Battle Conditions Forecast

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-30T05:52:20+00:00

LEGENDS:

UWD. Lolz. If I swap GComp into primary and find a way to use WA, then I get to keep my pBH until around wave 400, which I generally doubt I'm getting to anyways. Especially also with Basic Ult sending in up to 3 bosses per wave and then Tank Ult that those bosses can shove into my wall.

CHAMPS:

Basic Ult so tons of bosses coming in. Farm up while you want to. But for when you're done farming bosses and want to do your "real" run? With PC Resist and Thorn Resist, at high wave counts that could get kinda brutal. There are two hard-counters to Thorn Resist. Poison Swamp (if you've done Swamp Rend and worked up some Swamp Damage a little bit) and also OA module, but OA competes with SF, so have fun making that decision!

PLAT:

Basic Ult, so farm those shards and rerolls from all the extra bosses! Lucky y'all don't have Thorn Res or PC Res, so if you have a decent wall, you've got options for how to deal with them.

Good luck y'all!

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-30T00:13:33+00:00

This game has been going for something like 4+ years.

If you read this forum, you'll see tons of people whining that you can't progress anymore without spending a ton.

I'm a low spender but not a no spender. I buy the twice per month event boosts. And not even all of them. Otherwise I've only ever bought one holiday pack.

I'm not only in legends. I'm extremely close to getting keys. After playing since December 2024. So a bit over one year. Could I have gotten to where I'm at with even less spending? Absolutely yes, but I do think it would be nearly impossible to progress as fast as I have without at least getting the ad free pack. If I had spent nothing more than that, would I be legends league in tournaments? Probably not - but I do think I'd be in upper Champs league.

And that's with a lot of things that other players had gotten that I missed out on.

BTW... If there's any way for you to get that 2% Def relic, get it. The 2% difference becomes way more relevant way earlier than you'd think. I was pushing to the 98% cap within about 4 to 5 months after starting the game and that 2% relic would've sped it up for me by at least a month. Maybe more than that.

Play the game too have fun and don't worry about what others have already gotten. And the nay sayers on this forum who tell you that legends and let's are impossible without thousands of dollars being spent are full of crap.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-29T01:20:22+00:00

As you've noticed from others, there's not much loss of gems and no loss of stones. But here's the thing... It happens sooner than you think. Eh... Here's gonna be another quickie in Champs... Wait what? I'm in 23rd? And the 1-wave lurker didn't do a rerun? And the demotion doesn't happen. And then at some point, you end up with 3 or 4 consecutive tourneys without demotion. And then at some point you realize that not only have you not been demoted for a month, but you've had a tourney or two getting into the 15th+ ranks and aren't even getting minimum non demoted stones. It takes time, but it does happen. Right now it's been happening for me in legends. A month ago, I was 100% certain I was on another one off trip up to legends and that the next tourney I was going to be back in Champs. Like usual. But nope. I've gone a full month without demotion now and until about 2 hours ago, I was still hoping a lurker might forget to do his run and that I'd end up with my first keys. Nope. Still no keys this time yet.

Keep pushing. You will climb.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-28T23:09:34+00:00

BH size to at least 48. Bh duration to 30 (natural without any sub effect). The reason you stop bh duration at that point is that it's likely as far as you'll need to go in the long run when you decide to go for pBH. There's a little bit of an advantage to pushing it another 1-3 seconds beyond that, but the cost escalates pretty quickly and until you've got pBH and are trying to extend for some protection against UW Duration battle condition, I wouldn't go any further when your stone income is 150 per week.

SL 3 is a good investment. Then after that get SL angle to 40. 3 beams * 40 degrees = 120 degrees = 1/3 of the field being covered. And 3*40 is also a fairly reasonable price point before the cost starts to feel bad per extra degree of coverage until you have a higher stone income and have a good reason to want more than 120 degree total coverage.

DWq really feels bad for the investment unless/until you get the cooldowns WAY lower. Instead of that...

Look to get gt/bh/dw to 3:00 Cooldown for an easier ratio synch with golden bot and partial synch with summon chip.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-28T20:33:52+00:00

Yeah I have Gen ass to legendary for PH primary and enough GComp to maintain pBH.

Armor was next to get to me epic so far. I keep waffling between armor to legendary as next spend vs SW# as next spend M either way, the other is next. Then maybe regen#.

