|
On February 16 2012 01:27 Neurosis wrote:
I just think they need to quit changing the game. Every time they patch they take away credibility for this game being a "sport". They didn't make basketball goals taller in the NBA just because Shaq is freakishly large.
Well, most in the NBA is Terran, so balance isn't much of an issue 
|
QXC's suggested change is spot on.
|
On February 16 2012 01:58 MafiaCheese wrote:
Seems kind of odd that they want snipe to be an Anti-Psionic ability when emp serves that purpose already /shrug
It should be obvious they want ghost to be a anti-psionic unit then and not the all purpose kill-everything-zerg that it is now 
|
7 Posts
Instead of 25 +25 to Psionic make ghosts do 50 base damage with some reduced amount vs. massive
Exactly what I thought after reading the patch notes: only reduce damage against massive! Thanks a lot for posting.
(Btw. it is unlogical that a sniper rifle can easily take out heavy armor units.)
|
OR
just put a cooldown to snipe
|
On February 16 2012 01:20 Zorkmid wrote:
I agree that there might be a better way to nerf the ghost/fix ZvT. I don't agree that terrans regularly snipe the emboldened members of QXC's "less" list:
marine
marauder
reaper
zealot
baneling
hydralisk
mutalisk
infestor
corruptor
broodlord
ultralisk
workers
this is what i was thinking while reading the post. so not counting broodlords and ultralisks which is what the patch very much intended to not have snipe be used for, you're left with 3 units ghosts would regularly snipe pre-nerf -
baneling
mutalisk
infestor
one of which, is still viable to snipe. the list doesn't look as outrageously stacked now that all the unnecessary fluff is taken away doesn't it?
there's 2 main arguments of qxc's which are inherently flawed.
1. "nerfing snipe is like nerfing marines". this is a straw man argument. it's much easier to make an argument against a 50% marine damage nerf simply because marines are NOT ghosts! marines only have their base damage and a stim move. ghosts besides having snipe have cloak, nukes, and emp. that's a lot more utility than your average marine and still makes ghosts a viable production unit for certain situations including sniping infestors and templars. this argument of qxc's was not so much an argument against a ghost nerf, more than it actually was against a marine nerf, which only lead to confuse and mislead his audience.
2. sniping any other unit is "innovation". No, it's not, and if it is, it's not very good innovation. there's a lot better ways to kill a marauder or zealot than sniping it. Let's imagine though that there are games where possibly sniping zealots and marauders is a good idea. Out of 100 games how many do you think that scenario would present itself? 1? 2? maybe 5 at most and if we're generous? Out of 100 games of TvZ how many would it be a good idea to snipe broodlords/ultralisks? 70? 80? if not all?
Balancing a game is not a perfect science. But anyone can see that the move to nerf snipe provides MORE balance than less, even though there is a tradeoff where we significantly balance the TvZ matchup but lose a few "innovative" scenarios.
So in conclusion, myself personally, as a protoss player, I find the nerf to be fair and find qxc's argument to be both misleading and flawed.
|
|
|
On February 16 2012 02:51 Yoduh wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2012 01:20 Zorkmid wrote:
I agree that there might be a better way to nerf the ghost/fix ZvT. I don't agree that terrans regularly snipe the emboldened members of QXC's "less" list:
marine
marauder
reaper
zealot
baneling
hydralisk
mutalisk
infestor
corruptor
broodlord
ultralisk
workers this is what i was thinking while reading the post. so not counting broodlords and ultralisks which is what the patch very much intended to not have snipe be used for, you're left with 3 units ghosts would regularly snipe pre-nerf - baneling mutalisk infestor one of which, is still viable to snipe. the list doesn't look as outrageously stacked now that all the unnecessary fluff is taken away doesn't it? there's 2 main arguments of qxc's which are inherently flawed. 1. "nerfing snipe is like nerfing marines". this is a straw man argument. it's much easier to make an argument against a 50% marine damage nerf simply because marines are NOT ghosts! marines only have their base damage and a stim move. ghosts besides having snipe have cloak, nukes, and emp. that's a lot more utility than your average marine and still makes ghosts a viable production unit for certain situations including sniping infestors and templars. this argument of qxc's was not so much an argument against a ghost nerf, more than it actually was against a marine nerf, which only lead to confuse and mislead his audience. 2. sniping any other unit is "innovation". No, it's not, and if it is, it's not very good innovation. there's a lot better ways to kill a marauder or zealot than sniping it. Let's imagine though that there are games where possibly sniping zealots and marauders is a good idea. Out of 100 games how many do you think that scenario would present itself? 1? 2? maybe 5 at most and if we're generous? Out of 100 games of TvZ how many would it be a good idea to snipe broodlords/ultralisks? 70? 80? if not all? Balancing a game is not a perfect science. But anyone can see that the move to nerf snipe provides MORE balance than less, even though there is a tradeoff where we significantly balance the TvZ matchup but lose a few "innovative" scenarios.
So in conclusion, myself personally, as a protoss player, I find the nerf to be fair and find qxc's argument to be both misleading and flawed.
As a random player, I'd have to say your argument is flawed because of the fact that nothing supports the idea that it's late game ghost play breaking TvZ right now. Heck, late game TvZ isn't even broken, not if you actually look at overall play and not just a handful of games by literally the best couple of players in the world.
|
Let's make feedback only usable vs. Psionics too.
So it doesnt counter all terran tier 3 anymore.
|
On February 16 2012 03:44 Jacen88 wrote:
Let's make feedback only usable vs. Psionics too.
So it doesnt counter all terran tier 3 anymore.
Haha, imagine, if feedback and infested terrans did half damage to non-psionic.
|
I think the problem Blizzard is looking at is just good game design versus what needs to happen.
