Division Zero is now a part of the My Atlantica Online network. In addition to PvP strategies and videos, we also plan to bring you a full-featured wiki, community forums and even coordinate our own events for players to participate in.
Thank you to all the readers who read and followed this blog when it was limited to a simple page on blogger.com (and, subsequently, much love to blogger.com for hosting this ridiculously amazing service). Thank you very much for your support, and hopefully you will choose to extend this support to my blog's new home, myAO.
See you there!
November 13, 2008
November 10, 2008
Mercenary Analysis: Exorcist
A mercenary meant to control spellcasters in the enemy formation, and empower the spellcasters in one's own.
Rank: C
Basic: Exorcist
Stats: Str 290, Dex 170, Def 260, Int 240, Vit 240, M.Def 285
Upgrade 1: High Exorcist
Stats: Str 350, Dex 190, Def 400, Int 300, Vit 270, M.Def 295
Upgrade 2: Great Exorcist
Stats: Str 380, Dex 200, Def 550, Int 330, Vit 290, M.Def 300
Upgrade 3: Michael
Stats: Str 420, Dex 210, Def 600, Int 350, Vit 320, M.Def 305
Upgrade 4: Hero Michael
Stats: Str 449, Dex 224, Def 660, Int 374, Vit 342, M.Def 305
Historical / Legendary Source:
Michael is an archangel, one of the principal angels in Christian and Islamic tradition. He is viewed as the field commander of the Army of God. He is mentioned by name in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. In the book of Daniel, Michael appears as "one of the chief princes" who in Daniel's vision comes to the angel Gabriel's aid in his contest with the angel of Persia (Dobiel), and is also described there as the advocate of Israel and "great prince who stands up for the children of your [Daniel's] people".
[...]
According to a diary authored by Father Raymond Bishop, a Jesuit priest at Saint Louis University, the mere mention of the name of St. Michael caused scratches on a 13-year old boy during an exorcism. Near the end of the exorcism, the boy saw a vision of the Devil and ten of his helpers engaged in a fiery battle with St. Michael. At one point during the dream, the angel smiled at the boy and said "Dominus." Shortly thereafter, the boy shouted out: "Satan! Satan! I am St. Michael, and I command you Satan, and the other evil spirits to leave the body in the name of Dominus, Immediately." Father Bishop's diary was used by William Peter Blatty as the basis for his book, The Exorcist, and later, by Thomas B. Allen, in his 1993 book Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism.
(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(archangel))
Pros:
Cons:
Abilities:
Breakdown:
Exorcists are pretty much staple mercenaries for just about every build in the world. Do you have any mercenaries in your build that have any methods of immobilizing enemy mercenaries? Do you have an Archer on your team and a way to open up the front line quickly enough to keep the enemy's back row permanently silenced? Do you run any amount of spellcasters in your formation and depend on them to keep your party in good condition or as a source of damage? Do you want to keep your enemy from dropping Holy Guards to remove the humongous amount of DoTs you just laid out all over his formation?
Do you like controlling your opponents and directly influencing what their actions in a turn will be?
If you answered yes, then the Exorcist is for you.
It's really hard to write anything more in a breakdown for the Exorcist because he really is that indispensable. I personally cannot think of a single build that would remain competitively viable at higher levels with no Exorcist presence, simply because no Exorcist presence in my enemy's formation would simply not force me to push forward my standard strategy. Exorcists are something you have to work around, and having that kind of clout in a mercenary is just extraordinarily beneficial.
Example Build:
There's no need to make one. I think every build I've ever made relies on an Exorcist being present in some way, shape or form. Look at other Mercenary Analysis, look forward to a Build Garage... to draw a terrible Yu-Gi-Oh! comparison, if you've ever played old Yu-Gi-Oh! at all, think of the Exorcist as a Pot of Greed or a Raigeki. Why in the hell would you not run one? Either you've got something very special going on with what you have or you simply don't understand what the Exorcist is doing for you. Just because of his ability to give a Monk extra AP to work with every round, you should consider having one in your formation. That's how indispensable the Exorcist is.
Total Grade: Early Game: 9/10 Late Game: 9/10
Rank: C
Basic: ExorcistStats: Str 290, Dex 170, Def 260, Int 240, Vit 240, M.Def 285
Upgrade 1: High Exorcist
Stats: Str 350, Dex 190, Def 400, Int 300, Vit 270, M.Def 295
Upgrade 2: Great Exorcist
Stats: Str 380, Dex 200, Def 550, Int 330, Vit 290, M.Def 300
Upgrade 3: Michael
Stats: Str 420, Dex 210, Def 600, Int 350, Vit 320, M.Def 305
Upgrade 4: Hero Michael
Stats: Str 449, Dex 224, Def 660, Int 374, Vit 342, M.Def 305
Historical / Legendary Source:
Michael is an archangel, one of the principal angels in Christian and Islamic tradition. He is viewed as the field commander of the Army of God. He is mentioned by name in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. In the book of Daniel, Michael appears as "one of the chief princes" who in Daniel's vision comes to the angel Gabriel's aid in his contest with the angel of Persia (Dobiel), and is also described there as the advocate of Israel and "great prince who stands up for the children of your [Daniel's] people".
[...]
According to a diary authored by Father Raymond Bishop, a Jesuit priest at Saint Louis University, the mere mention of the name of St. Michael caused scratches on a 13-year old boy during an exorcism. Near the end of the exorcism, the boy saw a vision of the Devil and ten of his helpers engaged in a fiery battle with St. Michael. At one point during the dream, the angel smiled at the boy and said "Dominus." Shortly thereafter, the boy shouted out: "Satan! Satan! I am St. Michael, and I command you Satan, and the other evil spirits to leave the body in the name of Dominus, Immediately." Father Bishop's diary was used by William Peter Blatty as the basis for his book, The Exorcist, and later, by Thomas B. Allen, in his 1993 book Possessed: The True Story of an Exorcism.
(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(archangel))
Pros:
- Mana Seal. Two turn silence of all spellcasters in an enemy formation. Pretty much, if a monk doesn't keep itself fully awakened with no Combo count on it, you will stun it, limiting the monk's choices as to where to target its Awakening.
- Speed Cast. If you've ever felt your spellcasting mercenaries just never had enough AP in a turn, Speed Cast will make all your problems go away. It also keeps your spellcasters somewhat healthy each turn.
- Speed Cast + Monk = Awakening every turn, if necessary.
- Decent strength, giving it a good source of melee damage.
- Being melee and a swordsman, it has a decent defense rating and good HP, making it a decent choice to rotate a middle line with, and a decent front choice once Guardian Stones are available.
- Surprisingly nice magic defense. Unusually, this may is the only mercenary who has any amount of gains in magic defense as it upgrades.
- Decent AP gain (nothing spectacular, but not bad).
Cons:
- Outside of its obvious applications and skills, it is an otherwise mediocre mercenary.
- Even though it can ostensibly become a decent front line choice, it will find itself being the first mercenary to rotate in any situation because enemies will focus on it. (This can be a good thing, sometimes.)
- Takes good damage from Flame Sword, but isn't fodder to it like other mercenaries seem to be.
- Mana Burn damage can be good, but only when taken to a very high level, which is difficult because Exorcists already have competition from two other excellent skills which take priority.
- Seal Staff is almost useless. It has very little use in PvE, and apparently only at very high levels.