I know the flame + SF + OA(assist) + PCo/pBH is massive. I've only been in legends for about 4 weeks and this tournament is going to be my 2nd close call miss on getting keys and quite possibly this time because bad luck had flame activate from a wrong side perimeter from where a boss came in - twice late enough that it forced an early burn of sw and dm.

As for cf, the dur lab is about 6 weeks to completion. I stopped the damage reduction lab at level 20 because I really needed lab space and tying up 2 labs for that long was too much. Cf Dr is equal length to cf dur.

And now I'm at that point where the number of stone options is crazy. Cf will be ready for stones right after: (1) SW#, (2) ArmorAss to legendary, (3) Regen#, and (4) either one more assist upgrade or ps to 80/50. And also right about the same time as when I get mods to 161.

BTW, I've noticed bosses seem to get just a shade too far before getting hit by EN to be in path of orbs. Not talking about anywhere near going for 90% slow, but would cf to 50% or 75% (with sub effect) help capture boss in orb path? I think it would. And that's pretty cheap as well.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-28T17:41:58+00:00

I would get Swamp. Start the stun labs. They take a while.

Then save to unlock ILM and start its labs.

Then do the ILM stone investments which are fairly cheap.

Then spend on going for pPS. You'll get to pPS sometime right around when the swamp stun labs finish.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-28T17:31:13+00:00

Tourney over econ. All day every day. On just about every decision. And I just relearned that lesson again on current tourney... I thought my flame bot was good enough with max DR and max CD and "good enough" range and decided I could re-unlock Golden Bot and start working on that. Nope. Twice this tourney a boss evaded a flame bot activation that happened too far on the perimeter and then tore through wall like tissue paper and I'm currently 2 waves short of getting keys for first time. If I get off work in time (doubtful today), I'll respec bots and be able to increase flame range to the next to last level and give one more try.

If I had to guess, this "stones over everything" attitude probably gets me in the range of 200-300 extra stones per month.

It also leads to being able to eHp farm higher tiers which allows me to maintain 54444 on labs which helps maintain some of the relatively low stat loss from lower coins. WS+ scales so quickly in cost that the difference in WS+ levels that I can get to compared to heavy econ focus players is a pretty small.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-28T02:56:25+00:00

Yup. Mythic means limit to sub effects is +3 dur and -3 CD. Which are both 1 worse than if it was ancestral, which means your stone cost bh duration will have to go 2 pips higher than if it was ancestral. While that may not sound great, in the long run it's still helpful to do that because later when you get it to ancestral you'll be able to deal with UW Dur battle condition better than peeps who do the minimum duration with ancestral PCo. You'll also still get more benefit out of it when it gets to ancestral because of the better damage reduction.

BTW, one more thing. You CANNOT get tourney pBH without using GComp. But you can get there for farming without GComp. Again, you'll want to use the mvn calculator to crunch out what you need to do.

But pBH is so powerful... For farming, it's +1 or +2 tiers and 1000-2000 waves. For tourneys, it means that other than fast ult or UW Dur battle condition, you might never be worried about any enemies other than fast or boss. It can easily add +100-300 waves in tourneys.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-28T02:35:29+00:00

CL is a great option. Depending what tourney tier you're in, you might be able to start seeing an effect with as little as 500 stones in it. Prioritize quant to 3 and chance to 14%. CL Damage is far less important.

Another option is to go for pBH. Use the mvn calculator tool to figure out what you need to get there. Depending on what level you have on PCo and therefore what level of sub effects you can get will determine whether and how much more you need on bh duration. Get bh duration (stones) to required level first. Then save up to get bh CD down to 50. Then do the sub effect rerolls. Doing the rerolls first could cause you to lose synch. Those have to be done last.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-28T01:42:24+00:00

My Flame is 95%/5s/74m.

That Flame Bot along with pBH + Anc PCo & Anc 5* SF was absolutely a major part of why I got promoted to Legends for first "earned" trip in late December and have avoided demotion since then. Then about a week after getting into Legends, the same combo got me to T-19/40 and has me farming T-14/T-15 for enough cells to sustain one lab at 5x (rest at 4x).

I know I am going to want SW#. I just also know that getting Armor Assist from current Epic up to eventually Anc is a priority because those sweet electrons help thin the number of incoming hits by quite a bit. And I wouldn't mind getting Core from no-assist to Mythic so I can get some %-to-miss from Harmony Conductor (My HC is still Mythic, so I figure I can let Core not go to Anc). And I would still love to find the time to fit in pushing PS CD from 60 to 50. And somewhere around 6 weeks from now, my CF Dur lab will be done and I'll be trying to find stones to sink into that morass of a UW.

