LazerBlazers: Totally worthless outside of Blitz

The LazerBlazer turret isn't a budget option. It's a handicap for your team and a noob trap. (Noob trap as a balance term meaning an option that fools new players into using it but is actually counter productive or worthless.) People are actually using it to grief by building them on every single turret nub to cripple their team. It's not a threat to Pros at all. Don't believe me? Here's a thread titled "Have yet to ever die from a Laser Blazer." I've heard people advocate leaving them alive deliberately to either farm juice from, or keep another team from building a good turret in its place. The number one tip I have to give new players is to stop building them. It's fine if the early levels cost more, because right now they just die or take up a spot and do nothing.

Potential fixes: Make LazerBlazers light Pros / Bots on fire like the Jetgun. This won't help versus Bots much since most die pretty quickly, but will make them significantly better versus Pros. Make LazerBlazer do more damage the more time they're firing on one target. That way, Pros won't be able to stand up to a LazerBlazer for more than ~5 seconds before it starts to really hurt them. Make LazerBlazers "paint" targets so they take additional damage while being fired on by a LazerBlazer. This would give them a role like the ShavedIce to help Pros kill Pros.

You are right, they have ZERO upside. You pay $25 to give the other team juice. It's literally a lose/lose situation.

Edit: They are worthless in Blitz too. Trust me, if you build LB's, you'll reach a point where you have tons of money and are just waiting for bots to kill them so you can build real turrets.

They are useful in Blitz?

Well, I kinda assumed they are. I've never played Blitz beyond Exhibition solo.

In super sudden death having one level 3 as a non support is good for buzzers.

They are otherwise completely useless.

During "The Scramble" Blitz they're all you need except for a couple shaveice and a couple rock-its close together in the middle for the splash if you get mobbed by gremlins for some odd reason

They're cheap, and they do the job. Gremlins, buzzers, and Bouncers aren't really worth rock-its, and it allows you to quickly fill the arena to capacity.

Not necessarily true, that is if you have support with decent hacking abilities. A lv3.3 (lv 3 hack) Lazer Blazer can come in handy. I've seen them surprise their fair share of pros, and with proper Support (IE, not letting tanks near one unless he's running), then they are fairly decent. Again, you need halfway competent Support to make them useful.

The only use for LB's are to quickly put a turret up to stop an army of blackjacks from taking down your shields.

I'm a pretty good support, and let me tell you, they are ******* useless. There's absolutely no reason for a support to sit there healing a machine that seems to be made of fine china. It will end with a dead support, dead turret and a juiced assassin or tank in the base.

A level 1.3 rock-it turret has more health, does more damage, has better range, and costs less than a 3.3 lazer blazer. On top of that, it's upgradeable.

Call me crazy, but I have yet to witness the usefulness of anything that's not a rocket turret.

In that case the LB might as well be replaced by a big "Kick me" sign.

Play sin when the other team uses shaveice turrets in the appropriate spots.

Play anything when the enemy has a pair of longshots, or worse - a 3.3 longshot - up and running.


But yes - LBs are worthless turrets. They are merely there as a very cheap option for when you're.. out of options. Even then, replacing the ability to build one with a turret that lights your own team on fire would be of equal usefulness.

LBs should at least have something to compensate for their really low stats. Maybe let them ignite target players upon reaching level 3? Either way, those things are crazy easy to destroy.

Make it so that Lazer Blazers cannot be upgraded normally. They upgrade by either: Killing Bots, a certain time elapses, or their max health is fully overhealed (as a consequence, they take a lot longer to overheal unless level 3). While upgrading, they can still fire, and are immune to damage, yet still aggro bots. This will make it so that their auto upgrade function never screws over the moneyball.

It also makes them a lot more useful, because for a small investment, you get a turret that "blooms" into a level 3 for no additional cost other than keeping it alive. It also still fills the last ditch defense role still, because they'll auto upgrade given enough bot kills, they'll still be cheap, and they'll build fast and upgrading wont cause them to have down time.

I don't think uber is going to implement a confusing and complicated mechanism for turrets like that...

If you're going to suggest a LB change, try to keep it realistic and don't make up all sorts of stuff that's never going to happen anyway. I think LBs can be fixed by simple stat changes, tbh.

A simple solution that I've stated before:

Make LBs only have 1 level. They always cost 125 to build, they deal a higher DPS than a level 1 rockit, have slightly more health than a level 1 rockit, and slightly longer range.

Downsides: Unlike a rockit turret they do not do splash damage, so while on an individual target basis they are stronger but multiple targets the rockit will do more damage.

They cannot ever be upgraded. Thus in a pinch a couple of LBs thrown up make a decent makeshift defense that is better than throwing up an equal number of level 1 rocket turrets, however you have to have the turret destroyed if you want to replace it. And level 2 rocket turrets far outshine the LB turrets.

Basically you get short term benefits and give up long term strength.

I say just consider them a failed attempt and remove them. Replace them with something else instead of buffing the original concept.

Confusing and complicated? I was giving inner workings. Much like how Deploy says: "Deploys the Gunner" instead of "Level 3 Deploy. Deploys the gunner. The gunner can no longer move, but is immune to grabs and knockback. While deployed, the gunner has increased rate of fire, accuracy and crits more often, and is immune to head shots. The gunner may fire his jets behind himself with space bar. However, the gunner can only turn 180 degrees in front of him. The Gunner may juice while deployed." I was saying how it would all work out. In game? All it needs to read is this:

"Lazer Blazers: (this amount of credits). This automatically upgrades after an allocated amount of time, or kills, up to level 3.

I was just getting into the finer details of what it could be. If Lazer Blazers automatically upgraded after a given time, but kept their current cost, they WOULD be worth it as a last ditch defense, and as a long term turret, while still keeping Rockit Launchers being the best for the 'end game' where everyone has the skills they want upgraded and are looking for a money dump.

It would still be confusing to completely rehash a turret and require needless amounts of work on Uber's part. A couple of stat changes will suffice.

Besides, the "auto-upgrade" thing you suggested wouldn't work, because the only time a LB is even slightly worth it, is when it's at lvl 3. So you want be able to get it to lvl 3 asap rather than having to wait and babysit it with overheals untill it upgrades itself. In fact: it would probably be killed LONG before it ever upgraded in the first place. Lvl 1 LBs are just free money for the enemy team.

Only in The Scramble, and really only to keep the buzzers off your ***, as they are hit-scan.