Why are towers always buffed in the weirdest ways?

YoungFarmer·Nov 21, 2017·171 votes·5,107 views

They are never just straight buffs to tower durability and damage, which is what the majority of players want (?). Instead the towers get 300 more hp which is like, 3- 4 autos worth of more hp which is fine but now they take more damage from minions. So its a minor buff with a minor nerf and then, minions get a whole 25 more movement speed when near them, which is an odd change Imo. Why can't towers just get more armour or straight up durability? or more damage. I just don't understand. It feels like Riot doesn't want to buff the towers so they give them a small buff and a small nerf at the same time just to make the player base think they are trying to make towers better.

131 Comments

420 gramsNov 21, 201753 votes

I think their health is fine, but their damage is so low people don't get punished enough for extended dives

NekoniClawsNov 22, 20174 votes

I had a Khazix and Sona (both level 10) stroll under my tower yesterday trying to kill me on Thresh, both were glass canon at that point. They took turret and my attacks for 11 seconds.

LordGeovanniNov 22, 20173 votes

things like that are slightly deceptive because sona heals and shields

VectrosNov 22, 20177 votes

[{quoted}](name=420 grams,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=J9PV7v1E,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2017-11-21T18:22:49.278+0000)

I think their health is fine, but their damage is so low people don't get punished enough for extended dives

Durability is a problem too. I can literally take out half a turrets health in a few seconds with the right set up...and if you went B or died? It's gone. One B should NOT cause your turret to die (unless it's like, 30 minutes in).

What Is SmiteNov 22, 20175 votes

Meet Mordekaiser , with Herald at his side and the enemy laner's ghost you can kiss your inhib good-bye at 15 minutes or less.

Edit: Let's not forget the demolition rune as well

kmathieu2220Nov 22, 20172 votes

Yeah this is the issue that I have had with towers. Like I get that Malphite is a tank but seeing him take 10+ consecutive turret shots while fighting him with him escaping totally fine feels really bad

Remlap1223Nov 21, 201729 votes

They need to have Wukong's passive. I'm dead serious, I think this will fix all of the problems. It will discourage 4 man cheese dives for an easy first blood on bot turret, and not punish people for split pushing.

It'll give bot lane a little more resistance, and I don't think it'll reintroduce lane swapping.

Worst case scenario they could revert the dank meme 300 health on bot lane to compensate.

YoungFarmerNov 21, 20173 votes

{quoted}

They need to have Wukong's passive. I'm dead serious, I think this will fix all of the problems. It will discourage 4 man cheese dives for an easy first blood on bot turret, and not punish people for split pushing.

It'll give bot lane a little more resistance, and I don't think it'll reintroduce lane swapping.

Worst case scenario they could revert the dank meme 300 health on bot lane to compensate.

interesting idea, increased damage and resistances with more enemies around would be neat.

InfinitexMortalNov 21, 20176 votes

I honestly don't know why Riot doesn't have that implemented at this point at least the dmg part.

Not too sure about the resistances increasing as that would just buff solo splitpushers (who are already strong in solo queue Tryndamere and would punish people for teamwork on taking objectives.

But, more damage the more enemies near seems like the way it should've always been. You have more people so more likely to kill the people under turret, but whoever is tanking turret shots is going to get punished or your team will need to swap out aggro smartly.

More risk more reward, that sounds like a better experience to me on both ends of the fights.

PsybicilinNov 22, 20172 votes

If they did that, people would still 4 man dive, and then the adc will solo the defenseless turret, while the other three take dragon.

EkitaihNov 21, 201714 votes

I think an interesting way to make this work is offering more protection the closer to base you get. That way if you get behind you can at least have some safety under tower.

InfinitexMortalNov 21, 201714 votes

{quoted}

I think an interesting way to make this work is offering more protection the closer to base you get. That way if you get behind you can at least have some safety under tower.

They actually used to have towers like this. Second tier towers would have a Janna like shield around them to absorb more dmg until later in the game (dont remember when exactly). Also the inhib turrets and nexus turrets would be a constant dmg laser instead of slow firing spitballs to further punish whoever was tanking during dives. Turrets had more MR and more Armor and i believe slightly less hp (the mr and armor was better than the flat hp).

