Radius/orbit tower

[dg86]

Okay, if we have oblit (darkness) and hail (light), why are we getting another long ranged aoe tower with darkness type damage? It'd be better with fire damage IMO.

Of course, I'm assuming it's an AoE type effect. If it's a single target tower at 1.5 speed, it's going to be as worthless as wealth.

[Chiquihuite]

Radius is a very unique tower (hence the delay). Its style of dealing damage will be most comparable to the Quark Tower, though it has its own special mechanic.

[dg86]

16 range quark tower?! YES PLEASE!

Except IMO I wish it could be a fire damage tower since we already have a light and dark mass aoe damage tower.

[Karawasa]

Radius spawns two orbs at opposite ends of the tower. These orbs make one rotation around and then go away. So it's like Quark except damage is only done at the end of the blade so to speak. The cool part, is that you can adjust the range. It's called Radius/Diameter for a reason .

[dg86]

Oh, so it's more or less like celerity--except if you're not in its magical range, it does NO damage.

Epic fail.

[gwho]

Oh, so it's more or less like celerity--except if you're not in its magical range, it does NO damage.

Epic fail.

range is adjustible.

no, it's not like celerity. with the right position/range u can hit a lot of targets in one sweep. (the spire looks like a gigantic celery. i'm going to call it the celery tower. actually, it looks more like a gigantic protruding hemorrhoid.)

plus i'm sure the projectile thing isn't tiny that you have to have it ultra precise.

is it out on v0.72?

i agree with the OP. why does it seem like none of the replies here even addressed it? fire type. yay

[dg86]

Range is adjustable--who cares? Once again, it's not a "micro once in a while". It's a "devote the rest of your attention to" type of micro. I mean unless it's like this massive orb that's like 4 units wide or something so it can pass clean over entire chunks of the maze, you're going to have to babysit the crap out of it from the sounds of it.

[gwho]

Range is adjustable--who cares? Once again, it's not a "micro once in a while". It's a "devote the rest of your attention to" type of micro. I mean unless it's like this massive orb that's like 4 units wide or something so it can pass clean over entire chunks of the maze, you're going to have to babysit the crap out of it from the sounds of it.

it is once in a while. u set the range and it orbits at that range right?

u can constant micro it, but leaving it at a set range in a nice position will do decently, unlike celery tower, which has severely reduced output

[dg86]

No. Think about it. You set the range, making it orbit that range. So, this little orb goes in a circle. You intend for it to hit some parts of that circle which are on the path that the creeps take. Except that path isn't circular at all. So you set the range hoping that 20% of the time it's working, it hits the creeps in a few specific spots.

Now unless the damage is 5x that of the obliteration tower, I really can't see any justification in having such a convoluted, attention-whoring mechanic. Why should I get this tower, instead of massing more oblit towers?

[gwho]

No. Think about it. You set the range, making it orbit that range. So, this little orb goes in a circle. You intend for it to hit some parts of that circle which are on the path that the creeps take. Except that path isn't circular at all. So you set the range hoping that 20% of the time it's working, it hits the creeps in a few specific spots.

Now unless the damage is 5x that of the obliteration tower, I really can't see any justification in having such a convoluted, attention-whoring mechanic. Why should I get this tower, instead of massing more oblit towers?

yea u miss a few spots, but something like 20% less from perfect is not bad at all. u can boost adjust the numbers so that even without micro it will do good damage. if u DO micro, it will be worth your apm.

celery tower, the worst you can do is like 0%, rather than a safe 80%-ish.

ur right u wont get 100% efficiency. paths aren't circular, and u can always do better. but there is a sort of safety net with this tower., and if the nubmers are bumpbed, then all is well. it would fit right in the concept of "no micro decent damage, yes micro better damage.

[Karawasa]

The orbs are not going to be itty bitty. gwho nailed it. It will do fine without micro and excel with micro.

[gwho]

if what dg observed is true though, let's give it fire damage. i think that was the original point of this topic haha

[dg86]

No. Think about it. You set the range, making it orbit that range. So, this little orb goes in a circle. You intend for it to hit some parts of that circle which are on the path that the creeps take. Except that path isn't circular at all. So you set the range hoping that 20% of the time it's working, it hits the creeps in a few specific spots.

