End of the melee tank as we know it? (in General)

First a few points:

1) With ENC there is no real way a tank can use both a melee and missile weapon effectively and have a chance to hit evasion. I think most people realize that tanks now have to concentrate in 1 weapon.

2) Since evasion was not changed, yet again, tanks still have the same problems trying to hit high evasion minions. A problem that was again not addressed is the AoF's boost to defensive dexterity that tanks have no way of matching.

3) With SG, which is a 1 or 2 cast to kill spell, melee tanks typically cannot keep up.

4) With the nerfage of AC, the reduction in regeneration in the TSA, and the lowering of the TOE, it is harder to live through 6 rounds of magic (vs FB/MM) than it was ever before. Even with the 10% reduction in magic damage this changemonth.

So, how can a melee tank make it in the new CB?

I have no idea. I had to add a SG since the TOE I was using was just not cutting it.

And with exbows doing 1 hit complete strength drain, a melee tank sort of has to go with the evasion route or avoid exbows. Since with ENC, it is almost impossible to use DBs with your tank.

Now if your a TOA tank, you almost always have to be a missile weapon user. A rare person can make a TOA melee tank, but I would not recommend it.

So, why have melee tanks been the red-headed stepchild of CB?

Well a ToA tank can now use a Mage Shield to prevent a lot of damage.


I on the other hand use a ToE on an Enchanter and a fully DX/ST buffed tank as main damage dealer.

So far it is going good but I indeed am getting problems getting to keep decent targets due to mages being made more powerful than they already were...

Not sure yet, I'll get back to you on that with my next NCB ^_^

First, let me start off by saying that I agree with all your comments.

1) I think that encumbrance needs to either be removed from the game entirely, or be greatly increased. Like you said, tanks need to concentrate on one weapon now. My ELB makes up half of my total NW, and I still don't stand a chance against evasion.

2) To put it bluntly, evasion needs a nerf. Because the only useful tanks in the game are archers now, people will hesitate before using them simply because of evasion. Evasion renders the strength of an archer useless. Why? Well, archers are strong in ranged combat. That's the whole point of an archer: Do as much damage as possible from afar before the enemy closes in. But when an archer goes up against evasion, it simply can't hit anything.

3) SG needs a huge reworking. Maybe remove the bonus from AC and make it armor piercing (AC has no effect on it), or make the bonus much smaller, about 0.2-0.4% bonus from each AC. SG paired with evasion spells doom for any tank.

4) "With the nerfage of AC, the reduction in regeneration in the TSA, and the lowering of the TOE, it is harder to live through 6 rounds of magic (vs FB/MM) than it was ever before."
You forgot the MgS nerf. Sure, the upgrade cap was removed, but you'd need a huge MgS to have a decent damage reduction. That paired with encumbrance... Well, you get the idea.

I personally love tanks. Tanks are fun. I don't think I would make a mage because they aren't very fun for me. So, with the recent changes, I now question whether or not I should even attempt to play CB anymore. My whole strategy is nerfed in a few days. If I were to even try to make a mage, I'd need to sell all my equipment and purchase gear for a mage, however it would be difficult selling tank gear because of the changes.

But I guess I should just shut up and join Mage Blender. (Term stolen from Yukk)

I also agree that the melee tank as we know it is dead, though I'm kind of ok with that. This is a game after all, some strats gets nerfed others get buffed, we as the players of this game have to adapt to it. I mean we've been given huge chances to change up already with our 50% weapon artist and the free retrain week.

Also, who knows, the players here are smart, maybe some person will think of something new that can revive the melee tank without trying to keep the game exactly as it was before.

i am not sure exactly what your point is ranger. are you upset that you need to now specialize and can't do both ranged and melee on one big minion?

mages have needed to specialize always. they really couldn't do both a ranged dd and melee dd and do very well either. tanks are now limited similarly to mages, yes it may be less than what they could do, but they are now more in line with the rest of the game.

or are you saying that even when specialized, melee tanks are still weak or that you shouldn't have to add a magic damage minion?

50% Weapon disenchanting is rather poor overall.

For weapons like 100M, you lose 50M if you want to change to let us say a missile one from a melee one.

That is too much to lose and stay competitive. Especially if you have not used USD and played smart.

We needed a weapon artist or a 95% weapon disenchant time, during free retrain time to let tanks have a chance to keep up.

"i am not sure exactly what your point is ranger. are you upset that you need to now specialize and can't do both ranged and melee on one big minion? "

I am quite sorry you cannot see my point.

But here it is in clearer words:

Yes, melee tanks are very, extremely weak now. So much so they are fairly unplayable as anything but a specialized strategy now. Similar to the 3xEC strategy to target only tanks.

I am really pissed that while mages got the chance to change their spells and adapt quite nicely, I am stuck with a huge MH that really sucks wind in this new age of CB. I never had the chance to adapt other then change my tattoo and change my EO spells. WOW, big thing for me. I got to lose EC and get junction. Nothing to help my tank at all. In some battles, it does well before melee even starts. All with 8+M levels of AMF, and a huge MgS/TSA.

O, yea, I could have disenchanted my MH and lost 120M on it. yada yada yada.... That of course is not a real option. How about if mages had to lose 5% of their xp every time they wanted to try a new DD spell. O, wait, this week they had NO penalty.

It used to be with a TOE, TSA, etc... a melee tank could try to live until melee. Now that is nearly impossible due to the new spell and the nerfs damage reduction experience this month.

Then add the free retrain period and all the mages could adapt to the new changes while tanks could not really change their focus.

Just look at Mikel and Freed for instance. Both abandoned their weapons. I had to go to a mage familiar. All to keep up with mages. So even the 2 highest missile tanks had to ditch their weapons.

I loved ENC entering the game. I great foil for USD, I have posted that numerous times. I never stated that I wanted to have a missile and melee attack since ENC came about, well not after the first week or so :).

But with the new changes, one strategy that got left out, in the cold, is the melee tank. Game over for those of us.

"50% Weapon disenchanting is rather poor overall.

For weapons like 100M, you lose 50M if you want to change to let us say a missile one from a melee one."

Not if you forge (or hire a forger)!

At 70% forging rate, that 50m you just got would give you a weapon with roughly 71m NW. Losing 29m out of 100m isn't nearly as bad as losing 50m. ELBs are screwed, though. :P

You don't have to disenchant all at once; it can be a slow process to allow the forger time to forge. You can borrow another weapon if you have to, etc. It's possible.

Aaaanyways, I do agree that SG might need a bit of a nerf. Not in the +1% per base AC part, but on the base damage. Still, SG isn't the end of melee tanks as we know it. SG isn't exactly the easiest spell in the world to utilize, even if it basically kills everything in one hit. They have to live through 5/6 rounds, themselves. :)

For most weapons, there is usually someone willing to do an insta... these huge 150m+ weapons are kinda left in the dark on that matter, but bleh... If you invest 150m nw in something you know very well can be changed or deleted at any time for any or no reason (as per the ToS), you are pretty well taking that risk. You have been warned, and changemonth is no surprise.

For those with weapons they could find people to insta to, but wanting to complain about the "loss" they would take due to having used the blacksmith for a large portion of their weapons growth, either eat the loss or move on. Using the blacksmith is like speeding to work. It may get you there faster, but you will get a ticket from time to time. You knew the risk when you took it, it's up to you if the change is worth the "loss"...

The free retrain matter is a whole 'nother story. One I am personally against. Far as I'm concerned; no free retrains. weapon not what you want anymore? insta down upgrade something else. Get burned? put some triple antibiotic ointment on it, and it'll get better faster.

O,

And evasion, yet again, suffered no change. Yes a couple new items to boost PTH. But for those locked into their weapon like the MH we get this crappy shield. Sort of like the old saying "My mom went to CB and all I got was this lousy shield".

