Another Evasion and RoBF thread! (in General)

*Steps on soapbox*

Disclaimer. If you don't want to read someone whine and complain then you should
probably go to another thread.

TheOne Score / PR / MPR: 1,718,431 / 935,272 / 685,917

Net Worth: $33,019,032


Sox Jr Score / PR / MPR: 2,009,906 / 2,401,179 / 1,701,653

Net Worth: $138,128,460 of which Bow of the Occult Slayer [5x2250] (+150) 50,813,340
A Tattoo of Augmentation lvl 2,987,009 54,171,121

To lose to this person because he can put all his exp into evasion is completely
wrong. Anyone that thinks that this is right can't honestly argue this point
and hold a straight face. I just got my weapon to over 50 mil nw and my
totol PTH is in the 180 something range, but his char at 685k mpr has a 187 effect
I only know this because he sent it to me in a chat-mail. Yes I understand that his
strat is set up to blow me away, but it shouldn't be able to happen at this low
a lvl. I am almost 3x his pr and 2 1/2 times his mpr. It's wrong. Something needs
to be done. I had to put a stack of arrows on at +30 to stop from losing. I doubt I
need the whole +30 anymore, but that's what I had on me when my weapon was +111 to stop
this kind of thing. Sorry for the whiney post, but this kind of thing can make a person
want to quit playing. What is the point? Really if this is how it's meant to be
then I need to get rid of archery and heck with the extra bonus I get from that, because
evasion is a necessity. At this rate everyone will just stalemate once we get our evasions
high enough.

*Steps off soapbox*

we won't stalemate... highest RoBF will win :P

1st mageseekers have a 90% penalty... im sure everyone knows
2nd ROBF should do 0 damage (please jon make it)
3rd you could use a SF instead of a TOA and blow him away...(like digital angel)
4th adapt?
5th can someone please put some math on the table?

MsK has a 10% penalty :P 90% is its effective CTH

i believe jon stated it was TOTAL CTH ... so if he gets 150 from the bow another 5 from arrows and say 50 from TOA and 25 from dex CTH = 230 x 0.9 = 207 CTH ?

4mill dex vs 2mill dex 25 CTH i believe

maybe?

3rd you could use a SF instead of a TOA and blow him away...(like digital angel)
4th adapt?

I'm going to bed, but had to talk about these 2. I am not going to switch tats to combat someone that shouldnt' beat me anyway. That and I would lose a lot of high end people I fight right now, to add someone to my list I wouldn't fight for a long time anyway. No matter if I could beat them.

Now on to the last part... I have said in chat and I'll say again. I shouldn't have to adapt to a person this far below me. There is no way I should have to fix stuff up to beat a person at less than 700k mpr. I did what I figured would be needed. That was add 20 mil NW to the bow and get the + from 111 to 150 .. but obviously a 700k mpr char should be able to totally make a 1.7 mil mpr char with over 130 mil nw compared to their 30 mil nw ... useless.. if that's the way the game is intended then I will adapt, but you cant tell me that's how it's supposed to be.

Unfortunately Sox, evasion is simply an extreme version of how the game works.

TheOne beats you because of evasion. Sure. But during battles your char is not actually 1.7 million MPR. In that particular battle your minion is simply HP and Protection, so probably about a quarter of the size. So it's no wonder that your char gets beaten.

A fight in CB isn't simply about damage (although for most tanks it can be), it's about reducing the size of your opponent's MPR. And lots of things factor into that.


When your char(tank) faces an AMF, that AMF is wasted XP, which means it doesn't exist anymore. So the opposition is smaller during a battle than their trained MPR.

And that's what evasion does to you, except it reduces your tattoo to nothing, your bow to nothing and your ST/Dex to nothing. Add to that, your DM is wasted in that fight too.

As I said, what you're actually facing is intrinsic game mechanics. Except that evasion is pretty damn powerful. But so is the ranged damage it's designed to avoid.

btw...thanks for letting me know how much PTH my char has to avoid....;)

PS: I do understand how you feel. But the basic question we're facing is "should it be possible to focus XP exclusively into one stat?"

And that is something that affects everybody. For example, Ranger's char is hugely successful against tanks. Not just because his char is bigger than everybody elses, but because he has a huge chunk of XP focused into EC.

Most tanks simply have no chance against that too. So is that wrong as well?

From WIKI: a level 1.5 million Evasion has an effect of 131
(It makes 18 mil trained EXP)
From WIKI: Elven Long Bow +131 | $29,495,303
Let say I have 1,5 mil DEX and +131 ELB
You have 20 DEX and 131 Evasion + $29,5 mil worth AoF,EB,EG (do not know, how much they boost your Evasion)
Have I any chance to hit ????

I agree Sox, completely.

You should not have to adapt to beat someone with 1/3rd your MPR.

He should not have enough xp to be in the same league as you. Your xp is not wasted vs him as others suggest.

"And that is something that affects everybody. For example, Ranger's char is hugely successful against tanks. Not just because his char is bigger than everybody elses, but because he has a huge chunk of XP focused into EC.

Most tanks simply have no chance against that too. So is that wrong as well?"

It would be if at 1/3-1/2 someone MPR my EC would take out their main tank. But as we both know, my EC has over 80M xp into it and my MPR allows me to have a massive EC and a nice tank as well.

EC is a spell that needs real massive xp behind it to work. If you take the character Soxjr is losing to and convert his evasion into EC, see how well then he does vs Sox. Nuff said on that subject.

Arguments about evasion and RBFs aside, the biggest misconception of the game is that MPR and NW are fixed and concrete. When in fact they change from battle to battle depending on who you face.

So (and I repeat) a big evasion against Sox reduces his tank to nothing but HP, DM and Protection. Strength, dex, ToA, weapons aren't there in that battle. And because there are no enchantments to dispel as such, DM vanishes too. So, how much MPR is left when you only have HP and Protection? Probably less than the much smaller evasion minion. This is a basic fact of how the game works.

That is the root of the problem JW.

Someone with 1/3rd his MPR should not be able to completely neutralize a single minion tank. Especially with a TOA and +150 ELB.

I need a massive MPR advantage to use EC to do almost the same thing.

The discussion is whether a character with 1/3rd his xp should be able to neutralize a TOA tank AND (key word) be able to have an attack tough enough to kill him.

Tell me any other strategy that at 1/3rd someone MPR you can stalemate much less beat them. Even if someone put all their xp into AMF or EC, they would be creamed by someone 3x their MPR set up as Soxjr is.

That is complete garbage from where I stand.

All archers have a weakness, and the weakness is evasion.
He put all his exp into evasion and only 10k of HP.
Rock paper scissors,
He has more evasion then I have at my mpr, so I really don't see a problem in the evasion part. The only real problem is that he is able to focus is exp into one stat.
Then change your strat from an single archer to a single mage, Ill bet you can kill him in one round then.

Should smaller characters not be able to beat larger chars then? Is that really what we're saying here?

I am inclined to agree with ranger.
Paper Scissor Rock only works for minions with similar XP.
say evasion get a boost and a NUB on first day can get say effect of 1 and stop(and RoBF get a boost to allow a kill) someone the size of ranger. although any other strategy at same level beats him, so its ranger>other strategy>evasion>ranger?
considered ranger spent years playing and the new "evasion" NUB spends 20 second. it is just not fair.
With the current level of evasion, the same problem exist, although on a smaller scale. If beating someone 3x your "raw" MPR is fair, what is the strategy that beats evasion/Robf with 1/3 MPR?

Considering the size of TheOne's evasion, I'm not surprised that I can't get past the evasion. But:

The battle ended in stalemate after 25 rounds of combat


is the result of my fight against the same char. The tattoo doesn't get past my ToE minion because the damage is too low.

Evasion is one thing, but the RBF is defeatable and if not that, then at the least avoidable if you start setting up some kind of damage reduction.

yes, you are twice that guy's size and only manage to stalemate. So someone at my size have no chance of hitting/surviving against a RoBF at a lesser MPR?

It isn't the RBF. The evasion is (187) and I don't have a weapon of over +187, so I'm not going to hit that. .

Yes the RBF in this case allows that to be so big, but if you are using evasion and going after tanks you don't actually need HP. I'm using evasion, and against people of nearly twice my size I take ZERO damage. I could do without HP on my tank in those battles and boost evasion even further, allowing me to take on people even bigger.

so basically with evasion, you don't need anything else to beat tank. while if you use EC, you still need good HP/Prot etc to survive the hit. and you say evasion is not broken even if it is the *only* skill that allows you hitting someone twice your size?

Rightly or wrongly it is the only leveller we have against the large NW weapons that are accumulating. It's not only USD that creates big weapons either, the duration of CB allows very big weapons.

Take away evasion's power and you create an even better atmosphere for NW and physical damage to dominate.

I agree with Johnny. It is like I am complaining against character with 200k MM and NO HP who can beat me.

I perceive that USD/big weapon problem. but having evasion as it is has a lot of splash damage. It destroy tanks as a whole. If evasion is designed to counter USD/big weapon, then maybe it should do just that and doesn't harm anything else.

The other "problem" raised by soxjr is that RoBF allows massive evasion. Does SFBM beat someone 3x their MPR? not likely. but this problem has been heavily documented in forums already and not going to waste words.

but DOES a MM mage with 200k MM only beat your RoBF? I am sure it is big enough to stop the damage. RoBF does have a reduce magic effect.

So after 1 year of playing CB2, you saved enough to buy an average size ELB and scream :"All the mages are belong to me" ? I don't like the evasion/rbf nor i care, i just copy "the Fallen". But this works the same as SMFB beat a CoC mage 3 times his mpr. Sadly but true that evasion is the only thing that can hold of tank at the moment.

i am sure it's said elsewhere that 20HP , 300k FB can kill me , I said 200k MM due to the fact that MM> FB. my RBF is quite small. now do you want to run a mage with 20HP to hunt me? that's up to you.

I'll go on my soapbox then.


Of course he can beat you. He's almost entirety Evasion. That much MPR into Evasion easily will beat many weapons, and that's fine....


The problem is, there should not be a character that can survive with almost 100% Evasion trained. There's no offense, so it shouldn't even be a possibility! But that's where the RoBF comes in. Maybe you could use GA against it...but nope, RoBF damage is immune to that.

Fact is, RoBF damage is screwy right now. It is high enough to win a battle on it, and that lets people concentrate EXP in a way never seen before. If it were lowered to a reasonable level - far below what it is now - you would have no problems with it, because people couldn't kill on its damage ALONE, and therefore could not concentrate EXP the same way as now.

I am sure you was not there when amazing single minion character "I Win " has nothing but HP / AMF / GA, and upset a lot of mages.

well i did say get rid of ROBF damage :)

"I am sure you was not there when amazing single minion character "I Win " has nothing but HP / AMF / GA, and upset a lot of mages."

That minion had to invest in 3 things, not just one (evasion+RoBF Tattoo) to win.

the truly ironic part is that when i was a single minion mm mage and someone like freed came along with massive nw and could beat me at around those same levels, the consensus was "if he put that much money into the game then he should beat you!"

when others did it because of specialized strats the consensus was "well any specialized strat by design will beat a generalized strat."

how much of this is due to single minions and the lack of additional kill slots just being at a severe disadvantage in cb2? how much of it has to do with specializing? how much of it has to do with people who use usd wanting that to be the only thing in the game without a counter? i truly do not know but if we are going to make broad sweeping statements to the effect that no lower mpr char should beat a higher mpr character, especially at a certain variance, then it needs to encompass all factors and not just the ones that piss the tanks off!

