EPTMaps.
The maps that are being removed are Central Protocol, Ruins of Seras, Orbital Shipyard and Lerilak Crest, which leaves Dusk Towers, Prion Terraces and Ulrena.
It’s good to have those 4 maps removed. The old ones have been about for almost a year since the beta began and Central Protocol gets vetoed a fair bit in competition. I don’t think GSL even has it included in their map pool. I support that decision. Prion and Ulrena are awkward maps that I find a little troublesome to play on but as long as we have enough (by which I mean 5) macro maps in the pool I’ll try not to mind too much. I do worry that Ulrena might end up having severe imbalances as time goes on. Currently my concern is that Tempests are too strong thanks to the bountiful air space for them to operate and the close air distance.
In general with the map pool you've got two camps. One is the progamers who like balanced, fair maps with small quirks that get explored as we get to grips with it and reward consistent macro play. I’m not saying every map has to be Daybreak or Overgrowth but it’s good to have maps kinda like it. The other camp is the audience, who don’t give an airborne fuck about what the players think just so long as the maps provide off kilter games and aren’t hideously favourable. Ulrena does this a lot, the ling/queen drop all in only came into existence because we have a map with such a short air distance some Zergs thought it’d work. But you also have interesting strategies revolving around the incredibly narrow choke and short rush distance. As someone who plays on Ulrena frequently I’m constantly frustrated by its psychotic design.
And I do acknowledge that Blizzard was right to have season 1’s map pool feature a lot of unusual design elements so that we can learn where the map design boundaries are. What happens when you have TvP with a really short rush distance? Oh, Protoss pylon rush a lot and it’s fucking obnoxious. What happens when you have 2 gold bases at the 3rd and 4th? Oh, Zerg take those and not their natural and Protoss get to be really upset. What happens when we have a map that has tons of bases, an easy natural and third and is ideal for split map play? Oh we get the occasional super entertaining game. Thanks Dusk Towers. Looking forward to you next season!
Fundamentally, I do think that Blizzard should favour the needs of the audience over the needs of progamers. If it were up to me every map would be Dusk Towers and obviously we’re not having any of that. But I would make this suggestion: Blizzard should track not just the map balance statistics across high ranked ladder and professional games but also the vetoes. That’s a lot trickier I’ll admit, but when there’s a map that pros consistently refuse to play that sends a clear message.
Balance
RAVAGER BILE TO 14 SECONDS
My biased Terran brain obviously supports anything that nerfs a unit that damn near every Zerg makes for the obvious selfish reason. The unit will still be good if this goes through, I can hardly imagine Ravager rushes and midgames and the fungal/bile combination will suddenly disappear. What it will do, aside from affect PvZ which is outside my purview, is make it much harder for Zerg to constantly throw down bile barrages and extend engagements. It’s very common for a fight against Ravagers to have a few shots fired, then both sides retreat a little while the biles land, repeat until dead. It’s not an imbalanced strategy but it can make things very frustrating when Zergs hit a certain Ravager count. So yay!
OVERLORD TIER 1 DROPS.
Theo the EuroToss suggested increasing the Queens storage on the overlord from 2 to 4. This would go a ways to lessening the impact of the ling/queen drop all in. If they do bring it up to Lair it goes against the whole point of individual Overlord drops which is to encourage unusual aggressive moves to a race that has 2 options early game: Turtle or storm down the front. Might as well just bring back Ventral Sacs if that’s what you’re gonna do. Alternatively just make it a little pricier I guess? I would recommend a slight nerf at most and see what happens.
As a Terran this strategy is quite map dependant and pretty easy for us to beat now we know all about it. Reaper scout can spot it easily if we time it right and we just have to ad a second bunker to defend. Not too much to it really.
CYCLONE
I hate the Cyclone. I even wrote an article about it that’s somewhere on Teamliquid. In summary the Cyclone is a unit purely designed for 1v1 situations and does not function outside of them and if you were to make it a unit that could be amassed then it would probably be broken and probably overlap in function to another Terran unit. In the early beta the Cyclone was kinda broken, particularly in TvP (though to be honest Protoss had a lot of things wrong with them at that stage) but now it’s been brought into line it currently has a very narrow function; early base defence.
If an Oracle/Warp Prism/Medivac/Banshee/Liberator gets within Lock On range it’s gotta get out of range quick or enjoy the express trip to hell. This is the situation the Cyclone wants to be in, 1 versus 1, mano a cyclono, but it’s the only situation where it’s of any use. It can’t be used to harass effectively as it can’t beat a Siege Tank, or an overcharge and a few Stalkers, or a queen and some speedlings. It’s far too expensive, slow, and lacking in damage to have utility after the early game and integrating it as part of a bio composition is just far too micro intensive. The unit just does not work.
I’m still in favour of scrapping the Cylcone entirely and coming up with something new, or at least just not doing anything to it and focusing on other Terran units. Maybe the Thor? It’s kinda useless. Or Ravens, they’re jank. But since they’ve talked about buffing it let’s discuss that option.
