Who is sucking all the score out of the top 50? (in General)

I understand the competitive reasons for doing this, slow down the people chasing but you also risk having the people chasing give up. While you will "win" then isn't a good part of the fun getting to keep playing the game?

Care to share your reasons for doing it?

What makes you say this? Has their been a significant drop in scores recently?

Yes, 25th place has gone from 9-9.5M down steadily over the past few weeks to 8-8.5M now.

Oh I took out like 3M score, and by took out I mean put into my char; but that sounds like significantly more than 3M. I looked through a bunch of fight logs, and I couldn't find anyone who was doing the stalemate thing. Also, the tourney didn't progress far enough for that too have caused something, even if there was a bug. Maybe a bunch of people are just running NCBs?

A whole gang of NCBs/NUBs are hitting the 6-7m score range and fighting up. This would explain it.

A few people get drained heavily, then they go on to drain who they fight, then the cycle continues. Even the top 10 have seen scores dropping lately. The top 10 scores just started to stabilized earlier in the week. Everyone was down in the low to mid 9m range for awhile, now we are back up to the low to mid 10m range.

A large loss of score came from when Ranger retrained his previous char (currently conundrum) quite a few times and Team Rocket (Horror) upon purchase.

^ That too.

You should blame Areo and joel.

2 of only a few Duke there are more as Xeno has pointed out.

I started farming Joel, which drained his score (I, and many of the other NCBs, were right around 4M). Then a lot of the NCBs started farming me, which I think is where a lot of that score came from. And I'm consistently gaining 100-200k score per full BA burning session from Joel.

Hmm maybe I should make Priest drain out the top end for the sake of the N*Bs who are growing.

Aw that just seems devilishly evil even thinking about it..

*puts it on his to-do list*

Xeno's a socialist. Spreading the score around!

I'd rather think of myself as CB's Robin Hood. Stealing from those rich in score and handing it off to those who aren't, increasing the mid range scores (and growth rates) at the sake of the top end.

But we also have to take into consideration the fact that I'm generally lazy (my BA burning schedule is a lie I tell you) and will most likely never do this on my own unless someone gave me some incentive to do so. (Hint: Money talks *wink wink*)

I'll end up fighting more then half of them anyway. Win Win for me in the long run.

*Blames Joel totally for his RoS destructive strat lol - scarily simple and so effective but seems weak against anything without a ros tatt (proper boom and bust/shotgun strat - quite impressive really)

I beat Joel with a small RoS :); he actually DEs all of my enchantments.

DMs*

Results (Score 5,995,379, PR 2.1M) beat Anomander Rake

Anomander Rake (6.8M score) beats Joel

Joel beats Arioh and Nocturnal Spaghetti

NS beats Karn

Karn beats FoD, Construct and Failure.

FoD beats Immortals

That is causing the sucking sound you hear, the score loss.

It takes only 1 person being able to fight way up to suck large amounts of score.


Such phenomena causes a temporary score loss that gets quickly fixed within 24 hours as in such situations scores quickly rise towards PR.

For scores to stay lower for a prolonged period a cascade as above is needed.

I was wondering when a post was going to be made about this :P\
Anyway, I do think that I have something to do with it. Maybe I'm at the center of all the drain! I don't know!
Anyway, it will all even out soon enough. My plan is to pump up my score to give to the guys farming me. Once their scores get close to mine, and stay that way, then things will be back to normal! In fact, I would like to coordinate with my farmers so that they will get the highest score gain, and Challenge Bonus %, from farming me, thereby ending, and minimizing, this score drain ASAP.

Btw, Titan, you don't beat me ALL the time. Your RoS strat isn't being used to its full AS boosting potential, either! When someone uses AS for the bulk of their HP, that's where my strat shines. It really has nothing to do with the RoS itself. Its just that my DM is so high that an RoS team that relies on AS for its HP will still take a huge hit to its AS, despite the RoS's protection.
You would probably have no trouble beating me if you would use a tattoo that increases your damage output. As it is, you seem to be trying to do as many things as you can with your minions, which is why you still don't beat me 100% of the time, yet have almost 4 million MPR. Areo has only 1.3 million MPR and he is, as of now, beating me 100% of the time. Of course I know its just because of that broken weapon - The Enforcer's Crossbow - drains my Strength to -13 million in one hit. But, that's a discussion for another time ^_-

It took me too long to write my message and Ranger pointed out that I AM at the center of the drain, or at least the secondary person involved, Areo being the primary :P

Joel (F) (+) 101 1 3 0 96.19

96% of the time is pretty good. I also have 800k less MPR than you. I also have a terrible minion layout for my current strategy; and I also need to dump about 100M more into my armor for it to be at it's most effective state.

Best drop it. It will never be changed,.

it was not my fault. I guess... lol

Titan: it is nothing to beat me. I have said that my strat is very weak on many occasions. It is only good for fighting 1 particular strat that many have a fondness for. Stop bragging over it, because it truly is not something to be proud of.

I'm not bragging on it; areo has a terrible strategy for anything except for moving up; which is what he is focused on right now. I was just stating that I beat you with an RoS; which doesn't matter b/c I could take it off and still beat you. My strat is by far "weaker" then yours. I'm a freaking heavy mage for crying out loud. On a four minion team without AS... are you kidding me? This is my char I'm just biding my time till I get the NCB ready to make people cry again.

Oh, so you're just belittling my strat, huh? In a rather confusing way, too, saying that your strat is "weaker" than mine, yet you still beat me. You also said that your character is not a very serious production of yours, yet he still beats me... Why would you say these things? Do you WANT me to be angry with you?

Someone lock this thread before it gets any more off topic -_-;

Yeah oh soooo wonderful a time stating my crappy strat is better than your weaker strat and back and for than it just keeps on going and going and it really makes no sense to keep on going on but hey it seems like it is the only thing to do because there is no semblance of an idea how to simply let it go because hey I need no I must or hey it's just fun to have the last freaking words and stuff because it is fun to be right or whatever because it makes me feel good and pisses off the other person and makes them reply and I get to say something somewhat witty or sarcastic back and he what do you know this will just keep on going because honestly know how to just stop is no one's forte because eh it's no fun or something I guess.........
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................yeah scroll back to the top and read again because hey this is my proclamation, so what it's drivel makes sense to write it since at least it's as honest as it will ever get on here. If you don't get smarter for reading it at least you will not get any dumber......or will you?

In the lower to mid levels people often play a specific focused strategy designed to let them fight up as high as possible to get as high a CB as possible.

So while Titan or Joel's strategy may suck at the higher levels, or may look rather strange, they are actually quite effective to do what they were designed to do.

So both you, hush up. Both strats, while strange looking, accomplish exactly what both of you wanted.

When you get to the 4M MPR, 8M Score range, you will both see that you need a better more well rounded strat. Until that time, good luck to both.

I have 7.6M score; this isn't a serious char (You don't really need to adjust your strat till your NCB finishes and you want to try to have a consistent top 5 char or something.) . I haven't been playing and I forge most of the time. I already said this. I'm in no way putting down Joel's char. Strategies like that are actually by far the best for NCBs and he'd be foolish to do anything like that.

