Been thinking about the hellbat recently and how much Blizzard screwed up by nerfing it. During the early parts of HotS, I offraced as terran playing exclusively mech. And while it was slow going, I found that hellbat drops were a really beautiful way to open into mech because it allowed you to be 1) mobile, and 2) to be create a beautiful setup for mech. But it also transitioned well into bio, which was neat...sort of like how hellion/banshee works.
Anyways, for those unfamiliar with the hellbat drop, it goes pretty much like this: + Show Spoiler +
Here's the BO!
10 depot 12 rax 14 refinery (rallied worker) 16 depot @100% rax -> 3 marines Factory @100gas (18/27, 3:30, OC finishes) 20 depot 20 2nd gas 21 reactor @100% factory -> 1 hellion 26 starport (@100% factory) @100% reactor -> 4 more marines 29 armory 29 depot @100% starport -> viking (5:35) 35 depot Switch factory & rax @100% armory -> 2 hellbats/1 medivac (6:20) Constant hellbat/medivac/depot production First drop arrives at 7:30-7:50 CC after 2nd drop (~8:20)
To transition to mech: Start +1 armor, keep dropping Get natural geysers When possible, add 2 factories + 2nd armory Start +1/+2 and constant hellbat/tank production Raven optional
To transition to bio: Build ebay (if you didn't earlier), start +1 attack Add 2 rax, techlab add-ons Research stim/CS at the same time Tanks/mines optional until 3rd base
Some notes:
1) The first 3 marines can hold off the initial reaper as long as you place them in an area where they're likely to intercept it. The followup hellion will help deal with any followup reaper shenanigans. 2) The hellion is included in this build mainly as a scouting mechanism (arrives ~5:45). I don't scout with this build and instead just rely on the read I get with my hellion scout. I don't think it's bad to suicide the hellion for information if he has marines on his natural ramp. 3) The viking out of the starport will help deal with drops. I generally just rally it in the airspace outside my main and keep my marines halfway between the ramp and my mineral line. 4) Keep a scan saved ~6:30 in case of cloaked banshee/mine drops. If you get a read on cloaked banshee or a mine drop, just build an emergency ebay and a turret in your mineral line, delaying your hellbat drops a bit. 5) If you get a read on your opponent doing hellbat drops too, add a bunker in the mineral line and do your own hellbat drops. 6) CC placement depends on what you scout. If your opponent has gone for an early expand, place your CC on the low ground and tear him apart with the hellbat drops. If they are defensive and going for some kind of tech play, place it on the high ground until you have held off the aggression.
There's also another version of this with reactor starport + reactor factory. Drops hit a little bit later, but hit much much much harder.
With this particular pattern, mech began to resemble its BW counterpart (especially in TvT) with hellbat/tank/viking armies with ~5 medivacs for dropping as well as for defending drops. During this era, TvT was the coolest it's ever looked, in my opinion, once we got over the fact that hellbat drops were difficult to counter. We started having matches that looked like this (Mvp vs. INnoVation, WCS S1 Finals): http://www.twitch.tv/m/17807
In the end, we saw that most players were adapting to hellbat drops and finding ways to circumvent it with clever timings such as: . In this series, we saw LucifroN hard counter hellbat drops with his own thor drops/thor rushes as well as seeing ForGG come up with a clever mass hellion/viking strategy that would just outright destroy a hellbat player with DPS. Even in Mvp vs. INnoVation, we saw ways to deal with hellbat drops using only marine/tank; in G2 on Akilon Wastes, INnoVation just hits a marine/hellion timing JUST BEFORE hellbats get out, dealing severe, game-winning damage. INnoVation also trademarked a defense of a bunker in each mineral line + a tank to be completely safe against any kind of drops. Long story short, it was possible to defend hellbat drops and players came up with new and exciting strategies.
In other matchups, hellbats were feeling overpowered for a time as well. In particular, a lot of protoss players were having difficulties holding hellbat drops into marauder/hellbat (again, a new and exciting strategy). However, we saw games where protoss players were starting to get a good hold on dealing with these strategies by going forge/robo and adding early cannons in the mineral lines (ex: First vs. FantaSy, best defense against hellbat/widow mine drops ever). Even zerg players were figuring out these drops, and some players like Life were still just using ling/queen to deflect them. It was difficult to control properly, yes, but definitely possible, as shown by many pros, to deflect these drops with ease. So was it hellbat drops that were really overpowered?
There are, perhaps, some rather odd displays of hellbat usage that can be pointed out as overpowered, for instance: Mvp's marauder/hellbat all-in vs. Stephano: )
or Polt's rather odd triple reactor factory hellbat/marauder all-in: ).
Looking at these games, perhaps the idea is simply that hellbats are too strong right out of the box, for only 100 minerals.
So let's look at the situation AFTER the hellbat nerf. Perhaps the best examples of modern TvT are: Maru vs. INnoVation: http://www.twitch.tv/wcs_osl/c/2661528 and
Polt vs. Taeja:
You'll notice a huge lack of hellbats and mech in general. Why? Because, as it's always been in the past, mech is just bad in comparison to marine/tank now that you can't use hellbats to control the early game. In particular, the most common openings in TvT now seem to be marine/widow mine, marine/hellion pokes, or mine drops into banshees. And to me, this is a bit of a stale experience, simply an extension of WoL + widow mines. I mean, I think these games are incredible and really top notch, but to be honest, I'm rather tired of marine/tank and I was VERY excited to see TvT start to resemble BW TvT. And to be honest, I see no problem with players being forced into playing mech in TvT; this was the case in BW, and if anything, it's a welcome break from being forced into bio every game. If we look at other matchups, hellbat drops have also disappeared (because they're just not good enough anymore and most people have learned how to deal with them), and it seems that most terrans are either 1) proxying rax/fact/starport, 2) widow mine drops, or 3) heavy economic openers, but mostly heavy economic openers. TvP now is almost exclusively marine/mine drops or CC first. TvZ is starting to look dominated by 3CC biomine (might I add, no banshees). In a lot of ways, it feels like we're headed back into the later stages of WoL with how terran players are forced to play.
