But as for balance, I think that should be left untouched. That's the one thing nobody ever wants touched.
Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
If I had to change something, I'd buff Dark Archons, Queens and Ghosts a bit, soo that they saw SOME competative play. Those units might as well not exist in the competative sense.
Increase starting energy of all those units by 50. Increase Ghosts HP by a bit, don't see this having a negative impact on the game, worst case scenario Queens become legit option in lategame PvZ
1. Dark Archons and Queens both see competitive play. 2. The reason Queens and Ghosts are not used more is because it just adds more complexity, having to use the abilities on top of controlling a lot of units is too much even if you have 300APM. 3. If you want units to have more starting energy simply research the max energy upgrade, it may only give 12.5 more energy, but that's more than enough in most cases. And having units come out spell ready would be ridiculous in too many cases.
No we don't Queens sometimes get used but not often enough precisely because it takes too long for the firstbroodling. I believe that even with 50 extra energy it would still take a few seconds before they could get used.
And Dark Archon are a joke BM unit.
Starting energy is literally the most liberal buff possible. If you think that this would make queens OP you've clearly never played BW
imo this balance change would be terrible, really terrible. Zerg has so many larva comapared to lets say terrans factories with machine shops. So if every queen of yours can trade against one tank, you will win. What a lame gameplay this would be.
It takes 150 energy to broodling a tank, that's 2 minutes and a half. The Queen starts with 50 energy, meaning it takes 100 in game seconds to get enough energy to trade with a tank, then after spending your energy another 150 seconds.
If you get the upgrade the Queen starts with 62 energy and has maximum 250 energy instead of 200. Soo if it were buffed to start with 50 extra energy, with the upgrade it would still take 38 in game seconds to get enough energy for broodlings, and then after that another 150 seconds to get it off again.
Not to mention the fact that you already need to research Ensnare and Spawn Broodling.
Where as Siege tanks are you know, actually useful whenever, Queens can trade 1:1 every 2 and a half minutes, buffing them slightly sure as fuck wouldn't hurt.
But as for balance, I think that should be left untouched. That's the one thing nobody ever wants touched.
Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
If I had to change something, I'd buff Dark Archons, Queens and Ghosts a bit, soo that they saw SOME competative play. Those units might as well not exist in the competative sense.
Increase starting energy of all those units by 50. Increase Ghosts HP by a bit, don't see this having a negative impact on the game, worst case scenario Queens become legit option in lategame PvZ
1. Dark Archons and Queens both see competitive play. 2. The reason Queens and Ghosts are not used more is because it just adds more complexity, having to use the abilities on top of controlling a lot of units is too much even if you have 300APM. 3. If you want units to have more starting energy simply research the max energy upgrade, it may only give 12.5 more energy, but that's more than enough in most cases. And having units come out spell ready would be ridiculous in too many cases.
No we don't Queens sometimes get used but not often enough precisely because it takes too long for the firstbroodling. I believe that even with 50 extra energy it would still take a few seconds before they could get used.
And Dark Archon are a joke BM unit.
Starting energy is literally the most liberal buff possible. If you think that this would make queens OP you've clearly never played BW
imo this balance change would be terrible, really terrible. Zerg has so many larva comapared to lets say terrans factories with machine shops. So if every queen of yours can trade against one tank, you will win. What a lame gameplay this would be.
It takes 150 energy to broodling a tank, that's 2 minutes and a half. The Queen starts with 50 energy, meaning it takes 100 in game seconds to get enough energy to trade with a tank, then after spending your energy another 150 seconds.
If you get the upgrade the Queen starts with 62 energy and has maximum 250 energy instead of 200. Soo if it were buffed to start with 50 extra energy, with the upgrade it would still take 38 in game seconds to get enough energy for broodlings, and then after that another 150 seconds to get it off again.
Not to mention the fact that you already need to research Ensnare and Spawn Broodling.
Where as Siege tanks are you know, actually useful whenever, Queens can trade 1:1 every 2 and a half minutes, buffing them slightly sure as fuck wouldn't hurt.
Poor analysis.
Lets take a look at an alternative Zerg caster, defiler. Has an insanely powerful spell, Dark Swarm. Can be casted immediately when the defiler is spawned, imagine how much the defiler would be used if it would take a 100 seconds before it could cast Dark Swarm then another 150 seconds before it could cast it again.
But as for balance, I think that should be left untouched. That's the one thing nobody ever wants touched.
Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
If I had to change something, I'd buff Dark Archons, Queens and Ghosts a bit, soo that they saw SOME competative play. Those units might as well not exist in the competative sense.