Toward the OP:

Ranger you probably did drain like 4-5M score out of the system; which isn't a huge deal, but isn't negligible either. I drained 3M out. However; NCBs have been draining 10s of millions of score out. So, the small things like what Ranger did doesn't even add up in the scheme of things. On the plus side, scores seem to be up overall from around a year ago. Maybe MPRs have went up too accordingly, but it doesn't seem that way.

As we have proven in the past, event like mine (strat or character changes) drain score which is quickly resolved in 24 hours.

What is happening now is a persistent drain of score from the top ranks.

Just b/c it balances out, doesn't mean it is not noticable. Let me put an example out there:

10 players:
Scores:
1M 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

After you do something, this is what happens:

1 2 3 4 5 6 3 8 9 10

Then it balance out and becomes

1 2 3 4 5 5.5 6.5 7 8 9

So, while it evens out, you still drain score. Where in NCB it basically becomes this:

Someone new comes into the field.

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

And they start moving up the ranks.

1 2 3 4 4 5 6 6 7 8 9

So, while what you're doing has a lot less effect; it still does essentially the same thing.

haha, so according to Ranger, im draining the upper scores! :>

Quyen, you're a part of it. Everyone from the mid ranks that farms me or Joel is. The main conduit of score drain is Joel and me. We both run super-specialized strats, that are built, as Ranger said, to allow us to grow as fast as possible, but which leave us weak to teams which are much lower than ours and are not in our field of focus.

lol, what is the specialist of your char?

also im being drained to, by Vation xD

It is his use of an obvious overpowered item letting him fight way up. The Exbow of course.

i just heard he can drain 8M Str into -13M str xD

I am a strictly anti-tank strategy. I search for opponents that only have physical damage sources (no DD, or GA, or RBF), nuke their ST, and when they can't do damage to me, I win. Most DD, GA, or RBF characters should have no problem beating me.

In the same vein, Joel seeks out opponents whose only source of HP is AS, and uses a huge DM to eliminate most of that HP. Anyone with mostly trained HP, who do not rely on EO/EDs will likely be able to beat him.

While that would normally seem quite excessive, that is standard with the exbow with only 1 hit. I have my 22M HP 8M strength tank drained into the negative 10M by Xeno and his 5M strength tank in 1 hit.

Just look at Aero's character-

Score 6,938,384
Power 2,090,720
MPR 1,400,482

Quite a powerful item.

At least Joel using MPR in the form of a huge DM to accomplish is fighting up. Not a one hit wonder like the exbow.

yeah lol, his targets are running low though, tehre arent much teams that use AS and have like 20HP base ._.

Yes a DM cannon that involves you being able to do no damage without a proper tattoo and relying on your opponent being ED based is not the least bit abusive, neither are EC cannons.

Yeah, currently you could hit 6.5M score with 1.5M MPR with a EC cannon quit easily right now.

Actually it takes me between 1-4 hits now to fully drain you. No BGs equipped means no 1 hit drain for me, I'm lucky if I do. Oh not to mention if I don't do it by round 3 and avoid at least 1 hit from your MsK I'm dead (you hit between 2-3 times per round I need you to hit at most twice). So yeah, it's not nearly as easy for me to accomplish as one might think.

To be honest most people in the game should not even have a 9 million score to begin with.

Do away with NW/PR and that would be true.

Whenever I fight you, one hit gets me into the negatives in strength. Certainly if you do over 220k damage.

And you are more than lucky to hit and drain all my strength evidenced by your 75% win rate vs me.

22M HP, 276 named DBs and 5+M dex is not enough to stop you from beating me 3/4 of the time. What an item!!!

You haven't seen socialist score yet, but you may.

Yes the threshold for me to do a full drain is 200k+ but I don't do that all the time. Most of the time I do about 180k which is enough to cut your damage in half, and all I need is that reduction in damage coming in from you to win. Basically as long as I hit you at least once and you aren't doing full damage I win. But yes occasionally I do get lucky and drain you in 1 hit.. but I assure you its not a guaranteed anymore. That still doesn't change the fact that if I don't hit you at all by round 3 of ranged I'm immediately dead. That means I have only 3 rounds of heavy ranged penalties on a low BTH item to actually hit you and decide the match. I had to bring my dex close enough to yours just to give myself a better chance of actually hitting.

Most of the time when I fight you, assuming I do hit and do not fully drain (which is about 75% of the time right now), you're tank is still doing about 500k per hit. I could post plenty of examples of me doing smaller drains if you'd like.

Isn't that the basic concept "What if the exbow didn't drain full str but reduced it bit bit over time." Well I try to mimic that as much as I can, did it with priest and I'm doing it now with conundrum.

Oh and I've already said a million times before the reason I started using the exbow in the first place was JW's MsK.. Now how else do you expect me to beat the team that was designed to ignore GA entirely (Yes ask Tasha' that was the original idea behind Team Rocket) and is wielding my kryptonite(MsK)? Well by fighting that team with their own kryponite of course (which again I've been using for over 5 months now anyway)

You can sit here and say anything you want about my choices in weapons, but we've already established that EC is basically useless, and that your Regen rate makes GA useless. Not to mention for whatever reason you switched to DM making the actual use of GA against you damn near impossible now.

"22M HP, 276 named DBs and 5+M dex is not enough to stop you from beating me 3/4 of the time. What an item!!!"

You're doing it wrong then. If you want to counter exbow figure out a different strategy instead of complaining that the one you're using isn't working the way you want it to against EVERYTHING in the game.

It's not enough that you can counter every other ranged weapon besides the exbow in the game and every melee weapon with your HP+DBs+DX?

Or that since your gear is clearly focused on doing as much ranged damage as possible to mages you obviously realize your HP+DBs+DX are that effective against all other types of damage?

Or, like Xeno stated, you counter the only other counter to your team, GA.

Let's be honest, your complaint is not how the exbow works. It's that it is the only item that can make you not completely unbeatable without someone having equal PR as you.

Wait, you'll say some team can make an 18mil EC team. Fine. That seems reasonable.

Actually it'd take a pretty tiny EC to nuke his tank, his DM is not super large.

After that you need a AMF, maybe a mageseeker and decent AC and you'd win every time.

I would disagree on tiny. Though 18mil was an exaggeration as I was just stating what it would take to get his STR to 0.

But no, it's not as easy as AMF/MsK/AC. You're ignoring GA while having to do 32mil damage (ignoring TSA regen). And you can't really use physical damage unless you're going to spend a massive amount of money on the + to get by his DBs.

Not quite true, a big enough ToA combined with a minimal +120 ELB could hit him the rest would be up to the damage modifier.

Oh sure, there are a million of things I could possibly do if I wanted to rework the strat from the ground up. Or I can just continue doing what I've always done which is to protect my familiar by trying to take out most tanks before they get me, considering the fact that (as I've stated numerous times) my tank isn't there to pump out damage its there to reduce incoming damage.

