The Big Changes (in General)

I'd just like to say, that although I'm still getting my head around them, I think this week's changes are a very clever way to sort out a lot of the problems we have.

Evasion has been weakened - not destroyed. And it has been weakened by quite a lot. Yes it can still be powerful, but now you have to train a lot more to get those effects. Which, correct me if I'm wrong, was what most of the anti evasion brigade wanted.

This whole business with encumbering: I'm still not quite sure how things are working, but it seems quite straightforward. It'll take a little while to get used to it. I suspect it will be tweaked some. But, allied with disenchanting, it seems to be a good way of dealing with the problem of oversized weapons and items. It would have been very easy to introduce a cap or...rescale the items and reimburse the difference.

But this way...well, you can still use big weapons, for instance, but there's a penalty for doing so; you have the choice to trim them down at the blacksmith or take the penalties. Or you can make other choices - for instance as a tank start wearing a ToA. Instantly you've a higher limit on your NW before you start taking penalties.

Jon could have forced the situation but this way things become strategy. Rather than bigger is better.

I like it.

Seconded. ;)

So just how is a tank from a 4 minion team supposed to be able to use armor, perhaps DB's, a missile weapon and a melee weapon and fit is all under the encumbrance cap?

Then add to that, archery takes up 1/3 your strength in xp and you have less xp to spend on str/hp.

Less xp to spend on strength? If your strength is lower then so is your archery. Up your strength and yes you need to up your archery but you raise your NW limit. Tanks can use a ToA - which gives them more strength thus raising their NW limit. Plus they get free NW from the ToA in bonus PTH, which isn't counted in your total NW, so freeing you up to add more NW on your weapons.

You don't have to run an archery tank - now that that massive ranged damage is lower - something which you campaigned for, for a very long time if I recall. You could run an evasion tank, which means you don't need DBs and could use a SoD or a speciality bow. You don't have to use a melee and ranged weapon.

You have choices.

O yea,

I can run an evasion tank and let all that DD damage hit me for 6 free rounds.

Interesting change, let us see how many tanks stay as tanks or even stay.

I wonder just how much rentals will even play a factor anymore. Most items in rentals will cause a lot of encumbrance and lower level players won't want to use them, so people will disenchant them, so overall most items will not grow quite so large or be useful to many players.

Well, for me, this worked out well. Suddenly my undersized gear is just the right size for my archer on my 3 minion team.
I do agree with Ranger on the ST/archery thing. Archery already took a huge chunk of XP from multi-minion teams and now it's even more of a drain though according to Jon skills do give a 25% return on encumbrance.
TOA is certainly more tempting now, but TSA boosts ST making it also a good option.
I have to say, I like this change. Jon's taken a big issue with the game and while a few people get screwed over a little, he's turned the downside into another strategy requirement.

I'm also worried about EC's ability now... Before, EC countered XP with XP, and if EC was truly massive enough, it could counter all the net worth of a tanks weaponry (once a tank is at/below 0 ST). Now, any tank that is pushing their Encumbrance limit is extremely succeptable to EC.


Sure, you've only got enough EC to chop of 10-15% of my ST/DX, but you've also got enough EC to bring my encumbrance to 15-20%... Great... now for 10-15% of the XP I've put into my ST/DX, you've nuked my ST and DX by a large percentage, and cost me a good bit of my AC, and HP... A bit much?

"So just how is a tank from a 4 minion team supposed to be able to use armor, perhaps DB's, a missile weapon and a melee weapon and fit is all under the encumbrance cap?"

Get bigger.

Sure, at 100K MPR you might not be able to use your +15 Tulks with your +10 HoE.

But it might fit at 300K MPR. Or 500K.

As your encumbrance will continue to increase, while the NW added by these items won't.

Unless (of course) you always fill your entire Encumbrace with your Wepaons. Which is your choice.

Or drop a minion. I think it's great that multi minion teams with E Kill slots aren't a no brainer option any more.

Want to run a non Tattoo, Heavy Armour, Massive Ranged Wepaon and Massive Melee Weapon tank? Stay single, to maximise your Encumbrance.

Want the easy cop out of that PL Battery or MgS Wall? Factor in taking a hit to your Tanks Encumbrance.

My biggest beef is it kills certain strategies.

