Guide to Blight Towers

3.8 - 3.11 Guide Archive Post
Spoiler


Introduction
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Empowering tower, improves effectiveness of other towers - but what does it do exactly? Do additional levels increase the power of the buff or only increase the range?

These are the questions i asked myself recently. They pushed me to make a few, small tests to quickly deduce the answer for both... However when it comes to me, "small" always leads to "EVERYTHING". I've end up testing every tower and how does each level of empowering tower affects them, collecting all data i was capable of.

This guide is basically a big summary of everything i gathered, including possible strategies for particular turrets.

General Tower Guide
Starting with basics:

Tower Types / Elements:

This section is will help you understand towers. What they do, their intended role, viability and other basic information. It doesn't go very in-depth. If you look for more straightforward
"What do i build?" section, check Strategy Guide instead.

Before i begin i want to point out a certain "rule" in tower design. All types can be assigned a role they excel at. Each tower type usually has one oddball tier IV tower which doesn't quite fit that role.

Tower Cheat Sheet - Fire, Lightning, Cold
Spoiler
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 5-6 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.

Tower Cheat Sheet - Physical, Minion, Aura
Spoiler
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 what 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.

Tiers, resource cost and opportunity cost
Spoiler
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, as that's where
* 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 Empowering tower will not apply to Imbuing tower and vice versa.
Strategy Guide
Towers and Annointments
Spoiler
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. Meanwhile level 3 gives some extra dps.

Silver + Black - "Your Empowering Towers also grant 25% increased Damage"
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 annointments you can get. You can never have too much damage. Helps especially Arc tower in single target.

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.

Strategy for Blights
Spoiler
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 damage 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. What i present should carry you through blighted maps with minimal interference from your side, regardless how strong your build is. The following steps / rules is how i'm doing it.

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 Arc and Empowering tower in a spot where lots of lanes converge, around ~1,5 screen away from the pump. Make sure that your empowering tower can affect at least 2 towers. Keep repeating until your Arc towers can cover all lanes.

3 - Later also add Meteor tower and possibly Seismic/Chilling tower for extra safety. This is primarly to handle the incoming bosses which arrive around ~1-2 mins after the portal activates.
4 - Go to the next lane and repeat. Arc+Empowering -> Meteor+Seismic/Chilling.

5 - Once all lanes have above setup, you can add extra Meteor towers to help with leaks/bosses or Smothering towers in extremely contested areas.
6 - If facing resistant monsters, place alternative tower of the same role. For example place Flamethrower tower instead of Arc to clear lightning resistant monsters.

Examples of strategy in practice:
T15 Colonnade
T14 Lava Lake
T14 Primordial Blocks

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.

Monsters, Resistances and Portals
Spoiler
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 will spawn 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

IMPORTANT: BEFORE YOU READ
=====================

Sections below go more into tower details. What they do, what effect Empowering tower does, more in-depth explainations in some cases. The numbers seen below are not absolute, estimated error margin is ~0,05 sec, but should be correct in majority of the cases.

Tower damage and any increases (if there are) are extremely hard to test due to variable hp and resistances of the monsters. Therefore i did not include anything related to tower damage other than official tooltip.

Based on Seimic tower testing, Empowering tower might also improve secondary effects caused by towers like: chill effect, freeze duration, stun duration and similar. Like with damage, it's very hard to measure it.

Due to me playing SSF and having limited access to oils, i don't have the data on more tricky annointments.

Keywords:
Duration - total time during which tower is active per cast.
Recharge - total time between casts.
Emp - shortcut for Empowering tower, signifies that the stat is affected or granted by the it.

Additional Resources:
Blight Helper - Oil Annoinment browser.
PoEDB.tw - Blight tower ingame tooltip data
Blight Tower Data - raw data i've collected


Aura Towers

Empowering Tower
Improves the effectiveness of other towers

Damage: None
Radius: 35 / 45 / 55

* 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.

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.

Imbuing Tower
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.

Smothering Tower
Weakens nearby enemies.

