Is there an easier way to repair/upgrade/sell overlapping defenses?

Specifically playing as a monk, I tend to overlap my auras for the maximum benefit (e.g. snaring + lightning).

However, when I want to upgrade an aura, if one overlaps the other in almost perfect fashion, or in some cases completely envelops the other, I find it nigh impossible to upgrade or repair the covered one without doing the "outer" one first. In the case of upgrading, this can get especially frustrating when I'm trying to upgrade the lightning and end up doing the snaring instead.

My friend who's playing an apprentice tends to place his magic barriers inside of my auras for maximum benefit as well, and voices his frustration with upgrading / repairing / selling his defenses, since the game is indiscriminate on which ones you can affect (understandably so, as it is a team game).

Is there some trick I'm missing to doing upgrades/repairs/sales on overlapping defenses?

Solution 1:

I duo as a Squire with a Monk and we have run across this problem as well. After doing some testing, I definitely see the problem you are talking about. I hadn't run into it on live because my Monk friend found that pretty much the only way to solve this is to slightly skew the setup of the auras.

Overlapping Setup: Selling

Here you can see the problem you described. Everything is overlapping evenly, and the Snare field is inside the Lightning Field. Unfortunately, you are unable to upgrade or sell the Snare Field without doing so on the Lightning Field first. However, you mentioned your friend plays an Apprentice, and you are able to Sell whatever is inside these fields. Make sure you notice the icons next to your cursor, which will tell you which item you've selected. I highlighted those in the red box in the first 2 pictures.

Overlapping Setup: Repairing

When repairing with a perfectly overlapping set of fields, as far as I can tell through testing, the Repair icon will prioritize the field with the most damage. It's a bit hard to see, so I tried to zoom in the selected section, but the Snare Field has taken more damage than the Lightning Field, so even though the Lightning Field usually envelops the Snare Field, the Repair option prioritizes it.

And of course, if you hover directly over the Barricade itself within the two fields, it will be prioritized.

Skewed Setup

This is what we do. He sets them up slightly skewed. The distance between them is large enough that you should be able to relatively easily Repair, Sell, or Upgrade each individual field without sacrificing too much of the effectiveness you get by overlapping.

I've colored each field the appropriate color where they don't overlap, then showed an example of where you can hover in order to work with each item in the picture. I stood in one spot and moved my cursor to each separate area, then photoshopped them all into one so I didn't have to post multiple photos of just a moved cursor. With this setup, you should be able to more easily Repair/Upgrade/Sell on the fly without sacrificing effectiveness. It gets more complicated the more you have in the fields of course, but hopefully this helps! Unless they release a patch or something that allows you to select a field inside another one, this is what my friends and I do in order to make this more clear.