Ranged weapon during melee (in General)

From what I know, there is a huge dexterity penalty if you use a ranged weapon during melee. My question is: Does it affect the PTH of the ranged weapon if we use it in melee? Given a huge ELB that can deal millions of damage, can we afford to go without a melee weapon? We can effectively kill 4 minions in range and finish the battle in the 6th round of battle. Any comments on this issue?

You will get a 40% DX penalty, in which you will be seriously hampered in melee.

As well as that I think you also get a -40 to PTH but I'm not sure.

If thats true, then your only issue would be Evasion in combination with DB... their Evasion would own you throughout ranged, but then as soon as u get it to its lowest point (melee), then your DX drops massively. The +on the DB could take care of the + on ur ELB, so any Evasion mages or teams with an Evasion wall would be your downfall... Another problem would be heavy AC walls. Going against 350+ AC, your damage would be piddly. So avoid walls of any sort and Single-minion Evasion users...

Otherwise, it seems like a perfectly viable idea. After all, Everything has to have a weakness...

The way I see it, ranged weapons are a lot more powerful than melee weapons. If we can get an ELB to let's say +150 combined with a large ToA, won't we be able to hit almost all evasion teams?

No, you will still miss evasion teams, the reason is that evasion is defensive DX :)

a 500k Evasion with +100 DB would be able to stop you... Evasion is a tricky thing, and it creates a lot of randomness as well: say the DB/Evasion is enough to take out 170 pth (i think thats about it...), and your ELB + Arrows + ToA has a combined total of 200 pth, do you really want to fight someone that you have a 30% chance of hitting? Consider if the Evasion wall also had EC/EG/AoF... Consider EC being used against you. There are many things to consider, these are just some ideas of possible problem areas...

Firstly you have to guarantee that you will win in ranged. I finish most of my battles in ranged, but there are a few that go beyond. I've just tried a run through my fightlist without a melee weapon. That dex drop makes a big difference to my longer fights, even given that my ELB is doing large amounts of damage.


You need a pretty big PTH to get past even an average evasion - remember the bonus to evasion in ranged. My evasion of (70) goes to (210) for the first round of ranged. And that first round is now the crucial round since Jon introduced the HoC. Yes it's possible with a ToA, but you still need to spend a fair few dollars on the + of the bow.

And that's even before anybody has started using EC or axbows, or exbows.....;)

or haste ;)

Otherwise it's a decent idea if you gear the team up for the biggest damage you can do. That's the biggest problem; if you spend enough on the PTH to make it work, you're not spending enough on the damage.....

Not all teams will have evasion and DBs or EC. And you could do some EC of your own to counter their defensive DX.

Why use EC to counter Evasion's defensive DX when you could counter it with....normal DX! EC only works at effect of half the points put into it against DX.

Sorry for the double post, and the horrible format of my previous one. I thought I'd pointed at defensive DX as a possible culprit., but I guess not. For a better example of what i was talking about above:

Take an Evasion wall with 500k Evasion, mix in some +12 EG, +11 EC, +10 AoF, and +100 DB. Throw that against your 1m DX and 180 pth.

Round one: Evasion wall has 2,295,000 defensive DX, and removes ~245-260 pth... good luck hitting that...

Round 2: Evasion wall has 1,785,000 defensive DX, and removes ~225 pth... again, it's a no go

Round 3: Evasion wall has 1,275,000 defensive DX, and removes ~190-200 pth... So much for ranged rounds...

Round 4-25: Evasion wall has 765,000 defensive DX, and removes ~ 160-175 pth. Against your 600,000 DX and 140 (if pth is penalized)-180 pth.

As you can see, you've not much of a chance against a proper Evasion wall with that idea... Go ahead and say the equipment is large, but you're the one talking about a +150 ELB...

"The way I see it, ranged weapons are a lot more powerful than melee weapons."

Ranged weapons can do their job decently enough.

Melee weapons will always have a place in CB.

Ranged=Aggressive strategies (best for those with lots of NW)

Melee=Defensive strategies (best for those with lots of brains)

*shrug*
=P

There's a big difference between the two, don't try comparing them on which hits first and which hits harder. They're different weapons to do different jobs, each will always be better than the other.

However, as for this whole evasion/PTH talk, yeah if you can get your PTH that high you'll have a relatively strong weapon.
It's by no means an ultimate weapon, I'd have no doubt that many CBers would be able to find quite simple counter strategies and on the off chance most people didn't catch on, Jon would nerf it.

But yeah, put enough NW into something and it'll be a little tougher than it was before.

It isn't a bad idea; and thanks to the HoC it can work. Sometimes.

The tank would have strength and dex pumped; and if they didn't have a melee weapon then they could focus a lot of money into an ELB, and still be under the weapon allowance.

