The main reason why Melee dragons are favored over Magic dragons for Coliseum seems to be because once you get their Breath up, they can generally Scratch + Eliminate just about anything not in the Level 25 venues. So, what if there was an Eliminate-like move for Magic users?
This idea works off of one of the big fundamental differences between Melee and Magic attacks (once you get beyond Contuse) -- Melee relies on non-Elemental attacks that hit all enemies the same regardless of their Element, while Magic tends to rely on Elemental attacks that vary somewhat between enemies depending on their Element.
Each Element has one Element that it is terrible against, two that it's not good against, two that it's good against, one that it's great against, and the other Elements + neutral are, well, neutral. For stuff like the Bolts and Envenom/Enamor/etc., this moderately affects the strength of Elemental attacks.
For a Magical, Elemental variant of Eliminate, I think it should really exaggerate those Elemental match-ups. Make this one more about strategy and knowing how the Elements stack up against each other, while Eliminate has the advantage of being good against anything. Like, if you use Magical Eliminate against its worst Elemental match-up, it does barely any more damage than Contuse would have; but if you use it against its best Elemental match-up, it's equal in strength to a Scratch + Eliminate (assuming Int stat was Strength and all that jazz), with my guess being that the two "good" match-ups would be about equal in strength to a plain Eliminate.
For balance's sake, let's estimate this attack costs 60 Breath, and it doesn't regenerate. If you have Discipline on your Mage, it could be a two-turn attack, or it could be a three-turn attack if you're unlucky. This would make it faster to get to than Eliminate in the first battle or two, but slower afterwards since Eliminate can be used turn after turn once it's usable, assuming it doesn't miss, so hopefully it would roughly balance out grinding times over several battles.
Of course, the idea would likely need to be tweaked some, but...well, I guess the basic idea behind it is to reward people who know and understand the Elemental match-ups by giving a team of three well-picked Mage dragons the ability to Eliminate or better 9 Elemental types within two or three turns, while still leaving 2 Elements and a Neutral per venue to keep it from being all-powerful. This might not be the most useful for Exalt Leveling, I admit that much, but perhaps it could find its niche for Loot-grinding where you want to kill everything as quickly as possible. It would also just be nice to give Mages a really hard-hitting attack that isn't held back by secondary effects justifying a lower hitting power. And by leaving it so much at the mercy of Elemental match-ups, it wouldn't necessarily be meant as a replacement for Melee dragons so much as just a viable alternative for those who want something different, or perhaps people who like to collect naturally Mage-oriented breeds and don't want to waste time/money getting a Melee-based team.
...Okay, that ended up really long. If you read through all of that, thanks. I hope this idea doesn't seem dumb, I just want to have at least a little more variety in the Coli rather than two or three "right" ways to Glass Cannon your way through.
The main reason why Melee dragons are favored over Magic dragons for Coliseum seems to be because once you get their Breath up, they can generally Scratch + Eliminate just about anything not in the Level 25 venues. So, what if there was an Eliminate-like move for Magic users?
This idea works off of one of the big fundamental differences between Melee and Magic attacks (once you get beyond Contuse) -- Melee relies on non-Elemental attacks that hit all enemies the same regardless of their Element, while Magic tends to rely on Elemental attacks that vary somewhat between enemies depending on their Element.
Each Element has one Element that it is terrible against, two that it's not good against, two that it's good against, one that it's great against, and the other Elements + neutral are, well, neutral. For stuff like the Bolts and Envenom/Enamor/etc., this moderately affects the strength of Elemental attacks.
For a Magical, Elemental variant of Eliminate, I think it should really exaggerate those Elemental match-ups. Make this one more about strategy and knowing how the Elements stack up against each other, while Eliminate has the advantage of being good against anything. Like, if you use Magical Eliminate against its worst Elemental match-up, it does barely any more damage than Contuse would have; but if you use it against its best Elemental match-up, it's equal in strength to a Scratch + Eliminate (assuming Int stat was Strength and all that jazz), with my guess being that the two "good" match-ups would be about equal in strength to a plain Eliminate.
For balance's sake, let's estimate this attack costs 60 Breath, and it doesn't regenerate. If you have Discipline on your Mage, it could be a two-turn attack, or it could be a three-turn attack if you're unlucky. This would make it faster to get to than Eliminate in the first battle or two, but slower afterwards since Eliminate can be used turn after turn once it's usable, assuming it doesn't miss, so hopefully it would roughly balance out grinding times over several battles.
Of course, the idea would likely need to be tweaked some, but...well, I guess the basic idea behind it is to reward people who know and understand the Elemental match-ups by giving a team of three well-picked Mage dragons the ability to Eliminate or better 9 Elemental types within two or three turns, while still leaving 2 Elements and a Neutral per venue to keep it from being all-powerful. This might not be the most useful for Exalt Leveling, I admit that much, but perhaps it could find its niche for Loot-grinding where you want to kill everything as quickly as possible. It would also just be nice to give Mages a really hard-hitting attack that isn't held back by secondary effects justifying a lower hitting power. And by leaving it so much at the mercy of Elemental match-ups, it wouldn't necessarily be meant as a replacement for Melee dragons so much as just a viable alternative for those who want something different, or perhaps people who like to collect naturally Mage-oriented breeds and don't want to waste time/money getting a Melee-based team.
...Okay, that ended up really long. If you read through all of that, thanks. I hope this idea doesn't seem dumb, I just want to have at least a little more variety in the Coli rather than two or three "right" ways to Glass Cannon your way through.
Support, but only if it refunds the breath upon KO.
Support, but only if it refunds the breath upon KO.
