Archers: the new FB mage (in General)

So I found that I owned a base pair of Beleg's Gloves, and I am trying to offload them. In doing so, I realized that I don't actually know what they are or what they do. I did an Auctions history search, and found that essentially only base ones are abound. I checked the wiki, and was astounded to see that they give a whopping 3% damage increase per plus in ranged. Further, from the auctions page, a +9 is only $220,289, and a +14 is a little over $4m. $4m for a 42% boost in ranged damage. Now that's nice.

So then I considered the possiblities. With all of this talk about ranged rounds and how annoying they are, I think the time might be ripe for an Archer/CoC team. It'd be VERY cheap to get a massive damage boost, especially with a ToA.

Good luck lol!

VB works much better than CoC would...AMF would cook you.

COOK

... just like bacon

two minions

I don't know. If you don't train anything but CoC and Hp, you get same ratio with ST and DX from ToA and damage during ranged round. You could add EC to increase your chance of hitting. Or just train DX lol. A little.

CoC archers never did and never will exist.

Although I do recomend the strategy if you're aiming to have half the power of an archer during ranged, and half the power of a CoC mage in melee. For a total of 1/4 the power of a regular character (OK, I'll give you 1/3 regular strengthbecause of the exp curve, and then I'll bring it down to 1/6 regular strength because of a huge weakness against evasion, AMF, EC, dex and everything else I forgot to mention)

Wow, 1/6 regular strength -- that's pretty weak.

Imagine sutekh converting to a CoC archer.

He could have 2 mil hp, 2 mil CoC, ~1.5 mil ToA (750k str, 500k dex), enough archery for max archery, and the rest of the exp could be spent in dex (maybe enough to get it to 1-1.25 mil).

Given those numbers, the Coc alone could do 1,900,000 damage at a max, and the archery + belegs would allow at least 750k damage (I am just guessing here, I have never used a tank in cb2 :P ). I could certainly see this working, especially since many of the top players have abandoned ranged and those who didnt get the nice 4th round penalty. And since CoC doesnt have that penalty, you have another advantage.

Of course, you must sacrifice AGs and CoI, so the DD would have to do it alone.

GA == You lose
EC == You lose
AMF == You lose (to the tune of 500k a round in blow back)
Evasion == You lose

It looks good on the surface, but there are not really that many people who you've be able to beat...

Personally I've always been a fan of the strat. That is mainly because I'm a fan of anything out of the norm... and Novice is right to an extent ... Sure GA would hurt, EC would hurt, AMF would hurt ... and so on .. BUT if the tattoo was large enough and if your CoC was big enough then it doesn't necessarily mean you lose .. there are just a lot of spells that can cripple the strategy .. this definitely would work better as a 2 minion strat at least. you'll need some AS at the least. Some AMF and Protection wouldn't hurt either. oh yea and PL would be nice as well. ..

The real question with the strat is what ranged weapon :) SoD or ELB?? Hmmm decisions decisions :)

Evasion trumps Archery sooo hard.

I see 0/3/0 and even 0/9/0 on a regular basis.

Not to say you couldn't find targets, though.

No, I am not going to be an archer mage. I don't want to play the net worth game against folks who spend thousands in USD. That'd be pretty silly, now, wouldn't it?

I just used your character as an example, not suggesting that you would ever make that switch. :)

I would agree that evasion is a big killer right now.... even with a 1.5mil ToA (PTH) 1mil + dex, and a +45 bow I see TONS of misses in ranged (and even a few in melee) vs characters with little to no dex.

Seems hard to believe that a few xp (relative to 1mil dex) can trump all that dex and the combined PTH of the bow and ToA.

Well, the point is that you can dump all your WA into the PTH, since with the BG, you'd need far less on the damage modifier of your ranged weapon. I mean, 3% per plus? That's a lot.

sure NS, but +300 is a long way off...

hearing the same sob story from a ToA archer worries me, I had hopes the elb wasn't completely useless...

I had to drop my tank strat completely, because I wasn't able to hit jack crap in range, and barely anything in melee and this was with the full dex/str gear setup. I just wasn't able to keep up with CB2$/USD needed to put NW into my weapons to be able to hit anything. Took a loss in damage, simply because MM damage is totally dependent upon your exp spent on it where as ELB is NW, but who cares if your ranged damage can't be evaded.

