The hidden tesla (abbreviated to “tesla”) is a defense that is unlocked in TH7. As with its name, it is hidden in the beginning of the battle and only “pops up” under certain conditions. The first way to activate a tesla is to come too close to one. If you are within 6 tiles of a tesla, it activates and starts attacking enemy troops.

A common question people ask is “what happens if I destroy everything else but not the teslas”? There are a few ways to activate the tesla, the otherway to activate a tesla is to reach 51% destruction, then all teslas in the base will activate. This means that you will never encounter the situation above, as soon as you get 51%, all teslas will appear even if no troops enter their radius.

The tesla is best used to surprise enemies. Some people use “tesla farms” which is just a concentrated area of teslas to out-damage heals and quickly deal with many enemies. You can also just place teslas where-ever and still get good use out of them as more defense appears than anticipated for the attacker.

The tesla has a range of 7 tiles which is one of the shorter firing range in the game. This range is tied with Wizard Towers and the Double Cannon. At lower levels (TH7-10), the tesla is an amazing defense. It has greater DPS than other point defenses and it has its amazing surprise factor. However at higher levels, other towers catch up and the final DPS of tesla is lower than other point defenses.

The tesla has a firing rate of once per 0.6 seconds. This means each hit deals 0.6x of the displayed dps. If your tesla deals 100dps, each hit only deals 60 damage. Over a longer period of time, this averages out to 100 damage per second.

The number of teslas grows fairly well. At least you get the 5th one at TH12. The tesla is the only new defense building you get at TH12. Supercell stated that they don’t want bases to become too big and chaotic, but that had a huge side effect where TH12 doesn’t gain much strength over TH11. TH12s need to cherish their 5th tesla as that building alone contributes to about 15-20% of your TH12 point defense growth.

The build time of teslas were much longer in the past. In fact, teslas were famous in 2014-2017 for being the defense with longest build time. The 3 levels in TH8 used to cost 6/8/10 days respectively, meaning you needed 72 days of builder time to max out your 3 teslas in TH8. If you did not upgrade teslas throughout TH8, they would become your bottleneck at TH8. This how the quote “ABT” or “always be tesla-ing” became famous in the past. Of course, this is old history now given the much shorter upgrade times. Now, it only takes 18 days to max out 3 teslas in TH8!

Do teslas need a buff?

I think teslas at TH12 need a buff because the growth is far too small between TH11 and TH12. Firstly, tesla’s range should be increased by 1 tile at lvl10. This includes activation range and firing range. This is to accommodate the complex and large base designs of TH12. The second buff is to increase the dps from 120 to 135 at TH12, giving it a +25 dps over TH11 teslas. It makes no sense that teslas only increase by 10 dps at TH12 and 12/11 dps at TH10/11 respectively. TH12 teslas are just not good enough and mostly just an afterthought. Giving it 135 dps would put it between cannons and xbows, making them a great surprise defense.