One that only helps vs tanks and you have to wait till melee to try to hit to use its special ability.

But when I wanted a buff on the SoC to help us melee tanks, seems some people adamantly were steadfast against it.

Yes, the melee tank got royally hosed this month. To almost unplayable status. Unless you have like 2 mage walls and a HP/PL/TSA battery. But as some say "how boring".

But as for the melee tank, the future is looking bleak, but I feel I may have found a ray of sunshine in a world of darkness. Like I said, I'll get back to you during my next NCB ~_^

i feel for ya not being able to play with your weapon and that it has become a bit of an albatross for your team. at some point you may have to just take the hit on it, it would seem that you got quite a bit of benefit from it though for a very long time. it is easy for me to say that though.

Hatch,

Then why play a tank at all, since you need a high PTH weapon to hit evasion?

Since any changemonth it can be nothing more then a paperweight.

"At 70% forging rate, that 50m you just got would give you a weapon with roughly 71m NW. Losing 29m out of 100m isn't nearly as bad as losing 50m. ELBs are screwed, though. :P "

Do you really know how long it takes to add 20M to a weapon? Does any tank wish to be without his weapon that long?

C'Mon now.

8 Weeks give or take...

"Do you really know how long it takes to add 20M to a weapon? "

about $60. :P

My VB got a huge benefit by having it's base upped and the new items will help immensely (i think). But the VB lost a lot of it's purpose with the AC, ToE, and protection nerf. Furthermore, there is now a MoD ignoring PL, so that it has basically the same effect my VB does on walls backed by PL (assuming there is no AS involved...) since I have to kill the wall at least twice with a VB (assuming the PL sink keeps up)... Oh and that spell that works just like a VB, only harder-hitting and not succeptable to evasion.

So in the end, the focus of my net worth as a non-USD spending char got a small prize, in exchange for having it's usefulness tossed in the trash... But y'know, I don't mind. I like all the new stuff that'll keep me thinking for the next three months. And I know we both know what happens then... *ANOTHER* changemonth! Where, for all we know, my VB will become the single most undebatably overpowered item in the game. Who knows? I don't, you don't.

Again, changemonths are no surprise. Roll with the punches. Don't take the game so seriously... I have one suggestion that would likely put a lot more of the fun back in the game for any at the top who are currently feeling burnt out, but it is taking quite a leap to the assumption that it is not about the destination (in this case, the top spot, where the only place you can go is down...), so much as the journey. Either retire/sell your character, or fire a minion or two, and start from the bottom. Where we've all been playing this marvelous game and enjoying the best of what it has to offer for so long.

Every dog has it's day. Every rose has it's thorns. Every player knew the MH was the most useful all-around weapon in the game. The VB was like that a year and a half ago or so, right? What happened? You were warned.

Tyriel, that is extremely unreasonable. Let's compare. The mage has a free retrain. Completely 100% free with no penalties. No lost money, no lost exp, nothing lost at all.
Tanks on the other hand, are left in the dark. Ranger's MH is huge and if he were to join mage blender, there goes a rather large portion of his life savings.

Why do mages get everything all perfect and dandy, no penalty at all, and now tanks can't do anything. Tanks have to retrain into mages and lose half their net worth in the process. Mages can retrain into even BETTER mages and lose absolutely nothing.
Also, it's rather easy for a SG minion to survive to melee. Against a tank, simply train evasion. Problem solved.
Against a mage, AMF + AS. problem solved.

Let's create a scenario here. Let's say I decide to retrain into a mage. I know I don't have the best equipment and everything, but I spent a lot of time getting to where I am now.
Anyways, I retrain my minion and blah blah blah, but wait! oh no! what do I do with all my tank gear? Well, selling it is out of the question, because who would want useless junk? Who would buy it for even a fraction of what it was once worth? So let's say I'm able to sell my 35 mil net worth tank gear for 5 mil. Yes, 5 mil. Would you buy anything that has absolutely no purpose? I doubt it...
So let's say I'm able to sell all my equipment for 5 mil. Well, I might be able to buy base corn, CoI, and alaters. Where do I get the money to upgrade it? I don't have a NUB, I don't have anything of value. Well, I guess I can spend about 6+ months to get around the same NW that I have now (35 mil).... It would probably take even longer than that.

What I'm trying to say is I'm screwed. Ranger is screwed. Pretty much anybody with a tank is screwed. We don't get a NUB to start over with. We can't ditch our accounts and make new ones because we'll be banned. We have to spend tedious hours making $400 (if we're lucky) to get back to where we were before the change month.

So really, tanks are done with. There isn't any point to have a tank anymore. Gone are the days of gouging, slicing and hacking, hello casting and.... touching...

Raveshaw, I think its quite a bit harder to survive to melee than your making it sound...

Anyway, I really like the way hatch thinks. Tanks as we know them have been pretty much screwed now, but theres no reason why we can't try to find a new way to run a tank. I'm also going to see if I can find a way to run a tank between now and when my current ncb ends, and would like to support Hatchet in his endeavor. Go hatchet and your konichiwizzles!

as far as the forging thing. It's all about planning. Up in the higher ranks, you have less time to plan, due to your back being the one with a giant target on it. This is a potential problem for what? 5 people? The five people that have had the privelege of running the top scores list of this game for years? Changemonth was made (along with the N*B) to keep the top ranks from stagnating. The game is *designed*against* somebody staying number one forever.

at the lower ranks, there is far more versatility. rentals can be arranged, and strategies can be adjusted to be not-so weapon-centric... my VB, for example. I would rather not go without it once my strategy is based around it. It's why I planned ahead (yay me?), and built a strat that couldn't even use it if it wanted to while it gets forged. At some point, when my weapon is done being forged, I will make my strategy around it. At which point I will hold off on much upgrading until I have acchieved what I plan to with the character that uses it. At which point, it will go off to another forger, while I plan my further conquests.


The game itself, and all of it's mechanics back me fully when I say:

It is *not* the destination. It is the journey.

Ranger -

Have you tried going with two damage dealers? You can't put a ranged and melee weapon on the same minion, but what about two separate minions?

thats where dilution kicks in :)

"Have you tried going with two damage dealers? You can't put a ranged and melee weapon on the same minion, but what about two separate minions?"

How does that do anything to resolve the ENC / weapon NW cap?

ENV is on a per-minion basis.

you all have taken the current picture, and see how the new skills affect them in the short run. Evasion is ONLY good if there are tanks, and SG is ONLY good if there is high AC wall. Suppose it become mage blender and there is not a single tank, and no one use more than +20 base AC (mage gears), would you still train evasion and SG? They are merely a counter to some strategies. With equal MPR, a CoC with AMF will smoke a SG with Evasion any day.
SG+Evasion > current teams > currently unviable teams > SG+Evasion

Yes NS,

I have thought about that.
But do I want to sink another 100M into a decent missile weapon to try to hit evasions?

Knowing in the span of 31 days it too can become useless. Just another paperweight for my collection. On the shelf alongside my MH.

And for those of us not in the 6 BA regeneration zone, one has to worry about Weapon Allowance (WA). Something that the changemonth before got cut in 1/2. So 2 decent weapons increases your PR so much your rewards suffer, compared to mages. Who, by the way, got a huge benefit from the free retrain.

Compared to us tanks, esp the melee ones, who have to use our weapon. Or ditch it and become mages. Or disenchant it for 50% loss and wait for months to have another missile weapon forged.

As much as I have disliked changes in the past, this month has been probably the worst I have experienced. From a balance point of view.
The other changemonths with the free retrain were nothing like this one. Tanks just got hosed, melee versions royally so.

You know there is still another option.... UC

And basically my character now is a mage.

The "tank" in the back is really at best a mage wall. 3M levels of strength since I am stubborn not to use my MH. Unlike Mikel and Freed who have given up their tanks. A minion there for some mop up duty at the end of the battle.