Increase starting energy of all those units by 50. Increase Ghosts HP by a bit, don't see this having a negative impact on the game, worst case scenario Queens become legit option in lategame PvZ
1. Dark Archons and Queens both see competitive play. 2. The reason Queens and Ghosts are not used more is because it just adds more complexity, having to use the abilities on top of controlling a lot of units is too much even if you have 300APM. 3. If you want units to have more starting energy simply research the max energy upgrade, it may only give 12.5 more energy, but that's more than enough in most cases. And having units come out spell ready would be ridiculous in too many cases.
No we don't Queens sometimes get used but not often enough precisely because it takes too long for the firstbroodling. I believe that even with 50 extra energy it would still take a few seconds before they could get used.
And Dark Archon are a joke BM unit.
Starting energy is literally the most liberal buff possible. If you think that this would make queens OP you've clearly never played BW
We just saw Queens being used this season by Effort to counter mech, and it has been shown to be effective already in the pro scene...
You mean the game where he died because he had to wait too long to get enough energy to take out his opponents tanks. A not that insane 50 energy buff to Queens, him only needing to wait 1 minute instead of 2 sure would have helped him there to not make it a one sided stomp!
But as for balance, I think that should be left untouched. That's the one thing nobody ever wants touched.
Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
The only balance changes should be making scouts either faster or cost 25 minerals less. Any more than that and brood war is no longer the same anymore.
This. Making scouts slightly faster would actually be cool imo.
they have an upgrade for that
Someone plays with scouts a lot but for real i had no idea haha. Then yeah make them like 25 minerals cheaper haha
Devil's advocate: I don't think the Scout should be buffed, out of Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost, it's actually the best unit believe it or not.
Sure it's utter shit in Single Player, but in team games especially Hunters Scout/Siege Tank is the most efficient combo, it's insane if you can get it going, soo it actually has a niche, if you buffed it too much it might make it OP in Team games, if you only care about 1v1, making it a bit cheaper would be nice though.
I think I've seen Professional game where Scout was useful. The Protoss player went 2 base Carrier versus Terran on Colloseum II and the Protoss made 2 or 3 Scouts while waiting for his Carrier tech to finish, he sniped SCVs building turrets and a few siege tanks with it. I think the Protoss won that game, but other than that I can't imagine it not helping if Scouts cost 250/100 instead of 275/125 and maybe cut the build time by 5 to make it 45 instead of 50
But as for balance, I think that should be left untouched. That's the one thing nobody ever wants touched.
Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
The only balance changes should be making scouts either faster or cost 25 minerals less. Any more than that and brood war is no longer the same anymore.
This. Making scouts slightly faster would actually be cool imo.
they have an upgrade for that
Someone plays with scouts a lot but for real i had no idea haha. Then yeah make them like 25 minerals cheaper haha
Devil's advocate: I don't think the Scout should be buffed, out of Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost, it's actually the best unit believe it or not.
Sure it's utter shit in Single Player, but in team games especially Hunters Scout/Siege Tank is the most efficient combo, it's insane if you can get it going, soo it actually has a niche, if you buffed it too much it might make it OP in Team games, if you only care about 1v1, making it a bit cheaper would be nice though.
Except team games arent what starcraft should be balanced around. DA, Ghosts, and Queens have seen far more competitive play than scouts, and pretty sure the only actual games that scouts were used not as a BM move was i think Jangbi vs forgg on colloseum to break a contain, and one where someone actually did the stove in a tournament game.
But as for balance, I think that should be left untouched. That's the one thing nobody ever wants touched.
Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
The only balance changes should be making scouts either faster or cost 25 minerals less. Any more than that and brood war is no longer the same anymore.
This. Making scouts slightly faster would actually be cool imo.
they have an upgrade for that
Someone plays with scouts a lot but for real i had no idea haha. Then yeah make them like 25 minerals cheaper haha
Devil's advocate: I don't think the Scout should be buffed, out of Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost, it's actually the best unit believe it or not.
Sure it's utter shit in Single Player, but in team games especially Hunters Scout/Siege Tank is the most efficient combo, it's insane if you can get it going, soo it actually has a niche, if you buffed it too much it might make it OP in Team games, if you only care about 1v1, making it a bit cheaper would be nice though.
Except team games arent what starcraft should be balanced around. DA, Ghosts, and Queens have seen far more competitive play than scouts, and pretty sure the only actual games that scouts were used not as a BM move was i think Jangbi vs forgg on colloseum to break a contain, and one where someone actually did the stove in a tournament game.
Also keep posts within one post please
I edited my comment, and mentioned that game.
