Release of Official Mage Blender (OMB) (in General)

The whole of top 10 uses SG or CoC or a familiar, with 1 exception, who uses RBF. Is it proof that we are in the age of mage blender?

It sure looks like proof to me

no.

Evasion was nerfed recently, you need time before people start going tank again.

Without the ability to dodge attack entirely, I can see large melee weapons being very effective.

You're forgetting about Ancient Anubis, who uses a ToA on his Tank minion. And its true that it will take a while for the transition to occur, as Evasion has only been recently changed.

Having just added an 8m str tank who hits for between 700k and 1.4m up to 4 times a round I think I finally understand a little better the complaints of the tank teams. Even with evasion and dbs being nerfed I still see a need for just a little more love for the tanks of the world, especially in ranged rounds.

But I do agree that the ED's are far too good now, as well as SG being still far too powerful for its own good. That's why we see the current selection in the top 10.

"The whole of top 10 uses SG or CoC or a familiar"

Ugh, this concept annoys me. You fail to mention because of all the top tanks who quit and disenchanted all their huge weapons in the months prior to the evasion nerf.

The reason there are mostly mages in the top 10 is because until recently tanks weren't nearly as viable. And now that it is viable, most people don't have the guts to retrain.

"with 1 exception, who uses RBF"

Are you talking about Hatch? That's hardly a RoBF strat. That's a complete heavy tank strat. He uses an RoBF because I suspect no other tat benefits him as much, as endurance disappeared.

And I don't think you are noticing AA with Soul Collector. For some reason he's still bent of killing people in ranged with an SoD (and a VB?) Anyway, despite the odds, he can still take out somewhere between 15-20 million of my HP in ranged.

Anyways,

With the introduction of the MoD and the nerf of evasion. Tanks are definitely an option. A way to get past annoy Pl batteries? Possibly the only way to break the GA cap on ED teams? Jon has made an effort to bring back tanks.

Give things time, most tank teams right now are obsolete, but new tank teams are growing, USD and CBD rates are incredibly low, people have to just start being smarter and start making use of the new game dynamics. (What's with all these archer teams? Bloodlust anyone? How come no one can beat Flatcap's max hit?)

I agree that ranged attacks need some love, novice.

I agree that CB is Mage Blender right now.

Just throwing in my two cents.

i think jon was probably anxiously awaiting an informative, non-biased post such as this to enlighten him on what direction to take in the game for future balancing updates. ; )

instead of people just going, "this is mage blender because people are choosing to be mages" people should state why it's mage blender.

And if it is, explain how we can fix it. Without reasoning, nothing in CB means anything.

More like HP-Blender.

Most mages can get away with only having 2 things trained; HP and their DD. Tanks, on the other hand need to train ST, HP, DX, and most likely a skill. Now, tell, me, which one do you think is more likely to have higher concentration? :)

Also, tanks must spend A LOT on their weapon to get anywhere near decent damage. A lot of tanks (since straight archers are basically obsolete thanks to ridiculously low ranged damage) have to either go entirely melee (which I'll come back to later) or have two weapons; more money spent!

Mages, on the other hand, have lots of money leftover that tanks don't. What do you spend that on, I wonder? Well, walls seem to be fairly popular. PL sinks are also popular. What does that mean? Well, I'd say that, on average, mage teams can outlast tank teams.

Why does that matter? Well, since ranged damage sucks (unless you plan on carrying that bow into melee, of course! :D), it's all about surviving until that MASSIVE CoC or SG can fire, obliterating the other team.

In short, if you don't want to read those previous, incoherent paragraphs; ranged is too weak, defensive strategies are overpowered, especially HP (and AS, for that matter).

I call for either a buff to ranged damage or a nerf to melee damage (and a nerf to HP, as well!). The massive penalties to ranged damage are stupid and necessary, IMO.

"'with 1 exception, who uses RBF'
Are you talking about Hatch? That's hardly a RoBF strat."

I think he is talking about mikel

i really wish jon would share with us the current percentage of battles ending in ranged as he did in the past. that would mean more to me than the anecdotal evidence given by most in support of ranged damage being too weak.

I'm running an SG/AS team - one of the first people to jump on that particular bandwagon!! And with it I can beat a couple of teams that have more than a million MPR than me. So that's good.

But I get beaten by much smaller ranged based teams, especially archery/hal chars. Oh and DM, DM reduces me right down.

Additionally the teams that do beat me generally beat me within ranged. Look through my battles over the last 24 hours. The majority of the fights I'm winning are ones where I last through to a lot of rounds. Almost the exact opposite in the defeats.

See, lots of people talking about SG/AS being OP at the moment. As ever I'll argue against something being OP. It simply isn't. It's mostly that people haven't adjusted their strats to take it on.

"Most mages can get away with only having 2 things trained; HP and their DD. Tanks, on the other hand need to train ST, HP, DX, and most likely a skill. Now, tell, me, which one do you think is more likely to have higher concentration? :)"

You don't have to train that much dex if you care that much. Only if you intend to double - quad hit should you train dex. Even so, it's max effectiveness is really around 2 million. With current nerfs, if you really wanted you would more or less rely on the BTH with minor dex and train BL. Apples and oranges. Do mages ever get a reason to get multiple hits? Do they ever get a skill to double damage? The whole dex concept is more of a plus than a negative.

"Also, tanks must spend A LOT on their weapon to get anywhere near decent damage. A lot of tanks (since straight archers are basically obsolete thanks to ridiculously low ranged damage) have to either go entirely melee (which I'll come back to later) or have two weapons; more money spent!"

Why are we trying to win battles in ranged? All the damage nerfs were Jon's way to moving battles in to melee? Get out of the old CB2 mentality when the game was ruled by archers (about a year ago).

As for money, I agree. Tanks are expensive. But since when were Tanks solely about MPR? The money aspect is a big plus for some people, but yeah it's a big investment. But the alternative, is having money boost tanks damage output to an insane level and make USD spending OP again. Not much we can do there. Though with hitting not a gigantic issue like before, investing in the X with a little BL is an option i really think tank teams should explore.

"Mages, on the other hand, have lots of money leftover that tanks don't. What do you spend that on, I wonder? Well, walls seem to be fairly popular. PL sinks are also popular. What does that mean? Well, I'd say that, on average, mage teams can outlast tank teams."

I agree.

"Why does that matter? Well, since ranged damage sucks (unless you plan on carrying that bow into melee, of course! :D), it's all about surviving until that MASSIVE CoC or SG can fire, obliterating the other team."

Well, if people start investing in gigantic melee weapons we can say the same for them. This mentality goes for every melee based team.

"In short, if you don't want to read those previous, incoherent paragraphs; ranged is too weak, defensive strategies are overpowered, especially HP (and AS, for that matter)."

