Utoko

I agree dual element towers seems tot weak right now. The only "viable" 2 Element tower tier 3 is right now well 3 (because of the combination with nature 3 for fast builds). Imho Tier 2 Dual element towers are fine but Tier 3 towers should get buffed again across the board. They are only a little bit better as the 3 element towers but without access to any support towers they are a lot weaker. On top of that the pure essence shift(45 ->50) also hurt the duel element builds more than the 2 2 2 2 2 2(-2+1) builds.

It isn't easier on average but the top build atm. has 4-5 "hard" waves. If you play chaos and random the waves right it is easier(you clear some waves faster). At some point builds are so refined it is hard to improve them. So playing Chaos is an option for most builds to improve the score. (but you have to play several games)

1. Flamethrowers seems fairly weak to me atm but in theory they are decent against frog waves if you have slow towers to cluster the creeps together. 2. Moss towers are for high hp creeps and disease for low hp creeps.

Imho that seems to me like a complicated implementation of the 98% sell value. It has the same effect. but it gets way more complicated because the lock times would need to be different when you have a different amount of money saved up. If you don't implement a scaling then you cant get a balance between the early and lategame. If you use flat numbers you couldn't even use arrow towers anymore to prevent leaking in the midgame for example without losing way more money. Can't really see any advantage of something like that which needs a lot of testing and balancing and in the end it would have the same effect as 98% or 99% sell value.

First you say you don't watch the games and then you claim that these high scores are impossible without abusing these buy/sell tactics... I wouldn't call it the biggest issue when the best scores have nothing to do with the buy/sell tactic. 97/250 high scores random In fact it is not even easy to do in that extreme manner. If you mess up once you lose easy 15 lives in one wave. and like I said even if you get the high net-worth it is very unlikely that you get a very good element combination. In most games you can kill with 250.000 gold the same amount of frogs as the other guy in -ap with 110.000 networth. So with the change of the networth bonus I don't think this will be a issue anymore. Even in all pick 220.000 gold is possible so the gap isn't even that high. The Speed vs slow Income scoring discrepancy is the important and hard thing to balance.

I agree with your overall points but the random numbers are correct. I had several 700.000k+ scores but it doesn't show up because my ap score is higher you can get 250k+ with most element combinations(no gold tower needed). If you play slow and keep sell/rebuy basically the whole game. Of course your prefrog score is then pretty low and you need to have the right towers for the frogwaves then. Here is one example with 320.000:

I added my Slow Build Spreadsheet now. Based on @WindStrike spreadsheet (Hope it is ok I used it) : ) It is mostly based on ingame test. (Still missing for some towers) I try to focus more on the usability for real builds. Next thing: AoE Tower should be easier to distinguish from Single target towers. Like you said it isn't enough to have high DPS AoE clear you also need to choose your Single Target Tower. @yoitzhiok spreadsheet is great work and very accurate for future balancing help but it is very hard to extract usable information https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rp-PeiX55ZI6phFuXM7Lbhns0cETx1wzl92P0szs230/edit#gid=542633801

Well I guess it depends on your perspective. Seems like you went some mix which is fine but it has limits.I mean with "speed can't compete with slow builds" the upper limits(your score is 46% from the 1. place score). Realistically the score before frogs can't be much higher than 450.000 but if you try to reach that you have to take a specific element build and you can't aim for gaining a lot of income. That is the reason why fast builds have a limit around 650.000. Slow builds are only limited with the amount of gold they can gain over the 55 rounds and the amount of space you have on the map. There is no hard-limit no one breaks. note: all numbers are for insane I have no clue how much is possible in other modes.

You are right about the AoE/ single target part. Inc/ench is a good combo but don't you struggle a lot vs fire creeps? Many people are not greedy enough. Right now gold> lives. If I only leak 2-3 creeps in a round in my test I don't add any tower. My goal is it to finish with at least 40 lives. The recent patch buffed basically all support/buff/debuff towers which makes 2 2 1 2 2 2, 2 1 2 2 2 2, 2 2 2 1 2 2 and co. way superior to every build you could make with dual element towers. I think I have a decent amount of insight 1. place now(1,028k)/finished 1. place last patch. That's why I thought I share some thoughts about my process. Might help someone to get better results.

