Hi. I'm a Terran master (low level) Here are my unbiased thoughts on the PTR, and why Blizzard has gone this direction.
First off, the GSL shouldn't be mentioned much in this discussion. While this is the breeding grounds for the best play, each GSL has been so different from one another. This shows to me that players are only getting better and understanding how to react to certain situations, with very minor balances (hallucination time for scouting purposes, observer for scouting purposes, phoenix for mainly scouting purpose, the big one may be Voidray, but was quite obvious).
Why remove Amulet?I believe Blizzard wasn't looking @ HT to be used the way they have been used. HT amulet is not meant for 6+ HT warping in at one time. 300 minerals and 900 gas was stopping/killing a maxed army. Or losing straight out from one EMP. HT is for situational, and for harass.
I think Blizzard also realized that the warp prism has been a dead unit. Gravitic Drive is never used, ever. What an amazing upgrade, yet no protoss use it. With the HT being more of a situational unit now, I know in the future warp prism will be a huge part of play (uhg, unfortunately, so annoying for a Terran ). We will see HT being warped in behind a min line, and drops being abused from large maps.
What does this mean for Toss?Other than the obvious HT, warp prism, now toss will build sentry all game, with DTs - which is very important, and overlooked a lot. Even pros at top level don't do this, but they will. SenZen was using DTs like mad, yesterday. I think that the removal of the amulet wasn't just because it was imbalanced, but producing rather monotonous games. With the removal, we now have warp prisms, DTs, and much more FFs, and chargelots drops(hopefully) late game.
Vortex is way too obvious. Yes, yes... Boo hoo, the toilet can still be used, but no more insta rape. Sorry Toss, no more troll face wins for you (kinda like when Terran troll faced with 5x reaper).
Charge lot buff and why? Other than the obvious marauder kiting, this is for hellion play. Hellion could micro infinite chargelots, and rather easily at that.
I think that chargelot buff will induce mech play. While maras are great for kiting zealot, zealots rape them when they are trapped in a FF. Now that the zealot hits at least once, chargelots will be great for killing marauders late game. Forcing tier one to stop, and Terran will trans into a mech game.
BC buff and why? BCs were a dead unit. In TVT late game, you could never go BCs (unless it was very very very situational). Why, though? Mainly because the walk over to your opponent would take ages, and Terran could outmacro a reinforcing BC army. Also, with the new age of big maps, BCs were even more out the window. This is a very great buff, and I think BCs will be used A LOT now, making super exciting games! With that being said, I don't think protoss will have to worry much about BCs rushing to their base ^^ They aren't super units like way back when.
Viking Flower The trick was a little buggy - late game you could hide cloak banshee, and ravens.. I don't think Blizzard wanted to give that option to Terran, and IMO I am quite happy that is removed from the game.
Stim Well, like I said, I am a Terran player. This one should hurt me the most, right? Wrong. Early stim doesn't affect my play much, but does prevent my all-ins from working so easily. I would have to say this nerf was almost as necessary as flux vane speed. Once again, our troll face is now tongue-in-cheek. To represent Terran players out there, I humbly apologize Protoss. What we did was wrong, and I hope you can forgive us.
So this next part might be the juiciest of it all.
I'm not a zerg player. I can beat high level diamond players as zerg, but that's nothing to brag about. These next opinions are more from a Terran standpoint, and I ask experienced high-level zergs to help me out, thank you!
I suspect at first zerg will cry (take no offense please), but with micro practice, this is a very good buff for zerg.
Infestor buff Health This should be obvious enough. Infestors weren't doing their job. They should be a fear mongering unit. I should, as a Terran player, look at it as 'oh fuck, he has an infestor out, I shouldn't engange yet.' Sort of like Terran is with HT, at the moment. When playing zerg, I never seem to use my infestors cost effectively. They die WAY too quickly (2 shot tank wtf??), or mech units aren't bothered at all by them. With the health increase, I think infestors have a slightly better chance at being more cost effective. I hate to be so blunt, but this goes for Protoss as well. The health buff was very necessary against both matchups.
Infestor buff/nerf fungal growth At first, I thought this is bullshit. Now my marines have an even BETTER chance of being super cost effective. I gave it a chance though, thought about the whole situation. I've noticed that FG has been causing an absolute mess of: 1a, close eyes and pray to allah, open eyes, did it work?? sort of play. Where art thou micro?
