WindStrike

75+ fruit kills on normal? Meh, I can pull plenty better than that using several other combos. Pretty sure I can do better using a different set of just two towers (excluding pures). Considering the fruit round gains slow immunity, I'd say poison towers are not overpowered to the extent that they'd need to drop down to 25 damage. That's just... too much.

Eh, I suppose. Guess it's good to have one tower still be random chance, such that it stays unique in relation to other towers.

300, eh? Is this on Very Hard or what? Might have to hop on later tonight to see it for myself. Though I really don't think Poison needed a nerf down from 35 to 25. If anything, it should've just changed to the old effect, where its AoE increased by 0.66 per attack, rather than 1.2.

What would the fruit point count normally be from that Trickery/Poison combo, prior to nerf?

Mucho better. Still find it odd that the visual of the explosion is twice the size of the actual AoE though. But it does seem fairly balanced now (then again, that's only with one game, can't really say for sure). Thanks.

Currently, I've been putting Ice and Mildew towers on the far left of the middle island. That cannot be the ONLY good spot for these towers. Are there any other spots that allow them to consistently hit multiple targets?

Even with a chance of 40%, I've seen the Quake's shockwave not activate 10 times in a row, at which point too many creeps get past when none should at all. It's not just a one-time occurance either. A tower's damage should not come from random chance (ex, old drowning tower). How about the Quake tower gets a shockwave off on every third attack? It'd be like going back to 33%, except that it's guaranteed 1 out of every 3. A way of making it work is that it uses energy of 0/3, 1/3 (first attack), 2/3 (second attack), 3/3 (third attack - autocast goes off, activating the shockwave and knocking it down to 0/3). Or if there's an easier and more passive way of doing that... This way, there wouldn't be any "rush 20 ray towers in the back of the defense because the quake's shockwave didn't activate" or something like that. Granted, it does become somewhat more consistent for every extra quake tower you get, but it can still be quite annoying.

Essentially, after having a bunch of Torrent or Tsunami towers out for a while, they won't even need to be firing and it will still lag. You can sell them, and it will still lag (to the extent where it's really hard to even put down another tower). The only way for that lag to disappear completely is if you lose and/or quit the game. To test this, run it on extra short and plop down a Tsunami tower right off the bat, and then rush Fountain Towers such that by the start of 42, you have two Tsunamis and a Fountain tower. When the game gets to be really laggy (say, round 51 or even 56), sell everything. It should still lag really badly. From what I can tell, something is adding up over time (probably the level-up effect) and it's just not disappearing. (Yes, this is referring to the original problem in that Torrent + Well topic, just... more specific and to the point)

I've only had this bug appear post wave 50 and extra short mode (then again, I've only played a few games since 0.86), but when I killed the wave fairly quickly (by the end of the first bend), the countdown for the next wave wouldn't start until another player beat the wave (it's on competitive). Then when that player died, round 58 never came. Heard from someone else that the same bug happened on fruit - killed the first wave w/ poison towers pretty fast (by about halfway through second bend), but then not only did fruit stop coming; the fruit kills/points never went up to start with and said 0. I'm not sure what exactly causes the bug, it's only happened when the wave died pretty fast, though it could happen due to something else. EDIT: Just ran with Tsunamis + Fountain (they still laaag) and got to the fruit round. It's broken. It sends the first wave but the kills/points don't increase at all. And then it won't send any more than the first wave.

So after playing around with things a bit, it's not well towers, or torrent really... It's Fountain (level 3 well). When paired with just about anything, the lag goes up exponentially. Most notably Fountain + Torrent or Tsunami. Next worst would be Fountain + Ice, then Fountain + Ephemeral. The Forge buff (or any variant) has absolutely no problems, but for some reason, Fountain is ridiculous. It's not just the fact that towers fire 120% faster; there's weird lighting effects that only happen with Fountain, which results in lag that makes micromanagement nearly impossible. I'd say the only thing that comes close to lagging as badly as this is mass Hail towers, which again, probably has something to do with the powerful lighting effects.

It may have something to do with that Forge+Magnify bug that I reported in 0.84. It was fixed in 0.85. Truth is, Ephemeral/Temporal suffered was affected by the same bug as well and I was aware of it, but I didn't report it because I honestly found that tower a little weak without it. Though now, in its current phase out bug state, it's kinda overpowered.

The Ephemeral Tower (WEN), although it says the phase out effect is active, the damage itself does not drop, thus turning it into an overpowered tower.

Ephemeral doesn't actually phase out. It SAYS that it phases out, but the damage doesn't drop. I'll post it officially in bug reports.

If Hail towers were seriously your only ways of beating hard and very hard, you have much to learn. If anything, it's the bugs on Torrent Tower and Ephemeral Tower that are turning people away at the moment.

