And when you start lining your track with more and more of those…eventually you may be mana pooling every second into the hundreds of thousands of mana. On a gem that hits 5 targets, that’s 210 mana at a time, and with a capped firing rate, that can easily become thousands of mana per second, all from a single gem in a single trap.
8.4 mana per hit is nice, but at a x5 multiplier from mana pooling that becomes 42 mana per hit. Mana pool a lot to increase your mana/score multiplier. You cannot lose so long as you have mana, so make lots of it. Once everything is capped gems in traps will probably do more damage anyway, but again…generating mana is the first priority. Traps are generally better than towers because while the damage is less, their firing rate is much better, and your first goal is to generate lots of mana, not necessarily kill monsters. Supergem until firing rate, splash and mana drain are capped. Though note that at sufficiently high multipliers, and with enough maxxed red-orange gems, it’s very possible to have monsters that are banished dozens of time but still generate more mana than they cost. Just try to find the fine line between too many and not enough, such that the extra monsters give you more mana from mana drain than any leaks take away by needing to be banished. You don’t need to kill everything every wave. Just don’t anger so much that you kill yourself. More monsters = more mana and more score. If you have specific questions, let me know and I’ll try to answer, but basically the keys are: I’ve seen single gems in traps able to contain waves in the 30’s with no leaks, and these gems can be made such that even if they did zero damage and _every_ monster needed to be banished, you’d still come out ahead because they generate so much mana. (Numbers will vary by skills.) If at the same time I also mana pool a lot and get my score/mana multiplier up, that gem may be generating thousands of mana per second.
That might not sound like a lot, and I had to spend a 122 mana to comine, plus 22 mana for the grade 1 gem, but simply by continuing to do this, over and over, I can get a gem with a 533 firing rate that drains 8.4 mana per hit, and hits 6 targets at a time. I now combine that with a grade 1 orange and it bumpb up to 39-125 damage, 59 firing speed, 12.6 splash and 1.9 mana drain. For example, testing it right now, I combine a grade three red with grade 3 orange, and get a gem that does 33-113 damage, with 58 firing speed, 12.6 splash radius and 1.7 mana gain per hit. This increases damage, firing rate, and secondary effects. You absolutely have to supergem by combining additional gems (of at least two grades lower) onto your duals. Even combining grade 6’s, the effect is not spectacular. I get only a single target effect because the splash component isn’t strong enough, and the mana drain effect is roughly _half_ of what I get from simply dropping a grade 3 orange in. For example, testing it right now, I combine two grade three gems to make a grade 4 dual red-orange, and drop it directly into a trap. To really get use out of dual red-orange gems, you basically just need to make a point of maxxing their stats. Skills just make it faster and more efficient. It probably wasn’t particularly useful at that level…I’m sure I could have just stuck some grade two and three gems in towers and done just as well, but the basic strategy does work even without skillpoints. I just now reset my skills and tried it on level 1 and beat it, angering every wave, and the last two with nothing but a single grade three dual red-orange. There’s may be a a minimum effective level for the dual red-orange strategy, but if there is it’s probably under level 20. Do you have more specific questions? What’s the problem you’re having?