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Hey, I just had a quick mechanics question. It's impossible to reliably test this in-game because there's no combat log, but basically it's what the title says. How do debuffs that stack infinitely (or otherwise) stack with different levels of that debuff? Like, say you have a flamethrower tower at the top left corner that applies stacks of the napalm debuff to the target, and then a flamespewer tower in the middle section that applies the same debuff, but at a higher level. Do all applied stacks of the flamethrower napalm debuff get updated to the flamethrower debuff when a unit gets attacked by the flamespewer? Or does it just add stacks of the same level debuff that the flamethrower tower applied, without updating to the flamespewer debuff? And as a corollary, if the buff stacks do get updated, is it omnidirectional? Like, using the above example, let's say the tower positions were reversed (that is, flamespewer at top left and flamethrower in center section); do the buff stacks get downgraded when the flamethrower tower attacks the creeps, or does the game just take the highest level debuff and just add stacks of that? thanks in advance!

I propose diversifying the damage payload structures between various single-element towers. Currently the towers overlap too much. There are Single-Target towers and Splash towers; 3 for each, and since the WC3 versions, there has always been a "best-in-class" for both the splash and the single. Usually Fire outclasses Earth and Water; while the single target damage towers struggle to find purpose when they're nothing more than glorified arrow towers. Adding minor abilities would also open up the chance to fix early-game balance issues: such as Dark Towers hitting for 260 damage against a wave 1 with 110 hit points (or something like that). Abilities wouldn't be given to single-element towers for the sake of having abilities: it would just be added for those elements desperately in need of something unique to distinguish them from their counterparts. Some ideas that come to mind: Dark Towers - 15% Chance to crit for double damage; when a Dark Tower overkills a target, the overkill damage chains onto the nearest enemy (overkill damage cannot chain again). This would solve a serious issue with Dark Towers wasting so, so much damage during the early waves. Earth Towers - Instead of splashing, their projectiles could splinter into 2 half-damage fragments that strike new targets (Would function exactly like Drow Ranger's Scepter upgrade). This would finally distinguish Earth as its own tower and not just perform as an inferior Fire Tower/Water Tower. Water Towers - Maybe a bouncing effect? Like 6 bounces or so? To clearly distinguish it from Lightning Towers, it would have poor base damage, no damage decay on bounce, and could bounce back to the original target. It would specialize in killing groups of 2-3 but would be absolutely atrocious vs single targets; and just outclassed in splash-centric scenarios. Light Towers - Not sure range advantage is enough by itself; but I got no ideas at the moment. Maybe the sheer range advantage in itself is good enough. Fire/Nature Towers - Probably don't need abilities as they would each serve as a baseline for Splash Towers and Single Towers respectively. I'm not necessarily pushing these specific examples: but I do want to see single-element towers distinguished from one another. Right now we have 3 glorified Arrow Towers; of which, we really only need one to function as a super Arrow Tower. As for splash: Fire just outclasses Water/Earth because it's the highest DPS splash among the 3, and within splash scenarios, range rarely matters once you properly set splash up with supporting snares.