Magnify Towers

[WindStrike]

Magnify Towers are like the single-target version of Quark Towers. They're one of the best single-target towers in the game, dealing Dark damage and requiring a dual combination of Fire and Dark. Oddly enough, as hard as it is to place Quark Towers (click here), there are less optimal spots for Magnify.

Similar to Quark, Magnify starts at 8 range and increase its range all the way up to 22 and can likewise decrease it back down. The difference is that it loses damage with higher range, whereas Quark does not, and that's because of the difference in how they hit.

• 8 range - Full damage, 160
• 10 range - 85% damage, 136
• 12 range - 70% damage, 112
• 16 range - Half damage, 80
• 22 range, Quarter damage, 40

Placements

Now, most of you see that this is an 8 range tower, and with microing on its range increase ability, you supposedly get in a little extra damage by reducing its range until the creeps are right up to the tower. So it works "alright" just about any spot. However, if you read my guide on Money and Life Tower Placements (click here), there's a sniper spot that pretty much makes this the highest damaging single-target tower in the game except for pures and the fruit round.

Those four positions at the bottom-left are the best spots for Magnify. Set them on 16 range (half damage) and they'll chipshot creeps coming in from the middle for a good while before they come back down to you. Below is an example shot of the damage from chipshotting.

That's pretty much at least 25% of the wave's health gone from chipshotting, making it a lot easier to take them all down when you drop the range of the Magnify Towers down to 8. Something to note about Magnify is that its beam hits the target instantaneously. Not only does it mean there's no wasted shots ever, but it's impervious to getting blocked by mechanical invulnerability. Placing them on a peninsula too helps with that. If you want more Magnify towers, place 4 more directly below those towers. To chipshot with those towers though, you'll need to place them on 22 range (quarter damage), which is still worth it. I wouldn't get any more than 8 magnify towers, despite how awesome they are. You'd be better off getting more of your other towers at that point.

Unfortunately, Magnify loses its chipshotting on the Fruit Round, as they come in endlessly. Nonetheless, it'll still do decently for Fruit Round, so there's no need to sell them.

Tips

I have a really good build with Magnify towers that is probably more stable than any of my other builds. I'll post a full guide on that build later, but for now, here's a quick rundown of it. By wave 30, you'll have access to Level 2 of the following towers:

• Magnify (Dark) - Dark + Fire
• Cannon (Earth) - Dark + Earth
• Forge (Support) - Fire + Earth
• Flamethrower (Fire) - Fire + Earth + Dark

This build has towers covering each other so well that it's disturbing. While the end result doesn't really get the most fruit points, you can pretty much guarantee getting to the Fruit Round with all 50 lives. Using the Magnify spots, use them to chipshot creeps and then slaughter single-targets, especially the Level 3 bosses (which you'll want to rush and have Level 3 of Fire, Earth and Dark by 450). Cannon towers cover the weakness to Light beautifully, and Flamethrower makes Nature rounds a joke (cough, 40 and 50). And then you have your Forge towers buffing their damages. For 4th element, go Water to get Erosion and Muck as supports with Haste as another good anti-single target (better for Fruit Round than magnify; once you cap on 8 magnifies, you switch to these). Your pure towers can be whatever you want, though I personally place Pure Darks on the right-side, same places that I'd place Gold towers.

The only way you're not gonna get the chipshot damage in is if some jerk decided to camp the entrance with Ice Towers (guide will be posted on that later), which is hard to do, so it's unlikely.

I hope this guide helps, and I'm hoping to see more people abuse that 16-range sniper spot in-game.