Maximus the Merciful (in Contests)

I can't really say I hate the auto-retire function because it's actually a good function. But one that I wish not to deal with again.

With that in mind...Maximus the Merciful needs a defensive strat that'll ensure its score not dropping so low that the auto-retire function jumps in between.
Yes, I know, how hard can it be to think of a strat for that char, but I'm just no good with strats at all.

So, first person who works out a strat for Maximus, complete with which weapons/armors I need, explaining why that strat would be best AND gets a thumbs up by 2 others, gets 500k.
2 others themselves get 300k too.

I need a complete strat, so it will not be something you can jot down in a few lines.
This strat will be built around the current learned skills, so no unlearning/relearning and all that, but equipment needs, in which order they should be and so on.

The skills as follows:

Pepper:___________Sour:
hp: 20k___________hp: 20k
str: 20___________str: 20
dex: 100__________dex: 100
EC: 1500066_______evasion: 0
__________________EC: 1489453

Sweet:____________Spice:
hp: 30k___________hp: 20k
str: 20___________str: 20
dex: 100__________dex: 100
EC: 1483191_______Decay: 0
__________________EC: 1463839


Give it your best shot guys.
P.S.: Don't forget to explain why your strat would be best suited.

Good luck for all those joining.
Linguala

Minion 1: All AS

Minion 2: All AMF

Minion 3: All AS

Minion 4: All MM

I have used this on my character Elementals and without a tattoo keep a good enough score/PR ratio to not be autoretired.

If you have a tattoo or lesser tattoo, stick on it on and it can only help.

No equipment needed. If you have some, great.

Oops,

I need to read before I post. Bad habit.

I did not see the no unlearning part.

With your EC, you are going for an antitank character. But without AMF or DM, your really vulnerable to mages and decay.

It also seems to be you need a DD tattoo to have some attack as I see none presently.

Without a high level familiar, I cannot see you keeping your score/PR ratio high enough. Or a complete retrain.

Or a ToA and some nice NW weapons.

It would be far cheaper to unlearn and relearn to a magecentric strat.

I would just stick a RoBF on the last minion.

Train a bit more HP on each minion, and then go after a high score pure tank when your Score/PR ratio is low.

As has already been said, you're wither gonna need a large tat, or a retrain. Though retraining just one minion should be enough to keep above the auto-retire. Retraining a minion likely wouldn't even change your BA cost, and therefore wouldn't affect forging efficiency in the slightest. In the event that it does go down, at that MPR, it would result in less than a 1% loss in efficiency.

Quite simply, you *need* at least a little AMF and some form of offense. I'd advise picking up a 2-3m tat for relatively cheap (~20-25% of nw), then making it into a SF or HF. Or just chuck a 6m familiar on top of what you currently have. Or just prepare to unretire for every fifth NCB that finds your char and/or every tourney that allows any source of damage outside of tanks.

What's been said by Ranger and Hatchet is completely true. What you're asking for is impossible with all EC trained.

So you're choices remain, retrain or fight when your score gets low.

I say to do a variation of Ranger's strategy (my strategy).
Minion1: AS
Minion2: AS
Minion3: GA (+100k AMF)
Minion4: SG/MM

Very simple defensive strategy that has the enemy kill him/herself while your mage cleans up. No weapons required. Items are not required either, but if you put items on the most critical are Cornuthaums and AoF's on the enchanters. If you use a tattoo, you have quite a few choices (which illustrates this strategy's versatility). RoBF is one choice. Put an RoBF on an enchanter or even the mage to lower AMF backlash damage (AoI is optional). Any familiar (except FF because Fireball is so bad) junctioned to any minion is a fantastic choice as well, as long as the gear that its equipped to suits the familiar (tank gear for jig/hal such as BoM, mage gear for magic dd familiars such as NSC). I personally use an RoS, which protects your AS/GA and improves your AS as if it had x2 xp concentration.

However, if you really do not want to unlearn, then it isn't so much a strat change than a armor change. In this case you are going to be farmed by any mage team no matter what. If you still don't want to unlearn, you're best choice is probably sticking a medium sized Hal and junction it to an enchanter.