examples of ranged damage rediciously high (in General)

Ok, you have heard this a million times before but I didn't realize ranged damage was that high. Here's an example.

When I was 400k str, and had [5x500] SoD, I could normally triple hit for 400k+ damage plus splash. I fought sigmar, 640k str with BL and a x2200 BoNE and this is what I got

Warrior Priest of Sigmar eviscerated King Cookie [505332]
Warrior Priest of Sigmar decapitated King Cookie [545668]

(I see in his char page his max hit is around 650k, idk if those two hits were just weak ones)

around 2x str more than me with BL and a weapon 5 times as big, he does only 100k more damage.


Another example with hejin, whom currently doesn't have his BoTH equiped or his BoM so I cant give you play by play, but this is what he lookes like. About 1 mill str with the BoM, a .6 BL, and a weapon twice as big as mine, he hits me for about 220k+ damage.

I did not have any AC for these examples.

I think this is just weird.

Jon has said before.... I don't remember where.... that the reason ranged is so much higher... is because there are only a max of 4 rounds in ranged.... 21 rounds in melee. In the end you will do more damage in melee if you have equal weapon X.

Missile damage has always been like this. If you want to make a better comparison try the ELB...

I absoulutely cannot balance archery with str =P

personally i feel its not the problem with range damage but the problem with PTH and dex... considering that even with dex given CTH reduced during melee rounds an archer can still hit constantly during melee thats where the problem lies... example if an archer was fighting a mage with hp and DD trained only... that = 150 CTH no matter how much dex is reduced by entering melee rounds with a range weapon.... the CTH + PTH should be reduced and not only a dex reduction

Sorry I didn't have proper equipments on for you to fight, I just attacked you with stats:

Zanpakuto (named Blade of Thuringwethil) [73x1088] (+70)
** note that with naming bonus, this is actually x1238.

Chiko HP: 750,000/750,000
ST: 1,145,000/500,000
DX: 817,500/750,000
Bloodlust: 228,900/210,000 (0.60)


Chiko eviscerated King Cookie with Zanpakuto [398945]
Chiko dislimbed King Cookie with Zanpakuto [273385]

(side note: blasted PbP was off. I'm still all for a toggle on the side panel so I don't have to fight 2-3 times to get a Play-by-Play for one fight.)

I agree with lostling too

"the CTH + PTH should be reduced and not only a dex reduction"

that's exactly how it's worked for quite some time

If ranged damage is so overpowered why do relatively few of the top 10 use a bow?

"If ranged damage is so overpowered why do relatively few of the top 10 use a bow?"

I can state for myself that I already had a massive MH when the archery change occurred. Before that archery was not really needed, it only gave an extra round of missile but no penalties to hit.

So instead of making another massive ELB with all the cb2 needed, I made Koy's current strategy.

I would guess that if you gave people in the top 10 the opportunity for 1) free retraining and 2) the ability to switch their MH for an equal NW ELB most would take that offer. I certain would as missile damage as stated is too uber.

My problem now is the quite powerful evasion and the effect EC has on it. It seems the only way to hit nice sized evasions are a TOA and large PTH.

If you go over the say the top 50 character standings there are a few archers there, but there are also plenty of melee based characters and some very powerful mage teams too. Seems fairly balanced to me a year on from the archery/ranged changes. I still don't see the ranged domination that was predicted so often. Maybe I'm not looking at the same evidence that everyone else is?

(And yes I know I'm running a very high scoring ranged based char, before anyone points that out; but having a very large evasion and GA does help somewhat too......)

Now if somebody could just fix EC, enforcers bows and the ToE...I can't beat anybody that uses those.....

If ranged damage is so overpowered why do relatively few of the top 10 use a bow?

surely there is a more concrete method of gathering data than going by the popularity of an item/skill/spell for determiniing its relative power. i mean by that logic, there are no single-minion teams in the top ten score or mpr...let's boost single-minion teams!

If ranged damage is so overpowered why do relatively few of the top 10 use a bow?

