Thursday, January 31, 2013

General Update

This is a general update since I haven't really been active in responding to comments for the last week, which causes a pretty massive backlog, and I'm sorry for the ones I don't get to, but fortunately many people in the community here are pretty nice about replying and normally right on the money. So I decided I would cover a few quick topics.

1) Sylvan Labyrinth


The amount people have liked this event has varied based almost purely on their luck with bosses and maze flowers. Personally, I haven't been participating heavy in this event since and had no intention to until the second half. The reason is, I plan on using this event to recoup resources as opposed to go for rank (Lost 600HP on HW...QQ).

To do that I am going to count on the better maze flowers in the second half of the event. Also, I have just been doing 6 attacks and saving my resources until the better maze flowers come so I can recharge AP.

The event itself...isn't bad, but I don't like the changes. They've definitely tuned down the rate at which monsters come to up the value/use of CW. On top of this, the fact you need to kill 3 crappy bosses using 3 AP before a decent boss can be summoned is annoying. It's a nice way to get people with heavy attack decks to waste AP on bosses they don't even want to battle.

Personally, I just don't like it, but that shouldn't stop others from enjoying it quite a bit, and at least they made the rewards reasonable.

2) The Economy


I have several friends who quit after the last HW and even more that have been quitting recently. The economy is the prime reason.

Now, I will note that about two days after bazaar came out I noted that the steady decline in prices would never stop under the current system (pat myself on back). The reason is basic supply and demand in a system where there will always be more supply than demand. Once players get to SR, they never need HR again. Once players get to SSR, they never need SR again.

Now the concept I am going over is much bigger with more working parts than I am willing to write, but hopefully it's easy to understand.

In the game, your cards are like stock shares and HP is like money. You buy them, hold onto them, and expect them to hold value or gain value, and sometimes lose value. No matter what though, you expect them to stay close to the value you purchased them at.

As the value of cards dropped, people panicked and sold, causing the price to drop more, causing more people to panic and sell.

Now, everybody in the game has only 2 jobs, stockbroker or farmer. Your ability to make money is purely reliant on your ability to buy/sell/trade stocks. You can also farm your crops and sell them for a pittance if you wish to do that. Most players, are farmers until they gain the money/education to become stockbrokers.

Now, eventually, these stocks all become worth less and less, it gets harder and harder to buy/sell/trade stocks to earn enough to feed your family. Eventually, farming is paying as much as stockbrokering.

Here comes the best part, bills (events) are increasing in price the entire time. So as you make less and less, the 'bills' cost more and more. The only way to make up for this loss is cheat, which many players are doing.

Eventually, you will be farming/stockbrokering everyday and be left without enough to pay the bills if you're honest and only the cheaters will prosper.

What's the big deal?

Well, this is a pretty fun game overall, and I dislike the idea of everything being worth 1-10HP and events costing me 1000HP to compete in. Which is where the game is heading.

So if I'm so smart, how do we fix it?

Well, what we have here is NOT a free market. The market limits people to up to 5 trades a day. If this limitation was removed, Almost every rare would be removed from the market in order to skill up other cards. Many HR would also be removed from the market for the same exact purpose. The ability to sell their rares would give many players decent sums of HP/CW to purchase higher level cards taking some of them off the market.

Those HR/Rare with some value (claymore for example), would probably be purchased and re-listed at higher prices. Eventually they would level. They would never reach high prices they were at before Bazaar when trading required effort, but they would steady themselves. Because, eventually, if they hit a low enough price, they would be purchased constantly for skilled feeders.

As the system stands...it would be prime time for another anime based TCG to come on the market and steal all of mobages market.

I can tell you this. My Marvel War of Heroes site increased in traffic by 40% after HW was finished in Rage of Bahamut.


Friday, January 25, 2013

The Sylvan Labyrinth Updated

Alright, so there have been a lot of changes since the previous raid events and really this warrants a new look.

First, I would like to say that Mobage finally noticed that their rewards had gotten just stupid and they upped the value of them. Woot.

Second, about the decks. The layouts I recommended previously are still more ideal because they will function on the same math, what has changed is the way attack power works in this event and its relation to AP as well as the way boss rewards are distributed.

