Historical Guides - "The strongest build: lfwd-n"

[Cisz]

Preface

This is a guide from the old forums, back from the days of eletd 3.0 and tft 1.20e. Maybe it's still interesting. Please note that most links are leading to the abandomed old forum. Enjoy.

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I had a chat with t4lruum on the channel, and he asked me about what damage towers to use with an lfwd build. I told him that this would take quite a bit of explaining, but he still wanted to know, so here it goes.

>> Update - Version 1.3<<

Changes in 1.1 - Added a note about poison in "The other towers"

Changes in 1.2 - Added a Replay Pack

Changes in 1.3 - Corrected comment about waters splash size.

Overview

As far as I can tell, the lfwd build goes back to the early days of this forum, when escpy released a replay on how to win very hard without leaking. (He posted it here.) He used the elements fire, water, light, darkness and earth. (I will abreviate all elements from now on, so his build reads like lfwde.)

The mayor idea behind his build was to combine strong slowing towers with towers that reduced the creeps armour.

There are only two towers that reduce armour: Enchantment (fdl) does single-target armour reduction and acid (fdw) does aoe armor reduction (aoe = area of effect). Both share two elements (f and d), and they are easily combined in an lfwd build.

This build also holds the strongest slowing tower of the map, storm (wlf). And in storm, there is always ice (wl). Both towers do their slow with an aoe.

So with just 4 elements you get two powerfull armour reducers and two strong slowing towers.

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How to work with slow and armour reduction

There are two general aproaches to slowing towers.

You can either use them to slow down the overall movement speed of the creeps. To do that you place one slowing tower near the entrance and watch where the slow runs out. And that's where you place the next tower. And you continue in that manner over the whole map. Gipface used only three ice towers for challenge 5 to slow allmost the entire path of the creeps. And I abused map wide slowing to the extreme for my ronald hunt.

Or you build your towers so they will slow in one small location, so the creeps will run into the map at top speed, get slowed near your towers, and run freely again after that. This is the idea behind lfwd.

Once storm is upgraded to monsoon (wich automatically includes the requirements for freezing towers), the creeps will get really slow. So slow in fact, that you get really much time to finish them off, and you will rarely ever leak with monsoon and freezing.

As a result, the creeps will get pushed together into a slowed crowd. This crowd gets slower and denser with each slowing upgrade/tower you get. In the end an entire wave of creeps will be piled into a small area, to slow to get past you towers.

Such a crowd is of course best attacked with aoe towers. A single target tower will hit one creep, no matter how close they stand to each other, while an aoe tower will hit more and more of them, as your slowing power increases. So in the end towers with a big aoe will hit many, maybe most, or even all creeps of a wave at the same time, depending of the size of the aoe.

The armour reduction towers fit well into this tactic. Especially acid is great, since it's armour reduction is an aoe-effect as well. And enchantment towers take a while to apply their spell to all creeps, so the slower, the better.

The result is a block of tightly packed creeps, that is moving at or near the minimum speed. Some creeps are near the end of your slowing zone, low health and nearly free to run on again, while at the other end of the slow-spot new creeps with full health run into the crowd. The armour reduction can get as high as -40 with fully upgraded towers, so this block will take astounding damage.

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The damage towers of lfwd

Many towers in that build have a good damage output.

Imo all long range towers don't do well on this map, especially in mulitplayer, and even worse with a slowing concept like this. Just think about it for a second. A tower like gold or rainbow does like 6000 damage with every shoot and shoots once a second. So with 30 shoots, all waves up to and including 25 are done. And a single one-shoot-per-second tower can do 30 shoots on a wave, as you will find out if you try this simple challenge. Now if you are a mapmaker and you have to ballance long- and short-range towers, your long-range towers will have to be weaker in some aspekt, to ballance their longer range. If they would do the same amount of dmage, who would build short range towers? So they are either slower, weaker, or unballanced. Theoretically a long-range tower could hit creeps for a longer time, so it will do damage longer. But in multiplayer, a rainbow user will start the next wave after about 35-40 seconds, and if he's on very hard, you have only 5 seconds to do extra damage. So in a best-case scenario you will have like 45 seconds instead of 30 to do the damage. And unslowed creeps will start to leave the map after about 45 seconds. In addition to this, the entire point of the lfwd build is having all creeps in one defined point of the map, so you can build all your towers near that.

So in conclusion, long-range towers are out, especially with lfwd. That outrules light, dark, lightning, and hail.

