How are Apprentice primary builders handling the Sharken?

Created this thread to share ideas and strategies on how to work out a defense against them.

One problem i have been having is when ogres attack and there are sharken behind them. My defenses attack the ogre, but not the sharken behind the ogres hence they will charge and move the magic barricades.

I do use lightning towers, but it is a bit unreliable to do 10% damage before it charges or the lightning arc goes a different direction.

I've been playing an Apprentice solo, but it appears that this is no longer possible on survival.

From what I can tell, Sharken need to be dps'ed down as soon as towers come into view. When there are ogres blocking tower projectiles, the Sharken are free to charge through and let the ogres in. Lightning towers seem like the only option in most cases, but they are inconsistent, uncontrollable, and have very low single target damage for the DU.

On Misty survival, I've tried many variations of towers and placement, but the point of failure is always ogres blocking damage from sharken, sharken moving walls, and the subsequent horde of ogres destroying defenses.

It seems that in order make progress I'll need to switch to a tower squire and perhaps a tower huntress for prox traps on Sharken charge points. That or I'll have to stick to multiplayer where people can dps down the Sharken. It's too bad though, I was really enjoying the previous version of the game.

-edit-

I gave up on Misty survival and went back to Alchemy Lab with all lightning towers. This worked pretty well, but I still had to rebuild the walls a lot. I got up to wave 20, at which point my severly neglected tower health walls just weren't holding anything back. My tower damage is 1700. My monk aura radius is around 1200.

The new Strength Drain aura strips elemental resists. I'm stacking it with lightning towers and raping sharken. Everyone is freaking out about nothing. Snare them, Drain them, and shock them to death. Try not to fall asleep.

Krey, I'm curious what maps you're doing this on and what stats you have, because I can only use lightning towers effectively if I can stack them all in one place like in alchemy labs. This is because they don't do a lot of damage and their arching is so random that many are necessary to actually kill sharken or hope that enough towers randomly hit them before they start charging.

As an example, with my 1700 tower damage, 4 lightning towers aren't enough to kill sharken consistently even with gas traps at wave 11 on Misty.

On another strategic note, a deadly strike/fireball tower combination did get me to wave 15, but as soon as ogres piled up, creating a shield for the sharken, the deadly strike towers stopped hitting them. I'm not sure if this is a problem of target priority or deadly strike bolts colliding with other enemies.

Perhaps this could be fixed if at every choke point there is a deadly strike tower with a significantly elevated vantage that can shoot sharken unimpeded, however, that's not easy to integrate into a plan.

The more I play, the more it seems like the tower damage requirements for survival maps are not in sync with the quality of loot that drops. Perhaps the gear drops are more appropriate to tower stat requirements at 2000+. That's the only reason I can guess as to why some people just don't have any problems.

It appears that anyone who was able to get geared when nightmares were easy has been grandfathered into the game at a point where it's still challenging and rewarding. Anyone else is just in for a lot of wasted time and disappointment until they finally loose interest.

Krey, I'm curious what maps you're doing this on and what stats you have, because I can only use lightning towers effectively if I can stack them all in one place like in alchemy labs. This is because they don't do a lot of damage and their arching is so random that many are necessary to actually kill sharken or hope that enough towers randomly hit them before they start charging.

As an example, with my 1700 tower damage, 4 lightning towers aren't enough to kill sharken consistently even with gas traps at wave 11 on Misty.

On another strategic note, a deadly strike/fireball tower combination did get me to wave 15, but as soon as ogres piled up, creating a shield for the sharken, the deadly strike towers stopped hitting them. I'm not sure if this is a problem of target priority or deadly strike bolts colliding with other enemies.

Perhaps this could be fixed if at every choke point there is a deadly strike tower with a significantly elevated vantage that can shoot sharken unimpeded, however, that's not easy to integrate into a plan.

The more I play, the more it seems like the tower damage requirements for survival maps are not in sync with the quality of loot that drops. Perhaps the gear drops are more appropriate to tower stat requirements at 2000+. That's the only reason I can guess as to why some people just don't have any problems.

It appears that anyone who was able to get geared when nightmares were easy has been grandfathered into the game at a point where it's still challenging and rewarding. Anyone else is just in for a lot of wasted time and disappointment until they finally loose interest.

The only way i am currently able to progress is by buying gear. Very rarely do i find any meaningful upgrades from runs.

The DST are probably aiming for center mass on the ogres- which, if the was a sharken behind it, would send the round over it's head. Try putting a DST in a more elevated position so it will shoot down at ogres and through what's behind it.

And I know what you guys are talking about. It's especially frustrating when those older players(whose characters have full supreme) can only respond with the likes of "UMAD USOBAD? GET ON MY LEVEL CASUAL" when someone brings up how steep the entry curve to nightmare is. I've got full myth bought from player shops, and a couple trans items, mainly a nice genie(which may be the only good item I've found myself.) Most of it isn't even particularly good, most of it is way too hybrid. But it's enough that insane is too easy to enjoy much. It's also not nearly enough to solo nightmare. Right now I'm stuck grinding mana to upgrade my gear, which I'll just have to replace and upgrade again later. It feels like, the game up to insane is fun out of the box, and then you have to dig through a wall, with all the tedium that implies, to get to the next fun thing.

The best gear to be had from playing one difficulty should be at good enough to at least barely scrape through a few levels of the next. You need nightmare gear to even start playing nightmare, and that is a huge barrier to new players.

I put towers directly behind my walls. You have to do constant repairs, but the towers prevent the walls from moving.