My 2

My laptop battery is at 12%

Alright. So. People always whine about apprentice vs squire. They always moan about fireball towers being worse than harpoon turrets. Well, I have had enough of it, and nobody to my knowledge has come along and told it how it is.

In my opinion, apprentice towers are just great. I have been playing since the latest steam summer sale, and all of my builders are at 3k-3.4k tower damage now, to give you a rough idea of my progression. I AFK farm aquanos HCNM survival, and have gotten past wave 25 of sky city HCNM survival. I run groups of 3 randoms through Aquanos HCNM Survival. I am trying to give you an idea of my gear and experience level.

Anyways, I used to use my squire exclusively, and one day I made a ........

my train stop is here, I'll continue this later.......

Alright! At my destination with my charger plugged in!

Anyways:

I'm not a noob. Now that we have this out of the way...

I don't really remember balance from lower levels of gear; I didn't start using my apprentice until I had already cleared aquanos on HCNM survival. However, once you get above 2.5k in damage stat, or, say, where I am at, where my squire is at 3.2k damage and my app is at... 3.4k? Anyways, once you get to where I am at, the dps of a fireball tower and the dps of a harpoon turret are going to be very similar. I think that at one time, when my squire and apprentice both had about 3.1k tower damage and 2k rate, the fireball tower did 83% as much dps as the harpoon turret.

Why does this matter?

Ok, well, if you're just trying to have a pissing contest, the harpoon turret wins. But beating HCNM Survival Eternia Shards DLC maps solo requires more than a pissing contest. Just because my harpoon turrets do slightly more dps than my fireball turrets doesn't mean they're better. Or worse.

You have to remember, the fireball turrets are 5DU while the harps are 6DU. So, on a damage per DU ratio, my fireball turrets win. However, -dun dun dun- fireball turrets do FIRE damage which can be RESISTED, while harpoons don't have an element. This is ALL old hat, everyone reading this should already know this!!!

So, which turret wins if you stick it in front of 1000 mobs and have at it? Well, the harpoon turret is going to do better by itself. But here's the thing all you people who always say the apprentice is broken and useless, THE FIREBALL TURRET IS NEVER BY ITSELF.

What do I mean?

I mean, when you get to my skill level, and you start playing maps at the difficulty I play, strength drain and ensnare auras are mandatory. Sometimes I use minion walls, sometimes I use EV walls. Either way, Strength Drain is mandatory. Sometimes I can get away with a darkness trap in lieu, but 90% of the time, you need a strength drain covering every choke. Now, with a strength drain on every chokepoint, my fireball towers elemental alignment suddenly isn't a drawback. Now, I am just comparing a 5 DU perpendicular splash projectile launcher to a parrallel splash projectile launcher.

What the **** am I saying?

Well, harpoons do damage in a LINE. Fireballs do damage in a radius, or, if enemies are lined up perpendicular to the projectile's direction, in a perpendicular line.

Sometimes, damage in a line is super good. For example, long coordiors. I can think of at least two places in Aquanos where harpoon turrets' line damage kicks ***. However, when minions are stacked up perpendicularly to your defenses, fireball turrets will kill more enemies faster. Why does this matter? Well, if you've got a few sharken coughing and they each have 15 million hp, and they're next to eachother, then by the time your harpoon turret gets to the last sharken, your gas trap might go on its 2 second internal cooldown or whatever.

Which brings me to my big point: if you're good, your defenses will be connected and work together. To make it through HCNM Aquanos Survival, you can't just randomly place things. Everything has a purpose and its placement does too. So, now we come to gas traps. Every choke has a gas trap when I play (good luck winning without gas traps). Gas traps make enemies line up perpendicularly. I already established earlier that fireball towers win when it comes to perpendicularly stacked enemies.

Alright so every one of my choke points has a strength drain and ensnare aura, a gas trap, and some kind of wall.