Damage: None
Radius: 55
Base - ??
Emp I - ??
Emp II - ??
Emp III - Reduces monster's elemental resistances by 20%

* Due to nature of the tower, it's nearbly impossible to deduce what does the Smothering tower actually do.
* It seems to slightly increase overall damage taken by enemies, around 15%. Unconfirmed.
* It's very likely it also works similar to Enfeeble curse. Unconfirmed.

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 Empowering tower.

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

Fire Towers

Fireball Tower
Long range tower that shoots fireballs.

Damage: Medium
Radius: 45 / 60 / 75
Projectiles: 1 / 3 / 5
Recharge (Emp): 3 / 2,5 / 2,3 / 2,15 sec

* Multiple fireballs land close each other in a line, unless using ring annointment that causes tower to shoot in nova pattern.
* Fireball tower might be able to shotgun. Unconfirmed.

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 can potentially turn it into a cheap and amazing tower. It should massively increase overall clear potential. I didn't test it personally so i can't really confirm it.

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

Damage: Very High
Radius: 100
Recharge (Emp): 3 / 2,5 / 2,3 / 2,15 sec

* Meteor has a delay of 1 second before it hits the ground

Role: Damage - Single Target

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Meteor Towers drop an additional Meteor
#2 - Your Meteor Towers always Stun

Commentary:
Basically an straight upgrade of Fireball tower, with higher damage, AoE and range. Absolutely melts bosses. 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. 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.

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

Damage: Very High
Radius: 45
Recharge (Emp): 2 / 1,65 / 1,5 / 1,4 sec
Duration (Emp): 1,75 / 1,375 / 1,25 / 1,15 sec

* Empowering tower levels also increase the length of the fire stream.

Role: Damage - AoE Clear

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

Commentary:
Great clear potential, especially for very dense bottlenecks. Alternative to Arc tower, but slightly inferior. The 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. Unfortunately i couldn't test it myself.

Cold Towers

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

Damage: Low
Radius: 35
Recharge: 7 sec
Duration: 4-7 sec, increased with tower level and Emp

* 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.

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.

Freezebolt Tower
Shoots a piercing projectile which freezes enemies.

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

* Freezebolts can pierce infinite amount of enemies.
* Freezebolt tower fires in nova pattern, think of Tornado Shot.

Role: Being Useless

Worthy Annointments:
None, don't use this tower.

Commentary:
Hits hard and has a lot of utility too. However it suffers from poor fire rate and overall reliability. The projectiles are thin and can easily miss targets. Projectiles are thin and can easily miss targets. Targetting can feel random. There's so many issues with it there's not a single reason to ever build this tower.

Glacial Cage Tower
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.

Lightning Towers

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

Damage: Low
Radius: 20 / 25 / 30
Recharge (Emp): 1,5 / 1,25 / 1,15 / 1,05 sec

* Additional Shock tower levels increase damage, chance to shock and area of effect.

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 efffect to other tower. Great for chokepoints with support of crowd control towers.

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

Damage: Medium
Radius: 45
Recharge (Emp): 1,0 / 0,8 / 0,75 / 0,7 sec
Chains (Emp): 7 / 9 / 11 / 13, includes primary target

* Chain values for Emp II and III are estimated, it's very hard to count it unless you get perfect situation.
* Long chain range.

Role: Damage - 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.

Lightning Storm Tower
Strikes lightning beams around the tower.

Damage: High
Radius: 45
Recharge (Emp): 1,5 / 1,25 / 1,15 / 1,1 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 limit's 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 suppossed to do. I suppose it's single target option for lightning towers. I didn't feel the need to build this tower, ever. It's not a bad tower. Arc simply outclasses Lightning Storm by a large margin.

Physical Towers

Seismic Tower
Creates cascades around the tower which always stun enemies.

Damage: Low
Radius: 45
Duration: 5 sec
Recharge: 7 sec
Repeats (Emp): 7-10 / 13-19 / 19-26, for tower levels I-III
Cascades (Emp): 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

* Seismic tower repeats multiple times over 5 second duration.
* Empowering tower levels increase amount of repeats, amount of cascades and stun duration on the enemies.

Role: Utility - Stopping

Worthy Annointments:
#1 - Your Seismic Towers has 100% increased length and range of Cascades

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. Spam of this tower is very strong, but also 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.