The next thing about lfwd is, that you should go for aoe damage towers, since your creeps are piled into one small area. (Maybe I should point out that all long-range towers are single target towers.) And there are quite a few possibilities for aoe towers in this build. Water and fire, ice, steam, acid, and of course storm are aoe damagers. And a part of the attack of tidal is aoe too. Now some of those towers don't stack. That is, two will do about the same damage as one. The damage over time part of the acid and steam towers attack (damage over time = dot), and storm towers too, don't stack. So two storms do the same damage as one storm. And two acids will only do more damage with the direct attack part of their attacks, the dot of the acid is only applied once. So you shouldn't use more than one steam, acid and storm at one single location. And since lfwd calls for a battle at a single location, more than one of those is unnecessary. Tidal is a little special, because only one of it's two attacks is aoe. The spell like extra attack, that does most of its damage (afaik), is single target only.

So we have ice and water, steam, acid and fire, and storm. For several reasons acid, steam, storm and ice are less of a damage dealer. Storm and acid don't stack properly, allthough they do decent damage. Steam doesn't stack well either, and I'm not even convinced that it does decent damage to begin with. And ice does to little damage for it's cost, since it's primarily a slowing tower.

So what is left? Water and fire. Both do decent damage for their price and both are aoe attackers. The aoe of water is smaller than the one of fire, so many players don't notice it's existence.

Of those two, fire is considered to be the better damage tower by most players, and I agree. Overall, in most situations, fire is da bomb. But we have a special case here, wich gives water a slight advantage.

Let's recapitulate what towers we will use so far. We have storm, ice, acid, and enchantment. Maybe we will have a steam. And we are about to add either water or fire or maybe both. Now the damage types of this towers are water (ice and water), light (storm and enchantment), and fire (steam, acid and fire). The light towers are not to be exchanged, since we need them for their special abilities. So let's take a closer look at water and fire. Fire is weak against water. So if we go for refined and pure fires, our build will loose some potential vs water waves like the evil healing fish-heads of wave 46. To counter water, we would need a good darkness tower. Imo only the sludge tower (dwe) does decent dark damage (being an aoe tower), but we dont have earth in our build so far. And the dark towers do long-range single-target damage, that I outruled for several reasons allready. So fire gives us a weakness against water that we can't compensate. It makes us strong vs nature, but none of our towers is weak vs nature, since we don't use any earth right now. Now for water. Its weak vs darkness, so we need light damage to compensate for that. Aha. So water has an advantage over fire, because it's weakness (dark armour) is compensated by the light damage of the storm and enchantment towers. So now we have to decide if this makes up for the smaller aoe of water.

Luckily for us this qustion has been thoroughly tested in the challenge 7. I claimed water to be better for the explained reasons, while escpy claimed his trusted fire to do better. It seems the difference is only small, so if you like fire for some reasons, feel free to stick with it and you will win the map with that and never leak. But water seems to be a little faster in the end. I got escpy convinced and he switched to water towers as well.

(Imo, steam is out for the same reason as fire: It gives you a strength vs nature you don't need and a weakness vs water that you can't compensate.)

So as it comes for water or fire, fire is a little weaker speed wise, but both will do the trick.

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The other towers of lfwd

We now have a list of towers that are definately used in lfwd:

Storm, acid, enchantment, ice, and water.

And we have a list of towers that are dismissed as main damage towers:

- Fire for the wrong damage type.

- Steam for the wrong damage type and overall weakness.

- Lighning, hail, light and dark for beeing long-range single target towers.

- Tidal for beeing a single target tower mainly.

What about the other towers? Or how about a single tidal? So I'll go through all non-obligatory towers of lfwd once more.

One could argue, that a single long-range tower will help with single escaping creeps, so one hail (wln), dark, light or lightning (lf) could be helpfull. I disagree with that for two reasons. First, the build has beeen proven to hold all creeps in many games and on all difficulties, including vhx (very hard extreme). So if you leak single creeps, you are probably doing something wrong. And if you invest money into long-range towers, the tendency of your build to leak will get greater, since those towers will do less damage for their cost in the same time, as a short-range aoe tower.

One could argue that the damage types are not that important and fire is better than water, or both should be used. As escpy has shown, you are not alone with this opinion, and lfwd works well with fire. Feel free to use it.

A single steam (wf) could be a good addition, since its damage is entirely aoe with a huge area. I doubt the strenght of the tower is enough to make a difference, but feel free to use it, lfwd can deal with that too.

Tidal (ldw) and magic (fd) are in the build, and both are well know for their huge damage potential, especially with highly slowed creeps. Both are doing spell damage to a single target, so the advantage of aoe on stacked creeps is lost. In addition to that, enchantment provides a damage bonus to towers, that doesn't affect those spells afaik. (But someone should probably check this..)