Abilities:
- Mana Seal: All spellcasters in an enemy formation, prevents targets from using skills or spells. 175 AP cost. (9/10)
- Speed Cast: All spellcasters in your formation, adds AP and small amount of healing every turn. Passive. (9/10)
- Mana Burn: Single target, upgrades to row, upgrades to cross. Deals damage to targets' MP and deals that same amount of damage to their HP. 150 AP cost. (7/10)
- Seal Staff: All spellcasters in an enemy formation, lowers attack power and deals damage per turn. 150 AP cost. (2/10)
Breakdown:
Exorcists are pretty much staple mercenaries for just about every build in the world. Do you have any mercenaries in your build that have any methods of immobilizing enemy mercenaries? Do you have an Archer on your team and a way to open up the front line quickly enough to keep the enemy's back row permanently silenced? Do you run any amount of spellcasters in your formation and depend on them to keep your party in good condition or as a source of damage? Do you want to keep your enemy from dropping Holy Guards to remove the humongous amount of DoTs you just laid out all over his formation?
Do you like controlling your opponents and directly influencing what their actions in a turn will be?
If you answered yes, then the Exorcist is for you.
It's really hard to write anything more in a breakdown for the Exorcist because he really is that indispensable. I personally cannot think of a single build that would remain competitively viable at higher levels with no Exorcist presence, simply because no Exorcist presence in my enemy's formation would simply not force me to push forward my standard strategy. Exorcists are something you have to work around, and having that kind of clout in a mercenary is just extraordinarily beneficial.
Example Build:
There's no need to make one. I think every build I've ever made relies on an Exorcist being present in some way, shape or form. Look at other Mercenary Analysis, look forward to a Build Garage... to draw a terrible Yu-Gi-Oh! comparison, if you've ever played old Yu-Gi-Oh! at all, think of the Exorcist as a Pot of Greed or a Raigeki. Why in the hell would you not run one? Either you've got something very special going on with what you have or you simply don't understand what the Exorcist is doing for you. Just because of his ability to give a Monk extra AP to work with every round, you should consider having one in your formation. That's how indispensable the Exorcist is.
Total Grade: Early Game: 9/10 Late Game: 9/10
Mercenary Analysis: Beast Master (Revised)
(This is a revised Analysis. That means that there are significant changes in the writer's opinion from the time of the original writing of the first article and his current feelings on the mercenary. You can read the original article here.)
An axe-toting mercenary that can summon beasts to attack the entire opposing formation.
Rank: C
Basic: Beast Trainer
Stats: Str 280, Dex 170, Def 800, Int 160, Vit 290, M.Def 175
Upgrade 1: Beast Tamer
Stats: Str 350, Dex 180, Def 900, Int 180, Vit 320, M.Def 175
Upgrade 2: Beast Master
Stats: Str 380, Dex 190, Def 1000, Int 210, Vit 350, M.Def 175
Upgrade 3: Zhu Rong
Stats: Str 400, Dex 210, Def 1000+, Int 230, Vit 370, M.Def 175
Upgrade 4: Hero Zhu Rong
Stats: Str 428, Dex 224, Def 1000+, Int 246, Vit 395, M.Def 175
Historical / Legendary Source:
Zhu Rong is the Chinese god of fire and ruler of the southern hemisphere from pre-Qin mythology. He is depicted as a proud man clad in armor wielding a sword and riding on a large tiger. He was one of the gods that helped separate Heaven and Earth and set up Universal Order.
He is most famous for battling his own son Gong Gong, who was a water demon responsible for causing floods. When Zhu Rong heard that his son was attempting to seize the throne of Heaven, he went to stop him. The two of them battled for days across Heaven until both plummeted down to Earth. Finally Gong Gong was defeated and sulked away in shame while Zhu Rong returned to Heaven triumphant, after having won a great battle.
(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Rong)
Pros:
Cons:
Abilities:
Breakdown:
The Beast Master is a very difficult mercenary to rate. It has its uses, and there are in fact builds that all but require a Beast Master to be effective. However, a complete lack of versatility means that this mecenary is not for everyone.
That's what I originally thought. Here's how I feel now.
The Beast Master's first, obvious use is its AoE damage ability. Because of this, it stands to reason that the build best suited to a Beast Master is one that does a good amount of AoE damage and has many different ways of doing this AoE damage. Since the Beast Master uses an axe, it has one point largely in its favor: melee damage. Axes do some of the highest melee damage in the game along with spears, with the major difference being that an axe can hit three mercenaries while a spear can at most hit two without magical assistance. Since the axe can hit everyone in a row, that means that if you drop someone on a front line, you can effectively hit the entire middle line with your axe. This is good if your AoE build also has the capability to stun your opponents, since it adds more stun combo threats to your enemies.
Surprisingly enough, when you completely ignore its Beast Summon skill, the Beast Master can fit its way into many different kinds of builds. It makes a surprisingly decent, intelligent replacement for a Spearman in a three Spearman mid-row build, where its different attack that hits a row over a column proves to be very useful in some instances. Not only that, but it is better at taking damage than a Spearman, which means that the Beast Master might be the mercenary of choice to rotate your weakening front line with. This is all besides her obvious applications in an AoE build. With Seth's Will or Brutal Will, she actually does a good amonut of concentrated high damage, and with a Prophet in the group, her seemingly mediocre accuracy can be improved and her high damage axe can definitely be put to great use along with the aforementioned spells. She is a decent choice for those of you who want to have some variety in your straightforward Spearman strategies, a solid choice for AoE builds, and offers you a stronger mid-line mercenary to rotate your front row with when you need to lay down some heals. All in all, I was very unfair to her in the beginning, but my opinion of her strengths now has greatly improved. Just don't start her off in the front of a formation unless your entire goal is to bait out early Flame Swords, then hide her in the middle, heal her and Will her up.
Example Build:
Variety Option: The Row Sweeper
Level 95
F: LKN / SWO / EXO
M: VIK / BMA / X-M
B: MON / PRO / ORA
This build was made with the idea of being absolutely bizarre in mind. If you're willing to sit through with me for a little, I'll explain to you how this relatively unusual builds work.
Let's start off with the most unusual choice here: three axe users. Your main will be an axe user, and along with those you have your Beast Master and your Viking. So far so good. A lot of people will say, okay, this doesn't seem like a great idea: why would you run a Viking with an Axe main? Bear with me for a little.
The build itself provides a relatively strong front line. Exorcists can become comparable to Swordsmen in the front line if you hand them Guardian Stones, which is what you should be doing at this level anyways. Your front line is also capable of dealing some decent damage and has a major factor with you Exorcist, that aids in control (Mana Seal). This opens up the basic combo of Mana Seal + Freezing Axe on your opponent, already a good start. The idea here, of course, is for your Oracle's level 60 Seth's Will to fire off once you've executed this.
Get ready for an incredibly hilarious front line massacre. With very high Seth's Will, some good high level axes and three Axe users pounding away, it's almost guaranteed that the large amount of spread out damage amongst the three front row mercenaries is going ot stack up very, very quickly. The low AP of axe users is pretty much overcome by the ridiculously high amount of AP that Seth's Will hands to your mercenaries at the beginning of each turn. Have Concentrate up to 60 as well and enjoy what I'm thinking of dubbing the "Atlantica Chainsaw Massacre." You should see the majority of front lines drop within a couple of turns of your Seth's Will going off, gaps suddenly opening up everywhere, and all it takes from there is to hit Holy Guard on the mid row, tag into your Axe users and drop some Freezing Axes all over.
