The Celerity Tower

[gwho]

ok so i've been a broken record about how bad the celery tower is, but i've finally got a good solution

problem:

- it's peak damage still isn't that great, especially considering that it's a single target tower, and there are plenty of other long range alternatives that do well with no micro.

- if you dont' do constant micro, the "average damage" sucks.

current dps:

maximum 950 minimum 100ish. average 425 ish.

_________________________

solution:

What if we give this baby an actual role and make give it:

really slow attack rate, really high damage, but requires micro.

attack speed 4,

maximum damage = enough to one-shot a creep until level 20 or so.

Damage too high? Not at all.

The most damage it could do is 1 shot kill (i.e. infinite damage).

Higher damage further simply means up to what level does it start requiring 2 shots or more.

what simply means is which level it can 1 shot up to.

the lower the attack speed, the less creeps it can kill in a wave.

(also keep in mind that you wont be able to do maximum damage the entire time b/c there won't always be a creep at maximum range available.)

slower attack speed means less apm requirement.

it also means less kills if the tower damage > creep HP.

Heck, why dont we actually start differentiating the celery tower from other long range single target towers by making it REALLY slow, and REALLY strong?

It will be the tower that "can one shot up to a certain wave level with micro, but is limited in the # of kills it can get in a wave." Now that right there is a niche.

Now, in order to prevent this from being only an early game tower, have a little bonus.

If you get something at 22 to 21.00001 range (or 22 to 21.5), you will insta-kill the target.

This creates a skill gradient, and those that go for the micro challenge will be rewarded, although it will be much more difficult than other micro.

if we increase the maximum, that increases the average, and so a really low minimum damage of 100 is no problem. (the problem was that the average and maximum were and still is low, so also having a low minimum just made the tower completely not worth it. With a hi max and a decent average, a super low minimnum is no problem)

[Aranneas]

TBH it's not really fair to have to micro this one at all, SC2 click response just isn't good enough for me to enjoy it. Short range micro towers are fine; I've been avoiding this one like the plague.

The other problem is that if you ever try to click on more than a few attack buildings at a time, you'll get mad FPS drop from the stacked targeting reticles.

[Karawasa]

I could increase the attack speed to 1 (keep DPS same). It got some major buffs to damage recently (280 > 400).

[Chiquihuite]

I like the increased base and reduced range idea a lot. It'd really move toward the goal of "good for people who can't micro, but optimal for people who can" idea in a very easy-to-understand way.

[gwho]

edited OP.

[Karawasa]

How does it feel now?

[Karawasa]

People who used to hate this tower...what do you think?

[HiggsBoson]

People who used to hate this tower...what do you think?

This tower is good enough to hang with the Haste Tower against fruit (0.79).

With the nerf to Haste in 0.80, I'm pretty sure it's the clear best tower in the game.

[Ubernuber]

I also consider celerity to be one of the best (if not THE best) tower - if you micro it. If you place one in the 5 area, you can effectively make a 4+ pass at maximum damage output (above and below 4, below 2, right of 6, above 8 - depending slightly on placement). Ridiculous damage. I know no other tower that takes you so far in such small numbers.

[flyjum]

Good tower with micro

average to weak without

[holepercent]

Used properly, it is one of the best towers in the game. It would take up most of your attention but leads to a very strong build.

[gwho]

People who used to hate this tower...what do you think?

This tower is good enough to hang with the Haste Tower against fruit (0.79).

With the nerf to Haste in 0.80, I'm pretty sure it's the clear best tower in the game.

damage buff finally is nice.

is it still d/14*500 like the website says?

i wouldn't go so far to say it is on par with haste tower.

upgraded celery has 3930 max dps

upgraded haste has 9670 dps, no micro.

celery has max 786 dps

haste has max 1935 dps.

light pure dps level 2: 757 dps no micro, but about 600 more mineral cost. BUT 1 less element so u can get it earlier. light pure > celerity, any day. There is also the indirect benefit of not having to commit to 3 elements, just light.

no way. long range lets you hit longer, but it's not at that max dps, also, you have to compare celerty to a different tower with 22 range. namely light pures.

even with the nerf to haste (where is the nerf to haste that we're speaking of? i see nothing listed since version .75), the stats of celerity and pure light remains the same. pure light > celerity

[Ubernuber]

Might be from a purely DPS point of view, but a Haste tower can do a two-pass (the first of which is mainly used for charging up), Celerity can do a four-pass. Also, once the last creep is around the lower left corner, you can stop microing, because all zones it can shoot are basically at max range. Just some small micro to ensure no creeps slip through.

