Guide to Blight Towers

Fire
Primary Role: Damage - single target
Towers: Fireball (I-III), Meteor (IV), Flamethrower (IV)

This is your default choice for killing bosses. Fireball tower launches 1 to 5 hard hitting projectiles over a long range. Has quite slow firing rate and the standard projectile layout, so it's not suited for clearing. Meteor tower is direct upgrade of Fireball tower with more damage, range and AoE. The mini nukes it delivers will instantly kill pretty much every single enemy except bosses and resistant monsters.

Flamethrower tower is the oddball, and does exactly what you would expect. Has short range and hits twice as fast making it good for clearing monster waves. It swipes in 90 degree pattern, turning clockwise. It excels in VERY dense bottlenecks.

Lightning
Primary Role: Damage - clearing
Towers: Shock Nova (I-III), Arc (IV), Lightning Storm (IV)

Your bread and butter tower for clearing monster waves. All towers fire rapidly at low/medium damage output. Shock Nova does the same thing as skill gem, but also leaves shocking ground as a bonus. Arc tower is direct upgrade of Shock tower, because it's absolutely busted at clearing while dishing out decent single target damage. Can hold up to 9-10 lanes simultaneously with help of Empowering tower tier 3.

Lightning Storm tower is... not really an oddball as it's closer mechanically to Shock Nova. Periodically casts lightning version of Firestorm that works slightly differently. However Arc is just superior all around. I think it's supposed to be a single target option for lightning type, similar how Flamethrower's role is clearing for fire type.

Cold
Primary Role: Utility - slowing
Towers: Chilling (I-III), Freezebolt (IV), Glacial Cage (IV)

Classic slowing tower. Mechanically it works exactly like Siphoning Trap, including low damage output. Chilling tower's strength heavily depends on levels. Empowering tower (aura) also drastically increases overall performance of all towers in various ways. Chilling tower is the most useful tower of this element.

Freezebolt shoots a piercing projectile that freezes all enemies hit. Unfortunately it's close to useless due to extremely poor reliability and firing frequency. There's no reason to ever use it. Glacial Cage traps enemies inside to block them from advancing. It's strong at what it does, but it's targetting can be quite random and should be placed behind your damage towers. That way you can isolate targets you truly need to.

Physical
Primary Role: Utility - stopping
Towers: Seismic (I-III), Stone Gaze (IV), Temporal (IV)

Another "slowing" type of the tower, but completely immobilizes enemy at regular intervals. Works exactly like Seismic Trap. Similar to cold type, Seismic tower's strength depends on levels. Empowering tower (aura) drastically increases overall performance of all towers in various ways. Seismic tower is the most useful tower of this element (unfortunately causes a lot of lag).

Stone Gaze tower is direct upgrade of Seismic tower. Petrifies nearby enemies after they were exposed for long enough time, regardless of which direction they face. Temporal tower is the oddball. Applies a very strong but decaying slow every 4 seconds on enemies inside it's radius. Has a large area of effect.

Minion
Primary Role: Utility - intercepting
Towers: Summoning (I-III), Sentinel (IV), Scout (IV)

Walking meatshields. This tower type is underwhelming unless you're using a build with multiple offensive/defensive auras (summoner/aurabot). It's pretty much pointless to use them once you reach maps.

All towers from this type deal quite low damage and the minions summoned cannot withstand concentrated fire of multiple enemies / a single boss for long. Entire purpose of this tower type is to stop those single enemies who got through your primary tower defense.

Summoning tower creates multiple zombie-like minions who are fragile. Sentinel tower spawns one durable minion. Scout tower is the oddball, summons 10 flying and invulnerable minions. They have long range and instead of blocking the path they kill the incoming enemies. Their overall DPS isn't good enough to become primary damage tower, but it's enough to fulfill their job.

Aura
Primary Role: Support - buffing
Towers: Empowering (I-III), Imbuing (IV), Smothering (IV)

Like all auras, this tower type supports your towers and/or players within their radius. Empowering tower is objectively the best tower in the game due to how much power it gives to majority of the tower. Tier 3 Empowering tower grants from ~50% up to triple the effectiveness of affected towers. These number is further multiplied by amount of affected towers. Make sure to support all your towers.

