Cypher

Cypher - 294 NA

Which sc2 realm are you on? I've never selected realm that I can remember so I have to assume I'm on a North American realm by default. If there's a way to verify realm let me know, tried to look it up on the blizzard online guide but it's currently down.

Read my post. I'm not talking about douse I'm talking about the damage of the tower. This is new since the .85 patch and it only affects the torrent tower not the upgraded tsunami tower.

An error seems to be happening with the first tier torrent tower (LWN), every time it gains 10 charges it gains a damage buff allowing it to have over +2000 damage when it's fully charged.

I will participate

I kinda know what you're going through dude, I play very hard random and it's extremely frustrating to be in a competitive environment when you see the same lame trick being used game after game and there's not a whole lot you can do about it. A big part of why I made my complaint about hail and immortal towers a while back was exactly that. Every game I was in had at least 1 person using those builds and sometimes everyone in the game was doing it. Fortunately pollution / trickery wasn't a well known build at the time or I'd probably have been annoyed by that as well. Something I've noticed though is that cheese builds tend to be a flavor of the month. After a while people get bored of doing the exact same trick over and over again. They either try to toy with other builds, fail, and quit or they find another build and realize "oh hey I'm doing the exact same thing just using different elements". Random keeps the game interesting, I just wish more people would play that way and learn to appreciate the depth of the variety of towers. There is some potentially good news though: https://forums.eletd.com/index.php?showtopic=2712 The current competitive and race settings work very well but no one ever uses them. All random and same random have the same problem. The more broad changes they're working on will hopefully put an end to the robotic arranged builds and require players to stay on their toes. Let's just hope they do a good job, I'm sure they willl.

Finishing wave 60 and getting to the fruit round means you've beaten the game pretty much. The point of the fruit round is sort of like a tie breaker final stage that cannot be beat, they continue to get harder until they eventually knock you out. For multiplayer purposes the object is to score the most points to be declared the winner. After everyone is eliminated don't exit the game right away, give it another 30 seconds or so and you'll get a menu screen pop up like you would in any other SC2 game that says "Victory!" or "Defeat!" with exit game options. Edit: I realised you may have already explained that you've done what I was saying. What I'd suggest is try making the fruit round in a game by yourself where score and last survivor won't matter. If you still get "Defeat!" message something is wrong. Unless I'm mistaken actually it's been a while since I've got to that point but I could swear I get a "Victory!" screen. I'll play a game right now and if I'm wrong and I get the defeat message I'll get back to you. Re-Edit: Confirmed I got the "Victory!" message when I finished in the fruit round. When the game is over look at the top right corner of the screen and you'll see a count down timer that says game ends in xxxx seconds. Let that count down finish before you exit game to get a genuine victory screen.

I'm excited to hear about these changes. EleTD has been hit hard by a lack of players in the last month or so to the point that I stoped playing entirely due to very long wait times to get 4+ in the lobby. If you need testers I'd be glad to help out.