What needs to happen is that snipe needs to be changed in a way that only affects its relationships with the units that are the problem (Broodlords and Ultras).
I think Blizzard recognizes this, but is concerned about the game design aspect of it, in that a - to massive makes snipe too convoluted. Obviously, the tooltip wouldn't need to change much, just a minus to massive added in, but there's two problems with that.
First, there's no other unit with a minus damage stat. It's not a technical hurdle as much as it is a psychological one. I don't think Blizzard likes the idea of attack reductions against certain things. On top of that, the snipe tooltip explicitly states that its damage is not reduced by armor.
Second, Blizzard seems to like the idea of two sniping every caster unit. This would require the ghost to get a buff to snipe to achieve. That, or have the base damage be 45-15 to massive/+5 to psionic.
Third, I think Blizzard also sees the ghost becoming an infestor of sorts. While it isn't currently used as such, a ghost's utility, I would argue, is probably double that of a single infestor. First, nukes are huge and severely underused.
1. Nukes: They can force an army to move, deny expansions, deny mining, and, if they hit, are the most cost-effective thing in the game.
2. EMPs can deal a thousand damage from a Protoss army at once, in an instant, or deny your opponent use of any casters, period. Can reveal cloaked units. Can protect your units from opposing HT.
3. Snipe: deals damage to every zerg unit, in large numbers, hard counters zerg tier 3. Is an effective way to remove psionics from the game. Did you know you can snipe larva too? Snipes overseers very quickly as well, Zerg's only effective method of mobile detection.
It can do all of these things while cloaked. It's absolutely the most, without a doubt, versatile unit in the game. Blizzard is looking ahead and realizing that ghosts only get more used from here, not less.
|
With all these frequent patches - and expansion sets - coming out I think we'll be discussing unit balance for a long long time. Though this is an example of a particularly bad patch.
Leaving aside the ghost nerf, the other aspect of the patch, the phoenix buff vis-a-vis mutalisks seems to be a lot less controversial as I do not see any major uproar in the zerg community. As opposed to what's going on in this thread.
|
The currently proposed 25 Damage, +25 to psionic makes the spell too situational. EMP can already be used to counter casters, so an increased ability to snipe them won't help terran players much.
Snipe also needs to be good against other units. I'm thinking: zealots, zerglings, banelings, marines, workers and larvae. So essentially it'd be most effective against tier1. For this I'd set the damage at 25 with +25 to light armor.
|
On February 16 2012 03:44 Jacen88 wrote:
Let's make feedback only usable vs. Psionics too.
So it doesnt counter all terran tier 3 anymore.
Lol, I have actually thought feedback is kinda OP ve terran tier 3... good idea, lol. And about the ghost nerf,,, agree with qxc (Random player).
|
Even though this is a great idea, I think blizzard will not use it simply because they were not the ones to think of it.
|
It´s a joke that you need 2 snipes for zerglings, even though zerglings aren´t snipet so often.
|
Giving units a negative bonus is ugly from a design point of view. Besides 50 would be too strong as it would 3 shot zealots which could be abused I think.
I don't think the loss of other interesting ghost tactics is that bad they were very narrow anyway. Also I think terran has too many viable tactics in general which lead to build order poker too much, cutting of the fringe tactics isn't that bad as I'd rather have a less luck dependant game then too many goofy yet viable strats.
Let's be honest snipe vs protoss is extremely rare against zealots anyway so not a big miss. The only things we will be missing with this nerf is ghost tactics in TvT (which is only useful for a funky rush really) and snipe vs banelings / muta's. Changing it to 30+20 should be fine really, you can still snipe banes then and 2 shot marines with shield (same as now). All the other sniping is rarely done anyways so won't be a miss at all I think.
|
On February 15 2012 19:35 Xalonark wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 19:01 IcemanAsi wrote:
The Balance discussion here might be irrelevant.
Depending on how the damage code is written it could be literally impossible to implement your suggestion with the current damage model.Right now units have base damage and an additional damage against one type of enemy, your'e suggesting having base damage minus damage against one type of enemy.
Reprogramming the damage model could actually create some major bugs as it isn't simply a variable change. They could just implement it as plus everything else (except for massive) from a lower base if minus doesn't work. And I don't see any reason that it would be programmed with negative damage vs massive being not possible, especially with the modability that Blizzard put in the game. As long as the variables involved will accept negatives, it shouldn't be a problem, and even if they don't, it still shouldn't. Show nested quote +On February 15 2012 19:26 mime1 wrote:
Trollllllllll. Yeah snipe nerf is big..too big. But what about the phoenix "buff" for toss? Make fleet beacon + upgrades to be ABLE to counter a midgame unit from zerg? It's just absurd... How can people like this patch? It's the silliest patchs since they removed amulet... You'd be rich if you sold all that wine, qxc. qxc made an excellent suggestion that would be a lot better than what the people that are paid to balance the game came up with, presented in a well formulated post. You complained about imbalance without any reasoning and without any alternative suggested. Then you call qxc a troll... Good job. Edit: typo
No, he made a suggestion. We don't know if it is better or not, because everyone who tried to discuss what qxc suggested got ignored. Hopefully Blizzard will keep their change, and maybe tweak the ghost in another patch.
|
Why not reduce the base damage to say 30 or something, and buff the ultralisk's frenzy ability to negate the armour ignoring component of snipe? Ultralisks now do not evaporate to ghosts, and ghosts are still strong against broodlords.
|
This spell deals 1/2 damage to massive units.
And MAYBE +10 dmg to psionic, since they want that for some reason...
Just my 2 cents... This really shouldn't be that hard... They always make these changes so... dumbfoundedly weird.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
