RoE Revisited (in General)

I stopped fighting a while ago with my current Strat. But I'm getting the itch again (just need to wait from some new meaty changes!) and just wanted to post a review of how the new RoE worked for me.

I always thought that using the RoE to give you single Minion XP concentration, with 4 Minion slots would be awesome. It's the best of both CB worlds.

But there was a little facet that I didn't realise, that made this type of team very interesting. More on that later.

As for my current team, EC is nice and I wanted it to round out my charcater (Plus ENC has made it a lot more potent), but for leveling, AMF would have been better. I faced so many Mage teams on the way up, that it's really required. Unless you want to do a lot of fightlist shuffling.

Initially, I thought I'd use the three extra minions as old CB1 20 HP meat shields, used as nothing more than to suck up a round or two of ELBow fre, or to spread FB/CoC for a round.

But then I found out the interesting part. Zero XP base minions add no PR to your team, no matter how much NW you put on them.

I could stick the largest MGS on each of those three minions, and it would add no PR to my team at all.

So, then I thought about setting up 500 AC suits on them, but Encumberance stops that. The three base minions will be at 100% encuberance (unless you Train GS on your single minion, but that would be a waste).

But, Encumberance doesn't reduce the intrinsic or passive bonuses for items. So a +50 MGS would still provides it's full Magic Damage reduction, and a set of +100 DBs would still reduce PTH by 100.

So, I decided to train AS on my single minion instead of HP, to turn my meat shields into walls.

Next, what to do on my Single minion. I opted this time for SG, because I like touching people, and didn't want to get into the Tank arms race. ;) But UC would work just as well. The nice thing about running a Mage would be that I could use spell boostign items, that would also help my AS.

I originally set up my minion order as;

Base Minion (with DB and SoC)
Base Minion (With EH/MGS)
Main Single Minion
Base Minion (With EH/MGS)

First for Physical Damage, last for MM as usual. All with AoF.

While making me weaker to DM (and the MoD), it's rare I met a DM large enough to cause Problems. And the AS gave me a Total of 145% Health (before AoF boosts) compared to the 100% Total a Single minion would have.

In the end, I swapped in a few AoI and my Set up became;

Base Minion (AoI, MGS/EH)
Base Minion (DB)
Main Single Minion (AoI)
Base Minion (MGS/EH)

This made my Main minion always targetted last by any Physcial attack. I also frequently swapped his position with second place, to give me an extra round versus MM (or back again if I was more worried about SG.

Phew! Sorry about the Wall o' Text, but I think that's about everything.

Single Minion, with free PR on massive NW items, and 145% Health that could be further boosted by the powerful AoF.

I don't think I'll ever run a single minion again. Not unless a tattoo become a lot more appealing!

Awesome review GL!

I was thinking about the same thing, however planning on training all minions at certain intervals so I have a more balanced team then normal :)

While that would help, getting XP on a base minion will make it start adding PR for the massive NW items on it. :(

This idea sounds great in theory but how does it actually work for you?

But, Encumbrance doesn't reduce the intrinsic or passive bonuses for items. So a +50 MGS would still provides it's full Magic Damage reduction, and a set of +100 DBs would still reduce PTH by 100.


that is false my friend !!!
a encumbered minion will see is evasion granted by DB go down !
look i just equip a DB+50 on one of my minion and Encumbered it with a big weapon getting a .99 encumbrance and voila evasion goes down to 0.

SHD you only proven that for DB's, but mgs would still work..

Nice catch on the DB. Maybe it was due to the change to Evasion as a whole.

Still, the EH/MGS are uneffected. ;)

It isn't worth it for me to not grow a tattoo. Growing a tattoo is one of your main sources of networth that you can always sell or insta in a tight spot.

I agree with 666.

A tattoo is far more valuable as both a powerful source of income and effective power.

Junction an AoF to a DD familiar and you get tons of "free" DD levels.

Do the same to a Hal and you get ELB damage with no NW.

The ROE is good, but has been quite neutered IMO.

EH/MgS are useless with only 20 HP. I was planning a NCB that uses a RoE for a similar purpose. Far as capitalizing with gear on minions like this, you either need a bunch of AS on the minion with XP, or just go for leadership. With more and more teams moving away from ranged combat, you can fit a big ol' AoL and BoF on there. Simple counter to this though is 50ST with a x10 SoD ~_^

"EH/MgS are useless with only 20 HP."

