Strategy Challenge 1 (in General)

Not a contest. I'm going to post a CB strategy (or bits of strategy) and I'd like to foster discussion about how to counter it.

To start with;

Three Meat shields, all wearing AoF. You're facing a RoS on an AS minion, and another trains GA.

How do you counter the massive amount of HP on the meat shields, without dying to GA retaliation?

;)

Way 1: High AC plus fair hp.

Way 2: VA and/or MH/BoTH

Way 3: Massive DM

Way 4: RoBF

Way 5: Do very high damage, e.g. with ELB, Archery and later against the AS with a MoD to do more damage than GA retaliates

While a massive DM would work, do you think it's an effective way, when facing a RoS?

Massive DM is the way to go, especially if you are a single minion with a SoD and you want a high Challenge Bonus by not wearing a tattoo while fighting an opponent that relies too much on AS! Get to a super high MPR, super fast, then start buying minions! Enjoy passing up everyone else!

1: The High AC is required on the damage dealer. Do you think going this route you can have a damage dealer that puts out enough damage? Maybe a Heavy SG Mage?

2: With GA being reduced by armour, and returning at max 60% of the damage done, with the combination of Leech Weapon and VA you can leech 60% of the damage done. So with this combination, you should gain a little life per hit, and not lose any.

3: (Repost of above, but wanted to get these in order! :P) Is DM good enough when facing the protection of a RoS? Especially as it works at 80% efficiency anyway.

4: Would the RoBF deal enough damage to really dent three RoS AS meat shields boosted by AoF?

5: 60% of very high damage is still 60%. Unless you're aiming at lowering the returned percentage. But then your taking 40% of very high damage instead of 60% of lower damage. Is 'very high damage' really a good counter to GA? Esecially as GA wasn't 'balanced' when all damage was reduced?

To answer your DM question, exactly, DM is VERY good against the setup you mentioned. I am able to DM ALL of Stormbringer's Arioch's AS, and he has exactly the same setup that you posted, even the items! All I need to wear is a Corn+2 to boost my DM to where I can DM it all, and then I just use my small SoD, with no pluses to BTH, and my named Rune of Enlightenment, for the 4% bonus to exp., and I win in round 2! He even has more MPR than me!
Now, against King's Epitaph, I have A LOT more trouble. His AS is being boosted by a HUGE RoS! Also, he has actual trained HP on all his minions! But, if I were only 1 million MPR under him, instead of just under 2 million, then I would have enough DM to completely wipe out his AS! I'd then put on a HoC +0, take off everything else, except my ToA, and kill him in 2-3 rounds, easy! As it is now, I barely get more wins, than draws, against him, but I trained enough HP so that I don't lose to him anymore :D))

TL;DR: DM is VERY effective against the setup you mentioned; even though RoS protects against DM and DM only casts for 80% of its level. I beat Arioch with no tattoo and I can beat Epitaph more than 50%, even though he is close to 2 million MPR above me. :P))

Against big GAs, Morg/VA/big HP coupled with SMALLER damage output, lower PTH actually can do very well. The lower damage hitting not as often can chip away quite nicely at a large AS/HP, providing you can stay healthy too.

When I was running my mageseeker/morg/TSA tank there wasn't a GA in the game that would hurt me because I would chip away, but stay alive.

1) Beginning single minion, with 40-60% of the target characters HP and a hard counter to the target's non-ga damage source(MsK ExBow), Morg to help out in melee rounds. Hiring late. [Viable]

2) RoBF [Viable]

3) DM Cannon [Abusive, lose to people 2M MPR below you to hit a limited number of ED based characters.]

5: 60% of very high damage is still 60%. Unless you're aiming at lowering the returned percentage. But then your taking 40% of very high damage instead of 60% of lower damage. Is 'very high damage' really a good counter to GA? Esecially as GA wasn't 'balanced' when all damage was reduced?

It depends on how high is your damage and how low the GA is trained.

For simplicity, assume the trained AS is 2mil, so giving 8mil HP together for 4 minions.

If all your hits are within the GA level, than you'll get 60% of 8mil = 4.8mil damage.
But if you hit for say 1mil damage, and the ga is only trained to 500k, than you'll kill with 8 hits, but only receive 8 x 60% of 500k == 8 x 300k = 2.4mil damage
.. this ratio becomes better the higher your damage compared to the opponents GA.