Edit on 3/28/2012: For those who are interested and want to bring Fortify into the mix of the discussion, here's my two cents that I posted several months ago. Despite the support that this thread received, Riot insisted on paying me no heed. Regardless, here's what I had to say about Fortify and how it interacts with turrets and extending game length: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/....php?t=1460247

In the past few weeks, I've come to notice that turrets are an increasingly diminishing force in games. I'm not entirely sure if Riot has been initiating ninja nerfs with hotfixes and various patches, but I'm finding it to be rather ridiculous just how useless turrets are becoming.

Several examples of this include:

• Champions (Not tanky ones either) able to tower dive under level 6, without the repercussion of death. The ability to do this is often times augmented by the many shields, healing, and summoner spells that have been incorporated into the game. e.g. Pantheon who may choose to utilize both his passive shield as well as a summoner heal.

• • On a side note, I've also noticed an increasing number of entire teams that are not able to simply tower dive once, but multi-tower dive, leading to an entire team of five people essentially storming past outer turrets, inner turrets, acquiring kills, and then getting away with it.

• Durability of turrets have been reduced to an all time low; Having timed an assault before, I've discovered that a single character has the potential to knock down a turret after merely 20 seconds of a champion being absent.

• • Part of the issue with this is the "invisible aura" (for lack of a better term) that minions have, which allow them to decrease a turret's resistances by an ASTRONOMICAL level when they're present. Turrets may initially start out with 200~ some armor and magic resistance, but are instantly cut down to the 50s and 60s once minions arrive. This means that turrets will start out with about 67% physical damage reduction, but are instantly downgraded to 36% once you have minions on your side.

• • Not only are turrets easily demolished by a single champion with a few dozen seconds to spare, but Cannon minions also cause minion build-up to be a terrible threat at all stages of the game. Turrets innately start out with around 158 damage, but this is cut in half when facing siege minions due to their passive shield. This allows for giant masses of minions to take out a significant portion of turret health (While the turret is at the above mentioned reduced armor value, mind you) while only one minion takes blow after blow.

• Poor Intelligence: Turrets seem to have the inability to discern between changes in threat or the utilization of a clone. Towers are quite easily fooled (in the instance of say, Shaco or Wukong) as to which unit is "fake" and which one is real.

• • A similar issue occurs for champions with ranged or kiting abilities, that may not immediately attack you, but are able to get behind your turret, cut off your minion waves, or harass you outside of turret range. The turret may initially target somebody due to the damage that you take, but turrets are innately blind to when somebody is clearly showing the intent to act upon you and kill you. Instead of taking the preemptive strike on what is clearly going to occur, the turret will take that 0.5 second pause to lock on to a champion.

At this point, the plethora of blinks and dashes available in the game will leave many champions getting away scot-free, without so much as a single (low damaging) shot fired from the turret.

Now, I'm quite aware of all the "Pro" weak tower arguments that have been thrown around for many years on the forums. Many have said "You are there to defend the towers, not the other way around." However, I've come to find that this argument is simply becoming absurd. Standing by to assist an A.I. ally that doesn't even have the power to help itself is almost nonsensical.



With each passing game I play, I wind up asking myself why I'd stick my own neck out for such a squishy structure. Much like playing with a friend who is new to the game; I initially feel bad for leaving them out to die, but I simply cannot justify vain martyrdom. I'm well aware that it gives gold to the opposing side, but why should I augment their gold gain?


(Now, hypothetically speaking)

Do you remember that game you just played where you had that 0-17 Shen on your team, and you're in full throttle carry mode? You tell Shen to do what he can, go in, and help you out in fighting off two people, but Shen ultimately has no durability, damage, or intelligent play? That Shen is to you what turrets are to me.


These weakened turrets contribute to a few styles of "unfun" gameplay, including but not limited to:

• Bot (As in computer, not the bottom) Lanes
  • Due to the fact that turrets are more flimsy than a Kleenex tissue in the midst of a raging hurricane, many people are taking advantage of that fact, following the Yeti Bot motto of "Push push push push push push push push push". No matter how many times you may deflect or defeat a champion in the solo top lane, they will just keep. coming. after. your. turret. without. rest. I used to have faith in the fact that I could leave my lane for a few minutes to go help my allies since they were struggling and I was annihilating my own lane.

Well, it looks like I was wrong. Since my opponent up top was a persistent bugger, they were rewarded for their persistence, instead of facing punishment for losing to me. Now, I have nothing to show for my strategy and top lane tactics, because my bottom lane is still struggling, and I have now technically "lost" my lane turret in the span of 25 seconds absence.

• Dominion-Style Aggression
  • Aggression in Dominion works well because deaths and kills do not necessarily mean as much as they do in Summoner's Rift. Since Riot's agenda involves making every character that is tactical by nature suddenly non-tactical (whether it's because they lack aggression elements or otherwise), this makes everybody want to be engaged at all times, without pause.

In all instances of continuous conflict without sustainability, champions may be wounded enough to send them retreating back to the solace of their turret. Unfortunately, turrets do not provide ample cover for recalling players, as opponents massively tower dive to pick up a kill. Unless a champion has both grandmaster kiting abilities as well as 2+ forms of CC or self-protection, there is seldom hope for the turret being able to fire enough shots to kill the assailant, and even that will not guarantee a player surviving the dive.

