what is the strength of mages?

[Garzec]

Hey guys,
the squire is spamming harpoon towers, the huntress is good at dealing player dps and the monk manages buffs.

What about mages? Are some towers better than harpoon towers?

[Im on EQOA Sandstorm Toons Below]

witht he mage you need to remember to use the monk aura that removes elemental resistance, or the mage's own barriers provide the cheapest walls and those atatcking those barriers are stripped of elemental resistance. After that, it is nice having a flame tower for a flexible aim with a good bit of splash damage, and the lightning tower looks cool, can stun for a split second and and can also chain for some area damage too.

The sniper tower from the apprentice, seems like it's a shorter range than I remember from the first game. It may be they shortened it a little bit, but much of that might also be from my having made a tower focused apprentice in the original game and having a lot of range extension from it. but it's great for hitting things like ogres, or when you have a smaller number of things flying in a stage. Not too good when there's a Lot of flying creatures though since those sniper towers cost 7 DU a pop iirc. Might be 8, haven't played for a bit waiting on the full release currently. In those cases the flame towers are cheaper, deals plash against ground units, and cans till tag flying creatures along with having a faster rate of fire. the deadly sniper tower has no element though, so if anything comes along with elemental resistance to fire and is flying they will be great against those even enmasse as long as you have enough range statted up along with tower attack rate.

The apprentice has a lot to offer, and int he first game his towers were my favorite. I still favor him in this version as well. Although, int his version I haven't used the squire's towers as much to supplement the apprentice as I did int he original game. I make more frequent use of the monk's auras in this one though, especially slow and enrage and with points leftover maybe at a choke point also strip elemental resistance with an aura. I never used traps too often in the first game nor this one, since I dislike the maintenance on them.

Int he first game though once I had a great huntress weapon I specced one out for total pure dps and used her to fight the waves. lacking that so far in this one, I use the apprentice with rods with spread fire (think a wave of many shots like contra's spread weapon) and while I spec the apprentice for towers he does adequate damage if you level upt he rods alittle and hold onto em until you get the next one like that which would be an upgrade to it. Also, his alternate attack is a nice aoe and his ultimate is a sweet one even with a tower strength spec but you have to learn it's charge timing or else you could end up dying. The apprentice has always been my favorite class in the original and this version. He reminds me of Orco from He-Man, and I love his towers. I tend to name my apprentice character Orco actually.

[Heruwulf]

From what I've seen the current meta revolves around huntress traps, monk auras backed up by squire walls with apprentice DSTs in the middle covering most of the map.

The only underappreciated character as I see it is the squire.
He has no extra HP compared to other heroes, he has nowhere near enough dps to justify being melee, his only use is really dumping fortification health and using him as a shield potentially.

Heroes you want to use after your map build is complete are huntress for dps and monk for DST boosting.

You could run apprentice as a dps potentially, but is more risky if you want to squeeze out the most dps out of him due to needing to be closer to a target.

Edit: DST = Deadly Striker Tower (apprentice sniper tower)

[Im on EQOA Sandstorm Toons Below]

Originally posted by Chlodulf:

From what I've seen the current meta revolves around huntress traps, monk auras backed up by squire walls with apprentice DSTs in the middle covering most of the map.

The only underappreciated character as I see it is the squire.
He has no extra HP compared to other heroes, he has nowhere near enough dps to justify being melee, his only use is really dumping fortification health and using him as a shield potentially.

Heroes you want to use after your map build is complete are huntress for dps and monk for DST boosting.

You could run apprentice as a dps potentially, but is more risky if you want to squeeze out the most dps out of him due to needing to be closer to a target.

Edit: DST = Deadly Striker Tower (apprentice sniper tower)

Interesting, I played the first game as well as this one alone. So this sounds pretty interesting to me.

[Benilith]

Squire goes in the bin, mage for towers, monk for auras, huntress for dps

[dizzydiana]

There are some targetting issues with harpoons as well as bowling balls not seeming to work as they did in the first game which leaves the squire mostly as your main waller. The apprentice towers especially the DST just do more damage with better range and attack rate so most end game builds rely on Apprentice towers to deal the bulk of the damage. The huntress' gas trap is almost mandatory in Nightmare currently and usually accompanied by an explosive trap at every wall/spawn. Monk auras are widely used especially the Strength drain to both remove elemental resistances and reducing the damage to walls. If they fix issues with harpoons we may see more variety than present, but time will tell.

[drchrisms]

The best perk of DST isn't its range and it's damage. It's the ability to pass through walls. Well, for me that's its best perk.

[Garzec]

sorry to reopen this but I have an apprentice on lvl 20 know and tested out the deadly strike towers. Yes the are nice but they have a really low attack speed, no? And they are not piercing so they only hit one target. Harpoons are faster and hit multiple targets.

So is the attack speed on lvl 100 with legendary gear high enough for these towers?

[Database]

During EA, the Lightning towers got a major buff. I found I enjoy using them a lot more than the Monks Electric Aura. Paired up the the Huntresses gas traps, you can pump out a pretty good amount of DPS.

[dmitroys]

Originally posted by Garzec:

sorry to reopen this but I have an apprentice on lvl 20 know and tested out the deadly strike towers. Yes the are nice but they have a really low attack speed, no? And they are not piercing so they only hit one target. Harpoons are faster and hit multiple targets.

So is the attack speed on lvl 100 with legendary gear high enough for these towers?

at lvl 100 with NM promenade solo items upgraded to max (337) and range up to 1500 (or slightly less) DSts shoot once per second or faster and can reach the opposite side of the map (promenade).

[Heruwulf]

Originally posted by Garzec:

sorry to reopen this but I have an apprentice on lvl 20 know and tested out the deadly strike towers. Yes the are nice but they have a really low attack speed, no? And they are not piercing so they only hit one target. Harpoons are faster and hit multiple targets.

So is the attack speed on lvl 100 with legendary gear high enough for these towers?

For the DU it uses, DST has almost always better dps than a harpoon tower. While being able to shoot only one target, they make up for it by having huge range and the shots go through walls.

DST are nice vs high hp targets, harpoons are good for many low hp units (up to orks) on a straight lane.