Decay: now useless? (in General)

I think someone already mentioned this, but wasn't sure...

With AoIs in play now, is there really any reason not to put your wall at the back? Decay is the only magic that single-fires from the front, and physical attacks all fire from the front (but AoI can control the flow of that).

Especially on ToE/ToA teams (no familiar to worry about -- though even that can now be taken care of with Junction), AoIs have made Decay 100% useless. Koy has a HUGE wall. I have a hard time hurting it with a 3.4 million level MM. That's pure, focused magic, the biggest there is, and I can't beat Koy even in multiple tries. Additional minions won't help (no mage offense increase to be had with more minions), and Decay is useless against a wall at the back.

So, what is the point of Decay now in the world of the AoI?

I use decay quite well on my character. Especially with all the MM/DM teams floating about. And vs AMF characters, a higher than base decay can do wonders. Especially on a 20 hp enchanter who cannot die from AMF backlash.

It is a specialized spell, but one that if used properly can do a lot of damage for little xp expenditure.

I would have thought that the opposite was true: AoI's make decay more useful.
Instead of chewing through walls at first it starts hitting those front mounted tanks and mages as soon as possible. Assuming the goal is to kill enemy damage dealers ASAP this is a good thing.

If you rely on GA for kills then hello stalemate if your decay minion is the only one left, but that has always been the case hasn't it.

Yes, but Decay's main strength is the fact that it eats through AC/ToE/Protection, and that the huge amounts of HP it can take are hard to absorb with PL.

So, follow my logic here:

-- A good way to beat a wall is with Decay.
-- Any smart player that depends on a wall is going to place their wall at back, and slap AoIs on all other minions (if you disagree with this point, please elaborate as to why).
-- Decay cannot reach a wall that is placed at the back.

QED. AoIs lead to walls in back, which leads to Decay not working on said wall, which leads to Decay not being useful at doing what it is primarily suitable for.

That's my point. Just because some teams can say: "I use Decay and it works OK" doesn't make my point less valid. Show me Decay in action against a back-walled, AoI-equipped team, and tell me how it could be working well at the very thing it is suited to?

So, if you decay a minion equipped with an AoI, it doesn't target the next in line, it just fizzles?

Magic disregards AoIs, they only affect physical strikes.

So no, the Decay doesn't fizzle, it just hits the lead minion, probably a low-HP enchanter or somesuch. In other words, the Decay can't get to the minion it could do the most damage to -- the wall.

I agree.

I've experimented with this spell myself, albeit mostly on idiotic decay archer strategies.
And it is particularly weak; it has to survive until melee to fire and it's got one maybe two good shots in it. However the wall minion is exception because it's one that can otherwise be very difficult to kill. Decay makes this job significantly easier.

Decay is a curious spell, phenomenally powerful and yet 9 times out of 10 utterly useless.
To make it more useful is asking for trouble.
But to make it's prime target immune makes it far harder to use than before.

"Additional minions won't help (no mage offense increase to be had with more minions), and Decay is useless against a wall at the back. "

What if you hired a new minion and trained EC. That would help, no?

No..no, it wouldn't, I don't even think he could have an EC of 1 mil, maybe I'm wrong, but an EC one 1 mil is only -500k ST/DX, which does almost nothing to the 2-3 mil ST/DX tanks floating about.

EC seems to only be useful if u can either: A) completely nuke a tank, or: B) You can put the tank's DX below your Evasion (Damn you Flamey! :P). It doesnt look like a valid damage reducer at all...

This isn't meant to be a "help Hubbell" strat session... *grin* This is about Decay. Chuck somewhat agrees, though I would go further and say that because of AoIs, Decay is now even useless against walls, because any self-respecting wall will be at the back. So now Decay is 100% useless for what it is supposed to do, instead of just 90%.

And completely off-topic, I'll cover all the ideas people tell me about what to try with Hubbell (I appreciate the comments, I really do!):

