This horse is coming back to life, darn it! (in General)

Okay. My temper finally snapped at ranged attacks. Just completely sick of it.

ELBs. I can deal with them. You want to know how I deal with ELBs? Use a familiar. I have to. Alot of them still beat me, but at least I have a chance.

But what bout MSK? If I see that item, I lose. My mage has 159 AC, I train a 16 protection. I lose. My mage has well over a million HP when combat starts. I lose. Now... what are my solutions to this rather annoying problem?

Evasion. That's about it. And do you know how stupid I find this? That there is ONE solution to a widely used strategy? I'm never going to retrain my mage to use evasion. It's against what everyone has always said about mages, which is exp dilution. Well, mages are being diluted.

Now, you can say all you want that range last 4 rounds, melee lasts 21, so of course archers should do more damage. Now when the heck is the last time it took every melee character in the game until the 24th round to win!?

Most fights are over before round 10. Most of MY fights are over before round 4. How is it POSSIBLE that there are characters in the game that don't use melee weapons because their bow is so great? Heck, they don't even have to cool down after ranged, just go straight into the other team. But they don't have to do that normally. Because the other team is dead already.

The HoC didn't help matters. Before, I maybe could have forgiven it. But now my entire party is dead by melee. CoC took this especially hard. Despite it now firing into melee, it's also firing into stronger EH and with mage penalties, while rangers just get a free, non-penalized attack. Oh, did I say attack? I meant round. We all know archers get 2-3 attacks. As if the first million they do isn't enough.

This isn't a rant against ToAs. Or a particular type of strategy. This is saying the simple fact that ranged damage needs to be reduced so it's not an instant win. And, more importantly, I'm over the defending of it's damage output. Lower it already. Ranged, in reality, gets no more attacks then melee. Because fights DON'T last until 25t round often. They just don't.

Lower damage. Please. Thanks.

kill slots, GA, exbow, evasion, EC, walls, AoI (vs. ELB), or just have more damage output to beat/draw them..

Kill slots only -help- against AS, and even then you need a familiar. Exbow only helps for tanks. I run GA, and it doesn't stop them. EC has to be absurdly large to make the damage survivable. And against MSK and SoD, neither wall nor AoI help.

1) "Kill slots only -help- against AS" <--- this doesn't even make sense
2) Exbows actually deal decent damage.
3) Your GA and hp are low, so GA is mostly worthless to you. It also helps to combine some good damage reduction in but your minions are minorly/un-armored. The prot is helpful of course but easily dispelled.
4) big EC + familiar = win
5) MSK does significantly less damage than ELB and is a bit less accurate, so that pretty much gives you your wish. MSK is as much a counter to mages as exbows are to tanks imo, and require special consideration in any strat.

use a +200 DB ?
use a corn you your GA?

however GW raised a valid point... considering mage's exp = damage not everyone can train evasion...

dispel works well for range teams as they dont need much of it to have a large effect
lol i do know that TOA <--- str dex PTH boost gives multi hits larger damage and more resistant to EC

i propose that a HOC change... make it so that HOC allows you to fire in the 1st melee round like it was a ranged round... and remove the extra round... ;) dun wana say much... just think about it

Really big DB and PL to a high AS minion are two things that will help. In fact, PL is a big way to deal with this. PL away with a giant AS. Train a ton of HP on the PL minion, and use a TSA on him.

Godwolf, here is what everyone is writing, in my opinion...

To make their bows lethal, those tanks had to invest a lot of $ to get them to [6x10,000](+150). If you are not willing to invest a lot of $ into your defense (+200 DB, TSA, +14 Corn, 350+ AC armor set, etc...), then you just have to suffer like the rest of us poor (or cheap) folk.

But he doesn't have to suffer in silence!

Those bows don't have to be that big to be lethal. People forget that a x1000 ELB with 1M STR can do more damage than a 3M FB with a CoI and AGs that have several million poured into them.

You can complain all you want about how much cash you "have" to pour into your bow, but you are pouring it in there to counteract Evasion, which not everyone trains, or to increase your damage, which is really high already.

But like I've said before, I'm done talking about archers. I think Jonathan knows Ranged is broken, so we'll just see if he does anything about it.

range works fine. i can actually win now.

4) big EC + familiar = win

your EC should be huge!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if your up against a msk.
Ask ranger he has 40% of his mpr in EC.

Well yeah it has to be huge, because if it doesn't cover the entirety of their ST, it is useless. Ranger's and the others' works because they have more MPR than anyone else...

Yes,

Most of us believe that ranged damage is a tab bit high, but by now Jon should/would have done something if he believed the same.

So, let us see if anything will be done this changemonth.

"To make their bows lethal, those tanks had to invest a lot of $ to get them to [6x10,000](+150). If you are not willing to invest a lot of $ into your defense (+200 DB, TSA, +14 Corn, 350+ AC armor set, etc...), then you just have to suffer like the rest of us poor (or cheap) folk."

Unfortunately due to the overpowering effects of evasion one has to spend tons of money on the + of their elb/MSB in order to hit.

Even a 3.2M EC effect does not make it possible to hit the 3th top evasion with a +142 bow and +10 arrows in missile in ANY round without a TOA.

ow come on Ranger, you know better then this.
The biggest evasion out there is effect of, roughly, 139. This means he'd spend over 29mil exp on that single minion. That is, roughly, 700k mpr he'd spent on his evasion. That is 31% of his total mpr is dedicated to evasion.
Well with his much xp spend it should have an effect that you can't hit.
Even if you "nuke" his defensive dex. Come on

Agreed RS.

