Patch 1.9

[WindStrike]

This patch is also known as "Buff batman", for its many buff bats, man, as well as scoring alterations, a Short Mode, and a few nerfs as well. Here's the changelog below!

• Features
  • Short Mode added! Starts you on Wave 16 with 1600 Gold, 4 Lumber, 10000 Score, and the endspeed score bonus is based on 35 minutes instead of 45 minutes.
  • Random should now cause 3-element and 4-element to happen more often, 5-element about the same, and 6-element less often.
• Scoring
  • Each creep on Classic has been bumped from (Wave # + 5) to (Wave # + 10) score each.
  • Each creep on Express has been bumped from (Wave # + 3) to (Wave # + 5) score each.
  • The per-wave speed bonus has been removed.
  • The end-game networth bonus is now equal to your networth instead of just half of it.
  • Each Icefrog has been bumped from 200 score to 400 score each.
  • Each successive Icefrog wave now only jumps by 40 score each now, down from 50 score.
• Wave Timers
  • Hard reduced from 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 seconds to 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 seconds
  • Very Hard reduced from 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 seconds to 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 seconds
  • Insane reduced from 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 seconds... to 1 second at all stages of the game. ENJOY!
• Creeps
  • Healing effect reduced from 25% to 18%. However, AoE bumped from 250 to 300. Now, without slowing, it can affect up to 4 creeps, up from 2.
  • Avenger effect AoE reduced from 300 to 250. Duration increased from 7 seconds to 10 seconds.
  • Undead now revives creeps with 60% of their health, up from 50%.
  • Temporal backtrack increased from 4 seconds to 5 seconds.
• Towers
  • Basic
    • Arrow damage increased from 30 / 90 to 35 / 105
    • Cannon damage increased from 35 / 105 to 45 / 135
    • Fire now switches per attack to the closest target, meaning its effect will cause much less wasted overkill damage.
    • Earth ability reverted back to 1.7. AoE reduced from 225/450 AoE to 150/300 AoE. Delay now takes a full second to occur.
    • Water damage increased from 55 / 385 / 2700 / 27000 to 60 / 420 / 3000 / 30000
    • Nature effect increased from 10% per creep to 15% per creep
    • Darkness damage increased from 300 / 2100 / 14700 / 147000 to 330 / 2300 / 16700 / 167000
  • Duals
    • Disease damage increased from 90 / 450 / 2250 to 100 / 500 / 2500
    • Electricity initial bounce range increased from 225 to 300
    • Flame damage & effect damage increased from 45 / 225 / 1125 to 50 / 250 / 1250
    • Geyser effect AoE increased from 250 to 300
    • Life Level 3 effect now only requires 2 kills per life, instead of 4 kills
    • Magic range reduction per attack is now 50, down from 75. Max stacks increased from 12 to 16. Its minimum range is now 700, up from 600.
    • Poison damage increased from 300 / 1500 / 7500 to 400 / 2000 / 10000
    • Atom damage increase per attack from 12% to 15%. However, max stacks capped at 13, down from 15.
    • Vapor secondary shockwave AoE reduced from 450 to 350. Damage and effect damage increased from 22 / 110 / 550 to 30 / 150 / 750
  • Triples
    • Incantation minimum effect increased from 5% / 15% to 6% / 18%
    • Polar effect reduced from 11% / 33% to 10% / 27%
    • Corrosion range increased from 700 to 900
    • Jinx range increased from 700 to 900
    • Muck range increased from 700 to 900
    • Flamethrower damage reduced from 600 / 3000 to 320 / 1600. Napalm damage increased from 100 / 500 to 160 / 800. Napalm AoE increased from 300 to 400
    • Flooding damage per second increased from 200 / 1000 to 220 / 1100
    • Gold effect increased from 30% / 40% to 35% / 50%, damage reduced from 5500 / 27500 to 5000 / 25000
    • Hail range increased from 1150 to 1500. Crit increased from x4 to x5. Damage reduced from 1000 / 5000 to 800 / 4000
    • Haste damage increased from 1000 / 5000 to 1600 / 8000. However, projectile speed reduced from 4000 to 900, and due to its overdrive, it can no longer be micro'd.
    • Impulse damage increased from 4000 / 20000 to 4400 / 22000
    • Obliteration damage increased from 1100 / 5500 to 1200 / 6000

 

Patch is live!

[Califax]

- WindStrike.. What does the 1.9 patch say about Hail's attack range?

- ITS OVER 1500!!!

- What?! 1500?! ... There is no way that can be right!

[WindStrike]

-WHAT 9000?!

 

Not sure what's better... uber Hail Tower... or overdrive Haste Tower. They're both epic now.

[GoatAss]

Finally we can feel powerful again

[Kon Roy]

 Thank you guys !

[DogBollocks]

Let the wrath of the tower take on those waves. Well, I guess the following patch will be balancing all the over powered tower in this version.

