WindStrike

Here's a silly mode... this would be an alternate choice to All Pick, All Random, and Same Random. Random Tower mode. Every 5 waves, instead of getting a random element, you get a random Dual or Triple element tower. When you get that tower, you get access to all upgrades for that tower as well. After completing Wave 5, everyone gets access to base level single-element towers. After wave 15, upgrades for focused unlocked, and after wave 30, upgrades for refined unlock.

I've got some potential ideas for this, but before I do, I've got a question.... So last I checked, due to the properties of buildings, towers aren't supposed to be able to have animations, yes? Well, how is Nova Tower animated then? Did something change allowing buildings to be animated or is there something special about that tower?

Most unrealistic alpha screenshot I've ever seen. Arrow/cannon towers with triple-element towers? Please, surely you jest! Just kidding, it's an awesome shot yo.

To my understanding, custom games will be free, and even if the option of it costing something is there, it's been decided that EleTD will be free either way. As for the possibility of custom cosmetics for the mode costing money, I have no idea.

For now, we're doing a port of the TFT/SC2 versions, with a few revamped towers. Once we get a community back in the playing field and the game is up-to-date with the latest that TFT and SC2 brought, we'll probably be up for suggestions towards expanding/evolving the game. I for one would be all for adding new creep abilities especially, especially in Chaos mode. Those are some good ideas there. I'm hoping we'll be able to reach them someday relatively soon.

Both at once or manually switch between them? Actually, there's a move in Dota called Diabolic Edict, which pretty much fires a series of explosions at random targets around it. However, they'll all focus on one target if there's only one target. More targets around, more it'll split up. The ability is actually intended as a 1v1 move, in which it is nearly unparalleled in damage. Though, if we already have the single-target isolation tower idea, I guess that idea might as well go out the window.

So Obliteration Tower is also kinda meh in design, not to mention it overlaps with Ephemeral. Alternate design idea: Siege Tower: 16 range, small AoE, decent damage. Every 5 seconds, it can fire a long range shot at a target. Anywhere. This shot is a bit stronger and is single target; if it were AoE, it'd overlap with Artillery and the newly suggested Poison Tower.

For number 1, it's a repeat of haste tower, I wouldn't use it if possible. Second one, IT'S URSA! Just kiddin'. Anyhow, I noticed the dual towers have a low number of single-target towers (those three support towers don't count worth crap, lol). If this game is supposed to remind us of Warcraft 3, put it on Earth + Light, which was a single-target tower that was the dual-element equivalent of Haste. Third one, I'm guessing that's the railgun tower idea, but modified a bit? Well, instead of a railgun, since it just goes temporary super power, put it on Dark + Water. Poison tower naturally synchs up with a double slowing build, and whatever Dark + Water is should be splash. Fourth one, Dark + Earth + Light. Should be able to keep its name as Laser/Phasor Tower. And with this, it should actually be useful as a finisher. Fifth one, I can't say I'm fond of that idea. Well.... is it that specific tower's attack or any attack? If it's the latter, that's cool. Sixth one would be a great replacement for Earth + Nature. Ideas overall seem pretty solid.

