What should I do with my junction "mage" (in General)

I started the team with a MM junction mage, junctioning a SF with HoC, NSCs, and EBs (only really there for encumbrance boost).

A little later, I hired an AS enchanter, and gave them a base Decay. Been training all AS ever since.

hen I waited a couple hundred thousand MPR before hiring a GA enchanter and a wall. The GA enchanter was training 1/4 DM and Max GA until the GA got above my AS casting effective, and now he trains 1/2 into each...

The CoC on the "wall" is just high enough to be bigger than my decay after penalties. the UC is base, for the encumbrance boost and the slight evasion effect it gives when accompanied by the Combat Gi and Helm's Gauntlets. This is temporary, and I plan to replace it with full wall gear once they have enough encumbrance limit.

Here's my issue... My junction "mage" has a pathetic DD, due to the semi-large investment required for junction. My SF has an effective MM level over 850k... My junction mage has an effective MM of under 320k. Seems to me that's just begging to be destroyed by AMF... I can unlearn the DM and HP, and get another 200k into my DD, but it still seems doomed to forever fall behind, due to needing a third of the minion's total XP for junction, and I'd rather not leave a damage dealer entirely without natural HP without a RoS (even then, I'd rather not :P). So I'm thinking of ditching the MM entirely... My question; for what?

Any suggestions from any angles are welcome ^_^

Depends how long the mage tends to stay alive anyhow. If he dies quickly in most of your fights that you win, then increasing the damage done for that short time might help you specialize more and beat higher people with similar strategies. If your challenge bonus is already decent, then redefining that minion's role based off the strategies that tend to beat you could be helpful. Try fighting lower opponents that beat you and look for a way to toughen up.

Retrained to a 50k Decay, and put the rest to DM. Doing so forced me to remove nobody from my fightlist.

With a new Decay, I was able to remove the base one from my AS enchanter, which also helps a lot on saving HP against AMF, especially considering my junction minion uses NSCs anyway. Not sure If I'll eventually drop the Decay, or if it will become a vital, functioning part of my strategy, but my theory with this char is "time will tell"...

The added DM means it will be a while before I need to train it on my GA dude again, especially considering my junction "mage" will now train nothing but Junction and DM... This, combined with my wall (once he can equip stuff) should allow me to make the most effective possible use of my GA.

Everything appears to be coming together quite nicely. even if I do look like one of those 4E teams with a familiar that just decided to retrain one of his AS dudes into a currently malnourished wall... :P

Does GA play a large to semi-large role in the majority of your fights?

GA plays an enourmous roll in any fight against an opponent without a large DM. With more HP and AC on my "wall" I can better stand up to tanks. Against heavy DM, I have the advantage of killslots. ToE, RoBF, and spread damage with heavy DM hurt me. Aside from that, I won't have many issues ^_^

Yup.

With a five minion team and some decent AS + GA, you will do somewhere between a third and a half of your total damage, with GA reflection (at least, that's about what I do).

With a four minion team, it's unlikely that you will ever get an effective MM level anywhere near the SF's level on the minion with the SF equipped, especially since it must train at least Junction. Hence, some sort of EO or other skill that isn't adversely affected by DM/AMF/EC etc is the best choice, IMO.

The use of the wall is a novel one; I hope it works out for you. My strategy against tanks has always been "Hope they don't train DM and then let them kill themselves on my GA". Also, you may wish to use an AoI on your junction minion, and for MM I would suggest some big Alatars gloves for your SF - I _think_ it will serve you better than NSC's, not sure though, since I cannot afford AGs. Other than that, it's a nice setup; best of luck with it.

Cheers,
muon.