[item idea] The useless machine

Text: Somebody forgot to change the battery and it wont flip the switch back on. Rarity: Unique Effect: Do it yourself -80% Experience Sets your tower base damage to 1. Would be nice to have a unique card for balancing out your damage when you are getting into the 400+ and bonus rounds and just multicrit dabbling isnt enough to keep the creep flow where you want too. The penalty should be that it doesnt level or leveling slower atleast while using it. Should be unique and drop quite late I think. Dont know about balancing or if its a good idea, but Ive wanted something like it oh so many times :)

Okay, so you want a card to make a tower "useless"? More or less to compliment the pumpkin? I mean like you state it, the tower gets a 1 basedamage and nearly no experience... What was the purpose for your idea and is that really what you mean? Since you said for 400+ ;) it seems kind of... strange. I could understand, that early on you want your supportive towers only actively hitting enemys on boss rounds and challange rounds. But after wave 400, the damage a beaver or even a muli without items/pots can do is... nearly non existant. So i at least dont really see a use for that card, but you can awlays enlighten me =)

Yeah, I'm not entirely certain what its purpose would be. If I find I have an old Carry that's killing before my new Carry can, I'd just change the old carry in to a support, or sell it...

Yes basically thats what I want, I first thought about a pumpkin equiviant for crit, but seeing as crit is a much "rarer" value than speed it couldnt be -100% crit and if it was something less like -25% crit it would be completly useless. The pumpkins gets useless sometime around wave 100, and honestly I dont use them very often at all. So I tried to come up with something more original and unique for damage control. The thought was close to no damage, but since the tower can still do onhit stuff with full speed (like the ripper or shadow), there should maybe be a leveling penalty atleast? Its basicly a card for your 2nd carry in my head, but then again, players usually find all kinds of clever ways to use a card for something completly different than it was intended. I originally wanted to call it "The dud", but it was a bit too close to the white russian bowling ball he is working on :) Its a fun card tho...I love the useless machine...i still want one :)

I guess I could almost see it for a Shadow or Ripper, but honestly, I usally just load up my non-dominant one with four Magic Mushrooms if I want the Proc without it killing.

Ah well, now at least i can see where you want to go with your idea. Where is the benefit to your idea vs 4 mushrooms and alike? Okay, you have got a Holgar in the back for mead production and a shadow/ripper in the front. So you want your Holgar to get the kills, while your front tower is stacking up. For this you would have to push the Holgar with potions, while the front tower have to stay low (farming stacks, but no potions). In the end the front tower will be next to useless. With your item (Lets say, you have lucky pants, a 7-league boots, new item and wedding ring) on your stack-farming tower, it would deal enxt to no damage, due to the 1 basedamage from your item, while still gettin LOADS of stacks. I start to like the item idea now ;) since you have put more thought in it then i did ;) And now the most hated word comes: ------ BUT ----- This item is once more an item that only benefits the unlimited stacking towers, or to name it: Primary Shadow and now the Ripper too. With such an item, you would let a low range and high dps tower (First Holgar, later proably Dark Forge or somethin in that direction) in the back farm for 500 waves, then remove the Seelenreißer and stuff from it, put it on your shadow/ripper which farmed probably 20 times the amount of stacks it normally would have (Lets face, you have to feed a few potions early/mid if you want a shadow/ripper to carry, so he will start one/two shot enemys, reducing the total amount of stacks), since the enemys do not die while he is in attacking range. I like the concept, but in the end of the day it is just 2 towers which really benefit from it. I mean, if you play Scarface+Black Widow, it does not really matter who takes the kills as long as its the one with the Seelenreißer. This would make the Darkness Deck played even more and even more powerful. It already is the most powerful deck due to the ulimited-stacking crap right now. With your items, the potency of the towers will easy get multiplied by 20 or more. (how many stacks could shadow farm with MR and probably 2 Elvis well placed, if the enemys would not die after 5-10 hits?! i mean in my experience you make like 100%+ right now. With your items how many hits could your shadow make? 50?100? more? if we just take 3 Adapts avarage...) Well, now i've stated my concern XD and it went from "seems useless" to "seems only to buff a certain tower" ^^ *Edit: Of course i dont mean a level 5 shadow ;) on wave 8. I am talking of wave 100 or around that.