Have some more tower ideas! Many of these were pulled from or inspired by DOTA 2 Heroes. And since we're shifting to DOTA 2 anyways, why not? Shockwave Tower Channels a beam at an enemy, which deals moderate damage over time. Each time that target loses a certain percentage of its health, a shockwave pulses outwards from the target, dealing damage to those around the target. No, the shockwave does not hurt the target that it came from, or else it'd help proc itself. This actually would not be a support tower. Support towers are generally able to affect a good chunk of the wave, if not all of it. This is only able to focus on one target at a time. However, it synergizes very well with other towers that are able to focus fire. Growth Tower A plant-like tower that shoots slow-moving single-target pulses at enemies. As it racks up damage, it grows in size, up to three times. Each level of growth increases its damage, buts lowers its attack speed. However, you can expend a level of growth to return it to its original attack speed while retaining its current damage level for a period of time. For each level you expend, the duration that this lasts increases. Expending all three levels at once should be a little bit longer than expending three levels individually. Rotting Tower A diseased tower that drains its own life to deal damage. When it begins decomposing, it shoots out a toxic cloud that lightly damages whatever is around it. As the tower loses more hp, the toxic cloud grows, both in area of effect and damage. When the tower drops down to 1 hp, it causes a toxic explosion, hitting a large area with high damage. After the toxic explosion occurs, it will take 5 seconds for the tower to fully regrow. If you stop decomposing early, the tower will regrow to its previous state over time, but it will take a minimum of 2.5 seconds. You can manually cause it to begin decomposing early, even if there's no enemies around. This actually makes it a potential finishing tower, by timing its toxic explosion to hit stragglers. Range Tower Why increase attack speed or damage when you can increase range? This would be an alternate support tower, but yeah, nutshell, increases a tower's range. Can have up to 4 towers buffed at once. Area of Effect Tower Same as above, increases an area of effect. FYI, this is a multiplicative effect, so it has no effect on single-target towers. Rift Tower Here's a funny support tower idea, using Chaos Knight's (DOTA 2 Hero) Reality Rift ability. Select two random targets in a medium radius around the tower. Warp both of them to a random distance between their original positions. As this simultaneously recalls a creep backwards and pushes another creep forwards, this actually wouldn't be broken, even if it's spammable. I suppose it would have a slightly higher chance to warp them both closer to the creep in the back, and its upgrade would increase that chance. Now, if we want to drop the support tower idea, remove that chance listed above, and then make each creep take damage based on the distance it traveled as a result of warping. Also, this tower should probably be a slow attack time, cause otherwise..... lotsa warping enemies when you get multiple rift towers. Bloodthirst Tower A tower that deals mediocre single-target damage. However, for each target near the tower that's at half health or less, it increases in damage and attack speed. Who says single-target sucks against Undead? Illusion Tower A single-target tower that shoots bursts of light at its targets. Every time it attacks, it has a chance to summon an illusion on the target, which does less damage than the tower, but it also has a chance, smaller than the tower version, to summon illusions. Each illusion lasts for 5 seconds. The awesome part? These illusions will borrow the tower's behavior. By default, they'll continue hitting the original target that they were summoned off of. They can, however, attack anything, until they disappear. Illusions also borrow the tower's buffs. Multi-Strike Tower Direct pull from Ember Spirit's (DOTA 2 Hero) Sleight of Fist ability. Strikes every target in a small area, with a 0.2 second delay between each strike. Each attack deals 35% cleave damage, meaning while the main target takes full damage, everything behind that target will take 35% of that damage. The cooldown between each strike is 1 second. The more targets clumped up in an area, the longer it's going to maintain its strike spree before having to recharge. Diabolic Tower Direct pull from Leshrac's (DOTA 2 Hero) Diabolic Edict ability. Summons lots of explosions, hitting targets in an area around the tower. If there's only one target, all the explosions will converge on that target, but the explosions will start randomizing to different targets as more appear.

Spore Tower: Shoots out a wide arc of spores that do constant damage over the area it hits. It deals bonus damage if the targets' healths are high, so it acts very good as a weakening tower. While it can shoot a wide arc in any direction, it can only shoot it out in one direction at a time. Ideally, place it in a double-pass stretch, like the left-side of the middle peninsula or anywhere on the right side. This tower would replace Mildew, and act similar in that it's supposed to be a good weakening tower. However, Mildew overlaps pretty badly with Ice. So whereas Ice and Mildew shoot out in a straight line in the direction they're shooting, Spore would hit more of a horizontal line, perpendicular to the direction it's firing, and hit a pretty wide area. Plague Tower: Does decent area of effect damage and has good range (12 or 16). Yes, this replaces Poison. The more corpses there are in that area, the more damage this will do. Poison tower was always a bursty tower before. This banks on that burst, amplfying its damage as more things in the area it's shooting dies. The actual search radius for corpses is much larger than the AoE of the attack, so it doesn't become completely useless after one second, lol.