Now, remember, I'm not a noob. When your gear gets good, each point of DU you spend has its purpose. Eventually, you don't place harpoon turrets/fireball turrets unless you need to kill ogres and djinns. Eventually I won't even need them to kill djinns...

I like to use electric auras at my chokes, overlapping my gas traps, so that the coughing enemies get shocked to death. My electric auras can kill everything but ogres.

With my gas trap/ electric aura/ strength drain aura at every choke, the only things getting to my walls are ogres. Occasionally a sharken might get through, but that's due to a problem with my placement. Sharken getting through? Put your walls farther back, and your gas traps farther forward. Anyways: only ogres are showing their faces at my walls. Electric auras won't kill ogres. You need to invest some DU in a tower of some sort. So, which tower am I going to buy?

Let's think from the tower's point of view. Mr. Tower is behind some sort of wall. Beyond the wall a ways is a gas trap, and there are tons of enemies coughing their asses off. Those enemies (think sharken, kobolds) would rape my walls if they were allowed to get through; luckily they're coughing hard inside an electic aura. In fact, the whole area is electrified, so Mr. Tower doesn't even need to worry about spiders coming from behind. All Mr. Tower has to do is focus on what's in front of him. You know what's in front of Mr. Tower 90% of the time? A perpendicular wall of coughing enemies. Whabam, fireball tower wins. You know what's in front of Mr. Tower the other 10% of the time? Misses Ogre. Misses Ogre is just a big fat damage sponge! She's distracting Mr. Tower! Now, Harpoony McPoonPoon will kill the ogre a little faster... But Mr. Fireball Tower will kill the ogre ALMOST as fast... AND kill those coughing enemies (think: sharken) faster... AND costs 1 less DU.

BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!

Fireball towers are smaller than harpoon turrets, which makes them EVER SO SLIGHTLY easier to condense on buff beams, and A TEENY BIT EASIER to protect with a 1du reflect beam.

I don't know if I have already said this, but the purpose of the fireball tower/harpoon turret is basically condensed damage. For me, the fireball tower is better. It costs less DU, and its stength (aoe splash) is fully utilized by (necessary) gas traps that you'd be using in any build. Its weakness, that being fire damage rather than harpoons' non-elemental damage, is negated by my use of strength drain auras, which are necessary regardless of what build you're using (ev walls, minion walls, whatever, on NM it will die quickly without STR Drain).

Alright. I need to vent more. You know what an advantage is to gearing out an apprentice over gearing out a squire? Both of mine are equally geared, but I only use one squire tower: the harpoon turret. However, the apprentice has THREE towers I consider worthy. The fireball tower obviously, but the magic missile tower might eventually become good (as my gear gets better, two of them might be able to out-dps a harpoon turret. They'd still be worse overall, but it's nice to have a DPS tower for 3 DU). Thirdly, the lightning tower. My electric auras outperform my lightning towers, and my builders are similarly geared (3.3k damage monk 3.4k damage app). However, lightning towers are SUPER COOL. You just don't get cooler than chain lightning. On aquanos, I like to swap out an electric aura for a lightning tower. Just one; but it does really well and gets lots of kills. In the stats section after the game ends, I divide the # of towers by their kills, and my single lightning tower always does ever so slightly better than my electric auras. And, it goes around corners!! Isnt that neat?!

Alright but the secret super sneak cheat to leveling an apprentice and gearing him out? When your gear gets good enough, you can just slap down a str/ensnare/elec aura on each crystal, and then as many lightning towers as you can on a buff beam, and as long as you arent playing eternia shards or higher, NOTHING is going to make you lose.

I just carried random pubs through all the HC NM original challenges (the ones you need for cube). All I had them do was upgrade stuff and dps. I did all the building for all the challenges. And my strategy was the same for all of them: monk auras on each crystal, and as many lightning towers on a buff beam in the center of the map as i could fit. Whabam, worked on every challenge. Throw in a few fireball towers and some summoner minions and ev walls and it works for HCNM campaign king's game.