"I agree with Johnny. It is like I am complaining against character with 200k MM and NO HP who can beat me."

Considering that you have 10k HP trained, it's not comparable. I could do 10k damage in a single hit if I had a staff sling and were using balls of poop as ammo... assuming I could land a hit. 10k HP is 120k xp. I make more than that in one set of 160 BA. Considering how little effort you seem to be putting into your HP, it's not at all wrong that someone who puts 2.4 mil XP into their MM would beat you. Especially because you can't be bothered to train anything that helps beat mages (such as AMF).

Think about it: How much XP is trained into your Evasion, vs the amount of xp you're rendering without effect on Soxjr, just in terms of the DX you negate? Not to mention the fact that PTH upgrades are designed to help grant a hit. If their entire purpose is negated, why even have an accuracy enchantment at all?

Another thought, to go along with the "what other strat can do this kind of thing?" issue that has been raised:
Let's say I took a Mage, trained 10k HP, and put all of my XP into FB or MM, all the way up to 700k MPR. Let's also say I equipped a ToE at my max tat level, along with whatever AC-granting gear I could manage, to provide equivalent protection to that given by the (non-maxed) RoBF that people like YOU and lostling use. Would that 10k HP mage be able to beat people at, say, 2 mil PR? Maybe one person, who doesn't have a ranged weapon nor train AMF. But the FB, trained up to whatever ungodly level that YOU's Evasion/defensive DX is at, would not be all-consuming.

The reason that this example wouldn't work is because the mage has to put on equipment for defense, and train a spell for offense. If it wants Evasion, it would have to train that separately. People like TheOne and TheFallen put on an RoBF, and they already have BOTH offense and defense in one nice, cheap, self-upgrading package, without spending a single point of XP. They have nothing to put XP into except Evasion, unless they want to specialize to beat mages that can do 10k damage over 4 rounds.

OB, I personally don't think that RoBF damage is outrageously high. It could be lowered back to what it was before it got the 20% boost that came along with all the rest of what made it ultimate, but I don't think it deserves too much of a lowering of damage. After all, 25 rounds is a long time. If the RoBF is designed to not be able to do enough damage over 21 rounds (minimum) to kill anyone at the same level who trains things besides HP, that's a very small amount. I, for example, have about 700k HP right now. I *shouldn't* be beaten by YOU, either. For him not to kill me over 21 (or 22) rounds, his RoBF would have to do around 30k/round to me, maximum. At that point, it almost ceases to be viable damage at all. Like I said, I could do that much damage per round with a staff sling and balls of poop, assuming I could triple-hit.

Furthermore, about 31.2 mil of that MsK's NW is put into the +. If that much were put into the x (which would put it around x3593), it would do a lot more damage (assuming a hit) than an FB with the same amount of XP put into it that TheOne's Evasion has. If that high an FB/MM/CoC is not comparable to that high a weapon multiplier, why is it that that high an Evasion completely creams that much PTH?

So, I've re-inked my RoBF to a ToA, and retrained evasion back to UC, to continue testing my contention that RoBF/Evasion is way OP. So far, I had to remove the majority of the RoBF/Ev characters that I was beating back off of my list again, and I just tried this:

TheOne (/FTW) defeated Jackie's Ladies after 19 rounds of combat

Ranged:

Lieutenant Mercedes missed The One


Misska Desslok missed The One
Lieutenant Mercedes missed The One
Captain Saffron missed The One


Misska Desslok missed The One
Lieutenant Mercedes missed The One
Captain Saffron missed The One


Misska Desslok missed The One
Lieutenant Mercedes missed The One
Captain Saffron missed The One

Melee:

Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [5000]
Misska Desslok mistimed his attack at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Misska Desslok burns from the flames surrounding The One (209090)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [2500]
Misska Desslok mistimed his attack at The One
Lieutenant Mercedes stumbled swinging at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Misska Desslok burns from the flames surrounding The One (211236)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [1250]
Misska Desslok swung wildly at The One
Lieutenant Mercedes swung wildly at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Misska Desslok burns from the flames surrounding The One (182445)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [625]
Misska Desslok's blow was dodged by The One
Lieutenant Mercedes mistimed his attack at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Misska Desslok burns from the flames surrounding The One (210818)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [312]
Misska Desslok stumbled swinging at The One
Lieutenant Mercedes stumbled swinging at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Misska Desslok burns from the flames surrounding The One (184690)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [156]
Misska Desslok mistimed his attack at The One
Lieutenant Mercedes swung wildly at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Misska Desslok burns from the flames surrounding The One (180884)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [78]
Misska Desslok swung wildly at The One
Lieutenant Mercedes swung wildly at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Misska Desslok burns from the flames surrounding The One (206865)

R.I.P. Misska Desslok

Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [39]
Lieutenant Mercedes's blow was dodged by The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Lieutenant Mercedes burns from the flames surrounding The One (184331)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [20]
Lieutenant Mercedes stumbled swinging at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Lieutenant Mercedes burns from the flames surrounding The One (173136)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [10]
Lieutenant Mercedes's blow was dodged by The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Lieutenant Mercedes burns from the flames surrounding The One (163493)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [5]
Lieutenant Mercedes swung wildly at The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Lieutenant Mercedes burns from the flames surrounding The One (195875)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [2]
Lieutenant Mercedes's blow was dodged by The One
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Lieutenant Mercedes burns from the flames surrounding The One (171004)

R.I.P. Lieutenant Mercedes

Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [1]
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Captain Saffron burns from the flames surrounding The One (177185)


Princess Athena's Decay hit The One [1]
Captain Saffron's Cone of Cold hit The One for no damage
Captain Saffron burns from the flames surrounding The One (197511)

R.I.P. Captain Saffron

Princess Athena's Decay hit The One for no damage
Princess Athena burns from the flames surrounding The One (204604)

R.I.P. Princess Athena


This is just @#!$&^% ridiculous!

Mikel : a complete RBF strategy also needs 3 things : HP / AMF / Evasion with a tattoo. "I WiN" was born when Toe ~ 70% rate or so.

Sox: your weapon is rather low at being an archer at your mpr. If you have chosen a NW specialized strategy, you would have to up keep the NW. There's no stopping into it.

Generally, the 1mil level RBF i have give poop damage anyway. I cannot even beat gimp Shade. That's taken after its damage got boosted. My prediction is that Jon won't change this anytime soon due to various reasons, hence, adaptation maybe?

How big is CoC? we all would love to know. I have 4.1mil dex by the way.

I feel your pain Sox, but my setup is the perfect example of another setup that can beat someone at 2x or even 3x the mpr. The team has to be vulnerable to it, but that's sadly what pure tanks are to evasion. Maybe the answer to this is... duh duh duh... specialty ammo! Enchanted arrows that have a minor aura effect that doesn't require an actual hit to do damage, if you get within 50% of a hit you get 5% of the damage you'd normally do.

I also think RoBF should have a lessened effect on MM, it's neither fire or ice and eliminating the blanket effect on DD would instantly end the exp concentration going on.

I'm still waiting for the person who really wants to beat myself and poison to do what I did with Forge Hog and use three minions with nothing but enchantments to do it...

So your strategy is "incomplete?"

And no, RoBF enchanters don't even need HP. That's the amazing part. They so fully can counter DD and physical weaponry that they don't even have to have any HP. Why, if I put all my stats into AMF and Evasion evenly right now, I'd have:

Evasion 1,587,500
Antimagic Field 1,587,500

That's pre-Corn for the AMF, and pre-EG/EC/EB/AoF for the Evasion. So, without spending tooo much money on our gears, we can get 92% to Evasion and 20% to AMF.

Evasion 3,048,000
Antimagic Field 1,905,000


...and that's just at 900k MPR! All the AMF has to do is put the total magical damage under 20% and the RoBF will erase the rest. That's not too difficult with this kind of setup.

Considering you have -all- yours into Evasion, I can imagine that it is enormous as well.

The point is, you could even devote a little more to AMF - Evasion will still be ridiculous - let's keep them even. About 2.5M in each. The mages and tanks each will cause 0 damage...and then you have an offense that comes along free, as well! Not only that, but no GA/AMF backlash? That means there is -no- damage that can touch you unless:

1) Single mage with enough HP to withstand the massive AMF backlash and enough DD to pierce the 20% shell

2) CoC mage in team, enough HP to withstand an even more powerful backlash

3) ToA Tank of a far greater MPR, with USD invested.

I only see Evasion + 10k HP trained on yours.
IF you want to take on mages, you'd need AMF as well and a lot more HP.

Which is what started this post in the first place.

I wonder if now the ToA PtH should be put back to the way it was for Evasion?

Now, you say his weapon is too small for his size. If he adds enough PtH to beat you will it remain under his WA? Probably not, so should the WA be increased?

"I wonder if now the ToA PtH should be put back to the way it was for Evasion?"

When was toa pth changed in the first place?

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002EaB

I do not see a problem with Evasion,
I do not see a problem with RBF (it's damage is way too low to bother).
I do not see a problem with NW allowance. We know what Jon wants to do with NW allowance balance and i think he does a great job.
Possible solution is maybe a evasion penalty for wearing RBF maybe.
OB, We all know what you typed above about. It's too old news. I didn't bother read the second half.

*checks clan points*

Nope you are quite far from being farmed into negatives. So I guess everytime you get beaten by someone much lower mpr than you, you lose money and exp... Nope, that also doesnt happen. So what is the material loss for YOU to beat you at a lower mpr? nothing? Arn't you getting some exp from losing?

I reinked my tatt from RoBF a while ago because I can no longer maintain positive clan points without buying BA. Simple as that. I was being farmed into the ground. As far as I can see, this entire thread is just about hurt ego. What about the bigger mage teams that you've been slaughtering with the MSK since you started playing? They don't even have the option of using defensive ammo.

In all fairness, evasion is broken and RoBF exploits the brokenness to the max. A whole series of fixes is needed to set things right and it's been talked about over and over. Meanwhile, if you can maintain a positive clan score while having a respectable list, then there is no reason to fuss. Afterall, if YOU farming you is not causing you material loss of reward, why should you be bothered at all? In the game of specialization, you have your own target.

I can't help this.... It's just too obvious....


You tanks complain that the tattoo allows him to beat you with only one tattoo. Try being a mage. He ONLY needs the tattoo for that.

"Look, ma, no stats!."

With only one tattoo and one stat*

Sounds to me that your just mad because someone found a build that beats your build.

i also reinked out of robf because i could not use a roe without retraining each time. it has major downsides and weaknesses. with the way cb has always been though, it will be the rock to some scissors or else there is truly no reason for it.

"You tanks complain that the tattoo allows him to beat you with only one tattoo. Try being a mage. He ONLY needs the tattoo for that."

Nice try, but I'm pretty sure most mages at the same MPR Level as YOU are beating him.

For more extreme examples of the RoBF's ability, and for proof it doesn't tone down much over time, see Karn's char...

Actually there are victims to YOU's playing strategy. There are some teams who saw their reward drastically reduced. I'm not talking about tank team with soxjr's character. The true victims are the teams that also feed on tank teams at a much high MPR. Before YOU started hitting down all the tanks just under 2mil score, my robf team had a list of 5 clanning tanks, all over 1.9mil score. After he started hitting the top tanks, I saw a 200k drop in score on most of my targets and my challenge bonus went form ~35% to under 10%. That's 25% of reward straight out of my pocket. Is there any need for YOU to hit that high? not really. If his goal is to maximize reward, then you should be content with getting 100% CB. Hitting any higher brings him no material benefit. In fact, insisting on farming bigger tanks would cost him because of potential losses. So assuming we are all rational benefit maximizers, sox shouldn't be farmed by YOU at all. Of course, that assumption fails in the real sense. YOU derives great pleasure from hitting as high as he can because he gets a big ego boost. So he'd happily hit high, lowering the score of a lot of tank targets for everyone else. That is a big part of the reason why I reinked.

