On January 21 2015 09:33 Tadah wrote: reminisce12, regarding you comment on my first point, I feel I should stress that it is not the egg I am talking about, but rather the cocoons from which Guardians and Devourers "hatch" from.
During the Starcraft beta testing, the developers originally intended for the mutalisks to come down to the ground then morph into guardian, but it caused a bug when the muta would try to morph at a terrain that ground units can't be on (i.e. water), so they made a new unit called the 'cocoon' but apparently forgot to change from ground unit carapace to air carapace.
Interesting detail omission, although we won't know if this was done on purpose or not.
Another really interesting detail that Bliz probably forgot was a hallucinated queen can infest a command center.
Woah, really? I didnt know those..
I won't need a balance patch, because I'm too bad. But I have the firm belief that every current balance issue can be easily countered by micro or tactical decisions, compared to the size of the imbalance. Certainly compared to another similar, yet way too different game, at which I'm also terrible.
From a casual Zerg perspective I would perhaps like to have Broodling cost 100E (150E makes you wait way too long after investing in queen to fight Terran mech, which is against Zerg flexibility). I would also like to see good 8 player map other than Hunters and alikes (the default or perhaps the only choice if you happen to play 3x3 or 4x4 game)
On January 21 2015 09:33 Tadah wrote: reminisce12, regarding you comment on my first point, I feel I should stress that it is not the egg I am talking about, but rather the cocoons from which Guardians and Devourers "hatch" from.
During the Starcraft beta testing, the developers originally intended for the mutalisks to come down to the ground then morph into guardian, but it caused a bug when the muta would try to morph at a terrain that ground units can't be on (i.e. water), so they made a new unit called the 'cocoon' but apparently forgot to change from ground unit carapace to air carapace.
Interesting detail omission, although we won't know if this was done on purpose or not.
Another really interesting detail that Bliz probably forgot was a hallucinated queen can infest a command center.
Woah, really? I didnt know those..
I won't need a balance patch, because I'm too bad. But I have the firm belief that every current balance issue can be easily countered by micro or tactical decisions, compared to the size of the imbalance. Certainly compared to another similar, yet way too different game, at which I'm also terrible.
On January 21 2015 09:33 Tadah wrote: reminisce12, regarding you comment on my first point, I feel I should stress that it is not the egg I am talking about, but rather the cocoons from which Guardians and Devourers "hatch" from.
During the Starcraft beta testing, the developers originally intended for the mutalisks to come down to the ground then morph into guardian, but it caused a bug when the muta would try to morph at a terrain that ground units can't be on (i.e. water), so they made a new unit called the 'cocoon' but apparently forgot to change from ground unit carapace to air carapace.
Interesting detail omission, although we won't know if this was done on purpose or not.
Another really interesting detail that Bliz probably forgot was a hallucinated queen can infest a command center.
Woah, really? I didnt know those..
I won't need a balance patch, because I'm too bad. But I have the firm belief that every current balance issue can be easily countered by micro or tactical decisions, compared to the size of the imbalance. Certainly compared to another similar, yet way too different game, at which I'm also terrible.
On January 21 2015 08:06 Bswhunter wrote: Buff / change the underused units, Scouts, ghosts, firebats, wraiths and maybe queens.
firebats are usefull against Zergs, they are specialized and situational, but still used frequently. Wrights? Are you kidding me? Its already one of the most powerfulll unit in TvT, and it has its niche also in TvZ as a hard counter against greater spire builds (plus wrights are already quite effective against Zerg in hands of good players).
Even queens are quite controversial on this list, since they finally found niche as a late anti-mech unit.
Wright, wraith, wriath, wraif wait I'm confused.
He meant playwrights. Those suckers are way imba.
Just kidding, hitthat. You're from Poland, and I'm pretty sure your English is way better than my Polish.
54.5% is better than chess's 55% advantage for white.I think that's good enough.Sucks that P is the worst in individual leagues but I would argue that that is because P is less consistent rather than weaker. One may point to how hard Bisu slumps, but isn't it a bit strange that ALL of the top P have horrendous slumps, while JD/Flash/Fantasy have more modest slumps? I don't think so.
