My new Strategy (in General)

I am planning to use this build for a new char after my NUB runs out.

First Minion: Max UC, Small Protect
Enforcers Crossbow
Mage Shield/ Mithril Shield
Helm of Clearsight
Combat G
Amulet of Focus
Helms Gauntlets/ Elven Gloves
Elven Boots
Elven Cape
T-shirt

Second Minion: Max Giant Strength
Vorporal Blade
Mithril Shield
Cornuthaum
Elven Hauberk/ Mithril Cuirass
Chain Mail Leggings
Shadow Cloak
Tulkas' Gauntlets
Amulet of AC/ Amulet of Focus/ Amulet of Invisibility

Third Minion: Archery, Base Decay, Haste
Mageseeker
(Mithril Shield)
Cornuthaum
Elven Hauberk/ Mithril Cuirass
Chain Mail Leggings
Shadow Cloak
Belegs Gloves/ Noldorin Spellcasters
Amulet of AC/ Amulet of Focus

Fourth Minion: Max Abulative Shield
Cornathaum (Mithril Shield)
Rune of Solitude
Noldorin Spellcasters
Amulet of AC/ Amulet of Focus
(Chain Mail Leggings)

If something is in parenthesis then I'm not sure whether I want to equip it at all. Also I was planning add a small AMF to either the last minion or the third minion.

Basically i fight with the seeker and exbow during ranged rounds and UC and VB during melee. All the enchanters are designed to be semi tanks themselves except for the one with the tat.

Could I get some feedback on how you think this strategy would work or any suggestions on making it better?

Thanks

What's the purpose of having Noldorin Spellcasters on a character without a DD spell?

I think is was supposed to have a base decay

oops, yeah, the last minion is supposed to have a base decay on there.

You are essentially doing a 4T strategy using GS and Haste. Unfortunately, RoS is rather underwhelming and dispel magic will still give you trouble. I do not anticipate it to do too badly but frankly, a 4 archer setup is more effective with the 4T strat. Don't expect to hit evasion minion with that setup. If you are playing a casual character, by all mean go ahead. Don't expect to get very far in the competitive ranks though.

very very very very expensive strat .. I can't afford 1 tank let alone 4 of em. good luck though.

Interesting thing about GS and Haste:

They are added to your character post penalty. That means you can have as much armor penalty as you want and not compromise your dex. That means it's a pretty good idea to put a heavy tank in the back, train all hp. Put on as much AC as you can and give it shield and a 2 hander. Slap on xbow or sod for some extra penalty. You end up with a reasonably speedy tank with lots of ac.

That also means you can't get boosted from TSA however.

I would also have the RoS on the haste minion. You need to actually hit to do anything.

I'm with Ulord. You have diluted the Haste minion with Archery, while boosting HP...why? The DX minion is the one I would consider -most- important, whereas the GS/AS minions might could take some dilution....I'd say Archery on the GS guy, RoS on the Haste guy, and AS separate.

After all, if you hit them with an Exbow and an ELB/MsK, there will be no need for that much HP theoretically...

I also suggest splitting the UC minion some GA on there, if you're going to have all that AS-created HP.

I don't think this team can hit evasion minions unless you can cut down on your weapons, and just pour NW into them.

so dex would be the better choice to increase with the RoS? will it play that much of an effect to hit though?

Unless your weapon is +100, without enough DX, you aren't going to hit.

I'd say that's a somewhat important effect.

you're looking at 100 million NW on the weapons alone...

even if your weapon is +100, you won't hit the evasion minions that a lot of mature teams are using. Closing that defensive dex gap is the first step to having any shot of hitting really. You also have to keep up in term of PTH, which is very expensive on even one weapon. Hopefully you saved up a lot of money in your nub...

I still have another 6 weeks of nub and I'm planning on forging a bunch of the equips that I will need before it runs out, because I get the nub bonus to forging.

I think, that 100 million would be better to be shoved into a wall.

I don't think you should be discouraged from trying it out. I still recommend you to go for high dex, range focused team with one heavy tank. 4T teams don't have the best endurance so you need good damage fast. No extra hp does not give you endurance. Archers will still one shot you anyways without evasion of your own.