If you want to play a tank you pretty much have to use a ToA right now or see your damage go down the tubes. There is no such thing as a decent wall. And, of course, low end characters can't even THINK of using some of the equipment well, such as an AoI, or decent armor. Base armor, that's fine, but what good will that do you against mages? This cap just plain sucks.

It seems like the NW whiners got what they wanted. I've even heard a few of them revel in the top NW players situation - that pretty much says it all. This is all about limiting NW and nothing about balance. If it was about balance then it would have been based on the items affect rather than cost. Either that or Jon was just too lazy to figure out something based on affect rather than NW. I've spent 3 years acquiring great equipment. In all that time I've probably purchased a total of 20 million USD$ in stuff net. I've bought and sold a lot, but it evened out. I've wheeled and dealed, watching the auctions religiously to catch deals. Spent a large part of my wealth building a rental empire instead of investing in my character. So I am NOT one of those folks who just plopped down USD to gain an unfair advantage. I just worked hard and made my investments grow - IN GAME. Other folks have set up in-game loan operations so they could get that NW up - I applaud them and want them to succeed.

I feel like I'm now in a socialist game. Since not everyone has the energy to work to acquire the wealth lets just make sure those that do, don't get to take advantage of it any more. Kind of like our school system. Dumb it down so no one appears better than anyone else to the point that we are graduating idiots.

The system should REWARD folks who work to acquire wealth and good equipment without giving them an insurmountable advantage. This could have been done a number of ways instead of just capping it and thus undoing all that hard work. The PR weight system was great as is the whole concept of PR - build on that. Another thing that could have been done was to have a diminishing returns system, where your high end items gave better results but not so much so that they were ridiculous.

I am a bit peeved to say the least.

I have similar sentiments. i've spent a lot of time building up my AC armor and other gears through fighting and buy/sell. Now most of these gears cannot be used unless my character gets a lot bigger... and disenchant them would be a waste of all the time I spent on them. tanks are getting a lot harder to run.

"Since not everyone has the energy to work to acquire the wealth lets just make sure those that do, don't get to take advantage of it any more." ... "The system should REWARD folks who work to acquire wealth and good equipment without giving them an insurmountable advantage. This could have been done a number of ways instead of just capping it and thus undoing all that hard work. The PR weight system was great as is the whole concept of PR - build on that. Another thing that could have been done was to have a diminishing returns system, where your high end items gave better results but not so much so that they were ridiculous."

Yeah, because opening up your bank account is so much work. Jon has already stated "I strongly doubt anyone has an encumbrance over 0.2 without using USD." This change makes equipping a team require actual thought now instead of just spending as much money as you can to have as big of items as you can. I don't see the problem.

Ranger, has it changed your fight list? Methinks you protest too much.

My fightlist is absolutely unchanged. I added LEga back, but still draw with him a fair amount. That's it. Didn't give me any of the folks with huge weapons, like pffft or Double Troublem even with my massive ranged offense.

What's the problem?

"Yeah, because opening up your bank account is so much work. Jon has already stated "I strongly doubt anyone has an encumbrance over 0.2 without using USD." This change makes equipping a team require actual thought now instead of just spending as much money as you can to have as big of items as you can. I don't see the problem."

I'm currently 3M under my enc, with 40M in easily liquidateable assets. If I dumped that all into my gear, I'm sure I'd be over 0.2 enc.

I certainly changed my fightlist.

I cannot and likely can never add Nightstrike with his exbow.
I lose Conundrum as I was (I have since had to retrain yet again), and before I retrained did not even kill one of his minions.

And anyone with a decent sized Exbow I certainly lose. As it is impossible for a tank now to equip any decent sized DB's, a decent bow, and a decent melee weapon without going well over your encumbrance.

Did i mention that the exbows still drain over 100% of your strength even if your tank has 0 strength?

However,

I have balance my character a bit more and things are better.

After reviewing the facts I do believe this is not a bad change.

The change does hit the economy type player a bit. But remember, if you've been around for 3+ years and have not a big enough character to use your gears, that means you are spending too much time on your gear and not enough on fighting. This is carnageblender, not trading blender after all. Maybe it's time to think about starting an ncb and get to 2.5mil mpr where your bigger items will fit. Maybe it's time to put some of that hard earned money into buying minions. This is what change month is about, to get people out of their comfort zone and start playing the game differently. I think this change month has succeeded in that. Well done Jon.

The problem is Ranger, you want to beat every single strat. Welcome to the real game.

