Blademail and Runemail (in General)

I have an idea for two items that would provide new strats and I don't think they will unbalance anything too much.

Both are armor pieces with 22 base Armor (same as a TSA), with a flat damage return of 30%. Blademail for physical only, Runemail for spell only. Balrog flame, GA, AMF no return.

This would basically be a replacement for some teams for thier second TSA that alot of people wear if they have two high HP walls and one with PL. Think it would add an interesting twist to some defenses.

Let me know what you guys think.

90% damage return? No thanks.

30%...literacy ftl

Wraithlin, GA is 60% and with this would make it 90%. Thinking ftl?

Nobody with a smart strat should see 60% GA return unless they are planning on it. If you can't do enough damage with your damage dealer to reduce your opponent's GA to something manageable you need to rethink your strat.

Make them have a lower Flat rate of return like the BoE (Which is 5% btw)(and maybe a low or no penalty) and I would say they would be a great addition to the game!

What if, since there is a concern about GA combo, that the max return cap is still 60%, so if you're already getting max from GA, the armor does nothing, but if you're getting less than max or you don't use GA then the armor will help.

The cap would definitely be a good idea but lower the rate, 30% is too much for a flat rate on any item. between 5% and 10% would be more appropriate returns.

So, 10%, no penalties, return cap 60%. Sounds good to me, let's see if we can get it coded now.

"If you can't do enough damage with your damage dealer to reduce your opponent's GA to something manageable you need to rethink your strat."
Good joke.

You train HP, STR, DEX, archery, CoC, GA and AMF on your single minion team. You have more XP dilution than most 4 man teams and you're wondering why GA hurts you? It's because a 4 minion team has more into GA than you have in your CoC and then they rip you up when you get to melee. If you simply switched to a melee weapon and turned your CoC XP into more HP/STR/DEX you would get hit alot less by GA and you would kill faster, not to mention being able to ignore people with AMF would be nice.

Base GA, base CoC, token AMF.

Well grats, now i'm absolutely confused as to why you think GA is so bad since you don't even deal with it.

Personally I think GA should be able to get up to 100%.

Team A trains HP 50% and MM 50%, Team B trains HP 50%, GA 50%. Team A will win everytime, and it won't even be close.

In my opinion, if you have a team train full defense aka GA while another trains full offense aka MM, they should kill each other off at about the same time and both should win 50%. AMF does work like this, not sure why GA doesn't.

He's an archer. They die to GA like crazy. ;)

GA isn't that powerful with HP, but it is with AS, and an RoS.

AMF doesn't work like that at all. .50 AMF results in a 2:5 caster:target damage ratio. You also don't need anywhere near 50% GA to accomplish 60% return. 1:1 HP:MM would probably lose easily to a 4 minion 1:1:1:1 AS/AS/AS/GA team. Also, how do I not deal with GA?

I forgot to mention that a 4 minion team with equal EXP distribution would never, ever have anything close to 60% of the total HP of a typical GA team on the damage dealer.

"Well grats, now i'm absolutely confused as to why you think GA is so bad since you don't even deal with it."

Are you so blind that you do not see the MAGESEEKER that he uses? Quit being so arrogant if you have no idea what the hell you are talking about.

"Nobody with a smart strat should see 60% GA return unless they are planning on it. If you can't do enough damage with your damage dealer to reduce your opponent's GA to something manageable you need to rethink your strat."

By the way, of course the full 60% can be reduces by AC. But thats about it. Breaking GA cap is incredibly hard nowadays without AC or massive DM.

That's why DM is in the game. I'm not sure how everyone else plays this game but i'm constantly studying the people that farm me, and seeing how I can tweek my lineup to counter them. If GA is killing you, I suggest DM. Yes it would leave you vulnerable to decay, but for everyone without a RoS you have to decide whether to be vulnerable to decay or GA unless you come up with a better way to beat it.

On the other hand you could stop being an archer, just go with RoBF damage alone, granted it wouldn't be as fun as shooting people, but you wouldn't have to deal with GA. You already have the high level tatoo.

I'm not about to study your combat logs to decide how to progress the best, but if GA is your current wall, just continuing to hit your head against it is not the answer.

Oh and rawr, he has base CoC trained, so he only deals with GA in ranged rounds, yes I know he does deal with it, but for 6 rounds is not as bad as the whole battle. And if he's planning on it only lasting 6 rounds then he should definately have DM trained and stop worrying about AMF for decay.

