Decisions... (in General)

The more I play my NCB the more I see problems coming down the road. My final setup is going to be a RoS on my AS minion, and to train as big a DM as I am allowed on the AS minion. That way I should have the HP and DM protection to help me against mages (which are the bane of my existence right now) and cast some DM to reduce ED (multiple uses).

My problem is my tank. The damage I do now is great for where I am, I can hit people where I am, and I just sunk 5 mil into my tank (3.5 mil of that into my VB) to give him a little more juice, but without a ToA I don't know how much longer this will last.

I really wanted to get away from a ToA team, but doing the math if I put a ToA on my tank right now I would have 500k str and 550k dex. yikes! Suggestions? There must be some way I can save my tank from stumbling at my oppenents later on :D

Adding plus to your weapon is key, you're going to have to bring your to hit up to a point where triple hits are easily gotten against enchanters, and double hits are the norm against other tanks. The elven gear does a good job of boosting dex to a point where you should still get a hit from it, even on ToA tanks. The RoS gives you an interesting choice, GA to kill the damage dealer on the opponents side, or VA to keep your poor tank going...Have fun!

Honestly speaking, your tank will probably not be able to catch up with ToA tanks. Your only way out is to either target mage teams or up the plus on your weapon.

Seems a non ToA tank requires deeper pockets then I have right now :(

The only thing I can see to avoid using a ToA is to train Haste on the EC minion. It has it's advantages. If it's large enough then not only will your tank be faster, but those enchanters will have dex, cutting down on the amount of dex gap based multi strikes from opponent tanks. xp for xp it's actually more cost effective than training the EC, but both together are a good combo.

I love the ToA though. I love watching stats growing without having to do some work. And the bonus to PTH is a good way of saving cash.


Mages are going to be a problem even with a lot of HP if you don't have AMF and or a ranged attack. But you know that right?

There's always a MgS to reduce Mage damage if you're not going to have AMF.

The other alternative is to do a bit of a repeat of what you did before, and what lots of people are starting to do, which is evasion on the tank. I was considering it too, remembering how your old team used to beat mine! And mine was a ToA tank then, with a decent amount of dex at the time and a good amount of PTH.


Sometimes the things you know work are the best things to do.....

GA is really good to use.

also is VA, I like my team, which is almost identical to yours. if you don't have VA on a tank without a BoTH/MH you can easily get killed by GA and have enchanters alive.

VA is usually used to negate GA damage you take, to keep you at the same HP as you would if GA was not in the battle, it may even boost you at the end of the battle. but people say VA should be trained at your MPB, I don't think it should, *anymore* (thank you, Ranger.) your VA should be at 60% of your MPB, somewhere close to your average hit, you'll hardly get near your MPB most of the time, so in the end, its a waste of xp. A good way to look at strats is to see where xp is wasted, obviously against a tank team, your AMF is useless, so that makes you substantially weaker, also it makes your MPR lower in some perspective, where all the xp put in AMF is wasted and whatever that equates to in MPR, you're down.

So, with that said, VA will have wasted exp a lot of the time, the only time you hit your MPB is probably on the high of the random factor of hitting and on an unarmoured enchanter.

you can't go wrong with GA, it'll reflect anything, which is nice. so if there are big tanks, they'll get hurt major, seeing as my GA is almost 300k, and i don't see really that many big hits, and they're getting themselves killed by my GA which is cast on my 3 enchanters, then they attack me, by that time, they should be weak enough to kill.


Sure, I miss, 40% of the time in ranged, they have evasion, but I usually don't miss in melee, and my VB (Blade of Destruction [75x200] (+40) ) isn't all that big either, sure the '+' gets expensive, but not everyone has a lot of money, and there are a lot of mage teams out there anyway.

my RoS lets see, makes this occur, Ablative Shield: 1,042,247/531,631 (521,133) -- with a corn of course (+8). I get 300k HP or so in combat, ultimately making well over a 1 mil HP to kill for the opposition and wasting hits on my enchanters, and I believe most of the time, they do not kill my enchanter in one hit, unless its with a bow, but then again, my evasion (37) has its uses, it makes people miss in ranged as well.

So, believe me on the VA thing, if you need further explanation, kindly CM Ranger, and he may reply with the answer :)

DM/AMF doesn't work nicely, even with RoS involved, still hurts you, I believe.

You can safely train 1/4 of your Tattoo or Max tattoo level, whichever is higher, into DM without it hurting you in any way. ;)

The problem with what I did before was it was a ToA tank training evasion, so I could afford to have it around...700k I think. Without the ToA I would have no str or dex.

hrmm I have my VA trained to 100k, but after looking at my fights my average hit is around 75k, so there is some wasted exp right there. I can stop training that one for awhile.

You know, I train EC to *reduce* oppenents dex, but I never thought of training haste to increase mine even more. Per exp point I get more dex this way...and it effects my *whole* team. It seems so obvious now lol thats why threads like these are great :D

I have AMF on my team, its at 160k right now and will slowly continue to grow, just to give me a bit of protection from mages. If I decide to add GA into the mix, as well as DM I am afraid my exp dilution will be too great

Time to do a bit of rearranging :D

The other reason haste > ec is that it is good against all foes; if your tank is faster he's getting more strikes in against mages as well as other tanks. EC = waste of xp against mages......so yes more bang for your (xp) buck all round....

heh heres a little update. I now have a small EC (just to knock down some str/dex down on enchanters with weapons) and a haste with the same effective increase in dex as my EC before it...plus an extra 25k trained in evasion :D

woo thanks for the suggestions everyone :D

The drawback is that Haste can be dispelled, whereas EC cannot. Further, if haste trains at 68% and DM trains at 80%, it takes less XP to dispel your haste than what you put into it. Also, EC attacks both ST and DX, whereas raising your own DX only combats against DX.

It's true it can be dispelled, but my experience on my last team showed me that not many people have a DM large enough to dispel a haste of about 500k - which is what I had. Whereas for Horseguy to nuke the tanks in the upper levels with an EC would require at least an EC of about a million. Anything less isn't going to make much difference.

Whereas the two together is a nice little mix...

Haste, sure you can train, yes it can get dispelled, but Haste is ED, If you notice, you won't or don't have many ED slots, well at least i don't, so EC is nicely done there, can't get dispelled and is both ST and DX. If you have a slot, sure train Haste, but VA is good, especially without a BoTH/MH.

So my advice is, if you have room train Haste, otherwise, EC is good, not bad.

and when you think about it, you've got GA, VA and AS, 3 slots already? they all need some exp, so your enchanters are full, you probably want to a train a protection, because it's worth it and on the tank, so where, oh, where does the Haste go?

if you want Haste so bad, don't train VA.

but training EC on the minion with VA is good and that minion is nice with evasion, I'm sorry If this sounds too much like my strat and I'm telling you to change to it, I'm just sharing my view point, and on the previous post, you see how much I love GA. :)

Well I don't think GA has a place on this team now, and once my RoS is on this team it should protect my haste. Any DM I have run into so far is under or at 1/4 of my max tatoo right now anyways, so I am not too worried about that.

Actually if my haste gets big enough I am considering trying an axbow on one enchanter and an exbow on the other, to see if I could land any hits that would give my non ToA tank any kind of an edge. I don't think it will work, but it's worth a shot :D