Now unless the damage is 5x that of the obliteration tower, I really can't see any justification in having such a convoluted, attention-whoring mechanic. Why should I get this tower, instead of massing more oblit towers?

yea u miss a few spots, but something like 20% less from perfect is not bad at all. u can boost adjust the numbers so that even without micro it will do good damage. if u DO micro, it will be worth your apm.

celery tower, the worst you can do is like 0%, rather than a safe 80%-ish.

ur right u wont get 100% efficiency. paths aren't circular, and u can always do better. but there is a sort of safety net with this tower., and if the nubmers are bumpbed, then all is well. it would fit right in the concept of "no micro decent damage, yes micro better damage.

No, I mean that it only hits 20% of the time. That it's going in a circle while the creeps are going in squares/rectangles/other forms of right angles. So about 80% of the time, those fireballs are wandering around in space, not hitting anything. Then 20% of the time, they're hitting something.

And we're supposed to favor this over the obliteration tower?

[Karawasa]

And we're supposed to favor this over the obliteration tower?

You're not supposed to flat out favor any "damage" tower over another. Instead, you should select based on the situation. In other words, damage type/creep type/support type/AoE (or not) type.

[dg86]

And we're supposed to favor this over the obliteration tower?

You're not supposed to flat out favor any "damage" tower over another. Instead, you should select based on the situation. In other words, damage type/creep type/support type/AoE (or not) type.

Now you're just theorycrafting.

At the beginning of the game, you have to have a certain strategy in mind, because you won't be able to get every tower. And you have to specialize in 3-4 elements or all your towers will be weak. This means that at the end of the day, you'll have a couple of damage towers, a couple of support towers, and the rest are prerequisites to those. Meaning, no matter which strategy you use, you'll have some sort of creep type or element type you won't do so well against. Meaning, no matter what you specialize in, you're going to get screwed in some way, so you have to find a way to specialize that screws you least.

Currently, the obliteration tower is a "screws you least" type of tower. Long range, heavy damage, aoe. With earth, you get longer range aoe with lesser damage (so mass more) in the form of mortar towers (which also cover your weakness to light). You also get a slow and amp tower. And you get a support tower. So you are more or less about as rounded as a combination can get.

So why should we choose a tower that requires micro, which probably will be equal at best to obliteration tower, but require more micro? Right now, this tower is just looking like the bonus the laser is to DELN. Instead, you go DFLN for nova, jinx, and oblit, and the radius will be a never-used bonus.

Is that the intention?

[Karawasa]

That just indicates Obliteration is too strong...

[gwho]

No, I mean that it only hits 20% of the time. That it's going in a circle while the creeps are going in squares/rectangles/other forms of right angles. So about 80% of the time, those fireballs are wandering around in space, not hitting anything. Then 20% of the time, they're hitting something.

And we're supposed to favor this over the obliteration tower?

whatever the percentage is, the thing that matters for balancing purposes is the actual dps that percentage value is, not the percentage it self.

(100% efficient damage) * (20%) = typical damage output

adjust the theoretical perfect damage output to balance the typical damage output.

obtain the typical percentage value thru testing.

the difference in damage from typical to theoretical will be the benefit you see by microing.

the range of this value shouldn't be extremely large, but since it would require a lot of constant microing, the payoff should be proportional to that.

[dg86]

That just indicates Obliteration is too strong...

Is this a joke?

It just means that "if I'm going to be screwed no matter what I do by having limited damage types, I might as well get a tower that doesn't have any fancy crap on it at the cost of effectiveness".

[gwho]

That just indicates Obliteration is too strong...

Is this a joke?

It just means that "if I'm going to be screwed no matter what I do by having limited damage types, I might as well get a tower that doesn't have any fancy crap on it at the cost of effectiveness".

see i think what's "stronger" than other towers should be proportional to the micro requirement.

[Karawasa]

Is this a joke?

It just means that "if I'm going to be screwed no matter what I do by having limited damage types, I might as well get a tower that doesn't have any fancy crap on it at the cost of effectiveness".

Obliteration should not be the default choice. When I say too strong, I mean relatively. There was a recent tweak to creep HP that I think will alleviate some of this "I need one tower to win" type thing. The rest will come with tower balance.

see i think what's "stronger" than other towers should be proportional to the micro requirement.