All of this basically goes to say: hellbat drops were a good thing for the game primarily because they were a completely different opening that basically revolutionized the meta. It brought other cool strategies into style as well as making mech viable for a short time. During this time, we saw several awesome strategies emerge and started to see a completely new game; however, since then we've fallen back to a lot of the stale, WoL-esque openings.
There is, perhaps, a question of whether or not the hellbat was too strong in a broad sense, and I think the answer is: probably. However, I know for certain that they WAY they nerfed the hellbat was overall bad for the game, and is forcing us into a WoL regression. This is perhaps the first huge mistake Blizzard has made in HotS, and ironically, it's the first thing to deviate from their "buff everything" policy. I don't know how others feel, but IMO the hellbat nerf was a pretty big deal and really should have been studied and played with a little more (and perhaps have waited for a month or two more).
Sidenote: Now that Blizzard is looking to "buff mech" by combining air and ground weapons, perhaps they need to look where the problem with mech originated.
I wasn't prepared to agree with you. But I do now. Successful argument, and might I say a very good write up of your point.
Delaying the patch would have been a great thing IMO. Like you said, many pros were about to or already beginning to figure out new timings and work arounds to the hell bat problem. I still think that a nerf was in order, or possibly some buffs to even everything out, but TIME is really what was needed in either case. The WoL regression is a scary thing IMO and your argument made me realize that the place that the strong hellbats would have taken us may not have been so bad in comparison, or even at all, and may have even turned into something really cool.
I am sure there are many more games where they rely solely on who has more hellbats or who does better hellbat drops in TvT. in fact, hellbat drops set up beautifully into any kind of follow up because how much map control and defense needed to block the drop. if anything, hellbats limit the amount of opening terran can do in TvT
The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game.
On August 17 2013 16:21 Scarecrow wrote: The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game.
The nerf was a mistake as in "the Hellbat needed a fix but it could have been handled better"
Still not as bad as the Snipe nerf... that DEFINITELY could have been handled better, hell it could have made TvZ both balanced and exciting for the last few months of WoL if Snipe was nerfed while still letting it be viable!
On August 17 2013 16:11 ETisME wrote: I am sure there are many more games where they rely solely on who has more hellbats or who does better hellbat drops in TvT. in fact, hellbat drops set up beautifully into any kind of follow up because how much map control and defense needed to block the drop. if anything, hellbats limit the amount of opening terran can do in TvT
You're missing the point, though. Players WERE starting to learn how to deflect hellbat drops; ForGG was 45-3 at one point with his trademark hellion/viking style. Hellbat drops were popular, but not unstoppable. For this reason, we definitely did see a lot of hellbat vs. hellbat games (which is a little unfortunate), but we also got to see a wealth of amazing new openings come out of people trying to counter the hellbats. Additionally, I see no reason to criticize hellbat drops for map control as they WERE a map control play, much like hellion/banshee. Invariably, we saw players who would, if they could defend the hellbat drops well, pull ahead in terms of economy and tech. Examples include pretty much every ForGG game and every later INnoVation game, as well as other players such as First and Life.
Refer below to limiting terran openings.
On August 17 2013 16:21 Scarecrow wrote: The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game.
I agree that they may have been too cost-effective, but I don't think it was the hellbat drops necessarily that were the problem. Again, the mirror aspect of it was that seemed very powerful and was very popular, but that doesn't mean that it was the ONLY choice, and I've provided many examples of this.
For instance, in the Mvp vs. INnoVation series, Mvp does a marine/mine drop into cloaked banshee in G4. In G2, INnoVation does a fairly non-cheesy hellion/marine drop @7:00. ForGG created a hardcore counter-build: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=412904. INnoVation has shown time and time again that he can defend using only marine/tank, using BUNKERS instead of TURRETS (biggest mistake most people were making). Basically, the only limiting factor was that you couldn't go fast cloaked banshees or get away with certain marine/mine defenses, but everything else that's possible now was pretty much possible then with the right considerations. Again, I believe hellbat drops needed another month or two to fully mature. At the time, I didn't realize it and thought the BFH nerf was good, but now that it's happened, I can see the damage it's done.
On August 17 2013 16:21 Scarecrow wrote: The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game.
The nerf was a mistake as in "the Hellbat needed a fix but it could have been handled better"
Still not as bad as the Snipe nerf... that DEFINITELY could have been handled better, hell it could have made TvZ both balanced and exciting for the last few months of WoL if Snipe was nerfed while still letting it be viable!
And omg, can I just say I agree wholly with you on that. Ever since the snipe nerf, I've defended my opinion that Blizzard broke the game then. It was a little crazy how good ghosts were back then, but when they nerfed snipe, they killed several strategies all across the board in several matchups. Much like nerfing the hellbat did. It wasn't just a "lessoning of power", it was a complete overhaul of the unit's utility and purpose :/
Not only that, but when you see how terrifying lategame zerg was in WoL, the change looks premature in retrospect. In fact, Terrans NEEDED something to survive the Ultra/Brood tech switches... besides the fact that Brood Lord/Infestor was ridiculously hard to combat... I think Snipe was perfect for dealing with that!
