On October 30 2011 00:14 Greg_J wrote: There's a certain game that I’m amazed hasn't been posted in this thread yet. I bet someone beats me to finding it. Ready, Go!
kal vs fogg on Colosseum, twice?
Blizzard didn't patch the scout because they weren't as needlessly overbearing concerning balance as they are now. The thing that never made sense for me in the vision upgrade. The vision upgrades for the ghost, observer and overload all make sense, but the one for the scout is the most useless upgrade in the game.
Because it makes "ratatatata" when it attacks, and any buff on the air to ground weapon would require to remove that awesome sound effects.
edit : oh and I go use scout quite often in PvZ, using a similar build order as Stork used against Kolll during WCG 2009 semi finals. You would really be surprised to see how fast it kills an overlord.
On October 30 2011 00:14 Greg_J wrote: There's a certain game that I’m amazed hasn't been posted in this thread yet. I bet someone beats me to finding it. Ready, Go!
kal vs fogg on Colosseum, twice?
Blizzard didn't patch the scout because they weren't as needlessly overbearing concerning balance as they are now. The thing that never made sense for me in the vision upgrade. The vision upgrades for the ghost, observer and overload all make sense, but the one for the scout is the most useless upgrade in the game.
edit: lol got beaten to it twice
I posted it on the first page, but not with the embedded VOD :-(
The game is already balanced around a weak Scout. Besides Flash, PvT slightly overall favours Protoss. Buffed Scouts would only hurt the balance more. It might help PvZ which is mismatched in favour of Zerg, but Terrans really would complain about it.
On October 30 2011 00:14 Greg_J wrote: There's a certain game that I’m amazed hasn't been posted in this thread yet. I bet someone beats me to finding it. Ready, Go!
kal vs fogg on Colosseum, twice?
Blizzard didn't patch the scout because they weren't as needlessly overbearing concerning balance as they are now. The thing that never made sense for me in the vision upgrade. The vision upgrades for the ghost, observer and overload all make sense, but the one for the scout is the most useless upgrade in the game.
edit: lol got beaten to it twice
I posted it on the first page, but not with the embedded VOD :-(
Wow, so you did. I didn't notice that, sorry. Not sure if you're a super ninja or I just need to pay more attention.
The fact that the game features a unit that's so rarely used and that also prevents other units from appearing in certain match-ups just sounds like bad unit design to me. The fact that you all are also satisfied with its role (nearly equivalent in role to SC2's mothership) kinda bothers me. It's like BW is THE epitome of the RTS genre, and that it would be bad, nay sacrilege, to try to improve it and get rid of this design flaw.
IMO, BW would be improved if the scout was not such a hard counter to capital ships and had some other role; the same could also be said about the devourer. Granted I haven't watched as much BW as the rest of you all, but I have yet to see a game that features a PvZ air battle that features both scouts and devourers.
It's ok with us because it's just one unit in the game, and because we're generally satisfied with not every unit composition being equal and possible in every match-up. BW has a few design flaws, I'll admit it, but having a BM unit is ok with me.
PvZ air battles do involve devourers if the air battle becomes the central theme of the game (Much vs Luxury on Andromeda). Why you must see scouts involved in this escapes me since scouts just really don't have a good place in the matchup. It is simply a better use of money and time to produce corsairs and carriers than scouts in PvZ. Not to mention, scouts are far weaker against scourge than corsairs.
Not everything needs to be viable in every context for a game to be balanced. The fact that 99% of ZvZs only involve muta/ling/scourge does not mean that the game has a design flaw. Dark archons prevent carriers from appearing in PvP; does this mean that PvP has a design flaw?
edit: and really, if the non-usage of a single unit is your argument that BW has a serious flaw when the rest of the game is completely fine, then you are grasping at straws. I've seen so many complaints that certain units suck throughout the years (the most recent example being the queen). Holy fuck did people complain that the queen sucked huge dick and was useless for years and years but then Zero started figuring out how to use them and then everyone started using them against lategame mech. "Queens require too much apm to use properly". Oh wait, whelp.
On October 29 2011 21:40 Greth wrote: In FFAs they are a unit to be feared. I've won several with scout/arbiter fleets. Only when players start building anti-air you could find yourself in a bit of a pickle - but really, nobody ever does. ... Right?
PvZ air battles do involve devourers if the air battle becomes the central theme of the game (Much vs Luxury on Andromeda). Why you must see scouts involved in this escapes me since scouts just really don't have a good place in the matchup. It is simply a better use of money and time to produce corsairs and carriers than scouts in PvZ. Not to mention, scouts are far weaker against scourge than corsairs.
