Please look at Spike Blockades

Spike Blockades are horribly broken, at least in Misty which is pretty much the only map I run these days. Ogres walking straight over or through them is pretty common. We have also experienced unexplained crystal damage almost every time using Spikes. I can only assume it's a warp speed Kobold that passes right through the spike. No, it's not an archer shooting from beyond the spikes. We have no issues when using magic blockades, ever, but upon switching to spikes in the same location, we have all sorts of problems with them not blocking the area. Finally, Spikes seem to be taking dramatically more damage than magic blockades. Even in lanes with a darkness trap so the added elemental damage is stripped.

I'm not about to FRAPS an entire play session to try to capture this behavior, but I assume many have experienced the same issues. Spikes are virtually non functional right now as barriers.

indeed, i have also noticed that spike blockades get torn down comparatively quickly. 30k hp magic blockades hold almost as long as my 70k spike blockades.

[quote]indeed, i have also noticed that spike blockades get torn down comparatively quickly. 30k hp magic blockades hold almost as long as my 70k spike blockades.[/quote]
Do you have anything that strips elements off of mobs before they hit your spike blockades? That might be an issue--because if tower damage is anything like hero damage, elemented mobs will deal double damage. Just a thought.

Put a magic barricade and spike barricade next to eachother and watch the damage numbers. Screenshot it if you can. If you are using a darkness trap in front of squire barricades, they should both be taking the same damage.

It does seem like something is up with them. They always die a lot quicker on me than magical barriers do despite having X times as much life.

Let me emphasize that the bigger issue is they are not blocking an area they should be blocking. The same area that is blocked by a magic barrier 100% of the time, can have mobs (most commonly ogres) pass through the walls when switched to spikes. I have seen this happen repeatedly, not an isolated incident.

Even if this issue is only due the elemental stripping effect of Magical Barricades, perhaps a change is still in order. If the current end-game involves mostly elemental enemies (including Ogres), then in essence Magical Barricades have about the same 'effective HP' as Spikes (since they cut most incoming damage by 50%), cost 1/3 the DU, reduce incoming damage to all other defenses + heroes indirectly (via elemental stripping), and make all mobs susceptible to all elemental damage. They may be slighly less wide, but you can afford 3 of them for each Spikes, so this is a non-issue. The damage Spikes do is negligible, and hardly makes up for all the other advantages of Magic Barricades. In this case, there is quite the disparity.

If mostly elemental enemies continues to be the norm for end-game, a change in the balance between Magic vs. Spikes Barricades seems needed.

spike blockade size should directly scale with tower hp

Let me emphasize that the bigger issue is they are not blocking an area they should be blocking. The same area that is blocked by a magic barrier 100% of the time, can have mobs (most commonly ogres) pass through the walls when switched to spikes. I have seen this happen repeatedly, not an isolated incident.

I don't think this is a blockade specific issue. It seems more like a map issue. I have monsters pass through both blockades on certain maps in certain spots on a regular basis.

Let me emphasize that the bigger issue is they are not blocking an area they should be blocking. The same area that is blocked by a magic barrier 100% of the time, can have mobs (most commonly ogres) pass through the walls when switched to spikes. I have seen this happen repeatedly, not an isolated incident.

I've seen this before too, but each time I've seen it there were two ogres. Is this your experience as well? Maybe having two ogres causes one to push the other through the barricade.

I don't think this is a blockade specific issue. It seems more like a map issue. I have monsters pass through both blockades on certain maps in certain spots on a regular basis.

No, these really are issues specific to spikes in Mistymire Forest, possibly elsewhere, I don't run much else anymore. We have no issues with magic blockades in any location. I can recall one time seeing an ogre glitch through a magic blockade. That was about a month ago and hey, I don't expect the game to be perfect, glitches happen. I have not once since then seen an ogre walk straight through a magic wall. Virtually every time I've used spikes in a survival run, eventually something gets through. I've seen it in the east lane and between the trees near the northern crystal. I was in a run not long ago where we built up in the north west choke. No ogres walked through magic barriers. Around wave 18, we replaced magic with spikes in the same location and left it for two waves. During those two waves we had 3 ogres walk straight over the spikes.