Support if it refunds breath like the meelee one does. I find it odd that magic apparently doesn't have anything that can eliminate an enemy in this game.
Support if it refunds breath like the meelee one does. I find it odd that magic apparently doesn't have anything that can eliminate an enemy in this game.
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The elemental attacks (Envenom, Congeal, Sear, Enfeeble, Fossil, etc) are supposed to be the magical counterpart to eliminate. Instead of creating a magical clone of eliminate, what they could do is increase the base damage of those attacks so they are closer to the damage eliminate does on an elemental neutral pairing. The magical attacks would keep their side effects and would not refund breath, the only change would be to increase the damage so its a bit more even with eliminate (although I still think it should be somewhat less than eliminate since the magical attack's side effects can be quite teh benefit)
For example this
guide has the formulas when it comes to damage.
The current formula for Eliminate: (12 * STR + 75) - (4 * DEF)
These are theforumlas for the elemental specials:
All elemental specials except Enfeeble - (6 * INT + 17) - (2 * MND)
Enfeeble - (2 * INT + 100) - (floor(MND / 3) * 2 + round ((MND % 3) / 3))
So if we had two dragons, one with 100 str and 5 def and one with 100 int and 5 mind
the current damage for those would be
1255 for the melee dragon using eliminate
607 for the mage for any of the specials other than enfeeble. If I understood the formula correctly, then enfeeble would do 297 damage
Instead of using the current formula for the specials they could use (10*INT+50)-(4*MND) which would give 1030 base damage using the example dragon above. Quite respectable, and yet balanced when compared to eliminate considering you've got the chance at the special effect. It wouldn't refund breath, because breath is easy to generate on mages.
I'm not certain why they want enfeeble to do less damage, however if there is a valid reason, then they could use a variation of the current enfeeble formula to increase the base damage or use a variation on the suggested alternative formula perhaps (8*INT+25)-(4*MND) which would cause 805 damage.
The elemental attacks (Envenom, Congeal, Sear, Enfeeble, Fossil, etc) are supposed to be the magical counterpart to eliminate. Instead of creating a magical clone of eliminate, what they could do is increase the base damage of those attacks so they are closer to the damage eliminate does on an elemental neutral pairing. The magical attacks would keep their side effects and would not refund breath, the only change would be to increase the damage so its a bit more even with eliminate (although I still think it should be somewhat less than eliminate since the magical attack's side effects can be quite teh benefit)
For example this
guide has the formulas when it comes to damage.
The current formula for Eliminate: (12 * STR + 75) - (4 * DEF)
These are theforumlas for the elemental specials:
All elemental specials except Enfeeble - (6 * INT + 17) - (2 * MND)
Enfeeble - (2 * INT + 100) - (floor(MND / 3) * 2 + round ((MND % 3) / 3))
So if we had two dragons, one with 100 str and 5 def and one with 100 int and 5 mind
the current damage for those would be
1255 for the melee dragon using eliminate
607 for the mage for any of the specials other than enfeeble. If I understood the formula correctly, then enfeeble would do 297 damage
Instead of using the current formula for the specials they could use (10*INT+50)-(4*MND) which would give 1030 base damage using the example dragon above. Quite respectable, and yet balanced when compared to eliminate considering you've got the chance at the special effect. It wouldn't refund breath, because breath is easy to generate on mages.
I'm not certain why they want enfeeble to do less damage, however if there is a valid reason, then they could use a variation of the current enfeeble formula to increase the base damage or use a variation on the suggested alternative formula perhaps (8*INT+25)-(4*MND) which would cause 805 damage.
Full support! I have waaaay too mant mages and this would be great. It would also lower the price of Eliminate because there would actually be a decent alternative to it
Full support! I have waaaay too mant mages and this would be great. It would also lower the price of Eliminate because there would actually be a decent alternative to it
[quote name="fiercekitty64" date="2014-12-24 18:05:30"]Full support! I have waaaay too mant mages and this would be great. It would also lower the price of Eliminate because there would actually be a decent alternative to it[/quote] Eliminate is expensive? I find them from the daily item from the Trading Post a lot. I remember buying some for like 2500. I must not have checked their prices or something recently.
Oh and for the idea it's got a good point but eliminate is reliant on Strength and Agility to Chance of hit and damage if it does. Therefore the magical eliminate would just be people spamming the Int stat and then it's officially unbalanced. So a copy of eliminate is unlikely. Perhaps like Dragonsage said about the elemental attacks being buffed. Or perhaps maybe they could come up with higher tier elemental attacks for magic.
fiercekitty64 wrote on 2014-12-24 18:05:30:
Full support! I have waaaay too mant mages and this would be great. It would also lower the price of Eliminate because there would actually be a decent alternative to it
Eliminate is expensive? I find them from the daily item from the Trading Post a lot. I remember buying some for like 2500. I must not have checked their prices or something recently.
Oh and for the idea it's got a good point but eliminate is reliant on Strength and Agility to Chance of hit and damage if it does. Therefore the magical eliminate would just be people spamming the Int stat and then it's officially unbalanced. So a copy of eliminate is unlikely. Perhaps like Dragonsage said about the elemental attacks being buffed. Or perhaps maybe they could come up with higher tier elemental attacks for magic.
50% support.
I just want a proper non-elemental magical Eliminate.
They can make it cost 90 or 100 breath, but I just want to be able to use a caster and NUKE MOBS, instead of having to rely on physical attackers.
50% support.
I just want a proper non-elemental magical Eliminate.
They can make it cost 90 or 100 breath, but I just want to be able to use a caster and NUKE MOBS, instead of having to rely on physical attackers.