Imbuing tower only buffs players. Other towers and monsters are unaffected. The buff it provides equals to maybe ~15% more player dps in best case scenario. Not worth building compared to any other tower. Smothering tower is the oddball. It debuffs enemies instead. Exact effects are unknown. I speculate it increases damage taken and reduces damage dealt by monsters. Build only if you have extra spare resources.

Tier 1 - 100 cost
Tier 2 - 150 cost / 250 total
Tier 3 - 300 cost / 550 total
Tier 4 - 500 cost / 1050 total, each tower type has a 2 different level 4 tower.

This is quite obvious, the higher level the stronger the tower. For majority of the time you should be levelling your damage towers to the maximum for significant damage boosts (fire and lightning type). This is not the case for utility towers (cold and physical type) due to opportunity cost.

Temporal or Glacial Cage towers are really strong in their niche. However, you could instead build a damage tower to achieve similar if not better results because monsters already bite the dust. The same situation is present in current clear speed meta, where utility and defence is redundant since you can kill monsters on sight to completely skip their mechanics.

That doesn't mean utility towers are bad, only that tier 4 tower cost is simply too high. Both Chilling and Seismic tower are incredibly effective even at tier I, but they require support of Empowering tower which you should build anyway. This way you can help your damage towers deal significantly more damage / prevent leaks at minimal cost.

Taking this into account, as a rule of thumb:
* Upgrade your damaging towers to highest tier possible to increase their effectiveness.
* Empowering tower should be at least level 2, high efficiency/cost ratio.
* Leave utility towers at level 1-2, and upgrade to 3 if you have spare resources.

There's one more important note regarding tier 4 towers. They are a completely new tower type with their own mechanics. That means annointments, for example, for Empowering tower will not apply to Imbuing tower and vice versa.

Towers you'll be using
Arc Tower (Light IV) - default damage tower. #1 clear and decent single target.
Meteor Tower (Fire IV) - boss killing tower. Hits extremely hard over long range.
Flamethrower Tower (Fire IV) - secondary clearing tower. Use against lightning resistant enemies.

Seismic Tower (Phys I-III) - primary utility tower. Level 1 is enough to almost permastun enemies with help of Empowering tower.
Chilling Tower (Cold I-III) - secondary utility tower. Keep at level 2 or 3. Use instead Seismic tower inside maps with "Monsters cannot be stunned" mod.
Empowering Tower (Aura I-III) - heavily buffs all towers in range. Keep at level 2 or 3.

Ring Annointments
There's quite few good annointments but i'll only recommend the ones i truly believe are the most useful for this strategy.


Azure + Sepia - "Your Empowering Towers have 25% increased Effect"

Great starting point. Cheap and accessible even in SSF. It's hard to describe the real effects. With 2 annointments, level 2 Empowering tower gives the same bonuses as level 3 one. I recommend using it on both rings or none for that reason. Meanwhile level 3 gives some extra dps.


Violet + Indigo - "Your Meteor Towers create Burning Ground for 3 seconds on Hit"

It might not seem very strong but effectively one of most powerful annointments in the game. Burning Ground allows to damage enemies inside proximity shields and it also deals full damage to fire enemies. This makes Meteor tower effective against every monster type. Heavily recommended for my strategy.


Silver + Opalescent - "Your Chilling Towers freeze enemies for 0.2 seconds while they are affected by chilling beams"

Yes, this mod permafreezes affected enemies including bosses. It's extremely useful for many situation. Keep in mind that Chilling towers have maximum amount of enemies they can affect. Heavily recommended for my strategy.


