Support Towers

[ele]

Hey,

Just wanted to point out something that bothered me while formulating strategies. One of the biggest headaches is looking for combinations that can utilize one of the 3 dual-element support towers.

Light+Dark = clone

Fire+Earth = damage

Nature+Water = speed

All of these towers requires tier 3 of each respective elements. I'm not sure if other people agree, but I find light-dark combo being way stronger than the other two. Getting tier 3 of fire+earth or nature+water doesn't seem to be strong enough to get you far. I've never seen it work before, in my opinion the triple element towers for fire+earth and nature+water isn't very strong either. Whereas light+dark+nature = obliteration and light+dark+water = hail, which are two of the strongest and most used triple element towers imo.

I will post additional thoughts on this a little later. I'm aware that fire+earth allows you for the wealth tower build, but so far I haven't seen anyone getting tier 3 fire+earth and making it to the end of the game.

Discuss

Note: I'm only referring to very hard difficulty and I've have made it to the end of very hard lots of times with the light+dark core strategy. Just the other 2 doesn't seem possible/plausible. If anyone have made it to the end with tier 3 fire+earth or nature+water let me know

[gwho]

nice catch. cloning a tower is essentially 100% speed upgrade or 100% damage upgrade while the others are not. (higher levels even greater than 100%)

one way of "nerfing" the clone tower could be to adjust the duration it lasts to something roughly on par with the other towers.

5 seconds with a 15 second cd would theoretically get you effectively 33%, on par with the other support towers.

in the late game, cloning a really strong tower is so much cheaper and so much more effective than buying additional towers. you will will buy additional towers, but you will make that many more clone towers if you're being cost effective.

It seems, though, that even though the clone tower level 1 has a 15 sec cd and a 15 sec duration, it doesn't seem to continually clone.

How does the "already been cloned" status on a tower work?

if you have 2 towers per clone tower, will it then be able to clone continually by alternating?

is the restriction just against cloning the same tower indefinitely?

[Karawasa]

In terms of benefit, we look at the downtime. So we are dealing with 10/60 not 10/15 (for level 1). This is because a million cloning towers does you no good if you only have one tower to clone. The reason why cloning towers seems stronger is because the 15% (level 1) benefit is given in a shorter period. With the other two buffing towers, the benefit is given over the 60 seconds. In other words, cloning tower is more like a spike in damage output.

It seems, though, that even though the clone tower level 1 has a 15 sec cd and a 15 sec duration, it doesn't seem to continually clone.

How does the "already been cloned" status on a tower work?

if you have 2 towers per clone tower, will it then be able to clone continually by alternating?

is the restriction just against cloning the same tower indefinitely?

Actually, the duration is 10 seconds. The "already cloned" status simply prevents any cloning tower from targeting it. It lasts 60 seconds on all levels. So, you'd need four towers per cloning tower for maximum effect (continuous).

[gwho]

ah, so the level 1 clone tower is 100% * 10 / 60 = 16.66% damage boost.

this is pretty on-par with the other towers which are 15% over a period of 60 seconds. beautiful.

what is the priority that a clone towers operates by, when having multiple towers within its cloning range?

[Chiquihuite]

I believe it uses default priority (proximity). Could be wrong, though.

[gwho]

i presume all three of the towers in question have the same cd?

level 1 being 15 seconds? the cd is very important, since it relates directly to dps calclations and it should be stated on the website.

Rather, instead of making a separate "cd", it would simply be the speed right? so the speeds for those 3 towers should be 15/15/15 for each level?

[ele]

I think all the support towers are fairly balanced.

The problem is that the towers you could choose for the 3 support aren't as balanced. Ie. pure light+dark imo is better than any of the pure earth/fire/nature/water. Also for the triple elements, aside from combinations with light/dark the rest doesn't really have strong towers. I might be wrong, but I did a few test on VH + extra short mode testing triple element towers and I found towers with light+dark outperforms the rest by a noticeable margin.

[dg86]

I think all the support towers are fairly balanced.

The problem is that the towers you could choose for the 3 support aren't as balanced. Ie. pure light+dark imo is better than any of the pure earth/fire/nature/water. Also for the triple elements, aside from combinations with light/dark the rest doesn't really have strong towers. I might be wrong, but I did a few test on VH + extra short mode testing triple element towers and I found towers with light+dark outperforms the rest by a noticeable margin.

