Obviously the changes surrounding base defense lately are pretty controversial.
Forts, Keeps, and the Core will no longer grant Allied Heroes that take damage in their radius 35 Armor for 4 seconds.
I was opposed to the initial PTR number (50), but the 35 number has felt reasonable the more I’ve played. If we’re getting rid of it entirely, the other changes need to really make up for it.
A new Fallback Tower has been added. Fallback Towers have the same HP and Attack Damage as Keep Towers.
The placement of this tower is far enough that it is very unlikely to hit the minion wave, and it will punish enemies pretty well for getting hit. Great! Only problem is it’s also so far back that it’s unlikely to attack enemy heroes unless they have moved well past your fort. It doesn’t seem like it will help you defend large or medium pushes any more than the armor did to be honest; if not worse. You need to get close to the enemy wave to clear it, but enemies can still prevent you from reaching the wave. The tower will do nothing for small pushes too, where at least the armor lets you manage those well enough. I think this is likely an insufficient replacement for the current armor mechanic.
Attacks from the Core, Keeps, Forts, Fallback Towers, and Towers near Keeps will now reduce Hero armor, and the reduction has been increased from -10/-20 Armor to -20/-40 Armor.
Good change, and we probably needed this effect amplified once Call For Help was removed.
Call For Help
Automatic structure aggro is inconsistent for attackers and unfair for heroes with certain kit shapes, but removing it removes much of the threat enemies must face when playing under your structures, so long as they bring enough wave to clog things up.
Suggested Changes
Armor Shred: Attacks from Forts, Keeps, and Cores against Heroes reduce their Armor by -10 for 2 seconds, stacking up to -30 and refreshing on hit. This affects the primary target only, in the case of the Core’s splash attack.
Comment: Taking sustained punishment from the fort is harder, but a few shots will be faster to shrug off.
Core Protection: Cores grant the first Allied Hero that takes damage in its radius 35 Armor for 4 seconds, 4 second cooldown.
Comment: I found the Armor bonus to make Core offense/defense more exciting and more do-able for teams defending down numbers, so I’m keeping it. Heroes will not draw Core aggro, and instead it will use its splash attack efficiently to clear the enemy wave.
Hero Buster: Damaging an enemy within the range of your Fort or Keep will cause it to fire its next shot at them, then return to usual operation.
Comment: Here’s my new idea. Defenders still can have their fort attack heroes when they push a wave, but they have to keep dealing damage to the same person and only the same person to get the optimal effect. There is no longer the issue where certain heroes struggle to siege based on their attack shape. Attackers, tanks especially, can retreat from enemy fire and stop taking fort shots whenever they choose. Dives will be more difficult than currently, but if you stunlock a sole defender, they can’t trigger the fort aggro.
I’m hoping these changes, especially Hero Buster will satisfy what myself and others in the community are looking for out of their structure’s defensive capabilities, without being excessive punishment for the team on the offensive.
Great questions. Here’s how I think the details should work:
Generals have a melee attack and a spin attack. The spin attack will not apply armor reduction since it is analogous to other core types’ “Core Ability”, like Infernal Shrines’ frost circles.
Some implementation details. There is a hidden Hero Buster debuff belonging to a fort that can only be applied to one hero at a time. When a fort’s basic attack is at half of its cooldown remaining (0.5 seconds usually), it will aggro (beam and sound) the hero with the debuff, if there is one. Behind the scenes, the debuff can be moved still, but the fort will not change targets once it beamed a hero. If the target has not left the area by the time the fort’s basic attack is ready, it will fire one attack at them, remove the debuff, and then retarget to its usual target. The attack doesn’t need to land to have the debuff removed. If they leave the range, it will remove the debuff, and then retarget to its usual target.
AoE damage types can only apply the Hero Buster debuff to a single target. So basic attack splashes/bounces will choose the primary target, and AoE spells will use the “first” target like the armor bonus does right now.
DoTs should not apply the debuff except for its first hit.
Heroes with the potential to deal damage more than once a second (read: definitely auto attackers, but also most heroes if you cycle through abilities and weave autos) are capable of causing sustained fort fire on one target, as long as they keep attacking, and as long as an ally doesn’t move the debuff to another target.
I think iteration on the design is good, Call For Help wasn’t perfect. It made certain characters that should be good at sieging constantly take fort fire. Bounce autos and summons for example should be good for siege, but actually hurt your ability to attack the structure since you’d keep taking shots for doing damage to heroes.
Call For Help WAS perfect compared to what we have now. It did not need changes.
It made certain characters that should be good at sieging constantly take fort fire.
And now every character that has access to any kind of Summons renders Structures useless
actually hurt your ability to attack the structure since you’d keep taking shots for doing damage to heroes.
This was extremely easy to avoid and was basically never an issue. What we have now is something that does not fit the current fundamentals of the game and requires turning everything upside down, and for what? That is right, to make changes that NOBODY ASKED FOR work.
The tower would be good if it added a slow effect on heroes. Considering that the far back would protect retreats against divers, but if not place it back to its original location before its removal years ago.