"OB, We all know what you typed above about. It's too old news. I didn't bother read the second half."

If you acknowledge that you understand what I typed above, then how can you even begin to make this argument?

"I do not see a problem with Evasion,
I do not see a problem with RBF (it's damage is way too low to bother)."

Maybe you -should- have read it all. I'm just pointing out that the problem isn't the Evasion, it is RoBF's ability to provide an indefensible offense so that the team can concentrate *entirely* everything on defense.

YOU are wrong about MM>FB against RoBF. FB does quite a lot more total damage than MM. Not like it matters, RoBF without AMF is just food to be farmed to the ground. The only thing that saves you from total clan point annihilation is the fact that your score always fluctuates downward, making you a poor target.

Yes I would have to say ego has a part in this, but there is another part also. There is no reason why a char should be able to do what that char can do. Yes I can see specializing and being able to beat someone, and yes I agree that someone shouldn't have to be the mpr of another person to beat them, but this is rediculous. I myself was able to beat people higher mpr than me because of my MSK but at no time did I beat people this much further ahead because of it. I made this post because it's rediculous to work so hard to stay above 2 mil score and finally think your char can work and then get online and everytime you are off for more than an hour your score is down to 1.8 mil because of something so incredibly rediculous.

I'm just reading all the reasons why people think this is ok, and I keep going back to ... You are trying to tell me that at 700k mpr he should have enough xp to negate 130 mil nw and 1.7 mil mpr. If that is what you think then so be it, but to me that is completly crazy and is wrong. No matter how specialized it is.

Oh and to YOU, my weapon now is at 54 mil nw. That is plenty at my mpr to compete. Yes when it was at 30 mil nw the other day it was way low, but you also didn't see me posting things like this. So basically what you are saying is that I need to get another loan of about 20 mil and get my weapon to 75 mil nw and then I should be able to beat a char at 700k mpr... I mean just saying it makes me lol in real life.

I don't understand your logic. So what if your score was lowered? That's actually a positive thing for your reward. Lower score means some of the higher people will remove you from their list, ie more clan points. Besides, you can get back to 2mil score after you fight through your list. That's in fact a pretty good way to not get farmed into the ground at the 2mil score bloodbath.

Actually, Ulord, if he can keep his score at ~2M then he won't lower the scores of his 2M score opponents. As is, when he signs on, his score is lower and so when he fights them he drops their score, thus lowering his rewards.

i don't understand what you "LOL" about. You CHOOSE the BOW strategy from "you know who" and at 1.7mil Mpr sitting on 30mil NW bow? and you don't see a problem with that?
again, before you forget Evasion actually got lowered from the rescale. Many can recall Evasion drops at least 2-3 points right after rescale. RBF got 20% boost awhile ago. this is not new news. What you might think wrong with all this , as Mikel point out, the NW allowance is somewhat too strict. and Evasion penalty while having RBF is your only option to beg for. Fix evasion? you would have 20 more threads from mages, Fix RBF? RBF was crap all along cb1 and 1/2 of cb2, nerf RBF is the same as bring it back to Cb1 or might as well take it out from the game. Right now we are looking at Mage class, Tank class, and Anti-tank class, with the ratio of 2 against 1, indeed , you are in trouble, but I think Jon intend this for tank users. Overcome? Answer: UP NW allowance. (Per Mikel says)

UH. I didn't complain when I was at 30 mil nw on bow... I did up it.. 20 mil .. It's now a 50 mil nw bow. That you so happily can drop to useless because of one stat. ... and like i typed over and over, so now your telling me that a 700k mpr char should be able to totally negate 2.4 mil dx, 50 mil nw bow <most of the NW on the +> and a 50 mil nw tat, oh and a tat which he admits is nowhere near at his max tat lvl can still hit for 2.6 mil damage in 20 rounds. .. too funny. really. stop making me laugh so hard. it's starting to hurt.

I love the RBF!!

It lets me loan out my mh and dbs to clanmates, and still be on top with 1/3rd the NW I would normally need.

I just wish for a free retrain. The let's see how many tanks are left when everyone goes evasion/RBF to keep up. I know I would retrain my larfer EC and change my smaller one to AMF.

Evasion is the end of tanks. With a +212 MSB, +5 arrows and a 6 million effective EC vs Draco's evasion minion, I cannot hit. And it is a 4 minion character (diluted xp).

C'mon, can you not see the obvious?

You totally missing the point. Let me tell you the whole story again.
Right now my tattoo sit at a cool 1mil level. does something like 200k damage. New damage boost 20%. So many months ago, it would be 200k less 20%. Right? Not much change to affect anything.
Evasion recently got reduced, everyone knows that. Meaning, it was stronger many months ago.
Your Strength and dex recently also got a boost from both tattoo and 12 rescale,
Your bow stay the same NW 2 months ago.
As far as I see when evasion was stronger and 20% boost from RBF was not around, You were not complaining and "LOL". why? People didn't catch on then. Now they do, and you go Opps!

i think as users we have two options open to us in cb2. get behind the holy trinity of balancing (lower evasion, lower ranged damage and introduce a nw weapons cap of some type) or make do with the rock/paper/scissors/robf interaction that we now have.

even with all of us behind it though, it depends on jon and his vision whether it gets implemented or not.

one thing i do notice and had stated in some of the earliest nerf robf threads was that in cb2 many of us have gotten away from ac and chosen our items for the effects. the robf may force us to actually choose between item effect and ac. again this hurts single minions a bit more as we have to choose between the two whereas multi minions can have both on the same team.

my CoC 92,737 <raw lvl 360,660>

my RoBF Sizzling Bond Girl Oomph lvl 2,783,083 NW $50,473,543

versus

Slayers >>> Score / PR / MPR: 1,790,646 / 1,434,140 / 1,065,653

Slayers has no AMF, char's minion KOS-MOS has AC 304:

The Establishment Back-Up's Cone of Cold hit KOS-MOS [111162]
KOS-MOS burns from the flames surrounding 007 (121872)


No doubt an extreme example, but here's the lvl 2.7 mil RoBF delivering 120k dmg, and the upstart CoC 360k (92K) delivering 110k dmg :)

Against Super J's char Slot Machine [his AMF is reduced to 0.00 on account of NSCs], the same CoC delivers:

The Establishment Back-Up takes damage from his own Cone of Cold (0)!
The Establishment Back-Up's Cone of Cold hit Eyedes [379616]
Eyedes burns from the flames surrounding 007 (589183)

380k from the CoC versus 590k from the RoBF

Make's me happy i've trained that icy spell on the new minion; maybe over time the RoBF might just become redundant in my strat, or nerfed, or both, then i'll simply reink into a ToE if the CoC has grown enough by then.

The nice thing about this RoBF dmg though is that it is impervious to AMF and evasion; also, it is unaffected by GA. Then, the DD protection from this rune is equivalent to equipping a Mage Shield +20 [assuming the protection of 20 percent]. There is of course, no such thing as an Evasion protection from this rune, though it is advertised.

So, what was the positive gain from having my RoBF all the time since the inception of my NCB? A huge AMF and evasion char acting like a wall, shielding my CoC-AoI mage from mage and tank, except the Mageseeker.

From my experience, I think the RoBF is like pimples and acne, an adolescent affliction to be undergone for a period, but cast off for the larger things awaiting in the CoC adulthood.

lol, i'm getting philosophical in my $0.02 :)

"Right now my tattoo sit at a cool 1mil level. does something like 200k damage. New damage boost 20%. So many months ago, it would be 200k less 20%. Right? Not much change to affect anything."

Btw. That's 40k a round, or after 20 rounds, 800k damage difference.

People were complaining about the fact that RoBF and evasion was way overpowered from the time this started. I personally didn't complain because I just dealt with it, mostly because I felt my NW wasn't up to par with where it should have been for a person at my size, but now it is and still a person can have a evasion high enough at that low a lvl to negate all my trained stats. That is wrong.. just because it gives you this great challenge % and the ability to kill a tank at my level and higher if you wanted probably doesn't make it something that is right.

You have a good point about the cascading effect Ob. However, I am pretty sure the secondary score drop effect is a lot smaller than the primary effect. In fact, at Sox's mpr, I doubt it makes much of a difference in CB. So sox, did you see a material drop in your opponents score since YOU started farming you?

Also, I hope I am not understanding what YOU is saying. Up the weapon nw allowance? Are you bonkers? Is sox even close to hitting his max allowance? The fact is sox started the character as a nub and hasn't had chance to accumulate wealth. He is in a position where he has to buy ba each day to keep up the MPR growth compare to the top. His only other source of income would be trading, which can be lucrative if he puts some time into it. The only other solution is to take out a big loan and get the bow upgraded (which he has done). I don't think criticizing him for not having a 100mil usd bow is ridiculous.

I wonder if now the ToA PtH should be put back to the way it was for Evasion?

Now, you say his weapon is too small for his size. If he adds enough PtH to beat you will it remain under his WA? Probably not, so should the WA be increased?
(Per Mikel)
<<In case people did not bother to read the rest of the thread>>

WA should not have to be increased to accomodate enormous PTHs in order to counter Evasion.

As is, Sox's bow would fit under -my- WA, at just under 900k MPR.

It is definitely big enough.

Increasing WA does absolutely nothing when the limiting factor is disposable income. And about the secondary score drops, they DO play a significant factor. If I sign on with 1.8M score and the top person on my list starts with 2.1M, both I and that opponent end up with 1.9M, which is quite a significant drop.

btw when there was the elb problem (and there still is one) small mpr characters could easily take down a big mpr character just using an elb

What were they, single decay mages? It's not that hard to hit back. That is, of course, assuming you can hit at all.

More likely you'll end up at under 2mil, not counting the fact that you are getting max reward for a good part of those fights before you drop their score. It's not as dramatic as you make it sound JS. Let's also not forget the fact that the one you are farming might also be fighting, bringing their score back up. The cascading effect is definitely a lot more dampened than the 200k score drop of all my targets inflicted by YOU's farming of tanks. I've had to remove you off my list many times because your score dipped. More clan point for you.

I'm so glad that I could avoid you dropping my clan score because someone else could do it in your place. Also, score drop happens very, very quickly, as in in the first few fights.

Dropping in score would not add more opponent farming you. If someone lower than you can farm you, they would've farmed you already. A drop in score has no correlation with your fighting ability. Hence you get a net gain in score. You tanks are not the biggest victim of this upstart scenario we are in. Ironically, other RoBF characters are most hurt from this. Seeing as you are an robf user yourself now, my sympathies to you.

im just curious here... how close is your weapon to your WA ? somehow im thinking its along the lines of 50mill/100mill or something...
and another large point... 20mill NW using the blacksmith isnt really much to say... (no offense... spend money wisely?) and rent a larger bow from someone else? if im not mistaken someone said that the + on MSB is cheaper then on an elb?
quotes " 90% total CTH"

moral of the story... kill ROBF damage... make it like 1% or something

Well this will be my last post on this because I have finally just given up the fight here. If Jon changes things he will, if not then this will just continue. There are only a couple mageseekers higher than me lostling and really I could care less if it's smart spending or not, I needed my bow upgraded and didn't want to wait over a month to get a forger to put 20 mil into it. Actually it would have been more than that with the % paid, but I wanted it upgraded and didn't want to mess with trying to figure out rentals.

