Anyone care to guess what is wrong with the battle? (in General)

Missile vs Starum

More damage per hit than Sut's 4M FB, and multiple hits per round.

Quad hits with a sling. Must have crazy PTH on that or the shots are heavily modified for defense like the thread mentioned a while ago.

SoD 5x721+77 boosted by a 1.3 mil lvl ToA
Using Explosive Shots 11x302+50.

Chill, Ranger, I've taken them off now and replaced them with base Explo Shots, your fight sheet against Starun won't feel so scary now....

. . . for the time being at least; once I get my SoD 5x1000, I will up those remaining 40 souped up explo shots even more, perhaps 11x1000+50, then we'll see if its still stalemate or Koyaanatsqi falls :)

The PTH on ammo is 3x more effective than on the weapon. So a +77 SoD, big PTH from the 1.3mil ToA and +50 ammo which would equate to +150 PTH = close to +300 PTH, correct? I guess I'm wondering what the big problem is. He spent a ton of cash on some shots just as someone would sink money into a MH or ELB.

Shooto,

Your missing the point.

He does more damage in 1 shot with relatively low NW than Sut does with a 4M FB. Multiple times a round.

I am sure he did not spend of money upgrading his shots also.

So for 14M and change you can practically take out the top teams

is prison really that much more damage?

the shots are x302, that means he is doing 300% of the damage he would normally do to begin with (since each x on ammo now adds 1% to damage).
I'm finding it hard to see the problem also.

So get out that old RoBF. There will always be exploitations to each group. He found a good exploitation to your strat. It isn't viable for him to keep up with the expensive shots though so there is nothing to worry about.

There is no way he can afford to keep it up, unless he really has no better use for his USD.

Come on, how much more of an example do we need that *something* needs to be done about defensive ammo...

>_<

aha stop whining if you cant win a battle.
Happens to more people these days.

Oh and "Using Explosive Shots 11x302+50." luckily with a stack of 11 Ex Shots, he only hit 11 times in that battle eh?

Henk, this isn't whining.

I would dearly love to see the top team change thier start to massive SoD + upped defensive Ex Shots and just end the game...

So, up the HP on all minions. Ok, he can hit multiple minions multiple times but he's not doing more damage per round than an ELB is capable of. If I pumped 14 mill into an ELB's damage and trained archery coupled with a ToA of the same size I'd be hitting for similar amounts of damage in total.

It's only the ex shots splash damage that's the problem.

I don't see what's wrong here personally. Go Chuck!


(GL's only pulling a face cos this is what he wanted to do!)

The damage, including splash, would be fine on normal sized Ex Shots.

The problem is the ability to use x300 +50 Ex Shots to guarantee defensive wins on teams you couldn't touch.

And really, there's been a lot of moaning that multiple teams have all the advantages in CB - AoI, ToE, RoS, etc etc. And now something that takes on multiple minions far better than it does single minions. If Chuck was taking on a single minion the shot wouldn't have quite the impact....

'The problem is the ability to use x300 +50 Ex Shots to guarantee defensive wins on teams you couldn't touch.'

Simple answer. Don't attack teams that do that.

"I will up those remaining 40 souped up explo shots even more, perhaps 11x1000+50, then we'll see if its still stalemate or Koyaanatsqi falls :)"

This makes me shudde. (And please don't get me wrong, this is nothing about chucky, it's not personal in any way).

I've said this since the Day Ex Shots were changed. I'm glad someone is actually going to do it.

Linear 'X' upgrade costs, on cheap ammo because of the small stack. Do we really need supercharged defensive ammo? How does it help the game?

"Simple answer. Don't attack teams that do that."

That's not an answer Johnny. Say thewhole top ten adopt this, cuz it's obviously awesome.

Don't even bother trying to fight the top?

So how would that be any different to now? With massive amounts of USD NW floating around there? (apologies to those players who don't have the USD NW)

It's not worth attacking half those players now, if there is a way to get around that is available to all....

It wouldn't matter if Krang could do the same to you if he couldn't survive the same. And looking at Chuck's example that wouldn't cost much. You could raise a SoD to this level in no time at all from fight rewards alone. It would lead to lots of draws, lowering scores, fight rewards. Is it worth it for everyone to follow suit?

All supercharged defensive ammo sucks. Period. The Ex shot is the worst of the bunch (Normal Ex Shots are fine. As depth and strategy), as it removes strategy be being easily able to kill every minion on a team (single or multiple, no different), regardless of strategy used.

