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United States1719 Posts
On March 10 2010 05:00 Ecrilon wrote:
It is very much a "don't let your opponent get there" argument. However, it is a very different argument for Brood Lords. When you grow a blue ball, you get archons, you get reavers, you get templars, all at the same time. A smaller blue ball is understandably easier to tackle, so you tackle it, and kill off a few Archons/Reavers/Templar. This is fine, and your opponent is able to reach a good mass, but never a critical mass. It's different with BLs. You get hydras, then more hydras, yet more hydras, then you suddenly get a bunch of Brood Lords and you've already achieved critical mass. There's no real growing phase like there is for a blue ball. You can engage Hydras all you want to technically whittle the force down but you're not hitting the key units like you can in a blue ball.
In an Even Endgame situation, both of you take even economic damage. The power the Protoss is able to produce on even footing with the Zerg is less than that of Zerg now that Zerg has BLs.
To me, if zerg has been able to amass enough hydras to support BL's and push out, it doesn't sound like they are on an even footing. I don't know how much you consider an adequate amount of hydras to support 3 BL's, but colossi rape my hydras, and in some games by the time I have BL's he has enough to match my hydras. With hydras decimated, BL's get wiped out in about 0.5 seconds, and suddenly i have P ground army raping my base. Admittedly, I usually win the games where I can get to late game with 3 bases against P, but those are also the games during which i successfully contained him to his main/nat all game, and his main is mined out so effectively he is having to fend off my BL/hydra army with units from 1 base. On games where i was heavily harassed, I never win even if I get to BL/hydra army simply because they pop out too late and my opponent's army is considerably larger.
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United States1719 Posts
On March 10 2010 05:09 amoeba wrote:Show nested quote +On March 10 2010 05:02 rotinegg wrote:On March 10 2010 04:56 amoeba wrote:
yes they are higher up the tech tree, but you get the use of a very good intermediate unit in the meantime. This is huge. Its also much much easier for zerg to switch tech. To throw up a carrier army, protoss has to put up multiple starports.
So while it seems like oh, just go to starport -> fleet beacon, realistically you aren't going to do a 1 starport carrier pump. In real game situations, broodlord armies won't come out later than carrier armies. ^ that is true, tech switching is easier for zerg because their production facilities are already in place, but that's just the nature of zerg.. to be versatile and have an all-over-the-place feel. about the real game situations, I don't really know what to say because I have never had a protoss go carriers on me, even in late game situations. Maybe it has to do something with the fact that I'm only in silver league, but I have had plenty of games where I was in the middle of trying to climb up the tech tree to get to BL's but lost the game simply because I didn't have enough hydras when they popped or died to a timing push/drop harrass. It's not a walk in the park to fend off early-mid game aggression while reserving enough resources to steadily climb up the tech tree. yes that is the nature of zerg. But this argument has no place in a balance discussion. as to why you haven't had any protosses go carriers, its because protoss is forced to go robo to counter the rest of the zerg army namely roach push followed by mass hydra and honestly carriers suck against zerg. assuming protoss avoids the many zerg tech switches like midgame muta, etc, and reaches lategame, they run in to broodlords. In pvz it is typically the protoss that is reactionary and the zerg that is proactive.
Well you brought up the point about tech switching first so I was just commenting on it. Now i feel like a kid screaming you did it first!  anyway, about carriers, yea they are useless against a zerg army, I was started to wonder if something significant had changed in SC2 to allow carriers to be used against Z. So P is reactionary is PvZ, but P has answers to almost everything that Z throws at it, or at least i think so... for lings there's zealots, roaches there's stalkers+immortals, hydras have immortals+colossi.. now I did say earlier that i think P has no answer to Z air harass earlier in this thread, and I do concede that corruptors are very useful in that midgame situation where mutas+corruptors are just LOLing all over your bases, but that's not really BL's fault, that's more of a ZvP IMBA thread material
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to make a comparison to SC1. In SC1, guardians never saw play in a zvp because goon templar just killed them too quickly. Guardians also weren't terribly effective in ZvT either but at least saw some usage.
Did guardians need a buff? probably. So their damage got buffed by 5 and they spawn broodlings each shot and they got 125 more hp. sounds like a big upgrade but they also cost more.