AP:  One AP is equal to 100 ATK PWR while Six AP is equal to 400 ATK PWR. This means that players probably won't be able to attack every boss once regularly since they will have to be using a minimum of 100AP each time. This change is...understandable, but unfortunate. In attempting to minimize players abilities to one hit farm bosses, they pretty much made it impossible for low/mid levels to accomplish anything.

Regardless, it should be obvious that you ideally want to be against bosses with insanely high health so you can dish out Six AP attacks since they have the best value.

BOSS REWARDS: So, no more critical bonuses. Players earn Maze Flowers (the exchangeable items) based on the damage they do to the boss and MVP. Players earn Sylvan Berries (the point reward) for defeating the boss, discovering the boss, and getting the last hit on the boss.

What this means for players is they won't be able to gather exchangeable items unless they can do mammoth damage to the bosses. Essentially, if you don't have raider cards, don't expect to be able to gain HP through Maze Flower turn ins.

OVERALL: I'm still broke from HW so I won't be participating much in this event. This event is purely tailored toward benefiting high level players who are willing to spend heavy amounts of HP. Between the AP set up preventing players from hitting bosses once and the necessity to do huge damage to a boss in order to gain Maze Flowers...this event is made to make you spend.

On a bright side, awful lot of nice cards in those maze flower packs, I imagine we will see those cards drop nicely in price near the last few days of the event.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

The Sylvan Labyrinth

**REFER TO THE SYLVAN LABYRINTH UPDATED FOR CURRENT INFORMATION**

So, it seems that Rage of Bahamut may really be ending CW events or at least making them extremely rare. Many may see The Sylvan Labyrinth as a 'new' event, but its merely a re-packaged raid event.

You will quest and summon bosses the same as usual from the sounds of it with a twist, instead of your normal five card deck you are utilizing a ten card deck. Players will also have access to a "break gauge" which they can activate using their ATK PWR which will deal major damage.

The Sylvan Labyrinth Ten Unit Decks:

Players will be expected to put together groups of ten cards. The decks are made up of two 3 Card Units and one 4 Card Unit. Only the Unit Leader Skills will activate.

So, what's this mean? Congratulations, you now need to buy 3 Raider cards to do well. Ideally, you would probably use 3 Highly Skilled Raider cards and behind them 7 of the highest damage cards you have.

Placement should be your group of four should have all your highest damage cards along with your best Raider Card.

Your second deck, whichever 3 Card Deck you decide on should then have your following 3 Highest damage cards with a Raider Card Lead.

Your final deck will probably be made up of your best leftover cards, probably defensive cards.

The reason you don't balance your decks is because your Raider Cards will multiply damage. By ensuring your highest damage cards are with your best Raider Cards you ensure your highest base will be multiplied by your highest multiplier.

An example of this would be having a deck of:
1 Raider Card that multiplies power by 10
1 Raider Card that multiplies power by 5
1 Raider Card that multiplies power by 2
3 Cards with 20k attack
2 Cards with 17k attack
2 Cards with 15k attack.

Example 1: We will balance the decks.

Deck One: Raider 1 - 20k, 17k, 15k
Deck Two: Raider 2 - 20k, 17k
Deck Three: Raider 3 - 20k, 15k

This damage output would look something like:
Deck One:  520k
Deck Two:  185k
Deck Three:  70k
Total: 775k

Example 2: We will stack it the way I recommend.

Deck One: Raider 1 - 20k, 20k, 20k
Deck Two: Raider 2 - 17k, 17k
Deck Three: Raider 3 - 15k, 15k

This damage output would look something like:
Deck One: 600k
Deck Two: 170k
Deck Three: 60k
Total: 830k

As this shows, stacking your decks in this manner should result in the highest output.

The Sylvan Labyrinth Raider Cards:

Rare: Elder Spartoi Soldier - Med/Small Boost
High Rare: Lunar Werewolf - Big/Med Boost
S Rare: Kitsune Yuel - Big/Med Boost
SSR: Moon Al-mi'raj - Great/Big Boost

I assume halfway through the event we will also see a new Raider Card with a Massive Boost. Also note, that each skill has a boost to the corruption and a boost to large bosses, I assume the large bosses are the ones that the game refers to as the 'rare' bosses which will occasionally be summoned.

