Cisz

You know what I ask of your, right? Please.

A tower that randomly transforms a creep into.. ..a creep of either the last or the next wave. It would of course be known as the chaos tower. It would do great vs healing or fast waves.

I hear the clear sound of reason.. Ok, off to think up some more cool new towers then.

MrChack just had a divine moment and channelled pure elemental essence into his creativity gland. He suggested having a pair of two towers that get a bonus when combined, and to place that pair into one of the weak builds. Actually it's possible to place tree of such pairs in a way that each bad build gets exactly one of them and no other build gets any bonus combo. Here is how it works. 8 game winning towers are aranged like this: e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 <= Elements, yet to be sorted S1 1 1 1 S2 1 1 1 S3 1 1 1 S4 1 1 1 A1 1 1 1 A2 1 1 1 ?1 1 1 1 ?2 1 1 1 S = Aoe slowing towers A = Armour reduction towers ? = Other game winning towers This leads to the following 15 4 element builds: Elements Game winning in build towers in build e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 | Nr.| S1 S2 S3 S4 A1 A2 ?1 ?2 | | ------------------+----+-------------------------+---+------- 1 1 1 1 | 1 | 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 | 2 | S1, A1 1 1 1 1 | 2 | 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 | 2 | A1, ?1 1 1 1 1 | 3 | 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 | 2 | S4, A1 1 1 1 1 | 4 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 5 | 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 | 2 | S4, ?2 1 1 1 1 | 6 | 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 | 2 | S3, S4 1 1 1 1 | 7 | 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 | 2 | S2, ?1 1 1 1 1 | 8 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 9 | 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 | 2 | S3, ?1 1 1 1 1 | 10 | 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 | 2 | S3, A2 1 1 1 1 | 11 | 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 2 | S1, S2 1 1 1 1 | 12 | 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 | 2 | S1, ?2 1 1 1 1 | 13 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 | 1 1 1 1 | 14 | 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 | 2 | A2, ?2 1 1 1 1 | 15 | 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 | 2 | S2, A2 ------------------+----+-------------------------+---+------- The following builds are the bad builds so far: e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 | Nr.| ------------------+----+ 1 1 1 1 | 4 | 1 1 1 1 | 8 | 1 1 1 1 | 13 | ------------------+----+ Now we need three pairs of triples, one of the combos included in each of the three bad builds and none of the pairs showing up in any other build. The towers that are used for these pairs are automatically non-game-winning towers so far, as they are in bad builds. The first bad build (no.4) has 4 triples: e1 e2 e3 e4 e5 e6 ------------------ 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ------------------ Now here is where the fun begins: No other build has more than one of those 4 towers. We can chose any two of them and call the pair an overkill combo. Or we could make the combo require 3 or all 4 of them. Same goes for all other bad builds or in fact any of the 15 4 element builds: No pair of two triple towers exists in more than one build. So by chosing any combination of towers, one in each of the three bad builds, and awarding them a combo bonus equal to two game winning towers, all 4 element builds would be valid. Now I have to check the 5 and 6 element builds and make sure they don't get to strong. I expect problems here, so stay tuned for more in the next post. (Hurries back to the build lab...) Edit: Hmmm.. I just noticed that this idea has been suggested before in this thread, and that I had a good reason against it: Any combo that boosts a single 4 element build will show up in 2 5 element builds and add to the allready available 4 game winning towers in it. So every 5 element build would have the equivalent of 6 game winning towers, compared to 2 of them in the 4 element builds. And yes, all of those towers are maxed in the end. If we use brute scripting force, there is a nasty workaround: Award the bonus for the combo only if no other game winning towers and /or combos have been built on the map/are available to the player. Something like: While (build=sucks) do (improve build). It looks really evil and arbitrary to do such a thing. Maybe we could make the three bad builds kind of themed (the dragon special extravaganza, the brutal battlegear build, the hobbit hunters delight..), so sticking to the 4 elements would feel less forced and loosing the special bonus would apear a bit more reasonable.. Like a special hand in mah yong. "If you limit yourself to this 4 elements, the gods will favour you." Your opinions? Is this a dead horse? Is having all builds being valid worth the trouble? Is a build that loses a big bonus if you add the wrong element to it to strange to be acceptable?

I just noticed that I got that idea from starcraft 2 - they plan to have teleporting photon cannons.

