Quad Balance and Ranked Season 3 Update 1.5

*This patch launched on March 4th, 2022.*

Welcome to Version 1.5! It's been a few months since we added **Quad Element Towers**, and overall, the reception has been decent. Build options were expanded, creative compositions were invented, and as per usual, you all broke the game. Instead of filling more specific roles, certain **Quads** ended up soloing the game. And some **Quads** were just outright bad.

To that end, balance this patch was focused on bringing down the outliers while giving some love to underpowered towers. Not just **Quads**, but everything.

Other than that, we've got **Ranked Season 3**, various fixes and improvements, and a couple new builders. Without further ado, read on for the notes:

*Accurate rendition of how Version 1.4 was played.*

## Features & Improvements

* Ranked Season 3 has begun! Climb up the ladder in a hopefully more balanced game than before.
* Two new Builders added:
	+ Level 60- Bone Drake
	+ Level 70 - Demon Summoner
* In Co-op, Path Indicators are now color-coded, move faster, and linger longer.
* Element Prompt now continues to remain up and doesn't act as an input blocker. Has an X button to manually close it out.
* When building a Buff Tower (Blacksmith, Well, Trickery & Life Altar), it'll now highlight towers in range of its buff.
	+ You can also see this by hovering over its ability icon.

* When hosting a lobby, it'll keep your settings from the last time.

*Who knows, Crystal Spire might actually be useful afterall? Nah, probably not.*

## Bug Fixes

* Fixed a bug where a tower would continue to exist way off-screen for about 10-15 seconds after it was sold.
	+ This included Trickery Clones when they expire.
	+ Since it's way off-screen, it's not in-range for most towers... but certain ones were coded a bit differently and didn't care. Particularly Railgun, Crystal Spire, & Obelisk. All three of these, in conjunction with Trickery, resulted in basically double damage output. Especially Railgun.
* Fixed a bug with Railgun where its main gun would be hitting twice.
	+ So instead of dealing 75k damage, it was dealing 150k damage.
	+ This + the Sell-Trickery bug resulted in extreme silliness.
* Fixed not being able to select and kick someone in lobby.
* Fixed a bug where ctrl+upgrade building from Tower Table wouldn't update the Damage Table.
* Fixed an issue with the Average Damage checkbox on the Damage Table where, at the end of the game, it'll list stuff like "In,fin,ity Damage" and -1 on tower counts and the like.
* Fixed a bug where you could bypass the tower limit in non-FFA by holding Shift.
* Fixed Life Altar listing 0 + 200 for its AoE stat, instead of just 200.
* Fixed a bug where, if multiple Trickeries were in range of a chain of Tesla Trees and you switched them from manual to auto-cast, they would all clone the Tesla Tree chain, resulting in a hilariously laggy amount of clones, depending on how much multiplication you did.
* Fixed being able to get the Monument Achievement on Easy.
* In War, fixed a rare issue where creeps stop spawning.

## Balance

#### **General Balance**

* Fixed ridiculously stupid logic error that applied Teams Base HP & HP Scaling to FFA. This was legitimately in place since 1.4.2. Words cannot describe.
	+ Expect the game to be up to 10% easier through Wave 55, and start 30% easier from the first Boss Wave.
* Diminishing Returns bumped back up from 5% to 6%
* **Level 3 Boss** HP reduced by 10%

#### **Co-op**

* Wave timer reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
* **Atlantis** creep movespeed increased by 10%
* **Tundra** creep HP increased by 20%
* **Pinnacle** creep movespeed & HP increased by 10% (except on the long paths)

#### Singles & Duals

* **Light** projectile speed increased by 10%
* **Darkness** projectile speed increased by 15%
* **Nature** damage increased from 90 to 95
* **Atom** adjusted:
	+ Damage increased from 315 to 330
	+ Stack carryover rate increased from 25% to 30%
* **Lightning** damage increased from 180 to 190
* **Trickery** adjusted:
	+ Clone damage reduced from 40% / 120% / 360% to 30% / 90% / 270%
	+ Clone duration increased from 15 to 20
	+ Clones now carry over Cursed stacks from the original tower
* **Poison** duration increased from 15 to 16
* **Ice** damage increased from 800 to 825
* **Vapor** adjusted:
	+ Damage reduced from 2000 to 1100
	+ Damage bonus per creep increased from -4% / 0% / 4% to 3% / 6% / 9%
* **Solar** damage-per-second increased from 110 to 120
* **Bloom** damage increased from 350 to 360
* **Geyser** ability AoE increased from 300 to 300 / 325 / 350

#### Triples

* Laser damage loss per nearby creep reduced from 1000 to 750
* Haste adjusted:
	+ Projectile speed increased by 33%
	+ Attack speed gain per attack reduced from 7% to 6%
	+ Max attack speed increased from 5 to 5.5
* Golem damage increased from 2300 to 2400
* Money adjusted:
	+ Damage reduced from 3400 to 3200
	+ Damage gain based on unspent gold increased from 15% / 30% to 20% / 40%
	+ Tower now passively gives you 5 / 20 gold every 15 seconds
* Corrosion damage-per-second reduced from 160 to 150

#### Quads

* Railgun adjusted:
	+ Static field range reduced from 900 to 750
	+ Main gun damage reduced from 75000 to 57500
	+ Passive charge rate increased from 7 to 10
* Doom debuff damage reduced from 7500 to 7000
* Phantom Zone adjusted:
	+ Shockwave now applies damage in Full/Half AoE, just like all other AoE in the game
	+ Shockwave damage conversion reduced from 30% to 25%
* Plague adjusted:
	+ Damage no longer reduces by 2% per second
	+ Duration increased from 20 to 25 seconds
	+ Bounce range increased from 1200 to 1500
* Crystal Spire adjusted:
	+ Damage increased from 22000 to 32000
	+ Attack speed reduced from 0.66 to 0.5
	+ Projectile speed increased by 50%
	+ There's now a 0.25 second cooldown before it can launch the next spirit, which should reduce the amount of missed/overlapping attacks
* Tsunami clones will now try to automatically trigger their shockwave right before they expire
* Archdruid damage now scales by the amount of path skipped. For reference, skipping half the path on Forest will result in a 50% damage increase
* Life Altar adjusted:
	+ Damage increased from 8000 to 8500
	+ It now has a 60 second cannot-be-buffed period, matching its cooldown.
	+ Life Threshold increased from 2 to 3 kills
	+ Damage & Attack Speed buff increased from 35% to 45%
* Tesla Tree adjusted:
	+ Damage increased from 7500 to 8000
	+ However, the 3000 extra damage it receives per linked tower has been removed. They still combine their damage as they link up.
* Gravity Cannon damage reduced from 4200 to 4000
* Nuclear max slow increased from 40% to 50%
* Shredder adjusted:
	+ Attack speed reduced from 0.66 to 0.5
	+ Split creeps move 5% faster

As per usual, with all our major balance patches, Score Leaderboards have been reset.

*Maybe now that he generates a small amount of actual money, this bad boy could have a comeback! Or not.*

That's it for Version 1.5! I know it's lighter than our usual fare, but that's because we're working on larger things in the background. We'll have a post up later this month detailing more post-release content for ~~Railgun TD 2 Tesla Tree TD 2~~ Element TD 2. In the meantime, enjoy the patch!