Divers and the Tower changes

General Discussion
1

So I keep seeing this misconception being passed around when people are arguing over the Tower changes, and I think it’s time it got cleared up.

Tower diving is not hindered by the Tower changes. At all. Some of the usual suspects when it comes to Tower diving are actually stronger now.
“Tower diving” is when you dive beyond where your minions are, either up to a Gate and its Towers with no minions, behind a Gate and into a Fort’s range, or well behind a Fort when your minions are still in front of it.
Why the emphasis on the presence of minions? Simple, if you’re staying near your minions, that’s just normal pushing.

Typical heroes capable of Tower diving include Illidan, Genji, Tracer, Samuro, Zeratul and the like. There are other heroes who can do it, such as CS Varian, Butcher, Kerrigan, Greymane, and Artanis, but it is significantly riskier as their kits do not provide as much escape and/or burst.

There were 2 main things that make Tower diving tricky, and each of these affected a different group of heroes.

  1. Due to the fact that you were diving past your minions, Towers and Forts would immediately aggro to you.
  2. Forts and Keeps had a very punishing 40% attack and movement speed slow.

Factor #1 was not that big a deal for most heroes who could dive. They were beefy, mobile, or bursty enough to deal with Tower aggro already. As a result, the fact that Towers can now ignore the minions that used to distract them does not really impact divers. Illidan didn’t care about this before, why should he start caring now?
On the other hand, heroes who weren’t capable of diving Towers were hamstrung by this. Now that Towers aggro to heroes so easily, a simple standard minion wave push can now end the same way as a dive would, with Tower aggro focused squarely on you, despite the fact that you have a minion wave shoved up. This made Tower diving prohibitively hard for many heroes, especially Mages and Rangers. This meant that pushing heroes, not diving ones, were the ones most affected by this factor.

Factor #2, the Forts and Keeps’ slow, is what actually kept divers in check. If a diver went under a Fort and got hit by it, they’d better have a movement ability to get you back out ASAP, because they almost certainly weren’t just walking out. Additionally, the attack speed slow completely crippled heroes like Illidan, who relies on his attacks for his self-sustain and mobility ability CDR. Attacking 40% slower means he is more fragile and easier to catch. Similarly so with TBF Varian, who was completely shut down by Forts’ 40% slows, as he not only lost almost all of TBF’s attack speed bonus, but also struggled to actually keep up with enemies. If you wanted to Tower dive as Varian (without feeding), you needed to pick Colossus Smash.
Now that this check is completely gone, there is basically nothing about the Fort itself holding divers back now. Forts are basically glorified Towers now, and divers are already well equipped to handle those.
Meanwhile, normal pushers are still not equipped to handle yet another Tower that treats them like they are diving whenever they tap an enemy hero, so they are, once again, the ones getting the brunt of this change.

As we can see, divers actually come out ahead from this change, while normal pushers are the ones actually hurt by this. Even the more obscure divers, such as Varian, Butcher, and Greymane, are now able to dive behind Towers more safely than before and walk away fine.

To everyone saying, “Tower diving is dead,” you are wrong. It’s doing just fine.
To everyone saying, “Tower diving is still around, so clearly Towers are too weak,” you’re barking up the wrong tree if you want Tower diving gone.

3 Likes
2

How does towers reducing armor and shooting you harder while giving the defender a nice debuff to delete you in a rotation make tower diving worse than before when they were not attacking you at all as long as pve minions were in range and when you could use summons to buy you time?

It does change period.

1 Like
3

These heroes already have some combination of enough sustain to eat a couple shots, the burst damage to only need to take one or two shots (if any), the mobility to quickly get back out if things get hairy, or a trick that renders Tower shots and/or their armor reduction useless (Illidan’s Evasion, Samuro’s Image Transmission, Varian’s Parry, etc.).

Just about any hero who was considered decently capable of diving under Towers had at least two of those.
Zeratul has burst and mobility.
CS Varian has burst and Parry.
A stacked Butcher has burst and sustain.
Illidan has sustain, mobility, and Evasion.
Samuro has burst, mobility, and Image Transmission.