But back to the main point here. I have noticed something. The main people fighting for this are mages and people using the RoBF <evasion>. I think the mages fight for it because they just like to see anything out there that totally dominates a tank, and well the other people are just doing it because it's what they use. If you look at the people fighting against it, there are tanks < of course> and then the people just looking at it with no particular stance in terms of they beat the RoBF and other things because of multiple minions and such and those are the ones that make this seem that it's over the top, because they just see it..

I will just state one last time. Show me one other strat where a person can train 1 stat and win. <silence> There is none. That is where this is wrong. There is something completely wrong with having all your exp into one skill ... not even an offensive DD or anything to do with damage. It's a skill they put their exp into, and win. That isn't in the meaning of the game from what I have seen from Jons posts in changelog. Maybe that's my interpretation, but that's how I see it. Enjoy saying whatever you will about how I should just adapt and change and do so many things differently, but the core of the problem here is that to me and a lot of other people this is just plain wrong. Have a great and wonderful day.

Let me say a few words about RoBF and Evasion.... Robf is overpowered... no damage can compare and GA does not effect the robf... too much stat dilution... oh wait lack there of I should say.

Get all the info about evasion change before you post about it.
Evasion was dropped a whole 2 points or so... and When I had 207 effect before the change it dropped to 205 Boo Hoo... with the 12 point change my level went up about 400k!!!! That is a huge defensive dex advantage.... who cares if I lost 2 points on my evasion when I gained a huge defensive dex advantage.

Moral of the story... Robf and evasion shouldn't be the only two things on a minion, or Robf should get damage dealt back to it via GA.... or some other such thing... it is just too powerful to have only one stat trained and have a tattoo with offensive and defensive capabilities.

My advice to you is to focus on growth and development of your character, instead of chasing frivolous things such as your own score. I imagine you are hitting your primary targets (mages with not so big evasions) fairly successfully. Keep up the challenge bonus, keep your clan points high and believe it or not, try fighting lower with an RoE. Your goal is to get to 6/20 and maybe get a shot at the top right?

Mary Frances Boyd burns from the flames surrounding Cloudscape (1679451)

More damage then I do with my x12000 MH. Yes, I do not use Bloodlust, however, I cannot afford to use that skill. It is archery or evasion for a tank now.

Please stop the incessant "RBF does little damage". Yes, I know my tattoo is very high, but even a tattoo 1/2 its level will do 800k a round, subject to ALL the damage modifiers of EVERY other type of damage. And immune to a few also.

Lorni burns from the flames surrounding Cloudscape (844315) vs a 5M TOE and 122 or so AC.

So we now have to have heavy tanks and mages to compete with the RBF??

This is in response to "well you just do not have the proper defenses for the RBF" or "you have not adapted to the RBF". Both garbage points in the discussion.

Leave Mary alone! What did she ever do to you! Arggggggggggg.....

"So we now have to have heavy tanks and mages to compete with the RBF??"

well since jon made the robf so that the only thing that would reduce its damage is endurance, ac, protection or another robf then wouldn't this be pretty obvious? see my above post regarding choosing between items with ac or effects as well.

imho, the garbage points are when people want to make it just like every other magical damage out there. then no one has to change their strategy one iota to counter it. once again, why add something new if it is just a reiteration of something currently in game?

all I want for Christmas is RoBF damage being affected by GA

wait...oh it's too late...

" Show me one other strat where a person can train 1 stat and win. <silence> There is none."

20 HP FB/MM Mage. Maybe even with a FF/SF. Training everything into thier DD.

And picking thier specialised fight list to target other teams with no AMF and no ranged attacks, that they can kill before Melee.

Maybe even a Familiar based strat where only Junction is trained.

No one. Not a single person complained back in the day about SacredPeanuts 4 EC team, that devastated Tank teams far far larger (I'm talking about six times and over) than itself.

Because he could reduce thier Str and Dex to zero, ToA or not, and beat them.

He fought up, and was bought down by Mage teams far smaller than himself, as he had nothing to counter them.

No one complained.

It was a strategy.

Evasion is Borked. Well all know that. It might even be necessary atm. And changing it will almost certainly require other aspects of the game to be changed alongside it. I still assert that direct reduction at the end of the damage routine is far too stupid, and the the MTL is far too big. /meh

But this has been said time and time again.

And until Jon lets us know about the state of things, or gets enough free time to actually do anything about it, there's really nothing we can do.

"Please stop the incessant "RBF does little damage". Yes, I know my tattoo is very high, but even a tattoo 1/2 its level will do 800k a round, subject to ALL the damage modifiers of EVERY other type of damage. And immune to a few also."

Counter the maths then Ranger.

I've shown that out of all the 'magical' damage dealers in the game, it's the smallest by far.

So if it's that big, then damn, all magic damage must be so overpoweringly massive... And all physical tiny in comparison.

Or you're wrong.

And don't bring AMF into it (And that actually the RoBF damage is massive becuase it's not always reduced by AMF like DD is...), as not everyone uses AMF. Just like not everyone uses EC.

"20 HP FB/MM Mage. Maybe even with a FF/SF. Training everything into thier DD."

Oh or an Archer with only Str trained with a + big enough to let him hit (even without archery) that also sets up thier fight list to prey on people with no Ranged/GA that they can kill before reaching Melee.

"As far as I see when evasion was stronger and 20% boost from RBF was not around, You were not complaining and "LOL". why? People didn't catch on then. Now they do, and you go Opps!"

People were not complaining because the 20% boost in RoBF damage also brought alone a change from passive damage to active damage, a reduction in mage damage, and the ability to focus every last iota of the experience on your single minion team into one stat to completely crush every tank in the world.

The 'change' to Evasion is negligible. The ToA, in case you don't recall, was also nerfed against Evasion. Instead of adding 100+ PTH to your +150 Bow, it now adds just 30, because it just adds part of its NW to your PTH, instead of a straight PTH boost.

Don't forget the differences between pre- and post-RoBF change, YOU. Before the change, the RoBF was almost completely useless. If you wanted to focus all your XP into one stat, you didn't have many options. You could go all EC, but even then, you can only fight targets around your MPR, or slightly bigger, that have ToA or single tanks. Trust me, I've tried. You could have gone all Evasion before the RoBF change, but your offense would be vulnerable. If you equip a weapon, you're vulnerable to EC, Evasion, DX, every kind of magic, GA. A DD familiar, you're vulnerable to AMF, MgS, EH, GA, and all other mage killers.

Now, tell me. Which list is shorter:

Pre-RoBF, vulnerable to, depending on what you use for offense, any of EC, Evasion, DX, DD, GA, AMF, MgS, EH, MsK...

or

Post-RoBF, vulnerable to DD.

800k a round to a 5M TOE NOT subject to GA and AMF.

Hmmm, I think most people would love that amount of damage vs one of the highest TOE's out there. Of course not subject to GA and AMF. The only counter is a Heavy tank or Heavy mage.

But ever since mage items no longer give AC, the heavy mage is almost a pipe dream.

QBRanger wrote:

800k a round to a 5M TOE NOT subject to GA and AMF.

Hmmm, I think most people would love that amount of damage vs one of the highest TOE's out there. Of course not subject to GA and AMF.

Dear Sir,

This is what I'd really love:

Max Tattoo Level: 9,248,506
Steeds of the Apocalypse lvl 6,789,658 owned by QBRanger (Koyaanisqatsi)

Just imagine were Steeds of the Apocalypse a 6.7 mil ice familiar, the minions exerting DM, its a no-contest any which way with such huge stats.

Just to reitterate the mathmatical side behind the RoBF's massive damage.

Consider a RoBF and a SF, both of the same level (I chose the SF as MM deals that smallest amount of damage for its level out of all the DD spells).

The RoBF deals 20% damage.

The SF deals 48% damage. 2.4 times greater damage than the RoBF.

In addition, the SF can be boosted by a pair of AG (+17 being the max in game, taking it up to 56% damage done, or 2.8 times the damage of the RoBF), or by a pair of NSC, to resist AMF if you wish.

So, if you *always* face a AMF that hits you for (0.60) (or roundabouts) then your SF will be dealing the same damage potential as a RoBF would. (Yes yes, while also taking damage... Don't care. Fightlists and being hit by 60% AMFs are strategy discussions. I'm *only* concerned with damage potential here).

Oh. And this hasn't taken into account that the SF will have 3/4 rounds of more damage dealing than the RoBF.

So the RoBF does massive damage right? Where's the maths to back that up?

Considering that it can't be boosted in any fashion, doesn't hit multiple times a round, and that the smallest equivalent sized DD does 2.4 times more damage than it, I feel that not triggering GA returns or being effected by AMF is absolutly fine.

800k, even against a ToE from a 6.7 million lvl tattoo may be fine. But considering that most of the large tattoos in the top levels (by which I mean about the top 75) are less than half that size....and you start to see that the average RBF is doing much less damage than that......

Add to that, it's going to be a pretty long time until even the nearest tattoos are going to be that big....

And as for comparing RBF to Morg.

I just did a little suicide run against Ed's char.


Charlie burns from the flames surrounding Avarice (583842)


Meanwhile the tank hits my 1.5 million lvl ToE wearing enchanter (don't think my ToE really matters here...) :

Malice crushed Jim & Alison with Blunt Force Trauma [1183694]
Malice draws strength from his weapon! [8640]
Jim & Alison's Guardian Angel smote Malice (13917)
Malice pulverized Jim & Alison with Blunt Force Trauma [1207668]
Malice pulverized Jim & Alison with Blunt Force Trauma [1190675]
Malice pulverized Jim & Alison with Blunt Force Trauma [834883]
Malice cries "Die! You Weak Pathetic Fool!"


So his RBF does about 500k

But around 4 million damage from the Morg in one round......

Meanwhile, the biggest Ice Familiar (Novice's)


Gordon Gano's familiar's Cone of Cold hit Jim & Alison [4895480]


;)

Wow! Defiiatley massive RoBF damage there! Especially compared to larges Physical and Magical damage!

GL, didn't you just say you're not looking at AMF? How can you not, AMF + GA just own DD, especially FB.

I think the difference is that RoBF allows 100% evasion XP.
IF/FF with 100% evasion means that a good size AMF eats you alive.
(I don't have hard numbers for this, but if its not true, then IF/FF is broken as well)
ToA Tanks with 100% evasion=no damage.

Flamey, then fight someone without AMF/GA.

Or use a fight example of a RoBF user facing a 400AC wall backed by PL then try to claim it's damage is massive.

I'm looking mathematically at the damage potential of the RoBF to DD, regardless of what defences your opponent has.

The rest, is strategy.

ToA tank with heavy investment in evasion using a SoD is deadly. The usage is very similar to RoBF + evasion. With magic teams, for example fireball mage, you only need a moderately big evasion. You will finish the battle in the early rounds of ranged combat anyways and you get huge multiplier early on. Extra kill slots can help to tank that extra 3rd or 4th round.

"I'm looking mathematically at the damage potential of the RoBF to DD, regardless of what defences your opponent has. "

Then look at it in the opposite direction, how much they can get hindered.

The SOD/TOA tank has to actually hit to do damage. The RBF always hits.

The SOD/TOA tank takes tons of damage via GA. The RBF does not.

Using a TOA alone for dexterity will have you miss decent evasion minions all the time. One has to train a massive amount of dexterity. Just ask Soxjr or Mikel.

So, how are they similar?

