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Fortification - Lost in Season 6

i4got2pull0ut·7/3/2019, 6:43:07 PM·3 votes·2,432 views

Perhaps you have been playing long enough to remember, maybe you are a bit newer, or maybe you don't read patch notes. All the same, it doesn't change the fact that bot tower has no fortification buff in the earliest levels of the game. To understand what this means, we need to define what fortification is (this is for you newer players), and why the change was made in the first place.

Fortification is a buff that makes it so your attacks only deal 50% damage reduction from all sources, the reduction applies before armor; this effect expires on the top and mid tower at 5 minutes.

On patch 6.15 there was a couple of changes to fortification; the important ones are as follows:

-> Duration reduced to 5 minutes from 7. -> Damage reduction increased to 50% from 35%. -> Bot lane turrets no longer have FORTIFICATION

Let us take a moment to understand what on earth was going on in S6 to understand why Riot would have done this. For those not playing the game at the time, Season 6 was the first season that introduced Lethality, and the marksmen who abused it. At the time, it was win bot win game. Sounds like S7 and Ardent Sensor right? Well not quite; as an ADC main, I would call this the beginning of the decline of the golden age. The time when my team actually needed me to take towers. You see, at the time mages couldnt deal AP damage to towers, like they can now. The Vladimir with 600 AP can probably take the tower in a few autos now, chunking it each time, vs the marksmen who will look like they are struggling.

The purpose to taking Fortification off of the bot towers was an effort to get Junglers to spend more time pressuring the lane and getting them to rotate out faster to other lanes. Then in S7, this stayed true as you then saw the S7 Ardent meta the season after.

Once mages had tower pressure, not having resistance on the bot tower felt kind of pointless. Honestly, I was personally surprised to find that fortification wasn't removed when turret platting was added.

Not that I think its something so pressing it needs to be removed, but just as a reminder, its still there. :)

2 Comments

Critmaster Garen7/3/2019, 6:48:50 PM2 votes

i still think this is unfair to the solo lanes.

bot lane already has two champions to be able to pressure a turret when they get into the position. this means on average, the bot turret is likely to take more damage on uncontested pushes than in solo lanes.

but the additional removal of fortifications means the bot lane turret can get pushed down even earlier and faster.

this ensures that turret first blood gold, and turret plate gold is more likely to stack up on either bot lane.

which is part of the reason why it can feel like win or loss of bot lane singlehandedly decides games. bot lane just snowballs faster since the large amounts of turret gold are easier accessable. this takes a lot of agency away from the other two lanes, because doing equally well usually doesnt mean to snowball as hard.

i still think turret first blood gold was a gigantic mistake and lead to most of the snowballing issues in this game since it was introduced.

NY647/3/2019, 6:59:41 PM2 votes

I definitely dream of having it back so one side of bot lane can’t stomp as hard by taking as many plates, it’s still one of the reasons junglers love to camp bot early. Definitely not the main reason but one of the reasons.