Bot turret was also not the weakest turret in the game and was balanced equally with mid and top (and actually had some defenses so it wasn't so paper). Don't quote me but i believe this was all season 5 maybe season 4.

Riot has been nerfing turrets ever since to make LCS games faster. The minion speed buff is just another way to quicken the game since minions will be pushing faster and doing more dmg to towers. Adding 2 item 1028 worth of hp was just a distraction to make us think they were "buffed" while the 10% extra dmg minions will do will actually make them die faster.

EkitaihNov 21, 20175 votes

{quoted}

They actually used to have towers like this. Second tier towers would have a like shield around them to absorb more dmg until later in the game (dont remember when exactly). Also the inhib turrets and nexus turrets would be a constant dmg laser instead of slow firing spitballs to further punish whoever was tanking during dives. Turrets had more MR and more Armor and i believe slightly less hp (the mr and armor was better than the flat hp). Bot turret was also not the weakest turret in the game and was balanced equally with mid and bot (and actually had some defenses so it wasn't so paper). Don't quote me but i believe this was all season 5 maybe season 4.

Riot has been nerfing turrets ever since to make LCS games faster. The minion speed buff is just another way to quicken the game since minions will be pushing faster and doing more dmg to towers. Adding 2 worth of hp was just a distraction to make us think they were "buffed" while the 10% extra dmg minions will do will actually make them die faster.

Not to mention the current destroy rune. It's so strong on people like Chogath specifically and even Garen or Rammus I dunno. The extra health seem kinda menial when compared to a 1000+ strike coming from Cho when he has only a few stacks. It's kinda ridiculous.

InfinitexMortalNov 21, 20177 votes

That is pretty dumb especially considering that Chogath can literally stand under and tank turrets for teammates to take. There is no reason he should be allowed to also completely wreck turrets on his own in my opinion.

EkitaihNov 21, 20173 votes

{quoted}

That is pretty dumb especially considering that can literally stand under and tank turrets for teammates to take. There is no reason he should be allowed to also completely wreck turrets on his own in my opinion.

Yea, I agree. But what can ya do? Adding 300 health doesn't really help much in the long run of things.

KloqdqNov 21, 20174 votes

These changes were removed at the end of season 5 during Pre-season. They mark the worst set of changes in League history in my mind.

LordGeovanniNov 22, 20171 votes

Id rather it be armor magic resist and hp buffs closer to the base. As a melee fighter main that Shield on tier 2 turrents was bad for fighters in both iterations of it. Shield on the champions made dives that you should win impossible even if they were less than 20% hp. shield on tower you push the lane to get a low hp tower you get to the tower just bearly break the shield and the fed mid laner who backed late to counter your push still pushes you off before you get any damage on the real turret health. id also rather towers get 5 hp/5 aka 1hp / second than that shield again.

karolmoNov 22, 20172 votes

{quoted}

Id rather it be armor magic resist and hp buffs closer to the base. As a melee fighter main that Shield on tier 2 turrents was bad for fighters in both iterations of it. Shield on the champions made dives that you should win impossible even if they were less than 20% hp. shield on tower you push the lane to get a low hp tower you get to the tower just bearly break the shield and the fed mid laner who backed late to counter your push still pushes you off before you get any damage on the real turret health. id also rather towers get 5 hp/5 aka 1hp / second than that shield again.

You should not be able to 1v1 dive your laner on tier2 tower unless you're massively ahead. That was working as intended.

PaffWasTakenNov 21, 201714 votes

Those buffs were just a big straight up insult to the community from Rito: They gave what the community wanted, turret buffs, but they still found a way that it turns out in their favor so that they still are the only one who takes decision about the game's gameplay

GayFluffyUnicornNov 22, 20175 votes

The worst part imo is the following: League has EVOLVED into 5 man grouping and teamfighting in patch notes is just a big slap to our faces. Nope, rito. You FORCED the game into that direction. League hasnt EVOLVED into 5 man deathballs you straight up put the game on its head to change it into this direction and now they are acting as if it was some natural change that happened like people adapting to fighter top, mid mage, supp adc bot. That was something league EVOLVED into because people figured out it to be the best way to play the game. 5 man death balls? Nope that's on rito.

