Change tower targeting to buff/debuff aura. Right now you can dance under fort and the defence comes automatically and can actually win like this. Makes the defence unrewarding and the attack frustrating because you are not against the human player anymore. Buff/debuff aura makes good players earn the defence and bad players still lose.
1 Like
Sometimes I am annoyed by current Towers/Forts system, but I got used to it.
So personally I am fine with current “Call for Help!” anomaly and won’t be against if it stays or will be unchanged.
1 Like
I think if the tower agro system works right, then its a boon to both defensive and offensive aspects of the game.
Without an agro effect, trying to defend a structure becomes a liability and it wouldn’t be uncommon in older replays to see teams outright abandon defending their structures once an objective was won. That’s a bit weird since the point of a fixed defensive structure would be to repel attacks, and should be a time to stand with them, not cower away looking for the next wall.
However, having a manipulatable agro means the offensive team can coordinate their attack to still allow for aggressive dives and also preserve the duration of their objective. So, they can strengthen their offensive with complementary tactics rather than just standing out when an Arthas, Gazlowe, or Sylvanas are on the team to literally freeze the structures.
Imo
-
The tower debuff should have a lower -armor cap but it will stack with hero-based -armor effects (such as Tyrande’s Hunter’s Mark) That way the stand-alone effect isn’t as powerful, but the complimentary power (hero and structure) can deter a dive due to the severe armor debuff similar to now.
-
Rebuild the third tower around forts, but lower the individual damage of each tower.
On the one hand, structures can be seen to be too powerful as is. With a third tower, that offers a way to reduce the individual power of a tower, but keep the collective power of the whole structure. This reduces how much threat deters a frontal assault, but offers a bit more backline cushion for the defenders.
- Go with the unit targeting priority (tower minions, fort/keep heroes)
If the tower & fort/keep have different agro priorities, then the hind tower offers a different position from what it can attack to get around some of that priority (ie, minions won’t be there in a hard dive to take the shots from the hind tower) so it becomes a complimentary cushion for the defenders strictly against a hard dive (when they want it) but is otherwise a small hurdle during a focused push since it’s otherwise out of range when the front towers are assaulted.
1 Like
Something like ‘only abilities and attacks targeting heroes draw turret aggro’ would be helpful. A lot of heroes are nearly unplayable now because they can’t use aoe near heroes
Yes to both “Change all structures to prioritize Map Objectives before anything else” and “Lower the damage that Structures do to Heroes”.
The core defenses could be a little stronger as well. It still feels weird like such an important object is still fairly defenseless, even with the recent changes.
1 Like
I am satisfied with the current situation. It is a good thing that the towers and the gate are more difficult to demolish. Please don’t weaken the towers. There are still many heroes that can destroy the towers without risk.
2 Likes
Who knows, unique minions that do different things will be the next anomaly ! Lets hope they do make laneing more interesting like this relatively soon!
I feel like everything should be a measure of risk vs reward. For example, right now there is no reason to push with early objectives (except some like zerg wave or frozen punisher) since the risk of towers turning on you and the enemy team just ignoring the objective and killing you is too high. If you consider the amount of risk it involves in pushing with early objectives or even early mercs vs the reward of getting the frontwall or even the whole fort, it is just not worth it. Most of the time people are just leaving the objective and pushing other lanes because they can get structures there without that much risk. The high risk is mainly because of the armor debuff.
There is another problem with the armor debuff now. Let’s say you are behind and you get a good fight and even team wipe the enemy team. If you don’t have a minion wave close to enemy structures, your tank can’t even hold the tower aggro for too long because of the armor reduction. After some time, he will start receiving 500-800 damage each tower shot, and this is just too much. The armor debuff kinda kills a good comeback mechanic we had before, unless you have something to soak the shots/disable the structures.
I feel like if we keep the system the way it is now, the armor reduction from structures should not go above 20%. -40% armor is just too high. Maybe even get rid of the armor debuff entirely and just increase the damage that the structures do to heroes (just heroes, not minions/obj/mercs). Armor debuff is just a very scary thing, since it increases the damage you get from anything, not just from the towers.
I really think just increasing the damage to heroes and removing the armor would make things way better.
Edited: Just as an example, some heroes are meant to dive towers, like Diablo and Anubarak. Some are meant to have armor so they are tankier, like Garrosh. One of the most powerful tools against these kind of tanks is armor reduction, and because of how structures now have it, these tanks became extremely squishy close to enemy structures.