Not sure if I agree with you but here goes...

Dark Light Nature: Annihilation. Probably the single best non-pure tower in the game, no questions asked.

Dark Light Water: Comet. Wannabe annihilation. Fails miserably.

Dark Light Fire: Orbit. Doesn't exist. IMO should be a long range aoe fire type.

Dark Light Earth: Phaser. Really really meh. I suppose it's decent light damage, which isn't anything to get angry over.

Now let's go down the rest of the list.

Slow towers--obviously useful in all cases:

Supernova (FLN)

Plasma (FLW)

Spike (DEN)

Mire (DEW)

Okay, 8 down, 12 to go.

Amp towers--all more or less do the same thing, all are pretty useful:

Corrosion (DFW)

Invocation (ELN)

Glacial (ELW)

11 down, 9 to go

Short range aoe towers--I don't understand why you'd ever want a short range AoE when you can get more damage from massing obliteration towers:

Tsunami (LNW)--this one just sucks like hell because you need to micro its ability and get it once in a blue moon. Sorry, but no bueno.

Seism (EFN)--short range, low regular damage, and entirely dependent upon triggering the ability while the creeps are in range.

Flamespewer (DEF)--if you do the math in terms of how many stacks of napalm you need to apply to get the damage of one annihilation tower shot, it's slightly less than 38. Divide that by 5, and you have a number between 7 and 8. In other words, to get the damage upon death of ONE annihilation tower, you need eight flamespewers. If that's not garbage, I don't know what is.

14 down, 6 to go.

The remaining 6:

Blitz tower: tri-elemental and single target? Junk.

Temporal tower: See above, now add the fact that it fires slowly, only does 4400 damage on a single target (NOT 45000!), and decreases its damage, and you have a recipe for complete disaster. In other words, if you were planning on using the mold+fountain strategy, your tri-elemental tower blows.

Drowning tower: see, with instant kill towers, they're either worth massing in large quantities to reliably instant-kill entire waves, or they're a complete waste of resources. Obviously, the latter in this case.

Velocity tower: Even at max range, they do 2124 damage (22/14.5)*1400. So for 6 more range than annihilation towers, you lose splash and the tower becomes far worse as creeps get closer.

Wealth tower: I remember in warcraft 3 that this was only earth+light--what the atom tree replaced. Once again--a slow-firing, single target tower is rarely justified. I do not think it is in this case.

Hex: Once again...low range, single target, low damage.

See, it isn't that the dark+light+X towers outperform everything else. It's that 7 of these are either the very useful slow/amplify damage towers, 6 are just single-target miscellaneous effect junk, and the other 3 try to be an annihilation/comet tower, yet give up all range, have far less effective AoEs, and their two-tower trees also stink.

Now hopefully the annihilation tower won't get brutally nerfed by having its damage cut in half. IMO considering that annihilation is mid-long range with 2500 damage and gets support from the masquerade or possibly deceit tower, that's about as good as you can get in this game outside of essence towers.

[ele]

I think all the support towers are fairly balanced.

The problem is that the towers you could choose for the 3 support aren't as balanced. Ie. pure light+dark imo is better than any of the pure earth/fire/nature/water. Also for the triple elements, aside from combinations with light/dark the rest doesn't really have strong towers. I might be wrong, but I did a few test on VH + extra short mode testing triple element towers and I found towers with light+dark outperforms the rest by a noticeable margin.

Not sure if I agree with you but here goes...

Dark Light Nature: Annihilation. Probably the single best non-pure tower in the game, no questions asked.

Dark Light Water: Comet. Wannabe annihilation. Fails miserably.

Dark Light Fire: Orbit. Doesn't exist. IMO should be a long range aoe fire type.

Dark Light Earth: Phaser. Really really meh. I suppose it's decent light damage, which isn't anything to get angry over.

Now let's go down the rest of the list.

Slow towers--obviously useful in all cases:

Supernova (FLN)

Plasma (FLW)

Spike (DEN)

Mire (DEW)

Okay, 8 down, 12 to go.

