RBF Update (in General)

I've been running my RBF char for over a month now, and thanks to the new improved NCB bonus rate I'm able to make a comparison between this char and one of my old ones that hit a similar MPR after four months.

Monkey Business Score / PR / MPR: 1,569,214 / 947,498 / 707,863
The Clash Score / PR / MPR: 1,896,429 / 697,119 / 697,119

The Clash was a four minion archer team at the end and that 1.8 million put it into the top thirty. Whereas my RBF guy isn't even on the front page of the standings. My last character Johnnywas hit a million MPR by the time of retirement and also sat in the top thirty on a regular basis. Both characters were ranged based ToA tank teams. Both were able to take on much much bigger characters face on - Johnnywas had a two million MPR char on his fightlist.

This char on the other hand has actually very few characters much bigger, in fact the biggest is only about 300k MPR bigger. I've stayed at the same score for nearly two weeks (check my graph), and have added only a couple of new players to my fightlist, both of whom are smaller. I'm sure there are others of a similar MPR and smaller that I can beat, but generally I judge how successful my char is by how much higher I can fight up.

It's quite possibly the weakest and least successful character I've ever played. So much so that I'm considering a change back to my usual ToA tank set up. It may just be me, I'm used to tank teams after all. But I've worked with single minion evasion chars as well and had better success there too.

Overpowered? Not in my hands....lol ;)

Somebody mentioned in the ton of RBF postings we had a few weeks ago that if it was MPR versus MPR the RBF would come out on top no problem.

I notice that Nov's char and Dude's char are actually fairly square in PR/MPR. I also notice that Nov's char comes out on top of that particular battle. Another interesting comparison. At least to me.


Now, where did I put my SoD?

;)

Say that again when you retrained to tank and put on your lovely SOD and fight the same type of char around your MPR :) And no cheating with hiring more minions :P

We'll see, just have to make some money to pay for the tattoo artist....lol

JW, I would say your observation is more an indictment of 1 minion vs 4 than that of archer vs RoBF.

If you get as large as dudemus's character, then the proof is already on the table -- you would be able to beat some pretty big characters, and have others (like me) off your attacked-by list (not that that really matters so much for score).

I wouldn't necessarily expect an RoBF singleton to be better than an archer quartet. And when your targeting is fairly specific (you do well against mages, I would wager, if your AMF is anything like dude's) the ability to grow score is very random given the nature of the scoring ladder. You might play for another month and find your score vaulted over 2 million depending on what fruit starts to hang lower for you. A 4-minion archer team is slightly more generic in terms of who you can beat, IMO.

my score is dropping of late, i am now out of the top ten as much as in it. i have stated many times that if the rbf is overpowered it is very underwhelming.

i added no players above my mpr. the only reason my score went up is that people took me off of their fightlists. i have also been steadily losing people off my lists as they adjust their strats and grow. i lost godsend yesterday to a loss instead of the usual stalemates that i have to remove people from my list for. my score now is very close to my mpr.

violent femmes recently added me back on their fightlist as well. the number of rbf's has changed little, 165 or so now, a month ago there was 159. that is compared to almost 300 toa's and over 200 toe's. the masses of people changing to rbf strats really hasn't panned out as many feared.

all of this is anecdotal though and the only opinion that truly matters is jon's.

From my own experience with the RoBF it is quite strong in the lower ranks, however I have not added a new person to my fightlist in almost 2 weeks. Tell me again how overpowered the RoBF is. I have HUGE Evasion and AMF for my MPR and still can't beat the bigger MPR teams.

JW,

Let us keep things in perspective please:

The NW on your RBF character is a mere 22M.

What was the NW on your archer team? I am not typing about the WA (please leave that for another discussion), but the total NW of your archer team when you were at your 1.9M score?

Take that excessive NW and put it on Monkey Business. IE some elven gloves, a corn for AMF and some nice sized DBs.

Being at 1.56M score with a 22M NW is quite nice.

Of course we all know that with a decent bow, archery, BGs and a HOC, archer teams rock in the game.

Also,

A bit of "deception" there JW.

What was the PR of The Clash when it had a 1.9M score? Certainly not equal to its PR.

Please give us all the info to make an informed comparison. If The Clash had a PR of over 1.3M, then how can you say the 4 archer team was better then the RBF character? How are the rewards for each?

Ranger, I agree with your points for the most part...

However, I trust JW not to be deceptive (in quotes or not). Deception is implicitly intentional, and I can think of no reason nor precedent for JW intentionally misleading anyone.

I would also like to comment. The part of not adding new people for 2 weeks is something I find interesting. If I looked at who I had added for 2 weeks then I also am not moving. If anything my score has dropped over the last 2 weeks and I am taking people off that I could beat before. Once you pass 1 mil mpr and higher the ability to add new people gets slower and slower. It's a very long process to enhance your char to see who new you can beat. Just an observation.