HP is OP? Should we get rid of it all together? AS is weak against DM, that isn't a big detriment? Just cause people like me find the value of using it with complete exp concentration doesn't make it OP as the concentration itself.

"I call for either a buff to ranged damage or a nerf to melee damage (and a nerf to HP, as well!). The massive penalties to ranged damage are stupid and necessary, IMO."

Again I point at Jon saying that he wants the game to move towards melee and make the battles longer.

When I joined the game, everything was about the quick kill, no one invested into melee weapons because it was all about archery.

Instead of trying to climb back upstream, lets actually try to adapt to this new system and use it effectively.

"it's all about surviving until that MASSIVE CoC or SG can fire, obliterating the other team"

Get a massive weapon, train all STR and no/limited Dex, Use TSA and other STR boosting gear, train BL and use a SoC.

Face a team with Ranged weapons, and soak up that damage with your SoC.

Land a Mega-Smasher first hit with BL that also releases the stored up SoC damage.

SoC was the way I was still inthe Top 5 MPB (as UC of all things) hours after the MPB reset.

I have a solution: cut all damage by 30-40%, reduce ED effectiveness by 50%, reduce EO effectiveness by 25%, remove ranged penalties.
I'm pretty sure that would balance things nicely. One would never hear "nerf SG!" anymore, or cry that GA is too good, or that ablative shield is OP. Battles would last longer and into melee, and FB/MM/archers would no longer have a reason to complain.
Of course, the max turns allowed for SM would have to be increased from 50 to perhaps 60-75.
Dunno if this would ever happen though.

The problem I'm seeing with some of your comments 3/4ths is that you talk like it's so easy to switch from a ranged weapon to a melee weapon. It isn't. It is very expensive and even if you do have the cb money to do it, how long will that weapon work until you need another? The reason, if you need one, that the game is going to mage blender is simple. Mages are easier to roll with the changes than a tank is. When there is a big change all a mage has to do is retrain. When there is a change that effects a tank we don't re-train, well maybe a little, but we have to change weapons. That isn't really a viable option in my mind. I am staying an archer because I'm stuck in this strat. I have no other gear other than my archery gear.

So in closing if you want to make it not mage blender then my fix is to somehow make it easier for a tank team to switch weapons to roll with the changes. Until that happens then the game will slowly go mage blender. Thanks and if you don't agree with me that's fine. Just my opinion here :)

I do agree that it's difficult to change strats with a ranged setup. And that is much of the main problems.

The game would benefit greatly if people were able to swap NW from ranged to melee, as the game was so ranged heavy in the past. I guess the point I'm really trying to drive home to PK's response, is that the problem isn't in how tanks are currently working, but rather how the players are and are not adapting, or how they can't adapt. That's why there are so few tanks in the top ten (not that the top ten is a good description of the game as a whole anyway).

theres a reason theres a salvage yard... although i would like to see ranged weapons added into the mix...

lets just look at the bone novice was using
A Blacksword of Nan Elmoth [92x10180] (+225)
+117 $22,716,991*
with 8mill str dealing 700k to 1mill damage per hit
that would mean 3x 800k = 2.4mill damage per round
so that would roughly mean 1 lvl of str gives 0.3 damage

now comparing to someone who would have used that 8mill lvls in DD
COC 0.1372*5
FB 0.078333333*5
MM 0.294066667
SG 0.372533333

all this is based on in melee
COC up to 5,488,000 per round
FB up to 3,133,333 per round
MM up to 2,352,533 per round
SG up to 2,978,666 per round on no base armor minions

as you can see... if you used BL... 2.4mill damage would become
2.4mill x 1.3 = 3.12mill damage that would put it roughly in the middle of all the magical damage... and dont forget im calculating based on average tank damage....

i can draw several conclusions from this

1stly maybe you people should up you X more instead on trying to hit more times considering only probably less then half of your NW is in X
2ndly Tanks can do more damage then mages mostly because theres MGS and EH floating around
3rdly tanks can use BL
4thly i do agree that its retarded that ranged weapons do more damage in melee then in ranged

What I don't get is why not having your target in front of you lowers damage by a flat 40%? And from me, do away with the alternate turn firing for ranged weapons in melee - they should simply get the 5 extra rounds of earlier whacking and lower damage output per turn.

except AC works better against tanks as well.

looking at the arguments again, I think one of the point strikes me. EDs are too good. With a good size AS being uncounterable (you need more XP in DM to beat it), defense are easy to get, and thus melee DDs gets better, thus the SG being good. SG is not actually that OP, its just a symptomes of ED being broken. (I don't think any team uses SG without EDs)

That sounds remarkably like somebody suggesting AS is overpowered. Which it isn't. It takes a huge investment in the stat to make it work for a team. I've nearly half my team invested in AS, and do you know what? There are DMs up here that tear me apart, because I don't have any HP whatsoever. But to back it up with HP I'd need at least half my teams XP again to be effective.

AS and HP have always been like this in CB2; there's been no changes to them whatsoever. In fact they used to be better, because of the ToE than they are now.

but do those team get ripped apart by teams half their PR because their DM is not doing anything?

also, you are training 3 ED. compare the following:

Minion 1, 2, 3, 4:
HP
Stuff

vs

Minion 1:
less HP
AS
Minion 2, 3, 4:
less HP
stuff

you would have more XP to spend, AND DM doesn't do much to you (their DM would have to be like 20% over your AS to cancel it out, in which case, hopefully your HP is enough to survive since they have more XP spent in the DM vs ED war.

sorry for triple post:
DM vs multiple ED is a one sided fight, and I think it should be that way, but DM vs single ED is also one sided, the single ED getting the advantage.

I have two AS on my team, which (with large rented corns) look like this: 2,456,003 + 5,062,694.


This is the cast result on each of my minions: 2544558.

That doesn't actually take a huge investment in DM to cut down. A 3 million DM will kill it dead. And that's certainly a lot less XP involved than I've got in the AS.

Perfect counter; if people aren't using it that doesn't mean AS (and other EDs) are overpowered. It just means people aren't using an easily available counter.

And that DM will not only kill my AS stone dead, it will also pretty much reduce my GA to miserable proportions.

That's a lot more bang for the buck than I'm getting out of my XP.

The real secret of what makes those teams work isn't the AS or the DD spell itself. It's the Noldorin Spellcasters.

If Novice takes his off I can beat him easily. But with them on I can't touch him, because my nearly 5 million level AMF does almost nothing. Admittedly Nov's gloves are nearly 50 million NW (or were, he was going to disenchant!) so they should be pretty effective.