I did say it was devil's advocate, because while I agree the game shouldn't be balanced around Team Games, at the very least the Scout is good at something, and it's VERY good at that. If you can get a maxed out Scout Army with a supporting Terran Siege Tank army. Good fucking luck killing that.
Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost remain "fun" only units, they don't have much competative use and it's a shame because all 3 are very fun to use, if I had to only buff 1 unit per race. It would be those 3, if I could balance as I could, I might buff Scout by a bit, and maybe make Valkyries build 5 seconds faster 32 to 27 or increase their attack speed from 2.688 to 2.5 or maybe increase their acceleration or speed slightly, this is purely because I think Valykries are the shit and Fantasy build needs a comeback and a Valkyrie being slightly slightly better might make that a reality. It's sad that you can be the best Protoss, Terran or Zerg on the planet without ever having to play with those 3, seems a bit sad.
For the people arguing against these buffs especially for Queen, Ghost and Dark Archon let's ignore Valkyries. I really don't understand the mentality, there is a golden middle ground, where they get seldom used, but don't fuck up balance and being OP. If Blizzard were still supporting the game, I'd ask them to gradually buff those units up incrementally until they saw some competative play, if the buffs were too much I'd roll them back, I really don't think anything else in the game needs balancing because it would just screw up how delicate Brood War is. To be clear I don't want to see a Dark Archon, a Queen or a Ghost in every game, I just want them to be viable late game alternatives
But as for balance, I think that should be left untouched. That's the one thing nobody ever wants touched.
Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
The only balance changes should be making scouts either faster or cost 25 minerals less. Any more than that and brood war is no longer the same anymore.
This. Making scouts slightly faster would actually be cool imo.
they have an upgrade for that
Someone plays with scouts a lot but for real i had no idea haha. Then yeah make them like 25 minerals cheaper haha
Devil's advocate: I don't think the Scout should be buffed, out of Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost, it's actually the best unit believe it or not.
Sure it's utter shit in Single Player, but in team games especially Hunters Scout/Siege Tank is the most efficient combo, it's insane if you can get it going, soo it actually has a niche, if you buffed it too much it might make it OP in Team games, if you only care about 1v1, making it a bit cheaper would be nice though.
Except team games arent what starcraft should be balanced around. DA, Ghosts, and Queens have seen far more competitive play than scouts, and pretty sure the only actual games that scouts were used not as a BM move was i think Jangbi vs forgg on colloseum to break a contain, and one where someone actually did the stove in a tournament game.
Also keep posts within one post please
I edited my comment, and mentioned that game.
I did say it was devil's advocate, because while I agree the game shouldn't be balanced around Team Games, at the very least the Scout is good at something, and it's VERY good at that. If you can get a maxed out Scout Army with a supporting Terran Siege Tank army. Good fucking luck killing that.
Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost remain "fun" only units, they don't have much competative use and it's a shame because all 3 are very fun to use, if I had to only buff 1 unit per race. It would be those 3. It's sad that you can be the best Protoss, Terran or Zerg on the planet without ever having to play with those 3, seems a bit sad.
For the people arguing against these buffs. I really don't understand the mentality, there is a golden middle ground, where they get seldom used, but don't fuck up balance and being OP. If Blizzard were still supporting the game, I'd ask them to gradually buff those units up incrementally until they saw some competative play, if the buffs were too much I'd roll them back, I really don't think anything else in the game needs balancing because it would just screw up how delicate Brood War is. To be clear I don't want to see a Dark Archon, a Queen or a Ghost in every game, I just want them to be viable late game alternatives
Each unit has its place. You hardly ever see Devourers being used but they have their place too. Also, when doing balance, its inportant to look at what needs to be changed and also what occurs because of that change. Lets say you buff DAs maelstrom. You're subsequently making PvZ more Protoss favored and they already have a very strong late game vZ. You also make it so that since DAs will be seen more, every other spellcaster just got a small nerf since feedback is a thing as well.
How about Queen buff? Well, early game mech is now generally unfeasible, since your first tank push gets crushed and Zerg counter attack is super strong, hell with earlier broodlings, Id say Zergs are actually the aggressors vs early mech play. So you nerfed Tanks straight into the ground early game with the SB buff. But wait theres more! With earlier broodlings, you just made Queens also stronger in ZvP! Now they can broodling HT more readily so timing attacks like the Zero game on Fighting Spirit happen much more.
Ghosts are incredibly delicate to balance because they have potential to be the strongest unit in the game with nukes.
But as for balance, I think that should be left untouched. That's the one thing nobody ever wants touched.
Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
The only balance changes should be making scouts either faster or cost 25 minerals less. Any more than that and brood war is no longer the same anymore.
This. Making scouts slightly faster would actually be cool imo.
they have an upgrade for that
Someone plays with scouts a lot but for real i had no idea haha. Then yeah make them like 25 minerals cheaper haha
Devil's advocate: I don't think the Scout should be buffed, out of Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost, it's actually the best unit believe it or not.
Sure it's utter shit in Single Player, but in team games especially Hunters Scout/Siege Tank is the most efficient combo, it's insane if you can get it going, soo it actually has a niche, if you buffed it too much it might make it OP in Team games, if you only care about 1v1, making it a bit cheaper would be nice though.
Except team games arent what starcraft should be balanced around. DA, Ghosts, and Queens have seen far more competitive play than scouts, and pretty sure the only actual games that scouts were used not as a BM move was i think Jangbi vs forgg on colloseum to break a contain, and one where someone actually did the stove in a tournament game.
Also keep posts within one post please
I edited my comment, and mentioned that game.
I did say it was devil's advocate, because while I agree the game shouldn't be balanced around Team Games, at the very least the Scout is good at something, and it's VERY good at that. If you can get a maxed out Scout Army with a supporting Terran Siege Tank army. Good fucking luck killing that.
Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost remain "fun" only units, they don't have much competative use and it's a shame because all 3 are very fun to use, if I had to only buff 1 unit per race. It would be those 3. It's sad that you can be the best Protoss, Terran or Zerg on the planet without ever having to play with those 3, seems a bit sad.
For the people arguing against these buffs. I really don't understand the mentality, there is a golden middle ground, where they get seldom used, but don't fuck up balance and being OP. If Blizzard were still supporting the game, I'd ask them to gradually buff those units up incrementally until they saw some competative play, if the buffs were too much I'd roll them back, I really don't think anything else in the game needs balancing because it would just screw up how delicate Brood War is. To be clear I don't want to see a Dark Archon, a Queen or a Ghost in every game, I just want them to be viable late game alternatives
Each unit has its place. You hardly ever see Devourers being used but they have their place too. Also, when doing balance, its inportant to look at what needs to be changed and also what occurs because of that change. Lets say you buff DAs maelstrom. You're subsequently making PvZ more Protoss favored and they already have a very strong late game vZ. You also make it so that since DAs will be seen more, every other spellcaster just got a small nerf since feedback is a thing as well.
How about Queen buff? Well, early game mech is now generally unfeasible, since your first tank push gets crushed and Zerg counter attack is super strong, hell with earlier broodlings, Id say Zergs are actually the aggressors vs early mech play. So you nerfed Tanks straight into the ground early game with the SB buff. But wait theres more! With earlier broodlings, you just made Queens also stronger in ZvP! Now they can broodling HT more readily so timing attacks like the Zero game on Fighting Spirit happen much more.
Ghosts are incredibly delicate to balance because they have potential to be the strongest unit in the game with nukes.
No your logic is flawed, you assume that every Zerg gets allocated X amount of Queens and every Protoss gets allocated X amount of Dark Templars.
Currently the resources you would need to spend on Dark Archons and Queens would be better spent elsewhere, meaning you are shooting yourself in the foot and aren't spending those resources better, I'm proposing for those options to be equal or slightly worse than the current options, but viable.
Also we are talking about energy buffs, we can both agree that Dark Archons and Queens are under tunned, and giving them slightly more energy is a very liberal buff.
50+ Starting Energy for DA and Queen isn't going to break the game, if you think it is you don't play enough. Also considering that T>Z>P>T, even if the 50+ starting energy somehow made Zerg win 0.5% more versus Terran and Protoss win 0.5% more versus Zerg, I'd call that a job well done.
I'm not asking for huge buffs here, I said incrementally, but that was an update soo you might not have read it.
Also on your analysis on Queens, I think you totally missed the mark there. It currently takes 100 in game seconds to get the first broodling off, 88 seconds if you get the upgrade. If we buff the Queen by 50 energy you only need to wait 67* seconds or 51* with the upgrade (Not to mention you still need to research those spells). Having to wait 1,12* minutes instead of 2.24* minutes isn't going to break any early game TvZ, Queens would still be pretty bad, except it would take you 67* seconds to make your return investment and 269* seconds to outvalue the Terran instead of 134* and 336*. (Slight Edit: It currently takes you 5.6 fucking minutes to outvalue the Terran with a Queen if you trade with Siege Tanks, not factoring that you can lose your queen or mismicro it)
You really don't understand balance if you think small buffs like these would break any match up.
