I just spent the last 2 hours trying to clear as many timed towers as I can, and lo and behold, I was able to do almost every fight without breaking a sweat. Keep in mind that this is a small sample size, and it could just be a co-incidence that every tower of time active at the moment is relatively easy, but there are universal changes that I did notice compared to pre-release. This could very well be anecdotal, so don't take your foot off the gas just yet.
Before I list the changes, keep in mind that
there's a timed tower that awards you the first Summon Tower key that I've seen so far. And the summoned tower itself is quite easy, even though it mentions the difficulty as hard. I will be attaching videos with this post so you can see for yourself. Anyway, on to the changes.
- For most of the timed tower sets, the first tower or two only consist of one or two fights.
- You do normal damage for the first tower of the set, and damage reduction happens incrementally as you move along the towers in the set, with your damage being the highest on the first tower, and lowest on the final tower.
- This might be anecdotal due to the small sample size, but most of the enemies now use tag assists where another item appears on the screen to help them, and not special move assists like missiles, lasers, or grenades. The former can't be called while the CPU is in the middle of being combo'd, but the latter can and break the player's combos. However, the former assists aren't completely gone and still exist, especially in character towers.
- The special forces air strike barrage assist seemingly has been changed from a volley of grenades that appear from behind the opponent, to a staggered strike of missiles that falls vertically from the sky to the ground. The new version covers more ground, but does less damage since you only get hit by one missile or two at most. Keep in mind that this may be a different assist from before and I might just be mistaking them to be the same assist.
- The Cache of Wealth summon tower has difficulty of hard, but all player attacks do normal/high damage.
- Some enemy assists not correctly show when they're off cooldown, but not all of them do. Especially ones like Tanya's Tonfa, Mileena's Sais, or Cyrax's net.
- Since player damage is penalized less in many towers now, single slot move assists like Nitara's bats, mileena sais or shinnok's hand flick are way more useful and damaging. You can now beat entire fights without touching the opponent with your own character if you have these assists. However, this is a rare situation and don't get complacent assuming this is a norm. See the Sub Zero fight in the video on the Cache of Wealth tower.
However, all is not well. There are some things that could be changed. Here are some off the top of my head:
1) Chaos is still the worst modifier and shouldn't exist. Any move that reverses your inputs forces you to sit there and block till the effect passes, and usually the CPU is able to read the situation and counter with a low, overhead or grab depending on the situation.
2) Some assists put you in a trap state and are still unblockable, like Bo Rai Cho gas cloud or Cyrax net. You can't see their cooldown so cannot pre-emptively avoid them. However, today I faced them only in the Summoned Cache of Wealth tower, where my damage was boosted, so I could counter them with single slot special consumables.
3) Projectile assists like Tanya's 2x hitting tonfa and Mileena's sai do too much damage and go off cooldown too quickly, without giving an indication when the cooldown is over. However these can be blocked. The best way to overcome these is to sit there blocking till you block the assist, then go for a quick 2-3 hit combo, and then go back to blocking before you get hit by one. Mileena's sais do the aforementioned chaos effect that reverses your inputs. If the game could show the cooldown of these assists for the CPU, they would be much easier to defend against.
4) Timed towers are seemingly easier now, but character towers still feel tough. Noob's character tower 4 is still unbeatable due to 250 spears and 250 hell ports requirement which is a bug. Characters who are zoning focused or have low combo damage like Jade or Kollector might suffer in their character towers. NRS should give character towers a look next.
Take all of this with a grain of salt as this could just be coincidental or anecdotal. Stay vigilant, but do try these towers yourself and inform me if you feel any difference. Thanks for your time.