"I have two AS on my team, which (with large rented corns) look like this: 2,456,003 + 5,062,694.
This is the cast result on each of my minions: 2544558.
That doesn't actually take a huge investment in DM to cut down. A 3 million DM will kill it dead. And that's certainly a lot less XP involved than I've got in the AS. "

I might be wrong, but I believe you are mistaken.
A 3 mil *level* DM would have a 2.4 mil effect, which would almost completely nullify your first AS, but you would still cast for 56k+2662k worth of AS, or nearly 920k effect.
The enemy needs a 5 mil *effect* DM (6.25 mil level) to also nullify your 5 mil *level* AS.
So that's 6.25 mil DM vs 7.4 mil AS total for complete nullification.

Of course, like I said, I might be wrong and the effect is actually compared with the effect, not the level... but I kind of doubt it.

I am sure DM does it thing on each minion's ED, so yes 3m AS would nullify his whole AS. However, the fact that a ED trained in parts can be nullified by a mid-size DM doesn't counter my point. I have conceded the fact that DM is a perfect counter for multiple EDs.

Having 1 minion train AS and the rest train HP innately would be advantages against any amount of DM. Either they spend more on the DM vs ED war, or you have more HP than teams that just train HP.

Proteus 4 does this:

"Nemesis cast Dispel Magic on all enemy Minions (3,448,865)"

Which leaves me casting this: 545002

So my numbers are a little off, but not much....And that really doesn't add up to much in terms of HP, at this level half a mill HP per minion is absolutely killed stone dead in terms of effectiveness.

And lets not forget that same DM also hits my GA. I've a 4 mill GA, which might as well not exist after that DM hits.

DM is easily counterable. I've run teams that use no EDs before now, simply to target DM teams. But it's a good counter for AS. There is nothing to stop somebody doing with DM what people are doing with AS and XP focus.


Oh yes. I forget. A lot of people won't retrain these days unless it's free.

Also, let's put it in very simple terms, it's not so much how much of what negates what or so on and so forth.
It's DAMAGE SCALING that's the problem.

For instance, take the following examples : a single ELB archer vs a single magic missile mage.
Not going into the details of EXACTLY how much damage each deals, also completely taking evasion out of the equation for a moment, the tank will probably train something close to 30% HP, 50% ST, 10% DX and 10% archery, the mage will probably train 30% HP, 70% DD (just so we keep the HP equivalent).
The tank will also have to upgrade its weapon x, maybe even add a bit of +.

Now, take a random point in time, at around 10k levels.
Even assuming all NW goes into the weapon and none on other gear, the archer (5k ST) will let's say have a [6x50](+0) ELBow (that's 390k NW already, probably over encumbrance limit or very close to it - let's just ASSUME it's not over it even if it is).
The mage will have 7000 in DD.

Move forwards a bit, with now the opponents at around 10 mil total levels (1000 times more).
The mage will obviously have exactly 1000 times more damage (7 mil into DD)... but what about the archer ?
Well, sure, the archer might get his 5 mil ST, but I can bet you that he DOESN'T have a [6x50000](+0) ELB, which would put his damage ratio precisely where it should be. Heck, the largest x on an ELB in the game right now is barely above 10k.
So, for realism's sake, let's say he has a [6x5000](+100) bow. That's already a top level bow... but how much comparative damage DOES it deal ?
First off, we had 2 hits per round, now we get 3 hits per round, so that's a 50% increase, which is fine and dandy (well, sort of, anyway, since we probably would have had a bit of plus on the weapon already).
The total damage we need to deal per shot for "breakeven" won't have to be 1000 times larger, just 666 times larger (heh).
Now, the bow x is only 100 times larger with ST 1000 times larger, which makes the total damage PER SHOT a whooping 316 times larger than before. Oh... wait... that's not even CLOSE to the needed 666 times larger, it's actually barely half of it, if even that much.

Now, see why exactly it's "mage blender". Because even with what can be contrued as "above average" investments in gear, you STILL don't even get half of the damage increase a mage does when leveling up.

And that is why we have "mage blender" now, more than anything else.

Ok, let's see how things fare with a ToA archer then with loads of gear.
Quite coincidentally, I am an ELB single archer wearing a ToA that has roughly 10 mil raw levels trained. Well, a bit closer to 11 mil levels, but I have much more raw DX trained, and my ToA is above the level it should be if I would have leveled it from the start.
I have a x3k-something +0 ELB (around 24 mil NW, which is more than enough for me), and a +113 from the ToA, so that's about on par with the above example.
I don't have "only" 5 mil ST as the archer in the theoretical example, I have over 8 mil.
Comparing that theoretical archer from before and its gear, I only deal 310 times more raw damage per shot (pretty damned close), but with a lot less NW invested, and a slight bonus in ranged from the BG... but still nowhere close enough to compare to the damage increase a mage's spell has with same level of XP invested.

I would have to get my bow up to almost x12000 to even begin to compare, actually.

A Halidon Familiar lvl 4,647,926 does this:

Hal skewered Abracadabra [452864]
Abracadabra's Guardian Angel smote Hal (85154)
Hal skewered Abracadabra [490842]
Hal skewered Abracadabra [478114]
Hal struck deep into Abracadabra [495103]
Hal cries "I can't let you do that, Dave!"

My EF at 5 mill levels with an AoF bringing my DD level to 7 mill does an average of 1.5-2 million damage per round.


And, before I go and find breakfast: the top ten at the moment is more fluid than it's ever been in CB2. No one team is dominating. Anybody has a shot at a place in the top ten right now. So if it is mageblender right now, that's a much more healthy and balanced place than we've seen before.

On the OTHER hand, my NW allowance would be adequate even if my bow would be closer to x40k, which would be a HUGE advantage over the mage's increase.
However, I can never hope to afford getting such a ginormous x on my bow, not even close.

The reason we have mageblender at the top is because the physical damage formula scales poorly as one grows, needing huge amounts of NW for similar upscaling, but worse, ALLOWING much more NW than it would be fair for a scaling, so much more NW compared to how much you could possibly hope to earn that you would NEED to use USD.

Bottom line, we have "mageblender" because "USDtankblender" had to be toned down, rendering "nonUSDtanks" absolete before the evasion change, and STILL heavily underpowered even after the evasion change.

Sick, are you counting the massive amount of +STR gear a Tank can get?

Johnny, HP (and AS by default) got a lot more 'power' from the recent nerfs. It's the only defense that wasn't hit be the nerfbat, while all offense was.

As for AS, it's good. With 4 minions I get 145% of the HP I would normally have on a single minion. Which can be boosted by Corn, SB and the AoF. While ther'es nothing to boost natural HP at all.

And HP is king. ;)

"Sick, are you counting the massive amount of +STR gear a Tank can get?"

