Alternate Tower Ideas

[WindStrike]

For an idea regarding an alternate set of towers for the game that may get added eventually.

• Soul Tower (Dark + Fire + Light)
  • Single-target, long range, average attack speed
  • The more targets in the area around the target, the more damage the attack does.
• Splash Tower (Water + Nature)
  • Single-target, medium range, average attack speed
  • Support tower. Buffs other towers and increases their AoE by a percentage.
    • If the target has no AoE, it gives the tower a small amount of AoE.
• Range Tower (Fire + Earth)
  • Single-target, medium range, average attack speed
  • Support tower. Buffs other towers by increasing their range by a percentage.
• Propagation Tower (Fire + Water + Dark)
  • Single-target, medium range, average attack speed
  • Debuff tower. Causes a debuff to a creep that causes up to two random nearby creeps to take a percentage of the damage the debuffed creep takes.
• Railgun Tower (Earth + Light)
  • AoE, short range, fast attack speed
  • Lightly zaps all creeps around it, dealing minor damage. It charges up as it deals damage, and once it deals a certain amount, it fires a railgun sniper shot, dealing massive single-target damage. This attack has global range.
    • For the lulz, if it kills the target, the target gets sent flying in that direction.
• Dwarf Launcher (Earth + Light + Fire)
  • AoE, long range, very slow attack speed
  • Literally launches a dwarf at a target, dealing high single-target damage. If it kills the target, the dwarf lives, and it carries the corpse back to the tower, launching both the dwarf and the coprse on its next attack, dealing massive AoE damage by spontaneously exploding.

[WindStrike]

Incoming more suggestions. Sticking names next to some of these, since credit isn't all mine.

• Forcestaff Tower
  • Credits: Pierfrancesco
  • Forces a creep to move forward in the maze, but in doing so, the creep takes major damage.
• Rocket Tower
  • Credits: nb
  • Constantly unleashes a barrage of single-target damage rockets at nearby creeps. Randomizes targets on each rocket.
• Tunneling Tower
  • Credits: nb
  • Short-ranged tower that deals cleave damage. Has a medium-ranged ability that lets it swap positions with another tower. Leveling it up decreases the cooldown.
• Hook Tower
  • Credits: nb
  • It's pudge time! It rots away, naturally dealing damage to all creeps that within short range of it. Has a medium-ranged ability that lets it hook another tower to its location. Leveling it up decreases the cooldown.

[Mangoat]

No particular elements in mind, but some niches that are missing:

Anti-clumping towers. Towers that have knockback, or that forcestaff effect, an AoE effect that scatters creeps varying distances forwards/backwards, a debuff that increases the damage a creep takes but makes it move faster, etc. AoE builds have slowing effects to force creeps to clump up and make the AoE more efficient, but single target builds that use things like lasers, enchantment, etc. have nothing that does the reverse.

More forms of crowd control. Usually with something like this you have to be careful because a full CC maze can make the game impossible to lose, but Ele TD isn't really about not losing so much as it's about winning as fast as possible for maximum score which means slow builds that overuse CC mechanics will be inherently undesireable. The most obvious would be a bash tower or some other kind of immobilization, but towers that prevent creeps from using abilities could also be interesting, or even mind-control towers that make creeps turn around and walk backwards momentarily.

Aura towers. Right now we've got buffing towers that support up to 4 towers each and can be placed a good distance away. Aura towers could potentially buff more towers simultaneously but would need to be placed more thoughtfully to maximize their effect on the towers you want to buff.

Transfiguration towers, change the elemental damage type of other towers; either some ability that lets it toggle between any element switch but has a cooldown so you can't use it every wave (cooldown reduced with level?), or rather than letting you choose it shifts the rock-paper-scissors type forward or back a step (water becomes fire, fire becomes nature, etc. or vice-versa). Not sure where this one fits in though. Would probably work best as an aura tower rather than a buff.

Summoning towers. I seem to remember there being some of these in older WC3 versions of Ele TD. Just a concept I've always liked thematically even if it has little impact on gameplay. I imagine the hangup here is potential lag issues.

Luck towers. Very niche right now because there aren't TOO many towers with proc effects, could change with the number of elemental combinations doubling via variants; but basically they'd buff the rate of proc abilities. Perhaps could give a simple crit to towers that don't have a natural proc effect.

Wilder tower effects. Things that work very different from more standard towers. Problematic because there's more room for abuse cases.. Example: anti-economy towers - towers that have some kind of inherent cost to attack or use abilities. Techies tower that places landmines and can actively suicide to do a big burst of AoE damage but disable the tower while it 'respawns', or even outright destroys it and refunds 90% of the cost. A tower that buffs creep HP with its attacks but gives a bonus to your score for every creep hit. A tower that can sacrifice lives for some kind of effect. Etc.

[elklopso]

• Swap Tower:
  • Active Tower that can change places with other Towers, giving them a debuff so you can't swap all the time (like Trickery).
• Glimpse Tower:
  • Sending creeps back x amount of time/way (maybe random), can only send them back once per round. 
• X-Mark Tower: 
  • Short range (so it takes up space in the high dps area), X-Mark on creeps so they get back here. Only once per round.
• Curse Tower:
  • Applies a Debuff on creeps dealing Dmg, when the creep uses a skill duration gets doubled. (While shielded ticks could be stopped/still deal dmg?)
• Rift Tower:
  • Randomly choosing 2 creeps and bringing them both together. Maybe just creeps from same wave. Clumping them up getting higher aoe value.

[Karawasa]

Any and all ideas are welcome. The more we have to consider the better. You can also reference: https://forums.eletd.com/topic/2182-tower-ability-wishlist/ for inspiration.