Evasion isn't just defensive dexterity, it reduces PTH. Right? And who says defensive dex has to get nuked! Its a skill.... maybe your so highly trained in evasive manuevers... that you can move arrows with your mind, to an almost magical effect.

Haha, I'm just saying... with so much XP invested in the sole purpose of NOT getting hit, it just makes sense that you can't be hit. Unless there is some sort of Mage-Only leg-slot that does not reduce Skills or DD and grants AC... make it comparable to a MS.... meh, I'll save it for another post.

Ranged damage is too high. I understand this is because there are less ranged rounds than melee rounds, but if you cannot ever make it there... it defeats the entire concept.

"Haha, I'm just saying... with so much XP invested in the sole purpose of NOT getting hit, it just makes sense that you can't be hit."

So the 40% of my total xp spent into EC should not effect his evasion? Especially when Jon stated that EC does bite into defensive dexterity. But I suspect it bites into it after the missile multipliers not before.

Is the only counter to evasion a TOA?

Evasion of 139 is ~23,072,216 XP, which is 582,869 MPR.

If you're going to quote numbers, use the tools available...........

And my 2 EC's gives a total of:

74,779,432 xp
with a MPR equivalent of 1,493,113.

But let us not forget that evasion can be increased in a number of ways:

EC, EG, EB and AoF

Have a Free Retraining at the end of this month, so everyone can tweak their strats, especially if ranged gets nerfed.

As if the whole world trains Evasion.

well check how many teams above 600K MPR trains at at least some evasion

I train Evasion through the Transitive Property of Unarmed Combat :) :)

I vote we immediately vote NS off the island for using the transitive property ^.^

Yeah, NS is such a cheater... always using the transitive property... *casts dirty look*

lostling - not a single person on my entire fightlist, for example?

cant see your fight list ... but many train evasion... thats all :)... use the selector in the stats page... 18.6% popularity of evasion in the top 5%... i would consider that a large amount

Right - I'm saying you're talking about "having" to upgrade your bow soooo much to fight around a single trained stat (which, by the way, has the downside of reducing the damage on mages - they can't just put money in there to make up for it like you archers can, EXP is what builds their weapon).

But hey, I've said this a million times. There's going to be a million excuses no matter what I say, so no need to continue stating the obvious. =)

If you add UC in the picture, there's a lot more :) I don't know how DB works , but if the same evasion bonus also applies to them, then you have another segment hehe.

Evasion multipliers do not tack on to DBs, and the inherent Evasion in UC is only at 3/3 if the UC minion is wearing a Combat Gi, often discarded in favor of a ToA.

3/3? I always thought it was 2/3...

2/3 without the Gi, 3/3 with the Gi. Check the Wiki if you have any further questions regarding UC, I did a big clarification on it a while ago while I was in my 'UC love' stage.

To clarify that a little better - I'm talking about during Ranged rounds, since we're discussing multipliers.

If you're discussing ranged rounds, then it's different every round. Again, people, the information is widely available -- please be accurate so as not to waste time discussing issues based on inaccurate facts.

UC Evasion is 1/3 without a Gi and 2/3 with it during melee rounds. Not all of your UC is counted towards this (according to OB, as I understand it, only trained + Elven modified UC).

During ranged rounds, it receives the same 9/3, 7/3, 5/3 modifiers, with an assumed 11/3 modifier for round 1 when a HoC is involved (see http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0022lA&all_p=1). Applying these modifiers times the UC Evasion yields:

Round 1 w/o CG: 1/3*11/3 = 11/9 = 1.22
Round 1 w/ CG: 2/3 * 11/3 = 22/9 = 2.44

Round 2 w/o CG: 1/3*9/3 = 9/9 = 1.00
Round 2 w/ CG: 2/3 * 9/3 = 18/9 = 2.00

Round 3 w/o CG: 1/3*7/3 = 7/9 = 0.77
Round 3 w/ CG: 2/3 * 7/3 = 14/9 = 1.55

Round 4 w/o CG: 1/3*5/3 = 5/9 = 0.55
Round 4 w/ CG: 2/3 * 5/3 = 10/9 =1.11

Melee: w/o CG: 1/3 = 0.33
Melee: w/ CG: 2/3 = 0.66


If I made a mistake up there (using a laptop and can't get the keyboard down..) please let me know.

Yep, you made a mistake there, *if* I'm not wrong, because instead of changing from 1/3 to 2/3 in the switch from melee to ranged, you changed from 1/3 to modifier.

I.E. you'd say:

W/O Combat Gi, you have 1/3 your UC level as effective Evasion in melee rounds, and 2/3 of it as effective Evasion in ranged rounds. It is then affected by multipliers (hence the name) in the order of 9/3, 7/3, 5/3 - this seems correct, no?

So then correspondingly it would be 2/3 in melee rounds with the Gi, and 3/3 in ranged rounds, then affected by multipliers in said order, yada yada.

huh?

did you guys noticed that every high score in tournaments belongs to an archer?

T8 - Mikel had the high score with fireball.
The next three below him were archers though :o

Duh, archer is the way to go in a tourney. You don't have the time to invest in a big melee weapon and a mage doesn't really have enough money to get anything useful...

"and a mage doesn't really have enough money to get anything useful..."

You don't think having the money to buy a big tattoo is useful in a tourney?