The apprentice is more FUN, has more UTILITY, and when you have really good gear, outperforms (perpendicular damage, less DU) and nearly out-DPS's squire's harpoon turrets.

I actually don't use my 1800hp/3200dmg/2000rate/1200range squire anymore. My apprentice has more than 1000 less tower hp, and only half my squire's range, but slightly more damage, and similar rate- and he just outperforms my squire now. Because remember, my defenses work TOGETHER. It's NOT a pissing contest! The fireball tower/harpoon turret is a piece of a whole - its job is to kill ogres and djinns and sometimes sharken. Its job is NOT to kill EVERYTHING ON THE MAP. That's why we have lightning auras! And archers! And mages! And sometimes lightning towers!

I should mention that I only have 1 tower at each choke because my gear allows me to do this. However, the ogres don't hit EV walls, so even with low gear, you could probably get away with 1 tower at each choke..

At lower levels of skill, harpoon turrets will do better because lower skilled players wont have all their chokes covered in an elaborate setup of gas traps and auras. But - when you get to eternia shards and higher, I hope I have made the choice clear.

Finally, I am not saying the squire is worse than the apprentice. I would still use my squire if he had identical stats - but I would only use his harpoon turrets for long corridors, where enemies get bunched into a line. Also, I think the squire's harpoon turrets are better for anti-air. When it comes to anti-air, you want to be able to kill coptor ogres from far away so you dont have to deal with the ogres. what if the coptor is fire immune? sure you can kill it once its close in your str drain aura, but then you have 2 deal with the ogre. So, i think harpoon turrets do a better job for anti air on big open maps like mistymire and sky city.

If you read all this gold star to you. I will smile every time I see a lowbie playing an apprentice instead of a squire. I will continue to use my apprentice for my pub games, to promote apprentice use, in the hopes that people will eventually pull their heads out of their asses and STOP COMPARING FIREBALL TOWERS TO HARPOON TURRETS LIKE IT'S A ****ING PISSING CONTEST

Towers in dungeon defenders are far more complex than single target DPS (haha magic missile tower you suck)

I'm not sure if you read the other post at all, but this was basically a similar conclusion with incredibly basic map setup mixed in. Oh and the whole theme of how super cool your apprentice is, which is mainly irrelevant since the other post turned into a discussion into which towers were actually more effective rather then simply opinion.

We were simply trying to discuss which was the better build in the category of handling ogres - which varies greatly at different stats, and depending on your layout. At the end of the day both harpoon and fireball's main task will usually to be dealing with ogres, so if they are coming in faster then your defense can handle it (Lower stats) fireball will clear more of the pile at a time, where if they are coming slow enough you never have more then one at the wall (Higher stats) a harpoon tower would produce better results as it will be doing higher damage to the single ogre, and probably hitting whatever happens to be choking behind it.

I would suggest the next time you make a thread or post, that it be less insulting and doesn't resort to petty insults.

I've edited your post to be nicer. Next time it will be deleted. Thanks for understanding.

Well this has sort of convinced me to use a tower apprenctice, but I'll be using it in support of my tower squire.

Achievement unlocked - you read the whole topic

I also feel apprentice is well under rated, while at some point due to the difference in attacking style of the towers it makes all the difference!

For example all squire are especially foccused on front attack while electric towers give a radius of attacks. (oke bouncer en spinner can attack in all directions but they dont have a radius which you can expand like electric towers)

I would suggest the next time you make a thread or post, that it be less insulting and doesn't resort to petty insults.

I've edited your post to be nicer. Next time it will be deleted. Thanks for understanding.

How was he insulting?

How was he insulting?

Please read my post, you'll notice I have edited his post and removed the majority of it.

I actually liked the post. I'm gonna go and use my apprentice as a builder from the campaign to the DLC maps now. Time to make new strategies.

Some times its nice to throw a little chaos into the mix.

