iDB Community Forum

I need help setting some (a) goal(s). My weapons set is way too weak, but where should I go from here. Suggestions most welcome.

Here's where things stand:

Grarrl: HP 330; Str 286; Def 286 [trying to get to 300 boost in both Str & Def as fast as Mumbo Pango lets me -- now that I have 1 pet instead of 3 things are moving again].

Weapons: Snowglobe Staff; Goo Blaster; Ylanas Blaster x 2; Honey Potion; Greater Healing Scroll; Downsize!; Sophies Magic Hat.

About 1m in the bank. Quit restocking a year ago, but ready to start back. Earnings potential mainly a function of time spent (& luck).

I'm going to stay a Grarrl, so changing not an option. Have only ever done 1 player and will probably stay doing so as my weapon set is as nothing at my boost. I know I don't need the Goo Blaster in the mix.

Passively saving for a Bag of Healing Dust, but is that really the next step for me?

What do the creative, insightful minds of the iDB crew suggest?

Thanks!

Yes, I'd say the 50% healer is definitely the next step for you, followed by a Ghostkerbomb (Honey Potion's not that great when your main attackers do almost 13 icons each).

I would suggest some better shields to take advantage of that nice balanced defence, but I've found (I'm in the same boost) that my faerie tabard doesn't help a whole lot, even against opponents who deal a lot of water. When I'm maxing out on an opponent, for the first number of fights I really don't need defence at all because I can kill him in one hit. By the time he starts getting strong enough that I need to last for more rounds than my sink/burrow/D! can handle, he's already hitting hard enough to overload my shields. The tabard might help me get a few more wins if I'm lucky. If I were you, I'd keep training defence and buy a G-shield or tabard once you're around the 500 boost (I'm trusting Shattered's opinion here that defence in one-player really becomes viable at the 11x multiplier, but I'm simplifying things -- apparently there's this whole messy net icons thing that is over my head ).

If you don't currently play the stock market, start (buy at 15, sell at 60). I sold 10 lots of MYNC this morning for a payday of 600k. I only paid 150k total for those shares, so that's a nice profit for practically no effort.

I'll take a slightly different line of attack on the situation and in this rare case, disagree with a bit of what Cranberry has suggested. I have no problem with you getting a 50% healer, as you've outgrown the Greater Healing Scroll and you probably help your opponent as much if not more than yourself when you use it. But I'd hold off on thinking about a Ghostkerbomb. It's a fine weapon, but not for you as your next move. You have a problem with it. You have no dependable freezer, which is where I'd next concentrate my upgrading. Your G-Bomb is still going to be equipped and unused while you're dead waiting for your current freezer to do something helpful in many fights. If you're going to invest the kind of nps a G-Bomb costs, you need a freezer upgrade BEFORE doing so. The freezer upgrade with your current weapons would VASTLY help you NOW and would allow you be much more competetive while saving up for your next upgrade, which may or may not be a G-Bomb.

My second comment is that you're equipping in opposition with your training, which isn't helping you. You're training defense, but with the exception of Sophie's Magic Hat, not equipping a single weapon that uses your defensive advantages. I think you might want to look at the wonderful world of dual duty weapons, which you pay little extra for, and which have some advantage to you now and will only have more as you continue training.

I don't agree with totally with Shattered's view that defense is basically useless until the higher levels (example 500 boost). It ALWAYS has usefulness, just not as much, and its usefulness ALWAYS increases with more training until you reach the 700 boost. I will agree that defense isn't something you should base your set around early on in one-player fighting, but you've already made significant progress in training and you should be phasing into the dual-duty world a bit.

I would certainly agree that you should keep training, as you have a fine start, but I'd go healer first, then freezer, then see what boost you're at when you've got those covered and you have more nps.

Firstly, thank you both Cranberry & VermontHermit for the extensive feedback. I really appreciate it.

[added question: Should I sell the Goo Blaster?]

Seems to me you both agree the 50% healer is the place to begin. I will keep training too. I love to train, but w/3 pets it was wearing me down and I basically stopped for over a year. My intention is to do 10 KQs each & every day while saving up for the BoHD.

Once I reach that point, I will consider the question of G-bomb versus the Freezer. For the short term, as a 1p battler, I can always use the 'freeze or withdrawl' approach with opponents. But, I would ultimately (probably) want to move on to 2p and that option will be lost.

Maybe I will restock a Leaded Elemental Vial before then and it will be a moot point!

Vermont, I see what you mean when you write that I'm 'equipping in opposition with your training'. Thanks for that insight. Will certainly try to address that fact -- especially as my def increases over time.