Problem now is that stalkers cost the same as dragoons yet do 8 to non armored and 14 to armored, significantly less damage than the 20 explosive (20 to large, 15 to medium, 10 to small) of dragoons. stalkers also have 20 less hp than dragoons.
So in a PvZ in sc2, you are never going to see that many stalkers because frankly they get owned by zerg ground. so now protoss is pretty much forced to go zealot/collosus to fight zerg ground, neither of which can attack air.
In addition, broodlings provide excellent blockers for hydras so that zealots can't really get to them.
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stalkers don't really counter roach. stalkers don't really counter much of anything and immortals don't really counter hydras since hydras aren't armored. in fact an immortal vs hydra fight in sc2 is similar to a dragoon vs hydra fight in sc1 (hydras usuallly won that one with equivalent cost armies) except now immortals cost so much more than dragoons in sc1.
Honestly i'm not sure why blizzard decided to nerf the dragoon, its not like they were that great in sc1.
I brought up tech switching being easy for zerg because I wanted to point out that while BL is higher up the tech tree, protoss needs to invest more in buildings to switch to a lategame air army.
you can't really counter this argument by saying "well but thats how zerg is...." we know thats the flavor of zerg but this has no relevance in a balance discussion was my point.
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United States1719 Posts
^ understood, you have a good argument and I have nothing more to say. I do think Z is OP against P atm, but hopefully they will find other ways of finding a balance rather than nerfing BL's cuz frankly BL's are the only thing that lets me have a chance to win against T
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well I think giving BL mana and having spawn broodlings be an auto cast orb effect might be a good solution.
I mean it still won't effect zvt very much and you can still get a lot of broodlings out even with a just spawned broodlord but it allows protoss to maybe counter by using feedback. this also makes templar a more viable alternative as opposed to every protoss going collosus.
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On March 10 2010 05:37 amoeba wrote:
to make a comparison to SC1. In SC1, guardians never saw play in a zvp because goon templar just killed them too quickly. Guardians also weren't terribly effective in ZvT either but at least saw some usage.
Did guardians need a buff? probably. So their damage got buffed by 5 and they spawn broodlings each shot and they got 125 more hp. sounds like a big upgrade but they also cost more.
Problem now is that stalkers cost the same as dragoons yet do 8 to non armored and 14 to armored, significantly less damage than the 20 explosive (20 to large, 15 to medium, 10 to small) of dragoons. stalkers also have 20 less hp than dragoons.
So in a PvZ in sc2, you are never going to see that many stalkers because frankly they get owned by zerg ground. so now protoss is pretty much forced to go zealot/collosus to fight zerg ground, neither of which can attack air.
In addition, broodlings provide excellent blockers for hydras so that zealots can't really get to them.
How come your zealot/collosus army doesn't have any psi-storm in it? Both Hydras and Broodlords are pretty slow units, psi storm would benefit a lot.
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because it takes a crapload of gas and sci storm is frankly less effective than collosus and takes forever to research.
Its like saying why you don't go both reavers and templars in Sc1, sure, once you are on 4+ bases , its possible, but it happens very very late.
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On March 10 2010 06:28 amoeba wrote:
because it takes a crapload of gas and sci storm is frankly less effective than collosus and takes forever to research.
Its like saying why you don't go both reavers and templars in Sc1, sure, once you are on 4+ bases , its possible, but it happens very very late.
That's ridiculous. I've seen plenty of PvZs in SC1 where the protoss has both reavers and psi storm.
Anyway, collosus/zealot is not as gas intensive as hydra/broodlord at all. Going pure ground when you see a spire is just stupid.
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dual tech reaver storm is fairly lategame in sc1.
storm also does less damage than their sc1 counterpart while hydras have more HP.
lets not forget hydras do like 2.5x the damage they did in sc1 to zealots. templar zealots is just not very viable army against hydra right now, and if you do templar, collosus dual tech, it takes a lot of gas in the midgame.
I'm not sure what your point of contention is. storm isn't really a viable solution to broodlords considering you need 4 storms to kill a BL. storm is barely a solution to hydras at the moment.
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Lol yup Sc2 storms are retarded. It looks sweet and you're like yeeeaaaaahhhhh diiiieeee then you get walked over. Definitely not worth wasting my precious gas on.