Balance patches is not the right way to go. I think it's best to just admit that three highly asymmetric races cannot be perfectly equal and that we should just take what we have.
Wow, this is the dumbest post I've read in like, two weeks. That's saying something, especially with this floating around. How did you come up with such a bad idea? Did you read any of the following for inspiration:
OR DID YOU EAT SOME WEIRD CHINESE TAKE-OUT AND THIS IS WHAT CAME OUT IN THE TOILET
On January 21 2015 04:53 neobowman wrote: As everyone knows, Brood War hasn't had a balance patch in well over a decade.
Okay.
Despite this, it remains surprisingly balanced at the top level with every race having a good chunk of representation. Still, it's also pretty clear that each race has one slightly favourable matchup and one slightly unfavourable one. Zerg vs. Protoss favours Zerg by about 54.5%, Terran vs. Zerg favours Terran by about 54.5% and Protoss vs. Terran favours Protoss by about 52.5%. Now, these numbers aren't really all that far from 50% which is why Brood War is lauded for its balance but it still makes a difference. This is especially true in individual tournaments where Protoss seem to struggle.
Protoss doesn't struggle in individual tournaments. Look through the defiler tournaments: http://defiler.ru/tourney/ and tell me which race is dramatically favored. Yellow Starleague finals was Breach vs Fold. Yellow Starleague 1 finals had one of each race in the semi-final and one walk-over. ASL1 was a final between WandS and Rush. ASL2 was a final between WandS and NoisE. CrSL1 finals were between jacklinks and PassiOn. CrSL2 finals didn't have a Protoss, boohoo. CrSL3 finals was Castle vs Radley. MaSL1 finals was Favian vs Southpark. MaSL2 finals was Favian vs Cryoc. ISL1 and 2 had icky non-protoss players in the finals. ISL3 had dOTY vs Sziky. TSL1 was won by iefnaij. TSL2 was won by NonY.
Of course,
2012 Tving OSL winner: Jangbi 2011 Jin Air OSL winner: Jangbi
In OSL championship history, there are: 14 Terran champs, 10 Protoss champs, and 9 Zerg champs
The MSL looks bad for Protoss, but really, it mostly shows player dominance. 3 wins for Oov, 3 for Flash, 3 for sAviOr, 2 for Jaedong, 3 for Bisu, and random championships won by other players like Calm.
Clearly, you didn't do any research, but came to some random-ass conclusion that Protoss is faltering in tournaments. Even if Protoss players were unable to win tournaments, you would have to assess whether sociological factors cause stupid people to play Protoss before examining the balance itself. You would have to look at maps. You'd have to look at individual players' playstyles. You would have to examine individual matches. There are a wide variety of factors that go into whether or not there is a balance problem, or a perceived balance problem. If you go "Well, every race should have 50% wins in all match-ups statistically, but they don't hur hur hur hur" and this is known as Gamblers' Fallacy. This logical fallacy states that if you flip a coin, you have a 50% chance of getting heads or tails, but over a long series of coin flips, the exact number of the results may not be 50%. You may notice that perhaps the coin flipped onto tails 54% of the time. Does that mean tails is imbalanced? No, it doesn't. Don't be an idiot and think this.
So hypothetically, if you had control over balance patches, what changes would you make to try and make the game as balanced as possible? Ideally, a balance patch for one matchup should affect a different matchup as little as possible.
If you even made a small change, it would change the way people form strategies. You would be changing the fundamental aspects of how the game works and operates. You can actually make UMS maps to test this out, but you won't get a large number of people as a test pool because generally people don't really give a shit about the 'balance' unless they are raging noobs. For example, I notice that a lot of new Zergs seem to really struggle with ZvP. If you only listened to the nerd-rage of noob-zergs getting stomped, you might conclude that psi storm is imbalanced and 'needs a nerf'.
In Terran vs. Zerg, it seems obvious that if you nerf bio somehow, it wouldn't affect the other matchups.
