Advice for a beginner.. (in General)

Hey guys,

I just started out here. To cut a long-ish story short, here is my minion layout at the moment:

4 minions, 3 of which are enchanters. Each enchanter has only one spell trained, so I have maxed out experience on Ablative Shield, Ethereal Chains, and the Antimagic Field. One minion, one spell.

I have 1 tank, placed behind all the other enchanters with 91AC.

From the outset, I though my strategy worked quite well. I was fighting people about 5000 above my MPR. I'm worried that something will come along and flatten my tactics. Battles are getting a little harder now, what with Dispel Magic..

Should I adjust something with my strategy?

Thanks.

Apologies, a little addition. I plan to keep my tank with equal weighting in all three stats.

Rent an amulet of invisibility from rentals, and put it on your tank. Put him at the front. This will protect him from magic missile which targets the minion at the back first.

You might also want to try and get a tattoo as early as you can.

You could use a Tattoo of Augmentation on your tank; upside: it provides your strength and dexterity. Downside: your tank won't be able to wear body armour and a cloak.

Or the Rune Of Solitude. Put that on your Ablative Shield enchanter. It gives you a bonus to defensive enchantments, and protects them from Dispel Magic.

Try and get a normal tattoo rather than a Lesser. They may be much cheaper but they don't grow as fast.


Welcome to CB!

That's solid advice from Johnny.

Also, welcome to CB.

You're building a solidly balance strat there, and I would suggest a ToE if you plan on focusing on beating everyone around your level, DM base teams will always be a problem if you rely on AS for HP, so I wouldn't even try to beat them with a four minion tank setup. Best advice I could give is to look at the teams in the top 20, and see what interests you the most and go from there. When raising a team, it does help to pick a type of opponent you want to be best against and use that as a basis for the type of team you create, trying too early to beat everyone only lowers the rewards you could be getting from fighting higher.

My opinion: just say no to defensive enchantments. It's a harder road to follow, but it makes you immune to DM.

If you do insist on using Ablative Shield, I highly recommend learning PL on one of your enchanters so that it can help leech damage away from your damage-dealer.

I see the point sutekh is making. He should know because he uses a huge collective DM made for ruining strats like that. I personally use them to an extent, but only because I have a Mage and a SF. It might be wiser for a Tank to avoid DEs.

I should not I am a fairly extreme aberration in the DM game... I was able to afford that gambit because I spent 90 million on minions, and devoted them purely to DM. It is hard for me to say what I would do coming up. AS/GA/PL is SOOOOOO powerful in a 4-minion build, and I am not sure there is heavy enough DM in other parts of the scoring ladder.

So, my initial response might be a bit harsh on the DE front... I would agree that lesser-minion teams, especially tanks, can probably do without DEs, though, especially if a quick-kill archery type of team.

"AS/GA/PL is SOOOOOO powerful"

I thought GA/PL was a bad idea? The PL'd damage doesn't get GA'd. Right?

Also, I've been thinking about a high-end RoS/AS team... looking at bigger characters, I notice that main enchanters have somewhere around a 2m+ trained enchantment. Add an RoS on this minion... increase it by about 1.5m.

This will result in a 3.5m DE ... it seems that the highest DM's out there reduce DE's by about 2m. Add in the DM protection from the RoS and that works about about 1.5m, leaving a 2m DE cast. Not too bad? Or is it?

"My opinion: just say no to defensive enchantments. It's a harder road to follow, but it makes you immune to DM."

Or spare no thought for DM and use all the defensive enchantments you think you'll need and avoid DM teams.

Just don't get a enough defense enchantments for DM to hurt you but not enough to really take advantage of opponents who don't use it.

Anyway, as for your strategy I think it's pretty good. Maybe convert the AS minion to pure HP if you don't want to be vulnerable to DM, then later perhaps add PL to it so your tank lasts as long as it does even against opponents that use fireball.
Experiment with rentals if you'd like, they are a cheap way to get good equipment and try new stuff out.

One other concern I have is that putting NW into AC isn't something I'd recommend unless you have much more money than you know what to do with. I've always found it much more cost effective in most situations to put money into my weapon rather than armor and rely on minion stats for defensive purposes. Just an opinion there, feel free to ignore it.

Anyway, judging by your character you've already found the wiki? If not, top left corner of the top left frame "Help!" link is very useful.

Yes, good point, DD... Shows that I don't use AS/GA/PL... *smile*

AS/GA, or AS/PL, then. *smile*

Wow. Massive activity in minimum time..

I will need to.. digest this information. At the moment, I am liking the sound of replacing my AS with pure HP. But hey, if I screw up, there's time enough to start a new character.

You guys are very welcoming.

Thanks. :)

PL does hurt GA. It's always something to calculate. Just like DM combined with a larger AMF, or FB on a live-to-melee-rounds team. It isn't really "bad", it just isn't viewed as cost-effective.

You will however find cases where conflicting XP expenditures will be a boon. Particularly against those teams that count on people avoiding such combinations. I for one assume that I won't be farmed by a team that uses both DM and AMF. If ever I get hit by both, then most of my advantages get negated.

By the way sutekh, you weren't always one of the biggest DM team on the block. I know for a fact you discovered the effectiveness of DM while on the receiving end. I'd still say you know what you're talking about when it comes to CB strategies. (Except about GA apparently.)

I just bought you a Halidon Familiar as it was the only base tattoo with a buy now price. I think you will like it once it starts to grow. Use it and enjoy. Send it back if you don't want it.