Best Anti-Air tower?

[åhboj]

Hey guys. Loving the game so far, think we all do!

Been wondering about what tower to get/focus upgrades on for anti-air. Any suggestions?

At the moment im using Air Guard but feels like it becoming weaker and weaker.

Is lightning tower maybe something to go for? Let me hear your thoughts.

Edit: Oh btw, does anyone know what special attribute/thing or whats is called the ghosts have? I looked in the enclopedia but can't find ghosts in there.

Regards
åhboj

[Honorable_D]

Hey, Lightning is great anti-air when the harpies are close enough together for it to chain, but, sometimes the harpies come out with a large enough gap that it can't chain - in that case the Air Guard is better. Lightning does do great against bats though. So, I'd have to say Lightning for bats and close harpies and for spread harpies you totally want the Toxic tower.

Ghosts move extra fast and are totally immune to stuns and slows.

[åhboj]

Hey. Will do some experimenting with the lightning to see if it's worth it or not. Will keep the air guard for now and see. Toxic tower I haven't seen yet I think. Is that a rare tower?

Ok thanks for info about the ghosts, thought they was immune.

[Manxome]

Lightning Tower is highly effective against just about everything; it hits both ground and air with no penalty, and as long as enemies are close enough for the lightning to arc it has better damage per prime-second than anything that's not highly specialized.

Toxic Tower is a "unique" (purple-border) tower. Only hits air, has a powerful DoT, but low rate of fire and no area damage. It's got amazing damage per prime-second IF it can get full effectiveness from the poison, and unlike the dragon tower it changes targets to spread the DoT around.

The thing to keep in mind regarding unique towers is that they're not substantially better than other towers _at a given level_, and they're more expensive to level, but they have a higher _maximum_ level. They only become impressive when you can afford to fuse them up to very high levels.

[Marbur]

The best anti-air tower is definitive air guard. It has the highest damage to a single flying enemy and splash effect for nearby enemies.
The great benefit of lighining tower is that there is no difference between air damage and ground damage.
The other tower with this benefit is sharp shooter. This tower is slow, but has the sceond best range and is ideal for bonus fields away from the path of the monsters.
Toxic tower is slow, but not bad. I don't use it, because there is a limit of towers you can take with you into battle.
As long as you don't have a full developed lighting tower you have to work with air guard and dragon (or prime cannon, stone).

[Marbur]

åhboj lähetti viestin:

Edit: Oh btw, does anyone know what special attribute/thing or whats is called the ghosts have? I looked in the enclopedia but can't find ghosts in there.

Ghosts can't be stunned or slowed down, you can read it in the english encyclopedia. Punisher gives you a nice bonus against ghosts but is outdated when you get dragon or prime cannon.

[Sirrus]

Depends on mission variables (monsters present, waves' sequence, map's layout, prime available), and difficulty you playing at.
To be honest, I'm not impressed with Toxic tower. It may look good on paper, but in missions I haven't noticed any advantages worthy of rare status and price. Same goes to Prime, and Toxic towers also. Sharpshooter is nice, but every so often it waste its shot on "nearly dead" enemies that could be destroyed by other towers in vicinity. Yeah, yeah, lack of unit cohesion. :)

But I digress. Lightning tower was the one that got me through majority of missions on Normal (that was a way before patch). Lightning really shines (no pun intended) when enemies are closely packed, practically begging to "summon next wave", to have more target s in the area. It usually pays for itself on Normal difficulty and still useful on Heroic. Even with invigorating jolt bug.

When I finished campaign for the first time, I haven't used AirGuard (because I have none:)). Later I found it and could upgrade it. It became quite useful on Heroic survival missions. Yes, it is not as effective against packs as Lightning, and has no anti-ground attack, but a) no invigorating jolt bug, b) twice cheaper, so you can place more of them along the way.

Stone tower was one of my favorites on Normal and I'm quite sad it's not that useful on Heroic. Can't explain why, but I like that tower beside characteristics.

Dragon tower, even after all nerfing, still can chew up pretty much anything thrown its way. Only pack/flock enemies (scarecrows, bats) can present problems due their "groupie":) nature. Depending on type of enemy, you can use either Mortar or AirGuard to deal with them. Such tactic is not flawless, because due lack of unit cohesion, Mortars tend to attack leading target, ignoring tightly groupped enemies where their shells would definitely inflict greater damage.

Generally speaking my "spherical in vacuum" deck consists of: Ice, Dragon, Accursed, Detector, Sun, Injector, Lightning. Some cards could be replaced with another, such as AirGuard, Mortar, or Energy. I've been experimenting with different combinations, but for me those seems to be most efficient.

[Marbur]

If they fix the bug with lighting the tower is going imba.

I've calculated the efektive Damage (damage in relation to firing rate) and then divided by prime costs. But in reality the towers behave differnt.
From prime you would expect more and from Sun and Mortar less.

[Sirrus]

Yeah, I did some calculations too (after all, I've found that in ME2/3 all people are just ~ 130cm tall, in Vancouver Sun rises at North, and Shepard can carry up to 150 kg of armament only:D). But according to actual playtesting, Prime towers are not that effective as mere AA. Of course, could be allmighty random for all I know.

[åhboj]

Thanks for the input everyone, good calcs and advices. Been trying out the lightning alot lately, and that thing chews up pretty much anything. Lightning + one or two air guards seems like a really good combo against any flyers.

[Detonator17]

the air guard has been the best for me

[Titan]

Air guard is nearly always the best, the DPS of DoT+ normal damge of toxic tower is at the same level of air guard, but no splash damge. Other towers are much lower DPS/price.

[Kelson]

Is that accruate? If so, then yeah that kinda makes the Toxic tower useless. I didn't really care much for Air Guard when I used it early on because I never seemed to get the benefit of the splash damage for banshees. Great for bats, though I'm sure. I tend to use Lightning tower these days, but love DoTs, so I keep hoping Toxic works out to be useful.

[Titan]

Yes. dps/price of Air Guard is 17.97, the range of Air Guard is 263, and dps(inlcude DoT and normal)/price is 18.65, the range of Toxic Tower is 225, but toxic can only attack single target, and the poison cannot transfer to other enemies. So the toxic tower is too weak. It is better to enhance the damge of toxic tower, or just add an toxic cloud effect of toxic tower.

Kelson lähetti viestin:

Is that accruate? If so, then yeah that kinda makes the Toxic tower useless. I didn't really care much for Air Guard when I used it early on because I never seemed to get the benefit of the splash damage for banshees. Great for bats, though I'm sure. I tend to use Lightning tower these days, but love DoTs, so I keep hoping Toxic works out to be useful.