The point of health regeneration in mazing

[WindStrike]

So after I abused mazing mode with super long mazes (I'm sure others did this as well), Karawasa decided to add health regen to mazing mode, which is a perfectly fine change. However, it seems a bit... overboard. To the extent that it obsoletes quite a few builds.

As it is right now, it goes from 1% of its health back a second all the way up to 4% of its health back per second. Which means in the beginning, it won't affect anything until creeps have at least 100 hp, and by the end, creeps move at double speed and can rejeuvenate back to full health in under 25 seconds. Commandos have 56,421 hp and regenerate 2,257 hp a second. Very few towers in the game actually even have that amount of DPS (namely single target towers), and it takes a Forge 3 or Well 3 buff to go on par with that regeneration for most towers. Builds like (one of my personal favorites) Poison and Flood towers to weaken the creeps and then finish them off with Death towers doesn't work, because by the time they get to the death towers, they're already back to half health. Well, there goes one tower out the window. And often times, even if your maze just spirals around one area and isn't very long, by the time fruit go out of your maze, to the second checkpoint, and back to the start of your maze again, they're full health.

What was the point of health regeneration for maze mode again? Not so things could infinitely stay alive, but to prevent super long mazes that abuse an extremely low amount of towers, thus gaining ridiculous interest and still managing to kill them all. Instead, it is forcing the defense to be oriented around instantly killing everything in one go or using mass single target defenses in order to take them out. Long mazes should still be a viable strategy, but as it is with ridiculous health regeneration rates (especially towards the end game), it's just a suicidal idea.

My opinion is that health regeneration should stay in the game, but rather than scale upwards like with speed, it ought to be a static regeneration rate. The average time for creeps to start out, go through a maze and get all the way to the end is somewhere between 45 seconds and a minute. ... and at 4% health regeneration, unless you somehow have mass kill along the entire way (which is extremely unlikely), anything that gets through might as well come back at full health. That said, I propose a static 2% health regeneration rate for the entire way through (if even). Factoring in the time it would take for the creeps to get out of your maze of damage and come back, they wouldn't be back at full health... maybe up to half of its health back at best. This provides a bit of an early game preventive for super long maze and minimal tower abuse while not killing builds off in the endgame.

Additionally, elemental summons should not have health regeneration, as they can infinitely go through your defense and single-handedly kill you because you don't have the single-target killing power (cough, early level 3 in random mode).

[Ayr]

Fully concur. I too was a 'long maze abuser'. If the purpose was to prevent abuse at fruit level, then move the 4% back to fruit only, and go with Wind's 2% for the rest of the levels. If it was to prevent long mazes, well, I can still build a long maze that works for this mode. Only that it limits my options and is quite irritating in VHAR games.

[WindStrike]

I've done some VH Random games.... pretty much, if you don't have either a level 3 double or level 2 triple (damage, not support) by 46, you're dead. The amount of damage you do with weaker towers just cannot keep up with the health regen by that point.

In fact, in earlier rounds, level 1 duals pretty much useless by 26. To an extent, you can still use them... but that's it.

So maze mode is ridiculously hard, especially on all random. And this is coming from players that have played the game a ridiculous amount. So what's going to happen to players that try maze mode out and haven't really played that much? Complete slaughter. So long as that super high health regen is there... man, it's hard enough winning on normal difficulty with random on, unless you get handed some good stuff early.

I'm voting for 1% health regeneration for the whole way through. Yeah, it's possible to abuse again, but at least random is possible given not-so-good combinations/6-element (which it is in the standard mode given practically any combination). I really like the 20 second interest change though - that felt really necessary.

I think a better change than high health regen would be to keep health regen (lowered to 1% per second) and then force round change every minute. Like casual mode, except it's a backup instead of forced. This (combined with the lower health regen and 20 second interest) should block the singleplayer infinite builds while also allowing a lot of builds that were rendered useless by 2%+ health regen (even 2% is pretty darn high). The next round starting at a maximum of every 60 seconds sounds reasonable. In the standard game, it takes a full minute for a creep to get from start to finish. So for maze mode, the longest it could possibly last (through 60) is one hour. Of course, that rarely happens, however it would block some of the singleplayer abuse and super long mazes... while they could work, by the time creeps are halfway through, the next wave has started.

Also, something else that's fairly retarded given the current health regen: mechanical. Every time a creep goes invulnerable, for the next 3.6 seconds, it gains back (currently) 10.8% of its health. Unless you have an instant kill build, that's going to severely hinder any defense.

A few of us can handle the more recent changes that have made the game harder. However, that's probably a total of 1-2% of the players, and given that we don't exactly have the most visited forums for constant help to the community, it's detrimental to the game and in helping getting new players in. A good amount of these changes were needed, but more than anything, drop the health regen down to low amount and find some sort of alternative to preventing super long maze abuse.

[Karawasa]

Regeneration at 3% currently. VH is definitely possible with 6 element. 1% would make it a joke. 2% was the previous value.

You mention us being in the top echelon of players. That is true. But, most players aren't doing VH. Normal and below are by far the most prevalent. Players who understand the basics of mazing cruise through most of the game at this level because of this. Players who have no idea how to "maul" are screwed anyway.

I propose you host some public mazing games on casual and all pick mode.

Edit: After some consideration we can revert it to 2%.

[WindStrike]

6 element is possible. The problem was 6 element + a level 3 and a level 2 by the start of 46. It just wasn't good at all. Anyhow, while I won't be able to test until later tonight or tomorrow, I thank you for dropping it to 2%.