So why is FG good/bad for zerg vs T? Instead of instant, there is a missile now. While the muta,bane,speedling into marine tank works, there was something missing. Why was I (T) winning so many games? Ah.. the infestor wasn't around much. With this health buff, the infestor would be imba with such a powerful FG, so Blizzard cuts the time in half, and missiles it. I think the infestor is a viable and soon to be popular unit against T. Now I really have to pay attention to my marines splitting, and moving, while zerg also has to micro hard to nail me with a FG. Pro zergs, help me out on this? Maybe I missed the broad side of a barn, but please provide explanation if I am completely wrong.
Infestor, again! Against P +30% vs. armored units I think this is the main reason why the Infestor received a buff against mechanical. While this helps against Thors, the main reason is for Stalkers. Too many times zerg is forced to blow millions of dollars on gas for banelings that sometimes wouldn't even work! And when they did smash into 25 stalkers, 5 of them would die, a few would blink out, and the rest would walk in after with a huge troll face.
Why is this good for zerg? Protoss can no longer go full out stalker. They will lose. 2 FG will decimate along with a few cheap speedlings an a few banelings. Mutas will become fantastic to pick off straggling stalkers, or already injured; mass stalker is out the window. With the decrease in stalker, I think mass muta will participate in the slaying of colossi, and archons will be a much more used unit, after a couple storms may or may not go off. PVZ is looking very promising with mutas, banes, infestors, oh my! For late game ultras, that 30% buff on FG is going to be reprimands for all the times your expensive ultras were slaughtered down.
With all that being said, I do believe Zerg still needs to veto maps properly and really focus on finding out the fundamentals between TVZ. Instead of QQ (we all do it), stop and look at your replay. Find out, oh.. I did miss that FG, or shit I didn't macro for 30 seconds, and Terran was.. No wonder I lost.
I can't remember who said this but, back in BW, I remember a quote "Terran hard for noob, ez for master". I think that applies for zerg these days.
TL;DR I know this is a giant wall of text. If you don't have 10 minutes to read, alright, fair enough, skip to the bold parts that apply to you. But there is no summary for all of my writing. And to be honest, the people who take time to read well organized thoughts tend to be higher level players. They take time and like to discuss with evidence, and I ask you to respect that as well. If you blatantly disagree with something, provide some sort of information why. Or else I'll just ban you from my blog, dun dun daa..
I can't really comment on balance since I don't really have time to play SC2 as much and the only computer I can play it on is broken, but I will say it was a well written blog.
But for the stalkers you need to think about how they nerfed the time from 8 seconds to 4 seconds. Sure the damage is better but you needed the time for units like zerglings to attack which did the bulk of the damage against them. Also:
As you can see it is possible to dodge the spell altogether.
Also with the shorter duration fungal growth eat through your marines faster then the medivacs can heal them. So 2 fungal growths will just kill all the marines in the aoe.
On February 27 2011 10:43 elmizzt wrote: I prefer not to talk about balance, but I love this blog for the Summer Glau content ^.^
Thanks, but anything that isn't crap will look good on TL at the moment . Ack, cheap shot, sorry TL.
On February 27 2011 10:39 green.at wrote: you could be right. or completely wrong. time will tell.
Yes. I should add that to OP. This is just for fun speculation, but some good theory behind it as well.
On February 27 2011 10:43 darklordjac wrote: But for the stalkers you need to think about how they nerfed the time from 8 seconds to 4 seconds. Sure the damage is better but you needed the time for units like zerglings to attack which did the bulk of the damage against them. Also:
As you can see it is possible to dodge the spell altogether.
Very cool! Thanks for providing that! This could be argued two ways. One, with time, micro practice will come around. The second is, this isn't a typical battle. Usually you have an enormous amount of zerglings and banes, roach, etc floatin around. So, even if FG misses, do you think it would be effective in a .. defensive, offensive spell? What I mean is, sometimes storm misses, but creates a good pushing opportunity for protoss.
The problem is going to be that nothing kills stimmed MMM except for colossus or templar. Now templar is too fragile of a choice, so now it will be just colossi, I don't think that protoss is gonna be weaker overall, they're just pidgeonholed into colossus more.
edit:
Oh and PvZ... templars are now only to make archons and archons are only good against muta-ling, so yeah.
