Having the turrets would be one thing - I'm of the opinion these can show up when a flip is switched, but the switch is outside the base. If either team hits the switch, turrets spawn, and fight the opposing team. Pulsar/bomb spam outside of bases would thus subside, and it would also make swordies have issues. If possible, team-based rocket puppies, so you can't just stand back, you need to seriously back off.

Other ideas I've had would be class-based revamps. Modify some passives, and potentially add some actives.

PASSIVES

• All classes - health trinkets use a scaling system. Heart pendants would give players up to an additional 33% of their health each, not stacking with other health trinkets.
• Striker - gets -2 to all statuses
• Striker - gets CTI medium and bomb CTI medium. Same bomb reduction as before, but less charge attacks now
• Recon - if armor is immune to a status, recon shield is immune to the status
• Recon - death marked enemies are given a -2 movement speed reduction
• Recon - gets a +2 MSI while under the recon cloak, activates after 1 second of being cloaked
• Guardian - gets +10*tier defense for every damage type (this only would take effect on the damage type you're using)
• Guardian - -2 enemy attack speed when inside of your guardian bubble
• Guardian - +1 ASI when shield is broken, but suffer through -1 MSI
• Guardian - complete flinch protection

Now keep in mind that some, not all, of these would be put in to find that perfect balance. Moving on.

ACTIVES

• Guardian - gain shield bash ability. Acts like a tortodrone shield shield bash. Any enemies hit by the bash would lose 50% of their total shield health. Still requires a full shield.
• Recon - gain phase-walk ability. Activated through a shield bash. Teleports your player 5 tiles in the direction of your cursor, and can cross over anything you can shoot over. Grants you free cloak for 2 seconds after activating (to allow for more stealthy get-aways). Requires at least 33% shield health, and uses 33% shield health.
• Striker - gain light feet ability. On shieldbash, grants +2 MSI but -4 DMG for 5 seconds, and zips the player forwards 8 tiles in the direction of your cursor, lightly damaging all enemies who come in contact. Requires an in-tact shield, and instantly destroys your striker boost when used (100% shield health), and takes an additional 2 seconds to recharge. Yes, you can use it at 1% shield health to close distance.

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• Striker - gain "hardheaded" ability. Grants a defense up orb for 10 seconds. Activated by sprite command key 1. Has a 28 second cooldown.
• Striker - gain "quick feet" ability. Lower dash cooldown time to 2 seconds. Lasts 7 seconds. Activated by sprite command key 2. Has a 42 second cooldown.
• Striker - gain "berserker" ability. Heals the user for 3(*tier) pips of health, grants MSI +1 and an attack up orb for 7 seconds. Activated by sprite command key 3. Has a 60 second cooldown

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• Recon - gain "night terror" ability. Grants +1 MSI, +1 DMG, and removes footsteps and recon alerts. Stat effects last 5 seconds, and alert effects last 15 seconds. Activated by the sprite command key 1. Has a 35 second cooldown.
• Recon - gain "entangle" ability. Fires a single line of apocrean harvester tentacles (act exactly the same, such as tracking opponents and being fairly easy to dodge) that trap any member of the enemy team that it hits. Tentacles "explode" into a little circle upon hitting a wall, and will stop moving if they do hit the wall. Entangled players get a defense up orb, but must wait 10 seconds or for a teammate to attack them to free themselves. Activated by the sprite command key 2. Has a 45 second cooldown
• Recon - gain "radar" ability. Shows all enemies within 30 tiles of you all of your team's minimaps. All control points your team owns will also get a similar affect during this duration, however only within a 15 tile radius of its center. Disables death mark and death mark notification for 10 seconds on use. Activated by sprite command key 3. Has a 60 second cooldown.

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• Guardian - gain "counter-attack" ability. Grants +2 ASI, +2 MSI, and +2 damage for 3 seconds after the player or shield is hit. Effect lasts for 12 seconds. Activated by sprite command key 1. has a 30 second cooldown.
• Guardian - gain "protective measures" ability. Boosts the healing rate to be 5% of the player's health while inside the guardian shield, and grants a +10% defense boost to allies inside the shield per ally inside of the shield. Defense boost continues to affect players for 3 seconds after exiting the shield. Activated by sprite command key 2. Has a 40 second cooldown.
• Guardian - gain "shield drain" ability. All enemies inside of the guardian shield have their shield drained at the same rate as a recon's shield would if they walked through a mist bomb while immune to said mist bomb. All shields drained would give 1/4th of the drained shield to the guardian's shield power (even healing it from nothing back to a little something). If a player has no shield left, the guardian shield would then start adding time to their dash counter until it reaches 7 seconds, then damage the player at 1 pip per second that their dash time is at 7 seconds, shield is at zero, and are still inside of the shield radius. Effect lasts 15 seconds. Activated by sprite command key 3. Has a 60 second cooldown.

Whew, that's a lot of typing! I will say that some of these abilities are for sure a bit over the top, but the idea is to spice up combat is it not? Lockdown has a lot of potential and right now it feels awfully generic.

Heck, with all those abilities I mentioned, it would be interesting if "random lockdown" had a chance to be various modes of "lockdown". "Classic" would be what we have right now, "tournament" would be the everything's fair, no UVs, no trinkets, etc, and "Super Lockdown" would be classic lockdown with all the bells and whistles I added. That said and done, "guild v guild" matches could choose what mode of lockdown they wish to play so it gives more reason to play GvG to play the game exactly how you want it.

Aaaand I'm going to stop typing now because this is getting long enough.

TL;DR - Give classes passive buffs/nerfs to balance them. Introduce 3 gamemodes of Lockdown into the random lockdown rotation - "Classic", "Tournament", and "Super Lockdown". Super Lockdown would be a new mode with 4 new activated abilities, caused by shield bash, and your sprite command keys. Tournament is UVless, trinketless, etc. Classic is what we have now. Guild Vs Guild matches can choose what mode of lockdown they wish to play, but random lockdown randomly selects from the 3 gamemodes.

Right now the classes aren't really specialized. It's more like "are you new to LD? Guardian. Are you in LD and want to learn how the game works a bit? Recon. Are you in LD and want to play competitively? Striker." While some players don't follow that line of thought, that's how the gradual advance system works, so you see a lot of strikers because people have gotten to the "lockdown end game".
By specializing the classes a bit it makes players more likely to create a sort of "role" for themselves. A recon could, say, become a team radar, trekking into enemy territory and getting everyone marked on the map so that strikers could rush points. Strikers could close distances very quickly and in general become very nimble. Granted they have to use the abilities wisely, else they will find themselves in a bad situation. Guardians could lock down points and prevent strikers from just rushing in and wrecking their shield, or opt to play a field medic.

Testing wise, this would be a good addition to the testing server! Since people on the testing server likely won't have max UVs or stupid powerful gear, and everyone can have trinket slots (despite maybe not having trinkets), it'll give a more fair representation of what the powers are like. It would also allow players to give feedback, suggest effect length and cooldown duration (which, like sprite skills, adds cooldown to all of the things), and overall help tweak the stuff.

And for the new game modes yeah, I'd suggest it come into play with more lockdown things. This way, you can have the game be the same until we add a lot of new stuff to it. I am pretty adamant about random lockdown choosing a random gamemode however, as if you split up lobbies into gamemodes normally you'll split up the playerbase far more than you already do with the tier system. I like the idea of GvG being able to choose however, as you can play "fair" if you're really concerned about it.