sometimes i have the feeling there is a program error.
i just played W3 on glaring with a lot of traits. i bombed around 100 waves, then suddenly the monsters nearly made it to the orb. i stopped bombing (already enough xp so far x50 or so ...), than the waves got back to normal. no problem. 5 towers, 3 grade 16 and 2 grade 15 gems. all under control. when i looked at the coming waves (left) i could read something like "8 possessed reavers" and so on. all a peace of cake. but suddenly the amount of monsters got crazy, they broke through my defense like nothing and the game was over in seconds.
when i don't bomb waves anymore and the info says 8-10 monsters per wave (or some more swarmlings, who cares) how can there be so much monsters on the screen within 2 waves ?
Not all of a wave's monsters come in at the same time.
The little indicator that tells you how many monsters are on screen also tells you how many monsters are waiting to come on screen, from already activated waves.
It sounds as though you had overbombed a wave (when the monsters started giving you trouble) and the later monsters added onto the wave by your bombing got through.
ok, i obviously overbombed a wave or two, so far i can follow.
but after that all went back to normal, 20 or more waves without any trouble,
the monsters not even entered the screen due to my g16 gems at the entrance, so why do they come back from earlier waves towards the end of the game ?
once i saw the danger, i reduced speed to 1x, used freezing and curse, activated beam, bolt and barrage and cleared the screen. no monsters left (at least none on the scrren).
after that it was all easy, there was even a break between the waves (so no monsters coming left from previous waves).
must i understand why suddenly at the end there come hidden amounts of monsters when i cleared all the previous waves ?
indicator showed 0/0 before the next wave then for example 3/10 for the actual wave.
suddenly, around wave 66 or 67 it became 5/200 or so. so the monsters from far earlier waves reappeared. so you have no real sense of what to expect midgame or endgame.
Thanks for laying out this phenomenon. It's happened to me more than once (Without over bombing) and I always figured that I'd done something else wrong. Whether it's designed-in or a bug it should be changed. The game can be challenging enough without having random hordes of monsters pop up.