Yes, I did, in the next example.
I have under 4 mil raw ST (plus about raw 1.6 mil DX, and HP you see).
I have over 8 mil effective ST from ToA+gear. I get more ST like this than compared to a big TSA, and I also get "free" weapon + NW.
And it still is underpowered badly.

My single minion : Greater Halidon Familiar

Hit Points: 4,011,111
Armor: 79
Strength: 8,130,977 / 3,953,762
Dexterity: 3,464,471 / 1,650,654
Archery: 1.00 / 0.80

Net Worth: $31,525,758
Encumbered at: 380,174,202

An Elven Long Bow [6x3087] (+0)
An Amulet of Might [0] (+10)
A Pair of Elven Boots [10] (+24)
A Pair of Beleg's Gloves [3] (+13)
A Helm of Clearsight [-5]
A Buckler of Mandos [10] (+23)
A Tattoo of Augmentation lvl 3,464,472 (62+ mil NW)
A 2007 CB T-shirt [1]

Ranged damage is usually in the 600-700k range per shot (the 1 mil MPB is from melee against Moirae, where I usually hit ONCE every two rounds), and I obviously seldom hit more than 3 times a ranged round, and only against no-evasion, no-UC, no-DX targets.

I'm reading the thread, and I'm having trouble understanding any of the numbers in the arguement. Lots of it the calculations don't make any sense, and the logic is bizarre.

So I'm trying to understand the heart of the argument:

"Move forwards a bit, with now the opponents at around 10 mil total levels (1000 times more).
The mage will obviously have exactly 1000 times more damage (7 mil into DD)... but what about the archer ?
Well, sure, the archer might get his 5 mil ST, but I can bet you that he DOESN'T have a [6x50000](+0) ELB, which would put his damage ratio precisely where it should be. Heck, the largest x on an ELB in the game right now is barely above 10k."

I'm not every sure that logic even works, but if it does, wouldn't 50k in the X mean that the ELB does like several million PER hit? Apples and oranges man, weapons aren't supposed to scale linerly because of multiple hits. What are you expecting? Several million per hit? Sure. That's fair.

"So, for realism's sake, let's say he has a [6x5000](+100) bow. That's already a top level bow... but how much comparative damage DOES it deal ?
First off, we had 2 hits per round, now we get 3 hits per round, so that's a 50% increase, which is fine and dandy (well, sort of, anyway, since we probably would have had a bit of plus on the weapon already).
The total damage we need to deal per shot for "breakeven" won't have to be 1000 times larger, just 666 times larger (heh)."
Now, the bow x is only 100 times larger with ST 1000 times larger, which makes the total damage PER SHOT a whooping 316 times larger than before. Oh... wait... that's not even CLOSE to the needed 666 times larger, it's actually barely half of it, if even that much. "

What numbers are we refering to?! I'm so confused! DD's doing a thousand times more damage? Its doesn't feel obvious to me, am I stupid or something?

interesting discussion

just some things. Mgs is now impratical for a tank due to the restrictions brought about upon enc (BoM almost definantly required) and since it is recognised how badly penalsed ranged damage is u would need a massive allowance to both equip the gear needed to both boost st and provide enough room for an extremely developed weapon.

I shall be trying out mod and cing how that stacks up in comparison to my vb which is getting 1mil hits 4 times per round.

It is impossible for tanks to go both ranged and melee enc doesn't allow it (would be nice to c enc adjusted so that only one weapon is accounted at a time not both in working out the enc effect)

My enc is 500mil largest in the game and i am barely able to use two weapons both of which are some of the biggest in the game.

"For instance, take the following examples : a single ELB archer vs a single magic missile mage."

Errr, interesting things to compare... just note that on average, ELB does tons more damage than MM at lows levels. And how can we compare the two? One takes massive ranged penalties to damage, but hits most in melee, the other hits every other round in melee with a huge CTH penalty.

"Not going into the details of EXACTLY how much damage each deals, also completely taking evasion out of the equation for a moment, the tank will probably train something close to 30% HP, 50% ST, 10% DX and 10% archery, the mage will probably train 30% HP, 70% DD (just so we keep the HP equivalent)."

D: why?

"The tank will also have to upgrade its weapon x, maybe even add a bit of +.

Now, take a random point in time, at around 10k levels.
Even assuming all NW goes into the weapon and none on other gear, the archer (5k ST) will let's say have a [6x50](+0) ELBow (that's 390k NW already, probably over encumbrance limit or very close to it - let's just ASSUME it's not over it even if it is).
The mage will have 7000 in DD."

And at that point ELB will probably do WAY WAY more damage than the MM.

"Move forwards a bit, with now the opponents at around 10 mil total levels (1000 times more).
The mage will obviously have exactly 1000 times more damage (7 mil into DD)... but what about the archer ?"

Well, I would assume the archer isn't doing 3mil per hit.

"Well, sure, the archer might get his 5 mil ST, but I can bet you that he DOESN'T have a [6x50000](+0) ELB, which would put his damage ratio precisely where it should be. Heck, the largest x on an ELB in the game right now is barely above 10k."

Erm, yeah not many people investing in huge Xs when PTH has always been an issue. Expect more X in the future.

"So, for realism's sake, let's say he has a [6x5000](+100) bow. That's already a top level bow... but how much comparative damage DOES it deal ?"

Top bows are tiny, as the way of the archer has been nerfed. Jon said he's been trying to move the game into melee rounds. Hence the nerfage.

"First off, we had 2 hits per round, now we get 3 hits per round, so that's a 50% increase, which is fine and dandy (well, sort of, anyway, since we probably would have had a bit of plus on the weapon already)."

Wait weren't we comparing MM to single hits of bows before? I mean if you look at that way, it's multiplying it by 300%! That's kinda a play on words.

"The total damage we need to deal per shot for "breakeven" won't have to be 1000 times larger, just 666 times larger (heh).
Now, the bow x is only 100 times larger with ST 1000 times larger, which makes the total damage PER SHOT a whooping 316 times larger than before. Oh... wait... that's not even CLOSE to the needed 666 times larger, it's actually barely half of it, if even that much."

Yeah, anyways MM does so much less damage than ELB to begin with, that even though ELB isn't having it's damage X1000 it's still doing alright damage. (again I ask why is everyone so bent on using ranged weapons?)

And last time I noticed, even ranged weapons aren't doing 1/666th my damage. (per round) I'm pretty sure there are tanks that deal over 4k damage. Wait...yeah.

"Now, see why exactly it's "mage blender"."

Wait what?

"Because even with what can be contrued as "above average" investments in gear, you STILL don't even get half of the damage increase a mage does when leveling up."

Wait where does this prove that.


"And that is why we have "mage blender" now, more than anything else."

