Bursters

[Rabid Squirrel]

It's annoying how much I have to micro manage my troops because there are exploding enemies with damn near infinite hp that 2-shot every unit in the game (INCLUDING THE HERO) and guess how many are usually spawned together at once? you bet, 2. so you'll have an army of 60 units and 8 healers pushing through an area, uncontested for a solid 5 minutes, you pan away to build yet another farm because your peasants keep complaining that they need food to survive, and 15.5 seconds later pan back over to 7 units and a stray healer that for some reason engaged a solo mob on the other side of the clearing from your army. In the higher difficulties of survival: EXACT money management is the only way you're going to win. That group that just got wiped out by 2 exploding units has now set you back just far enough that the amount of defense you can build up for the next wave will be just enough to stop all but 1 single crusher who will make it to your base and kill you.

Spawn the exploding ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ solo so it's a worrying hit but doesn't 2 shot your entire army, or lower their hp so they can at least be realistically contested when approaching. The only time I've been able to actually keep one single one away and kill it without micro managing someone booping the snoot was with 4 (FOUR) ballistas. popping a spicy balloon shouldn't take enough troops and siege engines to sack Constantinople.

[324]

Hey Rabid Squirrel

Thank you so much for taking the time to reach out about your experience regarding bursters and your detailed feedback, I'll share it with the team to investigate, appreciate your patience and passion for refining the experience.

Cheers!

[Vambran]

i doubt they will be removed from the game at this point , but they sure could use a nerf.

[Katitoff]

I'd rather deal with 100 bursters than 10 spitters, unless you have range upgraded arbalists/hunters, spitters are just infinite micro tax that makes it impossible to even use melee nearby, you are just forced to kite, or leave all your melee behind and kite with hero while ranged kill them.

[Buntkreuz]

I agree. The typical burster design is that they deal a lot of AoE damage up close but squishy as hell.
But this burster design deals a ton of AoE damage but is also insanely tanky.
I think they should drastically reduce their HP.

Regarding the Spitters, i agree too. They are ever awful to deal with no matter your unit composition or strengths.
I would say a good balance change could be that they cant shoot at targets too close to them AND dont deal that much damage to structures.
I'd say they are the strongest enemy in the game and that includes Crushers.
Late game they tend to not be much of a problem in waves because you can focus fire on them, but its still not a well designed enemy unit.

I understand its hard to design fun enemies that feel balanced, but for these two they missed the mark.
I'd rather see a smaller tanky enemy that sits between the Axeman and the Crusher.
Personally i think that its more fun to fight the typical nightmare masses and they could simply have more different versions with different strengths and "tiers", like faster ones, ones that can climb walls, twin headed ones with double attack speed etc.
Spam them in large numbers and its more fun than Spitters clipping inside 1000 enemies.

[Trevor Drakenor]

Burster can tank 15 shots from impaler as well, which is ridiculous. Why is something that blows up the way they do, also have huge amount of armor? Sure you can, lure them into pre-detonation, but you ain't going to do that effectively in a wave.

Imagine that, how much arbalest and reinforced balista do you need just to kill 1 burster in large wave if impaler took 15 to kill one? what happens when the Giant appears, they would be too distracted by that giant to kill burster.

You would have to constantly, order every tower and siege to focus down on the burster, lets be honest there, I dont think your average player can even micro and precision apm like that, on 5 different fronts. More so if you dont play with pause like I do. "No pause"

[Crypto Gamer]

Yeah bursters got tankier in 0.8 version.
Tier 3 used to be 200 hp got buffed to 250hp 125 armor.

Unless changed in last few patches they also have 50% health dmg reduction againts projectiles.(almost anything ranged,flamer,grand below count as melee dmg).

So they are very very tanky still mass impalers can knockback kill them but it takes a while.

If they lose all hp while they are burning or fire dmg kills them they will do fire explosion that deals fire dmg to nearby nightmares and can also set off chain explosions among bursters.

In a wave you have to kill them before they reach your walls as they deal big % bonus dmg to walls unless changed tier 3 burster is 900 dmg and 50 armor shred to a building......

Pikemen could also counter burster but with knockback % nerf not sure if it is still viable in post pikemen nerf game.