Boards›Gameplay

Turret Change Discussions and Healing in General

Dancing Eel·2/10/2015, 6:05:03 AM·9 votes·1,410 views

As you'll notice in the higher elos (or possibly all elos... not sure), a lot of high-mobility champions are banned like: Nidalee, Ahri, Kalista, Reksai, Jarvan, Vi, Tristana, and Azir* (not really high mobility but has decent kiting + poke power). Instead of being ignorant and concluding "oh they're just OP", I decided to speculate on why these are some common bans. I feel like not only is the main reason that Mobility, Damage and CC all in one kit is superior in Solo Queue, but also that champions with very high mobility can run to their "safe-haven", the Middle Shield Turret in short amount of time in very clutch situations. I feel it's a bit too abusable, especially against Global Ultimate champions. The main concept behind Global Ultimates such as Requiem, Whirling Death, Final Spark, Ace in the Hole, True Shot Barrage, Super Mega Death Rocket!, and Rite of the Arcane (not fully global but also impacted), are supposed to be the fear-causing "Punishers", "Wombo Combo Finishers", and the legit definition of an "Ultimate", because it is to me and others, ultimately the end of your enemies days. The purpose of them was to punish bad players who initially got caught out of position or chose to engage in bad trades. I feel like after adding in the Shield Turrets, bad players can just pick very safe/high mobility champions to flash-dash-jump (or whatever necessary) to the nearest shield tower and safely b. I feel like these Shield Turrets make a huge mockery out of these badass Global Ultimates that are supposed to instill fear in enemies. As a Karthus main, I enjoyed new players trying to flash out of a Requiem, only to find out that it doesn't cure a poor trade or engage against him. I'd never think I'd see the day where you can now actually legit Flash to escape a Requiem (Just run/jump/dash/flash to the nearest Heal-bot or Shield Turret). Now normally I'm fine with small things like this, but in higher elos every kill counts, and every small amount of gold income counts. I understand the purpose of these Shield Turrets were to prevent Poke Teams from sieging in too quickly and giving bad players a chance to turn a fight around, but I feel like the turrets are being used and abused against Global Ultimate champions. It's unecessary shielding, and it makes Global Ultimate champions lose out on as little as 1 kill up to as many as 5 kills+ per game in higher elos (which can definitely make or break in clutch situations where both teams have equally skilled matchups but one person has a core item over the other).

*Side note: Giving Soraka a 2 second Heal was very impacting towards Global Ultimates and most Champions. Typically our "breathing room to ultimate or engage" is determined by what intelligence we have on enemies spell cooldowns; If Heal, Barrier, Spellshields, Banshees, GA, etc are on Cooldown, it's safe to punish the enemies and finish off what we started. A champion that heals in 2 second Intervals pre-fight, during fight, or even after fights (for Karthus), Riven who Shields 3.6 second intervals with 40% cooldown reduction, the gap for securing "good" Global Ultimates becomes almost impossible to execute. 2-3 second intervals of shield/heal gives us no breathing room to fight, and gives the enemies all the more "Undo-Mistakes" spells to cast (it hurts players who capitalize on enemies to make mistakes, because if your shield/heal is 2-3 seconds you're allowed more room to make endless mistakes and get away with it). Playing against LCS players and non-LCS but skillful players have taught me that it's incredibly difficult to find a mistake to capitalize on when they play flawlessly. When they do finally screw up though (once or twice at the most in solo ranked high elo), I expect a chance to fight back, rather than them being granted infinite healing powers.

Conclusion: Shield Towers and 2-3 (s) Heal/Shield Spells are hurting the game because high mobility champs abuse the towers by running to them early game, and the extremely low cooldown undo-poorchoices-spells give the capitalizers hardly any breathing room to punish.

Possible Solution:

-Bring back the old tower that didn't randomly grant shields (handicapped basically)

-Increase the cooldowns for champions that have 2-3 Second Burst Healing/Burst Shielding capacities

-Make Global Ultimates bypass the Shield Turret power, much similar to how minions can still damage both you and the turret even when it has shield.

