[Public Beta] Thoughts about Trickery, Gold and Flesh Golem

[jolin012]

This post is about my thoughts about the trickery tower, the flesh golem tower, the Gold tower.

About trickery tower there are a lot of situations where it is too good or too bad compared to blacksmith and well. Sancdar just pointed out one of them. I've said so many times that i wish to change it into something equal to blacksmith and well. And as far as I remember you searched for a tower like that but didn't find any other ability than dagame and speed increase?(i understand that things like range and aoe and multishot don't work). )

I still don't understand what's wrong with my sugguestion: The trickery tower makes a clone of the selected tower (can be set to autocast like smith&well) and puts an actual copy of the tower on top of the selected tower (yah in the sky). The clone has an effect on it called something like "cloned level 1, delas only 25% dmg(50 at tier 2. 100at tier 3)" which is the opposite of fire up, so that it's dmg is x0.25 The clone has also some effect making it look a bit ghostly, so that it don't block the view. The Trickery tower casts at the rate same rate and cooldown as blacksmith and well, and works to cast on the same towers at blacksmith (so it's not possible to clone an enchamntment tower with fuill spell and lower dmg).

The tower can cast at any Damage tower(at any level, just like smith&well)), so the description of the spell can be something like that, for not to confuse.

Here follows a couple of situations where i find trickery imbalanced compared to Smith&well.

-If there are towers of many different attack types trickery favors, because you cannot base your damage on trickery and switch them between elements every level. (means build 1 tower of each element, then spam trickery). Smith/well favors without many different attacktype towers.

-If there is smith/well in the build, well/smith favors, because trickery don't stack well with smith/well. In other words, trickery don't combine well with the other 2, because well+smith tier 3, together makes a buff of 400% while smith+trickery makes about 250% (a number that varies, the thing is, the don't work extra good in combination, like well+smith does.) Trickery favors standalone.

-If it is a slow game Trickery favors, because it has time to recharge, and can be placed on a slower 2pass placement. Smith/well favors in faster games.

-If there are less than 4 damage towers Trickery gains advantage, cause Well/smith is not fully effective. A situation like this could be a game with the networth of 2000 where you prefer trickery+drowning rather than well+drowning. If there are a good number of damage towers Well/smith can be fully effective.

-The Well&Smith favor with a bad microer because Trickery requires Manuall casting. It also favors the player who is likeley to remember using his tower, and the one who don't have to pick up the phone^^.

-Trickery tower favors at tier 1 (and maybe tier 3 for pure) where the well tower only does 25% increase, while the well get's stronger with time, the trickery doesn't.

-The Well&Smith favors if the damage towers are at a bad level compared to the support dual, where Trickery would maybe not even work.

-And what Sancdar pointed out: The trickery tower don't work well when you shall upgrade your build to tier 2.

-While the Trickery tower can just spam more, the well/smith have to raise more damage towers, this is pretty logical to work/not work out in different situations. However, if we ignore that and say the value of the added well and dmg towers are equal to the added trickeries there is a new situation that don't work out: Pure essence. Trickery tower can be used to equal half a pure essence, while the well cannot summon more pures^^.

And afaik, my setup or a better one, would solve all these situations, that maybe don't seem too critical, but can appear manyt of them at the same time, while the current setup... I guess most ppl hate the current^^ at least i do.

Flesh golem I have used in pick mode single player where it appears to work out. but as soon as it is in random, it has the problem that you cannot sell/rebuild it, like all other towers can do. and if I enter a MP game the speed is up so I have to play at 43 or 6 insrtead of running between 7 and 9, have not yet tried if it works there (will update this later as i have tried).

About Gold tower, This one might be too weak to be worth using. Except for a combo like kindle+gold where gold just ttakes the last shots for the gold. I have not tried gold at tier 2, or gold tower on easier difficulties. Gold tower in vh is less usefull than gold tower was in 3.0 on vhx. Gold tower and fleshy were tested in beta 9, and only on vh. I will do some more testing with dif Normal/VH on Public beta.