Well said. That's the goal. Towers like Celerity should be decent without micro but should be able to excel beyond average when used properly.

[dg86]

Is this a joke?

It just means that "if I'm going to be screwed no matter what I do by having limited damage types, I might as well get a tower that doesn't have any fancy crap on it at the cost of effectiveness".

Obliteration should not be the default choice. When I say too strong, I mean relatively. There was a recent tweak to creep HP that I think will alleviate some of this "I need one tower to win" type thing. The rest will come with tower balance.

see i think what's "stronger" than other towers should be proportional to the micro requirement.

Well said. That's the goal. Towers like Celerity should be decent without micro but should be able to excel beyond average when used properly.

This is why obliteration is the default choice:

What does it have?

Range. Single target damage. AoE. AND also very importantly, a fourth element that can fill out its weakness extremely well, AND give it access to all support towers (Earth--gives you dark+earth=cannon/mortar, and access to barb/spike, and evoc/invoc). So, it gets a 5/5. Range, std, aoe, dual element counterDamage on quad, dual triple-support on same quad.

Point for range for 16+ range.

Also, -1 for micro intensive.

Compare this to other damage towers.

Celerity (FNW): 1/5. Range, but not good damage or aoe, though it has good secondary damage (FW), but can't quad element to get both an amp and slow support. Micro intensive.

Torrent (LNW): 1/5. Gets counter damage with LW and has aoe, but no 4th element will give it both level 3 supports. (Earth gives amp, darkness gives nothing, fire gives slow) Micro intensive.

Earthquake (EFN): 3/5 AoE. Once again, poor single target damage, very mediocre range. Has access to its damage counter already in a dual tower with infrared (FN),and gets both supports with darkness.

Haste (EFW): 3/5. Single target damage, mediocre range, no aoe, already has counter damage, gets both supports with 4th element darkness.

Hail (DLW): 3.5/5 (I'll give it half a point for single target damage), with excellent range and good AoE, but its drawback is that if it gets counter damage from going nature, it doesn't have level 3 supports, and if it goes earth for level 3 supports, it loses counter damage. When it was water-based, this was a very close second to obliteration.

Flamethrower (DFW): 3/5 exact opposite of haste. Mediocre range, aoe, but very poor single target damage. Gets access to counter damage and triple support by quad elementing into water.

Wealth (EFL): 3/5 has counter damage via electricity, and has both level 3 supports via nature. Though the damage in both cases is so terrible that you're really dealing with light and fire and get counter damage via nature.

Flooding (DNW): 2/5 because it gets counter damage by 4th elementing into light, but no level 3 supports. It has good single target damage, but no AoE and very mediocre range.

Ephermeal (ENW): 1/5 because it gets counter damage by darkness (poison) but only slow towers (two of them, sludge and barb). At best, it has good single target damage, and that's a stretch. Its range is mediocre and its aoe is nonexistent. And to maximize its single target damage, it's micro-intensive.

Laser (DEL): 3/5 because it gets access to both support towers and counter damage via nature. It has good single target damage, but mediocre range and poor aoe (I count it as focusing all the fighters at once--either way, it either has good aoe or good single target, but not both at once). Of course, if you go nature for the counter towers, this just becomes a bonus to the obliteration tower and should more or less not be built at all anyway.

These scores can get even further skewed if you consider that pure light is arguably the best pure tower in the game, and that by going for pure light, you also unlock one of two elements for your level 3 2-element support tower.

In short, it's not that the obliteration tower itself is so amazing.

It's that the one-interest, quad DELN, max light and dark build is just an all-around amazing build because cannon (DE) is perhaps only 2nd to mildew (EN) in terms of the best damage dual-element towers, which nicely supports obliteration's weakness to light, and then on top of that, you get deceit tower and pure lights, and then all the other goodies I mentioned.

It isn't obliteration alone, but that earth (and possibly fire, if you make radius a fire-type damage) can create for very well-balanced builds capable of taking down every single wave with potentially no problems. In fact, if you make radius a fire type, then DFLN might become the hands down best build in the game, focusing primarily on radius as the primary damage dealer, using obliteration for backup against water waves!

So yeah, it's not just the one tower, but everything you can put around it. From what I hear, haste+flamethrower also works. I'll have to try that out.