Hell, PvZ was beginning to look "okay" with the use of Carriers... imagine this type of balance patch
I can't understand you guys at all. Snipe wasn't just a bit crazy, it was completely broken. There was no way a zerg can break through a split map situation. Tech switch whatnot doesn't do anything when terran sitting behind with PFs, tanks and ghosts with bios. I will never forget that game between july zerg against Mvp because even if I am a Mvp fan, that game just looked damn stupid.
The mid game was in advantage for Terran at that time, hellions contain was extremely powerful, it lets terran grab a 3rd extremely safely with hellion banshee opening while zerg struggles to get a third up because of hellion runbys and banshee support. The game was full of roach ling baneling all in, similar to what it is nowadays, you can see that in MMA vs DRG final, I think it was 3 or 4 games were won by that all in. It wasn't until queen got range buff then zerg starts to have an "advantage" in mid game while in fact, it was still mainly 3 base vs 3 base and infestors were the only reason why zerg has a huge power over terran.
Snipe is actually buffed in TvP right now, it was pure EMP vs HT before. As for why ghost disappeared in TvZ, it's because zerg gets better at dealing with cloak ghosts and ghosts are just too expensive to invest in.
learning how to deal with hellbat drop opening doesn't mean the strategy was any more balanced than it should be. hellbat drops completely dominates other openings except those that are specific designed to deny hellbat drops, which is problematic because it becomes a complete poker style game play. Those hellbat drops specific counter build are much inferior to standard openings. The risk and reward for hellbat drops were way too uneven to call it a good strategy. The forgg thingee was HUGELY over excited about, he was playing against EU terrans, hardly a lot of the better terrans in that record.
Not to mention if both players do hellbat drops, it just looks silly.
I don't mind it too too much in other matchups, it's TvT that it has ruined. Even now we don't have any games that are on par with Flash vs Ryung game, with flanks over flanks over flanks and insane action everywhere.
Nice write-up. At the time I thought the HB nerf was premature, but that was because it was more in line with my belief that Blizzard should be hands off as far as possible once the game is out of beta and released. That said, I despise the unit. To me, it is emblematic of the worst aspects of SC2 design (i.e. a hard counter unit that is also tanky and does a lot of damage). It's one drawback was meant to be its lack of range (and its slowness - but even then it is fast enough to be a part of unstimmed bio compositions) but that was swiftly circumvented by players' use of boosted medivacs. (I wonder if this was foreseen by the design team? They seem to have a history of not realising that players will get up to all kinds of unanticipated cool stuff.)
I disagree with regard to TvT as I thought that match-up was silly and even if players were figuring out a response to it, the whole match-up was dominated by one unit and how to respond to it. As for BW TvT I never watched it, and as I really don't give a shit about BW, just saying that the match-up resembled BW TvT means nothing to me. Secondly, if the HB nerf meant an end to early experimentation of TvP mech then I don't see the problem with this. I don't think I've seen a single SC2 TvP mech game which was not factory based turtle-esque play rather than the classic positional based mech style. Therefore, to me this is good riddance. If, however, real mech based play was arising from HB play in TvP then maybe I'm wrong about that.
Finally, I think the HB will return. It's too much of a strong unit to completely go missing. It's just that when Bliizzard brings out the nerf hammer units tend to get shelved as players return to more familiar and easier strategies (WOL-esque as you say). But then, over time, they return to these units, experiment and begin to incorporate them into their play and into new strategies. I think the same will occur with the Hellbat. it's just that it may be a little while before we see it return.
1.) X gets abused to no end and is nerfed 2.) X does not get used anymore because it works differently 3.) X gets figured out again, when people start using it more
Hellbats are still very cost efficient (esp. for harass), when they get the blueflame upgrade, so I expect that people will come up with builds that include it later in the game.
On August 17 2013 18:46 ETisME wrote: I can't understand you guys at all. Snipe wasn't just a bit crazy, it was completely broken.
The community suggestion was to change snipe from 45 damage everything, to 45 vs non-massive and whatever it takes (let's say 25) vs. massive.
What Blizzard did is shoehorn Snipe into a anti caster role with miserable damage against anything else, often worse than normal attack DPS.
This is beautiful, exactly my thoughts on the matter.
On August 17 2013 20:07 Daswollvieh wrote: Maybe it´s just the usual patch dynamic:
1.) X gets abused to no end and is nerfed 2.) X does not get used anymore because it works differently 3.) X gets figured out again, when people start using it more
Hellbats are still very cost efficient (esp. for harass), when they get the blueflame upgrade, so I expect that people will come up with builds that include it later in the game.
Well, perhaps. The thing is, what I'm arguing here is not that hellbats are no longer good, but rather because of the nerf, Blizzard destroyed a new and interesting way to open and thus killed a lot of interesting strategies INCLUDING MECH. It was a mistake in that regard.
In a way, it's a lot like the ghost nerf, which completely removed ghosts from lategame TvZ because vikings/marauders were just better; hellbats were completely removed from the early game because marine/mine drops and cloaked banshees are just better. And that's fine, but it's very WoL-esque...we're not moving forward.
On August 17 2013 20:02 aZealot wrote: Nice write-up. At the time I thought the HB nerf was premature, but that was because it was more in line with my belief that Blizzard should be hands off as far as possible once the game is out of beta and released. That said, I despise the unit. To me, it is emblematic of the worst aspects of SC2 design (i.e. a hard counter unit that is also tanky and does a lot of damage). It's one drawback was meant to be its lack of range (and its slowness - but even then it is fast enough to be a part of unstimmed bio compositions) but that was swiftly circumvented by players' use of boosted medivacs. (I wonder if this was foreseen by the design team? They seem to have a history of not realising that players will get up to all kinds of unanticipated cool stuff.)
