Cheap aggressive strategies? (in General)

*sigh* After all this time MrC the self proclaimed CB mad genius is still a newb... let's put an end to that though. Please give me some strategy advice.

I've always worked on the principle that I can make up for huge disadvantages in NW by playing defensive. Can I do this with aggressive tactics too? Or will I be simply out gunned by aggressive opponents?

Also, my thoughts when looking at the skills/spells page always jump to my old tricks. EC, AMF, UC and CoC. I start thinking about my old tactics, what I dub "enchanter warfare" (please tell me no one has figured out this one yet). Also "Invisible MPR" or as I think of it "In fight MPR".

The latter I can perhaps still use in an aggressive strat, but the rest is purely defensive. I wanna attack, crush, maim and kill in the first...however many rounds ranged combat goes for. Unfortunately, I don't tend to think in offensive tactics, so I'm going to have to ask for advice.

100k budget.
Aggressive strategy.

What are your ideas?
Note: I don't care if it's not a sound strategy, if it looks cool, post it.

Dunno... perhaps...
4 fireball mages, each with HoC equipped, plus a ToE for the team (and any other tricks the gurus have for reducing AMF damage).

Makes for 16 attacks during ranged rounds, hitting all minions on opposing side.
Just simple. Probably not very effective though.

DM/HF?

SMFB, about 1/3 HP, 2/3 FB, fight one week, buy HoC, fight a day or 2 buy FF, train junction, you can mix in DM at any time if you like.

Rubberduck's is about the best thing for low cost aggression. The alternative to his, is the FB mage with Steel Familiar. You're looking to take out people in ranged. If you get the current supporter item - rentals - and train junction - you'll be hitting from the front twice in round one and from the back twice. You could almost be taking out whole teams in one round as your team grows in size.

Apart from the Sling of Death equipped with explosive shots, that's something that NW teams can't do.

Oh yeah, welcome back to the forums!

'Invisible MPR' heh. ;)

Oh yeah, enchantments and skills.

Evasion. Lots of it. That'll reduce the tank opponents down to size. Make all their NW useless.

And EC. Dunno if you were aware of it, several of us weren't, but EC also reduces defensive dex as granted by evasion. So if tanks obviously get taken care of. But so do mage teams who have put a lot into evasion. Bringing their invisible MPR right down.


So, FB mage with Steel or Fire Familiar, wearing the new HoC and training EC or DM and evasion. Diminish and Destroy!

Keeping in mind your budget, you can use this simple strategy.

Assuming you do this team at starting and not high up.

Start as a single MM Mage, training appropriately, buy a SF with your 100k, You'll manage with 100k. :)

Hire another minion, training AS and AMF.

stick the SF on the chanter I suppose, so when you do get money ;) you can wear a CoI.

This works with the basics.

For flavour, get junction on the enchanter, HoC, CoI and AG. Same for the Mage.

Cheap if you want it, quite costly if you want, Still works with no armour, even without the Tattoo it would be okay, but nothing flash, You probably need the SF for the quick kill. :)

I'm seeing a lot of SMFB. Has anyone tested a SMFB against a SMMM. I like the thought of ~3 minions dead by melee more than most minion lowered health but all alive to do damage.

not sure what a SMFB is, but a SFBM usually is able to end their fights in ranged...

Josh, MM would win? because FB is supposed to be for spread damage, so if it's concentrated wouldn't MM do more damage, because that's how it's supposed to be?

*BUZZER* wrong answer! FB hits harder than MM at equal level...

I haven't tried, so it was a guess.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone.

I'm starting as a single fireball mage, packs a punch and doesn't cost anything.
I'll turn it into an archer eventually. Relying heavily on ToA and HoC. I'll use a compound bow and use one of my already semi-decent MPR chars to forge it up to reduce the cost of upgrades.

Josh, FB appears to have the edge single FB mage Vs single MM mage. That said, if it's really important you might want to do a few controlled tests.

Its not important, I'm just curious.

OK, while it may take some budget, I would strongly recommend saving cash for an ELB, over a compound. Use your forge char to make some money and get an ELB then forge that. The difference in damage output is huge.

Currently I'm using a x850 bow, with a PTH of 16. It's NW is about 6 mill. Not very big at all really, but coupled with my tanks strength of just over a million is hitting for an average of about 600k per strike. Against some people I'm getting a million per strike. I paid just over a million for the bow and I've invested around 6 million since, but that's over nearly three months, two months of which I've been making around a million a week from fighting.

You want aggression, it doesn't take HUGE NW, just some well placed cash, which doesn't have to come from USD. Just fight lots.

on my character heat i recently quit using my tattoo. i found i could beat the same opponents without it so i am now trying an ac mage route.

with the free retraining i went from fb to mm. i was able to add to my fightlist while putting less xp into mm. i usually stay in the top 30 score while having a nw of less than 10 million. this is a single minion character.

There you go Mr C, Dudemus has a working heavy mage...

Don't forget the use of Evasion to make invisible net worth...

His Evasion is the reason he wins against so many tank teams.

Evasion is great, only way i kill tank teams too... (my tank doesn't compare with others near equal MPR) :)

You could do a lot worse than to follow heat's strategy. That's a
tough character for not so much cash.
If you're planning on going archer and you really can't make yourself
save up for an ELB, pick up a cheap compound for emergencies
but rent ELBs. You can get an ELB most times for not too much
money if you're not after the huge items.
From my experiments, my 600k ELB was better than a $6M comp.
Even Duke didn't think it would be that bad and as far as strats and
equations he's a pretty smart guy.

ELB is really that much better?
Darn.

I'll consider rentals, they're a good option but there's nothing like having your own weapon. Apart from anything else it provides consistency and you can level it up as your char increases in MPR.

I'm not too keen on the idea of saving that much, but I think I'll do it. Nothing like taking the cheap option and wasting more cash in the process than you otherwise would. I'll just stay single mage a little longer and enjoy being the nutcase with a ToA on his FB mage for a while.

Johnny, yeah it's nice to see a mage with decent AC... unfortunately I still don't see any good mages using an adamantite cuirass. They'll all catch on someday!

Once you've got a decent weapon the changes Jon made to damage upgrades means that you can get decent damage at the rate you earn the money, it might be slow (ish) but you can get a good bit of hit out of it. And keep upgrading, even though you might not be making massive amounts of money. Coupling it with the ToA is the key though, letting the ToA bonus to PTH do it's thing saves a load of money.

It's how I've gotten through my last two teams and still managed to get my chars up to the level they've reached on fairly low MPR.

Sorry I'm a little rusty on CB items, what exactly is the ToA's PTH bonus?

And, in the longer term, investing in a compound is a dead end financially, because you simply cannot sell it for the money you put into it. Whereas at least with an ELB you have some chance of a return, either through sales or rentals.

"Grants a bonus to weapon PTH. PTH bonus is not linear to tattoo growth, but a ToA at level 450,000 will grant about 40-45 PTH. PTH earned at other tattoo levels is unknown."

from the wiki, that's all I can say, we don't know about it.

The bonus is enough that with it and enough dex I'm hitting triple strikes with a +16 PTH on my ELB, and no archery.

Sounds better in JW's case, doesn't it?

a 400k ToA is small anyway, so that's already huge on a small item, anyway.