BlankMinded

Badges/accomplishments?

Couldn't you just ...use skype and play seperate games? I mean the idea isn't bad by itself, just not entirely sure if its worth time of devs to do this.

Think I forgot a few words in my haste to reply. It would be autocast with a long-ish cooldown, and would shot a single arrow / make hail rain in a line 1500 units in length, not just the 700 range or w/e of ice tower. It would also retain the current single target damage it has now. But yes, I never expected ppl to take the idea super serious since there are already ice towers and root towers that hit in a straight line

The fastest way for you to just copy what others are doing is to WATCH what they are doing in stead of asking for detailed pointers in forums. You can use the method described here: to do so. This will get you onto the leaderboard the fastest. If you wish to actually understand what you're doing and why, play another 50 games, experimenting. Note down what works and what doesn't, try to guess or ask why certain things are better than others, watch what others are doing and compare with your own games, and then you will be able to figure out your own builds that work instead of merely copying others to get a high score.

I think that would make hail tower a little silly (both in power output and from a particle effect/fps standpoint), but interesting none the less...Would make it the new runic tower sans splash. How about Powershot? As in the dota skill: an active that fires an arrow in a straight line hitting all targets. Kind of like combining the Ice tower and a single target damage dealer, it would have better synergy with support towers late game, have varying possible build positions, and still be worth building early game to clear waves (similar to how it functions now).

You'd also have to either reset the game time to 0:00 or set the game start time to w/e the current clock is when wave 1 spawns.

The nature/water "leaderboard" guide was written for a different version of eletd. In ths older version, speed was the biggest factor in high scores. This is no longer the case. Chaos and rush modes also don't add bonus score anymore (they used to), they are meant more for fun rather than high scoring. The current best builds for the leaderboards use Gold towers and slow play to build up gold, and transition into strong frog hunting builds, since frogs are currently the best way to gain score.

There's a few things I can say to possibly help you out... Firstly, if "the guide lava thing made" refers to his Nature/Water guide, it was written for a different version of the game. In this older version, speed was the single biggest factor in obtaining high scores, which meant you always play on Rush Mode. This is no longer the case. In the current version, the highest scoring builds are all "slow" builds, that deliberately take a long time to clear waves in order to build up gold via Gold Towers (fire light earth), and then clearing 6+ boss waves. Lavathing's guide was written for games that lasted a max of 31 minutes; current top scoring games take over 65minutes. It is possible to get a high score using a "fast" build, such as Nature/Water, but is much more difficult now compared to when Lavathing's guide was written. Secondly, the higher your difficulty, the higher your score. Normal mode gives x1, hard x2, very hard x3 and Insane x4. This means if you kill 100 frogs on normal, and 60 on insane, insane mode will have the higher score. Chaos and rush mode are meant for fun play, not for chasing the leaderboard, and so rush mode actually gives you a lower socre than classic (since you do not get some bonuses that have been added to classic mode). Try playing higher difficulties without the chaos/rush modes, and learn to play those modes well. Thirdly, alluded to in my first point, hunting frogs is currently the best way to earn high scores. In order to hunt large quantities of frogs, you need to come up with, or copy, a build that uses a mix of good towers, built at good positions, along with slow playing -- slow playing allows your interest to build up, giving you more towers to kill frogs with. It is quite possible to get over 200k score on hard or maybe even normal mode, if you kill enough frogs. A final point, one you may already be aware of, is that quality is always better than quantity. It is better to have 1 upgraded tower than to have 4 towrs of the lower tier (and it costs less also!). Similarly, if you build any "support" towers (slows, damage amps, blacksmith/well/trickery), it is "usually" better to have them at their highest forms. a Single well 3 is better than both a well 2 and a blacksmith 2. Happy hunting.

I went to IRC a week ago or so to ask that exact question b/c if that was the case, it was stupidly OP. And after the looked at me with heads tilted, that is in fact how it works. Polar tower is a unique case. If the creeps die before frostbite duration expires, they are supwer powerful. If creeps live through frostbite, they aren't that great.

If you're goal is to get high score, yes its outdated. If you're goal is to try a new build, who cares!? xD

I think "10 apm" micro is fine tbh. It could be the difference between a high score and average score with identical builds. However, you shouldn't need SC2 level apm to max things in a TD game. Turning off auto-cast for the Mirage towers near the end of a wave for example.