EDIT: Look I understand your sentiment, Brood War is in a magical place in terms of Balance, it's pretty incredible, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws. There are a few units that could be tunned a bit better to be seen a bit more, they don't need big buff, for a unit like the Queen energy buffs would do.
If you think 50 energy is too much, then let's make it 40 energy buff or 30 or 20 or maybe 50 is not enough and let's make it 60. Currently it takes the Queen to long for it to get it's ROI back, and the timing window is too big. If the Terran sees you started making Queens he just pushes you and you die before you get a chance to even use Broodlings.
This is exactly what happened in the Light vs Effort Game
Effort gets Queens at 2:37:25
Light sees the Queens with his drop, and decides to push out immediately
2:38:15 Effort does a very clever move, and forces the Terran army back to give his Queens additional time, but even with this genius distraction the Queens simply take too long to get ready
2:39:00 Light arrives at Efforts base and starts Siegeing him down, Broodlings are not ready, yet
2:39:40 Effort finally uses broodlings, but sadly Light already broke his Sunken Defense.
If Queen started with 30 more energy, no 20. Effort could have held that, he would still be behind, but it would have been a better game. You need to understand even if Queens started with 50 energy, if the Terran was shelling your base down and you decided to go for Queens you'd still need to wait 67* seconds before you could broodling his tanks.
Not to mention after you broodlinged it would still take ANOTHER 201.6* seconds to use Queens again.
EDIT2: It's even worse than I thought, I looked up how Energy regen works and it's 0.744 energy per second which means it takes 134.4 Real Seconds to generate 100 energy or 201.6 seconds to generate 150 energy.
This means it takes 2 minutes and 14 seconds to get your first Broodling off, which works out perfectly with my analysis in the Light vs Effort game.
With my proposed buff, it would only take 1 minute and 7 seconds to get your first broodling off, but it would still take another 3 minutes and 22 seconds to use your spawn broodling ability again.
On December 20 2016 12:47 [[Starlight]] wrote: [quote] Not entirely true. But it is true that of the ppl who want even slight balance changes, they can never seem to agree on what those should be.
So, Blizzard would have to make any of those type of changes.
The only balance changes should be making scouts either faster or cost 25 minerals less. Any more than that and brood war is no longer the same anymore.
This. Making scouts slightly faster would actually be cool imo.
they have an upgrade for that
Someone plays with scouts a lot but for real i had no idea haha. Then yeah make them like 25 minerals cheaper haha
Devil's advocate: I don't think the Scout should be buffed, out of Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost, it's actually the best unit believe it or not.
Sure it's utter shit in Single Player, but in team games especially Hunters Scout/Siege Tank is the most efficient combo, it's insane if you can get it going, soo it actually has a niche, if you buffed it too much it might make it OP in Team games, if you only care about 1v1, making it a bit cheaper would be nice though.
Except team games arent what starcraft should be balanced around. DA, Ghosts, and Queens have seen far more competitive play than scouts, and pretty sure the only actual games that scouts were used not as a BM move was i think Jangbi vs forgg on colloseum to break a contain, and one where someone actually did the stove in a tournament game.
Also keep posts within one post please
I edited my comment, and mentioned that game.
I did say it was devil's advocate, because while I agree the game shouldn't be balanced around Team Games, at the very least the Scout is good at something, and it's VERY good at that. If you can get a maxed out Scout Army with a supporting Terran Siege Tank army. Good fucking luck killing that.
Dark Archon, Queen and Ghost remain "fun" only units, they don't have much competative use and it's a shame because all 3 are very fun to use, if I had to only buff 1 unit per race. It would be those 3. It's sad that you can be the best Protoss, Terran or Zerg on the planet without ever having to play with those 3, seems a bit sad.
For the people arguing against these buffs. I really don't understand the mentality, there is a golden middle ground, where they get seldom used, but don't fuck up balance and being OP. If Blizzard were still supporting the game, I'd ask them to gradually buff those units up incrementally until they saw some competative play, if the buffs were too much I'd roll them back, I really don't think anything else in the game needs balancing because it would just screw up how delicate Brood War is. To be clear I don't want to see a Dark Archon, a Queen or a Ghost in every game, I just want them to be viable late game alternatives
Each unit has its place. You hardly ever see Devourers being used but they have their place too. Also, when doing balance, its inportant to look at what needs to be changed and also what occurs because of that change. Lets say you buff DAs maelstrom. You're subsequently making PvZ more Protoss favored and they already have a very strong late game vZ. You also make it so that since DAs will be seen more, every other spellcaster just got a small nerf since feedback is a thing as well.