Silver + Black - "Your Empowering Towers also grant 25% increased Damage"


Golden + Indigo - "Your Towers deal 10% increased Damage per Type of Tower Active"


Golden + Golden - "All Towers in range of your Empowering Towers have 50% chance to deal Double Damage"

Extremely expensive but also one of the best generic damage annointments you can get. You can never have too much damage. Golden+Indigo should have highest ceiling of all 3 mods, i assume it grants 10% damage per each category (Aura/Fire/Cold/Light/Phys/Minion) but i might be wrong. Pick any of those if you don't find previous annointments worth it.

Map Encounters
Trivial or extremely difficult, there's no other way. Usually it's the former since majority of the encounters have 2 lanes you have manage. Build a Arc/Flamethrower/Seismic/Chilling tower with Empowering tower to hold one lane and focus on another one.

The problems begin if you have to hold 4 lanes that form a cross... and that's not even the worst scenario. You can encounter even 5 lanes (no, not portals, lanes). In these cases the tower spots are also in awful locations, making it impossible to cover more than 2 lanes with Arc/Flamethrower towers. You won't have enough resources to cover all lanes regardless. The approach that worked best for me is slowing enemies down with Seismic/Chilling towers and hoping to clear lanes quickly enough.

The other way to avoid 4+ lane encounters is farming indoor maps to prevent them spawning in the first place. They only appear in maps with a lot of free room (outdoors).

Blighted Maps
Lots of people have different strategies what works for them. That doesn't mean they're going to work for you and your build. What i present should carry you through blighted maps with minimal interference from your side, regardless how strong your character is. The following steps / rules is how i'm doing it.

#0 - Don't build towers that are heavily countered by a map mod, this applies mostly to Seismic/Chilling tower being completely nullified. If a certain lane has monsters resistant to certain tower type, build a substitute tower. This rule has highest priority and overrides steps below.

#1 - Once you start the encounter, defend without towers until few more portals appear. This is so you can build your towers in a great spot.
#2 - Place Seismic OR Chilling tower and support it with Empowering tower in a spot where lots of lanes converge, up to ~1,5 screen away from the pump. If required, place both Seismic and Chilling. Try to place you Empowering tower in a place where it can affect at least 2 other turrets. Keep repeating until you covered all lanes.

#3 - Place Arc OR Meteor tower. Arc if a spot you're building at can reach enemies stopped by utility towers or far away from pump. Meteor if it's closer to the pump.
#4 - Towers you didn't build from steps 2 or 3, it's worth placing them for a good measure.
#5 - Repeat until you've finished the map.

Examples of strategy in practice:
T14 Spider Laid / T15 Lava Lake / T15 Burial Chamber / T13 Siege
T13 Geode - clearing whole map with 2 Seismic + 2 Chilling towers (+Emp)

In case you still have issues, you can always apply one or two amber oils to reduce cost of towers and their upgrades. It completely trivializes the blighted maps.

I want to talk primarly about resistant monsters. As you know there's 6 tower types and monsters can be close to immune to all of them except aura towers.



Monsters of certain type, let's say cold, take close to no damage from towers of the same type. Resistant monsters also ignore the additional effects from that tower type like shock or any sort of crowd control. In this example they won't be slowed/frozen by the cold towers.

You should look out for some resistant monster types. Fire is especially deadly with huge range and massive damage. Others are not nearly as dangerous. Cold is next in line especially for melee. Minion resistant ones can also hit hard. It's good idea to prioritize these portals when planning your defensive line.

Lightning monsters are also worth mentioning. These portals spawn suicide bonewheels that explode when in close proximity. All towers completely ignore them.

Portals always activate from left to right, signalized by turning yellow on UI. This way you can prepare what towers you should build in advance. This is especially useful for blighted maps.

Bosses have massively increased health compared to usual units. You can spot them by the "grey sun" above the portal. Boss usually spawns around 1-2 minutes after the portal activates. The "sun" will turn red when the boss spawns until he's defeated or reaches the pump.