No JW,

It is that with the change, tanks have a bad choice to make.

Use a medium missile weapon and a medium melee weapon, or use 1 large one (either type).

Then try to get in armors/shields to help your tank out.

Then, if using a bow, spend tons of xp into a skill that does nothing but let you string your arrow properly and not shoot yourself in the foot.

All the while trying to keep enough dexterity up to actually hit evasion (which is still quite powerful, just look at my battle logs to see some stalemates).

Forget about a heavy tank, all that NW is too much to equip weapons and keep dex and have decent weapons.

Forget about using decent sized DB's as it is impossible to fit them in also with all the other armors/shield/weapons one has to squeeze in.

Forget about using AS/ROS for HP to help as you have little END without HP.

What we have is far less choices for minions/characters then before.

As a mage, one trains hp to keep END up. Mages do not have a lot of NW in items so END does not really bother them.

While there are some good things about this change, there are a lot of very poor points.

Tanks have certainly gotten further neutered again this month. A continuing trend it seems.

And please do not use the USD arguments again. There are plenty of non-USD tanks like miteke who are dying from this change.

Miteke has been fighting in the upper reaches with a character much smaller than a lot of those around him for quite some time. If we, as you are prone to do with evasion, judge somebody's capability to win based on the amount of XP involved then Miteke has been fighting far higher than he should do. Whether he has gained his gear by in game means or extra game means.

Jon's changes have been to try and balance the game; that will involve making it so some people can't fight as high without penalties being brought into play. If there are casualties then so be it.


And for most of the past two years tanks have been using only melee or only ranged thanks to that lovely change to the first round of melee. So in that respect whats the difference?

Score / PR / MPR: 2,279,915 / 2,544,842 / 1,898,376

Miteke's character.

I do not see him fighting so high. What am I missing? Appropriate score/PR/MPR.

As to the tanks only using missile or melee, that is crap. Just look at the top characters. Over 1/2 use both types of weapons. Lega, Draco, myself (until now), Edyit etc..

"As to the tanks only using missile or melee, that is crap."

I'm gonna have agree with JW that a lot of them were. Not everyone has unlimited CB to spend, so it was more strategic to have one large weapon under the NW cap than 2 mid sized ones along with having to miss the first melee round.

For a very long time most of you guys only used a melee weapon. As I recall you finally decided that if you can't beat them join them when the mageseeker came into the game, and a lot of the tanks who didn't use a bow only seemed to get back on that since the mageseeker. Mikel has only started to use his melee weapon in recent months, most of the SoD tanks only use a SoD no melee.

It interesting to see who's complaining and who is actually quite happy with the change.

In fact, if you go down the list of people who have archery trained, very few of the top group have more than a bow equipped.

"It interesting to see who's complaining and who is actually quite happy with the change."

Yes, mages just love it. They do not have to worry about ENC with the low NW armors they have. They also do not need a weapon to worry about.

Yes, tanks hate it. They have to worry about a missile and/or melee weapon, armor, shields and possibly DB's to avoid exbows/axbows. They also have to train numerous stats including dexterity to hit. They also, if they use an ELB or MSB, have to train tons of xp into archery which does nothing positive. Only stops a negative. All that xp tanks have to spread around.

Certainly it is interesting to see.

Yes, and with the mageseeker a lot of tanks went missile/mage. Now it is very difficult to have 2 nice weapons. But recently tanks have had to use missile and melee. That choice of a lot of us has been taken away with ENC as only 1 weapon for a lot of tanks fits under that cap.

And if your miteke, able to fight up due to smart trading, your especially hosed. But nobody except for a few seem to care about that. Certainly not a mage. Yes, interesting indeed.

I'm running a tank; tank/mage hybrid sure, but a tank where it counts. I've only got about 500 HP and about 600 ST I've got 55 million NW limit on my encumbrance. My SoD could stand to lose some NW still; I could fit two reasonable sized weapons under there and still do some decent damage.


Simple fact is not many people have NW that doesn't fit. Those players were the ones who didn't stand a chance before these changes. There were quite a few of those. I'd say this benefits the majority. Which is how it should be.

Jon has put in enough options so that people can adapt if they have to.