-type R blood-

Oh don't me wrong I also think app towers are understated from most people as well, this guy is just all over the place making it really hard to figure out what the reality is. I will say his opinion is quite clearly stated against the pro-squire majority, the original post was making petty jabs that weren't really needed. With so many variables with stats and layouts, the superior tower for one person could be the complete opposite for another, even on the same map in the same difficulty.

I think the OP missed a major point,

Using a gas trap, my Elec and Inferno (or proxie) will kill ALL trash with no input from Harpoon or FB, so it really does just come down to single target DPS where harpoon is superior. Also, if you are (very) unlucky and a gas trap ends at a bad time, the Harpoon can still target the Sharken/Djinn through a whole mass of mobs while a FB cannot.

I think the OP missed a major point,

Using a gas trap, my Elec and Inferno (or proxie) will kill ALL trash with no input from Harpoon or FB, so it really does just come down to single target DPS where harpoon is superior. Also, if you are (very) unlucky and a gas trap ends at a bad time, the Harpoon can still target the Sharken/Djinn through a whole mass of mobs while a FB cannot.

This would be the general idea. Especially since you tend to want your gas traps/aura hitting mobs around the corner well outside sight range of a fireball/harpoon. Yes, a fireball can hit a few mobs around the corner but so can your electric/inferno and it will hit more then just a few. It will already be enough as above quote shows that further imput from fireball/harpoon is pointless.

Also due to how A* (pathfinding algorithm) works and Ogre bounding boxes.. usually ogres line up in a train/line instead of spread at a wall so if more then one two ogre is at a wall the fireball loses. If its just two usually due to bounding box size/detection of harpoon projectile it can still hit both in most cases.

I think you gave a poor example of lighting tower usage, but yes they can be useful. MM is discussed in detail in the other thread.

Fireball core feature is cheaper DU cost.

Before I start, I prefer apprentice over squire tower for sentimental reasons. Although you have covered many issues between comparing fireball tower to harpoon, there are a few you missed, that are in favor of the harpoon.

The harpoon is far more robust than the fireball tower. In a test with both towers on the same buff beam, with similiar apprentice and squire tower HP stats, both towers hit by the same ogre swipes, the harpoon took significantly less damage. The harpoon is actually a very capable 'tank'. The fireball tower is a 'glass cannon'. There are situations where this is very relevant, for me Talay Mining Complex where I use an array of damage towers at north crystal. They have to be able to take ogre punishment unsupervised for periods of time, fireball towers simply cannot do this.

The harpoon also has a significantly wider arc of fire than the fireball tower. This can be critical when attempting to cover multiple corridors.

Last but perhaps the most important. The fireball never delivers its AoE damage over the entirety of its globe radius. It usually fires at the closest priority target, which is usually standing at the front of a cluster of enemies. At best damage is delivered to roughly half the globe area, as the front half of the globe is usually unoccupied.

As if that were not bad enough, just like the proximity trap, damage is not dealt uniformly over the entire globe area. Those enemies closer to the center of the globe take the most damage, those at its outer fringes take very little damage.

Even in a situation where ogres 'in a train' are lined up at your defenses, the ogre standing directly behind the ogre in front is usually taking drastically less than the ogre in front.

There are situations where fireball towers are great. For me its situations where ogres should not be able to reach fireball towers (ie aquanos with a wall build) and/or where a group of enemies needs to be regularly cleared from a gas trap setup (again aquanos). In Sky City there are little nooks I can place two fireballs side-by-side on a buff beam, but harpoons are too wide to place two side-by-side there. Again, good situation for fireballs. In Karathki DU is very scarce, another good argument for fireball towers.

Not convinced anything other than fireball from apprentice is worth using. Lightning towers suffer from the biggest problem slice 'n dice has (in my opinion), which is to say set damage interval that doesn't scale with tower attack speed. Most towers, as you stats get better, tower attack and tower damage complement each other multiplicatively. These two just get left in the dust once your tower attack speed starts to get up there.

