How does the towers/core know who to target first? Every single game every scenario it targets me first. I tried with 4 of my teammates in front of me, it targets me. Minions in front, it targets me. Both teammates and minions in front of me, targets me still. Did HOTS handicap me?
As far as I know, structures target the foremost closest target first, then the first attacking hero to deal damage to a defending hero.
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So it will target the best player of the team first regardless of positioning as long as all are in range? It is frustrating that it targets me first every single time, knowing that there are other heroes in front of me. I die many times bc of this.
No, no thatâs not it at all. 
I shouldnât be snide, perhaps my use of âforemostâ was not clear. I edited my original response.
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Hitting first =/= being the best.
Often just focusing the Forts/Keeps first is more useful.
Also you can break that aim by exitting the Structuresâ range.
What kind of Heroes do you play usually?
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I dunno, tanks who take tower aggo during dives are frequently the mvp in my eyes 
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I mean between my 2 accounts I have over 15,000 games played. lol I saved the file that is so obnoxiously clear it targets me first everytime.
Then it is because you are either the closest target, or you are the first to deal damage to a defending hero.
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Iâm literally the farthest from the tower. Last game played Tass and team were mostly melee, so it had to target them first right? But it doesnât! Weird.
Can you upload a game and tell when you think the towers did have a âstrangeâ behaviour?
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Not necessarily. If your Psi-storm or something hit a defender first, and you were in range of the tower, then it would target you.
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AA build perhaps? Itâs really eaay to get targeted with that.
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The best player of the team makes the best use of the game rules.
Towers try to defend players, and players defend towers. Unlike in DotA2, where they are absurd weak and frankly useless, mere time gating to hold the minions.
Some heroes struggle a lot under towers, particularly Tassadar and Li Li.
Tassadar supposedly struggles because of the splitting D. I mostly QW towers and thatâs it.
Others are effectively tower immune, Illidan in particular, but many tanks and even bruisers can eat 10-20-30 shots in the face.
Since nobody has given a detailed explanation yet, I guess I will (OP should already know most of this, given their stated experience, but it might still be useful to someone else who finds this thread).
Basically, forts, keeps, and the core have three targeting âmodesâ or level of priority:
- if an enemy hero is inside its attack range, and there are no other targets available, it will lock onto the hero.
- if there are minions, mercenaries, summons, or some other option, it will lock into one of those instead
- if an enemy hero attacks an allied hero while inside the structures attack range, it will lock onto the attacking hero, even if it was already locked onto something else (that wasnât also a âlevel 3 targetâ).
Within the same priority level, the structures pick the closest target to lock on to. (although there seems to be some other criterion Iâm not sure of, 'cause sometimes I let minions go in first when playing with abbyâs monstro, and still get targeted first)
Once locked on, it will continue attacking the same target until one of three things happens:
- a target of higher priority becomes available
- the target is destroyed
- the target leaves the structureâs range, goes into stasis, or is otherwise no longer valid
point 3 here is the easiest (and most common?) way to stop an enemy structure from shooting you: just walk out. Once the structure picks another target, you can safely walk right back in if needed.
Also, some heroes can use stasis instead of walking: Dehakaâs burrow, Chromieâs time trap, Murkyâs bubble, etc.
Other heroes can also make use of point 1. For example, itâs not uncommon for Nazeebo to summon zombies to distract the structures after a minion wave is destroyed, so it wonât target him while the next wave arrives (at least in vs AI, where the enemy can be counted on to not interfere )
The same can be done with other summons. Iâve even seen Abathur use Ultimatte Evolution to purposefully attack a hero so the structure lock on to the clone, which gives free reign to his team to pile on and kill the enemy hero with impunity, even under the fort/keep (since the structure sees the clone as a heroic target, and wonât switch).
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That only work on towers tho. On bosses it switches target after some time even when all 5 are within range after it does the stun attack.
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When i tower dive with abathur (not as clone) i never get targeted, must be a bug.
Playing tassadar auto attack build is hell with it auto targeting heroes for the chain. If the fort isnât already targeting someone, it WILL target tassadar if ANY enemy heroes get in range of the chain.
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This targetting mechanic is well over a year old development I have zero idea how you can have this much games played and not have the pattern recongition to spot what is going on
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Yeah, never liked the tower changes. Punishes aggressive players, and forces you to let the tank take the lead.