I think I found the major disconnect as a wrote a response. I am copying it and my response up to the top here:
Forts and Keeps are not designed to make you win every fight under them.
They are designed to give you a safe area in which the enemy cannot kill you easily and/or safely
What way would you suggest that they think it would change things?
Also, what snowball effect?
Not liking it, yea, it FEELS worse. I think it actually is better generally speaking.
I completely agree.
I agree, the old system with Ammo was much more fun.
otherwise, i don’t understand what exactly you’re trying to communicate.
If you mean that heroes who cannot clear the wave effectively can now be damaged by the enemy hero at the fort, encouraging teams to swap around who is in what lane. Or ganking that lane.
Isn’t that promoting better play?
Either you and your team respond well, or you get punished more.
And having lane pushed harder, means your team should be responding more.
I think it is entirely true to say it can feel really bad, and in QM due to the nature of the hero selection, sometimes you’ll get teams where one has 0 waveclear, and the other has tons. But this is a QM problem is regards to many, many comp issues, the root of the problem is in QM, not the tower changes.
yes, that is almost any community that doesn’t have frequent changes.
Either there are constant changes, in which case community tends to accept them, knowing they can get changed back if it doesn’t work.
Or there are few changes, where any change will be rejected flat out.
this part is 100% true.
But what adaptation are people being slow with here?
The “adaptation” is to… kill the minion waves?
Were people not doing that?
Not everyone can do it after the changes.
In fact, far fewer heroes can do it to an enemy who is not at very low health.
It is between easier and the same to kill people who are at very low health now for most heroes, 100%.
What changed that doesn’t allow this?
If you defended vs Genji pushing your lane (somehow you have worse waveclear than him) with like 10% of your HP under the fort, sure. Genji will kill you.
But Genji could have done that under the old system also, about as easily, or more easily, if you are staying at such low HP.
If you have most of your health, Genji still isn’t gonna be able to burst you down… So what changed?
The cooldown period on forts and keeps is 4 seconds before it can reapply it.
vs auto-attackers it is just as effective, as long as you stay under the tower.
I’m not sure exactly when it applies the armor, so it might actually be weaker to the first hit being burst damage.
If you clear the minions, it is exactly the same.
Again, did you not want to clear the waves before?
Sure, I think making it so the armor applies a slow against enemy heroes who attack you would be reasonable, not change much, and mostly make people be fine with the changes.
50% more effective HP is not enough of a buff?
what heroes, what matchups, what problems.
IMO, the issue is that people used to be lax and let people who couldn’t waveclear fight against heroes with good waveclear in the off lane(s).
I think the fix here, is give it some time for people in QM to realize that they need someone who can clear waves should be fought by someone who can clear waves.
You should not have Nova lane against Sonya, as an example.
yes, the armor is not meant to make it easier for you to clear the wave.
It is meant to give you protection from enemies diving you under your fort/keep when they have minions around, which will now draw fort/keep fire.
All the defending player needs to do is hit the minions, and if the enemy hero runs in to damage you, run back to the fort, now they effectively take only 65% dps.
If there are no minions present and they dive you, the towers and fort will hit them AND you get -35% damage taken.
It is a LARGER UPSIDE without minions around.
Forts and Keeps are not designed to make you win every fight under them.
They are designed to give you a safe area.
Those two things are the same.
If you as the hero are the target of the enemy, raising your armor, or lowering their attack both make the time to kill for them lower.
If you’re 1v1 under the tower, that means that the tower is gonna be targeting the hero.
If you’re fighting under the tower and their minions are there, why did you not clear them where the waves meet, and on their way to the fort?
I don’t think that it giving more armor is bad. I don’t have an issue with it.
As someone who plays Abathur in something like 30-50% of my QM games, I have not seen an increase in people being able to kill me, or the other abathur that the enemy team often has in QM.
I think this is a non-issue.
Especially as Zera gameplay is often blink in/out/vorpal/blink out/etc.
Where he does not stay under the tower, so getting armor vs the prior tower always focuses zeratul makes the armor protect you better than the fort focusing zeratul before the patch.
Giving some sort of slow on AA hitting makes sense to me.
Or just add a secondary attack to forts and keeps which does like, 1 damage, only hits heroes, and attacks every couple of seconds.
I think the second one is nice, as it would make players feel like the enemy gets focused somewhat still,
Giving them an attack debuff seems dumb, as it just means that they cannot hurt anything under the towers as easily, and reducing damage on heroes is better achieved by giving the heroes higher armor.
done.
Sorry if you feel I have really been “no this change is bad”.
I was very much “idk if I like this” until on another thread I broke it down and wrote things out.
And realized that the changes are almost always more positive than the focus fire was.
here is what I wrote there on the benefit/downsides of this: