4 Minion Idea (EWTE?) (in General)

Right now I am planning on starting a 4 minion team. My plans after reading pages and pages of info is this so far:

ENCHANTER:
2/3 AS
1/3DM

WALL:
MAX HP
PROT --> lvl 15-20

TANK:
Even mixx between ST, DEX, and HP.
Debating on Archery(Yes i want a bow) or BL


ENCHANTER:
AMF
? One mroe spell?

I know this is a sloppy draft on it, i have it nocer on paper lol. I just needed some input or ideas to what others think would work out better. Should i move spells, change spells, make certain spells on a minion stronger than others?

Also is it stupid to train DM and AMF? I like what they both do, but what is everyones sugestion?

Any other help would be greatly appreciated!

DM dispels your AMF it is only good if you have a HIGH level AMF and a very small DM to kill lets say VA and PRO

depending on the timing of you hiring your minions you could RoS your AS minion to boost ablative shield, and protect from DM (even your own). Or you could ToA your tank.

I would suggest an Evasion wall over a high AC wall, DB, EC, EG, EH, MgS, and AoF being the ideal equipment for such a setup, while putting AoI on your tank in the front The VB totally destroys a AC wall, but good luck destroying what you cant hit. If u use the MgS, you'd have to toss protection onto your AMF enchanter.

That would be another question i have, when would be a good time to hire new minions?

DM works against all spells cast on your opponent before the start of combat so their ED and your EO (amf and ec). So they don't go well together unless you have a RoS (tattoo) which protects versus DM.

You need to think about which tattoo to use.

Other things to think about are minion placement, using like AoI for the tank - TEEW and pl on the enchanters for instance.

the minions is my strat, just not the setup, with one of the Es using Junction with SF

anyone else? also help with how many and which minions to start with and when to add more...

Hire all minions to begin with.
If you want to end up with four, you usually should start with four.

As for spells, AMF and AS is a good combo for beating mages, unfortunately it's much less so when AMF isn't adequate so I'd suggest only training AMF on this minion.

One of my concerns is the order of your minions, the AMF enchanter will provide slight protection from MM mages, but it's debatable whether you'd actually beat them or not so I'd suggest the following order: WEET.
The tank would be vulnerable to MM, but stronger against everything else. The position of the wall allows it to be attacked in ranged, where it can easily withstand multiple rounds (also, should you take the evasion wall suggestion, the evasion would be most helpful in ranged). The enchanters however would die very quickly in any round, therefore you usually want them where an opponent can do most of their damage, melee and the easiest way to make them survive this long is to hide them behind the wall.

As for tattoos, ToA is advisable as your tank will be very, very weak. Being on a four minion team without a ToA and it's only assistance to it's stats is an AS, a tank will struggle to keep up with other tanks.

DM-AMF combo is not advisable because it's not cost effective.

And finally, the choice of archery or bloodlust for your tank. I'd personally choose BL as you have four minions, including a wall and both enchanters are focussed on defensive enchantments, why try to fight in ranged when you're better set up for a long fight?
However if you want to go archery, make sure you have a melee weapon handy because the main advantage to having so many minions as an archer is the ability to finish off the last one or two of your opponent's minions in melee.

All in all that's not a bad strategy you've come up with, especially for someone new (it's about as good as I'd expect from most vets). Keep up the good work. :)

just some general advice:

You'll want the tank to be bigger than that. Either you'll want to use a ToA (tattoo of augmentation) or use one of the enchanter's to boost the tank's strength or dexterity (with haste or giant strength). Third option is to start with only one minion (the tank) and then after an appropriate amount of time purchase the additional minions. However that path will cost alot more money and will be only temporary as *eventually* over time the exp difference between your tank and the 3 purchased minions will proportionately become closer.

Also, you want to decide if you want your wall to be stopping enemy tanks or enemy mages. If enemy tanks, its good where its at. If enemy mages, place it in the very back. Regardless of this choice I would also recommend your tank be your first minion in front and give him an Amulet of Invisibility so he will always be the last one targetted by either magic or melee.

Awesome kool thanks a lot. so your suggestion would be:

W:
HP
Evasion

E:
amf

E:
as

T:w/ ToA
hp
str
dex
bl

Sounds kinda simple,. i think i understand where its going, so i am using the wall to take my damage (duh) from everything but MM. The enchanters are specializing in only one attribute thus making it immensely powerful. decay on amf mage maybe?
tank is going to be weak you say... so i up him with ToA whih i understand ups his attributes, plus as, plus bloodlust making him a lot stronger. Did i get that right?

Well now that you bring up that my tank is going to be weak, would a 3 minion team be better, or even a two ro single team? Can a single team compete with a 4 minion team? what about a double and triple team?

Any other suggestions?

sorry for all the questions but thanks so much for the responses!

Also, if possible an dnot too much trouble, can people who post ideas for me post a layout of rthe team such as the "

W:

E:

E:

T:

or whatever you come up with? I guess in the back of my mind i am thinking of a 3 or 2 or single team also, but just looking for input

MM is very popular I don't recommend the tank at the back.

I much prefer teams with uneven minion sizes. It depends somewhat on the strat but that is my general preference. The problem is one of cash, the price is based on the largest minion currently in the team and gets pretty expensive.

If you put a ToA on the tank, you solve the problem of him being weak. That being said, I recommend:

AoI = amulet of invisibility, makes the minion last to be targetted by physical attacks.

T(with AoI)
W
E
E

With this setup, wall and enchanters will take all the physical and magic missile damage (magic missile targets in reverse order back to front) and the tank will be the last one to be targetted by both so he survives to the end of the battle.

hmm i like that idea.... with a toa, can you not wear armor and stuff? is it worth it?

You can't wear body armor or a cloak, it is worth it with the right setup and decent weapons to make use of it.

Tattoos prevent the minion wearing them from wearing body armor, a cloak, and power shield (power shield is just Mage Shield and Buckler of Mandos, all other shields can be worn). So you can still wear gloves, boots, helm, amulet, and normal shield. And yes its most certainly worth it. The ToA boosts str/dex a large amount and also gives additional P2H (plus to hit) which gives you higher chance to hit and chance for multi-hits.

Also in my above recommendation, better to change to T/E/E/W. Essentially the same, but it makes a minor difference versus MM (the enchanters will die in melee when the magic damage is at its strongest. Better to make them waste attacks on the enchanter in melee than in range.

Another very effective setup is this:

Tank in front, with ToA of course, also displacement boots and trained evasion.

Enchanter here

Enchanter here

Wall here, with anti-mage items like Mage Shield and Elven Hauberk to stop magic missile. Train phantom link on the wall to redirect damage the other minions receive (namely the tank) back to the wall.

So physical attacks go to the tank, who evades the majority of attacks. When actually hit, the damage is sent to the wall instead. The enchanters will only take damage from fireball and cone of cold, which will be sent to the wall again. And the wall reduces damage from magic missile by a massive amount and keeps the rest of the minions alive.

Also, since the enchanters are "expendable" this would be a good strategy to train a base level decay spell on the enchanters.

what does it mean by base level of a spell? one level in decay will do damage to minions???

Since you are using AS, another thing to consider:

Tank: ToA etc.. using AoI. If using TOE it is on one of the enchanters. Letting you use TSA, EC, HOD or HOC, EB or DB, MgS or BoM, and EG.

Enchanter: Phantom Link, AMF, Protection to 54k (level 20) using AoI

Enchanter: Phantom Link, Large AS using AoI

Wall: Using standard wall equipment: AoAC, Adam, TG, CML, SC, MS, HOD. Training all HP but level 122k evasion, which will be 97k given the dex penalty for the armor which will be level (40).

This way all the damage goes to your heavy wall, which due to the enchanters PL gets additional hp. Since 10hp of damage makes PL only use 9 hp on the PL minion you gain an extra 10% hp on the Enchanter effectively.

The wall in this way works both magical and physical damage and gets supported both ways by the PL enchanters.

You can learn some native HP on the enchanters if you wish to guarantee some HP vs DM teams.

with no AoI though, put it as either WTEE or EETW, because MM will start hitting minions from the back, and all others hit from the front, so it will protect the Tank in all cases with these two setups.

Single minions can easily compete with four minion teams.

In fact, most people would be best off using single minions.
They are very simple which is both a good and bad thing.
Simplicity means they're easy to use effectively. Unfortunately it means you're somewhat limited in the changes you can make (an advantage to newer players, a disadvantage to experienced players).

It wouldn't be a bad idea to run a single minion strategy for a while, get used to things and later add in the enchanters and the wall minion. This wont hurt you at all so feel free to try it.

As for the order of minions, if you can afford an AoI, then the TWEE strategy would be great.

Thank you so much for all your contributions, i have gotten a lot fo good info and learned a lot, thanks!

Ok on my tank, what should i train in skills and enchantments? I may be ready now for something (check out the animal) but i dont know what to train. could train AMF due to mages being pretty hurtful, archery isnt needed after lots of reading, BL may be, but its overkill now, evasion may be, but dont know much about it , what do you guys thinks??? please help me out here! I have 100k in experience saved up to do something!

bump

Just a thought, if you are going to start with four minions, I suggest using an RoE on your Tank for a while, until you slap on whatever tattoo you plan on using. This way, while opponents are easy to defeat you'll get extra EXP, which is huge with a four minion team (any team for that matter)... You could even just HUNT with an RoE and defend with a ToA on tank or ToE on enchanter...

I don't agree that "if you plan on having a four minion team, you should start with four minions" because your Wall really doesn't need much EXP to help out... If you waited on the Wall and even one of the E's for a bit, your Tank and AS enchanter would be much more powerful, killing quicker, and ultimately making your next two minions that much stronger at start, with the extra AS.

Also, starting with only those two minions, the tanks DX and ST wouldn't be so small that you would even need to use a ToA at all... and he also wouldn't have to focus as much on HP, obviously giving a boost again to the EXP being spent on DX and ST.

I would go

T (with AoI)
E (with AoI and Phantom Link)
W/E (evasion wall and enchanter)
W (mage wall)

in fact I'm seriously considering switching to that configuration except I'd have to hire a 4M minion and buy lots of equipment.

i tried TEEW with an AoI on the tank and AoF on the junction minion in spot 2, and i did worse than WTEE with AoM on the tank. So i cant use my AoI to my advantage, =X

tell me about it, i took my AoI off my mage, and my score went up 200k >.<

Animal, a tank on a four minion team should have as few spells as possible. The commonly accepted spell here is protection because you can train it very low and just leave it, it'll add a very slight amount of damage reduction or get hit by DM in which case the loss of protection is miniscule.

Other than that, all you should be considering are the skills, archery, bloodlust, evasion, unarmed combat, junction and phantom link.
If you're not going with archery, your choices are bloodlust or evasion, I'd hazard a guess that evasion would be the better of the two although I've not done any research on that.

On a single minion tank you'll often want to train a skill and maybe an enchantment. AMF or DM are the only two I'd recommend, AMF if your biggest problem is mages, DM if your biggest problem is GA. With that said, keep in mind that you want your EXP focussed on a few key stats, the more things you're training, the weaker they'll be. Oh and as always, a small protection is always a good thing (just train it a little and forget about it).