I’d argue that what’s necessary isn’t a Health buff but a DPS increase, at least to ground targets. Thing about the Cyclone is that you’ve only got so many seconds that you can be locked onto a target before it gets microed back and its mates shoo away the Cyclone. And you’ve only got so much time to be harassing with it anyway. I’d also suggest making it’s Lock On ability passive, or at least a much shorter cooldown. It’ll still be a shit unit past the early game, nothing’s stopping that from ever being the case (barring perhaps a fusion core upgrade that made it’s lock on super long ranged or something) but at least it’ll be a bit less shit, hopefully.
BANSHEES AND LIBS
I’d say this is a case of “if it’s not broke don’t fix it” Liberators win fights, Banshees harass. We don’t often see Banshees past the early game because Medivac harass works great and the distinguishing feature of the Banshee is the Cloak ability which ceases to be much of a factor once midgame rolls around. I don’t really want to see the Liberator nerfed because they’re lovely units and they’re crucial for keeping Ultralisks in check, something the banshee absolutely sucks at.
Oh yeah, and banshees require a tech lab which makes it very hard to make a lot of them unless you’re in lategame turtle mode. Perhaps a reactor-able Banshee would see more use (Dark Templar requiring a Gateway is a big reason why they see so much use later in the game, the production is always there) and creating more of a divide between Liberator and Banshee would be preferable, but that’s probably a bad idea. Reactor Banshee might excite Ruff’s trousers but I’m willing to bet there’d be some horrendously broken Banshee openers available.
AA FROM THE FACTORY
Ground based AA in this game generally sucks. I mean it starts off fine but at a certain point you gotta graduate to your own air force to have the strongest AA capability. If Zerg want to beat Air units they make corruptors and Vipers. If Protoss wanna do it they make Tempests, Carriers and Phoenixes and then back those up with High Templar. If Terran wanna do it we have Ghosts (for zergs), Vikings, Tavens, Libs and BC’s. The options are available. Perhaps we’re weak on this particular front. I dunno, I’ve very little experience in this area, but from a purely design point of view we’re covered for AA in general.
“For example, because splash AA is covered pretty well by Widow Mines, one potential route we can go is more of a single-target, flat damage option on the Thor.”
This statement annoys me. First of all, the thor had a single target flat damage option back in HotS. But then Blizzard removed it and replaced it with nothing. Even then it wasn’t really killing that many Broodlords, which incidentally are a much stronger unit now. Secondly, mines are cute units but it’s very hard to use them as designated anti air splash damage. Sure they've had some application in this area in HotS as part of a Mutalisk trap or for destroying Viking/BC armies that had insufficient ground support but it’s very difficult to convince a zerg to fly his corruptor/broodlord ball over them. And besides, if you want good AA splash we have Liberators now, a unit which every Terran makes for this situation. And they’re great!
Which returns me to my original point, why does the factory need a solid lategame AA option? Is it because nobody is playing mech and perhaps this is why? Because there’s a bigger reason for that.
DISCUSSIONS AROUND MECH
The reason we don’t see Mech are matchup specific. In TvZ the two chief issues are Ravagers mass biling tanks and trading efficiently (if Terran has tankivacs this is less of a problem, but it’s very difficult for Terran to have all the medivacs available for this when they’re busy purchasing so many gas intensive units and upgrades). The other issue, and a more pressing one I’d argue, is Hive tech units. Ultralisks, Vipers, Broodlords all got improved between HotS and LotV and all Terran got was a diminished Thor and a Cyclone which is, as I mentioned, a shit unit. Having a few factories churning out a couple tanks is fine enough but if you’re planning on beating Zerg in the long run you’re gonna need Starports and probably Ghosts.
In TvP the siege tank doesn’t quite put out enough damage. Fortunately liberators do. So we make those instead. A few tanks early on to secure bases or put on some pressure is a fine idea, but as the basis of a composition it doesn’t really work out. This was the problem in HotS, it’s still the problem now. Tankivacs mitigate the Tanks vulnerability which is great in smaller numbers alongside bio units but doesn’t help mech out all that much.
In TvT the mech player is too stretched between defending aerial shenanigans and securing bases. LotV requires players to be a bit more proactive with their expansion taking which is naturally harder for a composition that doesn’t like having to leave its comfort zone. That said, I actually think if mech gets figured out in any matchup first it will be this one. It might take a good while and only be a map specific strategy but Tanks are great all game long against other Teran units and mech sure does appreciate having lots of Tanks.
Let’s not forget that Mech takes longer to get figured out anyway. In HotS it was years before Mech TvZ really kicked off and it wasn’t because Blizzard patched anything. Top Korean Terrans eventually cracked it and we all followed suit. Same for TvT where Mech got increasingly popular as time went on. I’d give it a few more months before introducing mech buffs, just in case.
