Does the Apprentice need a buff to keep up?

As is, no one is accepting app builds in insane+ due to the harpoon gun being far more effective at...well, EVEVERYTHING. This is very dissappointing to me because I enjoy the app as a builder. Is anyone else noticing that app builders get kicked in the first 5 seconds or so of build phase due to a lower geared tower squire already being there?
If its just me, then my luck stays at over 4 thousand kicks in a row and 0 multiplayer games played as a tower app. :apprentice:

Edit: Nerfing quires concept no longer valid, currently looking into ways to change/adjust app towers.

More of a suggestion than a bug.

If anything, though, I'd prefer that App towers get buffed.

More of a suggestion than a bug.

If anything, though, I'd prefer that App towers get buffed.

Thumbs up

Host your own games, then you won't get kicked. That's the best way to play the class you want.

pretty sure that wasnt the answer he was expecting :)

pretty sure that wasnt the answer he was expecting :)

I am slightly agreeing on this.


But yes. We either need to nerf the Harpoon Turret a little, or boost all Apprentice builds a bit. 15% more damage, 25% more directional range and a 10% health buff should make people accept it in their builds.

The solution isn't penalizing others just because you want to play a class.

The balance between App and Squire is a continuous struggle. The fact is, if people want harpoons, they want them for a reason, regardless of other characters.

This topic should be about buffing, not nerfing.

Use app firetower for splash or harpoon for pierce...

Masema, you are probably right with app towers needing a buff instead, But I have tried hosting games, only to have a tower squire join, sell all of my towers, and replace them with harpoons. I've gotten to the point that I can build my way through a nm hc with an afk toon, I just don't understand why people refuse to use the app as a builder...we only have 1 almost useless tower, (dst) but that's only because of the du cost.
Anyone know if it's just my bad luck on games...or is this for more people than just me?

Also, the fact that harpoon is non ellemental with full damage of the fireball tower I still think is op

Most NM Surv Builds Rely on Fireballs not harpoons xP

Masema, you are probably right with app towers needing a buff instead, But I have tried hosting games, only to have a tower squire join, sell all of my towers, and replace them with harpoons. I've gotten to the point that I can build my way through a nm hc with an afk toon, I just don't understand why people refuse to use the app as a builder...we only have 1 almost useless tower, (dst) but that's only because of the du cost.
Anyone know if it's just my bad luck on games...or is this for more people than just me?

Also, the fact that harpoon is non ellemental with full damage of the fireball tower I still think is op

Again, why you want to penalize those using a squire is beyond me and totally unhelpful. The solution is to improve, because if you nerfed the squires, chances are they would still be used, and would just cause unneccessary uproar.

I agree that a buff in App towers should see more action. I would kick anyone who sells any of my towers, unless they ask. I'm sorry that you're dealing with people like that.

Again, why you want to penalize those using a squire is beyond me and totally unhelpful. The solution is to improve, because if you nerfed the squires, chances are they would still be used, and would just cause unneccessary uproar.

I agree that a buff in App towers should see more action. I would kick anyone who sells any of my towers, unless they ask. I'm sorry that you're dealing with people like that.

I didn't mention (or if I did I didn't intend too mention) nerfing squire that time, and unfortunately there are enough tower squires on that I can't kick them fast enough (3 of them selling 4 towers each before I can)
I think it was rather well balanced (all types of towers used aprox the same amount) before the harpoon got the recent damage buff 1-2 patches ago, I don't know if the squires were having this problem then tho.

The beginning of my message isn't intended to be hostile, but I am slightly frustrated as I just had to kick 5 people in a row for making harpoons on my (recently sold) fb towers

http://forums.trendyent.com/showthread.php?64739-Compairing-Apprentice-to-Squire-Towers...

I made a thread on this before, throwing around a few ideas for a buff.

...I have noticed the Squire towers utterly outdamage Apprentice towers in almost every way.

Both in single target and multi-target DPS, Squire towers seem to blast through almost every enemy. They have more Health, Resistance, and their towers pierce through every enemy in a line, not to mention to being restricted to the elements that the Apprentice towers are. I am not saying Squries should get a nerf, but I feel Apprentice towers should get a buff so they don't need 1.5-2.0x the stats of a Squire to be able to do Nightmare. Here are a few ideas I would like to toss around.

Magic Missile - Have it pierce 2-3 small enemies, like goblins, archers, mages, skeletons, and wyverns... but not large enemies like Orcs or warriors, or any 'boss' for that matter (Sharken, Djinn, Ogres)

Magic Blockade - Raise the health of the Blockade a little bit (not as good as squire, but better than now) and have the blockade give off a very small 'Aura' to remove the elemental immunities of enemies. Perhaps, with the aura, Magic Blockades could take a little more (1, if anything) DU.