Would take at least 16m trained EC to nuke ranger entirely (10m if I just want his dex gone), and his DM is 4m so I'd need at least 6-7m GA to try to make GA work, but then I'd have to worry about his regen rate and hey look I dont have DM anymore so I'm open to taking GA damage now guess I gotta drop the familiar.. there goes 1/5th of my total HP.. yada yada. I could go on all day with this.

But wait wait... I forgot, I'm not trying to only beat ranger. I'm trying to beat everyone I possibly can with a setup that is the most optimal for the gear I own or is available to me.

Am I unbeatable? No. Is ranger unbeatable? No.

This is the way it should be, everyone's got a weakness, everyone should be able to be beat by someone. If I wasn't beating ranger right now, no one would be. Mikel beats him but he's in his clan and there is no reason for them to ever fight, and for some reason AA hasn't picked up on the fact that he beats ranger right now.


And something I forgot to mention.. a 75% win rate is a 75% win rate. When I get to 100% you can start to complain more. Though the complaints are likely to fall on deaf ears.

Ahh... how'd this turn into an exbow topic yet again?

Simple.

The exbow is the one item that a low PR character can slap on and fight way up.

GA, EC, AS, DM all require MPR which needs xp. The exbow can be used on a relatively lower xp character to fight way up.

So, the exbow user down in PR fighting up is sucking the score via a cascade system.

^ Ah ok never mind, I forgot this topic was partly about Areo draining scores, was simply wondering to myself "Why the heck are we talking about this again?" but it makes sense now.

I blame a severe lack of sleep for my inability to remember what was said earlier.

We all have been there :)

BTW, now it is 100% of the time I attack you, I lose.

With 22M HP, 276 DBs and a higher dex. I have no idea how else I can try to avoid those exbow hits.

Interestingly enough when I attack you I still lose about 30% of the time, my win rate just dropped down from 75% to 70%. For instance I just double tapped you and I lost twice in a row because I couldn't land a single hit on you.

It all comes down to me being lucky enough to hit you when I need to, if I can hit you by then I lose.

You didn't happen to switch from the MsK back to the Elbow and back again did you? I noticed in that time frame you lost to Me, Bast, MM, and King. You never lose to Bast, MM or King when you have the Msk on. If you indeed did switch to the Elbow again for testing purposes (I know you were looking for a backup MsK for a reason) then that accounts for how I was able to get a 100% win off you in that period of time, as I wouldn't even need to hit you with the exbow, I'd have survived long enough to get to melee where my decay and familiar would have killed you.

If that's not what you did.. then hell if I know because I can't guarantee a hit on you right now even if my life depended on it.

I tried a SoD.

The ELB is not as good, even my lack of AMF.

That would explain it then. If you are using a sod then you are hitting my AC wall and not putting my familiar in direct harm giving me more rounds to hit you with the exbow, and since my main damage source isn't being put in harms way anymore it nets me the 100% win rate you saw. I am much more likely to hit you in ranged rounds 4-6 then I am in 1-3, the problem is when you are using the MSK if I don't hit you in round 1-3 then my familiar dies and my chances of winning die off with it.

Nice, down to 9 players over 9 million and less than 25 over 8. The vacuum is still on in full force.

Thanks to all those who chimed in this thread.

I never knew how bad I was fighting and how wrong I was selecting my opponents.

Extra thanks to DoS!!!

I just wish more people farmed you, I'm draining score greatly from the top 20-5, but top 5 is going slowly.

Whoa wait, where did all your score go? It was like 10.2M yesterday and no one was farming you. Did you retrain or something?

Joel's been double tapping me a few times a day which drops my score by more than I can re-make, I beat conundrum, conundrum 80%'s horror, another leak at the top because some people are happy wasting BA for score.

Yayyyy!! Keep it up Joel and Xeno!

wow, seems azthral, a character that doesnt burn any BA at all is first in score ._.

I have always had a problem with double taps lowering your score. Score should be lowered if someone can beat you honestly without a double tap.

Same with stalemates lowering score, I believe they should not change score at all.

Draws, they should raise the score of the lower score person and lower it of the higher score person. But about 1/2 as much as a pure win.

Just my views.

I'm sorry, I just couldn't wait more than a year to be able to beat you, King! I'm not going to double tap you any more, since your score is so low, now. I could raise my score by 1 million by only wasting 5-6 BA, when you had over 10 million score. The road to recovery begins today!

It's up to 85% now, should be about 90-95% when the losses start to fade. I had to do something to stop the losses, so I did.

Such is the beauty of the exbow.

I have 276 DBs vs a +100 exbow. I have 2M more dex. I have 22M freaking HP, I have 165 AC, decent and much better than a ToA archer and yet with 1 hit, its almost all gone.

Aside from slapping on 330 AC, how much more defense can one get.

And to quote someone "do not insult me about the ToE".

I just found a way to finally survive the ~4m damage per round onslaught I get from your bow during ranged.

And if I have to clarify, I'm still not 1 hitting you. Occasionally I do, most of the time I do not. I could put my BGs back on and do that if I really wanted to.

+276 DB means ++176 wasted. Your dex to dex ratio which is only 1.5 mil dex apart means a 39% cth before ranged penalties. 22 mil HP means a nice damage threshold but 165 AC is light armor which means easy to break.

In short both sets of defenses you are using are flawed.

Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [1375062]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [1113829]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [868302]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,092,036]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]

Pun-isher shot Mick Taylor [238350]
Mick Taylor looks weaker!

Mick Taylor regenerated 238,350 HP

Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [344]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [344]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [307]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [307]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [177]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [177]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,086,032]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]

Pun-isher hit The Reaper [263800]
The Reaper looks weaker!

One hit= complete loss of strength. In the first round of combat in which you actually fire. Forget my 276 named DBs or dex advantage or 22M HP. All gone in 1 hit.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid!!!1

Yes,

Unfortunately he gets to wear EBs to boost his dex while I have to use DB in a vain attempt not to be hit just one freaking time.

Or use other armors lowering my attack significantly just to stop one broken stupid item.

I can post page after page after page where I do not one hit you. Just because you tapped me once and I got a full drain doesn't mean that's every time.

Tap me 100 times, then post all that data.

I'm just saying going half in one 1 side of the defense and half in on the other side isn't gonna work. Raging about it not working isn't gonna help either.

Round 6: The 4th Wall's familiar touches Mick Taylor [3,004,920]

Round 7:
Tom Riddle's Decay hit Mick Taylor [9,827,540]
Pun-isher shot Mick Taylor [294661]
The 4th Wall's familiar touches Mick Taylor [2,949,027]

Round 8:
Tom Riddle's Decay hit Mick Taylor [3,621,926]
The 4th Wall's familiar touches Mick Taylor [5,359,436]
The 4th Wall touches Grotesque [36]

This is also helps.

Ranger, why not train a tiny PL and wear an AoI?

Horror (F) (+) 215 33 0 4

I don't see what the big deal is.. If I were you I'd send xeno a check.

Hey look proof I don't 1 hit you all the time.. or even two hit you!


Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [1111570]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [977929]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [1218659]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]

Mick Taylor looks weaker!

Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [198040]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [198,040]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [304646]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [304,646]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [233316]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [233,316]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,522,031]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor regenerated 198,876 HP


Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [282161]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [282,161]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [252977]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [252,977]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [251099]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [251,099]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,771,301]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]

Mick Taylor looks weaker!

Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [61176]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [61,176]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [55464]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [55,464]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [80831]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [80,831]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,402,074]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor regenerated 188,460 HP


Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [85486]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [85,486]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [55900]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [55,900]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [76279]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [76,279]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,752,202]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]

Mick Taylor looks weaker!
The 4th Wall's familiar touches Mick Taylor [5,470,498]
The 4th Wall's Shocking Grasp hit Mick Taylor for no damage

Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [163]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [163]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [294]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [294]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [237]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [237]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [157]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [157]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,798,798]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [656,639]
Mick Taylor regenerated 660,000 HP

R.I.P. Mr E. Nigma

By golly another example of me not one hitting again.

Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [1169293]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [980653]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]


Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [502596]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [502,596]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [378249]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [378,249]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [414436]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [414,436]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,519,704]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor regenerated 167,121 HP


Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [145565]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [145,565]
Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [154597]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [154,597]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [178258]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [178,258]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [902,825]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor regenerated 180,214 HP


Mick Taylor shot The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [303]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [303]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [270]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [270]
Mick Taylor hit The 4th Wall's familiar with The Man with the Ski Mask [304]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [304]
Grotesque's Magic Missile hit The 4th Wall [1,509,567]
Mr E. Nigma absorbs damage [808,992]
Mick Taylor regenerated 223,216 HP

I guess you are correct. 1M to 1-200k in 1 hit is not too much. It is just fairly balanced for a weapon less than 1/2 of mine on a 22m HP tank with more str and dex wearing huge DBs.

O stupid ole me.


The PL goes to the familiar.
The AoI makes all the damage then go to the familiar.

To completely neuter my strat to avoid a broken item is not advisable.


Nothing else seems to do the trick about this obviously stupid broken horrible item.

Please read everything. Ranger, your defenses are flawed. I need to repeat this, your defenses are flawed. Zenai has a lot more defense vs an exbow with smaller DB less than half your hp and less than half your AC. You left a fatal flaw in each part of your defense. You have 22 mil hp but light armor, you have +276 db but low dex.

Comparing weapons NWs means -nothing- in this case. You -barely- have a dex advantage, 165 AC is barely in the moderate AC category, and Hp doesn't matter when I can Decay and kill it in 2 rounds.

Your strat focuses on all out offense in ranged, my strats a turtle who absorbs/reduces as much damage as possible till I get my chance to do big damage.

I told you that you would start to complain more as my win rate started reaching 100%.

Thanks for the motivation to make it happen with all your CMs, stuff like saying you prefer to have a clean fighting sleight, well I thought about it and I agree, winning is nice.

And yet Z loses as much as I do. He has a higher dex, but much less AC and 1/2 as many HP as I do.

So to stop the exbow of less than 1/2 my NW, how much AC would you say is appropriate Nat? 240? 300? 400? You cannot get over 300 effectively using a bow wihtout neutering your damage and getting rid of the DBs. Which means you get hit all the time.

So Nat, in your opinion, what is appropriate defense vs the exbow? I really want to read what you have to say. Adam? That lowers your dex significantly, leading to more hits. SC and MS? I can get my AC to 225 and still lose to Conundrum easily. Remember all heavy tank armor lowers dex, leading to more dex CTH.

Now there are only 6 people with scores >9M. And I does not fight.

+1

#1 - Gandhi was right. You can win without fighting (much).

True but short term is not what I am looking at Ranger. I am set up for success in the long term once everything gets to where i want it I should be doing just fine.


However I have to say as far as this conversation is concerned you cannot beat everyone so why worry and complain about it? Someone is gonna come out of somewhere with a super specialized strategy and get you. Although I hate them it is what it is, same with the ExBow. Enough is Enough right?

< However I have to say as far as this conversation is concerned you cannot beat everyone so why worry and complain about it? Someone is gonna come out of somewhere with a super specialized strategy and get you. Although I hate them it is what it is, same with the ExBow. Enough is Enough right?

I lose to Azthral and do not complain about it. Why? He uses MPR to counter my attacks. Not a cheap item that sucks all the strength, or most of it with 1 hit.

Superspecialized strats are great, especially when you do it with MPR, not a relatively cheap weapon on a partial tank.

That is my problem with it.


Actually your strat uses an item that is abusive to the game. Useable with less than 1/2 the NW of the items that actual damage dealers use with less dex and less strength. Effectively taking about a 22M hp, 8M str, 5M dex tank with a 250+M NW weapon completely.

What's an actual damage dealer? Cause last I checked I had one of those, my familiar. My tank is not a damage dealer anymore, he's a damage reducer.

Abusive says you, and maybe a few other people. Still an opinion regardless.

You still act like I've got a 100% on you because of this magic item when that's hardly the case, or that I shouldn't even be able to do it just because your team is slightly bigger. There are a lot of reasons I'm able to beat you, the exbow is not the reason alone, I had to set up a bunch of defensive measures just to be able to survive long enough to hit you with the darn thing.

No, actually the exbow is the reason you beat me. All the other defensive measures, including your AS and PL are inadequate unless you use the exbow to leech most of my strength if not all of it.

Your damage dealer is your EF, that I agree. But you do not use 400+AC armor. You do not have a massive HP/PL/TSA minion. You do not use AMF to help vs my SF.

You rely vs me chiefly on the exbow on a tank that is less dex, less strength, much less hp, less NW (much less), and less PTH than mine.

If you used EC like Azthral to beat me and the EF with it, that would be fine. You are actually using MPR to beat me. Not a cheapish item that destroys most tanks with 1-2 hits. Even my 250+NW Mageseeker cannot do that vs your familiar.

So should MPR be the only way that should be able to counter massive nw ranged weapons and/or usd spending?

If one could pay cbd to add damage, why shouldn't one be able to pay to take it away?

Comparing a bow's nw to an exbows nw just doesn't fit, the weapons aren't fighting eachother. What does it matter how big your weapon is vs mine, I'm not touching your weapon, I'm hitting the minion that's holding it.

And you're point is? Does that mean it should never touch you ever? That it should be impossible?

We are going round and round and round.

We just have different opinons on a weapon that at relatively low NW, on a relatively low strength minion with relatively low dex and almost no hp needed can drain most if not all of the strength out of a minion with 22M HP, 8+M str, 5+M dex, +276 DB and over 180 AC.

Making that minion and all its NW essentially useless for the entire battle. Other than a kill slot with some evasion.

My point is that it is a broken binary weapon that can be used on a relative low strength, low dex, low HP minion that with a relatively low NW can do massive destruction to tank teams.

Vs Azthral that actually uses MPR to win.