I disagree with regard to TvT as I thought that match-up was silly and even if players were figuring out a response to it, the whole match-up was dominated by one unit and how to respond to it. As for BW TvT I never watched it, and as I really don't give a shit about BW, just saying that the match-up resembled BW TvT means nothing to me. Secondly, if the HB nerf meant an end to early experimentation of TvP mech then I don't see the problem with this. I don't think I've seen a single SC2 TvP mech game which was not factory based turtle-esque play rather than the classic positional based mech style. Therefore, to me this is good riddance. If, however, real mech based play was arising from HB play in TvP then maybe I'm wrong about that.
Finally, I think the HB will return. It's too much of a strong unit to completely go missing. It's just that when Bliizzard brings out the nerf hammer units tend to get shelved as players return to more familiar and easier strategies (WOL-esque as you say). But then, over time, they return to these units, experiment and begin to incorporate them into their play and into new strategies. I think the same will occur with the Hellbat. it's just that it may be a little while before we see it return.
Aside from perhaps being too tanky, I think the hellbat drop mechanic is AWESOME, and I love that hellbats were so multi-purpose that they fit into any army composition. I personally love hellbats and hellbat drops. In my opinion, hellbat drops are much like (admittedly, less skillful) reaver drops; they're quite fun to pull off and it allows you that board control without having to leave your base exposed.
WATCH THISSSSS:
I honestly think that hellbat/tank/viking/medivac greatly resembles the goliath/tank/wraith/dropship armies in BW. It was exciting to see something so similar in SC2 for the first time. , I'm sad BW doesn't mean anything to you. I didn't get into SC until 2011 and I still love BW.
Closing statement: Again, I don't think the problem is with the hellbat itself now. The hellbat is still strong, of course, and still works well with mech. However, forcing players to have a techlab and spend money on blue flame completely destroys the place that they had before and the advancement of the meta. As it is, with the hellbat nerf, we've had a regression and are now playing "slightly more balanced WoL".
On August 17 2013 20:07 Daswollvieh wrote: Maybe it´s just the usual patch dynamic:
1.) X gets abused to no end and is nerfed 2.) X does not get used anymore because it works differently 3.) X gets figured out again, when people start using it more
Hellbats are still very cost efficient (esp. for harass), when they get the blueflame upgrade, so I expect that people will come up with builds that include it later in the game.
Well, perhaps. The thing is, what I'm arguing here is not that hellbats are no longer good, but rather because of the nerf, Blizzard destroyed a new and interesting way to open and thus killed a lot of interesting strategies INCLUDING MECH. It was a mistake in that regard.
Well, most people agreed that it was an obnoxious opener that made a lot of strategies impossible/irrelevant, because the risk-reward was way too good for Hellbat drops. It made the game (esp. in TvT) revolve around the execution and defense of one strategy. I still think it would be too good as an opener and while it´s true that it made transitions to various styles possible, which otherwise wouldn´t be, that´s more a sign that certain styles (i.e. mech) were too weak in general, so they required an imba opener.
In a way, it's a lot like the ghost nerf, which completely removed ghosts from lategame TvZ because vikings/marauders were just better; hellbats were completely removed from the early game because marine/mine drops and cloaked banshees are just better. And that's fine, but it's very WoL-esque...we're not moving forward.
I disagree. The ghost nerf permanently changed the snipe ability, while the hellbat nerf simply delays their effectiveness. You cannot upgrade ghosts to be as good as they were pre-nerf. Of course delays are significant when a unit gets pushed to a stage of the game where it´s not relevant anymore. I just don´t think that´s the case with hellbats.
On August 17 2013 16:21 Scarecrow wrote: The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game.
The nerf was a mistake as in "the Hellbat needed a fix but it could have been handled better"
Still not as bad as the Snipe nerf... that DEFINITELY could have been handled better, hell it could have made TvZ both balanced and exciting for the last few months of WoL if Snipe was nerfed while still letting it be viable!
Snipe deserved to be nerfed. It's nonsensical to claim that making TvZ lategame about accumulating energy on mass ghosts was a fair response to broodlord/infestor (and mass ghosts + Snipe arguably made ultralisk transitions useless too). Both were boring, tedious strategies that require almost no coherent thought to execute. Balancing the spell itself would've been a pain in the ass as 45 damage would still make ghosts a strong counter to all lair tech units.
The main mistake Blizzard makes in these decisions is assuming the unit itself is the cause of the problem instead of looking at the game as a whole. If they did that they would realize that these problems are systemic issues stemming from design flaws.
As a terran amateur/semipro/best terran southern hemisphere I can confidently state that the hellbat nerf, at least in it's aims of changing up TvT openers, was completely warranted. Hellbat drops were bullshit. Hit too early for too much and gave the hellbat drop player immunity to most pushes early (at least marine/tank sort of thing. Mass hellion viking was good, and the thor drop was a fancy gimmick that no one else picked up since it's designed to counter a very specific player doing a specific build)
Also, Polt never plays mech even pre patch. Referring to his tvt as an example of no mech post hellbat nerf is a bit misleading.
On August 17 2013 16:21 Scarecrow wrote: The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game.
The nerf was a mistake as in "the Hellbat needed a fix but it could have been handled better"
Still not as bad as the Snipe nerf... that DEFINITELY could have been handled better, hell it could have made TvZ both balanced and exciting for the last few months of WoL if Snipe was nerfed while still letting it be viable!
The main mistake Blizzard makes in these decisions is assuming the unit itself is the cause of the problem instead of looking at the game as a whole. If they did that they would realize that these problems are systemic issues stemming from design flaws.
The fact is that Snipe had real potential. Imagine someone with amazing mechanics sniping down all banelings, making Tankless Mineless TvZ possible (Ghost/MMM). Or imagine leaving behind two ghosts in every mineral mine as anti-muta defense. Imagine ghosts being built instead of tanks when defending a roach bane ling all-in... you just have to control properly. Imagine ghost drops where Snipe is used to kill workers.
