CoC Armor Idea (in General)

Bear with me....

One of the strongest opinions about CoC these days is that it is best to try to keep him alive as long as possible with lots of walls and HP, ect.

So maximizing AC would be a good Idea for the CoC mage.

Adam
CoI
CML
Leather Gloves
Corn
MS

After about 10mil NW invested, the magic penalty is minute (something like -5%). AC is nice and fat.

What do you guys think?

what is the corn gonna do for a CoC mage that only trains CoC and HP?

Oh poop. I didn't realize that the corn only affects ED's and EO's.

/me walks back to the drawing board muttering something about the good old days...

Isn't Adem -17% magic penalty

Right, but he's offsetting some of that with the CoI.

Yep, but with the bonus from the CoI (and the bonus I thought was on the Corn) it would negate the penalty. But, the Corn doesn't affect DD's anymore, so this won't work very well.

I see, your expecting CoI (and maybe Corn?) to cover that, maybe MC would be better.

Woot!!, just what i wanna do, make my CoC that hits for like 300k dmg, do only 150k....=P

All that would be like -40% magic....lol

could go with an MCM maybe...

True, but what he's trying to say is go with Adam cuz of the AC, which you cant go near as high as with MCM as adam can. But yes i am looking for an MCM for my CoC mage.

Going MC it might actually be viable for a "heavy" mage to exist.

I'm almost sure that any attempts to make a heavy mage would be quickly outdone by a ToE Mage with an MS.

Finally someone else figured this out. :)

I was trying to do it when my single CoC mage was in the top 5, needless to say, I was too lazy to save up for all of that armor though.

Although my idea was just ToE, CML and a corn, but I see that wouldn't work so well anymore.

Just one thing I'd like to point out though, whilst when people talk about mages, taking magic penalties is a huge problem, but really, before a fight it's not uncommon for a lot of characters (specifically, TM and EETM although there are a lot more) to 'lose' a good amount of their PR before even entering a fight so taking as much as 10% (or a little more) penalties from it is really a very minimal loss.
I highly suggest you only do this on a one minion character though because when you think about it, AC only adds a % to your HP which will be much higher on a one minion character. And really, don't worry about the penalties you take from the armor if it gives you enough AC to last a few extra rounds because for example, if you take 20% penalties to your CoC (and you have 50% of EXP it in and the other half in HP) then you are only losing 10% of your PR, most opponents will have EC or DM and just simply by not using a tank or any ED spells you'll force them to lose much more EXP before the fight even begins.

Now, if we put this on a 4 minion team, your losses from the high penalties aren't very big at all, but you also have to consider that every stat is vital to this minion because it has to stay above your opponent's AMF and at the same time maintain a high enough HP to survive a few hits.

Or.. I used to think a Combat Gi would be pretty fitting for spell casters. True it doesn't have much base AC, but since CoC mages are generally at the back of the lineup, they're more susceptible towards spells. Now, Combat Gi has an insanely low enchantment cost. I think it was just a tad bit more expensive than the CB-T on CB1. Given the CoC is somewhat well defended against opposing spellers, we now focus on physical damage protection. One method is to stack a heavy tank in front of the CoC mage. Definetely a viable possibility, but another option would be to get an insanely upgraded pair of DBs. Yet another option would be to get a couple Exbows with high + enchantments on the CoC mage and its enchanters. This can cut the opposing tank's strength by some 50%.

Its all up to you. Insanely upgraded DBs should be over +100. However, this will definetely hurt you're PR:score ratio. Exbow would be the way to go if you want to keep you're PR down. You can equip a pretty high amount of weapon nw before it even starts affecting your PR.

Now that you mention it, would you be able to get the higher then normal evasion from UC in ranged rounds if your using CoC. Since UC's weak point is damage, maybe it's possible to replace the damage with CoC and still get all the other UC bonuses.

That's an interesting theory, Vestax...

:) I thought about that in CB1, where Gi s gave a fixed Evasion bonus. Was it worth training a base UC abd wearing a Gi instead of an MCM and training Evasion...

Now the magic penalty on Gi s has been increased, and they double any pre-item evasion gained from UC.

At level 341,102, UC has an effect of (57). That would give an evasion of 19. A Gi would then give an additional 19 Evasion if it's not clased as item evasion and the UC portion isn't classed as skill evasion. If they are both types of evasion, it sucks. Plus, they're not worth using with a pair of DB s anyway.

But some of that (maybe just the original 19) would be doubled in ranged.

If the way skill and item evasion stacks was changed back, it would be worth considering this, coupled with a fat pair of DB s.

I used to be a strong believer in the Tank with an FB/VA mage and still am. I am pretty sure you could effectively modify this for a CoC mage with "heavy" armor also.

The tank in front would have to probably be a light ToA tank and regards to an ELB or exbow I would think either to try take a minion or 2 out at the start or to severely lower tanks STR and damage capabilities before melee (depends who you fight, if you are wealthy one of each will do :P).
The CoC mage would be behind the tank waiting for melee with just HP ,CoC and a low evasion (keep with me on this one at a 1/10 of exp level) equipped with a compromise of high AC armor and low penalty/high bonus armor. So an MC, CoI and MS for sure but I would then get some reasonable DB's to accompany the evasion (the evasion helps to save some cash on the DB's so it can go into other armor also). Get some EG's to add to skill level, if EB's do the same then I would get those and get the AC from the other armors but cml's may be worth the AC depending on net magic penalty.
What do others think?

When I was prepping this strategy (back before NW counted towards power), my kit was going to be: ToE, HoD, Mithril S, CML. Between the AC and the ToE, you're reasonably well protected, and there's less magic penalty than with an Adam and CoI (unless you're crazy rich :) ).

If your objective is AC and not evasion, then yes EB's would be far better then DB's, and they do give a skill bonus as well, so evasion would still be boosted. If you want to go heavy on the AC then MC is my choice. The question is really how essential is that evasion bonus if your going for as much protection as possible. Since you won't have any DX to back up that evasion then I might suggest you go for as much AC possible while limiting penalties. Here is one option:

MC (-8%), CoI (10%-12%), CML (-4%), LGlets (0%), Cab (0%), MS (-6%)

This becomes a penalty of -6% to -8%. The total base AC is 75. Going by the low end of the top ten of each of these items the total AC comes to 201.

The two items of the biggest contention here is the gloves and the head gear. Leather Gauntlets was chosen since it's only penalty is to DX, but I see the biggest Leather gloves beats the biggest Leather Gauntlets, that could be because light tanks and mages both use LG's and it's a popularity issue. You could also go EG or take in another -2% penalty and get TG's or Pair of Cesti.

On the issue of head gear, once again, you can take on more penalties for more AC, but a HoD seems like a bit much at another -5%. My choice might actually be HoE which only has a -2% penalty. If you decide to throw on an enchantment on this mage though, maybe a small DM or maybe even a small prot, then Corn would be helpful to counter the ED/EO penalties, which is not covered by the CoI.