Why not two Vikings, you ask? Vikings have a very low amount of AP per turn, and they don't ever make a good front line rotation mercenary because of their propensity to get dropped faster than a bad habit. Beast Masters are much better to rotate your front row with and they have way more AP per turn. Your main is probably a better option to rotate with than a Viking, in all reality.
Total Grade: Early Game: 7/10 Late Game: 8/10
An axe-toting mercenary that can summon beasts to attack the entire opposing formation.
Rank: C
Basic: Beast TrainerStats: Str 280, Dex 170, Def 800, Int 160, Vit 290, M.Def 175
Upgrade 1: Beast Tamer
Stats: Str 350, Dex 180, Def 900, Int 180, Vit 320, M.Def 175
Upgrade 2: Beast Master
Stats: Str 380, Dex 190, Def 1000, Int 210, Vit 350, M.Def 175
Upgrade 3: Zhu Rong
Stats: Str 400, Dex 210, Def 1000+, Int 230, Vit 370, M.Def 175
Upgrade 4: Hero Zhu Rong
Stats: Str 428, Dex 224, Def 1000+, Int 246, Vit 395, M.Def 175
Historical / Legendary Source:
Zhu Rong is the Chinese god of fire and ruler of the southern hemisphere from pre-Qin mythology. He is depicted as a proud man clad in armor wielding a sword and riding on a large tiger. He was one of the gods that helped separate Heaven and Earth and set up Universal Order.
He is most famous for battling his own son Gong Gong, who was a water demon responsible for causing floods. When Zhu Rong heard that his son was attempting to seize the throne of Heaven, he went to stop him. The two of them battled for days across Heaven until both plummeted down to Earth. Finally Gong Gong was defeated and sulked away in shame while Zhu Rong returned to Heaven triumphant, after having won a great battle.
(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Rong)
Pros:
- Very high defense rating at very low upgrade stages.
- Good vitality produces rather decent HP at later levels.
- Giant Crystals are about the cheapest of the Rank C crystals to obtain.
- Axes do high damage and hit a complete row.
- Full row attack means that Beast Masters are attractive targets for Brutal Will and Seth's Will.
- What seems to be a surprisingly attractive base combo rate combines well with the previous point.
- Beast Summon hits every person in an enemy formation for decent damage.
- The previous two points combined mean that a Beast Master can do damage over a widespread variety of targets.
- Decent magic defense compared to other melee mercenaries, and much better than the other axe mercenary, the Viking.
- AP regeneration increases slightly as mercenary is upgraded.
- High defense (even without a shield) means the Beast Master makes a decent backup tank to relieve and rotate your front line with.
Cons:
- No way of reaching back rows except with Beast Summon.
- Beast Summon is relatively weak until level 100, and even then it does not amount to much more than decent.
- Obnoxiously weak to Flame Sword, making it a sketchy choice for a front line mercenary.
- Despite decent base defense, not a good choice for a main front liner if you're tight on selection for your build.
- Giant Crystals are also required for Exorcists, a very attractive mercenary to spend Crystals on.
- Despite upgrading AP regeneration, AP still regains somewhat slower than most other melee mercenaries save for the Viking.
Abilities:
- Beast Summon: AoE, skill-based damage to enemy; requires special equipment to use. 150 AP cost. (7/10)
Breakdown:
The Beast Master is a very difficult mercenary to rate. It has its uses, and there are in fact builds that all but require a Beast Master to be effective. However, a complete lack of versatility means that this mecenary is not for everyone.
That's what I originally thought. Here's how I feel now.
The Beast Master's first, obvious use is its AoE damage ability. Because of this, it stands to reason that the build best suited to a Beast Master is one that does a good amount of AoE damage and has many different ways of doing this AoE damage. Since the Beast Master uses an axe, it has one point largely in its favor: melee damage. Axes do some of the highest melee damage in the game along with spears, with the major difference being that an axe can hit three mercenaries while a spear can at most hit two without magical assistance. Since the axe can hit everyone in a row, that means that if you drop someone on a front line, you can effectively hit the entire middle line with your axe. This is good if your AoE build also has the capability to stun your opponents, since it adds more stun combo threats to your enemies.
Surprisingly enough, when you completely ignore its Beast Summon skill, the Beast Master can fit its way into many different kinds of builds. It makes a surprisingly decent, intelligent replacement for a Spearman in a three Spearman mid-row build, where its different attack that hits a row over a column proves to be very useful in some instances. Not only that, but it is better at taking damage than a Spearman, which means that the Beast Master might be the mercenary of choice to rotate your weakening front line with. This is all besides her obvious applications in an AoE build. With Seth's Will or Brutal Will, she actually does a good amonut of concentrated high damage, and with a Prophet in the group, her seemingly mediocre accuracy can be improved and her high damage axe can definitely be put to great use along with the aforementioned spells. She is a decent choice for those of you who want to have some variety in your straightforward Spearman strategies, a solid choice for AoE builds, and offers you a stronger mid-line mercenary to rotate your front row with when you need to lay down some heals. All in all, I was very unfair to her in the beginning, but my opinion of her strengths now has greatly improved. Just don't start her off in the front of a formation unless your entire goal is to bait out early Flame Swords, then hide her in the middle, heal her and Will her up.
Example Build:
Variety Option: The Row Sweeper
Level 95
F: LKN / SWO / EXO
M: VIK / BMA / X-M
B: MON / PRO / ORA
This build was made with the idea of being absolutely bizarre in mind. If you're willing to sit through with me for a little, I'll explain to you how this relatively unusual builds work.
Let's start off with the most unusual choice here: three axe users. Your main will be an axe user, and along with those you have your Beast Master and your Viking. So far so good. A lot of people will say, okay, this doesn't seem like a great idea: why would you run a Viking with an Axe main? Bear with me for a little.
The build itself provides a relatively strong front line. Exorcists can become comparable to Swordsmen in the front line if you hand them Guardian Stones, which is what you should be doing at this level anyways. Your front line is also capable of dealing some decent damage and has a major factor with you Exorcist, that aids in control (Mana Seal). This opens up the basic combo of Mana Seal + Freezing Axe on your opponent, already a good start. The idea here, of course, is for your Oracle's level 60 Seth's Will to fire off once you've executed this.
Get ready for an incredibly hilarious front line massacre. With very high Seth's Will, some good high level axes and three Axe users pounding away, it's almost guaranteed that the large amount of spread out damage amongst the three front row mercenaries is going ot stack up very, very quickly. The low AP of axe users is pretty much overcome by the ridiculously high amount of AP that Seth's Will hands to your mercenaries at the beginning of each turn. Have Concentrate up to 60 as well and enjoy what I'm thinking of dubbing the "Atlantica Chainsaw Massacre." You should see the majority of front lines drop within a couple of turns of your Seth's Will going off, gaps suddenly opening up everywhere, and all it takes from there is to hit Holy Guard on the mid row, tag into your Axe users and drop some Freezing Axes all over.
Why not two Vikings, you ask? Vikings have a very low amount of AP per turn, and they don't ever make a good front line rotation mercenary because of their propensity to get dropped faster than a bad habit. Beast Masters are much better to rotate your front row with and they have way more AP per turn. Your main is probably a better option to rotate with than a Viking, in all reality.
Total Grade: Early Game: 7/10 Late Game: 8/10
Rants: The Weekly Championship, continued
I tend to write my articles very quickly, while I generally have the ideas and opinions fresh in my head. I also tend to rely on a few people who tell me about what goes on in the Korean and Japanese servers. The problem, obviously, is that as with anything that you write on spur of the moment, and with any information that you get from a second hand, you're obviously going to run into a few problems. The first, for the former situation, is that you end up realizing that maybe there's more than meets the eye at a first glance. The second, for the latter situation, is that word of mouth will only get you so far.
