100% agree with this list, this games barrack are a blast to use, with bladesingers being my favourites traditional barrack in the series, it would be demon pit if counting non traditional barracks. It is sad though seeing how badly artillery had fallen off between frontiers and origins.
Awesome tier list and video! I agree with every single placement. Nice. The only tricky ones were whether or not to swap Longbow and Weirdwood. I think they are interchangeable. Longbow is insanely good on endless, but I don't really count that as true utility. Weirdwood is better against more levels in the main campaign to me, generally due to the ground slamming true AOE mostly, but honestly these two are completely opposite towers with probably near the exact amount of utility. Good players use Longbows more than Weirdwood, that's for sure. It's really helpful in awkward spots like in Duredhel Outskirts with its subpar tower spots, and it is also better in basically every elite stage as well, so I do think it deserves to be placed above Weirdwood like you did. Well that to say, this is a rare perfect tier list video!
Bro literally i'd searched for this when I got stuck in a level, but u haven't uploaded this by then, and now that I've completed the whole game, u r uploading this!
Best tier list I've seen. I only slightly disagree with golden longbows placement over weirdwood, but I only ever played with the obsidian arrows star upgrade on one stage before deeming them too over powered and never using it again (along side all the other level 5 star upgrades) so I never really used them at their full potential. The only reason I dissagree is because l can't think of any niech solved by golden longbows that wild magus can't do, but I can at least think of a few scenarios where the weird wood is a better area damage option than arcane archers. Hunters mark is really good, but I think I'd rather just have unupgraded 2 wild magus for slightly more cost just about every time. The wierd wood is much better at dealing with spams of spiders than the arcane archers, so I would sometimes use it unironically. My opinion isn't exactly the most authoritative yet though, I'm still relatively noobish haha 😅
High elven mage really need to come to alliance, the game usage of flying enemies with mini bosses being more common would make them way more better in there rather in origins.
Here before some newbies say.. "U just don't know to play it right"😂 Great vid, 100% on spot I just have a little disagreement about 3rd level of AH in some comments section. U seems defend the RNG by saying that selling is the counter, I agree but there is no single sign which one abominor will eat and that's not fun at all, if only they give us signs, yes we can sell it fast, Even if there are like 3 towers will be eaten! Still I respect u as veteran of kingdom rush series👍
The one redeeming factor of ADH is that Sylvan Curse is extremely helpful in Endless mode when enemies just keep growing tankier and tankier, which means you’ll eventually never be able to kill the enemy before the curse expires. Also, Wild Magus Silence is a lot better than people give it credit for. While I was farming the achievement, silencing the Scourgers really ensures that your towers stay operational 100% of the time instead of having to play around it.
arcane archers and bladesingers, are arguably the most broken early game t4 in orgins (note: if your wondering why artillery sucks in origins is bcos almost all the artillery in og and frontiers are too much)
Alex Playz - Kingdom Rush forgot to double the cost efficiency of the arcane sentinels as each sentinel fires 10 bolts so their actual DPS per 600 Gold would be 32-64. So the only good thing about the high elven mage would be the arcane sentinels.
When i first played the game i thought combining Arch druid and Forest Keeper is the perfect synergy since the FK can slow the enemies so AD can hit more and also heal the bears while doing true damage in the back .but boy i'm i wrong
Definitely agree with the list! Personally, I'm not sure how I'll order Bladesingers against Forest keepers, but that's just me being not experienced enough and generally indecisive. There are 2 things I noticed that I wanted to comment on, though: Edge Mastery for Bladesingers increase the DPS of each individual unit by 10 (with upgrades), so for 300 gold you're, on paper, getting 10×3=30 extra DPS, which is actually very efficient. The real problem with this ability is the fact that this is only true when all 3 Bladesingers are in attacking in melee combat, which only happens a fraction of the time, and also gets hindered by their other, much stronger abilities, especially Perfect Parry, making it pointless in almost all situations. When making the comparison between Arcane Sentinels and tier 3 mage you forgot to take the total DPS of the 2 Sentinels, and instead you've used in your calculation the DPS of only a single one while also deviding it by the cost of 2. The total DPS of maxing the ability is 32-64, so its DPS per 600 gold is 32-64/48 on average (or 12.5 gold per point of DPS). This is actually more efficient than tier 3 mage, which gives 32-49/40.5 DPS per 600 gold on average (or 14.8 gold per point of DPS). This would make the Sentinels an actually pretty decent ability. Definitely not amazing and not enough to make up for having to build an inefficient tower to begin with, not enough to even bring it on par with weirdwood. But it is straight up better than tier 1-3 mages in terms of gold to DPS efficiency.