Top tanks: by MPR:

Whether they used missile and/or melee BEFORE the change (and what they did 6 months ago does not matter, what they were doing recently does):

Koy- missile and melee
King of Pain-missile and melee
Failure-melee only
Edyit-missile and melee
Lega-missile and melee
B Ark-melee only
Double Trouble-missile only
Xanas-missile and melee (axbow)
Iconics-missile only (UC)
Reda Luu-missile and melee
Nemesis-melee only
Anbhas-missile and melee (exbow)
pfft-missile and melee
Vistek-missile only
Flamey-melee only
Proteus 4-missile only
Soul Collector-missile and melee

So where are we:

Missile and melee: 9
Missile only: 5
Melee only: 3

About 1/2 use or used both missile and melee.

Far cry from most.

"Jon has put in enough options so that people can adapt if they have to."

That is for certain. The disenchant option was a must.

However, some things should be tweaked, IMO of course.

AS should supply ENC bonus.
Archery should give something positive or not be as cost prohibitive.

That's pretty much 50/50. And the fact that people used only one or other before IS relevant because it means that they can again. For instance, with an RBF you only used a bow as I recall. And very little NW. The RBF hasn't really changed very much. It was overpowered before: you have the choice of doing that again don't you? Or is it not overpowered now?

You are completely right JW.

There are plenty option available.

I would like to see a free tattoo artist now but do not really want to see free unlearn/relearning. Esp after I unlearned a 4M EC just today.

I guess it will take a while for people to adjust to the changes.

so there is a choice now, you said so yourself, two medium weapons or one big one. that seems like a much more balanced choice than what we had before which was tanks, especially with usd influence or good money management, could have it all.

if you have been used to having it all, then yes it is hard to handle forced balance. mages have never had it all, we have been asking for more ways to spend money on items to no avail. so are mages more pleased with this change than tanks? if we couldn't have the options meleers had, then taking away some of their options is another method to balance.

the change hasn't allowed me to increase my score or change my fightlist, i actually lost some people. what it has done is made it so that i am not farm-fodder for lowbies with high net worth weapons or gear. it is quite nice not having people farm me that i know should not be able to. it is also nice to see that some low mpr teams can still do so, the ones who are rocks to my scissors, or just the ones who have good strategies.

for too long a valid strategy in cb2 was, throw cash at it and ya can win. it is possible now though to see the true strategists, the ones who can balance the limitations rather than just purchase wins. i truly believe that this balancing opens up a slew of strategies rather than closing them off, other than the easy win button we have had since 2005.

Simple fact is that tanks would have been handicapped no matter what if evasion was to be fixed. And maybe evasion might prove to be still too powerful. But as Jon himself said, and plenty of us had been saying for a long time, if evasion was to be fixed big weapons needed fixing too.

The alternatives were a weapon cap, which would have handicapped the same people; or a rescale. At least this way people have a choice of still using their big weapons/items with some tweaking.

Actually that probably needs making clearer. Most of these changes have come about because Jon was trying to fix evasion fairly. I guess "be careful what you wish for" really should be the CB motto...

Please no free tattoo artist or unlearning. I must have dumped about 100k mpr today, and 800k on the Tattoo artist.

--> Yeah, because opening up your bank account is so much work. Jon has already stated "I strongly doubt anyone has an encumbrance over 0.2 without using USD." This change makes equipping a team require actual thought now instead of just spending as much money as you can to have as big of items as you can. I don't see the problem.

Huh? What a completely stupid thing to say. I just told you I acquired this wealth by trading and renting. I make over 500K per week just on rentals. Were you even listening? The reason I have 300M NW on my tank is because I had a vision and worked hard to get there. I wanted to play a non-ToA bloodlust tank because someone said it couldn't be done well. It took me a while but I did it. It's not like those dime-a-dozen RBF evasion clones, and it took a heck of a lot of work getting the NW to build it, but I did it!!! I could easily have gotten a much higher score for my MPR if I was willing to retrain every time Jon got capricious, and God knows over the last year or two the tank has suffered, but I wanted to succeed where others failed or wouldn't try. So what part of that didn't take thought? I was dang proud of my ToE tank. But that option is now pretty much impossible to do well as well as a number of other strats. As far as I can determine less options means less thought, not more.

Come on people! It was known from the beginning that tanks would be NW focussed and mages would be BA purchasing focussed. So I do exactly that and someone complains that my tank has/had high NW? Sheesh! Without high NW gear the strat wouldn't have worked, so I sacrificed BAs and experience to build that NW, including putting weekends into forging so that I could get my weapon up to my WA and my wall above 300 AC (something I was working towards but never achieved).