For a bit on both points, I'm going to have to thank Leyla for scrutinizing and discussing things with me. Mainly relating to the topic of the Weekly Championships. I also would like to thank a few readers who bring up some good points both in comments, PMs and e-mail (the majority of whom choose to remain anonymous).
Anyways, this rant will focus on continuing the Weekly Championship discussion by adding a little more fuel to the fire. For the discussion that was had about the entire idea, you can read the discussion at:
http://atlantica.ndoorsgames.com/center/ATForum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=8149
What we've so far determined is that spreading out a lot of gold is probably an easy way to lead to hyperinflation. With items being rather scarce in some situations, and money going out of control from rewards, it would be relatively easy to see prices for a lot of things simply skyrocket. All of a sudden, all that created money wouldn't have all that much value. Not exactly something we want to achieve. What would not be quite so bad is to either hand out the equipment outright, or pay out Battle Points.
Yes, the points you earn from Free League victories that you can trade in to Pointry. I would like to say the idea is genius, but the flaw exists, of course, that with a lot of people able to get these scarce items now, you will have a lot of equipment flooding the market at much lower prices.
... I'm not sure that's so much of a bad thing. Making things more affordable to all players isn't bound to screw up the economy all that much, considering gold is only really actually created when:
It's also not created in huge amounts, and people still spend the gold in ways that the gold is effectively "eliminated" from the system, such as buying things at fixed prices, going to Goncourt, training skills from skill masters, so on and so forth.
Therefore, the new tournament system can just hand out 64000 points to the winner, 32000 to second, so on and so forth. Perhaps halve the rewards, but make it so that winning at least once nets you way more than a Free League victory. If it happens that Conqueror's Equipment Boxes aren't 4000 points like I suppose they are, all you have to do is more or less scale it so that the victor could ostensibly buy 12 Conqueror's Equipment Boxes with the first prize, because that's more or less what they can do currently with the established market price on, say, Mycenae, compared to the amount of gold they would win if Atlantica Gold Coins were worth 1 million each. If they're about 1200 per box, you could say that 16000 for the first place finisher is about right. Second gets 8000, third gets 4000, fourth gets 2000, fifth through eighth get 1000, top sixteen get 500, top thirty-two get 250, top sixty-four get 125. Want to be nice? Participating at all gives you 62 points. That's about, say, two Warrior's Signs. ~400k if you don't crowd the market. As with the original system I proposed, you can only get up to a maximum of 16000 points total by participating in Weekly Championships, and if at any point you make 4000 points or more during a weekend, you are no longer allowed to participate in Weekly Championships (so you pretty much can't consistently place third or second, for example, to collude to let your buddies get more points than anyone else in the tournament).
Because battle points can only be spent on equipment, then there's no actual monetary crash. In fact, supply increases to meet the demand, so prices can come down a little and more people can afford to deck out in nice equipment to face the much more equipped players at the top of the ladder. Parity for those rising up the ranks could actually be achieved! Sure, the top winner will probably get a lot more equipment in the end, but chances are that he will end up putting his older things up for sale or simply choose to sell boxes to stock up on gold. The second place can buy about half the boxes which will possibly put him up to contend the next time they fight.
Here's where I'll diverge a little from what's discussed, and you can comment on this if you'd like or not -- the probability of it happening is probably low, but it's worth tossing out there. I think that, on top of all this, you could offer a lot more things with battle points. I'm figuring you should probably offer additional items, such as crystals, jewels, growth vials, vials of potential and 100k experience books (which already exist, mind you). You'd probably say, well, why would you want to give all that? The major reason is actually surprisingly because there are times and situations where having other people catch up isn't always just an equipment situation. The wealthiest person in the server probably has no need to obtain any of these items. Not only that, but people who are almost entirely devoted to PvP don't have a particularly easy way to obtain these items short of burning Battle Points off into Warrior's Signs and selling them for profits to buy the crystals with, or to buy quest resets so they can spend an inordinately large amount of time just trudging forward to get the crystals they need to upgrade.
Having people repeat the Cannoneer quest over and over to get Secret Vials of Potential, for instance, is not exactly great when it's literally the only reliable way to get your hands on them. Maybe letting players win lots of fights in the Free League to trade some points for a vial is not that bad of an idea. Options are always nice. Most of the repeatable casket quests that offer huge rewards anyways, such as six jewels that could sell for about a market price of 700k each. That's 4.2 million in gold, which is about what a Conqueror's box would cost. Since the box is worth about 1200, divide 1200 by 6 and you get 300. 300 battle points for a jewel. Simple.
The only problem is that some items probably should be a little harder to get than that. The Cannoneer quest literally gives this instead of jewels, and because there is no market price, it's hard to find out where you would begin to balance it. I would suggest that each vial in this system actually cost about 900, which is about enough for a winner to snatch 17 of the vials in my suggested point schematic.
Growth vials are a completely different beast and I refuse to touch the damn topic related to them without some well-earned sleep. Really, all in all, I think we all saw that the system was kind of busted and came up with a pretty decent, solid way to fix it and make players wealthier without actually causing ridiculous hyperinflation.
Anyways, for tomorrow's schedule I will be editing my review of the Beast Trainer and showing her a little bit more love. After watching a few matches and closely analyzing possibilities, it turns out that she does have a pretty good few uses. Also, Spearmen are probably not worth a 10 in the endgame (likeliest a 9, in my opinion), and after actually going out to watch a few matches I've also seen that the build I've suggested isn't exactly as cream of the crop in Korea as I was first told (hint: when writing and seeking some sort of journalistic integrity, make it a point to NOT go by word of mouth from people who claim to have been "totally there and watching matches unfold" -- confirm your resources). I want to write about the Witch, but I feel as if I haven't explored it enough to give it a good analysis. I may skip her to move to something I definitely am more familiar with, the Exorcist. I also would like to finally get around to finishing this Build Garage article that is just sitting here, staring at me. I haven't forgotten. I promise.
Thank you for reading, thank you for your comments, and most of all, thank you for your criticism. I'm deeply thankful for the latter if only because the only thing it can do is help me improve the quality of the content. Keep your comments, thoughts, suggestions and criticisms coming, whether it be by PM, forum, e-mail or otherwise.
For a bit on both points, I'm going to have to thank Leyla for scrutinizing and discussing things with me. Mainly relating to the topic of the Weekly Championships. I also would like to thank a few readers who bring up some good points both in comments, PMs and e-mail (the majority of whom choose to remain anonymous).
Anyways, this rant will focus on continuing the Weekly Championship discussion by adding a little more fuel to the fire. For the discussion that was had about the entire idea, you can read the discussion at:
http://atlantica.ndoorsgames.com/center/ATForum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=8149
What we've so far determined is that spreading out a lot of gold is probably an easy way to lead to hyperinflation. With items being rather scarce in some situations, and money going out of control from rewards, it would be relatively easy to see prices for a lot of things simply skyrocket. All of a sudden, all that created money wouldn't have all that much value. Not exactly something we want to achieve. What would not be quite so bad is to either hand out the equipment outright, or pay out Battle Points.
Yes, the points you earn from Free League victories that you can trade in to Pointry. I would like to say the idea is genius, but the flaw exists, of course, that with a lot of people able to get these scarce items now, you will have a lot of equipment flooding the market at much lower prices.