With the NSC, I really do not have to worry much about AMF. My EF always gets at least 3 hits in, which is basically 3 dead minions and my "tank" and minitank take care of the rest. I am lucky to have such a high level familiar to be able to have a mage/tank combo. Most others are not.

For most battles, the EF does all the killing. My back minion is just a very expensive mage wall.

You *have* rolled with a mage before (The Grid-CoC) and honestly its not the end of the world if for the moment, the proverbial stick has come up short for the Tank in CB. There was a time when mages were underpowered to tanks, there will again be a time when mages are underpowered to tanks. Patience is a virtue; your paperweight will one day be useful again!

Think of your paperweight as a phoenix;

"It has a 500 year life-cycle, and near the end the phoenix builds itself a nest of cinnamon twigs that it then ignites; both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes, from which a new, young phoenix arises. The new phoenix is destined to live, usually, as long as the old one. The bird was also said to regenerate when hurt or wounded by a foe, thus being almost immortal and invincible"

^_^

"Sword of Ashes [84x11400] (+150)"

See? Mikel's got the right idea :P

On another note, where's edy's MH? :P

sorry for the triple-post (I can't help it, my fingers have too much DX and I upgraded the pth on my keyboard too high)>.< didn't notice edy's MH cuz it lost it's name, and i was looking at the named items list because i remembered there was a MH to back my phoenix claim :P

Next thing you know the weapons shop will be gone. It isn't like it matters much anyway.... because weapons are useless now. *tear*

Ranger- on your point (2) (Since evasion was not changed, yet again, tanks still have the same problems trying to hit high evasion minions.) Good luck with that! I have a fairly nice ranged weapon. Heart Cleave (SoD)[5x4350] (+200) worth $128,414,084.With a Ranged Bonus to-Hit of 223. Guess what? Some evasion users I don't hit even once for however long the (fight?) lasts! Can we get a tweek??

Before the new damage model, mages ruled (actually, the SFBM dominated) and tanks were very hard to play. Jon summarized that changemonth with "Welcome to tankblender", at which point mages were *VERY* hard to play. Somewhere along the line, the scales tipped back, and mages and tanks were about equal. Now, mages are back on top again.

CB is a game that changes more often than Oprah's weight. That's just kinda the status quo. Heck, look at tattoos. When I designed my character, it was designed around what was then the worst tattoo in the game. Then the RBF became the best. The HAL went through the same transition. The TOE/TOA were the only tattoos worth anything (all familiars were trash), then Junction and TOE/A nerfs changed all that. Things change all the time.

You do make a good argument, however, that despite "change" being an integral part of the game, non-UC tanks do have a hard challenge when adaptation requires dumping a $100M weapon.

temporarily switch to a mage, and maybe some evasion minions will switch away from evasion to AMF, then you switch back.

It is not the system itself that balances the game. It is the players. In any game that there is human making decision, it should reach an equilibrium where each option is "equally" good (e.g. evasion become less good with less tank, which means the few tanks left have a good time because less people keep evasion). There is a point where one option is so much superior than the rest (like a new DD that guarentees 1 hit kill on their whole team with only base trained and ignore all defense), that the equilibrium is at everyone take that option, but I don't see CB being that far off yet.

the other thing that needs to be remembered is that some players made an investment at a time when it benefited them greatly. the usd they invested made one heckuva difference.

the tide has turned, and all of that usd that many of us thought they were crazy to spend, now seems just that. it did make a whole mess of difference though for the longest time and just because now it no longer makes that difference the game is suddenly horribly broken.

it is a different game now and yes it sucks that they spent cold hard cash on something that was in hindsight fleeting. that was their choice though and they weren't nearly as upset when the pendulum was swinging in their favor.

the real question is whether jon should now bail them out because the game has changed. i doubt anyone now would upgrade a weapon that high with weapon encumbrance the way it is. with our game population getting smaller all of the time and the knowledge, strategy and helpfulness that some of these players have exhibited, it really wouldn't bother me at all if jon did decide to bail them out.

i do think that it is important to state though that we all make our own choices and shouldn't expect accommodations or entitlements and if they are given we should be very grateful.

/me never spent any USD on this game other than that for supportership.

never spent USD on this game. period. except for paying CBD to get supportership (that's the only time USD touched my account)

your score is also 500% of your mpr, what exactly is your point?

SG is far too effective compared to a melee tank, and I think that is the major problem. Seriously if you can kill one minion around with DD there's nearly no point to a tank. When you compare SG with the VB, SG is far more effective.

Even if you had say an SG wall, with a Combat GI, MgS, MenC, HoC, AoAC... what a crazy armor set btw, I still bet you wouldn't be able to block it nearly as effectively as any melee damage.

the former question of mine was for raveshaw, as for painkiller, your team is doing great for its mpr as well. it is a very strong team at least from what i can see. are you saying that you are an example of the dead, worthless melee tank? if so then i think we need to define dead as well as worthless.

I am not an example of the dead, melee tank class, however, I am considering joining and have all the gears for it. I am sure by the time I paid off my loan, I can switch and see NO evasion anywhere.

my score being five times my MPR means i can find high score farms that can't attack

well just to be clear then, the usd statement was for those complaining that they now have albatrosses in their huge weapons and that they cannot get the same benefit as mages got with the recent free retrain period. furthermore, these were often the same people that raised holy hell when mages wanted something to spend money on to bring them up to the equivalency of the usd spending tanks.

the pendulum swings.

I think somewhere along the line everyone started missing the point. NightStrike you say that change is part of the game, and I'm sure Ranger doesnt have anything against change. Just try to see it from his perspective. He was using a MH tank for his damage dealer. He put over 200M CB$ into that weapon. Ranger obviously doesn't have a NUB so now that 100M dollars would take awhile to reobtain. Now, however, there is a free retrain, and mages can tweak whatever they want to and lose nothing. They don't need new gear b/c their gear works for all types of magic. Also Ranger's point about the melee weapon versus ranged weapon is a good one. You have to choose between one, why would someone put have of their WA in two different weapons and dilute the accuracy and damage, your much better off with one. Also, it is very hard to survive to melee round, why would a tank now spend its main WA on a melee weapon when it could buy a ranged weapon which did a lot more damage. The truth is melee users got screwed and Ranger can't change his character without losing a lot of CB$. Since mages now can change for free it just doesn't seem fair, it just doesn't seem fair.

Not to mention I was a single mage team and I had 2 mil score with 100k mpr, of course because of Maximus, now reinked. Score ratio proves nothing. It's high when your power is low regardless.

my score isn't high because i'm an uber tank or anything. my fight list includes five people, each with rather high scores compared to my PR that don't attack, or do very little damage.

In fact I am on your fightlist, and I have about half your PR.

During the free retrain, I retrained as both a melee tank with a MH, UC and VB. All of those sucked and my fightlist went virtually away and my PR shot through the roof.

I then attempted to go SoD tank instead with a 65 mil NW SoD that is +165 and could not hit anything and saw the same thing regarding being able to compete. I couldn't in the upper ranks.

I switched back to FB mage and I was not only able to get a much larger Challenge Bonus than before, I could easily use my RoE AND my PR is MUCH lower than when I attempted tank.

Right now imo, CB = Mage Blender, tanks are not even competitive unless you have MASSIVE ENC and MASSIVE NW on your weapon.

lol corn, that's because you have the highest score out of everybody on my fightlist =P

my comments were more for the ones saying that the free retraining was more beneficial to the mages than the tanks. i was basically saying that even if it was, it was about time for the reasons stated above. if you do not really fit into that category then my comments weren't for you.

i will say that with the free retrain i tried several single minion mage strategies out. they still sucked for me! i do think that much of that has to do with being a single minion though and it is single minions that are the original red-headed step-children of cb. any usurpers to that throne will have to do their time first.

i truly believe that single minion teams that are not robf strats are doomed after a certain point in the game. the further you dilute yourself, the lower that threshold will be.