Sigh... I don't want to get into this again but here it goes.

Evasion + ToA is actually trained more like FB + evasion. ie. a moderate evasion that gives survivability for first few rounds of ranged combined with a nice dispel magic. Use the ToA primarily for strength and invest quite a bit into dex. (a second minion could be an option). Like all tank teams, a setup like this is still not going to hit teams with 50%+ exp into evasion. However, it's very effective against enchantment teams and low hp tank teams. It has a higher dps than FB and no fear of the imba MGS. One successful hit combined with the broken beleg and a large sod can wipe the whole team.

How is it similar to RoBF? Not much, just another setup that makes us of evasion, less exploitatively perhaps. I'd play this over RoBF any day of the month. The perks include flexibility with RoE and a nicely scalable damage output. Ranger, feel free to try an RoBF team with a regular sized tatt at the 1-1.5mil MPR range if you want. It's absolutely brutal and thanks to defensive ammo, targets are getting scarcer and win rates dropping. Fun is nothing close to it.

"Then look at it in the opposite direction, how much they can get hindered."

Why?

Explain how that will help demonstrate how massive the damage the RoBF puts out does?

"Then look at it in the opposite direction, how much they can get hindered."

we saw in one of the earliest threads while koy had a toe on that robf damage could be reduced 90 to 95%.

my memory is a bit faulty again. it was oxcha reducing koy's robf damage by 95% as per this thread and only using ac and toe, not prot: http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002GVr

/me goes to the equip page and checks the size of his familiar

The COMBO of 400 AC and a 6+M TOE was reducing the damage to about 100k a round.

A 5M TOE alone was reducing it by just about 1/2.

How many characters have a 400 AC wall? How many can afford it and how many have the spare minion to have it be a heavy AC wall?

Most walls are mage walls with about 250AC at most.

How many have a 6 million Tattoo?

How many can afford a 3 million Tattoo?

What relevance does this have?

No relevance, it was certainly not my point.

My point was the real effective was of reducing the RBF's damage to minimal is a combination of both a heavy wall and a TOE.

Your last post is nothing but a useless attempt to make my point seem meaningless.

No relevance, it was certainly not my point.

My point was the real effective was of reducing the RBF's damage to minimal is a combination of both a heavy wall and a TOE.

i just thought that since people were quoting damage levels from some of the top tats to prove the robf was overpowered we should use the damage reduction at the top as well?

The Lega's TOE is one of the top 7 tattoos. Is that not enough to compare?

I was not using a 3M TOE or less. I was using the number 2 overall TOE.

Who else in the top 30 has a wall with over 350AC? None I can see.

this is the question that i was trying to answer:

"Then look at it in the opposite direction, how much they can get hindered."

my point is that it can be hindered by at least 95% most likely more since one aspect of its damage reduction was absent in this data.

if people are not currently using the foils to a strategy whose fault is that? there seems to be an issue with the robf where it is introducing a whole new aspect to rock/paper/scissors. some of us think this is great, more variety means more fun.

others however seem to be saying that they shouldn't have to adjust to counter a new strategy. change it so that what we are already doing coutners the new thing as well. i think if this is the case then jon needs to never add any new strategy elements as we are already set in our ways.

Exactly dude.

And Ranger, not meaning to be confrontational here, but until you address the maths I've set out (twice now) about the (equivalent) pitiful nature if RoBF damage, you points are meaningless.

Seriosuly, if we're not going to actually debate this issue, could a mod please just lock this thread (if that's possible?).

quoted "if people are not currently using the foils to a strategy whose fault is that? there seems to be an issue with the robf where it is introducing a whole new aspect to rock/paper/scissors. some of us think this is great, more variety means more fun."

Uh seems people have gone away from my original rant. My problem was not the damage done by the tat, but that it allows for a person to use all xp in a defensive skill that is not able to be stopped by a tank... Read that, by a tank.... and again to say for 10,000th time, I shouldn't have to change my strategy to foil a char a 700k mpr with 100 mil less nw than i have. that is the problem here. or at least my perception of the problem. Even if you don't agree. Seems a lot of people find fault in that.

How can you say 800k a round, autohitting, not subject to GA or AMF from a 3M TOE is pitiful??? Please repost your math as I do not want to go through all the posts in this thread. But if your unable to be hit, even 400k damage a round is quite a lot to beat most people.

Especially when people cannot hit the uber evasion minons?

And how can people reasonably be expected to redo their entire strategy just to combat one tattoo? So people now have to use a heavy wall as a requirement.

I think Sut said it best, walls are boring. But it seems RBF users say it is the way to "adapt" to the RBF.

Well heavy walls are good vs every type of damage. What makes them so special vs the RBF.

We have AMF vs DD.

We have EC vs physical damage.

We have High AC/TOE for ALL damage.

Where is the counter to the RBF? Another RBF? So now we have to have a heavy wall/TOE or a higher RBF? How freaking boring.

No Sox,

Your 100% wrong.

You should have to adapt to beat someone with 1/3rd the xp and 1/2 to 1/3 the MPR of you. Forget that if this was a mage, you would hit them in missile rounds as they would need some sort of xp into their spell. Or if they used a tattoo for damage you would easily hit it.

You should go heavy tank or TOE or hire another minion. But that is just to stalemate YOU, not to beat him.

You are so foolish not learning to adapt to beat someone you should easily cream. You poor poor strategist you.

<sarcasm>

PS, I do love the line that 95% of the RBF's damage can be mitigated. 95% of ALL damage can be mitigated with the 400AC and TOE. So is physical damage too little then? Perhaps we should ratchet it up a bit.

Soxjr, if you want tank damage to be unstoppable, aren't you voting for Tank Blender?!

/me becomes a flagbearer for ranger.

you just said my point. except 300% better.

chuck I never said unstopable, but for a 700k mpr minion to stop a 50 mil nw weapon and a 2.6 mil dx ... from 1.7 mil mpr and 2.3 or 2.4 mil pr char. yeah. i want that.. is that too much to ask.. i guess so

"How can you say 800k a round, autohitting, not subject to GA or AMF from a 3M TOE is pitiful??? Please repost your math as I do not want to go through all the posts in this thread."

I'll repost after this post.

"But if your unable to be hit, even 400k damage a round is quite a lot to beat most people."

You're either missing the point, or continuing to ignore it. It makes it frustrating to try to debate these issue with you.

I don't care about not being able to hit a RoBF user. It's not part of the discussion I'm having. Want to ount how many times I've posted the Evasion is broken? Hell it seems the Evasion fromt he RoBF doesn't even work currently.

There.

Can we get back to the Damage it deals, and not the fact you can't hit it?

"Especially when people cannot hit the uber evasion minons?"

Make another thread if you really must, which I'll stay out of. I'm debating the 'massive' damage the RoBF throws out, not how hard it is to hit it.

"And how can people reasonably be expected to redo their entire strategy just to combat one tattoo? So people now have to use a heavy wall as a requirement."

Change. I think it's good forthe game. Obviously it threatens you and you don't.

A stagnent CB gets boring quickly. It was probably the major reason epople stopped plying CB1. Nothing new was implemented, and the existing brokenness wasn't fixed.

"I think Sut said it best, walls are boring. But it seems RBF users say it is the way to "adapt" to the RBF. "

Go count the numer of times i'ev post that the RoBF is boring. Can we get back to it's damage yet?

"Well heavy walls are good vs every type of damage. What makes them so special vs the RBF.

We have AMF vs DD.

We have EC vs physical damage.

We have High AC/TOE for ALL damage.

Where is the counter to the RBF? Another RBF? So now we have to have a heavy wall/TOE or a higher RBF? How freaking boring."

Yup. As a last thought on this; why not now list all the ways to boost Magic Damage, and then to boost Physical.

Then list all the ways to boost the RoBF.

Just to reitterate the mathmatical side behind the RoBF's massive damage.

Consider a RoBF and a SF, both of the same level (I chose the SF as MM deals that smallest amount of damage for its level out of all the DD spells).

The RoBF deals 20% damage.

The SF deals 48% damage. 2.4 times greater damage than the RoBF.

In addition, the SF can be boosted by a pair of AG (+17 being the max in game, taking it up to 56% damage done, or 2.8 times the damage of the RoBF), or by a pair of NSC, to resist AMF if you wish.

So, if you *always* face a AMF that hits you for (0.60) (or roundabouts) then your SF will be dealing the same damage potential as a RoBF would. (Yes yes, while also taking damage... Don't care. Fightlists and being hit by 60% AMFs are strategy discussions. I'm *only* concerned with damage potential here).

Oh. And this hasn't taken into account that the SF will have 3/4 rounds of more damage dealing than the RoBF.

So the RoBF does massive damage right? Where's the maths to back that up?

Considering that it can't be boosted in any fashion, doesn't hit multiple times a round, and that the smallest equivalent sized DD does 2.4 times more damage than it, I feel that not triggering GA returns or being effected by AMF is absolutly fine.

sorry sox, postings in a public forum do tend to take on a life of their own though.

relatively few people in this game can counter every strategy out there. no one is forcing strategies on anyone here. you can always do what the rest of us do and ignore the few anomalies who can fight way up.

i am still not, nor have i ever, stated that the robf doesn't need some tweaks. i still think it should not give evasion or the amf effect. it allows enough xp concentration that this is overkill. i just hate for the other inherent effects to be changed so that it is really just another iteration of strategies already in the game. i like more variety and hate to give jon the idea that we are too set in our ways to accept new strategy aspects entirely.

I don't think he's asking for that, chuck. Obviously someone with all of their EXP into Evasion should easily dodge him from a much lower MPR. That's not his point. The point is that he can put -ALL- of it into Evasion due to the RoBF's nature. That's an imbalance...I could train -ALL- of my EXP into EC with this tattoo and be unharmed by many tanks above me because I'm able to effectively use 100% of my MPR to stop them! The issue is just compounded with Evasion because there are so many ways to boost it...he can effectively get 200% of his MPR by boosting his skills that much.

OB. You can also easily do that with a DD Familair.

Just tailor your list to hit Tanks that don't train a high enough AMF to cause you problems.

What's the problem with that?

OB, if the gripe against the RoBF is that it allows xp concentration into one or two single skills/spells; then the only way out is to do away with the RoBF; there isn't any intermediate nerf available. Because, the damage done by the RoBF is already minimal, and it wouldn't be practicable to nerf it down that lane. Or, the other solution would be to turn it into a cloak that every team can use, as it used to be originally.

GL - the biggest problem I have with the RoBF's damage is that it's non-retaliation damage. I.E. that's not an attacking point...no AMF, no GA. So if they put everything in defense, they can let the RoBF's damage do its thing without any fear of GA/AMF taking them out.


Effectively, if they can use that 100% of MPR to eliminate damage sources, that means they don't even have to train HP. That is -huge-, as you know...this is where I say RoBF damage is too high.

The damage itself is not necessarily that great. A 1.5M tattoo would only do 300k damage/round, from what I can tell. (20% is right, no?) But it does add up. 300k/round for 21 rounds is still 6.3M damage. The problem lies in the fact that that amount of damage -can- kill by itself, and often does.

Ordinarily, if an opponent puts everything into defense, he can probably get a stalemate with most opponents near him. In fact, he might even score a win against a single mage, if he puts that much into AMF...but even then he'd have to put some HP on there. AMF won't take mage damage down to 0. The RoBF fixes that, allows for the 'no HP' ability.