On February 27 2011 10:46 Kiarip wrote: I don't see how DTs replace templars...
The problem is going to be that nothing kills stimmed MMM except for colossus or templar. Now templar is too fragile of a choice, so now it will be just colossi, I don't think that protoss is gonna be weaker overall, they're just pidgeonholed into colossus more.
edit:
Oh and PvZ... templars are now only to make archons and archons are only good against muta-ling, so yeah.
I don't see why more colossus is a terrible thing. Also, who says storm is out of the question? You can still use them to slow down MMM balls, and I wasn't saying they are replacing. We will see much more DTs, where as DTs were non-existent/cheesy before. I see how you may think toss will become weaker overall, but with different play, harassment will become very dependable, like how Terran depends on its harassment every game. I don't see MMM overrunning protoss late game, in fact, I see protoss coming out ahead because of the macro ability. ei, 10+ warp units. Thoughts?
You second part is pure speculation and has no part in this discussion, sorry man
On February 27 2011 10:49 thedirtyleg wrote: I agree. Very thoughtful approach to the upcoming balance changes (and great pics too!). 2 questions though:
Will the slight 5 second increase in bunker build time be the end of the early bunker rush vs zerg? Is that the reason?
Will PDDs be able to snipe fungal growths en route now that they're missiles instead of insta-cast?
If you watch successful bunker rushes, you will notice that zerglings pop around 1 marine inside bunker with the second nearly there. I don't know for sure if this will straight up eliminate bunker rushes, but certainly stop Terran from winning a match, or dealing much damage.
I can still see some causing problems stuck at the back of a mineral patch (Xel'Naga is infamous for that) but these days zerg is so good at reacting to bunker rush, I can't see Terran using a bunker rush in standard play. If so, it would most likely be a bluff to pull drones off. With that said, a reaper following a bluff bunker will be able to kite a lot of zerglings for free. Keep in mind early harassment isn't gone
As for your second question, I haven't ran into that situation yet on PTR. From an educated guess, considering storm doesn't get PDD or neural or such spells like this, I will say no.
That rocket thing for Fungal Growth is ridiculous . I mean i am not worried about me (no one is going to dodge that in Diamond) but at the pro level people already started to make Banelings basically useless against marines wich are insanely cost effective against every other Zerg unit.Now with this change like what the fuck are you supposed to against marines. Here comes Fungal ups he microed here come the banelings whups he microed well i´m dead. In both cases Zerg can´t do anything to better theire chances. It´s either the Terran micro or he does not. my 2 cents
I think the vortex nerf was unneeded and they didn't have to remove amulet all together maybe just add +20 energy, so it actually takes a couple of secs after warp in for storm.
Firstly, you play terran in master league, this clearly means you will have some bias. You can't call it an unbiased discussion when you play the game on a high level. The best you can do is acknowledge this fact and try to present fair discussion. Sure my views below aren't unbiased either, but I won't try to hide that.
On February 27 2011 10:46 Kiarip wrote: I don't see how DTs replace templars...
The problem is going to be that nothing kills stimmed MMM except for colossus or templar. Now templar is too fragile of a choice, so now it will be just colossi, I don't think that protoss is gonna be weaker overall, they're just pidgeonholed into colossus more.
I don't see why more colossus is a terrible thing. Also, who says storm is out of the question? You can still use them to slow down MMM balls, and I wasn't saying they are replacing. We will see much more DTs, where as DTs were non-existent/cheesy before. I see how you may think toss will become weaker overall, but with different play, harassment will become very dependable, like how Terran depends on its harassment every game. I don't see MMM overrunning protoss late game, in fact, I see protoss coming out ahead because of the macro ability. ei, 10+ warp units. Thoughts?
I completely disagree here. More colossus is an absolutely terrible thing. Protoss is so dependent on this one unit in all 3 match ups. The game largely evolves around getting enough colossus and keeping them alive, because you don't play P, you might not realize this. I play protoss and already feel largely pigeonholed into colossus against all races. (Colossus are necessary against zerg roach/hydra, one of two counters to terran bio, supremely good against P's ground units in pvp).
