Single Minion Balancing (in Debates)

Help GL out. ;)

OK, I'll list out what I feel the current issues are, and offer a few solutions. Please help me sanity check these, and please offer up your own! :P

Skills;

PL: Allow PL to provide Singls Minions with a 10% Damage Reduction

AS: Change AS to provide the same amount of HP (maybe 68% of level like Haste/GS) regardless of minion count

Decay: God knows... Add a Decay familiar?

Items;

Leadership: Allow Leadership to provide it's bonus to the wearing minion, if they are a single Minion.

Tattoo Restrictions: Remove the BA/Cloak restriction from Tattoo use.

Tattoo Auras: No idea... Add a few Single Minion only specials to balance out those with auras?

RoE: No idea...

General Drawbacks;

Kill slots: No idea... Give Single Minions some bebefit for the lack of kill slots.

Lack of Item/Skill slots: As Kill slots above...

;)

OK, global idea.

How about increasing the flat XP cost for higher minion count teams?

So single Minions train Ranks at 12xp level, 2 at 14xp, 3 at 16xp, etc.

But costs still remain linear.

I have to throw in an opposing view on one of your points.

Tattoo and body armour on a single minion would definitely by anybody's standards be overpowered. And you know how I am with things being overpowered. Most things simply aren't.

But imagine a full heavy AC wall set on a RBF minion. Or TSA/EC with ToA.

Ouch.

I agree with Johnnywas.

I have about 144 million XP trained on Ocapir. at 12/per, thats 12 million levels

At 18 per, thats 8 million, a loss of 33% of the levels I have trained on this character.

Could someone with a 5+ million MPR character give us similar numbers? Just for frame of reference.

At this point, I think that this penalty is too severe, and would force people to run single minions, as a 33% penalty would be an effective deterrent.

How about allowing single minions to equip an MGS without the no EO/ED/DD penalty? It wouldn't necessarily improve Decay for use by single minions, but it would allow single minions to defend against Decay more easily.

Should this not be an issue our new CPC can deal with?

perhaps a side note but are single minions even intended to be viable end-game?

The problem is not so much with single minions themselves, but with the completely screwed up way to change minion count :
- if you want to go up in minion count, you have to spend *A*LOT* of CB$, and you get some measly extra XP on the fresh minion(s)
- if you want to go down on minion count, you are giving up *A*LOT* of XP overall

So, the problem could be solved by shifting the XP from the minion level to the team level (optionally with some additional loss if done between minions), and by making hiring minions no longer give any extra XP but reducing the cost of hiring to something symbolic.

The first is decay fodder, the second is nothing new mate. ;) Can be done with 2+ Minions and PL.

Oh and removal of the restirction would be global. Just remove it totally. If there is a balance issue from allowing a specific Tattoo/Chest combo, just adjust that combo. ;)

My change to the MGS would fix the Decay fodder issue. Also, I think he was referring to the massive ST bonus a TSA provides, on top of the ToA-gained ST.

I like the PL idea. I think most single minions would be better served with Archery/Evasion/BL, but that's just my opinion.

I like the As idea as well, always wondered why it worked differently than Haste or GS.

I addressed the Decay matter in my last post. While it won't make Decay a viable choice for single minions, it will make it more easily defensible, which, in the battle of Decay Vs. Single Minion, does shift the balance towards the Single Minions.

While I think most single minions would be better served with a pair of DBs, I don't think the change to Leadership would be OP.

You could have tattoo auras be stronger the less minions there are, the way FB/CoC are. Although the DM protection from RoS and the ToE damage reduction both seem to be defensive tattoos, whereas I see most single minions as offensive builds (likely due to the lack of kill slots).

For single minions, have the RoE grant 1% XP bonus for 4 minions teams, 2% for 3, 3% for 4, and 4% for single minions teams, unnamed. Have the naming add an additional 4% regardless of minion count, as it does now. Due to the difficulty of running a single minion RoE user, 8% XP is great incentive to find a way.