Cuz most of these strategies in the top 10 where made before archery got so damn powerful.
If you want a fine example of overpowered-ness and a new character take a look at mikel's character.

lol It's Mikel who's overpowered, not archery....I'd be willing to put money on Mikel being able to take any strat (possibly not RoBF but then again...) into the top ten....;)

that is not the point, the point is mikel saw which strategy is the easiest to do and which is the most powerful at that point. His whole strategy revolved around archery and a huge bow. And the only way to do that correct is single archer. Now you see all these popping up. Isn't this the same when single fireball mage was overpowered? You saw countless of new characters all single fireball mages. Now that that is nerfed bam the next overpowered strategy rears its ugly head.

One needs to take a look at all the NUBs that have started after the archery change.

Are most tanks archers or melee type tanks? I suspect the former.

And yes, there will be a large number of mages due to the expense of running a tank team.

oh jon that means now its ((CTH + PTH) *0.6) during melee rounds?
dont you think that bows should have a larger penalties then xbows ? considering they put out so much more damage i think that bows should have a larger penalty...
xbows 60%
bows 50%
slings 40%
however i think slings should be given a slight boost as 20% of your (CTH and PTH) is ridicious... considering they already shoot every alternate round

on a side note... jon have you fixed the random BA regeneration thing yet? (whispers what about junction and AOF =\)

read the wiki lost, other than exact percentages, that's exactly how it's setup...

i mean the % should be changed

bows already have a larger penalty that xbows...

"The penalties to ranged weapons used during melee combat are 80% for Slings, 60% for Bows and 40% for Crossbows." - from the wiki...

"however i think slings should be given a slight boost as 20% of your (CTH and PTH) is ridicious... considering they already shoot every alternate round"

You don't "sling" at people in melee, it doesn't make any sense.

Using any missile weapon in combat does not make sense.

Ever think of how your going to use that bow/sling/xbow when someone is swinging a massive vampiritic hammer at your head?

David and Goliath anybody?

Did Goliath have a hammer?

Sting struck deep into Chaos with Queen of Pain [4627996]
Sting skewered Chaos with Queen of Pain [3784390]
Sting skewered Chaos with Queen of Pain [3640478]
Sting skewered Chaos with Queen of Pain [4572985]
Sting struck deep into Chaos with Queen of Pain [3120000]

Sting struck deep into Chaos's familiar with Queen of Pain [4581728]
Sting skewered Chaos's familiar with Queen of Pain [4320538]
Sting struck deep into Chaos's familiar with Queen of Pain [4380835]
Sting skewered Chaos's familiar with Queen of Pain [3801569]

Sting struck deep into Riot with Queen of Pain [2905474]
Sting struck deep into Riot with Queen of Pain [3096778]
Sting skewered Riot with Queen of Pain [3555050]
Sting struck deep into Riot with Queen of Pain [2842578]
Sting struck deep into Riot with Queen of Pain [3193518]

Sting struck deep into Anarchy with Queen of Pain [3026132]
Sting skewered Anarchy with Queen of Pain [2529118]
Sting skewered Anarchy with Queen of Pain [3217775]
Sting struck deep into Anarchy with Queen of Pain [3733701]
Sting struck deep into Anarchy with Queen of Pain [3467487]

Sting skewered Noise with Queen of Pain [1839177]
Sting skewered Noise with Queen of Pain [1472800]
Sting struck deep into Noise with Queen of Pain [1598133]

I would guess the last round was the first in melee with the incredible 60% damage penalty bows get in those rounds.

I don't use archery because I am a mage. Kind of silly to count me as part of the "top ten" in that regard.

Not everyone can afford a big bow. It's the big bows that are the problem -- it doesn't scale well (or scales too well, I guess I should say). You can call a large bow an aberration, but I assure you if Freed gave me Platypus Phlegm today, I would be a retrained archer tomorrow (and be able to beat more people).

Big items never go away -- they only increase in number. But many folks up here can't afford that: NWO, Failure, Hubbell, Dixie Cousins, Lega, Tank Killer -- these are nice teams, but lower NW.

So if the argument is simply that large items will remain rare or rarely used, then OK -- I can't argue with that I guess. But lack of archery up top is NOT an indictment of ranged damage being "ok". Ranged damage gets too huge too fast, and it makes battles have that on/off feeling instead of a real fight. Binary options are very prevalent in this game and they detract from the fun for me. I've already written about all that more times than I can remember, so I'm going to stop now.

