- Craftsman still too good. Easy to stay alive with higher levels of energy shield and safety sphere. So here's what I'll do in the next build: each level of Loaded Craftsman will reduce damage reduction. This sort of follows the typical wizard/magician RPG archetype where the class has stronger magic but is physically weak. I'll also most likely take out triple damage and globe from the subclass because 1) sphere artifacts are cheaper and 2) this is a team-support subclass. Will also likely increase the cost of the spheres.

- Increased the cost of damage and safety sphere from 10 to 15 adrenaline per second.

- Looked at the Loaded Monster list recently and will swap out tech monsters for some more useful ones.

- Will add a placeholder ability for WM hybrids so that WM/AM and WM/MM will receive a link gun. Currently, they do not receive a link gun because of the WM/ENG engineer link.

- Need to fix tech, ice, and fire warlords not properly firing projectiles at targets. This is because the regular warlord has homing missiles. I may also slightly increase the damage radius on the ice and fire rockets.

- Condition messages like being healed, frozen, heated, nulled, etc. can get real messy. I'll try to stagger the messages so that they don't overlap, and rather than having sentences (You are being healed by ____), I'll just have the words "Healed," "Frozen," "Heated" to keep the screen clean and clutter free.

- Slightly changed the XP table for the holiday bonus so that there is a 20% reduction in the XP requirement across all levels. You'll have to level up once for it to take effect.

- Will remove force/slow motion modifier from Avril. As Dragon mentioned in another thread, a slow motion -5 or less can cause a crash.

- Need to fix some bio globs giving off a green tint effect when it's a different color.

- Need to lighten up ice trails.

- Need to lower damage bonus on Arctic and Solar from 30% to 15% against Fire/Ice; give energy effect to Solar like how the sun gives energy (good synergy with Infinity to keep up berserk combo); and give a new weapon skin for Solar.

- Need to fix Avril not showing up for Proficiency (note- your damage with Avril works with Proficiency, but the damage bonus is not properly updated).

- Need to increase damage on Mercury Launcher.

- Need to fix the starting weapon abilities to properly show up for WM/General and non WMs -- all Loaded Wep users should be able to buy both the classic starting weapons and the normal starting weapons; everyone else just the classic starting weapons.

- Need to rename the Warrior ability from 'Melee' -- I'll also most likely be renaming the class from 'Warrior' to 'Classic RPG' to 1)receive less questions about what a "warrior" does and 2)differentiate it a bit from WM, since a WM could be considered a warrior to RPG players.

- Need to fix pets having a 'same species as' function which prevents their controller from targeting/damaging any monster which it is 'friends' with.

- Need to give the Tank subclass a 'sturdy ability' to behave more like a Tank should (I know this would be a popular ability, but this will be a Tank-only thing).

- Cosmic Monsters: shock combo explosions are too flashy after several thoughts about it. Dragon has also mentioned this before. I'll try to reduce the amount of effects the combo uses since it has about five or so different kinds. For a frame of reference, the Phantom monster (the one that spawns a purple orb at you and makes the meteor shower) uses one effect from the shock combo. Much cleaner and less flashy.

- Need to rename Grave to Vorpal - basically the same thing and so people will stop asking.

- I'll allow two Phantom pets for the Necromancer, and will maybe make players completely immune to all the Nalis. Not too much of a buff since there aren't many Nalis and don't do much damage, but better than nothing.

- Need to add Mine Booster Sentinel to tech monsters' targets.

- I'll change the damage distribution on the Summoner class so that weapon damage decreases as pet damage increases. This way, you can choose to either have normal weapon damage, or higher pet damage (or a mix at mid-level).

- I'll spread skull and skeleton monsters across waves a bit more so you don't have to worry about getting your head hunter award in by wave 4 or 5 (needing 15 head shots).

I think I have my work cut out for a 205B update. Time to get to work Dragon!

I'll be nerfing the Ball Turret. At 220 DPS compared to 150 Linkgun DPS, it's just not fair. It hasn't been modified as an AS-Mothership turret to fit Invasion, even in the old DC days. I'll decrease the Solar Turret too -- 200 DPS tops, maybe somewhere lower than that. I'm also decreasing the damage distribution again on Engineers -- 15% extra for base builders, 30% for weaponry. Nerf nerf nerf!

See my comments on the other post.

Sneak peek pics up on my steam profile under artwork. Rate them up!