So there we have it, experience laid out for a stalemate every time...but wait! The RoBF does damage, and unfortunately enough to kill most opponents by the end of the 25 rounds. Since the other team is left standing there offense-less, they can only rely on their defense to hold out and hope for a stalemate. 25 rounds of not-so-much damage adds up pretty quick, and they die.

If there was a GA vulnerability - an AMF vulnerability - ANY vulnerability to the RoBF damage, that really would cause a change. If the damage was low enough that your tattoo couldn't kill by itself, that would really cause a change. But as it is...this is just silly. Training nothing but Evasion and winning against an opponent by dodging them while your tattoo whittles away their life and kills them....I'm all for defensive strategies, but this isn't even a defensive strategy, it's a train-and-win.

no please do not turn it into a cloak the huge fireball won't be able to kill 4 minions with 4 rbf

if you really want to hit YOU with a weapon, you could always go put 8 mil nw onto the pth of a dagger. You wouldn't do much damage but you would hit him, and he would die in 1 hit.

OB. You can also easily do that with a DD Familair.

Just tailor your list to hit Tanks that don't train a high enough AMF to cause you problems.


--- except that's just the thing! The team can be nerfed by the Evasion, but if they train an AMF/GA, they can kill that familiar without their offense! What can you train to retaliate against the RoBF whenever you're left standing without an offensive front?

chuck, I think you distilled everything perfectly right there.

All he wants to do is be able to do _some_ damage. Not a lot, and not zero. Some. In between. Not binary. Not on/off. Not boring.

That's the problem with Evasion and its binary nature.

In answer to JW's post way, way up there:

Yes, there is a line where someone smaller than me should never, ever, in a million years, with all the money in the world (not saying money is the case here, just including that for completeness of my opinion), be able to beat me. Surely you don't think a 1 PR character should be able to beat a 1,000,000 PR? Therefore you have a line as well. It's simply a matter of where that line is drawn.

In my personal experience, I feel anyone with half or less of my total PR should never, ever be able to beat me, no matter how specific the strategies on either end (and assuming both people are trying -- I'm not talking about a totally undefended team here). If someone half my PR can beat me, then I feel one of two things is probably happening: a game imbalance, or an inaccurate representation of total PR. I have complained about both at various times during my tenure here in CB-land.

As for everything else, I think folks need to focus more in order to find common ground. For example, is the RoBF damage output a bit small in comparison to a hitting tank? Yes. Let's agree on that. But then move to the next level: With the ability to train Evasion so high when wearing an RoBF, and with Evasion being binary in nature, the tank is no longer "hitting". In that scenario, even the RoBF''s smaller offense is enough to win.

From there, one can discuss the lack of retaliatory effects, etc.

And I agree with Ranger -- walls are boring. Saying that a massive AC wall and a ToE are the obvious foils to RoBF isn't adapting, it's trivial. We all KNOW that. But, in my opinion, that would be bad and boring for the game. It would simply add more to the binary nature of the game. What Ranger is asking for is a real, unique, TACTICAL foil for the RoBF. Not the generic and obvious "get more damage reduction".

Mental exercise: If Jonathan suddenly buffed Fireball to hit 200% harder, and I started beating Ranger, would anyone in their right, good conscience tell Ranger "get more damage reduction" as a viable "strategy"? Of course not. Might they, however, tell him to devote more MPR to AMF? Sure. Other offenses have foils IN ADDITION TO the obvious "get more damage reduction".

All Ranger is asking for is that there be a secondary foil for the RoBF. Taking just that point, specifically, and looking at it, how can anyone not at least say, "I see your point." Feel free to run with the ball after that, but can't we start there? Can't we start with common ground?

But if you use a DD familiar all you will do is just stalemate, if you go 100% evasion. GA and/or AMF will kill your familiar.

But the RBF allows one to have max defense (xp) and a nice offense (RBF)

Now to GL:
"The RoBF deals 20% damage.

The SF deals 48% damage. 2.4 times greater damage than the RoBF. "

Yes, I read that before and quickly dismissed it as poppycock. Why? They are difference modes of damage. The SF is vulnerable to both AMF and GA. The SF does not have inate evasion so you have to use junction/DBs (ask novice it if is as good as evasion). The SF will get creamed by archers, destroyed by AMF and blow itself up via GA. You can spend 47M on NSC's to reduce AMF, but GA still will do tons of damage to your familiar. So you can use DM to lower GA, but then your evasion is lower. Dilution of xp. The RBF does not require it.

The RBF has NONE of those problems.

Being able to do 1/4rd of the SF's damage for 21 rounds is a very small price to pay for immunity to AMF/GA/physical damage.

How the heck can you not see this?????

Just as a very calm response to GL here. One that took me a few seconds to make, because my first one would have gotten me fined I think. Please don't tell me to make a new post and to follow where you are going with your post when I was the original poster. thanks.

Going back to the topic at hand though. Never in my post did I complain about the RoBF damage. So you got that from somewhere else. The point of it is that there is damage that has no counter. Because of there being no counter, except for a 400 ac wall then any damage becomes massive damage. Does that not make sense? To me and many other people it does, but to people that use it or mages that just seem to hate tanks in general it doesn't make sense.

"And I agree with Ranger -- walls are boring. Saying that a massive AC wall and a ToE are the obvious foils to RoBF isn't adapting, it's trivial. We all KNOW that. But, in my opinion, that would be bad and boring for the game. It would simply add more to the binary nature of the game. What Ranger is asking for is a real, unique, TACTICAL foil for the RoBF. Not the generic and obvious "get more damage reduction". "

/me hugs Sut. Exactly what I am typing about!

GL, you can't boost a familiar's damage output without investing in Junction.

That's the offset there, as I see it. You keep making it sound like augmenting a familiar to do greater DD is free of charge. It isn't. It costs precious MPR. My junction is almost at a cool 1 million right now (almost a full half of that minion's MPR). Don't you think I could use that experience elsewhere? I could, but I have decided to invest it there, and it is expensive.

Right back atcha, Ranger. No leave poor Mary Frances Boyd alone! *smile*

GL,

If the RBF did 10k a round per million level, would we have this conversation?

NOPE. Then all YOU and other RBF users could do is stalemate. The RBF would be a trivial amount of damage. All the RBF users could do is stalemate. However, the damage is still high enough that in TWENTY rounds, it is enough to kill people with MPRs 3x theirs.

Is the current RBF damage huge? No. Is the current RBF damage a lot? No. But it is high enough to kill people given an extended battle. Especially when the person your attacking has no chance to hit you, not 1% but -100%.

others however seem to be saying that they shouldn't have to adjust to counter a new strategy.

Well, I determined what I needed to do to counter it, did that for a while, and then moved on to try other things instead. The only conclusion I've come to after reading (literally) hundreds of posts both for and against, and despite the vehemence of the RoBF/Evasion defenders, is that the use of RoBF/Evasion to maintain 100% bonus from characters 3X the RoBF character's MPR, for little other reason than collecting CB$, isn't a strategy - it's an unfortunate exploit.

Considering that I realize there are also players who are trying to utilize the RoBF as part of truly well thought out strategies, simply for something different and the love of the game, that conclusion saddens me...

I think the problem with RoBF is not that that deals more damage than other options, but allow you to have a perfect defense AND get enough damage in to kill.

RoBF has built-in magic reduction and with 100% XP on evasion, both tanks and mages have problem hitting RoBF user. I have a feeling that when evasion was made, it is not designed to hose tanks twice your size!!!

With 100% trained into evasion a mage will have no trouble hitting the robf. A mage with around 1/2 the mpr of the robf user will kill him.

"if you really want to hit YOU with a weapon, you could always go put 8 mil nw onto the pth of a dagger. You wouldn't do much damage but you would hit him, and he would die in 1 hit."

I just had to address this as it is a very good question.

Once someone wastes 8M into a dagger, all the RBF people have to do is train 100k HP. Not a large % of their total xp. Since we tested a large dagger with 4M strength only doing about 2k damage a hit (if i remember correctly), it is not hard to get over that threshold.

Then what do you do vs all the other characters your fighting, use the pathetic dagger vs them? or just equip it for the times you want to beat someone with 1/3rd your MPR? or defensively equip it and get killed by any non-RBF character?

A nice thought, but not a viable option.

can I have an example of a fight where a mage 1/2 the MPR of a ROBF user beats him? I checked the records for YOU and didn't find evidence supporting 1/2 MPR can beat RoBF. [although equal MPR is viable]

"In my personal experience, I feel anyone with half or less of my total PR should never, ever be able to beat me, no matter how specific the strategies on either end (and assuming both people are trying -- I'm not talking about a totally undefended team here). If someone half my PR can beat me, then I feel one of two things is probably happening: a game imbalance, or an inaccurate representation of total PR. I have complained about both at various times during my tenure here in CB-land. "

Sut, I have people of nearly twice my size on my fightlist. I can beat them because their particular strat is vulnerable to my weapon of choice. Yes, my weapon of choice is powerful, but it's their strat that lets me use it against them. My strat is the scissors to their paper. I don't think I'm running a char that's out of balance; after all other strats can walk all over me.

And it isn't the first time I've been able to do this; I run single minion UC teams, evasion archers, bloodlust morg guys and CoC mages that could take on teams twice the size. If something is out of balance it's either most of the game, or me. And I don't think either of those things are true.

MPR during battles is not what we see on our character page. If we could see what our 'invisible' MPR was, once enchantments had been cast, once skills had been activated, once built in enchantments in certain weapons were at work; then, and only then, would we see that what seems to be out of balance is purely a result of the real MPRs in battle.

with sut's entreaty for common ground, i would accept some other type of foil for robf anytime with a few prerequisites:

1. it needs to be a new foil, using existing ones will do nothing to differentiate the robf

2. it must cost xp to bump it up and/or use a skill slot, not an item that can be bought with usd

JW, I'm not saying one cannot always find targets.

And if by "weapon" you are referring to an actual tank weapon, in that case it would fall under my "total PR not be properly represented". That is why I dislike the WA.

I am also assuming equal minion numbers. Are you saying you could consistently, on average, beat teams with the same number of minions as you, when their total PR was fully twice yours?

And let's say for the sake of argument that my opinion is simply wrong -- half is too high. Where would you draw the line? A third? A fourth? A tenth? Never? At what point do you look at a situation and think there is something amiss?

I completely agree with you, dude, and would add that instead of adding a foil, I would be fine with lessening some of the RoBF's features. I don't mind an item being really good at something, and I don't mind an items having a balanced attack/defense. But when it has a lot of both of those characteristics, then I start thinking changes might need to happen.

I COMPLETELY agree with making sure any changes don't just turn the RoBF into a ToE or a familiar or somesuch. It needs to stay something different.

how about just making the curve for evasion higher?

Painkiller - how does it help anything to push the curve higher, when people can put 100% of their EXP into it? That's the real issue here.

holy trinity of cb balancing: evasion, ranged damage and weapon cap. doing only one would be much worse than leaving it as is in my humble opinion.

those things do need to happen though at some point.

I do think you're right Sut, and that there is a line where it shows there is a problem.

However without taking all sort of things in account it's difficult to say where it is.


For instance: evasion (overpowered or not) reduces NW, and if it does so completely Strength and Dex. Thus removing a huge chunk of MPR. Now maybe it shouldn't do it as much as it does. Maybe it should. But if you then work out that tank team's MPR minus those stats you'll see that the MPR gap isn't as big as it seems.

Alternatively a morg adds a VA of 20%. If the tank is hitting for an MPB of 1000,000 in melee then how much MPR would that VA add? So a Morg wearing tank is actually a lot bigger than he seems. Again any MPR is actually not what it seems.