Isolation Tower: Whereas Vapor and Runic gain more power the more targets there are, this is a single-target tower that actually gets weaker the more targets there are. The more targets within 3 or so range of the target, the less damage it'll do to that target. However, when it's shooting something that really is alone, this should actually be the highest single-target DPS tower in the game, save for pure towers. It should be fantastic at finishing stragglers or, better yet, killing elemental bosses. Its range shouldn't extend past 12, if even.

I say go ahead and just leave SC2 version as it is. Sure, a lot of random people play it, but there's practically no community on the forums, no real feedback, no real debates every time I go nuts and post up giant suggestion lists *cough*. Meanwhile, I'm seeing a lot of support coming in for DOTA 2 custom maps, including a large want for "Element TD, it's back from WC3!" It's like a bunch of people didn't even know there was a SC2 version at all, even when the arcade went free to play.

Well, I was about to hop on to ask about this, and here I see it officially announced...... well, maybe not complete with info/screenshots, but yeah, I'm lookin' forward to this. Seeing as you're saying "a few months", I'm guessing the DOTA 2 version is a lot easier to make, ie simpler map editor? Dunno, just guessing. One thing I'm curious about... how's the UI going to work? Traditionally used to WC3/SC2 UI setup, where buy-stuff is in bottom-right corner, along with tower abilities, with stats at bottom. This'd put abilities in mid with stats next to it, in theory. Do you intend on using that give towers more abilities, upgrades, and/or flexibility?

The wave order I posted is Composite, one of every element (no abilities), and then start the abilities train. The reason that blank composite wave is seemingly randomly inserted later in the wave order is to put some distance between two particular waves, otherwise it'd be Light for Wave 37 and Light for Wave 40 (too close together). There's one flaw with that wave order, and it's the lack of Dark creeps, having a long distance between 35 and 48. I dunno if Kara has found a way to fix that (without causing another issue), but otherwise, the order should work pretty well. If you want a fun challenge, try this test out: Start on short mode (Wave 16), but intentionally don't spend one of your elemental picks, and then spend it at wave 60. Additionally, the use of ray and grenade towers are banned. Good to know some new players are coming in. I dunno what the progress on the update is or what's being included, or which wasn't, but here's to hopin' it goes well!

SWEEET! You rule, sir. I'll try to be on skype more often, so prod me if ya need some testing done.

