Potions need a Nerf

[gerbillover]

Disagree with me all you like, this is just my opinion.

Potions in Tower Defence are too OP. In fact, I have no issue with most of the "attacking" potions such as Zeus Rage and Inferno. However, the speed and regeneration potions are horrid:

1. The cooldown is very small. Potions can be used about once every 5 seconds, and when you have an enemy constantly spamming speed and regen on a tanky mob it becomes an unfair nuisance.
2. Speed and regen potions are SO CHEAP. They only cost about 200-300 XP to unlock, which is very little, and to purchase them it's around 800 coins. I know this doesn't sound cheap, but at this point in the game that is a pretty small amount.
2.5. You can hold loads of them. The kinds of players who I talked about earlier (potion spammers) just always seem to have so many so quickly. I believe this is because they buy like 20 potions beforehand. This isn't a huge one to me, but I'd prefer if some sort of limit was put on how many potions can be held at once, I think it should be no more than 10.
3. They're just generally really good. The speed potion almost doubles the mobs speed, and of course it works for all of those mobs. This is annoying because they speed through your defences, even if you have an ice tower or use freezing AoE. The regen potion is even meaner, basically making mobs unkillable if you don't have several towers attacking them at all times, and with the speed that will NOT happen.

I'm not saying potions are necessary bad or should be removed, but they're just a huge horror when spammed.

My solution:

I propose a simple solution: Increase the cooldown on potions. Currently it's about 5 or 6 seconds, I think it should instead be around 15 or 20 seconds. Potions are meant to be a small boost, to help your mobs fight. You shouldn't be able to do that all the time. Think about Mario Kart: you can't always use a Mushroom or something, you have to wait for an item box. There needs to be some sort of limit on potions, and I think an increased cooldown is the way to go.

 

[Spleefy]

I've never thought of the potions as being "too OP" or "unfair".

We make heavy use of pots in our games and always have several handy and/or the funds set aside to obtain them when necessary. Speed and regen pots are very effective and we use/spam them always, especially on our finishers such as blaze or giants, depending on the other team's defense composition. Most people who I've played against seldom use pots, let alone have a decent defense or an offense that poses a threat.

However, for the teams that have used pots, we always counter with our own pots, such as slow and meteor. We also used them around the appropriate towers (i.e., around archers for fliers and artillery for ground mobs) to get the most from the pots and to maximize damage output.

We've also never had much of an issue of mobs speeding through our defenses because of our counter pots. This not only effectively counteracts the other team's pots, but it would afford our towers enough time to do some serious damage. No matter how many pots the other team threw, we were always prepared to throw down just as many, if not more.

If the other team were also aggressive with pots, this could certainly lead to draining both team's economy and having limited funds to follow up. But that was the beauty of it. It forced your team to manage your economy/funds effectively and to make the most out of towers and offense.

We had some insane pot throwing battles... ahh the sweet memories :D

The current cooldown and price of pots make for some epic, fast-paced battles. The rush when both teams are spamming pots and the need to react/think fast as a consequence is an adrenaline rush in itself.

I would suggest making more use of pots and getting accustomed to the fast-paced action of it. If the other teams are spamming pots, then you and your team can very easily do the same and use counter pots. Alternatively, if we suspected the other team was saving up for something big, we would do a rush of our own to make the other team go on the defense and be forced to counter us and thus drain their funds a bit to buy us some more time to get up a better defense and/or harder offense.

Also, what we usually do is have those on offense to obtain only offense pots and those on defense only defense pots. So whatever the situation calls for, you will have pots ready for any occasion, and plenty of them.

This helps us in our games immensely... I hope it does the same for you, and you may even grow to love pot battles as much as my friends and I do.

 

[Power Ranger]

Imo the defensive potions (meteor shower, ect.) are much more effective than the offejsive ones (regen, speed) so I think they are pretty balanced. If someone is using speed and regen on their wave against you a metor shower and a slow will pretty much devastate any mob they sent. Also unless they changed how potions work since I last played you can only hold 3 at a time to begin with.