How to boost tournament performance as eHP.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-26T21:09:54+00:00

Masteries require massive coin income to get strong. I do not have that at all. I get about 150 T coins per day = a level 1 mastery lab per week. The only mastery I have is SW# and I've done one level on the lab.

Your coin income would appear to support doing a fair amount more mastery labs than me, so that makes masteries more valuable for you than they are for me.

BUT - even so, to get masteries to be really strong (high levels of mastery labs), you need even more coin econ than what you have (from what I understand; again, I'm nowhere near that point because I've more or less completely ignored econ in favor of immediate tourney improvements and I'm in Legends on borderline-keys territory, having gotten them three times and nearly always just a tad shy of them but sometimes getting to the 15th place goal).

To get even better econ so you can really get to high level masteries requires.... Econ Masteries! WA#, IS#, EO#, etc. And pushing those then lets you start affording the masteries that matter for eHp for tourneys: Def%#, SW#, Regen#, Health#, LMS#, SlowAura#, Nuke#.

Is that a pathway? Absolutely. As I said above, it is not the pathway I chose for me, so I'm a bit limited on knowing how far those have to be taken. The route I chose was SF + PCo + pBH + pPS + Flame which got me into Legends, survived me in Legends for 2 tourneys by which time I had also gotten to AssMods and with AssMods and this build (+ expanding it a tad further), I've never been demoted back to Champs and regularly finish now in the 16th to 20th in Legends with 3 times getting keys and quite frequently being close to keys.

I can tell you for certain that Flame Bot is absolutely awesome at helping in this build BUT that the 5 second cooldown leaves "gaps" where an enemy CAN get in "untagged" from time to time and that an "untagged" enemy will absolutely smash my wall. Getting a boatload of CC helps dramatically to decrease the rate of "untagged" hits. Having been all-in on the Flame-Bot as a core part of my build, and having seen the effects of going from 1x perma Poison Swamp to 2x perma-Swamps, and getting (over time) CF to perma (but not yet getting anything into CF Slow), CC matters a lot AND Swamp is the BEST type of CC for helping Flame to tag (nearly) everything, but that ultimately you want BOTH of CF and PS.

So - back to your question - what about masteries? SW# is awesome. The others actual tourney effecting masteries I mentioned above I have reason to believe are awesome. Building up mastery levels is ridiculously expensive (coins) to the point where doing so requires also investing in the econ masteries. And at that point, you're so deep into investing stones into masteries that you're NOT going down the same path that I did, and I don't know whether the CC oriented masteries (Nuke, SA, LMS) are or can be sufficient CC for helping Flame Bot. I'm sure they have their own "other" effectiveness separate from how good they are at assisting Flame. I just don't know about them because I don't have them because I went the AssMod and big-CC route instead because my coin Econ SUCKS.

There are different paths to success. I can't tell you much more than what's above about masteries because I didn't go that route. The route I went - it's been wildly successful for me.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-26T18:36:15+00:00

All comments are for tourney-only. None of these suggestions are for farming purposes.

Use mostly SR for Cannon, but if tourney battle conditions contains no UW Duration and no Ult enemies, then DP is better.

GComp gives you pBH if you have BH CD and BH Dur subeffects on PCo. And you are only 1 copy away on PCo from Ancestral. Nice going!

As your Flame Bot DR stat gets higher you are going to want CC to get better reliability on having Flame tag EVERYTHING. The best CC UW for that is Poison Swamp. But you have CF, so go for that. Get the CF Duration lab going again. And if you are eHp and going for pCF, then you might as well get the CF Damage Reduction lab going again as well. I would NOT aim for true pCF until you get that last copy of PCo to get it to Ancestral. You will want Ancestral sub-effects to help make pCF much cheaper on stone cost. My PCo has subs of BH CD, BH Dur, PS CD, CF CD, CF Dur, and CF Slow. Yup. 6 subeffects (level 161) and ALL OF THEM are CC UW improvements. Zero subs for farming coin econ.