This is just a streamlined version of the large suggestions list, prioritizing the ones that, after testing and theory crafting through various means, are the most important. 1. New Wave Order, Earlier Start and Faster Game Attached to this post is a new wave order. What it does... The first wave now starts where the old Wave 14 started, with about the same HP (45). Instead of a set of composite rounds, it starts with a single composite round, and then it goes into a rotation between all of the elements and composite. Creep Types start at Wave 8, just like the current game. However, there is practically no breaks in creep types. They will continue to rotate between Speed, Image, Healing, Undead, Mechanical, and Regeneration. Waves go up to 50, after which the Fruit Round starts. The start of the game has been altered. You start with 2 Element Picks from the get go. There is a 45-second grace period where you pick your starting elements, followed by the "Ready" button. If you have not picked your elements by the end of the grace period, your starting elements are randomized. You cannot get a Level 2 element from the start. Level 2 and 3 elements unlock at the next element pick (after Wave 5). When the grace period ends, you have 30 seconds before the first wave starts. For minerals, you start with 750 minerals. This should allow you to build 4 single-element towers, or a dual-element and one single-element tower. Bounty progression remains the same. And as a way to remove various forms of abuse... Grenade and Ray towers are removed from the game. Selling a tower now takes 5 seconds to deconstruct it, or cancel the sell. 2. Starting Gold Before the first wave starts, interest should be disabled. Very Easy - 750 minerals Easy - 750 minerals Normal - 750 minerals Hard - 750 minerals Extreme - 800 minerals Very Hard - 800 minerals Extreme - 850 minerals Insane - 850 minerals Extreme - 900 minerals 3. Wave timers The intention here is to give longer wave timers on higher difficulties, but also drop scaling timers. It should also reduce the viability of front-entrance camping. Very Easy – 10 seconds Easy – 8 seconds Normal – 6 seconds Hard – 5 seconds Very Hard – 5 seconds Insane – 5 seconds 4. Ability scaling This would scale how powerful creep abilities are. Higher difficulties will increase the power of abilities. Very Easy – Abilities decreased by 20% Easy – Abilities decreased by 10% Normal – Default Hard – Abilities increased by 7.5% Very Hard – Abilities increased by 15% Insane – Abilities increased by 20% 5. Speed creeps Speed creeps are often the most difficult creeps by a long-shot in the early game, but in the late game, due to slowing, they might as well be standard creeps. This change nerfs them early but buffs them against slowing builds later. When the speed buff activates, the speed increase is dropped from +200% to +100%. Additionally, the creep becomes immune to all forms of slowing for this period of time. 6. Regeneration creeps This is a new creep type designed to counter multi-pass and long-pass builds, not to mention the triple-pass location at the top of the map. Every second, creep regenerates 1% of its Maximum HP (maybe 1.5%, may need tinkering). 7. Fruit Wave While it should stay in waves, it really needs to have randomized creep abilities scattered across the fruits. I’m not saying each wave is a different ability, but each fruit individually has a different ability. This would really fix how, in the end-game, splash wins by default. Healing creeps and mechanical creeps would really screw up all-splash defenses. 8. Attack Ground Please make it so when you select a group of towers and have them attack ground on a single spot, they all do it and not just the primary target. 9. Towers Annnd here’s all the balance suggestions I’ve got for towers. FYI, some of these are large changes. Earth Tower DPS – 16, down from 18 It feels completely superior to Fire and Water, so a damage decrease should fix it. Forge/Well/Trickery Allow these towers to buff other support towers. In return, nerf the DPS of all support towers by about 15-20%. There should be a button that's set to "On" by default on all support towers, saying whether they'll buff support towers or not. The reason for part of this is, in addition to the tooltip update that says which towers are support, it'd make it so new players aren't confused when they're trying to figure out why they can't buff support towers. Additionally, it'd open up different builds that haven't been really possible. Poison Tower – Tower Update Range – 12, down from 16 Instead of resetting its splash every time it changes targets, it resets after it hasn’t attacked for 2 seconds. The rate its splash increases would need to drop. This tower is literally useless in the early game. It cannot do anything without severe slowing and speed bonuses to its attacks, and, in fact, limiting viable builds with this tower to Dark 3, Water 3, Nature 3, Earth 2. This would improve its use in the early game and give it more viability with other builds, as well as maintaining its usefulness with the above mentioned build. Quark Tower – Tower Rewrite DPS – 10 Range – 8 AoE – Everything within its range Quark Tower starts out with low damage. However, the longer it deals damage, the more damage it does to everything around it. Additionally, its range can be changed, up to 10, 12 and 16; however, the rate that it grows is lessened, and changing its range resets its damage down to base value. This change would fix Quark Tower in the early game in that it’s straight up overpowered beyond belief. Its low DPS would weaken the wave and probably only destroy part of it, but in the late game, slowing would help it substantially, so it’d be far more useful then. Additionally, in terms of what it hits, given the way the orbs are, can be rather impractical, especially at the 16 range. This would fix its issues at the upper range and give it more spots it can be placed. Ice Tower ​DPS – 40, down from 50 Range – 10, down from 12 This tower is WAY too strong early game. This also makes it so that the explosion can hit a lot better. Flamethrower Tower DPS – 150, down from 222 Napalm’s damage is increased to 100. Currently, Napalm’s effects aren’t very well felt. This shifts the overall DPS of Flamethrower around so that half of it is in the initial attack and the other half of it is in the Napalm. While its DPS is nerfed slightly, because Napalm’s AoE is a flat 6, this would be an overall buff, and the tower would gain a lot more synergy and thus usefulness in the late-game. Laser Tower ​DPS – 1400, up from 1100 Laser Tower is just a pretty weak tower overall. This should help it out. Runic Tower ​Ability’s AoE dropped down to 2.25. This tower is stupidly strong in all stages of the game and stupidly OP with slowing. This is a flat nerf to fix it. Obliteration Tower DPS – 500 This is simply a text change and not an actual damage change. Hail Tower – Tower Update DPS – 900 The tower is always firing 3 shots at a time. For 3 seconds, the tower can direct its fire at a single target. Defaulted to off for auto-cast. I honestly found it odd that it’s firing at its best for 6 seconds and then virtually useless for the next 3 seconds, so it might as well be firing optimally at all times. This update gives it an overall damage buff as well as giving it a partial defense against single-targets. This is especially more useful for double-pass and triple-pass positions, as it’s able to make more use of it for picking off single targets. Flooding Tower ​DPS – 1000, up from 967 Range – 12, up from 10 It’s a useful tower, but it could be a little bit stronger overall. Haste Tower DPS – 340-2004 Large damage buff. This tower, like Laser, also really needs it. Ephemeral Tower ​Damage – 600, up from 500 DPS – 1935-388 Text change for DPS to change it from maximum to minimum. Similar buff to Haste and Laser, though not as much. Celerity Tower ​DPS – 375-1125, up from 300-900 Another single-target tower buff. Torrent Tower ​First two charge levels dropped (80 and 175). Caps at 80 attacks, down from 100. The first two levels were very useless anyways. This gives the lower levels more usefulness while quickening the pace to max level, giving it an overall buff at all stages of the game. New Wave Order.xlsx