Not everything needs to be viable in every context for a game to be balanced. The fact that 99% of ZvZs only involve muta/ling/scourge does not mean that the game has a design flaw. Dark archons prevent carriers from appearing in PvP; does this mean that PvP has a design flaw?
You are right, but the thing is that the scout isn't a good unit in any matchup. You don't use carriers in PvP but carriers are awesome in PvT and PvZ.
Scout sucks versus almost everything and everybody.
It's the fact that "scouts just really don't have a good place in the matchup" that bothers me. This is nothing to do with the balance - it's a game design problem. So yes, the fact that dark archons prevent carriers in PvP is a design flaw IMO. I also dislike BW ZvZ, except for the off-chance that it gets to hive tech.
In SC2-land, everyone was up in arms about how hard counters are (were), and in BW there are counters that are so hard that they prevent units from even appearing in the game 99% of the time.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to compare SC2 to BW at all here, or even saying that one is better than the other. I just think that BW has some flaws and that it could be improved upon (and I'm not saying that improvement is SC2).
BW ZvZ is a micro-intensive, strategic and exciting match-up, I'm sorry you don't like it. Personnally it's what I expect from a match-up, and I'm that every 6 match-up of bw is as diverse as they are. There are a few things I would improve on BW, but encouraging bio TvP, carrier PvP is not really what I have in mind. Edit : to be more precise, I like that strategy don't really rely too much on making the right type of unit.
On October 30 2011 03:24 lbmaian wrote: It's the fact that "scouts just really don't have a good place in the matchup" that bothers me. This is nothing to do with the balance - it's a game design problem. So yes, the fact that dark archons prevent carriers in PvP is a design flaw IMO. I also dislike BW ZvZ, except for the off-chance that it gets to hive tech.
In SC2-land, everyone was up in arms about how hard counters are (were), and in BW there are counters that are so hard that they prevent units from even appearing in the game 99% of the time.
EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not trying to compare SC2 to BW at all here, or even saying that one is better than the other. I just think that BW has some flaws and that it could be improved upon (and I'm not saying that improvement is SC2).
How do you propose that we fix design flaws? The only party that has control over that is Blizzard, and they haven't patched this game in a decade. It's not like a different map will suddenly encourage the use of underused units. They're underused for a reason: inefficiency. Costs and build times aren't things that any of us can change.
And lol, I really don't think dark archons prevent carriers in PvP. PvP is a pretty aggressive matchup that involves a lot of pressure and different kinds of harass. It's hard to mass up carriers while maintaining a force strong enough to stave off DTs, reaver harrass, and/or storm drops. And if you're not inflicting some kind of economic damage/pressure yourself, the opponent will just expand like insane, as shown in the previously linked Bisu vs. Much game. Sure, Much got out his carriers, but he was sitting on 1 base while Bisu had 5. That was why he lost, not because Bisu built scouts (which barely did anything, hard counter my ass).
Don't really think it's viable as a standard strategy in pro games, except maybe in some rare cases (cheese/surprise). There are several uses, but in most cases other units can do comparably or better.
In PvP on maps with close air positions and far natural positions (Gaia 6vs7 I'm looking at you), if you suspect your opponent is going reaver drop, you can go 1 scout to snipe the shuttle and the reaver and scout (pun sooo intended!) his base/harass.
But mostly, going scouts requires having a good advantage over your opponent (reaver drop killed probes earlier). I've beaten C-/C level players with it, it's not totally easy though, but once you get a good number it's hell for the other player. It's just for fun and bm. ;P
That being said, they're like wraiths/mutas, but waaaaay more sturdy and faster. I like to get enough to snipe workers in 1 shot (plus speed) while I expand/mass while getting upgrades for them (attack armor shield (you can get shields to +3 without templar achives)), then resume scout production. This is easiest on maps where expansions are easy to defend, like Destination (plus their expo is exposed), or maps like Gaia where you can attack/harras and get back in time for defense.
I hate the scout. I never understood why a Protoss unit had a ratta tatta machine gun.
It's also basically a slower, more expensive corsair. The ground attack is too useless to be worth the high cost. It's kind of good against BCs, and that's about it.
As to why it's not buffed? Well, even if Blizz cared at this point, the community would be furious if they messed with the balance of the game at this point.
EPT
i realy wanna see that cuzz the scout is freaking AWSOME tatatatata
