How Much do Icon Types Really Matter?

[rabid_schnauzer]

In a lot of the ratings here, the raters express the opinion that certain icon types are better than others, but I'm beginning to question to what extent the icons tyoes actually differ in usefulness

In any given match, the icons which your opponent cannot defend against are the best type, and frequently fewer icons of the right type are far better than more icons of the wrong type. But I think it may be a mistake for anyone to assume that they can reliably guess what the right type is before a battle.

Many weapon raters espouse the opinion that icons which get through Sink (Earth and Air) and/or Burrow (Light and Dark) are superior to the icons that don't. On the surface, this is certainly reasonable, since both are useful and commonly used abilties which you may encounter in a battle. And yet if you set yourself up to get through Sink or Burrow you are making two assumptions which may not hold. First, you are assuming that your opponent will use Sink or Burrow (even after he sees that your weapons get through it) and secondly you are assuming that your opponent has not taken additional steps to plug the holes in the defense these abilities offer. As to the first assumption, it's entirely reasonable that a 2player opponent may react to seeing your weapons' icon types by choosing to use other useful faerie abilities (such as Diamond Dust, Drain Life, Regeneration, Quench, or Air Shield) in place of Sink or Burrow and few 1player opponents use these abilities. As to the second assumption, I know that I will use Air Faerie Crown and Ring of the Lost on a turn I Burrow and I will use a Mask of Coltzan or Shovel Plus on a turn I Sink.

In other ratings, icon types are rated by their ability to get through Ghostkershield or other other defensive weapons, and while this is important to know, we're fast reaching the point in Neopian weaponry when there are a broad range of viable defense options. Paying more for Fire and Water icons to get through G-Shield is a poor choice if you face an opponent with a Faerie Tabard. All icons types have 100% defenders, most have 100% defenders that also do something else. We can still make decent guesses about the types of defensive or dual-duty weapons available in most price ranges, but we can't be sure, and the guessing is getting harder and harder as more weapons are released.

Which brings me to my final point, being that rating weapons for their ability to penetrate FUTURE defenses is an exercise in futility for anyone. Yet where the IDB ratings see the heaviest interest is during wartime, which consists of 1-player battling against opponents who will have unique new weapons of their own, and in such cases their valuation of icon types may be highly irrelevant.

Those are my thoughts, I'd like to hear yours.

[graphitesmoothie]

For the most part in lower-level battling, the most important icon types are (like you said) those that get through Burrow and Sink. The reasoning behind that is that lower-level battles last a very small amount of rounds, and it is most effective.

Therefore, for me at least, icon types depend very much upon the level of the weapon. A 6-9 icon weapon that does a scattered range of icons which are all easily blocked by burrow/sink would not be too helpful, since you'd be lucky if a low-level battle (and by this, I mean around 55 boost and lower) lasts even 5 rounds.

However, as you get higher up to the range of 500+ HP and boosts and the like, different icons are useful. For example, you mentioned the G-shield. G-shield is one of the most-used shields. Therefore, once you get to a higher level, mass dark icons can be good and bad. If you have 3 main attacking weapons, with one being SoS, you can use that to mess with your opponent's head. They'll think you will use SoS again and will try to block it, but only to have you use your 2 other attackers. However, if you ONLY have SoS, you have little chance.

What you mentioned about icons going past G-shield (water + fire) would be nice. I would like it at a high level. However, there are no prevalent high-level fire or water weapons for that. Should that happen, I'm sure they would be a pretty mainstream weapon of choice.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the ratings (most of them) are written for both 2-player and 1-player. I would guess (as I'm not a rater) that they don't want to alienate one group and not the other. Our ratings are for all the time, not just wars.

Those are my thoughts, I'm pretty sure I missed a lot of your points, but I would like to see the discussion on this thread.

[nov@choek]

As to the second assumption, I know that I will use Air Faerie Crown and Ring of the Lost on a turn I Burrow and I will use a Mask of Coltzan or Shovel Plus on a turn I Sink.

You would be surprised how many people do not dodge earth when sinking or dark when burrowing, hence I even make that noobish mistake myself often.

As for the importance of the icon types, they are very important. Water is a commonly blocked icon at first (leaf shield) but evolves in the rarest icon as you advance (only Spot doing a fair amount), Thats why people don't get the faerie tabard, because "nobody" uses water anymore, thats why raters (if they see a mass water icon weapon) rate it "hard to block'. This can be subjective, as in certain icon types are hard to block for one player, and easy to block for another. But as up now I think that water, light and air are still considered the most hard to block icons because few people carry defence for them. I see your point with the burrow and sink part though, but a weapon beating a burrow or a sink deserves a definite plus since this is an ability not every weapon has.

[rabid_schnauzer]

Now let me try to make things a little more concrete by looking at what I see as the Strengths and Weaknesses of each Icon type.

Physical:
Strengths: Cannot be Reflected
Weaknesses: Most good shields (Leaf Shield, Patched Magic Hat, G-Shield, F-Tabard) block at least some physical. At the low end, Scarab ring blocks 3 physical. Aganst any defense boost, nearly all physical damage can be blocked by Sinsi's Helm, Winged Scarab, Yooyuball Keepers Chest Guard or Yooyoball Player Sling. While there are full blockers for all icon types, the Winged Scarab and YYKS are far far cheaper than the other full blockers which come with attack icons attached.