[Karawasa]

Compare this to other damage towers.

Celerity (FNW): 1/5. Range, but not good damage or aoe, though it has good secondary damage (FW), but can't quad element to get both an amp and slow support. Micro intensive.

Torrent (LNW): 1/5. Gets counter damage with LW and has aoe, but no 4th element will give it both level 3 supports. (Earth gives amp, darkness gives nothing, fire gives slow) Micro intensive.

Flooding (DNW): 2/5 because it gets counter damage by 4th elementing into light, but no level 3 supports. It has good single target damage, but no AoE and very mediocre range.

Laser (DEL): 3/5 because it gets access to both support towers and counter damage via nature. It has good single target damage, but mediocre range and poor aoe (I count it as focusing all the fighters at once--either way, it either has good aoe or good single target, but not both at once). Of course, if you go nature for the counter towers, this just becomes a bonus to the obliteration tower and should more or less not be built at all anyway.

How do you feel about these towers now?

[gwho]

Compare this to other damage towers.

Celerity (FNW): 1/5. Range, but not good damage or aoe, though it has good secondary damage (FW), but can't quad element to get both an amp and slow support. Micro intensive.

Torrent (LNW): 1/5. Gets counter damage with LW and has aoe, but no 4th element will give it both level 3 supports. (Earth gives amp, darkness gives nothing, fire gives slow) Micro intensive.

Flooding (DNW): 2/5 because it gets counter damage by 4th elementing into light, but no level 3 supports. It has good single target damage, but no AoE and very mediocre range.

Laser (DEL): 3/5 because it gets access to both support towers and counter damage via nature. It has good single target damage, but mediocre range and poor aoe (I count it as focusing all the fighters at once--either way, it either has good aoe or good single target, but not both at once). Of course, if you go nature for the counter towers, this just becomes a bonus to the obliteration tower and should more or less not be built at all anyway.

How do you feel about these towers now?

celerity

oo it's been upped to 500 is getting there, but still might need more.

For simpicity of calculation, why dont we make it range / 11 * 500? max range is 22, so we will know the average damage is 500, and the max damage is double that value.

still comparing it to obliteration tower, obliteration does 400 x3 + 200*2 = 1600 damage.

just a typical value, assuming 2 creeps get hit by full AOE, and 2 creeps get hit by half AOE.

The obliteration tower CAN do more damage with appropriate slows, but the celerity will do at most, 22/14*500 damage, which is not even 1000 damage.

to further demonstrate how !#%&!#%!#% ING crappy the celerity tower is.

I will also go with pure light tower over celerity tower. You're really being shy with buffing celerity.

compare it to level 2 pure light tower: (when you have 2 light elements)

cost is half of celerity tower

requires 2 elements, but celerity requires 3.

range is same

dps is 760.

AM I SERIOSULY GOING TO DO ALL THAT MICRO (which i will not do perfectly) for 20 extra damage??????

seriously, celerity is a nice concept, but in order to have any niche, it's going to need a TON of damage. making the formula range/11*1000 is more like it. dead serious.

but if we do that it will be too OP. the solution is to give it really slow attack speed! that way, even if you 1 shot consistently, even up to high levels, the # of creeps you can kill will be limited. So even if it has OP damage, you will still leak. That is the concept of celerity tower that will actually have a niche.

that niche is:

the tower that can one shot creeps up to around level 30, is micro-intensive tower that you have to baby sit constantly, but can't kill that many units due to its slow attack speed. I think it's the only way to save this tower. if it simply does damage, it's just too hard to make it worthwhile - ther are other towers that have all the good aspects of celerity tower without the drawback.

proposed celerity tower:

attack speed: 4

damage: range/11*1000.

so max damage is 2000. that may seem like a lot, but it's not. wave 37 and wave 39 have HP's 1800 and 2100 respectively. within 2 levels the critical hp has been surpassed. so my point is, it's not going to have a super big effect on the range of levels it will one shot.

Next, damage reduction means it can 1 shot until level 37ish for very easy, and level 34 for very hard. See how everything is confined within wave 34 to wave 37?