All that tactical depth? Gone completely. Ghosts are now utterly useless except for casters. It was such a cool unit and now it's just another hard counter like the immortal.
Now I am sure Snipe was too powerful, but there must be a better way which allows ghosts to be effective but not broken... for example, what if Snipe had a cooldown but bigger damage (like an actual sniper rifle)?
How can you know it was impossible to balance without even trying? In my opinion, Blizzard chose a lazy solution.
On August 17 2013 20:07 Daswollvieh wrote: Maybe it´s just the usual patch dynamic:
1.) X gets abused to no end and is nerfed 2.) X does not get used anymore because it works differently 3.) X gets figured out again, when people start using it more
Hellbats are still very cost efficient (esp. for harass), when they get the blueflame upgrade, so I expect that people will come up with builds that include it later in the game.
Well, perhaps. The thing is, what I'm arguing here is not that hellbats are no longer good, but rather because of the nerf, Blizzard destroyed a new and interesting way to open and thus killed a lot of interesting strategies INCLUDING MECH. It was a mistake in that regard.
In a way, it's a lot like the ghost nerf, which completely removed ghosts from lategame TvZ because vikings/marauders were just better; hellbats were completely removed from the early game because marine/mine drops and cloaked banshees are just better. And that's fine, but it's very WoL-esque...we're not moving forward.
On August 17 2013 20:02 aZealot wrote: Nice write-up. At the time I thought the HB nerf was premature, but that was because it was more in line with my belief that Blizzard should be hands off as far as possible once the game is out of beta and released. That said, I despise the unit. To me, it is emblematic of the worst aspects of SC2 design (i.e. a hard counter unit that is also tanky and does a lot of damage). It's one drawback was meant to be its lack of range (and its slowness - but even then it is fast enough to be a part of unstimmed bio compositions) but that was swiftly circumvented by players' use of boosted medivacs. (I wonder if this was foreseen by the design team? They seem to have a history of not realising that players will get up to all kinds of unanticipated cool stuff.)
I disagree with regard to TvT as I thought that match-up was silly and even if players were figuring out a response to it, the whole match-up was dominated by one unit and how to respond to it. As for BW TvT I never watched it, and as I really don't give a shit about BW, just saying that the match-up resembled BW TvT means nothing to me. Secondly, if the HB nerf meant an end to early experimentation of TvP mech then I don't see the problem with this. I don't think I've seen a single SC2 TvP mech game which was not factory based turtle-esque play rather than the classic positional based mech style. Therefore, to me this is good riddance. If, however, real mech based play was arising from HB play in TvP then maybe I'm wrong about that.
Finally, I think the HB will return. It's too much of a strong unit to completely go missing. It's just that when Bliizzard brings out the nerf hammer units tend to get shelved as players return to more familiar and easier strategies (WOL-esque as you say). But then, over time, they return to these units, experiment and begin to incorporate them into their play and into new strategies. I think the same will occur with the Hellbat. it's just that it may be a little while before we see it return.
Aside from perhaps being too tanky, I think the hellbat drop mechanic is AWESOME, and I love that hellbats were so multi-purpose that they fit into any army composition. I personally love hellbats and hellbat drops. In my opinion, hellbat drops are much like (admittedly, less skillful) reaver drops; they're quite fun to pull off and it allows you that board control without having to leave your base exposed.
I honestly think that hellbat/tank/viking/medivac greatly resembles the goliath/tank/wraith/dropship armies in BW. It was exciting to see something so similar in SC2 for the first time. , I'm sad BW doesn't mean anything to you. I didn't get into SC until 2011 and I still love BW.
Closing statement: Again, I don't think the problem is with the hellbat itself now. The hellbat is still strong, of course, and still works well with mech. However, forcing players to have a techlab and spend money on blue flame completely destroys the place that they had before and the advancement of the meta. As it is, with the hellbat nerf, we've had a regression and are now playing "slightly more balanced WoL".
Well, I've always enjoyed BW PvT (what little of it I have watched). I really liked seeing Speedlots and Goons moving around the map, Protoss armies recalling in and out, HTs dropping storms, reaver drops, stasis fields etc. But, I am tired by endless comparisons to Broodwar. That's what I meant by not giving a shit about BW. Just because something was good in BW does not necessarily mean that it is good, or going to be good, in SC2. I rarely watch any non Protoss mirror but WOL TvT was something, when I did watch, that I always enjoyed. The HB based HOTS TvT style that was developing seemed, as I said, just silly. So, comparing it to BW-esque TvT was not a reason for me to like it.
Give it time. I think you will see the HB return as the game matures further. It might be an even better unit for it.
On August 17 2013 16:21 Scarecrow wrote: The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game.
The nerf was a mistake as in "the Hellbat needed a fix but it could have been handled better"
Still not as bad as the Snipe nerf... that DEFINITELY could have been handled better, hell it could have made TvZ both balanced and exciting for the last few months of WoL if Snipe was nerfed while still letting it be viable!
The main mistake Blizzard makes in these decisions is assuming the unit itself is the cause of the problem instead of looking at the game as a whole. If they did that they would realize that these problems are systemic issues stemming from design flaws.
Finally, someone with a functioning brain. <3
Hmm, yes. That is a good insight. But I wonder if we sometimes don't overstate the design flaws (too much production too fast; too many easily available resources; excessively hard counters - units and abilities - that limit micro, neuter strategies and negate units from a match-up) of SC2? For all its flaws it has remained a good and viable game which is rewarding to play and spectate. I think it could have been even better if Blizzard had had their current balance policy in WOL. The development team seemed to misunderstand, at that time, that a RTS like SC2 (with sufficient depth and complexity) will develop in ways unanticipated by the design team. And that this is the beauty of the game and it should be allowed to do so. Thankfully, they seem to understand this now (at least for the most part) and are more willing to let things play out.