[gwho]

Might be from a purely DPS point of view, but a Haste tower can do a two-pass (the first of which is mainly used for charging up), Celerity can do a four-pass. Also, once the last creep is around the lower left corner, you can stop microing, because all zones it can shoot are basically at max range. Just some small micro to ensure no creeps slip through.

it's not truly 4 passes. passes are measured by by time - how long the tower is attacking. even if a tower attacked 24/7 it still wouldn't be double the # of passes of a tower with 12 range.

the amount of time charging up can still be quntified. it's not that significant when you consider that hte dps is almost 2.5 times greater at peak state. the peak dps is maintained for quite a while.

you'd also have to compare the imperfection of the celerity tower, just as we'd factor in the imperfection of the haste tower. you won't be shooting at max dps with celerity tower for a good portion of the supposed extra two passes. multiplied by the amount of additional time, and considering that it's a fraction the celerity's dps that is already "2.5 times" less than haste, the extra damage of the celerity isn't very significant either.

did we also factor in the overshooting damge by celerity tower? haste has some too, and so does light. but yeah. as you go to the extremes of hi attack speed or to the extreme of hi damage, you tend to have more wasted damage. pure light would have the least wasted damage out of the 3 towers.

Regardless of how it stacks against haste tower, you'd still have to compare the celerity to the pure light. Pure light has the exact same role as celerity due ot the range, but costs no micro, and makes up for the slightly greater mineral cost with requiring less elements, less commitment to element types, less micro, and the possibility of upgrading it really high, whereas celerity's upgraded version has a damage cap, when u get late into the game.

more DPS comparison: this time with purelight.

they both have the same range, so there is no apples and orange comparison btween damage dealt: they're exactly the same.

if you get the max upgraded pure light, which costs 11225 and has dps 11,363 dps..

compare it to upgraded celerity which costs 5000 and has 3929 dps...

if we scale it to have it be even cost:...

11225/5000 * 3929 = 8820 max dps

this is the dps of upgraded celerity if it costed the same as maximum pure light. as you can see, the dps/cost is still less. (and severely sucks in comparison). And again, that's a maximum, and costs no micro.

cleerity would take more space too. of course it costs a pure essence. but you get some pure essence for free. so it's essentially free, if you're getting a few. (did you catch the pun in that one?)

keep in mind the light tower has the lowest dps of all the pure towers. at fruit level, everything will be firing constantly, so having extra range for lowered dps is a loss on the fruit level. every other pure tower is better than pure light, which is better than celery or upgraded celery.

why would i ever commit to the element combinations for celery, just so that i can have a tower that is worse than any light tower, and requires me to micro constantly? it still needs a buff to justify the hi cost in apm. a more sensible thing to do would be to find a way to reduce the apm cost.

[HiggsBoson]

Yea, I tried the Celerity/Velocity on Very Easy last night. It's insane. With the logical extension of Well Towers (NW), you can last with just one of each of the towers through wave 50. Haste, even in it's un-nerfed state, could never do that. I'm pretty sure if I optimize my build, I can get 500k minerals even with only 1 Interest upgrade, without losing a life pre-fruit.

The other thing to consider: the clock. The game is now made such that the last person to finish the round controls the clock. I was actually microing my Velocity Tower to NOT hit the leading creep, for more clock. Many times you just sit there and not micro at all, intentionally letting the AI hit the close ones so they go all the way around.

Another thing: If you build NW+FL, with the last lvl 50 + 55 upgrades into Light, you could access TWO slow towers. I haven't tried this, and one of those is kinda micro heavy and my wave 55-60 performance is unstable, but there still is flexibility. It could be NW+FD too for one slow tower.

gwho, you should probably stop blowing smoke and just try it. Your points on DPS are fine, given a fixed set of minerals, but as I've shown, you can get way way more accumulated Interest with Celerity/Velocity due to its efficiency, and I think it needs a nerf (since Karawasa seems to dislike the notion of obtaining max minerals and getting 140 towers built).

If you need more proof, I'll try to optimize my build with as much micro to do as I claim: On Very Easy fill the board with towers (public game) with only 1 Interest upgrade. I have one 380-ish kill 0.80b replay, but I overbuilt and screwed up several times.

[holepercent]

LWFN build without any leaks in VH difficulty. Towers were celerity, tidal, ion, nova, well and ice.

This replay bug is irritating..

