Again, why is there Friendly Fire with FB? (in General)

I still cannot understand the rationale behind it. With the changes in the game over time, including the addition of PL, why do we still have friendly fire with FB?

It does less damage overall than CoC, the other AoE spell which should be the consideration in its usage.

As you can see, nobody in the top 50 uses it. There is no FF in usage except perhaps in the early stages of a N*B.

So either get rid of it, or let us have a skill to use to get rid of it.

Hey, at least this was not another exbow rant!

Can anyone explain how it got nerfed? I recall FB was one of the best spells in CB1, back when there was MM, FB, CoC, and possibly decay/FoD.

Well first there was friendly fire, which was instituted at the beginning of CB2.

Then PL sort of really destroyed it. Any hope of taking out the low hp minions and then getting increased damage from the ramp up from fewer minions was essentially removed.

Introduction of the TSA and its regeneration also helped nerf FB. Now HP/PL/TSA minions are almost a staple of most characters.

SO by the time you get to melee, you take a butt load of self damage making FB useless except perhaps in the earlier stages of CB.

.. didn't the FB take effect only in melee?

Ok so my next question is:

Would eliminating recoil damage make FB a viable balanced spell again? Seems like it was way too OP before. When I played, I vaguely recall it being better than CoC in most situations - One of the Qbs proved it with testing. (MM was not comparable since it had a different mechanism).

Yes Q.

It may be, but with PL and TSA, I would think battles are lasting longer.

Before PL, FB would be exceptional to wipe out the low hp minions, but now that strategy is effectively moot.

Even removing the FF, FB still wouldn't be used.

Unless we really want to move to a CB where we're all Ranged, and only the first 5/6 rounds matter...

I feel it's probably better to have FB deal *more* AoE damage in Melee rounds than CoC, but reating the drawback of the FF.

That way, you can go the 'safe' route of CoC for Melee AoE, or the dangerous route with FB.

And hey, any buff to single minions is a good thing!

How about remove FF, put a 70% nerf around the board to ranged damage, and about a 25% nerf to SG and 20% nerf to CoC.

Oh and just so people don't think I'm biased:

Shocking Grasp 18,569,550 21,592,500

<3

But even then, why woud anyone use FB? It would be pointless in Ranged, and CoC would still outdamage it in Melee. :/

Unless FB Ranged goes through PL...

If we cut ranged damage down by 70%, count on CB becoming SG/EF blender.

Once you get to melee, the EF is by far the best attack. It is the least vulnerable to GA and does incredible damage amplified by AC even if the defender has AP. Best of all, it always hits.

I think ignoring PL would be a huge huge buff. If that got put in, I think that the FF should be left it; other wise I think the FF should be taken out and it should be give a little something else maybe.

That's why that was included with a 25% nerf to SG...

It might have to be something like 25% CoC and 30% SG; but I think that can be tweaked.

If you allow FB's Ranged damage to ignore PL (no need for Melee, use a MoD!), it gives it back it's role as a team sweeper.

Clearing out those annoying 20HP Meatshields (that like to suck up a BL intial hit), to let you get to the meat of your opponent come Melee.

And would bring a little more diversity back to CB.

how about a tat that is FF friendly multiples FF value and nullifies friendly fire or reduces it over time ?

i meant FB

Time to bring this up again?

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002glD

I don't mind the idea of skills to make mages better. However, I never cared for having things that have one and only one purpose. For instance, the only time you train Containment is when you are also training FB. So really, why make it separate? Ditto for all the others.

Archery blows in this respect, too.

Those skills in that linked thread shouldn't be terribly hard to implement, though, if you guys really want them.

Isn't that the same for all skills thought NS?

You only train BL when you're using a Melee Weapon. You only train UC when you don't want to use a Melee Wepaon.

Maybe the solution would be to add a few negatives into the skills (above the extra XP cost ofc), to make them a choice.

BL might make you take a small amount of increased damage from all sources on that minion.

That sort of stuff.

Not really. With bloodlust, for example, you use it with *any* melee weapon. The DD skills are used with a single DD. With bloodlust, there are other skills that might work better. With DD skills, there aren't.

For instance, an alternative would be a DD skill that buffed any DD, and came with it some drawback. For instance, makes your DD do more damage, but increases AMF backlash. That's a stupid example, though, because taking the XP out of the skill and putting it into the DD directly does the exact same thing (as damage output goes up, so does backlash).

But archery and BL affects a wide array of other damage offense. For instance, you can go for pure damage with BoNE, go for an GA counter with MH, go for a AS/PL destroyer with an MoD or finally go with a tank killer with a VB. However, with containment, you are only ever going to use an FB attack. I agree that skills that affected all DDs would allow for a more varied game.

Btw I hate NS for ninja'ing me.

Archery does blow, hard. To need a skill that only lets you use your weapon to what it should normally be really blows chunks.

But with the mage skills, one can have a mage skill called enhance. Its effect is dependent on what DD you have trained as you cannot have more than 1 trained.

If you train FB, it works like Contain etc.... The program just sees what DD you have and adjusts the effect differently.

Would this work?

Pffft. All melee. /meh ;)

You could make a single DD 'skill' with that reasoning.

"It works with all the DDs!" ;)

Indeed. ;)

:D

It'd be doable, but it's not really different. The only difference is that switching DD's doesn't require switching skills.

We need a DD skill that is generic enough to not be required and not affect a single DD, yet specific enough to be interesting.

Like... just off the top of my head, here's an idea (like my other one, this is stupid and won't work for other reasons):
A skill called Concentrate that makes spread DD spells work on fewer minions, maybe half the minions. So if there's 4, it hits the first two. Or maybe 1 fewer. Whatever.

Point is, it's only for certain strats, and it's usable by multiple DD's.

That would work for FB and CoC. MM and SG work that way anyway.

What FB needs is to have one of the ranged penalties removed on it. That should be enough.

What do you mean, "one of the ranged penalties"?

If you're talking putting negatives into skills didnt bloodlust used to increase the damage you received in exchange for the extra power it gave you?

There are currently 2 ranged penalties that affect FB in ranged. The first is the universal 40% penalty all ranged attacks get in ranged and the second is the 30% ranged penalty that ramps down each round to 0% in the last round of ranged. This is the one that affects ranged DDs. If 1 of these were to be removed for FB it would probably work effectively.

As long as there is friendly fire, I doubt anyone would use it.

Natasha, the direction we need to go is not make the weak ranged attacks strong, it's to weaken the strong ranged attacks.

And also weaken the strong melee DDs, doing one of those without the other would be bad.

I say remove FF and go from there.

I tried and tried about a week ago to make a FF work with my strat. But of course I could not get it to. The damage in my opinion is not that bad. Its the friendly damage that is a pain. Like others have said, maybe have it ignore PL or something. Just have to be careful not to change it too much or else MM will be pointless.

I have not really understood the point of archery either. I would like to see a skill for mages as well. Something that may work like the NSCs do. I would think that if a skill for DD does ever get implemented, then it would only be fair to get rid of or reduce the amount of archery required.

Funny I got a FF to work perfectly fine while I was running Conundrum... Sure it caused me to SM a few more people then I normally did lower down the totem pole, but it also gave me people I couldn't beat before, and the majority of my fight list was left unchanged. >_>

Sans friendly fire damage, that would have been my tat of choice because it would've safely given me every person in the game.

well sans King anyway, that would've broken the SM I forced on him with the EF.