Amp towers--all more or less do the same thing, all are pretty useful:

Corrosion (DFW)

Invocation (ELN)

Glacial (ELW)

11 down, 9 to go

Short range aoe towers--I don't understand why you'd ever want a short range AoE when you can get more damage from massing obliteration towers:

Tsunami (LNW)--this one just sucks like hell because you need to micro its ability and get it once in a blue moon. Sorry, but no bueno.

Seism (EFN)--short range, low regular damage, and entirely dependent upon triggering the ability while the creeps are in range.

Flamespewer (DEF)--if you do the math in terms of how many stacks of napalm you need to apply to get the damage of one annihilation tower shot, it's slightly less than 38. Divide that by 5, and you have a number between 7 and 8. In other words, to get the damage upon death of ONE annihilation tower, you need eight flamespewers. If that's not garbage, I don't know what is.

14 down, 6 to go.

The remaining 6:

Blitz tower: tri-elemental and single target? Junk.

Temporal tower: See above, now add the fact that it fires slowly, only does 4400 damage on a single target (NOT 45000!), and decreases its damage, and you have a recipe for complete disaster. In other words, if you were planning on using the mold+fountain strategy, your tri-elemental tower blows.

Drowning tower: see, with instant kill towers, they're either worth massing in large quantities to reliably instant-kill entire waves, or they're a complete waste of resources. Obviously, the latter in this case.

Velocity tower: Even at max range, they do 2124 damage (22/14.5)*1400. So for 6 more range than annihilation towers, you lose splash and the tower becomes far worse as creeps get closer.

Wealth tower: I remember in warcraft 3 that this was only earth+light--what the atom tree replaced. Once again--a slow-firing, single target tower is rarely justified. I do not think it is in this case.

Hex: Once again...low range, single target, low damage.

See, it isn't that the dark+light+X towers outperform everything else. It's that 7 of these are either the very useful slow/amplify damage towers, 6 are just single-target miscellaneous effect junk, and the other 3 try to be an annihilation/comet tower, yet give up all range, have far less effective AoEs, and their two-tower trees also stink.

Now hopefully the annihilation tower won't get brutally nerfed by having its damage cut in half. IMO considering that annihilation is mid-long range with 2500 damage and gets support from the masquerade or possibly deceit tower, that's about as good as you can get in this game outside of essence towers.

Well yeah a lot of the towers right now aren't balanced to the point that is cost efficient.

However, what I mean is that if you want to have a fully up'd dual element support tower (clone, speed, damage) you need to have tier 3 of the 2 respective elements. that leaves you with 5 other options to choose from. What I'm saying is that light+dark+X+X is greatly better than earth+fire+X+X or water+nature+X+X. There doesn't seem to be many good towers with the latter 2 combination. I guess the glacial is a pro tower, but doesn't have much strong towers to support it. Correct me if I'm wrong

[dg86]

I think all the support towers are fairly balanced.

The problem is that the towers you could choose for the 3 support aren't as balanced. Ie. pure light+dark imo is better than any of the pure earth/fire/nature/water. Also for the triple elements, aside from combinations with light/dark the rest doesn't really have strong towers. I might be wrong, but I did a few test on VH + extra short mode testing triple element towers and I found towers with light+dark outperforms the rest by a noticeable margin.

Not sure if I agree with you but here goes...

Dark Light Nature: Annihilation. Probably the single best non-pure tower in the game, no questions asked.

Dark Light Water: Comet. Wannabe annihilation. Fails miserably.

Dark Light Fire: Orbit. Doesn't exist. IMO should be a long range aoe fire type.

Dark Light Earth: Phaser. Really really meh. I suppose it's decent light damage, which isn't anything to get angry over.

Now let's go down the rest of the list.

Slow towers--obviously useful in all cases:

Supernova (FLN)

Plasma (FLW)

Spike (DEN)

Mire (DEW)

Okay, 8 down, 12 to go.

Amp towers--all more or less do the same thing, all are pretty useful:

Corrosion (DFW)

Invocation (ELN)

Glacial (ELW)

11 down, 9 to go

Short range aoe towers--I don't understand why you'd ever want a short range AoE when you can get more damage from massing obliteration towers:

Tsunami (LNW)--this one just sucks like hell because you need to micro its ability and get it once in a blue moon. Sorry, but no bueno.

Seism (EFN)--short range, low regular damage, and entirely dependent upon triggering the ability while the creeps are in range.

