Question about PL (in General)

I have a two minion + Hal team. One minion (Flarg) has PL and bunch of hit points. When I fight someone with an ExBow or Assassins Xbow, the reducing effect appears to be random as to which minion is affected.


Talalicious shot Hal [145294]
Flarg looks weaker!
Flarg absorbs damage [145294]
Flarg regenerated 130,765 HP


Talalicious hit Hal [181033]
Hal looks weaker!
Flarg absorbs damage [181033]
Flarg regenerated 162,930 HP


Talalicious shot Darp [169077]
Darp looks weaker!
Flarg absorbs damage [169077]


These are the first 3 rounds of my fight from the opponents side. According to the Wiki, the PL should redirect the reducing affects of the ExBow if the damage adsorbed is more than half of the damage dealt. In all three cases, PL absorbed 100% of damage, however, the strength reduction was not all absorbed by Flarg, the minion with PL.

Just curios as to why?

Thanks

The first hit, I hit your Hal, normally I would drain your Hal, but the PL absorbs it b/c the PL guy still has ST. 2nd round I still target your Hal b/c he still has the most str, when I hit him, the PL guy no longer has any ST, so I drain your Hal. In round 3 Flarg has the most ST (your other guys are in the negs), so I target him and he gets drained.

So the PL will only absorb the reduction if it is positive to that attribute (IE str)? It does not matter if it can absorb all of the physical damage.

If that is the case, if might be time for a wiki change.

Yup, that's the case, there's two stipulations determining whether or not it absorbs the drain. 1) the PL minion must be able to absorb a majority of the blow (over 50%) and 2) the PL minion must have positive ST.

Thanks

np :)

This does mean that I will join the ExBow is overpowered bandwagon though.

My Hal is about level 6.2 mil which should have a strength of about 2.5 mil. In order for the Exbox to target Darp in the third round, who only has 20 Str then it would have had to remove all 2.5 mil in strength on one shot that would have done just 181K of damage.

We welcome you aboard!

Ranger, I did not realize that it was THAT ridiculous.

Think that's bad? Look at Picasso, he has 8M HP and when I was farming him, like 12M ST. Drained him in one hit, booyah!

That is bad.


I might even have to contemplate going to the dark side. I disagree with the ExBow, but if it is that overpowered I might have to try it myself.


I don't think so though.

A Hal without AS backing it up has 0 defense against the exbow. It's expectations that I honestly don't understand.

A single mage without any defense can expect to explode in similar fashion when up against an archer or Hal. I fail to see the difference.

Another question with PL.

Does the amount of drain get calculated using the stats of the target or the PL tank.

for example:

if you were to hit minion A with an exbow it would drain 1 millionn.

if you hit minion b with an exbow it would drain 400k.

minion b has PL and the exbow hits minion A, does minion B lose 1 million or 400k?

How would AS help my Hal vs ExBow? He did not take any physical damage.

What I disagree with is a hit that would have caused only 180K of damage causing a reduction of over 2.5 mil in strength. That means for every 1 point of damage, 13.8 points of reduction of strength. I believe that if the Wiki (The stat drain will be proportional to damage done.) is to be believed that the ration should not be that high. I could go for 2 or even 3 to one, 13.8 to 1 seems very high to me.



I would agree that a single minion, though it can be very powerful will have holes, and therefore be very vulnerable to certain strats. That is why I do not have a single minion. I still win the fight because my Mage kills him.

The max drain for an exBow is at 5% of the current HP of the target in damage dealt.

With a 6 mil Halidon, you have 2 mil HP, 5% of 2 mil is 100k.

An exbow that hits for 100k will do the full drain that it can possibly do (STR ratio of attacker and defender), which in this case is over 2.5 mil.

If you trained AS as suggested you would really decrease the drain. Say you had 2 mil worth of AS, it would double your HP and would require 200k damage to get max drain, which the damage you're currently getting hit with is well under 200k.

Granted, that would push the reduction to below xero for one more round, but would still reduce it in one round to be non-effective. That is why I think that it should be based on the amount of damage it does solely and not relative to anything else such as HP

It will defeat (when it hits) all melee based teams with a small investment of NW and attributes.

I have 15M HP on my tank with almost 9M strength.

Vs the 2 people that I fight with exbows, after the first hit that goes to my PL minion, the next hit reduces my strength from 9M --- 2M. The next after that takes me well into the negatives.


So your typing that a HF HAS to be used with AS. To play a HF without AS is just asking for exbow users to dominate you. Just like it did Windwalker? And we see where that helped the game.

A single mage, certainly. But that mage can have a lot of HP without the need for AS. But a duel or more minion mage can have numerous defenses vs archers or HF. Such as a heavy wall, PL, ToE, AC, GA etc...

The comparison between a SINGLE mage and a HF is laughable at best.

So I should be able to complain that I have to have AS to use a DD familiar?

No, you certainly do not HAVE to use AS to use a DD familiar.

There are people who do not. They can use a huge PL/HP/TSA/revive minion to suck up the damage.

But vs the exbow that gives you just 1 round of help.

hmm when did PL start effecting AMF... or GA

You can't complain about counters without at least attempting an obvious defense.

When you have an item such as the NSC, AMF is far less hurtful. GA can be a problem but there are ways around it, like every other damage minion except the RBF has to deal with. So the HF and DD familiars both have to deal with GA the exact same.