You don't understand his strategy. It is to kill the enemy damage dealer (magic damage) and then have the RoBF finish the team with no worry of retaliation. It is an extremely unique and effective strategy. From what I can tell I am his only problem with GA, and that is because I have a much larger tattoo/MPR.

"I'm not about to study your combat logs to decide how to progress the best, but if GA is your current wall, just continuing to hit your head against it is not the answer."

Changing strategies is not as easy as you make it sound. Retraining means big loss of MPR, and money since you usually have to get new gear for the changes.

So if you're the only one beating him, and it's only because of the MPR gap, then i'm back to scratching my head about why he's worried about it anymore. I thought his strat was solid which is why I was confused off the bat, but I figured since he was posting about GA that it was a problem for him.

Anyone that has a huge MPR gap over me and that's why they are beating me I don't worry about, it happens.

"So if you're the only one beating him, and it's only because of the MPR gap, then i'm back to scratching my head about why he's worried about it anymore."

I think you forgot about the idea behind this. If the GA retaliation gets up to 90% as you suggested earlier, then he, and many many others, will have a much bigger problem with GA, obviously. Of course you guys suggested solutions for this, but just because someone mentions a problem with an idea does not mean it applies to just himself. This is a community, after all.

Oh and I agree completely about retraining and full strat changes being horrible in CB. I usually try to make mine as small as possible. For example in his case, he could retrain AMF to DM which shouldn't be a big swing as it sounds like it is low XP. And then just put some XP towards it as he levels up, don't worry about doing the change all at once, just aim for beating you a month from now, not tomorrow.

but that would kill his strategy. You need incredible amounts of DM to overcome GA, since most GA users pair themselves with RoS (like myself). And then without AMF he'd be vulnerable to decay.

If he trained DM though he wouldn't need AMF because he'd be able to take out the decay mages too during the ranged rounds if AS was lowered by it as well. At least that's what I would shoot for, DM enough GA and AS to kill the mages in ranged, and hit up the melee with no decay left so AMF would be unecessary.

He wouldn't need to DM all of your AS/GA, and with how hard it looks like he hits, I'm sure there is a ratio that could work.

Well lets say theres an RoS of 6m, which is a medium sized tattoo for his range. He'd need 2.4M levels of DM to START getting an effect. Therefore he'd be pulling a lot of EXP out of possible HP/STR/DX to DM. Your idea is sound, but it does not take into account every detail.

What if he took that from his dex. Say he went to 2.5 mil dex, 2.5 mil into DM. From what I can tell at higher level most people go with closer to a 2:1 or greater STR:DEX ratio. My guess is he is going with a 1:1 just so that he beats those people, but if nobody near him is giving him problems in that department, taking care of the GA would be a higher priority.

I agree, especially since MSK hits mages which almost never have high DX.

Dropping strength down as low as 2.5 mill at this level leaves you incredibly vulnerable to other tank teams, who at moment have on average double that in the upper levels.

Big DBs aren't enough to protect you in the dex wars...

JW, they are conversing about reducing the dex to 2.5mil rather than reducing the Strength.

Typo: I meant dex!!!

No to the initial post.

You want GA damage, train the spell.

No sense to slap on a piece of armor and get a nice GA return.

I follow what Ranger says: GA is an investment not something you should get for nothing.

But you're giving up a TSA or a tatoo slot for it, the idea is a tradeoff. That's like saying the MgS should be removed because you should train AMF. Having a mix of items and spells that do similar but not the same thing makes for varied strats. The arguement that alot of people keep using of "something else does something similar" is really old and honestly just a terrible arguement. Heck, with that logic we should just remove AMF completely since it's similar to GA. Or get rid of CoC because Fireball is basically the same thing. Why have a Halidon familar when you can just buy an ELB?

Actually it wouldn't be much of a trade off as the main strat that would end up using it are the RoS/GA ones. For them the TSA is useless more or less and the tattoo only goes on 1 minion.

Yes but with a 22 base AC it makes it too high to put on a SG wall minion unless you think it's worth the 22% bonus you give them for the 10% damage return, and it's too low for a physical wall minion because you'll want the adamantite. It's a tradeoff, and I don't think everyone would use it, and if it still caps GA at 60% then the GA teams that already train GA won't need it.

I'd be tempted to use a runemail. Couple it with my SoC and Morg and I'd be returning massive amounts of damage without having to train a dispellable GA.

Yes please. Anything that resembles a spell that cannot be dispelled is far more powerful and unbalanced than this looks at first glance.

Minions receiving AS HP are not giving up a TSA because the TSA doesn't do anything for them.