Deep 6
But at the same time, if you just nerf bio, it could just mean an increase in mech play instead, since mech is relatively viable, even in TvZ. That said, it would be interesting to find out the winrate of Mech TvZ vs. Bio TvZ. Either way, I don't think a bio nerf would do much other than making more players use mech.
This part is really dumb. I can't believe you actually said this public. A "BIO NERF" would make any kind of zergling rush super-powerful, so Terrans would have to over-defend to compensate for this. Since the Zerg knows the Terran is going mech, they have option to double expand, because they can fend off any threat of bunkers with lings, or can double expand into speedling.
Additionally, taking options off the table hurts a race in general. If I said "Zerg can only go mass Queen/Muta from now on in ZvP" then the whole concept of the game being a 'strategy game' sorta becomes voided. In any match-up, players are given many options, and a few different tech trees and/or unit compositions to pursue and eventually transition into a new tech tree to give them further options.
In short, forcing everyone to "go mech" is fucking stupid.
My best idea was a science vessal nerf. My first variant of this idea was to make irradiate cost 100 but I figured that would be way too much of a nerf. I think the best way to balance it would be to increase the time it takes for it to deal all of its damage. According to liquipedia, Irradiate deals 250 damage over 37 in-game seconds. If that was nerfed to, say, 50 seconds, I think it would be significant enough to make a difference, but still leave it as an essential tool to have.
So, seeing the error of your ways, you've decided that perhaps nerfing the infantry themselves isn't the right route. Therefore, you're going to nerf the Terran's primary (actually pretty much only) spellcaster!? Terrans playing strictly bio have a big obstacle to overcome, which is Dark Swarm. Irradiate gives Terran the ability to kill invincible lurkers and the defilers that create this scenario entirely. Changing the time would almost certainly give a huge cushion of time to do whatever. YOU WANNA KNOW WHY? DO YOU? Because a hydra -> lurker morph takes 40 seconds of game-time, which means that if there are two lurkers irradiated, the Zerg can simply morph two lurkers in before the first pair of lurkers is actually killed.
This would obviously also drastically effect the way science vessels are used to deal with mutalisks and guardians. If vessels are nerfed, the Terran is basically forced to invest in wraiths or valkyries, which are practically useless against Zerg unless they are in large numbers with upgrades, and then once they get plagued, it's all ogre.
A third thing would be irradiated ultralisks would be way more powerful post-vessel-nerf. If they attack infantry, the irradiate would deal splash damage to the infantry while allowing the ultralisks to live longer, thus dealing more damage in general. Additionally, if ultralisks are used against mech, irradiating them beforehand will do very little to deplete enough health to make it worth anything.
Therefore, this proposal would actually fuck Terran completely and utterly, and in the most brutal, prison-soap-dropping way.
In Zerg vs. Protoss, the obvious unit to nerf is the hydralisk. It's the unit that Protoss has the most trouble with in the mid-game and it's not really used in the other 2 Zerg Matchups. My first idea here was a simple damage nerf so that instead of 10 base damage, Hydralisks would do 9. Essentially a -1 range attack upgrade. Another idea for the hydralisks would be a health nerf from 80 to 75. This lets dragoons and zealots kill it in one less hit each. An alternative would be a buff to a Protoss unit. Here, the obvious unit to help out is the corsair. A +1 damage buff comes to mind but it's pretty clear that it would be way too much. A health buff from 100 health 80 shields to 120 health 80 shields would mean it would still die to a pair of scourge, but it would be slightly more sturdy against mutalisks and hydralisks. A Psi Storm buff also came to mind but I think that this too would be a bit much. The fact that 1 storm doesn't kill a lurker is key point so any damage buff would be overkill.
I could write a book on how awful these ideas are. This shows a complete lack of understanding about the match-up in general, because if you ask any decent Protoss what they hate about PvZ, they will almost always say "cracklings" or "ultralisks", NOT fucking hydralisks. You have no mid-game as Zerg without hydralisks. You will die. You would have to play on Battle Royale for Zerg to be viable. The only options would be to go mass mutalisk, which almost always is followed by something hydralisk-based, or get lurkers and rush to hive. Again, this takes options off the table for Zerg, which wrecks the match-up entirely.