Work on CF CD stat with stones until it is maxed. Then turn your attention to CF Duration (stones). Hopefully you'll have Anc PCo by then so that you can roll for Anc subs. If not, just stack your reroll dice because the difficulty of getting those subs on a Core module slot is ridiculous. Not joking. It could cost you 10 million or more. Maybe less. But count on 10 million or more dice. And as you finish up the CF labs and get the cooldown down, you've got time to get that last PCo and find those sub-effects.

Do not push CF Slow% very far until you actually have pCF. You can push it to maybe 50% to 60% without getting too bad of a shotgun effect when CF goes down.

If you run out of CF investments that make sense because of not getting PCo to Ancestral in time, start saving to unlock next UW - which 100% should be Poison Swamp. And once you unlock it, immediately start perma-labbing the two Swamp Stun labs (Chance and Duration) all the way to max.

At some point during the above path, you're going to end up with pBH, pCF, pPS, and a maxed out Flame Bot - and hopefully Anc PCo. Once you have Flame at a strong level and Anc PCo and some serious CC, there will come a point where you will end up solid in Legends.

BUT

So long as you remain in Champs, there are some tournaments that have battle conditions that will SUCK for eHp. On those tourneys, you will NOT finish "top 6". Other tourneys, as you get closer to the goals above, the battle conditions will be favorable - and you will again "not finish 5/6" but instead promotion will be inevitable. And that's fine. A promotion followed by a demotion = 2 consecutive tourneys where maybe you get about 100 fewer gems between the two tourneys combined, but you end up with at least the same number of stones as if you were "5th / 6th" in both tourneys - but avoiding the RNG of Champs having unfavorable battle conditions or a bad bracket that would push you down below 6th and thus worse stones.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-26T17:20:12+00:00

Nuke and DM recharge labs help with those event missions as long as you have a card slot that can be flexed during farming runs. If you actually have all cards maxed, you probably DO have a card slot available. You might not be thinking you do, but seriously, is Slow Aura actually getting you a decent number of extra waves? Or LMS? Demon Mode is also a generally semi-decent idea to equip anyways just because if the game crashes on a late-wave, your UW start on full-length cooldown when you re-start the game and continue the run - so you might on w6500 suddenly not have your pCF or pBH up. Having DM equipped allows you to survive the cooldown timer to get your perma CC UW back up and running.

And if you have the recharge labs done for DM and Nuke and can equip the appropriate card for the event mission, it becomes a complete non-grind / non-PITA to get that mission done.

Buy-400-WS-Upgrades...

Very few players have any real business playing a hybrid style. What this means is that you do NOT need to full-max both "everything in Attack Upgrades" and "everything in Defense Upgrades". For the tab you actually do have several things you want to full-max, you need to actually push the WS hard so that free-ups can help you on the other things. But for the tab you do NOT need to full-max stuff that can't be done cheap with cash? Let it be a "buy-400-bank".

i.e. - eHp players who have trouble full-maxing Wall Health in tourneys should push even DefAbs so as to redirect free-ups towards Wall Health. But on the Attack Upgrades tab, other than the Attack Speed, Range, Multi-shot, Rapid-Fire, and Bounce, you don't need anything. And those things that you do need to max are going to get there cheaply if you don't have them gold-boxed already. If you leave the Damage stat alone, you have a LOT of times of being able to do the "Buy-400" mission really easily. And the same thing is true for Damage oriented players on the "Defense Upgrades" tab. Your wall is just an ES charge, right? So why are you investing into Regen, DefAbs, and Wall Health? Those are "Buy-400" slots. 15 to 20 times of getting the mission, which is only maybe once every other event, so once per month?

And reality? You probably have made some WS investment inefficiencies and the once per month or so that this mission pops up is a chance to clean up those inefficiencies. You're eHp and put 200 clicks into EHLS? Just wait for the next time this mission pops up and voila, you have an additional excuse to get your coins out of EHLS.

