RoBF NW--a telling tale (in General)

As it stands right now the RoBF has the highest average NW, and has been a tat for the shortest period of time. I guess that tells us that many people have re-inked preexisting tats to the RoBF. I wonder why people would do that? I wonder if the tat will ever be adjusted inline with other tats.

On a side similar note I have noticed that wall armor is dropping in price and not selling nearly as well. I wonder if it is because the RoBF is a more effective and easier way to run a minion that can mitigate damage. I am guessing that wall armor will continue to lose value until the RoBF is adjusted. A shame that some of the highest NW gear in the game is becoming obsolete because of a tat.

Oh, well little more can be typed that has not been typed already about the RoBF. I guess I just wonder if all of the lines of text will continue to fall on blind eyes.

Thanks for your time, and maybe I should just join the masses and re-ink too.

The RBF may have the highest average NW, but it's average is only a million more than the ToE and ToA. And that also doesn't tell you that the biggest tattoo in the game is currently an RBF, which completely skews the figures.

I ran an RBF strat with this minion, and switching to a ToA tank made - guess what - no difference to how high or how successfully I could fight. What I did keep consistent between both strats was EVASION. That's the skill that makes the RBF so successful. The DD resistance helps, but can be achieved by so many other ways that it's not the most important part of the strat. It's the ability to pump evasion. But the ToA lets you do that too. Don't hear too many people complaining about the ToA lately...

Does the word fad ring a bell? RoBF has plenty of weaknesses and I thought the mass should learn them by now. CoC +NSC = dead RoBF. I've seen a number of teams at my score range taking advantage of RoBF's weakness and making a mint. Perhaps, it is time for people to adapt their strategies to counter their foes. All too often, people are reluctant to get out of their comfort zone and adapt to their situation. Then complain about things being overpowered because it trounces their never changing setup. Specialization is the name of the game. If you can't beat RoBF, then maybe you can farm people who can.

It's also funny that you brought up wall gears. Wall gear is one of the best way to counter ROBF teams and exploit their lack of damage capacity. Perhaps it is time for you to stock up on wall gear and kick some RoBF bottoms?

JW is spot on about the potency of evasion, a necessary evil due to the outrageous damage bows can do. Any strategy that exploits evasion will have great success.

Who is complaining, i was stating a fact about the NW and offering an opinion about armor prices.

I mentioned in my post that some people are uncomfortable to get out of their comfort zone and complain when they get behind the tide. I did not say you are complaining :).

I believe JW offered some explanation as to why RoBF has the highest average networth. I'll elaborate: RoBF is a fad. It is build up to be this ultimate killer strategy and people are trying it out now that it hasn't been nerfed all through December. Also, the average is skewed as JW pointed. The biggest tatt in the game is using RoBF, due to the threshold nature of the RoBF, this is working very well. Also, there are far less RoBF out there than ToA and ToE, meaning there must be a lot more unused ToA and ToE out there, further skewing the number.

Your point about armor prices is also skewed. Lately, prices of all goods have been plunging. Have you tried selling an Elbow as of late? How about mage gear? How about tattoos? Everything has falling prices and a lot of supply surplus. I guess you can try to prove that the overall price glut is due to RoBF users not needing these items, but I see EB prices plunging as well.

I think it is evasion that is the problem. Evasion's minus to hit should not eat into the dex's bonus to hit. Folks are using the RoBF + Evasion to be just plain impossible to hit at relatively low PR. I've been over this before but I'll restate it briefly.


Say a minion's evasion gives a -200 to hit (eiither from the skill or DBs) and the minion has a 1M defensive dex. He is attacked by someone with a +50 weapon and a 2M dex. The evasion should totally cancel the +50, but not affect the 2:1 dex advantage still leaving the attacker with multiple hits.

"On a side similar note I have noticed that wall armor is dropping in price and not selling nearly as well. I wonder if it is because the RoBF is a more effective and easier way to run a minion that can mitigate damage. I am guessing that wall armor will continue to lose value until the RoBF is adjusted. A shame that some of the highest NW gear in the game is becoming obsolete because of a tat."

This happens in cycles... Prices fall, they get cheap, cheapskates learn to utilize them well. Everyone sees they own, everyone wants to buy, prices rise. Other competing items have a fall in prices, cheapskates will learn to utilize them. Everyone will see that that owns, everyone will want to buy, prices will rise. Continue this to eternity, and we have an economy forever.