... I'm not sure that's so much of a bad thing. Making things more affordable to all players isn't bound to screw up the economy all that much, considering gold is only really actually created when:
- Items are sold to an NPC vendor (including gold coins, etc.)
- Monsters are killed in combat
- Towns pay taxes to their guilds
- Quests
It's also not created in huge amounts, and people still spend the gold in ways that the gold is effectively "eliminated" from the system, such as buying things at fixed prices, going to Goncourt, training skills from skill masters, so on and so forth.
Therefore, the new tournament system can just hand out 64000 points to the winner, 32000 to second, so on and so forth. Perhaps halve the rewards, but make it so that winning at least once nets you way more than a Free League victory. If it happens that Conqueror's Equipment Boxes aren't 4000 points like I suppose they are, all you have to do is more or less scale it so that the victor could ostensibly buy 12 Conqueror's Equipment Boxes with the first prize, because that's more or less what they can do currently with the established market price on, say, Mycenae, compared to the amount of gold they would win if Atlantica Gold Coins were worth 1 million each. If they're about 1200 per box, you could say that 16000 for the first place finisher is about right. Second gets 8000, third gets 4000, fourth gets 2000, fifth through eighth get 1000, top sixteen get 500, top thirty-two get 250, top sixty-four get 125. Want to be nice? Participating at all gives you 62 points. That's about, say, two Warrior's Signs. ~400k if you don't crowd the market. As with the original system I proposed, you can only get up to a maximum of 16000 points total by participating in Weekly Championships, and if at any point you make 4000 points or more during a weekend, you are no longer allowed to participate in Weekly Championships (so you pretty much can't consistently place third or second, for example, to collude to let your buddies get more points than anyone else in the tournament).
Because battle points can only be spent on equipment, then there's no actual monetary crash. In fact, supply increases to meet the demand, so prices can come down a little and more people can afford to deck out in nice equipment to face the much more equipped players at the top of the ladder. Parity for those rising up the ranks could actually be achieved! Sure, the top winner will probably get a lot more equipment in the end, but chances are that he will end up putting his older things up for sale or simply choose to sell boxes to stock up on gold. The second place can buy about half the boxes which will possibly put him up to contend the next time they fight.
Here's where I'll diverge a little from what's discussed, and you can comment on this if you'd like or not -- the probability of it happening is probably low, but it's worth tossing out there. I think that, on top of all this, you could offer a lot more things with battle points. I'm figuring you should probably offer additional items, such as crystals, jewels, growth vials, vials of potential and 100k experience books (which already exist, mind you). You'd probably say, well, why would you want to give all that? The major reason is actually surprisingly because there are times and situations where having other people catch up isn't always just an equipment situation. The wealthiest person in the server probably has no need to obtain any of these items. Not only that, but people who are almost entirely devoted to PvP don't have a particularly easy way to obtain these items short of burning Battle Points off into Warrior's Signs and selling them for profits to buy the crystals with, or to buy quest resets so they can spend an inordinately large amount of time just trudging forward to get the crystals they need to upgrade.
Having people repeat the Cannoneer quest over and over to get Secret Vials of Potential, for instance, is not exactly great when it's literally the only reliable way to get your hands on them. Maybe letting players win lots of fights in the Free League to trade some points for a vial is not that bad of an idea. Options are always nice. Most of the repeatable casket quests that offer huge rewards anyways, such as six jewels that could sell for about a market price of 700k each. That's 4.2 million in gold, which is about what a Conqueror's box would cost. Since the box is worth about 1200, divide 1200 by 6 and you get 300. 300 battle points for a jewel. Simple.
The only problem is that some items probably should be a little harder to get than that. The Cannoneer quest literally gives this instead of jewels, and because there is no market price, it's hard to find out where you would begin to balance it. I would suggest that each vial in this system actually cost about 900, which is about enough for a winner to snatch 17 of the vials in my suggested point schematic.
Growth vials are a completely different beast and I refuse to touch the damn topic related to them without some well-earned sleep. Really, all in all, I think we all saw that the system was kind of busted and came up with a pretty decent, solid way to fix it and make players wealthier without actually causing ridiculous hyperinflation.
Anyways, for tomorrow's schedule I will be editing my review of the Beast Trainer and showing her a little bit more love. After watching a few matches and closely analyzing possibilities, it turns out that she does have a pretty good few uses. Also, Spearmen are probably not worth a 10 in the endgame (likeliest a 9, in my opinion), and after actually going out to watch a few matches I've also seen that the build I've suggested isn't exactly as cream of the crop in Korea as I was first told (hint: when writing and seeking some sort of journalistic integrity, make it a point to NOT go by word of mouth from people who claim to have been "totally there and watching matches unfold" -- confirm your resources). I want to write about the Witch, but I feel as if I haven't explored it enough to give it a good analysis. I may skip her to move to something I definitely am more familiar with, the Exorcist. I also would like to finally get around to finishing this Build Garage article that is just sitting here, staring at me. I haven't forgotten. I promise.
Thank you for reading, thank you for your comments, and most of all, thank you for your criticism. I'm deeply thankful for the latter if only because the only thing it can do is help me improve the quality of the content. Keep your comments, thoughts, suggestions and criticisms coming, whether it be by PM, forum, e-mail or otherwise.
November 7, 2008
Rant: The Weekly Championships
Okay, look.
I love the Free League more than anyone. I love Weekly Championships. I love the Milestone Mettle tournaments. It's a great way to enjoy PvP, they happen very often, and the rewards are pretty decent. They're all fine and dandy.
But, there's a huge problem.
Weekly Championship rewards are skewed. Ridiculous. Completely unbalanced, even. The winner of the Weekly Championship wins a Heavenly Horse that lasts for 7 days. That's cool. But they also win a base of 15 Atlantica Gold Coins, with another gold coin per participant in the tournament, with the maximum possible that can be earned 50 per tournament.
Atlantica Gold Coins sell for 1,200,000 gold. That's pretty much 60 million gold for reaching first place. And that's not even counting all the Atlantica Silver Coins you get every time you beat someone, and the Atlantica Copper Coins you get for each fight you participate in. All in all you can probably walk away with something like 70 million gold every time you win a Weekly Championship.
That's awesome. But that isn't the actual problem, nor is it the reason why the rewards are so skewed in the first place.
The biggest problem is that the rest of the players get completely stiffed on rewards. Players do not get anything resembling or even remotely compared to the amount of money that you get for winning first place. I'm not saying they should get a ton of money, but I'm saying that there should be more incentive to participate in Weekly Tournaments than to pretty much give your current server's impossibly dominating force an even larger amount of money than he or she already has. And you know why that player will continue to remain unchallenged in the top seat of the Weekly Championships? Because there is simply no way for any other players to amass the amount of wealth he has in that amount of time, short of turning into Chinese gold farmers or spending an incredibly large amount of real money to buy gold from said Chinese gold farmers.
The player in first place can effectively buy himself anything. Not only that, but sometimes they allow the player in first place to participate in the tournament on the next day, so they can play on Saturday AND Sunday. Not only that, but with their incredibly dominant position, those people are guaranteed at least one victory every weekend, which means 50 additional million in gold for that person, with no actual sizable rewards for second place, third place, fourth place, top eight, and so on. There is absolutely no incentive to participate for people, save for the small amount of money they might get for participating in the first place (which, incidentally, is trash), which only people who are practically broke will begin to appreciate.