Garrosh literally depends on his armor to survive, and the thing about armor is that the more you have, the more armor reduction affects your EHP. For example, 50 armor doubles your EHP. 75 armor doubles it again. So actually reducing -25 armor on someone that has 75 armor is much more effective than putting it one someone that has 50 armor.
Now Diablo and Anub, they are meant to dive towers, but when they do they just set them up to get killed. If the enemy team is smart, they can just CC the person that got the tower aggro and blow them up instantly.
Tyrande, for example, is very good in blow up comps because of her stun and her trait, and her trait is only -15 armor. But -15 armor is already enough for any team to blow up the target.
These are just some examples of how powerful armor reduction on structures are and why I think they are the major problem with this anomaly.
8 Likes
Damn, the worst timing for a bombshell like this to drop. I’ll get back to this thread tomorrow.
I agree with the idea of two diferent mechanincs for towers and keeps. Also, I agree with others about trade armor reduction for speed movement reduction.
Towers feel too strong right now but forts feel OK. I like the current strategy of tank diving in forts and damagin heroes so the fort atcks the tank, allowing the rest of the team to dive in the fort with no major risk.
Cores are great right now.
1 Like
First, I want to thank you for listening to player feedback and the courage to act on it.
Second, I want to point out that it took a lot of vision and guts to implement a major change like this.
This, I want to mention that being able to SEE what the structures are targeting in an of itself is a MAJOR game enhancement both for attackers and defenders. No matter what you do, leave that change in.
Let’s look at your two main objectives:
1- defending structures need to be smarter
2- desire for more interesting back-and-forth
I’d say you definitely succeeded on point 1 and completely failed on point 2. These changes completely ruined any opportunity for interesting fights at structures because the invaders just got decimated.
Now let’s look at your proposals.
1- structures prioritize map objectives always
This may allow attackers to push with their objectives again, but it does nothing to address the other balance problems, particularly in regards to creep. Mercs and minions are just less meaningful as anything other than XP fodder with this system. Additionally, heroes like Raynor (with splash damage) or Malfurian (who must attack enemy heroes to heal) are still terribly punished.
2- tower prioritization reverted, fort/keep/core unchanged
This is at best a partial fix. It still does nothing to address the problem of pushing when towers are already down or nearly down. Particularly in the early game on maps like Dragon Shire, Volskaya, and BoE the objective just isn’t strong enough to take a fort on its own, necessitating that heroes either push with it (and thus take deaths) or push a different lane (and this feels unintuitive and bad for the “victorious” team).
3- Lower structure damage done to heroes
This is probably your best option. This would still allow tanks to be the front-line bulwarks they’re supposed to be and more properly reward a team when they get an advantage and push with it. I think I like this one best, but it’s still problematic for heroes like Raynor and Malfurian.
Finally, I want to make note of something important. In this article, you stated that your first goal was to “make towers smarter”. However, when this anomaly was released, you stated the goal was to disincentivize tower diving because it felt really bad for the person getting dove. These are two different problems. This strikes me as a classic X/Y question. You want X, so you ask how to do Y instead.
In other words, we want to disincentivize tower diving, so how do we make towers attack enemy heroes in a more meaningful way? What you should have asked is “how do we discourage players from hard diving enemy structures?”
I would like to offer a suggestion for the latter question. Have forts and keeps grant a passive armor bonus in a radius around them. This would make it more difficult to kill enemy heroes when diving structures. No changes would be necessary to tower prioritization or damage. This wouldn’t change the game balance in a meaningful way during pushes either; it would simply encourage attackers to expend their abilities on structures rather than enemy heroes (which is what they should be doing with an objective push anyway). It also wouldn’t change the balance for creep pushing or punish heroes with splash damage. Finally, it would eliminate the dynamic of defending heroes “dipping a toe” in some small AoE damage in order to make structures prioritize a backline mage.
Thank you for your time and consideration of our opinions.
3 Likes
Even if this adds complexity to the Call for Help mechanic, I think this is the best solution. As another commenter mentioned, you defend your gate while your fort defends you.
Before CFH I never felt like towers were supposed to defend me because if they were alive (even with no gate) I could hide behind them and be safe from dives since the fort would protect you while the minions were frozen at the towers. Once the towers died though you weren’t safe under your fort and could be dived whenever the lane was pushed in. If CFH only applied to forts/keeps/cores it would fix the problem perfectly.
my quick fix would be to make the punisher and immortal take top priority if we WANT people to push with all objectives. I also liked the idea someone had of giving PLUS armor to defenders instead of aggressively reducing the armor of enemies.
