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What's everone's opinion on owning the 75% reflectors? I'm wondering whether to try for them in the near-future.... Since I mainly do 1p, I can see how they can be to someone's advantage (plus they'd transition nicely when I finally get around to doing 2p), but I can also see the money spent better elsewhere. Any thoughts?

I don't know... There's other viable defenses for (generally) a lot cheaper, so I don't see them as that useful, really...

Ultra Dual Shovel is probably the best of the bunch at the pea-infested top level of the BD, but other than that, the most earth you're getting is from a Faerie Slingshot, and an UDS doesn't come remotely close to stopping it.

Triple Turbo Dryer is probably the best defense you're going to get against Ghostkerswords and Pirate Captains Cutlasses, so if you're running into a lot of those I suppose...

Combo Battle Mirror is just lol. Unless people start using dual Amulet of Thilgs (yeah right) this isn't going to come in handy enough to justify the price and weapon slot.

Ultimate Dark Reflectorb is good against Sword of Skardsen and (lol) Wand of the Dark Faerie, but that's what the Ghostkershield is for. And unlike the G-shield if your opponent doesn't have/use a SoS then it's wasted space.

Flame Reflectozap, depending on the price relative to the Clawed Shield, might be worth a look as an anti-Portable Kiln G-shield supplement.

Mega U-bend - See the UDR note above. Since it's useless against the vast majority of weapons you're likely to face, the Faerie Tabard is a much better defensive option.

I'd much prefer standard dual-duties or shields (see Dusty Magic Broom, Air Faerie Crown, Scarab Ring, Hobans Hat, Cloudy Wand of Storms, Frozen Wand of Crystals, and the aforementioned Ghoskershield and Faerie Tabard) to most of those.

They offer highly conditional pwnage.

For a 75% reflector to be useful you need a couple of the follwoing things to happen:

1. You need your opponent to have a decent chance of using the type of icons it reflects
2. You need your opponent to have a chance of doing rather a lot of damage of the type it reflects. Note that I said "damage", not "icons" here.
3. You need to not have a superior full-blocking or icon based defense option available.
4. You need to have a HP-to-opponent's-Str ratio high enough that guessing wrong for a round or two will not automatically lose you the match.
   
   

You'll note that points 3 & 4 will very frequently apply to lab pets. Furthermore, point 2 tends to apply to lab pets frequently when they battle in league structures, where they will often be facing opponents with higher Strength but fewer hit points.

Lemme illustrate with a pair of lengthy examples:

Let's assume that HappyChton gets a mildly good lab result tonight and goes up to 936 hit points, and let's further assume that Shattered Rift goes on a Negg binge at the same time gets to exactly 612 HP. Then we fight. My pet has 400 Str boost, Shattered's has 600, so we each would need exactly 72 unblocked unhealed icons to win. Let's assume that I know Shattered is going to cautious attack me with dual WoRs. I have a couple options. First I can try to counter with a similar offense, choosing my dual WoRs and the same stance. Since his pet is stronger I'll take more raw damage than he will (26*13*1.0=338; 26*8.5*1.0=221), but since I have more HP, it will come out proportionately even (338/936 = 221/612) Alternately, I can choose to use my Combo Battle Mirror and my WoR, in which case I'll reflect 7.5 of his 10 light icons back at him, taking only 240.5 damage (18.5*13*1.0) and dealing 208 damage ((13*8.5*1.0) + (7.5*13*1.0)) in return. While he's still dealing more raw damage, that's a relative win for me since 208 / 612 is notably larger than 240.5 / 936.

Now let's assume the inverse case, where Shattered knows that I'm about to use dual WoRs and has to decide whether to use a Combo Battle Mirror or not. We already know that since this is an even match, if both pets use dual WoR, the round is a draw, with the numbers given above. If he uses WoR + CBM, he'll reflect 7.5 of my 10 light icons, thus taking only 157.25 damage (18.5*8.5*1.0) and he will deal 232.75 damage ((13*13*1.0) + (7.5*8.5*1.0)) in return. That looks good at first, but it's actually a proportionate loss, as 232.75/936 is slightly less than 157.25/612. Thus Shattered would be a better off going for the even exchange with the dual WoRs.

Now if species resistances or stance multipliers were different, it might be more advantageous for Shattered to use the reflector, but I wanted to keep the example simple to illustrate the point that raw damage frequently matters more than icons when choosing to use reflectors.