Light:
Strengths: Gets through Burrow, gets through Faerie Tabard, only minimally blocked by G-Shield.
Weaknesses: Totally blocked by faerie ability Steam Shield; blocked by Patched Magic Hat, blocked by Dusty Magic Broom, Air Faerie Crown and a number of other less-common dual duty weapons. Totally blocked by Shadow Shield and the Pirate Captain's Hat

Dark:
Strengths: Gets through Burrow, Gets through Faerie Tabard, Gets through Leaf Shield and Patched Magic Hat.
Weaknesses: Totally blocked by G-Shield and Ring of the Lost, blocked by Mask of Coltzan, blocked by Bottle of Magic Sand, blocked by Golden Compass, blocked by Earthen Scorchstone.

Air
Strengths: Gets through Sink, Only minimally blocked by both G-Shield and Faerie Tabard. Gets through Leaf Shield, Patched Magic Hat and X-514 Shield. Top-level reflectors are the most expensive.
Weaknesses Blocked by Winged Scarab, blocked by Earthen Scorchstone, Blocked by Commander Blade, blocked by Tornado Ring, blocked by Pear of Disintegration.

Earth
Strengths: Gets through Sink, only weakly blocked by G-Shield
Weaknesses Blocked by Mask of Coltzan, Cloudy Wand of Storms, Leaf Shield, Patched Magic Hat, totally blocked by the Shield Of Pion Troect and by the Pirate Captain's Hat

Water
Strenghs: Gets through G-Shield
Weaknesses: Totally blocked by two different faerie abilities (Boil and Water Breathing), totally blocked by the cheapest total
cheapest total blocker, reflected with the cheapest top reflector, totally blocked by Faerie Tabard, blocked by Hoban's Hat and Frozen Wand of Crystals, blocked by Leaf Shield.

Fire
Strengths: Gets through G-Shield
Weaknesses Totally blocked by faerie ability Quench, blocked by Scarab Ring, blocked by Greater Fire Potion, blocked by Pirate Captain's Hat, reflected painfully by cheap reflectors (Clawed Shield and Flame Reflectozap)

Now my evaluations are probably incomplete as I'm only considering weapons I consider to be decent enough to consider using at their price and I'm a little shaky on my knowledge of some of the more expensive total blockers and reflectors. I'm also probably not being totally fair in which specific icon defenders I'm choosing here, I wouldn't ever use a Greater Fire Potion unless I knew for sure I was facing a Mask of Coltzan.. If you have any suggestions for improvement in this analysis, please let me know.

However, looking over that list, I have to think that with all the decent defensive options being either rare or expensive AIR is probably the best type currently in the battledome

[nov@choek]

You are forgetting the 75% reflectors, triple turbo dryer is quite common up high, jhudoras wand too. Kings lens too... I think light is probably the hardest to block, since steam shield is an ability that takes 40% in normal occasions like water breathing and boil but unlike quench.

[Dead_water]

(I battle 2p almost always)

In one player, icon types don't really matter.

In two player, they do. But IMO it depends at what level you are fighting at (like graphitesmoothie said)

Yes you can only guess what your opponent will/can defend, but you can atleast get a ballpark idea. I personally think the getting past sink/burrow thing is a little over rated, (you gotta predict exactly when they will sink/burrow, and which they will do, and like you said, smart people will usually defend those icons anyway)

Wars can't really be evaluated cause TNT makes up the weapons for the war challengers however they please.

And something that I've been noticing: All the "good" 6-9 icon weapons seem to do light or air. Also, physical is almost always the "variable icon" in a weapon. Probably 50% of the weapons do physical.....

[Phuzzbomb]

Another point for 2 player is icon types change over time. With the NQII weapons doing lots of light it made good sense to use a dual duty weapon that blocks light. With RotL, SoS lost some of its potency and dark was seen as weaker. At low level battling the scarab ring was able to have an effect with its blocking. These will change again as weapons retire or become rarer, making them too expensive for their power.

It can be difficult to judge 1 player as it depends largely on the opponent, but generally I reckon icon types are less important here as there are no "fashionable" weapons.

[whostolemycheesecake]

At lower levels icons typed really do matter. Scarab ring and leaf shield alone make, earth, water, physical and to a lesser extent fire a bad choice as if your opponent has half a brain they can seriously limit your attack whereas with light, dark and air most people have nothing to defend it with as there are few dual duties or pure shields that block these effectively (well there aren't but people don't really seem to use them). Air is possibly the best at lower levels because there are dual duties like jade staff that block light and especially dark.
I would prefer scroll of moonlight (6 light) over Essence of Esophahor (4.5 earth, 4.5 water) in pretty much any situation.

[rabid_schnauzer]

Thanks very much for everyone's input so far. This is a pretty interesting discussion.

The more I think about this, the more I think that it's a mistake to look at icon types as superior to other types. I'm not to saying that icon types don't matter, but rather that icon types need to be evaluated in context of the weapon they are on, the price of that weapon and also the price and commonality of weapons which can neutralize or overcome it.

To illustrate, I think it's a better analysis to say something like:

Starry Battle Dung is lousy because it only gets 1 icon through Mask of Coltzan, while taking 8 in return, only gets 6 through Ring of the Lost while taking 9.5 in return, and only gets 1 through Ghostkershield. Even against the one-tenth the cost Golden Compass, this weapon comes out behind by 0.7 icons in a head to head matchup.

Than it is to say:

Starrry Battle Dung is lousy because Earth and Dark are lousy icon types, easily blocked.