Flamespewer (DEF)--if you do the math in terms of how many stacks of napalm you need to apply to get the damage of one annihilation tower shot, it's slightly less than 38. Divide that by 5, and you have a number between 7 and 8. In other words, to get the damage upon death of ONE annihilation tower, you need eight flamespewers. If that's not garbage, I don't know what is.

14 down, 6 to go.

The remaining 6:

Blitz tower: tri-elemental and single target? Junk.

Temporal tower: See above, now add the fact that it fires slowly, only does 4400 damage on a single target (NOT 45000!), and decreases its damage, and you have a recipe for complete disaster. In other words, if you were planning on using the mold+fountain strategy, your tri-elemental tower blows.

Drowning tower: see, with instant kill towers, they're either worth massing in large quantities to reliably instant-kill entire waves, or they're a complete waste of resources. Obviously, the latter in this case.

Velocity tower: Even at max range, they do 2124 damage (22/14.5)*1400. So for 6 more range than annihilation towers, you lose splash and the tower becomes far worse as creeps get closer.

Wealth tower: I remember in warcraft 3 that this was only earth+light--what the atom tree replaced. Once again--a slow-firing, single target tower is rarely justified. I do not think it is in this case.

Hex: Once again...low range, single target, low damage.

See, it isn't that the dark+light+X towers outperform everything else. It's that 7 of these are either the very useful slow/amplify damage towers, 6 are just single-target miscellaneous effect junk, and the other 3 try to be an annihilation/comet tower, yet give up all range, have far less effective AoEs, and their two-tower trees also stink.

Now hopefully the annihilation tower won't get brutally nerfed by having its damage cut in half. IMO considering that annihilation is mid-long range with 2500 damage and gets support from the masquerade or possibly deceit tower, that's about as good as you can get in this game outside of essence towers.

Well yeah a lot of the towers right now aren't balanced to the point that is cost efficient.

However, what I mean is that if you want to have a fully up'd dual element support tower (clone, speed, damage) you need to have tier 3 of the 2 respective elements. that leaves you with 5 other options to choose from. What I'm saying is that light+dark+X+X is greatly better than earth+fire+X+X or water+nature+X+X. There doesn't seem to be many good towers with the latter 2 combination. I guess the glacial is a pro tower, but doesn't have much strong towers to support it. Correct me if I'm wrong

Glacial is ELW, and is an amplification tower, not a main-source-of-damage tower. If you go DELW, your main source of damage would be hail/comet, and your secondary source of damage, to cover for the dark weakness, I presume would be laser/phasor and then the solo light tree once you get light 3. However, hail/comet IMO is still by far and away worse than obliteration/annihilation because it's target capped as opposed to AoE capped. Both DELW and DELN have A) a mainstay AoE long range tower (hail/comet vs oblit/anni), a slow tower (sludge/mire vs. barb/spike) C) an amplification tower (polar/glacial vs evocation/invocation) and D) the laser/phasor tower, which really sucks compared to both oblit and hail. Both have access to the trickery/masquerade/deceit support tower, as well as the mortar tower, but DELN benefits far more from it since mortar covers oblit's light weakness, while hail/comet is water and has a dark, rather than light weakness.

Now as for the rest of them...

When you're talking about a 5000 mineral tower, there are three different kinds of towers you want, and no others:

1) Damage--namely, the massive AoE kind. If it's single target, it sure as hell better be out of this world. At 12 range, considering that the pure dark does around 18000, a 3-element single target damage tower should match around half of that.

2) Slow

3) Amplification

And then you want a secondary element that covers your primary damage dealer's weakness for a fraction of the price.

[Karawasa]

Hex: Once again...low range, single target, low damage.

This is also a damage amplification tower. Therefore, not a main source of damage.

[Keno]

Doesn't Hex have an AoE effect as well?

[Karawasa]

Doesn't Hex have an AoE effect as well?

The effect is AoE, the attack is not. Should probably work on the impact visual to make this more clear.

[Rai]

considering game difficulty in the actual balance-discussion i'd strongly recommend to nerf obliteration ;p

[dg86]

Oblit already got nerfed.

[gwho]

Doesn't Hex have an AoE effect as well?

The effect is AoE, the attack is not. Should probably work on the impact visual to make this more clear.

make the website more clear too ^^

btw: the info for pure fire towers level 3 4 & 5 are completely messed up.