My poor bullied ToA. (in General)

Ok people. Nerf the ToA seems to be a firm favourite on the changemonth wishlist. Now, I'm a ToA user, and have been for a very long time. So I'll admit that I'm biased. And I'll admit that it's a good little tattoo. Bonus PTH, extra XP into tank stats.

But, it's pretty pointless unless you've a decent weapon to use. And as I said in the changemonth thread, I've a +40 weapon and a 1.5 million level ToA. Dunno how much bonus to PTH that gives me, but I still can't hit the evasions I'm up against. A decent EC makes mincemeat of me, so do exbows, axbows and UC.

Ok, so some of the bigger ToA wearers get quad and quint hits out of it. But they've also got huge amounts of PTH on their weapons. And if you're hitting for 4 or 5 million per strike you've killed your opponents with the first hit anyway. So all that extra PTH is wasted.

It requires work to use one properly. Meanwhile....there's the ToE. Huge amounts of damage reduction...which sort of translates into free HP. And other than doing bigger damage there is no counter to the ToE apart from the VB....Oh yes, look what happened to that......

The ToA has many many counters. It doesn't equal instant win. It requires NW to make use of it. It's the most specific tattoo we have IMO. I think the ToE on the other hand....that would be my vote for a nerf....

Anyway, I'm rambling now. What I want to hear here is why the ToA is so nerfable. Because I'm not sure I get it.....

get a +100 weapon and see how much difference that makes -.- everyone around your MPR has at least +100 if not more

But surely, if that's part of the problem that's the weapon PTH that's the problem not the ToA? Otherwise I wouldn't have a problem......

The main reason I like the ToA btw is because I'm still Lazy Johnnywas. I'm only training one stat per minion right now. I hate having to work out multiple stats to train!

And, incase anyone points at my fairly decent score/mpr ratio...I do better with a ToE. My fightlist doesn't change if I switch to a ToE of the same size. I've tried! Infact I can take on more opponents. I may be lazy but I don't like it when things get too easy. The ToE makes things a little easier....;)

You could make the ToA's PTH be like how DB adds to Evasion -- A ToA that normally gives +100 when added to a +100 weapon will make the total something around +150 instead of +200.

That is an exceptional idea.

Instead of nerfing something, lets work on trying to improve something. RoBF anyone?

See that's what I like - something positive! (If it means the ToA gets left alone for another couple of months.....lol....)


But in all seriousness, CB can spend months and months trying to reduce something, when it would be more effective to make something more competitive....I've never understood the whole 'it's overpowered' crowd....such a negative way to think....

and how big is that tat of yours? and how much is it under your max tat?

My tatt is approx 1.6 mill, my max tatt level is just approaching 1.5 mill.

Ranger used to hold the view that a tattoo of that size gave around 100PTH bonus, which would give me around 140 pth. And still I can't hit some of the evasions around here...

I am sorry JW but with this stat line:

Score / PR / MPR: 1,943,075 / 1,310,681 / 965,128

A +40 weapon is pitifully low.

Try boosting the + on it, it should not be that much.

"But in all seriousness, CB can spend months and months trying to reduce something, when it would be more effective to make something more competitive....I've never understood the whole 'it's overpowered' crowd....such a negative way to think...."

Mudflation.

Either, everything else in existanec can be buffed to be on par with said 'overpowered' item, or you take th eeasier route and bring the overpowered item back into line with the rest of the game.

Actually I think evasion granted by RoBF should come back.

I think the real problem is that trained DX does have a PTH effect.

I think that if you reduce the PTH effect from the ToA and add a PTH effect to **trained** DX, it will solve the problem.

I agree that a +40 weapon is low; unfortunately in recent months very large amounts of debt have meant very low amounts of boosting of such things. That will change. I'm well aware that at the level I'm fighting at, +100 and above is pretty much necessary...

Ah but the cost, the cost!!

"but I still can't hit the evasions I'm up against."

As I've been saying, an Evasion nerf would come hand-in-hand with a ToA nerf. The PTH of the ToA combines with the Ranged weapons to make ridiculous high amounts in ranged that just continue to increase at a rate that a trained Evasion or DBs couldn't keep up with without multipliers - so drop/weaken ToA PTH, and you can weaken Evasion accordingly.

"What I want to hear here is why the ToA is so nerfable. Because I'm not sure I get it..... "

OK, you've got a 2 minion team, 1.5M MPR. It's pretty nice and strong, a big damage dealer and an enchanter, and you hire a 3rd. 100k stat points, grrrreeeeat. What the heck can you do with that? NOT MUCH. Name another tattoo you can put on there to make that minion into your MAIN damage dealer if you wanted.

Answer: There is not one.

When I bring up this point, people say "Ooohh, the steel familiar, the fire familiar" - but those are familiars, not minions. Set amount of HP, separate NPC minion, can't shift them around in minion orders, etc. If I see responses of this sort to this post, my estimate of your intelligence drops.

Additionally, it gives free NW + free stats. That's on top of 0 stats. You can totally untrain everything and put it on the minion and he can kill first round, even if he does have only 20 HP.


Trust me, I can argue against that overpowered ToA alllllll day. When I was putting over 60% of all the XP on my team into EC, all it took was a ToA slapped on the team to add stats beyond what XP the team should normally have had available, and thus my EC couldn't cover the ST of teams with MPR *below* him at times. With over 60% of his XP in EC! That means over 30% of the opponent's XP in ST! How many teams put that much of their total XP into their ST? Stupid ToA, that's all I could say. But heck, I could get around that. I could nerf their DX and then wear DBs, I'd get them that way. D'oh....they get tons of PTH, too. Looks like even my +200s that I borrowed from Ranger wouldn't cover it.

Yeah, ToA needs a nerf.

And yes, forgers need loooove.

However, the view that my +40 weapon, even with a 1.4 million level ToA and it's bonus PTH, is too low suggests something.

IMO the bonus PTH a ToA affords serves two purposes. For those tanks with lots of cash it gives extra hits on top. See Mikel for a perfect example of that. For those playing a tank game who don't have lots of money however it lets you be competitive without the cash. I like that about it. It lets somebody play a tank without resorting to USD for instance. Or somebody who's too young to be spending lots of cash. And, imo that's how it should be. Tanks should be open to everyone, not just those able to afford them.

Anyhow that's a bit of digression. My point is that my PTH is seen as too low for the upper levels. So, I'm needing to spend cash now I'm hereabouts? So ToA bonus PTH is actually not enough? Something to ponder...


Raise the ToA bonus to PTH!!!!

I am going to disagree with some people.

I think the ToA is fine where it is. The extra PTH gives no more then 1.5 hits a round extra. Which for the negatives of the ToA is ok with me.

The negatives:
1) No body armor (typically a TSA for a tank), therefore no regeneration of hp and the lose of a nice amount of AC.

2) No cloak, therefore less dex from no EC or less AC from no SC.

3) No MgS, therefore quite a vulnerably to FB and MM by the tank gets hit by it.

Just look at the top ranks, who uses a ToA? I can only think of 3 - Mikel, Draco and DreadedTiger. If it was that powerful, more people would use it.

However, where the game breaks down is missile rounds.

Missile rounds have become more of a Plus/Minus type of game now. Hit and you kill your opponent, miss and you die from the MM's and FB's being cast. It is a simple analogy but one that is not unreasonable to assume.

IE, with a x2000 Mageseeker bow, I hit for 800k damage a hit. With a x12000 MH I hit for about 1.3M a hit. Add to that the ability to boost arrows for defensive purposes and missile damage has long been out of hand.

So, because missile damages are out of hand, Jon needed to put in a counter--evasion.

However, I believe, and most people it seems agree, evasion is either too powerful or broken.