Stone Gaze Tower
Casts a petrifying gaze, slowing and finally petrifying enemies.

Damage: None
Radius: 45
Duration: 1,75 sec
Recharge (Emp): 4,0 / 3,0 / 2,5 / 2,0 sec
Petrify Duration: 5 sec

* Petrifies nearby enemies who were affected over full duration.
* Enemies affected by the tower are heavily slowed until they're petrified or are no longer affected by the tower.
* Cannot affect enemies who are currently petrified.
* Very likely has limit to how many enemies it can gaze at once, similar to Chilling tower. Unconfirmed.

Role: Utility - Stopping

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

Commentary:
Direct upgrade of Seismic tower. It cannot be as easily countered, but also cannot completely stop enemies. 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 chokepoints and nearby your damaging towers.

Temporal Tower
Periodically slows enemies in a massive area around the tower.

Damage: None
Radius: 45
Recharge: 4 sec
Duration: ~2,0 / ~2,5 / ~3,0 / ~3,5 sec

* Slow decays over duration, slower curve early and steep later. Having this point in mind, it's very hard to judge the duration.
* 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
#2 - Your Temporal Towers effects decay 25% slower

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. Second annointment effectively increases slow potential of the tower over time.

Minion Towers

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

Minion Damage: Low
Minion Life: Low

# Minions (Emp): 3-6 / 5-8 / 7-10, for tower levels I-III
Radius: 30
Recharge: 9 sec

* Can only summon minions when all previous minions are dead
* Empowering tower increases amount of minions by 1 per level
* They can be supported by player's auras.

Role: Utility - Intercepting

Worthy Annointments:
None, minion 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.

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

Minion Damage: Low
Minion Life: High
# Minions: 1
Radius: 45
Recharge: 9 sec

Role: Utility - Intercepting

* Once the minion is dead, tower quickly assembles a new one.
* It can be supported by player's auras.

Worthy Annointments:
None, minion 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). Place near pump or behind chokepoints... if at all.

Scout Tower
Summons 10 flying minions that attack nearby enemies.

Minion Damage: High
Minion Life: None (Invulnerable)
# Minions: 10
Radius: 75

* Unaffected by player's auras.

Role: Damage - Intercepting

Worthy Annointments:
None, minion 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.

FAQ
Q: Why some towers have no bonuses from Empowering tower?
A: Because they're not listed doesn't mean there aren't any. It can be really hard to observe some of the benefits and can be easily missed. The ones i've found were documented.

Q: What's "recharge"?
A: It's a full time between casts. It consists of cast time and recovery time (during which tower is idle).

Q: Wouldn't "+1 repeat" annointment be double the damage?
A: It will work similar to Spell Echo and Multistrike supports, repeat the cast twice. However tese supports also come with additional atttack/cast speed multipliers, finishing their actions quicker. The tower will simply do the cast twice without any big benefits to speed. However it will skip the recovery time.

Q: Where can i find list of tower's annoinment?
A: I've linked an excellent annointment browser at the beginning of the guide. Here's shortcut link, for your convenience.

Final Words
==========

While the guide / data dump is far from being complete, it shares tons of useful info that should give you a good picture of each tower. Knowing strengths and weaknesses of the towers should quickly turn you into tower defence expert.

If have any questions or want me to test something, i'll try my best to help you out. There's still a lot to do after all.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides
Changelog - 8th January 2021
Tower Strategy:
* Updated recommended ring annointments.
* Added small images of oils to make it easier to navigate through that section.
* Updated Strategy for Blight section.
* 5 new videos added of clearing Blighted maps with minimal usage of main character. Found in Strategy for Blight section.

Data Dump:
* Updated tower data to new values!
* Found and added couple details to some towers. I'll be adding more of them soon and will point them out next time.

===============

Technically i've already done what i planned. Updated data for towers? Check. New strategy written? Check. Finally new videos that don't use any annointments which make map clearing easier? Check. (i was in SSF and couldn't afford to lose those maps back then).

However i still should update some tower descriptions in data dump. For example, Seismic and Chilling tower now last for ~7 seconds while having only 4 second cooldown, what's happening then? Answer is, both of these casts are in effect simultaneously.