NOT EVERYONE WHO HAS NW IS A USD ABUSER!!! Try to understand that. Not that I even think that spending USD is an abuse. That's a label you NW whiners can have all to yourselves.

I will state it again here.

HP from AS HAS TO BE COUNTED TOWARDS ENC.

If not, a lot of characters will be neutered. Whether or not they are USD spenders or not.

(Just to be pedantic)

It is. ;)

Just not as much as natural HP is.

It's just like the TSA not effecting AS. AS applies tot he whole team, and is therefore too good to apply fully to the ENC of each and every member.

It negates the multi minion penalty of ENC.

Seems like Jon's changes are for the better..

Is there some sort of problem with not being able to have super-high NW items on your character? Those +130 DB won't fit? Shrink them, or get something else. Don't want to do that? Increase your ENC by retraining some stats, changing your tat (ToA does wonders for ENC!), or changing around some other gear. None of that works? You can always change your strategy around. Perhaps use a RoE to grow your DB-wearing minion until it can. Perhaps use a minion with larger XP to fill the role of DB-wearer. If all of that doesn't work, you can always save that pair of DB for later.

Do you really want a 465 AC wall (and, in the future, higher) in the game for no penalty (if/once Freed (or another person with that massive AC) gets into 6/20)?

I'm curious to see some of the top peoples' ENC, along with their gear and NW. I'm sure, if you really thought long and hard about it, you could at least take off a point or two off of some items with no adverse effects.

But maybe, being a person with low NW, I'm just deluded from the real truth. Please, enlighten me if that's the case. :)

Tyriel you make some good points. Yes, there are still viable strategies out there. Some are even attractive. I'm not arguing that. I'm just peeved that so many options are now off the table, including the one I've been working on for so long. I like variety and options and choices. And I'm particularly peeved that the NW whiners got their way and made it impossible for me to use the equipment I've worked so hard to build up without undoing all the work I've put into it. Wouldn't you be?

Compare for example +1 added to some Tulks to make them +21. What affect does that have? +1% strength and +1 AC. Now compare that to adding +5 to a base TSA. Which helps the team more? Why is the former going to kill your teams enc even though the effects are less. This was not about mechanics or play balance. This was about giving the NW whiners what they wanted at my expense. Of course I'm ticked off.

If a 465 AC is a bad thing, there are better ways of dealing with it. The vorpal blade was an excellent solution to that problem, but it got nerfed into unusability. Another bad change that could have been done right just by increasing its damage a tad bit. A skill that gave spells armor piercing or an armor piercing spell would also have solved that problem nicely. These are all ways it could have been done and INCREASED options instead of this ridiculous NW ceiling.

The NW ceiling had to come about before Jon could work on evasion. There were other ways of doing it, all of which would have been worse than this.

Much like the vorpal, months of campaigning about overpoweredness will always lead Jon to make up his own mind about what needs to be done and when. I've said it once today, but I'll say it again. The real motto of CB is 'be careful what you wish for'.

I think most people like the change, myself included after some thought and reading other peoples posts.

However, I still think enchanter based teams got the very short end of the stick, mostly those that relied on AS for HP.

Before, it was a very viable strategy subject to DM. Now I cannot see much use for such a strategy as a tank. They now have to worry about both DM and ENC. As a mage, certainly viable, but not as a tank based character.

That is my number 1 problem with the changes.

Number 2 is of course archery skill which I recently dropped and feel great about the xp I was able to spend in strength and hp. With a huge boost to my ENC as well.

the change(s) that have been macde are best for the game. Yes, bad for certain individuals - but adapt. I have - I am now just pressing the return key and I dont care. Thats the way the game has gone - live with it.

also I never have to buy any more cb$ - I just suck a weapon or a piece of armour

I apologise to all you other slight or more usd spenders - it was my fault - I just wanted to get 477 :(

Never apologize. We all wanted to see 477. What is your AC now with the ENC hit?

I still wanna see 477! :P How much more is it gonna cost?

Maybe we could get a CB wide whip round?

Just create a massive single minion NCB and train nothing but HP and STR... You'll have enough room for 477, and all the weapons you can stand...

i wonder how much encumbrance a massive single minion robf character would have with training hp, evasion and amf equally or thereabouts and i wonder how well it would do with that amount of ac even with penalties.