I don't know about you guys, but to me it looks like Conundrum's EXbow should (almost) never actually hit... why does it hit (relatively often) then ?
It's a +100 unnamed crossbow vs +276 named displacement boots, and 5,313,552 defender DX vs 3,672,000 attacker DX (a -30% DX difference).
Would a higher DX advantage completely nullify the chance to hit or not ?
I'm still fuzzy on the whole weird new to-hit rules taken to the extreme.

My DBs take away all his PTH.

His CTH is base 60.

My dex advantage is 3,672,000/ 5,313,552 = 69%. So 69% of 60 = 41.4% CTH.

Cut by whatever ranged penalties there are.

So his CTH is not actually low, it is just over 41%. Far too much IMO given the devestation that item does to any non heavy armored tank in the game in 1 (possibly 2) hit.

And given I have to use DBs to avoid getting hit, while he can use EBs to boost his dex it is not a dex winning battle for me. Unless I lower my HP and strength. Making his exbow hits that much more effective.

Even if his cth was like .2/.3/.35/.4 the odds of him hitting ranger once in 4 rounds would be: 78%

Are you sure that's how it's supposed to work ?
Because I'm pretty sure once upon a time even a 50% DX advantage (assuming no weapon + nor any evasion/DB were in play) would mean 0 CTH for "him" and base+100% CTH for you...
Or does that only apply when no + nor eva/DB are in play ?

CTH is separate from PTH

That how its work, and its a major issue when its come down the the ax/exbow, since you only need 1 hit for a win and not several like you would with a ELB/MSK or melee tank.

I am in a similar position that ranger is. My ToJ can cancel out any PTH of ppl around my MPR (currently 150) but even 500K Dex will give them about 15% hit on its give hit 5 round and they are at 75% hit 90% if they use a HoC.

Only defence that exist again ex/axbow is very high AC and very HP. Dodging base defence cant work. A option would be to cap str/dex drain at 33% of the total post battle per hit, its give them option to try to reduce the amount of hit under 3 or reduce dmg done.

That doesn't answer my question.

AdminJonathan September 3 2008 12:37 AM EDT

probably. remember, the lowest his chance to hit can get is his weapon's base.

http://www.carnageblender.com/wiki/To-Hit

dex advantage can take CTH down beyond base

that isn't what jon said nor what i saw with just a jigoro.

ranged penalties are all that would take it below base from what i saw.

Dudemus i have no idea what you are trying to say. Care to explain please.

each weapon has a base to hit. the only thing that can eat into that is ranged penalties or in the case of ranged weaons, the melee round penalties.

range penality seem to work only on PTH and not dex CTH

From what I can remember of what Jon said was that Evasion/DB can't take the effective chance to hit below the base weapon chance to hit, but that DX advantage could reduce it below that (and the AoI also).
He was never clear on how the chance to hit mechanic is actually supposed to work.
An admin with access to the code should really post in the wiki how the formula looks like in reality.
And before you go "oh, no, we should endeavour to find it out ourselves"... screw that, no, just freakin' post it.

My impression based on that changelog thread that dudemus is quoting from is that the only way to get any lower than the BTH is with an AoI. Though I don't know if anything has been changed in between Sept. 2008 and now.

Sickone the formula in wiki is exact. Just read its

Is it a reverse-engineered formula, or an actual copypaste of the real game code with explanations ?
And if yes, who put it there ?

I dont know who put its there but all my test show that formula is exact.

We can just get rid of the wiki if it's bothering you...
I'm in the camp that says less is more as far as docs go, if new folks have to ask maybe they'll remember it better.

JS put that there, and it was right through extensive testing when NS was debugging stuff. If dude saw something different, I'd need more testing.

I remember when we were going over this at least 3 years ago.

When Jon showed weapon CTH he explained quite a lot. He also opened the code to let us actually see CTH and PTH in effect.

IIRC this is what I know/think:

Every weapon has a CTH, a dex base weapon Chance to Hit if the dex is the same. That is the value you see on the battle report as ranged/melee base to hit.

Then, on top of the CTH is PTH, which is all the Plus to Hit you get via Leadership, plus on item and plus granted by the ToA. You only see item and ToA plus on the battle report as ranged/melee bonus to hit. Leadership varies depending on the minion alive, so it cannot be shown as a constant.

From that you take the negative PTH from DB, UC, evasion and the RBF from your opponent. You see this total as evasion on the battle report for your defensive rounds.

If the result is positive that is additional percentage to hit. If the result is negative, treat as 0.

Now dex chance to hit was explained as follows: If you have lower dex, you get a percent to hit based upon that ratio times the weapon base CTH of the weapon. If higher I do not know/remember the ratio but the max percent to hit in 100 + weapon base CTH. I think that the max dex you need is 4x for 100%.

You add the PTH to the dex based CTH to get a final %. Remember a negative PTH is counted as 0 in this computation.

The other modifiers are the AoI (flat -20%), missile round penalties (unknown but applied to the final %), and archery skill (if penalty applied to final %).

I could be completely wrong, but playing with this in mind, it holds true fairly well.

Barring a complete misreading, everything Ranger said matches up with the wiki and is correct by all players accounts other than dude.

One thing I left out, the using missile weapon in melee is a penalty to the final chance to hit.

only thing maybe i have miss read

In a case of

dex cth exceed base CTH of the weapon negative pth can apply and is not consider like zero but cant take CTH lower that weapon base cth.

I think the way he worded that he was including it in the pth calculations, like it should be. The wiki has it really straight forward.

Anyway like you said wiki have its right there no point arguing on this.

i could be wrong, it certainly wouldn't be the first time. i just remember jon stating it in that thread and then remember that even with my junctioned jiggy using dex boosting gear and getting numerous hits per round on people, i could still be hit with the junctioned hal teams.

that could also be attributed though to the fact that dex advantage is totally different than dex disadvantage, especially when applied to the 100 base ranged weapons with archery. i remember having those discussions as well.

how does the dex disadvantage figure into the equation again? in effect, if the defender has the dex advantage what ratio is required to lower the bth?

Can we get back on the subject find a solution for the ex/axbow.

I've already found 2... but that's not the topic of this thread...

Titan what are you idea ??

multiminion w/ PL, high AC, medium size EC, they all work. Also magic magic damage works pretty good, but people ignore that one.

That not really a solution its just plain avoiding using physical dmg

This I know is going to be railed up, but I think the solution is to have the CTH of the exbow be 0.

That would force exbow users to actually have a higher dex or put a higher PTH on the weapon to hit. The x of their weapons are much lower than the x's of the damage dealing weapons. The highest of those in use is 10k.

If they can hit then, a drain enough to cripple a tank is worthy.

Right now I have a 22M hp minion, the 2nd largest in the game, with a decent (although some call lightly) armored minion with AC 165. I got my AC up to 215 and nothing changed with respect to the leech. AC, unless real heavy does not matter.

Also, since I would lower the CTH of the ex/axbow, I would also lower the CTH of the other missile weapons 60% AND remove the missile round penalty to hit.

Missile damage goes down a bit, and exbow users actually have to try to hit with decent dex CTH or overcome DBs.