Cranberry, yes I do buy stock each day. I've got about 150k shares, but have been actively selling them on a regular basis to buy gallery items?! That is also how I recently bought my 2nd Ylanas Blaster. The Food Club has also been a good earner over time.

Thanks again!

I can't believe I missed the freezer! I'm definitely rusty when it comes to giving advice. I still think the healer should be your next move, but then definitely a 100% freezer before upgrading to the G-bomb. I still think you should hold off on the shields until you're around 450/500 def. They definitely do help, but I haven't personally found that they help enough to justify the cost, at least not when you have other stuff that needs upgrading first.

I'll jump in again to second what Cranberry has said about shields, which is a more direct approach to what I was implying with moving to dual duties. Particularly in one player fighting, where you're at training-wise, I'm not sold on shields either, and I'm a defensive based fighter that's moved through all of the defensive boosts to the 700 level. First, you don't have total predictability that your shields power will be used. Secondly, most shields are spread out over a large number of defensive icon types with little coverage on any particular one. This, I've never found to be particularly helpful going up the ranks.

Most one player opponents have one or two weapons that you HAVE to try and neutralize and until you get to the very top challengers, a bunch of junk that you hope they'll use. And of course, they do tend to grow in the level of their own power boosts as they gain hit points while you're continually beating them. I think your best shot at winning, and your best weapon investments at the stage and budget you're at, as long as you plan on continuing to train, are the dual duties. I think I may take it upon myself to write an IDB article on this as soon as baseball/softball season is over.

Anyway, lets toss examples out on this for now. Your Sophies Magic Hat is one of the better pure shields around in the price range BEFORE you start dealing with millions of nps, but Cranberry's earlier point about not needing to defend against weaker opponents and getting overwhelmed by stronger ones is both well taken and accurate. Eventually ALL one-player opponents get to be 15 multiples of icons (700 boosts). It's against THIS standard that I'd check my defensive items. In your case, Sophies Magic Hat provides 3 icons of defense against fire, dark and physical attack and five icons against earth attack for a very respectable appearing 14 icons. But those 14 icons are distributed so widely they have very little effect when you NEED to defend against any particular challenge.

Against a 15-icon multiplier attacker (maxed out 700 booster), who just happened to attack using all four icons that you're defending with the hat, your actual effectiveness at the 250 boost (5.5 multiplier) is such that you're defending not 14 icons, but 1.1 icons of your opponents attack in fire, dark, and physical, for a total 3.3 icons, and 1.8 icons of earth attack for a net total of 5.1 equalized icons of utility. Thus, at its maximum best, for a 250 booster defending against a maxed-boost opponent in one-player, with ALL of the defending icons used, this pure shield will lose (head-to-head) any time the attacker uses a weapon with 6 attack weapons or more. With no compensating offense from the pure shield, and the extremely high probability that not all four icons defended are attacked against in the same round, this otherwise respectable pure shield becomes even less effective and more easily overwhelmed. I'd guess that in most cases, it will lose (head-to-head) to any weapon of 5 icons or greater that the opponent uses as long as one is earth, and to any weapon of 4 icons or more if earth isn't used. This is AWFUL!

Now lets' make a minor adjustment and move you up to the 300 defensive boost, as you're almost there, and it's instructive I think to see the subtle differences more training bring will bring. At that level, against the super opponent mentioned above, Sophies Magic Hat becomes slightly better. It will now, with the 6.5 multiplier defend 1.3 icons of fire, dark and physical and 2.2 icons of earth attack, it's range now moving up to a maximum of 6.1 icons of total attack defended, and meaning that the oppponent must now attack with a 7-icon weapon to overpower it at its maximum defense. Note that most one-player challengers have weapons that are below this, though unfortunately they have items that area above it too. In my opinion this is the FIRST time that this particular defender has any real value against a quality challenger, and then the value is pretty minimal and the pure shield remains pretty bad, particularly since, and I keep re-emphasizing this, it's unlikely that all four icons it defends against will be fully used in any one round.

