Debunking the 'Starfish' and other Defense Absolute focused builds post T1

TLDR: spent less than half as many coins to go ~1500 waves further in T4 and T5 than the designer of starfish spent on their starfish build by using eHP blender and not wasting money on def abs. I also had most of my UWs turned off for the last 2000 waves to prove that damage UWs are not necessary for eHP blender to deal with protectors.

To be absolutely clear, this is not intended to put anybody down. It's just a game, and personally I think some of the coolest things are people intentionally playing the game so called 'sub-optimally', and having unique experiences doing so. I love seeing people max 'useless' or under-powered labs, workshops, modules, etc, just to see what happens.

That said, I do want to ensure that all players have access to accurate information. DoYouEvenIndexBro recently made a series of posts about using Defense Absolute post T1, culminating in this guide to the 'Starfish' build. While I appreciate their effort, and have had a number of interactions with them, most of which were pleasant, I believe much of the information in the guide is highly inaccurate. Fundamentally, while their starfish build does work as they say it does, it is drastically inefficient in terms of cost and flexibility, with a basic blender build being far cheaper to achieve the same farming potential and massively higher milestone and tournament potential.

The crux of the issue is spending coins in the workshop on def abs vs health. While I think def abs is arguably the best tool for T1 up to wave 1000, and perfectly viable, albeit needlessly costly, up to T1 wave 4500, beyond this point, its value is negligible, at least until after health is gold-boxed. Fundamentally, with any non-GC build, your ability to live is based around your eHP, and ability to heal faster than you are damaged. Health levels increase your health much faster than def abs levels increase your def abs, therefore health scales your eHp much faster than def abs scales your eHP. Def abs does have the advantage of lowering damage, but a) this can be offset by the drastically higher eHP of a health focued build and b) blender ensures most enemies do not hit your tower. Not to mention c) blender lifesteal drastically outstrips regen for the same cost

The starfish build revolves around coin leveling health, health regen, and defense absolute, while ignoring the attack tab. This results in enemies crashing into tower thorns, rather than being knocked back into orbs, as they would be in blender. The idea is that def abs prevents you from taking damage long enough to put more cash levels into health and health regen, and as def abs runs out, the regen keeps your tower alive against the enemy damage.

The issues with this idea are that as previously noted, health scales drastically faster than def abs. Putting the same workshop coins into health allows you to survive far longer and get far more health cash levels than abs def would, before you begin to take any meaningful amount of damage. Packages are health % based healing, so can easily keep up with your healing requirements early on, no def abs or regen required. Blender further lowers the damage taken by ensuring most enemies never hit your tower, instead dying to orbs.

DoYouEvenIndexBro argues that blender is impossible until you have 500B+ coins to sink into workshop and % based damage to kill protectors. This is categorically false. To setup a viable blender build, you need at absolute maximum 100M coins in the attack tab. Yes you probably want to spend another few billion fleshing out utility for the EALS, but this is also true of starfish. And all the remaining coins left over? As previously noted, they are ALWAYS more efficiently spent on health than def abs.

What about protectors? Well in case you haven't noticed, the starfish's approach to protectors is to kill them with thorns. Nothing about blender prevents this from happening. Yes the knockback can result in them building enemy clumps, but target priority will help mitigate this, and you'll have stupidly high enough health to just eat the clump anyway, till far beyond where the starfish would get.

But all the talk in the world means doing without results, and boy do I have results. I wasted 150 gems to respec down to less than 10B workshop expenditure, and I got: T1 wave 11353, T4 wave 6324 and T5 wave 6049. As a point of comparison, DoYouEvenIndexBro showed that 24B coins in workshop (i.e. more than double), got to T4 wave 4600ish (can't find their original comment about it) and T5 w4300. Also, for fairness, I turned off my BH for the last 2500ish waves of each run past T1, to prove that percentage damage was not saving me from protectors. Video of T4 linked in comments.

In summary: health is simply always more coin efficient than def abs for eHP/lifesteal/regen type builds, as soon as you are past around T1 w4500/the break point is potentially packages for early healing or maybe leveled bounce shot idk idc you can earn 100M coins easily enough. I did not simply forget what it was like to be at a lower progression point/not have tried it since the latest update/just be lying for 'big orb'?, and I wasted 150 gems and several days to satisfy myself as such, if you were just rage baiting DoYouEvenIndex then you've done well. In general, to all the def abs shills out there, if you're doing something off the beaten path in this game, it suddenly seems to work well, and you think you're a genius, you've probably just spent a bunch of coins inefficiently and succeeded due to sheer brute force.

PS: obligatory yes abs def is fine if you goldbox health easily and want the def abs freeups to trickle onto something else faster/feel like ~1% damage reduction is worth it to you.

PPS: I know GT and DW are helping my build but they help all eHP builds you'll live.