This week’s battle mage secrets focuses on the Unprotected Ruleset.

Ruleset Details

In the Unprotected ruleset, all armor is removed from all monsters and no ability to gain armor during battles. Immediately monsters with high armor like Ever-Hungry Skull, Enchanted Defender, Dumacke Orc etc., become useless. I have encountered so many battles where the Ever-Hungry Skull is so overpowered due to its high armor and cheap mana cost. Also, mid-tier tanks are negatively impacted by this ruleset such as Silvershield Paladin, who on its day is a great mid-tier tank with decent health and decent armor, but losing the armor, will diminish its value add that it brings to battle. An approach to focus on in this ruleset is providing buffs to increase damage, health, and speed. Abilities like Inspire, Tank Heal, Heal, Silence, Demoralize and Swiftness just to name a few key abilities to focus on providing those buffs and debuffs. Finally, I have had great success in doubling up on Sneak and Opportunity monsters in the backline as there is no armor, all damage is essentially treated as magic damage and therefore capitalizing on this aspect is critical.

Battle – Full Battle History

Battle Details

• Mana Cap: 48

• Ruleset(s): Earthquake, Unprotected, Noxious Fumes

Line-up Details

• Alric Stormbringer (summoner): +1 magic damage to all friendly monsters.

• The Kraken: main DPS melee tank with high health, high melee damage and Taunt ability to absorb all damage.

• Prismatic Energy: support magic tank with Magic Reflect and Void abilities.

• Spirit Miner + Sea Genie + Water Elemental: backline damage support + team buffs.

• Ruler of the Seas: a high-damage magic monster with Blast ability (area of effect damage) to take out the opposition backline.

Did your strategy work? What will you try differently next time?

This battle was like an anxiety-filled pill with double Earthquake and Poison damage thanks to the Noxious Fumes and Earthquake damage on top of the Unprotected ruleset. So, the strategy for going to battle was simple, can I hit harder and faster than the opposition? I was never going to not pick The Kraken as it provides everything I need from a frontline tank – high health, melee damage debuff and Enrage ability which when procced will increase its speed and damage. The rest of the line-up was made up of monsters that either had Flying ability, high health, buffs/debuffs and maximizing damage output. The battle was on a knife’s edge as the opposition had a lot of buffs and debuffs in play, but the Ruler of the Seas was the MVP with the Blast ability coming in clutch and taking out Pelacor Arbalest, Iziar and Venari Crystalsmith with one Blast damage hit. It was a thing of beauty and the rest of the battle played out with me securing a very satisfying victory.

Do You Like the Unprotected Ruleset? Why or Why Not?

Not having armor treats all damage like magic damage (bypasses armor) and therefore makes melee attackers more appealing due to their typically higher damage output. Also, monsters with healing, speed, and damage buffs/debuffs become important in battle as you need to determine as a player – do you want to outlast the opposition or batter them into submission. Therefore, I really enjoy this ruleset as this restriction (removing armor and the ability to gain armor in battle), does give players opportunity to get creative and try combinations that may have not tried before.

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