After 4 leagues i finally have good amount of oils saved up to test some oil annointments i couldn't afford before! So i'll still be doing some work until i'm bored or run out of oils or things to test. Maybe i'll finally uncover Smothering tower does... who knows?

Also to prove my point that new utility towers are absolutely broken i've recorded this special blighted map clear. I killed only a single monster with my character, everything else died to 2 Seismic and 2 Chilling towers.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides
Last edited by DankawSL#2030 on Jan 8, 2021, 11:57:28 AM
Changelog - 9th February 2021
General Tower Guide:
* Coloured tower types so breakdown of each tower is less monotonic.

Strategy Guide:
* NEW SECTION: "Other Useful Info" - small tidbits you might want to know about.
* Added info how much resource you get from killing enemies.

IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT CHANGES BELOW: Recently i learned that PoEDB has datamined info on all towers... Not sure since when, because i could never find it during Blight league. There was one person who copied partial/incomplete data on his website, however without reliable source i didn't dare copying. Now that i actually had a good look, i copied info i didn't have yet

Data Dump (PoEDB.tw part):
Spoiler
Added:
* Smothering Tower - Increased 25% Damage Taken (more context below changelog)
* Meteor Tower - Meteor AoE increase per Emp
* Chilling Tower - # of Targets
* Chilling Tower - Slow Strength
* Shock Nova Tower - Chance to Shock
* Shock Nova Tower - Increased Shock Effect
* Shock Nova Tower - Shocked Ground damage increase
* Arc Tower - Chance to Shock
* Seismic Tower - Stun Duration increase
* Stone Gaze - Hits to break Petrify
* Stone Gaze - Petrify targets
* Temporal Tower - Slow Strength
* Summoning Tower - Emp Minion buffs
* Sentinel Tower - Emp Minion buffs
* Scout Tower - Emp Minion buffs

Confirmed (stuff i suspected but never confirmed):
* Empowering Tower - Cast Speed Aura (more context below changelog)
* Freezebolt Tower - Recharge time (more context below changelog)
* Arc Tower - # of Chains
* Stone Gaze - Petrify targets
* Stone Gaze - Recharge time (more context below changelog)
* Temporal Tower - Duration

Data Dump (My findings):
Spoiler
Added:
* General - Lots of towers had minor commentary adjustments.
* General - Cast Speed reliant towers have their recharge 100% correct now (Emp Cast Speed aura confirmation).
* Fireball Tower - Nova Annointment test + strength deduction
* Flamethrower Tower - Added note about short delay between recast
* Chilling Tower - interaction with "Monsters have #% chance to Avoid Elemental Ailments" map mod
* Chilling Tower - Short recharge and long duration interaction. Not yet confirmed but likely.
* Freezebolt Tower - New commentary and +2 projectiles annointment performance test
* Freezebolt Tower - Arc pattern when not supported by Emp discovery.
* Lightning Storm Tower - New commentary. Still awful.
* Seismic Tower - Short recharge and long duration interaction.
* Seismic Tower - 100% length of cascades annointment test (IT'S BUGGED)
* Temporal Tower - old Duration is now "Effective Duration"
* Temporal Tower - 20% Action Speed annointment test + how it works.
* Stone Gaze - added note about weird delay after recharge (more context below changelog)

Confirmed:
* Fireball Tower - Can shotgun
* Seismic Tower - Cascade Interval (insted of # repeats, suspected for some time)

Removed:
Flamethrower Tower - Duration
Temporal Tower - 25% decay annointment (pointless now imo)

==========================

That's quite long list. Now for extra context on some changes:
Context
* Majority of the data i added from PoEDB was already suspected or know. However i getting right numbers was very hard, time consuming or straight up impossible. Regardless i'm grateful that now my data is almost complete.

* PoEDB data under "Confirmed" is what that word suggest. I suspected them or had exact numbers in my guide already.

