Suggested Changes for 1.46

[WindStrike]

Below is a list of all things that have been suggested for the next patch compiled onto one spot, including stuff from chats:

• Maze Mode - increase the scaling movement speed buff so that goes back to 2x by wave 60. Before, when there was only 2 checkpoints + endpoint, it was a little too difficult, but now that there's 3 checkpoints + endpoint, the mid-game to end-game needs to be harder. Quite frankly, any newbies that are getting screwed over by the early waves won't feel this anyways, and when they do get mid waves, it'll probably be due to actually figuring out how to make mazes, even in a basic form, so they'll be fine.
• Trickery Towers - is there a way to transfer all buffs from the original tower to the clone? A huge problem I have with mixing Trickery with Well/Forge is that you have to increase your number of Well/Forge towers to accomodate Trickery, and considering Trickery already consumes more space, that's a pain to deal with.
• Fruit Points - On the previous fruit system where fruit gained abilities over time, we thought Very Hard gave the most points because virtually every defense died at the same point (speed). On the current one, however, it's actually balanced, and with some testing and experiencing things first-hand, Normal currently gives the most fruit points. Regarding what new numbers to use to fix this, here's two of them:
  • List 1:
    • Very Easy - 1 Point
    • Easy - 2 Points
    • Normal - 3 Points
    • Hard - 5 Points
    • Very Hard - 7 Points
  • List 2:
    • Very Easy - 1 Point
    • Easy - 2 Points
    • Normal - 4 Points
    • Hard - 7 Points
    • Very Hard - 10 Points
  • Regarding List 2, Normal currently beats Hard out, but not by much, so increasing it to 7 Points should fix it. Very Hard needs to be more than double of Normal, and the point spread between levels shouldn't decrease either, so that's why it's 10 Points and not just 9 Points.
• There's still a few things from this thread that could use implementation (most namely Celerity), secondary to that would be Money/Life followed by Poison.
• Both voting menus done at the same time. Now that Wars and Defense are chosen in the lobby, all of the settings should be done at once (except for Teams), and then just increase the maximum voting time to 1:30 to accommodate both.

Anyone else got any more? Also, finally thought of some stuff for new Wars system, you can check that out here.

[WindStrike]

Revert Quark (Earth + Light) to what it was. As in, before the orbs. It was perfectly balanced then. Now... there is one spot where it is stupidly overpowered at 10 range. 8 range, it's fine, about 8-12 spots where it's usable. But that one 10-range spot at the front of the maze... holy crap. On bloody Hard difficulty, an Electron Tower (level 2) practically solo'd through 35, save for 30 (Earth + Undead) and 32 (Composite + Mech). There's not a single triple-element tower in the game that does even that, except maybe Celerity in single-player mode, and this is one tower that's slaughtering everyone else in multiplayer. I know we balance around Very Hard, but this... this is just ridiculous. I'll post a replay of this soon. It really is dumb.

I won't suggest nerfing its damage because then it's a crappy tower in all of the other spots.

EDIT: Here's a replay. Pretty sure I just broke the record for Non-Mazing (and that was in Multiplayer, not Singleplayer). Only reason I'm not posting it up officially in its own thread is due to how long that Quark/Electron lasted in that one spot. Regarding fruit points, another scaling model would be to just buff Very Hard to 9 Points (so 1, 2, 4, 6, 9). Hard and Normal... it's iffy which one is higher, depends on the build.

v146 _ Hard_ 349 Fruits _ 2094 Points.SC2Replay

[WindStrike]

Alright, you know how triple-element damage towers are great vs. the waves but not so good against fruit? Well, there's one tower that is not only good against fruit, it's stupidly overpowered, and tweaking its damage isn't going to fix its problem.

Runic is dumb. With one level 2 slowing tower, it's good, it's probably on par with the rest of the triple-element damage towers, maybe some more. With two level 2 slowing towers, it's beyond overpowered. I was just doing a test run on Very Hard (which has been tested for producing less fruit points than Hard) and got 2000 Fruit Points, with lots of screw ups that resulted in me entering the fruit wave with 9 lives. I don't think a single fruit got past the front door till about 1000 points, and it took another 500 before it got past the second bend. So what about all the other triple-element damage towers? Where did they end up? Well, I've been experimenting with Quake, Flamethrower, Haste, Flood, Ephemeral, Oblivion... yeah, pretty much all of them couldn't get past the third wave on Very Hard, even with max level support towers and pure towers supporting. I think Oblivion managed to get the farthest at about fifth or sixth wave, but overall, Runic just outclasses all of them.

And it outclasses the level 3 dual-element towers. I believe my Infared build is the only thing I've got that can keep up with it, and that's using a specific build to get to that point that has no guarantee of survival, especially if someone camps the entrance.

The problem with just nerfing Runic Tower's damage is that prior to those slowing towers, it's just like Infrared or Vapor or Poison (input some other various examples here) - it's mediocre. It's alright, but not that great. Nerfing its damage will just make it a useless tower till slowing. So it's the exact opposite of Quark Tower, which is stupidly overpowered early but useless later.

So how do we fix these? Rework them both. I can see why you wouldn't want to revert Quark back to what it used to be, it was kinda generic then, but it was balanced. As for Runic, well... there's plenty of suggestions in this thread. Personally, I'm still all for that railgun tower idea, though it might be tricky a tower to input.

Also, this one may seem like a weird suggestion, but could you increase the range on Hail/Comet Tower to 17? There's a lot of spots where, like other 16 range towers, it can hit a lane away, but the split shot won't go off.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I was playing Hero Mode recently and noticed you changed his range to 8... which fixes his stupidity issues, but now that his range is actually... good, could you give him a projectile? It just seems weird waving his sword around 20 feet away and suddenly explosions.

EDIT2: Proof of Runic haxorz is now attached and ready for anyone to watch its hax attacks.

Holy scaling_ batman.SC2Replay