Now to evaluate the 6 available reflectors on my other points:

Flame Reflectozap
This is probably the best 75% reflector in the current weapon mix. Portable Kiln, Ring of the Lost, Ghostkerbomb and Mask of Coltzan all see fairly heavy use and deal significant amounts of fire. Garoo Elite Blaster, Skeletal Fire Gun, Prickly Potion, Glowing Cauldron and Porcelain Hair Sticks also have notable fire components to their attack. So fire is common, and fire in quantity is common. More importantly, the F-Zap is massively cheaper than ANY other viable fire defense option. Wand of Flamebolt and F-Zap 2k are far more expensive, and even though it only blocks 5 fire, Faerie Tabard is still about triple the cost.

Ultra Dual Shovel
Heavily touted as the Pea-killer, this is only worthwhile for the most elite. Since Carrotblade retired, earth is only common in lower end weapons, Essence of Esophagor, Bow of Destiny, Honey Potion, and Ghostkerbomb until you reach the level where FSS and Peas are common. There are many cheaper icon-based shields which can handle EoE, + BoD, Downsize!, Thick Smoke Bomb, Potion of Concealment and faerie abilities can be used to effectively counter once per battle heavy earth attacks. And at the high end, either of the two full earth blockers still in the tower are far cheaper than UDS, while G-Staff is a generally safer bet.

U-Bend of Great Justice
Water is becoming more common than it was before, but there are a grand total of 10 weapons available to neopians that can deal 6 or more water icons, one of which is Glittery Faerie Dust, And even in the case of mass water attacks, EKST is a lot cheaper or Faerie Tabard is a lot better.

Combo Battle Mirror
Granted, my lab pets has stats very favorable for reflection, but I don't know why this doesn't get more respect. There are few heavy-light weapons (Skarls, SAP, FSS, Kaylas AoT), but there are a plethora of common 3-5 light weapons (RotL, Bzzt, Pike Pike, Scuzzys, SoRF, GoC, WoR, PCC), and they are fequently used in combinations due to the usefulness of light in overruning shields. Since there are notable drawbacks to both full light blockers in the HT (PCH and J-Ring), the only real alternative for mass light defense is the cheaper-but-not-for-long Shadow Shield.

Triple Turbo Dryer
This is solid, with the commonality of WoR, Bzzt, BoD, UBG, PCC and GSword in pro-level battling. There aren't many air defense options (RoW, S-Soar), but the current price on this just scares me, as I am irrationally afraid that TNT will eventually hire someone who knows what they are doing in the BD and release better air defense options.

Ultimate Dark Reflectorb
At the moment dark is not all that common, but there is a hyper-common mass dark weapon (SoS) and 2-3 more somewhat less common mass dark weapons (DFC, J-Ring, J-Pot) as well as one elite (WotDF). That would make dark reflection attractive, except that this is not priced competitively against the generally superior options of GShield or RoTL. Even MoC and Kaylas can fare decently against some of the heavy dark weapons. If you can find a UDR for the 2.5-3.5mil that CBM and F-Zap trade for, then it's worthwhile. At the 4-8mil people ask, this is just nuts.

But I wouldn't use dual-Wands I mean, Rabid used me in an example!

(Shadow Shields are inflating? Or Combo Battle Mirrors are deflating?)


There are several disadvantages, as pointed out, on planning to carry 75% reflectors over into Two Player. However, there's another angle on using them in One Player that I don't think has been brought up yet. Namely, the full-blockers can be more effective in several cases (full-blocking dual-duties can be much better in a couple of cases).

I'd also like to point out that I have a full set of 75%+ reflectors and full-blockers, exclusively for One Player use.


First off, Ultra Dual Shovel and Triple Turbo Dryer are expensive for the what they do, due to the elite-end weapons. Illusens Silver Shield is relatively cheap (unless its price has shifted since I last checked some months back), and Ring of Weightless/Shield of Soaring were about half the price of the Dryer at that time.

Secondly, if your Strength Boost is equal to your opponent's, Ring of the Lost is better than Ultimate Dark Reflectorb against Sword of Skardsen. Due to a lack of heavy-Light weapons (in One Player: Two Player's another matter), Jhudoras Bewitched Ring and Skarls Sword are both better than Combo Battle Mirror or Shadow Shield. Granted, not everyone dares to put on the Ring, and most of us can't afford the Sword.

Perhaps more importantly, there are several One Player opponents who deal one icon the mots often, but don't deal a lot of it. Against these opponent's, it's generally better to be running a full-blocker or full-blocking dual-duty, simply because it saves on damage dealt to you that turn (which is arguably more important than dealing damage).

You wouldn't use cautious attack neither And you were the most obvious real example of an evenly trained pet against a my lab pet in a fair match (although I had to add a couple HP to each to make it 100% even)

And yes, Shadow Shields are inflating, due to the TCG retirement. Not especially fast mind you, but noticably faster than the underappreciated CBM.

