WindStrike Posted April 11, 2012 Below is my list of my suggested balance changes for the next version. With this list, triple support towers will get a damage buff, obliteration will hopefully no longer fail, and quite frankly, I'm not sure what to do about radius. (in order from Single Element Towers to Duals to Triples) Earth: Comparing to Fire, same AoE, longer range Earth DPS = 15 Fire DPS = 22 It may have longer range, but having only 70% of the DPS does feel a little weak. Also, the visual effect looks big, and I think it should be big. I vote knocking the range back down to 10 but jacking its AoE up to match its visual at 3/6. Damage might need to go down slightly to 14, but overall it should end up fine. Water: Increase damage to 9. Feels inferior to Fire by a long shot, and even the current Earth feels better. AoE is fine. It should feel like a condensed Fire tower with more firepower. It may have a range bonus, but who cares when you can't kill anything to start with. In comparison, current Pure Water does 8468 DPS at 12 range and 1.5/3 AoE. Periodic tower does 9000 DPS at 16 range and 1.5/3 AoE. There's nothing wrong with periodic really, especially given the fact you need 6-element, it's just that water really needs a damage buff. Disease: It is supposed to be a finisher tower, but at 8 range... eh, I'd gladly take the old damage back for the 10 range. It's fine as it is, it's just a personal preference of mine. I don't know where everyone else stands on this tower really. Infrared: Decrease its damage from 10 to 9. Yes, it gets its power the more infrareds you have and can result in stupidity for long single player games, but it still feels a tiny bit strong in multiplayer currently. Ice: It gets most of its damage from the explosion at the end, so it really limits the number of spots you can place it. I won't say it's underpowered right now, but I think a tweak might make it more useful. 35 damage for the explosion, range knocked down to 10. Yes, this is a tower where a range decrease would actually help it. Mildew: It shouldn't be underpowered, but it feels that way, and that's due to a result of no attack ground option. I suppose Ice could also have it, but that'd just make that tower silly and obsolete the jet tower. Mildew, on the other hand... it would increase its usefulness by a good bit while not overpowering it. Life: Gold > Life. Lives are nice, but a defense that's actually stronger as a result of more towers will beat out a defense that has more lives. I'm not suggesting an effect change, just that life towers do more than money, maybe from 18 to 21 or something. Not a huge buff, just a small but noticeable one. Laser: Haste is the ultimate single target in the game, it just takes some time for it to wind up. It ends up being (240 / 0.19) = 1263 DPS at 12 range. It's not overpowered, it's just that laser is a bit weak in comparison. Laser is 900 DPS at 12 range. It's also not instantaneous, because it has to spend a second or two launching all of its fighters. While laser has multiple automatic functions and doesn't take as long as haste to build up, it could use a buff from 6 fighters to 7 fighters. Hail: Buff damage to 110. Obliteration: Dark + Light + Nature DPS including 3 second reload = (360 * 7) / 10 = 252 DPS DPS assuming no reload = 360 DPS Flood tower DPS at same AoE = 300 / 0.66 = 455 DPS Yes, Obliteration has longer range, but that's just pitiful. I just calculated old Obliteration before nerfs (500 damage per shot, 2 second reload), and it's actually only 389 DPS. Considering its range vs. Flood's 10 range, it's definitely strong, but the nerf shouldn't be that big. I suggest 450 damage at 2 second reload, knocking the DPS down to 350 and killing the option of manual reload. It's nifty, but I feel like there's a huge dependency on it, and late game when you have a ton of towers, it's practically impossible to manage your oblierations' manual reload. Alternate suggestion is 400 damage per shot, 3 second reload, and jack AoE up to 2.25/4.5, still nuking manual reload. You'd still be able to manually use the auto-reload (2 or 3 seconds) for in between waves though, or something along those lines. Radius: 2 orbs, 1.5 attack speed, each does 180 damage and hits in a radial pattern. There is nothing wrong with this tower. It's perfectly fine, except for one major flaw... It does not combo well. The number of locations it can be placed is limited, and its sub support tower is Trickery, but if it has limited locations, then Trickery won't work that well with it. Sure, you can adjust the range on Radius tower for some extra micromanagement (extend to 16 range so it hits bottom and right lanes), but that's not a practical idea for a multiplayer match when people could be killing it before you're able to do that. It does combo alright with Nova and 5 element builds (namely all but Earth, giving you double radial slowing), but again, you're not getting a good 4 element build AND triple-element support towers. There is currently an overlap in towers - Quark, Vapor and Radius. Vapor is unique in that it gets stronger with slowing. However, Quark and Radius are redundant, but why does Quark do so much better? It combos well with Gold Towers (nice single target) and Forge... alternatively, Laser and Trickery. Magnify can go nicely with Radius, but Magnify is also a tower that works better in very certain locations and not so great for use with Trickery (Forge is better). That said, I've got a few different ideas for how this could work: Flip Flamethrower and Radius elements. Yeah, it kinda makes no sense, but Radius being able to go with Magnify and Forge and Cannons works a lot better. And Flamethrower with Trickery can work very well. Give a different ability to Radius that replaces range adjustment. Example, maybe Haste's effect for a single energy orb that starts off slow and gets faster and faster as it goes while also increasing its power a bit. Though it'd result in a little more overlap. Keep Vapor, move Quark over to Radius and replace