Talk:Plumber Monkey/@comment-5357744-20190223222412

Official Rating:

Originality: 8. Haven't seen a tower that jumps on bloons before, so that's original to me. The upgrades are fine too, only problem being that Super Star seems like a stronger Bomb Blitz and POW-block seems almost the same as Pop and Awe, right down to the 10 second stun & 2 damage per second.

Balance: 5. A couple of balance issues:
 * 3/x/x seems more like a sidegrade than an upgrade. You're trading significant uptime for more damage on half of your attacks, which isn't always beneficial. Either way, a sidegrade isn't worth $2,100.
 * 4/x/x, in a similar regard, is overpriced for just a +2 damage upgrade as the tower is already a slow attacking, high damage tower. I suppose it also removes the downside of 3/x/x, but you might as well buff 3/x/x so it's not a sidegrade and buff 4/x/x so it's a more meaningful upgrade. Either that or make 4/x/x cheaper.
 * x/1/x seems exceedingly useless for $500 considering you're shooting a projectile that's weaker than a dart every 5 seconds. I guess it's offset slightly by how strong x/2/x is, but it really isn't because x/2/x is overpriced as well. Despite being a strong attack, it's still weaker than a Glaive Ricochet which has way more pierce and a much lower cooldown. Red Hot Rangs, the upgrade that lets it pop 2 layers, is only $300.
 * x/4/x is underpriced. As previously mentioned, the ability is very similar to Pop and Awe. However, Pop and Awe costs $33,000 on medium, more than 5 times as much as your POW Block. Also, it's a tier 4 ability which stuns for 10 seconds. Tier 4 means it can be placed multiple times, so it would be very easy to spam these 10-second stuns and infinitely stall out bloons that way.
 * x/5/x has strong effects but the ability is terribly underpowered. Damaging once every 3 frames might seems strong (if we assume we're running at 60fps), but other than that it's near useless. It seems to function as primarily a waveclear ability, but it's aimed towards the strongest bloon on the screen. It honestly doesn't seem like it would hit many bloons at all. I would honestly suggest swapping the T4 and T5 abilities then rebalancing prices as you see fit. You could also make the fireball deal increased damage to its target (the strongest bloon) or something.
 * x/x/3 seems quite underpowered but I don't really know how it works.
 * x/x/5 is kind of overpriced for an effect that only triggers when a life leaks. I guess it is technically balanced if we're looking at Bomb Blitz, but Bomb Blitz is barely usable anyways.

Detail: 5.5. Definitely have a few detail questions.
 * Base tower. What does jumping even mean? Does it reposition itself each time or does it jump back to its original position?
 * 1/x/x. What does the "small shockwave" do? What's the range of the shockwave?
 * x/4/x and x/5/x don't have ability cooldown times.
 * x/5/x. How fast do the fireballs move? This is a minor detail that becomes important due to the nature of the ability. The size of the fireballs and even the dimensions of the helix might be relevant.
 * x/5/x again. What does it mean to "double power of all attacks"? Is it damage, attack speed, pierce/popping power? Something else I don't know about?
 * x/x/3. Confused about how it works. Does it reposition randomly? Is it an ability where you choose how to reposition it? Does it drill down onto the track or onto normal land, and if it is normal land, then how is the mini shockwave supposed to damage bloons?
 * x/x/4. Does the clone gain future upgrades? How does repositioning work?
 * x/x/5. How long does the monkey not attack for? Do both clones stop attacking or just one?

Epicness: 8.5. It's definitely a nice reference, and seems very thematic to boot. The upgrades work well with what a "plumber" does. Good job!

Overall Rating: 7.0/10. Original ideas for the tower, but unclear details along with a slew of balancing issues affect the rating quite a bit.