Magic missile are fast and cheap, yeah, but they're completely single target. They just can't keep up with the number of mobs we realistically have to face at one time.

Also, gas traps really aren't mandatory any more. I get by alright with mostly just archer minions.

4k builders and playing since Steam summer sale.... Seems legit.

You get more dps out of fireball towers pretty easily. 6 fireball towers will do more damage than 5 Harpoons.

Did a test in tavern. Fireball on buff beam did 353,568 DPS, Harpoon did 362,262 DPS. The piercing of Harpoons isn't worth 1DU. When ogres have 50million HP- 10k dps will mean nothing.

You get more dps out of fireball towers pretty easily. 6 fireball towers will do more damage than 5 Harpoons.

Did a test in tavern. Fireball on buff beam did 353,568 DPS, Harpoon did 362,262 DPS. The piercing of Harpoons isn't worth 1DU. When ogres have 50million HP- 10k dps will mean nothing.

That test sounds like your App had a good chunk higher stats then the Squire/Countess in TDMG/TRate. You are showing a 3% decrease in damage going from Harpoon to Fireball... doesn't sound anything like the results I got in prior comparisons.

I think that was 6 fireballs vs 5 harps or like you said a huge stat diff. Pretty sure that it stands up if your wall is getting several ogres standing next to each other fireball will get better results, if your defense is keeping up so only one is ever at the wall, harp(s) are a better use of the DU.

When I do palantir surv for example, I love having fireballs as those massive 100mil ogres start piling up since it basically comes down to trying to keep all of their focus off the wall at once - which a few harps generally won't be able to do. Albeit the harps have higher dps but it isn't enough of a difference that stuff with 100mil hp is going to care. On a map like aquaros, my stats have gotten to a point where the fireball towers are no longer needed, very rarely do I get a pileup of ogres anymore, so having the few towers as harps simply speeds up the pace.

I don't see how I can stress the point I'm about to make any further then what will be below...

Fireballs will almost never deal greater DPS to ogre that are bunched up at walls even when excluding long cooridors. The reason is due to how the pathfinding of the enemy AI works (that is what controls where the enemy units walk). As far as I am aware Dungeon Defenders has ZERO capability of handling dynamic adjustments to pathable areas caused by barriers/bodies/anything else that could potentially block a route. This is part of the reason the warrior mob can jump since it is not coded to know how to go around. It is also why they are likely unnaffected by traps/aura to the degree of other mobs since their AI can not see these in the environment. A* (the algorithm commonly and almost exclusively used in the game industry to control pathing of AI units) finds the shortest path possible up to a given point. Depending on map size it may find the exact shortest path to the exact destination, but for optimization it may only find the shortest path along a heuristically defined ideal shortest path (not likely being used in this game). Due to exact shortest path diagnals are not your friend if you can make a straight line to the goal assuming there was nothing blocking you (enemy units can not see other enemy units, outside of Djinn buffing... Necro healing does not count). Therefore, when you have a group of ogres at the wall usually (except the rare occurence) you will see at max two ogre up against the wall... and the rest behind. The rest can not see they need to take a different path because they don't see any dynamic obstacle (other ogres). They only see the physical map, itself. Since diagnals are not pathfinding's friend they stand behind the first 1-2 ogre in a line while trying to walk forward.

To offer further verification for those who do not understand... look at the drawing aggro method when using passive walls (EV wall/reverse spike wall/etc.). The enemy ogre aggro the harpoon/fb/etc. behind the wall but can not see the wall and thus wil attempt to forever walk at the tower harming the ogre and thus ignore the wall. By its inability to see the wall I mean its pathfinding algorithm does not see the wall, its targeting algorithm can, however. This is why it can lock onto the wall when not targeting say... a harpoon. Another example can be seen in that say.... aquanos you build a wall that does not cover an entire lane but is just in front of the tower to block off an ogre that would walk in a straight line to harpoon. Ogre will not attempt to walk around it (tho due to slight variance in orientation while walking may slide along the wall very slowly until it passes around the wall). This won't work, of course, if you don't have a wall blocking off the straight line path to its target.. say a ogre that walks just around the corner so properly wall off any straight line paths if you wish to test this and leave openings in the rest of the potential path ways.