Same here,

the high end of my fightlist has remain unchanged for almost 3 weeks. Mind you I am fighting with an RoE, I just miss the days when I had 30 people in my fightlist all giving me a 100% challenge bonus.

Back on topic though, my only problem with the RoBF remains in the DD reduction, it's much too high.

Ranger, Johnnys never used USD. I doubt he'd ever have/had "Excessive" NW. ;)

His Elbow was big, but was only upped with normally earned fight reward cash.

I suppose his archers NW depended on the size of his ToA really... Probably less or the same size as his RoBF is now.

/shrug

My ELB was x(1000) and +40. I've never invested huge amounts of cash into weapons, only what I earned. My tattoo at the time was just over MTL, and was about 950k in level. I had a pair of belegs, and a pair of +20 Elven Boots. Nothing else. I had a 17 million Morg that I sold because it wasn't actually getting used thanks to the ELB.

My tattoo now is sitting at 850k level or so, and is below MTL. The only real NW difference is the weapons, and they didn't figure in PR thanks to WA.

We are talking ranged damage however, and that being what it is dishes out more damage, hence easier to kill people than the damage I'm dishing out currently. My MPB on The Clash was about a million per strike, so about 4 million per round (I can't be bothered to look) whereas currently I'm hitting out for about a max of about 170k per round.

Almost forgot; there was an AoI on The Clash. The biggest reason for the difference is probably the ingredient Sut mentions, the kill slots. The Clash was 4 minion; my own experience there is that it almost doesn't matter what you train on those minions if one of them is a large damage dealer. Perhaps that really is what's causing the difference.

I was only commenting on the difference, because this really is the slowest char I've run. It feels sluggish, that's the only way to describe it, like I've hit a ceiling and am wading in treacle.

The other major difference is that I'm reliant on 'growth' for my damage; that's a new one to me, fight rewards increase damage on weapons at a faster rate I've found.

The "molasses factor", JW?

Welcome to running a singleton. Molasses comes standard. *smile*

That's just the way the game is. Even for dudemus, being that single minion makes it hard. Sure, he can get some big targets off his back (with a very great anti-magic strategy), but he can't really dominate. And, as he said, people are starting to adjust.

But as I said, if you give it more time, you will find targets coming onto the radar, targets that could, overnight, increase your score by 25%. Best way to utilize rewards for an N*B? Maybe not. But I don't think any of that necessarily has to do with the RBF (or the previous character incarnations you mention).

I have yet to read all the posts below my last one.

I meant that one can skew data but leaving out some data points. I will read the posts below my previous one.

I mistyped if it came across that such things JW did were intentional.

I never meant that JW used USD, I have no idea where that came into play.

I am typing that if he took the NW he put into his ELB and other weapons (arrows) and put them into other items to boost his evasion/amf, he would likely do better.

But having the score/PR/MPR ratio he has using a single minon without any weapons (archery) is quite an achievement.

"But having the score/PR/MPR ratio he has using a single minon without any weapons (archery) is quite an achievement."

i thought that at that mpr it wasn't too far off for what my mm single minion was. if you look at serialkiller's team "the force" it is very similar as well. it is probably at the top end for single minions but not that amazing for an active character.

meh. My fight rewards are down too; on average a week or so ago I was getting quite a few 100% challenge bonuses. Now, the average challenge bonus is about 60%. I'm seeing about 20% less on my XP rewards.

>.<

I figure I'll contribute a few observations on the "overpoweredness" of the RoBF. It is a bit overwhelming.. until you reach about 300K PR, then its a bit meh. Other single minion teams of similar size are starting to treat me like a chew toy. While I likely don't play as much as most people, my score (much like Johnny's) hasn't really changed at all in about 2 weeks.

I'm not saying that it isn't broken, because it really is, I stalemate far more people than I should, etc. However, calling it "overpowered" is a bit off.

Not overpowered
You mean you can't own a tank team.
Just train evasion slap on a RoBF you do not even have to train HP

At least MM and FB have to delute their Xp even some of them use a RoBF and who can blame them, Free Evasion Free Damage.
Jon you don't need to nerf it just change it to Rune of Lameness.

Lol, can't own tank teams? Nah it's mage teams that kill me... Most of the tank teams I face around here can't get past the evasion; but some of the really big mage teams that sit around this score level are hitting me for far more damage than my tattoo can stand.

Thatanos is actually in sarcasm mode :P

I have sarcasm on 'ignore'. ;)

Hey JW. I'm wondering what percentage of exp do you use to train hp. I use just under 20%. I find it enough to tank 1 shot from an occasionally lucky archer and that seems to be optimal for me. I spend the rest of my exp evenly in amf and evasion. Maybe you can get your amf a bit bigger to take on bigger mage team? I do notice more and more people are using NSC and that's definitely bad news for our set up...

I've got my HP at a million, my evasion at a million and my AMF about 500k. So yeah, I could do some retraining. Dunno yet, I'm waiting to see whether or not I stick with this strat or go back to my comfort zone. Viva Le Tank!