How about Queen buff? Well, early game mech is now generally unfeasible, since your first tank push gets crushed and Zerg counter attack is super strong, hell with earlier broodlings, Id say Zergs are actually the aggressors vs early mech play. So you nerfed Tanks straight into the ground early game with the SB buff. But wait theres more! With earlier broodlings, you just made Queens also stronger in ZvP! Now they can broodling HT more readily so timing attacks like the Zero game on Fighting Spirit happen much more.
Ghosts are incredibly delicate to balance because they have potential to be the strongest unit in the game with nukes.
No your logic is flawed, you assume that every Zerg gets allocated X amount of Queens and every Protoss gets allocated X amount of Dark Templars.
Currently the resources you would need to spend on Dark Archons and Queens would be better spent elsewhere, meaning you are shooting yourself in the foot and aren't spending those resources better, I'm proposing for those options to be equal or slightly worse than the current options, but viable.
Also we are talking about energy buffs, we can both agree that Dark Archons and Queens are under tunned, and giving them slightly more energy is a very liberal buff.
50+ Starting Energy for DA and Queen isn't going to break the game, if you think it is you don't play enough. Also considering that T>Z>P>T, even if the 50+ starting energy somehow made Zerg win 0.5% more versus Terran and Protoss win 0.5% more versus Zerg, I'd call that a job well done.
I'm not asking for huge buffs here, I said incrementally, but that was an update soo you might not have read it.
Also on your analysis on Queens, I think you totally missed the mark there. It currently takes 100 in game seconds to get the first broodling off, 88 seconds if you get the upgrade. If we buff the Queen by 50 energy you only need to wait 50 seconds or 38 with the upgrade (Not to mention you still need to research those spells). Having to wait 1 minute instead of two isn't going to break any early game TvZ, Queens would still be pretty bad, except it would take you 50 seconds to make your return investment and 200 seconds to outvalue the Terran instead of 100 and 250.
You really don't understand balance if you think small buffs like these would break any match up.
EDIT: Look I understand your sentiment, Brood War is in a magical place in terms of Balance, it's pretty incredible, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have flaws. There are a few units that could be tunned a bit better to be seen a bit more, they don't need big buff, for a unit like the Queen energy buffs would do.
If you think 50 energy is too much, then let's make it 40 energy buff or 30 or 20 or maybe 50 is not enough and let's make it 60. Currently it takes the Queen to long for it to get it's ROI back, and the timing window is too big. If the Terran sees you started making Queens he just pushes you and you die before you get a chance to even use Broodlings.
This is exactly what happened in the Light vs Effort Game
Light sees the Queens with his drop, and decides to push out immediately
2:39:00 Light arrives at Efforts base and starts Sieging him down, Broodlings are not ready, yet
2:39:40 Effort finally uses broodlings, but sadly Light already broke his Sunken Defense.
If Queen started with 30 more energy, no 20. Effort could have held that, he would still be behind, but it would have been a better game. You need to understand even if Queens started with 50 energy, if the Terran was shelling your base down and you decided to go for Queens you'd still need to wait 50 seconds before you could broodling his tanks.
Not to mention after you broodlinged it would still take ANOTHER 150 seconds to use Queens again.
EDIT2: It's even worse than I thought, I looked up how Energy regen works and it's 0.744 energy per second which means it takes 134.4 Real Seconds to generate 100 energy or 201.6 seconds to generate 150 energy.
This means it takes 2 minutes and 14 seconds to get your first Broodling off, which works out perfectly with my analysis in the Light vs Effort game.
With my proposed buff, it would only take 1 minute and 7 seconds to get your first broodling off, but it would still take another 3 minutes and 22 seconds to use your spawn broodling ability again.
TLDR: There is a 134.4s(Energy Regeneration time)+13.4s(Queen Build Time)=148.8s timing window between when you start building Queens and when you can actually use them. That's a big enough timing window for the Terran to unsiege, get to your base and kill you.
This is the reason why Queens don't see play because they are just too big of a liability to invest in.
If they started out with more energy the initial timing window would be shorter, but later on it would still take quite a bit between broodling attacks, meaning that it would not impact the Zerg over a long game, but it would allow more Zergs to successfully transition to Queens without dying.
There is an argument to be made for simply dropping the energy cost of the broodling, depending on how much the drop would be, say 125 it could be a nice change, but I think dropping ability costs instead of Starting energy could make the Queen legit overpowered, this is why I proposed 50+ starting energy buff.
On December 22 2016 06:43 Kairo wrote: Mutas should be medium size
Turrets doing 5 damage to a single mutalisk is ludacris.