I haven't spent usd. I have been in debt for almost a year paying on a weapon that when a person spends just a bit of exp into a skill <evasion> makes my year of cb worthless because i can't hit anything. That to me is broken and I have the biggest mageseeker in game. It's my weapons design to kill mages, but for me to not have a chance to hit them and they dont' even have to use all their exp. just a good amount and i'm done.. That's rediculous. I don't say get rid of evasion, but something about the defensive dex as it's applied to all bonus items makes it terrible. I have tried having 5 mil to 6 mil dex and still that doesn't come close to evasion defensive dex in ranged. I have stopped arguing this point because it's pointless. Mages think it works fine, and that is their right, but geez. It's a bit overboard.

/me goes back to the sidelines not arguing about it anymore.

Prophecy: next changemonth = tank blender if everyone go mage and people will start complaining that you need massive NW/USD to compete.

2) Since evasion was not changed, yet again, tanks still have the same problems trying to hit high evasion minions. A problem that was again not addressed is the AoF's boost to defensive dexterity that tanks have no way of matching.

Again, still, again.

Just curious. Did something happen another time? This isn't an original turn of events?

Lol - yes I'm trolling.

Thanks to all those that understand what I am typing.

And to those that do not-well I am sorry you just do not get it and persist on the "you made your MH do you can shove it up your nose" argument.

Stating that I want to Jon to "bail" me out is just stupid. I want an equal game. Again, if you cannot understand that, I am quite sorry.

Someone smart once stated that fair in cb is something that applies to everyone in CB equally.

Well this free retrain time left tanks seriously lacking in their ability to adapt to the new changes. Certainly did not seem fair to me.

I feel the need to mention what i was trying to explain in a previous post.

Everyone seems to think the only way to fix the problem of not being able to hit mages with evasion trained is to nerf evasion.

I believe we need to make requirements for evasion so that some dex and or strength need to be trained to get evasion benefits.I myself prefer having dex be at least 50% of evasion and if it is less then only twice the amount of dex gets evasion benefit.

This would make it so mages training evasion would have to use some experience on dex diluting their other spells/skills.

And if you think about it.Evasion implies "the ability to avoid or dodge."It seems to me that without the dexterity to do so, evasion would only give you the idea and not the current automatic physical capability of evasion without dexterity to avoid the arrows/swords/maces/hammers coming at you.

I hope I have explained it better here.

I understand you Ranger. I don't agree, but I understand.

All this is summed up by;

"You do make a good argument, however, that despite "change" being an integral part of the game, non-UC tanks do have a hard challenge when adaptation requires dumping a $100M weapon."

And in answer, we should never have had the free retrain.

At least thanks for understanding!!!

In my case, a 240M weapon, but it applies to all melee tanks who have spend money (whether earned, bought, stolen etc...) on their main weapon.

if some kind of weapon conversion shop were implemented, how do you envision its workings?

would it totally convert one item to another, with a percentage lost (what % if so) and then allow you to allocate that percentage of net worth into the new weapon? or would you have to have both weapons, but it would then allow just the net worth or a % to be brought over to the other weapon? would it allow you to say take your big morg and put half of that net worth into another item, or several?

i would assume that you wouldn't ever really cash out and get cb for it, that would be handled just by disenchanting as we have it now.

Sorry to all those that don't understand what I am typing.

And to those that do not- well I am sorry you just do not get it and persist on the "my weapon should pwn forever or give a refund soon as it stops" argument.

Stating that I want you to shove a hammer in your nose is just stupid. I want people to play the game, as it was designed. Win some, lose some, move on. Again, if you cannot understand that, I am quite sorry.

Someone smart once stated that "all this everything must be fair stuff is total crap"

Well this free retrain was unnecessary crap. Complaining about any levels of fairness during a free retrain is like going out during a riot to loot a toaster, finding one, and having someone else loot it fitst... Certainly seems a fair analogy to me.

Oh, and I *understand* you just fine, but again, two different points of view are the culprit. Yours = You're number one. So long as you're willing to make reasonable accomidations, you should stay there for as long as you want. Mine = It's a game designed against specifically that. Either take a few months out of the spotlight, or be prepaired to take a huge loss. Whichever decision you make, make it so that it puts the fun back for you.

Remember back to when ya started, when the game was fun for you. Were you number one? Did you even think you had a chance at it? Both of those questions left me with a "no" answer for my own start. I've since had great fun with many accomplishments of my own, and I've *still* never been number one (or hit 2m MPR for that matter, though I've hit the top 10 with 4 chars now :P) ... Simply put, people make their own goals. If yours is to be the brightest star at any and all costs, burning out is nothing less than an inevitability.

On a related note, Koy is nearly 200k score over the closest person trailing him... How bad are you *really* hurting?

wow, hatch summed up many of the feelings i have on the issue very well. about the only thing that i think would be needed to really help understand my point of view on things is the "boy who cried wolf" analogy.

we have heard for so many months how tanks are toast (when the scroes and rankings obviously said otherwise) and that we were in mage blender already. if and when it does truly happen (if not already) many of us will likely miss it due to the fact that we are no longer listening.

Koy is now a mage team. View it and see.

400k tattoo artist re-ink is hardly "a mage team"

I am a mage team just the same as Conundrum was/is. And all other familiar based characters.

My familiar does tons more damage then my tank.

My other characters are just support for it.

Does not matter if it is 400k to re-ink it.

but seeing you running DD familiar is pretty sad. I don't have a reason to try anymore :P. Welcome to Mage world! :P


Ps: comment earlier was j/k

how does removing your weapon affect your fightlist? does it also allow others to win against you that wouldn't with it equipped?

no, Koy is a mage team in the same sense I am. Sure, it's a familiar, and we both have minions with a little bit of ST and a MH (albeit, his on a far grander scale). But our damage comes from enchantments and the mage familiar more than anyone. With a MH playing a little cleanupDenying Koy as a mage team as they are currently run would be similar to denying OB as a tank team.

I hate the fact that there is simply no tank left to beat :(


So is Mikel , Freed = all mage team.



Sad Day !

hurry, untrain your evasion and watch some tank somehow beat you.

Dude,

I am about to test that out.

However I do need a minitank of some sort as I do not have AS to boost my familiars HP.

But I will run my list using my 30M NW VB (rather pathetic at this MPR) and with no weapon.

mikel is robf based now.

i would still advise caution before we state exactly what is going on here. in my opinion it could be at least 3 things or combinations thereof (as well as things i may not have thought of yet):

1) sg and its familiar are so good that your tank isn't allowed to shine or is dwarfed by the uberness.

2) tattoos are just too damned important to the current cb.

3) tanks are too weak currently.

i am not so saddened by the koy becoming a much more diversified team. if jon's vision for the evasion is as it seems, then diversified teams would have to be the goal unless you just want to avoid certain teams (rock/paper/scissors).

i will definitely state this though, i played a bunch with my very simple strategy with the free retrain. i can damn sure shut down more melee damage than i can magic damage. i even tried going no evasion and everything in hp and amf at many different ratios. even with 150 million xp in amf, it really didn't allow me to fight upwards at all.

the thing that always gets me is that we just really don't know what jon's vision is at any given time. it is truly hard to say anything is broken when the only input we get is silence or working as intended. i am fine with that, but it does make us assume that things like evasion and amf are working as intended.

With this on my tank: Slice [67x1500] (+101) 28,701,737

I stalemate Lega, Oxcha and NWO.

I lose to FTW about 50% of the time.

Everyone else is easy.

With no weapon on The Grid and my VB on Cloudscape:

I beat NWO and stale Lega/Oxcha.