This is why harpoons are virtually always superior to fireball towers when solely concerning dealing with ogre trains. The rare exception is a map such as Sky City. This exception exists because of the velocity at which the ogre is moving on the lifts + poor pathing on the lifts + copter ogre flight variance determining where it will land. Thus an entirely different issue...

The damage could go either way to a pile of ogres Xen, I was just focusing on the fact that as they keep getting nailed by the fireball across the wall, they wont hammer my walls down. I have tried almost the same setup with harps instead of fireballs and they pummel my walls down - once there is a sufficient number of ogres that can't feasibly all keep getting hit by the harpoon. In case it was confusing I was basically agreeing with you, and pointing out the one scenario I have had fireballs work to greater effect, and in the end the damage was mostly irrelevant since the two towers produce similar results, it was the way it keeps the ogre's attention.

The damage could go either way to a pile of ogres Xen, I was just focusing on the fact that as they keep getting nailed by the fireball across the wall, they wont hammer my walls down. I have tried almost the same setup with harps instead of fireballs and they pummel my walls down - once there is a sufficient number of ogres that can't feasibly all keep getting hit by the harpoon. In case it was confusing I was basically agreeing with you, and pointing out the one scenario I have had fireballs work to greater effect, and in the end the damage was mostly irrelevant since the two towers produce similar results, it was the way it keeps the ogre's attention.

In regards to keeping their attention there are issues in areas like Aquanos south section in which two very different arrival points for ogres occur resulting in ogres whailing on walls if they are not aggrod (which may occur if not enough dps is being dealt to deal wtih them). In this case fireball/harpoon will both fail regardless unless adjustments/dps are accounted for. As I said you should get identical results with aggro for the first 2 ogres (the rest will be behind in which case... those behind can still club wall since fireball won't grab aggro). Another way to account for this is a few archer that are closer to certain sections of your walls in proximity to increase the odds they grab aggro on different ogres isntead of all targeting the same one. Your case in which you see FB generate superior results is likely in scenarios such as Aquanos south where the left side has 3 entry points (for the core left entry point) for ogre. They remain spaced unless you properly place harpoons in correct positions. With FB you don't need to worry about this because of the spread dmg will grab aggro on the front most ogres easily... though you will have issues if more ogres pile up behind the first row.

One method of placing harpoons to guarantee results similar to fb towers even on spread ogres is to have them fire in a overlapping (or crossing) area such as south Aquanos (tho if you place them correctly this is unnecessary, but requires more effort to figure out). This of course requires more then 1 Harpoon in a spot you may otherwise only have normally 1 core dps tower. Best solution is to find proper placement, but if you don't then a FB is a good solution so long as it kills the front row of ogres fast enough to keep further back ones from aggroin wall.

That test sounds like your App had a good chunk higher stats then the Squire/Countess in TDMG/TRate. You are showing a 3% decrease in damage going from Harpoon to Fireball... doesn't sound anything like the results I got in prior comparisons.

Slightly.

It was ~2750, 2200 app towers vs ~2600, 2200 Squire towers. A very, very slight stat advantage to the app. Both towers were on a 3.2k dmg Buff beam and non-active.

Harpoons do their job....but they cost 6 du. Again, 5 fireballs and 6du of anything will pretty much always out dps 5 Harpoons.

It's all about getting the most out of your DU. Optimization.

There is no price for piercing thru enemies in some maps.

I recently switched from fireballs to harpoons, around 3k turret dmg - 2.4k attack rate. Without harpoons i was unable to progress that much in aquanos....
Your fireballs hit only the ogre, while the others monsters are on the gas trap(my monk only had 2.4 tower dmg at the time)... after a while the ogre eventually die, but then the trash monsters get to the wall, maybe with another ogre behind. Then the wall get obliterated.