"Ranged Damage" or "Elven Long Bow Damage?"

I would like to point out that NWO's highest AC minion is 137. He also has min dex and no evasion trained.

So yea, I'm going to not only hit him quite a few times, but for also for quite a bit of damage.

People always seem to disregard the fact that Mikel's bow has 143M NW on it...

I would like to point out that I would probably even lose with triple AC and lots of evasion on each minion and the familiar. :-D

How dare you call me poor? I could so afford one of those, I just have no more use for one than do you!

"Big items never go away -- they only increase in number."

*Cough* Central Bank *cough* Dawg's items...


Oh, and regarding ranged damage... my Exbow does VERY little damage. As Draco pointed out, it's not ranged damage -- it's ELB damage. What's the MSB look like? What's the SOD look like?


The root of the issue here is that the only real penalty we can impose on archers through evasion, DB, DX, etc. is a reduction in the total Chance to Hit. As Ranger has said countless times, what does it matter if someone hits once or five times when each hit is doing 3m damage? You're either dead or you're dead. Either way, you're dead dead.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has the ability to use 143 million NW bow. Seriously. If it was mine, I'd still be using Oduten and I'd be able to beat Mikel with no effort at all.

Ya'll want a good example? I recently rented a 56 millionn ELB. I put it on a minion with 1k ST. 1 freaking k of ST. It hits 30,000 regularly.

But, no, that's not overpowered. Nope. Not a bit.



Oh, the whole top ten picks thing, has been answered thoroughly.

1) Most of the teams currently in top 10 were created before the addition of the current super ranged damage.

2) Most simply can't afford the ELB necessary.

3) The player with a current 7,000 battle winning streak uses a bow. A big one.

4) Mikel.


It's not archer. Or the ELB. It's simply the way ranged damage is calculated that is skewed.

YES. If a battle lasts 25 rounds, the morg beats the ELB.


But look at Mikel's battle log. Looks like familiar teams take 5. Wow! Go familiar teams. If you equipped a melee weapon and had 20 more rounds, you might catch up to him!

P.S.
Letting bows fire in melee is dumb. Give them all the penalties you want. Either stop this, or let the people using bloodlust and morgs with no bows start throwing their hammers in the 1st round for half damage.

Simply, why should an archer only have to buy one weapon when most tanks need 2?

just switch the tank into an archer

What you need to look at is this:

If I start boosting the damage on a bow from base with only cash rewards, after six months will I be doing similar damage to a MM grown over the same period of time?

Anything above that...money from buying/selling or USD is extra to this and should be discounted. Damage is high for bows, but USD input skews things.

And it is BOWS that are the problem, not xbows or slings. My SoD is 5x2585, the biggest X on a SoD in the game. With a million strength I hit my MPB of 2.5 million. With X250 shot. An average battle sees strikes of 600k perhaps reaching about a million against teams with no damage reduction. That's from over a million strength and x2585. 600k average doesn't seem too high to me...

It is the ability tanks have to boost their damage at will that is the problem - bonus items, ammo X increases. These skew the damage levels.

And using Mikel as an example of 'average' damage from a bow is ridiculous.

"That's from over a million strength and x2585. 600k average doesn't seem too high to me... "

I have a x12,001 MH, no bloodlust and 4.4 million strength.

I do about 1.2M a hit on average vs a light AC opponent.

Yes, 600k damage from a weapon that is 1/4-1/5th the x of my MH with 1/4th the str is was too much. Especially since it occurs at the very beginning of a fight, for up to 4 rounds before I get to first swing my MH.

And please, before we get into the "you don't use BL so your damage is 60% lower then what it can be", let me state the following:

For tanks there really are only 2 skills to use:

1) Archery for the quick kill

2) Evasion to try to make it through missile rounds vs archers so you can finally start to fight them.

If one uses bloodlust, in the first round of melee your melee tank is toast. This given the fact that bows get to fire in the first melee round THEN every other round thereafter. If one uses bloodlust, that first round of melee will be your last (if you use a familiar as a 5th kill slot, otherwise you likely will not make it to melee).