I brought up a bunch of points earlier in the thread, and I would appreciate if you read through them like I have (with much difficulty) with yours.

I just said "magic missile" because it has a similar damage structure to a bow (single target, from first ranged round).
I could have easily compared a single SG or a single CoC mage's damage scaling with a single BoNE melee tank's damage scaling, and the conclusions would have been the same.

The point was not the comparison between the mage and the tank, the point was the comparison of "damage of tank at 10k vs damage of tank at 10m" with "damage of mage at 10k vs damage of mage at 10m".
While the mage's damage scales LINEARLY as MTL increases (MTL = 2 * sum of raw levels), the tank's damage doesn't - not realistically, anyway, even if you push all cash you earn in the most effective possible way into gear and weapon for damage maximization.

The point was that tanks need a lot of NW (a lot more NW as they can realistically get with naturally earned cash) to get the same linear damage increase scaling that a mage gets (and the mage doesn't even have to have any NW at all).
In other words, that the ONLY competitive tanks near the top are USD spenders (well, that, or really long time players who managed to hoard and multiply their cash, but I kind of doubt that) - while at the same time, mages (or familiar-based teams) have it much easier on top.

You may argue that physical weapons are overpowered at low MPR, and I couldn't honestly say I disagree.

However, it is obvious that while a mage gets a linear increase in damage as MTL goes up, a tank ONLY gets that linear increase in damage if he BOTH gets ST up linearly AND he increases the weapon x linearly at the same time - a lot more NW into the weapon x as you can realistically expect that tank to earn.

So, obviously, even if physical damage MAY be overpowered at lower levels, you unavoidably get to a point where the damage potentials cross paths, and the magic damage dominates from that point onwards. How high that point is might depend on a lot of factor, and it was brought lower by the recent changes... but it doesn't really matter WHERE that point is... the fact that point does exist is indisputable.

P.S. Also, there's yet another problem.

While you may not completely stop physical damage, at high enough MPR levels walls that absorb so much physical damage to make killing them with physical damage alone unfeasable (even given much more NW invested in the weapon) are possible - and the higher you go, the more true that becomes.
On the other hand, magical damage can not possibly nor realistically be reduced enough (not with the encumbrance limits anyway) in such a way, you would have to also include a hefty AMF and hope the enemy doesn't have high-NW NsC so he ends up killing himself before you die.

And now, with heavy armor mages becoming *almost* feasable, I shudder to think of the future of tank-based teams in the top ranks.

what is crazy is that people always say, if ya wanna run a melee team, it will cost a great amount of cb. if you don't want to or cannot handle that, run a mage team.

yet we always have people who get up there and then complain about the fact that this is so and then want to change the game so that their melee team is viable or that magic teams should cost more.

as far as the current balance, i would imagine jon has certain stats that he is watching. percentage of battles ending in ranged would likely be one such statistic. i am sure there are others though but i doubt population of any of the classes is one of them.

one thing that is interesting is the growth of hybrid damage teams. if your encumbrance won't allow a big melee and ranged weapon, use a familiar for one as many others are doing to great effect.

There's no reasonable motive a melee team should cost much more than a mage team (or, for that matter, be much better if you do spend more), and there's no good reason to "have" to have hybrid damage teams in order to be viable.

Or, in another words, the encumbrance limits are perhaps waaaaaay too forgiving (think "about 4-8 times too large"), the weapon x costs are too high (by about the same factor), the encumbrance penalties too harsh (should only reduce effectiveness to the level one would have with a NW equal to the encumbrance limit, not a lot below) and maybe ALL item + curves should be rescaled too ?

:)

you mean other than the fact that it has always been that way in cb and was designed that way by jon the creator? ; )

The fact he even introduced encumbrance in the first place and repeatedly spoke about "reducing the impact of USD use" in relation to encumbrance made me think he maybe changed his mind...

i do not understand your logic then. you said that mages and tanks should be fairly equivalent without cb investment. that would inherently mean then that if someone did spend cb on one, then that would win out over no net worth teams. the one that could spend more would then do even better...melee weapons.

that inherently would encourage usd spending to make your team more powerful, yet you say that jon's statement regarding minimizing the impact of usd supports your belief that he would change it thusly?

unless you took the "reducing the impact of usd" to mean "reducing the necessity of usd"?

Ra's Fireball hit Soul Devourer [817406], Soul Reaper [488336]

Soul Devourer's explosive shot hit Invictus [377694], Ra [102664]
Soul Devourer's explosive shot hit Invictus [464159], Ra [127728]
Soul Devourer's explosive shot hit Invictus [336367], Ra [92846]

This is after my Endurance of 44%, and his AC (he has no MgS or EH).
My FB is ~17.2 mil, his STR is ~13.2 mil. Yes magic damage is randomized more, so this may not be perfect scaling. However, I see no issue here. In fact, I'd say if my Endurance wasn't there, he would be doing more damage per round if anything.

The only issue I see here is his weapon outweights your puny TOE in cost by A LOT. Ignoring the fact that he actually spent USD to get it there, it's still an achievement by itself yet being toned down to a mere "hand in hand" competition with someone who practically doesn't really need more investment than earnings from everyday battle. That's what discouraging people using tanks actually.

which brings us back to the same old argument, since melee requires a large investment to shine, considering an ample investment, should melee outshine magic or just be comparable?

basically, where is the balancing point set, magic is equal to an equal expenditure melee or magic is equal to max encumbered melee?

perhaps we just need to say to hell with choice and options and truly balance the game? make weapons mandatory to actually hit in their respective rounds, a melee weapon for melee, ranged for ranged. get rid of str and dex and just have a stat called "melee." also, get rid of multiple hits, you can only hit once per round. for true balance i guess we should get rid of the different magical attacks as well and just have a stat called "magic."

when trained to the same level, the two stats would do exactly the same amount of damage. the weapon you choose has no impact on anything, but is only for role playing purposes. also introduce wands, orbs and staves for mages so they can pretend too. is this the direction we want to go in?

" unless you took the "reducing the impact of usd" to mean "reducing the necessity of usd"? "


That's precisely what I meant - making it so that you earn roughly enough CB$ to *either* more than fully upgrade your gear up and above your NW allowance *or* upgrade to a decent portion of your NW allowance and buy all possible daily BA (all of this in the "no N*B" scenario, things would be slightly different for a N*B scenario) near a certain "reasonable" challenge bonus (the definition of "reasonable" being left open for debate).

In other words, if, say, for a certain non-N*B character the daily purchaseable BA cost around 200k CB$ total, and he earns around 250k CB$ a day fighting just his naturally regenerated BA at 0% challenge bonus (i.e. around 500k CB$ at 100% challenge bonus), then the sum of NW allowances increases on that character should be somewhere around 400k at most, if not lower, say around 300k or so.

