Enemies

SkeletonThe baseline grunt of the early waves.

The skeleton is the plain foot soldier every strategy is measured against: modest health, standard walk speed, no armor, and no tricks. It marches the path in a straight line and does moderate damage to your base if it leaks. If you can hold a wave of skeletons comfortably, your towers are in good shape for what comes next.

AntLightly armored swarmers that arrive in tight groups.

The ant has low health and a little armor, and it comes packed into dense clusters. Individually each ant is fragile, but the tight spacing means a lot of them are on the path at the same time, and stragglers add up to real base damage if you let them slip through.

Counterplay: Splash and area damage clear ant clusters far more efficiently than single-target fire, since the tight grouping lets one hit strike several ants at once. A small amount of armor pierce helps chew through them faster.

SpiderThe densest swarm on the board.

The spider has low health and arrives in the tightest packs of any wave, spawning almost on top of each other. No armor and little health means each one dies quickly, but the sheer number pouring in at once can overwhelm a tower that can only shoot one target at a time.

Counterplay: Area and splash damage shine against spider swarms, since the packed spacing means one hit can catch several. Set up your widest-hitting towers before a spider wave and let the overlap do the work.

GoblinFast but flinches hard at frost.

The goblin is the fastest wave enemy in the game, sprinting the path far quicker than a skeleton, so it can reach your base before slower towers get many shots off. It is skittish under crowd control, though: slows and stuns grip it 40 percent longer than normal, and it shakes off that crowd control slower than anything else on the field.

Counterplay: Lean on slows and stuns to answer goblins. A frost tower or any crowd-control effect turns their speed against them, pinning them in your kill zone far longer than it would a normal enemy. Position your control tower early on a goblin wave so the slow lands before they build up a lead.

GhostFlickers out of sight the moment you hit it.

The ghost has low health but refuses to die cleanly. The first time it takes about 10 percent of its health in damage, it cloaks and turns untargetable for 2.5 seconds, then reappears further down the path. Your units cannot pick it as a target while it is cloaked, so a burst of fire can be wasted if it triggers the vanish early.

Counterplay: Damage-over-time effects (poison, burn) keep ticking while the ghost is invisible, so applying a damage-over-time before it cloaks lets you keep hurting it through the vanish. Spread your damage rather than dumping it all at once, and expect to finish the ghost off after it flickers back in.

OrcThe armored bruiser of the mid waves.

The orc carries the heaviest armor of any wave enemy, which cuts the damage your towers deal to it. It walks at standard speed and hits your base hard if it leaks. Raw damage bounces off it, so orc waves punish teams that have no way through armor.

Counterplay: This is the rogue's target. Rogues strip armor, and piercing attacks ignore it entirely, so route armor-shredders and pierce onto orc waves. Once the armor is gone the orc dies as fast as any other bruiser.

TrollThe slow, unstoppable tank that hits your base hardest.

The troll has by far the most health of any wave enemy and does the most base damage if it leaks, roughly double a skeleton. It is completely immune to crowd control: it cannot be slowed, stunned, or feared by anything. It moves slowly, but nothing you do will make it move any slower.

Counterplay: Do not waste slows or stuns on a troll, they simply do nothing. Because it is CC-immune, the only answer is raw sustained damage, so focus your hardest-hitting towers on it and start firing the instant it enters range. Its slow speed is your friend: it gives your towers the most time-on-target of any enemy, so use every second of it.