Damage to pump is based on monster rarity:
Normal (white) - 1 durability
Magic (blue) - 2 durability
Rare (yellow) - 3 durability
Unique (orange/golden) - 15 durability

Resource gained based on monster rarity:
Normal (white) - 4 resource
Magic (blue) - 12 resource
Rare (yellow) - 50 resource
Unique (orange/golden) - 250 resource

Tower Activity Range
If towers are too far from you, they'll stop working. It should be around ~1,5 - 2,0 screen radius from your location. Monsters on the other hand will always move towards the pump. You should always keep this in mind when placing your towers. Going too far away from one chokepoint to create another one can result in a massive leak if you're away for too long. Staying near the pump is optimal.

Ring Annointment Snapshotting
Yep, that's a thing. Whenever you place or upgrade a tower, game checks for ring annointments and snapshots them. Tower will keep using the buff until it is upgraded again, where it checks once again for ring annointments. Levelling Empowering Tower doesn't make other towers to update their ring annointment buffs.

If you're determined enough you can have each tower buffed with 2 annointments by swapping rings as you place turrets. Not something i recommend doing since it's not required to beat blights. It's simply worth to know it. Might come in handy sometimes.

Party Play
Anyone can build towers in the party. Placed tower will be buffed by ring annointments of a person who ordered Cassia to create it. This means each person in a party can use different annointments for each tower to create even stronger defenses without use of snapshotting.

Improves the effectiveness of other towers

Damage: None
Radius: 35 / 45 / 55
Tower Cast Speed Aura: 20% / 30% / 40%

* Empowering tower's effect increases with level of the tower.
* Empowering tower's effect varies depending on the type of tower.
* Towers affected by Empowering tower have a small circle around them.

* Empowering tower requires line of sight in order to buff another tower.
* If a tower is supported by multiple Empowering towers, only a single, strongest one will apply it's effect.
* Empowering tower can be supported by another Empowering tower, however it doesn't seem to have any effect.
* PoEDB shows that Empowering tower also has one more stat that i didn't discover yet.

Role: Support - Essential Tower

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - All Towers in range of your Empowering Towers have 50% chance to deal Double Damage
#2 - Your Empowering Towers also grant 25% increased Damage
#3 - Your Empowering Towers have 25% increased Effect
#4 - Your Empowering Towers have 25% increased Range

Commentary:
Starting with most complicated tower of them, as it has an effect on other towers. Objectively it's the best tower in the game, massively increasing power of nearby towers. For many towers, being supported by level 3 Empowering equals to more than double the effectiveness - and it can support more than one tower. You should ALWAYS build it along other towers.

Annointments are listed from best to worst. Increased effect is really cheap for good it is. Range is more of QoL you can opt in.

Gives additional stats to nearby players

Damage: None
Radius: 55
Base - 25% Attack and Cast speed, 30% Movement speed
Emp I - 30% increased Damage
Emp II - 30% increased Critical Strike chance
Emp III - 10% Life Regeneration

* Stats given by Empowering tower are additional. At level 3 all of the above stats will be granted to the player.
* Imbuing tower buff doesn't stack.
* Only players receive the buff. Other allied units (like minions or towers) are not affected by the Imbuing tower.
* Totems, traps and mines are based on player's stats and therefore affected by the tower. However life regeneration won't be applied to them.

Role: Support - Buffing

Worthy Annointments:
None, Temporal tower with annointment is superior to Imbuing tower.

Commentary:
Nice small boost to damage. That's it, extremely underwhelming. Unless you're capable of clearing blight maps by yourself you should never build it. In that case just place it where you'll be standing for whole duration of the encounter.

Annointments are pointless when you can get 20% increased action speed from Temporal tower. Twice. That's 40% more multiplier.

Weakens nearby enemies.

Damage: None
Radius: 55
Base - Affected monsters take 25% increased damage
Emp I - ??
Emp II - ??
Emp III - Reduces monster's elemental resistances by 20%

* Due to nature of the tower, it's extremely hard to deduce what does the Smothering tower actually do.
* It's very likely it also works similar to Enfeeble curse (Emp I / II). Unconfirmed.

* Emp I and II effects are unknown so far.
* Base effect is "somewhat" confirmed, but still might be wrong.
* Emp III effect is definitely confirmed.


Role: Support - Debuffing

Worthy Annointments:
Due to enigmatic nature of the tower, there's no way to know if they're any good.