Three days ago, while working on mixed mode, we swapped magic with spikes between the trees near the northern crystal, and in the eastern lane. We made three attempts. All three ended with the crystal being destroyed while all defenses were intact. We have no idea what happened. During those three attempts, we had multiple occurrences of unexplained crystal damage (that did not result in destruction) and an ogre walk straight over the spikes. We had no such issues before switching to spikes, and have had no such issues since switching back to magic.

Today while doing a solo run, at wave 28 I had a magic barrier destroyed. I quickly put up a spike in the same location. Figured all would be fine since there were just a couple ogres left and a few spiders. No, less than a minute later, an ogre walked straight through the spike. Magic barriers had stopped every mob for 28 waves. A spike lasted less than a minute before having an ogre ignore it.

Look, we're not talking about the eastern stairs in alch labs, which is notorious for having mobs ignore walls of any type. That's always been just a buggy location and I can come to terms with that. This is happening frequently, in multiple locations, and only with spikes.

yeah, i know the magic blockades last longer due to stripping elements, but my point was that at 3 DU cost, and with roughly twice the HP, spike blockades are kinda useless, because of the aforementioned properties.

and yes, i just did a few misty runs, one using spike blockades, and 2 using magic blockades, and starting in wave 7, the spike blockades between the 3 trees near the north path, ogres just charged right between them, almost like the tree wasnt even there.

spike blockades just arent justifiable because effectively, magic blockades are just as efficient for 1/3 of the DU, which leaves more DU for things like auras, or just extra damage.

and because you can place more, you run into less issues with enemies walking through them.

it would be nice also if armor resistances were applied to tower defenses also ;)

Was doing Misty using Kandar's build and for the first time from many runs I experienced the Ghost Ogre (walking through blockades). The ogre just walked right through the blockade while I sat on a harpoon. WALKED right THROUGH a spiked blockade.

Instead of coming up with b.s. content, Trendy should try to fix existing problems.

ive seen in spots ogres walk through barriers as well... and its forced me to change my layout to compensate sadly.

what i believe it to be is a HOT BOX issue... the problem being the hitbox is failing in 3 areas... some parts of the map where theres a wall thats not entirely solid... allowing for some play of movement... the barriers and barricades.. especilly baricades. not having a properly sized hit box allowing again.. more movement play... and the enemies hitboxes needing tweaking.. ESPECIALLY large enemies. ogres and super wyverns.

seriously.. play DFA and attack a super wyvern.. its head is really the only part that can be hit. as if its hitbox is the same as a standard size wyvern.

spiked blocks should also draw agro.. heres NO reason why an enemy designed to attack the closest target.. keeps going PAST all these walks to attack something behind it. in NM ogres and other enemies already have TWICE the attack range as thier graphical counter parts show... this alone is BS.. when a mob swings.. and im 4-5+ character lengts out of that visual animations range... i should NOT be getting hit.
you want to boost thier range.. make thier weapons bigger.

again.. hit box issue.

That's interesting because I'm an avid squire builder and I constantly experience this totally random and totally weird glitch where there seems to be graphics and animation near the crystal/hero that made it seem as if an ogre had just smashed the ground (and you even take damage!) and sometimes the crystal will take unexplained damage. No living soul ANYWHERE near the crystal.

I'll have to change gears to an app and see if I still experience these.

I've noticed it's a risky endeavor to try and go for the concave dual-spike blockade setup in certain areas of Mistymire for just this very reason.

Ogres in particular, due to them lasting much longer, will run up to the spike blockades as normal. Towers behind will draw its aggro, and it will attempt to find what it thinks is an available spot to pass through and attack. This would be the gap in-between the concave blockades. However, they can't, so this creates a magical moment where the Ogre will stand there, confused, while towers continue attacking.

However, if left alive for too long, a fail-safe seems to trigger, allowing the ogre to clip through the blockades.

