Even post patch it's so ridiculously easy for assassins/tanks/gunners to destroy turrets that I feel spending even a single dollar on a turret is wasted money and that the only viable way to play is an extreme offense team so having no turrets up isn't a downside at all. I mean, why pay over $1000 for a level 3 rockit turret that dies to 3/4 shots of a juiced gunner no matter what or dies to an assassin who is wandering through. Sure, if you REALLY want to turtle you can, but have fun needing to dedicate 2/3 teammembers just to hold off one juiced player, which in the end gives the other team the advantage. I'm sure they're thrilled that you're at least 1 more player down than they are, not to mention; a turtling team is going nowhere. With less offense, you're not going to be touching their moneyball anytime soon, and with less pros out on the field, that's less pros killing other team's to control their juicing, which in turn makes your defenses weaker. Am I just crazy? Because I really can't see the point of base defenses.
I usually build some once I'm into spare cash, they're handy against the random idiots who rush in without juice, and will still kill juiced players who are killing other turrets. They're also great if your team is bot tarded and you have a steady stream of enemy bots waltzing into your base.
The point of defenses is to boost them, not to be impenetrable. Your teammates also have to guard them in order to keep them up.
I hope we're not arguing that if something is effective against idiots, that it is effective in general. I'm more talking about the smart assassins that will get juice every minute or so by farming bots and turn your base to rubble. For juice that is worth 500 to be able to remove $2000+ worth of turrets is a little excessive. Yeah, but why guard them when you could be offensive? Like I illustrated in my post, that just leaves you men down. I'd rather spend the cash on juice as a gunner/tank and push the hell out of their base and win, rather than feed them turret kills.
You guard them after you have died or you spot someone juiced going towards your investment. You don't guard them 24/7, and in order to not have to babysit them , you need a good support with level 3 hack and overheals them. Afterwards, the support can follow you and do stuff. Basically, without investing in a little bit of defense, your moneyball is as good as down if your team just ignores one side of bots. Lazer blazers are a waste of money. ShaveIce is situational and you don't need more than one usually. Longshot is sometimes useful, though depending on the map. Rockit is the best defense, which is why we use them. If we don't use them, the moneyball will go down REALLY soon. Anymore questions? :?: edit: True. You do need to have competent teammates that sees someone that has juice and tries to stop them. Problem with most players is that they ignore that "shiny" player and move on. That player has his objective set on destroying your defense and that's where all the **** goes down.
Hah, while true, on the occasion that I'm playing support AND the enemy team has a competant assassin that juices rather than runs around facegrappling, there is literally NO POINT me building turrets, I have about a million times more fun and success by focuing on getting lvl 3 firebase/hack up asap, camping a lane in a forward position and raking in the kills AND leaving the base completely safe, yet undefended. Who cares if you have no defenses at home when no one is going to be getting there anytime soon? And as always, overtime is a juice rush-fest, and who does the most damage to the moneyball? Support, that's right, so I'm alreay there juiced and ready to go. If you stop guarding them they die in about 2 seconds to a juiced assassin, thus making your 'investment' if you can call it that absolutely worthless. Again, I can't see the point of building them over being offensive. Turrets against competant players are worse than worthless.
Your base won't be safe if you die. Turrets are there to support your defense. I don't know how else to phrase this bro. If you think you can win games without your turrets, then maybe we will try to prove that to you in game? edit: You can do both. When you die, their team is forced to go to your base and destroy it. Without turrets, that's where base-rape begins. The bots will move in and take down moneyball. Moneyball dies; the end.
But if i'm not there babysitting the turrets they're as good as dead anyways! All it takes is a few seconds and poof, they're gone. Unless there is some kind of magical super turret that can survive a juiced attack (hint: there isn't) they're absolutely worthless. Maybe I feel like defenses are worthless because my playstyle is generally as a gunner or assault, I sit in the middle of the map/towards the enemy base and kill pros, I'm currently running a 7 kdr (which includes dicking around as other classes) so perhaps I'm just better than the average playerbase at the moment and can keep them down enough solo that base defense isn't a concern.
Regarding your complaints: It gives them something to focus on other than killing your whole team, and before being able to push bots in. Think of your static defense as an obstacle. It only makes sense for it to cost more to defend than to attack. Otherwise, every remotely even game would go to overtime. Regarding your question: On the surface it may seem that pure offense defeats any need for defense. Keep the enemy on their heels, and they won't even get a chance to attack. But that only works if your team can be consistently better than the other team. Even if you're better overall but lose some battles occasionally, a lack of defense can bite you in the ***. A few coordinated (or lucky) kills or a sneaky annihilator by the other team can suddenly force you onto defense. If you've got no defense prepared when that happens, you're suddenly in a tough position.
