Wishlist

The place to make/discuss Kingdom Rush suggestions.

Wishlist

by Killing Smalls » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:59 pm

This post is separated into 7 sections:

Section 1: Purpose of Post

Section 2:The meta of Heroes: (please read this before the hero section)

Section 3:Gerald LightSeeker and what heroes he inspired and whether they were successful

Section 4: Alleria Swiftwind and what heroes she inspired and whether they were successful

Section 5: WHAT MAKES A HERO FUN

Section 6: CONCLUSION WITH THE WORST HEROES

Section 7: Heroes I want


SECTION 1: PURPOSE OF POST

I have been playing KR since the original when only 3 of the dlc heroes were released (ignus, magnus and the dwarf guy). I am the type of player who refuses to use the gem powers as they are cheating to me BUT does purchase almost all of the heroes including those in Iron Marines. I beat the entire game on Veteran first but then go back to both the extra levels and replaying old levels trying to beat them with every hero. However heroes tend to have niches that make them good on some maps and worse on others. Some hero niches are more universal than others. Some heroes are interactive and fun. However some heroes fail to fulfill their niche and this has left me disappointed with some and happy with others. I want to try and address heroes I feel to be subpar in either the "fun" and/or "performing" categories. Hopefully this will give some player insight to the developers of what I (not speaking for the whole community) want from future heroes.

Disclaimer: I am missing 11/42 heroes.


Section 2: Meta of heroes

LightSeeker(using him as an explanation for the meta that has remained for all KR titles) :
Attributes: Very tanky eventually getting up to 80% armour
Skill 1: courage: buff ally armour by 5/10/15% and damage by 2/4/6
Skill 2: Block: 30/40/50% chance to block attack

While he is quite fun to use he does not perform. The barracks, I feel for many players, is there favorite tower as the rally point system to block enemies is what truly made KR one of a kind. LightSeeker is meant to synergize with the barracks. However you learn on Level4 Veteran Ironmode(i think, its the one with the circle type map) that barracks is not always the answer. Up to this point the intuitive strategy of barracks to pile up the enemy and artillery to do AOE has held as a strong foundation. This ironman challenge strips the AOE artillery piece away. The solution to beat this level is pretty much to spam archer towers.

Why? because barracks troops anywhere but the last line of defense actively hurt you. This is because if the wulfs are allowed to run through all of your archer towers uninterrupted your archer towers can deal with them. However if you place down a barracks, eventually your barracks troops will die and ergo allowing a large group of wulfs that were temporarily stopped to push up together rather than a stream. This glob is too much for your archers to handle and you will lose the challenge.

Now How does gerald fit into this. Well he keeps your troops alive preventing this wulf group to move forward. However he only increases the footsoldiers armour by a max of 15% and their attack damage marginally. While the attack damage is nice, avoiding the catastrophe of your barracks troops dying is only delayed by the small amount of armor he gifts to his troops (bar the self healing paladins). He himself also is a dueling character with his second ability only benefiting his effective HP, blocking 30-50% of attacks. Meaning that as the troops around him stall the enemies he has noway of clearing them.

What do we learn from this:

Heroes can be classified into three basic archeytypes: the staller, the dueler, and the clearer. (although the excellent IronHide Devs throw a couple curveballs).

Stallers are aimed at holding off large amounts of enemies so that AOE abilities can do work.

Clearers use AOE abilities to clear the lower tier enemies so that you can focus your troops on stalling problem enemies.

Duelers can stall on the large enemies that would normally be very dangerous to your footsoldiers.


Gerald Lightseeker is a mix of a dueler and a staller which at its core does not synergize. See he himself may "synergize" with the stall barracks tower BUT he lacks the clearing potential to properly support them. And unlike other heroes such as Magnus (who has a very powerful aoe storm ability) he can not clear a group under the circumstance that his supporting footmen die. This is not to say Gerald is terrible but this is the premise of a hero whose attributes who seem to intuitively mesh well toghether but due to the meta of the game, without significant AOE clear he is unable to save you from defeat and only delays catastrophe. I will go over what I would change to him in the hero section.








SECTION 3: GERALD LIGHTSEEKER AND WHAT HEROES HE SPAWNED IN LATER TITLES AND WHETHER HIS SUCCESSORS WERE SUCCESSFUL

As thourally discussed in the meta section. Gerald wants to support the stalling of barracks. However he himself only adds one additional enemy to blocked while also only extending the life of troops marginally through an armor buff. His "AOE" clear is the damage buff he gives his soldiers which has 2 major problems.