If you walk behind your fort, an enemy that attacks you will be hit by the tower. I think this is solely for the benefit of the player and not intended to kill minion waves faster. And if you’re a squishy ranged dps, you can still hit the wave while being in range of that tower. Since it reduces armor by 40, you have to think twice before following someone under their fort, as both the fort, this tower, and the hero can hit you at the same time.
I don’t know that I want the core to apply a -40 armor debuff. Core attacks splash, and players are afraid enough of ending games as it is.
While this feels balanced, the inconsistency is too big to implement I think. Players will expect it to fire every shot at the hero after the first. And against AA heroes, it will be every shot. A lot of players won’t understand what’s going on I think.
Never said it was for killing minions. My point is that it doesn’t offer that much protection to step up to the wave with how far back many are placed, it’s just somewhere to fall back to. The enemy can stand between you and their wave without being shot by it. It will only protect you if they dive well past your fort. Their exact positions seem to be a little inconsistent to be fair, some are close enough to be useful.
This Armor reduction change is on PTR, and is not applied by the splash. Only primary target.
It’s pretty simple as far as game mechanics go, and should be pretty obvious that when you stop dealing damage, your fort stops helping you. Not any more confusing or complicated than the current bonus armor, and actually probably less so. The fort armor you have to step into the visual circle, but then you can move within a certain, unindicated range, and can still have new armor buffs applied.
If you’re concerned about AA vs caster balance, it should be strong for both parties. AA is obvious, just keep hitting. If you want to play it “optimally” as a mage with longer cooldowns, you just need to hit someone, and then once you see the fort draw its beam on them, you use your second spell. You will get two shots that way, and you can back up for a moment if you need to. Once the second fort shot has landed, cast your third spell to take advantage of the armor reduction, and then maybe your ult once the beam targets them again.
Yes, since the purpose is to assist you, then it makes sense that nothing will happen if the enemy just hits your fort without engaging you. They don’t have to move well past the fort to get hit by it, as soon as they’re anywhere on the opposite side of the gate it will hit them
Here, if you are on the left of your fort, they will be hit if they follow you. It would be an exagerration to say past the fort. It’s not meant to protect the fort and gate, so we can’t say that it’s not doing its job. And if people decide to stand in front of their fort, they can’t complain either. Though on a map per map basis, I’m guessing they will adjust.
I can’t say I like the idea of being punished for approaching the core either way.
For the armor, the player doesn’t have to do anything. If you’re in range you get it. I think it’s counter intuitive, and would give bad habits to require the player to deal damage as they are trying to run away. I see enough players die by trying to deal damage when they would have survived had they just kept running. I’d rather not encourage that behavior.
This is false. I would draw on the photo but I can’t post them. Imagine a line from the southernmost torch on the fort going straight downward. Anything to the right of that line is unreachable by the bonus tower.
Once your gate is broken, the enemy minion wave will stand in front of your fort. Enemies can safely stand past their minions and next to your fort, rather than attacking from behind their minions. Enemies will play this line just outside of your bonus tower’s range, and can now deal full damage to the defenders again.
With Call For Help, the position directly next to the fort was yours to hold as the defender, not the attacker’s position to take for free. Once enemies control that space and you are pushed back to behind your fort, you have usually lost the defense because you cannot clear their wave.
It seems unlikely that this bonus tower will make defending your fort from a significant enemy wave any more viable than it is now, which is what most complaints I see are about. Hence the suggestion to invert the responsibility of Call For Help from attackers avoiding triggering it, to defenders intentionally triggering it.
The point I was trying to make is that learning to use the Hero Buster mechanic is simple, just throw autos (almost everyone can auto fast enough to keep it active). As a bonus, there is interesting depth to optimizing the mechanic for high level mage players.
By opposing side of the gate, I mean being west of the fort if the gate is east, of being east of the fort if the gate is west. Maybe I wasn’t clear. Basically, the minute you’re by the center of the fort, you’ll be in range.
As I said, the point of that tower is to assist you, not defend the fort, so this is fine since the enemy is not attacking you.
It’s not meant to help you defend the fort, just to help you retreat.
Kinda wish we had dev notes for this change. I can only assume they are trying to fix the issue where heroes who cant help but aggro tower like tass with bouncy AAs.
Which i agree should be addressed.
But gimping the forts like this comes with to many negative side effects.
Personally, Id be ok with making several of these bouncing attacks exempt from the previous fort rules so we could return to forts defending us again.
Also, and this might be an unpopular opinion, but I like the 3rd back tower. Don’t think it solves the for diving problem even remotely but I don’t think there’s gonna be much harm in one extra tower in the back.
Tower changes feel generally bad and disruptive to the flow of the game. Heroes diving towers with impunity before level 4 talents snowballs the game and destroys importance of ramp and macro. Tower changes turn every game into ARAM where the level 1 skirmish lasts 5 minutes and you can’t retreat or spread because your laner will get 4v1’d under tower and die… ending up with a huge exp imbalance which only gets worse.
If all this was to fix indirect damage or bounce attacks from drawing aggro, there has to be a better way.
Players are doing that since almost the begining of the game, it’s mainly XP globes that have encouraged that bad behaviour but even before, people were happy to brawl forever.
