Strategy Advice: NCB Single Mage (in General)

I was wondering what the best way to go about developing a single mage for my NCB in the future...

Before I start, I'm planning on having all the equipment beforehand to give it a running boost (but base, so my PR doesn't take a hit)

So I'm going with:
AoAC
ToE
Corn (HoC are too expensive)
DBs

And I'm deciding between AGs and NSs - I have base NSs right now, but I can easily switch for 100k or so - Any thoughts between the two?

And now for the harder part...
What should I train (other than FB and HP) - I'm thinking Evasion, Prot, and AMF

And in what proportions should I train each in, and when should I start training each?

Those would all be useless at base...

Upgrading armor does not affect PR. Each item gives a set PR increase. Upgrading items does however increase character NW. NW is independent of PR, so you don't have anything to worry about.

As to your actual strat, you kinda have to play that stuff by ear. Once you get evasion up enough, sell your DBs and get EBs.

Wait, NW armor doesn't affect PR?

In that case, It'll be even longer before I get a NCB... get to forge them up :D

Slow down there.

NW on armor certainly does effect PR.

Each piece of armor has a weighting factor.

The PR added depends on 3 things:

1) The NW of the piece in question
2) The PR weight of it, found in Stats under Item Overview or in the Wiki (most of the time)
3) The xp of the minion using it. IE a +20 corn will not raise the PR if on a 1 xp minion but certainly will if on a 50M xp minion.

Whoops forgot to read the latest and greatest... Well its school time so I'm going to attribute that bit of forgetfulness to stress. ;)

Sorry

Training AMF seems to contradict using FB.

FB is made for the quick kill. Your goal with it is to kill within the first 3-5 rounds.

Any slower than that, you're either dead or could use something else more effectively.

AMF is defensive. FB doesn't need defense. Train DM if anything, I'd say.

As long as he has a decent ToE, AMF, and Evasion, should work fine.

But if you're going to use DM, I'd probably use an FF/SF instead.

Would MM be a better choice for the single mage, in that case? With a ToE and AMF? or go FF with DM and ToE?

Or even a ToE?

No no no :)

Train HP, Evasion*, FB and have a small DM to keep GA retaliation damage down and a base Protection for non-DM casters.

Use DB's get the biggest you can rent/buy and keep them growing and you can slack off on Evasion some. Try to keep your HP level even with your MPR, then train the rest accordingly.

You might be able to go with a little less HP if you are going to use a ToE and the NS's (I'd prefer the AG's myself, not everyone has AMF trained, but everyone takes damage).

*If you can get an nice enough pair of DB's to start with, then you can probably skip training Evasion, and save it for later on when you start running into weapons that have a + bigger than your DB's.

i have always made SFBM and i do FB &HP with a base prot and evasion... and a DM

Precisely, it's a good solid strategy and probably the best for a SFBM.

SFBM? I've seen it used around, but never really understood what it meant.

single fire ball mage

Thanks novice :)

So FB, HP, Evasion, base prot, and a small-ish DM

Train HP at 1:1 with MPR ... does anyone know about what percent of your exp will go into HP (I've always been lazy and used a EEMM or EETM strategy ever since CB1, so I don't really have any good judgment with it.

And maybe for the rest of the exp, 2/5 FB, 2/5 evasion, and 1/5 DM?

the ratio I used before evasion became useful was 1/4 HP 3/4 FB, training that actually requires a little more care than once might expect due to cost per point of attrbute trained...that's what I consider the perfect setup for a ToE FB mage...you're not going to be surviving against MsKs and ELBs past round one or two anyway...so why try?

well i run a HOC on my SFBM and i make sure that my FB is 3x my HP... and when i have 1m FB i have about 50k-75k for DM... not much

using pretty much that same setup, hp at or around mpr, dd for majority, evasion, base prot and dm, i found that pretty much all through the life of my single mage, magic missile was better than fireball. this used to not be the case in cb1. i was fb till about 1 million mpr. at that point i started swapping to mm and back to fb at intervals. each time, even with the penalties before they were lessened, i added people to my fightlist with mm and lost them with fb. the most recent that i tried this was just a little over a month ago.

i think fb has been nerfed to the point where mm's spell description needs to be changed. it doesn't seem to me to be the lowest damage any longer and the only reall difference is spread damage or focused damage.

also...for anyone planning to do single mage all the way, i would not recommend it with the current state of affairs. the top guys will reduce my over 2 million effect mm by over 90 percent on average. i had hoped that single-minion strategies were still possible in cb2, i don't think that this is the case though, so add some minions before they cost 36 million each!

Evasion: 106,750 (42)
Fireball: 330,330/300,300 (38,909)
Dispel Magic: 105,148/106,750 (84,118)
Protection: 1,085/1,100 (5)
HP: 163,000/163000

SF Lvl: 224,000

This good? Anything I should do? Any advice?

Everything has basically been said, you can decide what to do based off these posts.

@Danger, that looks like a solid SFBM to me, I don't think there's anything you need to change, you can up your Protection to about (20) when the time comes and leave it around there.

So I got a single character and this is my setup:

HP: 1,182,490
ST: 20
DX: 20
Evasion: 200,000 (55)
Fireball: 2,161,383 (271,897)
Dispel Magic: 200,000 (160,000)
Protection: 57,608 (20)

For the moment, I'm just only training FB until it hits 3M (which will be about never.) I'm in the red for the moment, so all I have is a ToA that I'm trying to swap for a ToE or SF.
(I'm wearing the ToA right now because it gives me some dx, and it doesn't add enough to PR for me to raise alarm)

In the future, I'm looking towards a HoC, AoAC or AoF, DBs (I know it's not as effective with evasion, but my evasion is relatively small), and NSs or AGs.

If I get a ToE, I'll get NSs and untrain some HP and plug it into FB. If I get a SF, I'll get AGs and keep training FB.

Does that sound feasible?