Ugh, and I completely missed 1p battling in my prior post. Shattered covered that pretty well, but just to elaborate, you only really want to use the 75% reflectors in 1p when

You are going for a win against a much stronger opponent (who favors an icon in reflect-worthy quantities). I've seen 55 boosters take down the Space Faerie and 20 boosters take down Garoo by reflecting their own damage back at them

or

There are no other viable options for defense. F-Zap is reasonable against Ryshu the Nimmo's Fiery Attack Cross solely because multiuse full fire blocking just isn't an option for 99.99% of neopians.

Thanks for the info Spelled out in detail, and there were a few points that I hadn't taken into account. I mainly had my eye on the Flame Reflectozap as worthwhile (i'm still leaning in that direction). I also like the thought of air reflection, but yeah, there's better options.
I also don't plan on seeing any peas in the near future either.

When pricing these, I was pretty blown away by the Ultimate Dark Reflectorb. Just don't get that one.......

The only one that is priced that I saw is asking for 12 million . A little too expensive considering that Ghostkershield and Ring of the Lost is still abound.

BUT think about it this way: It is not JUST a shield. It is something that reflects back and hits your opponent, making it as effective as a dual duty in itself.

Against 1 Sword of Skardsen alone, you are hitting your opponent with 11.25 icons of darkness, while he can only manage slightly less than 4. Of course, I am not considering the fact that Sword of Skardsen deals with physical icons, but the damage of physical it does averages to 3 icons, give and take. So that's about 7 icons worth of damage against you.

Whereas with Ghostkershield, you might be blocking more icons, but you are not attacking with anything either, thus dwindling your attack option to just 1 offensive.

So, I think the price of 4-8 mill is pretty justified

Guess I made the right choice never upgrading to the Mirror.


Comparing Clawed Shield to Flame Reflectozap: the Reflectozap is consistency. The price tag (again, several months ago when I bought mine) was a million more, and in many respects isn't very much of a difference. (Granted, a million is a much "cheaper" upgrade than some things are.) Consistency is more important in One Player, certainly, but depending on your budget it probably wouldn't hurt you to go with the Shield. (On the other hand, the Reflectozap would get you "a few more wins.")

I don't know what the current price on Ultimate Dark Reflectorb is, either, but I remember them being 5 mil or so a few months back. That was due to Ring of the Lost, though, which is apparently now up to 7 (and I'd expect the Reflectorb to be running a comparable price). I'd again like to reemphasize my suggestion to get the Ring over it, unless your Pet's Strength Boost is low.


Realistically, though, the only thing you should need the reflectors for would be getting onto the High Score Charts (or in a plot). If you haven't read my sig yet, it explains what I use them for (when I'm not slacking off, as I've done recently by losing my place on two or so charts). They're worth going for about the point you break the 450 Strength Boost (preferably 500) and have a 100% freezer (though in maxing out, Slumberberry Potion is usually better).


Edit: Apparently I need to run the difference between the Reflectorb and the Ring for Cadaver.

At equal Strength Boosts, against Sword of Skardsen (which does 15 Dark icons...)...
Ring of the Lost blocks 15, and deals 9.5. This is a total of 24.5 net icons.
Ultimate Dark Reflectorb blocks 11.25, and deals 11.25. You also take 3.75. This is total of 20.25 net icons.

Ring of the Lost comes out 4.25 icons ahead, and has less damage being dealt to you. I'm not really sure how to properly explain why damage defended is more important than damage dealt, but I'd like to emphasize that again as being a major advantage of the Ring.

Although my earlier comparison was more to do with the Ghostkershield, I must admit that my knowledge about the mathematical aspect of damage calculation is severely limited.

Also, please refresh my memory on this, cos this is also something I can't seem to comprehend either: Is reflected damage blockable?

You had to ask the hard question, . It depends on who clicks Go first. In One Player it's considered you click second(?) (except against frozen opponents?), meaning you move first, so your damage is blockable/reflectable. I'm not sure how many opponents this would be an issue against (since most don't have strong defenses, and you're normally reflecting bulk).

Just testing ya, lol

Anyway, I think the point I am trying to drive is more about why the tag of 5-8 million is justified, at least IMO. Not about to compare which is better among the three, cos each has just about equal advantages and disadvantages over the other. Although I did make a comparison with the Ghostkershield, and it MAY seem that I am maing the Ultimate Dark Reflectorb look 'better', Ghostkershield has the obvious advantage of blocking all those other icons.

But the 12 million I am seeing? Now THAT is overpriced