Here a few things that you forget to mention : 1.Arcane archers weakens magic resistance , I don't know how that works on practice , but in theory it helps to deal more damage for their ability and other mage towers . 2.All artillery towers can't target flying enemies , so in this game artillery are way more weaker compared to previous ones . 3.Bladesingers have medium armor and that greatly boosts their survivability compared to forest keepers that have low armor and more hp , but that's isn't very helpful such as armor .
The star upgrade for Archer tower is awesome, while for rest is garbage, especially for Mage and Druid. Mage needs their range upgraded twice to have the same upgraded range for them in the previous games. (The final upgrade even fucks Wild Magus skill set). For Druids, it seems like the devs nerf them to oblivion. Star upgrades only helpfully change their damage to true damage. The upgrade only buffs them to be as good as THE UNUPGRADED ARTILLERY in previous games. So suck for them.
Mage and Artillery in this game are nerfed to oblivion. Mage needs to fire 2 orbs to hit it's target lower their DPS a lot due to increase animation time. Plus 60% of the enemy in this game immune to magic. They need Arcane Archers support to be relavant in late game. Artillery are even worse. Weaker AoE damage, slower reload time, lower accuracy and even lower projectile time make the Druid the worst Arty to ever grace this franchise. And their level 4 are not even that useful. ADH is trash. And Weirdwood only doing the same damage as Arty Level 2 of the previous game. Good thing is Weirdwood Clobber ability is actually useful. Making it worthwhile to get just for that crowd control power.
i dont understand why is it that people dislike this game for having arcane archers that you can spam to win, but love the games that have artillery you can spam to win i genuinely dont see the difference between spamming tesla + sorcerer (battle mecha spam in the case of frontiers) for each level over using arcane archers + bladesingers/forest keepers for each level. it genuinely just feels like bias to the older games in my perspective i know how horrible archdruid is and im not denying it, but if anything it feels just right that you'd only ever place down a few weirdwoods for their aoe capability in a level rather than being an all rounder like the previous artillery towers to prevent spam.
I always end up pairing bears with the druid hall for a 4 blocker that can heal. Probably not as effective, but IMO i think its what the devs originally intended, especially with the thematic harmony between the two tower upgrades and that the roots do a good job of keeping large groups of enemies in place for splash attacks.
Imo in KRO Barracks and Archers are quite good mainly due to: 1. Barracks Ranged Attacks 2. Archers Attack Speed 3. Bladesingers sacrificing Ranged Attack for tankiness, and unlike KR1 and KR2 Knights>Paladins or Templars increasing their respawn from 10 to 14/15, Rangers to Blade Singers only increase it from 14 to 15, though KRO Barracks are more expensive but higher in quality. 4. Arcane Archers and Golden Longbow have their own gimmick, though mostly with Arcane Archers being able to target 2 units reducing magic resistance and then give sleep before blasting them with Magical Explosive arrow.
Bleeding from arrows should be changed this way, altered between the 3 versions of the towers so they all get an appropriate bleed chance to compensate for the different attack speeds. That said, I love golden longbows, so fun to slap them in akward positions and have them assit a choke point that otherwise wouldn't have any more towers assiting it.
Now I'am waiting for the whole kingdom rush trilogy's towers comparision ;) If you're not going to do that, can you tell me which are the best of the bests from the classic trilogy?
Spamming archers felt broken in this game tbf, usually i never touch them or spam them much, but with the bleed upgrade too and of course the number of enemies with magic resistance, the archers feel a lot better. Obviouly they're probably not effective to spam in veteran or impossible, i haven't played those, but archers felt really powerful. And especially the magic archers shooter a 240 magic damage aoe for 600, they're pretty damn powerful.
Might swap forest keepers and magus but other than that great list. Most elite stages don’t have enough tower spots for more than one barracks and I always choose bladesingers over forest keepers. Then again I haven’t played impossible so who knows
its a shame artillery is so poor in this game especially since weird wood is a fun tower to use. however in saying that its funny how with just barracks, wild magus and arcane tower you can beat the game with those towers alone
My favorite tower in all Kingdom Rush is artillery. Like, in Origins all two of them kinda sucks. For me, Origins is the 'worst' game in Kingdom Rush. Some say it's Vengeance but at least Vengeance give you a lot of good towers to choose from and OP heros.