Changes in 205B:
- Craftsman now take up to 45% extra damage (or 45% less damage reduction however you see it). No more triple or globe; use sphere artifacts.
- EXP on sphere artifacts have been kept the same for Craftsman, but reduced for AM and Extreme AM. When I say reduced, I mean reverted back to the original Druid's value.
- WM/AM and WM/MM now receive a link gun.
- Ice and Fire warlords now shoot directly at players rather than off to the side, and the damage radius is now 800 instead of 660. Defense sentinel range is 750.
- Tech warlord rocket has been changed to a flak shell, much like the shell gasbag. The tech shell now bypasses defense sentinels. Defense sentinels will still attempt to shoot it down, but the damage will still be there. Currently the only projectile in the game that bypasses defense sentinels.
- Changed the tech slith's goop to a tech mine.
- Condition messages now appear in a row of X's. You distinguish them by color code: red for knockback, gray for freezing, orange for heat, purple for null, green for poison. Several reasons I took this approach was the overlay. At waves 15 and 16, it's common to have 2-3 or more conditions applied simultaneously, and the overlapping messages just made it look messy. This format applies X's in a neat row. Let me know what you all think of this -- it might take some time getting used to, and new players will definitely need to know what they mean. The healing condition messaged isn't "X'ed" and now just says "Healing".
- Force/Slow Motion now removed from Avril -- Avril Slow Motion -6 caused crashes.
- Fixed the light hue of a few bio globs that gave off a green tint effect when it was a different color. Also adjusted the light hue for ice projectiles.
- Lowered the damage bonus on Arctic and Solar from 30% per plus to 15% against Fire/Ice respectively. Solar now has an energy effect, the same amount as Energy Leech. So Solar is Infinity + Heat + Energy. Good modifier combo for berserk.
- Fixed Avril not showing up for proficiency.
- Fixed starting weapon abilities so that all Loaded Weapon users get the Avril, Utility, Classic Assault, and Classic Shield gun abilities. All other non-Loaded Wep users: just Classic Assault and Classic Shield.
- Renamed Warrior to ClassicRPG so new players will get a more accurate indicator of what the class is. Also renamed the 'melee' ability -- no melee implementation there.
- Pets now have a teleporter function so that they get stuck less, especially behind bases. They'll also attack/damage their own species.
- Tanks now receive sturdiness as any kind of Tank should.
- Cosmic Monster shots have been reduced down to just one effect instead of several (the shock combo). Projectiles now just explode into a flash. Also changed the controller on Cosmic Monsters to DCMonsterController, which targets higher level players first.
- Grave has been renamed to Vorpal for fast fire weapons. Still the same chance of a pop as before.
- Necromancers now have up to level 5 of the Necro ability. Each level decreases adrenaline, cooldown time, and health sacrifice. At max level, it'll be 30 seconds, 30% of health sacrificed, and 150 adrenaline.
- Allowed 2 phantom pets for the Necromancer, and also allowed the Adren Wraith as pets too.
- Added Mine Booster Sentinel to tech targets.
- Created new Damage Sentinel -- opposite of a defense sentinel, it boosts team projectiles. Auto Engineer only.
- Damage distribution changed on Summoners so that weapon damage decreases as pet damage increases, rather than with Loaded Monsters. Up to 50% more pet damage, 50% less weapon damage. Remember you don't need to max every ability, so you can choose your own damage distribution here.
- Healing output increased at Loaded Healing 5. So Healing Damage is 1x up to level 4, 2x between levels 5 and 7, and 3x for Healers at 8 and up.
- Increased Mercury Launcher damage from 42 to 50. DPS now 55.55.
- Decreased max goop level on Arctic Skaarj from 5 to 3. Damage is calculated as (Base Damage + (Damage * Goop Level)). Both Base Damage and Damage = 40, so up to 160 damage.
- Created Cosmic Nali: fires three cosmic shots and teleports every time it does. So it teleports a lot, making it hard to shoot down. Waves 13 and 16.
- Created Tech Queen: doesn't shoot. Instead, it spawns 5 tech flies that won't disappear until the Queen is killed. Tech flies will overwhelm defense sentinels, so kill the Tech Queen quick!
- Added in support for keybinding artifacts for the resurrection and the Craftsman magic maker artifacts.
- Lowered Ball Turret firing rate: now 170 DPS. Also lowered the projectile speed to 8000 - still significantly fast.
- Lowered Minigun Turret damage, so it now does between 80 and 110 DPS, Energy Turret now 70 - 100.
- Fixed a few F3 stat kills for monsters, especially for Skulls, Skeletons, and Queens.
- Spread out skulls and skeletons across waves to give players a better chance at Head Hunter. If you don't have it by wave 13, then it's over.
- Swapped out holiday stuff and put back in regular XP.

As always, let me know about bugs and balancing. Unless something needs urgent care, the next build will most likely be 206, so it won't be for another while.

Gonna "headhunt" you.................hehe.

- Two server crashes on waves 15+. Didn't get to see what the cause was in the logs.
- Ice/Fire warlords are also extremely strong now. Will most likely do an urgent update once I figure out what's causing the crash.
- Need to fix the Arctic Skaarj bio glob multiplying like crazy. Also an urgent update as it can cause crashes - has happened before.
- Need to fix pet tech slith's mines targeting players and not monsters.

DEKMonsters205C:
- Fixed fire and ice warlord rockets. These rockets used to be destroyable until the last update. The warlords fire two rockets simultaneously which would shortly collide with each other, making them explode before even reaching the player. I turned off the destroyable feature which 'fixed' the problem, but of course made it super difficult on waves 15 and 16. In this update, the rockets are destroyable again and now the warlord only fires one rocket at a time, or in different directions of each other if with two simultaneous rockets. Should be much easier now. Also changed the static mesh of the rockets since I thought they were pretty ugly. It's now more like an energy effect.

- Fixed Arctic Skaarj bio globs multiplying out of control. Some complex calculation about the 'goop level' of the globs and what happens when they merge with other globs. Important fix since this could cause crashes, which could have been the reason for the two server crashes within a few map spans of each other.

- I changed the Cosmic Nali a bit: It now has 15 HP instead of 125. So really, even though it teleports a lot, all you need to do is just hit it -- minigun works best, or if you're an ICTF player, use your shock/lightning skills. The catch now is that it can't be killed by lightning sentinels, lightning rods or bolts, stinger sentinels, or any other "automatic" strike that would make it a cheap shot to kill. Pet cosmic nalis will keep the 125 HP.

- Since I was bored and could do more things with the update, I changed the color effect of teleports -- purple for cosmic nali and phantom, white for soul nali, orange for adren nali.

RPG version still on B -- no changes.

- Fixed Loaded Weps receiving multiple copies of weapons.
- Swapped damage sentinel in for WM/ENG until I get a fix for mine booster sents.
- 'Reset Your Skills' subclass seems to be broken which should become available at level 30 so pre-subclass players can redo their points. This may take a bit longer to fix since subclass configuration is a pain, but for now just come to me for any profile fixes.