The Ultimate Tank Mage Guide

[LKP]

Re: The Ultimate Tank Mage Guide

Both wrestling and anatomy are viable choices, but it depends on your application.

As explained in the guide, Anatomy + Evalint gives you defensive wrestling. "Defensive wrestling" has the same effect on your opponent's hit chance that wrestling does: If you have GM Anat and GM Eval, that's equivalent to GM wrestling. In other words, your opponent has a 50% chance to hit you on a given swing if he has GM in his weapon skill and you have GM in yours.

The difference between wrestling and "defensive wrestling" is your hit chance. With anatomy & evalint, you have almost no chance to land a punch on your target (unless he has no wrestling, defensive wrestling, or weapon skill, as the case may be). With wrestling, you have a very good chance to land a punch (50% against another grandmaster). The damage of a punch is negligible, but it's enough to disrupt an opponent's spell. Punch disruption is a very common and very effective tactic in mage duels.

On the other hand, GM anatomy gives you an additional 30% damage with your weapon and a 25% chance to land a special move. Special moves are key to some tank mage strategies. This is especially true for fencers.

So there you have it. In short:

Wrestling = punch disruption, less damage, no special moves

Anatomy = no punching, more damage, special moves enabled.

I believe I mentioned the formulae in the original post but here they are again:

Special move chance
Anatomy/4

Anatomy damage bonus
If Anatomy < 100, damage bonus = 20% of your Anatomy skill, or Anatomy/5

If Anatomy = 100, damage bonus = 30% of your Anatomy skill, or .3*Anatomy

As for my own recommendation, I suggest Anatomy. Wrestling, while useful in duels and some 1v1 field fights, is not nearly as practical as Anatomy in the field. Special moves are much more effective than wrestling disruption. If you are trying to disrupt an enemy, in most cases this is better achieved by using a fast weapon that will also inflict some damage at the same time. The only time this is really impractical is during some advanced 5x dueling type strategies, which rarely happen in the field. You will seldom get a chance to attempt a punch disrupt while field fighting, and very, very rarely use one in larger group fights or PKing scenarios. So once again, I would only take wrestling if you plan on using your tank mage for (5x) dueling as well.

 

[V1RTU4L]

thanks for the great guide ... made things much easier =)

 

[LKP]

Sorry for the late reply!

Dexterity does increase the rate of fire of your bow; that is, the time between one shot and the next shot. It does not make the arrow get to the target any quicker, and as far as I know it does not change the amount of time you need to stop moving for your shot to take effect.

Most archer tanks favor the heavy crossbow. It does almost as much damage in a single shot as a halberd, and although it is very slow, you really only need one good hit to set up a huge combo. I also like to carry a bow for sustained fire, as it's a bit faster and has a greater range (8 tiles vs. 7). Sustained fire is great in a fight of attrition, forcing your opponent to heal while you passively regain mana. In those cases, you'll want the fastest weapon you can get. This is especially useful in arenas, where most rings are less than 16x16 in size. If you stand in the middle, your opponent can never get out of range, so he can't avoid being hit by you and you won't have to move. I can think of only one arena that's too big for this to work, and even then you'll only have to move a few steps.

 

[shindig]

Tank mage guide:
Pre load chain lightning/meteor swarm (don't let opponent see you cast it, off screen to load it, use by type (scroll) on razor)

equip heavy hitting weapon (heavy xbow, halberd, war hammer or spear)

when you hit them to below 50%, drop chain lightning and equip fastest weapon possible (bow, katana, club/staff, kryss (poisoned too)) to disrupt heal while opening explosion potion

Loot away...