In short, only train AMF and DM on a single minion tank if they're necessary, always train protection. Should you be using a four minion character, the only enchantment you should give a tank is protection, let an enchanter worry about the rest.

hmmm really liking all the input, thanks a lot, i will untrain AMF for now... i have it traned a bit, but i dont think it is helping much. It would reutrn like 300 damage to the mage, but i come back and hit for 18k damage so 300 isnt very much at all... ill put it into protection, i can always re add AMF or something. Sometime soon i will be getting an Enchanter and train some stuff on him. what skills do you suggest if i go:
T /w ToA and AoI
E (AS obviously + ?)
E (dont know what skills)
W (hp)

The only thing i dont like about Phantom link is, if you put it on your wall, the damage it takes is what the ORIGINAL defender would have received, so all the armor and stuff wouldnt help. That is why i am thinking of doing no Phantom link, may be something else tho, not sure, ideas anyone?

possibly a little bit of PL on your second enchanter. It'll have HP from the AS. If you *don't* put PL on them though, GA is a wise suggestion for them :)

Would it be smart to get one enchanter now, or wait for it?

Any ideas on what to train on my two enchanters and wall and tank anyone else?

BUMP

So far this is what i have:

Tank: Train evasion or BL. Evasion may be the best bet, not sure yet... still looking for opinions on this one. If i do evasion, should i get displacement boots or stick to EB?

E: AS to the max!!! May be add something else?

E:

Wall: HP to the max then add PL to take damage from other minions. i LOVE the idea of making my tank use evasion to avoid melee, and making my wall avoid DD spells through Elven Hauberk and Mage sheild. So i may stick tot hat, but still looking to what skills to get on my other enchanters and should i leave protection ot be trainied on tank or on someone else?

Why the heck are we bumping a strategy post?

Unbelievable.

Just pick a strategy and go with it. Check higher level characters and do not post every time you have a new idea.

Imagine if everyone did just this. The forums would be nothing but the exact same strategy posts that have been posted numerous times in the past.

But people do not seem to check old thread that are the exact same as this one. Or even check on the top characters to see how they do things.

When hiring a new minion, unless you're trying to get the top MPR in the game (in which case it would be worth staying single minion for a very long time) it doesn't matter a whole lot if you hire now, in a week or in a month.

As for evasion I must say that I've not actually used evasion... ever. But I've gone up against it plenty.
DBs are useful for it, but as they add to the evasion's level, not the effect (see wiki) they aren't much use once your trained evasion starts getting to point where it's no longer cost effective.
Bellow that point you're probably still better training evasion as it gives defensive DX and it's effect is multiplied in range.
Again, I've not trained evasion and I'm too cheap to buy DBs so feel free to disregard most of that if you'd like.

Train protection on the tank, it stops being cost effective at I think around 100k. But usually you train it to about 10k and just leave it. It doesn't have to keep growing if you want it to be useful. The rule of thumb on how much to train is however much wont be noticable if it were trained in your other stats.

If you train it on an enchanter it means that enchanter can no longer cast another spell of that type, whether or not it would cast another spell doesn't matter so much, just the option of having it there is always nice.

The spells I would suggest for your enchanters would be AS and AMF (or replace AMF with EC depending on whether you'd rather target mages or tanks). Other than that, just fight a little and add what you need later on (keeping in mind that you don't want to spread your EXP too thin).

Oh and PM, that's exactly how I learned to play CB, ask lots and lots of questions in plenty of threads like this. Isn't that what it's here for after all? This thread is here to help this guy get his strategy right, I'd much rather see him achieve that than copy what the top ten are doing. A little free thinking never hurt anyone... well, I'm sure it has, but it's still the better option to just copying what others do.

Chuckles,

Imagine if everyone bumped a strategy post, chaos would ensue.

There comes a time when a strat has been talked to death, this is one such post.

I have observed what every top ten team in single minion to 4 minions have done in the top ranks, but i want to do something somewhat different, and i am just looking for help on making my own team. Im sorry for bumping this thread, but i just wanted opinions on everything. I am going to do this my way but i am looking for help on deciding how i want to do it. thank you for everyone;s help AND I AM STILL OPEN TO IDEAS AND THOUGHTS!!! thanks Mr Chuckles

And i have gone through all sorts of forums all ready made on topics, that si where i get a lot of my ideas (also where i decided to drop archery)

PLEASE CLOSE THIS POST, found new strat i would like to post in separate post.