Increase base to-hit for weapons on a single minion

Decrease base to-hit for weapons used against a single minion

Decrease penalties on weapons in all areas for a single minion

Take your pick with any combination you choose :)

How about just some simple ones?

Add a 0xp minion for 1M CBD
Remove the spell elimination from the MgS

All good stuff! :D

The MGS doesn't reduce Decay damage. :(

Just change the ToA back to giving STR/DEX that isn't increased by gear. ;)


Unless you're a Mage. ;)


Same.


Sounds good.


All good, but this would still just reinforce the "Level as a Single RoE team, then buy three minions at the end of bonus time", and that was why the RoE was originally changed.

That's just a psuedo RoE for 3M a pop and defensive set ups coming back. ;)

Stil it changes you from a single Minion to a 2-4 Minion team.

MGS change would allow you to use EO/ED, such as AMF, which does protect against Decay, while still using an MGS for defense against concentrated FB.

Evasion can cause a much bigger % reduction to physical damage, but I forgot to factor in the DX necessary to make a high trained Evasion worthwhile.

The tradeoff off hiring new minions after bonus time, of course, would be a few almost ineffective minions, for a HUGE cost in CBD, and the loss of the benefits being a single minion would (hopefully) provide.

I've always been fond of the hybrid tank/mage - ie the CoC archer.

But what always annoyed me about that was the way you could only do one thing, and then the other for melee.

How about a way that a single minion can be tank and mage at once so to speak.

Odd rounds mage attack, even rounds tank attack. There could be limits in place on how much of a percentage of your total XP gets used if you chose to go down the Hybrid route, and any other necessary checking would come from XP dilution.

ToA would obviously give some advantage, but perhaps you could add some sort of penalty for using the ToA.

I just wish there was a way to pick where your tattoo was at. On a single minion if I try to get any type of offense on my minion it puts the tattoo in front and with it's low hp it kills me. If I was able to get some offense on my single minion character and keep the tattoo in the back that would be really awesome.

You do realize that GS/haste add 68% of their level to each minion right? So at 2 minions its 136% and 3 its 204%. That is even worse that how AS is setup right now. The reason why AS is setup to add more hp the more minions you have is because when you have more minions each minion will be smaller so you cannot have as much concentration and therefor are much more vulnerable to DM.

PL would largely be useless on a single minion char even if it worked. PL is used to take on a little extra reduction on an already defensive setup for the most part. The cost of the exp and skill slot would largely be prohibitive to almost all single minion chars. The ones where it wouldn't probably already use it anyways.

Allowing a Tat and body armor/cape is totally OP. There are some insanely powerful setups you can create with that. Take for instance my char. It would allow basically my whole teams setup on 1 single minion except even more concentrated with additional defensive synergies. The RoBF, TSA regen, heavy AC, evasion and magic reduction from the RoBF which would defend the tank part even more. Not to mention it would free up the skill slot for maybe AP which would allow some good reduction on even SG. It completely eliminates all the weaknesses from my setup. And this was just 1 example.

Leadership maybe. It would take some looking at. But out of everything I would say this is the best suggestion.

Back in CB1, multi-minion teams gained slightly more exp per fight, compared to single minion teams. How about the opposite effect for cb2? That way single minion teams have the advantage of growing faster, thus making them more attractive for getting to the top and staying there.

Yes. ;)

I didn't mean like the current Haste/GA (I could have been much clearer! lol!) but instead of letting it accumulate (with a penalty) on minion count, it provides a fixed amount (slightly higher than the 50% currently) that is spread across all minions.


Largely useless, but at least there would be some point in having it for single minions. Even if it was for Mages using DBs over Evasion, how don't need to train AP.

10% Reduction is better than nothing. ;)

It's why I left Invisibility out. That has no effect on single minions. But at least you can gain something from equipping an AoI. A single minion gains nothing from training PL.


Yes.

But that's literally what 2+ teams have over single minions currently. There is no way to compete, becuase the combination of Tattoo and TSA is so powerful.

It maight take a little shuffling (or PL) to get it working on 2+ Teams, but single minions are left out in the cold here.