Let wall gear get cheaper. Hell, buy some while its cheap. then let those who bought it to use put it to good use. It will inspire more sales, and higher prices.

Nothing can replace the damage mitigation of a 400+ AC minion, *especially* when backed by a ToE. Nothing can replace the stats gained by an elven set, nothing can replace the abilities afforded by Corns, NSs, HoCs and TSAs. So on and so forth, you get the picture. It just depends on what's popular at the time.

miteke, that would turn physical ranged offense back unstoppable force, at least with the damage output possible by archers and explosive shot. Letting an archer hit even once usually means a dead target -- those massive blows can mince almost any target with one hit, much less two.

Add onto that the fact that explosive shot is commonplace now, so someone with a huge SoD could kill the entire opposing team in one round. It would just come down to tank vs. tank of you nerfed Evasion's defensive dexterity without concomitantly reducing the massive damage output available to ranged tanks.

I agree with Mit Sute. Evasion should no longer need to double-dip.

Now it grants Defensive Dexterity, no form of Evasional -PTH (from the Skill, DBs or other items) should be able to lower the Dex based cth.

-Pth reduces item +PTH, and if you want to cut into a Tanks offensive Dexterity based CTH, train the Evaison skill.

If the worry is about Natural Dex + ToA Dex outstripping Evasions defensive Dex, there's always the AoF. ;)

The -pth cutting into cth was introduced before Evasion gave defensive Dexterity. Now it does, the double dipping is too much.

I disagree. With the massive archery blows and now plentiful explosive shot, the binary nature of ranged fighting is at a zenith. Don't get me wrong -- I can't stand that. I hate aspects of the game which are on/off like that.

But as long as that is the game mechanic that Jonathan wants in ranged, evasion needs to be as massive as the offense it dodges.

If you are saying that you want me to train a high Evasion AND invest in gear like DBs, then I agree with you. That would be a suitable offset. But as Evasion and DBs currently stack, that wouldn't work either. A team like mine would simply start getting hit, and two explosive shot later from a large SoD = death to the whole team.

How would you combat that if Evasion were nerfed?

There certainly is a problem with evasion.

It is multifold.

To start, evasion was made uber since missile damage, especially the ELB does too much damage, especially when combined with Beleg's.
Therefore something needed to be done to counter it--evasion.

Now evasion gives defensive dex AND a minus PTH. Ok, it is a counter to missile damage, however with the AOF you get insanely high evasions compared to dexterities out there. Elven gear and TOA's do give/boost dex, however the AOF gives 3% per plus, which on an evasion minion is an insane amount. Now we're back to the binary missile damage. You hit he dies, you miss he lives.

Now, evasion minions can train only evasion and HP, where tanks need to train Str/Dex/HP. Therefore their evasion also becomes higher, boosted much higher.

Now in missile rounds not only is the defensive dexterity mulitplied, but the minus PTH is multiplied. IE Black Sophist has about 5,088,000/2,800,000 (208) evasion after items. Nobody in the game will ever have that high a dexterity and only a few have that high a PTH including TOA tanks.

Multiply that in ranged and even the last round it becomes 6,767,000 (277). Impossible to hit without spending a lot of CB2 on significantly upgraded ammo.

One solution is to make the AOF not boost evasion and give tanks and evasion minions the same items to help. The TOA will help tanks a bit more, however tanks need to put xp into strength so it is like a wash or close to bearable.

Another is to not multiple the minus PTH directly but have the new minus PTH based upon the new evasion level. I always thought this was the case but Jon confirmed it is the directly multiplication method.

Either way, something has to be done with evasion and/or missile damage to make the game less binary and more equable for everyone.

My viewpoint might be a bit biased, but I think that ranged damage without Beleg's is perfectly fine. 1M damage from 1.25M ST and 6x3750 against unarmored targets? In my opinion, if there I put 29.2M in the x of a weapon it should be able to deliver that. Against armored targets it can drop as low as 100k-300k. For a weapon that gets at most four rounds to strike (discounting not using a melee weapon and suffering the crippling DX/PtH penalties), I fail to see why this is an absurd amount of damage.

Well then perhaps melee damage should be ramped up.

I do about 1.6M with my x12012 MH vs unarmed targets in melee rounds.

A far more expensive item then your x3750 elb.

No argument here, melee damage isn't exactly known to be spectacular. Keep in mind, however, that 1) you do have a skill to boost damage, and 2) you have 21-25 rounds to use it.