Thanks for taking the time to ask the community!
My thoughts.
Yes.
Yes.
No.
maybe change to a flat percentage health damage? (10%? I dunno, you figure that out XD you’re the game wizards)
I feel like squishies get… squished, some tanks sit just about right, and others ignore them all together.
TL;DR: I like 2 and 3
2 - I miss some close battles at the gates. However, I don’t belive being killed while under the fort/keep and behind the gates is fun at all.
3 - would need a buff too: I really liked the idea of the tower working as a debuffer instead of a damage dealer because it allows counterplay for the hero being chased to the gates while increasing the risk of the offender. It would rely more in player’s abilities than game mechanics
Personally I’d love to see a mix of them - The Towers would still focus on heroes BUT have very lower damage and higher debuffers - increased armor penalty, bring back the slow… while the keeps and forts do heavy damage but doesn’t debuff that much.
1 Like
First off I have never used the forums really or reach out but here goes…
I would definitely stress not removing the anomaly, I think for a long while anomaly’s should add permanent improvements to maps and game play:
At first when the anomaly came out, I thought agro priority should be to focus the map obj. However, your point here:
backs up the opinion I have developed over the past few weeks and therefore I dont think the first option should be pursued because it would be unintuitive.
I think the second option:
is great and should 100% be the way forward. I would not worry about complexity as some is good and I really dont think there’s enough honestly and i’m certain people will notice and learn very quickly.
In addition to the second point being pursued, elements of the 3rd such as
reducing the armour reduction and maybe the dmg from towers ever so slightly so its easier for some heroes to get a push in offlane early game would also be good as well as permitting plays to be made because it is currently too difficult and I think the damage can be tuned to support future anomaly to find the sweet spot.
Finally, thanks AZ Jackson for reaching out on Twitter and making this post ! I think reaching out to the community in this way for future anomaly’s would be ideal.
Additionally, I would love to see you guys make poll’s to see what the community really wants such as a poll for anomaly requests or skin theme requests etc. Have a great weekend everyone !
I personally like the changes you’ve made to the structures but I do see why people might not enjoy some aspects of it. Here’s what I think could make new structure changes a bit more enjoyable:
-
Remove armor reduction debuff from structures and buff damage
The armor debuff that towers apply at the moment can be very punishing and makes strategic tower dives 99 times more risky than rewarding and therefore most likely deters any tower diving, which in my oppinion makes the gameplay experience less thrilling and exciting. -
Reduce tower hero damage and make them prioritise objective
While I still believe that forts, keeps, and cores should prioritise heroes and retain their strength (if not buff strength) I personally think that towers are a bit too punishing to heroes concidering, as you said, that AoE abilities often times trigger their hero-targeting which not only makes it harder to push in a winning fight but also makes it less appealing to push with objective. While I agree that it may add additional complexity to the game I think it overall will enhance the gameplay experience while still maintaining some of the challenge of diving and pushing lanes. The damage change may not be necessairy if the armor debuff proves to be a sufficient damage reduction in itself. -
Cores should remain as they are now
Core fights are rad AF now.
Thank you in advance if you read this super long post and thank you for keeping the game awesome 
Out of the 3 options, 2 or 3 seems to be the best two options. Number 1 buffs objectives again, and early game objective’s potency nerf was one of my favorite effects of the anomaly.
2 and 3 I am perfectly Ok with, I’m personally fine with towers staying as is, but I imagine changes are basically guaranteed.
2 sacrifices intuitivity for a nice effect, which I think is ok, but there will be initial confusion.
3 is probably my favorite, it buffs tower divers a bit, while still punishing them from extended solo dives, and keeps objectives at its current power.
Final vote is 3 for me.
Hard to get exact feelings about these, but to keep it simple:
- Make Armor Debuff go in -3/-4/-5/-6/-7% increments, up to a cap of -25% Armor (or something similar, but keep the -25% cap please). First 2 shots should be a warning, after that, it’s a commitment from the player
- Make Towers stupid, keep Forts smart, like your 2) point.
- I have no opinion on objectives. I think they all need some kind of rework, including Area buffs to Heroes? Perhaps one of them could be to prevent the Armor reduction, so Heroes are encouraged to push more?
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.
2 Likes