On the whole, I don't think my suggestions are polished ideas. I just wanted to list the inequalities single minions have currently.

I'm sure others can come up with far better solutions than myself.

That's kinda why I suggested the change to XP costs.

As something like this would just reinforce playing single to end of you bonus period, then buying three more minions and going 4.

Single minion teams SHOULD be harder to run than multi minion teams.

If it were just as easy to get to say 5 mil MPR with 1 minion as 4 minions then there would be almost no incentive to run 4 minions. Not to mention you can then just buy a second minion at 5 mil MPR (obviously expensive) and now you're really really far ahead of the competition.

The balance in the game comes from the ability to eventually hire more minions. So the longer you can go before doing that, theoretically the more powerful you will be.

Take this for instance: Someone saves up the kind of cash Z used on his last NCB for a new one. Instead of buying BA or gear or anything he just used a solid single minion strat for 6 months, just spending the daily BA. Obviously he would end around 3 mil MPR instead of 5 mil. He then spends all the money he saved and got during the NCB run on 3 more minions, now he's at 6 mil MPR and is #1 in the game.

You can correct the above math and tell us how many CBD it would cost if you want, and compare it against what Z used on his NCB + how much you would make in 6 months without buying BA to see if it's feasible, but I am pretty sure it is.

Seriously?

Like the ability to use AMF and EC at the same time? Or to have 2+ EDs? Or to use Invisibilty to control attackers order. The list goes on.

Multi Minion teams have a massive amount going for them, all *strategic* choices.

Focus and specilaistion should be a strategic choice, of equal potential, to diversity. How well you do would be jusdged by how well you *apply* your strategy. Not automatically limited becuase you don't want to hire that second minion.

And you know, focus ain't all that. I keep going back to it, but ages ago Johnny and I had a friendly comp to both run single UC monks. You know what absolutley destroyed us? a 4 Minion EC team.

Our much vaunted XP concentration helped for nothing there.

Who uses EC seriously nowadays though?

True, the EXBow has replaced EC.

Still... ;)

GL, in response to your post:

If it were just as easy to run 1 minion because you buffed single minions, still, who cares about all those things.

Darn, you lost out on having to balance 2 EOs and 3 EDs and invisibility and minion order, you only have to worry about your percentage of HP to GA that you're training. (or whatever the setup is)

If it were JUST AS EASY to get to 5 mil MPR with a single minion as 4 minions, then the amount of single minion teams would greatly go up.

As it is now, really only the people with the funds to support a single minion setup can attempt it.

What do you mean by 'just as easy'?

Single Minions can still dominate. You just need a lot of Cash, and use Archery. ;)

All I'm after here is to equalise the negatives that only single minions have.

Are 2 minion teams just as easy as 4? Do they suffer from the sheer amount of negativity single minions do?

I still don't see the problem with allowing one buyable minion for 1M CBD costing 0xp.

I'm saying GL that the fewer minion teams need to have the negatives in order for the game to be balanced.

Two minion teams have some of the same negatives that single minion teams do, just not as many.

Four minion teams arguably have no negatives, but if you made the game able to hire a fifth minion then the four minion teams would start to gain some.

There are no strategies that by adding another minion make the strategy worse (in the short term).

Yes in the overall strategy of building a killer team you would want to run single minion for a set time period then hire your second, third fourth at different intervals.

Right now there is no team in the game that will get worse by hiring a minion at full cost and training 75% HP and 25% PL, (in the short term).

Now granted, even if you buffed single minions, the above statement would remain true. However under the current system you reward the people with more skill in the game because it is harder to run a single minion due to disadvantages. If you made 1 minion as easy as 2 as easy as 4 then you would remove that aspect of skilled play that actually really attracts me to this game.

You don't see unskilled people with 5 mil MPR single minion teams, you see the quality players.

You don't see skilled people with equal MPR 4 minion teams either, they bought the minions at intervals they decided would make for the best team.

I don't want to see CB become easier and less complicated, if anything I would love to see the rock-paper-scissors tree expanded 10 fold by adding layers upon layers of different skills/spells/items so that the strategies get even more in depth.