4

They are just less affected at best.
Does not mean they dive better.

Saying diving is easier is outright false.
Even illidan who would enjoy losing the slow would have to be very careful has armor reduction make you die in a sneeze.

Meanwhile i pick any range hero and walk back and forth and i ignore the mechanic.

1 Like
5

They are less hurt by the new aggro function, but not entirely unaffected, as I said in my OP.

However, what they lose from the new Tower aggro function they more than regain from the loss of Forts and Keeps’ slows.

That is my point. They are hardly hurt from one part of the change but actually benefit from another.
Unlike non-diving heroes who are significantly hurt by both of the changes.

Illidan can literally press E and lose the armor reduction. The armor only lasts 3 seconds, and that is the same length of time as Illidan’s Evasion. And since he no longer has to worry about his CDR being hamstrung by the Fort’s slow, he can have it up for 3 seconds every 8 seconds or so, which is more than 33% uptime. That is a ton of leeway.

6

In real conditions illidan presses E to avoid tower shots else he dies before reaching the guy he wants to dive and now he has no evasion to try to avoid the defender’s attack.
Results he has his pants down with no defensives with towers on his face.

The big play for the defender? Stay in place with my hands in my pants or walk back if i am not lazy.
I also do this against varian i just walk back till he burns his parries and now he is as free as a bronze 7.

Towers target melees, ranged heroes most affected omegalul.

Well i have to say they are because now that the diver will survive 2 extra seconds they may need to do one more input when defending.

7

In real conditions a good Illidan would save it for when he’s reached max armor reduction to hard-reset it and negate as much Tower damage as possible.

And do you really think Illidan was better at Tower diving before these changes, when Fort’s would make him a fish-out-of-water with just a single attack, than he is now?

If he dove too deep and still failed to secure the kill, then yeah.

But that’s how it was before the Tower changes. So what’s the issue?

That was what they were supposed to do before anyway, at least if they didn’t think they could turn and kill the diver. Funnily enough, it’s actually easier to chase someone under their Fort because the Fort no longer slows you, which is exactly my point.

Divers ability to dive under towers is hardly affected, while their ability to dive under Forts has improved due to those Forts no longer debilitating them.

I never mentioned ranged or melee heroes in this thread.

8

Good thread, but idk if I agree with everything. I think some heroes got buffed and some got nerfed when it comes to diving.

I’ll speak about Genji cause main hero. It definitely feels way harder to dive towers than before. This was a big nerf to him. Just a couple shots and I’m already on half hp or even less and I need to get out, and that is only considering the fort shots, not even the gate towers. With old towers, I could definitely get hit way more.

Well, new towers are also another big nerf when diving with waves. With Genji you usually pushed pretty hard with waves/mercs/objectives, and you usually wanted to play REALLY aggressive. Now that everything just aggro on you, you need to play very passive just hitting structures. Definitely a pretty big nerf.

One last thing, it is REALLY rare for Genji to dive towers alone without anything holding aggro. People speak like Genji lives inside their structures. Whenever I read this I want to take those people and throw them out of the window. Like, that is literally just a hate on the character.

So yeah, if Genji is diving usually with stuff holding aggro, he got very very nerfed with new towers.

9

In my opinion, the least affected were Samuro, Genji and Illidan.

10

An awake defender kills you with the 40 armor debuff and the damage the towers already did to you.

Of course diving people was easier before since i just had to wait for minions to get the aggro from the tower and then i can have my undivided attention on the people i attack.
And before if i went behind the tower walls they did not blast me as my minions were crushing on it. Now all three structure blast me.
And since they get fixed on you even if you get the kill you often got killed after finishing someone.

With the nerfed towers you can afford to take shots and go to someone.
With the 40 armor ones you had to kill them in the first or second attack.
It was maybe possible to do more with a healer but all games do not have a healer and healers can die in a team fight.

It was very annoying if your team was behind and you knew pushing was limited.

The new towers are a good compromise they help you and you have some leeway diving but you can’t send minion crashing on it and ignore them unless you push it as 5 with a camp and a wave.

11

Genji and medivh benefit from the towers because they have an absorb damage and damage reflect mechanic.