My 2¢ on Squire vs Apprentice

[Xengre]

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.

[Gamblor]

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.

[VonCrown]

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.

[SkyKing]

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

[Mtg_Player_Zach]

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.

[Xengre]

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.

[Hawsomeic]

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.

[Xengre]

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...

[Hawsomeic]

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.

[Xengre]

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.