All the debuff towers and supporttowers effect both the Lighttower and the Nature tower the same.(Well tower-> Light tower more) So I don't see how that plays any role. In any slow build you build your debuff towers around the map anyway because you cant fit 170k+ or 250k+(random) in one position on your map. Feel free to test it and just show me a slow build setup where nature tower beats out Light tower. On top of that it was just a random example of 2 towers.

but would the dot not be over after 2 sec then`? after that your target burns for 0.9 seconds without taking any damage. Both options are not very clean in my eyes. e: There are a some dots in dota which start at 0.0 like (Frostbite, Sandstorm) they all don't trigger the last tick but they have all at least 0.5 sec procs which seems cleaner.

If you don't slow anything the frogs are very spread out but if you slow them with root+Nova or Muck+ Tornado the frogs get really close together . If they are close together towers have less time to hit the units. That is why runic, periodic tower and co. get very strong but single target tower with low range get very weak. The numbers are all right because I just created different setups and measured how long the towers could attack. In different setups you will have a little different numbers of course but the tendency will always be the same. I tested the towers in 3 Setups: No Slows 4 root 2+ 4 nova2 4 Muck+ 4 Tornado I measured the full round time. I placed the Towers in good positions and took the time how many seconds they attacked. I do a bunch of random test but most is way less presentable than your spreadsheet. That is true but at the time you have 8 + slow-towers you are in the Frog waves->. The Light towers are also getting up to 20+ stacks.

That is right and actually exactly what i mean. I would never suggest avoiding all the good support towers : ) The tower valuation part will be way more detailed but I wanted to make some more AoE damage test in the frogwaves first.

I thought I try to write a guide for a specific approach this time rather then a build which is outdated in the near future. The idea of this strategies is maximize the score from the frog kills to a point where the prefrog score doesn't matter in comparison. So the goals are: get as much lives as possible (if you build includes 2 life and 2 light) Save as much gold as possible as early as possible. Kill the creeps as slow as possible(stop attacking at the end) Do not build more towers then you need(not even Life/Gold-towers) Many players even if they play slow don't care too much about the first rounds or they are thinking the extra score outweighs the gold gain early on (that isn't the case). You can already save up to 750 gold by turn 16. At this point you still have 40+min before the frogs start. min gold 750 5 1114 10 1656 15 2461 20 3657 25 5433 30 8074 35 11997 40 17827 (in reality it is a little less because you don't get any interest for 1-49 gold) I just show this table because I don't want this to be a math guide. This shows 750 gold at wave 16 are worth more than 18000 gold in the end. Range 2 30% slows round-time 90 sec 550 24.44% 700 40.00% 900 48.89% 1150 61.11% 1500 94.44% When you figure out which main DPS towers you want to use in your frog killing build keep in mind that there are not much viable tower under 1150 range. Here my Slow build tower spreadsheet. I did already test for a lot of towers but there are still missing a lot: Slow Build Tower spreadsheet This is a work in progress guide but feel free to tell me what you want to see in this guide and any other feedback is appreciated.

I might sound stupid but: Why don't you just add a tick to these towers then in your spreadsheet? Many dots start at 0.0 sec the first tick. or are you suggesting to nerf all dot towers in the game? Still don't really get it sry My comparison was more about the range factor in early rounds where you have max 3 hits on a unit . The ability doesn't factor in much and in this rounds the 6.3 Light tower still manages to get even with the 9.2 Nature tower because of the range factor. In your theory you assume light tower have global range but they can't hit minions in the corners. Realistically in the middle position around 40 stacks is max. Normally when you micro the Lighttowers you get up to 30 stacks.The average is still lower then 20 stacks in frogwaves 10+ I agree a perfect representation of the efficiency might not be impossible. but I do a lot of testing for the frog rounds. To test which towers I need in my builds. range uptime no slows 2 30% slows roundtime 60sec 90sec 550 55.00% 24.44% 700 71.67% 40.00% 900 75.00% 48.89% 1150 90.00% 61.11% 1500 95.00% 94.44% Vapor 35.00% 28.89% In the early rounds: Nature 9.2 * 71.67% = 6.59. Light 6.7 *95.00% = 6.36 In the lategame with 4* double slowtowers on the map nature tower can't compete with light tower in any way even without the effects: Nature 9.2 * 71.67% = 3.68 Light 6.7 *94.45% = 6.33 note: In random it is sometimes a lot different because you can just rebuild towers in another postion. It is not perfect and a little different in different waves/positions but these rough values are close enough to figure out the strongest builds. The " Can't decide on a pure element tower? " Fun fact is at least only for fun if you don't take these things into consideration in any way. Interesting would be helpful facts : p