I guess a PL/TSA/revive minion is not a defense vs the exbow. As well as a set of DBs. Since with PL, you only need TWO freaking hits to nuke his entire strength.

I would love it if the ELB is that powerful where 2 hits takes out any DD familiar.

So the obvious defense if being forced to have AS, PLUS DB PLUS PL. Anything less is just not obvious a defense?

You do realize that the NSC might give folks another round against AMF, maybe. With an IF you can fully expect to lose 1/4 of your tat level in a single round against significant AMF.

Anything you can claim is unfair likely has a similar situation from another perspective. Your point of view at this point is so one sided that you might as well be in government.

There are no other weapons, spell or effects (other than Decay, which shall be address later) that are based off anything other than its own hit. My Magic Missile does not care how many hits point you have. Its damage is calculated from Its strength plus its modifiers compared to the opponents armor and their modifiers. Other Direct Damage and weapons are the same. The Morg and others with VA is purely based off the actual damage done. AMF and GA damage minion based off the strength of the spell/hit. The Xbows are the only ones that base it off something more than just the hit. This, in my opinion, has caused it to become unbalanced.

I do not have a problem with it draining all of my Str or Dex if it was based off of the result of the hit alone. If I get hit for 1M in damage and the ratio is 3:1 reduction, then remove 3M of that stat. That would reward the character who has invested in the stats and weapons to achieve it. Novice, I imagine that your Wooden Cane is doing much more damage than that. You would still be removing most if not all the Str in a couple of turns, but that is because you invest highly to do that. I have more issues with the ones that have invested much less and still achieve the same results.

Decay does remove a Percentage of HP, but is the entirety of the spell. It is removes the one stat that it targets. Therefore, while the damage can be great it is still based on the spell. The effectiveness is also continually decreasing due to the same percentage. If you could get hit by 4 Decays, the last would only be 1/8 as effective.

The ax/ex have always worked on a percentage basis... the largest exbow in game does maybe 350k a hit against unarmored targets. It would be a completely ineffective item if it were based on damage done.

Jon's choice of HP as the comparative stat was out of the blue I'll admit. However it really does work quite well as a method for ensuring that investment in defense pays off against the exbow.

The Hal is such an offensive powerhouse, having a built in weapon with a virtual net worth unparalleled by any other tattoo, that it really needs the weakness to the exbow as a counter.

I would have thought that you were able to do much more damage than that. However, I just fought you and that is just about right, if not a little high from my fight damage wise. I would still prefer it to be based on the damage done. Therefore, I would rather raise the amount of damage done by the X-Bows and then base the reduction off of that. It would still require you to invest in the stats and the X-Bow to it effective. I might not reduce the stat quite so much as currently, but would balance that ﾑnerfﾒ with increase damage. For Dagobah, for instant with the Wooden Cane and 13 Mil would be hitting in the range of say (totally guessing) 1.75 mil in HP and 5.25M (3:1 ratio)in Str reduction.

Right now it trades off damage for the ability to reduce the damage enemy damage dealers do.

If the exBow hit hard in addition to draining, nobody would use anything else.

The problem is not the damage, it is the amount of drain.

Vs some people the higher exbows can drain over 15M strength in 1 hit.

Ranger,

There would be a increase in the amount of damage and the drain would then be tied to the damage and not to the HP. It would reduce the amount of drain that occured. Some people like Novice would still be able to drain most people's Str in a couple of turns, but that would be because he has invested in the Wooden Cane and his stat to be able to do so. However, many people would see a lower drain since they are not doing as much damage.


A 3:1 ratio is just a number. I do not know what the best ratio would be. It might be 1:1 or 5:1. It would make people invest if they want the draining bows to be effective.

I have no problem with rewarding characters that invested highly in a strategy to benefit from that strategy. I just not like a minimal investment to give out unreasonable rewards. That what makes it over-powered to me.

It's only a small investment if your opponent does nothing to counter it.

A exBow will drain alot if your STR is high, your damage is high, your enemy health is low.

So if the enemy does not invest in health or damage reduction, they just hope their opponents don't know about the exBow, then the exBow will do great.

Since you are the one trying to deal with it, invest in HP, invest in defenses. Junction on some AC/evasion to the Hal and pick up an AS.

To be honest, a team that is using a familar and hasn't trained at least one AS is already fighting an uphill battle.

AS certainly is great.

However normal tanks with 10+M HP get their strength drained almost entirely in 1 hit after the PL minion goes into the negatives.

We can debate the exbow again and again, nothing much will change about it.

But the question asked in the first post has already been answered. PL basically works to save you 1 exbow hit in almost all cases.

I have found with my Farmer minion having 1M or 300k strength, it goes into the negative after 1 exbow PL hit. Making it useless for the next couple of hits.

I suspect Jon's logic in making HP the comparative stat was that investing in STR is something that doesn't cost tanks anything really.

STR increases damage, and damage is at the core of the reason why the exbow was created. Were drain based solely on damage done the ToA and the TSA (two of the most powerful items in game from certain perspectives) would gain another huge feather in their already quite fancy caps.

Well, I just fought Iconics, Heroes, Dagobah, and FuerGrissa ost Druaka
against the exbow users I checked how many hits it would take them to send me into negative str. Against the ELB users I checked how many hits it would take them to kill me. Here are my results:

Iconics: 12 hits, remaining str 156,880
Heroes: 13 hits to kill
Dagobah: 10 hits to negative str
FuerGrissa ost Druaka: 12 hits to kill

My exbow was not a factor.