Attempting to do well with minimal costs in Sylvan Labyrinth:

**CHECK UPDATE FOR PROPER INFORMATION**
The key with any raid event is to get Raider Cards or even prior to the event. This way you are able to down bosses using less ATK PWR. Since previous events had Personal HP and cards like DQs as possible rewards from the 'shards' gained from defeating bosses, gaining more of them by using less HP increases your chance of balancing. Ideally, you would want to gain more HP than you are spending on the event.

Now, if you're not interested in rank, but are interested in gaining resources, just hit each boss you see once. This way you are eligible for the critical bonus 'shards' which can be traded in for items. If you get lucky you can profit pretty decently doing this.

Thats about all I have for this event for the time being. I'm unsure at this time if mobage has changed anything else, I am also kind of curious as to the HP cost of your 10 card attack deck.

Quick Note:

**THIS DOES NOT WORK :( **
If you are able to attack a boss using only your core group without a penalty on the ATKPWR used, it would be best. Actually, even with a pretty significant penalty is given, it still may be worth it if you only have one great Raider Card. Since I have no idea what the ATK PWR costs will be, I don't know how well this would work.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Bazaar Changes

Rage of Bahamut
 
Thank you for playing Rage of Bahamut.

In order to improve your overall user experience and prevent inappropriate Trading within the game, we will be revamping the Bazaar system. Please note that the change will be effective Feb. 4th, 2013 (ET). Changes include the following:

1) Registered/Non-Registered Users
- Only user who performed Device Registration may now make use of the Bazaar system. Non-registered users will not be able to utilize the system.

2) Search Function
- You will now be able to search for Cards using Card names.
- You will still be able to search via filters.

3) Selling Cards on the Bazaar
- When selling a Card for others on the Bazaar, you will only be able to request Cards of the same rarity on your Bazaar WishList. For example, if you are selling a High Rare Card on the Bazaar you may only request High Rare Card(s).
- Due to the above changes, we will be adjusting the Guidance section for the Bazaar.

4) Trade/Gift Limitations of SSR+ Cards
- Any newly added Cards that are SSR or Rarer will now only be Tradable for up to 10 days from the release date. Once the 10 days have expired you will no longer be able to Trade the Card, and must sell and/or purchase it via the Bazaar.
- Please note that the above does not apply to Cards whose Rarity reaches SSR at final evolution.
-You will only be able to Gift Cards that are Rare or below.

5) Trading Restrictions for Items
- Previously, the Trading rules required you to be either a Fellow or in the same Order for 2 weeks. Please note that this duration will been extended to 30 days when Trading Items.
  - Under the new rules you must meet the requirements below to Trade/Gift Items:
  - You are a Fellow and/or in the same Order as the other user
  - Either and/or both of the following:
    1) You have been a Fellow with the user for at least 30 days.
    2) You have been in the same Order for at least 30 days.
 
My views:
1) Don't really care ab out registered users. Whatever.
 
2) Search function, finally.
 
3) Wait?..What? Great, no more down/uptrading guys. Yeah, people weren't limited enough.
 
4) For those who are wondering why this is a rule...it's to limit a person who maybe had 500 accounts from being able to transfer SSR to his main account. Of course these accounts can still just sell the card for HP on the bazaar and transfer that. Still dumb because it solves nothing but adds another limitation on a heavily limited trade system.
 
5) This is directly related to point four. Ideally, if you cannot trade the SSR with your main account you would sell it for HP, this makes it more difficult to get that HP to your main account. 
 
Honestly. Points 3, 4, and 5 are just stupid. They solve nothing. I have already thought of how to work through all of it. Player has all alt accounts linked to each other in some network. Each account sells their cards on bazaar for HP. Since the alts are long term friends, all HP goes to one main account. Finally, your main account sells a HR for the price of all the pooled HP. 

Regardless, Mobage have handled controlling exploiters horribly from the get go, and their new changes just prove again that they have no idea what they are doing in regards to them.
 

Holy War Post War Update

Well, the war is over for me since I've run through 600HP this war and I don't have time to recoup before my Orders last battle. Overall, we will be ranking around rank 40 (hopefully under) with our efforts. To give people an idea of what it takes to meet this rank I decided to write this.