Well, after a while of deciding not to do a single-player fruit hunt, I decided to do one. v1.48, Very Hard, Non-Mazing, standard settings... 421 Fruit Kills for 3,789 Points The good news is.... it's impossible to go infinite on Very Hard. Still feels like I broke the game though, considering I was relaxing up till about 2,500 fruit points. v148 VH - 421 Kills, 3789 Points.SC2Replay

Alternate suggestions for Laser and Runic. Personally, going with these rather than the two suggested in the base post. Laser So this tower is generic. Really generic. Sure, it's got different modes - set to weaken, set to finish, or set to random. To be honest, as flashy as the tower is, it's kind of a bland tower. Range increase from whatever it is to global. This'd pretty much make it the ultimate chase tower, and it'd be unique in that it can go anywhere and be anywhere. Things to consider nerfing as a result... Obviously, DPS The speed at which the fighters move. Currently, they're a decent pace, but they may need to be a bit slower. The speed at which fighters launcher. This is pretty slow at the moment, so I don't think this'd need to be worse. In fact, if it was reduced, it might as well just be a Haste tower with really long range. Runic 50% damage buff Reduce its AoE to 1.5/3 Reduce its effect's damage to 25%. This way, it scales exponentially on a higher level with more slowing, but seriously nerfs its early so that it's not super good the entire game. Honestly, because this tower is an exponential gain (and can be at a drastic amount), I really don't know if this'd make the tower better or worse in the late-game. That is, it's currently the best tower at the end of the game, no questions asked. Even if the fruit gain abilities, it'd still be god-tier. The balancing on this tower overall will need to be tested and adjusted. Forge/Well/Trickery Allow these towers to buff other support towers. In return, nerf the DPS of all support towers by about 10-15%. There should be a button that's set to "On" by default on all support towers, saying whether they'll buff support towers or not. The reason for part of this is, in addition to the tooltip update that says which towers are support, it'd make it so new players aren't confused when they're trying to figure out why they can't buff support towers. Additionally, it'd open up different builds that haven't been really possible.

There was a recent patch to SC2, and I know it was working fine before that. I loaded the map up just now on the latest SC2 version, and it's working fine. It's probably some error with the Starter Edition, dunno why that'd be the case though. As far as I know, development on the map was halted for a while, but I believe it's starting back up as of recently. Hopefully this issue will get ironed out soon. Is this the only map that doesn't work, or are there others?