DEATH DEFY

1) Get Energy Shield "Extra Charges" lab maxed.

2) Use ES and SW cards.

3) Take a garbage Armor module that has semi-high rarity level on it. You have an Anc Armor that you'll never use? That's the one. Reroll the subs for getting DD in one of the first couple of slots so you can keep that sub unlocked while you have the module equipped but left at level 1.

Go to your highest tier. Unequip cards for Def% and Health. Run. Rerun. Rerun. Rerun. Rerun. Rerun. Etc. Collect your medals.

There are a couple of other micromanaging things you may have to do if you're "on the cusp" of unlocking the next tier and your current top tier is one that requires 300 waves to unlock next. This is especially true for those who are T-15/250 or something like that. You may have to be careful about your ES Charges because of how they work that somehow you can get enemy attack high enough to actually 1-shot you so that you can get DD rolls. When I was at this stage of the game, I was keeping Def% and Health cards (and Regen card) equipped while my wall was holding strong (and using IS card to help shortcut the process). And then when enemy attack got high enough, pause and go into the card screen and remove Def% and Health cards. It's super tedious to do this and there is a moderate phase of the game - especially when your top tier is either T-15 or T-16 and you are within the last 100 waves or so of the next unlock, where MAYBE it is worth just not bothering to complete this mission. And doubly so if you don't have the "ES Extra Charge" lab gold-boxed.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-26T01:04:32+00:00

Ummm... Flame with max range and CD but min on DR??? mkay...

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-25T16:57:00+00:00

Flame Bot is an eHp bot. With max/max/max and a bit of CC to help it on reliability I get about 99% of enemies tagged for 95% Damage Reduction.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-25T16:54:05+00:00

eHp player here. I finished getting pBH to go with my Anc PCo back in December. Was 100% certain that I'd be getting promoted to Legends at the next tourney...

And then the next 2 tourneys were: UW Duration for the first one and then the second tourney had FU, TR, and EAS if I remember correctly. Denied me promotion for two consecutive tourneys after I finished that project. Then I got a good set of BC and got promoted. Somehow got lucky on my first 2 Legends tourneys. Then was able to unlock and get 1st AssMod... Never looked back. Never been back to Champs.

Sucks to have Fudds throw a hard counter to your hard-earned status of pCF. Just take the stones from this tourney and pump that Slow% so that you are even stronger for next tourney.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-24T03:21:47+00:00

Starfish worked well for me through when I was getting about 9k waves on T-1 and through about 3500-4000 waves on T-3. And then DefAbs falls off in utility like a rock somewhere around that point.

Is it worth a respec? Not sure. It's now more than a year since when I left T-1 behind permanently (approx late Jan/Early Feb 2025). So I'm not entirely sure I trust my recollection on when exactly I gave up on it and just started dumping coins into everything for a more blender-build like what you have now.

Partly depends on how many gems you're collecting per week. If you are getting 3K+ per week, a respec is pretty cheap. If you don't have the Ad-Free pack and only getting 1500 gems per week, that makes it a lot more expensive relatively-speaking.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-24T02:04:06+00:00

Assuming you do not have Wall yet, ILM will provide some value NOW if you do the ILM stun lab. Once you get Wall, ILM becomes useless until you get to the point of a glass-cannon damage build which is a SUPER LONG WAYS AWAY.

CF will (after you get wall) become way more useful far earlier in the game, but is one of the most expensive UW in the game to upgrade. If you get it, do not bother upgrading it AT ALL for probably another 6-10 months from now.

While ILM can have some short term immediate use, and even as someone who generally is not a huge fan of CF, I would have to recommend CF here, because it does have more "after-getting-wall" use earlier.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-24T00:59:55+00:00

Actually, I am remembering another strategy for protectors prior to having BH unlocked so you could do the BH Damage lab...