Every member of our order spent 300+HP, mostly during full Shingeki+Combo bonuses while using at least the small point boost cards. We only attacked Order Leaders, Vice Leaders, Attack Leaders, Support Leaders so we always got those bonus points, after five were dead they reset and we repeated. We have members in our order that spent over 1000HP carrying members who could only afford spending around the 300. These same members sold their cards from coin packs to earn more HP to spend as they went.

In the end, our Order will have spent about 20,000HP to achieve top 40 (assuming we hit it). This means we will have spent an average of 520HP per person. The rewards for top 40 equal roughly 400HP and hopefully we can earn 200HP in silver coin rewards as well. If we each spent 520HP we would be hopefully earning 80HP in profit from the entire experience. We won't even be eligible for Order Victory awards because we only fought about 6 wars. My individual reward for spending 600HP will be in the 1000-3000 bracket which is worth about 10HP.

Now, if we miss top 40, our prizes will be worth about 150HP each and we will be losing our asses.

Now, here's the interesting part. If I took that same 600HP I spent, purchased 8 Raphellias, combined them into their final forms, waited two weeks, I could probably easily sell them for 1500HP. Or, I could have purchased Devil Queens at 70HP each and sold them for 120HP each in two weeks for, 960HP.

This means that under pretty much 100% of scenarios I could make more HP taking advantage of low Holy Wars trading prices than I could actually participating in Holy Wars.

So why do I do it? Because it's more fun that playing the game like an auction house.

The moral of this story is Mobage needs to take another look at their reward structures because at the moment, it's so unbalanced that it favors people never participating. This means most players will stop participating in events which just leads to ceasing to participate at all.
 





Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Update on Multiple Accounts

According to an email from Mobage, the number of players being banned seemed high since they didn't do December bans from the Holiday. This same player who was emailed addressed the fact that he had accounts on different devices in which Mobage responded that after a quick lookup they could tell he had X accounts on that IP and that it wasn't an issue.

Although the email didn't give specifics they did mention that members of one particular order were found to be sharing devices but most were linked to massive amounts of feeders, in some cases over 1000 feeder accounts.

The issue apparently is not on multiple accounts and there is no set policy on multiple accounts. Instead the problem is when people use multiple accounts to EXPLOIT the game. For example, having 30 feeders to support ten mains is.

That being said, a player who has authenticated his accounts on his personally owned devices, probably won't be punished.

Decided to update people at the urging of an Order mate.

Friday, January 11, 2013

Holy War Changes and Strategies

I'm sure people are wondering how the addition of Position Skills and Skill Chains effect Holy Wars and the strategies players use. Before I move to them I would like to point out the other important changes. I'm not going to discuss all of them nor all their facets, just the pertinent ones.

1) Changes to Holy War Points Received - High minimum points from lower level players, higher minimum points when attacking users with lower DEF PWR.

This change is directly used to combat the lockout strategy since even at lowest DEF PWR they will pay more points. The strategy itself will still be viable since the increase will probably be slight.

2) Full-Force Attacks - Players can use up to 3HP to do up to 3HP worth of damage and gain 3HP worth of points in a single attack.

This ability is going to cause some shit to go down. Rage of Bahamut introduces and automatic weapon. I can attack 3x per HP, and I can burn 3HP isntantly? That's 9 attacks per click. I imagine we will see quite a few last minute power explosions when coupled with the bonus from the Skill Chains and Order Leader Skill.

Skill Chains:

I will address this change first because it is extremely simple and should happen naturally in most cases. Players just need to keep attacking until the skill chain is capped. While the bonus is active you gain 10% ATK, and when the number increases you can attain up to 50% bonus. This makes it more important than ever for a lot of players to attack constantly and remain active. It would be awful to lose a chain bonus.

I do have a thought on this since it doesn't mention whether or not attacking the castle or a wall will gain the bonus nor does it mention the amount of attack required. I think it might be possible to gain a high chain early on by simply attacking the castle with a low power deck. This is a theory though since we have yet to see how it implements.

Position Skills: 
Some things to note on position skills are that skills of the same type cannot be active simultaneously skills require SP to use, skills have cooldowns based on the power of the skills.