What damage would you be doing if you trained bloodlust? How much more per strike? In your case you're choosing to not use something that can boost your damage output.

Mikel's average against Poison - as detailed above - is not actually that much higher than your average, and he has the best part of 4 million strength and large Belegs. Remove the Belegs from the equation, equip base arrows and see what sort of damage gets dealt against Poison then do the comparisons.

Don't forget that BG are involved as well... now if there was some sort of melee gloves that granted more damage based on the plus that would be nice, and for a different thread. Now the BG that Johnny uses more than likely add an extra 39% damage to ranged... so in essence he is only doing about 365k damage.

With A Vorpal Blade (Named SoD) [5x2170] (+128) and 2 mil str and 36% from BG... I do about 1.4 mil damage... now that is a little more info to crunch on. With an elb of An Elven Long Bow [6x1258] (+100) I do 1.4 mil damage regularly. Mind you its half the NW of the SoD.

The bloodlust vs evasion vs whatever argument is a whole other thing. That's mechanics not damage. Some might say you should consider the whole thing, but if we're talking basic damage levels would you be doing much higher levels of damage if you trained bloodlust?

Otherwise the argument boils down to "it's not fair, they're doing more damage than me because I've chosen to do less than is available to me".

That's not a good enough argument to convince me that ranged damage is overpowered, and if that's the case then I'm not sure Jon will be convinced either. Forget the mechanics for the moment, forget your choices that you are 'forced' to make. Give Jon the proper numbers and let him make a decision.

I'm using +13 Belegs right now.

Which is exactly what I figured into my equation... so 365k damage without bg is pitifully low for that much nw investment

Much less than I hoped for when I started down this route.

See my post above for why using Bloodlust is not feasible for a melee tank.

In missile rounds Mikel is doing 3-4x my melee damage with his elb and it has about 1/2 the x on it.

In melee rounds he is still doing more considering I do not use bloodlust (see above post).

Yes, archers get an item that gives them about 50% extra damage AND have the ability to upgrade a part of their damage temporarily. Something melee tanks do not get.

Again, if I would use BL, who cares. The archer would have killed my tank well before I have a chance to attack his tank. Evasion is the only hope I have to survive with my now decimated character vs his intact character in the melee rounds.

For the purpose of this discussion, please let us not figure my EC into things. We are debating the "examples of ranged damage being ridiculously high".

Yet again its not ranged... its Elbow damage...

One has to consider everything in the conversation.

Missile damage, with all its bonuses (BG, upgradeable arrows) is so freaking high a melee tank cannot use BL and stand a chance.

The "low" damage for the SOD is far outweighed by the fact it can use explosive shots to damage all minions of your opponent. Doing 600k damage (with BG's) then doing 40% to all the other minions is quite a large amount of damage. This per hit.

600k is the average damage Including splash...

Cloudscape shot Chaos's familiar with Spiral [614530]
Chaos's familiar's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (64942)
Cloudscape shot Chaos's familiar with Spiral [493652]
Chaos's familiar's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (52500)
Cloudscape shot Chaos's familiar with Spiral [580325]
Chaos's familiar's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (59445)
Noise takes damage from his own Magic Missile (47351)!
Noise's Magic Missile hit The Grid [57699]
Cloudscape regenerated 58,900 HP
The Grid regenerated 57,699 HP

Cloudscape struck deep into Chaos's familiar with Spiral [527995]
Chaos's familiar's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (40412)
Cloudscape skewered Chaos's familiar with Spiral [566739]
Cloudscape struck deep into Chaos's familiar with Spiral [559042]
Noise takes damage from his own Magic Missile (54116)!
Noise's Magic Missile hit The Grid [104518]
Chaos's familiar takes damage from his own Magic Missile (46781)!
Chaos's familiar's Magic Missile hit The Grid [156099]
Cloudscape regenerated 58,900 HP
The Grid regenerated 120,000 HP
R.I.P. Chaos's familiar

Cloudscape shot Noise with Spiral [421199]
Noise's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (44497)
Cloudscape shot Noise with Spiral [540774]
Noise's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (58299)
Cloudscape skewered Noise with Spiral [504825]
Noise's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (17337)
Noise takes damage from his own Magic Missile (60881)!
Noise's Magic Missile hit The Grid [90570]
Cloudscape regenerated 58,900 HP
The Grid regenerated 120,000 HP
R.I.P. Noise