Obviously we can't see what this actually is per battle - I hate to think how much processing power that would require for all the battles being fought at the same time.


And, regarding minion numbers - there's normally a main strategy that I'm good against and yes, equal minions at twice the size has been the case.

Currently - it's not quite twice the size, but G Beee is waiting for the day when I can't beat his team....;)

I love RoBF and Evasion

Wow! Loads to respond to! :P

"GL - the biggest problem I have with the RoBF's damage is that it's non-retaliation damage. I.E. that's not an attacking point...no AMF, no GA. So if they put everything in defense, they can let the RoBF's damage do its thing without any fear of GA/AMF taking them out."

I never once said the RoBF doesn't need changing/tweaking. I don't like it. But the problem with it (and I'll assert this until Jon changes it) is that it isn't its non retaliatory damage that's the problem. It's not even XP concentration. It's about time single minions got something in CB.

The defense granted by the Tattoo is stupid. The DD reduction is stupid. Evasion is also a problem. (And the MTL is still far too high...).

"But if you use a DD familiar all you will do is just stalemate, if you go 100% evasion. GA and/or AMF will kill your familiar."

Wow... Do what a 4 EC team would do. Not attack those with AMf/GA that will kill you. Strategy.

"Yes, I read that before and quickly dismissed it as poppycock. Why? They are difference modes of damage. The SF is vulnerable to both AMF and GA. The SF does not have inate evasion so you have to use junction/DBs (ask novice it if is as good as evasion). The SF will get creamed by archers, destroyed by AMF and blow itself up via GA. You can spend 47M on NSC's to reduce AMF, but GA still will do tons of damage to your familiar. So you can use DM to lower GA, but then your evasion is lower. Dilution of xp. The RBF does not require it.

The RBF has NONE of those problems.

Being able to do 1/4rd of the SF's damage for 21 rounds is a very small price to pay for immunity to AMF/GA/physical damage.

How the heck can you not see this?????"

Ranger, do you HONESTLY think jon balances Mage damage by thinking " Hmmm... Mages will face 40% AMF reductions, therefore magic damage needs to be set at this level..."

I doubt it.

Leave AMF/GA out to get an unbiased exmaple.

I KNEW you would type this, so here's my counter.

Ranged damage isn't overpowered, we have EC to reduce that to zero. Therefore CB can get rid of Evasion as it's not needed. Hit by archers too much? Never! you obviously don't have EC. Shame on you.

Magical damage isn't overpowered as we have AMF to reduce it to zero. Theerfore CB can get rid of the Mage Shiled as it's not needed. Creamed by Mages? Never! You obviously don't have AMF. Shame on you.

"Just as a very calm response to GL here. One that took me a few seconds to make, because my first one would have gotten me fined I think. Please don't tell me to make a new post and to follow where you are going with your post when I was the original poster. thanks."

Sorry, I wasn't addressing you there with that comment. I don't think anyone would claim Evasion is working well atm. ;)

"GL, you can't boost a familiar's damage output without investing in Junction.

That's the offset there, as I see it. You keep making it sound like augmenting a familiar to do greater DD is free of charge. It isn't. It costs precious MPR. My junction is almost at a cool 1 million right now (almost a full half of that minion's MPR). Don't you think I could use that experience elsewhere? I could, but I have decided to invest it there, and it is expensive. "

I was only using the familair, as it was the closest exmaple for equivalency. I could have used a single mage, but then I could have skewed the results by training 50% into DD and not 33%.

Point still remains, that even using XP, you can boost Physical and DD dmaage. You can do nothing to boost the RoBF damage.

"GL,

If the RBF did 10k a round per million level, would we have this conversation?

NOPE. Then all YOU and other RBF users could do is stalemate. The RBF would be a trivial amount of damage. All the RBF users could do is stalemate. However, the damage is still high enough that in TWENTY rounds, it is enough to kill people with MPRs 3x theirs.

Is the current RBF damage huge? No. Is the current RBF damage a lot? No. But it is high enough to kill people given an extended battle. Especially when the person your attacking has no chance to hit you, not 1% but -100%."

Ah.. Now the real problem. Is damage too much? Has the changeto total linear output for damage outpaced reductions? Does everyone now need a boring 400AC wall, as Everything int he game, from the tinyest damage dealer up, is enough to kill you. If you can't use a binary redction to take the damage directly to zero.

I'd say yes.

Oh, and lowering the MTL would in turn lower the amount of damage output bt the RoBF. Same outcome Ranger. ;)

Now as to why people think it's ok to be hit by a ludicrous amount of Ranged, Physical or Magical damage, and hey, everythings cool, but rail against the new guy, I find is strange.

But the meat of the objections is some people want a binary reduciton to the RoBF damage, like everything else, so when they get large enough, it has no hope of touching them.

/shrug.

We rail against the new guy since:

1) It lets you put all your xp into evasion which everyone believes is overpowered.

2) It has no counter. It has the standard AC/prot/Endurance but thats about it. Or another RBF.

I guess I am just too dense to see how the RBF makes CB a better balanced game. Especially when someone with 1/3 the NW and 1/3 the MPR can beat someone so easily.

Is it the RoBF?

Or is it the current problems with Evasion, MTL and Linear damage scaling (among others)?

Couldn't the RoBF just be the most obvious example of where the fundamental mechanics of the game itself are broken?

Would removale of the RoBF fix Evasion? Would it stop specialised strategies from fighting up? Would it's removal fix massive Ranged damage?

Also on the note of;

"It has no counter."

Nor does AMF and EC. They must be way overpowered. No counter, plus they can totally take a type of damage down to zero.

Shall we scrap them as well?

Missed this. ;)

"All Ranger is asking for is that there be a secondary foil for the RoBF. Taking just that point, specifically, and looking at it, how can anyone not at least say, "I see your point." Feel free to run with the ball after that, but can't we start there? Can't we start with common ground?"

While I agree with your post, I disagree with this. It's the static nature of the damage to not have a secondary foil. You can't be able to specifically reduce it, without being able to boost it in turn.

And as above, what's the secondary foils to AMF and EC? At least DM has the RoS. ;)

I see the problem as two fold GL. Evasion is a problem, but not so much by itself because if a person uses any other tattoo besides a RoBF they can't put all their exp into evasion because it doesn't work. So when you add the RoBF to the equation that's when things are totally out of whack. A person with this tatto can now just train evasion and use the overpowered nature of evasion and not be hit. Geez even ranger at his mpr and his +212 MsK doesn't hit YOU's char until round 3. Does nobody see that as a bit much? That's with the biggest EC combo out there and biggest + mageseeker. So my line I thought was bad, but really. For someone with that much dx, str and ec and + and still can't hit the guy till round 3 and his mpr is 700k and rangers is what ... well over 3 mil.. that's a bit crazy.

So since I rambled a bit. I'll reiterate that I feel you can't talk about one problem without the other because not many people can have a evasion that high so low unless with the RoBF, which is why it's not as much of an argument till someone does a char specifically like this.

"And as above, what's the secondary foils to AMF and EC? At least DM has the RoS. ;)"

NSC and ToA, perhaps? :P

to kill archer with huge bow and DM --> 6100ish point experience in Decay + Evasion = Dead! (7-8 rounds)
Total Uber.

However YOU. The possibility of dying from GA due to the decay may someday outweigh its current benefit.

GA is pretty prevalent at the upper ranks. Many a low hp decay mage/enchanter have died from casting it.

that is true. But this is specialized team.

"But if you use a DD familiar all you will do is just stalemate, if you go 100% evasion. GA and/or AMF will kill your familiar." Wow... Do what a 4 EC team would do. Not attack those with AMf/GA that will kill you. Strategy. That's just the thing, GL! There's nothing you have to look out for so hard! There's no choosing your teams, there's no strategy! With the DD familiar as you said, you choose who you fight. With the RoBF, you're getting magical damage immunity -*AND*- physical damage immunity thanks to your concentrated experience! With no retaliation (as there -is- with the familiar, hence the strategy note you brought up) there's nothing to look out for! The only thing you have to watch is how far you fight up, because somewhere up there is a MPR cap where your OP item can't pull your small MPR. That's not strategy, that is - as Barzoo said - taking advantage of an unfortunate exploit.

D'oh. That's what I get for accidentally clicking HTML mode. No line breaks.


"But if you use a DD familiar all you will do is just stalemate, if you go 100% evasion. GA and/or AMF will kill your familiar."

Wow... Do what a 4 EC team would do. Not attack those with AMf/GA that will kill you. Strategy.

That's just the thing, GL! There's nothing you have to look out for so hard! There's no choosing your teams, there's no strategy!

With the DD familiar as you said, you choose who you fight. With the RoBF, you're getting magical damage immunity -*AND*- physical damage immunity thanks to your concentrated experience! With no retaliation (as there -is- with the familiar, hence the strategy note you brought up) there's nothing to look out for!

The only thing you have to watch is how far you fight up, because somewhere up there is a MPR cap where your OP item can't pull your small MPR. That's not strategy, that is - as Barzoo said - taking advantage of an unfortunate exploit.

YOU,

Please do not take this wrong:

I have nothing against YOU the person. Past aside. For what the RBF/evasion combination gives, it is the perfect was to grow fast and keep a 100% CB as long as possible. Was done in the past with the single FB/TOE mage, or the TOA/BG/ELB/Seeker archer, or the ability to use jumbo tattoos/familiars on 1 MPR characters. However, every time the community, almost to a person, realized that was "out of wack".

Your trying to grow as much as possible and get as much money as possible. What anyone tries to do. However, the strategy with the RBF/evasion is so out of wack it is unbalancing the game.

So my post about the RBF/evasion, and even some aspects of evasion itself, is not an attack on YOU, but on what is clearly (in my mind) severely unbalancing the game..

Ummm, not sure if anyone has suggested this.... I haven't read every word....

But wouldn't it be nice and simple to drop a stiff skill penalty on the RoBF? Give people the choice: you can be guaranteed hits that un-GA-able or you can avoid all physical attacks, but not both.

meh... I use a RoBF but there is not one sniff of evasion on my team.
I think Sox brings up a valid point (and not just because he is in my clan).

Loch,

That would be a fine solution, mentioned in the past 1 or 2 times in the past. In addition to its magic resistance being lowered a bit.

More posts of protest!

"That would be a fine solution, mentioned in the past 1 or 2 times in the past."

Another fine quote, brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department. ^_^

King of Pain defeated TheOne (/FTW) after 3 rounds of combat.
Takes me 3 to hit him as well.

Mikel, that's expected... It's not like ya got the fourth highest + of any weapon in the game backed by the biggest ToA and the 2nd highest DX in the game on a char over four times his size...

What?! Oh...

His evasion is at 4.5mil or so with effective level close to 190. Not a surprise that even mikel can't hit thanks to the ranged bonus to evasion. Another 400k mpr later, he'll be able to stale mikel. Now that's something I wanna see.

Good post Sox, but again I don't feel that's a fault of the RoBF. It's just the easiest way to exploit Evasion.

You can do the same with an Evasion minion on a multi minion team. This allows you to still use an AoF without drawbacks to boost your Evasion to silly levels (Imagine if someone trained a natural evasion to the size of somethign like Sutes Fireball, which was then boosted 100% by Gear. We'd be seeing 10 Million Evasions, and nothing would touch that). If we saw a super pumped Evasion, due to it's nature, no Tank regardless of current sizes, would be able to touch it. Then you can cater the rest of your team to killing your opponent.

You can also do somewhat the same with a single Archer with a ToA. If you really wanted. It's not as simple fighting up with that, as you'ld have to pick your fightlist more carefully, but it's still possible.

