Guide to Blight Towers
" I already shared my thoughts on it twice. It's very simple once you understand WHY Scouts seem to be so strong in these videos. All info is already inside the guide. Quick TL;DR if you don't want longer read. 3x Amber oil effectively increase amount of towers you can build in Blighted maps by 2,5-4x times (depends on awakening bonus). That's what Scout tower spam strong, not because towers themselves are strong for clear. However with Amber oil you can use any strategy and it will succeed anyway. It completely trivializes the content. Any "overpowered strategy" that uses Amber oil annointment should not be taken seriously. And to note - minion towers aren't bad other than Summoning tower. It's that their purpose is not very useful. Scout towers are great at dealing with leaks, but any good strategy will not leak anything. This makes them redundant and reason why i have a line "Minion towers are not very good." Extra References: Me addressing resurgence of Scout tower spam, started from Zizaran's video.
Zizaran's Scout Tower spam
I was mostly curious why this horrible strategy is popular once again. Not the first time it appears, it was the first "OP faceroll strat" people used. In case you didn't notice in my previous reply - i have Blight guide and i tested all towers extensively. There's even more info in my comments there, since i share my thoughts whenever a change happens.
Ziz's "strategy" is 60% reduced cost annointment (2,5x amount of towers). Anything else after that doesn't matter. You can clear map building absolutely whatever towers with it, and that annointment increases with Awakening bonus up to 75% (4x amount of towers). I recently saw a streamer doing random blighted map (Zana mission) using Scout spam without annointment and he had to be very active to successfully finish it. This is a clear indication it's still quite bad despite recent Scout tower buffs. Even before 3.12 it was possible to clear maps without killing any monster yourself and without leaks. Some other things to note: * Ziz had 64% reduced tower cost in video. * Ziz said "Empowering towers" but he actually build Smotherings which don't buff your current towers. They debuff enemies instead. * Scout tower is almost worthless in random blight encounters. * Community INSISTS on spamming only one tower. Combining damage, utility and Empowering tower is cheaper and more effective. It might not matter to you since you seem happy with results. I on the other hand die a little inside knowing what's actually going on here. This one is snip from my conversation with a... very interesting person. Dared to discredit my data, methods and guide itself so forgive the tone.
Scout Tower vs Arc Tower
#2 Scout towers are great - They are, they truly are - at their job of killing leftover monsters. Pre-buff Arc tower clears multiple times better than Scout tower after those massive buffs. Of course it's easy to claim something without proof, i could be lying after all. So to end this exchange of "X is good, Y is bad" it's more convenient to compared it using videos instead:
3.9 Arc Tower vs 3.12 Scout Tower In both cases they were done in red maps. In Scout Tower video, despite not ideal tower placement, you can still clearly see minions not taking any damage or blocking enemies. At the beginning you can also observe Summoning tower minions being affected by my Malevolence Aura, while Scout tower minions were unaffected. I see no area damage and nearly all monsters leaked too. In Arc tower video i wasn't sure if i'm going to leak due to minion resistant mobs spawning significant amount of extra mobs. Seismic Tower also wasn't very useful and mostly out of range of minions. If you believe comparison was unfair (Arc one was never meant to be used for that purpose), then i heavily recommend checking end of both videos and how quickly each tower dealt with leftover monsters. Look at minimap in Arc one. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides Last edited by DankawSL on May 9, 2021, 2:07:53 PM
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" Dude, you're still being smirk when I pointed out that you were factually incorrect about how minions towers worked. That itself says everything about your testing, etc. [Removed by Support] Last edited by Kane_GGG on May 10, 2021, 4:32:50 AM
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" Is this still the case? It seems like a bug, exploit, or oversight... Need game info? Check out the Wiki at: https://www.poewiki.net/
Contact support@grindinggear.com for account issues. Check out How to Report Bugs + Post Images at: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/18347 | |
" I checked it moments ago and yes - this is still the case. It's easy to test (cheap annoint) and i have it recorded as well. Burning ground dealing damage to enemies in proximity shields is fine. Degen ground skills bypassed it for as long as i remember. Annoint dealing full damage to fire resistant enemies feels like an oversight more than anything. It worked like this since this annoint exists, you can check earlier pages of this thread for more context. I'm quite positive there's few more annoints not working properly or being close to useless. Personally i want to make a list and test all of them so GGG can work with it. However last time i reported quite significant annointment bug (2nd most expensive ring annointment) i was only met with radio silence. I don't recall any fixes to it since i reported it so i assume it's still bugged. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides
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So I just failed a blighted map that has both unwavering and monsters can't be slowed. What towers are ideal here? Apparently glacial cage isn't strong enough on its own to hold the lanes back, and I don't know if stone gaze tower does anything with the mods I mentioned.
PoE players: Our game has a wide diversity of builds.
Also PoE players: The [league mechanic] doesn't need to be nerfed, you just need to play a [current meta] build! MFers found strength in their Afflictions. They became reliant on them. I am not so foolish. | |
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Like i mentioned in my strategy step #0 - you can't place towers heavily countered my a map mod. Seismic Tower is useless in "Cannot be Stunned" map. Chilling, Stone Gaze and Temporal Towers don't do anything in "Monster's Action Speed cannot drop below base".
Now Glacial Cage and Sentinel Towers have their time to shine. You'll have to utilize them - mostly against bosses than anything else. Sentinel isn't that bad anymore since he respawns much faster after recent buffs. Other than that more damage should also do the trick, but it causes risk of a boss passing through. Either way, a map like this might easily force you into actively killing enemies in unprotected lines. Seismic and Chilling Towers are invaluable and "losing" them is a big blow. https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides
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" So this has nothing to do with the reason of Scout Towers becoming a popular and viable tower?)) " | |
" I know i'm answering extremely late, i didn't play PoE in last 6 weeks i think? Buff caused people to become interested in Scout Towers again, but i don't believe it's the main cause of it's sudden popularity with a very specific enchantment. Viability? It was always good in it's niche (catching leaks). Buff certainly helped, but as i said it's not the reason why spam of this tower is strong. Amber oil is the cause. Remove it and suddenly you'll have to actively kill monsters. Let's not talk about maps with extra life/phys damage reduction... https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides Last edited by DankawSL on Jul 17, 2021, 6:33:07 PM
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This is really great and the most complete guide I have ever seen.
Thank you for your hard work. It seems that all this time I was not playing correctly. And I may ask you: has it been some time since you published your guide, has your strategy changed and / or new strategy options have been added? And an even more stupid question from a beginner: how much, in your subjective (or objective) opinion, does a rare or corrupt blight map affect the final loot? Is it worth the risk using vaal orb? And what oils do you prefer to use on maps? Thanks again for your time, and I apologize if my questions seemed silly, or if I missed something that was already written in your manual. Улыбнись мне.
В мрачном мире далёкого будущего есть место только войне. | |
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I kept failing these even at low tier maps, including the random encounter ones. They would always sneak past me and destroy the blight. I failed 99% of them. Not even an exaggeration. It was a miracle if I succeeded.
So this whole time I was building the wrong towers. I would always focus on trying to get Glacial Cage up ASAP, wasting precious resources. Then I saw a bunch of videos people just spamming minions. It didn't work. Nothing worked. I still always failed. I assumed the first tier towers sucked. Boy was I wrong. This guide made me completely change my strategy. Now I always build Empowering with Chilling Tower & Seismic Tower. This stun-locks everything in place. After that I just spam build Arc Towers and one or 2 Glacial Cage towers near the blight to stop any bosses. That's really all you need. Don't even need to anoint the maps. Thank you! |
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