In Need Of A Strategy Check Please (in General)

My strategy is pretty set in stone, except for one thing bouncing in my head, should i use DM or not...

My strategy right now is:

ToA Archer
Evasion AMF Enchanter
EC Prot Enchanter
Mage Wall (Coming soon!)

This main idea was that i would bring down Tanks with EC making them hit less and softer, coupled with evasion to make them miss... hopefully for the most part making tanks useless..

Then for mages i would bring them down with AMF and also my mage wall, thus causing them to do considerably less damage to me.

EC would also cut out evasion, thus making me hit more often than missing, and also making me not have to put MILLIONS into my + on my weapons.

My guard against GA is health, thats it... im for the most part letting my ToA cover my dex and strength, and i am just upping my HP.

I know that Archers SHOULD use DM, but i have wanted to make a strategy NOT COPYING anyone else, i want my own thoughts and ideas put into this tactic, not the simple ToA Archer, DM, AS, Wall team.

The other plus to this strategy was that i would have no skills (minus Prot) that could be taken away from me, so putting all this exp into these minions and i dont have to worry about DM taking it away.

A lot of this strategy has come from help and ideas from a few people (Mikel and The Ranger the most). So I want to say thank you to them, especially Mikel for putting ideas in my head. I have had this whole team planned out and im wondering if i am making a mistake not using DM.

Please give me your ideas, criticism, whatever you have to say, thank you!

Unless you plan to switch to a RoS then you will not be able to mix DM with your AMF and EC because your DM will reduce both of those. Given that you will probably have a decent defense already, I would suggest not switching to DM, the EC and AMF combo should work well enough.

Im not adding DM to my strat, i just need help on my thoughts and want to know what others think about it all...

Animal, that was your question... "should I use DM or not".....

I know, i am asking for thoughts on my original strategy, and if people think it would work, should i tweak it, change anything, or should i go the whole regular DM route. I want criticism, pros to it, cons, flames, suggestions, ideas, or nice things said about it. I want to knw what i should do or what you all think about the strategy...

Indeed.

Well, there are a couple of things to consider: firstly, if you prot is small, it will be wiped by DM, most likely. However, going the AMF/EC route is useful, because each of those enchanters can train something else - AMF at least is useful no matter how small it is, so the xp dilution doesn't really matter.

That's why I think the evasion on your AMF minion is a good idea.
BUT, from what I have heard (i've never used it myself) EC is only useful in large amounts. You are diluting it twice: firstly by having a 4 minion team, secondly by training protection. Not a good idea, unless Prot is the major enchantment, and EC is just to help you mop up enemy enchanters... but... yeah.

So, that's where it's at. If you used DM, then you "gain" a minion, because you don't use either AMF or EC. But, you lose both AMF (the most important thing) and you lose your EC (although I would be inclined to either train purely EC (and a base prot of effect 4 only), or to drop your EC and go for an AS minion).

But, I'm fairly inexperienced, and tank strats are not my forte.
Cheers,
muon

Thanks Muon, that was helpful. I am training JUST EC on him with a base protection, later on i may just add prot to lvl 20 just cuz. but he trains just EC, AMF and Evasion will be evened out im still rasinging Evasion up) and then i will slowly bring up evasion as needed, may be more thna AMF (again depending on enemies)

anyone else have any help on my strategy please?!

Muon, I'm going to have to disagree with you there. EC helps. Mine is small comparatively, I have Evasion and VA trained on my EC enchanter, it mops up UC teams and helps close the gap on ToA tank teams. Also it lowers the defensive DX granted by Evasion, so In almost all situations it helps somewhat.]

I agree though, that AMF/EC combo works nicely, and your EC will be large, large enough to greatly reduce enemy tanks, and if they're non-ToA tanks, then they're gone. It doesn't really matter how big AMF is, like muon said, but a 20k AMF isn't going to help against a 1 mil FB. AMF is one of those spells that has no top limit, unlike VA (It needs to be in line with your average blow), GA (needs to be in line with their average blow), Protection( (34) is actually the limit, but it's best to stop around (20) ), possibly Evasion (get it high enough, before the curve goes insane, then possibly train into other stats).

Onto your strat, finally. I'd have to say, no, not DM, mostly because of the AMF/EC combo, also, you can combat GA (which is an Archer's main threat) with HP/AC, if you have a lot of HP you should be fine. If you're really worried you could put a PL on the non-Evasion enchanter, though, you have no AS, so it seems that it wouldn't work to well. It also looks like that your evasion doesn't seem useful, because if they get to hit you, you're gone. A good aspect of Evasion is, it will work no matter what, against Tanks. That is, you will quite possibly lower their triple to a double, or double to a single etc.

I really don't see any other problem with the strat. :)

Training either AS or natural HP on your enchanters would help to spread FB attacks for more than a round. I don't really like the idea of training both AMF and EC because both will likely to be weak. If you are going to have a mage wall eventually, I think you can cut back on AMF and train some AS. Just my thoughts though :)

Do you know what I think? I think if you have four minions and you're doing large damage, you don't really need any enchantments at all.

AMF: On a four minion team AMF is nice, but really not necessary. At higher levels the DD spells are too big for you to make a real dent, unless your AMF is huge. That damage you can do to an opponent from AMF backlash is nice but if you're already doing enough damage to take out a minion a round do you need it?

You already have damage limitation against mage teams by (your future plan) having four minions. MM will have to get past your wall to do damage to the rest of the team. FB and CoC are spread across multiple minions thus reducing the amount of damage they do.