I beat FTW about 75%.

1) sg and its familiar are so good that your tank isn't allowed to shine or is dwarfed by the uberness.

2) tattoos are just too damned important to the current cb.

3) tanks are too weak currently.


1) Duh

2) The jury is out on that, remember you have to grow a tattoo from a baby. If they are important, one still has to get one and grow it, or buy it.

3) Duh, especially the melee kind.

then boosting tanks really wouldn't help do anything against sg being so strong, but toning sg down might help melee tanks live longer and thus do better. i at least think that is the priority for fixes at this point. baby steps rather than sweeping changes and all that.

melee tanks is not so bad that you can't win at all, e.g. melee tank + AMF should beat SG with AMF at the same MPR, right? As people shift towards mage blender, more teams train AMF and less EC or evasion. It should be possible to sidestep the counter with some sort of tank and be successful.
Team A: a mage team without AMF
Team B: a mage team with AMF
Team C: a tank team with AMF

even if tank is so weak that Team A beats Team C, Team B should be able to beat team A if AMF is doing its job, and Team C would just happen to sidestep the counter of team B, and that's a paper/scissor rock situation.

If we are going to "duh" things, we better "duh" item 2) as well, Ranger. Disingenuous (largest tattoo holder in the game), otherwise.

If you and someone else are duking it out with pure DD familiars, and you win 75% of the time, if you swap tattoos I would wager that the other person now wins 75% of the time. Sounds like a direct causal relationship to me. Very much a "duh".

Having to GET a big tattoo has nothing to do with it any more than one needs to "get" a big evasion or "get" a big weapon. Of course things need to be obtained before use. Duh.

I agree with just about everything you are saying in this thread, but don't shirk away once someone mentions tattoos -- your points are VERY salient in that regard: a game where biggest EF wins is definitely NOT what we want, but appears to be largely what we have here.

."melee tank + AMF should beat SG with AMF at the same MPR, right? "

Nope,

Vs LA I tried that. AMF does so little backlash compared to the damage it does, one cannot hope to kill the mage that way.

And with NSC's available, AMF gets cut quite a lot. The largest AMF in the game, Draoc's, does only .23 vs my familiar.

With 1 hit=1 kill most of the time on the SG, a melee tank cannot keep up.

Especially if that melee tank has to fight vs a decent AC wall backed by a TSA/PL minion. Even with the TSA's nerf.

I am not just spewing here. During the free retrain I tried all sorts of tank combinations. Even used the HF. However stuck with a melee weapon, no matter what size, is no match for a mage with the new spell. None whatsoever.

Even without the new spell, melee tanks are on the cusp of being dominated by CoC mages, given the free ride they have till they start to cast vs melee tanks.

And yes, I understand the concept of CHANGE, in changemonth. However, I did not expect to get my MH and melee strategy so completely neutered this month.

Again, while mages had free reign to change entirely, tanks were stuck to either:

1) Disenchant their weapon, losing millions in the process
2) Convert to mage
3) Ride it out and feel left out.

I had to choose option 2.

I am glad I do have Steeds. WIthout it, I would be losing to quite a few people, with all the NW I have and MPR I have. Unless I convert to mage also.

So like the title of the thread, Is this the end of the melee tank?

At least until perhaps possibly maybe 3 long months from now.

The biggest problem on the tank side, as I see it, is with the binary nature of Evasion. (yes, this again)

If Evasion gets nerfed too harshly, we will be back to Tank Blender. In an instant.

If Evasion doesn't get nerfed, than I have to agree tanks have a very, very difficult road, much easier to chuck it for magic.

I honestly believe that Evasion in its current state cannot be balanced. It will always tip one way too far or another. It's too binary. It needs help. I say that because I think it is rather unfair to tanks (for the investment), yet I can't possibly say I want it nerfed because otherwise I would be owned by every archer and SoD tank out there (unless we all switched to lovely damage reduction stances, which makes me vomit even more).

So, I'm pseudo-binary, too. Evasion -- can't live with it, can't live without it. And I think that is the entire problem with tanks right now.

"Is this the end of the melee tank?"

Things may change if someone with the resources is willing to dive into a tank setup such as with the mace of destruction.

I personally think that the days of having a giant PTH ranged weapon and a giant PTH melee weapon on the same minion are over.

Hatch, normally I really like what you type and say on here, but on a few things here I have to totally diasagree. One sec. More coffee, it's only 8:30 am and I stayed up till 3am. Ok back.... Just because you don't find pleasure in striving for the top and because you "enjoy" your game from making multiple characters reach the top 10 in score doesn't mean that that goal should be everyones. In your own words find what is fun. To some people striving to be number 1 and staying there is fun.

So lets get back to the point at hand and not try to divert the argument to some lets have fun and blah blah blah statelment.

I personally see the tanks going away. I am staying with mine because I don't use usd and have spent every cb I have made to upgrade my tattoo and my bow. I don't have other gear to just switch out my strats. So in one year I made the decision to go with a Mageseeker bow and try to play an archer. This is one reason why I don't complain about things because yes, it was my decision, but to have a skill out there that makes my 115 mil nw weapon useless and with such a low amount of xp is rediculous. To have all this new stuff to make it so that tanks don't really have a chance to compete is just terrible. I personally should be destroying the new people and their new spell because that is what my character is made to do. Kill mages first and yet that really isn't the case. I have the same list basically and if anything I lose people as they finally get to that evasion number that passes me. I can only add 1 + per week if that and yet evasion people can add that easily to stay ahead of me.

So back to the topic here. Yes I'm sorry, but as a tank/archer character I feel we are being left out. I retrained 2 times. One time to get rid of a 25k AMF to train DM. I would have done that even if it cost me. and the other was to untrain some hp so I could get my archery back to 1.0 after I got my BoM, but I could have lived with the time it would have taken me to get to 1.0 the slow way. The main reason I didn't re-train is because without being able to change the weapon it's not really going to help. For people to sit back and think that Ranger is just out for himself and is throwing a fit you need to sit back and think if you were in his position. I am not anywhere near his position and feel the same way. I usually dont' post because it has become very clear that most of you think that if you voice an opinion on here and complain at all about something then you are just whining and want things better for yourself.

So to end this. Please if you want to throw an argument about why Ranger or myself is wrong please do so and I know I personally will listen and take note, but please don't use an argument saying that just deal with it and change our version of fun to enjoy the game again. I dont' see the "fun" of making characters every 4 months and starting over. That isn't "fun" to me. Which is why I have the same char since I started playing CB. I think this wall of text is enough for now.

Back to more coffee and then re-read this and see how much sense it makes.

i agree with sut and still think that the tat issue may be a problem as the game goes forward.

as for the rest, i guess we need to wait and see how much difference getting the mgs properly functioning against the new spell makes in the balance before much more energy is wasted.

Well it seems the MgS is working just fine.

So the SG 1 hit=1 kill is working just fine also.

Again, why play a melee tank when once you get to melee, if you can get there, you get destroyed by the new spell.

That and trying to hit evasion when SG takes care of it easily.

The MoD will not make much difference. Remember part of the problem is living till melee as that type of tank. Then trying to live through magic while dishing damage.

I could not make it work with my MPR, tattoo, and NW. I hope someone else can.

But let us wait and see the game digress while we see how things are. The free retrain gave us absolutely no information about things, none whatsoever.

"2) The jury is out on that, remember you have to grow a tattoo from a baby. If they are important, one still has to get one and grow it, or buy it."

Come on Ranger, let's be brutally honest here and add;

Or if you're one of the lucky few to have an uber pumped Tattoo from way back when when loaning them out to others in an effort to pump your Tattoo when you were out of BA was allowed.

Not all of us were that lucky, nor can continue to do it.

I *still* say MTL needs to be lowered. It should be 1/3 of your teams Max XP (if that's MPR..) and no more.