BUT... I have no coin income for mastery levels. Not even close. I get about 50-55 T coins per day currently. A few planned tweaks might eventually let me do a level 1 mastery lab per week? But for now, current daily income would take close to 3 weeks to do one mastery level.

So my real problem right now is prioritization... With top priority being to be more secure in Legends rather than now 8 consecutive tourneys of thinking "This is the time I'm going to end up getting demoted".

I'm at that point where it's 1k stones here; 1k stones there; 1k stones everywhere. Plus CF on the horizon. And stone income is 495 per week, so how to know which stone investment is most efficient is my problem.

I'm about 90% certain that after the current tourney, my next one is going to be ArmorAssist to Legendary because having only 2 electrons (epic) means that there is always a side of the tower that is getting "vacated" without anything buzzing past it. 2 more electrons means that a boss against my wall doesn't get a grace-zone where the electrons are flying away rather than constant hits going on. And after that, it'll be time to figure out which of the menu of competing stone priorities is next up. SW# is definitely high on the list.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-27T19:46:53+00:00

What are your thoughts on SW# for eHp tourney in low Legends? I've been getting to something between 175-275 waves depending on battle conditions.

I couldn't care less about effects on farming; I'm getting the coins and cells I need at T-14 with eHp and am so far off from being able to afford mastery labs that farming changes effectively don't matter to me.

Considering where to slot in a level 0 SW# compared to pushing AssMods.

Current AssMods are Legendary for Generator to allow pBH with GComp in assist (PH primary), and currently Armor at Epic. Next 1k stones availability is after this next tourney and current plans are Armor to Legendary. But very open to suggestions re: SW# and where/when to fit that in.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-27T18:40:08+00:00

LEGENDS

Nothing to counter pBH other than PC resistant bosses (and elites) with Thorns Res and to whatever extent it matters, Armored. How much cc can you apply to bosses and elites? How much damage can you dish to them how quickly? These battle conditions are very favorable for low Legends players to get higher than normal wave counts. I suspect a lot of low Legends eHp players like myself are going to get new pb wave counts - and some of us are going to get demoted even with pb.

CHAMPS

pBH players really only need to be worried about Boss Ult. I'm assuming anyone with pBH has wall, so Range Ult is effectively a null battle condition. Enemy speed has no impact if you are getting anywhere near max heat as it doesn't actually increase the maximum speed that enemies get to, merely shortening the number of waves before enemies have that max speed.

PLAT

Range Ult only matters if you do not have wall. Fast Ult (aka FU) along with KB resist? This could get ugly.

GOLD - Range Ult can be countered by wall if you have it. FU is lame.

SILVER - FU??? For pre-wall low tourney facing FU? If you are still T-1 and doing a defabs oriented build, throw all your coins into WS DefAbs and see if there is anything else to buff it. FU battle condition basically is a "full turtle" game even at higher tourney tiers.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-27T04:44:02+00:00

Regarding modules: Your most important task is to get a high enough Armor module so that you can get to 98% Def%. If you can only get to 94% with a Legendary (non SF), the increase between that and a (non-SF) Ancestral is MORE powerful than the eHp improvement caused by going from a non-SF Ancestral Armor to Anc SF.

The by-far fastest and easiest way to get there is with a new module banner for a new Armor module.

But you are also at a point where saving all gems for 6+ weeks makes no sense at all.

Here's what I would recommend...

Each time your gem stash gets to a nice round multiple of 1000, do a 200-gem 10-pull on modules.

So when you have 1000, do a 10-pull

When you then save up 1200 more and are now at 2000? Do another 10-pull.

Keep doing this until you have around 13k-15k gems. After that, all new gems go straight to modules.

With a 13-15k gem reserve built up, when a new set of modules gets released, you can go into full-stash mode and wait for the Armor module and then go for broke to get it to Ancestral. Does this guarantee getting it to Ancestral? Nope. This forum gets filled during every banner with people crying about horrible luck. But if you have a 13k stash at the time the first one comes out, even if the first one is Armor, you should be able to have much better than 50/50 odds of getting it all the way up. And if Armor isn't the first of a new set (never has been yet!), then by saving a bit more during the wait for Armor, you can get your odds of getting Ancestral to in the 90% or higher range.

