors that have about 150% of my PR and 4 times my score all the time. Slap on a clan bonus usually at 14-15% and a NUB at 163% and its pretty obvious why I'm moving faster than everyone else.
And I can believe it happened... mages don't have much to spend money on so some spend it on BA during exp time. I've seen some do it and get 250k MPR in 3 weeks pretty easily.

And I know at that at least myself I designed my build so that I would be done buying/improving items pretty soon. So once I get 3 corns and CoI/AG all +10 I can start selling CB$ for USD.

VP:
Your strategy is more designed to beat other tanks than mages. So a comparison of your character to mages in your neighborhood is a poor one.

First, you use an axbow instead of an elb. I can lend you my elb about 15M NW and you can see how that helps/hurts. Also I can give you some seeker arrows to try and you will certainly blow those mage teams near you away, esp since you use a TOA.

Second, I have no idea of your AMF level so I cannot say if it is adequate at your level of fighting.

Third, I still believe that your second minion is mostly wasted xp when you fight mages. You need to live to melee to see benefit from your VA. Well vs FB mages that seems to likely not happen. I would drop VA and make that minion a wall or mini tank like mine. Equipping a MgS on it will likely do wonders vs mages, esp MM mages.

So your comparison of your character to "mages" about your level is a moot point.

A few nice tweaks to your character and you will be mopping the floor with mages near your MPR/PR.

UncleKracker when I did a NCB I kept my mpr over 10 times my battles won for a long time (maybe until I hit 7 refresh, not sure) with a bonus a lot less than yours, rather than depending on the build (obviously this has to be a decent one) its more important to manage your list and maximize xp time battles whilst minimizing money time ones. With the speed NUB/NCB grows this means updating your list daily or even more often in the early stages. I wasted that NCB ultimately due to other factors and I know I couldn't face maximizing things that way again as inspecting hundreds of characters some days is too much work.
Oh yea, buying all of Sundays BA whilst you still have a clan bonus helps too.

Also, comparing battles won is not wise.

IE: Major Stars
a Character belonging to Shake Some Action
Created May 22, 2006 (NUB until September 19) .

This character had a much higher NUB then you and therefore gets a lot more xp per fight. Hense, less battles needed for the same MPR.

When I was playing TAB, Mantra got Cosmos (now Koyaanisqatsi) to my MPR in 1/4th the battles. How? NUB and buying minions. Buying minions is basically free xp/battles fought.

"imbalance"

What is it, how do you prove it, and is it a problem?

Does proving "imbalance" take into account the possible defenses against each?

Bart, I think there may be as many ideas of what balance should mean in CB land as players :)

That's what I meant.

Yea, I did have a post sketched out in my head about this some time ago, asking what people thought balance should mean in CB. The strat permutations are pretty complicated these days and untangling things beyond simple "I hit for this much with this DD versus that much with this ST/weap etc" seems very tricky. Should the balance center upon the ability to grow a char from zero taking into account cash profits etc, should ease of use be a factor etc etc. Luckily I have spared you all that undoubtedly incoherant, question asking, doubt raising, no answer giving post.
I nominate Nymandus to make it, he seems to have a good handle on things and doesn't get fixated on one aspect ;)

Unfortunately I suspect there are a lot of people whose idea of imbalance doesn't extend past: 'The other guy can hurt me. It's not fair. He's smaller than me.'

Teach them "rock, paper, scissors".

Its still not fair, that rock is far too small to be beating me :P

:)

Good for Goose is good for Gander. So if Ranger is allowed to tweak VP's strat to better fight mages, can I tweak GL's strat to better combat tanks? Believe me I can do it. I can make him beat lots of hefty tanks and lose to lots of small mages.

This is one of the beauties of the entire CB system, the proverbial rock, paper, scissors. To say simply because a strat is not optimized for fighting a particular opponent and then using that lack of optimization as method for devaluing the data his fights create, well that particular argument can be used to invalidate ANY fight comparison.

And then we can get into, is your optimization better or worse than my optimization. You say go Elbow and seekers, what if I say keep you hard earned gear and keep using regular cheap ammo and instead learn this and train that, is my optimization worse than yours because I am not using one of the so called over powered items?

I guess some of you haven't been keeping up with the other forums.

I am very satisfied with the swing of the CB pendulum right now. I will admit that it seems to be slightly more to the tank side than middle, but not nearly to the degree it has been since I started playing.

There have been 3 or 4 threads over the course of the past few days all stating that tanks are SOOO overpowered, and the PR rating of tanks is a misrepresentation due to the fact that they can fight up so high compared to mages.

I simply wanted to show everyone the stats of the mages at my PR lvl, and my own stats to dispel some of that rubbish. Certainly there are some mages that are getting beat up now, and some tanks that are fighting way, way up but that is the way of life.

I like the fact that I can't beat "everyone" and that there are NUB characters that still zip past me during their NUB. If I didn't want that challenge, I would have never started this game with a 3 minion ToA tank! (after muchadvise from my mentor and others).

Anyway I hope that noone mistook my thread for me complaining, I never complained even when there was an imbalance, I am just getting fed up with hearing woe is me, so wanted to show some real life undoctored numbers.

Also, a few players have mentioned...

Using number of won fights is not a great indication....

At 80k fights he would have to have something like a 250% bonus over my NUB of 138% (which accounts for roughly 3/4 of my fights) to gain the same ammount of exp, or be fighting WAY up compared to what I was able to.

anyone ever seen a 380% NUB?


but again, I am not upset that he is where he is, or complaining, just trying to prove a point to the others that have been complaining, that things really aren't as bad as they make them out to be.

Accounting for the difference in # of fights can come from any or all of the above: Higher clan reward, fighting higher score enemies, fighting more (% of their battles) during whacky xp time, having NUB/NCB, or using a RoE.

Why do they beat you? While you use a ranged weapon, its a weak one. Your tank stats (str and dex) are very low for your level. Your overall cumulative hitpoints are low as well as your protection against magic. The majority of your strategy is focused on the melee rounds, while you lack any real measures to keep you alive to reach it. So during ranged rounds, you just get -blown away- by mages plain and simply.

Of course, the argument of mages not having to use their CB$$ is still a completely valid argument..

Now now Velvetpickle, be careful what you say! Saying tanks are now too powerful is the new fad!

Personally, I think the system now is much improved. Tanks, when supplemented with money, beat the mage that tries to compete naked and without cash. As, at least in my opinion, it should be.

The system is still good though. Magic can still tear up tank teams. I should find my old comparison thread, where I went into how much more damage magic was doing.

Anyway, I like CB as is now. Even though I do lack the NW it takes to be competitive.

I love the way CB is now.... that is the point of my thread.

The examples I gave were to dispute recent claims of "Tank Overpower" My examples are 4 mages and a tank who all share a similar Score/PR ratio.

Some of these characters beat me, some I beat, some I draw... If that is not rock paper scissors at its best I don't know what is :)

VIVA LA TANKS !!!!!

second the motion on like it the way it is now, and AMEN! to edyit