Fireball Tower - Decent as is, perhaps the fireball splash damage could be tweaked to scale up with tower attack range? (very small increases in size, but increases never-the-less). This is to compensate for Squire's infinite piercing.

Electric Tower - I don't know about you guys, but I find this tower worthless in almost every build. I don't know if this is true for everyone, so I am not going to suggest anything for this. (Because I barely use it.)

Deadly Striker Tower - Perfect, other than the fact that it is single target. Make this semi-pierce like Squire Harpoons. Have it be able to pierce any size enemy for around 10 enemies. Keep the attack rate the same.

I like the magic missile, magic blockade and fireball ideas a lot, slightly indiferent on the DST (though I rarely get to use them (du's spent everywhere else) )

With the Squire Tower nerf a few months back and Strength Drain change last month Fireballs are definitley competitive with Harpoons now. There are many other defenses with a lot more issues than either of those two that need looking at first.

i disagree about them being on par with eachother, however its not just the fireball im looking at here. The squire currently out dps's an app when it comes to any tower, hence why you can run through the campaign with a tower squire and almost no strategy. Looking at it this way a fireball has a du cost of 5 harpoon 6, harpoon should do slightly more damage on that part. The fireball having aprox. 20% of mobs immune to it should get a 20% dmg buff setting it slightly above harpoon turrets dmg, im not going to get into the splash vs infinite piercing part, but the bottom line, the fireball should deal more dps than a harpoon (if only slightly)
and with strength drain and darkness trap, thats extra du's used to make the fireball work on everyone (both requiring constant maintainance)
at the begining yeah i said nerf the harp...but realy whats needed is app towers getting modded to match the capabilities it has

With the Squire Tower nerf a few months back and Strength Drain change last month Fireballs are definitley competitive with Harpoons now. There are many other defenses with a lot more issues than either of those two that need looking at first.

that defnitely doesnt make them even...
fireball+ele stipper = 5+3/5(depending on wyvs) = 8/10DU (to reliably damage mobs)
harpoon = 6
piercing damage does the same amount of damage to each mob hit, splash damage decreases drastically with distance

@ original post, as others have pointed out nerfing squire wouldnt be the answer, buffing app would be much better

With the Squire Tower nerf a few months back and Strength Drain change last month Fireballs are definitley competitive with Harpoons now. There are many other defenses with a lot more issues than either of those two that need looking at first.

Also, im having dificulties finding in the patch notes ANY squire tower nerfs...
I am rather tired at this point but I've read as far down as this with no nerfs in sight
7.17d
* Fixed Harpoons spawn height offset which caused them to sail over the heads of short enemies
* Fixed Mix Mode Wyvern spawns on Mistymire
* Fixed DDDK Total Conversion cooking/launching (DDDK upgraded to 7.16d)

7.17c
* Harpoon Projectile Collision Height restored to previous value
* Fix for bug where Tutorial was forcing "Nightmare" scaling values on Healths and Damages

7.17b
* Countess "Queen of Hearts" outfit no longer has a faster attack speed than default Countess outfit
* All Projectile Target leading has been improved to incorporate Z-height changes into its leading calculations (e.g. on stairs/ramps)
* All Towers except Deadly Striker now do line-of-sight tracking/targeting checks, no more tracking/shooting into walls (yay for Harpoons)
* Increased Harpoon Turret Projectile Speed by 33%, and made Harpoon Turret turn 15% faster
* Nightmare Mix Mode now works properly with randomized enemy types. Increased Mix Mode item drop quality slightly to compensate for the potential difficulty increase.
* Healing Pets no longer get healing-amount affected by Hero Damage status effects
* Sky O' Love DU's increased from 80 to 90, map graphics have been better optimized for low-end machines, and completing the map on NM now gives you the non-Mythical Achievement as well
* Fixed DefendersStore.com issue where Cupid Pet would break Sync-All functionality

Also, im having dificulties finding in the patch notes ANY squire tower nerfs...

It was listed as a bug fix. Apparently Harpoons were doing something like 60% more damage than they should've been.

I wasn't active on the forums at that time, but I infer that it was called a nerf because the so-called bug was present for a long time before it was fixed.

It was listed as a bug fix. Apparently Harpoons were doing something like 60% more damage than they should've been.

I wasn't active on the forums at that time, but I infer that it was called a nerf because the so-called bug was present for a long time before it was fixed.

