Should these guys make it?

[Karawasa]

The following are towers I am considering giving the axe. Either they are too hard to balance, don't really fit into the game well, or just aren't interesting.

Hit List:

-Trickery Tower [D+L]

-Jinx Tower [D+F+L]

-Hail Tower [D+L+W]

What do you guys think? Feel free to recommend towers for execution.

[0rb3r]

I think that trickery is one of those amazing towers that fits perfectly on its role and that i'm proud to have in 4.0. We just need to work on its balance.

Here's my purposal:

-Rage works, doesnt it? Lets swich the role of Trickery to a similar like rage:

-Lets create a points system for this tower. Trickery lvl1 has 3 points, it can copy at once 1 triple; 1 dual and 1 amplified single; or 3 amplified singles. The cost in needed elements for creation of a tower is the power cost for copying it. Therefore, a Trickery lvl2 has 6 points and can copy a triple lvl2 (needs 6 elem. picks to create), 2 lvl1 triples, 1 lvl2 dual and 1 lvl1 dual,...

-Lets rework the copy skill. As soon as you press copy, the tower will link itself to the most powerful towers trying to fill all 3,6 or 9 copy-points. You can deactivate and reactivate the skill to re-link again to your towers (if only 1 triple has place on the copy-queue, and you have 3 triples, it will take a random one in range, reactivating allows you to randomize again to get copied a specific tower, or to substitute a "dead-link" because you sold the tower it was linked to).

-Once a linked trickery attacks a creep, it will create copies of ALL linked towers at once and create them ON adjacent squares to tower placement, the copies will stay same duration as our rage skill does and needs as much time to be used again like rage cd is. So, you have short living copies with large cd.

-You are supposed to choose manually (half-randomly) the towers to be linked. Once the tower is linked it will do the rest of the job on its own, it will autosummon all copies from time to time, as soon as the tower attacks.

-Placement gets extra important because you need to be at the same time close to good towers to copy and need to have your tower activete itself on the right moment, as well you need free adjacent squares or your tower will create less copies than normal.

-We could as well make the tower have 2 skills, one to link/relink, and an autocast to create copies that can be activated manually or can be left on auto.

Thoughts?

[Karawasa]

That is an interesting idea. I wonder if emjlr3 can code it or not, I'll point him over here tomorrow.

[Cisz]

I didn't read that tricky trickery suggestion yet, but about hail - it doesn't work for me either, needs some mayor overhaul.

Maybe make it fire at an area like it does now, only the % of the area that gets hit is better. Like in a smaller radius. And that area is placed like targeting with artillery. So the area had a radius and the tower had a range in which this radius has to be. Maybe a unit could be used to choose the area? Like a gyrocopter?

[Twilice]

Jinx. Shoots very fast (not like water but pretty fast) deals small damage. attack is fire damage, has a x% to infuse the fire ball with light or darkness. If infused with light it will explode on impact dealing damage and slows by a little bit. If infused with darkness it will create a Fire path, creeps that walk over it will take burn damage.

(maybe hard to code, Ps do you understand what I mean?)

[0rb3r]

Topic Hail tower:

I like cisz idea for hail, i think we should keep the "frozen cosmic debris"- concept and redesign the attack, it would be nice to have the tower taget a small area and punish it mercyless with frozen meteors as soon as a creep walks over it, many simultaneous meteors, mid damage and we could even keep the 50% hit chance. Its somehow like glacier but has longer range and doesnt slows.

[Twilice]

Hail Tower:

Hmm, do I get this right?

You mark a target location?

And random meteors will strike at random point in that lokation?

[0rb3r]

@ 13est: Hail tower:

Not exactly, each x time a creep is in the area (which you select like most of the besiegement weapons in w3tft), a frozen debris falls upon his head, having a 50% chances to full damage and 50% to do no damage, it should be done so that each creep that has to travel through the center of the small area, gets targeted twice, maybe 3 times if it is slowed.

This reduces sicnificantly the chances that a creep passes through without getting a scratch and there is a chance that the same creep gets meteored twice or more.

It has to be at least a tower that works good with Ice (L+W), Trickery (L+D) and poison (D+W)

Your jinx purposal:

I just dont agree to have a triple that attacks with fire and has extra light or extra darkness. I feel that triples have their elements mixed so that they become something more than just the elements they are made from, something different than the single parts. D+L+F sounds to me more like a huge energy skill, devastating somehow.