Switching to harpoons, i was able to actually kill ogres while also killing the thrash mobs, something you cant do with apprentice.
Never been able to go past wave 22 of aquanos, the istant i gave my app gear to the squire i was able to reach wave 24. Now(after a week or so of farming and trading) i'm able to finish aquanos nm hc mm survival with the harpoons. With fireballs, at last with my stat, i know i'm unable of such a thing.
Harpoons kill fwyvern when they are targeting the ogres, so in aquanos for me there is really no choice.
It's like having 6 du of harpoon shooting to some mobs and another 6 du of harpoon shooting the ogre... 12 du..
Fireball only do one thing at a time.

Also, fireballs tower shoots are slower, i'm wrong? That mean that the dps they do reach the place later, meaning that some of it is wasted(it will continue to shoot after the monster is tecnically doomed).

Another reason i prefer harpoons is about fps, if i use 3 fireballs in the same place with a triple star beambuff my fps literally reach <1 mark...(with some controller plugged in)... a more playable game for your dps character means a lot more than let's say.... 1 more tower in the map.

In aquanos, maybe just becouse of my setup, 1 harpoon is better than 2 fireballs in every aspect.

There is no price for piercing thru enemies in some maps.

I recently switched from fireballs to harpoons, around 3k turret dmg - 2.4k attack rate. Without harpoons i was unable to progress that much in aquanos....
Your fireballs hit only the ogre, while the others monsters are on the gas trap(my monk only had 2.4 tower dmg at the time)... after a while the ogre eventually die, but then the trash monsters get to the wall, maybe with another ogre behind. Then the wall get obliterated.

Switching to harpoons, i was able to actually kill ogres while also killing the thrash mobs, something you cant do with apprentice.
Never been able to go past wave 22 of aquanos, the istant i gave my app gear to the squire i was able to reach wave 24. Now(after a week or so of farming and trading) i'm able to finish aquanos nm hc mm survival with the harpoons. With fireballs, at last with my stat, i know i'm unable of such a thing.
Harpoons kill fwyvern when they are targeting the ogres, so in aquanos for me there is really no choice.
It's like having 6 du of harpoon shooting to some mobs and another 6 du of harpoon shooting the ogre... 12 du..
Fireball only do one thing at a time.

Also, fireballs tower shoots are slower, i'm wrong? That mean that the dps they do reach the place later, meaning that some of it is wasted(it will continue to shoot after the monster is tecnically doomed).

Another reason i prefer harpoons is about fps, if i use 3 fireballs in the same place with a triple star beambuff my fps literally reach <1 mark...(with some controller plugged in)... a more playable game for your dps character means a lot more than let's say.... 1 more tower in the map.

In aquanos, maybe just becouse of my setup, 1 harpoon is better than 2 fireballs in every aspect.

1. Trash mobs shouldn't reach your walls, that's why they are called trash mobs. If you have trash mobs at your walls, revise your build.

2. Fish come from the back side by the balcony. Your harpoons can't both hit ogres and those Fish.

3. A Fireball and a Proton beam will clear ogres Faster than a Single Harpoon.

4. Piercing isn't very valuable when you don't have anything but ogres on your walls. Fireballs are more than sufficient for Ogres.

5. FPS, is your only legitimate concern. I would suggest turning post-processing off and lowering your settings, it sounds as if you are running the game on a higher quality than your hardware can reasonably handle.

1. Trash mobs shouldn't reach your walls, that's why they are called trash mobs. If you have trash mobs at your walls, revise your build.

2. Fish come from the back side by the balcony. Your harpoons can't both hit ogres and those Fish.

3. A Fireball and a Proton beam will clear ogres Faster than a Single Harpoon.

4. Piercing isn't very valuable when you don't have anything but ogres on your walls. Fireballs are more than sufficient for Ogres.