Leverage loans wherever you can as long as interest rate is reasonable. Loan big weapons long term if you can. Good luck and have fun. I seriously think it's a fun setup to try.

maybe a wall minion with the VB instead of UC?

I agree with three4ths. The problem is, nobody brags about having a 100M NW wall, rather than a 100M NW ELB or weapon. But when you can reduce 5/6 of the damage dealt to you through physical damage, it is definitely worth it: it will allow your tanks to be able to deal damage in the long run.

Problem with 100mil wall: every single penny of that 100mil goes into your PR. There is no weapon allowance to shield you. AC is not optimal for a growing character and should only be heavily invested once you hit 6/10 and PR no longer matters.

A rear wall is definitely a good idea though, especially without having to worry about penalty.

I see a few problems with your strat.

One is your UC will be too small in a four minion team to hit most of the evasions out there.

Two, there is no EC or AMF on your team. Without, EC you will not hit the evasion minions out there, hence, even if you kill the opponents killslots you will still stalemate. Without AMF you may die at the same time as the opponent.

Three, GS and haste are only going to be effective on two of your minions since the other two are unarmed and UC will be too small on a 4 minion team. Since GS and haste have a 50% effective skill level, it makes more sense to just train the str and dx on the two minions that have raged weapons.

I would think a more effective strat would be to train evasion on the first minion, train the ranged damage minions without GS and Haste and train your AS minion.

Or

Do a 2 minion team

Train one with archery and the mageseeker and the other with FB. Evasion will be less of an issue with a FB minion and you can still have your huge NW weapon.

Just some thoughts.

I don't think a Mage Tank is the way to go. I tried that as my first Character, with fireball, and the character was stuck in between not having enough defense and not having enough offense. If you do, though, I strongly recommend training evasion on the FB minion.

It's not what you learn that matters. It's about how much exp you concentrate. That's why having multiple sources of damage is very inefficient, particularly if you train each separately. A multiple minion team would only work if group enchantment is used because that provides a large efficiency gain over training stats for individual minion. That being said, you still can't hope to hit the big evasions without a usd grade weapon. This is not the fault of this setup, but the overpoweredness of evasion.

Also, keep in mind when giving suggestions to pay respect to what the OP wants to do. You can always suggest sfbm with dispel magic and it'll be effective. But guess what, it has no relation with what the op wants. I always followed this principle while mentoring, to not intrude and comment on the type of strategy my mentee wants to use while optimizing what ideas he has.

Furthermore, UC at 25% of total team exp is not particularly small. Think about single minion or two minion UCs. With the need for AMF for the former and the dispersion of exp in the latter, you can hardly put in 25% of total exp into UC. None the less, UC is a weak skill. But it also doesn't require cb2 investment to hit a lot.

It looks like the UC will be monstrous, possibly higher than the efficiency of evasion on RoBF, but will the damage still be significant?

No, UC cannot compare to the efficacy of evasion. A evasion wall instead of the UC minion with a big SoD is going to be more effective than the UC setup because of the massive defensive dex. UC damage is pretty crap overall and it's highly unlikely that such a fragile team would stand long enough to hit melee rounds. Keep in mind vast majority of the teams out there are range focused.

well, I am planning on using a RoE for the first several weeks on the UC minion to increase it some. So it would be a little more than 25%

If your goal is to run a successful NCB then you will need to rethink your strat. Anyone that tells you different is just setting you up to have a team that fizzles out around 700k PR. If your goal is to run this strat no matter what then there is little use to make a post like this.

UC is a huge point sink. It is not effective. If you are going to run UC then it is best to only run UC and do what you can to make sure that minion makes it to melee rounds. With the UC minion first, it is unlikely he will make it that far.

Running a duel ranged team will get very expensive. I tried it and about 650k PR I could no longer keep up. At that point I had to decide to either spend US $ on CB $ or retrain and use DD spells.