I propose a solution to the system, of course: give more rewards all around to more players, and slightly curb the rewards that the first place player gains. This is not difficult to do, and can be done relatively easily if you adjust the way the Championship tournaments work to be more similar to the Free League time-per-game system. Not only that, but you have to rework the tournament system entirely: make it like a real tournament, with a real progression.
First off, cut off the minimum registration requirement to 9-man teams, so as to cull out the players who do not really have any realistic chance of victory. After that, determine the kind of bracket you're going to need, anywhere from an 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 or 1024-man bracket. From there on you're going to need to see how many people are "over" in the bracket. Cap entries at 1024. Make your brackets properly seeded by separating the highest divisions from the lowest divisions as normal. However, if you have a mismatch in the amount of people (let's say you have 128-256 people, but not exactly either amount), have the lowest division/level people fight each other first in what you will call a preliminary qualifier round. You accomplish this by matching enough of the lowest division/level people so that when all the matches between those players are over, you will have effectively "cut out" enough of the lower division players to make a bracket of the proper size, say 128 men.
So if I had 130 players, I would have an entire round to start dedicated solely to two matches, each match featuring two Division 16 players with 9-man teams against each other. The winners of those two matches "qualify" into the real 128 man bracket, and the bracket is immediately generated with standard seeding, highest division VS lowest. If people disconnect, make sure the game remembers where they are in the bracket, and give the appropriate people byes in the tournament rounds, instead of simply having them play someone else. If you just have them play someone, this will skew the brackets near the last matches and you will end up with situations such as 3 people in the semi-finals, with one person just waiting for another to win, which is a situation you do not want. When you get to the top 4, and after you have decided what the finals are going to be, have the people who are tied for 3rd place face each other to determine who will actually be placed 3rd.
With this you now have a clear record of the following: 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place, top 8, top 16, top 32, top 64. Your main bracket for this tournament was 128 men, right? So this, surprisingly enough, is the easiest part:
Earning at least 16 AGC at any point in time throughout a weekend through tournaments will lock you out from participating from any other tournaments that weekend.
This keeps players from amassing too much wealth by, say, consistently trying to place 2nd. This will make people want to aim for the top. It also keeps people from colluding and forfeiting their final match so that they can get even more rewards to allow themselves to participate again. The only thing it realistically doesn't prevent is people who, being able to win first place relatively easily, will try to run the system to place themselves in a situation where they will have about 15 AGC and then win the tournament. This is relatively easy to monitor and cap: simply enforce by code that you can only win up to 64 AGC total throughout a weekend by the means of tournaments. You've effectively set a limit to the amount of gold that can be won throughout a weekend by the means of tournaments.
Anyways, what about smaller tournaments? The trick is to cut rewards when things are smaller than 128, and keep rewards the same even when tournaments go up to 256 or 512. A 256 man bracket simply means you'll have to win 3 fights instead of 2 to land in the money, and 512 means you'll have to win four. If you're good enough, this is probably already feasible and possible, and in all reality I don't see tournaments suddenly getting that kind of attendance throughout the weekend. For smaller tournaments, simply remove the top reward amount and shift the entire thing up, so that now 1st place wins 32 AGC, 2nd place wins 16, 3rd wins 8, so on and so forth.
Having participated in, run and volunteered to staff a large amount of tournaments for fighting games (notably Evolution, which is the biggest tournament in the USA, which I have attended twice and was part of staff last year), I think the above system could possibly fix all the problems the Atlantica tournament system currently has. Tell me what you think about this, and if you're a developer or a GM, please pay some attention.
We could all use a little more wealth for being good at PvP.
I love the Free League more than anyone. I love Weekly Championships. I love the Milestone Mettle tournaments. It's a great way to enjoy PvP, they happen very often, and the rewards are pretty decent. They're all fine and dandy.
But, there's a huge problem.
Weekly Championship rewards are skewed. Ridiculous. Completely unbalanced, even. The winner of the Weekly Championship wins a Heavenly Horse that lasts for 7 days. That's cool. But they also win a base of 15 Atlantica Gold Coins, with another gold coin per participant in the tournament, with the maximum possible that can be earned 50 per tournament.
Atlantica Gold Coins sell for 1,200,000 gold. That's pretty much 60 million gold for reaching first place. And that's not even counting all the Atlantica Silver Coins you get every time you beat someone, and the Atlantica Copper Coins you get for each fight you participate in. All in all you can probably walk away with something like 70 million gold every time you win a Weekly Championship.
That's awesome. But that isn't the actual problem, nor is it the reason why the rewards are so skewed in the first place.
The biggest problem is that the rest of the players get completely stiffed on rewards. Players do not get anything resembling or even remotely compared to the amount of money that you get for winning first place. I'm not saying they should get a ton of money, but I'm saying that there should be more incentive to participate in Weekly Tournaments than to pretty much give your current server's impossibly dominating force an even larger amount of money than he or she already has. And you know why that player will continue to remain unchallenged in the top seat of the Weekly Championships? Because there is simply no way for any other players to amass the amount of wealth he has in that amount of time, short of turning into Chinese gold farmers or spending an incredibly large amount of real money to buy gold from said Chinese gold farmers.
The player in first place can effectively buy himself anything. Not only that, but sometimes they allow the player in first place to participate in the tournament on the next day, so they can play on Saturday AND Sunday. Not only that, but with their incredibly dominant position, those people are guaranteed at least one victory every weekend, which means 50 additional million in gold for that person, with no actual sizable rewards for second place, third place, fourth place, top eight, and so on. There is absolutely no incentive to participate for people, save for the small amount of money they might get for participating in the first place (which, incidentally, is trash), which only people who are practically broke will begin to appreciate.
I propose a solution to the system, of course: give more rewards all around to more players, and slightly curb the rewards that the first place player gains. This is not difficult to do, and can be done relatively easily if you adjust the way the Championship tournaments work to be more similar to the Free League time-per-game system. Not only that, but you have to rework the tournament system entirely: make it like a real tournament, with a real progression.
First off, cut off the minimum registration requirement to 9-man teams, so as to cull out the players who do not really have any realistic chance of victory. After that, determine the kind of bracket you're going to need, anywhere from an 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512 or 1024-man bracket. From there on you're going to need to see how many people are "over" in the bracket. Cap entries at 1024. Make your brackets properly seeded by separating the highest divisions from the lowest divisions as normal. However, if you have a mismatch in the amount of people (let's say you have 128-256 people, but not exactly either amount), have the lowest division/level people fight each other first in what you will call a preliminary qualifier round. You accomplish this by matching enough of the lowest division/level people so that when all the matches between those players are over, you will have effectively "cut out" enough of the lower division players to make a bracket of the proper size, say 128 men.
So if I had 130 players, I would have an entire round to start dedicated solely to two matches, each match featuring two Division 16 players with 9-man teams against each other. The winners of those two matches "qualify" into the real 128 man bracket, and the bracket is immediately generated with standard seeding, highest division VS lowest. If people disconnect, make sure the game remembers where they are in the bracket, and give the appropriate people byes in the tournament rounds, instead of simply having them play someone else. If you just have them play someone, this will skew the brackets near the last matches and you will end up with situations such as 3 people in the semi-finals, with one person just waiting for another to win, which is a situation you do not want. When you get to the top 4, and after you have decided what the finals are going to be, have the people who are tied for 3rd place face each other to determine who will actually be placed 3rd.