[HiggsBoson]

How about this for a nerf: reduce the damage but give it the modes like the Laser Tower has, or something equivalent. Maybe it doesn't have to be High Life/Low Life/Random, but maybe Far/Near/Random? I don't know, but something with toggle-able modes would help offset any nerf that's probably going to make this tower suck too much.

[Karawasa]

I was actually just planning a 10% nerf.

[gwho]

Yea, I tried the Celerity/Velocity on Very Easy last night. It's insane. With the logical extension of Well Towers (NW), you can last with just one of each of the towers through wave 50. Haste, even in it's un-nerfed state, could never do that. I'm pretty sure if I optimize my build, I can get 500k minerals even with only 1 Interest upgrade, without losing a life pre-fruit.

if you're comparing celerity + well, then you'd have to compare it against haste + forge not against just haste.

Another thing: If you build NW+FL, with the last lvl 50 + 55 upgrades into Light, you could access TWO slow towers. I haven't tried this, and one of those is kinda micro heavy and my wave 55-60 performance is unstable, but there still is flexibility. It could be NW+FD too for one slow tower.

i guess that works. going ephemeral, which is sort of like celerity, is also the key to unlocking two slow towers, with the addition of dark.

right now, i'd think that the two slow towers makes up for the crappiness of the celerity and ephemeral towers. epehemeral has been changed so not the case anymore, but i can't get on board with celerity just yet.

The other thing to consider: the clock. The game is now made such that the last person to finish the round controls the clock. I was actually microing my Velocity Tower to NOT hit the leading creep, for more clock. Many times you just sit there and not micro at all, intentionally letting the AI hit the close ones so they go all the way around.

very interesting. valid point. good eye.

but this again can be considered relatively lazy. you can sit with a 625 costing light tower, before you upgrade it to the 2125 costing light tower. you can control leaking by using mass grenade towers and selling them. that would give you even more compounding effect than commiting 1500 to a celerity tower. (and of course given the fact that celerity requires tons of micro, it's kind of hard to argue against the clicks that go into mass reselling)

Also, you can always control leaking by being pro and choosing what towers to build when, without having to rely on committing to a single tower with the ability to lower its dps.

it would be much better to have a high dps/cost tower, with less of them. lower efficiency is not a good thing, when you can simply have less of higher-efficiency towers.

Of course these higher efficiency towers come in chunks of money, so what you do is temporarily fill in the dps-shortage by reselling grenades or rays.

Since we're talking about 600 minerals being significant, that would fall in line with the period where grenades are rays aren't obsolete.

gwho, you should probably stop blowing smoke and just try it. Your points on DPS are fine, given a fixed set of minerals, but as I've shown, you can get way way more accumulated Interest with Celerity/Velocity due to its efficiency, and I think it needs a nerf (since Karawasa seems to dislike the notion of obtaining max minerals and getting 140 towers built).

Is the point you're getting at that the celerity tower, is simply cheaper 1500 compared to 2125, and thus leaves 625 more minerals to compound, which adds up?

That would be true with any other triple tower.

Bedisdes, one could always do the mass grenade tower resell for more waves for even greater compounding effect rather than buying celerity or another triple tower.

I could also argue that the precursor to the light tower that costs 2125 does partial damage, and is cheaper than celerity. you can fill in the rest of the damage with grenade towers for greater compounding effect.

Until you reach the level where even 140 grenade towers are basically useless, we can always have a "race to the bottom" and argue for lower priced towers are better than higher priced towers.

if you're not playing on random elements, commiting to celerity, which becomes cost-ineffective later on due to the dps/cost analysis done in previous posts, can become a drawback as well... b/c killing a wave needs a certain amount of damage or dps and youre going to have to spend an extra chunk of money later on to make up for the damage. this is harder to quantify, b/c it involves a time difference and compounding.

tl:dr

in terms of compounding:

- mass reselling a bit longer + 625 light tower > celerity tower > 2125 light tower.

in terms of dps/cost:

- any other 2125 single element tower > light tower > celerity

in terms of total damage dealt (factoring in range and shooting time):

- 2125 light > celerity

[joesi]

the amount of time charging up can still be quntified. it's not that significant when you consider that hte dps is almost 2.5 times greater at peak state. the peak dps is maintained for quite a while.

NO! why do people think this? (or has it been fixed?)

