Does the Apprentice need a buff to keep up?

[luke127]

I usually use Harpoons, Bouncers and Magic Missile towers in the Foundries and Forges map. I put the harpoons near the enemy
spawn points then the bouncer blockades and the MMT's behind them. I find this strategy works well on Easy, Medium and Hard but not so well on insane. I am still working on it. I will get there!

[Wally]

Well,

In my opinion the problem with bowling balls is the fact that harpoons are effective versus ground AND sky mobs. Since the introduction of djinns, you need propper sky related dps. Aura's don't help with that since djinns just move outside them. And DU is quite tight to experiment and have fun with bowling balls. Naturally i'm basing myself on NM difficulty, for insane you don't need to spend so many DU on sky related defenses.

I would be very much in favour of the next changes :

Squire
Bowling balls : DU - 2
Slice and Dice : DU - 4 - can not be moved by sharken, sharken get deflected by the swords

Apprentice :
lightning tower : -3 DU
Fireball : Du -1 *2 AOE effect
MM : -1 DU, +10% dmg
Strike tower : -3 DU , unlimitted piercing
wall : can not be moved by sharken due to their magical nature OR you can choose for them to only block/aggro certain mobs (spiders, sharken).

Hunter :
Etherial trap : -1 DU, activate only on ogres, sharken, djinn, wyverns and the new mob in shards 4. Dmg * 3. Can not be unsummoned
darkness trap : -1 du
inferno : +15% dmg

Monk :
enrage aura : -2 DU, can not be unsommoned, make sharken unable to charge while inside the aura

Barbarian :
Lightning stance : abolish the dmg aspect, increase stun duration

For the others, i'm still thinking.

[Grim indeed]

I would be very much in favour of the next changes :

Squire
Bowling balls : DU - 2
Slice and Dice : DU - 4 - can not be moved by sharken, sharken get deflected by the swords

Apprentice :
lightning tower : -3 DU
Fireball : Du -1 *2 AOE effect
MM : -1 DU, +10% dmg
Strike tower : -3 DU , unlimitted piercing
wall : can not be moved by sharken due to their magical nature OR you can choose for them to only block/aggro certain mobs (spiders, sharken).

Hunter :
Etherial trap : -1 DU, activate only on ogres, sharken, djinn, wyverns and the new mob in shards 4. Dmg * 3. Can not be unsummoned
darkness trap : -1 du
inferno : +15% dmg

Monk :
enrage aura : -2 DU, can not be unsommoned, make sharken unable to charge while inside the aura

i think that would be overkill (why would an ET be un-unsummonable?)
piercing/high damage 5DU DST seems a bit much
MB might make more sense to have it 'float' back into place after a charge
S+D, -4 DU and sharkenproof? 0.o

[Wally]

i think that would be overkill (why would an ET be un-unsummonable?)
piercing/high damage 5DU DST seems a bit much
MB might make more sense to have it 'float' back into place after a charge
S+D, -4 DU and sharkenproof? 0.o

ET's can then be used strategically everywhere on the map. I miss the moment where one could build everywhere on the map and to soften the high HP mobs up a bit before they reach your walls.
5DU DST : same as a harpoon, but DST has for the moment a much lower refiring rate due to animation.
MB : idea was to make it usable as dummy wall to draw sharkens towards it. Purely tactical reasons. But sure your option is a possible solution as long as they don't get smashed way to far and they float back kinda automagically.
S+D : means you get a small wall for 4DU (they cost 8 now if I remember correct). They are worse statswise then a 4DU EVwall. And their use is really debateable. Even at 4DU if it wasn't for them being sharkenproof I would still prefer the bouncer. There is at the moment in the implimentation really nothing that makes them useful as a buildingblock. At least I don't recall ever having used them in insane or nightmare at all.

[Xjphantom]

ET's can then be used strategically everywhere on the map. I miss the moment where one could build everywhere on the map and to soften the high HP mobs up a bit before they reach your walls.
5DU DST : same as a harpoon, but DST has for the moment a much lower refiring rate due to animation.
MB : idea was to make it usable as dummy wall to draw sharkens towards it. Purely tactical reasons. But sure your option is a possible solution as long as they don't get smashed way to far and they float back kinda automagically.
S+D : means you get a small wall for 4DU (they cost 8 now if I remember correct). They are worse statswise then a 4DU EVwall. And their use is really debateable. Even at 4DU if it wasn't for them being sharkenproof I would still prefer the bouncer. There is at the moment in the implimentation really nothing that makes them useful as a buildingblock. At least I don't recall ever having used them in insane or nightmare at all.