5. FPS, is your only legitimate concern. I would suggest turning post-processing off and lowering your settings, it sounds as if you are running the game on a higher quality than your hardware can reasonably handle.

1. This one is definitely true.

2. This one is partially true in most cases, but can be adjusted to make occur... it depends on how you are building that section. Also, jokingly, there is a bug that lets harpoons fire backwards at random. :P

3. Of course, you are using at least 7 DU in this case vs 6 (just like 5 DU vs 6 results in harpoons having greater dmg).

4. Piercing is value in the fact that he was correct about it clearing fish comming from the left/south section if they are engoldened since an aura stack won't stop them unless you also placed something such as an inferno trap there (depends on DU usage). Other then this, you are correct. In such regards, both are sufficient until you have in excess of two ogres at a given location in which Harpoon surpasses FB in virtually every case.

5. FPS is a concern for those with less then top level hardware. It is made worse, as given in the example, when playing split screen because Trendy... screwed up royally with how they coded the game game involving more then one camera. They are likely performing calculations when moving between coordinate systems or something else icky that is totally unnecessary. As MTG says, turn off post-processing/lower settings and if need be lower your resolution some.

1. This one is definitely true.

2. This one is partially true in most cases, but can be adjusted to make occur... it depends on how you are building that section. Also, jokingly, there is a bug that lets harpoons fire backwards at random. :P

3. Of course, you are using at least 7 DU in this case vs 6 (just like 5 DU vs 6 results in harpoons having greater dmg).

4. Piercing is value in the fact that he was correct about it clearing fish comming from the left/south section if they are engoldened since an aura stack won't stop them unless you also placed something such as an inferno trap there (depends on DU usage). Other then this, you are correct. In such regards, both are sufficient until you have in excess of two ogres at a given location in which Harpoon surpasses FB in virtually every case.

5. FPS is a concern for those with less then top level hardware. It is made worse, as given in the example, when playing split screen because Trendy... screwed up royally with how they coded the game game involving more then one camera. They are likely performing calculations when moving between coordinate systems or something else icky that is totally unnecessary. As MTG says, turn off post-processing/lower settings and if need be lower your resolution some.

2. Well, you can angle a harpoon/fireball to cover the balcony and also cover the south crystal ogres that come from the ramp. But you won't pierce fish and Ogres in such a situation.

3. Yes, it is 7 DU, but when do you ever only use 1 Harpoon. It adds up. If you, were to use 5 harpoons (conservative estimation, 6 is more likely) on Aqua that would be 5 DU you could have saved. With that 5 DU open's up options. You could add 2 proton beams and a reflect, a proton and an explosive, an inferno and a reflect, another fireball.....etc, etc. We can even adapt this to the above situation mentioned. If you have trouble with the trash mobs, you could take that 5 du and add inferno/elec/prox/gas and eliminate some if not all of the issue, eliminating the need for piercing (which wouldn't be as effective as splash for trash clearing anyway, but that's an irrelevant point).

4. Piercing could help with golden fish. But I have not seen ever more than 1 golden fish at a time. So, a fireball would be as effective as a Harpoon would be. There are also minions that would shoot the fish, in the event that it actually got that close to your walls which I would find highly unlikely. If you have more than 1 Golden Fish, it would seem that you have djinn that are not being cleared adequately. This has been aforementioned. Trash clearing should be addressed in such a case, which would involve the use of additional DU, that could be found by using fireballs.

I'm not saying harpoons are awful. You could make a build with them and do fine. But if you are struggling, fireball towers would open up a lot of possibilities to address whatever issues you are having due to the uniqueness of stats of different builders. It is my opinion that Fireballs are overall more useful and should be considered much more often (I think fireballs should be the standard and harpoons the exception to be considered).

There are actually a few places that I want to test the effectiveness of a harpoon vs a fireball on moraggo; where there are a couple places you can manipulate the enemies into corridors.