In terms of damage I can give you some idea of I do with my set up.

Just over a million ST, 800k dex. +10 Belegs. an x975 ELB with +16 PTh.

My damage per hit varies depending on all the things that can affect it, but it goes from anywhere between 200k per hit to 1000,000 per hit. On the whole it's on the upper side of that range.

"My evasion of (70) goes to (210) for the first round of ranged."
Johnny, I think you got that one wrong. Evasion increases your trained level by 3 times in first round of range, the effect will not hit (210), probably (100+). I'm not so concerned about evasion dexterity because I can always train natural dexterity to match it. Displacement boots plus evasion is a good combination but it will cost a lot of money to get a big enough pair of displacement boots, most will just go for elven boots instead. The issue I guess would be to get the PTH on that ELB to at least +200, maybe that would work ;)

Kong is right about the Evasion, it triples trained level, not effect, because effect isn't linear.

yeah, I am wrong on that (;) ), but still my little evasion can reduce some of the biggest weapons to single PTH hits in ranged. If you're relying on dealing with them in ranged that can be a problem..

Hatchetman raised an interesting point. Does the evasion dexterity get increased during ranged combat? 3 times the amount would really be overpowered.

No, only the Evasion (as in -PTH) gets increased, the defensive DX doesn't (as far as I know)

i believe it does. Otherwise JW would hit me easily, only having 300k Evasion versus his 821k DX...

Well, you can always ask him the stats of his ELB. If the PTH is low, that's probably why he misses you.

his pth is only 15 or 18, i forget which, but his ToA is probably adding close to 60 pth... But all that aside, with a +0 weapon, his DX should easily hit my defensive DX...

Not true. If your evasion is high, he will still miss you even if his dexterity is higher than yours. Another thing, I believe that displacement boots do not offer evasion dexterity so a 500k evasion would at most give 1.5 million evasion dexterity in the first round of range. Not that difficult to match with natural dexterity.

DB don't add to defensive DX, but that's not what was creating the higher numbers. Notice, i threw in some other equipment any proper Evasion wall should be wearing :)

PTH of 16.

I was fighting one of my opponents and I noticed that he can hit me in the second round of range with a +70 axbow powered by a ToA. My evasion effect is at 75. So I guess its not that difficult to hit a evasion minion with a +150 bow ;)

Raise your Evasion. I couldn't hit the top two Evasion characters in Ranged with a +180 Elb with ToA and 3 mil dex.

QB[OB]OddBird wrote: "Why use EC to counter Evasion's defensive DX when you could counter it with....normal DX!"

The reason for using EC instead of normal DX is that EC cuts into defensive DX, which is multiplied by 5 during ranged combat.

Lets say you have 50 normal DX against 50 evasion...

During first round of ranged combat, that is 50 DX against 50x5 (250) defensive DX.

... now with 25 DX and 25 EC against 50 Evasion ...

During first round of ranged combat, you have 25 DX against about 37x5 (185) defensive DX.

With a powerful ranged weapon and an HoC, I would like my odds better with the DX/EC combo.

I don't quite get why dexterity gets multiplied by 5 during range battle.

the XP into eva gets multiplied, not the effects...so yes defensive dex goes up in ranged, thus why I still can't hit Sut with 3 mil dex...

EC is better than dex, having seen what huge amounts of both can do (and not do), I can say at this point EC > dex. It takes just 5 hits with not even the biggest AXbow to turn 3 mil dex into nothing. Nothing can lower EC. Archery teams have a really ugly choice to make these days, DM so GA doesn't turn them into a pile of ash, or EC so the money they spent on ranged actually does something to people training evasion.
EC also offers really great (by ToA team standards) tank damage reduction. I'd likely be beating Sut now if instead of 3 mil dex, I had dumped my chanters XP into EC, and trained the 1.7 mil I have into dex into EC on the tank as well. Maybe not, but I'd be in better shape than I am now against him.

Nov's reasoning is why I'm not investing in the PTH on my weapon. Those 100 and above + weapons are pretty expensive; if somebody's evasion is going to make me miss anyway regardless, I'm going to invest in my damage, that way if I do get a hit in I'm hitting for a lot. And that's also why I love the ToA.

ToA bonus to PTH and Jon's changes to damage upgrade prices are the reason it is possible to run a tank (relatively) cheaply these days.

heh... cheap... /me shells out ~50-80k a day on ammo :(

Hatch: are you fighting with seekers?
whatever you're doing...stop...now

Apart from the seeking capability - obviously - with regards to damage, unless you're boosting ammo basic ammo is a much better choice. At base, there really isn't that much difference for me where damage is concerned between the three types of ammo. And that money you're spending on seekers could be better spent on upgrading your equipment!