Proposed Solutions:


Here are some potential solutions that I've come up with that merit at the very least, some discussion.

• Buffing turret durability by means of discarding the invisible aura that minions inflict on turrets.
  • Reasoning: Having a drop from 67% physical damage mitigation to 36%? On what grounds, Riot? How can you justify THAT steep of a drop? If anything, have this aura applicable to when both minions and MULTIPLE champions are present, so as to not encourage minion build up or backdooring.
• Buffing turret durability by means bonus health, health regeneration, or summoner spells.
  • Reasoning: If you do insist on keeping the stupid game aspect of having turrets get a 31% drop in mitigation value, at least consider increasing the amount of health that somebody has to chew through in order to down a turret. If somebody can eat through 2,550 hitpoints in the span of 20 seconds, why not add 10-25 seconds to that with an appropriate level of health? If not, perhaps some passive regeneration to help increase turret longevity, so that they may withstand multiple barrages.
  • The second aspect of this reasoning involves summoner spells. Why not reinvent fortify so that it may only affect one turret at a time, and has a non-global range to it? You know, give it the TF / Pantheon / Nocturne treatment. If a hero isn't in the immediate vicinity and is already on their way to help out a turret, why not give them a little period of grace?
    • Another spell that may be up for consideration could be "Repair", whereby a player may give a turret a massively increased amount of regeneration for a lengthy period of time, much like a Mundo ultimate. This would ensure that a turret is not saved instantaneously, but is more or less "patched up" from part of an assault.
• Buffing turrets by means of multi-shot.
  • Since minion build up is a bit of an issue when they come by the dozens, perhaps giving turrets more specialized shooting would be of help. My suggestion here would be to give turrets a split-fire shooting process that allows turrets to target up to 3 minions at once, and a 4th beam that would simply become active once champions are posing a threat. The split shot would of course come with reduced damage, so that turrets do not devour minions by the hundreds. Still, it would allow turrets to dispatch minions at a significantly faster rate than they do now when faced with the cannon or siege minion dilemma.
• Buffing turrets by means of discarding the targeting system
  • This is a simple suggestion, but would make a world of difference in ensuring fast response time. Much like a Nasus Q or any other auto-attack resetting ability, I feel like turrets should INSTANTLY lock on to a threat and fire a shot off IMMEDIATELY, rather than take that precious 0.5 - 0.75 seconds out of the day to go "Oh well... I guess I can start attacking you now." This targeting systems constantly makes me point at my screen and say "Yes turret, he's a threat. Now God **** shoot something already."
• Buffing turrets by means of scaling shots.
  • Earlier on today, I had the wonderful experience of having a Katarina (Not even a heavily tank-build oriented one. Just standard mage build) plop down right next to our outer middle turret, and went "You know what, I fancy this spot. I think I'm going to start using my ultimate." She proceeded to do so, getting off a full charge and killing one of our teammates, and was then able to saunter off and shunpo to one of her allies, escaping with a bar of health.

As she was spinning, I was counting off the shots; 1... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... and so on. As a character who is technically classified as an assassin mage type character, I found it rather inexcusable that her knees weren't buckling from the damage of the 3rd shot, let alone the 12th.


For this particular proposal (Like the others, it's simply one of many suggested potential paths), I would find it supremely useful to give turrets rapid scaling from one shot to the next. This would entail increases in damage, armor penetration, and attack speed. Think of it as a... Jax Ultimate for turrets.


(Hypothetical numbers, simply for demonstrative purposes)

First shot may hit you for 100 damage, 5% armor pen, and at a rate of 0.8 shots per second.


Second shot may hit you for 120 damage, 15% armor pen, and at a rate of 1.0 shots per second.


By the time you get to that 10th shot, you'd be getting hit for beyond true damage, and at a supremely fast rate. True tank champions may still pose a threat during this time, but squishy champions will most certainly be put in their place, and prove unable to take turret shots for prolonged periods of time.

Now, for Discussion...
I'm not saying that turrets should be some all powerful, deity-like force for the entirety of the game. Far from it. All I'm saying is that turrets should pose some semblance of a threat in the early and mid game. I remember when champions like Vladimir were initially released, and they were despised because of their unprecedented ability to tower dive at *gasp*, level 7!


Now, it seems like everybody and their brother has the ability to dance around turrets and whittle away at you, if not tower dive at levels even as early as 3. Whenever I'm in Skype with some of my buddies, I always make the joke that turrets are made out of sand and paper mache. Each time I say it, it becomes less of a joke, and more of a reality. I simply feel that turrets are marginalized to an extreme degree that is almost unfathomable.


Who here feels the same pain I do and wants a drastic change to this? Alternatively,who here is a a diehard fan that finds this game 101% flawless in every facet, and wants to tell me off? I would very much appreciate some sincere input on this matter.

I acknowledge that argument in the post, but if you would be so kind as to read it (Unless you are a God of speed reading), you'd see that turrets fail at even accomplishing that much.

Did they publicly announce that, or was it just tucked away in a hotfix patch? That's what I'd like to look at for reference.

Why not? If I've beaten my opponent in lane and paid my dues, why should they be rewarded with the destruction of my turret while I'm off elsewhere, trying to help out my teammates?

I mean, it is supposed to be a team game after all, right?