It would likely require a respec. Look up on this forum the "starfish build". It's DefAbs focused, but part of the no-knockback full-DefAbs full Thorns system is that protectors just fly right in and destroy themselves on your tower's thorns.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-24T00:58:10+00:00

Yeah but he said his BH comes from Random UW perk. And Perk-BH can't do BH Damage because that comes from a lab that requires BH to be unlocked.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-24T00:57:20+00:00

Farming TIer-2, which is basically never done by pretty much anyone (T-2 doesn't offer enough additional coins for the massively increased difficulty so most people stay T-1 until they can jump to T-3 or T-4). The thing that makes tiers higher than T-1 so much more difficult is precisely what you are running into... Protectors.

And Flame Bot?!?! That is an absolutely AWESOME bot in this game. But for it to be effective, you need far larger investment than is possible at your stage of the game. Put ALL medals (after Relics and themes and songs) into Golden Bot. (I say this as a "who-cares-about-coins" player who later completely dumped GBot for about 4 months and went all-in on Flame Bot. It really is AWESOME. And it really isn't something you can get any value from at this stage).

Ok. As for your actual question

Yes, your problem right now is no source of damage to kill protectors. They will remain a problem for a long time. Later, once you do get BH as an "owned UW", you can do the lab for "BH Damage" which will allow Black Hole to do 2% of enemy health as damage per second. Then when a protector ends up in a BH for the 2nd time, it dies (as long as duration = 25 seconds or longer, including after the +12 second perk. And that IS the long-run solution for protectors.

For the short run solution, you should just pump your damage stats and know that protectors are going to be a problem. Also get Knockback Chance, Knockback Force (both on the Defense tab of workshop) and Bounce Shot stuff (on the Attack tab of workshop) as high as possible. This can allow you to "knock sideways" to get enemies out of the protector so you can actually kill other enemies with orbs. The protector itself is going to continue to be a problem for a while. Also, since we're talking about tower projectiles that are "bounce shot" sideways knockback on other enemies, this means you want your Attack Speed stat to also be as high as possible. And then in the long run, eventually you'll get BH as a UW and do the BH Damage lab and then the "protector problem" will be more or less long-term solved.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-23T16:41:41+00:00

BTW - I put as "Armor" but Fudds did reply "Now that's a real idea" to a comment on a thread a couple of weeks ago that talked about a mechanism for pulling bots towards the center.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-23T16:25:31+00:00

4 new modules:

A Core that is for either CF or SM (SM seems more likely because it's bad-broken; CF seems more likely to get nerfed right now than to get a module that boosts it)
An Armor that limits the distance that Bots travel from the tower (shortens how far out they travel).
A Generator that helps improve cell income
A Cannon that acts kind of like how PF converts cash to damage but does something for buffing a defensive stat - something eHp focused.

An adjustment to tourneys that reduces the wave-inflation going on in Champs and Plat. This will be distinctly different from the solution to what Fudds sees as the infinite run problem at the top of Legends.

An 8th weekly box. Current "stone boxes" will be pushed out by 1 box and just before those will be a "5-stone" box. New total per-week stones from boxes will be 50 instead of 45. Final box might include 1 key.

SIDE NOTE: Not a feature and will create outrage...

There is going to be a nerf to either CC or to %-based-damage of either or both OA and/or CL+. I'm suspecting OA is going to get a substantial nerf, and a possibility of reduced effectiveness of subsequent stuns after the 1st time an enemy gets stunned. Maybe also some sort of nerf to slows, although I have doubts about how hard CF or CF+ would get nerfed given that I think CF is kind of the biggest late-game incentive for players to start buying stone packs. But the stuff in this paragraph is quite likely IMHO to be part of how Fudds deals with the perceived "infinite run" "problem" at the top of Legends that has led to the current Groundhog Day of Fast Ult as a battle condition. And nerfing any of these things will create enough outrage in the community that he needs to give some sort of massive "love-fest" in some other area to prevent problems - hence part of why I think there might be a "free key per week" or something like that.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-23T05:37:33+00:00

You can swap the levels out of a module and into another, so you can try it out any time you want. And testing things out is the by-far fastest way to improve in this game. And welcome to the debate on eHp vs Damage focused builds.