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On March 05 2010 20:24 Plexa wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2010 20:18 Mente wrote:
Furthermore if you're getting into that late game vs a zerg and he has the cash to throw all that stuff at you, you probably did something wrong in the midgame. There are several incredible timing pushes that protoss has in their arsenal that can completely stop zerg in their tracks. Plus with the combo of storm/harass capabilities I don't think there's much else to say. If you watch the rep you'll see that Wax went 2base muta -> broodlord and pretty much get steamrolled. But he manages to get 6-7 broodlords on my cliff and I think its pretty ridiculous the amount of damage they can do. Irrespective of the current metagame and whatnot, the very fact these guys can deal an obscene amount of damage is wrong. If SC2 becomes "protoss has to kill zerg in the mid game with a timing push else lategame zerg wins" then again, that's just not right.
Keep in mind most of sc1 has been entirely developed around timing pushes though. Don't be surprised if you have to take advantage of a lot of them in sc2 prior to the zerg powering drones the whole time.
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On March 10 2010 05:37 amoeba wrote:
So in a PvZ in sc2, you are never going to see that many stalkers because frankly they get owned by zerg ground. so now protoss is pretty much forced to go zealot/collosus to fight zerg ground, neither of which can attack air.
In addition, broodlings provide excellent blockers for hydras so that zealots can't really get to them.
This is exactly what happened to me 5 minutes ago. I had more resources, i owned his ground force. I scout spire so i switch to 2 stargate and start pumping phoenix and chrono boosting my stargates and I still get owned. I even destroyed all his expo workers after i just had collosus and he had a couple corrupter, and got those collosus away. I still got owned by mass corrupter+broodlord.
Im still kind of new (been playing for a couple of days, im gold 1v1 and got a couple plat 2v2). Here is the replay.
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On March 10 2010 05:39 amoeba wrote:
stalkers don't really counter roach. stalkers don't really counter much of anything and immortals don't really counter hydras since hydras aren't armored. in fact an immortal vs hydra fight in sc2 is similar to a dragoon vs hydra fight in sc1 (hydras usuallly won that one with equivalent cost armies) except now immortals cost so much more than dragoons in sc1.
Honestly i'm not sure why blizzard decided to nerf the dragoon, its not like they were that great in sc1.
It wasn't really possible to leave any unit that did explosive or concussive damage unchanged from SC1 without affecting balance hugely. The balance implications are too huge. Consider the units that dealt special damage (and were used):
vulture
firebat
dragoon
hydralisk
siege tank
goliath (air)
of these, only the hydra survives largely unchanged in sc2 (and to some extent, the tank). And hydras are massively more powerful in sc2 as a result.
Besides this, stalkers don't need an expensive range upgrade to be useful like dragoons did in sc1, plus have a new power in blink. Obviously they needed to be "nerfed" somewhat compared to the sc1 goon. I agree that they are a tad too weak, though... bumping base dmg to 10 would help
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Fun to see again zerg players stating broodlords are fine when they are as imbalanced as banelings and need to get nerfed.
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If Archons dealt splash damage, then they could be a reliable counter for Broodlords. But, for now, it seems like a combination of storm-spamming, sentries/stalkers and a few phoenix have to do the trick for now.
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how come it never gets pointed out that hydras cost more?
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carriers are your answer theye are more op 
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On March 12 2010 18:00 jtype wrote:
If Archons dealt splash damage, then they could be a reliable counter for Broodlords. But, for now, it seems like a combination of storm-spamming, sentries/stalkers and a few phoenix have to do the trick for now.
archon does splash but it is crap vs air because air dont clump as much as ground , and generally i feel air is a bit stronger in sc2 then in sc1
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On March 12 2010 21:38 Stormscion wrote:Show nested quote +On March 12 2010 18:00 jtype wrote:
If Archons dealt splash damage, then they could be a reliable counter for Broodlords. But, for now, it seems like a combination of storm-spamming, sentries/stalkers and a few phoenix have to do the trick for now. archon does splash but it is crap vs air because air dont clump as much as ground , and generally i feel air is a bit stronger in sc2 then in sc1
Do they deal splash damage in SC2? I thought that this was something quite a few people had been complaining about.
Also, I was thinking mainly in terms of actually dealing with the broodlings themselves, so that your stalkers/sentries could be free to take shots at the Broodlords. Of course, the bonus damage that Archons do to bio units would also be very helpful.
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EPT