Heh Sute, I'm not claiming that the change to Evasion would be the single balance equaliser. As you have said, there would need to be a multitude of changes tog et the balance right.

But, Evasion should change. double dipping is too good for it.

Evasion needs to be toned down. So does Ranged Damage.

I'd add in an anti Ranged damage Power Shield, for one. ;)

JS

You have belegs which are xp free while melee tanks have to use Bloodlust, thereby being vulnerable to specialty xbows.

Yes, archers are as well but those weapons have penalties in missile and you get to kill a couple minions (in most cases) before you get hit, even more with DB's.

Also, who cares if I get 60 rounds of melee combat when my character is dead in 4 by archers doing 5M damage a hit? And if not dead, my character is severely crippled.

I'd rather have ranged physical toned down than melee toned up.

I agree completely Sut,

I would like to see Ranged toned down and evasion as well.

Turn em down, turn em down; even though I'm running a ranged based evasion tank. Turning down ranged damage lets you knock evasion down. Evasion is the main reason the RBF works so well for all those single minions: if you can evade huge amounts of NW it can work wonders in letting you climb the score ladder....certainly doesn't mean I think the RBF is overpowered....

But evasion....thanks to high ranged damage....is.....a bit overpowered.....


There: I said it.....;)

You have belegs which are xp free while melee tanks have to use Bloodlust, thereby being vulnerable to specialty xbows.

Which is why I said earlier, Beleg's are overpowered. Bows basically aren't worth using without archery anyways, so they're hardly XP-free.

Actually, that was only implied. My bad.

eliminating the minus to dex based hit of dbs would be a cold blooded stab in the heart of everyone using a familiar

QBJohnnyWas, 1:50 PM EST [collapse]
"Don't hear too many people complaining about the ToA lately..."

Thats because the ToA was already nerfed due to the complaints of it being overpowered. I feel the Toa needs to go back to where it was... then Toa tanks will have more of a chance vs the Huge evasion out there.

What we need are more pure mage teams to punish the evasion users

Working on that one Novice :)

I think the mechanic needs to remain in place that if pth reduction goes above your pth then is eats into dex based cth. The change needs to come in both a reduction to ranged damage as well as a reduction to the -pth/def dex that evasion grants.

I only have 11 mil exp in my evasion (one of my lowest trained stats) and already have an effect of 103. Thats not counting the multiplication in the ranged rounds. Way too powerful, especially when combined with a 67 mil NW pair of DB.

"miteke, that would turn physical ranged offense back unstoppable force, at least with the damage output possible by archers and explosive shot. Letting an archer hit even once usually means a dead target -- those massive blows can mince almost any target with one hit, much less two. "

The problem is you can shut down a 40M exp minion with a (I'm guessing here) 10M experience defender. Evasion just gives too much bang for the buck. Compare to AMF which is closer to a 1/1 ratio. Find a better way to deal with Archery.

I'll deal with Archery just fine provided I am given a comparable offense. With magic, that isn't possible. So that's not a balanced choice. The only way to fight a huge tank (without Evasion) is with another huge tank. That's not choice.

And you have a good point -- physical damage is too controlled, front to back. MM was made to fire from the back, what about a physical counterpart? A way to evade the evasion, so to speak? You are correct in that s single, front minion can negate a whole tank with evasion or huge DBs. So give tanks a choice to get around that. They will still have trouble with the evasion minion itself, but at least Evasion won't provide an umbrella for the whole team... I just thought of that, and it's late, but is there a workable idea there? Mix up physical damage a bit from the offensive side?

I'm wondering about this and I don't know if this is correct of not, but wouldn't a 400ac + toe wall also be a decent counter for archery?

Now the reason why such a strategy is not popular is because it incurs huge PR increase because of the high nw required. Using that strategy during the growing phase of an ncb may eat into the CB a lot, especially as you approach the dead zone. But it should be very viable in the upper echelon of the game.

5% of 6 mil is still a good amount of damage (300k). At 4-5 hits a round on a heavy AC wall, you would be lucky to get 3 rounds out of it.

I remember back when I first started Novice was having the same problem with critical Fumble, the damage just killed his wall much too quickly (and Nymandus with the VB XD).

Who actually does 6mil damage -_-... Mikel? 300k*3 a round would be pretty painful I agree... evasion is just.. easier heh.

QBsutekh137, 12:19 AM EST
"And you have a good point -- physical damage is too controlled, front to back. MM was made to fire from the back, what about a physical counterpart?"