Commentary:
With so little info i can't really tell much about this tower. I guess the Emp III tower buff can be extremely useful in map with increased elemental resistances. Should be used primarly in chokepoints to support other towers, similar to slowing / stopping towers.

Annointments are not extremely useful. Other damage/utility towers should simply outclass them.

Long range tower that shoots fireballs.

Damage: Medium
Radius: 45 / 60 / 75
Projectiles: 1 / 3 / 5
Recharge (Emp): 3 / 2,5 / 2,31 / 2,14 sec

* Multiple fireballs land close each other in a line, unless using ring annointment that causes tower to shoot in nova pattern.
* Fireball tower is capable of shotgunning.

Role: Damage - Single Target

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Fireball Towers fire an additional 8 Projectiles + fire in a Nova

Commentary:
Hits quite hard, has long range, but can be really ineffective in general. The horizontal line pattern wastes tower's potential, as usually you'll hit only few monsters. Combined with quite long recharge time, it's slightly underwhelming.

Annointment turns this tower into very cheap and strong clearing tower which you can spam in terrible places. It works more like Shock Nova - it's devastating in close range and is capable of outdamaging Meteor tower if stars align. Long range it's not very useful alone, but sheer number of these tower is a clearing powerhouse.

Very long range tower that summons high damage meteor from the sky.

Damage: Very High
Radius: 100
Recharge (Emp): 3 / 2,5 / 2,31 / 2,14 sec

* Meteor has a delay of 1 second before it hits the ground
* Meteor gains small amount of AoE per Emp level

Role: Damage - Single Target

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Meteor Towers create Burning Ground for 3 seconds on Hit
#2 - Your Meteor Towers drop an additional Meteor
#3 - Your Meteor Towers always Stun

Commentary:
Basically an straight upgrade of Fireball tower, with higher damage, AoE and range. Absolutely melts bosses. Not so reliable for clear due to low fire rate. Due to it's massive range you can place it almost anywhere, but aim somewhere behind your main line of defence.

Annointments are very powerful. Burning Ground allows to kill enemies inside proximity shields and to damage fire resistant monsters. It's an extremely versatile annointment. Additional meteor equals to double damage. It's only useful against bosses as you would guess, but that's the entire purpose of this tower. Guaranteed stun can also be very useful tool, but i would rather invest into Chilling tower annointment instead.

Breathes a stream of fire in 90° cone over the duration, moving clockwise.

Damage: Very High
Radius: 45
Recharge (Emp): 2 / 1,67 / 1,54 / 1,43 sec

* Empowering tower levels make tower do 90° cone quicker.
* Empowering tower levels also increase the length of the fire stream.
* There seems to be a short time (~0,25 - 0,1 sec based on Emp) where tower doesn't do anything before casting again.

Role: Damage - AoE Clear

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Flamethrower Towers deal full damage to Fire Enemies

Commentary:
Good clear potential, especially for very dense bottlenecks. Alternative to Arc tower, however much weaker overall. Single target is a bit lacking and can leak rare monsters sometimes.

Annointment is gamechanging and allows you to use only this tower for damage. You can invest rest into utility towers in order to permalock bosses while Flamethrower is slowly doing it's job.

Applies a chilling beam to nearby enemies, damaging and slowing them down.

Damage: Low
Radius: 35
Recharge: 4 sec
Duration (Emp): 4-7 / 5-7 / 6-7 sec for tower levels I-III
Slow Strength: 30% / 50% / 75%
# of Targets (Emp): 9-16 / 12-19 / 15-22

* Additional Chill tower levels increase damage, duration, chill effect and amount of targets the tower can affect.
* Emp II extends the duration to 7 seconds for all Chilling tower levels. Emp I is enough for level 3 tower.

* Slow can be nullified by "Monsters have #% chance to Avoid Elemental Ailments" map mod! Check happens only once on first tick and persists until tether is broken.
* Due to duration being almost twice as long as recharge, it causes tower to have two overlapping casts at once as long as enemies are in radius. Unconfirmed but very likely. Enemies can still only be affected by 1 tether.