-- Switch to RoS and AS: Not sure how this will work. I would have to switch my mage to the AS, the other minions would be too small for it (and not leverage the RoS properly). Also, RoS/AS works well with GA, but my GA would be very small (again, imbalanced minion size) and get fizzled by any moderate DM. So, what would I do for offense? My SF can't lay out enough up here to do it by himself.
-- Try EC: Sure, I love the EC. But train it on what? Hiring a minion now will allow me to train a single 800K level spell. That's it. That's all 10 million experience gets you. Would 800K EC help a lot in concert with my Evasion? You bet. Would it be worth trading in DM for? No way. I dislike AS/PL teams FAR more than I dislike tanks. *smile*
-- Try AMF: Cool! Take down all other mages with a big AMF and by being a better mage than they are. Worth trading in DM for? Again, nope. I would be a mage-killer and mage-killer only. Even RoS teams would wipe me up. Can't have that, I hate RoS teams.
-- PL: Again, no new minion has enough experience to train PL and HP enough to be useful as a PL sink. A PL sink was my original idea way, way back for my second minion before I realized how hard folks hit in the top tier. I wouldn't gain my mage much of anything.
-- Wall: I don't have the net worth, and again, 800K HP on a wall is not very much.
-- Switch to being a tank: I suppose I could try that, but again, I have no net worth, and am not playing the USD game to that extent.
-- Try different tattoos: Well, ToE would be the only logical choice to try -- nothing else even has any feasability. A ToE has the problem of being most useful on my mage. That eats my CoI, a HUGE damage booster. Also, the aura of the ToE is downright useless (without a wall), except for maybe reducing AMF backlash. But most of my battles are short, and the big teams still hit hard enough to completely overwhelm even a large ToE. I put use of a ToE in the same category as RoS: just won't work with the minion imbalance I have.
-- Junction/AGs/HoC minion for my SF: It's gonna happen, don't worry, been in the works since the moment Junction was introduced and subsequently understood. *smile*

Thanks for reading this installment of "The Trouble With Hubbell"! *smile*

Decay is for use in conjunction with CoC and GA, it's amazingly useful against front mounted AoI hidden tanks...

What PM is running isn't a wall, and the next person to call it a wall is going to get my foot as a rectal implant. It's not a complete heavy tank, w/huge Morg. A Classic and undeniably effective setup. You can't kill him in multiple tries because he gains more HP than he loses, always a good thing. The AoI does allow for some tricks that do work well against Decay, however GA and CoC used properly can solve that as well.

Nothing a mage can do at this point is going to help you use what you have currently to win a fight with with a 410AC minion with a Morg...and that's how it should be.

However, Decay combined with UC and/or evasion is another story....

60 mil XP is all it takes to turn that tank into pudding, that's a couple big minions and an RoE away...

novice, so let me get this straight:

All I need to do better, and to make Decay useful, are the following:

Decay
CoC
GA
UC
Evasion
60 million XP
RoE

Wow, that was all I needed this whole time? How could I have been so blind? *smile* Seriously, I would love for you to be more specific, and will gladly give you full experience information of my two minions. Build me a monster!

My new minions start with 10 million experience. So, two more means 20 million total. That's a lot of RoEing to get each of them up to 30 million for that 60 million you are talking about. Meanwhile my offense barely be increasing except for a 16-per-level MM spell and tattoo growth.

Yes, novice is right. My "wall" is not a freaking wall.

And decay is needed to be trained over base to be used effectively.

It is awesome vs AS/PL setups. Even if a 20 hp enchanter is in front, the AS gives it tons of HP and your decay sucks those HP away, making the PL minons suck it up.

It is part of the strat I use vs Jayuu and others.

Train a decay to about 300k and you will do a lot of damage even vs the highest AMFs.

Imagine someone with a small FB taking our your 20 hp enchanter, then following it up with decay later.

There are plenty of ways to use decay properly, I just gave away 2 of my ways. There are plenty more if you use your imagination.

"Decay: now useless against minions that formerly were at the beginning of the lineup?"

"Any smart player that depends on a wall is going to place their wall at back, and slap AoIs on all other minions (if you disagree with this point, please elaborate as to why)."

Front minion, Evasion and Dex. Let him take the brunt of Physical attacks.

Rear minion, EH + MgS.

This leaves you free to use Tattoo (ToA probably) or other Body Armour/Shield (maybe you want an Evasion Mage, which a MgS would negate) on your front, Evader.

;)

What if decay worked similar to FB/CoC: it attacks all minions, starting at 10%hp dmg per minion (max of 5 of course) and increases as there are less minions. 10% per minion vs 5, 12.5% per minion vs 4, 16.67% per minion vs 3, 25% vs 2, 50% vs 1.

Or Decay could be made to seek. Targetting the highest HP or even highest AC. ;)

GL, that sounds like something I'd like to see.

Although I'd like to add that perhaps this could be done by using a special item or skill to allow it to seek.

Otherwise it'd be more powerful than it was before the AoI, which is in my opinion too powerful.