Here is the list of game winning towers with their elements. (S = aoe slow, A = armour reducer, ? = other game winning tower) The upper line of 6 zeroes is were the names of the elements belong. Here's the resulting structure again, the bad builds are blue: The three bad builds are: Element number 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 + + + + 2 + + + + Builds 3 + + + + There are 4 arrangement types for elements that give two of the bad builds 3 matching elements: 1 2 3 4 5 6 # # # # # # # # # # # # All "#" are elements of one set (say efd) and all " " are the other set (wnl). For each of the four sets we have 3x2 posibilities to arrange the first set into the first three slots and 3x2 for the second set. So we have 4x3x2x3x2= 4x6x6 = 144 possible ways to fill in the elements. Oh - I just noticed that I missed half of the possibilities, as there are two possibilities to chose from when deciding which set goes into which half of the build. So we still have 288. Damn. I have hope that many of those 288 are very similiar or even identical due to rules I just didn't notice yet.

Apparrantly we need mainly new damage towers, as we can't have more than 8 game winning ones and all special effects have to be mild. I just played tropical td for the first time, and it has a siege weapon like tower with a cooldown of about 6 seconds. Maybe that is a bit extreme, but a very long cooldown is missing on eletd. Something like 4 or 5 seconds should work. Or how about a single target tower with a very short cooldown. The first eletd flash game had the flower tower that lost range with each upgrade. In a build with strong slow, this makes perfect sense, as the tower has less and less need for range. But maybe the 3.1 slows won't be strong enough.. Maybe a tower that increases range with each upgrade would be needed. The movement of flesh golem allways seemed a bit to slow imo and I put it on hold most of the time. I neven found a use for moving it. How about some sort of ancient of protection tower that can take root? Or a siege tank tower? And we could have a teleporting tower, with a cooldown or mana fueled relocation effect; it could actually change the ledge it is standing on, unlike flesh.

I've done some further calculation, and it seems that if I want to have one of the three "no good towers" builds a set of three elements that cover each other (efd or lwn), automatically the following happens: -2 of the three bad builds get such a set of three, one each, and the third gets no such set. -None of the game winning towers is made out of three elements of such a set (naturally, as both sets a part of a "no good towers" build). -The number of possible element arrangements that work with the 8 game winning towers distribution and the "three of a set" limitation is not 720 but 144. Hopefully I will find a quick way to provide a list of all this possible distributions, complete with what elements are in what build, and which game winning towers have what elements. We could chose one of those 144 for best fit with the existing towers.

I play random most of the time, so I have a very, er, random setup normally. But I get those questions all the time, so I will make a post about how to hunt ronald.

Fair play - not exactly. It was on singleplayer and took an abnormally streched game to wait for enough money for the final. But I didn't leak for extra time or used stunned units to lenghten the match. No interest picks, just normal slow and 2% every 15 seconds. >> 70.000 Ronalds << (tft ver.1.20e, eletd ver.3.0, 12mb filesize, running time several days) For obviuos reasons I am not likely to repeat this in the near future.

There allready is a turorial, as well as a huge stack of imformation, all in the map. Select your worker, there is a "Tipps" button. Explains pretty much everything if you keep pressing it. Or press F9, there are lists of all the towers.

@Warcryptic You missed a finer point of this topic. It's about an ongoing war to get rid of fake eletd versions. Only fake versions have air waves, so a player going "-air" is likely a regular on those fakes. (And no, I doubt he just checks on any map, since I never got "-air" on my many games on blizzard td.) By making fun of them, the makers of the map (aka MrChak and Karawasa) express their annoyance about stupid kids messing around with a 2.5, calling it 3.1 and distributing that crap all over the b-net. So "There is no air" is the mild and friendly version of this very unjust but far more honest reply: "Stop hosting fake versions and stealing our map you stupid noob." I think you will agree that the other line is much more appropriate.

It takes two things for this: Knowing what to do and fast fingers. Both comes with a lot of games. You should start with trying to survive wave 1-15 with a build on area 4. Or maybe you should start with finding out where area 4 is. It refers to the numpad notation. Read more here. When you can survive there w/o selling (which might take about 10 games for a beginner), you can start to reduce the used towers to a required minimum. This will take some thinking and experimenting and you should try to learn from other players. The theory of minimum builds is still under construction and you might find overbuilding with about any player, including top level. The next step is to sell towers between waves. If you are fast enough or use only 1 or 2 towers, you can sell everything and rebuild. This is done to get more unused cash when the interest counter hits zero, so it makes no sense to sell towers, if you have to rebuild them before the next interest is due. You can also sell some and keep some towers if you are not fast enough for a complete rebuild. Once you've mastered that, you start to build less than the minimum required to kill the wave, and build some additional towers that are only on the map in between interest. Those temporary towers get constantly sold and rebuild and ideally you end up with all gold spent between interest and only the minimum of towers on payoff. Back to the top of the list: Try to survive on area 4.

