VA discussion (in General)

Is VA worth learning now?

With PL now in the game, and with a lot of people now using DM (esp with the ROS), my questions is this - Is VA worth spending xp on?

You could use that xp for plenty of other stats/skills/enchantments that would do you far more good.

Also, remember that VA is only good once you get to melee rounds. So for 3 rounds your not getting any benefit from that xp your spending. Unlike GA/Haste/Prot/GS/AS that give benefits from the first round of battle.

But since VA gets nerfed if you meet someone with PL, as long as the PL minion has HP, IMO it is wasted xp better spend someone else.

One could say GA gets nerfed as well if you have PL but there is a huge difference. The GA casting character decides whether or not to use PL and nerf the GA. With VA, your dependent on whether your opponent uses PL and most do.

Any discussion or other thoughts are welcome.

Dunno Ranger. VA has saved my bacon in numerous fights.

Va is a very nice skill, but in a 4 minion strategy it can a very large xp dilution especially when you are going with a high NW weapon tank. With being to >=MPB to achieve full effect, I found it lot more efficent switching to a MH and then spending the xp into a more vital area.

Not worth it. Use a Morg/BTh. ;)

I am going to use it on my team, I think it will do me some good. The three ranged rounds are non-existant thanks to my evasion wall (except against very high NW bows) and my tank gets an extra hit right away, letting the VA start first round of melee. Also, I am having fun with an RoS team, so I get an HP boost combined with some protection from DM.

Mind you my NCB is only 24 hours old, so this is all speculation of course :D

"Not worth it. Use a Morg/BTh. ;) "

My UC says that is not doable. :D

Certainly Ape.

However, would not the extra xp spent on HP do you better. Letting you live through those FB mages you face.

I do not know what level your VA is and how much you leech from combat, however, spending those xp in str or hp might serve you better.

"However, would not the extra xp spent on HP do you better. Letting you live through those FB mages you face."

Nope. I'm running a single minion UC character. Those extra HP do no good against DD(I tried that during the free retraining), they kill me no matter where my HP's come from.

If I were to scrap VA and place the xp's anywhere, it may be into UC. But then, since I only have a VA level of 33k right now, those xp's would not make much of a change to my UC level.

What about a situation where you get KO'd by a blow, but drain just enough to come swinging one more round, making the difference between a draw and a win? Using VA on my previous character, there were a few opponents on my list where this was the case. VA is very unique in that respect.

VA still seems viable for teams designed to "go the distance" if you are lasting 10+ rounds, (especially if you use multiple dmg dealers) It would still seem the extra HP from VA would be an advantage.

I think you have to weigh its use on a case by case basis though. For example 100k extra trained HP... It would only require doing 250k melee damage (after killing the PL minion) to recoup that same 100k hp with full VA. In my case that is a very realistic number as I typically do melee damage near 1 million.

Also take into account that for the most part, VA can be trained cheaper than HP on a per exp. basis. 1 hp now costs me 14exp, it would take quite a LARGE VA to get to that level.

with the recent melee changes VA is capable of returning tons of HP each round. for me, a tripple hit on a non-high AC target returns nearly as much HP as originally were on the dmg dealing tank. the only real drawback of high VA i see is that you can only drain what the target has left...

VA was best when you could actually put some AC on tank

I think VA is one of those things only good for a few strategies out there.

With damage being so high, and DM being more common now, it is difficult to keep VA at high enough levels.

But, what I realized was effective was training it at low levels. Instead of spending 12 points per level on HP, I could do VA at 9 and get way more HP for more exp.

But once the balance of spending exp on VA versus training exp on HP stops becoming so drastic, go with what you know will work.

But, really, with the addition of the archery buff, VA just isn't what it could be right now.

Which is why the free, non reducable, non PR increasing VA from a Morg or BTh rules.

The only downside to using one of these, is you can't use a VB. ;)

Evasion + HP + high AC Wall
Small DM, AS caster w/ RoS, PL
VA/AMF, PL
Tank, full non-TOA STR gears, Elvens, BL, BoNE or MH, either with high PTH

Use AoI as necessary.

lol BBQ, that is my strat...minus the PL :D

RoS gives you a bit of protection from DM, a nice boost to HP so an enemy tank has a bit more hacking to do, and the evasion makes the range rounds a moot point anyways. All the while VA starts first round of melee (not to mention three enchanters to plow through one round at a time) At least thats what I was thinking when I started this team.

Well it's good to have on my strat, since I use UC, and most know that UC sucks in damage :P So i dont' need my VA to be too high to get the best of it, which is good. I don't have to waste too much exp even if whatever Ranger is saying is true. At the same time, I get good effect by luck when the opponent isn't using DM or PL, and it's a good counter against GA ;)

But I still agree they need a bit of buff back :)

I agree with NK (I think :P), VA is really only good for GA nullification. So instead of DM you could train AMF, or something like that. And since GA doesnt work well with PL you know that GA teams will be affected by VA the way you want.

i like VA how *I* have it. Using a non-ToA tank with a VB, and a RoS to protect against DM.

someone needs max DM or close to, to fizzle my VA.