Prophecies fulfilled before our very eyes? (in General)

You guys called it. ~_^

Exactly what did they call?..

Single ToA Archers owning.

And this was predicted even before the HoC came out.

Single ToA archer? Mikel? As far as I can see, he can't beat any of the top twenty. Though for some reason he's not on any of their fightlists either..clan I understand, but why is nobody else taking him on? And if it's because they can't beat him then why aren't they on his fightlist?

No, looks to me like four minion ToE tank with Morg and Sod is owning. I don't recall any posts about that strat being overpowered though....it obviously is though, because nobody can beat it.

Hell it can even beat people of higher MPR or NW; that's what normally marks things out as 'overpowered' right?

Not again...

C'mon people, ELB in CB1 was tough but not unbeatable and in CB2 it's not even as strong as it was then. On multiple minion teams you could destroy it with EC. In CB2 you can do the same, heck, you can beat almost any equal MPR tank with EC.

Evasion does the job too, it's much better in CB2 than it was in CB1.

+215 might prove a challenge for it, but if you invest as heavily in evasion as has been done in that bow, you will stand a pretty decent chance (I am talking about EXP as well as NW for evasion).

What about good old 20hp minions, they work great too. Four hits and the archer starts using a wimpy melee weapon. Pump all of your NW into melee and you'll out muscle them in melee where you can kill all of their minions, their trade off is to be able to hit a little harder a little earlier and not be able to kill all of your minions. In my opinion, they're getting the short end of the stick.

Use your ELBs if you want.
Just don't try to tell everyone they're overpowered, they're big and scary but not so tough.

I'm not saying ELB is completely useless, it'll beat most opponents if you invest heavily enough in it but the same could be said for just about any other top weapon.

It's not useless. It'll beat up certain targets pretty well. But it's not overpowered either.

IMO its not the ELB that is over powered its the 3% per x boost to damage from BG that makes them so scary. +12 BG isn't that expensive to get to, name them and thats over 36% boost to damage.

I think you're right on the Beleg's. Make them more like Alatar's and I don't think anybody would see quite the same damage from archers.

What I want to know about Beleg's though is why other ranged users aren't using them. They work with xbows and SoDs just as well...

err should read 3% boost per + not x. (darned typos)

I just changed from my wimpy MM mage to a ToA tank. I used to dish out between 60 to 80k damage from the MM mage. My ToA tank now dishes out between 300 to 400k damage and the best thing is, I'm not using any melee weapon.

I don't think that the ELB is to powerful, but like it has been previously mention all the things that go with it that make it overpowered. Like BGs as previously mention and seekers.

JW, it's the seekers.

He's on my fight list. Last time I checked, I was in the Top Twenty.

He just worked his way out of mine and it is most definitely the seekers.

ow come on not overpowered? I just got hit by triples every one of those 600k damage. From a x2200 +100 elb named, with +11 belegs

From a character 370k mpr

Lava Tank skewered Enchanting The Henk with Strung High [693465]
Lava Tank skewered Enchanting The Henk with Strung High [606382]
Lava Tank skewered Enchanting The Henk with Strung High [668464]

And i got those against my other enchanter and wall ending up with -1.5mil HP on each.
nah sure these damages aren't ridicoulus for his MPR?
Well if that isn't the case i don't know what is.
"Maybe" the ELB isn't overpowerd, but if that isn't the case then its the way how belegs work with the elb and archery, cuzzz jeesz!!!

Without the Beleg's that cuts the largest of the 3 down to 520k, fair bit of difference given by the gloves.

When I made that thread, ELB was really overpowered (because evasion was useless and so on), but currently I'm not sure if it's overpowered, it's only overpowered when the guy using it combined with seekers. :)

The ELB is not overpowered unless someone can afford to keep upgrading it to the max of his weapon allowance. So, its not the ELB that is overpowered, its the weapon allowance.

Kong Ming, I -partially- agree with that statement. On the one hand, it is certainly the weapon allowance that is overpowered and allowing people to build enormous ELBows.

On the other, the Elven Long Bow can hit several multiples harder than a Blacksword of Nan Elmoth of equivalent size. That weapon is in a league entirely its own - so in that respect, it is also overpowered; this simply shows more because people are capable of wielding such large upgrades of it.