My point to this whole ramble is this, in one-player you usually only have one or two icons you HAVE to neutralize, you know what they are going in, and no matter how many total icons a pure shield defends against, if it doesn't block defend at least five icons of whatever type you need to stop, it's not worth equipping. Thus, at the general training level you're at, the only possible role for Sophies Magic Hat (in my opinion) is as an earth blocker when you need to slow down that icon, and it's helped by whatever odd assortment of the other attacks it defends that come into play. What I'm trying to say, is that it's position in a battleset is "Earth Blocker" (plus misc. defense). If I want to try and slow down my super opponent's earth attack, at that level, I'm not going to be real successful anyway (hey, it's a quality opponent, of so much quality at that point (700 boosts) that there are probably less than 150 pets in all Neopia that fight at that level). I'm going to max out, and I'm going to lose at some point in the not too distant future.
I'll digress further here to say that one reason I don't buy the "defense is worthless" theory for one-player fighting is that offense suffers similiar problems. If you're fighting with a 10-icon attack (say a Scuzzys Comb) against a maxed out one-player opponent at super status, even if he's doing ZERO defense, your 10-icon attack is equalized down to 3.7 icons (meaning that you're doing the same damage in undefended icons value to him as he's doing to you with just 3.7 icons of attack) at the 250 boost. At the 300 boost, this improves, but again, not overwhelmingly to 4.3 icons of equalized attack. Again, just plain AWFUL, and in fact, worse than Sophie's Magic Hat IF, and it's a BIG IF, all of its defense is used in the round.

The major impact of the release of Ylanas Blaster is that there is now available a weapon that significantly improves a player's chances SIGNIFICANTLY against such an opponent, at a price virtually all serious fighers can afford, though the odds continue to be poor at the 250 boost and only somewhat better at the 300 boost. This 12.63 icon attacker has an equalized offensive icon attack of 4.6 at the 250 boost and 5.5 at the 300 level. It used to cost about 3.5 million nps for those equalized offensive levels.

Anyway, if I were building a battleset for a pet training both strength and defense, I wouldn't look at anything that does less than 5 icons of defense as a blocker for ANY area, I'd look to dual duties, where the effectiveness of both my offense and defense is improving with each boost in EITHER catagory I get, and hopefully something that can fill TWO roles in one.

An item like this would be the Mask of Coltzan. At the 250 boosts it has 8 icons of offense (2.9 equalized), blocks 5 icons of earth (same as Sophies Magic Hat, 1.8 equalized icons) and blocks 6 icons of dark attack (2.2 equalized icons) for a total maximum package of 6.9 equalized icons at the 250 boosts. At the 300 boosts, it works out to 3.5 icons of equalized offense, 2.2 icons of earth defense in equalized icons and 2.6 of dark defense - total maximized package 8.3, which means that at its maximum usage, even a super opponent will only beat it with a 9 icon attack or greater, and for most challengers, most of their offense is under that.

The added value of an item like this is it fills TWO primary roles in the battleset at mid-level one-player - "Earth Blocker" and "Dark Blocker" and as a bonus gives you something in the battleset that has some value as an attacker against the odd Ghostkershield. It's not cheap, but it's well worth the price for this type of pet. Can you do better? Of course, there are better blockers at still higher prices that are beyond your budget currently. And you can make short term bets with reflectors.

But if what I'm trying to do is to train my pet for balanced stats within a budget, what I'd try to do is build a longer-term foundation that appreciates in its utility with each additional boost I get, and which doesn't require massive changes to my holdings each time I see a new opponent. Definately a long-term approach, but one that yields more and more results over time.

I'll shut up now!

P.S. - I like the Goo Blaster, but it's a better weapon in two-player than one, and better for those without defense than with, as having defense gives you other options.

People are talking about me when I'm not around. I must be famous or something.

Lance, I was only paying half-attention when I read your post, so if you've already countered anything I'm about to say, point it out.

Now, to keep this brief...

What ultimately matters in a given turn is how many net icons you land. Against increasingly powerful opponents, your Defense becomes less effective. The "good" dual-duties are, with the exception of Mask of Coltzan, 8 iconers that defend 5. That's 13 net icons in ideal circumstances (but because your Defense will always be lower than a One Player opponent's Strength, it becomes less than 13 net icons: also consider the fact that the defense might not matter), which is equivalent to your Ylanas Blaster (I'm rounding).

Ylanass Blaster runs the chance of being blocked as well, but it's generally going to be a lower risk than your defense not taking effect (and there's the chance of your dual-duty's offense being blocked). Overall, Ylanas Blaster is going be better than a comparable dual-duty.

Another, more minor problem crops up in that you'll ideally want one dual-duty to block each type of icon, running your budget up the wall. Fortunately there isn't a dual-duty for each situation (at least, not for 13 potential net icons), but that's an argument against Defense, and I'm only trying to point out why a non G-Shield/Tabard defense/dual-duty is useless to you at this point.

