Let every 4 element combination have a slow tower

[dg86]

Okay, let's list the four slow towers:

Ion/Plasma: FLW

Nova/Supernova: FLN

Mire/Muck: DEW

Barb/Spike: DEN

Now, after listing the 15 4-element combinations in a separate document, I got this list of 5 4-element combinations without a slow tower:

DEFL

DFNW

DLNW

EFNW

ELNW

The first of these has the missing tri elemental tower DFL (radius/orbit). This is a good candidate for a slow tower.

Next, the tower in common with the next two combinations is DNW, which is the godawful flooding/drowning tower. It's pure garbage because it overlaps damage types with the comet tower, which should be the be-all-end-all source for water damage aside from perhaps pure water towers. That, and its ability is absolutely worthless. Right now, DLNW, while it has two fantastic AoE towers (comet and annihilation) seems infinitely inferior to DELN, which is just phenomenal in so many ways (has a primary aoe tower with annihilation, a secondary aoe tower with mortar (made so much the better by being earth damage, which covers for the light waves that annihilation would be weak against), a damage amplification tower with invocation, and a slow tower with spike, and a fantastic support tower with masquerade (or if you'd like, deceit)). Its primary source of damage (dark) gets covered by its secondary source of damage (earth), and the laser/phaser tower is so much gravy on top of that.

Lastly, the tower in common with the last 2 combinations is the ephemeral/temporal tower--a single-target, low-range, slow-firing piece of junk. Yes, the damage is nice, but if there's anything I'd like when playing ENW, it's more time for my fountain'd mold towers to shoot straight.

[Chiquihuite]

Throwing in more slow towers could work, but seems terribly unimaginative.

I wonder if a knockback tower (which buffs creeps to make them immune to further knockbacks within X time) might serve the same purpose effectively.

[Karawasa]

Builds that lack slow make up for it by either having damage amplification support, or the possibility of making tier 3 dual supports.

[dg86]

Builds that lack slow make up for it by either having damage amplification support, or the possibility of making tier 3 dual supports.

Dark Light Nature Water.

Your four triple towers are:

Hail

Torrent

Flooding

Obliteration

Hail and obliteration are more or less redundant (hail does better vs. fast waves and darkness waves I suppose, but meh). Torrent is yet another AoE tower, and flooding is just plain terrible by design concept.

Furthermore, the idea that you "make up" for no slow/amplification by having tier 3 dual support is just plain wrong.

Once again, consider Dark Earth Light Nature.

You have a slow (barb)

You have an amp (evoc)

You have an aoe (oblit)

You have a bad bonus tower (laser)

And you can get the tier 3 dark/light support tower (deceit) if you go one interest, quad element level 2, and level 3 light+dark (you'll have the whole combo online by wave 55).

For instance, DLNW right now is an absolutely terrible build because you can substitute water for nature and have a far superior build.

[Karawasa]

Furthermore, the idea that you "make up" for no slow/amplification by having tier 3 dual support is just plain wrong.

Here is what you missed in your analysis. DLNW has access to two dual supports. Dual supports are not inferior to triple supports. Would you rather have 30% damage amp with 6 elements or 30% damage increase for 4? Furthermore, nothing tops 120% at level 3. So let's go over DLNW versus DELN. The first has 150% worth of support. The second has 180% worth of support. This isn't as bad as you make it sound. It might seem worse than it is because of damage tower balance being a work in progress.

[dg86]

I can sort of see your argument, but consider this: say you have 4 damage towers (any mix of annihilation/comet). By building one deceit tower, you get 4 clones. So now you need 2 spring towers to support those 8 towers, costing you a total of 2500. I suppose that's a deal compared to having an invocation or other 30% amp damage tower since 30% on those 8 towers is about the same sort of deal.

The problem is that DLNW has no slow tower whatsoever. This is, needless to say, pretty critical, wouldn't you think? Especially when the tsunami and flooding towers seem to be a bit redundant considering the presence of two long-ranged heavy-damage towers already.

[Aranneas]

If every combination had a slow tower, you could triple- or even quadruple-stack slows with five element builds. That wouldn't be a good thing.

[dg86]

I don't think slow effects stack.

[Karawasa]

They do. Obviously not ones from the same ability.

[Aranneas]

It'd be like having Incantation and Polar not stack. (Note: They do.)

[Eksentrysyti]

I do think that giving every 4 element combo a slow tower (or two) would be rather boring. However, it would be interesting to give other disabling effects to the combinations without slow (or rework some of the current slow towers into other effects). I'd suggest things like stuns, knockback, or teleport.