My two minion tank (he's only a baby!) is doing extrememly well.

A x5 SoD was doing at least twice the damage a x10 Exec was...

Ah, I remember the character Alucard who was a CoC archer. But you are pulled in so many directions doing a char like that. XP gets stretched out across too many stats, even with a ToA and you need a lot of cash to pump into your bow. Then you're weak against AMF and EC. There's no point in using VA so you also need a lot of HP.

In theory it should work really well, but in practice it takes a lot of work.

"two minions"

Two minions works a lot better, and despite the variants on CTH the damage archery gives is very very tempting. And then clean up with CoC in melee...two minions would lessen the xp spread. But you're still opening yourself up to EC AND AMF...which means you're a lot weaker than if you focus on one type of damage.

That's just me though, I've a problem with mixed damage teams....

Minion 1: Archery + Belegs. 20HP. Base Decay. AoI

Minion 2: Evasion. CoC. AG. ToE.

;)

and GL wins the 'Make the most GA vulnerable team possible' contest!!

What's he won, Bob?

A BOOTYDANCE!!!


*bootydances all over GL*

GL, what's the 1st minion going to train? Only archery?

I think it would be a great strategy because your archer would do huge damage and with archery train and a ToA, you would rock them all before your CoC mage does damage. With enough archery and dex, and a EB with lots of + to hits, evasion would be useless. Well that's what I think. You would need a lot of AC on your archer or DM on the mage so that the GA would do no damage. GL there and prove me I'm right :)

;) Of course it wasn't fully fleshed out, just the rought idea.

The archer would require Str and Dex, and you could opt to switch out the ToE for a ToA.

Oh and you're choice of AMF/EC/DM as appropriate. ;)

"Minion 1: Archery + Belegs. 20HP. Base Decay. AoI"
Oh man base decay is your own worst fiend, I used to swear by it, I was yeah evade range and start pwning in melee with decay, till I seen 90% of people use AMF, and was casting it 1.00 at me and I wasn't getting anything done but killing myself.

The biggest problem I have with archery is the fact VA does not work with it.

When I used archery long ago, GA was my doom. So then you use DM and take full damage from DD spells including Decay. Then you use seekers and they get evaded by the mages.

IMO, archery is a lost skill, at least until it gets a VA abilitiy. Either by a new weapon like a MH for missile or at least letting the VA spell work in missile.

Now back to the archer/COC mage idea. Very bad idea IMO. Your diluting your COC skill learning archery and using a TOA stops you from using a ROS/TOE/SF as a mage team should do.

The CoC is not there to do enormous damage, the CoC in this strategy would be there to finish the archer job.

I'll handle this for NS to address one of Ranger's points:

"Two minions".

Will we start having to use all caps? 2 minions, 2 minions, 2 minions. No dilution within a single minion..

To again state my point.

Trying to do the job with 2 minions is not worth it. I do not agree with the tank/mage idea. IMO, stick with either tank or mage and make the main damage dealer you have as tough as possible.

I see the point of an archer trying to kill as many minions as possible to let the COC mage do damage to the fewer remaining minions. However, as stated in my last post, why burn a TOA on an archer to do damage for only 3 rounds, none of which are guaranteed to kill any minions (esp with evasion being so darn good) when you can use a ROS/SF/TOE instead and boost your mages abilities for up to 22 rounds.

My opinion on the matter works for both 1,2,3 and 4 minion teams.

Also,

Jayuu tried doing almost the exact same thing with his character before critters. He had a large FB mage and a smaller TOA archer.

Just ask him how effective that was and if he stayed with it.

To counter evasion, you need to enhance your ammo. There's a reason Jon made each plus on ammo add 3% to your CTH.

The thinking is that CoC is very much more powerful when focused on fewer minions (obviously). It trains at 95% of spell level. Combine that with the absurdly high damage boost of 3% per plus from BG, and you're doing a very large amount of damage both in ranged and in melee.

NS: I've got +20 seekers and they do nothing...how much money are we expected to flush?

After talking with some other folks, it seems to me that my problem is not using a ToA, without the added PTh of the ToA archery loses a lot of it's power...

I still don't believe there is a viable version of the ToA CoC archer, even with two minions, you end up having an extremely limited fightlist, as everyone is casting something that hurts you badly.

so +34 ammo is always going to hit?