Opens up Goliaths, dragoons and Hydralisks as options (although still a poor ones) as being not completely crap vs muta gaming.
Thoughts all?
I'd avoid touching the *core* units, I think it could seriously damage Brood War as a game, I thought this over before. The only main unit I'd change is give Hydralisks a damage bonus vs Air Biological, this would only impact ZvZ and it would make Hydralisks in ZvZ more viable diversifying the match up.
I don't even know if this is possible within the Brood War game engine as + Bio wasn't a thing in Brood War.
If I could I'd make Hydralisks Damage 10 (+1) +5 vs Biological air. Or I'd just buff it incrementaly first I'd try +1 then +2 then +3, and I'd keep raising the bar until in ZvZ at least a small portion of the games would see hydralisks, I wouldn't go overboard though, I'd keep ZvZ predominantly as it is, but offer Hydralisks as a viable alternative. I think this would only serve to improve the game, especially with such a limited implication for the buff (Meaning only ZvZ as only Zerg has Biological flying units), but as I said this might literally be impossible with Brood War's engine.
If this change came through, you might see games like this occasionally if both playeres opted for hydralisks (As I said I wouldn't overbuff the hydralisks overtaking the current meta, I'd simply buff it enough to make it an alternative maybe something like 30%Hydralisk/70%Mutalisk, maybe players would open Mutalisk and transition to Hydra later, who knows, it's hard to tell, but in my opinion it would make ZvZ better.
(No Spire ZvZ, a really interesting tournament ran a couple of years back Match between TrutaCz and Technics)
On December 22 2016 07:52 vndestiny wrote: Seriously we're even entertaining the thought of tinkering mutalisk match up ? In a way that nerf Zerg mid game Z v T ? Really ?
Did you read, only vs Biological Air. Which means it has zero impact on ZvT. I also mentioned this might be impossible within the Brood War Engine, but I think if done correctly it would probably make ZvZ a better and more diverse match up.
I implore you to actually read the posts you are responding to.
On December 22 2016 08:24 duke91 wrote: The last balance patch was 1.08 in 2001. BW did fine without any patch since then.
Some of you want some units to get more action. This is not SC2 where Blizzard determines what is the meta.
I agree that there probably aren't going to ever be any patches, but that doesn't change if a change is warranted or not and if it would improve the game or not.
On December 22 2016 08:24 duke91 wrote: The last balance patch was 1.08 in 2001. BW did fine without any patch since then.
Some of you want some units to get more action. This is not SC2 where Blizzard determines what is the meta.
I agree that there probably aren't going to ever be any patches, but that doesn't change if a change is warranted or not and if it would improve the game or not.
Haven't we learned the lesson of what happens if you attempt to foresee the consequences of a balance change? Nobody is even remotely able to do so.
You could probably compare it to removing a predator in an ecosystem. No more wolves -> elk reproduce faster -> destroy more trees -> trees grow less high -> beavers find less material -> beavers build less dams -> rivers change their flow.
As has already been pointed out, there are secondary effects to balance changes: buff queen a bit -> see less tanks -> maybe see more hydras, potentially less mutas -> who knows what consequences follow...
On December 22 2016 08:24 duke91 wrote: The last balance patch was 1.08 in 2001. BW did fine without any patch since then.
Some of you want some units to get more action. This is not SC2 where Blizzard determines what is the meta.
I agree that there probably aren't going to ever be any patches, but that doesn't change if a change is warranted or not and if it would improve the game or not.
Haven't we learned the lesson of what happens if you attempt to foresee the consequences of a balance change? Nobody is even remotely able to do so.
You could probably compare it to removing a predator in an ecosystem. No more wolves -> elk reproduce faster -> destroy more trees -> trees grow less high -> beavers find less material -> beavers build less dams -> rivers change their flow.
As has already been pointed out, there are secondary effects to balance changes: buff queen a bit -> see less tanks -> maybe see more hydras, potentially less mutas -> who knows what consequences follow...
No you can make resonable predictions, especially when you have resonable balance changes.
The reason SC2 for instance has such weird meta swings is because Blizzard introduces big changes, something I wouldn't do.
Reading your comment feels like you really haven't read my posts. No, more energy for queens wouldn't kill Siege tanks, and it sure as fuck wouldn't make Hydralisks more useful in TvZ. I can say this being 99.999% certain. Most probably a small buff cutting the window down from 134 seconds to 67 seconds wouldn't even make the Queen much better than it is, I mean we aren't even talking about touching the stats, cost or the build time of the unit, just the starting energy and you are talking as if this has some kind of potential to kill the tank.