Yeah it would have been a pretty powerfull card, even tho it looks quite useless, which is kinda the point and why I wanted it unique and have some penalty. I can however only see it beeing truly usefull on 500 wave bonus round runs, as there allready are better options for 200 wave runs. 200 waves I think I got pretty much control on atm, its just a matter of random luck to do it better...and patience ofcourse. On 500 waves I can usually control my 2nd carry quite good by using last trains (keep crit low) first and frozen hearts (keep multicrit at 1) later on, but around 350 it starts to get a bit sketchy if I dont want to waste too many potions without using rings on both carries. I am struggling to find ways of doing it better tho, but obviously players like TheMarine has figured out something I havent yet with 100000 seconds bonus runs, so there is ofcourse a way :) When it comes to only usefull for a certain amount of towers, I actually agree and Ive tried to think up ways it could be usefull for other stuff than shadow or ripper, but Ive fallen short so far.

The problem is indeed the difference between 200 and 500 wave matches. It does seem pretty balanced for the 200 waves (now probably for the 300 waves, due to decreased dropchance) But lets just take the shadow from Marine. the lost adapt had about 4000%, which means a whooping times 40 damage. the others had times 50 and 60 i think. Seelenreißer gives 2500% damage (extremely low number here, most will have way more when they hit 500 and start the bonus rounds i think) Did not really play the ripper to be honest, but i guess he will crit like a stupid beast if played properly, expecially in combination with Abyss and Knux. Ever tried to play all races on golden grounds? The island on top, place a central iron man and then 4 shadows around it. Give the speed set (impatience) to all but your main carry. Place Abyss and Knux to the front, so they farm the mass waves. Then place a manitou and feed all of the friggn fists to iron man. Yeah the crit damage is crap on all but the 2 you feed potions too, BUT you gain good cc amounts and damage values even for your gimmik Shadows there, dealing decent damage. Then give the time warp set (cactus, mummy bandage etc) to your iron man and voila, high time guarantee. If you find enough Cauldrons, you could swap impatience wrath against some frozen set items (give a bit more critical damage) or simply wolf pelts. even the tiny 20% will have a huge impact (especially if you have the unlucky pants on iron man and the Knight as hero, which gives 2 MC). The problem is, the game is NOT balanced for 500 waves properly. the main balance focus is on 200 waves. And if you balance items/towers whatever for one, the other gets unbalanced because the needs are so different. One way would be to simply cap the stacks to wavelevel *5 or somethin like that. So it still could gain stacks on bonus rounds. But then they wouldnt be used anymore, since its much more valuable to get your meadfarm running But im just rambling away, about the issue and hard parts of balancing stuff XD I'm still frustrated about my wc3 maps XD whatever you do, whatever you balance it does break something else...

For what its worth, I would argue Darkness deck is second best for Short games (200-300 rounds), and barely the best at long games (400-500). Wolf Pack with Balu is far and away superior to Darkness for the shorter games. That said, I wouldn't fret over the balance concerns, like I said, typically Magic Mushrooms already do this job as is. Load up four of them on a tower, and you already get -80% damage (Which often brings the damage down so low as to be irrelevant) along with the crazy useful speed bonuses (Allowing for way more Procs) without the negative to experience. Just my own take though, my favourite towers usually use an on-hit effect, so less damage with more speed is a much better tradeoff in my eyes.

Hey Romeo, I think you still do miss the the impact of this Card ^^ like i did at first. The point is you use your Tower as main/secondary Card with the purpose of killing stuff. The thing is, you have your Holgar (or whatever) in the back, farming meads, drinking potion and killing everthing. But in the front there is a tower, with full potion effects (wedding rings), but barely deals damage, while hitting like crazy and farming his stacks up. On a mass Challange the enemys dont die after 5 hits, no the shadow can hit with MR equipped all he can, while dealing no damage and getting stack after stack after stack. But not only on them. On EVERY wave. A normal Mass Wave normally dies in a few hits. 2-3 maybe or a single hit, depending on the current stats. But now, with that item, he can dish out 30 hits or 50 or 100 if they stay in range. A Ripper can crit all he wants, a extremely slowed boss (frozen set slow, Gib and Elivs and of course a warp from the Withered Set), can crit for 2 min on the same boss, dealing no damage but farming an incredible amount of stacks, since the base damage is always one. And as soon as Holgar is in range, isntant kill ;) The second your holgar cant really handle it anymore, you get rid of the 1 basedamage item, and BAAAAAAM! you have a shadow with 250.000 % stacks or a Ripper with 25.000 % critdamage and all the boosts from the potions and stuff. You cant do this with Magic Mushrooms, simply because if you feed potions, a shadow will soon start killing, since he get the same potions as your current main carry, easy balancing out the -80% damage in a dozen rounds. About best Race: I was only talking about 500 waves matches, where you want a big bonus time ;) For Quests and short games, nothing beats the wolves right now :> No need for a Balu actually XD