I think this is why I find the endless comparisons to BW both corrosive and exhausting. BW may or may not be the "perfect" RTS (I think it tends to be put on a pedestal a bit much for my liking - especially, to my mind, by people who did not play it and probably never watched it). But, in trying to make SC2 if not another BW at least another "perfect" RTS, I think you run the risk of destroying the game (and the E-Sport) altogether. In this sense, and to coin a well used phrase, I see the constant urge to "perfect" SC2 by correcting design flaws as being the enemy of the good enough.
On August 18 2013 05:01 aZealot wrote: I wonder if we sometimes don't overstate the design flaws (too much production too fast; too many easily available resources; excessively hard counters - units and abilities - that limit micro, neuter strategies and negate units from a match-up) of SC2? For all its flaws it has remained a good and viable game which is rewarding to play and spectate. I think it could have been even better if Blizzard had had their current balance policy in WOL. The development team seemed to misunderstand, at that time, that a RTS like SC2 (with sufficient depth and complexity) will develop in ways unanticipated by the design team. And that this is the beauty of the game and it should be allowed to do so. Thankfully, they seem to understand this now (at least for the most part) and are more willing to let things play out.
I think this is why I find the endless comparisons to BW both corrosive and exhausting. BW may or may not be the "perfect" RTS (I think it tends to be put on a pedestal a bit much for my liking - especially, to my mind, by people who did not play it and probably never watched it). But, in trying to make SC2 if not another BW at least another "perfect" RTS, I think you run the risk of destroying the game (and the E-Sport) altogether. In this sense, and to coin a well used phrase, I see the constant urge to "perfect" SC2 by correcting design flaws as being the enemy of the good enough.
Those weren't really the design flaws I had in mind besides the part about counters. The other ones are unfortunate (depending on your perspective) but acceptable parts of the game provided that the strategic and tactical depth can compensate. It's not like BW was perfect either, especially when it came to unit navigation.
The big issues I had in mind here were:
The inefficient scaling of Protoss gateway units throughout the game.
The ultimate focus of constructing Protoss armies around expensive tech units instead of using tech units to supplement basic units.
A lack of tech units that make gateway units better instead of using gateway units as a buffer.
Terran issues with transitioning into their more expensive tech.
Terran issues with justifying said transition when faced with the cost-effective, high damage, and easy reproduction of Marine/Marauder/Medivac/Widow Mine.
The instability of mech openers and compositions, particularly the problems with tank-based play in non-mirror matchups.
Zerg having huge portions of their tech tree either invalidated or made useless in certain matchups.
Zerg being corralled into a limited set of opening builds.
Poor synergy within army compositions when attempting to incorporate HotS units.
On August 17 2013 18:46 ETisME wrote: I can't understand you guys at all. Snipe wasn't just a bit crazy, it was completely broken. There was no way a zerg can break through a split map situation. Tech switch whatnot doesn't do anything when terran sitting behind with PFs, tanks and ghosts with bios. I will never forget that game between july zerg against Mvp because even if I am a Mvp fan, that game just looked damn stupid.
The mid game was in advantage for Terran at that time, hellions contain was extremely powerful, it lets terran grab a 3rd extremely safely with hellion banshee opening while zerg struggles to get a third up because of hellion runbys and banshee support. The game was full of roach ling baneling all in, similar to what it is nowadays, you can see that in MMA vs DRG final, I think it was 3 or 4 games were won by that all in. It wasn't until queen got range buff then zerg starts to have an "advantage" in mid game while in fact, it was still mainly 3 base vs 3 base and infestors were the only reason why zerg has a huge power over terran.
Snipe is actually buffed in TvP right now, it was pure EMP vs HT before. As for why ghost disappeared in TvZ, it's because zerg gets better at dealing with cloak ghosts and ghosts are just too expensive to invest in.
learning how to deal with hellbat drop opening doesn't mean the strategy was any more balanced than it should be. hellbat drops completely dominates other openings except those that are specific designed to deny hellbat drops, which is problematic because it becomes a complete poker style game play. Those hellbat drops specific counter build are much inferior to standard openings. The risk and reward for hellbat drops were way too uneven to call it a good strategy. The forgg thingee was HUGELY over excited about, he was playing against EU terrans, hardly a lot of the better terrans in that record.
Not to mention if both players do hellbat drops, it just looks silly.
I don't mind it too too much in other matchups, it's TvT that it has ruined. Even now we don't have any games that are on par with Flash vs Ryung game, with flanks over flanks over flanks and insane action everywhere.
I remember that MVP vs JULY game on metopolis and how a lot of people thought snipe was broken after that, enough for almost an instant nerf. What they ignored was the fact that before julys bane all in mvp dropped july and killed his spawning pool i believe his spire as well and drones, july was waiting for his upgrade timing to finish because he was about to bust and hesitated on defending the drop. As a result he lost his spawning pool as well as taking a lot of other extra damage. He couldn't remax after doing a huge bust since his spawning pool was dead, nonetheless the game went on with july crashing ultras into mvp and getting them sniped until MVP eventually won(julys creep spread was also really horrible by todays standards). I really don't know how people ignored such a huge factor that contributed to that games outcome yet the amount of whine was so great it literally changed the game.
Feel free to watch the vod and just look at the mistakes that happen then come back and with 100% honesty say the reason why MVP won was purely because snipe was OP. It would be the equivalent of a terran losing an upgrading engineering bay during a bust then later losing to ultra because he has no +3, followed by an instant halving / removal of chitenous plating.
