Shade's Single Minion Familiar Strategy (in General)

Just something for me to think about and to perhaps get a few different looks on the entire build.

Since I've started I switched from a Fire Familiar to a Steel Familiar and this has quite much worked out for me.

Current statistics and items:
Junction: 1.00 / 0.78
Dispel Magic: 298,200 / 240,000
Ablative Shield: 568,458 / 458,510

An Amulet of Focus [0] (+12) (Named)
A Pair of Spellboosters [4]
A pair of Noldorin Spellcasters [0] (+15) (Named)
A Cornuthaum [0] (+10) (Named)
A Steel Familiar lvl 2,730,239 (Named)
A 2007 CB T-shirt [1]

Bonuses from all items:
AoF gives 39% Bonus to Junction and my AS and the MM from my SF
SB's give a 3% Bonus to the MM of my SF, 2% bonus to my AS and 2.25% to my DM.
NSC's give a 16% flat reduction to my opponent's AMF
Corn gives a 22% bonus to my DM and AS.

Play by Play spells cast:
High King of the Noldor cast Dispel Magic on all enemy Minions (298,200)
High King of the Noldor cast Ablative Shield on all friendly Minions (790152)

Total Bonuses:
29% Bonus to my Junction
24% Bonus to my Dispel Magic
72% Bonus to my Ablative Shield

This brings me to which item would be the best to upgrade. I'll continue this later on today for statistics (got to go)

Have you tried switching the corn to a HoC?

Try switching to a big pair of db's?

DB's if your having trouble with tanks, however i would probably increase the corn as the more hp the better

I'm not sure why people decide that single minion familiar strategies are superior to four minion familiar strategies. If you have three minions with AS trained to max, that's a lot more HP than just one (This is also taking into account the exp split from the start), and then you could add a fourth AS or maybe an EO.

Basically, if your team is based entirely around a familiar, you're better off with four minions.

Three minions with AS trained is far more vulnerable to DM than a single minion. Fact. A smaller DM will do more damage to three AS on a multi minion team than a single minion.

My last team The Prestige (3 mill MPR) had one minion completely devoted to AS and only had about 2.5 mill level AS. My current single minion at 800 MPR already has an AS of the same size and a million level AMF on it.

Ranger: no haven't tried yet.
Henk: haven't tried either.

Rave: I'm not saying anything, I'm just trying something completely different from what I used to do. :)

And basically so far it works nicely for me :)

From my expirence,

Corn >> HoC. Later on the extra 1 or two million hp you'll get from AS will be worth the round lost without a HoC. However I train AMF, since you are much more vulnerable to decay I'm not sure how it'll affect you.

You might want to consider investing into DBs instead of SBs. Reducing hits goes a long way with so much hp and provides a great cash sink if you intend to stay single minion.

SF is good. I'll also recommend doing an IF. Mages have the gift of massive spread damage, and if you have the HP to back it up an IF can take out damage dealers and work around minion positioning.

not even you have enough AS to make an IF work well 3/4

It works better than an electric familiar. EF makes me lose targets since it can't deal with kill slots and lacks the same firepower.

I guess I'm just hyper focused on one particular AMF (ab)user

"I'm not sure why people decide that single minion familiar strategies are superior to four minion familiar strategies. If you have three minions with AS trained to max, that's a lot more HP than just one (This is also taking into account the exp split from the start), and then you could add a fourth AS or maybe an EO.

Basically, if your team is based entirely around a familiar, you're better off with four minions. "

Doesn't matter how much hp you have on your entire team if your familiar fries itself with AMF and GA, it's all about how much HP you can get on your familiar. Also take into account that brute forcing AS will leave you better off against DM teams.

So far, I think single minion Familiar is the best way to go single minion

Anyway the first step is what to upgrade next.

AoF costs 4 mil for it's next point, 7 mil for the point after.
Corn costs 5 mil for it's next point, 9 mil for the point after.
NSC's cost 6.5 mil for their next point, 11.8 mil for the point after.

AoF imho. 3% more damage and 3% more hp from AS. Corn is only 2% for its bonuses. then I'd do NSC's

Yeah, AoF makes your DD bigger, then the NSCs boost should take out most AMFs around for a long time. Corn helps some, but the damage will help more...

don't upgrade your stuff and buy BA instead. The bonuses are really not worth the prices

Even at 3k value per BA? imo I would make more money when able to fight higher players with a 100% bonus than not...

Personally I'd upgrade, rather than buy ba. The upgrades are going to give you bonus to your MPR anyway, and at a size that will grow as your character does.

You'll probably find that the upgrades give you more bonus to your MPR than you'll get from buying the BA later on. Maybe not right now, but definitely when your character is bigger.

If your plan is to get into the 6/20 regen and use his char "forever" then I would advice you to buy BA. If not, definitely upgrade your AoF to +13 =)

Johnny: upgrades don't give a bonus to MPR but to PR...

Also there is the question: do I need to upgrade at this moment?

I think at this moment, with all characters in my fightlist being 100% bonus characters, that it could wait a bit. And then buying BA during bonus exp times could be useful perhaps.

Bonus giving items do give a bonus to MPR, as really does a tattoo.

It's actually easy to picture with a familiar tattoo. How much more MPR would a fifth minion of the size of a familiar give you? It's invisible MPR, but it's still MPR. The AoF is effectively making that familiar bigger, by boosting the DD spell and boosting the amount of AS that is cast on it.

Invisible MPR: it's real, honestly!

I would indeed see a Familiar as MPR but the bonuses from items I really only see as PR. Free PR on the Familiar's behalf but still PR.

But that's only a matter of how you look at it, not what it's effect is :)

I like to to see the XP and levels "added" from items as free MPR. But that's just my way to look at it...

Invisible MPR/Free MPR. yes!

Which leads me to the thought: If you buy BA with the money you would spend on upgrades, and used it during crazy xp time would the extra MPR be more or less than the boosts from the items?

I'm tempted to think that boosts to the items are worth more in the long run, but if you're aiming for a higher mpr character...

I'd still say boost the items.

At the cost of $6 million I can now buy all the BA I can for 10 days long. I will try to buy BA on Tuesdays and Saturdays for a while. This would mean getting more experience on those days for about 5 weeks.

I am doubtful another 2-3% to your enchantments or another 1% reduction of AMF will be the difference between getting 100% targets and not.

Buy BA now, and then upgrade your equips after your NCB. This is of course assuming you want to commit to this NCB no matter how well it turns out. If you intend to make another NCB after this one, by all means upgrade equips (which I recommend be the AoF then Corn)

also worth noting that a few days of buying BA at higher MPR could easily add 100k MPR. I'm just sayng that was my biggest regret for my NCB (upgrading and not buying BA)

If I start buying BA now, with my current amount of money and owed money, I could buy BA for 47 days.

47*210 = almost 10k BA and 10k fights...