Of course, a slight rescale of weapon x cost (so a linear increase in weapon x would be manageable within the heavily reduced encumbrance limits) and a rescale of just about all item upgrade curves would have to be made alongside this change... not only that, but encumbrance weights would have to be normalized a bit (even to the point of just making encumbrance ONLY depend on RAW levels on minion, not modified by any items at all).
What I mean by rescale of item upgrade curves (armor pieces mostly) is have them trend more towards linearity as opposed to more than exponential right now (well, of course not quite linear, but you get the idea).

Side-note on item upgrade rescale - that would mean lower levels would cost a lot more than they do now, while the higher levels would cost noticeably less (but still a lot).

Heck, maybe even rethink items and AC altogether - have them all have reduced effectiveness with higher upgrade levels, but completely linearize the costs, so that there would be a lot of room for fine-tuning at the upper levels, instead of HUGE steps.
So, yes, you might get to see a 40(+543) Adamantine Cuirass, but that +543 would not mean the same thing it means now (what exactly it should mean is also up for debate, but that's a completely different story).

P.S. It could be as simple as
Actual Effect = Base Effect * [1 + item based constant * (Upgrade Level - another item based constant) / Base Effect]

Uh forget about last post, wrong formula... I must work on it a bit more... I meant to get something that at "infinity" would tend towards a certain percent increase in base effectiveness.

I knew the argument would be posed that AA has more NW. While its true, consider that I have ~241 mil xp on the one character I use to attack, while he has more of an equal split of ~125 mil per char. The ToA makes up for this by hugely boosting his STR and DEX. His Tat is worth approx. 250 mil, his VB is worth another 200 mil. Taking that into account, he does have about 440 mil invested beyond that. Though I have his counter-strategy, if you could call it that. I have Endurance, I attack an extra round ahead of him, and my FB is insanely concentrated. Thats the primary reason why I can compete with him in damage. If our characters had the same xp concentration, he would do more damage than me, even without the huge tattoo. I was comparing the damage done, not the xp concentration or investment. His SoD is worth about 173 mil, which is the determining factor in his damage output against me. So taking this into account, and the fact I have about 25 mil invested in my CoI and AG, thats the comparison that should be made. As a mage with huge xp concentration, I do about the same damage (a bit more) with my ToE, than Soul Collector's SoD and 13 mil STR minion with the NW difference being about 150 mil. So it could be argued that SoD tanks need about 5-6x the NW investment to keep up with FB mages in damage in ranged. Thats the argument I was posing by showing the damage difference. Anything relating his USD investment is somewhat irrelevant, as he doesn't get a chance to use Death on me, and he has about 70 mil less MPR than me, as well as his xp not being concentrated on one character like mine. So yes, it does take more investment to make his ~125 mil xp character more than equal my ~241 mil xp character. But I really see no issue with the tank vs. mage damage. Nor do I see "mage blender," only the fact that a lot of people still use mages because they don't want xp loss due to retraining.

*Correction: not 70 mil less MPR, 70 k less MPR.

dudemus i think that's going a bit overboard. I understand you are upset people are wanting tanks to do a bit more but really, how many tanks are out there. I know I'm still there, but I'm no good. I can't get better because I don't have the cb to get better. My bow is doing ok damage, but vs good defensive teams I have zero chance right now. I personally don't care if there is a balance of any kind or not, but if the game continues on this path you will see more and more mages because tank teams will not have a chance to compete. Well real tank teams. I don't count Hals as real tanks.

Solare:

I think pretty much everybody on CB can agree that FB sucks. The current trend is to melee DDs, which do A LOT more damage than FB.

I'm still in shock that people were suggesting to a newbie using an EF or IF on a single minion, as opposed to a HF, or a SF/FF (which weren't even *mentioned*!). The reason? It's MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH easier to survive until melee than it ever has been. Why? Either 1) ranged sucks, 2) HP (and AS to a certain extent) is overpowered, or 3) both are true.

I'm curious. Does anybody have a massive melee weapon they could compare with a massive melee DD? I'm curious to see what the numbers would look like.

For an admin: EF should probably be added to the dictionary. :)

i am not upset at all, i actually think that everyone thinks their team should do more damage. i do think jon watches certain stats (other than population) and will balance accordingly. i also believe that anything we can do for comparison is likely too subjective to be of use as we have so many options available to us that it is impossible to compare the apples to oranges.

which is why i made my post. if balance is our primary goal then we are likely going to have to move towards a model based on that from the start and give up many choices/options along the way. if that is undesirable, then we trust jon and his data.

i do think it is great to have these discussions though and as stated earlier, i would love to see the percentage of battles ending in ranged currently. furthermore, i would love to see the original post where jon gave that data, i have looked but am unable to find it. i think it was around fifty percent or more but that could be selective memory.

"you are upset people are wanting tanks to do a bit more"

i am running a melee based team now, so more melee damage would be great! i am just not realistically expecting that to happen.

since my point was forgotten but very relivent I'll repost it.

""Also, tanks must spend A LOT on their weapon to get anywhere near decent damage. A lot of tanks (since straight archers are basically obsolete thanks to ridiculously low ranged damage) have to either go entirely melee (which I'll come back to later) or have two weapons; more money spent!"

Why are we trying to win battles in ranged? All the damage nerfs were Jon's way to moving battles in to melee? Get out of the old CB2 mentality when the game was ruled by archers (about a year ago).

As for money, I agree. Tanks are expensive. But since when were Tanks solely about MPR? The money aspect is a big plus for some people, but yeah it's a big investment. But the alternative, is having money boost tanks damage output to an insane level and make USD spending OP again. Not much we can do there. Though with hitting not a gigantic issue like before, investing in the X with a little BL is an option i really think tank teams should explore. "

and I'll repost something. Since you missed it I guess. How easy do you think it is to change weapon + into weapon x? Very easy, but also at a huge loss with disenchanting. I spent more than a year to get the weapon I have now with 200+ and 4k x and guess what. I'm not going to lose all that cb to disenchant it and add to the x .. Then what happens if there is a change where I need the x again. OH that's right disenchant and lose more nw on my weapon till it's even more useless. No thanks. Yeah. It's easy to change as a mage.. yep. lose a little mpr and change which type your damage is as easy as you want, but for me, I used to need dex now I don't so much so I can take the mpr hit as easy as the next guy, but how do I change my damage? Oh buy a new weapon and get 100 mil cb into it .. yep that's easy... or just keep using the weapon I got and keep plodding along. I wanted to be a archer/tank when I started, but if someone would have told me only USD people could run one, then I would have gone mage and made this so much easier.

i didn't miss it

"I do agree that it's difficult to change strats with a ranged setup. And that is much of the main problems.