The channel is public, as long as anyone is actually in there. You can check out member infos here.

We should do a thread about horrible randoms. I'd like to see the replay.

On top of this, your suggestion would make the map easier. After one year of strategy developement and practice the better players are demanding a harder map. So maybe the real question is: How can you improve your rnd game. Offtopic: Your nick is great.

I haven't won dwne on vhx yet, and my best sullution for vh is still with leaks, but thanks for your trust.

What is the use of that? Do you want to kill more ronalds? The record for killing ronalds is over 50.000, so maybe you don't need gold but practice? And once again, the game allready is too long, I won't support any changes that make it even longer.

How about all towers for all builds? Chart of all 4-element builds with available towers +---------------+---------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | | M I E L G P M D T S W C S L R | T E U L S H G N M G A D S S F C R I F D | | | o c l i o o a e e t e l u a o | i n n a t a l o e e c r l u l r n n l i | | | o e e f l i g t c e l a n v o | d c d s r i a v t m i w d m t y b f e n | | | n c e d s c h h m l y a t | l h e r m l c a l d n g m h p w r s o | +---------------+---------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | +---------------+---------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | l| + + + + + | + + + + + + + + + + | | d| + + + + + | + + + + + + + + + + | | w| + + + + + | + + + + + + + + + + | | f| + + + + + | + + + + + + + + + + | | n| + + + + + | + + + + + + + + + + | | e| + + + + + | + + + + + + + + + + | +---------------+---------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | 1 ++++ ldwf| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 2 +++ + ldwn| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 3 +++ + ldwe| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 4 ++ ++ ldfn| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 5 ++ + + ldfe| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 6 ++ ++ ldne| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 7 + +++ lwfn| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 8 + ++ + lwfe| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 9 + + ++ lwne| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 10 + +++ lfne| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 11 ++++ dwfn| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 12 +++ + dwfe| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 13 ++ ++ dwne| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 14 + +++ dfne| + + + + + + | + + + + | | 15 ++++ wfne| + + + + + + | + + + + | +---------------+---------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ | | M I E L G P M D T S W C S L R | T E U L S H G N M G A D S S F C R I F D | | | o c l i o o a e e t e l u a o | i n n a t a l o e e c r l u l r n n l i | | | o e e f l i g t c e l a n v o | d c d s r i a v t m i w d m t y b f e n | | | n c e d s c h h m l y a t | l h e r m l c a l d n g m h p w r s o | +---------------+---------------------------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+ What do you mean by stalling? I assume you mean making ronald stop entirely as oposed to make ronald move slowly, right? But why stalling ronald? How about killing ronald? If you stall ronald, you will fill the map with units until it is stuffed, and you die of a ronald overflow. If you want a high ronald count, go for killing. Stalling is an easy way for an early death. "-are ice age towers and supernova's ineffective or of no use compared to monsoon/freezing towers?" Consequently you should avoid supernova and ice age, because as little as two or three of them can lead to standing ronnies. Monsoon and freezing on the other hand tend to avoid that and to slow instead. "-is spamming lvl1 entangling roots ineffective for stalling?" Lv.1 roots don't disable a unit, they let them move on after a while. Roots disable only lasts 2 seconds, but takes 4 seconds to recycle. If you want a dead stop, you need gems or brambles. But all disables have one mayor problem: You can only disable as many ronalds as you have towers. Say you have 1000 brambles, they can stop 1000 ronalds, all after that will leak you to death. So where is the use of that? On top of this, you will most likely have groups of about 4-6 brambles for each ronald, holding the same unit, if you don't assign a new target to every single tower manually. "-is it a priority to upgrade to the max all enchantings/freezing/etc.. (slowing towers) to the max?" As for upgrading, it depends. If you use a tower as a source of damage, it has to have maximum level. If you use it for armour reduction, the same thing. But slowing has no effect, once the units are on minimum speed. Monsoon, nova and freezing result in about minimum speed, so no need for supernova upon that. And supernova has a tendency to stop ronald, so you should avoid that. "-is 1 pure fire/water enough of a damager since they cost too much?" They don't cost to much, they are cheap. To get the same damage in refined towers, you would have to pay twice the gold. Example: Pure earth tower: 80.001 dmg for 20.502 gold Refined earth tower: 8.001 dmg for 4.556 gold 10 Refined for 45.560 gold do about the same damage as one pure for only 20.502 gold. The more pures you have, the cheaper is your damage. I use 3 pures for my ronald hunts.