Once an idea gets ingrained it doesn't really get questioned. It's like how once you lose a game of starcraft its very easy to dismiss the reason you lost on one variable, but there's so many that lead up to it. People don't remember all the stuff that led up to Julys loss, they just remember seeing all of july's ultras get popped off creep once he was already way behind.
On August 18 2013 05:01 aZealot wrote: I wonder if we sometimes don't overstate the design flaws (too much production too fast; too many easily available resources; excessively hard counters - units and abilities - that limit micro, neuter strategies and negate units from a match-up) of SC2? For all its flaws it has remained a good and viable game which is rewarding to play and spectate. I think it could have been even better if Blizzard had had their current balance policy in WOL. The development team seemed to misunderstand, at that time, that a RTS like SC2 (with sufficient depth and complexity) will develop in ways unanticipated by the design team. And that this is the beauty of the game and it should be allowed to do so. Thankfully, they seem to understand this now (at least for the most part) and are more willing to let things play out.
I think this is why I find the endless comparisons to BW both corrosive and exhausting. BW may or may not be the "perfect" RTS (I think it tends to be put on a pedestal a bit much for my liking - especially, to my mind, by people who did not play it and probably never watched it). But, in trying to make SC2 if not another BW at least another "perfect" RTS, I think you run the risk of destroying the game (and the E-Sport) altogether. In this sense, and to coin a well used phrase, I see the constant urge to "perfect" SC2 by correcting design flaws as being the enemy of the good enough.
Those weren't really the design flaws I had in mind besides the part about counters. The other ones are unfortunate (depending on your perspective) but acceptable parts of the game provided that the strategic and tactical depth can compensate. It's not like BW was perfect either, especially when it came to unit navigation.
The big issues I had in mind here were:
The inefficient scaling of Protoss gateway units throughout the game.
The ultimate focus of constructing Protoss armies around expensive tech units instead of using tech units to supplement basic units.
A lack of tech units that make gateway units better instead of using gateway units as a buffer.
Terran issues with transitioning into their more expensive tech.
Terran issues with justifying said transition when faced with the cost-effective, high damage, and easy reproduction of Marine/Marauder/Medivac/Widow Mine.
The instability of mech openers and compositions, particularly the problems with tank-based play in non-mirror matchups.
Zerg having huge portions of their tech tree either invalidated or made useless in certain matchups.
Zerg being corralled into a limited set of opening builds.
Poor synergy within army compositions when attempting to incorporate HotS units.
I see. I don't think that I agree with all of that. But, that doesn't matter and I don't want to derail the thread any further. I'd just like to say that the production/resource flaws I mentioned may be acceptable as they affect all races equally and can be compensated, as you say, by sufficient strategic and tactical depth. I am not so sure when it comes to some of the hard counters in the game, both units and abilities. These really have a limiting effect on the game and constrain player skill.
This leads me to the one thing that BW has that I think SC2 should strive towards. That is, even if outplayed, roughly equally skilled players still feel that there was something they could have done. There is little feeling of helplessness as can sometimes be in the case in SC2. I don't think SC2 should be taking too many lessons from BW as they are fundamentally different in some key areas, but allowing players to consistently feel that they were fairly outplayed by an equal opponent is one of them.
On August 17 2013 18:46 ETisME wrote: I can't understand you guys at all. Snipe wasn't just a bit crazy, it was completely broken. There was no way a zerg can break through a split map situation. Tech switch whatnot doesn't do anything when terran sitting behind with PFs, tanks and ghosts with bios. I will never forget that game between july zerg against Mvp because even if I am a Mvp fan, that game just looked damn stupid.
The mid game was in advantage for Terran at that time, hellions contain was extremely powerful, it lets terran grab a 3rd extremely safely with hellion banshee opening while zerg struggles to get a third up because of hellion runbys and banshee support. The game was full of roach ling baneling all in, similar to what it is nowadays, you can see that in MMA vs DRG final, I think it was 3 or 4 games were won by that all in. It wasn't until queen got range buff then zerg starts to have an "advantage" in mid game while in fact, it was still mainly 3 base vs 3 base and infestors were the only reason why zerg has a huge power over terran.
Snipe is actually buffed in TvP right now, it was pure EMP vs HT before. As for why ghost disappeared in TvZ, it's because zerg gets better at dealing with cloak ghosts and ghosts are just too expensive to invest in.
learning how to deal with hellbat drop opening doesn't mean the strategy was any more balanced than it should be. hellbat drops completely dominates other openings except those that are specific designed to deny hellbat drops, which is problematic because it becomes a complete poker style game play. Those hellbat drops specific counter build are much inferior to standard openings. The risk and reward for hellbat drops were way too uneven to call it a good strategy. The forgg thingee was HUGELY over excited about, he was playing against EU terrans, hardly a lot of the better terrans in that record.
Not to mention if both players do hellbat drops, it just looks silly.
I don't mind it too too much in other matchups, it's TvT that it has ruined. Even now we don't have any games that are on par with Flash vs Ryung game, with flanks over flanks over flanks and insane action everywhere.
I remember that MVP vs JULY game on metopolis and how a lot of people thought snipe was broken after that, enough for almost an instant nerf. What they ignored was the fact that before julys bane all in mvp dropped july and killed his spawning pool i believe his spire as well and drones, july was waiting for his upgrade timing to finish because he was about to bust and hesitated on defending the drop. As a result he lost his spawning pool as well as taking a lot of other extra damage. He couldn't remax after doing a huge bust since his spawning pool was dead, nonetheless the game went on with july crashing ultras into mvp and getting them sniped until MVP eventually won(julys creep spread was also really horrible by todays standards). I really don't know how people ignored such a huge factor that contributed to that games outcome yet the amount of whine was so great it literally changed the game.
