Seekers (in General)

I am just curious to what everyones opinion is to why they exist and what they are used for. From what I can see they are mainly used so that a mage based team can not gain any clan points against tanks. Not sure myself so I just wanted to hear what everyone else had too say.

Not again...

Seeker Arrows
Has Missile damage gotten way out of hand.
Reasonable Mage Change Suggestions
Prophecies fulfilled before our very eyes?

Stop beating the dead horse please.

I say beat the dead horse all you want. It's how we get glue. Glue is good.

Glue is good, like a low fat alternative to peanut butter.

Well the reason why I ask is that I have only 5 clan members on my fightlist and when 3 of them equip seekers I can not defeat them. Also when I fight all but one of them I stalemate them which does not cause a loss in their amount of seekers.

Yes, Karn, it is annoying, and even more so because there is no other item in the game that can be so effectively used in a defensive stance.

It's also something only tanks can take advantage of.

Those are all the points made in the above-linked threads. I, for one, don't mind people bringing it up every day. I like noise. *smile*

cool-down on ammo(type) is needed i believe for switching ammo-types out.

Well when something is so obviously a mismatch in the game, pointing it out until it gets fixed is the right thing to do. So beating this dead horse is not the worst thing to do. I agree with Sut, we need more glue, glue holds the world together.

Points people make in the attempt to get seekers abolished:

Mages have no equivalent to seekers.

Seekers can be upgraded to overcome the mages only real defense to them-evasion.

Seekers, while expensive to use on attack, can easily be used for defense as Karn has seen. This cuts your fightlist maybe in 1/2, but archers fightlists are the same.

Being able to bypass a mages defenses, especially any blocking minions and/or walls is contrary to any semblance of fairness between tanks and mages.

Typically 1 hit from an archer, with the high elb damage, is more than enough to kill any mage.

My suggestion:

Remove seekers.

Introduce a new ranged weapon that auto-targets highest DD. Give it similar damage/penalties to exbow/axbow.

OR.........

Remove seekers.

And do nothing else =)

I actually don't have problem with the notion of seekers, and this coming from a mage build.

The more pressing issue is that Seekers are better than regular arrows in EVERY situation. If the base damage were lower than regular arrows then it would be more of a choice: ie you can hit mages or lay down serious damage, not both.

Choice is good.
(somewhat paradoxical considering that actually choosing sucks)

Hmm glue...

The following post may contain language that may upset Edyit. Edyit discretion is advised!



...Vorpal Blade, anyone?

Just get rid of the defensive ammo not being used up thing. That'll very quickly stop people from making ammo that costs $473948943758947594354398 a shot. Plus it allows people like me to still benefit -- I actually use offensive rare ammo that's slightly upgraded.

Here's an idea, keep seekers and introduce some variations of Alatar's gloves, ones that target strength, dex, or DD.

Obviously this is most directly applicable to MM users but I'm sure there is a way to make it functional for FB and CoC in some way.

Flame and FORS away folks!

Mage's advantage: Never misses. No need to spend $ on ammo and weapons.

Tank's advantage: Does more damage per hit. Can use specialized ammo.

Disadvantages not listed.

So which advantages you prefer is a personal choice.

Also, someone wrote: "The more pressing issue is that Seekers are better than regular arrows in EVERY situation." That is simply not true. An example: If you have a tank, you can train base DD spells on your enchanters and walls and seekers will always hit them first, no mater which weapons they are fired from. I could come up with many other 'workarounds' if I took the time to think about it.

Talion, the agrument is that it is an advantage for tanks and there is no counter for mages. Training a base DD on an enchanter would work for a TANK... but, I don't think they really need to worry about seekers. Do they?

Go ahead and do away with big ranged damage; go ahead and get rid of seekers. They polarise CB too much for there to be any good in arguing anymore. But don't say I didn't warn you when people can't get round big walls anymore. Oh yeah, I forgot, you can use the Vorpal for that can't you? Right....

Just to restate for the record; my views on seekers and ranged damage are probably known. But I am getting fed up of the arguments. The arguments aren't good for the game, the community and if I'm honest my interest in the game. I'm sure I'm not the only one. So, take seekers away. I'm for them, but on the other hand, I don't use them, and there are plenty of other ways of taking on mages that require some proper strategic thought.

Johnnywas has a good point about walls. To get rid of seekers, it might make sense to get rid of Invisibility, too. That way, a wall can either defend from the front of the team (and defend from physical attacks), or from the back (and defend from MM attacks) but not both. Thus, there is always a way around the wall.

Mages would have the same problem, and tanks wouldn't be stuck ALWAYS having to kill mages last in the team. But mages would also not be stuck ALWAYS getting killed first with seekers.

< = more?

Johnnywas : Good point.

(DD) Universe Man : I just gave an example. If a mage's biggest problem is with seekers, then that mage can use a strategy based around the PL, Evasion, and/or EC to deal with seekers. It's just like someone mentioned in another thread: Rock, Papers, Scissors... Everyone has a biggest weakness. For mage strategies, it's seekers.

Mages get to pick, MM hits the back, or FB and CoC hit everyone.
Tanks hit the front, and if you use ax/ex you can hit the tanks, and with SoD + ex shots you can hit everyone.

Isn't this already enough of an advantage since they can target better than the mages? Why compound this and make it even easier? A nice change would be to have seekers target the back of the team instead of the front, but that's just the town idiot speaking.

Arrows [8], Slayer Arrow [15], Seeker Arrow [11]


Make Seeker Arrows weaker then regular arrows. Then a choice would exist.

Slayer Arrow [15], Arrows [10], Seeker Arrow [7]

Even though the idea of making a team with pl/evasion/ec is a good idea, mage needs to invest most of their experience into their spell otherwise it is not very effective. This also would probably require a multi-minion team which would also divide experience further. Tanks do not have to worry about this since they can use a ToA to boost themselves and invest money into weapons to overcome exp dilution.

Well, I have to admit that the simplest strategy right now is the ToA archer. However, your XP dilution problem also applies to UC tanks.

Basically, the question is: Do you want to invest tons of gold into your weapon?

There was a survey a while back that asked if it would be a good idea to set a cap, sort of like the max tattoo, that would apply to weapons.

In my opinion, that is a better solution than removing seekers.

The best example I can give is the following... My Crusher character has a lot of XP trained into EC. However, even when some opposing tank's DX is reduced to -100K, if it uses an ELB at +100, it still manages to hit my UC tank in ranged. That, in my humble opinion, is what does not make any sense.

(1) The numbers I gave above are totally fictional, but not far from reality.

(2) A way to even things out would be to introduce an AoR (Amulet of Revelation) which allows the minon using it to target AoI wearing minions first with the MM and Decay spells. It could also grant the wearer a fixed amount of protection (like the AoI grants a fixed amount of defensive DX).

AoI doesn't grant any defensive dex...