ToE Vs. ToA - Strategy thoughts, anyone? (in General)

I'm currently equipping a ToE, but i have been thinking about (as some of you might have seen in the forums) trying out a ToA instead, but then again.. There is, IMO anyway, something to be said about the damage reduction of the ToE, which is quite substantial, i think.. I'm fighting with close to 100% Challenge Bonus, but admittedly it takes a bit of work to find the right adversaries, but i think it's worth it. :)
Let me hear your Pro's and Con's of the two tattoo's please? Thank you.

The ToA, you will find, is a brokenly powerful tattoo. There won't even be any work involved to find the right adversaries. You get free ST, DX, and free NW in the form of PTH - and no small amount of it, either. Not only that, but this PTH goes on both your ranged and your melee weapon, and doesn't affect your WA. Damage is increased and you are likely to get in more strikes as well.

With the ToE, you'll last longer....but why do 500k damage a round for 10 rounds when you could do 1M damage 3x per round for 4 rounds? ~_^

Yup, it's the PTH that is the deciding factor on a single minion tank for me. The ToE is a fantastic tattoo, especially on a multi minion team; from my own experience, level for level the ToE is the most effective tattoo there is. But, given that a tank needs as much money as possible at higher levels to boost weapons - why turn down free weapon upgrade from the ToA?

If you continue to run a ToE tank at some point you're going to be needing to push most of your cash into the PTH which gets increasingly costly as it gets bigger. Whereas if you let the ToA take the weight of PTH increase you can pump all your cash into damage. And then when you reach the higher levels where you come up against some big evasions you can also pump money into PTH helping overcome them.

Also there is this to consider: you're using archery. The chance to hit penalty for not training archery with a bow doesn't affect ToA PTH. So you could switch that archery to evasion for example and still hit multiple strikes.


My current team has been both ToE and ToA and I was able to fight the exact same teams with both tattoos...but my damage was three times the amount with the ToA's extra ST/dex and PTH. And with the ToA you'll probably find your choice of opponent broadens. And you have XP to spare on HP and/or enchantments.

I see your point.. I must admit, i hadn't paid much notice to the PTH, but that's quite an advantage, on top of the obvious advantages of having added str. and dex. But when you lack the damage reduction of the ToE, won't you then encounter problems with taking huge amounts of damage from DD teams, since you probably won't have the highest AC, seing as you only have boots (and then again, not - using DB's) Gloves, helmet and amulet to offer you any protection? and that leads me to another question.. Is the Protection spell worth the Xp spent on a single tank? (will probably buy a second minion at some point, but don't plan on more than 2)

Just put the EXP you had been putting into ST and DX into your HP to handle that.

And yeah, base Protection is pretty decent.

BTW, you'll put out more damage than the mages do.

Ok. If you're running a ranged based tank you should be doing enough damage that you don't need to last a long time. But remember that you're going to be freeing up a lot of XP. My last single tank had a million level HP around the same size as your guy is. But you'll also be free to either train a large DM or AMF. The latter obviously will help you against those mage teams.


Protection: Mine is about 127k in size and gives me a level (25). Now, that (at least as far as we know) gives you 25% damage reduction. Admittedly it's easy to dispel, but it doesn't use a lot of XP and can be built quickly. It's worth doing. Once it's done you don't have to train any more to it.

Yes, the damage dealing is not a problem, i guess, with the added str, the occational extra attacks, and as said above, the money into x's instead of +'s :)

How did you manage a million hitpoints at this stage? i have MPR 371k and all my stats added up barely reaches a million..

The reason for wanting to hire the 2nd minion is exactly that, AMF or DM (which one is to be discussed at another time) :)

I only trained HP for about the first 400k MPR; I let the ToA do the rest, and then I relied on the damage dealt to take care of enemies.

It's sometimes surprising how effective simple damage can be in your fights. All the rest, skills and enchantments can sometimes be nothing but icing on the cake where big damage is concerned.

Basically it comes down to this:

The TOE is a very defensive tattoo designed for longer battles, outlasting your opponent. Works great with high AC and a mage wall.

The TOA is a perfect tank's offensive tattoo. One must try to take out your opponent as fast as possible. Best used with archery and DM (to nullify GA).

Got it.. :) ..thank you for clarifying. heh heh.. And i have to admit, although i like my ToE, I'll probably have to make the change at some point :) ..thank you all for the input.

Ranger's comments are spot on, but that's not to say that a single ToE tank can't be effective. Shadowsparkle's char Failure was a single ToE tank for quite a long time. However it does in the long run require patience and cash. In order to compete with ToA tank teams for instance requires a lot of XP diverted into Dex and a lot of cash into PTH and/or DBs.

And it's also not a pre-requisite that you only run defensive or offensive strats either. You can take elements of both and make them work.

Bear in mind whilst making your decision - are you having fun running the char as it stands? Looking at your MPR/Score ratio I'd say you're doing something right - a score three times your MPR means a successful strategy in my mind. So, do you need to change things right now? ;)

(I'd still run a ToA tank personally - but it's still nice to see something a little different going on...)

TOA owns with single teams and TOE owns slightly lesser with multi minion teams :)
i remember i saw someone running a single heavy tank with TOE somewhere forgot who lol ^^

TOA rules lol

MiniMem (Trillion) 72.189.74.85 RobIn destructable (Hawkwar) $20 -- $20 word award 11:33 AM EDT