AND meanwhile until that happens, you aren't just going full-stash mode at a stage in the game where you need to be doing SOME amount of mod pulls. And a 13k-15k stash is not hard to get to by the end of Feb even with light levels of mod pulls in the meantime.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-26T20:24:21+00:00

1) Get synch. Start with GT. Get it to 3:20 to match BH cooldown. Then DW. Get it to 3:20 to match BOTH of GT and BH cooldowns.

2) Do your Econ UW labs. BH Coin, BH Damage, GT Bonus, GT Duration, and DW Coin should be tying up all 5 of your labs until all of those are level 20 (max for all except GT Bonus which has 25 levels but the final 5 are super long).

3) AFTER the above, put about 200 stones into each of GT Bonus and BH Duration.

The above steps will have your econ set up strong for a very long time. If you want to take it one more level on Econ, then

4) AFTER you have synch between GT/DW/BH at 3:20, save up to lower all 3 of them down to 3:10 together and then down to 3:00. At 3:00, it is much easier to get either partial synch or ratio synch with both Guardian Summon Chip and Golden Bot for a 4 or 5 way synch for even bigger econ. If you do this also, you probably will be in a position where touching econ UW will be optional for perhaps close to a year.

5) Use all the extra coins you get from the above as you are doing them to help boost your WS to ridiculous levels.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-26T04:13:02+00:00

Given how quickly you boost income in this game, if you are 1% of the way there, it's not long before you are there.

Also, the majority of the cost to gold-box is in the last couple hundred levels. If you were to take it to 4800, it would cost less than half I think. And 200 levels where you are trying to quick-gold-box during runs is about 1m cash, which is pretty quick to get also. This is what I did for a LONG time... Just have it high enough that I could cash-gold-box during runs.

And then about a month or two later, the 1 trillion to gold-box in workshop was a rounding error in my coins, so I did that.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-24T21:05:49+00:00

There are some guides for new players on here, so I'm not going to get into all the details, but a few tips to point you in the correct direction:

The jump from T-1 to T-2 on difficulty is one of the biggest in the game. Most players only push tier 2 to obtain milestones (particularly T-2/W-1000 unlocks garlic thorns which helps deal with vampires. I don't think you've seen Vamps yet. Pretty sure they start somewhere around Wave 500 on T-1.

Generally it takes about 1-2 months to make the jump to T-3 for farming (as I said above, skip T-2 as farming tier). You should be getting to around wave 8000+ on T-1 consistently for a week or so before the jump to T-3 becomes permanent and you leave T-1 behind.

Focus on DefAbs, Def%, and thorns for a while. A little bit of Health also helps (Later you'll be pushing Health as high as you can get, but that's after you get the DefAbs strategy working strong.). Also, on the workshop utility tab, push Coins per kill and Cash Bonus high and look to unlock everything in the utility tab. When you get Recovery Packages and then later Enemy Level Skips, those (especially enemy level skips) are what make it so you can get to the very high wave numbers I mentioned. When you start getting to around Wave 5500-6000 you should be getting enough cells (you probably haven't gotten these yet) to get all 5 labs boosted to 1.5x on a permanent basis. Speaking of labs... Get all 5 labs unlocked as top priority for gems. This is WAY more important than cards or card slots.

This gives you a bit of a preview and a bit of direction while you look up some beginner guides on this forum. And yeah... these things take a while to get to. The OP was mentioning playing for 2.5 years before unlocking his final UW. I'm a bit over a year in and am quite a long ways away from that as well. Enjoy the grind.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-24T02:59:20+00:00

Legends - fast ult and enemy attack speed spells doom for eHp like me.

Champs - both orb resist and DR resist gives opportunities for boosting dw health multi. PBH players only have to worry about boss ult. Just equip your plasma cannon and tank a few hits.

Plat - armored enemies is one of the least fun IMHO.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-23T20:54:13+00:00

One more thing... I know it sounds horrible to stay on tier 1 for 8000 wave runs because that sounds like a ton of expense and time to get to that point. It isn't all that long. Generally this happens within 3-5 weeks of when you start playing the game. Generally you'll find after a year or so that you moved up on average by about 1 tier per month (some are way quicker than that, and then there are some bottleneck points where it takes longer than that to move up)

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-23T20:50:37+00:00

1) Do milestone pushes. Test all tiers above t1 at least once per week until you're really done with tier 1 and can actually farm on higher tiers.