Ok, here's my next: This time a double feature: >> Supergrass - Pumping on your stereo << and >> Beck - E-pro << Violent colours, long stretched things, removable heads, black background, bright foreground, and unseen helping hands.

Hey, this is one of my shorter guides..

Preface This is a guide from the old forums, back from the days of eletd 3.0 and tft 1.20e. Maybe it's still interesting. Please note that most links are leading to the abandomed old forum. Enjoy. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I had a chat with t4lruum on the channel, and he asked me about what damage towers to use with an lfwd build. I told him that this would take quite a bit of explaining, but he still wanted to know, so here it goes. >> Update - Version 1.3<< Changes in 1.1 - Added a note about poison in "The other towers" Changes in 1.2 - Added a Replay Pack Changes in 1.3 - Corrected comment about waters splash size. Overview As far as I can tell, the lfwd build goes back to the early days of this forum, when escpy released a replay on how to win very hard without leaking. (He posted it here.) He used the elements fire, water, light, darkness and earth. (I will abreviate all elements from now on, so his build reads like lfwde.) The mayor idea behind his build was to combine strong slowing towers with towers that reduced the creeps armour. There are only two towers that reduce armour: Enchantment (fdl) does single-target armour reduction and acid (fdw) does aoe armor reduction (aoe = area of effect). Both share two elements (f and d), and they are easily combined in an lfwd build. This build also holds the strongest slowing tower of the map, storm (wlf). And in storm, there is always ice (wl). Both towers do their slow with an aoe. So with just 4 elements you get two powerfull armour reducers and two strong slowing towers. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - How to work with slow and armour reduction There are two general aproaches to slowing towers. You can either use them to slow down the overall movement speed of the creeps. To do that you place one slowing tower near the entrance and watch where the slow runs out. And that's where you place the next tower. And you continue in that manner over the whole map. Gipface used only three ice towers for challenge 5 to slow allmost the entire path of the creeps. And I abused map wide slowing to the extreme for my ronald hunt. Or you build your towers so they will slow in one small location, so the creeps will run into the map at top speed, get slowed near your towers, and run freely again after that. This is the idea behind lfwd. Once storm is upgraded to monsoon (wich automatically includes the requirements for freezing towers), the creeps will get really slow. So slow in fact, that you get really much time to finish them off, and you will rarely ever leak with monsoon and freezing. As a result, the creeps will get pushed together into a slowed crowd. This crowd gets slower and denser with each slowing upgrade/tower you get. In the end an entire wave of creeps will be piled into a small area, to slow to get past you towers. Such a crowd is of course best attacked with aoe towers. A single target tower will hit one creep, no matter how close they stand to each other, while an aoe tower will hit more and more of them, as your slowing power increases. So in the end towers with a big aoe will hit many, maybe most, or even all creeps of a wave at the same time, depending of the size of the aoe. The armour reduction towers fit well into this tactic. Especially acid is great, since it's armour reduction is an aoe-effect as well. And enchantment towers take a while to apply their spell to all creeps, so the slower, the better. The result is a block of tightly packed creeps, that is moving at or near the minimum speed. Some creeps are near the end of your slowing zone, low health and nearly free to run on again, while at the other end of the slow-spot new creeps with full health run into the crowd. The armour reduction can get as high as -40 with fully upgraded towers, so this block will take astounding damage. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The damage towers of lfwd Many towers in that build have a good damage output. Imo all long range towers don't do well on this map, especially in mulitplayer, and even worse with a slowing concept like this. Just think about it for a second. A tower like gold or rainbow does like 6000 damage with every shoot and shoots once a second. So with 30 shoots, all waves up to and including 25 are done. And a single one-shoot-per-second tower can do 30 shoots on a wave, as you will find out if you try this simple challenge. Now if you are a mapmaker and you have to ballance long- and short-range towers, your long-range towers will have to be weaker in some aspekt, to ballance their longer range. If they would do the same amount of dmage, who would build short range towers? So they are either slower, weaker, or unballanced. Theoretically a long-range tower could hit creeps for a longer time, so it will do damage longer. But in multiplayer, a rainbow user will start the next wave after about 35-40 seconds, and if he's on very hard, you have only 5 seconds to do extra damage. So in a best-case scenario you will have like 45 seconds instead of 30 to do the damage. And unslowed creeps will start to leave the map after about 45 seconds. In addition to this, the entire point of the lfwd build is having all creeps in one defined point of the map, so you can build all your towers near that. So in conclusion, long-range towers are out, especially with lfwd. That outrules light, dark, lightning, and hail. The next thing about lfwd is, that you should go for aoe damage towers, since your creeps are piled into one small area. (Maybe I should point out that all long-range towers are single target towers.) And there are quite a few possibilities for aoe towers in this build. Water and fire, ice, steam, acid, and of course storm are aoe damagers. And a part of the attack of tidal is aoe too. Now some of those towers don't stack. That is, two will do about the same damage as one. The damage over time part of the acid and steam towers attack (damage over