How to make lasers relevant

Previously, lasers were actually useful as a makeshift defense like the tutorial says. With rockets cheaper and lasers less effective, now there's just no reason to ever build lasers in anything but the lower levels of Blitz. I have not confirmed the statement people have made that getting hit by lasers gives you juice (I've only seen it work with a deployed Tank), but even if it's false, it's irrelevant. They're already worthless, and it just makes them more so. I have an idea that would give us a reason to actually build them, though.

Make lasers damage everything. Laser damage would hit life, juice, and skills together. Let them be less powerful in damage compared to rockets, but let that damage apply across the board. Potential applications:
* Reduces the duration of a juice rush, albeit not by much. The laser will still inevitably die, but so does a rocket. At least this way, maybe one less turret is destroyed by a juice rush.
* Support has to take it by surprise to hack it and will have trouble hacking other turrets. This is more incidental than intentional, since Support is already well-nerfed.
* Tank cannot deploy in front of one unless it attacks other things first. The Tank doesn't take very long to get juice in this way, and suggesting that I "deserve to get juiced on" because I built a laser just enforces the idea that there is no reason whatsoever to build lasers. In which case, why even have them as an option? With this change, the Tank has to work a bit to get this buff.
* Assassin almost must cloak into an enemy's base if not ready to juice. She'd have to cloak in and use a smoke bomb to disable anything in view of a laser.

This is a bunch of little stuff that would add up to a realistic reason to build a laser vs. a rocket. Do you want straight firepower with the potential to be huge power, or do you want something more tactical (not better, more tactical)? Any options that are worthless simply become worthless code and rules we don't need to know.

I like the thinking behind it. It make a good step towards making each of the 4 types of turret genuinely different to one another.

Juice drain: awesome, provided it does not completly out drain the tanks's juice rate while deployed. Make it so it delays the tanks time to go 0-100 considerably. Also,I think it should drain juice from currently juicing pros and pros who do no have a full juice meter. I do not think they should drain juice from someone who has 100% juice and has not used it yet.

Skill drain: no. Sniper has the market cornered on this, and too much skill drain would be a very bad thing for this game.

Sounds pretty good. If a laser turrent also drained your skills as it shot you, it would mean a Tank would need to kill the before the turrent could un-deploy :twisted:

I'm fine with the Tank still getting a net profit from deploying in front of a laser. Juice damage - Deploy's juice gain can reasonably be positive. However, I don't think that just because the Sniper has skill drain means he has to have a monopoly on it. All that skill drain from lasers does is it encourages people to fight them from a distance. It doesn't actually change much, but just enough to be relevant.
Also, my understanding was that you could always undeploy at will; it's just a matter of when you could deploy again.

I like the idea, and would support it if Uber decided to go along with it, but I don't think that laser turrets need a buff. With the DLC, they're more for a temporary defense or early game use, rather than the go-to turret.

My opinion, of course. I'd still like to see this happen. I actually haven't seen any tanks deploy in front of one before, and I would only notice it if I were defending the base as support (meaning they wouldn't be there for long).

eh they seem to be almost in a good place atm

Id nerf the amount of juice a lazer gives per shot slightly

No need for anything fancy that will just end up causing more problems

Scathis loves it.

^That.

are you saying the laser would eat away at the juice bar "even when not fully juiced" i like the sound of that. lasers are too weak and beneficial to the opposite team.

another idea would be to give laser razors a burn effect

i think lazers may be neat to make them damage a quarter a juice box worth of juice per shot, and maybe causse fire damage.

Why not mix in all these ideas? Make laser turrents drain pro skills and light them on fire? It only makes sense as they're Lazer Blazers for a reason, right? It'd make them worth building again if they drained skills and ignited enemy pros.

Now if only Longshots were ever useful to begin with...

I think that instead of boosting the near useless LB, how about they have the shortest nub refresh time. Something like it is in blitz (30 secs or something). This would make them a quick and easy defense.

Or maybe make them have another upgrade levels to boost effectiveness.

I really like this idea. Makes them more for temporary defense purposes.

That's what they were before, but now a level 1 rocket easily takes that role. It's quick to build and will definitely control any bots that come in. It's not much different in effectiveness against players.

lol, anyway, if they slightly drained juice, that would at least fix the exploit they currently have. making them more useful against juice rushers might also make them unique from rokkits, although not stronger. both of these make it a good idea.

fire damage is an okay idea.

now i trust uber devs to not go overboard, and make them drain all juice in 1 shot. that would be as funny as hell, and i would love it and laugh my *** off. thats not the point however, as much as i hate juice and want it removed, i think the effects should be minimal, to pretty much drain 1/2 or 3/4 the juice it would give a deployed tank.

not everything it hits will get juice in the first place, so the balance is crucial to make sure it isnt made stupidly overpowered as well. but this idea shows to be possibly useful, especially in overtime and/or to a team being pounded by juicers, as well as to fix an exploit.

Maybe the tank should be immune to the juice drain?

I always thought the way to make Lazer Turrets worth while was to keep the turrets exactly the way they are, instead of changing the attributes of the turrets it would be a better idea to introduce the ability to upgrade lazer turrets to level 4 and level 5 turrets.

These extra levels should be more focused on adding a serious amount of additional turret armor and only slightly improving the level of firepower. This would keep the turrets value as a quick fix option but also mean that you can build on the turret and end up with something of tactical defensive value. An XL Bot would waste additional time trying to destroy the additional armor and juice rushers might by-pass a level 5 armored lazer turret to attack less time consuming targets.

I'd say if you nerfed their juice giving potential and upped the damage just a bit they'd be fine. I really don't see why using LaserBlazers as free juice machines should be part of the game. It means that a skilled player is never going to build them, and they just allow newbies that don't know any better to get pub stomped even harder.

Honestly, I think laser's are fine... 3.3's are still very deadly, long range, and very cheap (I still dont get why they got the damage nerf though, probably some whiny assassins). The problem I have with them is the Tank Deploy insta-juice gain from them. For that single reason and that reason alone, I never ever ever build lasers and if I see someone on my team do it I get really frustrated. What other reason is there not to build them aside from the Tank juicing on you? I can't think of one.

The only time I build lasers nowadays is if I'm going to instantly upgrade/hack it to 3.3 and if there are no Tanks on the opposing team... even then though it makes me nervous because someone could spawn as a Tank, fly over real quick and take advantage (I do this myself from time to time when I spot a fully built laser).. then boom, all your other turrents gone.

Building a laser blazer when the other team has a Tank on it is almost more annoying than people who build longshots under bridges or on Steel Peel.