holepercent

Pretty common for games to end before 40 now.. The tier1 support triples are comparatively much weaker. It's hard to find 'casual' beta testers who play at lower difficulties (mainly normal) to stay in the beta test team.. When ETD 4.0 beta first came out, many players signed up. Slowly most disapperared after a few games. The only players who really stayed with the map are now the beta leaders..' Pros play better because we know how to place our towers and combine the builds properly. It's hard to say 'consider the casual players' who probably do not know everything about the game that we know. recently i've also been practicing playing at VII (although not very successful as seen from my #180) as well as the usual IV V..

It's a big challenge to master both the rebalanced builds AND creep difficulty (hp increase and 2% healing) at the same time. Personally, i feel that the game will be closer to balanced with the revised tower balance and 4.0pb creep settings. Focus on doing the towers right first. After we have a fully working set of towers then adjust for overall difficulty.. It's difficult to pinpoint real balance issues if all the factors are changed at the same time. About VH.. it should be a mode to challenge seasoned players. It should be challenging for the best players but not impossible. VHX will be the close to impossible mode. I click VH automatically now. Start with the hardest difficulty and learn from there. It can be seen easily what works and what doesn't. VE can lure players into a false sense and get a shock when they progress to higher difficulties as their builds work in VE but not VH.

shouldn't be too major a issue. But more logically, they should only revive once. If the player leaks revived units, the creeps should not revive when they are killed when they reenter the path. i wouldn't see the creeps going thru the maze so many times.. probably the defense is too weak. It may become a resort to just leak the units with low life rather than rush to build towers if the creeps regain the ankh. If the defense could damage the creeps to that low health, there shouldn't be a problem dealing with the revived creeps with 33% hp. apart from losing speed/ losing to a player who's racing.

DFNE did take a few more attempts (for my build project) but it's still a pretty reasonable build to complete at least for me. Roots, quaker, voodoo, smith flame (mushroom) and maybe gunpowder for cover. The main balance issue is the strength of the various 15 4-element builds. DNEW and LFNW are the easiest 2 with 2 aoe slows each. LDNE is close to unfinishable. The rest are in between with varying difficulties. DNEL and LFNE to name a few took me close to the full number of attempts. WFNE has both well and smith, appears to have decent damage but is one of the most challenging to complete. Key balance is also that all towers out of the 3 superduals and 8 supertriples, ie all damage towers are buffable properly by well smith (trickery). Also the reworking of a few towers such as disease that are just not viable.

selling instead of upgrading dark towers placed at 5.. i was going for a noleak random game but that mistake costed me 15 lives.. was sure i could have killed everything.. or getting the same randOOM for 3-4 consecutive games.. something like $LDLD$$ in various permutations and combinations.. and having the chaos mode give alternate weak and strong levels. Switching 20+ light and dark towers around for every wave.. this actually happened to me twice.. once quite some time ago playing with jolin012 and another time recently by myself..

Maybe the 6-ele build was brought down to the level of the 4-ele build but the creeps are now overpowered with respect to the towers? The new ice, new flame, corpse explosion as well as the other new/remade towers need their round of balancing against the existing towers. Also, adjustments probably need to be made to towers that were previously unbuffable by well and smith that gain the boosts now. This also contributes to build imbalance. Towers can be balanced as long as all towers can be boosted properly. Numbers can be adjusted after that. just a guess.. we may need to refine our builds with more experience..

Is the creep hp boost necessary? It appears that we are getting schooled much earlier compared to 4.0pb. Games are ending before wave 40 quite frequently. Maybe we are not used to the creep hp increase yet. Feels much harder than 4.0. More importantly, are the towers balanced with respect to the creep hp? Towers are cheaper but do less damage, making more towers necessary.

ice towers really result in massive lag.. we went down to 0.2fps.. flame tower doesn't affect my fps much.. gunpowder slightly but not as much as ice..

individual tower tests First impressions Plenty of effects flying all over the area.. nice but it will get messy seeing what's going on... corpse explosion Aoe combo which increases in strength when creeps clump together. needs good placement to take advantage of every explosion.. Ice Interesting ability. Thinks of how best to place the tower.. This tower is starting to feature strongly in games. Overpowered? Flame Stronger with aoe slows and clumping. 'mobile' kindle tower Gunpowder Too much effects? It appears that some damage is wasted. Trickery Better than the original. Autocast is a useful option but ofc the best is still to select the towers you want to be cloned. Will need to test this in actual game situations. i'll need to rememeber to use it though.. i NEVER used trickery so far.. Quark Fast attack speed and the damage cap is reached pretty fast (even more so at long pass placements). Hydro No more stunning of elementals. Less 'useful' but i guess much better for balance.. Well+smith / mushroom+magic not really sure about/why these interactions. I had to really pay attention to notice the shorter cooldowns.

i did a similar one for beta5 posted in club element. didn't transfer it into game reports.. i'm not as detailed to go into pages of numbers... so i do actual play tests... and post the report based on in-game results..

