Missile, Ice Shot and Meteor Damage

Note : This information current as of May 2014 only. 

Missile Damage

Your missile levels up every time you invest some coins into it. In the earlier stages it seems like a great idea to upgrade your missiles because it seemed to do a lot of helpful damage. I have personally felt like the higher my player level became (which in turn meant more coins required for each missile level), the less it was worth to invest coin into a missile. My rangers feel more powerful these days and my missile feels like it's doing a lot less than my rangers. So why would I invest over 100,000 coins into this category at player level 75+? The question has been gnawing at me a while so I decided to try and figure out, how much damage does my missile do? My current missile level is 78.

I used a level 50 Hunt and stage 16's dragon boss to try to approximate some numbers. One hit from Hunt causes 19791 damage (tested it against an enemy tower). In Stage 16, it takes 5 hits to kill the dragon boss so my best guess is that the dragon has between 79164 to 98955 HP. We can then figure that half his health would be somewhere between 39582 to 49477 HP, the point which would be indicated by visually seeing the dragon get knocked back.

I tested by firing the missile and then allowing Hunt to hit him. The missile did some damage, then after Hunt hit him once, the dragon was knocked back (reaching half health). So this was evidence that the missile only did somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 damage, definitely less than 39582 damage since the missile alone didn't knock him back.

From just normal gameplay, I think we can all agree that the missile does a concrete number in damage, and not a set percentage. In later stages, the missile feels like it is hardly doing anything. The boss's health bars don't even move, whereas in lower stages, the missiles seem to be hitting for a large chunk of the boss's health.

It's tough to put an exact number on it, but I think it's safe to say that for a missile that hits approximately 30K (even splashed over a lot of targets), it's hardly worth putting any coin into once you get into the higher player levels. If you want to compare, level 80 Alice does over 220K in one hit. Level 70 Opera James does 109K in one hit, also as splash over all targets in range. 30K splash is peanuts! Upgrading missile becomes astronomically expensive in higher levels and, in my opinion, it isn't worth it. Missile upgrade is low priority along with tower health now. I'll upgrade them when I am sitting on a wealth of gold, but otherwise I'm not going to bother.

Ice Shot Damage

Ice Shot's description states that it "damages enemies by freezing." Does it really? I tested whether it really does by recording videos of myself versus bosses in various stages.

Stage 16 Ice Shot thawing

Stage 64 Ice Shot Thawing

Stage 84 Ice Shot thawing

If you click to enlarge the images, you'll see that indeed Ice Shot does damage them. The damage occurs when the enemies thaw, not when they become frozen. The screenshots also illustrate that Ice Shot does a set percentage of damage since it takes the same "chunk" of health off the bar from bosses that clearly have very different health pools. How many percent? Again, it's hard to say, but I would guess 3% to 5% looks about correct.

Meteor Damage

It always bothered me that the Meteor item cost more than the others. Sure, it does a bunch of damage, but so what? What exactly makes it more powerful than Ice Shot? [NOTE: Below discoveries about meteor are applicable to single player stage mode. Not confirmed for Friend or Team Battle Mode.]

To test, I took a lot of video captures of various stages and watched the playback in slow motion to try to figure it all out. Unfortunately, Meteor's damage is incremental with a damage-over-time element which makes it is difficult to show in still images, so you'll have to take my word for it and maybe test for yourself to see what I mean. 

Meteor does damage five separate times spread over a small area immediately behind the front-most enemy. Each time it tosses a meteor down to the ground, it does an initial amount of damage to anything in that area, then burns them for an additional amount. It does this 5 separate times to 5 different spots. 

This is the shot right before I hit Meteor. The first meteor will target the area where the green UFO enemy is standing. 

Meteor #1

Meteor #2

Meteor #3 - Dragon boss is finally within range and gets hit

Meteor #4

Meteor #5

Notice how the boss's health is lower than when #5 hits. This is the additional burn damage that happens after a meteor hits.

Positioning

I tried over and over and concluded that it is quite difficult, if not impossible, to time it such that the boss gets hit by all 5 meteors. Usually they only get hit by about 3 of the 5 meteors. The area that it hits is relatively tight. The first meteor hits from the left and the rest sweeps towards the right while all bosses typically move from right to left. The only times I think it might be possible for the boss to get hit by all 5 meteors are: (1) you are insanely good at timing tornado such that the boss gets swept back at the same rate as the Meteors dropping, or (2) Boss health is close to half when meteors #1, 2 and 3 hit, then they are hit by meteor #4 and 5 because of the knock back to the right. I haven't ever successfully done the latter, but I guess theoretically it is possible (for bosses that get knocked back a great distance like the crawling worm in Altar of Flame).

Conversely, never time your item usage such that your Meteor will completely miss. I have done this by accident before. If while tornado is blowing everyone back (on a long pathway stage) then you hit meteor, the hot rocks will start to drop where there are no targets because the enemies are all swept back to their tower already. Positioning matters with this item, unlike Ice Shot which freezes absolutely everything on the path. 

Damage

I tested with a number of different stages and I've concluded that Meteor hits for a percentage of the total health of boss enemies. So if the boss is at 100% health, you release Meteor and 3 meteors hit it, then the boss will be left with approximately 70% of their health. Each meteor hits and burns for a total of approximately 10% the boss enemy's total health. It's a visual "guess-timate" so take it as you will! By the way, it is not 10% of the boss's current health. If it were dealing 10% of its current health in damage, then we would see that the meteors never actually kill any enemies but just bring it down in health and never actually reach 0 HP, which is untrue. [Side note: Percentage damage does not appear to apply to non-boss enemies. Meteor seems capable of one-shot killing low health little enemies outright, like the little UFO in my first picture above.]

So on average, you can expect that the Meteor item will deal 30% damage to bosses close to the front of the enemy line. Since it is a percentage, that can mean that it lopped off a lot of boss health, multiplied by however many bosses you are facing at the time. The potential damage is huge. Knowing this now, I think I feel that the 700 coins they charge me for the use of this item is justified. 30% can be crucial to timing, or help push through a Hurry Up phase where everything is already reduced to 50% health. 

I tested these items to the best of my knowledge. If anyone has other ideas or methods on how to figure out a more accurate damage meter, do share.