UC Strategy Advice - Tattoos & Hiring a New Minion (in General)

Hi.

I just started my NCB Theseus recently, and am looking for some advice on which tattoo I should equip, and how many additional minions I should hire.

Theseus is a single UC character at the moment. I know I will need to hire at least 1 additional minion in order to train AMF. I am thinking I will likely train some sort of ED as well (maybe GA?), although I have not decided on what yet. When should I hire this minion? Should I consider maybe hiring 2 minions for some purpose? What ED(s) and/or EO(s) should I be considering?

The next, somewhat related issue is tattoos. Which one should I equip? My thoughts on some of them are listed below:

ToA - Not even considering. I think the Combat Gi is much more useful.
ToE - Might help some, but I'm not sure if the aura affect it would have is worthwhile for my UC minion, maybe if I hired 2 minions (1 wall, 1 enchanter), the ToE might work.
RoS - Depending on my ED choice, it could help greatly, and the DM resistance is always useful
JKF - Good meat shield + some extra damage....

Any tips or ideas from other players would be appreciated greatly. Thanks for your help.

You are absolutely right, the Combat Gi is infinitely better.

ToE is a fantastic option: Since you'll be getting hit maybe once per round, you'll be recieving less damage. ToE would allow you to further reduce that. It would also help with GA reduction, and GA is quite a pain for UC characters, as they have fewer stat points to put towards HP.

RoS is great as well, especially if you want to go the GA route. Being hit once per round means GA+Protection+AS is a fantastic option, and you get the availability for DM *and* AMF.

JKF is a good meat shield, a tad bit extra damage (sometimes rolls it over for me), and it does a decent job absorbing damage/extra kill slot vs. mages. However, it is definitely inferior to the other two, and should only be used if you just really like the JKF - not for strategic purposes.

My tip for your UC character is to train the UC as high as possible, don't worry too much about DX (your PTH will pull you through just fine), and make sure you've got enough HP and STR. Having enough STR is critical, as you aren't doing nearly the damage other tanks are doing, but so is having HP....you decide your own ratios, though.

And best of luck! ^_^

I think you should hire a second minion at around 100k mpr, because Mages start to get much stronger around there. That said, I agree with the AMF and I think you should go with VA or AS. If you decide to go with a Familiar, then AS would be better and if you go with ToA/ToE then VA would be better.

My tattoo advice would be to avoid the ToA, and equip the tattoo on the second minion. I would go with either the ToE or the Jig, because you need to survive to melee to make use of the UC. Jig would give you another kill slot, but you can't really depend on it much for damage. ToE gives great damage reduction and is very valuable against mages.

I would stick to two minions to keep a good exp concentration.

So basically my advice is:
Get a minion for AMF and ED at 100k mpr.
Train VA and use a ToE
or
Train AS and use a Jiggy.

two minions, RoS on the enchanter...
enchanter training PL, AMF and AS

lets you maximize the stuff you get a bonus to on the UC minion...

train Prot or VA (prot being my choice) on the UC minion for some extra endurance...

what novice says, don't train VA though.

and yes, Gi + EC is better than ToA, for UC tank.

Mmmm. If you were to stay single then IMO the ToA is actually better: you are able to pump UC much higher, and the bonus to PTH actually helps you do more damage. Personal preference maybe, but in the long run more damage can help you more than the Gi's extra evasion; unless you want to stay vulnerable to mage teams half your size.

But on a multiple team where you have more options for defence from those teams I'd opt for the ToE - for the damage reduction; or the RoS; add GS to a UC based team and you have yourself a really strong tank. GA would help against other teams that can hit you multiple times; VA is better than Prot in UC's instance as far as I'm concerned, because while Prot will cut down on the damage you take, VA might just bring you back from the brink of death and let you win a fight

My own view of UC is that you don't actually have to worry about tanks at all. Unless they are super fast or have a huge amount of PTH they're not going to touch you. So focus your team on being a mage killer....