This was mostly fixed with tweaking the blockade setup slightly to make the gap less inviting, at the cost of the Ogre attacking the blockades instead of being stuck on them (Which is supposed to happen, so, no complaints).

The other problem seems to call in with the northern end of Mistymire. There's a fantastic spot to build two blockades in-between a log and have a good setup going. However, the spike blockade that has to be set next to the fence has to deal with a strange issue. You can walk along the fence and just go right over the blockade. Ogres can also do this. The only way I've found to reduce that chance of happening was to stagger the blockades, placing the safer one near the upper-end of the log, with the fence-side blockade at the lower-end of the log. It can still happen.

I'll have to take some time to do some recording of various areas where monsters can glitch past blockades, though I'm sure Trendy is well aware of the issue.

I don't think trendy cares how many patches have they put out now and this issue is still unresolved?

I've always thought (and seem to have noticed) that the reason spike blockades die so quickly is because they are targeted while magical barriers are not.

What i've noticed that can eat a wall in a few seconds are DEWs. If i want them with barriers up i noticed they run up to the barrier and kind of hang around for awhile then they might decide to attack the barrier or might decide to jump if i'm close enough but mostly they are probably just dead by then.

I've noticed with the spike blockades they run up and start swinging at it without hesitation.

tree causes the ground to be raised, hence allowing orges to `jump` over the wall. i`ve personally seen this happen many times, normally occurs when there are 2-3 orges in the same spot. the only way around it at the moment is to kill the orges fast enough, or to not to build walls anywhere near trees and on level ground (which is very very hard to find a spot to do that on misty).

for the time being, i`ve put more towers on areas that orges can potentially walk pass , atm the trees near the NE lane of misty, and to place higher priority on 2-3 hero going there with a guardian to dps down orges as fast as possible.

doubt trendy is gonna fix this anytime soon so we might as well learn to live with it.

ha! funneh story.

i was playing mistymire again last night, and i was using my trusty magic blockades, but 2 different times on the same game i saw a kobold run right through the middle of the blockade and charge the crystal. i was standing in front of the blockades buffing my turrets to deal with an ogre, so i wasnt just watching the minimap. i was there as it actually happened.

Experienced this for the first time last night on misty. Ran right through my southern blockades and harpoons and went boom on the crystal.

tree causes the ground to be raised, hence allowing orges to `jump` over the wall. i`ve personally seen this happen many times, normally occurs when there are 2-3 orges in the same spot. the only way around it at the moment is to kill the orges fast enough, or to not to build walls anywhere near trees and on level ground (which is very very hard to find a spot to do that on misty).

for the time being, i`ve put more towers on areas that orges can potentially walk pass , atm the trees near the NE lane of misty, and to place higher priority on 2-3 hero going there with a guardian to dps down orges as fast as possible.

doubt trendy is gonna fix this anytime soon so we might as well learn to live with it.

^ Noticed this too, especially with the northeast choke. The two area around the center tree where you build your blockade/barriers also has some sort of roots underneath which probably contributes to this height elevation which allows mobs to "glide" over the walls if there's a large enough backup. Agree with above that the only "reliable" solution is having enough tower dps to clear the mobs/ogres so there's no buildup and therefore nothing "glitches" over the walls. I guess in theory we could choose not to build our choke there but it's not feasible DU wise right now. We have to setup the blockades beside that middle tree so harpoons can cover both the northeast and eastern lanes.

I wonder if they could simply "remove" the roots and vines so that the ground is even at that location. Maybe that would fix a lot of our problems.

[QUOTE]"remove" the roots and vines[/QUOTE]
the game is full of mysterious places!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BQfCXnE1zQ

I've noticed Ogres walking right past bumper barricades also, It's frightning if your on Hardcore and that 3 million hp ogre doesn't stop walking.

Also about spike barricades...are they upside down? The bottom is rounded and the top is flat.

Was painful to experience this on Misty today (wave 21), watched as an ogre just waltzed through a 95% HP spike wall and 2-hit the crystal.