1. it is reliant on footsoldier being alive. Meaning once your chokepoint falls you dont have an ability to get you back into the game
2. the damage on it assuming 6 soldiers are recieving and attacking(not walking or unengaged or changing targets) is only about 15 per second on a max of 6 enemies. Since its 5 seconds on and 3 seconds off I believe the average per second more correctly tells the value of this ability rather than the total damage.

Gerald also has a dueling ability: block as well as 80% armor when maxed. This makes him an excellent dueler filling a niche role that no other hero can match. He can 1v1 even the biggest and baddest enemies in the game assuming they are not a boss and he isnt being hit with magic/poison.

Duelist is an akward classificiation to have in KR since you cant specifically target who you want to fight. especially in crowded environments.

With bad AOE (bad Clear hero), bad stall (bad staller) and duelist being a niche and hard to use correctly due to game mechanics not player skill. Gerald is a hero that is left in a sad place.

Gerald needed to either have a better AOE given more survivability to the surrounding troops. or my personal favorite is to make him the duelist he wants to be.

Gerald should have been tailored to more as a duelist via a targetting command for him signalling other footsoldiers to let him fight the threat alone. (so if it was an AOE enemy your men wouldnt all clump and die with you). This would take advantage of his block ability and would make him a hero pick that would work against some map composistions. If he was to be modernized to a new KR his ultimant could still effect barracks troops but make them have a strong burst AOE and restore the HP/respawn the barracks troops.

From Frontiers I believe there is 2 heroes that embody what Gerald was always meant to be. The first is alric. While he also pulls from bearclaw the role he fills is the same. He doesnt do AOE damage but is meant to support the frontline. However this time he doesnt support the front by boosting allies but by spawning in additional forces (like bearclaw). Why I would say he is more similar to gerald than bearclaw is due to his spiked armor ability. The duelist in gerald never saw the light of day due to a missing hero targetting mechanic. Which is still missing. However like Gerald, Alric is meant to duel the heavy hitters. He may not be as tanky as gerald BUT he can return 60% of the damage dealt to him. This means in a way, Alric is a Gerald that can take on heavies; defeat them; and return to supporting the chokepoint faster than the OG man himself.

From Frontiers there is also Dierdre. While she teleports similar to magnus she is more similar to gerald buffing allied troops and having an enormous HP/armor pool. If she could once again target enemy tanks she could not only buff troops but also keep tanks occupied. To her credit she does this much better than Gerald as she can teleport to troops. Buff them. Then teleport to the high tier enemy threat to slow him down away from her allied footsoldiers. She still does underperform a bit. Perhaps also giving her a buff to enchant allied weapons to help them shred through the host of medium armor foes would have placed her more in line for performance. However Design wise A+

From Origins there is Prince Denas. And while Obviously he is young King Denas he does not really embody the later King at all. He doesnt buff towers. and is now melee. He is extremely tanky due to high armor like Gerald. He is meant to fight among his fellow troops. and has the MIGHTY ability which ignores armor letting him put nasty bruises on heavily armored foes. Which may be different than Alcrics return damage dueling enemies or Geralds low damage dueling but still shows the presence of a "duel" archeytype. Furethermore he has the armor to be a duelist. As far as why he should be next to troops I have already discussed how slowing an enemy outside of chokepoints can be less than useful. His stun ability therefore is best in a chokepoint where he can give his barracks troops a few seconds to heal and damage the enemy. While he is stunning the enemy he himself does not attack so using him outside of chokepoints is once again less than ideal. Origins also implemented the amazing "ultimate" abilities in origins. This allows Prince Denas to support to lanes at once and shores up the weakness of duelists in general. If the choke point falls he can use his ultimate to hold the line until it reforms.

While there is more heroes out that embody supporting the chokepoints and dueling ill stop there. Overall I feel that the new heroes spawning from Gerald LightSeeker were successful BUT a targetting mechanic for heroes with this type of attribute should be implemented. I don't believe that you should be able to prioritize with barracks'. Part of war is that you don't always get to choose who you fight. But for duelist type heroes I feel it to be integral to their success.





SECTION 2: ALERIA SWIFTWIND AND WHETHER OR NOT THE HEROES SHE INSPIRED WERE SUCCESSFUL.

I feel like she is one of the most underratted heroes. I have read many articles bashing her. I disagree with them but I will say she heroes she inspired were not as successful as Gerald Lightseekers'.

