Good counters lose at the wrong timing. Mid control changes where waves meet. Teammate misalignment compounds fast. The wave function shows why.
There are several ways to sneak more wave strength in, but these are the most fundamental team-related wave strategies. If your counter timing is off, such as placing far front when a leaked wave could have been cleared by cannon, your own wave may stay mostly untouched, but your teammate can inherit the bad timing.
When your peaks and troughs are not aligned with your teammate, you can create wave interference. In Direct Strike terms, that means your wave amplitude, or effectiveness, can come back smaller next round, and the teammate you misaligned with can lose amplitude too.
Dominating your opponent can change the game dramatically, but it can also mess up wave timing and change which enemy wave reaches which teammate. That can increase your amplitude while decreasing a teammate’s amplitude at the same time.
The purple dots in the middle represent the center of the game. Holding mid creates a huge boost to your next wave’s amplitude because the whole team receives extra minerals.