Poison and moon are the last towers to take a look at. Both are slowing towers, which we have no real need for, since we have a great slowing power with storm/ice. But since monsoon takes 6 elemental picks, maybe an additional slow could be helpfull earlier. But both towers do single target attacks, and poison doesn't slow mechanical creeps. Moons damage potential is actually quite good, but we are not really in need for another tower with light damage that has no aoe. Maybe a player determined to get his fire towers could use poison as the required help against water. This could make sense, since the only water wave that is mechanical is the early game toyboat wave (afaik). Be aware that to get virus (poison lv.3) you need dark and water on level 3, and since you probably did this to cover your fire 3, this brings you to 11 picks. (So this gives you light 2, and water, dark, and fire 3, and nothing else.)

This concludes the tower analysis.

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Element distribution and sequence of towers

My standard lfwd build starts out like this: wfld-wlfd-w

The first element, water allows me to deal double damage with a water cannon for wave 9 (fire, healing). And I can use a water arrow to take down the fire elemental after wave 10.

My first goal is a steam tower for wave 11 or 12. It can solo almost perfectly up to wave 15, and if I build some additional elemental cannons it will be enough untill my next target tower.

After wave 15, one elemental arrow will be enough to hunt the light elemental.

Second step is a storm for wave 19. It's even possible for 18, as proven by t4lruum. 19 is a hard wave, since it's non-elemental (taking only 90% damage of elemental attacks) and fast, so it makes sense to upgrade for that wave. Again, the new storm is able to solo for some waves. It even handles the dark elemental after wave 20 if you know how to micro a storm, but a light arrow will do it too.

I add a steam for wave 24 (dark, healing).

Then an ice for 25 (fire, fast). And to take out the water 2 element, I have to add a couple of dark arrows. (I sell them directly after that.)

For 27 the steam is upgraded to acid.

Now I go for two enchantments. I start with a fire, then magic and finally enchantment. It's not really important if I finish one first or do both parallel. By wave 30 I have either 2 magic or 1 enchantment, which will be enough to hunt light level 2. I use both spells of the enchantment towers. Most of the time they are set to autocast fairy fire, but I use inner fire manually or switch the autocast every once in a while.

Carefull with wave 31, since those are healers. Maybe a few elemental cannons are needed.

In the following waves you upgrade your ice to freezing and finish the two enchantments in no particular order. This should be finished for wave 35. Fire lv.2 is no big deal with two enchantment towers.

Now I want to upgrade the storm, but I need 3900 for that, so I have to stop building and pile money. I do this with temporary elemental cannons. 12 fully upped cannons ("a fistfull") cost about 2000 gold, so with either 24 elemental cannons or 12 and 2000 cash I can upgrade to monsoon. I start with 12 super cannons, turn them into water cannons for wave 37 (light) and 38 (fire).

And for wave 39 (the infamous healing worms with earth armour) I can just upgrade to monsoon. It seems a bit akward to upgrade a light tower against a healing earth wave (and wave 41 is fast earth), but it works like a treat. Again, after wave 40 the level 2 dark elemental is no problem for two enchantments.

For wave 41 I make an array of 12 elemental cannons (non-light of course), and for wave 42 I upgrade the acid to hydrochloric.

After that you can either continue with elemental cannons and upgrade to incantation or build three focused water towers and delay incantation for after refined water.

After wave 45 the level 3 water should be no big deal and for wave 46 (healing water) you will have at least one incantation either way.

Now you have several options. You could go for a third incantation, or increase the number of water towers, or pile money for pures and delay your next towers/upgrades.

As for the remaining 2 lumber on wave 50 and 55, you could go for light 3 and upgrade the freezing to a sub zero tower, but that's not really required. You could add a pure essence for a 3rd pure. 4 pures will probably be to expensive. Maybe you want fire 3 for a pure fire or a fully upped steam (Immolation, wf).

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Variations of lfwd

Since the basic lfwd build requires only 9 elemental picks to work, the remaining 2 picks give room for fooling around. You could go for 2 early interest and get really rich after monsoon is finally up and slowing. Or maybe one interest first and an extra pure in the end. Or you could add another element.

There are several popular variations of lfwd, the most used beeing lfwd-n. But a lfwde works well too.

lfwd-n goes like this: wfldn-wlfd-w and a pure essence after wave 55

This single nature pick gives you one nova tower (lfn) with double damage for wave 30 (earth). It's a third slowing tower adding in to ice and storm, and although it becomes useless in lategame, it helps a lot in midgame. Nature is choosen to counter your last weakness - earth. Since water is coverad by light, light calls for a cover by nature vs earth. And the weakness of nature is of course allready covered by water. (light covers water covers nature covers light; earth covers dark covers fire covers earth) Nature arrows or cannons do great vs wave 39 and 41 as well. speaking off which, the well tower is a good addition to your build too. It gives a 25% speed increase for only 500 gold. One well can speed 2-4 towers, depending on the speed of the match and if the wells are speeding each other too. With clever placement the wells only speed up your damage towers and never use their spell on each other. So 2 or maybe 3 are enough. Remember to build them late, since they give only 25% foer 500, so the speeded towers should cost more than 2000 gold.