Since tanks cannot touch you, why are your HP so high?

Lower your hp and boost your AMF to get their DD spells under the cap of the RBF, then you will take 0 damage per round while dishing about damage not subject to AMF and/or GA.

Nah, I'm decided on taking the slower path to the same result. I can pretty much leave HP alone for quite a long time now and plough everything into AMF and see where that takes me.

Just a question about how the evasion effect of the RoBF operates:

the wiki says that the RoBF grants evasion up to a third of its NW translated into DBs NW. But, it is silent on how this evasion gets applied.

Is the RoBF's evasion the Evasion kind of evasion where you have a defensive DX? Or, is it stacking with the DBs evasion which merely cancels the plus-to-hit and gives no defensive DX?

From what I've seen, the typical RoBF single minion strategy usually has Eva or AMF trained much higher than HP. Also, I always though the 1.2mil score zone was where everyone slowed down due to lack of 100% CB targets.

Since the tactics portion of the RoBF has been restated ad nauseum, I'll just say this: the RoBF is 'overpowered' because it reduces XP dilution to a minimum, while enabling single minions to tango with other teams in a different way. I personally would've thought that it would open up a whole bunch of targets, as I see that many people are using 4 minions, and those teams are the most affected by a single large Eva/AMF.

And, although I'm not speaking with any tangible examples at all, perhaps the amount of people above 1.2mil score hitting people with much larger relative MPRs has lessened as well?

"I'll just say this: the RoBF is 'overpowered' because it reduces XP dilution to a minimum, while enabling single minions to tango with other teams in a different way."

What I absolutly love and adore about the RoBF.

While hating it at the same time.

It's about time that single (or less) minion teams got above multi minion teams.

Got *something* above...

How do you have a less than single minion team? ;)

Bah... You know what I ment. Less than 4.

I think it's the next thing to fight for; a less than single minion team. Just buy your items and cast 'animate' and off go your VB and your ELB and CMLs to fight your battles. A bit like the Sorcerer's Apprentice and the mops and buckets.

;)

I can also safely say that halving my HP and pumping my AMF up to around a million level has made absolutely no difference to my fightlist.

meh.

"I personally would've thought that it would open up a whole bunch of targets, as I see that many people are using 4 minions, and those teams are the most affected by a single large Eva/AMF."


At lower levels yes, but at higher levels it wouldn't appear to be so. Most of the problem is The Twilight Zone of mage teams sitting around this score; they're all pretty huge and AMF doesn't dent them enough to help. They slaughter me.

Big Cats, a 1.6 million MPR mage team; currently sitting about 100k or so above me in score. I lose to that team - this is the AMF casting:

Charlie cast Antimagic Field on Tiger (1.00)
Charlie cast Antimagic Field on Panther (0.37)
Charlie cast Antimagic Field on Leopard (0.69)
Charlie cast Antimagic Field on Puma (1.00)


Fair play and all, that's a char of over twice my MPR. Means I'm probably going to have to double my AMF to shut that char down fully.

Lol, I have gained a fightlist member thanks to the raised AMF. But I lost somebody else at the same time thanks to the lower HP. Heh.

could i add that your fighting really high with almost no nw?

Like a Mage?

You could. What I'm really doing is making a rough (no science) comparison with past teams. My last team was retired at approx million MPR and was sitting in and around the top 30 standings from about 750k MPR. T'was a ToA tank team with the marvellous SoD.

That team used to rise in what felt like steps. Whereas this one feels like it's crawling up a slippery slope.

It hasn't been the ultimate win machine is what I'm saying; hell even UC was better than this!

That last team Johnnywas was only equipped with the SoD and some ex shot on top of belegs, ebs and a tattoo. So there was only a NW difference of about 27 million because of that one item. And like I said that char was in and around the top thirty for quite some time.

A difference of 27 million represents a percentage difference of 100% from your current NW.

That's a lot. Doesn't sound like much when you use absolute numbers, but for your team size, doubling NW is a slightly big deal, no?

Yeah, especially when that percentage is made up of SoD.......I'm so going back to being a tank! ;)

Go ahead then :) Be a tank and come back here to whine about RoBF hehe

lol, like I'd whine about something being overpowered ;)

hehe not necessary overpowered, I am just saying you will come back and whine :)

nope GL a mage actually needs NW and they can't fight twice there mpr. Thats me attacking attacking Red luu. Think ill survive?

Then attack someone you'll beat.

Or as this thread is mentioning in a round about way, admit that it's weapons, USD and the WA that allows people to fight high.

Mages don't *need* NW. It's useful to everyone, but Mages don't need it. That's why the WA doens't apply to them.

serialkiller's team "the force" also has a similar nw to jw's team. mage team doing almost exactly the same.

WA is also big enough that you can boost a weapon by a considerable amount and gain a lot more damage than natural growth. Without it touching your PR.

Which neither mages or RBF guys/girls can do.