With this you now have a clear record of the following: 1st place, 2nd place, 3rd place, 4th place, top 8, top 16, top 32, top 64. Your main bracket for this tournament was 128 men, right? So this, surprisingly enough, is the easiest part:
- 1st Place: 64 AGC = 64
- 2nd Place: 32 AGC = 32
- 3rd Place: 16 AGC = 16
- 4th Place: 8 AGC = 8
- Top 8: 4 AGC = 8 x 4 = 32
- Top 16: 2 AGC = 16 x 2 = 32
- Top 32: 1 AGC = 32 x 1 = 32
Earning at least 16 AGC at any point in time throughout a weekend through tournaments will lock you out from participating from any other tournaments that weekend.
This keeps players from amassing too much wealth by, say, consistently trying to place 2nd. This will make people want to aim for the top. It also keeps people from colluding and forfeiting their final match so that they can get even more rewards to allow themselves to participate again. The only thing it realistically doesn't prevent is people who, being able to win first place relatively easily, will try to run the system to place themselves in a situation where they will have about 15 AGC and then win the tournament. This is relatively easy to monitor and cap: simply enforce by code that you can only win up to 64 AGC total throughout a weekend by the means of tournaments. You've effectively set a limit to the amount of gold that can be won throughout a weekend by the means of tournaments.
Anyways, what about smaller tournaments? The trick is to cut rewards when things are smaller than 128, and keep rewards the same even when tournaments go up to 256 or 512. A 256 man bracket simply means you'll have to win 3 fights instead of 2 to land in the money, and 512 means you'll have to win four. If you're good enough, this is probably already feasible and possible, and in all reality I don't see tournaments suddenly getting that kind of attendance throughout the weekend. For smaller tournaments, simply remove the top reward amount and shift the entire thing up, so that now 1st place wins 32 AGC, 2nd place wins 16, 3rd wins 8, so on and so forth.
Having participated in, run and volunteered to staff a large amount of tournaments for fighting games (notably Evolution, which is the biggest tournament in the USA, which I have attended twice and was part of staff last year), I think the above system could possibly fix all the problems the Atlantica tournament system currently has. Tell me what you think about this, and if you're a developer or a GM, please pay some attention.
We could all use a little more wealth for being good at PvP.
November 6, 2008
Mercenary Analysis: Spearman
An aggressive mercenary wielding a spear, specialized in dealing high focus damage in a formation.
Rank: D
Basic: Spearman
Stats: Str 310, Dex 210, Def 330, Int 120, Vit 240, M.Def 110
Upgrade 1: Spear Fighter
Stats: Str 350, Dex 230, Def 450, Int 160, Vit 270, M.Def 110
Upgrade 2: Spear Warrior
Stats: Str 380, Dex 250, Def 550, Int 190, Vit 300, M.Def 110
Upgrade 3: Zhao Yun
Stats: Str 440, Dex 250, Def 750, Int 220, Vit 330, M.Def 110
Upgrade 4: Hero Zhao Yun
Stats: Str 470, Dex 267, Def 990, Int 235, Vit 353, M.Def 110
Historical / Legendary Source:
Zhao Yun was a major military general during the civil wars of the late Han Dynasty and during the Three Kingdoms era of China. For most of his career, Zhao Yun served the warlord Liu Bei, playing a part in the establishment of Shu Han. In literature and folklore he is lauded as the third member of the Five Tiger Generals.
In 208, Zhao Yun distinguished himself at the Battle of Changban. When Liu Bei was fleeing in the chaos, he left his family behind. Then Zhao Yun disappeared to the north, prompting suspicion that Zhao Yun had surrendered to Cao Cao. When someone reported that to Liu Bei, Liu Bei angrily threw a handaxe and said "Zilong would never desert me". Sure enough, Zhao Yun came back with Liu Bei's infant son Liu Shan in his arms, also bringing back his wife Lady Gan. With this, Zhao Yun was promoted to General of the Standard.
(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Yun)
Pros:
Cons:
Abilities:
Main-Only Abilities:
Breakdown:
It's kind of difficult to not rant and rave about just how good the Spearman is as a mercenary.
It is, for starters, the best possible unit to cast Brutal Will or Seth's Will on. The reasons why are immediately clear: not only do they hit two mercenaries deep in a formation, but they already have high combo rates to start. Prophets also increase the damage output and accuracy of these mercenaries even further and keep them relatively healthy every turn, which just adds to the attractiveness of these mercenaries.
In reality, its simple to see the Spearman's place in a formation. It is a mercenary that definitely should never be selected by itself: there should always be at least two spearmen in a formation that plans on running a spearman at all. The main reason for this is because of Lightning Spear: the effectiveness of this attack almost entirely relies on either how much you can stack it on a single columns, or how many columns you can effectively incapacitate with clever turn shifting and proper focusing of the skill itself. Not only that, but with the high amount of damage output these mercenaries have, not putting them in a row with more of the same to simply drop a Seth's Will onto is almost criminal.
Any melee build benefits from the presence of at least two spearmen. I'll go as far to suggest that if you are planning to focus on melee damage as your strategy, you should simply have three spearmen as your middle line and go with that. It is simply the most effective, high damage output you can get along with either of the two Will spells and a Prophet boosting your melee's damage and accuracy. It does not make a particularly good front liner, although it can definitely survive a couple of hits for a couple of turns, making it a decent choice if you plan to rotate your mercenaries in battle to distribute damage around them to make healing more efficient. Pretty much a staple of every credible melee-oriented build in the game.
Example Build:
Level 85
F: WIT / X-M / EXO
M: SPM / SPM / SPM
B: MON / PRO / ORA
The build is pretty much the top build in Korea at the moment from what seems to be the majority of reports of the game's balance. The build is relatively straightforward: use your front line to defend and pressure your opponents while you use your middle line to actually put damage out. The Witch occasionally makes it rain meteors on your opponents to tack on additional damage, your Axe main is focused entirely on doing the Freezing Axe + Mana Seal combination on your opponents, and your Seth's Willed spearmen actually are what makes mincemeat out of your opponent. Simple, effective, deadly, and overpowered. Run this if you want to be both deadly and completely and absolutely unoriginal (because you will be rocking the same build as just about everyone else who is very happy to jump on the bandwagon the Koreans have started), and remember to replace one of your Spearmen with a Lady Knight and another with a Spartan down the line.
Total Grade: Early Game: 9/10 Late Game: 10/10
Rank: D
Basic: SpearmanStats: Str 310, Dex 210, Def 330, Int 120, Vit 240, M.Def 110
Upgrade 1: Spear Fighter
Stats: Str 350, Dex 230, Def 450, Int 160, Vit 270, M.Def 110
Upgrade 2: Spear Warrior
Stats: Str 380, Dex 250, Def 550, Int 190, Vit 300, M.Def 110
Upgrade 3: Zhao Yun
Stats: Str 440, Dex 250, Def 750, Int 220, Vit 330, M.Def 110
Upgrade 4: Hero Zhao Yun
Stats: Str 470, Dex 267, Def 990, Int 235, Vit 353, M.Def 110
Historical / Legendary Source:
Zhao Yun was a major military general during the civil wars of the late Han Dynasty and during the Three Kingdoms era of China. For most of his career, Zhao Yun served the warlord Liu Bei, playing a part in the establishment of Shu Han. In literature and folklore he is lauded as the third member of the Five Tiger Generals.
In 208, Zhao Yun distinguished himself at the Battle of Changban. When Liu Bei was fleeing in the chaos, he left his family behind. Then Zhao Yun disappeared to the north, prompting suspicion that Zhao Yun had surrendered to Cao Cao. When someone reported that to Liu Bei, Liu Bei angrily threw a handaxe and said "Zilong would never desert me". Sure enough, Zhao Yun came back with Liu Bei's infant son Liu Shan in his arms, also bringing back his wife Lady Gan. With this, Zhao Yun was promoted to General of the Standard.