[0rb3r]

The trickery tower makes a clone of the selected tower (can be set to autocast like smith&well) and puts an actual copy of the tower on top of the selected tower (yah in the sky). The clone has an effect on it called something like "cloned level 1, delas only 25% dmg(50 at tier 2. 100at tier 3)" which is the opposite of fire up, so that it's dmg is x0.25 The clone has also some effect making it look a bit ghostly, so that it don't block the view. The Trickery tower casts at the rate same rate and cooldown as blacksmith and well, and works to cast on the same towers at blacksmith (so it's not possible to clone an enchamntment tower with fuill spell and lower dmg).

This is actually a pretty decent idea for the "trickery issue", I like it. I think that the problems are the skills. Should a copied ice tower freeze? If the answer is yes then, should it de 25%

, 50%, 100% of normal?.

A) no skill = sucks in most cases

25%, 50%, 100% = you need to create extra skills for each skill being 25% and 50% of normal

C) always 100% = imba

There should be a way to choose manually a target building and autocast.

Making the lifespan of the image equals a ratio of trickeryvalue/imagevalue is imo a good alternative to the copied skill problem w/o need to add new skills but less friendly to combine with Well&Bsmith, still, copied skills are better and easier to ballance.

Different from Well&Bsmith that can't affect the same tower more than once, Trickery can. Make it so that ONLY 1 copy of a tower can exist at a time (no 1 periodic element tower +10 copies). If target selecting is trggered you could easily prevent a tower from being targeted by 2 Trickeries.

[jolin012]

heh, maybe i didn't point it out clearly, but the idea was actually that every original tower can only have one clone:) only a 2floor building (just like they can only be affected by well&smith once at a time)

also I tried to point out, that it should only work out on damage towers/on towers that can be affected by well&smith.

So - it won't be able to clone the ice tower, because the ice tower is a) not a damage tower not able to be boosted by well or smith.

and, it won't be able to make 10 clones of periodic, but one clone of each periodic, because the part some might have misunderstood - the clone will be placed on top of the Original tower, not the trickery tower (and clones can not be cloned ofc)

so there Will ofc be max one clone per original tower, and it will only work on dmg towers, towers that well&smith work on, (they do work out on skills such as quaker skill)

[Cisz]

Ice is a dmg tower imo, and afaik well does boost it. Not sure about blacksmith though, and even if blacksmith did work on ice, it probably won't affect the dot.

[0rb3r]

Oh, I see.

Yes and there are many damage towers that require their skill to work properly, so, or a clone lifespan adjustment or a skill adjustment is required.

Btw, the 2 Floor tower real+copy is an awesome idea, I love it.

And thx orb3r for feedback on the tower idea:)

[jolin012]

I recently noticed also that Ice tower for example, does get boosted by well&smith. all except those with dmg 1-1, except for well&smith themselves with 500dmg which is bad imo for towers such as electricity and oblivion that don't get boosted, and ice and flame and enchantment that does get boosted.

I think all/only damage towers should get boosted. also spellcasterdamage towers, but not support towers. maybe it ain't possible to make towers such as electricity and oblivion to stack with well&smith, but it'd be great if it was. perhaps change chainlightning from a spell into glaive thrower bouncing but with the model of a lightning jump? nah, i don't know much about the editor/coding.

Why shall incantation tower with 2,472 dps/gold get boosted if waterfall with 2,255 dps/gold gets boosted.

It might be a bit tricky to make a list of which towers I wish to stack with well&smith (and i always keep in mind how it'd work with my proposal of trickery, i never count in the current one, as it doesn't appear to work out balanced in any way). But i guess that list would be unneeded as it probably is impossible to make towers such as decease and olbivion to stack with blacksmith&well(& a working trickery). Anyway, what would be good and probably possible is to remove smith&well-stacking from ice, flame, enchantment, polar, voodoo, and maybe some more that are harder to decide. even ice is hard, as cisz pointed out, but if ice is boosted, shall flame be boosted?