Right now speed builds can't compete in score with slow builds so I didn't thought about them. slow player = Finishing the first 55 rounds as slow as possible to maximize the gold in 58 min+ You end round 55 with less then 200k score. The whole idea is to neglect the prefrog score to maximize the frog score. Slow towers increase your game time even longer which gives you even more gold to work with. Some slow builds don't have access to a lot of good slow towers which means they are already in a disadvantage because they can't gain as much gold. I see no reason to buff slow builds with slow towers further.

Thanks for sharing. I would appreciate if you could work a bit on the appearance. Highlight the important columns, Freeze first column, use 2 numbers after comma. Your legend should also be included on a 2. page in the document. It is always easier to read your own stuff help other people out a little bit : ) Where should it be higher? Pure fire Tower is the weakest pure tower. It has the lowest attackrange/uptime and does a lot of overkill. I would be interesting in efficiency of the towers over the whole round. In my test Light tower is already even with nature tower early on. In the lategame with well tower support Light tower> Nature tower.

I think a big problem is the elements you need for the tower. He fits in a slow build but in slow builds you don't really want 2 water and 2 shadow because that prevents some very good support towers. The saving charges idea is interesting but hard to balance. Even with cooldown if you save up mass charges for the frogwaves it can be really strong. Personally I like the big spread a lot.

I agree with the income box. It it also annoying when people in your friend list come online and you can't see the income box anymore for some seconds. The sandbox icon only blocks the "f" right? So I rather have it block one letter than more of the display. (using the net graph too)

This is not a good idea imho because slow builds are already the strongest right now. If you have slow tower you get already rewarded in more income procs which outweighs the points you lose when you have a decent amount of money saved up 10.000+. You get the points back in the frog waves because you can kill more frogs with more gold.

that is no bug. That is a change in the patch

isn't that already the case? The arrow in the bottom left does that.

My suggestion is to remove all the tower upgrade names from 2 element towers and 3 element towers. cons: confusing for new players In my first game my friend told me to build a blitz tower. Checking tower table not there asking friend ->upgrade from haste tower upg Haste tower to Biltz read skill description again(because it has another name) and see only damage increase most players don't know the names I wrote a guide and one of the first questions was of course "Where did you get the Foundry Tower?" I think i played the game more then the average player already and still could only guess what a Steam tower or a Wizardry tower is. You can't find the tower-names in game when you don't build the towers. you have to play several games until you see all the names once. How should players get familiar with the names? The average player won't study tower names on the website pros: some tower names sound cool If you confuse other players when you use the real names what is the point of having them? well 1, well 2, well 3 is clean and every player knows what you are talking about after 2 games. or just add adjectives like you did with single element towers.

oh wow I can give you reasons: you saved up 30000 gold and you have an easy round? -> stop tower attacks after you killed most creeps to get another income proc or two you have a easy round and want to give the kills to your life/gold towers ->Stop the others towers Elemental boss kill with light tower. creeps already spawning Elemental boss runs around the corner and your light tower is losing his 20 stacks because he is hitting a creep. With stop you hit stop and w8 3 sec until your light tower can attack the Elemental boss again. stopping attack for a short time to prevent a kill on a vengeance creep. Sometimes it is messing you up when some towers kill too many of them timelaps creep leaks you hit stop so you don't lose 6 lives on a single frog. 5 reasons of the top of my head.

You can combine Light towers with Well Towers which makes them stronger than Quark towers for the bosswave