Forest Keepers max B-tier, their basic stats are weak and at the same time not cheap, B-tier only because of abilities Bladesinger hall maybe A-tier, because it is not close to Arcane Archers
U cannot finish levels with bladesinger hall spam while u certainly can with arcane archers. It is better at its most capable niche but lacks the sheer breadth of capability the arcane archers have if that makes sense.
Arcane Archers are good, and I'm surprised it's the best in the game, but it makes sense. Other than the star upgrades, their arrows can break magic resistance is the cherry on top
100% agree with this list, this games barrack are a blast to use, with bladesingers being my favourites traditional barrack in the series, it would be demon pit if counting non traditional barracks. It is sad though seeing how badly artillery had fallen off between frontiers and origins.
I never liked Origins' towers that much outside of the Barracks.
Well you made a fantastic video showing that it is possible to with the main campaign with just the Barracks tower so you have a very good point.
Not just are they pretty unbalanced but also boring (especially the artillery towers)
@@arcitatious Yeah. The other thing I love about origins on steam is the impossible mode so you need every single advantage in order to win.
Me too
Awesome tier list and video! I agree with every single placement. Nice.
The only tricky ones were whether or not to swap Longbow and Weirdwood. I think they are interchangeable. Longbow is insanely good on endless, but I don't really count that as true utility. Weirdwood is better against more levels in the main campaign to me, generally due to the ground slamming true AOE mostly, but honestly these two are completely opposite towers with probably near the exact amount of utility. Good players use Longbows more than Weirdwood, that's for sure. It's really helpful in awkward spots like in Duredhel Outskirts with its subpar tower spots, and it is also better in basically every elite stage as well, so I do think it deserves to be placed above Weirdwood like you did.
Well that to say, this is a rare perfect tier list video!
Bro literally i'd searched for this when I got stuck in a level, but u haven't uploaded this by then, and now that I've completed the whole game, u r uploading this!
Better late than ever haha
Best tier list I've seen.
I only slightly disagree with golden longbows placement over weirdwood, but I only ever played with the obsidian arrows star upgrade on one stage before deeming them too over powered and never using it again (along side all the other level 5 star upgrades) so I never really used them at their full potential.
The only reason I dissagree is because l can't think of any niech solved by golden longbows that wild magus can't do, but I can at least think of a few scenarios where the weird wood is a better area damage option than arcane archers.
Hunters mark is really good, but I think I'd rather just have unupgraded 2 wild magus for slightly more cost just about every time.
The wierd wood is much better at dealing with spams of spiders than the arcane archers, so I would sometimes use it unironically.
My opinion isn't exactly the most authoritative yet though, I'm still relatively noobish haha 😅
High elven mage really need to come to alliance, the game usage of flying enemies with mini bosses being more common would make them way more better in there rather in origins.
Here before some newbies say.. "U just don't know to play it right"😂
Great vid, 100% on spot
I just have a little disagreement about 3rd level of AH in some comments section. U seems defend the RNG by saying that selling is the counter, I agree but there is no single sign which one abominor will eat and that's not fun at all, if only they give us signs, yes we can sell it fast, Even if there are like 3 towers will be eaten! Still I respect u as veteran of kingdom rush series👍
The one redeeming factor of ADH is that Sylvan Curse is extremely helpful in Endless mode when enemies just keep growing tankier and tankier, which means you’ll eventually never be able to kill the enemy before the curse expires.
Also, Wild Magus Silence is a lot better than people give it credit for. While I was farming the achievement, silencing the Scourgers really ensures that your towers stay operational 100% of the time instead of having to play around it.
TRULY ACCURATE, And I needed that convincing part...😉 Nice work
Finally, I was Waiting for this
A well-thought-out tier list that is the result of a sensible analysis, not a subjective opinion? Something new,. Great video, I agree.