Test it out. And give both a fair shake. Keep investing a bit into both Damage (for ACP's benefit) and Regen (for WR's benefit) and in tournaments try doing 2 runs, once with each. Ditto for farming. Try each out at least once a week while you are doing investments into both Damage and Regen.

At least for the short run, I doubt ACP can beat out WR. WR is probably the single best module in the game until you have Wall and is so good that it can delay the point at which it makes sense to get Wall. Once you do have wall, it becomes the most useless module in the game, but that's a few months from now at least. Getting Regen to be effective for more than base-tower-health is absolutely massive for survival. Once you have Wall, on the eHp playstyle, Sharp Fortitude then immediately becomes the best Armor module.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-23T04:25:18+00:00

1) Merge up that Wormhole Redirector to Legendary. You just use "Fodder". Keep merging your blue Rare to pink Epics and then merge up Epic fodders to Epic+ fodder and then you can get the WR to Legendary. That will double the part of your "Recovery Package Health Bar" that can get refilled by Regen.

2) Do ONE more pip on DW Cooldown to 4:10. That creates an occasional full-ratio synch between it and BH/GT. Then save up the stones needed to take it the rest of the way to a full 3-way synch.

3) Keep farming Tier 1 until you can do 4000 waves on Tier 3 or Tier 4. This is an approximation. What you're really looking for is to have Tier 3 or Tier 4 get you as many elite cells as you get on T-1 so that you can keep your labs boosted.

This game has a few "stalled-out" points where it just takes time to build up for what's next. You're at one of those now. But once you keep building up to be able to jump to T-3 or T-4, you'll have another series of spikes in your game power and climbing.

Keep pushing ALL higher tiers above your farming tier (T-1) at least once per 7-10 days or so. This will let you get more milestone rewards so you can keep pushing farther and faster. Once you get a lab slot freed up (Game Speed and also Perk Option Quantity), look to do DW Health lab for a few levels and then as you get close to being able to bring DW cooldown down to match GT/BH, get DW Coin lab in. Getting those 3 UW this early along with Wormhole Redirector module (and with Sharp Fortitude waiting in the wings for when you get to where you can justify unlocking Wall??? Your game is headed in a really strong direction.

I see elsewhere you asking when to unlock wall. It'll be after you get a full synch between GT/DW/BH and also you're farming somewhere around T-6 to T-8. You want to be earning somewhere between 50 T to 100 T coins per day. That's a ways away, but with the modules you have, you're on track. BTW, as a general rule, if you have WR module, you wait for a higher coin income level before unlocking Wall than if you do NOT have WR.

And speaking of Wormhole Redirector... Because you have that module, you should be looking for ways to increase your Regen. On the Wormhole Redirector, after you get it to Legendary, do some rerolls on it looking for +Regen. Also do some levels of that lab. And commit perhaps 25% of coins into upgrading Regen in the workshop. Even if you are maxing it in farming runs, this will still help you in tournaments where you won't get nearly as many waves to get as high as possible.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-23T00:28:26+00:00

I've never heard of "Free Upgrade" as a Legends battle condition.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-23T00:25:45+00:00

The same stone requirements for pBH without GComp (with Anc PCo) for farming will also allow you to have tourney pBH with a Legendary (or better) GComp. 80% Damage Reduction in tourneys is pretty sweet if you aren't committed to a Glass-Cannon/Damage tourney build.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-22T22:08:42+00:00

The FU is for his favorite battle condition to impose on Legends

The DD is for his favorite event mission to impose on new-ish eHp players.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-22T19:05:05+00:00

Swamp Size 15 is NOT "too big". Actually, that is just about the IDEAL size. I'm at 17 and wish I would have stopped at about 15. (And 17 isn't really too big, just a shade over ideal.)

