Help Me Not Fail CB... (in General)

I am now a naked turtle without its shell (or tattoo) and the only thing I can do is build a base tattoo from the ground up now. I have plenty of base tattoos, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

But what I really need help with is where to go from here. Any strategy and retraining advice to help me not fail at CB would be highly appreciated.

I was thinking about starting with a HF or JF, but I feel like I don't know enough about the game to make them work decently.

just to be clear, you will be starting an ncb run to grow a base tat faster? if so, what gear do you already have? are you trying to gear up too or just focus on tat growth?

Here's an option for you. My tattoo is kind of just sitting around and will be for a few months. If you want to use it till I'm ready for it, you're welcome too.

Ryu Ou lvl 7,236,445 131,221,903 (named ToA)

Do you have any decent weapons?

I can run my team against a great deal of my fightlist without a tattoo. My tank has a TSA and an elven cloak and, admittedly the TSA is quite boosted, but the St and Dex bonus I get from them is more than I get from a 6 or 7 mill lvl tattoo. And then there is the HP regen from the TSA. It's invaluable.

(It's not a surprise that my mage oppenents don't require me to wear my tattoo considering it's a ToE)

Ah. Damn. See what I mean? I wasn't even thinking about that. I was gonna grow a tattoo from the ground up using this character. But your idea is much, much smarter.

I have all the gear on me now, and an assortment of other miscellaneous items which I could use.

Maybe if I am doing an NCB I could start a tank? I never played a real tank before. But then what kind of tank would I be?

Kefeck's option isn't a bad one, providing you do some saving. A halfway decent tattoo will probably make itself available to you in the meantime. Saving you having to build one from scratch.

That's what I did.

with tats from 2-3m lvl selling for just slightly over store cost + transfers, why would you start from scratch in any situation?

A Tattoo of Endurance lvl 4,600,505
$16,685,407 in the cost.

In the armor store now.

You could also buy a named RoE and just use that on your MM mage. Named RoE gives 4% extra exp and without the PR hit of your tattoo you could grow much faster.

Your fightlist would change, but you can find enough opponents that it would still be big enough.

if you want to run a simple jingo or hf, you just need a single minion with AMF/AS trained and give him a junction with some gear for that particular familiar. you will find plenty of targets to farm up on.

more complicated strats are better, but this one is really simple and easy to figure out.

I was thinking about something I used to run.... It would be a ToA archer/mage. The ToA would supply enough ST/DX to the minion that would allow it to do a little bit of damage in ranged and in melee have CoC or something. Of course this has obvious drawbacks of not being a real archer.

My first thought was to have ToA + exbow + CoC. But then I read that the exbow doesn't work with the ToA. So maybe then ToA elb + CoC? Or maybe ToA SoD SG?

For a decent amount of damage at the level you fight, you would really need a 100M or higher NW weapon.

However, if you use CoC or SG, a ToE may not be a bad idea.

exbow works just fine with the ToA.

RoE or sell the char

Just wondering Nov, why do you think an RoE would be better than growing a 4.6m tattoo?

That just means your will have less of a direct drain. In other words you need to train like 50k str to be able to put the low str into negative but otherwise it won't change much at all.

I thought that the latest change of the exbow included all strength the shooter has. In the form of damage.

There are 2 types of drain. A direct drain and a % drain. Both of these are modified by the % damage you do. Direct drain is based upon your str (base only) vs their str and multiplied by the x modifier. % drain is based only on the x modifier.

Exbow doesn't work like that anymore Nem. It's just based on damage.

That is still exactly how it works. Just with 1 more modifier, that being the damage. At 2.5% damage of total health of the target nothing is modified. At less damage the drain is less and at more damage the drain is increased.

You've done enough damage to that poor char that I see the RoE (And refocusing the XP) as the only way to save it from the scrap heap.

I don't get it. So will a ToA increase/affect how much I will be able to drain?

And Nov, refocusing the EXP towards the MM minion?

I can Attest that ExBow/ToA Combo is deadly. Did some tests with Jir's ExBow Nov posted it on a thread some where. It should help at least a little with options if you use a similar setup and add in more Str/Dex Modifying Equipment.

Yeah but you also have a lot of innate ST/DX. I will not be training ST/DX at all, instead, I will be getting it all from the ToA.

About 95% of the drain done by exbows is a % drain which is not affected by your trained only str at all. It is however modified by the damage you do which the ToA will help a lot with. The other 5% of the drain is a straight reduction which is based partly on your base str. So you will end up with less straight drain than someone with real str however the difference will be nominal.

"The stat drain will be proportional to damage done. At about 2.5% of the target's current (not max) HP, the drain will be about what you were used to. At 5%, it will be 2x*, where it is capped. And on down: at 1% of HP, it will be 0.4 of the old drain. There is no floor; enchanters armed with a crossbow can expect to be very disappointed."

How does that have anything to do with what you said Nem? The drain is directly proportional to damage done, nothing else.

"The stat drain will be proportional to damage done. At about 2.5% of the target's current (not max) HP, the drain will be about what you were used to. At 5%, it will be 2x*, where it is capped. And on down: at 1% of HP, it will be 0.4 of the old drain. There is no floor; enchanters armed with a crossbow can expect to be very disappointed."

That explains nothing JS....

This was his comment I was talking about btw.

The alteration that Jon most recently did made damage a larger factor, it is not the sole factor. Weapon x is still the crux of how drain is accomplished.

If minion x has 40m str and fires a x250 exbow he'll likely do some pretty good damage, maybe enough to double the effect. However the resulting drain will still be small because of the low weapon x.

Why doesn't it say that in the change nov?

Because it's assumed... it's the fact he doesn't say he removed the effect of x. The way he worded it could have been clearer but I'm confident that the folks speaking here know what they're talking about.