I usually try to refrain from bias while ranking as it can apply to everyone. Thanks for the kind words!
arcane archers and bladesingers, are arguably the most broken early game t4 in orgins (note: if your wondering why artillery sucks in origins is bcos almost all the artillery in og and frontiers are too much)
WAIT, ISN'T THE THUMBNAIL FORMAT, THE SAME ONE SHYGUYMASK USED? (SORRY IF ITS CAPS LOCKED)
The Kingdom Rush Classics
Alex Playz - Kingdom Rush forgot to double the cost efficiency of the arcane sentinels as each sentinel fires 10 bolts so their actual DPS per 600 Gold would be 32-64. So the only good thing about the high elven mage would be the arcane sentinels.
Absolutely correct, I don't know how I forgot to include both Sentinels. I was probably hyper fixated on just one of them.
When i first played the game i thought combining Arch druid and Forest Keeper is the perfect synergy since the FK can slow the enemies so AD can hit more and also heal the bears while doing true damage in the back .but boy i'm i wrong
great video and analysis!
eager to see same list about KR alliance!
Next year, around the time the DLC releases. Would be great to have 5 more stages to test and experiment to gather a better grasp of the towers.
Very balanced game…
Only rivaled by vengeance
Definitely agree with the list! Personally, I'm not sure how I'll order Bladesingers against Forest keepers, but that's just me being not experienced enough and generally indecisive. There are 2 things I noticed that I wanted to comment on, though: Edge Mastery for Bladesingers increase the DPS of each individual unit by 10 (with upgrades), so for 300 gold you're, on paper, getting 10×3=30 extra DPS, which is actually very efficient. The real problem with this ability is the fact that this is only true when all 3 Bladesingers are in attacking in melee combat, which only happens a fraction of the time, and also gets hindered by their other, much stronger abilities, especially Perfect Parry, making it pointless in almost all situations.
When making the comparison between Arcane Sentinels and tier 3 mage you forgot to take the total DPS of the 2 Sentinels, and instead you've used in your calculation the DPS of only a single one while also deviding it by the cost of 2. The total DPS of maxing the ability is 32-64, so its DPS per 600 gold is 32-64/48 on average (or 12.5 gold per point of DPS). This is actually more efficient than tier 3 mage, which gives 32-49/40.5 DPS per 600 gold on average (or 14.8 gold per point of DPS). This would make the Sentinels an actually pretty decent ability. Definitely not amazing and not enough to make up for having to build an inefficient tower to begin with, not enough to even bring it on par with weirdwood. But it is straight up better than tier 1-3 mages in terms of gold to DPS efficiency.
Thanks for correcting me. Sentinels are indeed the only thing saving HEM from taking last place.
Here a few things that you forget to mention :
1.Arcane archers weakens magic resistance , I don't know how that works on practice , but in theory it helps to deal more damage for their ability and other mage towers .
2.All artillery towers can't target flying enemies , so in this game artillery are way more weaker compared to previous ones .
3.Bladesingers have medium armor and that greatly boosts their survivability compared to forest keepers that have low armor and more hp , but that's isn't very helpful such as armor .
1. Every arrow lowers 3 magic defense points
2. Artilleries can damage fliers if there is a ground enemy passing by beneath them
First perfect list i ever saw
The star upgrade for Archer tower is awesome, while for rest is garbage, especially for Mage and Druid. Mage needs their range upgraded twice to have the same upgraded range for them in the previous games. (The final upgrade even fucks Wild Magus skill set).
For Druids, it seems like the devs nerf them to oblivion. Star upgrades only helpfully change their damage to true damage. The upgrade only buffs them to be as good as THE UNUPGRADED ARTILLERY in previous games.
So suck for them.
Mage and Artillery in this game are nerfed to oblivion.
Mage needs to fire 2 orbs to hit it's target lower their DPS a lot due to increase animation time. Plus 60% of the enemy in this game immune to magic. They need Arcane Archers support to be relavant in late game.
Artillery are even worse. Weaker AoE damage, slower reload time, lower accuracy and even lower projectile time make the Druid the worst Arty to ever grace this franchise.
And their level 4 are not even that useful.
ADH is trash.
And Weirdwood only doing the same damage as Arty Level 2 of the previous game.
Good thing is Weirdwood Clobber ability is actually useful.
Making it worthwhile to get just for that crowd control power.
i dont understand why is it that people dislike this game for having arcane archers that you can spam to win, but love the games that have artillery you can spam to win
i genuinely dont see the difference between spamming tesla + sorcerer (battle mecha spam in the case of frontiers) for each level over using arcane archers + bladesingers/forest keepers for each level. it genuinely just feels like bias to the older games in my perspective
i know how horrible archdruid is and im not denying it, but if anything it feels just right that you'd only ever place down a few weirdwoods for their aoe capability in a level rather than being an all rounder like the previous artillery towers to prevent spam.