Please don't simplify CB is I guess what I'm advocating in my long ramble.

Wriath, in my mind, you *can't* get more simple than;

Only ever play a single minion until you can buy the other three.

As other have posted, running a single minion is complicated. As you allude above, the game actually gets simpler the more minionyou have. The less you need to worry about what you've got, what you're weak to.

I totally agree, that no matter what strategy you're running, everyone is better off hiring an extra HP/PL minion (unless you already have one).

That's simple.

I'd like to see minion choice mean something ore strategic, where just bolting on a HP/PL sink to whatever your running isn't always the best choice. Or the end game doesn't revolve aorund the necessity of 4 minions.

Bu that is getting slightly off track.

What you say is correct, lesser minions teams don't have it as good as 4. But that's for another topic.

Lesser minion tems Don't sufer from the majoirty of things I posted in the OP.

They can use Decay. They can use a TSA and PL. They can use Invisibilty, etc, etc.

Not true. For 1 if you already have a PL minion having another will do nothing for you as it will not work. Another type of team is a GA using team will suffer if PL is added to the mix. There are more but I just need 1 example to show that PL is not universally applicable.

I also do not like seeing people say that running 4 minions is the best choice. It is not. It is merely different, with a different set of problems to tackle.

If you raise a single minion team up to a good high level then hire on to add to your team, sure you will benefit in the short run, you will have additional equipment slots and exp to use. But in the longer run you may be weakening your team, potentially even ruining. A good example of this is Heroes. Right now it is a very strong character. The hiring is very successful in making it a powerhouse. But this character's power is already on the wane. You might be able to halt this with a continued influx of USD but eventually a significant strategy change will be necessary.

A team with PL already will get a backup PL battery for when the first fails, which is just more HP buffer. And if the first one had a TSA then all the better.

A team with GA and no PL will just have this minion steal all damage until he hits 1 life and then the team reverts back to the way it was before the HP/PL minion got there. So you got 1-10 rounds of free damage over what you were doing.

Both still get better.

There are really no teams that get worse in the short run; short run being < week.

As for the rest, yes the team will get worse if you bought the minion at a poor time in your team's development. Which is why I like the game so much as it currently is. Your team ALWAYS gets better when you hire a minion, but the trick is to make the team to CONTINUE to get better after you hire, not get worse.

I don't want to see a system that doesn't make your team immediatly better when you hire another minion, just as I don't want to see a system that makes 4 minion teams the best when you just get all 4 right away.

The current system is perfect, you have to plan out how you want to hire the minions and even once you have a perfect team it won't last forever, you'll eventually have to overhaul your strat and adapt. And if you just stick with a single minion and never adapt from there, you'll either pay out a small fortune or never compete.

A PL team with a TSA will not let the second PL tank work until the first one dies off. As the first one won't die off unless it gets hit directly the second PL tank ends up not working. There are a few cases where you could get it to work though.

Most GA teams also run with AS. When you hire a PL minion it dilutes the AS cast on your other minions so that they cannot return as much GA damage. Also your own offensive minion has less HP with which to combat GA itself. Also having the initial damage be non GA returning can be potentially fatal. Ranged tanks in particular, they have no VA and could kill themselves off in ranged. If you use a PL wall this can allow them to survive into melee where they can then put VA and a MH/BoTH into play, no longer being susceptible to your GA. By increasing the length of time that you are lessening the amount of damage output you have you can increase the strain on your own minion potentially dying to AMF/GA return itself when normally it would have survived.

I'm going to have to side with Nem on this one. Also, archers don't benefit from PL/HP minions.

i see what you mean now nem.

although I now agree 75 HP/25 PL isn't an upgrade for every team, I think you'd still be hard pressed to find teams that can't get an immediate upgrade from something trained on the minion, just more specifically helpful to thier strat, rather than this generic minion.

Although this is really a side argument to the main one, and I am curious to how you feel on that topic nem as you are generally a logical person.

Are you pro or con lessening the single minion disadvantages?

