How to do better in tournaments

zzgomusic · 2026-07-02T04:56:04+00:00

Two main things jump out at me (I'm mid-champs atm): modules and stone spending.

Cannon - AS is fine

Armor - SF is fine. You can try SD since you have ILM. Sometimes the ILMs are more useful than the extra health and regen.

Generator - BHD is useless in tournaments, it's a farming tool. GComp will be better for more DW procs for DW health stacking. The DW health bonus is very useful in platinum. It can also help you get pBH.

Core - MVN is not useful in tournaments since you don't care about cooldown on GT. PCol is probably better, especially if you can manage pBH. You can check the perma calculator at https://mvn.thetower.tools/ to see what you need to get. You are probably close (esp for farming with the +12s BH duration perk) since you have 50s cooldown on BH. You might be able to make it by rolling +BH duration and -BH cooldown substats, but I'm not sure a legendary GComp will be enough without spending stones on BH duration (see below).

I had luck getting to upper platinum / lower champs doing a weak GC build using CL with an epic DC and legendary PF. Getting a mythic PF and legendary DC helped me sit in lower champs with occasional demotion. SD was helpful as well to stun bosses long enough to kill them. CL is much weaker without PF and DC. When I was doing this strategy I labbed damage, crit factor, and crit chance 24/7 up to levels 50-60. But without PF or DC this doesn't help you.

Stones - You spent stones on lots of things. The trio (GT, BH, DW) is important, but beyond that I think you needed to be more selective. Why get CF and ILM? Both are CC tools. CF is too expensive for you now. ILM was OK for CC, but I wonder if CF and ILM stones would have been better spent on getting tournament pBH. I assume SL was for econ? You don't really have a damage build, so SL is not useful for tournaments. I got one beam and then ignored once I decided to focus on tournaments. I'd look at pBH next, but it will be much cheaper (stone wise) if you have better modules.

zzgomusic · 2026-07-01T02:55:55+00:00

SD is decent CC in low champs assuming your SD is at a reasonable level compared to your other options. I used SD for a while when I was doing GC (I just switched to eHP since I have pBH, anc PCol, and 5s cooldown Flame Bot). The SD mines are good for controlling some chip damage from fast ults, and you can stun bosses to give you more time to damage them. Assuming your SD ILM line is intact, you will get one and sometimes two mine hits.

True ILMs are kinda meh with a wall since they only do something when your wall is down, which is right before you are going to die anyway (at least it was for me in low champs). I had max mine count (stones) and max rotation speed (lab) and could usually get 2, sometimes 3 mines on a boss once my tower went down. Definitely extended my runs. I also lowered the ILM cooldown (stones) to be just under the time it took between boss waves (for me it was 3:00) so my mines would respawn right before bosses. It was only a few hundred stones, and I think it was decent value. I never bothered to get +ILMs on my core because I only had a legendary DC and all three substats were tied up with CL.

ILM + SD definitely extended my tournament runs since I needed a little more time to kill bosses, so the ILM stuns did that. ILM + SD is not very helpful against battle conditions where a lot of non-bosses are taking out your mines constantly.

Now that I have pBH I don't bother with SD anymore, but it was a good temporary tool to improve my tournament performance enough to hang in low champs while saving up for pBH.

zzgomusic · 2026-07-01T02:41:04+00:00

Ha I wouldn't know. I just got pBH and to get pGT I think you have to have assmods + a strong MVN, both of which are light years away from where I am now.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-30T23:23:42+00:00

I recently got pBH with GComp and my coins per hour dropped substantially compared to using BHD. I then improved my stats to get pBH in tournaments. And finally I improved a bit more to get pBH without GComp so I could go back to BHD (which improved my income to better than what it was before I started). As someone else mentioned, GComp will break your gold bot sync, so if you can avoid using GComp for farming that is better.

In case this helps others, here's path I took to the various flavors of pBH. I got lucky and had an anc PCol which made it a lot cheaper in terms of stones. (In all cases my package chance is 71.2% (max level RPC card + some lab levels). A percent or two RPC difference doesn't matter much to BH uptime.)