If we say, reduced Broodling cost to 75. You'd have a point, but you are kind of talking out of your ass, if you make resonable changes you can make resonable predictions, if you make wild changes, you can't make resonable predictions. It's as simple as that.
You could take a look at every Professional game where the Zerg went for Queens or look at all available replays from High level players where they for some reason decided to go queens. Mark when the Queens got 150 energy, subtract 67 seconds and then with reasonable accuracy predict how different the game could have gone if that small change would have been introduced. Balancing is really not as big a shoot in the dark as you think it is.
The difference with balancing in SC2 is:
-The meta is not as settled down as it is in BW -More than 1 change at a time (You can resonably predict how a balance change will play out among established units, but you cannot as accurately predict when another change might influence the equation as well) -SC2 and other games make big and drastic changes instead of small and incremental ones
I really don't know why I spent so much time arguing this, especially one specific completely theoretical change, it is kind of pointless since the Queen most certainly will never be changed, but it just seems like the majority of Teamliquid doesn't understand how Brood War "could" be better balanced, and because they don't understand it, they cannot even comprehend the idea that you can balance something in a slow and predictable manner (A technique most developers don't often employ, they prefer more interesting sweeping changes that throw the metagame out of whack) and end up with a better game at the end
Light sees the Queens with his drop, and decides to push out immediately
2:38:15 Effort does a very clever move, and forces the Terran army back to give his Queens additional time, but even with this genius distraction the Queens simply take too long to get ready
2:39:00 Light arrives at Efforts base and starts Siegeing him down, Broodlings are not ready, yet
2:39:40 Effort finally uses broodlings, but sadly Light already broke his Sunken Defense.
Subtract 67 seconds from 2:39:40 which is 2:38:33 and you can accurately predict how this particular change would affect this match, you can do the same with any small scale incremental change, the less drastic, the more accurate predictions you can make.
Do this with enough games and you have a pretty good model of how the game will change.
On December 22 2016 08:24 duke91 wrote: The last balance patch was 1.08 in 2001. BW did fine without any patch since then.
Some of you want some units to get more action. This is not SC2 where Blizzard determines what is the meta.
I agree that there probably aren't going to ever be any patches, but that doesn't change if a change is warranted or not and if it would improve the game or not.
Haven't we learned the lesson of what happens if you attempt to foresee the consequences of a balance change? Nobody is even remotely able to do so.
You could probably compare it to removing a predator in an ecosystem. No more wolves -> elk reproduce faster -> destroy more trees -> trees grow less high -> beavers find less material -> beavers build less dams -> rivers change their flow.
As has already been pointed out, there are secondary effects to balance changes: buff queen a bit -> see less tanks -> maybe see more hydras, potentially less mutas -> who knows what consequences follow...
No you can make resonable predictions, especially when you have resonable balance changes.[...] if you make resonable changes you can make resonable predictions, if you make wild changes, you can't make resonable predictions. It's as simple as that.
It's not as simple as that. if you make a change so small it has absolutely no effect on player decisions then I agree. But that's not what we are talking about. A patch is meant to make something viable that was not viable before. But the problem is, you can't examine a unit in isolation.
If a player produces a unit he didn't produce before, then at the same time he omits another unit that he did produce before. That fact follows from resources being limited and investment decisions always being a trade-off.
Why would a player substitute unit x for unit y in his composition? Only because it makes his new composition stronger than the old one. In a rock paper scissors game that is BW (every unit has a counter) a given composition is usually not just stronger on an absolute scale, but instead requires a different answer from the opponent in order to counter it. Hence you can conclude that the opponent will adapt his composition too.
(If that was not true and a buff would indeed make a composition stronger on an absolute scale, then it would alter the win rate of the matchup.)
By now we have concluded that buffing 1 unit to the point where it has any effect in the game at all at the very least changes usage of 4 units. (because the same principle holds for the opponents adaption of his composition: increasing the quantity of one unit automatically decreases the quantity of another unit too). And it doesn't necessarily stop there, composition changes could further ripple through different units.
by the way: matchup balance has continued to be adjusted post-1.08 patch. It was just done via the maps. Example: the balance between sunkens and marines is a function of rush distance.
Well.... I guess I have to back off in the face of reason on the medium sized mutas :S
For the sake of theorycrafting, turrets 13 normal damage instead of 20 explosive? Should such a change be considered a buff or a nerf to TvP, considering shuttles/arbiters/carriers vs observers/interceptors?
Would probably be a strong Terran buff TvZ, since overlords are not nearly as impactful as mutas in the meta...
EPT
but for real i had no idea haha. Then yeah make them like 25 minerals cheaper haha