What about the first 3?

you guys are correct, this all seemed deja vu-ish to me so i did some searching.

in my defense i have read nearly every thread created on cb for 8.5 years now and i am old! ; )

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

dex disadvantage has much less of an impact than dex advantage does. that is what makes it difficult to get rid of all hits even with ranged or melee penalties.

You do realize this means you will have 0 dex cth whether you have 0 dex or 1 billion dex regardless of what your opponent has.

Not as I understand things. And when Jon gave us access to the visualized pluses at a time of debugging.

You can get up to a 100%+CTH for max dex advantage. Which I think we calculated or were told it was 4x defenders dex.

So even with a 0 CTH weapon, remember that CTH is % with equal dex, you can get 100% dex based Chance to Hit with max dex advantage.

The worst you get with equal or less dex is 0. For the dexterity part of the equation. You can still hit with less dex via PTH (leadership, ToA and weapon plus).

Which I think we calculated or were told it was 4x defenders dex.


Now its seem its only 100% advantage net you the max dex cth

You can get up to a 100%+CTH for max dex advantage. Which I think we calculated or were told it was 4x defenders dex.

Yes you can, but that DX CTH is calculated by doing this if your DX is less than their DX, it's this: Your DX / Their DX * bth of weapon... if your bth is 0, that will always be zero... see?

that is what gl explained to me in the link i posted. there are also some tables in there showing how it works.

When R < 1, DX CTH = R * BTH. When R > 1, DX CTH = BTH + 100(1 - 1/R^2.2).

Here's DX CTH formulae; this are from JS, and they are correct. R is the ratio of your DX to their DX. This is from the wiki. This would 0 CTH for DX less than your opponent. And more than your opponent would give very little DX CTH.

See the formulae I just posted.

Ah, that is the problem. For dex less than the attacker the percentage times the CTH is a good rule.

However, since I never used CTH in that direct calculation of more dex. I added it at the end.

I used (my dex/their dex) minus 1 then times 33% to a max of 100.

Simple examples

20 dex vs 20 dex = 20/20 = 1. 1-1=0 so 0 added to CTH.

40 dex vs 20 dex = 40/20 = 2. 2-1=1 so 33% added to CTH.

80 dex vs 20 dex = 80/20 = 4. 4-1=3 so a full 100% added to CTH.

To sum.

You attacking:

Equal or less dex vs opponent uses: Your dex/their dex times CTH.

Higher dex than opponent uses: Your dex/their dex minus 1 then times 33%. Then added to CTH.

At least that is what has worked for me all this time, since Jon explained it and opened the code in the fightlog that day.

That's not exactly how it works though. JS did this during NS's debugging to-hit, those formulae are correct.

So even according to his formula, a weapon with CTH of 0 can still have 100 Dex Chance to Hit. Since BTH, weapon base to hit, is added not multiplied is the attacker has greater dex.

Yup, when you have a huge DX advantage you would have a near 100 dex cth. But anything below your opponents you would have 0.

Which is why lowering all CTH by 60, and removing the missile round penalties would be quite interesting and likely acceptable to most people but exbow users, who would actually need a weapon of decent PTH and need some decent dex to hit.

Sorry ranger, I just don't see this as feasible.

Why?

Yeah Imagine this happening against me with a base 12 Mil Dex and Augmented to be as high as i need to make everyone miss. I would totally dominate all physical fights >:-)



just saying..............

lowering the exbow to 0 bth would mean that it could never get more than one hit per round regardless of the dex advantage.

Because it forces ranged into a USD only situation.

As if tanks weren't already forced to use USD...

That is correct but is part of the picture.

They could never get more than 1 DEX based hit per round that is correct.

But.. they could get more hits per round if they had weapon plus or used Leadership or a ToA.


I still do not get your point. If you have more dex, you will have a chance to hit based upon how much extra. If you use a ToA, you get extra PTH. If you use leadership that is even more PTH. And you can use CB to buy some weapon plus.

It would counter the 60 less CTH by removing the missile round penalties. So the ex/ax bow goes to 0. The SoD unfortunately goes to 0, but it can be adjusted if needed to 20-40. The elb/MsB go to 40/39.

USD perhaps for the exbow only, unless you actually want to use dexterity to try to hit. And gives ToA tanks, like Z, a real chance vs exbow users. He has 18M dex after all.

I'd gain more CTH than I lost in Ranger's scenario in the first and second ranged rounds

I have some chance now, that they would miss, this would just make it more even so to speak.

I have a +299 exbow and miss regularly early in ranged, what exactly are you trying to fix?

Yours is the type of weapon that should hit. +299. And you do have a nice amount of dex to back it up.

+100 and less dex vs 276 DBs should have a much much tougher time hitting since 1 hit is most strength loss. 2 hits = all strength loss.

also, capping the exbow to 1 hit per round sure would play heck with its damage output.

for the archer minion, the damage isn't a big deal but for some teams the damage is important especially against enchanters and such.

Dude,

This is not capping the exbow to 1 hit a round. It is 1 dex based hit a round. And in return there are no missile round penalties.

They can get multiple hits using a ToA, having plus on the exbow and using Leadership.

So basically. Your request with the 0 BTH is, unless you have more DX than me you should not be able to hit me without spending enough money to have a higher + than my DBs and AoI?

I mean really, fighting Zen, there's no reason to train DX because the only way to get a hit from DX against him with a 0 BTH is to have over 18mil DX. 17mil DX would get you 0 CTH still since 0 x anything is still 0.

Even fighting you Ranger, based on that rule, the only way to get a guarantee of just 1 hit is to either have 21mil+ DX or a +400 exbow. Having both would only net 2 hits.

You forget about a ToA and Leadership. Should you not have to spend some money to overcome defensive money from DB? Or, since 1 hit = instawin in a lot of case, I will ask you: "Should you be able to win without spending CB as a tank"?


Zen is of course an extreme example. A tank with 18M dex. Hell right, for a weapon as crippling as an exbow, 18M dex should be enough. Or if you want to make the CTH 10 and lower all others by 50, that is ok. 60 is just too high for such a crippling weapon.

You can choose not to train dex, of course, if Zen is your only target. However, other tanks have lower dex. Perhaps you can Dex CTH them.


I only have 5.3M dex, I have 22M HP. Or a huge exbow like Novice's as I spend a lot upping my DBs. If you had novice's exbow, a decent sized ToA and/or leadership, you would have a chance to hit every round, needed only 1 hit, without any dex.

18mil DX should be enough, against base DX. Yes. I can agree with that.

18mil should not be enough against 17mil DX, or even 9mil DX to make your DX CTH a 0.

Essentially, even if I had 20mil DX vs. Zen I would only have a 3.3% chance to hit with that much DX? That's not ok.

I do see your point Josh.

You say you see my point but I kind of expect another post soon with something along the lines of "22mil HP, 276+ DBs, and more DX, what do I do?"

With the current BTH:

3mil DX vs. Zen = 10% DX CTH, 6mil = 20%, etc.

3mil DX vs. your 5mil DX is 36% DX CTH. 1mil is 12%.