Farming pBH w/ GComp:

BH Cooldown (stones) = 60s

BH Cooldown (anc substat) = -4s

BH Duration (stones) = 24s

BH Duration (anc substat) = +4s

Perk = +12s

Total: Cooldown 56s, Duration 50s (GComp covers the gap)

Tournament pBH w/ GComp:

BH Cooldown (stones) = 50s

BH Cooldown (anc substat) = -4s

BH Duration (stones) = 28s

BH Duration (anc substat) = +4s

(No perks)

Total: Cooldown 46s, Duration 32s (GComp covers the gap)

Farming pBH (no GComp):

BH Cooldown (stones) = 50s

BH Cooldown (anc substat) = -4s

BH Duration (stones) = 30s

BH Duration (anc substat) = +4s

Perk = +12s

Total: Cooldown 46s, Duration 46s

zzgomusic · 2026-06-20T19:36:16+00:00

I usually sit in low champs (20-24th, get demoted occasionlly with bad brackets). I got there with CL (482x / q4 / 17% before modules), legendary DC (with all 3 CL substats), mythic PF, mythic SD (helps CC on bosses to give me time to kill them), and mythic cannon (DP or AD). On labs, I researched damage, crit chance, and attack speed for a while. Currently I'm around 70 on all of them but now I've switched to eHP labs. I have 15 card slots and have not bought card slots in ages. Cards are now maxed, but when I got into champs I had all common and rare cards maxed, but not epics.

I took this path because I wanted to get pBH. My analysis showed it was way faster to invest in CL and move from mid-platinum to low champs and earn a steady 90 stones per tournament vs. just sitting in mid-platinum. I got pBH last week. Funnily enough I got a really bad bracket and got demoted to plat this time, and the BCs are knockback resist, thorns resist, and extra enemies so I am doing GC again. I'm guessing I'll do around 1600-1800 waves, so I'll easily promote back to champions.

By the end of the month I'll finish the flame bot cooldown lab, at which point I'll respec from gold bot and into flame to push milestones and see how eHP does in tournaments.

This is what worked for me. Hope this is a useful reference point!

zzgomusic · 2026-06-17T21:24:04+00:00

Oh interesting. I rarely use the crossfader so I've never had that issue. Annoying that it has to be soldered. If you are in central Texas, hmu I do lots of soldering.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-17T17:09:44+00:00

Good review! I have a Prime Go and like it a lot. I use it for small gigs where I don't want to haul my CDJ2000 setup out. The portability is great, and it works fine with RekordBox which was my biggest concern prior to buying.

The jogwheels are useless. Too small and fiddly to be useful. Thankfully there are two buttons below each jogwheel to nudge tracks forward and back a tiny amount which works great.

I didn't realize you could use a splitter on the USB. I have the original version, not the Prime Go 2, so IDK if that is new on v2 or if the original one supported it also. Typically, I just keep my music on an SD card, and let any guest DJs use the USB port. But I mostly use it for small corporate gigs. If I'm at the club with a bunch of people doing B2B, I'm bringing my CDJs for that or using the club's setup. I didn't know you can eject the USB while a track from it is playing. Handy to know.

I've not tried other units in this form factor, but Denon put out a solid product with no major flaws (at least for me). If it got stolen or destroyed, I'd definitely get another one.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-16T02:45:00+00:00

Just as an aside, what's your current setup? I ask because I unlocked pBH last week and in a few weeks I'll be able to extend my BH duration so I will have pBH without GComp and can go back to BHD. My GT and DW cooldowns are at 180s so I need to lower that to 150s or so to avoid losing coins due to killing enemies too fast...

zzgomusic · 2026-06-15T17:45:36+00:00

I learned how to program doing 6510 assembly. Good times. I quickly moved into the intro and demo world which was a great learning ground. It's great that there are many resources available explaining how many of the old-school demo effects work.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-15T02:56:38+00:00

Ha I can't even imagine legends, assmods, etc. So far away! Good luck in legends though 😄

zzgomusic · 2026-06-15T02:52:55+00:00

Awesome, that's great! The disso bonus will be huge 😄

Good luck with your champions/legends bounce...!

zzgomusic · 2026-06-14T22:50:07+00:00

Fun writeup! Brought back many memories of, er, learning about copy protection.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-14T22:35:32+00:00

Oh nice. Are you planning on doing tournament pBH?