Haste tower is terribly broken because it gives 800% attack speed when fully charged.. not 320%.

more DPS comparison: this time with purelight.

they both have the same range, so there is no apples and orange comparison btween damage dealt: they're exactly the same.

if you get the max upgraded pure light, which costs 11225 and has dps 11,363 dps..

compare it to upgraded celerity which costs 5000 and has 3929 dps...

if we scale it to have it be even cost:...

11225/5000 * 3929 = 8820 max dps

this is the dps of upgraded celerity if it costed the same as maximum pure light. as you can see, the dps/cost is still less. (and severely sucks in comparison). And again, that's a maximum, and costs no micro.

You should not compare with pure towers for 3 reasons:

1. Pure towers are a very high level of upgrade, that is the most expensive in the game. In this game, upgraded towers are always far more efficient than the less-upgraded ones, and linearly comparing the most expensive tower to a less expensive one, is not accurate — you have to take into the account the non-linear gains that increased cost has.

2. This is more important in my opinion than #1: you must have essences, which are extremely limited. One will typically have a maximum of like 6 essences, or sometimes maybe only 2, while a person can fill their ENTIRE AREA with upgraded celerity towers. You make 1 argument using fruit wave, but don't realize that another argument you make essentially ignores fruit wave. AFAIK 2-6 pure towers is nowhere near enough to do well in the fruit wave, and hence need to realize that essence is a huge limiter, and justifies a high cost-efficiency of pure towers.

3. Somewhat related to #1: The more expensive a tower is, the harder it is to smoothly get. Cost sometimes beats cost-efficiency, because it's possible that even if a tower is super-duper cost efficient, it is just completely nonviable to get because of it's prohibitive cost.

Take a look at real-life: We aren't all running the most efficient light bulbs, most efficient power plants, most efficient cars, etc. because they generally cost more... even if that cost will be offset by the better efficiency.

Anyway, all that stuff said, I think celerity and temporal type towers should be very strong towers, and very possibly need a buff (I haven't looked at them recently, and cannot make a concrete statement).

[gwho]

the amount of time charging up can still be quntified. it's not that significant when you consider that hte dps is almost 2.5 times greater at peak state. the peak dps is maintained for quite a while.

NO! why do people think this? (or has it been fixed?)

Haste tower is terribly broken because it gives 800% attack speed when fully charged.. not 320%.

that 2.5 was comapring the max dps of haste to max dps of celerity, not charged haste against uncharged haste. i guess i could have been more explicit.

800% is correct and it's reflected in my calculations.

(doesn't the greater the dps boost of haste, the more that help my argument O.o)

more DPS comparison: this time with purelight.

they both have the same range, so there is no apples and orange comparison btween damage dealt: they're exactly the same.

if you get the max upgraded pure light, which costs 11225 and has dps 11,363 dps..

compare it to upgraded celerity which costs 5000 and has 3929 dps...

if we scale it to have it be even cost:...

11225/5000 * 3929 = 8820 max dps

this is the dps of upgraded celerity if it costed the same as maximum pure light. as you can see, the dps/cost is still less. (and severely sucks in comparison). And again, that's a maximum, and costs no micro.

You should not compare with pure towers for 3 reasons:

1. Pure towers are a very high level of upgrade, that is the most expensive in the game. In this game, upgraded towers are always far more efficient than the less-upgraded ones, and linearly comparing the most expensive tower to a less expensive one, is not accurate — you have to take into the account the non-linear gains that increased cost has.

2. This is more important in my opinion than #1: you must have essences, which are extremely limited. One will typically have a maximum of like 6 essences, or sometimes maybe only 2, while a person can fill their ENTIRE AREA with upgraded celerity towers. You make 1 argument using fruit wave, but don't realize that another argument you make essentially ignores fruit wave. AFAIK 2-6 pure towers is nowhere near enough to do well in the fruit wave, and hence need to realize that essence is a huge limiter, and justifies a high cost-efficiency of pure towers.

3. Somewhat related to #1: The more expensive a tower is, the harder it is to smoothly get. Cost sometimes beats cost-efficiency, because it's possible that even if a tower is super-duper cost efficient, it is just completely nonviable to get because of it's prohibitive cost.

Take a look at real-life: We aren't all running the most efficient light bulbs, most efficient power plants, most efficient cars, etc. because they generally cost more... even if that cost will be offset by the better efficiency.

Anyway, all that stuff said, I think celerity and temporal type towers should be very strong towers, and very possibly need a buff (I haven't looked at them recently, and cannot make a concrete statement).

i'm saying eph and cel are weak and need buffs too.

