ForumsGamesGC2CS: Suppressing gems useless?

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LucaDiv
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LucaDiv
31 posts
Nomad

Before I start, let me say I'm currently Lvl 134, non-premium user. Recently finished the story as well as what is essentially the &quotost-game" story on tile Y.

I've been thinking about suppressing gems. Not only have I never used them except for a few fields that give you gems for free as well as the spirit-forge controlled ones, but to me, when compared with the other gem types, they seem extremely sub-par.

True, slowing healing is good, but poison seems to be a better option since, when suppressing outstrips healing, you get no benefit, but with poison, you get free damage. But of course, if you're actually in a position where a monster's regeneration rate is something to be worried about, You're probably doing something wrong anyway and will likely lose the level soon.

they way I see it, gems in order from most to least useful are as follows:

Critical
Bloodbound
Chain Hit
Poolbound
Mana Gathering
Armor Tearing
Slowing
Poison
Suppressing
(note that this list is my opinion, and not meant to be stated as fact, so don't take it as such)

Surppressing gems just don't do anything that other gems can't do better. To me it seems that rather than slowing monster's healing, it's best to just do massive amounts of damage with a Crit/Bound/Chain gem and take them out fast enough that their healing rate is moot rather than wasting time and resources making suppressing gems to slow healing.

Even poison gems which I stated to be only barely better than suppressing have their uses, (and I don't just mean B3) true there are better gems, but at least poison actually has some offensive use rather than suppressing which are 100% defensive. In fact, that seems to be the main problem, true, you're technically always on the defense, this is a tower "defense" game, but you can defend in an offensive way, such as with crit gems. Preferably you always want to be defending offensively so that you will have the advantage, and you never want to go on the defense, so to speak, because that means you're losing.

So I guess my main point is that suppressing gems are only good when you're losing, and in the end it's just better not to be in a losing position where you'll actually need suppressing gems by defending offensively rather than be in a place where suppressing will actually be useful.

I may be wrong though, So that's why I'm asking this: "Are suppressing gems really useless? Is there some obscure use for them that actually makes them good, even just a little bit, or are they just flat out bad?"

  • 16 Replies
psorek
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psorek
447 posts
Jester

In my opinion you are ABSOLUTELY right, these gems are worse than anything and always. BTW, in lategame list looks more like this:

Mana Gathering
Chain Hit
Bloodbound
Critical Hit
Poolbound
Slowing
(and useless)
Armor Tearing
Poison
Suppressing

I asked in one subject whether to replace Suppressing with some kind of accumulator gem (stores some number of shoots)

LucaDiv
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LucaDiv
31 posts
Nomad

I decided to actually try suppressing gems.

Field K3, Glaring, no battle traits.

My main gem was 2 parts suppressing, 1 part chain, 1 part slow. In the end I lost the battle, though this is partly due to 2 spires and a shadow showing up.

early on the monsters were weak enough that I was able to one-shot basically anything but a giant, and even giants were taken down in no less than 5 seconds (on 3x speed), so suppressing basically did nothing to help me. As the waves got tougher, I found I basically had no means of fighting off the stronger giants. I reduce their healing to 0, and then what? Just spam them with shots from my tower doing sub-par amounts of damage... I'd much rather have used a dual Crit/Chain gem and just dealt massive amounts of damage, it would have been much more effective. The amount of damage I'd do with a crit component would vastly outpace the monster's healing rates.

It isn't looking so good for our little cyan gem over there...

Astroshak
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Astroshak
268 posts
Peasant

The only real use for them I can come up with is at high Endurance run waves. When you get far into Endurance, you wind up with monsters with, well, monster regeneration rates, rates measured in the E levels. At that point, if you are relying on Freeze over a manafarm for mana while using a tower killgem to kill, your killgem may not be powerful enough to kill the monster in only a few hits - such as when the monsters are at e40+ levels of hit points (by then, monster armor is basically an afterthought to your killing gem). If it takes a minute or two for your killgem to kill a frozen monster, then the monster has all that time to regenerate as well, and the rate at which it regenerates can dramatically increase the time on target the killgem needs.

Under those circumstances, you really only have two choices : Wake of Eternity, which banishes 1 in 5 monsters, or a Suppression gem. Unfortunately, I do not know how well Suppression scales upwards, whether supergemmed or straight U'd. It may not scale up fast enough to be useful against monsters with e32 and higher levels of health regeneration.

LucaDiv
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LucaDiv
31 posts
Nomad

@Psorek thanks for your input, i fully understand that mana gathering is ABSOLUTELY indepsensible for endurance runs, but as stated, i'm a non-premium, and non-premium's don't have endurance, though i'm seriously considering premium, this feels like one of the few game where it's actually worth it.

@Astroshak see my above comment, I can't exactly do endurance runs. Though I think you're right, the mana that you would have to invest in suppressing to get high enough grades to actually be of any worthwhile effect when you get that far along seems better spent on just powering up your killgem or making gems for shrines if there are any available. (again, since i haven't done an endurance, that's just my opinion based on educated guesses and not actual experience...)

Astroshak
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Astroshak
268 posts
Peasant

I saw, you said you are not a premium user.

That's still the only use I can think of for the things. Stick some Light Blue (ok, a LOT of Light Blue) into your slowing gems, in order to remove enough of the health regeneration of the high wave monsters.

