Starting Note

It's been a few days, a bit longer than I said last dev log, but there were just some final things I needed to work out before Drill Sniper was ready.

Here's all you need to know about Drill Sniper:

Base, Up To Tier 2 And The Ability

Drill Sniper got changed a lot due to the introduction of Tier 3 upgrades.

• 1/x/x

  • Damage reduced from 6 to 4

  • Price reduced from $1000 to $750

• 2/x/x

  • Damage reduced from 10 to 7

  • No longer stuns enemies

  • Price reduced from $3000 to $1250

• x/1/x

  • Grants Hollow Priority Targeting

  • Price reduced from $275 to $225

• x/2/x

  • Explosive Core pierce capped to 5

  • Price reduced from $900 to $750

• x/x/1

  • Attack speed bonus reduced from ~28% to 25%

  • Price reduced from $400 to $350

• x/x/2

  • Renamed to "Even Faster Reload"

  • Price reduced from $800 to $400

As you can see here, Drill Sniper is a bit weaker in both damage and speed, going from 10 damage every 0.9 seconds to 7 damage every 0.945 seconds, or from 11.11 DPS to 7.41 DPS, weaking it against singular high health targets (for example, it will no longer destroy Shelleds as easily), and it also can't one-shot Rainbows anymore.

The big thing here, however, is that the stun effect that 2/x/x used to have is now gone. This heavily impacts the base Drill Sniper as well as impacting both of the other upgrade paths, but I felt it was necessary as the original had balancing issues with stun at base, notably with deciding between 3/2/2 and 2/2/3.

The total price of 2/2/2 has dropped from $6675 to $4025, which is really good for its ability, which remains as Supply Drop. If you were to sell-rebuy Drill Sniper to skip a large portion of the cooldown (which wasn't really worth it anyways outside of a few scenarios), the amount of money you'd lose has gone down from $735 to $205, which makes an extremely large difference.

As it currently stands, Supply Drop is still $600 every 30 seconds. I'll be keeping a close eye on the ability to see if it's going to need a nerf. Additionally, I've been thinking of replacing the ability for something else, but I don't know what exactly I'd change it to, nor do I know if I want to limit income production solely to Cash Producer.

Top Path - Drill In The Cripple

Top path now holds the stun bonus that 2/x/x used to have, not much more than that.

• 3/x/x - Weak Point

  • Attacks deal a little more damage and stun enemies for a short time

• 4/x/x - Master Huntsman

  • Attacks deal more damage, stun for longer, and now cripple enemies. Ability inflicts a longer stun and cripple effect to a single enemy.

The primary focus with top path is to provide some control over enemies with the single target stun.

Weak Point is just like the old 2/x/x, dealing 10 damage as well as inflicting a short stun. Not too much more to say about it. Just like with 2/x/x in the original, you can use Weak Point as a solid early boss stun which can continue to help throughout the rest of the game.

Master Huntsman is extremely similar to the original. It still has a longer stun as well as the cripple effect. A big change however is that Explosive Core no longer stuns.

The ability, Hunter's Mark remains the same as before, being a single-shot single-target long stun + cripple effect.

Middle Path - Bouncing Away

Middle path returns Drill Sniper to its roots in the very very early days of the original.

• x/3/x - Ricocheting Drills

  • Drills now bounce to nearby targets a few times.

• x/4/x - Drill Supply

  • All Drill Snipers on the field gain an additional bounce and larger Explosive Cores. Ability provides more cash.

The primary purpose of this path is to provide infinite range group damage.

Ricocheting Drills returns a feature that Drill Sniper had in the very early days of the game's lifespan, but was so mechanically broken (more-so than anything else back then) that it was eventually replaced with Explosive Core.

This upgrade allows the Drill Sniper's attack to bounce 2 times, dealing direct damage and exploding on each bounce. This makes it pretty good at dealing with dense hordes somewhat well, especially when paired with Brewing Station's top path, as the damage and pierce bonuses will apply to both the drills and explosive cores

Drill Supply is the same as the Mega Supply Drop upgrade from the original, providing a bounce and better Explosive Cores for all Drill Snipers. Just like the original, this Drill Supply buff does not apply to the Hunter's Mark ability. Also, external pierce buffs such as Brewing Station will NOT boost the pierce of non-x/3/x & x/4/x Drill Snipers, so you can't have a Master Huntsman with a butt-load of pierce, unfortunately.

Additionally, the ability gets improved from $600 per crate to $1500 per crate. And while we're talking about it, I want to include a little more here and just show the resprites for the crates, cuz why not?

Bottom Path - Slow Down For Nobody

Bottom path is all about speed, speed, and speed.

• x/x/3 - New Reload Tactic

  • Triples attack speed. Ability now doubles attack speed for a few seconds.

• x/x/4 - Automatic Reload

  • Quintuples attack speed. Ability now quadruples attack speed for a few seconds.

This path is the primary one you'll want to use if you intend to use Drill Sniper as a single target DPS machine. The insanely high rate of fire makes it perfect for catching fleeing enemies as well.

New Reload Tactic provides a 3x speed boost, much like it used to back in the day in the original. If you intend to use Drill Sniper more for a damage role than a support or crowd clear role, this update will be the move for you. Its DPS will be excellent for early and mid game, so you won't need to worry that much about Easy or even Medium Crushers.

If you're in a pinch, you can turn the speed up even more with its Defender ability, doubling attack speed for the next 5 seconds.

Automatic Reload provides an even larger 5x speed boost, making it perfect for single target destruction. You may want to pair it with Drill Supply in case you find it struggling late game, but it should be good if you want a consistent global range damage dealer.

Additionally, the speed can be brought up even higher with its Elite Defender ability, which is double the strength of Defender while also lasting 50% longer.

Ending Note

Hopefully, despite the stun shift to Tier 3, Drill Sniper will still be a good tower to use, as the high damage single shot in the early game should help out tremendously.

That's all for now, in the next dev log, I'll be going over Aerial Blaster and all the changes she got. And who knows, maybe another tower will be finished and I'll be able to make another tower dev log after her?

See you next time!