Yes, seekers are still very much a problem. End of Days can kill my entire offense with two arrows, regardless of my team stance. That is somewhat regrettable.

Though the damage of an ELB is large compared to melee weapons, it does not have some features like VA, lower evasion and defensive dexterity to overcome that melee weapons enjoy.

But I have to admit that the gears that compliment an ELB really makes it very powerful. A ToA, BG and a HoC can potentially kill an entire team before melee.

ELB needs VA about as much as my team needs Decay, i.e., not at all. An archer kills fast. No need for vampiric anything.

Kong, as much as the other factors such as seekers, beleg's and weapon allowance help the elbow become even stronger it still remains the fact that even after the nerf it is still the strongest weapon in the game by far.
Even if you don't wear beleg's and only use bog standard base arrows the damage still far surpasses any other weapon.

So where is the balance going to be? Nerf it until it does as much damage as a melee weapon of equal nw? Or still higher than a melee weapon?

An ELB is only very effective if you are going to train archery which requires 1/4 of the strength trained into it while bloodlust requires only 1/5.

Balance?

First, banish seekers. The ELB does far too much damage to need seekers.

If a mage makes it so you cannot get to it before missile ends, so be it. That person did his/her job of protecting the mage adequately.

Second, stop the ability to upgrade ammo. This is massively wrong on 2 accounts. A) Defensive ammo. Just plain unfair to all those mages out there who cannot use defensive AG's or COI's. B) Gives the elb the ability to do real massive damage

Third, Decrease the bonus BG's give to 1.5% per + from 3%.

Fourth, Make archery 1/5th the level of str like BL

Just my thoughts.

/me adds fuel to the fire >:)

When I started CB, I had a SFBM, at about 260k MPR, i hired a tank. Brand new tank with an ELB at ~1/3 of my WA was dealing about equal damage to my SFBM. By 500k MPR, my tank was my main damage dealer, and the mage was useful only for evasion minions...

/me tries to put out his own fire :)

ELBs hit hard, they slaughter really. But I've noticed most of the complaints are about the wicked huge ELBs running around. Quick question, get an Exbow to x2000 +100 (or higher) what happens to that archers ST on impact? Sure, it won't help against mages, but thats what mage walls, GA, and AMF are for ^_~

Well, I have nothing against seekers since I don't use them anyway. I don't need seekers to take out the whole team in ranged anyway ;)

"Second, stop the ability to upgrade ammo."

That's an interesting idea... I don't recall seeing it mentioned (though admittedly I don't read many posts anymore). Personally, I need upgraded ammo (I'm one of the few that uses the same ammo for offense as well as defense, and yes I upgrade it) to win, but I might not if I didn't have to overcome magnificently huge defensive ammo.

Fifth,

Make the penalty for not using a melee weapon in melee rounds -60% to str and dex. How can an archer draw his bowstring back enough while in close combat to do maximal damage.

This would make archers need to spend on a melee weapon and choose how much of their WA to spend on missile and melee.

I think EC, Evasion, GA and really big DB's are overpowered. There are ways to counter the Archer strat. If you aren't using a combo of them to do so, then can you really complain if this strat beats yours? I'm not running around complaining every chance I get about what can beat me. Also, quite a few of you are targeting Freed and my Elb's which happen to be the two biggest in the game, so yes a small % isn't really going to change most of the outcomes of our battles. And for all of the hype coming from Pops, Freed still doesn't beat him.

Almost forgot, I use Seekers only because that is the only leverage I have as a single minion vs Mage teams. Mages are going to hit me every single time and do pretty much the max damage, so If I can't take out their mage quickly, then I'm dead before I can kill their team off to get to their mage.

So what do single mages have to compete with multi minion tank teams?

Seeker magic missiles?

Figured I'd throw a small comparison in here. I rented out an ELBow of comparable stats to my BoNE and tried them both against the wimpiest possible opponent I could find.