The holepercent's build project b11 Individual tower test report This will cover the tests for the individual towers Tower combination test report Towers are tested in combination based to expected builds. Individual build reports All 15-6-1 builds individiually tested. After a warm-up test round, 3 attempts on each build will be attempted. All builds should be playable reasonably. The aim here is not so much completing, but to see how the builds stack agaisnt each other. No build should be way more difficult than the others.

there's way to little build time considering there's tier2 elementals in play already..30sec for short mode was just right although slightly longer would be preferred but 30sec is still playable.. 60 sec (interest free) for extra short should be enough.. it doesn't feel like 30sec even.. after looking at the elementals, pressing tower query, a brief plan on the build, by the time i start building the wave is almost coming in (i was in random!)..

yes! thanks for the custom builder... better than nothing. but the one we have seems a bit weird..

pretty much the standard 6-ele build.. the quakers seem a bit isolated.. maybe the nova could be placed at VII. it hits all around VII as well as supporting the quaker. Also, it can deal the last bit of damage to leaks right of VII or / .. Enchantment is not really built that early in the game.. and no voodoo tower? from my build project experience the easiest 5-ele build is WDNEF. the one with no light. my build order went something like roots muck zealot corrosion quaker voodoo. well smith added in somewhere.. flame towers at the short pass placement. i started with upgrade to hydrochloric to clear wave 45..

on to the replay. in ve difficulty, it is almost impossible to lose as long as you build towers.. in short mode, any lvl 1 elemental summoned is killed automatically at spawn point before wave 16 starts. you do not need to build towers to kill the elementals.. disease is the worst tower in the game.. you got away only because you're playing in very easy difficulty. 'nuff said. NEVER sell towers in pick.. unless you really know what you are doing. PLAN your build well before playing. the hydro towers hardly attacked.. build above the roots and muck tower or where the gunpowder were.. pure nature.. interesting choice. any reason for that? WDNE usually ends with pure water and pure earth.. replay this in VH difficulty or at least normal then post your replay. you'll learn more that way. really. even if it is a noob replay with plenty of leaks. read up on the strategy forums.. and the many guides available. The most important would be cisz's tower placement guide. there's plenty of information on improving. post your questions if need be. watching replays by the pros (cisz, jolin012, DDRKirby(ISQ) just to name a few) is also a good way to learn.

you have to play the game with the correctly named map (in future). renaming the map after that doesn't work. the replay is linked to the filename of the map used to play. i renamed my file to watch the replay in the first post. i'm watching the replay now and comments will follow later..

the original replay can be viewed. but anyone who wants to watch it has to go thru the trouble of renaming their map. so please fix the filename of your map immediately.

your filename for the map is wrong.. to watch a replay, the filename must match exactly which yours does not. the filename for the map is Element TD 4.0 Public Beta with no extra underscores or any other characters.

first of you, you broke the rules about replays. Please ensure you have the correct filename for the map.. All leads hate to rename the map/have multiple copies of the map. i'll get to the replay later..

not for me.. could be due to global announcements... if not just click the 'mark forums read' link.. at the bottom when at forum index.

this is one of the easiest 2 builds to complete.. roots and muck, hydro, well, mushroom at IV, gunpowder at V. read my guide at the link in my signature (scroll down for brief notes about playing all 15 4-ele builds) .. i'm sure you read my guide as the tower list is from my guide.. start with roots and muck. after that, gunpowder mushroom well. hydro is added as and when. duals upgrade start with mortar. then upgrade to thorns and mire tower after that. follow with well and mushroom upgrades. End with 1 pure water and 1 pure earth. It is possible to skip mushroom and depend on roots muck mortar well hydro. however, this is a bit too reliant for hydro to proc. (i managed to not leak using that build but it cannot be replicated reliabily.) mushroom is hence added for damage. the towers you do not consider at all are disease and poison. after you finish the build, save and post your replay here..

sounds like you're still experimenting on the jinx build for forum draft #1b? but whatever.. jinx tower is out ...

if i'm not wrong there are a few other silent towers.. nature tower is easy to detect as being silent as it's a starting tower.. but yes. every tower should have a sound.. the endgame will be very noisy with every tower having an attack sound.. talk about effects..

hydro is used a lot more than jinx. that's why you see more hydro triggers than jinx triggers. hydro can be used used in the early game while jinx is used in very specific situations, say catching elementals, or often late game or ronald hunts.. but it appears somewhat that hydro tends to proc more than jinx even with the supposedly lower chance..

nice replays and ronald hunts.. the kirby playstyle.. interest sell and rebuilds.. (i'm always too lazy to do that... have to start practicing.. to catch up with you guys).. idea to relocate just for the ronald hunt.. with pretty good builds as well.. i've been planning to attempt to kill them right at the start (VII -VIII) but my intended kill zone hardly works out.. relocating to the end seems a better choice.. i do realise that i've been overbuilding by quite a bit in my games.. i could have cleared the waves with less towers..