Role: Utility - Slowing

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Chilling Towers freeze enemies for 0.2 seconds while they are affected by chilling beams

Commentary:
Classic slowing tower, staple element of all TD games. Used primarly for it's utility in order to make you or your towers deal more damage to incoming enemies before they're out of range. It's very cheap for how strong it is, making it one of the two best utility towers. Place at chokepoints and near pump to gain some time before enemies reach the pump.

Annointment is extremely strong option to consider regardless of your strategy. Ability to permanently freeze any enemy including bosses simply trivializes the hardest parts of tower defence.

Shoots a piercing projectile which freezes enemies.

Damage: Very High
Radius: 75
Projectiles (Emp): 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
Recharge: 1,65 sec

* Freezebolts can pierce infinite amount of enemies.
* Freezebolt tower fires projectiles in typical arc pattern.
* If supported by Empowering tower, Freezebolt turret fires projectiles in nova pattern.

Role: Damage - AoE Clear

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Freezebolt Towers fire 2 additional Projectiles

Commentary:
Since buffs this tower is no longer useless, but still far from perfect. Hits hard, has utility and fire rate is not terrible anymore. However projectiles are thin and can easily miss targets. It's not bad in open maps where projectiles are able to travel far to reduce amount of mobs across whole screen.

With +2 projectiles annointment things get interesting. If unsupported by Empowering Tower, projectile spread (arc pattern) becomes reliable enough to clear lines of enemies. In that particlar scenario, Freezebolt might even outperform Arc Tower. I'd say that's still not reliable enough and requires specific situation. However tower shouldn't be underestimated anymore.

Creates small, circular frost wall, trapping the enemies inside.

Damage: None
Radius: 60
Recharge (Emp): 5,0 / 4,5 / 4,0 / 3,5 sec
Duration: 3 sec

* Glacial Cage blocks projectiles. You can pierce through it. Projectiles cannot fork or chain through them.

Role: Utility - Intercepting

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Glacial Cage Towers have 25% increased Duration
#2 - Your Glacial Cage Towers have 20% increased Cooldown Recovery

Commentary:
Great for stopping bosses. Don't use it for anything else, as it's targetting can end up quite random with larger monster quantities. Due to extremely high cost, you shouldn't build the tower unless you have a lot of extra resources. It's something to consider if your Seismic and Chilling towers are nullified. Always place it behind your main line of defence.

Both of the annointments should allow to completely lockdown enemies. Duration is slightly better since the monster will approach slower toward the pump compared to cooldown recovery.

Casts Shock Nova, damaging nearby enemies and leaving shocking ground.

Damage: Low
Radius: 20 / 25 / 30
Recharge (Emp): 1,0 / 0,83 / 0,77 / 0,71 sec
Chance to Shock: 10% / 20% / 30%
Increased Shock Effect (Emp): 20% / 30% / 40%
Shocked Ground (Emp): 20% / 25% / 30% / 35% increased Damage taken

* Additional Shock Nova tower levels increase damage, chance to shock and area of effect.
* Base Shocked Ground increase is an estimate. Damage increase from Shocked Ground on a player in white maps is also 20%. Might be incorrect.


Role: Damage - AoE Clear

Worthy Annointments:
None, Arc tower is vastly superior.

Commentary:
Well rounded basic damage tower, with rapid fire and some extra damage through shock effect to other tower. Great for chokepoints with support of crowd control towers. However you won't be using it almost at all. Arc Tower is simply much, much stronger. Shocked ground damage increase is quite valuable for sure, however tower's low range makes it less practical than Smothering Tower.

Rapid firing tower which casts Arc, a lightning that chains to nearby enemies.

Damage: Medium
Radius: 45
Recharge (Emp): 0,575 / 0,479 / 0,442 / 0,411 sec
Chains (Emp): 6 / 8 / 10 / 12 (plus primary target)
Chance to Shock: 10%

* Long chain range.