"Things may change if someone with the resources is willing to dive into a tank setup such as with the mace of destruction."

I'd rather see a VB backed by the new Gloves and Cloak. I think that will PWN Evasion. ;) And High AC walls. :P

"I personally think that the days of having a giant PTH ranged weapon and a giant PTH melee weapon on the same minion are over."

True.

Unless you're a Single Tank (preferably with a ToA), or on a multi minion team designed for the other minions to pump your Tanks ENC (Via GS).
>;)

Yep. I have plenty of encumberance, but since I don't use USD I can't take advantage of the encumberance. Even though I'm over my WA already. So not like even if I could afford another 100 mil nw weapon I could actually use it without pushing my pr up to 4 mil or more.

"So the SG 1 hit=1 kill is working just fine also."

Why shouldn't it?

Should any DD be allowed that? Or only Massive Weapons?

Only Massive Morgs?

Should Morgs be able to do it in 5 hits per rond. Or should they only need 1?

Sox, I have to agree with everything you just said.

Gentleman: what are you getting at? I think that Ranger has invested so much money into his MH is so he can keep up with the other top players. And as we've been discussing, evasion makes all weapons useless. Period.

> if you're one of the lucky few to have an uber pumped Tattoo from way back when when loaning them out to others in an effort to pump your Tattoo when you were out of BA was allowed.

3+ years later this is insignificant. Certainly compared to how much you can buff a tattoo with an NCB run.

"I think that Ranger has invested so much money into his MH is so he can keep up with the other top players."

I think you'll find that sentence is a bit muddled. That Morg has been around for longer than a lot of players!

"I think that Ranger has invested so much money into his MH is so he can keep up with the other top players. And as we've been discussing, evasion makes all weapons useless. Period."

i am not sure which game you have been playing, but koy has been number one in both score and mpr for much of the past few years. who would he be keeping up with exactly? he is still at the top in regards to score. if instead of keeping up, you had said staying ahead through usd infusion, i think it would be much more accurate.

GL,

Get your facts straight please.

My tattoo was not loaned out. Jon prevented that early on.

The 2 high tattoos now were buffed just like Jon stated one post above, via the NCB.

Jayuu buffed this one I have and Mikel's was buffed by Mantra I believe. However, both were done without MTL in play.

Anyone doing a NCB can buff a tattoo, nothing special or devious about the one I have.

I just was lucky to be able to insta to it when nobody else did. And I grew it from about 3M levels to its current 8M. Like I grew Koy from 1.6M MPR to 4M MPR.

So, yes, I put a lot of playing into my tattoo and character.

And considering there are a few ways to stop my morg from 1 hit=1 kill and there is virtually 0 to prevent SG from doing it, yes, it certainly is not right.

<< Should Morgs be able to do it in 5 hits per rond. Or should they only need 1? :

I would love to get 1 hit a round vs evasion minions. 5, I laugh. Perhaps vs 20 hp enchanters.

Sure, you can get a 6m+ level tat (Relic/Glory will have one shortly)...

It'll cost you no less than 150% NW and month and MONTHS of NCB time to do it...

--
This whole thread reeks of a lot of post change month crying.

Jon has once again pushed us towards mixed damage type teams... it hurts but that's where we are headed.

Nov,

I disagree and agree.

Yes to your first point. Partially. With the free untrain we can easily see how poor tanks got it this month and are stating the obvious opinions. If there was not a free retrain, you would have a point.

But I think we are going to magic >> tanks right now.

And,

While my MH is massive, I will say I bought it at a nice discount.

It was about 110M NW I got for 32 M in an auction long ago.

And I have been pumping it, only the x since I got it, to keep up with evasion. So people are correct in that assumption.

pump + to keep up with evasion? :P

Yes, LA,

I mistyped yet again.

The + not the x I have been boosting since I got my MH.

Ranger, it wasn't calling you out, but a generic complaint. Sorry I should have added getting a NCB uber boosted Tattoo in there as well. ;)

Jon;

"3+ years later this is insignificant. Certainly compared to how much you can buff a tattoo with an NCB run."

Sure Jon. I even made that point myself twice, and (not taking any credit) after the first time the MTL was lowered.

Tattoo's are the only 'Old Guard' thing left in CB.

The *only* way to beat the guy with the bigger Tattoo is to grow yours Bigger.

But here's the kicker.

The Guy above you with the Bigger Tattoo is always going to have better rewards than you (and to pass that guy in MPR you need to drop leveling your tattoo and use a RoE, as has been shown) and therefore thier Tattoo *will* always grow larger than yours.

And if you restart again, you lose out on Tattoo growth time (unlike the larger guy who's Tattoo is still growing) until your MTL gets larger than your Tattoo itself. Maybe that's made up by the increased XP rewards for the remainder of your Bonus time.

Large weapons are limited on teams to limit thier effect. Tattoo's should be by the MTL.

But the MTL is so large that it realy has no effect in the upper reaches of CB. Who has a Tattoo over the size of thier MTL in the 6BA regen zone?

Rambling now, sorry I don't think 'm getting across what I want to say.

"And considering there are a few ways to stop my morg from 1 hit=1 kill and there is virtually 0 to prevent SG from doing it, yes, it certainly is not right."

And how would you stop an equal sized CoC from doing it to single minion?

Massive AC?

"And how would you stop an equal sized CoC from doing it to single minion? "

Multi-minion dispersal, with a TOE.

Disperse the damage long enough to hit and kill them. Before you lose all your minions and take single minion damage.

It is what I used to do vs CoC last month. Worked well. Cannot be done now with SG.

only eleven percent of the minions in game have evasion trained and it makes up on 6.3% of the xp trained it would seem possible to just avoid those teams.

shocking grasp or the new familiar is even less popular, at least for now and should be even easier to avoid.

perhaps what we are lamenting is not the death of the melee tank, but the death of the uber melee tank as a strategy in and of itself. that strategy is actually just as viable today as it was, just not against as many targets as it used to be and especially not against all targets. as nov pointed out and i earlier in the thread, it seems diversification is possibly the new cb order.

either way, until we get some n*b's trying out the new items and combination of items, it is truly just too early to tell what the impact is for any of the previous strategies.

And also AC + MgS.

One of the 2 does not work vs SG, in fact makes things worse.

""And how would you stop an equal sized CoC from doing it to single minion? "

Multi-minion dispersal, with a TOE.

Disperse the damage long enough to hit and kill them. Before you lose all your minions and take single minion damage.

It is what I used to do vs CoC last month. Worked well. Cannot be done now with SG."

That's why I said single minion...

It's been designed that you can't dilute it's damage.

Maybe it's a lean back towards the front meat shields. That were no longer needed, and actually a detriment with the change to MM.

"It is what I used to do vs CoC last month. Worked well. Cannot be done now with SG. "

ranger, i truly think this statement here is indicative of what needs to be understood about the "new" cb. there used to be some strategies that worked well against many others. it seems we have moved away from that towards even more rock/paper/scissor based dynamics with no real way to guard against multiple strategies.

i am not sure i am being clear here, but i think we are going to have to get used to having our strategies be useful against fewer others than before. the jack-of-all-trades strategies that were effective against most other strategies out there are likely a thing of the past.

Yes,

I agree 100% dude, 100%.

New strategies need to be developed.

But like the RBF was way overpowered, the SG spell is WAY overpowered.

And you miss my point of the thread.... Melee tanks got left in the dust with all the changes this month. So much so they are virtually unplayable.

They are good perhaps vs other melee tanks and that is about it.

Just look at my first post for the reasons why. Address those if you must continue in this thread.