[Karawasa]

I should point out that the only towers that benefit from Blacksmith beyond simply an attack damage increase are:

-Hydro

-Laser

-Impulse

-Jinx

-Drowning

-Quaker

-Tidal

All of these towers benefit more from Well than Blacksmith for various reasons. Thus, their abilities get buffed by Blacksmith to compensate.

[Twilice]

Drownings ability get buffed upp by blacksmith?

[jolin012]

drownings ability is probably the most imbalanced atm. it does not get buff by blacksmith voodoo corrosion enchantment flame(dmg amplify) polar (the amplified part of polar). and is both armor and armor type ignoring. I think instead of a chance equal to 3000/creeps life after the normal damage it should be chance=(total damage of towers normal attack, aka after armor and such.)/creep hp after normal attack. a bird whispered in my ear that it's might be impossible to gather info about towers normal attacks final damage, but maybe to read out current hp before and after normal attack. if so it'd be something like chance=(creep hp before minus creep hp after)/creep hp after. This way it'd get boosted by smith enchantment corrosion polar flame in terms of higher chance. well would give increased speed=more chances for instantkill.

The word instantkill doesn't really stack with voodoo either we accpet it, or change the tower into something else (i don't like to change it), or make voodoo in some way do the double effect (as the normal attack is 50% of the tower)

[Cisz]

So why is it then that Karawasa claims that drownings special ability get's a boost by blacksmith?

[jolin012]

good question, when i talked to him last he said that the chance is actually 300/current hp, not including boost, and i gave these proposals of how it' can be changed.

[Karawasa]

It is 3000*Boost%/Current HP. As an example, with Foundry Tower it would be 6000/Current HP.

When you think about it, Well functions in the same way. By doubling attack speed with Waterfall Tower, you are doubling chance to insta-kill...hence this method.

[jolin012]

does *boost* include armor reduce and damage amplify?

[Guest Sancdar]

I doubt it does. If there isn't an efficient way to calculate damage done, I can think of one quick-fix way that should include all modifiers. If you give Drowning a 10% vamp and drop its current HP (sell is based off max HP, right?) down to 1, you get a quick way to calculate damage done.

[jolin012]

Sounds fair. I can't accept the current setup where it's ignoring so much things. Armor, armor type, dmg amplify... ruins game balance^^

[0rb3r]

The word instantkill doesn't really stack with voodoo either we accpet it, or change the tower into something else

Why dont we apply instakill chance after 2,5 secs? Like:

(Damage received during 2,5 secs after hit)/current hp

it would do stack with woodoo and add a strategical tweak to higher hp levels when the drowning tower damage is just too weak.

[jolin012]

sorry, but it would not completley stack with voodoo still. because the effect of drowning doesn't add any damage to the effect of voodoo. the voodoo can't gather any power because the drowning towers effect doesn't deal damage, until it kills.

[0rb3r]

Well, it deals 3000 damage, not much but still something.

Anyways, what do you think about the idea of making the chance% improving on collateral support damage after 2,5 secs?

[jolin012]

hm... not really the way to handle it. the problem is that voodoo doesn't charge up from the effect of drowning. but while the ability is supposed to be exactly 50% of the tower - you could just double the drownings normal attacks charging of voodoo - but i doubt it's possible. K - is there a possible way to balance this error, such as this but possible to code too? or shall we accept drowning's ability not to stack with drowning...

[jolin012]

It is 3000*Boost%/Current HP. As an example, with Foundry Tower it would be 6000/Current HP.

When you think about it, Well functions in the same way. By doubling attack speed with Waterfall Tower, you are doubling chance to insta-kill...hence this method.

So? a chance=damage dealt/current hp does not give well or any tower double benefits. Is there a problem in recording damage dealt? Btw, I talked with Immolatus and he sais that might be a problem, maybe Sancdars idea works if it doesn't cause lag, to record damage or attackspeed or such.(attackspeed would not be recorded for drowning ofc, as it allready gets benefit)