The current system also creates one more interaction that I find unintuitive:
During an objective push, the defenders are incentivized to run INTO some AoE abilities so the hero(es) on offense are targeted by structures, instead of avoiding AoE abilities which intuitively makes way more sense.
I think this can actually lead to some interesting back and forth on targeting abilities and intentionally taking damage at higher levels of play, but it’s definitely weird sometimes.
I’ve personally been hoping that map objective monsters would receive automatic tower aggro since the change. And, in my opinion, it’s not THAT unintuitive. If anything, it’s more consistent: Towers already auto-target the DK and Triglav over other targets, even over heroes hitting other heroes under towers (I believe). Having the towers auto-focus map objective monsters would make that consistent across the board.
(I understand the differences between heroic vehicles and map-objective monsters, but making the two more similar in that regard I think is good for ease of understanding on tower aggro).
Additionally, things that can shut down towers have become significantly more powerful since the patch. The Frozen Punisher is by far and away the more preferred for exactly that reason and the others feel really meh by comparison.
Garden Terrors are some of the best objectives for pushing because they shut towers down, but at least they do it in an interesting way with counterplay with the pot hp.
And Sylv is incredibly strong at the moment.
A final series of thoughts: Another potential change that could be made is not to the towers or forts themselves, but to the map objectives.
Currently, Tomb of the Spider Queen feels like a terrible map to play on because you can’t really push with the objective for fear of towers, but the objective itself, without support, is VERY weak. I’ve seen games recently with 2 turn-ins per team with 0 forts being destroyed.
Alterac is a bit better, if only because it’s so large that it’s harder for the defending team to respond.
But for the most part, all of the PvE objective monsters are significantly weaker because of how difficult it is for the team to push in with them, for fear of the towers. Perhaps instead of changing the towers, if you decide that you like their current functionality, you could instead increase the strength of map objectives, especially in the early game where the ratio of strength between heroes and towers heavily favors the towers.
But probably also adjust the scaling, so an increase in early-game strength to a map objective doesn’t just auto-win in the late game. Like, already if you get to a 4th Triglav, that thing literally just walks into the core and wins the game. Don’t need to make THAT any stronger.