Apparently, when you build a torrent tower, asides from the current ridiculous damage bug, it continues to add lag. And that lag doesn't disappear. When buffed with Fountain Towers, just by having one torrent/tsunami tower, the game lags a ridiculous amount by the time you hit level 60. To the point where 24 Blitz Towers lag less. I don't have a bad computer at all; it runs SC2 perfectly fine on high settings and can handle a lot, but once a torrent/tsunami tower is out for about 10+ rounds, the lag is just baaad. If you want to test it, use the currently busted torrent tower, stick one down on extra short mode w/ a spring tower (and later a fountain) and observe as the game ends up lagging by 40.

And my axe- I mean, gold towers. WindStrike.294 NA

Kay, so this is using a bit of interest abuse (not to the extent of intentionally losing lives), but I've managed to break my previous single-player record using gold towers and then switching to atom/blitz. The result is 138 fruit kills on VH difficulty (966 + 15 points). You might notice that I forgot to drop down a polar tower though. For those of you thinking this won't work in multiplayer, all I have to do is rush level 2 quark towers, sit on those for the 20s, and then plop down some money towers for the 30s, slowly upgrading them to wealth. Obviously, I won't get anywhere near close to as much money as single-player, but it still works just as fine. The replay was done in Versus AI, version 0.85 VH_ 138 Fruits.SC2Replay

On the contrary, the Muck tower currently has a bug on it, where it ignore the damage reduction set by difficulty. Unless you're playing on a lower difficulty or something, the muck tower is currently the most powerful, especially on VH (well, until the bug gets fixed). Muck is a stack type of tower - it hits the guys in the front, and the ones come in behind it catch up and get slowed, and so on, until the units are in stacks. This kind of slowing is preferable for defenses that abuse splash. Ion towers can also cause stacking (depending on how you use it). Barb and Nova hit more targets and it causes a lot less stacking, and thus they work well with any kind of defense. If you're finding any tower to be weak it's most likely a placement error (ex, a lot of people think money towers suck, they're actually really powerful, you just gotta know the right places) However, this game is not perfectly balanced, and there are still some towers that probably need buffing (cough, flamethrower). In my opinion, muck is perfectly fine, minus the bug that's letting it bypass difficulty damage reduction.

Splash tower defenses that are based around slowing get owned by the fruit round once slow immunity kicks in. Yes, it's meant as a countermeasure to how powerful these defenses are, but as is, every single-target tower defense build is doing far superior in the fruit kill count. It's nearly impossible to get any higher than about 40 kills because everything the defense is based on is suddenly useless. Instead, have the fruit gain abilities over time (fast, mechanical, healing, image, and undead), or something else that doesn't involve making slow builds useless in the endgame.

Due to the way the forge and well towers work, they HAVE to buff something that has the capability of attacking, so they are unable to buff Jet Towers using the Attack Ground option, because Attack Ground disables the Jet Tower's standard attack. Trickery Towers might still work though, not sure on that.

I was using the Spout Tower's Attack Ground option, and somehow, this happened: x2? It was doing full damage in both spots as well. I think it had something to do with the timing of telling it to stop/attack ground again.

Currently, the Flamethrower Tower, which should be a damage tower, feels like a support tower. Its damage output simply does not matter by the time you hit the last 10 levels, and its the AOE on its explosion ability is a little too small (3). I feel the AOE on that ability needs to be buffed to at least 4 and the tower overall needs a damage boost. I tried mixing it with Haste Towers to see if it'd work better, and I found it better just to spam nothing but Haste Towers even against Image rounds.

The Muck Tower does its full damage, regardless of the damage reduction from difficulty. Though honestly, this makes it such that its damage is actually noticeable late game on VH difficulty.

If you do say a level 2 forge buff (+30% damage bonus) on an intensify tower when it's at 16 range, it does way more damage than it should. 700 base damage, 16 range and it drops down to 50% damage, so it subtracts 350 damage and drops to 350 damage. Now, a +30% damage bonus SHOULD change it to 455. This is not the case. Instead, it buffs the base damage first to 910, and then rather than dropping to 50% of it, it just subtracts 350 damage and only drops it to 560 damage. Clearly, this becomes a HUGE problem when get you get level 3 forge buff, because then even at 22 range, the towers end up doing about 2.5x more damage than it should be doing. No Buff Buff

Currently, the Forge and Well towers (and all respective upgrades) only auto-buff when a nearby tower is attacking. During periods where towers aren't attacking, they don't auto-buff the nearest towers. However, the Trickery Towers DO auto-buff regardless of whether towers are attacking or not. Is there a reason Forge and Well can't do the same?