Quark with something. I dunno, the redundancy of those three towers just bugs me. It's fine is there's a radial for duals and a radial for triples, but two radials for dual? That's just my opinion on it, I'm not pushing it, it just bugs me. Overall, I'm not sure what to do with this tower. Might need a thread based solely on this tower or something. As it is, it's alright at best, but it has issues. And the last balance change... Every Single Triple-Element Support Tower: Since these towers can't be buffed by forge/well/trickery, and random mode can really screw someone over because their only triple or level 2 triple is a support tower... every single one could use a huge damage buff. That, and their current damages are just insignificant. While a muck tower shouldn't be able to solo the later 20s, it should at least knock out the early 20s by itself before you need another tower. Muck Tower - 225 damage Barb Tower - 50 damage a second for 5 seconds Nova Tower - 90 damage Ion Tower - 50 damage a second Jinx Tower - 650 or 700 damage Erosion Tower - 50 damage a second for 5 seconds Incantation Tower - 80 damage Polar Tower - 250 damage For those that know their original damages, this is practically a 50% damage boost across the board. In the lategame (50+), you won't feel a difference anyways. -------------------------------------------------- Maze Mode: Simply put, while this mode is certainly fun and awesome and works really well, it's not balanced for EleTD. Celerity is a pain to get to work and is worthless by 50+, so basing a defense around it ain't exactly smart. Vapor and infrared are obviously overpowered. Flood is even more hax with mode switching than it is in standard. Quake = god. There's a good number of others that feel superior compared to everything else. I do have a suggestion for a way around this such that both modes can be balanced alternatively without splitting the map into two, but it'd take a bit of extra time. Essentially, for maze mode you'd get a different builder than the one for standard. Its selection is identical, but the actual towers it builds are alterations of the standard mode and thus have different balances applied. Some would have different effects altogether (remember old laser tower? Stick that on celerity). I'm not particularly fond of that idea due to uhh... well, people getting used to one mode and then suddenly, the other mode's towers are different. It's perfectly cool if the maps are separate, but they're not and they're modes. Asides from this idea, I don't really know how to truly balance maze mode. This wouldn't be for the next version, just... possibly something for down the road. The following stuff, on the other hand, is being suggested for next patch. Pathing Indicators: Rather than a pathing dummy in the beginning, could there be an energy arrow that shoots down the path periodically (every 5 or 10 seconds), which shows the enemy path. Dots showing the path constantly can result in a lot of dots for large mazes, so this would prevent that from happening while also giving a clear indicator to the player where the creeps will go. It'll also let the player know of any holes that are seemingly invisible. It's not just a tool for newbies, but something that would help with anyone. Labels. As in, words plastered on the terrain indicating the "Start", "Checkpoint 1", "Checkpoint 2", and "Finish" (or Exit or End or whatever, lol). This one is for new players, and I think it'd be a nice addition that'd really help them out. Orange's Checkpoints are Low: Yeah, the checkpoints in Orange's area are a tower's space lower than the checkpoints for other players. I've tested the exact same defense on Red, Blue and Orange areas based around the checkpoints, and I'm ending up with a tower's less space on the bottom for Orange. There's also some doodad interference on the edges of Orange's area, namely the biotruck in the bottom-right and something else on the bottom edge (I don't know what it is, it's being covered by a tree). -------------------------------------------------- I still haven't properly given Flamethrower a run. Other than that, well... there's my giant list of balance suggestions as well as that feature for maze mode which would be a nice convenience. THERE'S MY TWO CENTS. Which is a lot for two cents. o_O EDIT: Some edits were made after I recalculated some stuff, so some of the suggestions were axed. Go to top Share this post Link to post
Karawasa Posted April 11, 2012 Thank you for making my suggestion a reality so soon. This is a great post for the next version. Quake = god. My name is Evan, and I approve of this message. Go to top Share this post Link to post
WindStrike Posted April 11, 2012 I forgot to note something regarding vapor towers and lag. It's fine in standard mode, but if you design a maze such that everything is getting hit by 4+ aftershocks and you're hitting at least 15 units at a time, that's 60 effects from a single tower, and often times, especially when I get slowing and well 3 later, that increases to even more. A few vapor towers won't cause lag. However, when you start getting a lot of vapor towers in one area (if spread across the map, it's not bad), you can get hundreds and possibly up to about a thousand visual effects going off at once every second, so long as that many creeps are out and being affected. Vapor is cool and well designed tower, it shouldn't need a rework, but if there is some way to tone down those visuals, it could really help with that lag issue. I've got a decent computer, it can handle Starcraft 2 normal games pretty well (except for huge 4v4s) at high graphics settings. However, not everyone has say, a 460 GTX graphics card to power their way to a victory, and in fact, a lot of people are running this game on low settings because EleTD can be laggier than the standard game. Yeah, vapors are broken in maze, nothing to be done about that really. But lagwise, it could use a bit of a reduction especially when that many effects stack. Go to top Share this post Link to post