Enter SNK3R. *grins* (sorry, SNK, I just could not resist.)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Using Bow Of Lost Magic [6x102] (+15):

Race Bannon struck deep into Hal with Bow Of Lost Magic [165417]
Race Bannon struck deep into Hal with Bow Of Lost Magic [223892]
Race Bannon skewered ??? with Bow Of Lost Magic [248901]
Race Bannon skewered ??? with Bow Of Lost Magic [182310]
Race Bannon struck deep into ??? with Bow Of Lost Magic [160415]
Race Bannon struck deep into Hal with Bow Of Lost Magic [238946]
Race Bannon skewered Hal with Bow Of Lost Magic [226749]
Race Bannon struck deep into Hal with Bow Of Lost Magic [263947]
Race Bannon skewered ??? with Bow Of Lost Magic [253838]
Race Bannon skewered ??? with Bow Of Lost Magic [222949]
Race Bannon struck deep into ??? with Bow Of Lost Magic [202350]

Lowest damage: 160,415
Highest damage: 263,947
Average damage: 217,247

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Using A Blacksword of Nan Elmoth [92x250] (+15):

Race Bannon dislimbed Hal [113769]
Race Bannon decapitated Hal [109025]
Race Bannon eviscerated Hal [146303]
Race Bannon eviscerated ??? [126299]
Race Bannon decapitated ??? [118467]
Race Bannon decapitated ??? [152098]
Race Bannon dislimbed Hal [143686]
Race Bannon eviscerated Hal [148466]
Race Bannon eviscerated Hal [121380]
Race Bannon eviscerated ??? [109526]
Race Bannon eviscerated ??? [159043]
Race Bannon decapitated ??? [124585]

Lowest damage: 109,025
Highest damage: 159,043
Average damage: 121,573

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is without the presence of Bloodlust, Archery, BGs, or an HoC.

Just ordinary weapons from an ordinary tankety tank tank.

The ELBow hits for, on average, 180% of the damage of the strongest melee weapon in the game. I'm assuming there are no ranged damage penalties for the ELBow, as I took these damages from the first, second, and third rounds.

Mikel and Freed's chars are not typical of the archers in the game; fight some of the other ELB users, especially those at the top of the biggest ELBs list and see what sort of damage they're doing; Pop-SICKLE's char for instance, with Beleg's and a [6x3200] (+101) bow, and a million in strength.....

Kool-Aid Man skewered King Clown with The Bow of Mikel [1028290]
Kool-Aid Man struck deep into King Clown with The Bow of Mikel [949160]
Kool-Aid Man skewered King Clown with The Bow of Mikel [1335607]
Kool-Aid Man cries "Oh, yeah!!"

That's against my tank, with the only damage reduction coming from 65 AC.

That's not massive amounts of damage for one of the top ten ELBs, that are supposedly doing monster damage right now.

RE: 5th There is already a massive damage penalty when hitting someone in Melee as well as a Dex penalty.

Trade: I'll take the ST penalty, if you give me un-penalized damage.

"I think EC, Evasion, GA and really big DB's are overpowered."

One by One:

EC: Vs a TOA tank is it like peeing in the wind. You will never do enough negative to their str/dex boosted by the TOA. And we all know TOA tanks are the way to go if an archer.

Evasion: Yes, they can put a crimp in farming/attacking a high level evasion character. BUT on the other hand, one small stack of uber upgraded + ammo can stop them from attacking you. A nice very cheap way of neutralizing all that xp into a skill.

GA: C'mon, what TOA tank does not use DM to nuke someones GA? And if they don't use DM, they should. Yes you can get to infrequent ROS teams, but your DM should nerf some of the GA. And seriously when your doing damage out of proportion to your MPR/PR, who is going to have a GA that high to give you max return damage?

Large DBs: Yes, quite powerful at the lower levels, especially if a very high +. But higher up, when weapons have at least +100, DB's are not going to stop all the hits. And all it usually takes is 1-2 hits from a nice elb to kill most characters.

Johnny:

Seriously 3 x 1 Million damage in 1 round with this bow: [6x3200] (+101), is not excessive damage????

With my x12,001 MH I do about 1.3 million damage per hit to a 0 AC minion.

