How do people do high end Torment stuff?

[Douchebag Extraordinaire]

Barely passed T3 and in T4, can't, for the life of me, even get past the second area, even with optimal card deals.

How are people actually thriving through these higher end Torments?

I usually start off with Sunder and Repentants because they hit multiple stuff at once but there's just not enough damage.

[psychotron]

you gotta get more damage. Sharp and Builder give +30% tower damage. Living shadow gives +1 projectiles which is basically x2 tower damage on the first play.

Don't play a card that doesnt give you damage, and dont play a card that isnt purple or gold or sharp or builder. Once you have +400% damage, or so, you can start to round out your build with tower range and area and stuff.

Reroll everything you get and you will have a gold card on turn 2. If its a good gold card then you will win the whole game. If its a bad gold card you will die on the second area.

[LazärheaD]

If it was easily doable, you would complain like the rest of em lost souls.

[Douchebag Extraordinaire]

Originally posted by psychotron:

you gotta get more damage. Sharp and Builder give +30% tower damage. Living shadow gives +1 projectiles which is basically x2 tower damage on the first play.

Don't play a card that doesnt give you damage, and dont play a card that isnt purple or gold or sharp or builder. Once you have +400% damage, or so, you can start to round out your build with tower range and area and stuff.

Yeah, the tower damage really helped a lot.

Got a Nuke card early and rolled it a few times and used Judgement instead of Sunder for high damage. Ended up clearing both T3 and 4 with that strategy. Eventually settled into a bunch of Judgements, Dark Marker, and an Unholy Pulse Tower that cleared screens of enemies in the later stages.

[roehcai]

I found the gambling cards sorta essentially for surviving the early stages, getting a bunch of lvl 5 towers with a few stacks of +100% damage. You sort of have to be a little lucky to get these cards and also not get bad results though. I believe there's 'cheat' mechanic with the luck spinner where you can click to push the needle a little further than it would go normally, and the boost seems to be more the earlier you press it. (To be honest it's a little difficult to tell if it's effecting it or just speeding up the animation).

You know about the crit + Unholy pulse, which is handy, especially if you can get the gold Natural 20. (While unholy seems to be best key towers, it's good to have a bit of holy and/or hellfire mixed in due to the random resistances in higher Torments).

Another trick that saved me on Torment 5 is the Blighted Blood card and Dark Marker towers (At least 2 Dark Markers if you can), and the Dark Mark curse active power as a bonus. With high attack speed, this seems to mow down even high HP enemies since it's based on percentage of max hp.

[Blinkstar]

I have been having decent success with Unholy MG + Dark Mark Tower (or whatever it is called) for the initial setup. Unholy MG does not seem to do a lot of damage, but the base attack rate appears to be very high, so it provides good single target burn. The tower that throws out dark marks does low damage, but healing is more than worth the trade off.

Then I follow this priority order, for the most part, when playing and choosing cards. What the exact choice is depends upon how well enemies are controlled and what will have the most impact on controlling them or survival.

Anything else is sub-optimal because more is always better.

• +Projectile / Projectile Penetration
  
• Trinity (only if you have all 3 damage types)
  
• Fill empty structure slot > structure upgrade
  
• Activated cards* (I usually set them on auto-cast)

Best enhancement cards.

• +Global Damage > +Tower/Garrison Damage
  
• +AtK Speed
  
• +AOE size
  
• +Recharge Rate

If you have resources to spend.

• +Range
  
• +HP from Dark Mark.
  
• +Healing from dealing damage.
  
• Choosing / digging for higher tier cards.

A couple notes on towers, since I never bother with garrisons.

• Having a Sin Spotter tower is always a good idea. It gets modified by everything, it is a projectile, and a targeted AOE.
  
• Holy Wind has a knockback effect and it is really useful to spread things out a bit.
  
• Dark Pike and Sunder are good for large area AOE damage.
  
• Holy lightning is good once you have a high attack rate, otherwise it is too slow.
  
• Saw is fun, but slow since it has to go back to the tower before redeploying.
  
• The Hellfire Rockets are okay, but they seem really inefficient.
  
• The 360 Knockback tower is quite possibly the 2nd worse tower in the game.
  
• Unholy Flail is a joke, don't use it.

*Unless you are in a really good place with shield buildup / self heal ignore Snowball.

**EDIT**
The damage resistance from Torment III onward does not matter.

[psychotron]

Originally posted by Blinkstar:

A couple notes on towers, since I never bother with garrisons.

• Unholy Flail is a joke, don't use it.

90% of my successful Torment 5 games start with Judgement (flail) lol. Especially useful with John Fenriz you can have 6-8 instakill flails by round 2 or 12-16 with a lucky +projectiles.

All your tips are excellent though no shade

[Shadowzyx]

Did you manage to do it ?

I would gladly follow all of your advices but the fact is i do not have enough AoE by stage 3, judgement is nice but it doesn't AoE, unless you all managed to get 5 piercing early on ?

[psychotron]

never used piercing with judgement actually

[Shadowzyx]

How do you get enough AoE then ?

[psychotron]

From the other starting tower. I start great cleanser then switch to Dark Marker or Sine Sprayer ASAP

[Shadowzyx]

I tried but building a great cleanser takes time, and I don't seem to be able to get enough damage and AoE before I die

[Shadowzyx]

Hell, even if I want to get a great cleanser, the only way I can get past stage 2 is by combining my first cards into a random lvl 5 and hope it's a good one, if I don't do that I don't even pass stage 2

[Shadowzyx]

I finally did it

For those who'd like to attempt it, you don't need any particular strat, only luck (like, real life luck, not the stat lol)

Just get a lvl 5 tower ASAP and pray for it to be a good one, and then build for it. But basically without a good lvl 5 tower you can't even pass stage 2. I got carried by a divine light in the beginning.

[psychotron]

Originally posted by Shadowzyx:

Hell, even if I want to get a great cleanser, the only way I can get past stage 2 is by combining my first cards into a random lvl 5 and hope it's a good one, if I don't do that I don't even pass stage 2

yeah. thats the method. reroll everything. you get a tier 5 gold card on turn 2. You know by turn 2 whether you win the game or not

[roehcai]

I didn't have gold by turn two, but 2 purples and a blue (IIRC). But I had like +700% tower damage due to the gamble card of "+100% structure damage vs destroying all structures." (Nuke I think)
From there there I used the Blighted Blood + Dark Markers trick, and over time upgraded and threw in some unholy crit + Unholy Pulse.