The Yetii RiderNov 21, 20178 votes

It's called 'the tyranny of the majority'. Players can want a change and be totally wrong about its impact on the game, and Riot should not implement changes that players want if they are going to make the game worse than it is. A great example of this is when Riot buffed Skarner while he was on the PBE during his rework and then he came to live and decimated at a 60% win rate.

These people make changes to the game for a living. They are screened, trained, and perform at a professional level. Sometimes they make mistakes. Not usually. I trust them a lot more than I trust a group of kids who cry on a forum all day.

DarkRoosterNov 22, 20172 votes

This not true at all. Otherwise we wouldn't have few years lethality problem and classic mages unplayable. And tanks dealing tons of damage and not exactly tanking and whatever is happening with adc whenever patch changes. We want the game more strategic, for it to have more value to us, they want it flashier, cheaper, and cashing in more money. Even if they are doing it for living, they do not do those changes for us, they do it for themselves. Another one ''the good old days with this and that are gone'', its becoming more business centric as it goes.

The Yetii RiderNov 22, 20173 votes

Lethality wasn't a problem. It was meant for assassins to kill squishy champions and it succeeded. People had an issue with it being built on marksmen, but honestly that wasn't really an issue either. They were giving up late game power for mid game power.

Tanks dealing tons of damage was quickly dealt with. The Cinderhulk meta lasted all of six months, maybe.

Not everyone wants the game to be more strategic or have more value. Not even everyone on the boards wants these things.

We are just players. We play the game, we love the game. It is not our job to make the game better, that's their job. Turrets are sturdier, and that's not because people were crying about it forever, because if it was they would have put it in sooner. No, turrets are sturdier now because Riot has data that indicates they need to be sturdier.

DarkRoosterNov 22, 20173 votes

Its also easy to see where the game started going this way, when Tencent got more than 90% of the stocks. They also broke most of our traditions we had, in favor of no one else, but themselves.

DarkRoosterNov 22, 20175 votes

Lethality is still a problem, and pretty darn big one, at some points i can just take lethality mid and snowball mid, bot, dragon, game, champions who profit from it will always build brain dead lethality. Tanks deal even more damage now than before, and it was bad before, full tanks being the most damage to champions on both teams. Just because everyone doesn't mean that majority doesn't, player base is dropping rapidly and more and more people are moving to Dota2 or HotS, which stays true to their fans. Strategic element of the game was the fun part, its not like we lack flashy brain dead games, but slowly they really are removing everything that was unique about the game.

The fun days of warm color summoners rift map, playing for the fun of it, 40 min games with unique champions and every lane having decent strategy are long gone.

But you can see that the people that ask for better games are always upvoted, not downvoted, majority of opinion can be gathered by what posts are made here and how well the are received, and its easy to gather what majority wants. Tankier turrets, old IP system back, runes and masteries that had many improvisation levels in them not completely forced paths. Less damage overall and less snowbally games, old school mages to be viable again, though all of their unique things got reworked and not for better, tanks to be tanks again, adc and supports want stable place in game, not 1 patch broken and another patch useless.

The majority will only stop crying about it when they all left the game, and the game itself became completely another game. You have not been much in gaming industry if you think that changes are made for its players benefits, we can count way much more ruined games than the games that stayed true to their colors. When we get something more enjoyable to jump on i think we will be out of your way.

LordGeovanniNov 22, 20174 votes

Lethality isnt a problem duskblade does too much damage is a problem the other lethality items are balanced. defense being bad is a problem armor health and magic resist.

PokkuNov 23, 20171 votes

I completely agree with both of your comments as I came to the same conclusions a while ago. It is becoming clear that LoL's best times have passed and it's only downhill from now. WoW experienced a similar curve. The common denominator for both games' downfall is Ghostcrawler: coincidence? I think not.

Recently, I've started to feel like Riot still has traces of its true, positive self somewhere, but that they are being suppressed by Tencent's endless greed. Tencent is forcing Riot to try to extract all the possible money from the playerbase, but the cash grabs are far too obvious even when they are camouflaged into loot boxes and whatnot.