That bow only costs 1/4 as much on the x side as my MH. But I guess that is fair. 1/4th the NW for equal damage as long as it is only in the first 4 rounds. Rounds that if you kill your opponent due to massive damage makes melee rounds obsolete. Or if you critically injury your opponent enough, he barely has any HP entering melee rounds to give you a fair fight in that area, where he is specialized.

Interesting take on archery.

And Mikel, I did not know there was a large damage penalty for using a bow in melee. Then disregard my point 5. I was mistaken.

"Mages are going to hit me every single time and do pretty much the max damage"

That statment is inaccurate. Mages do between 50% and 100% of max damage.

I thought the melee penalty was only to to-hit.

You're right Pops, one vs one they are weak. But as I said previously, by using a combination of those 4, and it's not so easy for an archer, but yet, then it makes it better for a Melee tank, GA can be reduced by Leech weapons, Evasion isn't nearly as strong in Melee either, and EC is just something that both have to overcome.

An example of a character that uses a TOA, a HoC, a 4M elb and a set of 2.4M BG's as their only tank equipment:

Score / PR / MPR: 933,754 / 116,526 / 89,806

Yes, archery with an elb is not too powerful at all.

My take on what's been said since my last post is that ELB does exactly what you'd want it to.

Seekers - I'm sure archers will put up their argument for the seekers but I'm with PM on this one. Targeting the main attacking minion isn't something an ELB should be able to do. _That_ is overpowered.

Beleg's - I couldn't care less.

ELB damage - I don't care.

As far as I'm concerned, for the past few years ELB has been the new FoD (I don't know *exactly* what Finger of Death did, but as to my knowledge it had the potential to do more damage than this... it was removed, but then, it was in melee). If you go into a fight against an ELB, you expect any minion it hits will die. The exception is a strong wall which may or may not stand up to a round of punishment. It's this characteristic of the ELB that should have you of the frame of mind that if you let anything important die in ranged, you've lost the fight.
So quite simply, don't let anything important be hit. And if you can't achieve that, don't let it die.

Well,

Considering there are now 4 missile rounds and basically up to 4 minions on a character, one has to spend tons of xp on evasion to stop from being hit. Thereby diminishing your ability to have any decent xp left for an attack.

Or use a wall with wall armor and all its negatives to dex and enchantments.

Not a fun choice. I have a character that can try to fight off the large elb's but not everyone can.

"Considering there are now 4 missile rounds and basically up to 4 minions on a character, one has to spend tons of xp on evasion to stop from being hit. Thereby diminishing your ability to have any decent xp left for an attack."

The great thing about that is that when you go from something like averaging four rounds to averaging 20 rounds, you don't need a whole lot of attack.

"Or use a wall with wall armor and all its negatives to dex and enchantments."

Agreed. That's very costly. 25% of your total EXP being used up and not one effective enchantment being cast.

Either way will cost you a lot.
Then again, archers put a lot into their offense, if you want to counter it you've got to be prepared to put the same effort into it as they did.

'Then again, archers put a lot into their offense'

And mages do not, or melee tanks do not??

If you can defeat a team in 4 rounds, who cares about the other 21 or so.

Sorry, Mikel.

My team got slaughtered by yours when you were half (450k) my (900k) MPR. Lets go through my team. The only thing that is completely useless in this battle against you is my AMF. My AMF accounts for 1/2 the XP on one of my four minions. Basically 1/8 of my XP. So that really can't be that much of a problem. I use EC, I use Evasion and guess what I also use, I use GA. I have a decent amount of exp into EC and GA, not so much into Evasion, but I still had an effect of near (50).

The result back then, was you still triple hit I believe all my minions, except for my evasion minion which I believe got double hit.

So lets face it, EXP can't take on NW.

Don't forget his minion was still 1/2 as powerful as each of your minions. Yes, there is a problem with exp and NW, but then again he is the top line of NW in the game, and you aren't. I'm sure if you have corns for your EC and GA and elven equipment for your evasion guy, the outcome would've been at least slightly different.

On a personal level, I actually find it very hard to keep up a fightlist. I have near top of the line archery gear, with named +13 BG and an ELB that's almost at my WA. My ToA is over my max tat and I can still only find a handful of people with a high enough score to farm consistently.