Xeno vs. you is only a 42% DX CTH, your DBs completely negate his PTH. It's possible to reduce the 42% further and it doesn't take ranged penalties into account.

Xeno vs. Zen is only a 12.3% DX CTH.

I don't think that's too high. I can wrap my head around 1 hit from exbow being a problem, but I don't think it is the BTH that should be the solution.

There's also already solutions to counter the one hit problem and it's been established that it is not a guarantee 1 hit currently.

In fact, Nat tried to explain to you 2 days ago in this very thread that your defenses against the exbow are flawed. Your response was "So Nat, in your opinion, what is appropriate defense vs the exbow? I really want to read what you have to say." That basically screamed "tell me what to do," at least to me. We shouldn't have to tell you.

I have tried all the things I can think of. Boosting my def to 300 stops a large part of the drain, but then I do pitiful damage anyway due to my lack of archer items.

I use the AoI and still lose over 50%. Since 1 hit in all of ranged is all that is needed. Which is over a 75% chance cumulative for 1 hit.

Right now I could unlearn all my HP, but I won't for 1 item, no matter who skewed it be. And then with less HP, I will be more vulnerable to the damage aspect of the exbow.

You did state you had a problem with the 1 hit being a problem. That is the exact problem I have with it. So it seems we both can agree that 1 hit= insta lose is a problem.

The solutions are somewhat worse than the disease itself. On a single minion character one cannot use PL of course.

But back to the OP, it is one item that certainly allows one to fight up very high and cause the score cascade. Along with other ways such as EC or DM batteries. Difference is the latter are MPR limited. The exbow is far less so.

Use EC, its the single best counter to the kinds of exbows you hate.

Increase the damage output, Lower the drain to a certain % per hit (like a decay hit but for str), cap the drain at a fixed % of the opponents str so that it can't go into negatives but can still be efficient at its job and worth investing money into, put all ranged weapons at 60 bth and give them all a marksman skill to increase bth towards 100.

Changes I can get behind based on personal opinion and suggestions I've read from other players concerning the exbow.

"I have tried all the things I can think of."

Can you say that honestly? Or would a better phrasing be "I've tried everything I'm willing to try?"

I do think part of your problem with the exbow is that you want to be able to run your character a specific way, while also being unwilling to have to make a major change. It is possible to lose MPR and/or NW and still advance your strategy.

That, or you could just learn to be OK with not being unbeatable. The game was purposely designed that way. In fact, the game was supposed to be about just hanging out, chatting, and making friends while playing a game. Being the best wasn't supposed to matter. And it really didn't matter the majority of CB1. That's probably why CB1 had a larger community and was able to retain new players even without an NCB/NUB.

Completely behind either changes Xeno mentioned. The drain would have to be round based and not hit based in my opinion so that even if you hit 3 times in a round it only drains a % once.

A 50% drain of STR would take 2 hits to cut damage in half.

Assuming one hit in 6 ranged rounds, an archer that starts off doing 1mil damage in round 1 would do ~2.7mil damage total instead of 6mil.

Because that would reduce damage to 1/8 of its original by the end of range and because STR also works defensively as a means to reduce physical damage I could see the drain being 25%.

This way if the exbow lands a hit every ranged round for 6 rounds you would start melee doing approx. half the damage you would have with no exbow. Also, as an outlier, if you were starting off doing 1mil a hit and only landing one hit, instead of 6mil damage you would do ~4.1mil in ranged.

This tourney has destroyed all progress towards score stabilization. The damage to our score and CB% will not recover quickly from this, and may never recover unless the problem is fixed. I do not want to play with a broken game.
Do any of you like playing with broken things?
At the center of this is the exbow.
If the exbow did not allow Areo to fight so high, then he would not be draining score from the bottom scores to the top!
By being able to beat guys with MPR more than double his, but still being weak to guys like Rubicon, who in turn is extremely weak to many different cheap strategies that are run by extremely low score, low MPR characters, he is to ruin score all the way to the top, with no real end in sight.
If he couldn't use the exbow how he is using it, then the score drain wouldn't even reach the middle scores, and it wouldn't make even a small ripple throughout the score system.
Think about any situation where a new player or NCB reached a point where he could beat some of the guys at the top.
The scores rebounded very quickly, and they never saw continued drain like this.
Every strategy, except the exbow using one, follows this flow.
NOW does the exbow stick out as a broken item that does not fit into the norm of CB? IT SHOULD! JUST LOOK AT WHAT IT HAS DONE!!!

The current Tourney draining scores and what Areo did with the exbow are two entirely separate issues.

How so? The tourney didn't exacerbate the problem with exbow at all?

No what happened with the tourney would have happened regardless, Everyone is about to get 2b CBD later today, they are going to be fighting every person in the top ranks they can possibly try to beat. All the scores are going to get pulled down after this, its simply a glitch in the T system right now.

And dont worry I plan to re-inject score into the mid range soon enough.

I hate tourneys,then, but there is no way to escape them, because if one doesn't enter, and try to win, then all the damage done by the tourney will go on without even a bit of compensation...

Increase the damage output, Lower the drain to a certain % per hit (like a decay hit but for str), cap the drain at a fixed % of the opponents str so that it can't go into negatives but can still be efficient at its job and worth investing money into, put all ranged weapons at 60 bth and give them all a marksman skill to increase bth towards 100.


Reply: I have suggest some of those change in the past, not sure about the hard cap on STR but a cap per hit would be nice. A increase in dmg and cap on STR would make its less extreme. Any change close to this i think would rally everyone, that would just leave the question of who will make its.

@Duke
if you put the drain on a fixed %, wouldnt a +300 x1 exbow be the same as a +300 x10000 exbow? >.>

Rolling Bonus

First, I am not unbeatable even if the exbow gets fixed/deleted/smashed. There are at least 2 character who can beat me fairly.

Second, remember Spid? Unbeatable.

Third, we have a lower retention rate hear due to ????. It could be the fact nothing has changed, no new changemonths in years. It could be due to the fact there are so many options now, compared to 6 years ago for your playing time. It could be due to the fact that the NUB is like supercrack. You get so big so fast and then see the slog you have to play at. And get the DTs.

Fourth, Joel is completely correct in how the exbow is messing the scores. Look at Aero and tell me that is not abusive to the system.

The drain itself wouldn't be a fixed %, it would still be based off some calculation comparing the damage done and the attacker vs def str etc, but the drain wouldn't be able to do a 100% drain.

How to exactly go about this I'm not sure, as I don't understand the coding behind it. But as an example, completely hypothetical just using random numbers, lets just say that for the calculations now what would constitute a full drain would become maybe a 30-50% drain. If it wasn't enough to do a full drain it would do about 10-25%, if the damage was negligible (ie: coming from a x1 exbow on) it wouldn't do any drain at all.

The fixed % I talked about for the drain cap against the defenders str was simply so that you cant push them into negatives, but you can still take them down to really low damage over time if you hit them enough. For example the max you could take them down to was somewhere between 10-25% of their original Str.