This is very off topic I know :) I dont agree that wolfpack (with or without balu) is the best deck for short games, but it certainly is the easiest and probably fastest. Once you got your pack on the map, you can basically just hit the scepter and put your phone down all the way to 200. It usually looks something like this Wolfpack carnage It will not hold up in bonus rounds even on 200 wave games though, and it starts falling short somewhere around wave 250 on longer games. This is ofcourse due to all the pack wolves reaching level 40-50ish and from there on it takes too many kills to level them, so your alpha scales way too slowly to keep up. You can keep him going for a while with potions, multicrit and keys, while using solaras and exp items on your wolves, but somewhere around 350-400ish it will just not hold up anymore, same in 200 wave bonus rounds somewhere around 1000 seconds. Wolfes are kinda fun tho, I like doing all my "nature and x" quests with them. The biggest problem with wolves if youre playing all 3 decks is actually the wolf card droprate, you can end up with as little as 1-3 wolves total on a 200 wave game (3 decks), which again renders them pretty much useless.

Well yeah, honestly, not much to add here XD I mean, wolfpack is fastest and easiest way to do quests (besides black+metro and money farming). I agree, they are pretty much wasted for longer games, BUT you can have a few "high" level Jillys after the doggys or whatever else you desire. They are basically exp sharing scientists which kick asses early/mid game. But i agree, its hard to keep them running after 300. but in the end, isnt that what blue cards should be for? I mean, shadow should be legendary/unique, just cos his passive. Blue towers are not meant to carry the game and be the strongest tower overall... but well thats a different story xD

Agreed, the Wolves are amazing. And I usually use Balu as soon as possible, as I find the Wolves start to fall off in effectiveness around Round 200 or so, whereas Balu can be kept amazing past that point, especially on non-Boss waves.

Well, since the whole point is to get the quests done ;D i always use 200 waves for fast questing... Damn all id o right now is farming quests, to get the "Loan Shark" xD since i got a build up my sleeve...

I'm with you on that. I'm trying to get Loan Shark, and re-get the Knight (I switched phones a few months back and lost everything...) It takes FOREVER. And I'm not crazy about the quests. I know they're necessary to get progress for them, but with the exception of the "Don't use Nature/Metro/Darkness" ones, they don't affect the playstyle at all. I'd like to see some crazier ones, like don't use any Uncommon towers, or no equipping more that two items per tower. Give me weird stuff I have to think about doing.

I like the idea of the crazy stuff (max 2 items/tower, potionless game, Unlucky day -Do not improve luck on any towe, stuff like that). But i think "dont use uncommon tower" if you mean blue cards... meh xD just go for the good old holgar build and be done XD What about "Godsmacked - only use Manitou, Ganesha, Beaver, Jillys and Huli/Muli, towers with some Goddish lore or who can stun ^^). Matriachart - Female only! Patriachart - Male only! In between - Genderless only (Dandelion, Shadow...) Effect less - Do not use any effect towers!(uhm does that mean hitman only? No other tower comes to my mind right now!) Splash only - ... Single Target only - All good comes in threes (or how it is called) - Only towers which can hit 3 indivual units / hit [no splash] ... oh well xD just a few stuff that instantly came into my mind xD -Oh somethin like "Search for Wisdom" You start with one Schoolbook, have to equip it, have to use Kvothe. Tower wont attack without an item that enchances the experience gain :> (maybe 3 Schoolbooks for starters XD just in case your unlucky... but you can do the whole game with just 3 ^^)

Yeah! I'm up for anything, just give me more incentives to keep going. It's hard to justify going for repeat playthroughs sometimes, as I get basically nothing for grinding through the same way every time.

A mode with pre-setup tower. Like you get 2500 tower points. Each tower level costs 1 point. (level 99 tower, costs 99 points) Common multiplicator *1 blue *2 yellow *3 purple *4 legendary *5 and 2500 item/potion points. Same mechanic. Easy you start with 4000 points each Normal with 3100 HArd 2500 You set up your towers (500 waves game) on wave 350, all drops/meadfarm/darkforge items etc are disabled and see how long your stuff can make it! (Shadow etc can still gain stacks, items cant be swapped later on, potions cant be used anymore, towers can be build/rerolled etc) Uhm... yeah xD Such a thing is know from other TDs ^^

Found this gem when I implemented the forum search last weekend! @Kyrandia what do you think? I've added an attack speed bonus, so that the item could be useful for support towers as well. It's going to be black market item and part of the upcoming DoL release. The item level is 160, so it will drop very late as you suggested.

This is the Ripper's exclusive items