(Source: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Yun)
Pros:
- Spears have ridiculously high attack power. There's just not much more you can say about that.
- High strength, higher even than axe-wielding mercenaries, which contributes to the former point.
- Spears also hit the mercenary immediately behind the target for half the damage dealt to the main target.
- Spearmen combo and evasion rate tends to be higher than that of other mercenaries'.
- Lightning Spear deals AP damage, as well as having the spear's normal reach instead of simply doing its effect to the main target.
- Lightning Spear reaches the back row when the spearman hits its third upgrade at level 80.
- Melee mercenary, which means it plays very well with prophets.
- Solid AP regeneration with low variability (70~80 per turn).
- Generally absurd combo rates when paired with Seth's Will means the physical damage output of a Spearman is among the highest -- if not the highest -- of any mercenary in the game, and definitely the highest potential damage per round of the B-class mercenaries.
Cons:
- Despite being melee, it takes rather high damage, even with a surprisingly decent amount of defense.
- Defense does not ever reach the 1000 barrier, even though it comes surprisingly close at the level 100 upgrade (990).
- Flame Sword fodder once it can be hit by Swordsmen; these mercenaries are not particularly difficult to bring down.
- Somewhat low magic defense compared to other equivalent mercenaries, which seems to be the uniting theme for spear mercenaries.
- The Broken Spear debuff obliterates the damage spears do at higher levels, and the current metagame practically demands that Prophets make this their debuff of choice over any other due to the prevalence of Spearmen, which means smart opponents will keep this on your Spearmen unless you scroll or Holy Guard it off.
Abilities:
- Lightning Spear: Two targets in a line, skill-based damage to enemy that damages AP; at the mercenary's third upgrade and above, attack range increases to entire column. 150 AP cost. (8/10)
- Deadly Strike: High powered, single-target, generic skill-based damage to enemy. 600 AP cost. (7/10)
Main-Only Abilities:
- Guard Dispel: Remove Holy Guard from an enemy row. 150 AP Cost. (9/10)
- Break Down: Area of Effect, generic skill-based damage to enemy. 150 AP Cost. (5/10)
Breakdown:
It's kind of difficult to not rant and rave about just how good the Spearman is as a mercenary.
It is, for starters, the best possible unit to cast Brutal Will or Seth's Will on. The reasons why are immediately clear: not only do they hit two mercenaries deep in a formation, but they already have high combo rates to start. Prophets also increase the damage output and accuracy of these mercenaries even further and keep them relatively healthy every turn, which just adds to the attractiveness of these mercenaries.
In reality, its simple to see the Spearman's place in a formation. It is a mercenary that definitely should never be selected by itself: there should always be at least two spearmen in a formation that plans on running a spearman at all. The main reason for this is because of Lightning Spear: the effectiveness of this attack almost entirely relies on either how much you can stack it on a single columns, or how many columns you can effectively incapacitate with clever turn shifting and proper focusing of the skill itself. Not only that, but with the high amount of damage output these mercenaries have, not putting them in a row with more of the same to simply drop a Seth's Will onto is almost criminal.
Any melee build benefits from the presence of at least two spearmen. I'll go as far to suggest that if you are planning to focus on melee damage as your strategy, you should simply have three spearmen as your middle line and go with that. It is simply the most effective, high damage output you can get along with either of the two Will spells and a Prophet boosting your melee's damage and accuracy. It does not make a particularly good front liner, although it can definitely survive a couple of hits for a couple of turns, making it a decent choice if you plan to rotate your mercenaries in battle to distribute damage around them to make healing more efficient. Pretty much a staple of every credible melee-oriented build in the game.
Example Build:
Level 85
F: WIT / X-M / EXO
M: SPM / SPM / SPM
B: MON / PRO / ORA
The build is pretty much the top build in Korea at the moment from what seems to be the majority of reports of the game's balance. The build is relatively straightforward: use your front line to defend and pressure your opponents while you use your middle line to actually put damage out. The Witch occasionally makes it rain meteors on your opponents to tack on additional damage, your Axe main is focused entirely on doing the Freezing Axe + Mana Seal combination on your opponents, and your Seth's Willed spearmen actually are what makes mincemeat out of your opponent. Simple, effective, deadly, and overpowered. Run this if you want to be both deadly and completely and absolutely unoriginal (because you will be rocking the same build as just about everyone else who is very happy to jump on the bandwagon the Koreans have started), and remember to replace one of your Spearmen with a Lady Knight and another with a Spartan down the line.
Total Grade: Early Game: 9/10 Late Game: 10/10
November 4, 2008
Rant: Is the clock too fast?
I think that by now, everyone's probably noticed how fast the clock moves in Atlantica's Free League.
If you haven't, try the following:
What does this all mean? Well, for starters, matches now are a lot shorter. More importantly, a lot less matches are actually concluding with the clean victory of one side or another; a lot more matches are now going to points and to the clock. For balance purposes, this means that builds that can cleanly kill off single targets quicker are now much better in Free League than builds that rely on dealing even, consistent damage over a large amount of enemies over a period of time. Remember that the point system rewards the usage of skills over the usage of normal attacks, and also rewards mercenary deaths with 100 points each. If you aren't able to kill more enemy mercenaries your enemy's cleared out one or two of your own, you'll be behind late in the game. Add to the fact that it is now pathetically easy to stall for time and you'll notice that defensive builds with the ability to focus fire on single mercenaries are now a lot stronger than they probably should be.
So what should be done about this? I'm not entirely sure. Matches could stand to be a bit longer, but that might involve making the Free League drag on for much, much longer than it already does or at least used to.
With this information, I want to hear from all of you. There is now a new poll up asking for your opinion on the subject: should the time for Free League be extended and adjusted, or should it be left as is? Voice your opinion and please leave your comments on this blog post as to how you feel.
I'll be going through some of the builds I got over the weekend and write the first Build Garage post. Stay tuned.
If you haven't, try the following:
- Get into the Free League, and start a match.
- Keep the Free League 'sign up' box open.
- Watch the time remaining for your match.
- Compare that to the time remaining in league itself.
What does this all mean? Well, for starters, matches now are a lot shorter. More importantly, a lot less matches are actually concluding with the clean victory of one side or another; a lot more matches are now going to points and to the clock. For balance purposes, this means that builds that can cleanly kill off single targets quicker are now much better in Free League than builds that rely on dealing even, consistent damage over a large amount of enemies over a period of time. Remember that the point system rewards the usage of skills over the usage of normal attacks, and also rewards mercenary deaths with 100 points each. If you aren't able to kill more enemy mercenaries your enemy's cleared out one or two of your own, you'll be behind late in the game. Add to the fact that it is now pathetically easy to stall for time and you'll notice that defensive builds with the ability to focus fire on single mercenaries are now a lot stronger than they probably should be.
So what should be done about this? I'm not entirely sure. Matches could stand to be a bit longer, but that might involve making the Free League drag on for much, much longer than it already does or at least used to.
With this information, I want to hear from all of you. There is now a new poll up asking for your opinion on the subject: should the time for Free League be extended and adjusted, or should it be left as is? Voice your opinion and please leave your comments on this blog post as to how you feel.
I'll be going through some of the builds I got over the weekend and write the first Build Garage post. Stay tuned.
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