Protoss vs. Terran is more even than the other two matchups but I still feel some adjustments could be made. The obvious one to mirror my first TvZ idea would be to buff EMP to cost 75 energy instead of 100. I don't think this does much against anything but arbiters and really late game Protoss armies so I think it's reasonable. You can't really buff Tanks, Vultures or Goliaths without having to worry about the TvZ matchup so that's probably a no-go. I know that nobody wants to nerf carriers. I would say get rid of the Arbiter attack but everyone knows it doesn't do shit anyway. Probably the best change to the arbiter would be to increase stasis field cost to 125 but even that might be a bit too much.
These are just my thoughts. I'm sure a lot of these are actually stupid and I'm just being an idiot but what ideas do you guys have for hypothetical balance changes?
The highlighted line is correct. Everything else is wrong. What you don't seem to know is that in maps with wide-open spaces, Protosses have a slight edge in engagements. In maps with narrow chokes, and high-ground/low-ground stuff, Terran has an advantage in engagements. Of course, no matter what the map looks like, if you screw up your game plan, or it gets screwed up by your opponent being talented and skilled, you will have less stuff to throw into the big fight, giving your opponent an upper hand. The same principle applies in every match-up, where the more mobile ground force has the advantage on open maps, the more siege-y ground force has the advantage in confined space maps. I'm speaking rather generally, of course, because besides map types, there are a variety of playstyles that can work against the player or give them a huge advantage.
And I don't get this whole "bio" and "mech" categorizing when it comes to TvZ. You can mix infantry into a late mech army so the upgrades don't go to waste and you can even add vultures into an SK Terran army composition too if you want mines.
It's not so much unit attributes, but more so Terran play styles: positional play style vs multitasking/harassment play style.
Hey man. I appreciate that you took the time to post this. Discussion on these ideas is what I want to encourage. I understand that a lot of my ideas are stupid. I'm by no means anywhere close to good at this game, but that's why I want other people to pitch in with their ideas so people can pool their cool thoughts.
Now, you give a bunch of foreign tournaments as examples. I do think it's relatively well known that protoss is considered a stronger race when not looking at the top Korean scene, which is what I intended to discuss. I'm unfortunately not nearly as well versed in the foreign scene but for this post, I feel it's okay to ignore the less than top level play.
Next, you make the point that MSL has comparatively few protoss players because it was dominated by standouts like the Bonjwas, Bisu and Jaedong. Yet, maybe it's because of racial imbalance that the standout players are of a certain race and not another. Maybe iloveoov would not have experienced the same success he did if he played protoss instead. I don't think you can cherry pick out players who were 'special' from the statistics just because they were mostly of one race. I think the fact that they were mostly one race says something.
Now, I'm not sure what your point is about the gambler's fallacy. The very way we evaluate an individual player's success is through percentages. If a player wins 70 games out of 100, it seems for illogical to conclude that they were lucky rather than they were inherently skillful. If a map has a 70 percent Winrate for one race over another, it seems weird to me that you would conclude that it is simply luck that made it imbalanced that way, and that it will balance out eventually. Let's take a chess analogy. White wins 55 percent of the time, not counting draws. Does this mean that the percent will even out with more samples? I don't think so.
I realize there's no reasonable way to test these suggestions out. But I don't care about that. I just want to encourage an interesting debate about what would potentially be good. I understand that starcraft is a complex interconnected web of stuff, but trying to figure it out is a fun of its own.
I don't think my balance ideas are perfect, but I think you seem to be overblowing their inadequacies. But hey, what do I know? I encourage you to give your own suggestions about the topic. You certainly seem to know of more than me.
Edit: I'm going to address some of the ideas because I want to encourage more discussion and I have nothing better to do.
On January 22 2015 14:41 ninazerg wrote: Deep 6
I didn't take Deep 6 into account because it accounts for less than 1% of all TvP games and is an oddity at best. But it is, indeed, an option. I suppose it would affect TvP somewhat.
This part is really dumb. I can't believe you actually said this public. A "BIO NERF" would make any kind of zergling rush super-powerful, so Terrans would have to over-defend to compensate for this. Since the Zerg knows the Terran is going mech, they have option to double expand, because they can fend off any threat of bunkers with lings, or can double expand into speedling.