That's why I used AS. ;)

"Simple counter to this though is 50ST with a x10 SoD ~_^"

And that's why I used EC. :P

Nice post GL!

Looks like you found a crack in the ENC/NW wall in regards to certain high NW items. Leverage it, see where it goes, one of the most fun things is to start a brand new team with it. In the beginning you will just crush people with the gear. That is a lot of fun really, then at some point, the gear gets out....well MPR'd I guess it is, that the MPR of your minions becomes a greater factor than the gear, I would love to know when that happens. When it does happen, this stat will likely suffer, but hopefully that wont happen until your MPR is considerable, and then it will give you opportunity for the next post, which is what to do once the MPR becomes more important than the gear.

Time to start over again Sef. ;) I've wasted too much bonus time with 'Bitterness'. Maybe I'll go for a single UC minion, with three MGS wearing Magical Meat Shields. ;)

I really like this concept. It's has potential to be very powerful.

If I may make a suggestion, you might want to consider the benefits of training HP and training PL if you are going mage. That way you'll be immune to DM while retaining the ability to "filter" damage through damage reduction. The 10% damage reduction from PL isn't to shabby either.

Also I feel that in order to truly abuse RoE, you need to think about not putting 100% of your exp into a single minion. You have complete control where the exp goes, and you should make choice values to maximize your advantage rather than just throwing it all into one minion.

In other news, get a ToE 1 million level or higher and put it on defensively. That could be fun.

PL would be cool, but it means my Single minion would always be the first to die.

Leaving me with three useless base minions after.

the point is not who dies first but how you make use of your HP.

If you keep everyone alive you can take something like 30-40% (3 minions each reducing damage by are 40%) less damage every round.

Or you can not train PL and have them die in one or two rounds. Leaving you with no damage reduction whatso-ever

With AS, you don't train PL. With HP you do.

How about an example, since I have to explain this so often:

you have 2 minions, one with damage reduction and little HP and another with tons of HP and no damage reduction.

If you don't train PL, the minion with damage reduction will take a few hits, but since he has low HP die in only a few rounds. Afterwords you'll be taking full hits on your big minion with lots of HP and no damage reduction. Not very efficient.

But if you train PL on your big minion. The Damage reduction will apply for a longer period of time hence resulting in a greater "effective HP" (and if done right will result in the most rounds gained.) So when your protected minion takes damage, he'll reduce the damage before removing from your total HP pool.

Ideally since the damage reduction minion has no real need for trained HP you want to have him train other things or have low exp to be most effective, which is exactly what your team is geared for.

hey GL, i remember when i srtarted my ncb and you had done this set up, i stopped and fired all my minions and ran your set up for about 800k mpr, the enc value was 28mil and with my best mage gear from over the years, named ag+16, coi+13, SB, and corn +9. since that point ive started a GA JC minion for when im big enough to use my 3.3mil tat, and ive planned to start swapping my roe around to build more AS on other minions. but as i found the more i swapped(3 times now) the more im slowing down, if i could start it back at 800kmpr i would of made my dmg dealer have JC and only then when i could use the big tat would i let my team acrue exp, oh well

"If you keep everyone alive you can take something like 30-40% (3 minions each reducing damage by are 40%) less damage every round."

Doesn't work like that 3/4ths. ;)

PL will only give you a 10% reduction in Damage, regardless of number of minions.

For example (and assuming PL works on the minion who's trained it, for ease);

FB hits a single minion for 100 damage, with PL you take 90.

FB hits 4 minions for 25 damage each, the PL minion takes 22.5 * 4 or 90 Damage.

;)

Without PL, all incoming damage has to kill off the base minions before (or with spread at the same time) your main minion dies.

With PL, You're main minion will always die first, as you're focusing all incoming damage to him.

Plus at best he'll have ~111.11r% Total effective Health (due to PL reductions to incoming damage, While AS over 4 minons gives 145%.

3/4s is talking about the damage reduction from items, GL, not just the PL

But you still have the same reduction from items without PL, plus there's more effective Health with AS (as long as you don't face DM/MoD) so they would live longer (As the fight is over when the singl eminion dies anyway...)

Unless I'm missing something.

He is suggesting using PL only if you go for HP rather than AS on single minion.

:P Which is a cool idea, but worse than AS, as your main minion dies first. ;)