Order Leader: Shingeki
By far the best skill, the Order leader bonus can be activated when a player gains 1000 SP and will last a full 10 minutes. The cooldown of the skill is 5 minutes. This bonus increases players ATK by 20-25% and the points received by 50-60%. 

Vice Leader: Braveheart
This skill is a baby version of Shingeki and cannot be active at the same time. It costs 500 SP and will last 5 minutes. The skills effect increases ATK and DEF by 10-15% and the points received by 20-25%.

Attack Leader: Warcry
This skill will decrease an opponents defense for a SINGLE ATTACK by 30-45%. It costs 60 SP and should be used ONLY WHEN THE ENEMY DEFENSE LEADER ACTIVATES PHALANX.

Defense Leader: Phalanx
This using this skill properly will be able to make or break orders. It will increase the defense leaders defense by 30-40% and when activated only the DEF leader can be attacked until he is either defeated or 6 minutes wears off. It costs 300 SP. Obviously Attack Leader's Warcry negates the bonus, making attack leader presence mandatory. 

Support Leader: Boost
It's an HP. Should be saved for attack leader or defense leaders. It increases the ATK/DEF of a member by 300-350 ATK/DEF PWR. The cooldown ranges from 3 minutes to 100 seconds and consumes 50 SP.

Support Leader: Magic Shield
This is the second skill available to support leaders increasing DEF. I...do not get this skill. The way its phrases makes it simply appear pointless no matter what. 

Regular Members: Yell
This skill is why you'll want a lot of members on simultaneously. It appears to have no cooldown and increases the ATK and SP of a player by 10-30 ATK/SP.  SP consumed is 30 SP, but if you're not a leader you're not using it. 
 

Now lets talk strategy:
So, how do these skills effect strategy? Well, it all depends on how easy it is to generate SP and whether you want to win or you want to go for mammoth points. I assume most people want mammoth points.

The way I see it, early on players should be attacking to increase the chain as well as generate SP which they should be sending to the Order leader. Once the chain reaches maximum power, and the order leader uses Shingeki, the team should go to down burning through Full Force attacks to maximize the point boosts of the chain as well as Shingeki. Once this is complete, players tone down, send SP to the order leader as they generate it by keeping the chain going until they can repeat the process.

Now, some players may be thinking...doesn't it makes sense to have two defense leaders alternating Phalanx the entire match? Absolutely...depending on how much SP we generate per attack that we can send to them. Each Phalanx costs 300 SP for 6 minutes. This means an order could have 18 minutes of defense in exchange for the same amount of SP that would earn 10 minutes of offense for the order leader. I DO NOT RECOMMEND PUSHING DEFENSE. The primary reason is because Phalanx ends when the defender is defeated. This means you could potentially spend 300 SP for one minute of defense and mitigating no points from the enemy. Instead, you could save that to eventually gain 10 minutes of bonus points and damage. 

So, if you shouldn't alternate Phalanx, how should you use it? I recommend using it on the home stretch, the last 6 minutes of the match to protect your lead or give you time to gain one.

I think with skill chains, full force attacks, and shingeki, players will be able to accumulate very large numbers of points very quickly. Because of that, 6 minutes of defense that an attack leader can break by combining his teams shingeki, morale boost, and warcry...doesn't seem like a good value. 

But hey, I'm an offense guy.




Thursday, January 10, 2013

And let there be Banhammers!

So, Mobage is rolling through its customary monthly house cleaning, quite a bit more aggressively than previously.

I honestly have to recant my previous words that Mobage doesn't mind if it's only two or three accounts because I'm hearing horror stories galore from highly ranked players who are getting their accounts permanently banned. Now, many of these players are getting tossed for having 10+ accounts that are used purely for farming. But I am also hearing about people who CLAIM that they only had two or three accounts and are getting banned.

There does seem to be some added aspects into the formula. Mobage looks for names like Doglover1, Doglover2, Doglover3, Doglover4, etc. After seeing them, they can do a quick search to see if these are different players or if they are from the same phone/IP.

Another thing they seem to be keeping track of is large amounts of trading as always that is strange. They mostly do this because its a sign of people buying cards/items for real money.