1. misnomer, my fault. i dont mean pure. i just mean single element. i compared celerity with the similar level one. namely the 2125 one. the numbers are correct. i adjusted and scaled to equate the cost. the numbers in the calculations are the appropriate level light tower, not the highest level "pure" one.

(u should read my numbers and calculations a bit better)

2. if u read my post, i'm saying u can simply use the essences u get for free for a few celerity towers.

given the fact that celerity has low dps/cost, why would you even want to get a ton of them? plus, they'd all have differne ranges, and microing efficiency would go down, there are much better towers, much better triple towers. Never meant that you spend all ur money on all pure towers. but getting those with what essences you have, results in higher efficiency for that many towers and that much money. still, celerity is cost-inefficient, especially late game, so you'd want to spam a bunch of other towers.

Plus, the only real direct benefit of celerity is in the early game, being 625 cheaper than the 2125 light tower, and being able to wilfullly leak guys through wiht relatively less apm than mass reselling.

u forget hi range is useless in fruit levels, and most towers are designed so that higher range has lower dps, while lower range has higher dps, as a general rule.

3. yah, so u can mass resell for a bit longer and that would be even more efficient that getting celerity in terms of compounding. also i'm talking about the 2125 light tower, not the pure so already addressed.

buying something less cost-efficient b/c it's cheaper on the absolute scale is right. we're limited by our pockets, but also we want to compound as much as we can. so what you do is find the highest efficient one that is available to you within your price range... but, taking it a step further, you'd also factor in what your eventual plan is and buy something that you'd already want to buy.

ex- going ling-infestor in the midgame, b/c you want ling infestor broodlord composition late game. going ling infestor is "lean" b/c it already fills a part of your eventual goal. celerity sucks late game. you dont want a lot of them. it's not lean. it shouldn't be part of your late game goal. thus it's like going mass roach hydra with missile upgrades, when your late game goal is strong ultras... it's a deviation and slows down your eventual goal by eating up your gas, and not being melee type. going line infestor into ultra works nicely b/c lings benefit from melee upgrades, which also works on your ultras. ling infestor is thus lean in terms of your end goal, and your end goal is a good one. celery is not a good goal, and any benefit is in the early game, which is outdone bya variety of other choices.

[HiggsBoson]

if you're comparing celerity + well, then you'd have to compare it against haste + forge not against just haste.

Uh, this is implied. There's no way at all to get to level 50+ with one Haste or Blitz Tower, regardless of having a fully upgraded Forge ot not. Anyone that's tried/seen the strategy just once would know this.

Is the point you're getting at that the celerity tower, is simply cheaper 1500 compared to 2125, and thus leaves 625 more minerals to compound, which adds up?

That's one part, yes...

That would be true with any other triple tower.

No. You can't just use one tower for nearly the entire game like you can with Celerity/Velocity. Less minerals used AND longer interest time.

Bedisdes, one could always do the mass grenade tower resell for more waves for even greater compounding effect rather than buying celerity or another triple tower.

Yea, I already do this. At some point, you can't keep up making and selling 26+ Grenade Towers. You just switch to one Tower when you are ready.

if you're not playing on random elements, commiting to celerity, which becomes cost-ineffective later on due to the dps/cost analysis done in previous posts, can become a drawback as well... b/c killing a wave needs a certain amount of damage or dps and youre going to have to spend an extra chunk of money later on to make up for the damage. this is harder to quantify, b/c it involves a time difference and compounding.

No. It is never a drawback. At the point when you finally have to start building more towers, it's Wave 53. You're so far ahead in minerals, it's really okay to make a 2nd Velocity Tower. At around Wave 55-56, you start laying down as many basic towers as possible, because it physically takes that long to setup for the upgrades when the interest stops. You bring up your DPS argument again, and then ignore yet again the 4x-8x+ more minerals I'd have to build anything I wanted. I've seen it with my own eyes, me with pre-nerf full 140 Haste/Forge and my opponent on full 140 Celerity on Fruit. It's effective.

And you keep going wishy-washy on the "waaah the micro is so hard" versus "well just rebuild grenade towers". If you've ever played Celerity, it's actually really easy micro. Compared to attempting wave 20-30 or so with Grenades, and the Haste Towers, I'd actually say it's the easiest of the three. I had to do a ton of micro trick to really prove Haste Towers worked, especially on fast, image, undead, and water levels. The only required micro with Celerity is on Undead levels, when you really want to be maxing DPS on the edges so it's not overwhelming. The DPS otherwise is more than enough to just sit there and do nearly nothing else between rounds 20 or so through Round 50, usually wishing it'd do LESS DPS so you can get more interest.