Additionally, taking options off the table hurts a race in general. If I said "Zerg can only go mass Queen/Muta from now on in ZvP" then the whole concept of the game being a 'strategy game' sorta becomes voided. In any match-up, players are given many options, and a few different tech trees and/or unit compositions to pursue and eventually transition into a new tech tree to give them further options.
In short, forcing everyone to "go mech" is fucking stupid.
I didn't think about the bio nerf affecting the early game. That's an interesting point. I totally agree with the rest. That's why I moved onto my next idea.
So, seeing the error of your ways, you've decided that perhaps nerfing the infantry themselves isn't the right route. Therefore, you're going to nerf the Terran's primary (actually pretty much only) spellcaster!? Terrans playing strictly bio have a big obstacle to overcome, which is Dark Swarm. Irradiate gives Terran the ability to kill invincible lurkers and the defilers that create this scenario entirely. Changing the time would almost certainly give a huge cushion of time to do whatever. YOU WANNA KNOW WHY? DO YOU? Because a hydra -> lurker morph takes 40 seconds of game-time, which means that if there are two lurkers irradiated, the Zerg can simply morph two lurkers in before the first pair of lurkers is actually killed.
This would obviously also drastically effect the way science vessels are used to deal with mutalisks and guardians. If vessels are nerfed, the Terran is basically forced to invest in wraiths or valkyries, which are practically useless against Zerg unless they are in large numbers with upgrades, and then once they get plagued, it's all ogre.
A third thing would be irradiated ultralisks would be way more powerful post-vessel-nerf. If they attack infantry, the irradiate would deal splash damage to the infantry while allowing the ultralisks to live longer, thus dealing more damage in general. Additionally, if ultralisks are used against mech, irradiating them beforehand will do very little to deplete enough health to make it worth anything.
Therefore, this proposal would actually fuck Terran completely and utterly, and in the most brutal, prison-soap-dropping way.
I never thought about irradiate time being that important. My reasoning was that it still kills defilers in a relatively short time, which should be your primary targets. I didn't think the interval between irradiating lurkers and new lurkers popping up would be so important. That's definitely a good point to bring up. Do you think a different irradiate change would be better or do you think the science vessel should be left untouched?
I could write a book on how awful these ideas are. This shows a complete lack of understanding about the match-up in general, because if you ask any decent Protoss what they hate about PvZ, they will almost always say "cracklings" or "ultralisks", NOT fucking hydralisks. You have no mid-game as Zerg without hydralisks. You will die. You would have to play on Battle Royale for Zerg to be viable. The only options would be to go mass mutalisk, which almost always is followed by something hydralisk-based, or get lurkers and rush to hive. Again, this takes options off the table for Zerg, which wrecks the match-up entirely.
I figured the -1 attack upgrade for Hydralisks or the hp decrease would be a significant enough nerf to affect how Zergs use them, but still leave them as a viable option. Do you have any ideas on how to make the hydralisk change work or should the focus be on some Protoss units and improving them?
The highlighted line is correct. Everything else is wrong. What you don't seem to know is that in maps with wide-open spaces, Protosses have a slight edge in engagements. In maps with narrow chokes, and high-ground/low-ground stuff, Terran has an advantage in engagements. Of course, no matter what the map looks like, if you screw up your game plan, or it gets screwed up by your opponent being talented and skilled, you will have less stuff to throw into the big fight, giving your opponent an upper hand. The same principle applies in every match-up, where the more mobile ground force has the advantage on open maps, the more siege-y ground force has the advantage in confined space maps. I'm speaking rather generally, of course, because besides map types, there are a variety of playstyles that can work against the player or give them a huge advantage.
tl;dr: l2p
I am quite well versed in mapping issues, if I do say so myself. Did you know that small unit paths generally favour Zerg over Terran and Protoss? Did you know that gas geysers positioned at the 12 and 9 o clock locations of the main structure provide the most efficient mining of gas? Less minerals per base also tends to favour Zerg over Terran and Protoss. Small chokes or ramps at a third gas location are favourable for Zerg as well. I digress.