All changes seem to be targeted at increasing Riot's (Tencent's) profit and reducing free components in the game. For example, removing runes from the game was over-compensated by transferring the rune page limit to the new masteries (yes, that's what they really are) and lowering IP/BE gain over time in the form of leveling. Another notable example is last year's April Fools (Draven Day) that gave free players a silly game mode (all champions had 2D Draven faces smacked on top of their actual faces) yet the shop was carefully filled with cash grabs like Definitely Not skins.

In no recent change has Riot been generous to its playerbase: when they give something, they take back two things. This strategy may work in the very short term, but in the long term, the playerbase will wither, leaving just a small community like WoW is these days. In contrast, I feel Blizzard has been much more generous in HotS: when they moved to a loot-based system, veteran players were given a truly generous number of chests for previously acquired levels. (Riot, on the other hand, gave an emote and a barely adequate refund on runes.) Blizzard also gave a megabundle of about 20 heroes for free, and the players were allowed to choose from four sets of heroes. Some of the most expensive heroes were included as well. (I cannot imagine Riot doing anything like this.)

DarkRoosterNov 23, 20172 votes

Oh you going that side of the game, this is the truth that doesn't get spoken so much. What i don't like the most is that Riot is caught actively lieing to us, they are of course allowed to make the game as they please, but they don't even admit to us anything. This tower buff is one of the endless balancing lies, saying its a buff but actually making towers more inefficient than ever. Last game i played minions alone pushed 2 towers, 2 damn towers minions alone, no one was in lane ;d. I never remember that happening, 1 tower on less than 100% life yes, but 2 ?

Then there is secret orange essence nerfs and secret blue essence nerfs. They are not anymore publicly accounting what they are doing, but they were before all the time. About runes its exactly as you said, a lot of people had like 20 mastery pages and plenty runes were universal and some were specific, 2 specific cases i had for aram and mundo. Now i am stuck to 8 pages which i filled already and to buy 12 more pages i would need to spend 75600, which is 20k more than i had refunded for endless runes i bought, and i had a lot, while in the same time making blue essence worth less.

Honestly the smart move was to make champion acquiring even more easy, since competitors have Dota2 where all champions are free, and HotS they are easy to get, but they screw it up and make it half harder than before. I will honestly sticking around to see what the season will form into and then probably moving out perma, and its hard thing for me to say since i was here since season 1 xD damn its not so easy to change moba after 6 years. If they won't acknowledge old school mages, the biggest favorite part of this game for me is simply gone and there is nothing left for me here. I am not fond of another flashy cheap game.

MuffledGarbageNov 22, 20171 votes

Uhhh...

Galio before the hotfix?

Galio PBE changes?

The majority of players didn't want/need these changes from Riot.

Riot buffed Galio anyways.

Then hotfixed him after 3 days.

But Singed ???

nono, Riot had to hotfix Singed in a day.

Sivir also hotfixed in a day.

Ezreal ???

no Ezreal nerfs or hotfixes?

The Yetii RiderNov 22, 20172 votes

First of all, you act as though all power spikes are created equal. Some champions are obviously overperforming in a specific way, with others there are several potential ways to nerf or buff them and you have to test and experiment.

Ezreal received a bugfix as soon as Riot identified it (with the help of the people on the boards! The people on the Boards said 'here is a bug' and Riot pushed out a hotfix the same day as they replied to the thread).

But Ezreal was powerful because of the gold income from Kleptomancy, which is based on his Q applying on-hit effects, which is not something you can numerically nerf. Ezreal wasn't dealing too much damage, he was hitting his power spike artificially early. How do you nerf something like that? If you just nerf Ezreal's damage he becomes worse when everyone else catches up to him, which is not a good idea since he's already hard to play in the late game with no crit items.

More importantly, just because the player base sees a balance problem does not mean one actually exists. If Riot listened to the playerbase all the time, Yasuo would be dead, Teemo would be deleted, half the reworks would have been reverted and we would have zero patches for three months while Riot fixed every single one of Mordekaiser's bugs. The players don't know what's important. Their opinions aren't relevant to the numbers in the game.