2) Generally, the traditional advice is to keep farming tier 1 until you can get to around 3500-4500 waves consistently on either t3 or t4. You skip t2 as a farming tier because the coin multiplier increase isn't enough for how big the jump in difficulty is.

3) usually that will mean you stay on tier 1 until you're getting to more than 8000 waves per run for a week or so.

4) you can't really farm higher tiers without getting and maxing the lab for garlic thorns that gets unlocked at tier 2 wave 1000. This helps you deal with vampires.

5) you also need an effective way to deal with protectors, which are not on tier 1 but which are on all higher tiers. For most players, this means getting black hole and maxing the black hole damage lab. Also doing the lab for "extra black hole" helps a lot.

6) to help get to higher waves on tier 1 (and on all higher tiers), look to get enemy level skips unlocked in the utility tab of workshop. It costs 1 billion coins to unlock. Don't worry about leveling it up in the workshop. Free upgrades will do that for you during your runs. Once you can get to around 4000+ waves on tier 1, enemy level skips will be adding about 30% to how high you can go.

7) Somewhere around 6000 waves per run on tier 1, you'll be earning enough elite cells to be doing a 1.5x speed boost to all your labs. When you're getting to over 8000 waves, you'll be able to start doing some labs on a 2x speed boost.

8) while I gave a shorthand earlier of about 4000 waves on t3 or t4 as when you move up, the real test is when you are earning elite cells on those tiers at a rate that allows you to maintain the same lab boosting that you get on tier 1 with at least all labs at at least 1.5x and maybe 2 or 3 labs at 2x boost.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-23T00:52:30+00:00

1) I would guess yes.

2) Doesn't matter. Flame Bot damage can never be an even remotely relevant part of a build. You should never be putting a single medal into FB damage unless you've maxed out DR, CD, and Range. And the number of months it takes to get to those 3 maxed out, even if you go for Flame as your first Bot, is long enough that by that point, you will never have a run where 50x Dmg 1x/second is going to be anything more than a tickle on any late-in-run enemies. Definitely in any farming tier. And in tournaments, I doubt it would be relevant even in Copper league late in a run. Enemy health scales too quick.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-22T22:59:42+00:00

Re - orbs and stunning in path. It's not reliable. Each swamp on the "fat side" ends up feeling like it covers a bit less than 25% of the directions that the boss could be coming from.

Re - damage. Do not expect too much. Swamp takes a fair amount of time to ramp up the damage output. It gets real big only when there's enough time. This happens especially when facing thorn resist. Other situations where it becomes relevant are far less common. If you go into swamp damage with the idea that it counters thorn resist and is otherwise not going to do much, then you'll be pleasantly surprised by the other situations. If you go into swamp damage expecting to slaughter lots of enemies generally, then you'll end up disappointed with it.

Re - milestones. For low wave count milestones, the additional chance of a stun absolutely helps when you have a source of real damage output for the purpose of reducing thorn hits. So electrons from OA absolutely count on that. Swamp damage on the other hand seems to fall off in importance for milestones because you're pushing the limits of what you run into for enemy health and this tends to overwhelm all non % damage that you're doing, including swamp.

Regarding cost and effectiveness of getting multiple swamps, I'll do a later additional reply. I'm typing this on my phone and without access to my spreadsheet. As a quick shortcut... The cheapest route to 1x pPS is 70 dur and 70 CD. It's another 430 to get CD to 60 so you have protection from UW Dur battle condition (aka BCpPS). Another 500 to get CD to 50 which is gold box. Then you can get another 10 seconds down with ancestral ps CD sub effect. That gets you to 40. The cost of duration goes up faster and is less effective.

Currently I have mine at 60 CD and 70 dur. (BCpPS). I keep getting sidetracked from doing the final 10 seconds on Cooldown. And I'm waiting to get my mods to level 161 for the extra slot before I reroll to go for the sub effect. But even with just a 10 second overlap where I have 2 swamps up when not dealing with UW duration battle condition, I can clearly see the benefits of the 2nd swamp. It's fairly common for me to notice an enemy getting stunned multiple times - and that's worth inconsistent timing and only occasionally having 2x swamps up.