Cloudscape hit Chaos with Spiral [714276]
Chaos's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (74968)
Cloudscape shot Chaos with Spiral [651180]
Chaos's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (69969)
Cloudscape struck deep into Chaos with Spiral [563143]
Chaos's Guardian Angel smote Cloudscape (13703)

Cloudscape regenerated 58,900 HP
The Grid regenerated 111,187 HP

With a x2112 Mageseeker bow and 1 Million str. Using base x arrows and a +13 set of BG's.
Personally that is a lot of damage per hit directly to mages for not a lot of x and a modest amount of strength. All not using a TOA.

Agreed, which puts us back at square one... Elbs are overpowered.... or they have too many choices of ways to add more damage to them.

Splash damage can vary quite a bit. This is a snapshot of damage against Godwolf's char Oduten. The only damage reduction is a (16) protection.

Johnny's explosive shot hit Bane [707329], The Unvindicated Soldier [203547], The Dying Warrior [203547], Warping the Field [203547], Warping the Field's familiar [203547]


That's 1.5 million approx per strike for a weapon with nearly 3k on the X and +13 Belegs. Yes that's good, but it's not great. And obviously gets lower the more damage reduction is involved.

And by vary quite a bit I mean in level. A 700k initial strike can sometimes see only 70k per hit on splash.

And like Coc... it has to deal with GA on a massive scale... so there is a setback for the damage.... Elbs break the cap on the GA damage return...

Here's me against Poison.

Johnny's explosive shot hit Chaos [576812], Noise [159983], Chaos's familiar [174294], Riot [153759], Anarchy [144041].

That was the only hit I got in before the GA kicked in BTW....

JW,

We must really see things differently.

1.5M damage PER HIT to Oduten is incredible for the x you have on the weapon. That is as much as I can do with a 200M MH in melee but you do it to 4 minions, again per hit.

With a TOA, you should hit about 2-3 times a round. You must destroy Oduten in 3 rounds at most.

Imagine if Oduten was a melee tank. He would have no chance to even get 1 attack off. Same with a CoC mage.

Well funnily enough I can't beat any of the melee tanks at the same level. Not one. They all beat me hands down. The only tanks I can beat are archers.

"And like Coc... it has to deal with GA on a massive scale... so there is a setback for the damage.... Elbs break the cap on the GA damage return..."

Why are you not using DM, since your SoD/ex shot combo can take out entire teams in missile rounds?

But then again, we are just typing about damage, not strategies, right?

*well actually there is one melee tank on my list...

But the rest around this level are too tough to beat...

JW,

The reason you cannot beat melee tanks is that most use a TOE. They have to try to live to melee vs all those mages who pound them with MM's and FB's for 4 free rounds before their first attack.

But compare your SoD vs their melee weapon and see if your weapon is comparable.

2 mil str... 36% BG
Cattie Brie's explosive shot hit Chaos [785421], Noise [220896], Chaos's familiar [241760], Riot [213149], Anarchy [201325]
Cattie Brie hit Chaos [1315498] With Elb.... yet again at half the nw.

And on the topic of change my Strat... why change my strat when I borrowed this weapon for these kinds of tests... My usual ranged weapon of choice is an Axbow.

Against NWO I die in one round with SoD.... 2 with Elb... just some useless knowledge.

Draco,

Don't get me wrong.

Elb damage is way way way up there.

But other forms of missile damage are still very high. Enough, IMO, to qualify under this threads heading.

I suspect we agree on the elb, but will have to disagree with the others.

Also,

When comparing weapons it is best to state the x on them. Since the NW into the + does not figure into the damage calculations. One can have a high NW weapon with a modest x if the + is very high.

I compared weapon X's in a previous thread in this discussion...

"The reason you cannot beat melee tanks is that most use a TOE. They have to try to live to melee vs all those mages who pound them with MM's and FB's for 4 free rounds before their first attack. "

Lol Ranger, I think it has more to do with how effective they saw your strat to be.