time = dot), and storm towers too, don't stack. So two storms do the same damage as one storm. And two acids will only do more damage with the direct attack part of their attacks, the dot of the acid is only applied once. So you shouldn't use more than one steam, acid and storm at one single location. And since lfwd calls for a battle at a single location, more than one of those is unnecessary. Tidal is a little special, because only one of it's two attacks is aoe. The spell like extra attack, that does most of its damage (afaik), is single target only. So we have ice and water, steam, acid and fire, and storm. For several reasons acid, steam, storm and ice are less of a damage dealer. Storm and acid don't stack properly, allthough they do decent damage. Steam doesn't stack well either, and I'm not even convinced that it does decent damage to begin with. And ice does to little damage for it's cost, since it's primarily a slowing tower. So what is left? Water and fire. Both do decent damage for their price and both are aoe attackers. The aoe of water is smaller than the one of fire, so many players don't notice it's existence. Of those two, fire is considered to be the better damage tower by most players, and I agree. Overall, in most situations, fire is da bomb. But we have a special case here, wich gives water a slight advantage. Let's recapitulate what towers we will use so far. We have storm, ice, acid, and enchantment. Maybe we will have a steam. And we are about to add either water or fire or maybe both. Now the damage types of this towers are water (ice and water), light (storm and enchantment), and fire (steam, acid and fire). The light towers are not to be exchanged, since we need them for their special abilities. So let's take a closer look at water and fire. Fire is weak against water. So if we go for refined and pure fires, our build will loose some potential vs water waves like the evil healing fish-heads of wave 46. To counter water, we would need a good darkness tower. Imo only the sludge tower (dwe) does decent dark damage (being an aoe tower), but we dont have earth in our build so far. And the dark towers do long-range single-target damage, that I outruled for several reasons allready. So fire gives us a weakness against water that we can't compensate. It makes us strong vs nature, but none of our towers is weak vs nature, since we don't use any earth right now. Now for water. Its weak vs darkness, so we need light damage to compensate for that. Aha. So water has an advantage over fire, because it's weakness (dark armour) is compensated by the light damage of the storm and enchantment towers. So now we have to decide if this makes up for the smaller aoe of water. Luckily for us this qustion has been thoroughly tested in the challenge 7. I claimed water to be better for the explained reasons, while escpy claimed his trusted fire to do better. It seems the difference is only small, so if you like fire for some reasons, feel free to stick with it and you will win the map with that and never leak. But water seems to be a little faster in the end. I got escpy convinced and he switched to water towers as well. (Imo, steam is out for the same reason as fire: It gives you a strength vs nature you don't need and a weakness vs water that you can't compensate.) So as it comes for water or fire, fire is a little weaker speed wise, but both will do the trick. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The other towers of lfwd We now have a list of towers that are definately used in lfwd: Storm, acid, enchantment, ice, and water. And we have a list of towers that are dismissed as main damage towers: - Fire for the wrong damage type. - Steam for the wrong damage type and overall weakness. - Lighning, hail, light and dark for beeing long-range single target towers. - Tidal for beeing a single target tower mainly. What about the other towers? Or how about a single tidal? So I'll go through all non-obligatory towers of lfwd once more. One could argue, that a single long-range tower will help with single escaping creeps, so one hail (wln), dark, light or lightning (lf) could be helpfull. I disagree with that for two reasons. First, the build has beeen proven to hold all creeps in many games and on all difficulties, including vhx (very hard extreme). So if you leak single creeps, you are probably doing something wrong. And if you invest money into long-range towers, the tendency of your build to leak will get greater, since those towers will do less damage for their cost in the same time, as a short-range aoe tower. One could argue that the damage types are not that important and fire is better than water, or both should be used. As escpy has shown, you are not alone with this opinion, and lfwd works well with fire. Feel free to use it. A single steam (wf) could be a good addition, since its damage is entirely aoe with a huge area. I doubt the strenght of the tower is enough to make a difference, but feel free to use it, lfwd can deal with that too. Tidal (ldw) and magic (fd) are in the build, and both are well know for their huge damage potential, especially with highly slowed creeps. Both are doing spell damage to a single target, so the advantage of aoe on stacked creeps is lost. In addition to that, enchantment provides a damage bonus to towers, that doesn't affect those spells afaik. (But someone should probably check this..) Poison and moon are the last towers to take a look at. Both are slowing towers, which we have no real need for, since we have a great slowing power with storm/ice. But since monsoon takes 6 elemental picks, maybe an additional slow could be helpfull earlier. But both towers do single target attacks, and poison doesn't slow mechanical creeps. Moons damage potential is actually quite good, but we are not really in need for another tower with light damage that has no aoe. Maybe a player determined to get his fire towers could use poison as the required help against water. This could make sense, since the only water wave that is mechanical is the early game toyboat wave (afaik). Be aware that to get virus (poison lv.3) you need dark and water on level 3, and since you probably did this to cover your fire 3, this brings you to 11 picks. (So this gives you light 2, and water, dark, and fire 3, and nothing else.) This concludes the tower analysis. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Element distribution and sequence of towers My standard lfwd build starts out like this: wfld-wlfd-w The first element, water allows me to deal double damage with a water cannon for wave 9 (fire, healing). And I can use a water arrow to take down the fire elemental after wave 10. My first goal is a steam tower for wave 11 or 12. It can solo almost perfectly up to wave 15, and if I build some additional elemental cannons it will be enough untill my next target tower. After wave 15, one elemental arrow will be enough to hunt the light elemental. Second step is a storm for wave 19. It's even possible for 18, as proven by t4lruum. 19 is a hard wave, since it's non-elemental (taking only 90% damage of elemental attacks) and fast, so it makes sense to upgrade for that wave. Again, the new storm is able to solo for some waves. It even handles the dark elemental after wave 20 if you know how to micro a storm, but a light arrow will do it too. I add a steam for wave 24 (dark, healing). Then an ice for 25 (fire, fast). And to take out the water 2 element, I have to add a couple of dark arrows. (I sell them directly after that.) For 27 the steam is upgraded to acid. Now I go for two enchantments. I start with a fire, then magic and finally enchantment. It's not really important if I finish one first or do both parallel. By wave 30 I have either 2 magic or 1 enchantment, which will be enough to hunt light level 2. I use both spells of the enchantment towers. Most of the time they are set to autocast fairy fire, but I use inner fire manually or switch the autocast every once in a while. Carefull with wave 31, since those are healers. Maybe a few elemental cannons are needed. In the following waves you upgrade your ice to freezing and finish the two enchantments in no particular order. This should be finished for wave 35. Fire lv.2 is no big deal with two enchantment towers. Now I want to upgrade the storm, but I need 3900 for that, so I have to stop building and pile money. I do this with temporary elemental cannons. 12 fully upped cannons ("a fistfull") cost about 2000 gold, so with either 24 elemental cannons or 12 and 2000 cash I can upgrade to monsoon. I start with 12 super cannons, turn them into water cannons for wave 37 (light) and 38 (fire). And for wave 39 (the infamous healing worms with earth armour) I can just upgrade to monsoon. It seems a bit akward to upgrade a light tower against a healing earth wave (and wave 41 is fast earth), but it works like a treat. Again, after wave 40 the level 2 dark elemental is no problem for two enchantments. For wave 41 I make an array of 12 elemental cannons (non-light of course), and for wave 42 I upgrade the acid to hydrochloric. After that you can either continue with elemental cannons and upgrade to incantation or build three focused water towers and delay incantation for after refined water. After wave 45 the level 3 water should be no big deal and for wave 46 (healing water) you will have at least one incantation either way. Now you have several options. You could go for a third incantation, or increase the number of water towers, or pile money for pures and delay your next towers/upgrades. As for the remaining 2 lumber on wave 50 and 55, you could go for light 3 and upgrade the freezing to a sub zero tower, but that's not really required. You could add a pure essence for a 3rd pure. 4 pures will probably be to expensive. Maybe you want fire 3 for a pure fire or a fully upped steam (Immolation, wf). - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Variations of lfwd Since the basic lfwd build requires only 9 elemental picks to work, the remaining 2 picks give room for fooling around. You could go for 2 early interest and get really rich after monsoon is finally up and slowing. Or maybe one interest first and an extra pure in the end. Or you could add another element. There are several popular variations of lfwd, the most used beeing lfwd-n. But a lfwde works well too. lfwd-n goes like this: wfldn-wlfd-w and a pure essence after wave 55 This single nature pick gives you one nova tower (lfn) with double damage for wave 30 (earth). It's a third slowing tower adding in to ice and storm, and although it becomes useless in lategame, it helps a lot in midgame. Nature is choosen to counter your last weakness - earth. Since water is coverad by light, light calls for a cover by nature vs earth. And the weakness of nature is of course allready covered by water. (light covers water covers nature covers light; earth covers dark covers fire covers earth) Nature arrows or cannons do great vs wave 39 and 41 as well. speaking off which, the well tower is a good addition to your build too. It gives a 25% speed increase for only 500 gold. One well can speed 2-4 towers, depending on the speed of the match and if the wells are speeding each other too. With clever placement the wells only speed up your damage towers and never use their spell on each other. So 2 or maybe 3 are enough. Remember to build them late, since they give only 25% foer 500, so the speeded towers should cost more than 2000 gold. Another way to go is lfwde. It could look like this: wfld-wlf-e-de-e. Or you could give up light level 2 and make it wflde-efdw-e and a pure essence. The idea behind this is to use sludge, flamethrower and earth towers, since those three cover each other in a circle and earth makes the best pure in the game. Especially with stacked creeps. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Conclusion The lfwd build family is very strong for its -40 armour and brutal speed reduction, so maybe some nerfing is required. It's a build I recommend for beginners, and it works for racing or countering spammers too. As I found the time I threw together a replaypack for lfwd builds. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - So t4lruum, i hope this answers your question why water is the best tower in lfwd-n. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Edit - Replay Pack now available: >>> lfwd Replay Pack <<< (tft ver.1.20e)

