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On August 22 2010 10:11 Floophead_III wrote:
. Blizzard also looks like they have no intention of even touching the game balance
bashiok wrote
Our intent is not to have a game with broken balance in an attempt to sell an expansion. That should go without saying. It makes me sad it isn't.
Our intent is also to not apply knee jerk fixes based on the first few weeks as understanding of the game and strategies are still in flux. The game is young, and we don't feel that it would have been helpful to progressing peoples understanding by throwing in tons of fixes based on flavor-of-the-week (or day, or hour) strats.
We see a lot of variation between the regions. Making a change for how NA players play may be completely ridiculous for how KR players play, and actually mess up a balance there. For instance 10 of their top 20 players are zerg. So that's one place where we have to be mindful and careful and attack balance issues with great prejudice.
That said. There are balance changes coming. What everyone was seeing in beta with tons of quick balance changes are because it was in beta and we feel we can get away with throwing out a lot of 'we think this may help' type fixes. With a live environment we're not going to throw stuff out there unless we're pretty sure. We've played. We've looked at data. We've looked at each region. And then we act. Which isn't to say we may not be wrong from time to time, but it's a more measured approach than beta players may be used to or expecting.
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On August 22 2010 10:11 Floophead_III wrote:
Because the game is not balanced at all. ZvT is proof of this. Blizzard also looks like they have no intention of even touching the game balance or making maps that mirror BW maps (closed nats, no bdoors to main, etc).
Nothing is "proof" in such a young game. The poor Zerg performances (well, except that IdrA guy schooling everyone) are easily explainable by Zerg simply being harder to play, which they quite obviously are.
What have Blizzard said/done that indicates they won't be touching balance or maps?
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Some things you should keep in mind:
medivacs have energy and can be feedback'ed if they try to drop, 1 feedback+2 stalkers will kill a medivac rather easily
HT will destroy marine marauder groups, its not even close...its a useful skill to spread out your HT regularly and have observers with your army to prevent cloak ghost EMPs
before stim comes out, zealot+sentry will destroy marine marauder groups. Just forcefield behind them then zealots own, throw in a guardian shield too. Ive had many games where a small MM group of like 10 marine and 6 marauders shows up at my base and I forcefield behind them closely outside of my base, win with very little losses and the other player just leaves with no GG.
Reason lots of people don't go guardian shield in a zealot+HT combo is because zealots charge forward and are often out of range of the guardian shield because of the kiting MM army. HT are also pushed around rather easily by other units like stalkers/sentry so it makes casting storms more difficult. If you have a separate group for HT and you could manage it well, im sure it would be beneficial to have some sentries.
Thats all I can think of...PvT is one of my best matchups and I open up 3 gate+robo which is safe against every single terran opening. Theres lots of transitions I could do depending what my opponent is doing too. Im not a fan of opening starport because you don't have observers and banshees can work around/destroy cannons.
I think PvT is fine, really fun to play with ghost vs HT 
Edit:
I do feel like PvT is rather fragile though.
1 missed forcefield early game and those 3 marauders with conc finish you off.
2 EMPs and your mismicro'ed HT are all out of energy and your army melts to +1/+1 MM.
Your observer just arrives at the terran base to see a starport with a techlab, seconds later a cloaked banshee is in your base.
your immortal happens to be in the front of your army and 6 marauders stim and take it out while only losing 1 marauder.
Its fragile but it just involves more unit control than macro.
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i think the attitudes of players on TL toward suspected "imbalances" is disgusting. every player comes in from their point of view, makes a list of things they consider imbalanced, and then makes stupid game breaking suggestions to fix it. almost every gripe here is something that can be worked around, or is meant to be that way. this game is more complex than "build x + y + z, win." it takes thought and effort to work around your races weak points and exploit your advantages.
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I don't know if there are balance problems, but one thing is for sure: it's muuuuuch easier to fight against stalker-heavy than zealot-heavy armies. Especially chargelot/sentry/HT can be very tricky to beat with MM/ghost.
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On August 22 2010 10:39 fallore wrote:
i think the attitudes of players on TL toward suspected "imbalances" is disgusting. every player comes in from their point of view, makes a list of things they consider imbalanced, and then makes stupid game breaking suggestions to fix it. almost every gripe here is something that can be worked around, or is meant to be that way. this game is more complex than "build x + y + z, win." it takes thought and effort to work around your races weak points and exploit your advantages.
I don't see many "Change XYZ and break the game" suggestions in this thread. Just discussion on the PvT matchup.