11 Comments

Aelthern2/10/2015, 8:46:47 AM8 votes

In my opinion the shield from inner turrets should start only after you destroy outer turret and maybe increase the delay before it starts to build up after taking damage and coming in range.

I main Xerath and the shield is actually nice counterplay mechanic against my insane poke and ult. It gives options for play to take down the shield and risk being caught or try to poke them through the shield.

CoIby2/10/2015, 6:12:48 AM5 votes

Nah. You were right when you said damage cc and mobility are just OP in one kit, the middle turret shields aren't really the reason the champs are banned. They're just really strong for picks, and are difficult to mess up.

Tis a nice day2/10/2015, 11:02:43 AM4 votes

I actually like the shield as it makes towers a bit more defensible during mid-game and thus prevents games from getting as snow-bally.

Perhaps the shield should only activate when the outer tower is destroyed? We could also add a 2-3 second delay to when the shield starts building up and compensate for that with a slightly faster shield increase rate. That way there won't be an immediate buffer of protection from ignite and Karthus ults.

Miku Lv1012/10/2015, 9:55:21 AM4 votes

The shields do not seem like they are a good thing. I hate it when you should have their mid laner killed with that ignite he can't possibly survive, right? No, he uses his mobility to get to the inner turret that saves him. Oh and he can't survive that Karthus ult, right? Wrong, again, go back to that turret and live again. Also they contribute to the games being longer and harder to end than they used to be. I'd rather the games be moved back in the shorter direction. Extra mechanics to help defend like this make the games longer obviously.

junglerboy162/10/2015, 1:53:48 PM4 votes

I'd say remove tha Champion shield from the inner turrets, or make it take longer to give you a shield. They have to keep the shield itself though, because the whole point is to deter split pushers from sneaking towers as easily when nobody is looking, without letting them simply regen to full.

Why Am PP Hard2/11/2015, 1:25:00 AM4 votes

Removing the shield would probably make it somewhat fair? Fair in a sense that if a person is low and returning to base and is constantly moving away from their lane to shelter at their inner turret, if the enemy or jg were to come and surprise/kill you. It seems like its a kill that's deserved. A shield that regenerates quickly and provides a good amount of protection, (similar as to a barrier summoner spell) its kinda bull shit in some cases. So somebody like Xerath against like idk Azir . if Azir was like 50 hp and Xerath needed just one more Q or ult. He should be able to earn it in if landed correctly and hit on the first shot. that shield at second turret just allows for Azir to probably survive long enough to move away from the second shot. and even the third.

Just providing a situation where it can be a bit annoying to have that shield.

GAME lS A JOKE2/11/2015, 7:36:49 PM3 votes

Yeah I agree, the shield turrets offer way too much earlygame safety to high mobility players who can get there in time. It's not like the shield itself offers much protection to sieging (especially against Zed and other AD Champions who can on-hit on towers). No idea why they made it harder for Global Ultimates to actually secure kills earlygame. 300 shield early game, when your ultimate does around 250 raw (250 if you have true damage, a lot lower if enemy has resists, which is very likely if they're smart), it's a joke. Enemies already have shields, heals, and Summoner Spells to combat against Global Ultimates. There was no reason to give them an additional "get out of jail free card".

ZephyrDrake2/10/2015, 8:54:15 AM2 votes

except that most of those champions you mentioned are broken in one way or another or are just simply a pain to pay against. Healing is almost a non-factor late in the game and is only remotely useful in the laning phase... lifesteal and spellvamp are obvious exceptions. The shield from mid turret is only really useful early game since it doesn't scale (as far as i know) so a slowly increasing shield that caps at 200 isn't going to do much if anything by the mid-game point of the game. Sorry but he only change i would want them to do to turrets is to do something about inhib turrets being actually useful for once since although they have high armor pen it's damage is crap and it heals so slow that it might as well not even have a regen attached to it