Three ToE based tank teams have sat near the top level for a very long time now. Certainly all the way through this period of 'ridiculously high' ranged damage. You could argue, and it has been said before, that you need high ranged damage to have any chance at all of getting past the 'ridiculously high' damage reduction a ToE offers.

Against Oxcha:

Johnny's explosive shot hit Hewteksun [48019], Eikima Et [77047], Conthebes [66230], Miacha [78609]
Miacha absorbs damage [48019]
Miacha absorbs damage [77047]
Miacha absorbs damage [66230]
Johnny's explosive shot hit Hewteksun [63436], Eikima Et [81825], Conthebes [71691], Miacha [83427]
Miacha absorbs damage [63436]
Miacha absorbs damage [81825]
Miacha absorbs damage [71691]
Johnny's explosive shot hit Hewteksun [46836], Eikima Et [74993], Conthebes [65792], Miacha [76670]
Miacha absorbs damage [46836]
Miacha absorbs damage [74993]
Miacha absorbs damage [65792]


Compare that to the hits against Oduten....that's a particularly huge amount of damage reduction. Add an (admittedly very large) EC to that and see my damage go to almost zero....

Johnny's explosive shot hit Cloudscape [99], Prophecies [57], Microchips [61], The Grid [10]

A large tattoo and a large EC are things anybody can achieve as well, unlike a large bow. Whether or not they should be forced to is a whole other argument.

4 of the top 20 scores are TOE tanks.

Not a disproportionate amount.

Your damage vs Oxcha is quite low, but then again, my MH does 150k a hit to his high AC wall. So your damage is still quite high compared to mine, again with a x12,001 MH and 4.4M strength.

That kind of damage reduction is pretty much impossible to beat without large damage output. And then factor in EC as well and you require huge physical stats too.

I think people are looking in the wrong place for what is wrong with the current CB model.

Hello. I am a nub and will start this comment by stating that fact. Now on with my thoughts. Everything I have read here leads me to think that everything is working fine. If you read what you guys are typing everything one person comes up with that says something is too strong someone has a counter for. Not one item, or one specific thing is so strong it can't be beaten. You basically have said it in your posts. So I'm really confused as to what the problem you guys see. The start of this post was that ranged damage was too high, but someone else showed what was needed to get past it. Just because you don't want to train what is needed to beat it doesn't mean it's overpowered. To me overpowered means it can't be beaten at all. It seems some people just choose not to use those methods to counter high ranged damage, but wish the damage to go down.

Yes I am a solo archer that uses a Mageseeker and GA kills me all the time, but I started to train DM and got that to 1 mil and 800k effect and it has helped. Do I beat everyone I come against? NO, but I do beat the teams that my strat is geared to beat. Isn't that what it's about? Yes trying to beat as many people as you can and lose to as few as possible.

Ok. again. Please don't flame me too hard, I am a NUB and stated so at the beginning, but if I am wrong I would love to be shown the light and learn more about this great game. Thanks

Nicely put there Sox. Good point about things not being overpowered if a counter to that thing exists. There are somethings that don't have a counter. Large bows and archery damage isn't one of those things.


Sox: Don't let your NUB status stop you speaking up!

Welcome (a little late on my part) to CB! :)

let me counter that Soxjr, if someone is spending well over 30% of his mpr on evasion just to counter ranged attacks, yes it damn effective against elbs but that is not the point, isn't it silly that someone actually needs to spend millions of exp into evasion just to counter one item in the game?
Don't say evasion is effective beyond ranged, because it simply isn't. Someone with enough dex and a normal PTH modifier on his melee weapon can easily hit a full evasion minion.
And if he is a mage that effort will be ruined by the mageseeker if the evasion isn't trained on the mage. Which no one does because of the exp dilution.
It maybe isn't overpowered but the damages done by ranged are ridiculous.
Combine that with all the archery items HoC and beleg's wooh you got a winner.

30% MPR trained to evasion seems fair enough.
I have 40% NW invested in my ELB and more than 33% MPR trained into the archer that uses it.

