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Towers have a bigger impact on snowballing than you think

TWITCHTV ERONATE·10/1/2017, 2:25:59 PM·117 votes·4,006 views

Once you're behind you can't really defend towers and you just have to let them fall without even trying to protect them because that would force a teamfight in the enemy team's favor and towers provide neither defense or offense

and if the enemy team is well coordinated they just keep snowballing their advantage by gaining around 600 total gold as a team per tower, and that's HUGE for how easy they are to take if you're ahead.

at the end of a game you can see how much of a difference they make in gold when you have the same cs and kills as the enemy laner yet he's like 1k-1.5k gold ahead of you

I know they're supposed to help you capitalise on your lead but they're making comebacks from the losing side impossible. Make them not affected by lethality, buff their defenses (and maybe decrease individual gold by like 25 on every consecutive tower taken in less than 5 minutes? would that be too much?)

59 Comments

FireDrizzle10/1/2017, 2:46:38 PM66 votes

Dying or being forced back due to a gank meaning you lose tower makes the game very snowbally. It is gross how quick they fall.

Marshbouy10/1/2017, 2:27:03 PM20 votes

Not to mention it makes you much more vulnerable to ganking.

Sire Hippington10/1/2017, 7:10:05 PM11 votes

Towers have a way bigger impact on snowballing than just the gold. The main benefit from takeing towers is mapcontroll, which opens up more objectives and farm. With how little vision there is in hte game since S6, loosing the vision from your towers is huge, and the benefits of your minions pushing deep into enemy territory and thus granting vision along the lane should never be underestimated, and it removes savety zones for your opponents from the river which makes it easy to have the better position around baron/dragon. Plants and scutllers make things even worse, as you have easy acces to them once you've taken all outer turrets, further snowballing your controll over the river and thus the objectives.

Atleast in high elo, the mapcontroll is the much bigger factor for snowballing compared to the gold(not saying the tower gold doesn't contribute to snowballing aswell). Imo we need to revisit vision and mostly the lack thereoff since S6, with more overall vision from players, loosing your towers would have less impact on the overall mapcontroll.

Asides from that, objectives are way to easy to take across the rift as the overall damage and sutain in the game is rather absurd. The most dangerous part of dragon/baron is positioning your self in the pit, the actuall monster hardly causes any problems, especially when an adc with lifesteal is involved. But even more disturbing than that is how fast they die. Lategame, you can burn down baron in ~5-8sec as a full 5 man, dragons become driveby objectives, and you can just walk over turrets as they fall in ~3-4sec if all focus on them. This makes it nearly impossible to respond to a strong 5 man once it's ahead, as you can't really play the map. If you don't match there rotations all the time, they'll just burn through the next objective in no time. If you opponents group at baron, you have no choice but to rush their asap or it's gone before you know what happened.

BladeSingularity10/1/2017, 4:00:52 PM10 votes

Why not rework the towers so they gradually gain stats as the game goes on? Maybe the minions-are-present damage reduction decreases, or towers get more attack damage?

GigglesO10/1/2017, 4:15:48 PM8 votes

Not to mention first tower gold...

Jayce Top10/2/2017, 1:45:32 AM5 votes

Lol last game I had a Talon top take my tower in less than 15 seconds with only these items: item 3142 item 3047 item 3134. The tower was full health and everything, he took it while I tpd bot, took only a few seconds and that tower was gone.

WDG Devour10/1/2017, 6:08:25 PM4 votes

Why not just give towers more HP so the laning phase can last longer than 3 minutes.... simple fix.

JRobin3110/1/2017, 10:24:00 PM4 votes

I think the point about how much gold towers are worth compared to how easy they are to take is really key.

We definitely entered a META where taking towers quickly and easily can and does occur. It makes sense that the value in gold for those towers should be reduced.

META is defined by the easiest path: lowest risk for highest reward. If the towers provide free gold by being too easy to take, it doesn't automatically mean the problem is that towers are too weak. It could be that towers give too much reward for the risk involved in taking them. META-wise we see the Rift Herald allows for some easy tower takes. The reward of taking a tower isn't necessarily balanced by the enemy getting a tower in return. If the reward for taking a tower is too high, it helps to create a free gold into snowball situation.

There are many ways to make towers easier to take down and not any ways to make towers harder to take down. It follows that the reward for taking a tower shouldn't be as high and/or the players should have more options available for tower defense.

For example, Dragon gives a buff for taking towers down, but there isn't any dragon for making towers harder to take down. There's a fundamental imbalance in the mechanics that favors a particular strategy. There's no option for players interested in defending towers, only options for players interested in attacking towers.

I could list all of the items, buffs, and summoner spells that favor tower taking, but I don't need to because all we have to do is look at the list of items, buffs, and summoner spells that favor defending towers... it's empty. There are no supplemental mechanisms available to players who want to defend their towers. But despite the inflation of tower-taking capabilities, towers haven't taken a serious hit to their gold value. And thus, I have to agree. RIOT needs to take a look at towers risk vs reward (monetary value) as well as tower defense options.

HollowMimic10/2/2017, 3:20:47 PM2 votes

I like the idea of getting less gold when one team takes down turrets consecutively.

This will stop the (any) aggression after making a tactical decision of giving up one turret in favor of something else.

Kloqdq10/2/2017, 12:54:15 PM2 votes

5.22 the worst change in league history. True story.

TEA Nietzsche 10/2/2017, 2:13:23 PM1 votes

{quoted}

and if the enemy team is well coordinated they just keep snowballing their advantage by gaining around 600 total gold as a team per tower, and that's HUGE for how easy they are to take if you're ahead.

Yeah, a team that is ahead AND well coordinated (in soloQ!) should in your opinion not be rewarded? If you allow people to rotate badly by giving them the ability to defend towers with ease overall gameplay quality will decline.

at the end of a game you can see how much of a difference they make in gold when you have the same cs and kills as the enemy laner yet he's like 1k-1.5k gold ahead of you

YES! YES! YES! That's how it should be! I hate this entitlement of players who don't understand the game "what?! the enemy team actually focused and efficiently forced objectives while we won only some random fights with no objective nearby - and they got rewarded for it?!".

If you can't play objectives then you can't play the game. If you can't play the game you don't deserve to win. It's as simple as that.

Dukues10/2/2017, 9:17:01 PM1 votes

Towers fall down so damn easy it's ridiculous. Their focus is shit and there damage is also shit. Was really fun yesterday being tower dove over & over by a Kled in mid. Ults in takes 3 turret shots doesn't matter because after I am dead and he turns around he just gets off his mount and losses tower aggro....... like yup..... classy out play man. Really happy instead of fixing this Riot just makes more champs this way. Fizz was annoying enough but you also have Elise now Kled and maybe others? I get its not all champs but even then.... towers tickle after someone has some health and like part of an armor item. Tanks after 1-2 items can tank many shots without fear.

sky blower10/2/2017, 9:51:55 PM1 votes

Hmm, I don't see why 5-man mid would make the turret extremely hard to defend. Unless their team is extremely fed and your team has absolute 0 wave-clear. Also a huge problem with 5 man mid is that it left side lane completely free of pressure. So unless they completely ignore the side lane, no one would be willing to group as 5 for long. Also, in solo que people always throws. Having an advantage early doesn't mean you won't throw it later. You are not competing with LCS teams who can hold onto their lead to the end. You are playing with 5 individuals who know nothing about each other.

LordGeovanni10/3/2017, 9:58:51 AM1 votes

Once people realise their life and score isnt equal to the tower. if you can fight at your tower and die but push the enemy off of your tower than is always a good trade. but people want to protect a kill score rather than objectives.