GayFluffyUnicornNov 22, 20174 votes

Ofc they know what they are doing and that is EXACTLY the awful and scary part. They ARE heavily biased and play favorites every single fucking patch while lying to the community and acting is if its not true. Noone wants these circlejerk trashcans on these boards to balance the game like "buff mages mages so weak" when the complete opposite is the truth. People simple want RITO to change the direction they have been taking into league of oneshots and 15 min CoD arcade like games. Buffing turrets is just one thing we can all agree is a step in to the right direction yet rito finds another way to "buff" turrets while simultaneously make games even faster and snowballier giving you less time to react when the 5 man deathball of snow approaches midlane after pushing sidewaves.

Remember rito helping fighters in meddlers quick gameplay thoughts? Have you seen the buff on the PBE? Thats rito "listening" that bruiser toplane mains are upset with the shitty meta for them once again lying and acting like they do something while straight up buffing jinx and jhin because why not they are adcs and once again get new skins. While THREE bruisers get a small buff, two which are meaningless (riven and camille) and the other will just make darius once again oppressive in lane without helping him in any way to stay relevant post laning phase. That right there is riot KNOWING what they do. They KNOW these buffs are shit and useless but they dont care because they hate bruisers and want to calm people down while simultaneously shitting on bruisers again by not nerfing any tank or aftershock and straight up buffing jinx hard to make it even harder to abuse the weakness of "immobile adc". And THIS in my opinion is even worse than rito balance team making actual mistakes like sivir getting too much of a base buf or galio buffs. This is what is "evil" about riot, they know what they do, say the opposite and people here be like "they are doing a good job mistakes happen" those arent mistakes, these things are calculated.

The Yetii RiderNov 22, 20172 votes

Yes, Riot are evil masterminds who want to make all melee players quit their game so they can lose a shit ton of money. For...reasons.

[sg-lux-2]

Anyway...

ForeverLaxxNov 23, 20171 votes

So basically, an "appeal to authority" fallacy based on the fact they're "professionals." Hmm. Either you don't play many other games, or you're woefully unaware of the kind of people that get hired in a gaming company.

Hell, the original Lead Developer for City of Heroes, which I'm loathe to talk about, never designed a single game in his life; never programmed anything, animated anything, or had any sort of artistic skill or creativity of his own. He was a History major, specifically Greek/Roman history if I recall correctly. What he did do was find a bunch of people that wanted to do things he couldn't regarding a Superhero-themed MMO and sort of put his vague ideas into a workable system.

Eventually, he got booted off the island for trying to turn the game into "WoW with Capes" once he saw the kind of success and subscriber numbers they had. It failed to occur to him that we played City of Heroes because it wasn't like any other MMO on the market. City of Heroes was live for a few months before WoW hit the shelves, too, so there was no reason to actually want to copy them after the fact. We should have known something was amiss when he first started comparing things to Super Mario Bros and how he wanted to capture that kind of challenge.

He was an idea-man who found good people to build a short-lived empire, but he wasn't given a pass just because he was a "professional game developer." It's our duty, as the players, to call developers out when they mess something up. I don't know about the entire portfolios of the people working on the project now, besides Ghostcrawler (who is basically a poison, so it doesn't bode well), but I do know the original creators of League all had a hand in Warcraft Dota before Icefrog took over. Those people at least had experience outside of a classroom setting, and the foundation they laid for future leaders of the IP is being buried by current Riot, likely due in no small part to Tencent's acquisition of the company.

The Yetii RiderNov 23, 20171 votes

Even acknowledging that game developers make mistakes, they still have MORE authority than the players when it comes to this stuff. If Riot has tested these changes and played them then I think they're probably the reasonable middle ground,

ForeverLaxxNov 24, 20171 votes

This is why it's an "appeal to authority" fallacy. You argue that by virtue of their position, their actions are justified. I even outlined an example I'm personally familiar with to illustrate exactly why this line of thinking is false, but it seems to have gone unnoticed.

The Yetii RiderNov 24, 20171 votes

It's not a fallacy, I'm appealing to ethos. The playerbase doesn't use ethos or logos when they argue for changes to the game, they use pathos. They argue for what they feel needs to happen based on negative experiences they have had in games. That's not the way we should be thinking about things.