Why not just give everyone a SoD and a stack of massive inexhaustable Ex Shots? Only usable on defensve.

Wouldn't it suck to have no targets to fight. OR everyone waiting, desperatly trying to camp those others fighting at the same time they are on?

What does supercharged defensive ammo add to the game? It's not strategic depth. It's not monetary cost.

It just lowers the amount of already limited targets people have, that they should otherwise be able to beat.

I can see *no* positive side to this.

Are you implying that no one should use defensive ammo anymore?
Just because 1 person starts complaining about defensive seekers and other ammo?

Jeesz, is there not something in CB that people aren't complaining about??
My thoughts on defensive; its a choice people make so they wont get farmed over and over by the same person for clanpoints. And if it happens to be a stack of x100 +50 explosive shots that dont get used up because the person attacking is so much higher.

You can start complaining about everything in CB if it happens to mess up your strat.
But if i want a big stack of defensive ammo on my team, and you cant beat me, that is my right isnt it?
Or are you trying to ban defensive ammo? Dont let them be upgraded in the blacksmith?

OK, I've had my breakfast and a journey to work.

Supercharged ammo is easy to take care of. Just stop ammo being used in the blacksmith. Done.

Defensive seekers is another matter. Imbalanced they may be in that they only affect mages but then exbows and axbows only affect tanks.....I've no problem with seekers, even when I've run mage teams. Grin and bear that one I say.


The real problem here is not the defensive use of super ammo.

This: 'More damage per hit than Sut's 4M FB, and multiple hits per round.' is the real problem. The levels that physical damage can reach and quickly through pumping with cash. After all the FB mage can hit multiple targets. There are ways of getting round their attack but still...multiple targets per round. Suddenly a tank can do that...it wouldn't be a problem if tanks weren't able to achieve multiple strikes.


But mentioning balance: FB mage hits multiple targets; against a single minion the power is much boosted. Ex shot hits multiple targets; against a single minion the power is much reduced.

You honestly think it's fair to pay a pitance to up a small stack of ammo to ludicrous levels (that you would no way on earth use for normal fighting) to make poeple who are normally able to beat you, unable to, while you aren't playing?

You really think that's fine?

Nah, I'm not worried about the damage potential Johnny. You pay that cash, you get that damage. Even if it's 10 Mil on a one shot xGaziliion Slayer.

Also, I don't mind defensive seekers. It does add to strategy.

What is broken is the ease to get a small stack of defensive ammo so large.

That is broken.

I know what would solve this for me.

don't base ammo upgrade costs on amount. Have a fixed upgrade cost per ammo type, regardless of the amount you have.

I'd be happy to see the ability to upgrade ammo taken away personally. I've never seen the point in investing in 'temporary damage'. You're better off pumping the weapon not the ammo.

Take that ability away and bang none of this is a problem.


Super pumped weapons....now they're the problem. Ban em I say, ban em!

Or introduce a max weapon level.....

But at higher levels, an extra x in that ammo will become more than worth it due to the increase in damage %.

There will come a point where a single x in the ammo will hugly outbenefit the x in the weapon and although the weapon x will be for life it might take you 10-50 times the cost or more.

Either that or CB3 is out by then :P

No Henk that is not right.

Just being able to equip defensive ammo should not make your team invulnerable.

What I am worried about-- People getting a SOD, upgrading it to about x500 and using a TOA.

Then equipping x400 shots and being invulnerable to the top characters in the game.

Imagine if you will cb1, where Spid or Jayuu could be defeated by a 10M NW weapon with less than 1M in upgraded ammo. Even if it is only a set of 100 ammo for defense.

Sort of takes away all the time and effort one puts into ones character to make it so freaking good.

For comparison, this is with normal shots:

I can see your point. But what should be done then?
No more ammo upgrading?
Upgrading until a certain point?
Or life with the fact that kind of shots costs ludicrous amounts of cash.

Well Henk,

You finally see my point.

There is no way x302 shots should do almost 10x more damage.

Personally I believe that upgrading ammo should not be allowed.

That would make people put the NW into their weapons where it should be. This would also stop this defensive ammo equipping. The defensive ammo was one of the reasons Jon put in the dreaded "cooldown".

Right now, one can upgrade a set of ammo for less then 500k and be invulnerable to most of the top characters out there at 1/2 their MPR.