The game would benefit greatly if people were able to swap NW from ranged to melee, as the game was so ranged heavy in the past. I guess the point I'm really trying to drive home to PK's response, is that the problem isn't in how tanks are currently working, but rather how the players are and are not adapting, or how they can't adapt. That's why there are so few tanks in the top ten (not that the top ten is a good description of the game as a whole anyway). "

Why does everyone ignore me? :(

From what I read I can only see that people think Mages are OP.. but I just think the problem is that tanks cost more...

Also I read that tanks have exp dilution or something along the lines well they don't actually...

Cuz if you think about it training a DD would increase the total damage. For tanks, they train ST "The amount of ST trained will increase the amount of damage one can do with a physical weapon" and DX "The amount of DX will affect how well you hit minions who have DX or Evasion trained." And i also seem to remember with more DX tanks can hit more in ranged so that would mean :

If a mage trained 10mil exp into DD he would get a total of x damage.

If a tank trained enough into DX to get his max number of hits and train what's left into ST then his single hits may not be as powerful but he gets more hits so therefore the damage should be about the same and he would do a total of x damage aswell!

But also, his weapon would not be on par and affect his damage likewise whilst the mage would not be affected at all....

So to conclude from my ridiculous noob thinking, the damage would be around the same if the tanks weapon could keep up.

What tanks really need is better weapon upgrading!

Sorry if that made no sense whatsoever, I still dun knows that much about the game mechanics >_< The only reason I wrote this is because I got bored today xP

dex hits can only be 150% so 1 or 2 max hits from dex advantage. anything above that is from the + on the weapon.

So my post made all the sense in the world!

Tanks need better ways to upgrade weapons xP

increase the efficiency of DM and I will be a lot happier losing to teams with AS.

yes increase my dm efficency that would be awsome. hey just so people know st doens't increase dmage out put by much at all the biggest benefit of st is the enc boost. The fact is the most important contributor to tank damage out put is x on a weapon. i once did a comparison back when i had 20mil st. I used a low end MH weapon with around 2kx and i hit for couple of 100k against low ac teams i then tried out my recently purchased mh (yep the big one) and the jump was heaps with 8k extra x on my weapon i was getting damage over 3x that of the 2k weapon.

My only problem with this whole set up is that st seems to have very little, except at the low levels, effect at high levels in regards to damage levels and weapons x means everything.

Hit Points: 113,263
Armor: 14
Strength: 172,654 / 97,224
Dexterity: 110,456 / 60,673
Archery: 1.00
Dispel Magic: 109,216 / 110,880
Net Worth: $4,148,731
Encumbered at: 10,053,802

An Elven Long Bow [6x335] (+0)
A Pair of Displacement Boots [0] (+35)
A Pair of Beleg's Gloves [3] (+10)
A Tattoo of Augmentation lvl 150,860 MTL: 222,086
A 2007 CB T-shirt [1]


I'd very much like to be able to do all the damage that I could possibly do, but I Disenchanted +35, got a whole whopping 400k for it, and was able to boost my X just enough that I moved up 5k damage. And I've still got 6mil in terms of spare Enc that I wish I could fill but it won't happen.

If I was a mage, do you know how I'd maximize my damage? Pump a little more XP into my DD and boost my HP.

I'm not crying that Mages are Overpowered, what I'm crying about is the fact that as an Archer, my damage capability will never catch up to another single minion archer unless I switch to Hal, and even then...

MORE INFO:

I got bored and thought I'd test how I did Ranged/Melee vs a new team I picked up on my fightlist. Here are the fun results.

Round 1:
Silvarian defeated The Anti-Antichrist after 6 rounds of combat
Physical
Silvarian The Anti-Antichrist
Ranged Hits / Shots / Avg Damage 11 / 11 / 30,712 3 / 6 / 2,304
Melee Hits / Blows / Avg Damage 1 / 1 / 31,116 0 / 0 / 0

Round 2:
Same amount of Rounds in Combat vs Same Team
Silvarian The Anti-Antichrist Ranged Hits / Shots / Avg Damage 11 / 11 / 28,898 2 / 6 / 2,769
Melee Hits / Blows / Avg Damage 2 / 2 / 29,100 0 / 0 / 0

Round 3:
Same Team but 8 Rounds of Combat
Silvarian The Anti-Antichrist
Ranged Hits / Shots / Avg Damage 8 / 8 / 30,947 0 / 6 / 0
Melee Hits / Blows / Avg Damage 2 / 2 / 36,561 0 / 1 / 0

Round 4:
Same Team, 6 Round of Combat
Silvarian The Anti-Antichrist
Ranged Hits / Shots / Avg Damage 11 / 11 / 29,739 0 / 6 / 0
Melee Hits / Blows / Avg Damage 1 / 1 / 33,382 0 / 0 / 0


In reference to his ED's:
Altruistic Thaumaturge's Guardian Angel fizzles under Dispel Magic
Slitwristed Wraith's Ablative Shield fizzles under Dispel Magic
Amiable Sadist's Ablative Shield fizzles under Dispel Magic

So those have no effect on the battle.

The fact of the matter is though, I'm doing more damage in melee than in ranged with a ranged weapon and hitting, every round. The current stats on my bow are An Elven Long Bow [6x350] (+0) so I'm working purely off of my Dex for my double, sometimes triple, hits.

simply put probably HP is better then str =x

"so I'm working purely off of my Dex for my double, sometimes triple, hits. "

Not entirely if you're using a ToA.

explain to me why DM isn't efficient enough?

it is possibly due to the fact that it can negate only 8 to 12 times it's own level in enchantments under the best case scenario. ; )

^ i guess 8 times would be the max actually.

OH, but dudemus, if they only train one ED it's only 80% effective! Taking out 80% of my trained DM of a teams HP before the battle starts is too little! It's only better than any single DD out there D:

so it has a range of efficiency of 80% to 800%. not too shabby at all in my mind!

If your team is mostly focused in EDs, like mine is, then DM is almost as good as evasion used to be.

"so it has a range of efficiency of 80% to 800%. not too shabby at all in my mind! "

Explain the 800%. I can only count up to 320% :)

DM actually has a range of efficiency of 0% to 320%.

Just for fun I went through my fight list and counted how many ED's each team had trained.

4 had no ED's trained
5 had 1 ED trained
2 had 2 ED's trained
1 had 4 ED's trained (however they use an RoS which protects against almost three quarters of my DM).