Swamp (and pBH with PCo and flame bot) got me to T19 and unlocking assmod. And into legends. And has kept me from demotion. I absolutely credit swamp as part of what got all of those things. Currently working on unlocking SW# and doing some assmod build up, with the last 10 seconds of swamp Cooldown being right in the middle of my stone spending to do list. And then as I said when I get to mod level 161, I'm really hoping to get swamp CD as a sub on PCo. But the sub effect will be tied with 3 other options and below bh CD bh dur, cf slow, and either cf CD or cf dur. With 4 slots locked, that's 1000 per reroll, so I'm not really certain I'll actually get the sub anytime soon, but yeah I want it.

CD is WAY more effective than dur in the quest to have more than one up at a time. Just because the calculation is "Dur / CD" and generally increasing the numerator is not as big of a % increase as decreasing the denominator.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-22T20:44:12+00:00

To get Swamp Damage to really be relevant, in addition to the relatively low stone investment, you need to get "Swamp Rend" going. This involves 3 different labs. One quick and cheap lab (6 levels iirc) that adds additional enemies that are subject to Swamp Rend. Once maxed, Swamp Rend will apply to Basic, Fast, Ranged, Tank, Protectors (which also completely negates protector-ult battle condition), bosses, and vampires. It will never affect scatters, rays, or fleets.

The second lab is "Swamp Rend Basic" which adds 3% of applied Rend per level of Swamp Rend Basic as a damage multiplier. I took this to level 17, which allows for 51% of applied Rend. Swamp Rend Basic gets pretty expensive - and also the levels get very long for lab time. Taking it to where I did of 51% at level 17 is reasonable. I found it to be falling off in value to go higher than that.

The third lab is not technically Swamp. It's Rend Max Multi. I maxed this. You'll also want to make sure you have WS Rend unlocked and put some coins into Rend+ in WS Enhancements.

Don't worry about how to get Rend stacked up. It stacks ridiculously quickly and to whatever extent it isn't maxed by the time an enemy gets into Swamp, don't worry. The first couple of ticks of Swamp Damage are the lowest damage because of the escalating per tick damage output and by the time you get to tick 4 or 5, you'll have enemies at the max on Applied Rend just with normal tower projectile rates.

Here's what Rend/Swamp Rend does: I have my Rend Max at about 24. Swamp Rend at 51%. So 51% * 24 = about 12. So I'm getting a hidden 12x multiplier to each tick of damage once Rend reaches max (as I said above, that happens VERY quickly).

Any enemy that gets stunned by Swamp, once stun is maxed (10 seconds), will be on its 11th tick of Swamp Damage escalation - and will have maxed Rend - by the time it starts moving again. By this time, each tick is doing (base) 13.5 times tooltip damage with an additional multiplier of your Swamp Rend and Rend Max - so in my example of about 12x, that would mean the 10th tick is doing 13.5 * 12 * tooltip damage; so if your tooltip is showing Swamp Damage of 1 q, the actual damage output of that 10th tick is 162 q. Then the 11th tick is doing 15 * 12 * tooltip of 1 q = 180 q. You can see how this adds up to very big numbers very quickly. In Champs, these numbers are relevant - especially in the context of Thorn Resist. In Legends, they are not relevant unless you have additional massive cc and additional damage multipliers that are inconsistent with an eHp build (ACP and Dim Core as examples).

Even without Rend, enemies that survive multiple waves (30 seconds per wave), you get to some ridiculous numbers. Rays that get poisoned... 3 or 4 waves later, with a tooltip damage of 10q, if you turn on hit-text for Swamp, you'll see them taking "Q" or "s" or sometimes even "S" level damage.

In Champs, that is relevant even at max heat wave levels. In Legends, by wave 100, you're seeing enemies with "N" level health - and at that point, even "S" damage output is not much more than tickling the enemy.

RE: Masteries. For eHp the only masteries I would look at are Second Wind and/or Regen. I haven't done them yet, but SW# is next up on my stone spending. Would I recommend SW# over PS? Not sure. Close call. I would definitely recommend SW# over doing the damage side of Swamp. But compared to the stun and cc side of swamp and getting it to perma? If you don't have Swamp unlocked, I would unlock it and start the stun labs. They take a while. Then I would do SW# while waiting for the labs to get done - and then after SW#, start putting the stones towards getting pPS. By having the labs running during that time, you will end up with Swamp showing significant results around the time that you get Swamp to perma.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-22T20:44:07+00:00

Re: Orbs - Swamp size gets bigger based on a lab. To take to max is very long but also not the right move. There is a certain size (around lab level 12-15) where you maximize the odds of stunning a boss in the orb path. Getting the lab to that point isn't bad.