Hmm, I guess it might change when the game has been out for longer on pc, because at the moment, I think I might lose about 1 in 10-15 games, and that's only when I get a full team of no armour facestabbing assassins and the enemy team is competant. But I'd say we could expect the skill level to even out a bit as time progresses. I suppose I could say I have on occasion build some level 1 rockits for a temporary defense - fully expecting them to die quite quickly, but by that point in the game I have all my skills maxed that I plan to, and probably about 1k spare. The main issue I have is with the poor support. He gets bugger all money compared to the rest of the pros and is defensive in nature, he can work all game to scrounge up enough cash for that shiny new level 3 rockit, only to have it immediately destroyed. It's heart-wrenching to see a fat italian man cry of the wreckage of his once beautiful turret.
Well yeah, you have to assume somewhat evenly-matched teams, or any talk of strategy or theory is pointless Support is defensive by nature, but he doesn't necessarily need to defend only the main base. He can be incredibly good on offense by increasing the whole team's staying power in a base siege and making it hard for the enemy to flank or push back.
True. I guess things might settle down when it's not a full blown retard bash-fest. It's just annoying that if you like playing support as a base defender role it's near impossible if you have a competant assassin shutting you down. On the flip side, if there is no (competant) assassin on the enemy team it's actually kind of fun to play (I was forced to do this early in the beta due to no australian servers as it was far too laggy to play another class effectively). It seems like it is extremely hard to find a balance between having a viable base defense, but not having it be impenetrable, especially when you take varying player skill into account.
On console, I almost exclusively build shave ice. Unless you can get a hacked 3.3 rocket up, they are the best turret in the game provided they have people watching them, and they make crowd controlling juiced assassins MUCH easier for non tank/assault classes, and they have enough armor to tank a few mortar rounds while your sniper headshots those pesky gunners. If our ball drops, shave ice go up in every available node. They slow down all the classes who try to suicide or cloak tickle the ball. I've done this in public and private matches. Two shave ice on the outside, 3.3 rocket on the inside. Put ice traps in the middle of this set up with a good sniper playing D, and your team will never lose before overtime.
Hmm, especially with the shaveice hp buff I might try funneling some excess cash into mass shaveice and hopefully convince a support to hack them.
I'd do it. In general you ever see me in game, let me know if you have a plan and I'm always more than happy to try stuff out. I'm aware I'm inexperienced at the game and more than happy to try new strategies out. This applies to anybody.
Let's put it this way, without base defenses anyone can simply walk into your base anytime they want. This includes spawn camping, simply wrecking all your bots as they spawn, or if your moneyball is down, hitting that. Turrets are far from impenetrable defenses, they're not meant to be, but they're good enough to stall the enemy and give them something to worry about while walking into your area. Without them, if your moneyball goes down, it stays down. That said, laser blasers are useless. Build rockits and shaveices mostly. Maybe a longshot or two if the map's open enough to support them (i.e.: NOT Steel Peel), but if you're a support, you're better off building more rockits for defense, and spending some cash on gapshots instead.
Turrets are still good. You need some turrets by the money ball or one annihilator can down your money ball. A level 3 shave-ice with hacks can particularly limit a player's ability to deal damage while juiced. A level 3 rock-it turret is actually a threat to a juiced player and if he gets grappled or controlled, it will probably kill him. Additionally a support who is doing his job and buffing/hacking base turrets from time to time also severely limits the damage you can do (particularly buffed shave-ice and buffed rock-its.) Juice buying is overall good for the game. It encourages offensive play and offensive play is more fun than defensive play. Remember, you can make them blow the juice early if you control enough of the map and attack them at the juice station. You can limit their damage to 1-2 turrets if your teammates jump on the juiced player and try to stop them. The problem is rushing a juiced player attacking your base is suicide and will almost definitely get your killed. Most players are too concerned with KDR to take a death to save turrets. In pubs I see most supports completely fail at maintaining the base. They respawn and run right out the door, while spending 20 seconds to buff a few turrets or hack something could really help. No one tries to keep an eye on the annihilator and juice machines, even though they are almost always in vulnerable positions. No one tries to stop the juiced players. They either run away to try and live or ineffectively shoot at the player instead of moving in for grapples. Turrets die, they are meant to die, but that doesn't mean they aren't good investments. You can spend max $2600 on your character. In a longer game you should be seeing 3k-4k easily. That leaves a ton of money for your team to control the annihilator, buy juice (making turrets a more valuable buy since your enemy can't buy juice if you do), and invest in turrets/bots. You don't get anything for finishing the game with $2000. When juice buying had no cooldown, yes I would agree with you. Back then you could juice chain juices non-stop if you had money. However, with juice buying limited the can only juice you via a buy twice, then they have to wait.