Ok, so maybe my memory is fading... here's what the changelog actually stated:

----

Ammo is upgradeable now.

Ammo + is about 3x as effective as bow +.

Ammo x increases damage by about 1% per x.

AoI now confuses seekers and the xbows too.

----

but what that means is if you have +33 seekers, it's the same as a +99 bow. I wonder how they stack. Does anyone know?

I've got a +50 bow, and what should effectively be +60 seekers, I do not see triple hits with this setup, in round 3 with no evasion or dbs...this leads to believe there is an additional penalty...

Ranger, FB trains at 65% of its level. CoC trains at 95%. The ToA archer would be the large minion, and the CoC mage the smaller. The CoC would be packing a larger punch against fewer opponents, so it would work better than Jayuu's char.

Jon changed the AOI to now it does not confuse seekers or axbow/enbow bolts.

Also a smaller CoC mage would be quite vulnerable to AMF. With a smaller CoC mage, your likely to kill yourself via AMF just as much as you will kill others.

Also, your giving up 3 rounds of damage capability to be able to use CoC and do more damage.

As you can see from Koyaanisqatis, I changed from CoC to MM for primarily that reason. CoC just takes far too long to start doing damage to make it a viable spell.

I do not believe upgrading the plus on ammo is going to be cost effective and may not even work unless you are aiming at +50 ;) Evasion is pretty effective in range and most archers miss me in range and my evasion is only at 48.

how can you all say, AMF, EC and GA will kill this team? GA will hurt anything, AMF will hurt a mage, EC will hurt a tank.

most teams don't have both, so we pick one, AMF, you hit in ranged with your bow, no AMF to hurt you there, any mage gets hit by AMF, so you start getting hit by AMF in melee. CoC cleans up the archery job, so we aren't looking for long rounds.

GA will you hurt, whether you are a tank or mage, which this is both, so does that really matter? no.

EC, will hurt a tank, wow! it'll hurt any tank, sure it might make you miss in ranged, but so does evasion, then you got melee if you survive, EC does nothing when you have CoC.

you are all mostly bashing the strategy, every strategy has its flaws, the game was not supposed to have a perfect strat.

Every strategy has it's flaws but you can minimize those flaws.

It's all about MPR in the end. MPR is not the fixed amount it might seem. It is fluid, changing from battle to battle. For instance if you have AMF that adds say 100k to your MPR and you face a tank team, where AMF is useless, then you are 100k lower in your MPR during that battle.

By mixing damage types you're setting yourself up to lower your MPR more often as you fight. Whereas if you stick to one type of damage you're effectively making your opponents, who might be focused on all types of damage, lower their MPR whilst fighting you.

True Johnny, but you also make it harder for people to shut your team down. ;)

Running just a pure Tank someone could dedicate themselve to using a large EC versus you.

Having both a Tank and a Mage, that EC does nothing versus your Mage, so lowers thier MPR. ;)

True GL, but, and it's only my opinion, you're more likely to be a good all rounder if you reduce the times they can reduce you. If your team can be roughly the same size all the time regardless of who you're fighting you'll be fighting consistently at the same MPR all the time.

It's why UC can be so effective yet poor against mages. If you are investing huge amounts into UC so much of that XP is wasted against mages - the evasion portion - so you're much much smaller against mage teams than you think you are. Conversely however, UC is so good against other tank teams because it reduces all of the following: ST, DX and weapon NW. If they aren't hitting you all those become ZERO.

It's why all the EO spells are so good. Regardless of what they say they are doing on the tin, what they really do is make your MPR smaller.

IMO, what people should be doing with strategy, and what some of the best strategists are actually doing, is looking at the best way of keeping their MPR as consistent as they can while reducing everybody elses.

holy crap, I've never ever seen MPR that way. thanks JW, I do understand where you're coming from.

and i don't know how to word what I'm trying to say, so I'll shut up. :)

on the topic of archery, my bow(1 mil NW, named) doesn't affect my fightlist at all, this bow, when it hits, does well over 100k damage, more than my 3 mil VB.

and i don't need it at all, Bows add PR not necessary for my team :O (Even though my bow doesn't affect my PR :P)

does this happen to anyone else?

I certainly hope this will happen for me, as this is my goal to have all my weapon allowance to be sucked up by my Morg :)