Role: Damage - Single Target and AoE Clear

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Arc Towers have 25% increased Range
#2 - Your Arc Towers deal 25% increased Damage

Commentary:
My personal favorite. All purpose tower with amazing clear and good single target. It doesn't really have a weakness except lightning resistant monsters. Can hold huge amount of lanes simultaneously all by itself (and Emp). You can place it anywhere.

Annointments are not very useful. You will do better by getting Empowering tower ones. Extra range is something to consider before you get to more expensive annointments. Same for damage.

Strikes lightning beams around the tower.

Damage: High
Radius: 45
Recharge (Emp): 1,5 / 1,25 / 1,15 / 1,07 sec

* Lightning Storm is a spell with set duration or maximum amount of lightnings before expiration.
* The more times it casts the spell, the more lightnings fall down.
* Due to the nature of the tower, it's hard to judge what limits it.

Role: Damage - AoE Clear / Single Target (??)

Worthy Annointments:
None, Arc tower is vastly superior.

Commentary:
A tower that doesn't really know what it wants to do. It's not a bad tower, Arc simply outclasses Lightning Storm by a large margin in all aspects. Therefore this tower has no niche and is likely weakest T4 tower in the game. Or maybe i simply never understood it's potential, who knows?

Creates cascades around the tower which always stun enemies.

Damage: Low
Radius: 45
Duration: 7,5 sec
Recharge: 4 sec
Cascade Interval (Emp): 0,7-0,5 / 0,35-0,25 / 0,25-0,178 for tower levels I-III
Repeats (Emp): 7-10 / 13-19 / 19-26, for tower levels I-III
Cascades (Emp): 3 / 4 / 5 / 6
Stun Duration Increase (Emp): 0% / 50% / 100% / 150%

* Seismic tower repeats multiple times over 7,5 second duration.
* Empowering tower levels increase amount of cascades, stun duration on the enemies and reduce interval between cascades.
* Duration seems to be around 7,0-7,5 seconds, but i suspect it appears shorter due to mechanics and real duration is 7,5 sec.
* Due to duration being almost twice as long as recharge, it causes tower to have two overlapping casts at once as long as enemies are in radius.

Role: Utility - Stopping

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Seismic Towers has 100% increased length and range of Cascades (CURRENTLY BUGGED, DOESN'T DO ANYTHING)

Commentary:
Undoubtly the best crowd control tower, but also very easily countered by a map mod and unwavering enemies. It only needs Emp III and a level 1 to be capable of permastunning the enemies nearby (while the tower is active). Effective range is quite small, you can upgrade tower to make it more reliable at medium distances. Be warned, it causes plenty of lag. Place at chokepoint and nearby your damaging towers.

Annointment is a powerful option, but also feels like an overkill - for monsters and your graphic card. Not really necesary to get. It's something to consider tho.

Casts a petrifying gaze, slowing and finally petrifying enemies.

Damage: None
Radius: 45
Duration: 1,5 sec
Recharge (Emp): 3,0 / 2,5 / 2,0 / 1,5 sec
# of Targets (Emp): 10 / 12 / 14 / 16
Petrify Duration: 5 sec
Hits to break Petrify (Emp): 7 / 8 / 9 / 10

* Petrifies nearby enemies who were affected over full duration.
* Cannot affect enemies who are currently petrified.
* Enemies affected by the tower are heavily slowed until they're petrified or are no longer affected by the tower.

* Slowing effect as well as petrify reduces action speed.
* Petrify effect will break if affected enemy is hit enough times.
* There appears to be a short delay (0,1 - 0,15 sec) before tower starts working properly after recharge.


Role: Utility - Stopping

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Stone Gaze Towers have 20% reduced Petrification Delay

Commentary:
Effectively Chilling Tower which can affect significantly more enemies at once. Petrify mechanic allows Stone Gaze tower to completely stop monster for short time and affect another pack of mobs. Due to extremely high cost, you shouldn't build the tower unless you have a lot of extra resources. One case where you might want to build it is if you didn't notice that your map has "Monsters cannot be stunned" mod, nullifying your Seismic towers. Place at chokepoints and nearby your damaging towers.