Actually you don't need to train evasion to get past ELB, you just need an AoI ;) While the ELB is busy killing off the rest of your minions, you better think of some way to kill it before it hits your main damage dealer ;)

JW, a large tattoo is something anyone can get? Only from dead man's shoes... And good luck getting the two ultra-huge ones (Oxcha and Koy) -- better bring a lot of USD to the table...

Ranger, saying there are only 4 out of 20 high-end ToE tanks is a tad bit misleading... two of those are generally in the Top Five. One can almost always count down far enough until the ratio looks cleaner. *smile* I wouldn't single out ToE tanks -- just ToE users in general. In that case, you have you, Oxcha, Edyit (in general, I see he is playing with a Hal currently), Conundrum, and Tank Killer. That's 5, all who can get in the Top Ten from time to time (three generally in the top five). Familiar-based teams are rapidly becoming the _least_ represented in the Top Ten. ToE has always been strong, and ToAs are growing more popular it would seem (likely as a "must-have" against Evasion).

In any case, pointing out the ToE sort of makes it MORE apparent how crazy ranged damage is -- because it has to be. Two aspects of the game that have become completely binary:

-- Ranged damage vs. Evasion: you hit like crazy for huge amounts, or hit nothing and lose. One arrow is all it takes, because you will be hard-pressed to get that one arrow.
-- Ranged damage vs. ToE. Without huge blows, large ToE cannot be overwhelmed, so it is another on/off situation.

Like I said in a previous post, I have written all of this before. Evasion, ranged damage, and ToEs have made this aspect of the game rotten/poopie/stupid instead of rock/scissors/paper. I've never been so bored out of my mind and simply going through the motions since as long as I can remember. Instead of people building intricate strategies and tweaking, people just try one thing or another and find their fight list radically changes. Trial-and-error carpet-bombing. Bleargh.

I approve of erroneous carpet bombing.

Sut, define 'large'. If we're talking the super huge jobs up the top then you're right...good luck indeed.

But if we're talking large in the rest of the game sense.... apparently anybody can now get within that 5% of the top again, so anybody can 'grow' a large tattoo.



As a little side note; am I the only person who's comparing the CB world to the music world of the mid 70s? Huge overindulgent supergroups dominating with massive stage shows and truckloads of cash and groupies. Just waiting for Punk to happen...

I'd also like to point out the joke that is ranged mage damage. Look at Rangers battle log against NWO a ways up... MM hitting for 50-60K...*LAUGH*. Against a 178 AC minion. Yeah, MgSs aren't overpowered at all. Not a bit. Tack on the ToE and various forms of regeneration, and Ranger doesn't even need PL any more. He can just laugh at mages entirely.

Gotta love items specifically to defend against magic. But I guess that makes sense, seeing as how there are so few other ways to bring mages down... Um, er, what?

MgS needs a change, and always has.

percentage based reductions are bad, umm kay

G_Bee of course you have 33% of you mpr trained as an archer. You team exist as a 3 minion team. so 33% is just normal. But you don't train 33% in one skill? You train archery and HP, maybe a small dex or str because of that ToA.
But you don't spend 33% on archery alone.
If you train one minion ONLY for evasion you lose a kill slot or an enchanter.

"I suspect we agree on the elb, but will have to disagree with the others."

Again, crossbow damage is very low compared to others. There is a MASSIVE ammount of difference between a weapon with base 4 and a weapon with base 5.

Maybe the ELB/MSB should be reduced to a base of 4 :) :)

JW, yes...we will see how the bonus tweak pans out.

I am not holding out much hope for punk, though.

NS,

The crossbow damage is low due to the fact it has another, more potent effect.

I am not typing about the heavy xbow which should be buffed or removed from the game.

Since I've got a STR testing bit going anyways, why not just pile on an extra two items - someone loan me over one SoD and one ELB at x32 or below each (check my x-fer before you send it if you are going to, please) and I'll compare its damage to the MH, BoNE, and Exec damages I've got recorded already for 1M ST.

Heck, it'll even be tilted in the Archers' favor - no BGs, and I'm using Bloodlust with the weapons I test.

that and huge defensive ammo that can hit one time in the first round of ranged with 119 evasion

"The crossbow damage is low due to the fact it has another, more potent effect. "

Exactly. So it's not all of ranged damage.