I personally started a thread on how I think evasion is broken. How the hell can I not hit Hubbell with his under 1.5M levels of evasion with 3M levels of EC. Is not EC a counter to evasion, like evasion is a counter to high PTH/dex?

Since everyone wants less ranting and more solutions here is mine:

1) Fix Ethereal Chains (EC) vs evasion in missile rounds. How can I whiff on Hubbell with a +140 Mageseeker with a 3M effective EC in the last missile round but get doubles and some triples with a +220 MH? If EC vs evasion is fixed, there is a counter to evasion aside from massive NW. If EC works on evasions defensive dex AFTER the multipliers, that is just wrong and it should be changed to work before any multipliers.

2) Lower the damage of ALL missile weapons. The damage right now is too high. I know there was a 20% nerf, but with Beleg's the damage is still far too high. I believe BG's need to be only 1% bonus per + instead of their current 3%. Almost every other item gives 1% per plus (except the corn and AoF), why do BG's give more.

3) Do not change the ToA's PTH. With all the negatives of the TOA, I believe it is fine.

4) Make the RoBF work in missile rounds.

5) If anything the ToA needs a boost to the dex it gives. WIth evasion giving defensive dex, and many more items available to raise it, the TOA needs a boost in the dex department. Remember a ToA user cannot use an Elven Cloak to get more dex. S/he has only 2 options for boosting the dex-Elven Boots or Elven Gloves. A evasion minion has 4 ways and the AoF gives a massive 3% per plus boost.

Thats all I got.

lol OB, I don't even think about familiar tattoos; they're pretty much a different place to ToA/ToEs.

Raise it, because there's a single skill you can't hit, Evasion? That's silly, JW. ~_^

You should just fight around people who use Evasion. You fight around your weakness.

"Everyone uses Evasion!!"

That's the problem, when you power something else up in response to something else overpowered. You have two pillars in the strategic battlefield: so everyone uses Evasion in order to counteract the ToA, because they know if they don't, they die.

So they both need reduction.

JW - the comment was more or less directed at people who often post in forums whom I've had this discussion in chat with before who used that particular argument, and I wanted to head it off before it was even brought up. ^_^

Ok, that's quite a bit of information to digest along with my lunch.

Thanks for the list of negatives to using a ToA Ranger, I'd probably have gotten onto them soon enough.

Raise ToA pth was a bit of a silly comment, and intended as such OB!


I'm not actually heading for full ToA defense today, I'm trying to understand why people want it nerfed. But I'm not convinced that it's the devil. Ranger has it right - ranged damage is pretty damn evil. And I'm running a ranged team!

I can beat my current fightlist with a change to ToE and a few stat rearranges. I tried it out recently and my damage was halved. And yet I could still beat all the same people.

However ranged damage isn't unbeatable. Flamey's RoS bloodlust team beats Freed's ToA Archer team. And that's with less NW/PR/MPR.


Who'd have thought that would be possible? Evil upon evil with ranged and a ToA getting beaten by a RoS melee team....

One would guess Flamey wins due to GA, as Freed's DM is only 450k.

One thing a TOA archer has to have it a large DM.

Which is yet another negative to the TOA, quite a vulnerability to GA, unless you have massive HP and/or DM.

Again, reduce the PTH effect from the ToA and add a PTH effect to trained DX, it will solve the problem.

This will obligate archers invest less in HP and ST and more in DX. ToA should still grant a bit of extra PTH else it would become pretty useless compared to equipping extra armor.

Also, the extra PTH effect to DX will have the desired effect of nerfing Evasion. It wouldn't nerf it a lot, but I think only a small nerf is needed.

I know it JW, but it gave me an opportunity to bring up my point - everyone uses Evasion because most everyone has to. That's just how strong the stuff is. So if you were to drop the Evasion bonuses, ranged goes back to nearly unstoppable again, instead of being the dicey hit and miss game that it is now.

"Which is yet another negative to the TOA, quite a vulnerability to GA, unless you have massive HP and/or DM."