Flamey, Flamey, Flamey, you are wrong. I have only been able to consistently beat you in the last 2-3 weeks. In the beginning I had about a 70% win ratio, in the last week I'm finally beating you every time. So I'm not sure how I suddenly went from 450k MPR to 1.2 mil MPR in 2 weeks. I'm know I'm growing fairly fast, but I'm not that good. And in that time period, I trained a DM to reduce GA damage, more than likely that is what turned the tide, had I not done that, you would probably still be beating me.

Th00p:

Score / PR / MPR: 1,113,368 / 430,717 / 302,402 and your finding tough targets to get a 100% challenge bonus?

Yes, believe it or not, I am. Having searched the entire 850k - 1.25m score range almost daily, I'm just about positive that these are the only people I can beat there. Sure my score might seem overinflated, but I do doubletap Titan (mostly just to spite him, but it does raise my score when he's at a good 2.7m score or so like he was yesterday). Besides, score barely means anything in this game anyways.

Looking at your fightlist I see 6 or 7 people over 900k score your beating. Each should give a 100% bonus.

Now, imagine if you were a mage or generic tank and all the problems you would have then finding 1 or 2 targets giving a 100% bonus.

You have it pretty easy as I can see.

Actually, I had to drop those two from my list because they started beating me too much, including several times in a row. Now, true, I don't know how much other people get around me, so can any 'generic' character out there around 300k MPR tell me how many 100%'s you have on your fight list?

Flamey, Can you not beat Bob? he's the same MPR as you, the difference between our strats is: I have a 600k DM trained. You two are very close to the same in MPR. I'm betting money that you win or force him to draws.

"Now, imagine if you were a mage or generic tank and all the problems you would have then finding 1 or 2 targets giving a 100% bonus"

Vestax is beating thoop with only slightly more PR and I imagine many mage builds with a decent evasion and FB or MM would.

Hurrah for the only decent weapon that has a chance of overwhelming the ToE aura on high AC walls :)

Whether the Elb is overpowered or not I certainly don't think the single archer variant is. With a ToA it is much better to get more minions, at least 1 for evasion/DM.

RD,

Let us compare single minion archers and mages.

Vestax is 3 minions giving him 2 more "kill slots" which can easily turn the tide of a battle.

He has also been farming me since his PR was 250k, mine being about the same as it is now.

I think this "problem" arose because of the recent changes/ introduction of the HoC. To add on, ranged rounds only account for 4 (max) out of 25 rounds. So ranged weapons have to dish out more damage because they really suffer large penalties in melee. My dexterity and to-hit (I believe) are reduced by 60% in melee rounds.

In conclusion, it is not the ELB that is overpowered. It is the following things that are making it overpowered:

1) Seekers
2) Weapon allowance
3) HoC

KM,

I think it is better stated as this:

1) Seekers
2) BG's
3) Ability to upgrade ammo and defensive ammo stacks
4) HOC

I used to be able to beat Bob, but can't consistently anymore so I had to drop him from my fightlist, and I have the third largest evasion in the game. It's a little more then 1/5 of my total experience (1,427,878/855,017 (129)), and I admit I do get alot of archers to miss, but when they hit its lights out. Hands down, no chance.

I know I don't have the greatest set-up, but it certainly is frustrating down here for the non-USD spender growing very slowly and being able to pump a maximum of 1 mil CB into a character/week. When I buy BA its about 600-700k.

I'm not trying to whine, I just get tired of seeing all these arguments about big damage from 15+ mil NW weapons, even some of the really big weapons.

Then perhaps you should check the numbers I posted, horseguy - those were both from much smaller weapons of equivalent size. The ELBow still did 180% of the damage that the BoNE did.

"Flamey, Can you not beat Bob? "

You're right Mikel, though you couldn't beat me, you beat me enough or stalemated or even drawed for me not to have you on my list, for a very long time, so I was under the impression you could beat a short while after that.

This was basically the same case with Bob, he was a much lower MPR and I wasn't consistently beating him, it was very random, probably from the large range of damage from the ELB causing me to win and when he hits high enough for him to win.

On the contrary, I've just recently been able to add Bob to my list. Go figure.