Mageseeker is back. However, thanks to disenchanting and being unpopular in the past, You 'd have to Black Smith Msb back to 200mil :P (from 1 of the 7 good size msb left)

To try to bring the threads track back. ;)

"1) With ENC there is no real way a tank can use both a melee and missile weapon effectively and have a chance to hit evasion. I think most people realize that tanks now have to concentrate in 1 weapon."

I like the distinction. A Tank can still have an uber Melee and Ranged wepaon. It just needs to be different.

Single with maybe a ToA, or Multi minion specifically backed by the other minion thorugh GS.

"2) Since evasion was not changed, yet again, tanks still have the same problems trying to hit high evasion minions. A problem that was again not addressed is the AoF's boost to defensive dexterity that tanks have no way of matching."

It was addressed, but not directly. The new Gloves and Cloak are there to address it. It doesn't help Morg users, but it was addressed.

"3) With SG, which is a 1 or 2 cast to kill spell, melee tanks typically cannot keep up."

Melee and Ranged can also be 1/2 round kills per minion. What is indicative about the SG is the usual all round deefsne of AC doesn't apply.

With that gone, it;s starting to show that AMF, even with a MGS (and ToE or RBF) just isn't enough.

Maybe if you designed your team to use zero (or 1) base AC items it is.

But mostly, everyone else will have higher AC. And it hits tanks hardest. They use armour for stats boosts that now make them take more Damage. here as Mages, with thier base zero AC don't. But Mages can't benefit from the MGS.

And we needed a front hitting DD.

"4) With the nerfage of AC, the reduction in regeneration in the TSA, and the lowering of the TOE, it is harder to live through 6 rounds of magic (vs FB/MM) than it was ever before. Even with the 10% reduction in magic damage this changemonth."

But it wasn't really that hard. ;) There are only two Ranged DD spells, neither (although one is designed to do so) are really adept at killing you quickly.

The Insta-kill DDs people recognise are the two Melee only ones. CoC that melts whole teams in rounds, and SG that 1-2-3-4's your team.

On top of these, Tattoo's are too powerful. ;)

"1) With ENC there is no real way a tank can use both a melee and missile weapon effectively and have a chance to hit evasion. I think most people realize that tanks now have to concentrate in 1 weapon"
- evasion has an answer, magic. Tanks have to balance NW like everyone else. You can use items of a massive size because of the effect of STR on ENC. I'll never be able to use dbs of the size needed for the top on a mage. Concentrating on one weapon is a choice with consequences. Quit crying.

"2) Since evasion was not changed, yet again, tanks still have the same problems trying to hit high evasion minions. A problem that was again not addressed is the AoF's boost to defensive dexterity that tanks have no way of matching."
- As soon as we see an item capable of boosting magic 30% to counter the effects of MgS I'll be right on board with you... for now I'll just point at the writing on the wall concerning the move towards mixed damage teams.

"3) With SG, which is a 1 or 2 cast to kill spell, melee tanks typically cannot keep up."
- MsK, oh wait, you opted to sell yours and not have a balanced tank. If I can keep a familiar out in front and survive (AND WIN) fights against massive SG teams you should be able to find a way to keep a tank around long enough to do something.

"4) With the nerfage of AC, the reduction in regeneration in the TSA, and the lowering of the TOE, it is harder to live through 6 rounds of magic (vs FB/MM) than it was ever before. Even with the 10% reduction in magic damage this changemonth."
- HAHHAHAHAHA. Did it hurt you to spout that crap? That's a lot of pucky for anyone to cough up... FB and MM are jokes...

GL: lowering the max tat that much basically negates all usefulness of them.

ToE: would have to have it's effect doubled
DD Familiars: might as well be deleted
ToA: trade a TSA for less than a mill bonus STR... no thanks
RoBF: I'm supposed to build a team around a napkin on fire?
RoS: as if it didn't suck enough already...

I've explained this the last time you went on this trip... it goes nowhere!

I set myself (for the first time! lol!) up a 1600 BA new NCB. I was fired up! I really wanted to use the new SoC with UC.

Now, I've found excuses with RL to keep me from burning BA (sorry Beer Garden!). As I just can't motivate myself to play, when I feel I should just scrap what I'm doing and go back to a single Mage.

SG needs to be down powered. It's becoming the only choice for DD (if you recgonise it's potential), which is the largest sign of "ZOMG OVERPOWER!". What Nov said in another thread just stuck a cord. It's not just the AC thing, that's cool.

It's the concentrated damage. I've always been a beliver of it, but this concentration knocks out the ToE as well as AC.

So what is left to stop SG?

Tattoo's are still a bugbear of mine. The MTL does nothing really to limit them in the endgame. Exbows also need to be changed, otherwise who cares how big your Morg is. Just use a MGS and RBF/ToE for Mages and have a massive EXBow to stop Tanks.

So why shouldn't I just drop everythign and go single Mage with SG and AMF. Use an Exbow to utterly stop Tanks (who cares about Evasion). And hope that the concentration of my XP into HP and AMF will, with either a ToE or RBF stop the tiny ranged DD damage of FB/MM until I can touch them.

CoC woudl still be a problem though. ;)

Well I can see those not playing tanks have it all figured out.
Greats to you all!

However, I will still stand by my points.

With ENC I choose to drop my missile weapon. And concentrate on missile. My choice of course.

And I advocate ENC.

The MgS had a huge nerf, and do not forget its restrictions. I would not mind a 30% physical reduction shield that restricts all but DD spells. But the NSC is better then a 30% boost in magic damage.

Novice, you continue to downplay the NSC as the most powerful item in CB. Well IMO it certainly is.

Now about the MSK, try to hit evasion (except famliars) with one. Just ask Soxjr. Evasion is boosted in missile, did you forget that? I could not hit most evasions with mine, I hope Soxjr is doing better.

And nov, the reductions in damage defense as in my point 4 certainly matter.

Without 2x AMF I lose to Hubbell and NWO. So there!!. I tested it last week. Even with 2 MgS's.

"GL: lowering the max tat that much basically negates all usefulness of them.

ToE: would have to have it's effect doubled
DD Familiars: might as well be deleted
ToA: trade a TSA for less than a mill bonus STR... no thanks
RoBF: I'm supposed to build a team around a napkin on fire?
RoS: as if it didn't suck enough already...

I've explained this the last time you went on this trip... it goes nowhere!"

Why?

Basically you're saying that right now, if anyone uses a Tattoo, any Tattoo, that's under thier MTL, that Tattoo is worthless?

maybe not worthless, but certainly worth... less

The power of a tat diminishes dramatically as it scales down. Adjusting the max tat would also make the current large tats even more insanely expensive to match via the NCB... not to mention the problems with balancing a weak tat cb world. Lets end this hijack with a word about Ranger's favorite subject right now.

The NSC is NOT overpowered, and it's laughable that you can say so Ranger.

I guess we will disagree about that novice.

However why did you sink 50M CB2 into an item that is underpowered?

And most tanks will agree with my statement about its Uberness.

Most tanks? I wanna see a show of hands the next time you claim the backing of "most" of something...

I sunk 50m into an item I help envision because I was trying to find a way to prove your self serving rants about CoC were dead wrong.
Even with that 50m item I still had to accept that because of the nature of AMF I couldn't use CoC. With nearly 9m HP I STILL couldn't live through the AMF of your team. The ONLY factor in your favor in our fights before the major changes was AMF, and yet you sit here crying. It's hilarious...

Yes, 7M into AMF does that to mages.

Or used to until SG came about. Not my AMF is 9M and does nothing to that spell.

And I am impressed I got you to sink 50M or about 200 bucks into an item due to my rants. It never helped you vs other teams. Or the fact that basically myself and LA were the only ones beating you mean nothing.

They must be quite persuasive indeed.

Another boost for SG highlighted there.

It gets boosted by AC (as part of design) which brings it up to equivalence to CoC. I honestly don't think SG is balanced around facing zero AC minions.