[gwho]

Uh, this is implied. There's no way at all to get to level 50+ with one Haste or Blitz Tower, regardless of having a fully upgraded Forge ot not. Anyone that's tried/seen the strategy just once would know this.

uh, you have to say it.

Bedisdes, one could always do the mass grenade tower resell for more waves for even greater compounding effect rather than buying celerity or another triple tower.

Yea, I already do this. At some point, you can't keep up making and selling 26+ Grenade Towers. You just switch to one Tower when you are ready.

the inferior tower, with same range and lower dps, right?

No. It is never a drawback. At the point when you finally have to start building more towers, it's Wave 53. You're so far ahead in minerals, it's really okay to make a 2nd Velocity Tower. At around Wave 55-56, you start laying down as many basic towers as possible, because it physically takes that long to setup for the upgrades when the interest stops. You bring up your DPS argument again, and then ignore yet again the 4x-8x+ more minerals I'd have to build anything I wanted. I've seen it with my own eyes, me with pre-nerf full 140 Haste/Forge and my opponent on full 140 Celerity on Fruit. It's effective.

maybe u just suck?

again, exeuction.

i've maxed out the entire map with fully upgraded blitzes with 400k to spare going haste.

and all that was on VH while you're playing VE. it's not about whos a better player cz that has nothing to do with this discussion. but u completely forgot to compare like with like.

ur attributing all this due to 625 mineral difference? then the alternative results in even more of a difference. ur pushing under the rug that ur getting a velocity tower.

executing is very important. YOU did haste forge while your OPPONENT did celerity. even if the same person executed both and compared, there would still be differences in execution and compounding. the things that are unchanging is the dps values. that dictates when u can get what, regardless of execution.

If you've ever played Celerity, it's actually really easy micro. Compared to attempting wave 20-30 or so with Grenades, and the Haste Towers, I'd actually say it's the easiest of the three. I had to do a ton of micro trick to really prove Haste Towers worked, especially on fast, image, undead, and water levels. The only required micro with Celerity is on Undead levels, when you really want to be maxing DPS on the edges so it's not overwhelming. The DPS otherwise is more than enough to just sit there and do nearly nothing else between rounds 20 or so through Round 50, usually wishing it'd do LESS DPS so you can get more interest.

i dont get how u acknowledge the dps analysis, and then out of nowhere with no basis other than "it just does", claim the opposite.

i even did a comparison with a tower with the same range. if the celerity is so baller, then the light tower even more.

And you keep going wishy-washy on the "waaah the micro is so hard" versus "well just rebuild grenade towers".

i dont think u read properly. it's not wishy washy. that entire apm requirement was a side note, too, aside from the main point of that paragraph. u claimed something, and i was making a rebuttal. ur the one who said it was easy to micro celerity tower. but light is easier cz there is no micro. so ur saying u can pull off a benefit by paying that apm cost. i'm saying there's an even better option with more apm cost that beats yours. and that option, namely is going 625 light with resell longer, into 2125 light... exactly the thing u claimed that was inferior to your celerity tower. herp.

No. You can't just use one tower for nearly the entire game like you can with Celerity/Velocity. Less minerals used AND longer interest time.

re-herp.

[gwho]

why does celerity do more than 22/14*500 damage sometimes?

if there is some kind of delay, shouldn't that be removed to actually reflect the numbers dictated by the formula?

[HiggsBoson]

Okay, here it is, two replays, both public games.

I use the same tactic of one Celerity Tower with 1 Well Tower (and upgrading them whenever needed) through Wave ~52 on Very Easy, and at the end the first one I nearly fill the map with Velocity Towers, and in the second I fill the map with Blitz Towers, Both times with Fountain support.

The build is:

I WNF WNF WN EE

I switch from grenade towers to the Celerity sometime between rounds 20-25. Otherwise I sit on a massive pile of minerals, and can achieve nearly the ~500K with only 1 interest upgrade.

Pure Velocity+Fountain: 383 kills

Element Tower Defense 080b VE 383 kills pure CelerityWell.SC2Replay

Blitz+Fountain with a few Velocity: 378 kills

Element Tower Defense 080b VE 378 CelHaste.SC2Replay

So really similar. In 0.80 it feels like the "You Die Now" phase gets immediately harder, such that it'll be impossible for me to replicate my 777 kill back in 0.76, but the point still stands. Using the Celerity/Velocity tower is too strong.