SwiftWind is meant to be just behind a chokepoint but can do more than just assist the chokepoint. She has high speed so can kite the enemy shooting a few arrows and then moving back. Once behind the choke she basically does what gerald does with her summoned beast. She can block one additional foe. However her damage output as much higher than geralds. Ignoring the Wildabeast damage (as it is different on mobile and flash), Swiftwinds attack speed is higher and she has a skill "multishot" allowing her to get multitarget damage. Similar to Gerald she does lack a huge burst waveclear but her multishot activates every 3 seconds firing 4 powered up arrows at once. This equates to about 120 damage every 3 seconds. In comparison to the Courage skill from Lightseeker that is about 40 damage per second which is consistent regardless of barracks troops nearby. Compare that to the 15 damage per second of Lightseekers courage. While Gerald Lightseeker also buffed his allies armor. If they died he had no way blob that his soldiers were holding off. Swiftwind on the other hand has a higher DPS and speed. allowing her to kite backwards killing many of them to stop the break in the choke while the choke reforms.

So yeah. I think that archer chick is awesome. She is both interactive to get maximum value and effective.

So which heroes did she inspire?

From frontiers their is mirage which has kiting abilities like shadow dodge and swiftness. a multitarget shadowdance. and even a assassin move to makeup for her high HP single target problem (Swifthind did not have a single target problem as she could fire all 4 arrows at same target). I would classify Mirage as successful as far as fun. But definitely not as effective as I wish she was. Tweaking to cooldowns and such would probly fix her fine IMO.

From Origins she inspired that starter hero Eridan. He may look like Swiftwind but he certainly does not play like her. The main difference is that his "multishot" equivilant is now a single target ability. Its not really a waveclear. It can change targets but in general its gonna fire about 180 damage in the volley and he will do it every 10 seconds in comparison to Swiftwinds 3 seconds. His other abilities include stuff like counterattack and melee buff. He also does more damage the more he hits one target. He wants to be a ranged duelist I guess but he also has melee abilities. Some of you genius' out there may be thinking "he is suppossed to be both. you should be sending him into melee to use his melee abilities and then bringing him out to use his ranged abilities and cycle". If this was the case then I would say "great hero" BUT its not. The reality is that he does more damage in melee due to his counterattack. and only wants to leave every 10 seconds to use his volley skill. His attack speed is higher in melee and does the same damage in melee and in range. While he has a ability that makes his arrows do more damage if successive hits were made on the same target, that does not make up for the loss of counterattack damage and attack speed. To be effective he would need his abilties to do more so the time wasted from him engaging and disengaging would be made up for. I like the idea of a hero who has to alternate between melee and range to get potential. But putting a passive that is constantly being lost while your at range and not making his abilites strong enough to account for the movement time/not making him fast enough to nullify engage and disengaging causes Eridan to be trash.

So design wise I love Eridan. he would be very fun. But he is terrible.




Section 5: Conclusions on What makes a hero fun

So now that I just crapped on Eridan in the last section I want to say that if he wasnt so bad he would be fun to use. To me fun heroes are the ones you can be interactive with. Duelists can be fun but frustrating trying to get them to target enemies that they should. Buffers can be fun. Look at Dierdre. She buffs like Gerald but is way more interactive teleporting to give the buffs and then teleporting to large targets that pose a danger to the integrity of your chokepoint.

I didnt talk about magnus but he was the first of the teleporting heroes. Which are all fun. To maximize their value, you have to be teleporting everywhere. In fact with magnus since he has a minimum distance to teleport I often would click far away to teleport him and then back to the small movement I actually wanted to make. He had an excellent AOE for waveclear and was even damaging to single units.

Eridan could be an interactive fun hero but he is to trash to be one.

Melee heroes while they dont kite and arent as interactive are fun too. Bc you can try and get them to target key units. This is why I sorely need a targetting button for duelist characters.

I didnt talk about Grawl from frontiers but he was another one of my favorites. He basically got a bonus for fighting enemies who had 1/3 of his health. this made him a niche choice on maps where the enemy had 250 or less HP enemies with high armour. since he had a chance to instakill them. He also did more damage when he stayed in oneplace making and had lots of AOE. So this made it a tradeoff to go and fight with him upfront to try and instakill a armoured enemy before returning to the chokepoint with his AOE's. However his niche being his tanky counter armor units was hard to make proper use of when the instakill goes off on non-armored units due to a lack of hero targetting (again).

Xin, A gerald Lightseeker offspring i didnt cover targets high value enemies automatically via his skill. Making him the duelist Lightseeker always wanted to be. But Xin lacks the armor to go toe to toe with the baddiest of baddies. furethermore having more similarities to Lightseeker is his inspire ability. To be frank besides Xins survivability, he is probly what Gerald should have been. I dont particularly like him though because his skill automatically targets the foe you want. It sounds like im nit-picking but movement is generally less important on melee heroes. taking away the little micro of the hero I do kind of sucks. Its like the devs heard my complaints about duelists and decided it was best if they just made the game did it for me then let me, the player have the option.




SECTION 6: The unfun poorly designed heroes.