C'Mon, where is the fairness in that to those who have the high level characters?

Upgrade costs that don't depend on the size of your stack.

I hope this change month is big enough for Jon to make it free untraining again! I'd love to see one of the top teams retrain to a AoF using ToA + SoD Tank, with AS/Haste/GS backup fromt he other minions.

And using a large SoD with ludicrously sized Ex Shots. ;)

LOL!

If you look at the last screenie, because of Prophecies AC, he's taking less damage from the initial hit than the others take from the splash! ;)

So why don't you just attack the person a couple times until the stack runs out. Quick way to make them drop 500k and all that happens is you lose a little score.

You can do the same thing with overpowered weapons. Use a 1M NW weapon on your minion then switch to a 60M NW oversized weapon and watch the fun.

I hated the cool down period thing, so does anyone have any ideas for preventing these kind of games? Perhaps a charge in CB2$ for equipping/moving things?

I think the WA limits the downside of that sort of thing. My team isn't even 100K MPR yet, and a 3.5M weapon is under my WA.

I dread to think how big it is at 2 Mil MPR. ;)

At 430k MPR I'm at about 27mil Weapon Allowance.

Well folks, I had the foresight to realise the potential of the SoD with explo shots when Jon first introduced them, so I abandoned my RoS elb/mh setup in favour of a total offense ToA boosted bloodlusted SoD tank with explo shots, aided by a high evasion enchtr, and high AS and high DM to dispel opponent GA and AS.

I used the souped up ammo coz i can only forge slow, and was in a hurry to find out the results, which seem to have sent lotsa folks in a tizzy, hehe

You can always use the RoBF as a counter to the explo shots. Then there are them seekers, mage or tank, there's no beating them. And single minion teams are better off since the SoD [even with base explo shots] does lesser damage than an ELB half its NW equipped with normal arrows.

Since I had to lose my AMF to get the high DM [and no RoS coz of the ToA], my team is a sitting duck for single mages, esp single FB mages. Against MM there's still a chance since the MM reaches my tank only in round 4, and till then the explo shots should've worked their magic in most instances.

Ultimately, if you understand that my success was the result of a well thought of strat involving a new weapon, then you can come up with an innovative solution to counter it.

On the other hand, if you are not so intelligent, ah, well, I've had my day in the sun, so Jon can as well go ahead and do some recoding, never mind :)

At 2m MPR, W A is around 215m.

LOL! A few people saw the same potential and listing the RoBF as a conter to x300 Ex Shots is sily. ;)

All large defensive Ammo casues Problems. Seekers more so for Mage teams, but the Ex Shot trumps them all.

Normal Ex Shots are fine, another layer of strategy, with the RoBF to counter them. But they shoud either be made common common, or rare and back into the AH again.

Really, I can't see how anyone could claim using massive defensive ammo to be a strategy though.

Here is the solution:

1. Lower base ammo costs.

2. Raise max ammo stack limits, purchase limits, and availailbility.

3. ALWAYS remove ammo from players when being used on offense and defense.

End of story.

If a character wants to base their strategy around ammo, make them pay for it. (I mean really pay for it, not pay to upgrade it once and use it forever.)

I am one of the more heavily farmed characters in the game, and use ammo in my strat, so if anyone wants to complain about ammo costs, check my stats.

I am attacked a minium of 800 times a day. At 4 - 9 ranged shots a fight that equates to 4000 - 7000 arrows I would expend on defense in a day, but I am okay with that to ensure people are paying for the items boosting their strategies.

Raise the ammo limit to 20k or 25k, lower base ammo costs by 30-30% so the "average" player would still end up spending roughly the same ammount for ammo over the course of a day.

Done.

You want to use it pay for it. You don't want to risk loosing it getting farmed UNequip it. People have no problem equiping ammo when they log off, should have no problem unequipping it either.

VP's idea actually makes a lot of sense....

you say that as if it normally dosen't ;)

Just looked at some numbers. For a 300 regular arrows: Blacksmith charges $2,666 / x . According to the changelog for ammo, each x to the arrow adds 1% overall damage. So for $266,000 or one days forging, I could effectively double the damage on my ranged weapon on defense for ever. For 500k or 2 days forging I could Triple my ranged damage. This would effectively cut down a great deal of attackers on my fightlist.

