hailminion

( Just providing some suggestions, final choice is yours ) Upgrading 1 relic and a weapon equates to 10 mil each reset, that's a very huge sink, 10 AP = 100M? (excluding shard upgrades that is). I suggest go through my OG post tip 1~4 It's generally recommended to do a bunch of AP in a row, and as soon as u hit targeted floor, instead of push beyond needed. U wanna do push (for min asc), rounds of AP, push (for min asc), rounds of AP, final push (ultimate end game, test your potential). Instead of many pushes, which equates to many wasted floors, times, resources, effort. U can sort of refer to tip 8 & tip 1

I only missed by 15 hours, great. . . . wait.... WUT? ITS TAKEN? HOW!

They have a purple smoke indication before latching on. I always pay attention to those and make sure i stay in CC area shortly after seeing those.

MODs just drop anywhere on gears/relics. MODs has very clear description, 99% of them should be self-explanatory (like anti-melee, increase % damage to melee mobs ; defense rate, increase attack rate by % ; poison servo, gives defenses poison element ; etc etc) There is no "the meta" setup, since everything is customization and tailored to fight different specific type mobs. A setup may be meta to some people, but can be useless to others, because they have different play styles, and building strategies. For example u need Piercer servo, to pierce ; Poison servo, to poison ; melee-boom, to deal explosion damage upon killing melee mobs ; anti-range servo, to better kill ranged mobs ; Fire servo, to deal double damage to Frost enemies. (the biggest meta if any, in current state, is Crowd Control, which can be achieved by combining water/storm, or poison/earth elements ; before u step into onslaught, this can be applied to every single map u do) The quickest way to pick those knowledge up, is by playing, experimenting, and watching streams/videos of players who already implement those MODs to show various examples of setup for various enemies, like Mr. Juicebag.

Tutorial doesn't teach u shards/MODs, as they are part of strategy setup for customization, they only teach u control wise to place down defenses, so don't bother to try to go back is my suggestion. As far as thorough explanation of the entire system, Search Mr. Juicebag, he's got pretty much everything there is to know about DD2 in his videos. When getting to smaller stuff, do read the text-description of shards/MODs u get, as most of them are very self-explanatory. As far as progression, expedition is where u do farming, and get introduced to various mob type. I call it "the second tutorial". After expedition, when u have experimented bits of defenses, mobs, u can move on to Mastery, and Onslaught (the mode that provides challenging content as u progress further). All of those Juicebag has good videos on, if u have specific questions.

fixes EU PS4 issue

I came across a few old videos on Juicebag channel at one point, and I think those are very similar to or same as what u r describing. Those did look super fun!!!

purple

Both Ramster or WM are very good choices imo. Both can out-range cyborks extremely easily with range and wouldn't need tenacity. On Sploody Harpoon, Ballista won't give a good AOE, it just pierces one line. When u attune with a MOD, u attunes the relic and the relic ONLY (and defense that is effected by relic if it's attunable), u CANNOT attune a shard or a MOD. (like if I have water on my weapon, it just means my attacks gona be water; it does NOT attune my "burning strike" to "drenching strike" ; or if I have ice chip on my weapon, it does NOT result an icey turn-the-tides damage) Attunement only happens to the thing it's on directly.

I think that's the beauty of DD2. It gave me so much joy and memorable moments I will for sure carry for a long time, in such a short time period, and for that I am very grateful. Kinda like I'm still thankful for the tour guide and girl I met, on that 2-wks Europe amazing trip, memories of which stay till this very day, after 10+ yrs. Could not understand your analogy tho?

My intention is that players can get the most fun/use/power out of limited resource, thus this post. As Glint mentioned, I'm posting, Not to bring attention to anyone who already knows about the strat; but only to bring such strat into spotlights for newer players. I'm NOT proposing a nerf at all, to be clear, even if someone completed 999. Those are two kind of separate topics. To answer u, I think u r getting misled a bit by my vids lol. I do apologize for that. If u search for videos of people above or on roads to 900, or even 700-800, such as Zombie, Blade's stream, as well as some videos on my channel, u won't see any cheesy proc mechanics at all on those higher floors. This is a Tower Defense Game after all. Relying on hero heavily can only cheese thru certain early-mid stages in a TD game. So do focus on your defenses instead of heroes, if your goal is to push high. I should probably put a disclaimer at beginning saying this is only for entertaining purposes.....

I believe Mr. Juicebag has many different videos on those maps with various builds strategy if u would like to learn. The purpose of this thread is only to pass and demonstrate the power of weapon MODs for newcomers recently entering the game.

ummm, maybe let me delete redundant post? lol

Not sure the intent of CG for upcoming balance, but my suggestion below. Either bring, hellfire, venomous viper and ballista bite (self proc) mechanics back, to be in line with self-proc WM; (since petrify will be more healthy now) Or disable all existing water-SR relics to be in line with special-mod-attuning-relic for ballista and vipers etc. (Just like the current fiery fang is hard-set to attune the whole existing relic to fire, even with other element present. ) I'd vote for either of above, but really don't wanna see, after nerfing 4 self-combo defenses (ramster, WM, ballista, viper), they decide to bring one back, and leave the other 3 in the shade, because "reasons". Either nerf all to be consistent, or un-nerf all to be consistent. Just my two cents.

I'm the good guy to show ppl the good stuff