I'm curious to know something... with the introduction of free arcade, do you intend to bring in Heart of the Swarm assets, be it for updating or adding to the game?

Pretty sure this is caused by one of the recent SC2 patches, but when you buff a tower with Forge or Well, Trickery Tower doesn't carry those buffs over to the clones.

I know a new UI was talked about to help fix that, but... that never happened. Pretty sure that, by dropping ray/grenade towers, players would get farther than they would, since it throws them straight into trying combination towers out. There should DEFINITELY be a tooltip update for all support towers. It should note that it is a support tower, which would imply for people that it's not a good first pick for a combination tower. FYI, Short mode would start at wave 10 (current wave 20), and Extra short mode would stay where it's at, wave 20 (current wave 30).

Well that's the thing - removing ray and grenade towers will draw new players towards the element summoning center naturally instead of outright ignoring it. As for using the ray/grenade towers to catch leaks, that makes tower placement and timing even more crucial. Or do you want to spend some money (and potentially sacrifice) on catching that leak? Or just let it through. Honestly, I see this as an upside. Makes players a little more paranoid, risk/reward is more prominent. Any ideas what that new mode is? I haven't been around the last few months due to spambots, no community, and just overall lack of updates/attention.

Well, since Patch 2.1 makes it so that the arcade is free, perhaps it should be noted somewhere, be it the main site or the top of the forums, that anyone can play it. Might be able to haul in some more people that otherwise wouldn't touch SC2.

Annnd here’s the big change! 1. How to get rid of buy/sell interest abuse · So because ray and grenade towers sell for 100%, there’s a rather cheap trick you can do with them if you’re fast enough… · Every time the interest marker is about to hit 0, sell all of them, and then rebuild the towers. You lose a bit of overall DPS, but over time, you stock up money…… lots of it. In fact, too much. To the point where later difficulties, despite that they’re harder, don’t feel hard at all because of this. So how do we fix this? · Drop ray and grenade towers from the game. Completely. What does this do to the game? · Starts the game at Wave 11, turning it into the new Wave 1. · Starting minerals at 450. Not enough to buy a dual tower, but enough to buy two starting element towers. · Start with two element picks. · It IS called Element Tower Defense. It would make more sense to start the game directly with elements than with non-elements. · You would be able to pick a Level 2 element right off the bat. You just wouldn’t be able to get a Focused tower immediately due to not starting with enough minerals. · Building temporary grenade/ray towers to help the defense out wouldn’t work, cause they don’t exist. · Players would learn much quicker that attempting to build instant countermeasures to waves instead of trying to save up for stronger towers would lead to doom. · This would fix the early game difficulty on higher difficulties. Once you know how to use ray/grenade towers, the early game generally becomes a joke. · Overall time it takes to complete the game (reach the fruit wave) is reduced. · Seeing as how the average time is 40-50 minutes currently, this would be a huge help. · Wave order would need to be altered/adjusted. · In conjunction with the first suggestion in the first post, the ability to choose the next wave would start on Wave 5. · Starting time increased to 60 seconds. · The building for selecting your elements should be automatically selected, and your builder should not spawn until you’ve picked your first two elements, at which point it will change your selection to your builder automatically. · Interest during this time ought to just be disabled. · So yes, it is a huge impact to the game. A lot of it is positive, but the on the pure basis it would dramatically change the game, it’s a risky move. · This could add a lot of attention to the site from the sudden change, be it positive or negative. · This suggestion would not block buy/sell abuse on random mode. The next suggestion would. 2. The alternative way to get rid of it · Keep in mind this suggestion doesn’t get rid of temporary towers, which is what makes the higher difficulties a little too easy in the early game. However, it also doesn’t cause a lot of changes like the above suggestion. · When you sell towers, you gain your minerals back over a period of time, instead of instantly. This time would probably be a 5 second time span. · This blocks the buy/sell abuse on random mode. What could be done is having BOTH of these suggestions implemented. Thus all of the benefits are included.