[Tower] Super Easy Trickery Solution?

[Karawasa]

Was reading through some tower ability suggestions on the forums and came across an idea I felt had potential.

Spirit Link

Basically the ability would link up X creeps and whenever one of them takes damage a % of that damage is dealt to the other creeps.

[Twilice]

Sounds like the dota spell.

But it might have potentional. I like it.

It would be suprisingly good with splash.

But it should spirit link about 4 I think its a good number.

But I don't got any ideas on the damage the other linked creeps will take.

[Karawasa]

Sounds like the dota spell.

You mean Warlock's spell? This time no credit is due for DotA, Spirit Link is a ladder spell .

[holepercent]

although as the 3rd super dual, this doesn't balance with well and smith...

i feel it would work better with strong single-targetters though. deal a large damage to a primary target and the linked creeps will take a % of that large damage dealt.. something like bounce damage..

[jolin012]

First of all, I don't like that this 3rd superdual targets creeps and not towers. That Does matter, cause for duals, that're meant to target tower, favorslongrange a little bit, while those who cast on the creeps on ground fails really to cooperate with longrange. (nova for example, you need 6 of it to slow the entire area that a longrange tower attacks on. 2novas are enough to slow a regular 2pass placement. Also this tower doen't make killing bosses any easier. aka, if you have this instead of well or smith you'll fail on bosses..

Super Easy? Might sound like it at first, but I doubt it's easy to make it work with all the complicated spells and such.

Let me list the first I come to think of.

Electricity, Does every bounce deal out aditional damage to a nearby creep?

Drowning, Will it spread the instantkill or chance or?

Kindle, Will it spread damage every seconds?

Spells/Effects overall? Like Windstorm, will the damage be forwarded? It's not meant to with storm imo(that a dual can buff it), but for example Ice that is currently a damagetower (also needs to go imo but that's another story and perhaps another version of the map heh)

Ideas are good, but to be really honest, cause, to speak clearly (might sound abit harsh) I don't want another (rather wasted) trickery betatested when I feel like I know it won't work...

[Cisz]

Although I really apreciate any good new ideas (and this is one), I sadly have to agree with jolin012. Basically targeting creeps imo means, that we will have the trickery problems all over again. That is, the tower would work totally different, react in other ways to your build, and will, in general, not give, say, +25% dmg/gold/sec to 4 towers on tier one.

[Kaini]

I think this idea has potential but there have to be some restrictions.

Only one unit sould get cursed and deaJs damage when it gets damage in a defined radius.

That suppords singletarget towers and solves jolins problems (except the Drowning...)

[jolin012]

Even though you can solve the problems on some specific towers, it's allready a basic mistake to make a dual that targets curses Creeps instead of buffs towers.

As I mentioned a Dual should favor longrange as much as shortrange, ie, it can not target creeps cause that makes it only work in a small area, a 2pass or longpass, something for a shortrange tower.

The number of duals built should be dependant on how many towers you have, and favor fewer strong towers. While this one targets creeps it is dependant on creepwave's length instead..

while the spells of smith&well lasts 60 seconds it has never really been possible to use them in random mode if you're selling rebuilding damagetowers every wave. another one of the differances between cursers(triples) and buffers(duals) that makes trickery wouldbe the only dual to work with selling/rebuilding between waves.

[Twilice]

You are all so boring with your Ele td sience stuff

What if it worked sort of exactly like the one in ladder games??

[Karawasa]

The dispersion idea (fraction of damage dealt in AoE around creep) mentioned a few posts above might also have potential. I'd like to point out that the Spirit Link would be modified in one way from the ladder one. Normally a fraction of the damage a target receives is spread over the other creeps. Instead, this fraction could be dealt to each of the creeps. Thus, it would work to amplify damage. Here is how I analyze both of them:

Modified Spirit Link:

-Transforms single target tower into bounce attack (essentially)

-Reduces or eliminates overkill

-Amplifies AoE damage

Dispersion:

-Transforms single target tower into splash attack (essentially)

-Reduces or eliminates overkill

-Increases the radius of AoE damage (if a unit on the outskirts of the tower's attack is damaged it will spread it further than normally would be via the dispersion)

Not sure about the target creep vs. target tower idea. If the net result is similar to the other duals, then it should be fine. However, always open to more ideas .

[holepercent]

Not sure about the target creep vs. target tower idea. If the net result is similar to the other duals, then it should be fine.

This is a fundemental game balance issue. The 3 superduals should function in similar ways, have a similar effect in 25%/50%/100% boosts , a 15sec cd and 60sec effect time. Therefore, a speed increase (well), damage increase (smith) and a effect (new trickery). All 3 should have similar concepts and function essentially the same way. Since well and smith targets towers, this new trickery should also target towers. I would go with jolin012's trickery ideas found in http://www.eletd.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=953.

i see potential in both ideas but i'll rather they be used for other towers.. perhaps for jinx as a damage tower?

[jolin012]

Yep that's exactly what I mean hole,

(To take longrange issue for example: )and a "net result similar" is not enough I think. As if longrange towers cannot be used effectively in a build that has this trickery as it's dual.

[Karawasa]

If we use that logic, then there is a way to make the current Trickery work. The new dual support numbers would be 25/50/200%. Now imagine if we made Trickery able to keep a duplicate out all the time (60 sec duration, 60 sec CD), that would result in a 100% increase in damage. Using that principle we can adjust the duration and CD ratio to match the support percentages needed.