Periodically slows enemies in a massive area around the tower.

Damage: None
Radius: 45
Recharge: 4 sec
Slow Strength (Emp): 70% / 80% / 90% / 100%
Slow Duration: 4 seconds
Effective Slow Duration (Emp): ~2,0 / ~2,5 / ~3,0 / ~3,5 sec

* Slow decays over duration and doesn't seem to be linear. Slower curve early and steep later.
* Effective Duration is estimate how long slow lasts in practice.
* Empowering tower levels increase strength of the slow.
* With Emp III, the slow's strength is 100%, completely stopping enemies for a short moment.

Role: Utility - Slowing

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Temporal Towers also grant you 20% increased action speed

Commentary:
Stronger, physical version of Chilling tower. Bigger range and stronger slow in bursts. Without support of Emp III it can be very underwhelming. While not as strong at stopping power as Seismic tower, it has much higher effective range. Due to extremely high cost, you shouldn't build the tower unless you have a lot of extra resources. It's something to consider if your Seismic and Chilling towers are nullified. Place at chokepoint and nearby your damaging towers.

First annointment is gamechanging. It's an EXTREMELY powerful buff, effectively 20% more speed multiplier per ring. Better at buffing than Imbuing. The only downside is that towers needs enemies nearby in order to cast the bubble so you can make use of the action speed buff.

Summons melee minions that attack and block nearby enemies from advancing.

Minion Damage: Low
Minion Life: Low

Radius: 30
Recharge: 4 sec
# Minions (Emp): 3-6 / 5-8 / 7-10, for tower levels I-III
Increased Minion Life (Emp): 0% / 20% / 40% / 60%
Increased Minion Movement Speed (Emp): 0% / 10% / 20% / 30%


* Can only summon minions when all previous minions are dead.
* They can be supported by player's auras.
* 4 seconds to resummon minions doesn't take into account extra 2 seconds before they can start moving.

Role: Utility - Intercepting

Worthy Annointments:
None, minions aren't very good.

Commentary:
Good tower to stop enemy from advancing, but shouldn't be relied upon against high numbers of enemies. Minion's damage is unnoticeable, and their life is also quite poor for holding more than few enemies. Their primary use is to block last few monsters who got through your primary line of defence. Place near pump or behind chokepoints... if at all.

Summons 1 durable minion that attacks and block nearby enemies from advancing.

Minion Damage: Low
Minion Life: High

Radius: 45
Recharge: 4 sec
# Minions: 1
Increased Minion Life (Emp): 0% / 40% / 80% / 120%
Increased Minion Movement Speed (Emp): 0% / 20% / 30% / 40%

Role: Utility - Intercepting

* Once the minion is dead, tower quickly assembles a new one.
* It can be supported by player's auras.
* 4 seconds to resummon doesn't take into account extra 1 second before sentinel can start moving again.

Worthy Annointments:
None, minions aren't very good.

Commentary:
Direct upgrade of Summoning tower. Same purpose, to block enemies from advancing. It's much more durable and also assembles slightly quicker than "zombies" (~1 sec). It's something to consider if your Seismic and Chilling towers are nullified. Place near pump or behind chokepoints... if at all.

Summons 10 flying minions that attack nearby enemies.

Minion Damage: High
Minion Life: None (Invulnerable)

Radius: 75
# Minions: 10
Increased Minion Cast Speed (Emp): 0% / 20% / 30% / 40%
Increased Minion Movement Speed (Emp): 0% / 20% / 30% / 40%

* Unaffected by player's auras.

Role: Damage - Intercepting

Worthy Annointments:
None, minions aren't very good.

Commentary:
Unlike previous minion towers, this one's purpose it kill incoming leaks rather than block them. Their combined single target is not very high, but enough to fulfill their job well. Overall problem is that with a good strategy you'll never leak, making them redundant.

Their single target is not too bad, but i'd say Meteor is still better and more versatile especially with annointments. Clear wise it's terrible.