Specialised strats will always be able to target and fight up, I'm sure SacredPeanut was beating Tanks more than twice his size. Why wasn't that a problem then, but it is now?

I also feel that the change to linear stats has ramped damage potential, past the increased HP you would have gained from HP and AS changing with them.

"But wouldn't it be nice and simple to drop a stiff skill penalty on the RoBF? Give people the choice: you can be guaranteed hits that un-GA-able or you can avoid all physical attacks, but not both."

Wouldn't the same deal still exist, but on a two (or more) minion team? With a Front minion training only Evasion, pumped by elven Gear and an AoF (they would lose whatever Evasion the RoBF gives, but get to equip an EC for more +Skill). You still get the un-GA-able damage, you're still unhittable by Physical attacks, and who cares if the Evasion minion is killed by FB/CoC, you don't need Evasion facing that team and the RoBF still protects you.

Compounding the issue the the vast amount of +Skill you can obtain, and use on Evasion.

I'm not sure how much the largest Evasions effect it, but imagine one of the other bigs skills on a multi minion team actually being Evasion, and that skill being boosted as much as possible.

I'll throw out 5 Million as the trained level. (Effect of around 200? If not more?)

With the largest DEX items in the game (named values second);

AoF: +14/+15
EC: +13/+14
EG: +15/+16
EB: +34/+36

For a total of +111%

That would make the Evasion over 10.5 Million in size (with 10.5 Million Defensive Dexterity). What effect would that be? 400?

What wepaon could touch 400 -PTH on it's own (which then cuts into Dexterity anyway), let alone which Tank could contend with hitting 10.5 Million Defensive Dexterity.

That single skill, with top end equipment, would rule every Tank in the game. what's the largest PTH currently? +252 on a Elbow (which would be hit by the Ranged Penalties). Even USd pumped, no weapon would ever be able to get past that.

Just tried [unsuccessfully as of now] to replace my RoBF with a Rune of Enlightenment, but from the initial tests, i am quite certain the RoBF does indeed grant Evasion. I arrived at this conclusion from the fact that while Super J's Slot Machine char's defensive ammo hits my minions in the fourth round of ranged when the RoBF is on, without the RoBF he hits in the second round onward.

Here is something to consider:

Draco uses evasion to get basically the same effect as I do.

Evasion 5,658,200 2,978,000 214 165

vs my 2 enchanter EC:

5,456,000 4,400,000 2,728,020 2,200,020

3,782,000 3,050,000 1,891,020 1,525,020


So for 3M levels worth of xp, boosted to 5.6M he gets the same effect as 7.5M trained levels of Ethereal Chains.

Why would anyone use EC anymore?

Because EC effects evasion? And evasion doesn't?

Of course if evasion was brought down a peg then EC would be all the more effective. Then maybe more people would use that instead. After all, EC - unlike AMF which is actually far more specific - hits tanks and ANYONE who uses evasion....mages....RBF teams...........

Which would make EC and large PTH pretty much the most desirable combination in CB....

"So for 3M levels worth of xp, boosted to 5.6M he gets the same effect as 7.5M trained levels of Ethereal Chains."

ethereal chains drains strength too, so is he getting the "same" effect after all?

Yes I am getting the same effect... after all if you can't hit me your str goes for naught... and that Defensive dex gets ridiculously high compared to the largest trained dex in the game... 13,214,595 defensive dex in round one of ranged compared to DX: 4,192,146 on Mikel's character. Even after all Ranged... I get 5.6 mil defensive dex in Melee with an effect of -214 pth... It helps to combat those huge USD weapons... but no one in the game could ever hope to hit that evasion without usd invested into their weapons or a huge mpr slice into EC...

If YOU Keeps up the pace he is going right now... YOU could have an even higher effect than I do... and I have a whole minion just about devoted to evasion. That is some serious Exp consolidation. With the Absorb value of ROBF that leaves for one powerful single minion character... No tank weapon could hit it... and most mages spells will fizzle...

Without training amf, mage will rip apart YOU's char, especially since it is single minion. No weapon will be able to hit him soon enough and that much is obvious.

Very true,

However, YOU can then hire a 2nd minion, all AMF and do quite well vs mage teams. Perhaps not all since CoC is quite powerful, but still enough to beat those near his MPR.

Well if you want to look at the viability of specialized RoBF strategy at high level play, you should look at what Chuck is doing. Another problem would be to get a tatt big enough. I find the naturally raised tatt to be insufficient. RoBF is truly imba if you can somehow get close to MTL. (ie what karn has).

What makes it even worse:
28.5 mil xp trained into Dex, and 19.3 mil into Archery.

AMF of that size won't be enough to stop mages around his mpr. Right now all a mage has to do is deal more damage in 1 round than his Robf would deal in order to win. Even if he trains AMF mages at the same mpr will still likely be able to deal more than that.

Actually, he just trains Evasion up until he gets 250 effect, and then switches to AMF. After all, at 250 effect and all the Def. DX that comes with it, he never needs to train into it again. ALL his exp from that point on can go into AMF.

How's YOU's strategy, assuming he learns amf, any different from the single minion RoBF characters that we've been playing since god knows when. Why do you not see any such team being competitive? Because it's mediocre at best in the high level game.

I still see no big RoBF Evasion/AMF single Enchanters in the upper level game. Everyone's trained HP or CoC or DX/ST or SOMETHING. Do you realize that at 1.2M MPR, they could have over 4.5M in Evasion, not counting multipliers? So at 2.4M MPR, it is reasonable to say the same amount could be put into AMF. That's still 1M MPR behind the #1 guy.

Besides, everyone gets stuck around a certain score. Nonetheless, those particular opponents would be stalemate bait, even if the RoBF damage can't hit past a wall/ToE.

Of the new chars who set up single minion RBF chars back in September/October there is only Karn who has stuck with a single minion.

Almost without exception the others in the game have either dropped the RBF or given up those chars. The other teams using the RBF were already where they are, using other tattoos.

Now considering it's the overpowered build of the moment, why would so many give it up? Why isn't the top ten currently overrun with single minion RBF evasion teams?

/me snickers something about the broken N*B system and the top ten's nice spot

That's probably the biggest part of it. Some might say the game is broken if most of the top ten can't be beaten by anybody else but each other. Especially if that has been the case for so long....

Personally I find that more concerning than somebody being able to train HUGE evasion.

the Nub system is broken? How? Please explain more.

With equivalent effort it's not possible to reach 95% of the top MPR in 4 months.

Therefore, it's broken.

I will say this... The top ten has changed alot lately, including and not limited to me joining the elite ranks... as well as Novice... We have whittled down and made our ways into the top ten even without the mpr to back it up. I see several with more mpr than I and I even have more than Nov... It is more than doable... just look at DreadedTiger's old Char... and the strat he used... He was able to beat just about everyone in BR including Ranger (At times) with his strat.

And his strat had how much MPR? 1.86 mil mpr is not that hard to obtain... considering I sold a char with about that much mpr not too long ago... and he was in the top 10 off and on as well... There is just so much more one can do with 4 minions than with 3 or 2 or even 1...

With the proper equipment and strat anyone can be in the top 10. I used what NS taught me to work my way up... I kept unequipping what I didn't need and then training to beat those that I was close to beating... and I have 3 people that currently farm me... and 2 that can but are in the same clan... Mpr is not the do all of the strat game... if you build a well rounded strat there will always be a few that can beat you... but there will be far less that can actually beat you...

The only real problem I have is with the Robf being able to consolidate all that exp and build a stalemate strat... or one that can make all weapons in the game miss and yet still be able to deal damage at 1/3rd the mpr of those that he farms. Its just a little off keel imho... but we will see what happens with it.

So what happens when a sleep-deprived person somehow blends the evasion issue with 'The Matrix' while possibly hallucinating?

Random and possibly bizarre suggestions!

Ok, so here we go:
Massive evasions are perceived to be a problem (particularly with a RoBF), sort of an underhanded and shady way to get a big score with little strategy. (like picking up at a family reunion, nobody really respects you for it).

The complete nullification of millions in NW (ToA, BG, ELBOW/MSK...) is a little vexing (or homicide inducing, depending on the NW in question).

So my solution: (drum-roll optional)
Any weapon over +100 should hit once per round even when facing evasion.
Let a suitably high Evasion nuke all double/triple/quad hits under the current formula.
AND
Have any excess Evasion reduce the damage of the one hit per round (someone smarter than me can come-up with the ratio here). The damage reduction would have to be significant but enough that in investment in HP/AS is necessary, just like every other character in the game.

The moral of the story is as follows:
Like Neo on the rooftop you can't dodge all the bullets but you can make sure that they aren't fatal hits.

Flame away my friends, flame away.

Didn't Neo dodge all of them though? :P

The always hits once is a nice idea, as is Evasion reducing the damage done by Physical attacks, not stopping attacks compeltely.

"<Lochnivar> anyone feel like flaming me in forums the perfect target just went up....
<Lochnivar> I am going to bed however
<Lochnivar> good night all"

Flame, flame....flame.

P.S. didn't even read any responses, I'm over this crap of evasion/RoBF.

heh, Flamey, you better start some moan/groan about the RoS being weak lol

I cried wolf and whined about the RoBF for months because the DD reduction was too much. But no one reacted to that, i cried and cried and complained and i whined. But now someone cried the fact that the RoBF makes evasion too powerful nullifying millions of nw! And bam a whole discussion broke lose, what about the mages????
They have the most problems with the RoBF! If you don't have a single mage or a two minion mage strat, your screwed facing it! Back in the day I had an SF well over 1,5mil in level, the SF did 0 damage in ranged and in melee facing the RoBF that was only 900k in level!.

Well i switched from SF to the RoBF, I gained every more DD teams then i did tank teams, cuz I already had an evasion character up front.
Have mercy on the DD teams here!

Nobody's complaining about the insignificant RoBF boost. People are complaining, ironically, about the fact that magic resistance leads to the ability to concentrate EXP in one or two stats, one of which is evasion.

Henk, the RoBF is effectively equivalent to having an additional minion wearing a Mage Shield that is around +20/25, its NW growing continuously with the tatt. Add the Evasion effect, much like that minion also wears DBs. And, that minion has an infallible weapon which cannot be AMFed or Evaded, or ECed, which cannot even be retaliated against through GA.

So, what is the solution? Remove the Mage Shield, i.e., do away with DD protection? Remove the DBs, do away with Evasion? Remove the infallible weapon? You will simply need to do away with the Rune of Balrog Flame.

I'd fix Evasion itself, change the DD reduction to either a percentage, or move it's direct reduciton to the front of the queue, and lower the Max Tattoo Level.

Every problem with the tattoo fixed, plus some general game fixes as well. ;)

Obviously, fixing Evasion will necessitate other changes, but that's a given isn't it?

And yes, after preliminary testing +/- the RoBF against Annihilus, I agree with Ranger, the only defence against another RoBF is to possess your very own RoBF :)

Edit: Like others have suggested, I'd also stop the RoBF DD redution from working on MM. And maybe even Fireball. ;)

GL, if you fix Evasion, you'll need to attend to Archery in ranged as well, there's a whole lot of items down that line that'll need attention in due course, its a long line of dominoes :)

1. Fix BGs
2. Fix evasion, maybe by making it grant 1/2 defensive DX instead or something. Maybe 2/3rds.
3. Move RoBF reduction to the front
No more absurd ranged damage, and evasion/AMF/RoBF ceases to be viable without making either the RoBF or evasion too useless.