With a storm nerf, templar tech actually is out of the question, in the early game. With an unnerfed storm, templar were viable and colossus could be skipped (kinda, you still need a robo for observers, which was not addressed in this patch). It was already a risky move because it's auto gg if the terran goes cloaked banshees and you opt for templar tech. Nothing was addressed about protoss cloak detection in this patch. Terrans will always have orbitals, maybe not have enough energy, but worse case scenario, you need to wait for 50 energy. Terran might also have ravens, which are excellent spell casters, but a little more late game. Turrets are also common because Terran players commonly get bio upgrades, which are greatly powerful. Zerg always have overlords and always get lairs. The question is whether they get lairs fast enough. Protoss must get a robo for observers. That's a 200/100 building with a 65s build time. But now, templar have less power and cannot storm as quickly. Sure you don't need a 150/150 upgrade, but that gives you one extra templar who must wait 30 actual seconds before storm can be cast.
More DTs? Definitely not. The dark shrine is 100/250 with a 100s build time. Incredibly slow with an enormous gas cost. DTs themselves are expensive (125/125) and easily countered by a single detector, which is fairly easy for Z/T to obtain. DTs won't become vital to a ball in any great number because of their high cost, both in tech and unit cost.
How can you see protoss harassment become more dependable? The main harass, HT warp ins was completely nerfed. Terran harass just got way better because HT storm warp ins will no longer help prevent harass on expansions. It's only possible to feedback the dropship, but after the units are dropped, storm isn't available to help.
You think protoss will come out ahead because of macro ability? How? There were no buffs to protoss macro, no nerfs to terran. Sure you can have a ton of warp gates, but without instant storm, reinforcing with warpages is much less effective, because each HT must wait 30 actuall seconds before storming.
I don't really see where you're getting your points from, this nerf is pretty major, but only time and PTR results will show.
I don't think you included that while the infester field goal time was halved that also means you can use it 2ce as often making more(mass?) infestors possible/viable. You seemed to have taken it as a completely bad thing.
Also instead of JUST stalkers the fungal hurts void rays and colossi as well meaning the protoss is hopefully going to have to vary up their whole unit composition. And medivacs can no longer outheal the fungal damage.
About fungal, i think most discussable decision is projectile thing, rest of buff could be interetng if not this. I would like to point that atm, zerg vs T is very luck based, mostly because main strategies are banelings+lings+ mutas, or burrowed banelings or infestor ling(/baneling). Burrowed banelings are pure luck, and is based on terran mistakes. Normal banes are luck based, because u either kill all marines with like 3 banelings, or u get kited and lack those 3 extra banes, resulting in not doing ANY real damage usually. Mutas are also luck based, u hope terran will mess marine position near tanks, leave tanks/medivacs undefended so u can pick them.
Actually it works often, but its really based on enemy's mistakes. Only solid strategy so far was infestors, because marines couldn't kite while fungaled, so u know your lings/banelings will actually do solid damage based on army strenght. A little luck was involved in fungaling itself, but it was more a reflection of mico spellcasting skill rather than hoping to hit. Just get in range to fungal, then instantly cast, nearly no risk of missing unless u mess it up bad.
But after fungal is (in my opinion) nerfed in zvt, as soon as terran scouts infestors, he will know he needs to avoid fungals. it's not hard to avoid fungals while stimmed, so during big battle every terran will know fungal will come any second, so he will prepare for it. At first push zerg has like 3 fungals, so he wont abuse any dps increase, he has total of 108 damage to use to not die in midgame doesnt matter if in 24 or 12 seconds. But if stimmed marines move back as soon as they see projectile,usually i think u will hit only 1/2 or 1/3 marines u would pre nerf, so u still need to deal vs 2/3 of his marines. But u have no fungals, tank rape everything, and marines come back to kill your lings from safe distance while u hoped to kill fungaled marines.
That's why i think its not good change for zerg, its cool to pew pew in later game, so u can mass 20 infestors and play quake mini game My 2 cents
I understand what you are saying, and what blizzard was doing, but the amulet still confuses me a little bit. I believe it will open up drops, as you where saying. But, it will force you to almost open up colossi first every game.
But I will say, I've been using colossi drops with the speed upgrade, and it's well... Fun lol.
EPT![[image loading]](http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2010/12/27/dcd7e870-dfb0-453f-bbd7-e65af800c2de.jpg)
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). We will see HT being warped in behind a min line, and drops being abused from large maps.
(kinda like when Terran troll faced with 5x reaper).![[image loading]](http://pics.spaceghetto.st/images/gerbilshir.jpg)
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. Ack, cheap shot, sorry TL.