So my DM is really only efficient against 2 of the 12 people on my fight list. DM also has the rather severe limitation of not being usable with other EO spells (except with the RoS). I'd probably be better off un-training my DM and putting the XP into Ablative Shield.

hmm, a 1m level dm could dispel 4 1m level ed's of your opponent while also dispelling 4 1m level eo's you cast on your opponent. that would be 8m levels of enchantment for a theoretical 800% efficiency, no?

the xp efficiency would be a different amount than the effective level efficiency, like about 640% given the best case scenario.

why do people keep refering to teams with 4x ED? People have choices and can choose to train none or 1 ED. When there is only 1 ED trained, DM team loses regardless. Either spend more xp to counter ED, or watch that massive HP slow you down. With no ED, the counter is to train no DM and its still a fair fight. When people choose to load up on EDs, it is a choice to lose against DM.

well, people wanted to increase the efficiency of dm. therefore to determine its range of efficiency you have to look at the best case scenario and the worst, no?

doh, that was you that wanted to increase the efficiency...too funny! we were just pointing out that it is one of the most efficent spells already.

actually, no familiar cast EO/ED, so the DM minion can't dispel itself, the maximum (assuming trained on 1 minion) is therefore 560%. Against another team, there is a maximum DM efficiency of 320%, however, those teams should have RoS to cover its weakness. I assume you lose 40% of it flat, so its 320% * 40% = 128% or something. Except ED do things without an opposing DM, DM do nothing against no ED. I believe that counters should be about 5% more efficient that what it is countering to counteract the fact that you have a useless skill against some teams. If EC only takes off 0.4 STR and DX per level, I doubt anyone would use it, even though it can take out multiple tanks.

"I believe that counters should be about 5% more efficient that what it is countering to counteract the fact that you have a useless skill against some teams."

So you would want an evasion that was 105 against 100pth? Or an AMF that let you wipe out an equivalent size DD spell?

The fact that you have a useless skill against some teams is what makes things balanced. And even then people cry OP...

"why do people keep refering to teams with 4x ED? People have choices and can choose to train none or 1 ED. When there is only 1 ED trained, DM team loses regardless. Either spend more xp to counter ED, or watch that massive HP slow you down. With no ED, the counter is to train no DM and its still a fair fight. When people choose to load up on EDs, it is a choice to lose against DM. "

Waste of exp? If you dispel 80% of their main source of HP, how are you still losing? They should be as fragile as pie at that point. Imagine if I took a team, any team, and cut their HP by 80%, before the battle starts (ignoring concepts like AC, GA and AMF).

Let's say I train 1 million levels of AS on a 4 minion team. 340,000 HP all around! Let's say you train one million levels of DM.

Well, now I have 68,000 HP all around. Apparently, according to PK, the DM trained team should still lose even though he just got rid of 1,088,000 HP with a million trained levels.

Right.

My point is that most team can afford to train 1 AS, even if you don't need it. Have some innate HP, then have a minion train AS for the sake of it.

I think I need to elaborate my point. Teams that rely on ED get eaten by DM, yes, but teams that take advantage of ED (doesn't really need it, but helps anyway) wins the XP war in the DM vs ED aspect.

You're not making much sense. Are you saying that a team like mine wins against a team who invest in DM?

Apparently he's saying that DM is useless against teams that train AS, but don't really need to train AS.

Which I understand.

Sometimes I like to train DDs I don't really need, and say how broken AMF is, cause my main damage dealer is a tank (and AMF doesn't do much on tanks)

"hmm, a 1m level dm could dispel 4 1m level ed's of your opponent while also dispelling 4 1m level eo's you cast on your opponent. that would be 8m levels of enchantment for a theoretical 800% efficiency, no?"

You're lumping together the bad and good aspects of DM to arrive at your 800% figure. That's not particularly helpful when determining how good a spell is.

ah, but we were determining efficiency, not how good it is weren't we?

he was right though, it would be an efficiency range of 0 to 560%. no need to take the ros into account, as that has nothing at all to do with the efficiency of dm either.

the statement was that dm should be more efficient. i thought it would be a good time then to show how efficient it already is so we can all determine if it does actually need to be made more efficient. i would say that it is likely the most efficient spell in the game at this current time. ec is pretty darned efficient, but not anywhere close to this.

LOL you guys are funny. Why all the debates about DM on a thread that talks about tank's unfair disadvantage against team with DD as prime attacker ?

DM is what it is. You get effectiveness against people who trains ED and without ROS, especially when it's done across multiple minions. The downside you can't learn other EO effectively when you are without ROS leaving you dead meat against even base Decay. That will round it up.

Oh and if you think doing anything to DM can help tanks, guess what? It also helps mages !!! Woohoo enlightenment eh? So go back to the topic please.

The original poster was the first to bring up how good EDs were quite early on in the thread. The DM conversation stemmed from that.

"Sometimes I like to train DDs I don't really need, and say how broken AMF is, cause my main damage dealer is a tank (and AMF doesn't do much on tanks)"

I was afraid that people wouldn't get the sarcasm.

My point is that PK was arguing that DM is underpowered because it doesn't help against people that don't needed AS and train HP but AS on the side.

I was pointing out the flawed logic, by comparing it to as if I was training useless AS (the DD) and complained how DM (the AMF) didn't get rid of it all the effect because they're using trained HP (the tank) as the main effect.

Sarcasm doesn't work well here :P

"ah, but we were determining efficiency, not how good it is weren't we?"

I thought we were discussing whether DM is fine as it is, or should be made better i.e. dispel a greater percentage of ED.

Someone thought that DM's efficiency should be improved (they thought it wasn't a good enough spell as it was presumably). You replied that DM could already dispel at between 80 and 800% efficiency and you thought this was "not too shabby" and that (reading between the lines), the efficiency of DM therefore did not need improved.

aye, that pretty much sums it up, dm has an efficiency range of 0 to 560%. i was wrong with my first figures.

"a 1m level dm could dispel 4 1m level"

hi everyone just have to say this is a false statement 1mil level dm can remove up to 800k of 4 1mil levels which is 3.2mil levels diepelled overall leaving 800k just thought i would point it out. Oh and my dm is the largest single trained in the game if anyone wants to use it for examples.

Can i just say if i didn't have dm how badly ga would butcher my team its already been shown as being uber for small exp investment if it weren't for dm their to help reduce it. And yep Dm does limit your team a fair bit in choices and other teams have exploited that so i don't c anything wrong with dm.

I find it amusing its usually something i have trained, spent or uses that seems to come up for debate just a general observation not saying i'm used as an example for all or anything. Tanks to strong>USD expenditure>evasion to strong>MgS to Strong>now Dm to Strong How about next just saying AncientAnubis to strong hahahaha have fun debating guys :)

if that's true, then I believe you're the new spid :P

This change gives AA an unfair advantage!

AA is too strong! =D
He needs a nerf!