Level:

1. 15 sec duration, 60 sec CD (25% damage increase)

2. 30 sec duration, 60 sec CD (50% damage increase)

3. 30 sec duration, 15 sec CD (200% damage increase)

This way there would need to be no value restrictions. A level 1 Trickery could duplicate a Periodic. The damage amplification would be burst instead of spread out, but the net result should be similar given the standard wave lifespan.

You might object and say that this effect could be stacked unlike Well and Blacksmith. There is, however, a solution to this. When a tower is targeted by the spell, it can receive a buff that lasts (60/60/30). A unit with this buff cannot be duplicated.

[jolin012]

That makes it alot better, but still not good enough for me, cause I'm abit picky with this tower .

sorry that I have to disagree again..

This tower would be alot more playable in random than smith and well, cause it can rebuild between waves and rebuild the damage towers, unlike fired up towers, cause they lose the 60sec buff. This trickery would also lose the 60sec cooldown when rebuilding, but if that is prevented by a starting cooldown the earlier mentioned problem would be worse I fear.

I guess this tower still needs manual targeting... one by one... that's another major problem :/

A rather minor problem would be the location of this tower, that the buff has the location of the trickery and not of the damagetower. so - either in the situation where I have like 3 towers i want my trickery to buff and they all need different placement, say one tidal (center 5) one flame (corner 4) and one zealout (lower 4 right of flame) I want them all to get their buff where =they= need it. another problem would be that kindle tidal and all those towers need to be on a placement that is limited. and if I use this trickery as my boost, there's nowhere to place my trickeries as the only good spaces are taken by the real towers.

One more problem is towers like flesh golem that charge up. Their boost helps them charge up faster. All boosts, except this one.

I guess this trickery solution of mine wouldn't fail at any point so - I dunno what's wrong with it if it isn't cause it seems too hard to code, but I doubt that, seems easier to code imo, although I know nothing about that to be honest.

[Cisz]

Oh, interesting. So the old copy idea could work?

You would need to keep all copies and all allready copied towers from beein copied again, and voila. Very interesting. Let's hear jolin about that.

Edit 001 - ok, that's jolin.

Edit 002 - I see a problem here: What if I combine, say, well and trickery. If well boosts the copies themselves, that would be a waste of mana. The perfect sollution would ofc be that only the original towers can be boosted, but that they transfer their boost status to the copies (spirit link?). So if I speed up a tower that has been copied with well, the copy should get faster too.

[jolin012]

Still - I'm not really understanding how the tower should really work out balanced to smith&well.

If you use the tier 3 trickery with towers of it's own cost, (maxed duals or triples or non pure singles) they can max spread out a 100% boost, the same as it's own price, by staying cloned at all times. That doesn't even cover up for it's own cost! (it costs 6000g and it stays as a clone that would not cost more as an original)

While a well or smith tower can, if as you say, changed to spread 200% each over like 4 or 5 towers, reach around 1000%.

[Cisz]

As I understand it, trickery can copy 4 towers for 1/4 of the time on level 1 (+25% for 4 towers), 4 for 1/2 of the time on level 2 and 8 towers all the time on level 3.

But you would need 8 towers to copy.

So I suggest:

Trickery with 15secs cooldown copy spell

Level 1: Copies last 15 secs each, with a 60sec "dont copy me again"-marker

Level 2: Copies last 30 secs each, with a 60sec "dont copy me again"-marker

Level 3: Copies last 120 secs each, with a 60sec "dont copy me again"-marker

So on level 3 you could copy the same tower again, while the first copy is still there, giving you 8 copies of 4 towers.

(Just as a reminder: The copies will be placed as close to the copied tower as possible.)

[jolin012]

getting closer... I take for granted that by clone placement you mean that they shall be placed as close to target as possible.

Let me sugguest that clones are born with a "25% damage only" effect (aka a negative version of fire up, don't worry about for example corrosion getting full effect, cause trickery tower shouldn't be able to target those that smith can't buff) instead of having the "don't touch me marker last longer than the clones, because that solves one of the problems that would appear in random. let me explain:

You could build 5 damage towers for 6k each an 5 trickeries tier 1 for 500 each. on first pass of the lane, clone all of the towers, each with one trickery tower, having twice as many damage towers on the first pass (aka 100% boost). on the second pass no boost is needed, there're rairily any survivors left. before next wave comes, you can rebuild your towers for some interest and for getting some new nice element as for damage. That rebuild and the 100% boost on first pass would never be available on random with smith, well or the way I just mentioned. rather the opposite, they would lose their 60sec buffs during the rebuild.

[Cisz]

Ahh - but jolin..

That is an rnd strat, and rnd is either samerandom or unballanced anyway. I consider the "sell dmg for %" solved. Right?

[Karawasa]

Cisz thanks for pointing out the multiple towers thing. I was thinking of current Trickery where it becomes the tower. For balance reasons though, you're right to say that it needs to actually create towers instead of becoming them.

[jolin012]

Nice idea, we can work on it and I'm willing to accept it in coming beta ..

...although I must say it does seem familiar in my eyes....

[Cisz]

Hey, coming from you that's allmost enthusiastic.

[holepercent]

well.. we have a trickery that is close to agreeable by all of us.. although that took a long time and several failed attempts to fixing the tower.. and karawasa taking so long to follow through with jolin012's ideas..