Like I said these are just ideas, I'm sure there are issues that would need to be worked out to make sure it is still a viable weapon. All the numbers I used were just filler numbers and I'm in no way suggesting that those are what they should be.

But if you are going to take away the possibility of a 1-2 shot kill from it, then you need to up the bth chance or even make a skill to do it, because as it stands its not actually easy to hit with these things so any massive decrease in effectiveness is going to make them completely useless. If it hit more often but slowly ramped down the damage as ranged went on it would be a slightly different story IMO.

That coupled with some new supporter item to help regen str during melee I think would be enough to even out this dispute a bit. Just my opinion anyway.

i dont remember spid, i do read that he was from CB1.. what made him unbeatable?

I made this suggestion, and I will try to find the post, over 3 years ago and was dismissed very quickly. Won't say by whom, I will try to find the post.

Here was my suggestion on fixing the exbow, it was 2 years ago:

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002lo4

We had a really good discussion about it then.

yep, that idea was out there (and many, many others) and jon chose to go in a different direction for adjusting the item. he chose to tweak the numbers on it some rather than completely overhauling it.

Problem with that Dude, is we once again have a almost binary factor.

Once you get to the tipping point of damage, you go massive drain. Until then you do much less drain. 1k more on the exbow can really do the difference.

In addition, you get the ability like Aero to fight extremely high. Something that is very hard to do without using most of your MPR in the form of DM or EC.

Titan is technically doing the same thing, except he's using an EC cannon to do it and bump the mid range in the mean time, as well as boost 300k mpr people into the 5-6m range. I personally see no difference between either method, both accomplish the same goal, both are capable of fighting higher then their respective levels because they are both specialized against specific teams. Both teams also have obvious weaknesses.

The main difference being one takes CBD for decent amount of NW and a Tank to accomplish and the other takes an enchanter/multiple enchanters and mpr/mage gear to accomplish.

Eventually Areo's score will get very high but many more people will be able to beat him and start to get a bonus from him, then slowly scores will even out and go back to normal. Or someone from the top can inject score back down into the system if they wanted.

Well considering it has been a while maybe it should be revisited and have the numbers tweaked again or the item overhauled. Understandable Jon's ideas were different for then but they may change a bit for now. If nothing else it is worth a try what's the worst answer we get "No"?

we have been over this many times, it always goes the same way. here is the point where i say:

jon left it binary for a reason.

i then go get the link where jon asked for community input and described that it was a powerful counter for something that is also very powerful.

Titan - 3.5M MPR. Needs most of that MPR to fight high up.

Areo - 1.6M MPR. Needs very little MPR to fight up.

When people use MPR to fight up instead of slapping on a weapon/item that is within the game as far as I am concerned.

Areo could not use any other item in the game to fight as high up as he is. Not the "overpowered" ELB, not the SoD, no melee weapon, no corn or other armor.

Only the exbow allows him to use a relatively moderate NW items, lower than [4x6930] (+73), to fight up as high as he can.

That to me shows how out of balance the exbow is.

That does bring up a point that was made in the past.

Jon never actually played the game. There were plenty of balance changes he thought were fine that after the community chimed in he changed. Or agreed to change. The VB is the classic example.

Also: The very powerful item that needed to be countered is the ELB. I think we can all agree with that. But now, at the later stages of the game, there are plenty of other counters to the ELB.

I can go over all of the again if people need to read them. But there are at least 3 perfectly viable counters right now aside from the exbow to the elb.

And while the elb is quite powerful, it needs a lot of CB to use properly as well as a lot of xp or the ToA. The exbow needs neither. A relatively cheapish exbow on a relatively medium sized minion can do just fine. Vs the super minion ToA archer, who invested all his/her xp in that minion, and a massive amount of CB.

this is my point, i think this is much more likely than asking for an overhaul of the mechanics.

i am speaking as a player, not as an admin here and have no special insight other than years of playing and watching changes.

I think, sadly, most of us in CB have given up hope that new and improved things will occur on a regular basis.

I personally, deep down, know nothing will ever be done about the exbow in the future. Why do I continue to post? Frustration about a game I really like.

However, I did not start this post!!

i always took it be usd on weapons in general rather than just the elb and yes you have posted your alternate counters...they have always been here and weren't added after the exbow adjustment.

i have also posted why i think usd is so powerful on weapons...linear damage mod at a flat cost.

methinks we should just copy and paste the same threads over and over and over and over...

maybe we need a counter-point poster who will come in and post how abusive usd influence is on the game constantly. i see that as the main point here.

for more redundancy, we usually get into the countering net worth with mpr debate about this time which then segues into the "you can always counter usd with more usd" line to which i respond that then we might as well just have people compare their bank accounts.

I've actually read this thread before, and for the most part I agree with it. Like I've said before I'm not opposed to reworking the exbow's drain, I just would like to see it still remain a viable weapon choice. Something not so extreme, but not so pathetic that it completely fails to achieve what it was designed to do (or at least what it seems to have been designed to do).

Having it ramp down damage over time, while allowing it to hit more often will force the exbow users to think about defense and how to soak up the damage in the mean time rather then simply rely on it hitting to nuke damage entirely.

But as I said, I feel like the bth would need to be increased to make this option viable, or at least allow for a skill to make it so.

Again all just opinions on it.

to be clear, i am not saying i want usd interaction to change. i really think that the system is now balanced on the whole in regards to usd influence on weapons through things like the exbow as well as challenge bonus.

as with any sytem, if you look at small interactions within it they may seem extreme. taking the system as a whole though is a different matter and you have to on something like this.

i think that if anything with those items mentioned above changes (short of tweaks as jon already started with the exbow) then we need to make changes to the whole system which gets much more complicated.

I think that is where we strongly disagree.

I'm fine with tweaks as well dude. ;)

Just tweak the common thing among all of the items. What would be besides USD?

Here would be my suggestion:

Part 1: Reduce all bow bth by 40, remove archery.

Part 2: Add in a new skill called Sniper Shot. Trains to 1/5 or 1/4 of str. At full effect it adds 40 cth with any ranged weapon used not reducible by any means and not affected by ranged penalties.

Part 3: Change the % drain to be a flat 75% no matter the x. The damage formula part would still be in effect so low damage will reduce it and high damage will increase it.

Should add in that it also includes all ranged weapons if not that at least all Bows.

Just my opinion on it. Overall I could go for this.

Unless we radically change the exbow drain, this would be too powerful.

Imagine an exbow user having 40% to hit in every missile round, not subject to ranged penalties, not reducible by ANY method?

They would hit on average 1 time every 2.5 rounds just on this skill alone.

I would rather have it add 40 CTH but have it be able to be reduced by dex, DB, AoI and other methods.

Given that right now, exbow users need much less strength and dex than primary bow/sod users, this would not need as much xp as a typical archer for a huge benefit.

Update on the vacuuming... Down to 0 over 9.5M, 4 over 9M, 15 total over 8M. We may have a retired character in the 8 million range in first if this goes for another week or two ;)

It's because of the stupid tourney.