I am hesitant to lean towards either. But I feel that the single minions are fairly well balanced as they are right now. It might be good to give them a slight buff like maybe allowing leadership to work on the minion that is wearing it. But they have strengths of their own.

For instance, I am not sure as I haven't been able to do testing on it. But I think that a single minion fully equipped and a multiminion team full equipped. If they had the same overall PR weight the multiminion time would have a higher PR than the single minion team.

Also the hiring potential is huge, though of course it is highly expensive. Right now if I hired just 1 more minion I would be either just below or just above KoP in terms of MPR. Zenai with a couple hirings would also be in a similar position.

Also, I would like to point out that while the top may be dominated by 4 minion teams, they are mainly what I would call temporary teams. That is to say they are teams that cannot maintain their proper or necessary proportions for a sustained period of time without the use of the RoE and also need to use a tattoo to have full effectiveness.

What that means is that it is exceedingly hard to maintain a grasp on the top of the game over time. This does take a good while though and it will slowly end up taking more time as time passes.

This keeps being bought up.

And while totally accurate, the moment you hire, you are no longer a single minion.

So the potential to hire doesn't do anything to address the negative aspects single minions have.

It's just makes them the jumping base to run a 'proper' team. :(

No, it makes them a jumping point in making a team to hold down the top.

CB's all about holding the top. ;)

A couple more benefits of running a single minion team. Running with a mage or any other non tank build is cheaper, that is you only need 1 set of equipment. Also with a tank team all the mpr of the team is on the minion using the weapon. On the smallest minion of a 4 minion team the same size weapon adds the same amount of PR.

I am going to make some generalizations here because each strategy is unique and doesn't work quite the same as any other. Also my numbers do not reflect reality. They are merely assumptions to give voice to concepts.

A single minion team on average has say an 85% efficiency. They have the ability to force their way to a 90% efficiency with lots of use of NW. They also have the ability through hiring to temporarily jump to a 98% efficiency.

A synergistic team, that is to say a team that has the correct proportions and continues to maintain its full efficiency as time passes has maybe say 90% efficiency. With lots of use of NW they could maybe force their way to 92% efficiency.

A temporary team, that is to say a single minion team with hired minions, could maybe get a 95-98% efficiency for a time and slowly lose efficiency as time passed. Eventually without a retrain it would fall to say 80% efficiency.

Note: It is possible for a single minion team to be a synergistic team.

True. But how about going from a single Tank to a 2 minion set up like;

1: 20HP, STR, DEX, ToA, BL, SoC, Morg, VA
2: Ful HP, PL, TSA, MGS

While you've got slightly smaller natural STR/DEX, this is made up by PLs 10% Damage reduction and TSA regen while letting you still use your ToA.

20HP at the front means you're immune to Decay, and Morg (with BL and SoC goodness) with VA means your immune to GA.

Best of both worlds. (If any GA teams run enough DM to dispell your VA, you coold always train DM yourself to take thier GA out. Or train some natural HP)

The slight loss of Tank Concentrated XP is more than made up from by the benefits of being able to use everythign in game, and having the flexibility to shore up weaknesses in your strat.

As for power, this has never really been about making Single Minions more 'powerful', but rather to redress the things in CB that have absolutlety no use on single minion teams, that other minion counts don't have to suffer from.

(Edit: The above would be very weak to MoDs, but them's the breaks! :P Train AMF and stick the PL Minion in the front. ;) )

SG and CoC would rock your socks off.

SG would blast you over your PL cap or force you to train a lot of PL. If the opponent trains any DM you lose the VA and most GA users train DM as well. You are also susceptible to the MoD, and even if you use an exbow to take it out, they can use the SoC to still kill your tank. Overall it is a far less stable setup than the single minion with more and larger holes.

;)

I tihnk I'm starting to muddy the waters here. 'Power' wasn't really supposed to be the focus (although it's been mentioned for completeness).

But rather that there was a significant amount of 'stuff', from items to skills, that don't work at all for Single Minions, limiting thier options compared to everyone else.

Single Minions are limited in slots enough already, they shouldn't have their avaialbe selection limited even more on top of this.