theoretical discussion: fixing the turret-balancing issue

Firstly, it's 4:50am, so cut me some slack if this is the dummest idea ever.

1) What if rocket turrets could only hit pros? No bots.
2) We'd also ramp of the damage the lazor turrets do to bots in order to conterbalance the void.

I believe that this is all that it would take in order for people to start building more lazors and ice thingies. Anyone else agree? No strategy is involved in our current system where the heaviest armored turret also dishes out the most damage.

Yeah, bots could maybe get to the money ball easier, but...maybe assassins would finally do their darn job . Obviously we'd have to fine tune this new system a little bit, but seriously - the current, rocket-centric system is quite broken from a usefulness perspective.

should be the opposite IMO

rockits do splash damage to take out waves of bots, and have high health and small hitboxes to make them durable

lazers should do good damage to pros but have slightly less health. Even with the same health they would be more vulnerable than rockits due to their large hitboxes

It is an interesting idea but having a turret that can only target bots and a turret that can only target pros would lead to more confusion among the newer players.

Turrets overall could use a once over, with LBs getting a major re-work.

Turrets are simply not rewarding enough due to their frailty since juice is so prevalent to the game. However juice is extremely needed to break through strong defenses. Level 3 rockits, and level 3 shave ice would be near unkillable if juice was nerfed. On the flip side though, without nerfing juice its far too easy for an assassin to make quick work of your early-mid level defenses.

An overall retooling of health ratios (LBs and Longshots are simply too weak even at max level when compared to Rockits and Shave Ice's MASSIVE health and significantly more useful abilities) LBs need to be a cheap temporary but effective choice. Right now a level 1 rocket is cheaper, and more effective than a level 3 laser blazer, and builds even faster.

I still say just put them back to how they were originally (before the 360 update)

Rockits were more expensive. 200/400/800 i think. You couldn't just throw Lv3 rockits up all over the place.

Lazers did more damage. A 3.3 lazer was something to be feared. Setting up a Lv3 lazer right at the start was actually a decent option.

Nerfing Rockits is not the way to go, IMO. As it is, they're already fragile enough for their cost. Rockits are fine.

I'd just like to say I've seen a few of these topics play out before hand, and for the most part the agreement was that it's really just Lazer Blazers that's the sour point in all of this.

As it stands a lv3 LB is weaker then a Lv1 Rock-It, and is more likely a nub that a good player will never give you back to 'fix' your mistake as it means free juice for Tank/Gunner ( and I think I saw an Assault get away with that physic as well but I could be wrong...), and even if it was hacked to a lv3.3, it's really not something most pros will give much thought about, chances are even running RIGHT past it's fire to your moneyball with many 1/5 life damage doing their stay.

I've seen a kicker point in all of this thought from the 360 side that LB's used to be set up where they did more damage. Part of me thinks returning to that MIGHT give them a LITTLE bit more worth. Thought I think Uber had lowered it's damage for a reason, and the 'mindset' for those guns has always been "You get what you pay for", so maybe in the end run they are just kinda that one gun that no one should even think about using in Crossfire, and keeping it purely a Blitz styled weapon.

Ive thought for a while a simple buff to bot damage could be the way to go, possibly with a cost increase.

I actually think it would be a nice way to go if they had Lazer Blazers and Rock-Its go back to pre-patch 360 but the Rock-Its stayed the same price they are now.

Giving Lazers burn damage and the ability to see through cloak (Assassin, Gremlin) could be an option.

I enjoy the idea of making LBs do damage like Void Rays in SC2. They start at a low DPS but after several seconds thier dps goes up by lets say 33%. then after several more seconds thier dps goes up by 66%. So once they are "fully charged" they do some scary dps. but until then not so much.

This would have a couple effects. The turret hp would have to be balaced so that bot waves wouldnt destroy 3.3's easily. But it would also make it towhere players couldnt juice farm the turrets, well they still could it would just take more time.

I like this plan.

This could be interesting... or, instead of the burn damage the lazers could go trough targets, aka penetration through bots so you cannot use them for cover.

I'd like to note that lazer blazers do 8x damage against bots, and you can easily keep a lane completely void of bot presence with a 3.3 lazer blazer. They're still incredibly fragile to pros, and basically useless if unhacked, but with a vast majority of lazer blazers and four rock-its paired with two long shots I was able to get to round 112 in super sudden death during my internet hiatus as support.

They were really useful in the fact that I could easily replace them for very little cash, and their fire rate meant that if you had two of them on a lane jackbots couldn't stand still for more than a second before dieing. If you had four aiming at the same target, it would never even get close.

In sudden death they were not an adequate substitute after round 60, however, due to the wave nature they didn't get the time they needed to put out the DPS required to take down the extremely fast durable waves of bots. In that challenge the rock-its were always superior, at least.

Basically lazer blazers will not hold out against a serious build up of bots unless a support is healing it, and absolutely won't outdamage pros. They function as a last ditch botflow-stopper, nothing more. The fact that they are basically useless in crossfire if not level 3 hacked doesn't help with this role.

If we were given the ability to replace them with something more useful if the flow of the game is changed and were more useful when not hacked, that would certainly be welcome.

I'd like to point out that while it is true LBs do 8x dmg vs bots. Rockets do 3x dmg vs bots and splash(albeit in a very small radius).

Laser Blazer at level 3:
0.2 Fire interval
7damage per shot
7x8 damage per shot vs bots
280 damage per second vs bots
Sight range: 1920
Health: 4500

Rockit turret at level 1:
1second shot interval
160 damage per shot
160x3 damage per shot vs bots
480 damage per second vs bots
Sight Range: 1408 (goes up to 1920 when they hit level 3 just like LBs)
Health: 5000

The biggest advantage LBs have over Rockets when fighting bots is that LBs can kill Buzzers, and Gremlins a bit more consistently due to the fact they can't miss since they don't have projectiles like Rocket turrets do.

so absolutely random idea, so bare with me.

Allow each turret to be upgraded to whatever kind you want. such as it starts out as a lv 1 LB, but you can upgrade it to a lv 2 rockit, then a lv 3 shave ice. Essentially you would end up having a lv 1 LB, shave ice, and lv 1 rockit on that nub. This would allow you to mix and match turret upgrades on hubs to cater to the situation. If you upgraded a lv 1 rockit to a lv 2 rocket then a shave ice. you would have a lv 1 shave ice, and a lv 2 rockit on the hub. An odd idea. Or when you upgrade them they turn into completely different turrets.

longshot + shave ice = the long shot's shots leave a frozen area on the ground.
Lazer blazer + Rockit would get a mix of the aoe and x8 bot dmg.
Just a thought, but an interesting one.
Long shot + lazer blazer = molten balls of death raining upon your enemies. (lights them on fire)

granted this wouldnt be to new player friendly, but it would allow for some complex base defenses and strategies.

ehh, kinda, a 3.3 rocket longshot would take on the characteristics of whatever it was upgraded to last, but retain some of the previous levels abilities. so a 3.3 rocket - longshot would have a mixed hp of the lv3 rockit and long shot. so still very killable. now i think a rockit - shave ice would be cool. rockets that slow the enemy... yes plz.

LB's doing fire damage seems OK, but they are still too fragile in general. I think it'd be cool if they couldn't be stunned as well. They could be the "smart turret" that is still fragile.