Again, I skimmed Lance's points, but comparing your current stats to the 700 Boost is a naive way of thinking. At the 300 Boost, you'll be able to push opponents to perhaps 450. If you're up against a 500 Boost opponent, you're pretty much screwed. (Again, I'm rounding.)

... and that fits my definition of brief. (Darn you, Lance. You reminded me that I was planning on writing an absurdly long One Player analysis article a while back.)


Your next option is between a 100% Freezer, G-Bomb, and SoS. The healer really can take a back-seat unless you start doing Two Player, especially considering that we just got off of TRoDS a few months ago. If you're maxing out against One Player opponents for fun (or giving serious thought to Two Player), go with the freezer (with the healer second in line). If you're just looking to upgrade, go with the Bomb. If you can sell your Goo Blaster, do it.

Shattered, in general, I don't disagree with most of what you've said, though our conclusions aren't always the same. I'd revise your definition of what ultimately matters to "how many icons you land and/or block in a given turn", as damage avoided is as useful as damage dealt in my view. I agree that against increasingly powerful opponents, the value of your defense will tend to decrease, though would add, the RELATIVE value of your offense is similarly compromised. At the 250-300 boosts, you will indeed be at a disadvantage to a super opponents boosts, and agree that a particular defense may not come into play, though the same can be true of a particular offensive icon type which can be totally or partially neutralized by the opponent's defense. In general though, I'd certainly agree that if given a choice between a 13-icon offensive item and a 13-icon defensive item, I'd take the offensive one every time. My own observation (sirhatter and I had this discussion several years ago in some thread or other) is that an icon of offense is equal to somewhere between 1.3 and 1.7 icons of defense in general. And I would argue that with an offensive weapon, you KNOW what power is being expended and what will land or need to be defended against, while with defense you're guessing or protecting against the worst possible situation, and in fact, you may guess wrong, or the situation my be less awful than what you're defending against, hence the increased value of an offensive icon.

I'll definately conceed that a dual-duty's offense may also be blocked, though most weapons that are scary to you as a battler in one-player tend to be pure offensive weapons, and that I'd prefer to be fighting with a Ylanas Blaster to a 13 TOTAL icon dual-duty, in one-player, though many 13-icon dual duties would easily beat the Blaster head-to-head in two-player. I'd add though that neither option is particularly great against the super one-player opponent we've been discussing if you're at the 250 or 300 boosts.

I'll disagree with you on the cost of the dual-duty strategy, as the exampled Mask of Coltzan (19 total icons maximum), fills in as the minimum for either of two icons, and costs of pure offensive weapons (I'd singled out Ylanas Blaster as a new and welcome EXCEPTION), that have any relative attack value against a super opponent are even more expensive the dual-duty route. I will however conceed that both theories have their weaknesses as the cost of two pure offensive weapons with any meaningful relative value of attack to a 250-300 booster is beyond the budget of the player in question and indeed most players in general, myself included, and there isn't an effective way to deal with air attack in a pure dual-duty approach.

I disagree with your conclusion about measuring against a 700 boost, and found that's the opponent I was maxing out against when I was at the 250 and 300 levels. I'd have been disappointed if I couldn't beat a one-player opponent at more than a 450 boost at the time I was there, much less now when single-use items actually are SINGLE USE and not recurring for the opponents. I wonder if perhaps in the thrust for pure offense at the cost of defense, the additional round or two of attack is taken from a fight, which allows one to last longer against better challengers.

I'd certainly agree that you're pretty much up the creek against a 500 booster in TWO-player, but you should be very competetive in ONE-player with a decently planned battleset, a balanced 300 pet, and decent battle ability, even without a massive budget.

In any event, what I was trying to establish is that for a player who has reached the 250/300 level with a balanced pet and a limited budget who plans to continue training, I think one has entered the area where dual-duties start to make sense, and will only appreciate in utility with each additional boost in either strength or defense and that overall they are cost effective (I guess we disagree on that), and represent a better alternative than most "pure shields". In fact I do agree with you that the Ghostkershield and Faerie Tabord are currently the only readily avialable PURE shields that are worth considering at these levels or higher. The key to me though is if you're a long-term player and you're continuing training, ultimately you're going to end up with the question of "Is it better to have a 700 strenth pet with low defense or a 700/700 pet", and I don't think it's hard to come up with better alternative.

Sorry, I shouldn't have used the word "land." I meant to imply successful defense in there as well (thus, "net" icons).