PPS: Cataras actually can be a nice guy if he wants too. Maybe his bike was stolen.

Thats a cool trick for a single frame animation film. Supergrass did a video featuring this, but they are not as good at it: Click to watch Supergrass - Kiss of Life

Whats EDT? Balance changes with the situation. Cannons have half the damage of arrows and without slow, cannons and arrows are equal. With clumped creeps cannons are much stronger. The advantage can go as high as 200%. While vs single creeps arrows take the lead with 200%. Arrows and cannons are typical opening towers, and it's good they are balanced for a "no support" situation. If the earth tower gets balanced for the monsoon scenario, splash towers will end up extremely weak in non support situations while nature will end up the mayor single target tower for early rnd. I disagree a bit on the ranking. Here is my version for early rnd (no support, amplified towers): EarthFire Nature = Water Darkness = Light When rnd-ing, most better players love early earth for its huge splash and damage. It outperformes fire mainly because of the much greater range. Water is clearly weaker than both. And here the list for lategame with maximum slow: EarthFire Water Darkness = Light = Nature My suggestions: -Nerf earth damage slighly, improve water damage a tiny bit more than earth got nerfed. This should bring the splash towers on par. (Earth down to 60, water up to 11, fire stays at 23 should do the trick. Water has a very low base damage, so a single point changes a lot. The other towers can be changed more easily to adjust to a water with base 11 if needed.) -Buff nature damage so that it outperformes all splash towers in early game. I'm not sure how much is needed, but I expect about +30-60% damage. Needs testing. The result should be that nature is not automatically useless in lategame and surprisingly good early game. -Increase all long range towers damage to at least 75% of an equally fast single target short range tower. 80% would be on par for a range of 1500. -If you want to change one long range tower, maybe make it a tower with 700 range, single target attack and low damge/high speed, like water without splash. Maybe this kind of attack fits nature the best, so make light work like nature is in 3.0, make nature the "mg tower" and keep dark as it is, but with said higher damage.