I'll start by addressing the possibility that this is just an awesome troll job, and if it is I'll say again great job heh, that said I'm going to procede as if this isn't. Where to begin... First you don't get to buy more than 2 essence upgrades. After you buy a second essence it's removed from the menu so a 12th vespene at wave 60 wouldn't serve the purpose you suggest. You get one essence for free at wave 51, another at wave 56 and so you're limited to 4 essence if you buy the other 2. Also let's pretend you could buy unlimited essence, you wouldn't be limited to just 3, or 5 by not purchasing resell, you'd actually be able to have 8 essence by getting one element to level 3 and then spending every vespene after that on essence. For the countdown timer there are actually a set of options already available. If you play the game on Competitive the next wave starts for everyone (even if you still have creeps on your board) once the first person finishes the wave. Competitive not only gives you some control over the spawn timer it also nearly eliminates the interest farming you seem to find so distasteful. Next up is Race, race gives each player an independent wave timer that starts when you finish your wave with the winner being the first to finish wave 60, this setting also pretty much eliminates interest farming. Interest is a funny thing, it's a big part of what makes this such a good game. Some people exploit it, others just use it as an innocent mechanic. Either play style is equally valid in my book, I sometimes manipulate interest and sometimes I don't. As far as only being able to practice interest farming on a certain difficulty I can tell you I learned to do it on normal and quite easily was able to do it on very hard when I decided to make that step up (I skipped over hard). Your difficulties doing it seem to be just that, your difficulties. By the way, not only do you get better interest rates on very hard you also get more minerals per kill giving you more money to play interest with. I'd also like to point out that resell upgrades aren't just for interest farming, to think that is pretty closed minded. Imagine you have a leak and you need to build a stronger tower at the back end of your track but you don't really want a large investment there, with resell you can build that tower for the situation and get rid of it. Also try to imagine playing a counter element strategy where you build a bunch of light towers for darkness rounds but when an earth round comes you want to get rid of those light towers in favor of nature. Use your imagination. Side note: you actually get both resell purchases for free as a balance measure for playing on -random. Something your buddy said (I have to assume you two are friends) struck a chord with me. Isn't that what you're trying to do. Why do you assume everyone hates interest, just because you do?

Fair enough, thanks for replying Kara hope a new version is out soon I'm looking forward to it.

You bring up an excellent point about the trickery towers working with comet towers. Honestly though I think the problem is still the hail tower not so much the trickery tower. Copy towers, as I call that family, are really on par with the damage buff and speed buff families. When you think about it a fountain tower giving +120% attack speed or a foundry tower giving +120% damage effectively turns one tower into 2.2 towers for the buff duration just done in a different way. If anything the copy towers are less powerful because you don't have complete control of the clone's placement. That said though you're absolutely right about copy + hail, the way I see it you're multiplying the imbalance by 2.2x and it becomes very obvious. One of my first thoughts on a balance suggestion was to make the hail tower not able to be copied but that didn't seem fair to the clone tower and the hail tower by itself was still enough of an issue.

You've missed my point about trivializing survival. To try to explain it again without repeating myself.. we're playing a very hard game, neither of us is playing perfect and we both lose 30+ lives by wave 50, pretty easy to imagine. Every life is 2% of your total health, if you arrange to build around life towers (not JUST life towers) you can quite easily still have 100% health while someone playing an otherwise equal game is at 40% health if not eliminated all together. I won't mention what happens on normal difficulty since you've already pointed out how unbalanced they are in that case. I'm unconvinced by the argument that comet towers are meant to outperform other towers with the same cost and elemental requirements, the fact that every tower costs the same suggests the intention of equality. Also, simplicity of use is not the way to measure a tower's potential. I have no problem with some towers being simple to use, it's just as obvious where to put a quake tower as it is a hail tower and I'm not complaining about the quake tower. You have inverted my argument. I made no complaint about any tower being too weak, in fact I believe improving others to match the power of hail / comet towers would be a colossal mistake. Also, pointing out that a tower is too powerful isn't valid input? That's my point, there is no trait that the comet tower is unable to handle. They outdamage image / undead / healing, and fast / mechanical don't allow creeps to escape their 22 range. Any other tower has difficulty overcoming something. A laser tower can be dodged by fast / mechanical and a celerity tower lacks the speed to overcome image / undead / healing while a comet tower shrugs it all off. You're downplaying both the extent of the comet tower's advantage and it's significance. Every tower does have a use. Every tower has strengths and weaknesses that balance them. The problem is that the hail / comet tower is lacking in weaknesses.