Finally, 1 shot tower is 1 shot tower. very micro intensive. it will one shot until the above mentioned levels. The earliest you can get a triple tower is around level 22 if u start on short, or around level 16 if u abuse interset from the very beginning. But you wont want to get it that early either way: The celerity tower will be designed so that it can't kill most of the wave by itself. you'll be leaking if you rush for it. Secondly, if you are interest abusing , you wont want to sink all that money into a tower that can't even handle the entire wave. The bottom line is, the window of the celerity tower's one-shotting is about 10 levels. after that, it will be more than that. useless? a hell of a lot more useful than it is now!

Torrent:

u know, this tower, unlike a lot of other towers is not redundant. its mechanics is unique and makes for good micro with the an appropriate frequency requirement (not 24/7).

I never really used it much b/c it seemed weaker, but with buffs, this tower really does have a place, and is quite unique.

Flooding:

NICE! seems like it will be worth it.

is "damage dealt" only the damage dealt by this tower?

Writing "HP lost" and "HP remaining" would be much more clearer.

what you wrote is kind of confusing b/c typically, with chance to kill, you're used to percentages. ur using fractions, right? so half hp means guaranteed kill?

talk about crazy mega ultra major buff. It's nice that it's very high attack rate. Keep that. but if i understood it correctly, this chance formula is way freaken high. why not only damage creeps to half health, and then have a flooding tower or two at the end? we've essentially reduced the difficulty of all level 30 and higher by half. can you imagine fruit level with this? reduced the chance reduce it by a frICK TON. of course, i may have misunderstood the way it works. If so, then the description still needs to be made more clear.

If damage dealt means damage dealt by this tower, then that means this tower gets more and more useless the longer the game goes. damage dealt / current HP will be less and less b/c the current HP increases to achieve the same chance. this is because the max HP increases for later waves. if you've lowered the later waves by that much, you will have strong towers to finish them off anyway. There is a really big systematic problem with the formula, whichever way it is that it is intended to work.

Laser:

did it get nerfed?

5 attacks at 120 damage each. 560 damage. pass. the 5 fighters simply mean that there will be less overshooting. but the damage cap is kinda low. if i want a "clean up crew" i'll invest in a specialized single target tower, since i'll need one anyway.

comparing to celerity: about 560 guarnateed damage, compared to 785 max, 350 average, and 80 min. 200 or so damage difference, is not worth all that apm. i will definitely go with laser tower over celerity tower.

idk about how the laser tower works now, but between toggling single target and multi target, one mode should have greater overall dps than the other mode. if it's exactly the smae, it's kind of pointless to have those two modes.

[Cielo]

What if Laser Tower would simply "release" its fighters so that they can follow creeps even beyond range of Laser Tower? You can put a time limit, as the vanilla game does with broodlings (once they are fired they die after a little while if let alone) even for fighters It would work like this:

The tower fires its fighters on the first enemy coming in its range;

The fighters start following thir target and when he dies they eventually move on to the next closest targets, and they keep on doing this until their time runs out;

To make it a bit more micro intensive you could chose to manually activate it or let it recharge naturally. In the last case, once it recharged, it wil fire five fighters as I described just now; if you activate it manually it will fire a limited number of fighters, depending on how much time it cooled down. Or, if you prefer, it could work as Carriers do. Once the fighter dies (because its time ran out) you can manually "buy" another one from the tower (with no money cost, just a cooldown on the skill); tho, if you chose not to buy any fighter, it will recharge on its own, slower than if you manually checked on it.

[dg86]

On the topic of laser: the problem is that its own 2-element towers really don't mesh all that well with it. Electron and trickery are more light damage, and cannon really has no synergy with it at all, either. Now once you start looking into quad element builds:

DELW: Laser becomes a bonus to hail.

DELN: Laser becomes a bonus to obliteration.

DELF: This is just a stupid build. Radius/flamethrower/money/laser on triple element? Even if radius is amazing, money, laser, and flamethrower all suck.

This tower simply has no identity on its own. Its dual-elements have no synergy with it, and quad-elementing into anything else just gets you a better damage tower that eclipses it (that is, DL gets you 2 very solid damage towers in hail and oblit, quite possibly a monster (or a complete dud) in radius, and something completely hohum with laser).

There's honestly no real way to reconcile the fact that the other 3 have very strong long range aoe damage, and laser is short range and single target.