Every tower has optimal positions. Every tower, if placed right, can get 2+ chances at the creep wave. I have been trying to say for a while though, that damage OUTPUT needs to scale with range --- longer range = less dps but more time in combat.

Gold towers currently give too much bonus. Builds abusing gold towers end up with 30-40k gold just from the towers themselves, which grows with interest gain. This huge networth bonus is the crux of almost all current frog hunting builds, since it is what allows you to build all the required support towers to amp up everything else. I think the high base damage is needed to make getting the effect easier, but maybe make it 15/30% effect or something. Nerfing this tower by itself will impact most of the frog builds by itself, so I'd suggest testing patches with JUST this tower nerfed, and patches with other towers tweaked but this one left alone. Runic tower: This being a triple allows you to get all 4 slows (2 30, 2 10). This, in turn, can cause 10+ creeps to group on each other. This makes runic tower ability damage deal something around 1m damage (initial hit on each creap + 9 100% splash per creep) without any damage amps. If the ability affect had a target cap, like hail tower it would be better. The alternative is to reduce the ability damage. 50% damage on all targets makes it much weaker, and considering the top builds are only building them for boss rounds, to abuse gold towers, it won't impact the early game. And even then, 50% damage bonus with no slows is still an overall boost from base damage for the midgame anyways, so its not completely unusable. Nerfing runics too badly (without the added nerf of gold towers) may just see them replaced with quake towers though (I've tried more or less the same set-up with quakes instead of runics and had great success). Quark towers are slightly less efficient, as the elements prevent you from getting as many slows. You can, however, get better buff towers, but with the stack cap reduction, and access to fewer damage amps as the Runic Frog Builds, I feel like this is too weak. It became popular on scoreboards simply because people copied the first guy to get a high score, instead of trying other things....which revealed the strength of gold towers into runic builds. Laser towers: I don't think they need a nerf, the crux of the 222221 builds are the runic towers + mass slows + mass damage amps. Laser towers are simply in the build for cleanup duties when the runic and periodic towers are done clearing out the clusters. Jinx tower effect is definitely too strong. Erosion damage bonus 30%. Enchantment Max 45%. Jinx tower max: over 100% (damage inflicted after curse and before first tick). Jinx really needs a nerf -- 15% with 3 ticks gives max amp of 51%, with the damage in middle/end being amped less than other towers (will most likely still be popular just not as effective). I feel like the hail tower problem is b/c of low damage output late game. The popular towers right now for frogs are quark and runics, which scale significantly with slows, but hail towers continue to hit only 3 creeps despite how grouped up they are. I know this was an alternate tower idea, but could make hail towers inflic bonus damage based on number of targets nearby? Nothing crazy, just say 20% per creep, might make it viable late game (although with that increase, runics will still be better). As already alluded to, the biggest issue with Dual towers is that they force you to skip some support towers that can be obtained in triple-focus builds, depending on the dual you want to spam. This is most likely why vapor/moss/decay/flame/hydro fall off so badly. Quark is not affected as much due to the access to gold towers to compensate, and the way their damage scales. A simply fix would be to make these towers scale better with their 2nd/3rd tiwer upgrades, similar to the changes to single element towers previously. May require base damage reductions on some. Ephemeral/Impulse Towers: Damage does not scale nearly as well with support towers as others. Not really sure how to change this without reworking the towers themselves. They are quite strong early/mid game when you get them though. Maybe these are good in some weird speed builds that I haven't tried? Obliteration Towers: rushing these doesn't seem that great, although maybe I'm just playing the buidls wrong. Like runic towers, they can scale quite well with support, but are overshadowed by their fiery brethren atm. Quakes are similar, really powerful late game, but currently overshadowed.

The in-game patch notes regarding quark towers say stack cap is 10. Also, quake tower ability tooltip says 600/3000 damage. Should be 900/4500 now

While I respect those that do this, it isn't that fair to the players who actually come up with, or practice, these builds, to show everyone else how to do it. If you want to appear on the leaderboards, try practicing a build, using different timings, or build orders, or tower placements, until your scores improve, rather than copying someone else move for move and getting same/better score than the one who put in the effort.