First I'd like to say that I sincerely thank you for your reply, I'm very interested to hear other's opinions on this subject whether they agree with me or not. I'm not a dev so I wouldn't know, but isn't difficulty irrelevant when balancing between towers? At issue isn't whether it performs fairly on very hard or very easy but how it performs compared to other towers. If the hail tower is overpowered on normal, but not an "I win button" on very hard, does that mean it isn't overpowered when compared to an ephemeral tower? To put it another way, if we agree that the hail tower is better than it's counterparts on normal, isn't it still better than the same towers on very hard since the towers haven't changed but the creeps did? I hardly ever use the life towers myself on any difficulty, but I have been stuck with light / nature for my first 2 elements and have dabbled with them on occasion and they're quite powerful on any difficulty. They still repair leaks too easily. The problem on very hard isn't stockpiling lives, it's getting back up to 50 so effortlessly. On very hard every life counts, you can't afford to have nail biting coin flips at the maze exit every other wave. Soon you'll have 30 lives on wave 40 and your chances of making the fruit round become very grim. This isn't the case with the life tower, just let em on through life tower will repair it over the next wave or two. You didn't manage your element match ups right and you have a ton of light towers when that earth wave comes? No big deal you'll take a dozen deaths but life towers will patch that up while your light towers get back to work on more favorable match ups. Element TD has been described as a "Survivor Tower Defense" and life towers seem to trivialize that aspect of the game.

I've been playing elements quite alot recently and I've noticed something. Alot of people are using arranged builds based on the immortal tower and the comet tower. The simplest way to know when something is overpowered is just watching the tendencies of the players. If there's a shortcut people almost always take it, and the shortcut in Elements right now seem to be in the hail and immortal towers. Complaints: Hail towers are simply too good at too many things; they're single target damage, spread damage, high speed, and long range. They're so effective they even perform well on earth rounds, their opposing element. On normal difficulty building straight to comet towers has become equivalent to an "I win button". Immortal towers reward too many lives and trivialize survival. Players can simply ignore the poor damage and mass build these towers knowing that anything that passes through is going to give the life back and leaks become almost meaningless. The poor damage makes them not exactly an "I win button" but their healing mechanic makes them something akin to an "I won't lose button". My frustration comes from the fact that I play the game on very hard and random and it's frustrating when I outlast everyone but the cheese players. Some of these players may justify playing that way as simply going for a high score, and for that reason I think removing the most fruit points category from the -rank command would encourage people to play the game rather than exploit and point hunt. The following ideas aren't meant to be taken all together, and the harshness of some of the nerfs would certainly justify improving these towers in other ways that I won't bother suggesting in this post. Here are my thoughts: Hail Tower - Change the buff to instead be a passive 25% chance to fire 3 projectiles, 50% chance to fire 2 projectiles, 25% chance to fire 1 projectile Hail Tower - Leave the buff mechanic as is but reduce the damage of each shot Hail Tower - Leave the buff mechanic as is but reduce it's duration Hail Tower - Change the range to 16 with the buff increasing range to 22 with the same cooldown it currently uses Hail Tower - Change the speed to .66 with the buff increasing speed to .31 with the same cooldown it currently uses Immortal Tower - Instead of using a hard calculation for life returns have it be a chance per kill, 35% for tier 1, 40% for tier 2, 45% for tier 3 Immortal Tower - Cap the number of bonus lives allowed to 60 total Immortal Tower - Change bonus lives beyond 50 to be temporary and expire after every wave. Immortal Tower - Change the life return to a progressively steeper requirement per life in a given round. For example, 1st life requires one kill, 2nd life requires 2 kills, 3rd life requires 3 kills (at this point 6 kills = 3 lives) this total would need to be tracked and shared amongst all life towers owned by a player. To address the possibility of owning different numbers of tier 1-3 versions at any given time have the bonus ignore tower rank and simply count towers of the type. The required kill increment to be reset after every wave.

If a creep is afflicted by napalm from a flamethrower tower and gets killed by a money tower the bonus minerals aren't given, it appears that the kill shot credit is going to the flamethrower napalm explosion rather than the direct damage of the money tower. I haven't tested this with the immortal tower but I have to assume the extra lives aren't being given either as the kill credit is going to the flamethrower.