[Guest Sancdar]

Even with Orb3r's suggested changes, I don't think that Trickery is a good tower to have in the game. No matter what tricks you give it, with better placement/timing what you have is a dual tower that is strictly more useful than any other dual. In the current implementation, even at level 1 it can copy another dual for a good amount of time each wave, and still has an attack. In the suggested one, I think it would copy slightly more than 1 dual and still have an attack, but be a little harder to time and exploit. Once you get triples, it's back to being great.

Trickery + oblivion = gg

[0rb3r]

Well, we can change the copy points to 2/4/6 instead of 3/6/9, have it 5 secs copy duration instead of 10, and leave the 30 secs cooldown, i don't think it would be that great anymore, would it?.

You would need to do a higher investment before you can start copying triples, and how soon can you get light and dark at lvl2, wave 30 ... maybe even 25 (dont forget that soloing on trickery is senseless, you need a support element). I think there are ways to adjust the tower.

Besides, it wouldnt make sense anymore to copy oblivion, the tower would be destroyed before it can summon. Some towers will be more suitable to be copied than others.

[Karawasa]

This all seems quite complex for only a dual tower, plus I don't think it will be easy to code (the hardest part is actually getting the duplicates to spawn in the right place). Perhaps a better solution would be the ultimate of Morphling in DotA. Essentially, you cast it on a tower and it becomes that tower for X seconds, then goes back to being itself. This would still keep the idea of "copying," towers, but would make this much more manageable.

Thoughts?

[holepercent]

it probably would be better in random mode where towers are more likely to be switched frequently. in pick, you would more or less have decided on what towers to build. in most cases, it probably would be better building the tower itself than a trickery and repeatedly copying the tower. the trickery should be more like a short-term boost to the defense. extra towers for a short period of time, maybe for problematic waves or to catch leaks. this would be something like a short duration and a long cooldown.

[Twilice]

Trickery is dark and light, (I don't like the copy idea) and it could be something like Ying and Yang tower. (got no ideas tought )

[Guest 1mpulse]

i think that the tower itself must become the target tower. i know it makes more sense to build the actual tower, but think of it like this:

you playing pick (it is useless in random =/ ) and it is a darkness wave, you then make your trickery duplicate a light damage tower. next wave, it duplicates a tower that is strong against that. so your trickery can mimic counter towers, without the expenses of building and selling on pick.

then again we can remove mimic and make this tower mimic only damage type. it has its composite, and it copies damage type for a duration of a wave. theen you need the other towers to give damage type (so that you cant make it attack with an element you dont have) it would also be a tower that is worth building on tricky waves. (base damage might help attractiveness)

[0rb3r]

Ok, lets stick with the morphling idea.

What if the tower owns 2 skills 10 secs lasting with 30 secs cooldown.

A "positive" skill that will copy any tower of the same or less value, excepting triples. So, lvl1 trickery can copy a Death or a well tower of its same lvl. Its the Yin skill. The copied tower deals +100% damage.

A "negative" skill that will reproduce the oposite tower (exchanging elements to those that dominate the weekness of the copied ones). Same rules like positive. Copying a Death tower will result i.ex in a Hydro tower (Earth>Light>Dark, Water>Fire>Nature), sounds complex but it is not. This skill means "Make me a tower that can defeat the leaking round of this tower". Making the negative of a Well tower would result in a (Light>Dark>Water, Water>Fire>Nature) Ice tower. Its the Yang skill. The negatived tower deals +100% damage.

Trickery can reinforce the rounds you are strong in by using positive and can compensate those rounds that you would leak by using negative.

Notice that Negative not always works in duals:

In the case of a death tower, if you face a light based round you can create a hydro that owns earth damage and you'll be fine. But in case you have a Well tower and face a darkness based round, its oposite the ice tower will deal water damage as well.

Notice as well that if you copy a Electricity or a corruption tower (the stronger ones), the +100% damage is wasted as it only applies to attack damage and not to skill damage.

However, it works perfectly on single towers. If you have many amplified darkness towers and face a light level, trickery swiches to an earth amplified.

@ 13est: Hope this honours somehow your yin and yang idea.

@ 1mpulse: This could be a more useful tower even in random.

[Guest 1mpulse]

@orb3r you make better suggestions than i could ever dream of.

these skills sound so awesome.

implement them karawasa. now.

[Twilice]

If the "yin and yang" tower morph into target tower I'm pretty fine with it.