Mikel, you're next! :) :)

Campy hates novice defeated Klasanov (War Gods) after 4 rounds of combat
24,463 / 30,521 / 9,554
double my PR, and it dies miserable with a naked team and a JKF...

The ToA archer has it's counter, it just has seekers to make clan life a little less miserable.

"Mikel and Freed's chars are not typical of the archers in the game; fight some of the other ELB users, especially those at the top of the biggest ELBs list"

like... Freed and Mikel? =P

lol; TH, you know what I meant! Some of the smaller bows in that top ten listing...;)

I was going to add something to this post. But I've got a hangover now and so I simply..can't be bothered. It's all pancakes anyway

Ah, yes. I was going to wonder why Jon insists on the ELB being powerful; actually ranged being powerful.

Do you not think that there is some connection between Jon raising the power of the ELB and people starting to hit 400AC and above? What else is going to get past that amount of damage reduction?

not ranged? Melee more so.

'What else is going to get past that amount of damage reduction?'

The Vorpal Blade perhaps?

Or perhaps magic that only uses the + of the armor?

or the cost of each + after a certain point it gets really expensive fast.

Mmm. The more I think about that the more sense it makes. What else is going to let people stand a chance of taking on the kind of damage reduction that goes on when you're talking 425 AC. The Vorpal did, but now who really wants to use one? Not many people judging by the auctions of the past few weeks, or the amount of them in rentals. What's left? Decay is too easily countered. That leaves the ELB and the SoD.

They're Jon's counter to USD injected AC. Designed to give normal mortals the chance of a fair fight.

Normal mortals? The normal mortal isn't wielding an ELB of that size any more than a normal mortal is equipping that level of AC. It's a wallet race, betwixt the two.

Come on PM, how many magic teams can get past your damage reduction? And, believe it or not, I'm not attacking you on this one. This happened before. The ELB is the only thing that could get past the big AC we had in CB1; and the big AC is the only thing that can stop the big ELBs. It's a nice little merry go round isn't it.

I think it's a problem that won't go away. AC damage reduction is simply too good at it's job; my little 275 AC wall reduces most damage to nicely manageable levels; there simply has to be a counter. I don't know what Jon can actually do about there. Maybe he's pushed ranged too far, but PM, you know exactly what your AC is capable of; how would you counter it?

So Johnny,

Your saying that it is ok for the elb to be the only item that counters high AC.

Therefore you have to have one to compete vs USD spenders?

So, therefore I have to have and use one to counter Freed or Mikel?

Nice way to let people have choices in this game.

Good thing the VB got nerfed, we certainly do not need more choices in the game.

Considering I had one of the top VB's in the game just to counter Freed's type of AC. So now, I am 'forced' to get and use an ELB to compete.

If you did not use the ELB, I might channel novice and say you were trying to keep the advantage you have. But I am not that nasty.

I'm a cliche!

And it is not just the USD spenders.

Look at the low ranks.

People with 4M elbs and 2M BG's with 110k MPR having a score over 900k almost 1M.

While mage characters that same MPR are with 1/2 or less score.

And please compare single TOA archers to single minion mages.

PM, incase you missed it, I'm not attacking anyone here. I'm trying to work out why Jon keeps on boosting ranged. Because most of the major changes in the past six months or so have been in favour of ranged. Whether you like or not, USD spend on the game does unbalance things. It does make it difficult for Jon to level things out for the people that don't use it.

That certainly is true.

But I have proposed a couple ideas to stop the uberness of USD.

None of them have been generally accepted by Jon or the community.

Therefore I stopped.

The biggest is to put a "cap" on the weapons abilities based on a characters MPR. Sort of like the MTL.

I proposed this even before Jon instituted the NW/PR linkage and was basically ignored. There are other ways to stop the USD powershift.

But, look at Oxcha. Little Devil does not use USD but has a nice sized TOE with a 370 AC wall. Getting AC to 360 is not that expensive at all. Especially if you name your items. But 360 AC and a TOE is quite effective.

But an ELB of modest ability can cut right through that defense. Especially a TOA archer and its extra PTH and generous strength addition. And with the damage an ELB does, they can kill the mage sitting behind it in 1 shot using seekers.