[WindStrike]

Sorry for the delayed release folks, there's a game breaking bug with random mode right now that's preventing us from releasing. Hopefully it'll be fixed by tonight and we can release!

[Kon Roy]

Take your time team, good things come to those who wait....

[WindStrike]

Patch is live!

[Iser]

woo

 

edit:  when you pick your first element, the element creep spawns.  this is before level 1.  is this intended?

 

edit2:  all our scores are the same.  

 

 

edit3:  when the game ends, the proper score shows.  

 

 

also, i still have not lost over 20-30 games with the following strat in regular 4-player mode in normal difficulty:

 

Edited June 10, 2016 by Iser

[WindStrike]

6 hours ago, Iser said:

when you pick your first element, the element creep spawns.  this is before level 1.  is this intended?

 

Definitely not intended, twill be patch fixed ASAP.

 

Twill check out ze score thingy as well.

 

 

6 hours ago, Iser said:

also, i still have not lost over 20-30 games with the following strat in regular 4-player mode in normal difficulty:

 

Not too surprising, most players out there in multiplayer are newer players, plus that's a genuinely strong strategy. Kinda surprised you don't sell the remaining impulse towers for Level 3 Vapors at the front, since Pure Natures pretty much outclass Level 2 Impulses in every way. Either way, kudos!

 

 

Also, predicting it now - I probably overbuffed Haste and be the new standard of speed killing everything, buuuut buffbatman mode says I don't care that much purely for the sake of overbuffing everything that sucked.

[Iser]

4 hours ago, WindStrike said:

Not too surprising, most players out there in multiplayer are newer players, plus that's a genuinely strong strategy. Kinda surprised you don't sell the remaining impulse towers for Level 3 Vapors at the front, since Pure Natures pretty much outclass Level 2 Impulses in every way. Either way, kudos!

 

Will try that out.  I usually don't like selling towers at all once I move onto elements.  I need to watch more replays and play with better players so I can learn more.  I also need to read up on the tower stats, and try to determine which towers give the highest DPS at certain positions.  

 

Quote

 

Also, predicting it now - I probably overbuffed Haste and be the new standard of speed killing everything, buuuut buffbatman mode says I don't care that much purely for the sake of overbuffing everything that sucked.

 

Aight, I will try that out after work today.  Which position is the best to place Haste towers on?  Will it be effective on position 7?  Edit:  just tried it out in sandbox mode real quick before work.  To me, it feels way way way weaker than Nature Towers + Well.  I might have to see someone's replay and learn the proper timing and placement.  

 

Thanks for everything.  EleTD is so so so awesome.  I was thinking about it while driving home yesterday.  EleTD interest system is a lot similar to how you approach your life.  You want to spend just enough money to get by, but save as much as you can so you benefit from it later.  It is really similar to retirement planning.  EleTD = Life Lessons.  Woo.  

Edited June 10, 2016 by Iser

[GoatAss]

Alright. I like the overall feel of 1.9 so far.

 

Earth feels better but I cannot do any definite feedback.

Faster game is good. 1sec is good in other words. Difficulty is good.

 

Scoring wise, ok you're right. While it's difficult to conclude the balance between frog-emphasis and speed-emphasis, which of the two being more imba... it does appear that both are equally important unlike previous version where theres too much emphasis on speed.

[WindStrike]

7 hours ago, Iser said:

Thanks for everything.  EleTD is so so so awesome.  I was thinking about it while driving home yesterday.  EleTD interest system is a lot similar to how you approach your life.  You want to spend just enough money to get by, but save as much as you can so you benefit from it later.  It is really similar to retirement planning.  EleTD = Life Lessons.  Woo.

 

Pretty much. Ironically, I'm actually not fond of the interest system personally, buuut I don't intend on getting rid of it either cause then everyone will rage at me and toss me death threats and whatnot.

 

3 hours ago, GoatAss said:

Scoring wise, ok you're right. While it's difficult to conclude the balance between frog-emphasis and speed-emphasis, which of the two being more imba... it does appear that both are equally important unlike previous version where theres too much emphasis on speed.

 

I think I fixed it more than previous patch... but I don't know. Should someone actually beat 5 or more frog waves, I get the feeling the balance will upturn on itself and I'll have to tweak it again.

 

 

Regarding haste, I'm still tweaking its balance, I know that late-game, it's about on par with various other towers, might actually still be a little weak by comparison, but early-midgame, you might be able to spam the level 1 version just because its DPS/Gold output is so ridiculously high, and because of value of wasted shots falls off from its slow projectile speed, it's arguably overpowered. I dunno, I haven't quite tried the spam tactic on it yet. Tweaking the balance on this tower is disturbingly hard. I seriously might need to break the consistency scaling to balance it.

[holepercent]

with short mode added, i might be tempted to play some classic as well for series now.