SnD is a great attacking wall. If anything should be done with it imo is a health buff to be a little more than bouncy block. And dst doesn't have a set "animation time" I've tested by setting firing rate to 0.00 and it will send a constant stream of bolts.

[JoBarfCreepy]

[BOLD]attacking[/BOLD]

It's "[B]"

Also I think that if the Magic Tower's DU was reduced by one, people would respect your decision of placing apprentice buildings.

[Xjphantom]

Sorry about bad proof reading...fixed it (Ty for telling me)

[Dr. Kohaku]

Just going to add a personal experience of mine to the discussion here.

I used to main Apprentice a few months ago, back when Squire was considered near useless. While it was fun, it certainly wasn't fair, but I never thought App needed a nerf or anything of the like. If anything, Squire just need to be up to par with him, but what do I know.

Anyways, I stopped playing for a few months a bit before the Apprentice nerf. I come back 2 Shards dlc's later and started again from 0 with a friend just for fun. Him being a Squire, me being an Apprentice once again.
It just took me a few campaign runs to note that his towers were just plain better than mine in almost any scenario. His did more damage, pierced and had relatively higher HP AND his character was sturdier, while I had trouble staying alive in a lot of occasions due to my low HP and hero damage.
Sure, I outran and could repair way faster than him, but if I stepped outside of our blockades I was easily stomped on by warriors and what not. Not to mention my towers, that I liked to think of as glass cannons were actually just glass in comparison to his.
I'd like to mention as well that he was running on an hybrid build, both stat and equip wise, while I was running on solely Tower and Hero HP. My patience ran out dry after we got to Nightmare.

Ever since then, I stopped using Apprentice and focus on Squire/Monk/EV. It's just easier to manage these characters and have solid defenses I can actually depend on in most cases.
I'm sure Apprentice still has it's uses but the rest of the classes just plain outshine him in almost every department making him not all that desirable anymore.
I'd absolutely love a buff since, honestly, it's still my favorite class and I hate to see it being thrashed like this. From a simple damage ramp increase to a mechanic change in the towers, anything. I just want it to be a viable builder like Squire is right now, as I like to have variety in my games, instead of having to use the same characters, same towers and the same builds that everyone else uses.

[CrzyRndm]

LT
I think the problem here is the damage ramp is way to low. With 150TD (my local mage ) these hit for 500/tick and really clear trash at an extreme rate. With 2k+ TD, they only tick at 3500 and because their RoF is fixed, that is extremely low.

Correction. 2.2k TD they tick at 2200. Was looking at it in NM the first time.

These towers are essential for my low level mage b/c of the significant damage they deal. They just dont on my high level mage

[Wally]

SnD is a great attacking wall. If anything should be done with it imo is a health buff to be a little more than bouncy block. And dst doesn't have a set "animation time" I've tested by setting firing rate to 0.00 and it will send a constant stream of bolts.

Possibly it could be considered a great attacking wall. unfortunately I have never seen a use for it. Besides even if I wanted this I prefer replacing this attacking wall with a normal wall and an inferno trap and this attacking wall gets outshined, not only in dmg but also effect range. Just making it have a little bit more health then a bouncy block will not change its use. And to me it does need a use.

Concerning DST, I might be wrong then, but I have never seen it reach the 0.00 range or even the refire rate of the harpoon. Even with an EV beam (or huntress 40 guardian) on it. And with a worse refire rate, a higher dmg output per shot (but not DPS), but only effecting 1 mob and for an insane amount of DU on maps that are tight on DU . There need to be specific uses where specific building blocks can shine. That to me is the direction I would want to go towards. Maybe the piercing is not the way to go, maybe it should have a target priority versys sharken, djinn, new mob, ogres, wyvern. But in my opinion it does need a serious change to make it useful. Even with just decreasing the DU into the direction of a Harpoon its use is going to be very very limitted due to the fact that the DU on most maps is way to tight to make optimal interchangeable builds.