There is a tank counterpart... its called Sod with ES... unless you have the Evasion minion in front avoiding all damage, all it would take is one shot to any non protected minion to deal massive damage to the rest.

Don't forget the RoBF is now the easy and simple strat, besides it doesn't require a huge amount of NW to back the tat up. So that is logical?

Same is true for sfbm. Due to the prevalence of robf, sfbm users can earn high CB and use a RoE at the same time. There is no better way to grow an ncb than sfbm. SFBM also costs less than a proper RoBF strategy because AoF and EB are quite expensive, so is instaing up a tattoo. RoE, NSC and maybe DB if you really want to bother are all you need on an SFBM. If anything, RoBF's simplicity makes it boring to play, hence detract form its imbaness.

Sute, Archers have that with the Mageseeker and STR/DEX seeking Xbows. Maybe some kind of 'seeking' Melee weapons would help?

Nov;

"eliminating the minus to dex based hit of dbs would be a cold blooded stab in the heart of everyone using a familiar"

The JKF has it's own Dex, and Evasion. The Hal has its own Dex. The other three are Mages, and you could always Junction an AoI on them.

"If anything, RoBF's simplicity makes it boring to play"

So very true; i'd gladly love to switch over to a CoC-ToE strat if only i can afford the high NW DBs and Mage Wall stuff to compensate for the AMF and Evasion that'll become the CoC.

i have mentioned it in other robf threads but will throw it in here as well for completions sake. the robf has one other big negative not mentioned in this thread and that is the ability to swap out with a roe and keep up with the top, or for a boost to get to that next regen rate without retraining and losing mpr.

in my mind this is a huge downside. if we add more negatives to the robf i fear it may go back to having few users again. furthermore, in the last month without a feared robf nerf the numbers as i have been tracking them have only gone up by 15 robf users, hardly the feared mass exodus. after change month those numbers may increase more, but we will just have to wait and see.

It looks to me like most agree that the problem is not RoBF but archery damage and evasion. I am running a ToA archery team and doing very well with it. However, I am starting to run into a problem with almost everyone above me having massive evasion. Its so bad that I retrained to add a CoC minion just to add a few to my fightlist. I am also spending a bunch on defensive ammo to try to counter the mass farming from evaders. There is no other ability that totally shuts down one type of minion thus limiting the strategic variety of the game.

I support any change that would balance archery/evasion. Go ahead and cut my damage way back just let me hit something once in a while. Maybe a fix that makes evasion reduce only ranged damage but not totally evade as much. this would still make it a viable counter but would make it more like AMF where relative level is more apparent. Instead of totally evading every blow or dieing in one hit.

As for the RoBF I think the ToA and ToE are way better tats. Seeing the popularity of the RoBF does not change my opinion on that at all.

Broke]Ulord[NK], 5:47 AM EST "Same is true for sfbm. Due to the prevalence of robf, sfbm users can earn high CB and use a RoE at the same time. There is no better way to grow an ncb than sfbm. SFBM also costs less than a proper RoBF strategy because AoF and EB are quite expensive, so is instaing up a tattoo. RoE, NSC and maybe DB if you really want to bother are all you need on an SFBM. If anything, RoBF's simplicity makes it boring to play, hence detract form its imbaness."

DB's are worthless against archers unless you still have level 100 evasion...cause every archer in the "dead zone" has a huge bow that blows right through you.... i only have 850k hp...but when they are hitting 1.4m a round...and TRIPLE hitting.... well then i dont see the point... sure the only way to combat this is evasion...but if they do hit...even once, im dead :(

You are right HC. Evasion hyper boosted with gear is probably still the best way to go on sfbm. Though I'd be a little twitchy about using AoF. 30% to amf sounds like pain. You are not gonna use EG as your dd needs some bosting.

It's just odd that despite how overpowered the RoBF is Ranger's massive one can't keep my MUCH smaller familiar from destroying his without resorting to using his MsK.

I can beat you with an RoBF Novice. No elb, just an MH, and no real retraining done.

Of course that is using only a total of 8 items on Koy to begin with.

But if Cloudscape is the last minion left, he takes 1.5M a round from the IF.

But, please remember my AMF is only 500k, far far too low for my MPR. The MSB is the reason I have a lower AMF.

If there were no seeker or MSB, I would have Cloudscape as almost entirely AMF and easily be able to have my RBF absorb/defect all the IF's damage.

Mikel: who do you lose with the RoBF?

aside from Clan mates that I didn't test, only NWO.