There are tons of unique great heroes. I couldnt cover most of them. The dwarf(i forget his name) from the original Kingdom Rush was unique and fun. Sha' tra (alien guy) from frontiers was another super fun hero. They dont fit as well in basic classifications in my mind but they are great additions to the roster. Some heroes like Catha are amazing and easy to misuse. You mostly should sleep at the choke or on danger enemies you wish to delay since a bad sleep from Catha could do more harm then good as I discussed int he meta section. I love this franchise I really wanted to give my thoughts.

As far as heroes that I dislike at the design level there arent many.

Hammerfurry has 2 AOE attacks meaning he is pretty much a choke only character or you are wasting potential. you might want to wait until the chokepoint builds up before you bring him up to do his AOE's but even that is questionable. you basically sit him one place and due to his speed you dont even want to change chokepoints that often.

Arivan I think is a joke. He has low speed and therefore his pretty much locked at supporting the behind the choke. On maps without a choke he is pretty bad. Granted his slow can come in handy but on maps without significant chokes I want to be using slows like the ice from Elora WinterSong or teleporters like Magnus or mobile High DPS like Sha'tra. Arivan as an Imobile DPS with little target preferance in comparison to other immobile heroes is lame.


SECTION 7: THE HEROES I WANT

I like any teleporter hero pretty much. I liked everyone that ever came out. Please dont make them the 7 dollar one. Its not the money. But the 7 dollar heroes make the game play for itself. If instead the expensive heroes had cool animations or effects I would pick them up. But right now they make the game unfun for me personally, so I avoid most of them. I bought AshBite and Phoenix and when I played with them, the fun of the game dissapeared.

I love the high mobility heroes like Swiftwind. I like the kiting. they still need to be strong behind chokes like Swiftwind with waveclear. but under the chance the choke falls they dont need an overpowered tornado. they can kite taking out enemies. making them spill blood with every step towards my gate.

I like duelists but many of them are poor due to no targeting. Not all heroes need it but some do. Please consider this. Maybe even a 7 dollar hero that has a cool animation and can take on 4 enemies at once. and you see him fighting an enemy above below and to his sides at the same time. I would pay for that. I would prefer cool heroes that dont break the game.

I would like a Eridan hero that revolves around engaging and disengaging. His premise is actually really cool.

Ignus was unique bc he excelled at taking on enemies coming in a stream with his fireball movement. It was kind of neat.

the Samurai guy was a duelist. I would argue one of the more boring duelists since he just had a single target hard hitting attack. So avoid doing stuff like him. Alric sand guy was cool bc he was a duelist that preferred hard hitting targets. I love that.

It would be cool if you had a hero that threw enemies towards your base. I know it doesnt make since but it would relieve pressure on a check and allow defenses behind the main choke to not be idle. It would be a niche hero but I think could be very strong.

a fear ability that caused enemies to retreat to their path would also be cool since it would keep enemies in the choke longer. It wouldnt be used much as The benifits may be similar to stun but they would not be as good in many cases since them running backwards causes them to blob which is a danger to the choke. However it could be more benificial since they are actively spending more time under the towers. since instead of a 3 second stun they spent 3 seconds going the wrong way.

I realize that not all heroes can be super attention intensive. You need some brain off heroes. Honestly the Dev team has been doing a great job. Just wanted to share my oppinions on some of the heroes. thats all. I do miss the old leveling durring the mission rather than permanant upgrades. Its like I could reinvest into heroes every game i played. I hope a mixture of the current and old leveling system comes in as well.





I had a lot to say. and i could say more. But im tired and this is already a ramble. I hope this was helpful to the devs or maybe someone who just wanted to understand the game a bit more. Or just an interesting commentary.
Last edited by Killing Smalls on Tue Jul 24, 2018 4:27 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Wishlist

by Killing Smalls » Mon Jul 23, 2018 9:07 pm

Also: sorry for all the typos. I didnt proof read or check to make sure I spelt the heroes names correctly and I cant seem to edit it. There is probly a way but hopefully its fine.
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Re: Wishlist

by Sirsquier » Fri Mar 22, 2019 2:08 am

Love Lightseeker Eirden and Swiftwind. Lightseeker upgrade is cool and need. So is the targeting.
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Re: Wishlist

by EpicPhantom999 » Sat Mar 23, 2019 2:34 am

I assume you're talking about KR1, not KRV? I like Alleria Shiftwind better just because he spawns his wildcat. It's pretty decent maxed out.
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Re: Wishlist

by RaZoR LeAf » Sat Mar 23, 2019 10:09 am

How do you keep digging up year old posts? Can you not please? You're giving feedback to a person that is no longer here and will never see it.
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Re: Wishlist

by Ninja » Sat Mar 23, 2019 11:29 am

His profile pic isn't a Necromacer for nothing! :lol:
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