How would you feel if Jon just randomly offered an item that for 500k would nerf certain players on your fightlist, and you could choose what type of characters you wanted to nerf (seekers for mages, slayers with axbow or exbow for mega tanks, slayers or regular arrows with ELB for multipurpose).

I know everyone is saying that would be great... until it happens to you. In effect that is what no defensive ammo usage allows.

Have you all noticed that the Score of characters has fallen lately? I'm wondering if the defensive use of ammo has anything to do with that. If you attack at a PR of X, but defend at an effective PR of 1.5X, it is going ot be a LOT harder to find folks with decent scores to attack. I wonder how many folks could be on my fight list if it were not for big ammo. I know I've been taken off a few fight lists because of big ammo.

Then again it could just be another phase in the score cycle. This has been know to happen before.

This is probably a good topic for another thread Miteke, but I really noticed starting the Monday two weeks ago (think it was two weeks)

After the MEGA server lag, and Saturday of no offense. My best guess was that shook up scores something fierce, and it never really returned to normal.

A few mages were able to slay characters with much higher scores b/c they had no capability to attack. In turn high scores dropped fast, and a few mages jumped crazy high in score. Then in turn when things went back to normal, all the characters who normally target that mage had to split up the score gains, so the mage's score ended up right back where it normally is, but all the tanks splitting the score increases ended up lower than where they started. In turn everyones score ended up dropping, and now that all the scores are lower, noone is gaining as fast.

That is my best summation. I know it happened starting right after that slow weekend, so it seems reasonable.

Fascinating analysis - and it makes sense.

I would just like to put forth another problem with defensive ammo, and/or defensive gear stances in general:

It is yet another thing that leaves mages out in the cold.

But, oh dear, we can't say anything about mages having _any_ sort of disadvantages now, can we? MPR is was, is now, and ever shall be, worthless, world without end.

Amen.

spare the seekers, spoil the mage...

I'm just pointing out facts, Hoss. There is no "defensive" stance for mages. MPR-based attributes can't be switched off and on, unlike gear which can be swapped out in an instant.

I'm on the side of mages in all matters save the seeker question...

You boys have done enough to raise the price of seekers by now don't you think?

ToE buff: check
NW AMF trump: check
rebuffing evasion now that archery is fixed : check
Giving dd familiars some much need love: check

However, I think seekers allow those teams that don't want to have to specialize in mage killing to forgo training AMF, and allows those of us who train it heavily, to not be do abused when clanning. I really do have to wonder how far you've fallen though Sut, seekers are a silly item for clan fighters...and you hate clans!

"rebuffing evasion now that archery is fixed : check"

When did that happen?

"I think seekers allow those teams that don't want to have to specialize in mage killing to forgo training AMF, "

So you say letting a tank team not have to spend xp to defeat mages is quite OK, they can use seeker to compensate.

But then you spew about making mages train EC to go after tanks. Where is the mage item that lets them defeat tanks without training EC.

C'Mon, lets be fair in the mage/tank debate.

AoI/ DB's certainly have plenty of merrit as an item that allows mages to go after tanks without training I should think?

Taking into account that a good pair of DB's 100% neutralizes all trained stats (Dex/Str) plus all NW dumped into weapons, and additional bonuses granted from NW pumped into certain tattoos (ToA), and bonus granting armor (Elven, TG's etc.)

Yeah I think that qualifies as an item mages can use to defeat tanks.... anyone care to argue that fact?

AoI is equally as powerful when a mage wears an AOI to hide from normal tank offensive, and equips a 300 - 400 AC wall to eat continuous damage...... not seeing a great imballance here.

vp: You do realize not everyone can afford to put a pair of +200 DBs on their mage, but quite literally EVERYONE can afford to put defensive seekers/exp. shots on.

You're sort of right there BBQ. Except right now anybody could put on a pair of (+85) for 25k if they look in rentals. Defensive ammo is as temporary as that.

You're sort of right there BBQ. Except right now anybody could put on a pair of (+85) for 25k if they look in rentals. Defensive ammo is as temporary as that.

--Johnnywas, 1:04 PM EST

True... anybody can rent that +85 DB for 25k but what about the mentioned +200 pair? The exp shots can be added anytime and upgraded easily.

I was commenting solely on the benfits of armor available to nerf tanks vs. the benefits of specific types of ammo.

I made it perfectly clear I am against defensive ammo use of any type earlier in this thread, and proposed a darn good way to eliminate it entirely.