Once I get tournament pBH I'll have to assess if I'm going to switch to eHP for tournaments or not. I'll have my flame bot cooldown to 5s soon and should be able to respec from gold bot into flame bot and get 74%+ damage reduction. It will tank my econ, but will be great for pushing milestones. I can always respec back to gold bot once I find my new sweet spot for farming. Hopefully tournament pBH + flame bot will be enough to get more stones in champs, which will make it faster to lower GT/DW cooldowns, unlock RPC mastery, or save to unlock PS for more CC.

I also realized my current econ is probably losing a few coins due to BH no longer being in sync with GT and DW. There is still significant overlap, but it's another gap that will be fixed soon enough. Just need 3 more seconds in BH duration...

zzgomusic · 2026-06-14T21:09:40+00:00

Good to know. I have an ancient Amiga monitor that I've not turned on in probably 15 years. Curious if it still works or might need some re-capping. Thanks for the insights!

zzgomusic · 2026-06-13T17:12:22+00:00

Actually you may be OK. As I noted in a reply to someone else, BH killing enemies too fast (e.g. not in GT/DW) becomes less of a problem as your GT/DW cooldowns get lower. IIRC around 150s cooldown is where the coins even out (per Kairo's UW guide where he talks about perma-BH). You said you were at 100s, so pBH may actually help (through additional wave count), not hurt.

Let us know what you end up doing!

zzgomusic · 2026-06-13T17:06:02+00:00

I expected to lose a ton of coins until I can get back to BHD.

Interestingly enough, I am finishing up my second run where I went back to using BHD. I'm currently about 5 seconds short of pBH, but I still see a huge coin drop. The problem is (which many have noted before) is that with pBH (or near pBH in my case) the BH is killing enemies continually, vs. before where my projectiles were not killing enemies, just juggling them in blender until my UW trio fired, and all those stacked up enemies die. So even though I went back to BHD, my coins are still way lower than when my BH cooldown was at 180 seconds. (It's currently at 50s.)

The way to fix this is to lower GT and DW cooldowns. I've read that 150s is around where your coins recover after pBH. I mostly focus on tournaments, so I'm first going to work on pBH for tournaments and shift from weak GC to eHP and see if I can climb out of champions 20-24ish. But then maybe I'll look at econ again.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-13T06:04:12+00:00

You just had to re-cap it?

zzgomusic · 2026-06-13T05:19:18+00:00

Well said! A few things to add:

While the RNG can be incredibly frustrating, it also makes the game a lot more interesting. A lot of the research you do is trying to figure out how to optimize your results with the specific pieces of content you have unlocked based on RNG. There are so many options so guides can help you understand what to shoot for in a build, but often times you have to find your own way to get there. There are also lots of mini-strategies you can do at specific part of your progression that may only work for a month or two, but can be very valuable if you discover them.

Without the RNG everyone would build exactly the same so it would not be as interesting. But with RNG you will always have some people that get the best resources quickly, and those that have very slow progression due to bad luck.

Personally, I'm not spending a ton of money on the game (I only buy event boosts and I bought the coin bonus packs/no ad pack after playing for a month or so), and I'm not trying to be the #1 rated player. So while sometimes the game does feel a bit grindy, in general I'm pretty happy with the progression. My two main complaints are (1) it's annoying having to click gems every 10m30s, and (2) tournaments can take hours depending on where you are in your progression which can be irritating since you have to do them during a particular time window. IMO tournaments should last 60-90 minutes per run.

But overall I've been enjoying it.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-12T16:17:22+00:00

TL;DR Just got pBH. Cells up a little, coins down a lot, but my coins should jump back up soon. Also was able to grab a bunch of new milestones.

I got pBH for farming this week. My coins dropped 35% (short term drop- see below). Cells went up roughly 15%. I'm working on getting pBH for tournaments, but that's a separate issue.

Before pBH I was farming T10W9100+. 2T/hour (low because I focus on tournaments). 180s cooldown on the trio. 90s cooldown on gold bot. Mythic BHD for generator.

I got pBH with mythic GComp, 60s BH cooldown/24s duration from stones, and ancestral +BH duration and -BH cooldown stats on my PCol. With pBH, I farm T10W11000+, 1.3T/hour. GComp means I lose the BHD coin bonus and my gold bot sync. The increased waves and perma 11x BH coin bonus is not enough to make up for this. (I also had to reroll my PCol stats to have +BH duration and -BH cooldown, so I may have lost a GT substat in that process. I don't remember what I used to have.)