[Ursinnet]

Loving the hail towers more and more with each patch. 

[ye]

On 6/10/2016 at 9:58 AM, Iser said:

 

 

Aight, I will try that out after work today.  Which position is the best to place Haste towers on?  Will it be effective on position 7?  Edit:  just tried it out in sandbox mode real quick before work.  To me, it feels way way way weaker than Nature Towers + Well.  I might have to see someone's replay and learn the proper timing and placement.  

 

I have had huge successes with haste towers in early-mid game.  When it comes to actually placing them, I've wound up putting them in areas where they can only attack creeps for brief intervals before they go out of range.  That way, their damage is done to each creep rather than just tunneling a single creep, and they build up speed before entering the larger portion of the tower's range (see diagram below).  Coupled with the new geyser towers it works great.   Also, since haste towers always attack the closest unit, placing them in such a manner that they prioritize the unit furthest along in your base works well.  The red circles represent the haste towers and their "general" ranges.   I'm sure there are better locations, but these worked out well for me. The map I used is the map for flash element TD, so it's a bit different, but I hope the idea still gets across.  Ignore the white spots.

 

I built two geysers near the spawn and upgraded the second one to a haste tower if that helps you with regards to timing.  I always play with at least three random players so I'm forced to build close to the spawn, but maybe haste towers around position 2 would work well.

[WindStrike]

Personally, my favorite spots for Haste are on the far left of 4 or the lower section of 6, so they get a decent double-pass. I still gotta run some test builds of it for latest version though.

[Iser]

i've been so focused on trying to kill everything on the first pass, so i never explored the double pass positions. i'm going to start experimenting with them.  

[yoitzhiok]

WHAT. YOU BUFFED THE TOWERS I PEAKED TOP 100 WITH?

 

 

Gg. Not telling which ones. Brb climbing to number 1 in hard mode only.

 

On actual notes, I'm gonna be doing more number crunching in a few days, so keep your eyes peaked for updated tables and graphs. (I'll save the graphs as image files instead). Gonna see how how the water tower changes affect those % I wanted to show you.

 

Also, why nerf hail tower QQ. 20% chance to do 20k, 80% chance now to do 4k, resulting in a damage average decrease from 8k to 7.2k per attack.

 

Honestly though, the range increase is pretty blessed. Able to hit creeps from the spawn helps.

[yoitzhiok]

On 10/06/2016 at 5:28 PM, WindStrike said:

 

Pretty much. Ironically, I'm actually not fond of the interest system personally, buuut I don't intend on getting rid of it either cause then everyone will rage at me and toss me death threats and whatnot.

 

 

I think I fixed it more than previous patch... but I don't know. Should someone actually beat 5 or more frog waves, I get the feeling the balance will upturn on itself and I'll have to tweak it again.

 

 

Regarding haste, I'm still tweaking its balance, I know that late-game, it's about on par with various other towers, might actually still be a little weak by comparison, but early-midgame, you might be able to spam the level 1 version just because its DPS/Gold output is so ridiculously high, and because of value of wasted shots falls off from its slow projectile speed, it's arguably overpowered. I dunno, I haven't quite tried the spam tactic on it yet. Tweaking the balance on this tower is disturbingly hard. I seriously might need to break the consistency scaling to balance it.

Yo I told you. Decrease the max stack attacks, increase stack attack speeds. Your current formula cause 16 stacks to be slower than 15 stacks. THEN tweak from there.

 

Edit: wait. Now as I think about it, the value doesn't decrease. Like it kinda plateaus around 14.

 

Edit2: I'll plot a graph when I'm free.

[WindStrike]

You might wanna wait a bit on the graph, there's another patch coming up within the next day, it's not as big a balance patch, but an attempt to adjust a few things in particular...

 

 

Including, of course, Nature gettin' nerfed back down a bit.

 

 

Hail Tower is overall a buff. It deals less damage on a focused front, but way more damage in a spread, and overall is way more consistent.

[yoitzhiok]

16 minutes ago, WindStrike said:

You might wanna wait a bit on the graph, there's another patch coming up within the next day, it's not as big a balance patch, but an attempt to adjust a few things in particular...

 

 

Including, of course, Nature gettin' nerfed back down a bit.

 

 

Hail Tower is overall a buff. It deals less damage on a focused front, but way more damage in a spread, and overall is way more consistent.

Doesn't hail still do the same damage on crit? 4x 5000 = 5x 4000

 

Edit: oh wait I get it. Yeah but the ability used to hit the whole map anyways if placed in the center

[yoitzhiok]

Wait I just realised. Rush + haste + camp spawn = Probably best rush start there is, since there's no wind-up time

[WindStrike]

Yyyyep, which is exactly what I was worried about. Still surprised no one's done it yet for Express. Maybe because it kinda requires at least 2 of them to be reliable.