Please let us shoot at marked pylons when fully charged

[FDru]

I feel it kind of defeats the purpose of using pylons when it is impossible to upgrade their damage unless an enemy walks through their firing range. Like firing a 17k damage shot at 100+ wave monsters is laughable. We should be able to upgrade their damage any time.

[Gulch]

I've never noticed that, what I have noticed about Pylons though, is if you have say.... a grade 11 gem and charge a pylon, the damage will be "X" amount, now if you mod that same gem with a bolt, the damage increases by a sh!t ton and stays there. Why? I don't know since i don't use Pylons that much,but I love the concept of them.

[DSJ and Co.]

Originally posted by Gulch:

I've never noticed that, what I have noticed about Pylons though, is if you have say.... a grade 11 gem and charge a pylon, the damage will be "X" amount, now if you mod that same gem with a bolt, the damage increases by a sh!t ton and stays there. Why? I don't know since i don't use Pylons that much,but I love the concept of them.

actually incredibly simple reasoning

pylon damage is based on the highest damage recieved (which also affects how it charges) bolt damage is +150% of the gems normal damage at base (feel free to correct me if i am wrong here, but i know it is a damage boost to some degree), thusly using bolt would lead to higher damage on pylons but in return would make it take a bit longer to charge

[Gulch]

Originally posted by DarkShadowJ: HEAVENLY MAAAAAAAAN:

Originally posted by Gulch:

I've never noticed that, what I have noticed about Pylons though, is if you have say.... a grade 11 gem and charge a pylon, the damage will be "X" amount, now if you mod that same gem with a bolt, the damage increases by a sh!t ton and stays there. Why? I don't know since i don't use Pylons that much,but I love the concept of them.

actually incredibly simple reasoning

pylon damage is based on the highest damage recieved (which also affects how it charges) bolt damage is +150% of the gems normal damage at base (feel free to correct me if i am wrong here, but i know it is a damage boost to some degree), thusly using bolt would lead to higher damage on pylons but in return would make it take a bit longer to charge

That makes sense, I was under the impression that Bolt/Beam/Barrage didn't affect pylons.
Good to know!

[Dragonmaster]

do note that the charge time of pylons is directly based on the incoming damage. The higher damage on the pylon, the higher damage on the gems hitting it will need to be to charge it.

Example: (note that values are not accurate)
A pylon with 100 damage takes 5 shots from a G1 gem with 20 damage. You also have a G4 gem that hit it for 100 damage and thus set the damage value of the pylon at 100. It will charge said pylon in 1 shot.
Now say you add bolt to your G4 gem and it also crits for 2x damage. So you just did 300 damage to the pylon.
New damage for pylon is set to 300. Your Grade 1 gems now need 15 shots to charge that pylon each time now and your G4 gem needs to hit it 3 times for the charge.

Its not always best to use bolt to bump the damage as your gems charging your pylon now take longer to charge it until you up their damage.
Its to prevent you from creating a lot of G1 gems to use them for pylon charging a high damage pylon.
The example above is if a pylon is 1 to 1 on damage for charge but I don't think anyone knows the exact charging mechanics yet.

[CPT Chthonbeard the Pirate]

Originally posted by DarkShadowJ: HEAVENLY MAAAAAAAAN:

Originally posted by Gulch:

I've never noticed that, what I have noticed about Pylons though, is if you have say.... a grade 11 gem and charge a pylon, the damage will be "X" amount, now if you mod that same gem with a bolt, the damage increases by a sh!t ton and stays there. Why? I don't know since i don't use Pylons that much,but I love the concept of them.

actually incredibly simple reasoning

pylon damage is based on the highest damage recieved (which also affects how it charges) bolt damage is +150% of the gems normal damage at base (feel free to correct me if i am wrong here, but i know it is a damage boost to some degree), thusly using bolt would lead to higher damage on pylons but in return would make it take a bit longer to charge

I was under the impression it was 1.1x base (110%) plus skill bonus.

Anyways, I'm starting to realize that if I'm going with a pylon setup, I should try to limit the damage of any one hit to avoid it taking too long to charge a pylon.

Yes, the damage it deals is about 10*x*(1.1+ Skill Multiplier), where X is the highest damage shot that has ever hit it. If you let a kill gem hit it, suddenly that will jump up a lot.

The problem is that you need to charge up 10*x worth of damage to get it to fire one shot every time after that, meaning that your weaker towers take forever charging it up.

This makes overkill a real issue with these towers, switching over from a kill gem setup to pylon setup. Care must be made to keep your kill gem from ever firing on your pylon or it will cause you issues. You'll be dealing massively more damage to each target than it takes to kill it, while you could have killed 2-10 targets with just tower shots in that time instead instead of just 1-4.