Feel free to watch the vod and just look at the mistakes that happen then come back and with 100% honesty say the reason why MVP won was purely because snipe was OP. It would be the equivalent of a terran losing an upgrading engineering bay during a bust then later losing to ultra because he has no +3, followed by an instant halving / removal of chitenous plating.
Once an idea gets ingrained it doesn't really get questioned. It's like how once you lose a game of starcraft its very easy to dismiss the reason you lost on one variable, but there's so many that lead up to it. People don't remember all the stuff that led up to Julys loss, they just remember seeing all of july's ultras get popped off creep once he was already way behind.
Snipe was OP. It's not even questionable. The biggest problem is how cost efficient it is to just turtle up for snipes, sitting behind PFs and just drop and nukes all game until zerg runs dry. because other than broodlords, there are no way any other zerg composition can break that kind of turtling PFs with bio and tank support, even without snipes Maps like shakuras is the perfect map to show case this. Terran always win split map games, snipes killed every hive tech units without a single unit loss as long as the terran turle behind the PFs
I think the nerf was necessary. As much as I understand that those hellbat drops were integrated into the meta, it was a bad thing to have. Too many games were essentially decided early because of hellbat drops, others were lengthened by the fact that one of the players had to fight an uphill battle. We were robbed from proper games by a gimmicky hat trick.
As much as people like to babble about balance when the game is clearly fairly well balanced, I prefer to talk about how fun the game is (or could be). In other words: good riddance. Hellbats are a boring unit to watch.
Nerf to hellbat drops were necessary imo. It gave terran players too much time to transition, which terran players didn't need anyway. All that time goes to preparing a timing push that will instantly kill the opponent.
On August 18 2013 05:01 aZealot wrote: I wonder if we sometimes don't overstate the design flaws (too much production too fast; too many easily available resources; excessively hard counters - units and abilities - that limit micro, neuter strategies and negate units from a match-up) of SC2? For all its flaws it has remained a good and viable game which is rewarding to play and spectate. I think it could have been even better if Blizzard had had their current balance policy in WOL. The development team seemed to misunderstand, at that time, that a RTS like SC2 (with sufficient depth and complexity) will develop in ways unanticipated by the design team. And that this is the beauty of the game and it should be allowed to do so. Thankfully, they seem to understand this now (at least for the most part) and are more willing to let things play out.
I think this is why I find the endless comparisons to BW both corrosive and exhausting. BW may or may not be the "perfect" RTS (I think it tends to be put on a pedestal a bit much for my liking - especially, to my mind, by people who did not play it and probably never watched it). But, in trying to make SC2 if not another BW at least another "perfect" RTS, I think you run the risk of destroying the game (and the E-Sport) altogether. In this sense, and to coin a well used phrase, I see the constant urge to "perfect" SC2 by correcting design flaws as being the enemy of the good enough.
Those weren't really the design flaws I had in mind besides the part about counters. The other ones are unfortunate (depending on your perspective) but acceptable parts of the game provided that the strategic and tactical depth can compensate. It's not like BW was perfect either, especially when it came to unit navigation.
The big issues I had in mind here were:
The inefficient scaling of Protoss gateway units throughout the game.
The ultimate focus of constructing Protoss armies around expensive tech units instead of using tech units to supplement basic units.
A lack of tech units that make gateway units better instead of using gateway units as a buffer.
Terran issues with transitioning into their more expensive tech.
Terran issues with justifying said transition when faced with the cost-effective, high damage, and easy reproduction of Marine/Marauder/Medivac/Widow Mine.
The instability of mech openers and compositions, particularly the problems with tank-based play in non-mirror matchups.
Zerg having huge portions of their tech tree either invalidated or made useless in certain matchups.
Zerg being corralled into a limited set of opening builds.
Poor synergy within army compositions when attempting to incorporate HotS units.
I was going to post that in the just released 4M strategy guide but decided that it wasn't the proper place to do so. After the Hellbat nerf this problem became even more clear.
On August 17 2013 16:21 Scarecrow wrote: The reason hellbats transitioned so well into mech was largely because of how ridiculously cost effective they were. They could transition into just about anything and there were a ton of mirror builds going on that made the matchup start to look like a two-way hellbat/scv micro tourney. It basically killed early-mid game TvT. Your choices of opening during the hbpm era was basically hellbat drop, anti-hellbat drop or cheese before hellbat drop. It was a great nerf imo. Hellbats had turned my favourite mirror into one of the worst mu's in the game.
The nerf was a mistake as in "the Hellbat needed a fix but it could have been handled better"
Still not as bad as the Snipe nerf... that DEFINITELY could have been handled better, hell it could have made TvZ both balanced and exciting for the last few months of WoL if Snipe was nerfed while still letting it be viable!
The main mistake Blizzard makes in these decisions is assuming the unit itself is the cause of the problem instead of looking at the game as a whole. If they did that they would realize that these problems are systemic issues stemming from design flaws.
Had to plus 1 this part of your post-- @op I came in here prepared to strongly disagree. I still do. While I really like some of the point you made, I could never get past the effort/reward tradeoff of the hellbat drop. They were mindless to execute and could decimate a mineral line in the blink of an eye. Furthermore even putting in a reasonabe effort to stop the drops with turrets and unit positioning often didnt stop you from losing a lot of workers. It was a dynamic where there was no reason to not be doing these drops, which led to infuriating gameplay. from a spectator standpoint I admit that I just read the Op again and I agree. Blizzard, in my mind, has once again made a borderline retarded, knee jerk reaction to something that they perceived to be a problem. But from a diamond level terran standpoint I have to be happy about these changes.
EPT
, I'm sad BW doesn't mean anything to you. I didn't get into SC until 2011 and I still love BW.