Of course, simply upgrading your killing gem is likely to be more effective. I'd rather overpower the monster's HP pool, and then just increase my ability to kill by close to 1000fold by one upgrade cycle of the killgem and its 6 amps when necessary, than have to take thousands (if not tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions) of additional shots while the monster is regenerating a little less.

LucaDiv
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LucaDiv
31 posts
Nomad

Just a thought: what if GC3 combined suppressing and poison into a single gem-type. essentially it would lower the monster's healing by a given amount each shot, but once it outpaces healing, it will reverse it and they start taking damage over time rather than regenerating. Does this sound like a fair buff to suppressing, or does it just take away what little usefulness poison has. I think it's an interesting thought to consider, as combining them opens up a slot for a new gem-type that could end up being really useful.

EDIT: actually, the above just feels like a poison buff and removing suppressing altogether, as this would likely mean less damage/second, but it would be permanent and stack-able... even so, I'd still support removing suppressing, even if poison didn't get the above buff in exchange, because, as i said, whatever fills that extra slot will very likely be MUCH more useful than suppressing gems are now...

tulamide
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tulamide
37 posts
Shepherd

[quote=Astroshak]Unfortunately, I do not know how well Suppression scales upwards, whether supergemmed or straight U'd. It may not scale up fast enough to be useful against monsters with e32 and higher levels of health regeneration.[/quote]
It scales not good enough. On my full endurance run I needed to get the healing rate down immensely, since the kill gem made 8e36, while the monsters had e49 hp plus e49 healing rate. A pure ('u'-upgraded) G75 suppression gem suppresses 1e12, a ('u'-upgraded) G75 mixture of k/r/c suppresses 7e13.

thunderrider
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thunderrider
641 posts
Peasant

Then how did you beat it? Spamming WoE for ages and ages? xD. BTW I heard WoE-banished monsters return with full hp...does that fail the point of WoE?

tulamide
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tulamide
37 posts
Shepherd

[quote=thunderrider]Then how did you beat it? Spamming WoE for ages and ages? xD[/quote] Exactly
I wish I've had more than one shrine of focus...Spamming WoE plus 2 suppression towers set to random.

I don't know who brought this up first, but if people really ignore WoE because of an April's fool, I feel pity for them

Reechi
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Reechi
14 posts
Peasant

Just a random thought:
What would you think about supress healing, if it increased the poison duration?
Like if a monster had 100 hp/sec starting regen, at 50 it's poisoned for twice as long, at 10 for 10 times the original and at 0, poison never ends.

I would definitely like it more. It would popularize poison more.

psorek
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psorek
447 posts
Jester

It looks as it would make sense for early game

Erile
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Erile
488 posts
Chancellor

If the pouch is not available for you (which it isn't for some players), suppressing is useful in highly specific instances where you have giants with massive regeneration (especially when you have the banishment trait set to high levels and giants slip through). In these instances, it works best in traps as a method of getting rid of the creature regeneration.

Altwing
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Altwing
23 posts
Scribe

I'm around level 500 in my pouch game and around level 100 in the game without it, and in both case.... I find suppressing useless. So much so that if I feel like randomly making a Prismatic gem, I'll use the other 8 colors without it.

Astroshak
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Astroshak
268 posts
Peasant

Just out of curiosity, I went ahead and checked something.

Figuring that psorek's gem recipes were based on the managem getting the most of its special, and the critical hit gem getting the most damage and the most special, I went and exchanged all of the orange in the managem recipe for cyan. I then went and used the 64 gem upgrade, squeezing the red out through displayed Grade 35.

At displayed Grade 75, not in a tower or a trap or anything :
Black-Cyan-Red
2.224e21 - 1.575e23 damage
184,233.13 shots/sec
4.97388565201226e23 suppression
2,183.49 chain
x1613.77 bloodbound (+1612.765/hit level) 0 hits

Black-Orange-Red
2.515e21 - 1.307e23 damage
172,553.71 shots/sec
2,183.49 chain
81,659,679,433,075,710 mana leech
x1613.77 bloodbound (+1612.765/hit level) 0 hits

8.166e16 manaleech vs 4.973e23 suppression? I hope that I'd had Suppression Gem skill at level 60 when I started this map. If not, then it would be at 0+15, or 3+15 at best, and there would then be a lot of growth potential based on skill.

In comparison, a killing gem (which has a different other:black ratio than the managem) at Grade 75 is
2.631e21 - 1.628e23 damage
178,783.11 shots/sec
x42,181,714,240,521,856 critical damage
2,247.04 chain
x1,697.01 bloodbound (+1,696.006/hit level) 0 hits

Looks to me like Suppression scales much higher and faster than other specials do. The fallacy in this is assuming that it is measured on the same scale; or more accurately, that the stat against which Suppression is useful rises the same way that other stats (gem costs vs mana leech, or monster HP vs killgem's total damage output). I'm not convinced this is the case, and in any event, it is generally much simpler to just power a monster dead through critical damage than it is to deal nicks and dings while scraping away its regeneration.

tulamide
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tulamide
37 posts
Shepherd

[quote=Astroshak]it is generally much simpler to just power a monster dead through critical damage than it is to deal nicks and dings while scraping away its regeneration.[/quote]
Nevertheless it is very important to see that psorek's math could be much more effective for suppression. A normal upgraded gem of G75 (k/r/c) and c-skill on 7+15 compared to a 64c gem of same mana value would be interesting, since the normal one was at 7e13...

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