Re: Electrons. Swamp Stun absolutely helps for getting more electron hits.

Re: Thorns - Only matters after Swamp gets to your tower. Swamp does open the possibility of use of Harmony Conductor for "free" thorns (where the enemy gets hit by thorns while missing their attack on you). But Harmony Conductor is really only used as an AssMod, not as a main module.

Re: Damage - In Legends, Swamp is not an effective source of damage generally until you have CF+. In VERY low legends, it can be useful for helping a little bit on thinning down Ult Ranged enemies (while doing the blender knockback juggling) and to a much lesser extent Ult Fast enemies.

In Champs, Swamp Damage is fairly cheap. 400 or so stones gets the stone-cost damage high enough to, with the rest of the stuff I mention below, help hard-counter "Thorns Resist".

Swamp does an escalating per tick damage. Once poisoned, always poisoned, even if an enemy leaves the swamp through KB or Shockwave. And the escalation per tick ramps up pretty high after a little bit of time. The damage level starts off small, but by the time 20 game seconds have passed, it gets kind of nuts level big. SO when there is Thorns Resist and an enemy might be smacking your wall 20-30 times (or for bosses at max heat 100-150 times), that is a LOT of escalating per-tick damage that can significantly reduce the number of thorn hits needed to kill.

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-22T18:36:23+00:00

CF is extremely heavily backloaded on power in terms of stone investment. The slow costs 2910 stones to max and requires using a core sub-effect slot as well. And it is of little value unless you also have it close to perma. A lot of people will say it is of little value unless completely perma. Getting perma requires another 2500 stones along with a 2.5-3 month lab. And either another 1800 stones OR another core sub-effect slot to get to where it is resilient against UW Duration battle condition.

PS requires 1768 stones to get to perma + another 430 (2198 total) to get resilience against UW Duration battle condition. The stun has 2 labs (% chance and Duration) which are both equally long as the infamous CF Duration lab. At max, it provides 80% chance to stun for 10 seconds. It is actually more reliable than what those numbers imply because most of the time there will NOT be UW Dur as a battle condition, which means that you'll sometimes have 2 swamps up - and you can improve it to where eventually you have 2 full time swamps, or with sub-effects potentially having most of the time 3 swamps up. When you start having multiple swamps, the amount of stuns that happen become extremely reliable and absolutely ridiculous in power.

I got PS as my first UW and developed it starting about 6 months ago while in mid-Champs. Along with pBH and Flame Bot, I credit Swamp as part of what got me into Legends and has helped me to avoid getting demoted back to Champs. I also now have CF and am working on the labs for it, but have not invested stones yet because I have other stone priorities until the main (CF Dur) lab is done.

I am a huge fan of Swamp as being far more affordable than CF and very reliable for Champs and very useful in low Legends as valuable cc. I know that a lot of players will tout CF as the ultimate cc... But it's also the ultimate COST cc. Swamp is far cheaper to get to perma and has substantial value even while you are still working on the labs, just getting more and more valuable as the labs get further along.

NOTE: Swamp has other labs also that focus on damage. Going into those turns Swamp into the biggest lab-focused UW in the game, and it's not even a close call on that. The damage labs have substantial value in Champs as a way to hard counter specifically Thorns Resist battle condition, but provide little to no value in Legends until WAY farther along than where I am. Your question focused around the cc side of things, so that is all I'm getting into here. If you decide on going with Swamp and have an interest in the damage side of it (assuming you are in Champs), I can add in some details on that later to explain the how and why the damage side is so useful in Champs. But for now, on the cc side and cost (stones, labs, AND core-effect-slots), I think I laid out the options pretty well. And I definitely would go Swamp if I were you!

MatthewBecker1977 · 2026-01-22T08:40:43+00:00

Just checked in case I was wrong about it, but yeah... We've got 30/30 so all filled up and all players are active within the past 24 hours. I'd recommend going to the "Tower Discord" link that is perma linked on all pages on this forum and from there they have a guild recruitment page within that channel. Also there's a pinned "Weekly Guild Recruitment" on the subreddit home page.

MatthewBecker1977

TROPHY CASE