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So much whining on this forum.
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I think the issue isn't what many are describing but rather the range and concentration of units of terran. MM are both ranged and can tightly be packed unlike other units in game.
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1 - Gateway Units
Terran gateway units are generally dominant over Toss early. The zealot is extremely slow, and the stalker is destroyed by the cheaper marauder. This allows Terran to apply early pressure very easily. Conversely it is very hard to pressure the terran much, outside of a very very brief window when stalkers can harass marines before marauders with concussive shell come out.
I really hate this as well because the terran dictates the game for most of T1. However, stalkers and zealots are perfectly capable of holding a choke or ramp. Just need some decent micro and you shouldn't have a huge problem.
2 - Stim
This changes the dynamic again, for a small hp hit terran gateway units are suddenly doing 50% more damage. What is often worse I think is the speed, it allows them to kite even chargelots, and run out of psi storms.
T1.5 or so is really strong. Protoss just needs to be able to survive. I do this with a good zealot/stalker with some sentry mixed in and if he really intends to attack, I chronoboost an immortal.
3 - EMP
I could write for days on this ability, lol. Suffice it to say that for the cost of a ghost academy, 150m 50gas, you can produce an emp machine with a lot of hp that also does decent dps. Ghost emp is a fairly hard counter to EVERY single toss unit, stripping on average 40% of their health. It also instantly cripples sentries and high templars.
Again, very annoying, but the way I found to remedy this a bit is to both spread out HT, and then don't engage when they get emp'd. Pull back if possible, and before any battle make sure you have a pylon to warp HT to.
4 - Medivacs/Vikings
The starport gives terran access to these two units at once, including the option to put on a cheap reactor to double their production. The medivacs are brutally effective, while also giving the terran the option to make drops at no extra cost. The funny thing is terran players would still make medivacs EVEN IF THEY COULD NOT ACT AS TRANSPORTS. They are that effective. And vikings hard counter colossus, one of the two possible counters to the MMM ball.
I don't think this is a problem. Vikings are worthless vs a protoss without Colossus, and they make their army so much weaker because they are damn expensive and useless.
5 - Planetary Fortress
The only expansion in the game that can defend itself. When repaired, this thing can be a monster to take down. Particularly as the SCV targetting priority is screwy. You have to manually target the repairing SCVs or your zealots will circle for ages getting killed. And stalkers do poor damage to the fortress and take a ton.
I don't think this is a problem either. Storming SCVs or targeting the SCVs really isn't that hard o_O
6 - Tech Costs
Terran's tech the cheapest and have full access to their full range of units cheaply.
Yes, but the buildings themselves have to be built as well in order to produce those units. Which is where Protoss comes out ahead.
A - Protoss can not effectively fight with equal cost of gateway units to barracks units
Protoss has an army that is much easier to replace. HT/Colossus already do very well vs bio, but if you made the other units stronger (which they are already very strong. Chargelots are AMAZING vs bio early on and later on if you have a good angle of attack/flank), how would terran EVER win a game?
B - Our counters to this are much higher tech, Colossus and High Templar. However Terran has hard counters to our counters that are much lower tech and easier to get. I.E. Vikings and Ghosts
That is what caused me to move away from Colossus dominated armies. Hard to replace, and fragile. I wouldn't say HT are hard countered by ghosts at all. What you can do is preemptive storm which I find quite effective.
C - Toss can not effectively counter attack. Losing a big fight with a terran means he will roll right over you. However unless you win with very few losses, Terrans can effectively defend against your remaining forces.
use your advantage to take another base and outmacro him.
D - Terrans are largely unscoutable, and have a variety of effective attacks, all of which require different counters. However they can scout you, and you can not prevent it.
It's pretty damn costly for a terran to deny your scout. They have to either invest 100/200 into a raven they may not need, a MULE, or 300 or so in minerals.
E - Terrans can control when they engage. They are extremely mobile, can outrun your force, and chase it down.
Protoss is also very mobile. A Protoss force IMO is much more mobile than a terran force. MMM Ghost is great mid game, but it doesn't hold up well late game. Terrans need to add tanks which really kills their mobility late game. Medivacs are annoying, but warpin is pretty useful in this regard. HT tech is pretty much pay 50/150 to shut down harass.
F - There are several effective timing pushes (detailed in other's posts) where the terran has the tech he needs and toss does not have his, that are devastating if executed right.
This is StarCraft.