I didn't want to dwell on it too much because, hey, I want to encourage discussion, but I think you should look on how you address people. Believe it or not, I'm a person as well. When you go on rants degrading my intelligence, whether or not I believe it, my feels are hurt. This is not the type of attitude that promotes this amazing Brood War comunity, nor one that encourages newcomers to post about their ideas and thoughts openly on Teamliquid. I mean no ill-intent to you. I think you could be a wonderful person if I met you face to face. Still, I think it would be prudent of you to check how you talk to others, even if it's on a faceless internet discussion board. Be nice and encourage participation.
On January 21 2015 08:06 Bswhunter wrote: Buff / change the underused units, Scouts, ghosts, firebats, wraiths and maybe queens.
firebats are usefull against Zergs, they are specialized and situational, but still used frequently. Wrights? Are you kidding me? Its already one of the most powerfulll unit in TvT, and it has its niche also in TvZ as a hard counter against greater spire builds (plus wrights are already quite effective against Zerg in hands of good players).
Even queens are quite controversial on this list, since they finally found niche as a late anti-mech unit.
Wright, wraith, wriath, wraif wait I'm confused.
He meant playwrights. Those suckers are way imba.
Just kidding, hitthat. You're from Poland, and I'm pretty sure your English is way better than my Polish.
I wouldnt be a true Polish, if I spoken perfect english ;P
On January 22 2015 16:07 neobowman wrote: I didn't want to dwell on it too much because, hey, I want to encourage discussion, but I think you should look on how you address people. Believe it or not, I'm a person as well. When you go on rants degrading my intelligence, whether or not I believe it, my feels are hurt. This is not the type of attitude that promotes this amazing Brood War comunity, nor one that encourages newcomers to post about their ideas and thoughts openly on Teamliquid. I mean no ill-intent to you. I think you could be a wonderful person if I met you face to face. Still, I think it would be prudent of you to check how you talk to others, even if it's on a faceless internet discussion board. Be nice and encourage participation.
Thoroughly agree here.
If folks can't be civil, don't post.
Don't hide behind an online ID and spew ad hominem attacks in ways one wouldn't dare utter to someone in real life. We have a small enough community as it is, let's play nice.
the issue man is that ppl talking about balance on bw is just ppl that don't understand the level of skill involved in actually beeing able to understand/ break the game at a certain match-up
its so much not about balance forget units, forget stats, races
its all about flow and timings its fucking kung fu
I think we should remove arbiters completely and double the supply, resource cost, and build time of carriers. (These units are obviously overpowered and only used in PvT.)
Also, zealots should cost 50 gas, and dark templar should be revealed for 2 seconds after each attack (fade time before becoming invisible again).
The zealot change should only affect PvT because you can forge expand anyway in PvZ, which defends against early ling rushes, and DTs don't alert zerg that drones are dying anyway, so it doesn't really matter whether they're invisible or not. That should bring PvT back to a nice even 50% win ratio without affecting other matchups.
Concerning hallucinated queens and cc — this is not true. I tried this 3 times, twice in a ums map, using my own cc, and once in Resonance II with a neutral cc. Doesn't matter, urs or someone's else the cc is, is it lifted off or not, hallucinated queens do not react, as the real ones should. They don't infest it, they simply can't
On January 22 2015 19:37 Sero wrote: I think we should remove arbiters completely and double the supply, resource cost, and build time of carriers. (These units are obviously overpowered and only used in PvT.)
Also, zealots should cost 50 gas, and dark templar should be revealed for 2 seconds after each attack (fade time before becoming invisible again).
The zealot change should only affect PvT because you can forge expand anyway in PvZ, which defends against early ling rushes, and DTs don't alert zerg that drones are dying anyway, so it doesn't really matter whether they're invisible or not. That should bring PvT back to a nice even 50% win ratio without affecting other matchups.
Legal Lord wrote: I think dragoons should be able to shoot across the entire map as a fair counterbalance to siege tanks.
And more members of the SC2 balance team weigh in.
