Mangoat

That would definitely be a buff to long range towers which is probably a good thing.

Excellent.

I think it's too early for the monthly leaderboard resets/balance updates. Considering how fast people figured out the last cheese build and how much faster after the wipe they figured out the new one, I think frequent iterations would be better until all of the obvious glaring issues are hammered out. One thing that seems obviously limiting right now is that not only rush mode but the speed modifier in general really forces you to go one way with your strategy. Obviously clearing a wave faster should score higher, but right now it scores way, way higher. If the multiplier were lower and frog kills were given a relatively high point value it would even it out for slower builds that focus on multiple slowing towers and AoE, because while they will take longer to clear the main waves they should be able to perform a lot better against frogs if well set up.

Right now I think the two things that really stand out as not having any particular counters are single-target and buffs. Shield, heal, regen and speed are all in different ways more effective against AoE, only undead really screws single-target over now that swarm is gone, and it doesn't really screw it as hard as swarm does. Swarm was, admittedly, too much, but I think with it gone single target towers feel overtuned just because there are few waves to really worry about (basically just undead waves of opposing elements). Meanwhile, basically nothing punishes a big dependence on support towers at all, they just straight up make any build more efficient. For single target - Phase: Passively evades 25% of attacks moves 15% slower. Shift: Blinks forward a short distance and temporarily doubles evasion to 50% for a couple seconds. Splash damage and other effects will still trigger on missed attacks. For support towers - Dispel: Removes a single positive buff from a nearby tower or a single debuff from a nearby creep. Can also dispel clones from trickery towers (but removes the unable-to-be-cloned debuff from the tower whose clone was destroyed).

No particular elements in mind, but some niches that are missing: Anti-clumping towers. Towers that have knockback, or that forcestaff effect, an AoE effect that scatters creeps varying distances forwards/backwards, a debuff that increases the damage a creep takes but makes it move faster, etc. AoE builds have slowing effects to force creeps to clump up and make the AoE more efficient, but single target builds that use things like lasers, enchantment, etc. have nothing that does the reverse. More forms of crowd control. Usually with something like this you have to be careful because a full CC maze can make the game impossible to lose, but Ele TD isn't really about not losing so much as it's about winning as fast as possible for maximum score which means slow builds that overuse CC mechanics will be inherently undesireable. The most obvious would be a bash tower or some other kind of immobilization, but towers that prevent creeps from using abilities could also be interesting, or even mind-control towers that make creeps turn around and walk backwards momentarily. Aura towers. Right now we've got buffing towers that support up to 4 towers each and can be placed a good distance away. Aura towers could potentially buff more towers simultaneously but would need to be placed more thoughtfully to maximize their effect on the towers you want to buff. Transfiguration towers, change the elemental damage type of other towers; either some ability that lets it toggle between any element switch but has a cooldown so you can't use it every wave (cooldown reduced with level?), or rather than letting you choose it shifts the rock-paper-scissors type forward or back a step (water becomes fire, fire becomes nature, etc. or vice-versa). Not sure where this one fits in though. Would probably work best as an aura tower rather than a buff. Summoning towers. I seem to remember there being some of these in older WC3 versions of Ele TD. Just a concept I've always liked thematically even if it has little impact on gameplay. I imagine the hangup here is potential lag issues. Luck towers. Very niche right now because there aren't TOO many towers with proc effects, could change with the number of elemental combinations doubling via variants; but basically they'd buff the rate of proc abilities. Perhaps could give a simple crit to towers that don't have a natural proc effect. Wilder tower effects. Things that work very different from more standard towers. Problematic because there's more room for abuse cases.. Example: anti-economy towers - towers that have some kind of inherent cost to attack or use abilities. Techies tower that places landmines and can actively suicide to do a big burst of AoE damage but disable the tower while it 'respawns', or even outright destroys it and refunds 90% of the cost. A tower that buffs creep HP with its attacks but gives a bonus to your score for every creep hit. A tower that can sacrifice lives for some kind of effect. Etc.

What about just implementing a singleplayer restart option only usable before the game ends? Because the main reason I can see for resetting is if you're trying for a certain score or goal, and when you fuck up once you pretty much have to leave and recreate the game which is a hassle. Resetting in multiplayer would probably be pointless since most people leave when they lose.

After seeing which strategies are making it to the top of the leaderboards consistently, especially after the buff to pure towers, I strongly feel the almighty mango may be simply too desirable. The fact that the higher tier a tower is the more cost efficient it is means that you want to play as minimalist as possible, with level 2 tri-element or pure mono-element towers being covered by level 3 dual element support towers (because level 3 dual element DPS towers all seem to underperform). The benefits of having a wide variety of elements available only really come into play if you're playing a slow game, stacking multiple buffs/debuffs/slowing effects and forcing waves to clump up in a kill zone. Because the road to the leaderboard is always going to be through the added multipliers of chaos and rush mode, combined with the inherent score benefits of finishing waves fast, playing a slow game is already suboptimal; but when you add in the almighty mango it becomes a total non-option in my eyes. Even before the pure tower buffs the top scores still took two pure essences and utilized them, and now it seems to be an even better option. But I don't think the pure essence itself is the issue; the fact that it comes hand in hand with a huge chunk of gold is. More gold means more towers and since you already have the most efficient towers available due to your extra pure essences and level 3 dual-element support towers the extra gold goes even further than it would normally. But on top of all that, frankly it detracts from the strategy of the game when skipping even one elemental choice in favor of mangos is a given. Even with a build focusing exclusively on 3 elements, what you do with the spare lumber is a key strategic decision for milking that extra bit of efficiency out of your build even if it's with level 1 blacksmith towers. But again given the inefficiency of lower level towers, just taking more gold is always going to be the right call, even if you don't use the essence at all. Maybe I'm wrong; it is a bit early to call it definitively. But it just seems to me that unless something major changes with the way the game is scored the best strategy will always be chomping down mangos and neglecting variety.