I always end up pairing bears with the druid hall for a 4 blocker that can heal. Probably not as effective, but IMO i think its what the devs originally intended, especially with the thematic harmony between the two tower upgrades and that the roots do a good job of keeping large groups of enemies in place for splash attacks.
Yeah. But Forest Keeper exist and Bladesinger have their invisibility skill.
ADH is just outright useless as both artillery and substitute barrack.
We are so barrack
Imo in KRO Barracks and Archers are quite good mainly due to:
1. Barracks Ranged Attacks
2. Archers Attack Speed
3. Bladesingers sacrificing Ranged Attack for tankiness, and unlike KR1 and KR2 Knights>Paladins or Templars increasing their respawn from 10 to 14/15, Rangers to Blade Singers only increase it from 14 to 15, though KRO Barracks are more expensive but higher in quality.
4. Arcane Archers and Golden Longbow have their own gimmick, though mostly with Arcane Archers being able to target 2 units reducing magic resistance and then give sleep before blasting them with Magical Explosive arrow.
Bleeding from arrows should be changed this way, altered between the 3 versions of the towers so they all get an appropriate bleed chance to compensate for the different attack speeds.
That said, I love golden longbows, so fun to slap them in akward positions and have them assit a choke point that otherwise wouldn't have any more towers assiting it.
Now I'am waiting for the whole kingdom rush trilogy's towers comparision ;)
If you're not going to do that, can you tell me which are the best of the bests from the classic trilogy?
I will do it next year. My top 3 choices are:
1. Tesla
2. Battle Mecha
3. Arcane Archers
Vengeance Towers ranking remake when?
Next year, hopefully.
Best to worst, but goes from worst to best (jk, love the vid)
Damn maybe i should have spammed arcane archers and no strategy 😂
Wild Magus is my favourite. Explode into space!
The lesson here is that if you hear the words: “Hado i philinn.” RUN
Spamming archers felt broken in this game tbf, usually i never touch them or spam them much, but with the bleed upgrade too and of course the number of enemies with magic resistance, the archers feel a lot better. Obviouly they're probably not effective to spam in veteran or impossible, i haven't played those, but archers felt really powerful. And especially the magic archers shooter a 240 magic damage aoe for 600, they're pretty damn powerful.
Might swap forest keepers and magus but other than that great list. Most elite stages don’t have enough tower spots for more than one barracks and I always choose bladesingers over forest keepers. Then again I haven’t played impossible so who knows
Hey Darth Plague from Btd6
It brakes my heart that u put longbows in c tier😭😔
Yeahhh, arcane archers are insane. Just them, a few bladesingers and forest dwellers annihilates stages
At least tesla and mecha are expensive and harder to spam
"4 of the most difficult stages"
*Proceeds to include Shrine of Elynie, which is far from difficult compared to any of the postgame campaigns*
Arcane archers don't fire fast though
its a shame artillery is so poor in this game especially since weird wood is a fun tower to use. however in saying that its funny how with just barracks, wild magus and arcane tower you can beat the game with those towers alone
Weirwoid I like the most but they become death wood in alliance 😢
1st (very cool vid i am looking forward to more!)
My favorite tower in all Kingdom Rush is artillery. Like, in Origins all two of them kinda sucks. For me, Origins is the 'worst' game in Kingdom Rush. Some say it's Vengeance but at least Vengeance give you a lot of good towers to choose from and OP heros.
Forest Keepers max B-tier, their basic stats are weak and at the same time not cheap, B-tier only because of abilities
Bladesinger hall maybe A-tier, because it is not close to Arcane Archers
I think the order of the 1st and 2nd should be changed, other than that the order is correct.
U cannot finish levels with bladesinger hall spam while u certainly can with arcane archers. It is better at its most capable niche but lacks the sheer breadth of capability the arcane archers have if that makes sense.
Kingdom rush alliance DLC is Japan
From best to worst?
hello
Hey, there!
I disagree with most things here
Arcane Archers are good, and I'm surprised it's the best in the game, but it makes sense. Other than the star upgrades, their arrows can break magic resistance is the cherry on top
Super fun when see heretic magic armor goes from high to none 😂