* Ladies and gentleman - WE FINALLY HAVE "CONFIRMATION" ON SMOTHERING TOWER. It gives 25% increased damage. I already suspected it does that, but which Emp level and how much? I actually figured out a way i could test it safely... but... problem appeared, and her name is Cassia. Her AI is aggressive and wants to participate in a fight all the time. She attacks enemies (low dmg, but still dmg) and also seems to buff tower from time to time (probably increased damage). This resulted in inconsistent numbers.

However there was one test where Cassia didn't attack the blight boss i was testing numbers or buff tower. I got perfect 25% damage increase on it (which is number provided by PoEDB). While i could do this alone, i simply accepted this is the result. Method i used - permafreeze blight boss with Chilling Tower annointment and compare hp numbers over long periods of time (at LEAST 30 seconds)

* Empowering Tower Cast Speed Aura - i suspected this for a long time, it made sense with numbers i was getting on nearly all towers... "nearly" is the keyword. I suspected that some towers were gated by cooldown instead of cast speed. In some cases (mostly Arc tower i remember) it made me question it a little. That was due to less accurate method which i used when i first started gathering data and i didn't recheck every single tower (i already spent over week on research) and here we are. PoEDB values confirmed my suspicion, i checked it later with 50% Emp effect.

* Freezebolt / Stone Gaze Recharge time - Freezebolt should have 1,5 sec (used to be 3 sec but GGG halved it), but i somehow got 1,65 sec on my tests which appeared odd to me (likely my fault). I didn't change numbers yet, i'll test again before i do so. However i did adjust it for Stone Gaze and added note - it likely has something to do with server tick or something.

And lastly - i tested couple of expensive annointments in standard. In particular:

Fireball Tower Nova - Gold + Opal
Meteor Tower Additional Meteor - Opal + Verdant
Freezebolt Tower Projectiles - Black + Crimson
Seismic Tower Additional Cascade - Golden + Verdant
Seismic Tower Cascade Reach - Golden + Silver
Temporal Tower Reduced Tick Speed - Silver + Amber
Temporal Tower Action Speed - Golden + Teal

If you checked full changelog you should've noticed some of them already. They all work as expected, except 100% length of Seismic Tower cascades. It's bugged. I was very pleasantly surprised how strong Fireball Nova is. Totally worth being 3rd most expensive ring annointment in the game. I recommend trying it out for fun if you have too much money to spare. I even recorded blighted map using it. I did try couple more basic ones but that's a story for another time.

It was quite a lot of work in general. At this point i'd say guide/data dump is mostly finished. There are still few things i want to test, and i will, but maybe another time.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides
Great guide, thank you!
comment to save
New changes to Blight, new post from me. This time revamp of map annointments. Shortcut to full changes. What interests me in particular is:

Teal Oil
* Now causes Blight Monsters in Areas to spawn 25% faster.
* Now causes Encounter Duration to be 40 seconds shorter.

Indigo Oil
* Now causes Blight Encounters in Areas to contain up to 3 additional Blight Bosses.


Those are the first oils that increase difficulty of Blight, and with that they're perfect opportunity for Blight Map showcase! Not to mention quantity finally applies to reward chests, so there's finally a reason to run rare maps.

I certainly look forward to try my best against triple Teal oil map with maximum awakening level. That's going to be nuts.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides
Last edited by DankawSL#2030 on Apr 15, 2021, 5:52:46 PM
thank you so much!
what's the best oil combination for blighted maps this patch in your opinion? there seems to be a lot of great anoint.
Yaa
I was busy getting my build going and some other games as well. Playing PoE a bit more casually these day. I hope to test Teal oils soon. Apparently they were bugged (spawning monsters faster than intended.) and GGG fixed it in most recent patch.

"
s1020111 wrote:
what's the best oil combination for blighted maps this patch in your opinion? there seems to be a lot of great anoint.

Best, but for what purpose? To make blighted maps easier - Amber Oil. To clear them faster - Teal Oil. To make them difficult - Teal OR Indigo.

If you're looking for "which oil is best for money" - i don't know and i won't test. This guide is about tower/blight mechanics and how to beat them, not how to profit from them in ever changing market.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3053600 - My Guides
I noticed you said minion tower is bad but I saw many vids where they just spam scout tower and melts monsters. What is your thought on this?

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