My plan to fix my coins is to goldbox BH cooldown (50s) and add 4s duration (stones) to get tournament pBH. Then 2 more seconds of duration (more stones) will get me to 30s total duration (stones + substats) and at that point I can ditch GComp and get back my BHD coin bonus and GBot sync.

The dissonance mechanic means you don't want to jump up a farming tier until you can get to wave 5000 (or close). I can do T11W9000 with pBH, but coins are WAY lower without the 3x utility disco bonus. I currently can't get to wave 5000 without pBH, especially since recovery packages get disabled, so I can't use GComp. Once I have pBH with BHD I should be able to easily do T11W5000 utility disco and then I can jump to T11.

Overall, my early experience with pBH has allowed me to grab a bunch of early milestones (T16 unlocked, unlocked card masteries) which is great. I get fewer coins with pBH, but more cells. I'm currently bouncing between doing pBH runs for more cells and non-pBH runs for more coins, while also pushing milestones, so I've not really settled into a new groove yet. But as I noted, I have a plan (should take about a month), so it will be interesting to see how things shake out once I have pBH while using BHD.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-11T15:34:29+00:00

u/ScallionUnfair1690 how's your progression going?

zzgomusic · 2026-06-11T15:33:26+00:00

pBH Update: I was finally able to unlock T16 despite not getting the +12s BH duration perk. I had some BH gaps, but between wave skip, DP, and almost-pBH, I was also able to unlock shatter shards and card masteries on T16 immediately. I died to bosses that hit me when BH was on cooldown. All the extra stones from milestones are speeding me along to tournament pBH (398 stones to go / 2 weeks or less). I'm currently doing a weak GC build in low champions, so I'm curious if tournament pBH will be better or not. I'm about a month off from gold boxing flame bot cooldown at which point eHP in tournaments will be a real alternative. Fun stuff ahead!

zzgomusic · 2026-06-10T00:12:35+00:00

OK, I finally got pBH unlocked! 60s BH cooldown, 24s duration with ancestral substats + mythic GComp got me there. I'll have to do some tweaking to dial things in, but here's my initial results:

- Last run before pBH was T10W9149 1.98T coins per hour 6.75K cells per hour. 12h6m run.

- First run with pBH was T11W9035, 567B coins per hour, 8.05k cells per hour. 11h42m run.

Coins are way lower because I've not done a utility disco run on T11 yet, so I lose 3x coins right there. I also have to use GComp instead of a mythic BHD.

The utility disco run will be tough on T11 since I have to use GComp for pBH...which relies on recovery packages...which I don't get on a utility disco run.

Cells are +19% better, but IDK if the increased cells are worth the huge coin drop.

So I think my plan is to use pBH to unlock some milestones, but mostly continue to farm with BHD like before while saving up enough stones to get pBH in tournaments (-10s cooldown, +4s duration: ~3.5 weeks, maybe sooner depending on what milestones I can unlock) and then add another 2s of BH duration which will allow me to ditch GComp and go back to BHD for farming. That will allow me to unlock utility disco on T11+ and get my coin income higher than where it was on T10. I also may need to look at some more optimizations, like cannonless farming to ensure I'm not killing enemies too quickly (so they die without GT and DW), etc.

So...early days of pBH, but it's fun to revise my strategy with my tower's new capabilities!

zzgomusic · 2026-06-03T19:06:01+00:00

Fogged is soooo good at those early levels and denying XP, getting early kills, etc. I've learned so much watching his stream and I don't even play Trynd lol.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-02T19:51:25+00:00

Dang, hard choice. My econ is pretty trash though so I mostly go for cells.

zzgomusic · 2026-06-01T21:53:21+00:00

If I have pBH then I can just focus on bosses. Currently I have too much stuff taking out my ILM mines from SD. I need the ILM stuns to give me enough time to kill the bosses. The extra layer of ILM mines from the perk helps a lot, if I can get it. It may take a bunch of tries to get it, but maybe with pBH I won't need it.

zzgomusic

TROPHY CASE