Apprentice pity?

Seems shock beams and proton beams are worthless afterall. :/ Proton beams don't really compete well with proxy traps and shock beams are far far weaker then a harpoon in the long run (due to extremely long animation/delay between attacks). 3 (2DU) Shock Beams simply can not compete with a single Harpoon turret if both are on buff beams.

This is what I had to say on apprentices
http://forums.trendyent.com/showthread.php?77489-My-2%A2-on-Squire-vs-Apprentice

One thing to keep in mind is Proton Beams don't have the huge animation delay and so are about twice as powerful under a Buff Beam than a Shock Beam.

If you can attach the Proton Beam to an existing Buff Beam it looks like a decent way to do some more damage if you have extra DU left over.

i use the proton beams because of their attack rate. its pretty easy to get them to pulse 10 times a second, and like i said, with 1900 attack, non-active they are ticking for 30k damage per tic. thats 300k damage a second. my aqua build uses 2 criss-crossed at each choke point, and with how i have them placed, at least half the time both beams are hitting the ogres that are clogging up, so thats 600k per second that the ogres are there just from them. boosted with my monk it goes to well over 1 million ever second.

there are also electric auras, inferno traps, and 4archer/2mage/1spider minion walls, so there is no lack for damage. the build i use has left over DU also, and since the middle crystal gets hammered by ogres, i drop 2 shock beams there shaped like a plus sign. they arent hitting the buff beams, but it doesnt particularly matter.

the hardest thing about making the proton beams and shock beams worthwhile is figuring out exactly where you have to have them to make them hit what you need them too, but when you get them there, they are ridiculously effective. the AoE damage on the shock beams is pretty much a non-factor to me because the AoE radius is pretty low and it suffers horrible falloff, and its pretty rare that more than 1 or 2 monsters are within the activation range of the beam anyway.

as far as repairing them goes, it takes forever to repair shock beams (like, 0.5 seconds per charge), but proton beams go pretty quick.

[c3;632522']i use the proton beams because of their attack rate. its pretty easy to get them to pulse 10 times a second, and like i said, with 1900 attack, non-active they are ticking for 30k damage per tic. thats 300k damage a second. my aqua build uses 2 criss-crossed at each choke point, and with how i have them placed, at least half the time both beams are hitting the ogres that are clogging up, so thats 600k per second that the ogres are there just from them. boosted with my monk it goes to well over 1 million ever second.

there are also electric auras, inferno traps, and 4archer/2mage/1spider minion walls, so there is no lack for damage. the build i use has left over DU also, and since the middle crystal gets hammered by ogres, i drop 2 shock beams there shaped like a plus sign. they arent hitting the buff beams, but it doesnt particularly matter.

the hardest thing about making the proton beams and shock beams worthwhile is figuring out exactly where you have to have them to make them hit what you need them too, but when you get them there, they are ridiculously effective. the AoE damage on the shock beams is pretty much a non-factor to me because the AoE radius is pretty low and it suffers horrible falloff, and its pretty rare that more than 1 or 2 monsters are within the activation range of the beam anyway.

as far as repairing them goes, it takes forever to repair shock beams (like, 0.5 seconds per charge), but proton beams go pretty quick.

I will give proton beams a bit more of a look over because I noticed that they provide increased DPS over a harpoon... my concern is the fact that they cover an incredibly small range and it took 3 proton beams (2 DU each) to barely edge out over a single (6DU) harpoon (both sets were on buff beams). The main advantage of the proton beam was that my EV had like... 2.4k TDMG/2.3k TRATE (I think that was the rate) for the test (could be slightly off with stats give/take 200 in either stat... not at home to check) and will thus beat a harpoon with similar stats by a reasonable margin. Of course, for what may be a ~30% increase in dps is at the lack of a MUCH MUCH larger range, very limited number of enemies being hit, and inability to hit air targets (very late wave gold fish/djinn that get past traps/auras - when djinn bug and fly super super high).

Then again my DPS test may not be accurate and they may be capable of greater damage then I was lead to believe. You said it had falloff similar to proxy?

i have a few reasons why i use the proton beams over other things.

first is because when an inferno + str drain + electric aura + gas + ensnare, everything but ogres an generally a non-issue.

second is because i hate sharken.

third is because they cant be webbed.

i still use harpoons and fbs for some maps because proton beams arent as effective in all situations, but i prefer to use protons. in tight corridors you can fit a lot of damage in a really small space, but there arent tight corridors everywhere.

for the shock beams though, they have a ridiculously small AoE. and again, the above aura/trap combo clears most stuff, so the AoE benefit of the shock beams is often wasted anyway. second to that though, because their AoE radius is so small, the falloff is extremely bad on them. you can seriously watch mobs standing right next to each other see as much as a 90% reduction in damage in the space of maybe 3 units (less than half the range of a stat-less MM tower).

also, they dont stun ogres, which i think is a crock, but i mean, whatever.

I think app's primary focus should be tower. My attempts at Survival runs, I use strength drain & slow auras, archer and mage minions, and app towers. I think magic missle towers are great no.1 bc its physical damage. Fire towers are great for the spread damage. Lightning towers are good but personally I'd rather use a lightning aura since it affects every enemy in the aura instead of relying on chains from the lightning tower. Deadly Strike Tower is good in my opinion, its VERY strong when maxed but the cooldown is so slow. I feel safer if I have a few magic missle and fire towers in the map