best dd spell (in General)

after reading a few threads im feeling like i messed up by choosing fb tho i feel its a little late to switch for future refrence it could help to see a few opinions

it depends on the type of team you want...

Magic Missile is the safe bet
FB for the quick kill (helps to have DM)
Shocking Grasp is great, but you've got to live long enough to use it
Cone of Cold is the real powerhouse, but creating a strat where it's better than all the other strats is nearly impossible.

Well, I haven't played with it recently, so I don't know how all the changes affect things. But with FB, the secret is early damage. I'd say you need a 5 minion team, with the fifth minion throwing the fireballs. The four trainable ones need to do everything they can to keep the familiar alive for 5 rounds, and to reduce the defensive capabilities of the opponents.

So, a large AS and a large DM. I'd suggest two AS minions, one pure DM minion, and one DM/Junction minion, with the FF + AG's + whatever else helps casters these days.

If you have lots of CBD to burn, I'd train armour proficiency on all three "pure" enchanters, and load them up with armour + corns. I _believe_ that the damage reduction from AC would outweigh the loss in EO/ED if you were smart and picked the right equipment.

That said, it's a very particular strategy, you'd have to pick your opponents carefully (stay away from MSK ;-). I guess all I'm trying to say is that you don't have to be able to beat everyone. You just have to be able to beat enough people whose score is more than double yours. At your mpr level, with your equipment, you should have _no trouble_ keeping 100% challenge bonus with your current strat, let alone the one I suggested above.

Anyway, each of the DD spells have their strong points and their weaknesses, you just have to make a strat that concentrates on the strengths and exploits the weaknesses of other characters' strats to that strength.

Cheers,
muon.

In order to outdamage FB, CoC only needs to fire in three rounds of melee. If you live that long, it served its purpose. It probably outdamages MM in two firing rounds. =P

No, in order to outdamage FB, it only needs to fire once in ranged and once in melee. Don't forget about Ranged reduction =P.
FB is crap, especially on a 4-man team. If you don't have a 1-man team or 2-man with an expendable minion, don't train FB. 4-man strategies are better off going SG or CoC; this coming from the guy with the biggest FB...

Solare it's three times. Check lostling's thread on magic damage.

^On a one minion team

You are forgetting ranged penalties.
And I'm talking about CoC half my lvl (17.5 mil) doing more damage than my FB in only 2 rounds. I compared damage with CoC using teams when they beat me. And usually they're half my level with less armor.
A CoC my level would out-damage me maybe even in the first round (maybe that's a stretch).

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

Those graphs there factor in ranged penalties.

i switched from FB to CoC and i have had more trouble that way

Thats because your team isn't designed for melee capabilities.

muon - you'd be better off training 1 or 2 minions with a Fire familiar. With a 4-5 minion team, the FB backlash would destroy your own minions. Also 1-2 minions are less susceptible to enemy DM with exp concentration.

Most teams that want to get to melee use AMF to lower enemy MM's and FB's.