At some point you will have to make that decision if you run a archer team. Look at your minion now that has the RoBF and ask yourself what would it take to hit. Can you afford the amount of money it will take? There are more RoBF teams out there and each of them will be a pain in your side.

If you really want advice, trust me on this, you will not hit the big evasions without EC, and without a mageshield or amf mages will destroy you.

Please do not waste a lot of money and forging time on a strat that will bottom out much sooner then--I would imagine--you would like.

There are many better cheaper strats out there.

What about if instead of archery and a seeker, I train AMF there. That way i take off a weapon and still am targeting mages with that minion.

If you own a mageseeker and it is a decent size that is a huge asset. Archery and a seeker is a great combo to build around. I would make a few simple suggestion.

Focus on either ranged damage or melee damage.

If you use ranged physical damage EC will be a necessity at some point.

Keep only 2 kill slots. on a four minion team use the other 3 (2 if you use a ROE) for support.

Most important, what a lot of people miss, you can mix damage types. One DD and one archer is ok. a MM minion and a FF tat will be good together. Many people want to run a team where all of the damage is the same. It is not necessary.

The above are not rules to success. They are, however, the most helpful general advice I think anyone can receive in this game.

Thanks for your time.

somehow, telling him to just go a mage strat doesn't seem to help him much with this one.

This guy seems to bent on this strat, no matter how much i talk to him. Maybe some insight on how he could maximize it would be the best at this point.

Remember, this game is to have fun, and knowing Nem, he's a kinda of guy that likes to go against the grain ^^

I want to help him out, even if I don't agree with it, hopefully he'll surprise us xD

I think we should encourage fresh thinking for new players anyways. It's not wrong to try a new tactic. How can anyone get ahead if they just use what the vets already use for ages?

I am one to disagree with mixed damage teams. The main issue is exp dispersion. CB awards specialization and penalizes exp spread. Using two damage type makes it impossible to specialize your team and make you overall weaker. Remember it's a game of your PR vs. your opponents' score. You either maximize the score you can hit (very hard and tend to plateau once you hit the 1mi mpr range) or minimize the amount of equipment needed. That's why minimizing item need is the best way to grow a character. This is a direct consequence of the current game dynamic. I'd rather hit 1.7mil score with 1mil PR than 2mil score w/ 1.5mil PR. So having more than one damage source means you might need double the equipment PR. (NSC for mages are PR heavy, so is a good TSA if you use that on the tank).

Tatts are not optimized for mixed damage type usage neither. RoBF demands some AMF usage and very often evasion. The familiars tend to kill themselves without a lot of AS to back them up. ToA only serves tanks. I suppose ToE would be reasonable in a mixed team, but you must have other means of damage reduction, which may disperse your exp further. RoS is only viable for both if you use it on AS. Then you probably want to use GA with that, dispersing more exp. (HP alone is very poor defensively). In short, mixed teams violate the spirit of specialization and no top team uses a mixed strategy. (unless you count RoBF + something).

I don't think that HP alone is a weak defence, it's about how you use the HP that matters. Just look at Little_Devil.

A good example of two damages sources that are different is Death Prophet. Death Prophet fights at a very appropriate score for his PR. I am sure it is not the best, but it is certainly not the worst either.

I do not know what the end goal for the NCB you are planning is. If you are shooting for 1 mil MPR, then it probably does not matter to much what strat you use. If you are aiming for over 2 mil MPR, then you had better find the best strat out there for leveling.

If you are against a mage that is fine.

Just think about what it takes to hit evasion and create a weapon that can do it. Ultimately it is your time an money. What you want to get out of this character will define what you should put into it. Enjoy.

I've seen a lot of teams with more than one damage dealer. Where tanks are concerned if you have more than one small tank on your team, then a team with ONE BIG TANK will wipe the floor with you. Focus your damage into one minion, with the others being there simply to help make that minion bigger and you will be far more effective.

Little Devil uses heavy ac + ToE to back up those HP of his. Either that or you turn your huge HP into a weapon via huge GA, ie Novice. Just having a large AS and hoping to survive is not practical because of the incredible amount of pounding you'll take unprotected.