League of Legends' Preseason Will Give Turrets Extra Health Bars, Defenses

Turrets in League of Legends are getting tougher in the preseason with a new work-in-progress feature previewed that adds extra health bars and defenses to the structures.

Sharing the ideas for the preseason on the League of Legends boards, Mark "Riot Scruffy" Yetter, the new lead gameplay designer for the game, previewed an idea Riot Games has for making turrets sturdier and extending the laning phase. Making the time that champions spend in lane longer is something that Riot Games has mentioned in the past, and the new turret changes would make the structures last longer and would therefore hold champions in the lane.

Sharing the image below as a preview of the turret prototype, Riot Scruffy said that the goal is to add barricades to the turrets. Each one of these essentially adds another health bar to the turret and provide extra defenses, but they'll disappear after a certain amount of time just as the current turrets' extra defenses do right now. For champions that excel at staying in lane and bursting down turrets, they'll get more gold for taking down each one of the barricades.

"Outer turrets now start the game with a barricade that adds 5 small health bars on top of the turret's main health," Riot Scruffy said. "Each piece of the barricade can be destroyed and rewards the local players some gold. Roughly around the 10 minute mark, these barricades go away, removing both the extra defense and the opportunity for the gold rewards."

Riot Scruffy said that the new feature would provide a balance between extending the laning phase to some degree and giving champions a gold reward to strive for if they stay in the lane. Moments of back-and-forth action under towers have also been seen when testing the changes, he added, as players attempt to destroy the different barricades.

He also said that Riot Games is currently looking into making turrets deal more damage in the early game. Tanks soaking up turret shots even early on is a scenario that players have likely seen in their own games or in the professional scene, and while Riot Games isn't looking to remove dives from players' arsenals, they want to make the plays more risky as they're intended to be.

"Additionally we're exploring some slight damage increases on turrets in the early game so that tower dives aren't more powerful," he added. "We still like them to be present, but there are cases right now where it seems like the attacker isn't taking enough risk."

The changes are scheduled to be implemented in League's upcoming preseason period, so there's a chance the new feature could be altered before the changes go live.