That's not a negative to the ToA per se, but a negative to the RIDICULOUS KILLER DAMAGE that you are putting out. *coughs* 0=)

I think at this point we're heading for a point where perhaps certain things need to be lowered; otherwise we're not going to be able to avoid either a (whispers) rescale, or CB3.

I'll cope quite happily with a reduction to PTH and ranged damage (so much of it is wasted damage), but sort out evasion as well. It really isn't a case of avoiding evasion teams; there are too many of them!!

"Which is yet another negative to the TOA, quite a vulnerability to GA, unless you have massive HP and/or DM."

Actually, if your bow does between 10M and 50M damage per hit, GA is not a problem. I think that is the situation of a lot of ToA Archers right now.

Agreed, JW.

Which,

If you read my long post above, is why I type missile damages need to be lowered across the board.

"missile damages need to be lowered across the board."

I agree.

Well... almost. Crossbow damage is just fine the way it is now. Lower it more and Crossbows will become very hard to use.

hehe I like the idea of CB3 :)

"The negatives:
1) No body armor (typically a TSA for a tank), therefore no regeneration of hp and the lose of a nice amount of AC.

2) No cloak, therefore less dex from no EC or less AC from no SC.

3) No MgS, therefore quite a vulnerably to FB and MM by the tank gets hit by it."

All of set by a PL rear minion. They 1) Get to wear the TSA, 2) Need no Dex (which the ToA provides anyway...) and 3) Get to wear the MgS.

Making your negatives moot, and reinforcing the 'power' of the ToA, on teams set up to use it. Like obviously having the biggest wepaon your money can buy.

The ToA will suck muchly if you use it on a minion armed with a mase dagger...

"Just look at the top ranks, who uses a ToA? I can only think of 3 - Mikel, Draco and DreadedTiger. If it was that powerful, more people would use it."

Because the ToE is just as powerful? ;)

"However, where the game breaks down is missile rounds."

For ages I've been advocating merging the rounds, and making weapons determine whterha minion is attacking from Range or Melee.

;)

There is a huge difference between a base damage of 4 and a base damage of 6 (xbows vs ELB). Reduce bow damage, sure. Xbow damage? ugh....

GL - how does a minion wearing a TOA wear an MgS?

I think he meant the PL minion, NS. =P

Certainly a PL minion can help vs FB, but then again it has to leech all that hp the TOA minion takes (who is poorly armored).

And the PL minion cannot wear a cloak to help the ToA minion with dex.

Also, the PL minion cannot help vs GA damage which is increased since the ToA tank cannot use body armor or a cloak for more AC protection.

While PL is great, it does not fully offset all the negatives the ToA tank faces.

Now about the ToE, yes it is quite powerful, but so is a 4M IF/SF/FF.

Especially when the top AMF is about 2M.

Just to poke my head in this thread since I am a ToA user...

I think the ToA is fine how it is, it only becomes a problem when it is coupled with HUGE weapons. My biggest hit with my x1600 Exbow is about 350k, and with my VB I might see 250k. I get eaten alive by any almost any mage team, since I have to train DM to deal with GA.

What I would like to see change with the ToA is *how* the pth interacts with weapon pth, in much of the same way DB stack with evasion. The more NW in your pth, the less pth a ToA will add.

Both my weapons are +75, and it was not cheap to get there. I know I whine about USD quite a bit (XD), but a ToA is a nice alternative for some one who can't pump a weapon to +150 or higher.

*gets off soapbox*

yeah... there ain't never be love for non-USD users. All they can talk about is nerf this nerf that, coz this guy with 200mil NW can do this and that... but in reality that's not even 5% of all TOA users.

When you argue, they say, "+40 is like a toy, bring it up to +100 and you will see" but they failed to realise it'll take months for some one who played it the hard way :P

/me is grumpy coz it's 6:30 AM here and I haven't slept... goes to bed