Yes, one can use evasion but you have to have it on you mage. Therefore lowering the xp available for HP and your DD spell. Not that great a trade off. Only a monster minion like Sut has can afford enough xp to put into evasion. But the non USD spenders cannot even afford more minions if they grow a super one. So, non USD spenders are further behind.

Now, comparing CB1 and 2, especially now is like comparing apples and buggy whips In CB1, one could only take out 3 minions. In CB2 one has the ability to take out an entire character in missile. And if you do not manage to, vs a generic melee tank, you gain such an advantage since his character is so wounded entering the melee rounds.

Is there a balance between the NW of the ELB and the fact it only fires 4 rounds? Certainly.

A few of us have proposed changes that would matter.

But the first thing that has to be done is removal of seekers.
Second thing, stop the ability to upgrade ammo. Defensive ammo is just too powerful.

Let's start there and see how much love the mages and generic tanks get.

"So Johnny,

Your saying that it is ok for the elb to be the only item that counters high AC.

Therefore you have to have one to compete vs USD spenders?

So, therefore I have to have and use one to counter Freed or Mikel?

Nice way to let people have choices in this game. "

Would you rather there were no way to counter high AC? That would really be a good choice for most people wouldn't it?

Also, I may be using an ELB, but what lets me fight as high as I am is not that ELB. It's my walls; my team is built around a particular weakness to a particular strat; most of my fightlist are DM mage teams. High AC and nearly no enchantments make them weak as kittens.


I don't see anybody crying out that AC damage reduction is overpowered. I wonder why that is....

lol, I'm going to have some breakfast. I can see this going round and round and round. Without getting anywhere.

Time for CB3 I think... ;)

I agree, let's nerf AC!

and what would be different about CB3 that isn't in cb2 or cb1?
As soon as the ELB rears its ugly head, you will get cb4, cb5, cb6 and still no real improvement what so ever.

Just make CB3 go back to the 'golden age' of CB1.

rewards were generally around $20-$30 at best and the rares were basically a couple of things like EC and CML :)

At the risk of responding to novice and what that might bring....

"double my PR, and it dies miserable with a naked team and a JKF..."

The PTH curve of the ELB quickly outpaces the Evasion curve trained by the JKF.

Evasion is useful at high levels, not lower levels. At lower levels you see weapons at the weapon allowance because it isn't hard to stay close to. Evasion is xp, therefore you can't train it high enough at lower levels, unlike Weapons which are Money based and at lower levels a lot of money isn't required.

Like PM said, Sut has a monster evasion a monster evasion is needed to combat Ranged and PTH. Also, Evasion is still more effective in ranged with the multipliers. I don't think people train high enough evasion, because it seems at lower levels its just plain useless. Not many people can really hit Sut, that is no one without USD input. +200 PTH can not be achieved without it and quite frankly you need to fight fire with fire, DB will combat that, probably along with Evasion and the AoI.

A few examples could be Karn and Horseguy, non-USD spenders and a really high evasion, extremely hard to hit, the only reason why I'm not farming them, even with a close to 100 PTH weapon I couldn't hit either of them, this being in melee of course.

Here's an idea that I'll bury in this thread somewhere so hopefully nobody sees it (it'll ruin my current strat):

Remove the distinction between ranged and melee altogether. Minions would have to choose between equipping a ranged weapon and a melee weapon, and if you want both, you have to have it on two separate minions. The "range distance" then would be the minion position -- if he's in front, it's range 1; if he's in back, it's range 4 or possibly 5 with a familiar.

The range would come with all the same penalties / bonuses as it does now, and you could even go so far as to extend this to melee weapons -- the only people that can swing a range 1 melee weapon are the people in front.

Extend this one further and allow battle stances on the train page, either a straight line or some flanking pattern. Heh.. I think I'm going overboard. Anyway, hopefully the basic idea is understandable. It'd definitely take the uberness of the ToA down a notch, since you can't use it for both weapons anymore -- you'd have to pick a minion that gets the bonus ST/DX/PTH and one that doesn't.

and another thing. ToA PTH is way too high. Edyit, I believe had the highest ToA and he was getting over 100 PTH solely on the ToA, You basically don't even need PTH on your weapon if you get to that stage. It also gives a decent amount of DX even if at 33% while ST is 50%, the PTH far makes up for it.