EC is useful yes, especially since it was revealed that it can affect evasion. But against large tanks it has to be trained really high to have a significant affect. Against non ToA tanks it works, but a ToA tank normally has the upper hand there anyway...


You've made a good move by not investing in defensive enchantments already, which means your team is a lot more focused. Not having too many things that can be diminished is good.

I don't personally think you need DM. The higher you go, the bigger you need it. Which means more of your MPR is wasted when you're up against teams who don't use enchantments.

;)

Johnny, both his enchanters have only 20 HP and will probably not survive one round of FB or CoC attacks ;) And when that happens, its the FB/ CoC mage versus his tank.

If he isn't training enchantments he can train HP. But it wasn't an opinion on his own strat; that looks solid enough - the Score/PR/MPR ratios are great.


Just an opinion in general on enchantments. ;)

Thanks for the great comments everyone! I am glad to see that others agree with my thoughts of having no enchantments that can be fizzled by DM. I would hate to spend millions of XP into an enchantment for DM to just get rid of it.

My only weakness as of now is FB. Since i dont have HP on my enchanters, i so have a weakness to FB. Also SOD will kill of my enchanters, IF THEY CAN HIT MY EVASION MINION. The one thing i was thinking though, by not training HP on my enchanter, was that if he gets hit, his evasion obviously isnt working against that team, so i dont need him, i would rather spend 10m exp into evasion/AMF than to put it into HP. 1m HP wont help against attacks that do 1.1m damage. NOW if i made him lose AMF then i could get armors on him and that would b a different story (T,W,E,MageWall?)

That is the reason i havent trained HP on him. But i would like suggestions towards this, as of now my main question would be towards HP on my evasion minion, and should i use AMF, and whatever else comes up.

Pretty much i am going to go without DM.... :)

Anyone else with help or suggestions, comments, flames, anything?

I have to agree with Johnny - the less EXP you allow to be possibly wasted, the better off your team is. I *never* use Defensive Enchantments for exactly that reason. The furthest with an ED to go is Protection to level 57,608 for exactly (20) effect. Not a lot of experience put in there for a pretty big effect when it isn't DM'd.

Anyway, it looks good to me. =)

TWEW eh? Johnnywas

Well sort of.... ;)

Close to that one, but first wall is evasion wall, and EC. That sounds cool, but i dunno, i may just stick with the evasion amf guy.

What does everyone think about having HP on him. I mean he is just an enchanter that dodges every melee skill he can, so if he cant dodge that characters attacks, there is no point in wasting exp into hp

Thanks OB for the comment

HP? As you say that can be a wasted choice for that minion. But, if your main weakness is FB, then HP on your enchanters is a good idea.

FB works by spread fire, right? So, on hit 1 right now an FB mage will take out your enchanters, so on the next round he's only got one minion to attack. This is why he's able to take you down.

But if your enchanters had HP it would take him longer to cut them down, thus maintaining the spread fire for longer, rather than his focused attack on your tank.

A mage shield wall will help you here, probably dramatically. But in the meantime HP on those guys will help you more than you realise. HP doesn't have to be able to soak up a million strength damage to be useful.

FB right now does between 40-50k damage to my minions, nothing for my tank, but that would mean putting 60k hp on my enchanters... and slowly raising that also

Right now it would help against FB. But, if you are going to use a wall don't bother. It won't hurt you to train HP for the reasons I've stated, but then you might as well train AS.

Put up with the fact that you're weak against FB for the moment; once you take on the wall that will change.

And remember this also, you're fighting quite high for your team's size; it simply may be that the FB mages are that much bigger than you right now. People that can beat you now probably won't next week... ;)

so yes or no on hp for the enchanters?

anyone else have statements or comments or anything to say abotu this strategy?

I'd say no. Get your wall and see what difference that makes once it happens. At that point you might want to start thinking about training AS, regardless of DM's effect on it. But otherwise, carry on as you're doing would be my advice. If it ain't broke and all that jazz....

;)

So see if i get away without HP on him for now? Is it smart to have an AMF enchanter use evasion to dodge, or am i wasting exp that could go into AMF?

"if he gets hit, his evasion obviously isnt working against that team, so i dont need him"


"A good aspect of Evasion is, it will work no matter what, against Tanks. That is, you will quite possibly lower their triple to a double, or double to a single etc."

It still does work, but you're taking out that aspect of evasion by having no HP.

evasion makes them not hit at all, so wether he gets hit once or three times at 500k to 1.5m damage, then whats the reason to have 500k hp?

my point was if you had more HP.

It would survive longer, because you're minimising blows and if they're super dooper tanks, well bad luck, you'll probably lose anyway.

Flamey,
What's the difference if he uses a 20 hp Evasion minion to get thru the first few rounds of ranged untouched so that his Tank can chop theirs up? It is a wall, designed specifically for Tanks. Tanks can be hit or Misses, Mages are going to hit every time. By the time he gets into the field where tanks can hit his evasion minion, 500k hp isn't going to make that much of a difference. I used a 20 hp evasion minion vs Critters and was able to hold him off long enough for my tank to do his team in. He trained a small FB to kill my minion off, so then I trained some HP to make him last long enough for my tank to kill his FB minion off.

exactly Mikel, i would rather put that experience into evasion to make sure he doesnt hit...

If you say so.

I guess it is me coming from a team with a big AS, therefore having a crap load of HP, anyway.