The only tattoo you should use until it's vital to do otherwise is the RoE.

well, I am using solo UC at 200k mpr and I am using the ToA. I was concidering adding a minion and using the Gi/EC and maybe the MgS. But I have figured it would end up almost the same, the Gi may up your UC but you need more experience into str and Dx and you don't get the PTH. were as, with the HG's your UC is still up lots and get extra experience for UC because you don't need to up your str and dex much PLUS you get the PTH bonuses.

So in other words, I would stay solo and use the ToA.

How are your fights against mage teams Legolas? At the moment, they wipe the floor with me in general, and staying single minion with a ToA won't help that unless I train AMF on my tank, which I would rather not do, as hiring a second minion will allow me to boost the EO (and ED as well) with equipment, instead of the penalties I get with UC minion equipment.

"Personal preference maybe, but in the long run more damage can help you more than the Gi's extra evasion; unless you want to stay vulnerable to mage teams half your size."

Definitely personal preference - without a Combat Gi on, my 800k Evasion in Melee would only be 400k, and the damage still wouldn't be enough as far as I can tell.

I still cannot possibly consider a UC minion, even single, to be a big damage dealer source, so I can't justify using a ToA with it. But the extra ToA DX adding with the inherent Evasion DX will help make up for the Combat Gi...but you're still missing some -PTH.

However, a UC guy with a ToA and high DX and an ELBow with DM/GA could work very well, since it would allot you your entire WA for your ELBow and still give you a somewhat decent melee weapon with a LOT of PTH! You'd easily hit quads early on in both melee and ranged!

I am wondering whether I should use and ELB or an SoD. Whichever one I pick I will obviously keep as close to WA as I can. I'm not sure whether the ELB with no Archery is worthwhile in terms of the PTH penalties... ELB will definitely hit harder, but if it constantly misses, than the SoD is better even if the damage is lower.

As far as Gi vs. ToA, I'll have to examine how the XP investment in UC at higher levels is, as at the moment I guessed that +10 UC with a UC of effect 100 is a much larger XP investment than a +10 UC with a base UC, but right now, with the limited data I have, UC effect seems to be about linear with respect to XP investment. I'll see how it pans out.

When I was running my first UC guy The Artful Dodger, and this was before the increases in physical damage - he was single minion, ToA, Helms, Elven boots and Elb. I had a UC after bonuses of about (106) and a large AMF.

With the bonus to PTH from the ToA I was easily hitting quad strikes in ranged and melee. The Elb let me hit hard enough to take on very large single mages - only to a draw, but still...And only the very large PTH weapons could touch me, but I was reducing those to single strikes. The Elb was quite large and was hitting for higher damage than the UC but thanks to the quad strikes I was doing at least 400k + in damage per round in melee.

The ToA works for me, but a lot of it is laziness. I get to build a tank the same way I build a mage, without worrying too much about individual stats. I can build it in chunks.

Kultur - I was using a SoD with my current char until about a week ago. I switched to the biggest ELB I could rent that fell within my WA. My SoD was only about x174 and hitting for about 40k per strike. With the Elb - much larger I'll grant you but still in my allowance - I'm hitting for 150k per strike. The hit/miss rate is the same as it was with the SoD.

Greater damage in ranged helps against those pesky mages. But you will need AMF if you don't want them to completely slaughter you. Without AMF teams half my size would take me with no problems.

Oh and just to blow my own trumpet a little - Artful Dodger's top score as a single UC guy with ToA was 1.6 million....at the time that was number 5 in the character standings. Lasted about 5 minutes though. A mage team came along and pulled me back down to 1.2 million.....lol...

Johnny - trumpet blower :P

Kultur, I was getting mopped by Mage Teams but I added a small AMF and got my SoD outta Rentals and Now mage teams aren't causing to much problems anymore. Yes, they are more likely to beat me than a tank, but i can deal with that. lol you can't win them all :)