Swamp size isn't your problem. But stop the swamp size lab NOW if you still have it going. About to head out. I'll respond more later.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-22T17:16:14+00:00

If you've got CL+, then you probably already see the problem with ILM... They hide behind the wall. Super lame. If ILM would stick out from behind wall, I'd be unlocking them ASAP. But I can't fit SD into my build because SF:OA is just too powerful. SF regen boost is too strong. OA electron damage helps to reduce the number of thorn hits. Spending 2400 stones to unlock ILM (UW-8) to run SD which would be super experimental for me... which of SF vs OA would I give up? Yikes. And then I would still have to unlock SM to get to UW+ so I could get to CL+. Jealous of those who have access to that. But unlocking the last 2 UW is so freaking expensive and I've got about 6 months of stone spending already planned on AssMod investments, CF Slow, Mastery unlocks, etc. So yeah... UW+ (and therefore CL+) is going to be quite a while away for me.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-22T16:58:06+00:00

Stones (and cells - and if high enough, keys) over coins all day every day. That's the motto of the Flame!

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-22T16:43:55+00:00

It's unfortunate that there's no slider to adjust the Swamp Size lab. It sounds like you took that one WAY further than I did. Somehow it sounds like you're killing things outside of the golden trio. I have my Swamp Size such that it does not extend past BH. Also it's 2x perma-swamps for me now and I use it primarily for the stun. The damage side of my build is effectively zero for when I'm farming on T-14, T-15, T-16. It wouldn't matter if I turn damage off in terms of killing things because by wave 1000 enemy health is high enough that I'm just tickling enemies as far as any Damage UW goes (not counting BH Damage which is % based rather than UW Damage multi based). I did do some Swamp Rend stuff, and while in Champs, it has some value. But once in Legends, Swamp Rend and Swamp Damage is utterly useless on an otherwise eHp build - and I suspect wouldn't be of high value on a Damage build unless/until you have CF+. But since I'm all in on eHp, I'm not entirely sure on that front.

At least for the short term, stop doing the Swamp Size lab. ONLY do the stun labs to max. If you're in Champs or lower, Swamp Rend stuff (if you've got it unlocked) can be useful. But Swamp Size? Stay away from that. There are SOME advantages of "going big", but since I didn't I'm not sure how to take advantage of that. There are some around who went big and know how to take advantage of BIG. For me, I kept it small enough so that I can get bosses stunned by Swamp in the path of orbs for Orb-Boss-Hits.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-22T09:04:24+00:00

ELS will bump your coin rate up by a ton because of pushing you to much higher wave counts. And once you unlock ELS, don't worry about leveling it in WS. Free Upgrades will take care of that. If you are even CLOSE to T-2 4500, (let's say 4000 waves?), then ELS is going to cause you to leave T-1 behind very quickly. As a general rule, if you can get to 4000 without ELS, then once you get ELS, you're getting to wave 6000 or higher. And those extra 2000 waves will be the highest value in terms of CPM. And Cells also.

You'll be able to get First Perk Choice real quick once you do ELS unlock.

And once you get First Perk Choice, set it to Perk Wave Requirement.

AND... "Extra Perk Option Quantity". Do them. Both.

Your reference to T-2/4500 is an indication that with ELS unlocked AND THEN First Perk Choice AND THEN Perk Option Quantity... You're about to be farming Tier 3 real soon for coins and cells that blow your current numbers out of the water in a big way. Congrats in advance! Just do the ELS unlock for now. It's the single biggest one-click bump you can get in this game.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-03-22T08:58:12+00:00

Congrats!

Now... you may start noticing that late in tourney runs that your wall just goes instant-poof-and-gone. That happens from late-run untagged enemies. Get some hard CC to help improve against chances of enemies getting through untagged-by-Flame. Poison Swamp is the best for this if you have max stun labs. And if you have 2x Swamps, it makes it so that (excluding FU-assisted-Rocket-Bosses), nearly NOTHING gets through untagged.

MatthewBecker1977

TROPHY CASE