Strategy Based Around GA? (in General)

I think GA is a pretty neat spell, but I've never seen any strategies about centering around GA. How well could a team where the main damage comes from GA do? Of course that GA will be huge, and there would be a huge AS and maybe an PL battery to help it outlast other teams. And you could even use a RoE on the GA minion because it'd need just a cornuthaum.

i thought most of NWO's damage was from GA

GA is meant as supplemental offense since it can't kill a minion without any offense (walls, enchanters, etc). Without some kind of damage dealer you'll stalemate almost everyone but single minions.

My last team was pretty much a GA team, almost even GA/AS/DM/MM with an SF... single minions were a breeze to beat (even archers, who take roughly 250~k per minion)

I have pretty much the same strat as what noneedforthese is talking about. GA is a great deal of my damage and I train it just as much as I train AS with DM playing a very minor role in my team.

my build is MEEE, GA does a good amount, as well as the Familiar

mine

Hey, that's not such a bad strategy novice... haha

Let me expand the discussion. GA is a unique for of damage for several reasons.

The first is that you can't eliminate the damage you take by killing any particular minion. Instead you need to kill the GA itself with DM. If this is not done, then the main goal of every other team, which is to deal as much direct damage as possible, starts to work against them.

The second is that it works well in quick kill teams. My original thoughts on GA was that it was suitable for defensive strategies. My first team with GA used a large CoC and small MM in conjunction with it. Eventually I found that most of my rounds were short and that the CoC Mage wasn't getting a chance to fire in many cases. The thing about GA is that it is damage that fires the first round your enemy does. So I encourage people to use it with MM or Archery rather then CoC and melee focused strategies.

The third unique quality of GA is that it bypasses two very recent defences, the AoI and PL. The status quo practically requires the use of either of these in a multi-minion strategy. With MM Mages firing in the back row and Archers in the front, the only other options are to pad your damage dealers with meatshields on both sides. Every team will eventually gravitate to using either of these in order to better utilize there blockers, or people will move to single minion strats that just don't worry about such details. This is the growing trend. The good news is that GA is good for bypassing PL and the AoI, and it also is effective against single minions.

It isn't all good news however.

As much as I've pointed out the effectiveness of using GA in a quick kill strategy, it doesn't work well with the best of all quick killers, FB. You don't want to risk dealing double damage to yourself with FB backlash on your other minions followed by GA backlash on your FB Mage.

You can't effectively mix PL with GA as the damage absorbed doesn't backlash. This is to prevent a GA-PL combination from being overly powerful. This means that a GA team who doesn't want to pad its damage dealer on both sides is forced to buy the ever-increasing-in-price AoI. A GA team also should not resort to being a single minion team itself, as GA is more effective with more minions. I personally think that a GA team should be no less then 3 minions strong.

There is one last point I'd like to discuss. A strategy one.

One possibility for solving the two issues above would be to mix the forbidden skill and the forbidden spell into one team with GA. A GA-PL-FB combination, if balanced correctly, might be worth testing. Especially with the use of the ToE. The point would to place PL at or slightly above the backlash damage of FB. The PL minion would absorb the backlash and prevent the GA backlash on the FB Mage. GA would only kick in when the damage is above FB backlash, thus dealing punishment to the enemies heavy hitters. To keep the expense of conflicting xp down, the ToE would cut down the FB backlash, not to mention all the other benefits of a ToE on a Mage-Enchanter strat.. Its just a thought.

interesting, there was some talk around about using PL to lower damage to GA'able levels, but from my remembrance it just messed things up because lower damage was absorbed too much. I would love to be able to recombine GA and FB, it was my favorite setup on CB1, I might considering trying it next NCB around...

Glad you like it novice. *smiles*

That's an interesting idea. Does PL redirect friendly fire then?

Your PL minion would have to be pretty big; maybe the one wearing the ToE to ensure he lasts until melee. Although that would mean no AMF backlash reduction.

Then your mage could be fully CoI, and MCM'd up. Then the remaining two might be better off as simple enchanters; AS and GA.

Would obviously be vulnerable to DM, and a heavy ToE/wall team might be able to break it as well.

But yeah, very interesting idea....

It might be bast to keep the ToE on the Mage and make the PL minion a TsA/PL wall. Back row the wall and stick the GA and AS enchanters up front. Then stack the largest AG you can find on the FB Mage. Have the FB Mage train most to all its xp on FB and use AS as it's HP.

Another thought is to drop the AS and instead train real HP in a three minion set up. This makes you more effective against DM while weakening the GA damage overall. Less HP to burn is less damage.

It is definitely something that needs fine tuning.

*best (I'm going to be in trouble for that.)

PL doesn't absorb GA damage.

Yes Nerevas, that is true. However, I stated that fact in my third point.

I suppose you are under the impression that I think PL could be used to absorb the GA backlash your FB minion would get from spreading FB backlash on you own minions. This is not what I mean. The beauty of the strat concept is that PL absorbs the FB backlash before there is a chance for a GA backlash onto the FB Mage.

But then that PL is going to stop all GA damage all together against the enemy as well and your GA is rendered useless.

Vestax what about a RoBF? with its FB reduction and backlash of its own it might actually be useful with a FB GA strat.

You DE baby-heads! Just say no, kids!

The AS isn't the issue, it's the GA...it's hard to keep both high enough that DM doesn't kill it all. And trying to stack it is a tough row too, because the DM trumps both. So, one has to concentrate all the AS and GA in two spots. And one also needs four minions to take full advantage. That makes concentrating it hard.

Anyway.

*respectfully ignores sutekh* I love you guy, I really do.

As for you edyit, I've considered that too and it might work even better. Though I would like to see a RoBF that works more coherently with the advantages it gives.

ha if your looking for a RoBF strat look at my retired char Guardian2 but anyways

I think something like this would work with a RoBF too
First Minion Mage
1/4 HP
3/4 FB
RoBF/ToE both would work

Second Minion Wall
1/2 HP
1/2 GA
PL as Needed to keep you mage from most/all hits
TSA is a Must my Favorite Thing is a PL wall ha

sorry the should of been
my favorite thing is a TSA PL Wall

Again, PL and GA do not work together..

Well, Atrix Nemoir was running a 2xAS, 1xDM, 1xGA team, with a SF on one of the AS minions; and that was doing decently at low mpr/pr (250kish mpr i think).

I changed it to the normal 1xas, 1xmm, 1xdm, 1xga + SF team because it's now basically a farm until i can forge enough to insta up my SF to use on my bought char...

But originally, I would do at least as much damage with GA a with the SF (who usually got thumped by seekers early on anyway).

But, you _need_ the extra AS minion and to stay away from DM teams ;-) I mean, with the current setup (-1 AS minion, +1 MM minion) I lose far more battles, can't fight constantly at 100% challenge bonus any more. See the spectacular drop in score on my history graph for proof ;-P

With GA, my experience is that HP translates directly into GA damage, whilst expenditure into more GA doesn't necessarily translate into damage... sounds strange, but i'd always take more HP over more trained GA.

Just my two cents...

for my char, most of my dmg comes from the SF, cause its very close to my max tat lvl. then the GA, and then my mage, which i'm working on only MM from now on so that'll probably change. im thinking the SF is going to be the main dmg dealer for my build even as i get higher, i'll also be adding junction and slapping a few things on the minon with the familar and the GA as offensive support. hopefully my AS would keep my last mage alive long enough to blast the remaining minion or minions to death :D


at least thats the plan