One interesting fact about these bans by the way is that they all seem to correlate with Login bonus campaigns last day. So, in the future and present you may want to limit any trading with alt accounts for times that do not correlate with card pack days.

Now, I believe talking to people saying DON'T MAKE ALTERNATE ACCOUNTS! Is a lot like telling people not to have sex. Since I can't be sure that you won't make the accounts instead I will tell you how to make it as safe as possible.

1) Name each alternate account something unique and different.
2) Avoid doing large amounts of trading that seems inherently one sided. Instead of one rupie, you could trade 9 feeders for example.
3) Avoid doing any large activities between accounts during event reward period and especially during claim ticket periods.
4) Try to use one second dedicated device for alt accounts and never log into them on your main device. This way if they do get banned, hopefully your main will remain intact.
5) Finally, there's a reason money laundering exists. If you use each of your accounts to sell items and purchase one very expensive item using their resources, and transfer that card to your main account, it's a lot less likely to raise a red trading flag than 30 different transactions all to your main account.

An example of this would be:

Main Account - Bridge Account (This account would be legit if possible) - Main Farm Account - 29 Other farm accounts.

Your 29 accounts would sell everything to gain HP and then transfer that HP to your Main Farm Account. Main Farm account purchase the most expensive card it can afford. Main Farm account then trades the card to the bridge account for something like 5 Rares and 100,000 rupies. Bridge account waits a week and then does a similar trade with the main account.

Hopefully the 29 accounts, main farm, and bridge should be on one device and the Main account on another. This way if Mobage catches the 29 accounts, they will see the related accounts but hopefully miss the main account.

Of course the best way not to get banned for having alt accounts is to not have alt accounts. I still feel that mobage doesn't have an issue with a player with 2-3 accounts that they play actively. I think their issue is with accounts for the express purpose of farming LCP. 


Monday, January 7, 2013

Decks Updated!


Alright, so I actually went through and did a proper update to each of my best deck set ups. You can check them out in their relative locations but if you're wondering about a quick look on what's going on here it is.

Demons:

Rare: Demonic Slave added to offense, Eligos added to defense.

HR: NM, HATTER, DK, TROW, TROW offensively. I also have commentary about how using Pan in the lead spot actually has a mild increase on it.

Wraith, Marsyas, Marsyas, BM, BM defensively. I also have commentary mentioning how Marsyas, Xuanwu, Xuanwu, BM, BM is viable.

SR: Jabberwock x2 added offensively, Hamelin added defensively with a brief commentary about using it with Xuan/BM combo.

Gods:

Rare: Animone added to defense deck

HR: TROW, PANx2, SVx2 offensively.

Apsara, Xuanwux4 defensively.

SR: Haniel, Cait, Cait, Thor, Thor offensively.

Sleipnirx5 defense with commentary on how you really should just use Sleip, Apsara x2, Xuanwu x2.

Man:

Rare: I added Holy lancer to the defense

HR: Clay, M.Arch x2, and Dragoon x2 offensively.

Paladin, Queen x2, and M. Astrologist x2 defensively.

SR: Griffon Rider and Achilles x4 offensively.

Oddly, Lancelot x1 and Longi x4 since Longi has higher base defense. With commentary that if you're using 5th Evo it goes back to Longi x1 and Lancelot x4.


Anyway, it's all in the posts. 




Sunday, January 6, 2013

Attack vs Defense Thoughts

I will note that this post relates much more heavily to people in high level orders than it does for people 1000+ in Order Rank.

Attack vs Defense

There is an ongoing debate over the usefulness of defense for high level players resulting in many players just going with no defense and pushing pure offense. I want to note, this way of thinking is not entirely wrong. The way I see it there are two ways to value attack over defense.

Option 1) Many players remove all their points from defense leaving only 10 left. This is a mistake. The reason being, mobage penalizes people for doing this. Every time a player with 10 defense is attacked during Holy Wars, they are worth the full amount of points. Over the course of 100 attacks, these players give out an additional 5000+ points. I highly doubt the players doing this are bringing in those extra 5000+ points.

