The Tower Power Delimma (With data!)

Just a few things regarding towers that I believe are problematic.

First of all, as pointed out several times in the past, the inner turret shields are unaffected by minions and are instead take direct HP hits when minions attack them. This leads to minion waves being able to push down towers at a faster rate alone since the shield is meaningless against them.

Secondly, the beam strength concerns me. I fully understand the desire to create a tower that has a continuous armour-shredding beam and deter split pushing. However, I also feel like the current setup is a bit... weak. I'll be doing some timed tests later tonight to verify or contradict my statement, but until then, I feel like the towers don't do enough damage for two main reasons, one of which I'll state, and one I'll reserve until I test to save myself looking foolish going in without empirical evidence.

• They're very forgiving. There is no initial burst from a tower shot. When you get in range of a normal tower, you immediately know - the thing at earlier levels hits you like a truck with just one single shot, and that shot fires the very moment you enter tower range without minions. These beam towers do not do that. They are incredibly forgiving, because walking underneath them for just a moment doesn't hurt at all. This is still significant later in the game, as it gives plenty of forgiveness to carries with low health who can easily charge under the tower, grab a kill, and get out before the tower is fully heated, taking virtually no damage. This is different than the outer towers, which will deal a fair amount of damage to carries with a single shot.

• EDIT: A surprising discovery among my testing which I failed to consider (and consequently did) was the damage to and from minoins to the towers. Specifically with regards to their changed preseason stats versus their Season 4 stats. Because minions now have less armour/magic resist per level (in fact, I don't think they much or any stat changes at all), and instead gain a flat HP gain per level, they are able to more effectively tank these beam towers. These new towers shred armour, but these new minions don't really have any. As a result, minions, especially super minions, took significantly less DPS than normal due to the fact they were able to health-tank the beam towers. This is probably one of the reasons why pushing down towers, especially the most inner towers, seems so simple now compared to Season 4 - the minions have more survivability which directly translates into more time to attack those towers.

• EDIT 2: As expected, the beam towers are significantly stronger (with a slight delay before damaging, as somebody pointed out in the comments) which is good against armour and split pushing. However, after doing some testing, I discovered a couple things.

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1. Stacking armour may not work against beam towers, but stacking health sure does. Playing as Garen, in early levels with only a Randuin's Omen and a Ruby Crystal, the outer towers took (a surprisingly long) average of 17.1 seconds to 100-0 me. The inhibitor turrets took about 8 seconds flat. However...

2. After a semi-finished build of Randuin's, a Giant's Belt, Warmog's Armour, and a Cloth Armour, it took the outer towers 28.5 seconds to kill me while it took the inhibitor towers roughly 21.4. Furthermore, while the inhibitor towers DID kill me faster, I lost 20-25% of my HP FASTER from the outer towers than from the inhibitor towers. Eventually, the inhibitor towers accelerated quickly enough to finish me off faster, but this ultimately seems like a power curve problem that can easily be resolved.

3. Finally, as a last test (which, sadly, I didn't entirely get to complete, because the bots won), with a Randuin's, Giant's Belt, Warmog's, Sunfire Cape, and Crystalline Bracer, it took the outer towers roughly (with occasional hits from super minions, although I dodged most shots) 33.9 seconds, and I lasted 28 seconds in the inhibitor tower before the bots ended the game, with me at just a tiny bit of health. Again, the first chunks of health were taken faster from the outer towers (even though it was simply peanut damage) and ramped up with the inhibitor towers, but the sheer amount of HP mitigated almost all of the difference between the two towers.

This power curve difference does create significant changes in gameplay, as it does validate that carries can safely dive in and get one or two shots off before the damage is equivalent to the damage that would be a result of spending the same time under an outer tower. This can be very significant in the mid-early late game when inhibitor towers are being sieged.