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Making it channeled sounds like a really bad idea, building even a single turret per mineral line would shut down all harass. I think something close to your idea, but more suitable to the game is to lower the energy cost for casting entomb. If it's only 50 energy then you can constantly threaten mineral lines, even if you react quickly you're still losing resources and it becomes important to do something about the oracle's presence.
I like a lot of the spells the unit has had during its multiple iterations. My idea is to merge the phase shift and entomb ability, you would be able to cast it on your own or enemy buildings as before, but instead of the buildings purely phasing out of existence, a phasing field would envelop them and you could kill it to free the unit. (or wait 40 seconds) They can then expand the spell so you could target ~2-3 mineral patches with it. You could use it as support for disabling static defense in conjunction with void rays, disabling enemy tech structures, disrupting mining or as a defensive ability to protect your own nexus.
The second spell could be one of the scouting ones, if you give them some method of detection and allow for synergy with the tempest's long range, then it fits perfectly with the game.
The third spell could be the cloaking field. Blizzard has said that cloaking field on the mothership was a bad idea, because the unit became such an important target. I agree and I like having the ability on a small fragile unit (that you can build more of). It's more useful in many small tactical engagements that way, instead of being designed for death ball use.
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On September 08 2012 21:26 Grumbels wrote:
Making it channeled sounds like a really bad idea, building even a single turret per mineral line would shut down all harass. I think something close to your idea, but more suitable to the game is to lower the energy cost for casting entomb. If it's only 50 energy then you can constantly threaten mineral lines, even if you react quickly you're still losing resources and it becomes important to do something about the oracle's presence.
This is a secondary design concern. Firstly, because there are "balance" variables we can change to help that. The range from which an Oracle can Entomb minerals, for example, might be increased so as to allow them to bypass small numbers of static defense by Entombing in areas that lack static defense coverage. On more of the "design" front, something like scaling down the size of Entomb's area-of-effect to only cover a few mineral patches at a time could be a drawback to this increased range and would introduce a positional element to the harassment (just as Mutalisks will exploit relatively exposed areas during their harassment, our Oracle can now find openings in a player's static defense line from which it can Entomb). This is just one idea, but the purpose of its introduction is sound.
Most everything I suggest in this write-up works towards mimicking the nature of current "successful" harassment units. The escalatory nature harassment units have with a player's defense (giving Oracles a means of disabling static defense accomplishes this perfectly), the "gradient" between the different levels of effectiveness harassment units can have, the opportunity harassment units give players, both defending against them and using them, to try and shift the level of that effectiveness and the outcome of the harassment play in towards a favored end with skill, attention, time, etc, and so on so forth. This is exactly what the Oracle lacks, and why people are disliking the unit so much as it stands. Lowering the energy cost of the spell does not address any of these issues.
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But you are wrong. Entomb allows for skill, since you get different results depending on when you use it (how many units are at home defending etc.) and if the energy cost is low enough the oracle can be a constant threat, then the defending player will have to look into chasing the oracle away or smartly decide on leaving more units at home or building static defense. It would be nice if this was not only strategic, but also about micro - having to risk the oracle more etc. I haven't tested the unit myself, so I don't know how it feels though. I imagine one interesting thing about it will be micro battles about chasing oracles away versus avoiding enemy vikings and such to penetrate their defenses and cast oracle.
Your idea might work as well, I don't know, but don't just say that entomb does not allow for the two criteria you listed. Which frankly a harassment unit doesn't really need to fulfill. After all, you can drop high templar and it's all about your opponent's reaction time and not about your own execution. At some point in the game it becomes okay to have harass that's simply about multitasking, i.e. doing something and hoping your opponent can't keep up. Not to say that's a good way to design something, but it can work out that way.
My main problem with your post is that you state some smart design principles and then you make the incredible leap to say "my design is sound and blizzard's design is not". That's not how it works. :o
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
Well argued and nicely written blog. Making Entombed into a channelled ability definitely sounds interesting (You could do things like focus Entomb on the close mineral patches, or save energy for bases with mined out patches), although the Oracle has very low hp so would probably need redesigning if that were to happen.
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It seems to be a technically demanding unit.
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More relevant than ever. Void Siphon is awful.
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On October 07 2012 05:03 SarcasmMonster wrote:
More relevant than ever. Void Siphon is awful.
My thoughts exactly.
There really is no reason for Blizzard not to make these changes to Entomb. All pros. No cons.
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EPT