Option 2) The proper way to value attack over defense is to leave roughly 100pts in defense and just use your offense cards in defense. For many high level players these will be SR, SSR, or Legend cards so the stats won't be awful, but they won't bring useful buffs. The nice part of using this method is as players attack you, the amount of points you are worth reduces until you use HP. There is also still the chance that somebody attacks you and loses (although not likely). Over the course of the match, these points start to add up rapidly.

It seems obvious...

Yes, it seems obvious that a player shouldn't want to be worth the full points during the entire match but a lot of players still reduce their stats to 10 defense. The logic behind this is often that they would be refreshing with HP anyway so they would be worth the full amount regardless. This is true if they are online for 100% of the fights, but we all know that's not likely. That means during the fights that they are not online, they are easily farmed for points. Although 5000 points won't normally be the win/loss at high levels, if 10 players are offline 50,000 points can be.

In conclusion:

I personally feel that pushing defense if you aren't a defense leader is pointless at high levels since 80-90% of the enemy team will still be able to take you down. But just because they can beat you is no reason to drop your defense to 10 and be worth full points the entire match. That's just ridiculous. So instead, leave 100pts in defense and just use your same attack cards as defenders. This way the points you are worth are still reduced.

At high level play Rage pretty much has a defense leader, and 30+ Glass Cannons.

I'm curious to hear your opinions on the subject.


Thursday, January 3, 2013

Sorry about Deck Upgrade Delays

Seriously, I would love to upgrade decks but I can't remember all cards and their stats off the top of my head and the wiki has been down all week for me. I really want to upgrade the decks to get it out of the way but the wikipedia is making it impossible unless I can somehow remember every card, its stats and its buff.

So, instead I'm just going to give you a rough update from memory. Keep in mind some of these decks are build just accepting the fact that 90% of the time they will get two buffs and virtually never get 3 buffs or 1 buff. 

Demon:
I can tell you for Demon Realm I'm going to be recommending Hatter, Demonic Knight, Dragonewt, Trow, Trow offensively in HR. This will try to get 3 buffs by using 3 different cards, but will get 2 buffs most of the time.

In SR offense I'll probably be recommending Hecate, Jabberwocky, Jabberwokey, Sutekh, Sutekh. This way you can ensure two buffs and still get three buffs regularly.

In HR defense it will still be Wraith 4BM. Only two buffs but there really isn't a better option off the top of my head.

SR Defense Hamelin and I have no clue after that. I'm guessing it would end up Hamelin, 2 BM, 2 TV or Death.

Man:
In man realm the new HR will be M. Arch. 2 Clay. 2 Dragoon. This way players have good odds for 3 procs, great odds for two procs. You use M. Archer in the top spot because it allows you to use 2 Clays for higher base stats.

**I have been informed that M.Arch has higher stats than Clay. That would mean we should actually use Clay, M.Archx2 and Dragoonx2. Remember, I did this with no Wiki, so not bad all things considered **

Defense will be Paladin, Queen of Heartsx2, M. Astro x2. Most the time a player will get two solid procs from this deck. If they wanted they could use 4 Queens.

In SR Man will be probably running Griffon Rider Leader with 4 Achilles. Griffon rider is the leader so you can have the higher base stats of Achilles x4. Players could also use 2 Master Alchemist wings if they didn't want to use 4x Achilles.

SR defense will be running Four Lances with a Longi leader defensively. Longi leader so players can take advantage of using 4x Lances since they have higher stats.

God:
God realm will probably be using Trow, Pan, Pan, SV, SV or the white rabbit in those spots in HR. Maximizes god/demon buffs while giving an all buff from the wings.

Defensively a player could either run 3 Apsara and 2 Xuanwu hoping to trigger three while using Xuanwu as a safetynet, or run One Apsara lead with 4 Xuanwu settling for a two proc.

SR will probably run Haniel Lead, Cait Sith, Fox Spirit, Thor, Thor.  Almost a sure 2 proc, with decent odds at a 3 proc.

Defensively Sleipnir lead, probably just use your Apsara and Xuanwu from HR. SR defense cards in god are still lacking.


So there's a rough update off the top of my head since Wiki was down. I'm not going to edit my posts because I prefer to write the attack/defense as well as the buff and I just can't remember the full attack/defense. I also will want to double check to ensure it's right.