But the AMF backlash is based on pre boost damage.

In essence SG has a built in AMF backlash reduction over CoC.

Another win for it.

Lowering the MTL would make the large Tatts easier to catch. As the new NCBs (the only way to boost your tatt) would still reach a MTL level high enough to allow growth. But the uber large ones at the top would be unable to grow themselves. Until the top MPR got much larger.

You didn't have 7m into AMF at the time...

I'm going to put this plainly...

If AMF was the only thing keeping me from beating you how can you possibly claim the NSC are overpowered. If anything I can see a need for another way (preferably XP based so Rangey's head stays on) to allow mages to overcome massive AMF and play in the "end" game of CB. SG does go a long way towards this (cutting my AMF return by a few hundred thousand a round) but as XP keeps growing and getting dumped into AMF I can see familiar teams being left behind yet again...

You're not even discussing things anymore Ranger... are you sure you're feeling alright?

My thoughts

1) MTL needs to be lowered

2) AOF's DD bonus to junctioned familiars needs reduced - 42% bonus to spell damage for just over 16M? Wow is all I can say. At the moment, in the middle ranks at least, DD familiar at Max Tattoo Level + AoF = ownage.

3) AOF's bonus to skills needs reduced - 42% bonus to Evasion for just over 16M is amazing value. DX gets no such bonus making it easy for Evasion to outpace it.

4) NSC's are fine, I cut AMF backlash by about 40% when using mine and damage is increased by around 20% against an average AMF. Given it does absolutely nothing against non-AMF teams that seems reasonable to me. Changing it to a percentage reduction rather than a flat reduction would reduce it to a novelty item that is useful on a minion with a base decay but not much else.

All IMO of course

Nov, I think you've pursuaded me to go single SG mage.

"I still had to accept that because of the nature of AMF I couldn't use CoC. With nearly 9m HP I STILL couldn't live through the AMF of your team"

SG is the answer isn't it. You don't kill yourself on AMF backlash. And AC is of no use stopping it.

What's left?

I'll strap on a ToE to reduce AMF backlash even more, and have an EXbow for Tanks (Or Evasion until I get a large enough EXbow. With my single minion concentrated HP to give me ENC to use it and DBs.)

GA might be a pain, if the concentrated SG damage doesn't overwhelm it. GA retaliation percents aren't based on actual damage done, but total damage right?

Mageseekers covered by EXbow and/or Evasion-DBs. That's everything bar RBF damage taken care of. If the ToE can't cope with that, and I don't need it for backlash reduciton, I'll use a RBF.

What's the counter to a single SG Mage?

Single FB mage with NSCs.

AMF on a single mage, backed by either a RBF or ToE should lead me to touching range.

What with the ranged DD damage reduction and all.

Train only HP, SG and AMF. Maybe a base Evasion.

The RoBF is terrible for stopping magic, as is the ToE on a single minion. With a +39 MgS and a 3.8M RoBF, I die in 5-6 rounds from some 1.5-2M MPR magic missiles.

You don't have AMF.

As long as AMF is hitting over 29.25%, that's more reduction to damage than your MgS gives.

Sorry Ranger, this has sorta highjacked your thread. If I want to continue this on, I'll make a new one.

Good luck hitting that. That's close to equal AMF to DD with +15 NSCs in play.

yes, the nsc puts quite a dent in amf. too much forr the cost. IMO, makes the MgS look tame.

"I set myself (for the first time! lol!) up a 1600 BA new NCB. I was fired up! I really wanted to use the new SoC with UC.

Now, I've found excuses with RL to keep me from burning BA (sorry Beer Garden!). As I just can't motivate myself to play, when I feel I should just scrap what I'm doing and go back to a single Mage.

SG needs to be down powered. It's becoming the only choice for DD (if you recgonise it's potential), which is the largest sign of "ZOMG OVERPOWER!". What Nov said in another thread just stuck a cord. It's not just the AC thing, that's cool.

It's the concentrated damage. I've always been a beliver of it, but this concentration knocks out the ToE as well as AC.

So what is left to stop SG?

Tattoo's are still a bugbear of mine. The MTL does nothing really to limit them in the endgame. Exbows also need to be changed, otherwise who cares how big your Morg is. Just use a MGS and RBF/ToE for Mages and have a massive EXBow to stop Tanks.

So why shouldn't I just drop everythign and go single Mage with SG and AMF. Use an Exbow to utterly stop Tanks (who cares about Evasion). And hope that the concentration of my XP into HP and AMF will, with either a ToE or RBF stop the tiny ranged DD damage of FB/MM until I can touch them.

CoC woudl still be a problem though. ;)"

If it actually stops mages AND tanks, then I would think there is a problem. As it stands, I am not quite seeing it just yet. I think there is something wrong when you have a mage with no DX 1 hitting a tank (or at least stops it from doing anyway) with a XBow. I have no problem with ELB + CoC or similar, because there is still a XP involved in using the ELB (or at least a ToA - which takes out a lot of options) and still won't 1 hit kill a tank.

"Most tanks? I wanna see a show of hands the next time you claim the backing of "most" of something... "

*raises hand*

Here's one.

The Noldarins are like the mage's equivalent to the Mage Shield.. only worse, especially after this change month. While we got a huge, multi-layered nerf to our damage reduction vs your MPR (in the form of DD), NSCs still continue to cut, sometimes drastically, into our MPR (in the form of AMF).

Meanwhile, due to the WA nerf, and partially encumbrance (but mostly the WA nerf) tank offense continues to fall short.

As for myself, even with 2 AMFs, a Mage Shield, and three -three!- Elven Hauberks, I have no choice but to avoid Noldarin users like the plague.

I say an eye for an eye. With the Mage Shield resistance cut down to .75, the Noldarins should get the same nerf.

Just have evasion effect SG the same way it effects melee attacks. After all SG is essentially a "magic melee" attack anyway, it only seems logical that it should be avoidable in the same way.

buffing evasion aughta help tanks a bunch! :P

i had also thought about the idea of a touch spell being evaded. for consistencies sake though i would have to say that would be giving evasion too much power just as i said the same thing when people wanted the robf damage to be subject to amf or ga.

if it needs a counter, create something else or make dex worth something at higher levels again and let dex be the evasion for sg.

i agree NSCs should be reduced

Well it is no wonder this discussions go no where with people like yourself partaking in them Hatchet. Evasion does not have to remain in its current form and judging from your previous long-winded posts earlier in this thread I assumed you were an advocate of choices.

Evasion itself could quite easily be altered to a reduction in the number of hits taken per round with a minimum of 1 based on the PTH of the weapon. I believe most tanks would be more than happy hitting at least once per round as opposed to the current big fat zero.

"Just have evasion effect SG the same way it effects melee attacks."

I like this idea.

From another post but relevant to this threads title: "melee weapons when compared to ranged weapons have 4x the rounds to hit without a dex penalty being applied that in itself is a bonus. "

How many battles go 30 rounds? 20 rounds? 10 rounds? make it to melee?

Just look at the recent battles and see. To me, battles are shorter now then before this changemonth.

However Jon knows the true stats and I can be full of it. I don't know for sure, but my battles are much shorter now.

So while melee tanks have potentially 4x the rounds, how many are really in play? Also, Missile weapon users do not have to wait to attack, therefore they can potentially kill their opponents damage dealer earlier, taking less damage. While melee tanks just sit there, get pounded on for 6 rounds trying to survive to start attacking.

And as an added bonus, those spells that start in melee really do not. Almost all mages use the HoC, something that melee tanks cannot get a benefit from.

So melee tanks even attack LATER then any mage except perhaps base decay enchanters. Adding more insult to them.

my battles usually finish in range when I win (often 1 or 2 rounds) and even when I lose, its 9 rounds or so (very often 7 round against melee teams, and 1 or 2 against archers).