Another way to go is lfwde. It could look like this: wfld-wlf-e-de-e. Or you could give up light level 2 and make it wflde-efdw-e and a pure essence. The idea behind this is to use sludge, flamethrower and earth towers, since those three cover each other in a circle and earth makes the best pure in the game. Especially with stacked creeps.

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Conclusion

The lfwd build family is very strong for its -40 armour and brutal speed reduction, so maybe some nerfing is required. It's a build I recommend for beginners, and it works for racing or countering spammers too.

As I found the time I threw together a replaypack for lfwd builds.

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So t4lruum, i hope this answers your question why water is the best tower in lfwd-n.

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Edit - Replay Pack now available:

>>> lfwd Replay Pack <<< (tft ver.1.20e)

[Guest Sancdar]

Conclusion

Cisz spent way too much time writing.

[Cisz]

Hey, this is one of my shorter guides..

[Guest Sancdar]

Exactly...

[Guest shadowfuri]

i tried downloading the replay pack cept wen i try 2 extract it says its corrupt??? using win rar btw... thread creater can u check whether the file is fine please?? thanks !!

EDIT: nvm i redownloaded and its fine !! thanks !

[Guest noobforcer]

hey guys.....

do you get 75% or 100% gold back when u sell elemental arrow/cannon towers???

[Cisz]

100% for everything that started as a cannon or arrow.

Read the faq for more basic information.

[Guest noobforcer]

oic......

for lwdf build should i put a level 3 light to make a sub-zero tower or save it for pure element tower???

[Cisz]

Imo sub zero is not necessary. You should either go more essence or add nature for wells and nova.

[Guest shadowfuri]

mmmm i was just wondering.. how do u decide whether to use arrow or cannon towers in the early stages of the game???

[Cisz]

Thats a good question.

I'll make a new thread about it.

[Guest noobforcer]

how do you guys manage 2 kill that water elemental on lvl 5??? i can't do it even once...... everytime it sure leaks......

[echinodermata]

Temporary Arrow Towers can help tremendously.

[Cisz]

how do you guys manage 2 kill that water elemental on lvl 5??? i can't do it even once...... everytime it sure leaks......

Good question.

I sell all my towers (arrows) and rebuild them on a long pass position. I can afford 4 super arrows at that point. After the element is dead, I sell them again and rebuild at a two pass location.

>> Placement guide <<

[Guest noobforcer]

any idea whr can i download any replays???

[Cisz]

Look at the end of the first post, where it says "Replay Pack".

Working for you?

[Guest noobforcer]

nope...

not working for me...

it says my warcraft is 1.21 version, so cannot work...

any way to fix this???

[Cisz]

Sure, total reinstall and use evercraft.

How about checking the threads about challenges? There are replays.

[Guest noobforcer]

anyone have a good build on very hard extreme mode???

i always leak in the opening few levels.

[Cisz]

This guide works on vhx too. See: >> lfwd-n, vhx, no leak <<

[Guest skazyseaz]

i try ur strategy

very nice

but

i not use acid tower

bcuz not nice

i make mooson tower

then ice tower

then sludge

then supernova tower

i had spawn MacDonald 380+

super slow and it not move

it stay there forever

i got the replay

if u wanna see it

[Guest Cataras]

i not use acid tower

bcuz not nice

I not understand this

in

my eyes

acid and especially its upgrade

very niiiiiiice

bcuz not very much armor left on creeps

i make acid

then waves no armor

then kill fast

[Guest skazyseaz]

yea

acid good for lvl low

when high no use

i use sludge

stuck them then supernova, -decrease ms, monsoon -decrease ms, breaking ice -decrease ms

all -decrease ms

i had spawn 3 lvl of mob in 1 line

when lvl 61

donald

not for kill but for slow then

who can most longer stay life

that why i make sludge tower

all stuck no move

after 5 mins 2 creeps leak

^^

[Guest Cataras]

I still don't get what your argument is....

Hydrocholic Tower (Acid upgrade) reduces the creeps armor by 15 which increases the damage efficiency of all of your towers by ~44%. When you build Ice, Monsoon and Supernova towers you alllready achieved the maximum of slow you can get. You dont need additional Sludge towers because you can't slow the creeps more anyways. So why not invest that money into Acid and it's upgrade Hydrocholic and go for damagae because your goal shouldn't be to pile up Ronalds until you die from Ronald overflow but to kill them and keep them coming.

[Guest recavik]

Hi, I recently became obsessed with ele td. I can't seem to get much farther than 45 .. i read that one part about two pass, long pass, all that stuff.

any basic suggestions or basic combos i should try for? so far ive just been experimenting but im not really sure whats good or not. i've tried the wfd poison towers. but not much besides that. anything would help! thankks!