It took them pretty damn long to fix the "bug". It would be fine if they found it OP. but to list it as a bug, when's it's been around for awhile?


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I would not increase tower damage for App.
What i would do is make Fireballs cost 1 less DU
so basically for each 2 harps you could put 3 FB...

That will give you a choice.
Also App would be more versatile... you can put 2 FB on one entry and 1 on the other while with squire you would have only 1 option.

That would be nice.

Also, im having dificulties finding in the patch notes ANY squire tower nerfs...
I am rather tired at this point but I've read as far down as this with no nerfs in sight

it was in with the easter/portalmk2 patch
squires were supposedly getting twice the NM buff they shouldve been getting (on all towers, not just harps)

I would not increase tower damage for App.
What i would do is make Fireballs cost 1 less DU
so basically for each 2 harps you could put 3 FB...

i like this idea... kinda, but would like to see something done about other towers too (MM/DST/LT)

Squires are capable of soloing the campaign because of one main reason, all of their placements deal physical damage, not elemental. The apprentice must expend a greater amount of DU than the squire in order to have all angles covered. The harpoon could have its damage nerfed into the ground and it'd still be used over fireball turrets because of that.

Take a look at the apprentice's arsenal of defensive placements and ask yourself this: What, in the apprentice's arsenal, does he do that none of the other classes can do better?

Forcefield > mage barrier
harpoon > fireball
Lightning Aura > Lightning Tower
Archer/Mage > MM/DST

So where exactly is the apprentice supposed to shine? This is the problem that the devs need to address, not nerfing every class that can do it better than him. They need to make at least something from the apprentice desirable. I do not believe the apprentice will ever receive a revamp to all of his towers to make them all more desirable than the aforementioned alternatives, nor should he. This game is designed for taking advantage of multiple heros and the forms of support/defense they offer one another. However i do feel the apprentice should have at least one or two things that make a player stop and consider using them instead of one of the currently superior alternative choices.

Electric Tower - I don't know about you guys, but I find this tower worthless in almost every build. I don't know if this is true for everyone, so I am not going to suggest anything for this. (Because I barely use it.) )

Just for fun a friend and I played Foundries on NM Insane MMHC and he put up tons of MM towers and a single lightning tower. The lightning tower had more than 5x the kills of all MM towers combined after 25 waves. They're VERY useful. The can go through walls/obstacles, hit many enemies at once (each time increasing its AOE) and it can stun enemies for seconds at a time. Never leave home without one.

Also, im having dificulties finding in the patch notes ANY squire tower nerfs...

7.26
* Added Penny Arcade Characters DLC
* Added Squire Bunny & Easter Egg Hunt Meta-Mission
* Increased Maximum Number of Heroes allowed on a profile from 16 to 24
* Raised Soft Mana Cap & Shop Item Sell Limit to 400,000,000
* EV Shock (3min/7max to 2min/6max) and Proto Beam (3min/6max to 2min/5max) DU costs decreased, EV Shock Beam Resets 33% faster, shock time ramp increased 33%, and has a 33% area increase
* "Portal Gun Mk 2" is given to owners of Portal Gun DLC who earn Hardcore Mythical Defender Achievement
* "Sky o' Love" Gender Enemies will no longer target Eternia Crystals
* Buffed Monk/Initiate DPS Ramp by 25%, high-end Monks & Initiates will do about 45% more damage, and HeroBoost/TowerBoost effectiveness ramps by 33%
* ToggleHUD button (default H) in First Person View will first toggle FPV weapon visibility on/off
* Fixed "non-attenuated" (2D) Amazonian costume swing sound, now is 3D
* Fixed Shroomite Pets not awarding at NM quality on Mistymire Forest
* Series EV 15% Higher Proton Beam Damage Exponent Buff, 15% Decoy Aggro Buff & 25% Decoy HP Buff
* Made Series EV Walls properly repairable/upgradeable when within a Trap/Aura
* "Rumble in the Jungle"/"War of the Djinn" no longer have Djinn exiting the Lamps super-fast.
* Barbarian Turtle Stance resistance now increases with the Turtle Stance level
* SeriesEV Proton Charge Blast Mana Absorption range increased by 175%
* Fixed bug that was erroneously giving Squire Tower 60% extra damage in Nightmare (37.5% reduction)
* Reduced # of Ogres in Survival Nightmare by 40%
* Mythical & Transcendent gear now always have distinctive minimap icon colors: Turquoise for Mythical, purple for Transcendent


somehow found myself looking at old patch notes Ctrl+F'd 'egg' and voila