Grrr. (in General)

Try Again is an opponent with only 79k STR. I have an EC of

Ethereal Chains: 147,425/131,630 (73,732)

casting at the beginning of the fight, leaving them with *UNDER* 6k STR. But I'm still getting hit for over 10k damage a shot, doubles, which means that archer puts 60k damage on me in ranged round. Against 188 AC.

...just wanted to rant, I'm frustrated. This strat of mine is entirely designed to take down those blasted Archers by reducing their damage to nothing, because I know they use DM instead of AMF and so my CoC doesn't eat itself alive with the RIDICULOUS backlash CoC has to suffer through...and my EC just can't cut it, because it has to stop ALL the opponent's STR in order to kill off enough damage. Even with the AC. An amazing 60% of all my EXP is devoted to EC - this means a tank should have to have 30% of his stats in STR, and 30% in DX to break even - and it isn't enough.

Makes me wanna pull my hair out. This is proof that the poor EC just can't handle that stupid ToA. And people say a tattoo that added straight to DD levels would be overpowered....while we use the ToA as if it isn't overpowered...I can even knock out all their DX and they still hit with that totally unnecessary PTH...*grumbles off into the distance*

P.S. when I preview this post, it is looking like my URL isn't turning into a link, so here it is: http://www.carnageblender.com/inspect_opponent.tcl?opponent_id=77377&opponent_name=Try+Again

Try Again (I see what I did now, I used a : instead of a =)

I would like to use this space to advertise Crusader as the coolest guy alive for letting me borrow his +10 Corn!

And my clanmates, as well, who are awesome and have been loaning equipment to help me out.

See, those of you who think this community isn't kind or generous....in your face! People rock!

Hyowal shot The Bold with Bow Of Lost Magic [133]
i have -33k str after your EC i am using x102
+15 elb 900k nw with a +10 bleg glove

*grins* Bet your AMF takes me out all by itself, too, though. I can't beat people that have a decent AMF due to CoC's ridiculous backlash, I'm just trying to get those DM Archers.

Yes OB,

Unless you take ALL their strength away, they will hit your for a lot of damage.

When I got Freed's str down to about 150k, with his massive ELB he still was doing over 1M damage to my enchanters per hit.

And forget about the dex part, the TOA gives PTH so who needs dex anyway?

EC is basically almost an all or nothing type of spell.

Using the formula that for any given weapon X and Strength Y that yields Damage N, 10X and 10Y yield 10N, You can quickly see that you can get by with very little ST as you start out. Think about it in terms of multiples:

As an example, naming an item adds 150 to it's 'x'. Bumping ST to 3,000 from a base of 20 will cause the damage output to be magnified by 150 times its base at 20ST and x1.

At 75% XP in EC, and another ~15% or so in Evasion at ~420k MPR, I was managing to put ST, DX, or both into negatives against most tanks my size, unless they had huge stat boosts, and I could take on many tank teams higher than me. Even if I couldn't get DX or ST into negatives, the huge defensive DX and PTH reduction of Evasion was usually enough to limit the number of attacks I receive.

With nothing but a ToA and a weapon, I could take down tank teams of equal and greater size with ease.

EC is a spell that needs either a lot of experience, or almost none. It's an all-or-nothing shot. It needs amounts of XP invested in it that force you to specialize against tanks if you want to use if effectively, unless you just have a small amount to stop enchanters with weapons.

But it's bloody worth the investment needed with all of these tanks running amok.

Well that was certainly the plan - unfortunately, since there's no DD-boosting tattoo, I can't specialize quite up to 75% - but it is just bothersome when so little getting by can have such an effect. Blech.

All an opponent needs is an EC above 60 and they put you under 0 DX as well. This gives them back as much as you take. This is just something to note.There isn't much you can do about it.

You might want to consider Evasion over EC. However, this assumes that the same investment into Evasion can avoid all hits by overcoming the DX of the opponent, the PTH of their weapon, and the bonus PTH of their ToA. Either way it seems like an impossible advantage to overcome. Particularly one that leaves you useless against any other tactic.

The DX doesn't bother me in the slightest, since TOA PTH is going to keep them hitting me. I just want to nail their STR into the ground.

I think its a good thing that you cannot kill all tank teams with 1 spell. I think it should be for multi minion tank teams to use in order to even the balance against less minion tanks teams.

Why not Rubberduck? AMF totally nukes mages. It's all you need. You don't even need a damage dealer.

Besides, what is suppose to do instead?

That is not strictly true Vestax in fact without any other damage reduction amf is not very efficient, up against a ToE backed mage it is downright rubbish. I said what I think it should be for :)

It is a good thing that even if I devote that much EXP straight into a single spell to take them down, I can't?

And yes, AMF by itself can kill my team, EASILY. I see myself receiving 1/4 my HP in backlash fairly often on my CoC when testing out to find new opponents.

And yes, they can kill me with AMF when I wear my ToE, too.

Now if you can tag a +50 EH, +50 MgS, and a few hundred AC onto a minion in back and bring MM down to nill for several rounds, and that's O.K., why is it not a good thing for me to be able to take down a tank team when I'm devoting more MPR to my EC than they are to their own STR and DX??

Well against a TOA tank, EC is pretty useless as well.

Well Oddbird, you don't write anything new. To make it short: there is no balance between tank/archer and mage. If you keep an eye on stuff and skills you easily see the winner and it seems it should be the way it is. If you really want to compete, get at least one of those armed guys.

Hmph, I refuse. I'm staying a mage and I *WILL* compete. I'll just have to figure out how to do it is all. =(

"those of you who think this community isn't kind or generous....in your face!"

but no one said anything of polite, eh? :P

Since when has anyone ever been so silly as to accuse me of being polite? ~_^