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Just in my opinion, as a protoss player, playing terran is really frustrating. I wouldnt say there is a huge imbalance in PvT right now but i feel that the margin of error for protoss right now is tiny compared to terran.
Initially, from what i rmb from bw, terran was supposed to be the defensive race (seige etc) but now in sc2, the fact that terran is both the aggressor and turtle very easily is frustrating. Sure.. if Protoss wins a big fight due to a mistake by terran and forces terran to turtle is a huge advantage for protoss since he'll be grabbing expansions and teching but if protoss makes one mistake later one, whether it be huge or small, the game is instantly even or swung into terrans favor. Now if protoss loses the initial fight..its gg for them.
Also imo, terran is the easiest to play right now and a lot of the rage from protoss players comes from losing to a lesser skilled player due to the race they play. Kinda like how in bw everyone raged that protoss was a 1a2a3a win race.
Game is still new though so strats can prob change but until someone finds a safe effective counter to the mmm with a bigger margin of error..we'll still hear lots of qq from Protoss players
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still, nobody explained why Protoss do so terrible in tournaments
i feel like its broodwar all over again, "balanced" but it took maps specialy designed for Forge->fast expand for protoss to become playable.
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Such a stupid thread, the zerg whining has infested toss players too now it seems. This matchup is nothing like ZvT (where there is a terran bias early). PvT is about as even as mirrors; you just need to play to your strengths and exploit weaknesses.
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As a whole, I think the matchup is pretty decent, but there are certain timings where Terran has a significant advantage.
-Stimmed bio ball before chargelots
-EMP before HT
I've had some success with feedbacking ghosts before they can get an EMP off using an observer to scout, but before they can come out I just hope I don't get attacked..
Hallucinated phoenix are fantastic for scouting, but be sure to keep an eye out for tech lab starports, cloaked banshees without an observer can be painful!
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On August 22 2010 07:18 Ascendant13 wrote:
I didn't say it wasn't winnable. Skewed, but winnable.
And I do agree that once tier 3 is reached things become better. The problem is surviving till tier 3 on equal footing.
I agree with this.. It's winnable but it's not in your favor as a Protoss. I'd compare it to playing Blanka against Guile in Super Street Fighter IV. It just feels like he has an easier answer to everything you have.
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The state of the PVT matchup is fine right now. It's very balanced.
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My main issue is that Colossi are hard countered by Vikings. Marauders aren't really even all that bad at 125 life doing 20 damage a pop, not to mention how fast they'll shoot stimmed.
I would say that the match-up is winnable, very much so. But winnable and balanced are not necessarily the same thing. Terrans just have a much, much wider range of options in the mid-game, and a slightly stronger end game. Protoss can answer back at any time, but they just don't have as wide of options as Terrans do.
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So does anyone know if these kinds of posts are actually worthwhile? As in I'm fairly certain a large majority of people have complained and are complaining about Terran through countless posts, but does Blizzard see these posts or does anyone try to contact them with it?
It just seems like there are hundreds of posts about this stuff with pretty similar answers, yet they keep being made over and over again without any real purpose.
Maybe we should try to actually get some answers from Blizzard or get some high-level players to try and talk to them somehow? Would seem a lot more productive then the countless posts and topics we are making.
Of course, I have no idea how hard it is to get Blizzard's attention and whether that has any point either. Maybe we're just stuck with it how it is and we need to start thinking more about how to counter it then simply making a lot of posts complaining about it.
Thoughts?
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I remember back when the Strategy section was about discussion strategy instead of discussing racial balance. >:[
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On August 22 2010 12:51 Vokasak wrote:
I remember back when the Strategy section was about discussion strategy instead of discussing racial balance. >:[
it goes kind of hand in hand, no?
is someone claims that marauders are in need of a Nerf, because they force Protoss to hide behind forcefields, then people can suggest ways to combat them in a way that protoss does not have to give up map controll for the first 10 or so minutes of the game.
wich, then would be a good place for the strategy forums, no?
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On August 22 2010 07:52 Yaotzin wrote:
Well, marauders would suck without shells. It's there as a researched ability rather than innate so Blizzard can mess around with cost and time and such if need be (iirc they needed to in the beta, it used to be innate).
Marauders are annoyingly overrated. It's the marines that kill you, the marauders just slow you down (literally and via being high-hp meatshields).
How the hell does the absence of shells make marauders suck? They would still have great DPS, health, stim and cheap cost. Zealots are supposed to murder marauders. It's the same as speedlings vs stalkers/marauders. No one complains that stalkers get molested by speedlings.
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EPT