Are Riot infallible? No. But that is not the topic of this thread. The topic of this thread is "should Riot be implementing changes based on what the players and the Boards specifically are asking for". To which I say no, because the players have no ethos and Riot does.

Nausicäa Nov 22, 20177 votes

Because apparently adding 1 HP to turrets stalls out games and makes every game 60min according to Riot.

You could literally add 1000 hp to turrets on top of this change right now and average game length still probably wouldnt go up more than 1 minute. But these geniuses at Riot that wont even try a turret buff for a single patch know best.

GayFluffyUnicornNov 22, 20173 votes

you dont understand. Rito doesnt WANT to buff turrets. They know exactly well this buff is meaningless and only help snowball by buffing minions because that is what they want but rito is clever, people will read "turret more hp" boom you have 1 million people saying rito is listening and does a good job and in reality they just slipped in another way to make games more snowbally. Yes those 300 hp are visible a BIT in the early game but not that much actually.

ErockandrollNov 21, 20174 votes

I can see were Riot's going with this, CHAMPIONS are doing too much to turrets, minions are more or less fine. So they compensate minions with the increased damage to turrets. And we just see this as a net nerf.

Riot doesn't want to devalue the pressure that minions have, and doesn't want devalue the importants of wave management.

FYI, I don't see any compensation for herald, so this would also look like a nerf to herald as well.

zlumpyNov 22, 20174 votes

They need better AI. Too easy for people to dance in and out of the zone doing damage and being completely ignored. Some champs are so good at it that usually the only hit they ever take is the one they get while leaving the danger zone after rofl stomping your face into the ground.

SeenanNov 23, 20172 votes

{quoted}

They need better AI. Too easy for people to dance in and out of the zone doing damage and being completely ignored. Some champs are so good at it that usually the only hit they ever take is the one they get while leaving the danger zone after rofl stomping your face into the ground.

Some people are Diamond+ just for abusing that mechanic.

ADC5LUTNov 22, 20174 votes

It's legitimately for eSports there is no other reason for it because across the board across all elos people want towers that actually function outside of the enemies objective of acquiring gold.

AnagsNov 21, 20173 votes

Because they want games to be fast.

Oakleaf RangerNov 21, 20173 votes

I think riot is trying to avoid a meta where it just non stop wave clear while you hide behind a tower. This is a change that keeps that borefest of a meta from coming back while making towers stronger.

ZephyrDrakeNov 22, 20177 votes

{quoted}

I think riot is trying to avoid a meta where it just non stop wave clear while you hide behind a tower. This is a change that keeps that borefest of a meta from coming back while making towers stronger.

yeah, it makes a meta of "you got behind early? too bad you get no chance of coming back! you might as well just surrender now!"

Oakleaf RangerNov 22, 20172 votes

how does this make snowballing stronger? Towers are stronger and only go down faster if you let a minion wave go to town on it. Its certainly a slower process for a champion take it now without a sufficient minion wave.

Pl0x3r 2605Nov 22, 20171 votes

[deleted]

LordGeovanniNov 22, 20173 votes

every 3rd shot is bosted as is the second. towers do increased damage every attack. I think it gets 75% stronger then caps there until agro is reset.

ToxicShacoNov 22, 20171 votes

[{quoted}](name=Im A Cracker,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=J9PV7v1E,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-11-21T18:14:46.568+0000)

They are never just straight buffs to tower durability and damage, which is what the majority of players want (?). Instead the towers get 300 more hp which is like, 3- 4 autos worth of more hp which is fine but now they take more damage from minions. So its a minor buff with a minor nerf and then, minions get a whole 25 more movement speed when near them, which is an odd change Imo. Why can't towers just get more armour or straight up durability? or more damage. I just don't understand. It feels like Riot doesn't want to buff the towers so they give them a small buff and a small nerf at the same time just to make the player base think they are trying to make towers better.

Because people don't want hour long games. We have better things to do with our time.

Increasing damage is fine but increasing durability is stupid.

YoungFarmerNov 22, 20175 votes