If your ToA is at MTL, you don't need to train DX, ST, or put money into PTH. You can use the tattoo for it all, and spend XP on Skills, etc and your money on weapon 'x'.

making that point, that's perfectly fine?

I was amplifying your point that the ToA gives too much.

I have thought that the pth from ToA was too much every I discovered it wasn't just a flat +50 any more...

Yes, Evasion and DBs are a foil for pth. But just because something has a foil doesn't mean it doesn't need tweaking. ToAs have some disadvantages, but being able to hit so often and so hard makes their disadvantages (which are mainly defensive) less meaningful. Once a ToA tank can hit hard enough and often enough (i.e. Archery), it makes most every other choice meaningless.

I would also like to add that even though Mikel and Freed are aberrations (I completely agree with that fact), once they hit the Top Ten, their seemingly aberrant nature will account for 20% of the Top Ten. Heck, probably 40% of the Top Five. That becomes disappointing for folks who dream of competing at the top, especially when few (if any) competing strategies will, in fact, be able to compete. I don't know if that will happen yet (yes, I am training Evasion as much as I can *smile*), but I am inclined to.

hey ho, wait up, it is not the ToA that makes the ELB do stupid damage. Don't change the subject here. Im using a ToA on my SoD +48 and i do miss high evasion and UC characters.
So only the ELB here is to blame not the ToA.

The top ten isn't the rest of the game, so maybe the rest in there are 'aberrations' lol; but even the biggest ELB dishing out the sort of damage it does, coupled with the biggest ToA, all that PTH, Freedy hitting as many as five times per strike, still isn't beating PM's char.

I have to admit I thought it was the AC that did it, but a combo of evasion, DB's and exbow with only 168 AC seems to be doing the trick just as well as the AC did.

Admittedly it probably comes down to NW versus NW in the end, but then again, even there, PM is working with much lower NW as well....so...at least in the Clash Of The Titans, archery and the ELB still isn't owning......

Actually, I was one of the folks on an earlier thread saying reduce damage but let tanks get their damage from multiple hits... Now I am asking for pth to be reduced. So, I think I am probably just tank bashing again... My Evasion still does wonders, even against Freed, but my Joe is an aberration of an MPR kind. We'll see what King of Pain does when Mikel's aberrant minion can start hitting mine! *smile*

The thing that I'm getting at is this: Freed and PM's char's are kind of like the rest of the game rushed through a couple more years. They're fairly evenly matched in terms of size; PM's has the MPR, but Freed has the PR, and both have lots of NW. You could see them as an extreme version of what goes on in the rest of the game at different levels.

And what happens? An evasion tank ToE team with only an Exbow for ranged trumps an ELB archery team.

You can view this two ways:

1. Those teams are not representative of the rest of the game. In other words PM and Freed aren't playing the same game as the rest of us.

2. They are completely representative of the rest of the game.

If you take the latter view, then the archer strat isn't the demon people are saying....

No, but if there were arrows that targeted a tank, PM would be toast. *smile* That would be my problem, and would be part of my post. I don't think Freed's archery is even at 1.00 yet. Once it is, he will destroy my offense in two rounds. Even if I had a ToE, he would probably destroy it with one or two arrows, because each would still whack my mage.

So have we determined what exactly is the problem here then?

Is it the ToA? Is it the ELB? Is it the Belegs? Is it seekers? Is it too much money pumped into a weapon (I earn about a million a week; 180 weeks of spending only on the bow and nothing else would get my ELB to about the same size lol)?

I don't know anymore. It hurts my head. ;)

That is why it all ends up sounding like generic "tank bashing" eventually. ALL the things you say seem like problems at one time or another. I have spent many a post listing all the choices and fun that tanks can have (including specific ways to kill and defend against mages) with no mage counterparts to them.

It all bothers me. If it weren't for my salvation (Evasion), I would almost have to think about switching to a tank, at least partially (though really is no partial for me because of my goofy minion power distribution).