On January 22 2015 16:07 neobowman wrote: I didn't want to dwell on it too much because, hey, I want to encourage discussion, but I think you should look on how you address people. Believe it or not, I'm a person as well. When you go on rants degrading my intelligence, whether or not I believe it, my feels are hurt. This is not the type of attitude that promotes this amazing Brood War comunity, nor one that encourages newcomers to post about their ideas and thoughts openly on Teamliquid. I mean no ill-intent to you. I think you could be a wonderful person if I met you face to face. Still, I think it would be prudent of you to check how you talk to others, even if it's on a faceless internet discussion board. Be nice and encourage participation.
Thoroughly agree here.
If folks can't be civil, don't post.
Don't hide behind an online ID and spew ad hominem attacks in ways one wouldn't dare utter to someone in real life. We have a small enough community as it is, let's play nice.
+1. NZ's a terrific poster with a lot to say (and I agree with some of her points), but she could've said everything she did without hollering insults every paragraph... and it probably would've come across more logically and succinctly too.
Ranting at someone is not only off-putting and childish, it also makes the community look hostile and non-welcoming to outsiders and new people. BW may be making a mini-comeback, but is it really to the point where you can afford to drive ppl away? I'm guessing no.
OP wrote: My best idea was a science vessel nerf. My first variant of this idea was to make irradiate cost 100 but I figured that would be way too much of a nerf. I think the best way to balance it would be to increase the time it takes for it to deal all of its damage. According to liquipedia, Irradiate deals 250 damage over 37 in-game seconds. If that was nerfed to, say, 50 seconds, I think it would be significant enough to make a difference, but still leave it as an essential tool to have.
On January 22 2015 14:41 ninazerg wrote: So, seeing the error of your ways, you've decided that perhaps nerfing the infantry themselves isn't the right route. Therefore, you're going to nerf the Terran's primary (actually pretty much only) spellcaster!? Terrans playing strictly bio have a big obstacle to overcome, which is Dark Swarm. Irradiate gives Terran the ability to kill invincible lurkers and the defilers that create this scenario entirely. Changing the time would almost certainly give a huge cushion of time to do whatever. YOU WANNA KNOW WHY? DO YOU? Because a hydra -> lurker morph takes 40 seconds of game-time, which means that if there are two lurkers irradiated, the Zerg can simply morph two lurkers in before the first pair of lurkers is actually killed.
Well, don't yell at me, but I'm not following that reasoning.
You seem to be saying irradiate's duration is 37 seconds because it has to be less than the 40 seconds it takes for a lurker morph, otherwise Zerg could replace irradiated lurkers faster than they died to irradiate. Well okay, but the lurker dies long before the irradiate's full 37 seconds... irradiate only has to do about half its total damage to kill a lurker. Irradiate does about 7 damage per second (on normal game speed).
So, what I took the OP to be suggesting was to slow down Irradiate to that it worked at like 5 damage per second (i.e. 250 damage over his suggested 50 seconds). Under that, the lurker would die after about 25 seconds, i.e. still much faster than a lurker morph would take.
That's not to say his idea is a good one, only that that particular reason for not liking it doesn't seem to be accurate... unless I totally misread your point here somehow.
This would obviously also drastically effect the way science vessels are used to deal with mutalisks and guardians. If vessels are nerfed, the Terran is basically forced to invest in wraiths or valkyries, which are practically useless against Zerg unless they are in large numbers with upgrades, and then once they get plagued, it's all ogre.
That seems more an argument to improve wraiths and valks than anything else.
A third thing would be irradiated ultralisks would be way more powerful post-vessel-nerf. If they attack infantry, the irradiate would deal splash damage to the infantry while allowing the ultralisks to live longer, thus dealing more damage in general. Additionally, if ultralisks are used against mech, irradiating them beforehand will do very little to deplete enough health to make it worth anything.
Those are good arguments for not nerfing irradiate in the OP's suggested way.
Therefore, this proposal would actually fuck Terran completely and utterly, and in the most brutal, prison-soap-dropping way.
EPT
Breach vs 
Rush. ASL2 was a final between 
NoisE. CrSL1 finals were between 
jacklinks and 