Were you just recommending Mask? I thought I read you suggesting that he pick up a full set of dual-duties, but now I can't seem to find that line. If you're just recommending Mask, we can ignore almost all of what I've said (and what's in the spoiler). I still disagree with you, but Mask is solid enough and relatively cheap enough that it's not going to hurt Pilot to pick it up. (Until SoS range, anyway.)

Again, ignore the spoiler if we're just supposed to be talking about Mask.

Shattered, I was suggesting that PilotGrarrl start putting dual duties into his lineup and I offered the Mask of Coltzan as an example of one that would be helpful. Another cheap alternative, which you didn't mention is the Winged Scarab, which has minimal offensive attack, minimal air defense, but for one-player, EXCELLENT physical defense which against some one-player challengers makes it a superior choice. The Scarab IS a bit of a unique situation, though it's generally been classified with the dual duties. In addition to the odd self-inflicting injury situation, the physical (but not air) defense is NOT subject to defensive boost.

I wasn't knocking Ylanas Blaster, which I rated as a "10" for value previously, but I don't buy the "one-size fits all" theory. I think you look at each one-player opponent and equip what gives you the best shot to beat that opponent. I certainly DO and have recommended that any mid-level battler on a budget have a Ylanas Blaster, and it's not my intent to say that one shouldn't have pure offensive attackers. I think you need at least TWO of those and a minimum of THREE if you don't train defense. But where someone is training defense, and plans on continuing training it (which I consider wise), and has now hinted about moving to two-player later on, the main thrust is to start taking advantage of defense (you've trained it, it has advantages), and that below the Faerie Tabord and Ghostkershield, dual duties are a better way of going than lesser pure shields.

I think that between dual-duties, pure shields and reflectors you'd better have a way of dealing with each icon type if you're planning on being successful against against super opponents. That said, most one-player super opponents still only have one or two items that are scary enough that you have to act to neutralize them. The lesser weapons, even if you lose to them in a round, aren't going to do enough damage to you (and you won't lose bad enough) that you can't make it up with your advantages in species ability usage, proper timing of the use of your healer, proper followup on a frozen opponent, superior faerie abilities, etc.

As I said in rating the Tyrannian Army Math Tools at the time (rated it a 5), it's at best a situational item and not usually the best option, even at what it tries to do.

Hobans Hat has appreciated pricewise out of the area we're generally discussing, though I feel it's a fine weapon, just not a fine price. The light defenders have a place in a battleset.

In general, I think most battlesets of this type have a healer, a freezer and bomb (lets call them the #5, #6 and #7 slots in a battleset. There are hopefully at least the two main offensive weapons in the #1 and #2 slots. For a defensively trained pet, I think two of the remaining three spots should be dual-duties at the level we're talking about, leaving one slot available for a stealer, third pure offensive or dual-duty or a pure shield, depending on the battleset and the particular opponent.

I have no problem with the Sword of Skardsen in either of the first two positions if one can afford it, but the point I think you're missing is that you're going to lose (and fairly quickly) with the SoS as well, as even at an average 18.3 average hit, assuming zero defense against either icon used, it's equalized attack at the 250 boost is only 6.71 equalized icons and at the 300 boost a more helpful 7.93 equalized icons. But anytime your super opponent uses an offensive weapon with 7 icons (at the 250 boost) or 8 icons (at the 300 boost), you're losing that matchup, head-to-head. And you've invested everything in one item, which if the opponent happens to defend/reflect dark attack or defend physical, won't be worth equipping at all. I'll grant however, that the same is true of the Mask of Coltzan, as an opponent that defends/reflects fire can render it unworth equipping against that particular fighter as well.

We obviously continue our long-running debate about the value of defense, and we can agree to disagree on that, as we have in the past, but we do appear to agree on the value of continuing training, and ultimately it appears, on a place for BOTH a SoS and the MoC in the battleset at some point, though we arrive it through very different ways. We also both seem to find a place for Ylanas Blaster as well. But to the very original question asked, I'd still say, with a long-term prospective - healer first, then freezer, then see where you are stat wise, and np wise to look at whether the next void to be filled is the #1 attacker, or the bomb upgrade.

And PilotGrarrl, if you're still with us after all of this I'd also suggest that on the real cheap end, you pick up a Downsize!, Scarab Ring, and Purple Sticky Hand as CHEAP situationals, any one of which may be worth equipping against a particular challenger.

And FINALLY, I think money spent on training ultimately is money better spent than on dual-duties OR pure offensive weapons. It just takes a long, long time and progess seems glacial, though it actually IS progress! 4a.m. here and I have to be up for work tomorrow morning - Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!