Slight improvements for Hail Tower

[Califax]

There has been few discussions is Hail Tower good or not.. I think it is weak, even after these "buffs". So I got few ideas how to improve it slightly.

 

• There is the basic increase damage / attack speed etc.. But that's just boring..

 

• Bring back the previous version Hail Tower, it was all about getting 14 hits and release the spread. Now you have lower attack range = less hits.
  • Wider spread dosen't really matter, old one was enough.

 

• Make ability psuedo-random, instead of having 14 hit limit.

 

• Make some kinda charge system for the ability.
  • Every time it hits a target, you get 1 charge. You can store unlimited amount of charges.
  • After 14 charges, the ability triggers if you the ability on auto-cast. (Basically works same way as now.)
  • You can turn the auto-cast off and cast it manually, consuming 14 charges. (This allows you to use spread attacks back to back.)
    • To balance this.. Maybe you get charge every kill, instead of hit.
    • The ability has cooldown, so you can't just build 10 Hail Towers at the start, and spam 10000 spreads last wave.

 

Not sure how new players feel about this, you kinda need to micro and make control groups and stuff to make it efficient.

 

• And something small that you can actually change.. When you hover mouse over the ability, you see the spread range.

 

 

[Utoko]

I think a big problem is the elements you need for the tower. He fits in a slow build but in slow builds you don't really want 2 water and 2 shadow because that prevents some very good support towers.

The saving charges idea is interesting but hard to balance. Even with cooldown if you save up mass charges for the frogwaves it can be really strong.

 

Personally I like the big spread a lot.
 

[WindStrike]

Heh, that's kinda like the old Tidal Tower (which is totally making a return if we ever get around to working on the darn alt tower feature idea). Right now, the reason all towers are set up to be "build it and leave it" with no micro actually needed is initially, the balance of the dota version will match the balance of the mobile version, and there's way to micro in that version due to interface issues. However, once the mobile version is out and we start taking the games down separate roads, the balance will shift, and in all likelihood, we'll bring back ideas that allow some degree of micro, ie something like the one you suggested, though... that would require a little too much micro for my tastes, plus yeah, that could get a little too abused. The tower works, but as Utoko says, the elements and builds it goes into are not really that good with it, and that's the idea of the alt tower idea, to fix all those builds that have a bunch of weaknesses and provide a ton more playstyles and builds and yadda yadda.