EPTA thorough analysis of Force Fields - Page 17
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Jukebox Joe
United Kingdom358 Posts
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sagefreke
United States241 Posts
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morimacil
France921 Posts
-_- Please, stop posting random suggestions that make no sense, with no reasoning, argumentation, thoughts, or facts backing them up. | ||
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hellohilo
United States68 Posts
One aspect of the forcefield that I don't think you touch on enough is its early-game importance for Protoss. Unlike the other two races, Protoss players don't have the ability to pump out low-cost units for early defense. Without sentries available to FF a ramp, any sort of early rush would annihilate Protoss openings. That being said, I do believe that FF is very powerful in certain situations, as OP detailed in his post. Even if FF is "overpowered" in those cases, I feel that it complements Protoss gameplay very well. Forcefielding really falls into two categories: defensive and offensive. In terms of defense, FF is vital to Protoss gameplay. I already mentioned its necessity in the early-game, but I'd also like to point out the relative immobility of the typical Protoss gateway army when compared to the other two races. Terran bio armies, which are very typical in all early/mid-game MUs, are able to use stims to micro around armies, or to retreat. Zerg players have cracklings and roaches with a possible speed upgrade, as well as a movement bonus on creep. Protoss? Stalkers are very mobile and quick, which makes them powerful in the extremely early phases of the game, but their usefulness decreases as both players begin to create a larger army. Zealots are very easy to micro around given their slow movement speed (until Charge, of course). Because of this inherent disadvantage to those two basic units, the Sentry is necessary to complement them and give Protoss players a chance in battles with only gateway units, as they nullify the advantages of the other two races with FF, while also allowing the Protoss army to retreat, if necessary, by blocking off the opposing forces. Although FF may feel too powerful offensively at the moment (especially given MC's stomping of July in the finals), that feeling may simply be a new timing that is only now being discovered. For a moment, I'd like to hearken back to the days of GSL 2 and draw a comparison between the MarineKing of then and MC now. In GSL 2, MarineKing demonstrated a tactic that has since become a staple of Terran play: the idea that marines, once stimmed, can actually defeat a baneling army. MK sparked the first revolution in SC2's play with his style, exploiting this tactic against players who had no idea how to combat it. Fast forward to today: though MK still does base his play primarily on early marine aggression, it is by no means his bread and butter. MK even went for a mech style against Kyrix, which resulted in a win. In the months between his debut onto the SC2 scene and now, MK's once-revolutionary style was imitated by many players to different degrees, in both the public ladders and in the proscene. Because of this widespread imitation, other players began to learn the inherent weaknesses of MK's style, and found ways to defeat it. MarineKing's revolution of then is very similar to MC's tactics when using FF. In the finals, MC came out with several new builds he had cooked up, which July was not prepared for. In the games in which MC "abused" FF, July did have Burrow researching, which seems a suitable response to combat the incoming forces. However, MC successfully exploited the timing before Burrow finished, giving him wins in those games. Though July seemed to have some idea of what was coming, his timings seemed...off. Not really wrong, just off. It seemed like when July planned his builds out, he simply didn't prepare for the possibility of FFs. Not to mention that MC straight-up tricked July in a few of the games (Faked 3 gate expo into 4 gate? O_O). I'd just like to finish with this: to all the players who cry "FF needs to be nerfed," instead try to find new ways to exploit the weaknesses of it. While I never really played SC1, I've frequently heard the argument that, in SC1, because every race had theoretically "OP" units, the games were much more exciting. So, instead of crying and whining to Blizzard to help you out, maybe think about the other player's point of view, and how you can exploit their styles of gameplay rather than "balancing" them to conform to your own "standard" gameplay. | ||
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pwnasaurus
Canada190 Posts
On March 20 2011 09:04 CosmicSpiral wrote: FFs are only necessary against T timing pushes. Zerg gets the worst of it for many reasons. That is just not true. Without FF P would die to Z timing pushes all day. | ||
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EggYsc2
620 Posts
On March 20 2011 08:41 freetgy wrote: maybe you should get overlord drops see how that logic works?... we were talking about TvP see how your logic does not work? you should think before you speak | ||
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Snaphoo
United States614 Posts
2-rax marines were considered utterly imbalanced at one point, with Dustin Browder saying Blizzard was "very concerned" about the situation. Zergs learned to deal with it, and most Terrans today use it as only an opener, because it's all-in variant is solidly countered by top-level Zs. Roach burrow solidly counters MC's style, as does better scouting: MC isn't getting enough credit for psyching out July; the FFs were only useful because the unit count for Z wasn't high enough to deal with the attack all at once. We may have seen the beginning of a metagame shift for midgame ZvP, not "proof" that FFs are "imba." MC played BRILLIANT mindgames with July, and made sure he was unprepared for the attacks. Question: What game did July play better than MC and lose? As far as I could tell, while July is an incredibly talented Zerg, he was outplayed. Period. It wasn't imba forcefields, it wasn't imba colossi, it wasn't broken void rays, it wasn't overpowered HTs... he was just beaten. Convincingly. JulyZerg: (A) made massive mistakes in several games (G1: ZERO micro with burrowed roaches, failing to respond to obvious tells that it wasn't a 3 gate sentry expand, greedily going for Hydra Den right after Roach Warren without creating any attack units in between; G2: Taking the "safe" expo first, failing to respond quickly with massive unit pumps when he saw 6 warpgates, not keeping lings at the front of MC's base to see the move-out, not getting burrow quickly, and MOST EGREGIOUSLY: G5: What the HELL were all his hydras doing dancing around off-creep in the middle of the map?!) (B) Was unlucky (G4: Didn't spot the dark shrine even though his overlord was scouting maybe 2 hexes out of sight range of it... T_T) --That being said, JulyZerg is clearly a top-tier Zerg talent; not saying he isn't a very worthy Finalist. Just saying he just isn't on the same tier as MC. MC simply outclassed JulyZerg; I agree with someone who said earlier that HuK, iNControl, Genius, etc. would likely not have had nearly as much success pulling off these kinds of strategies. Other Protoss know how to use FFs too; they don't insta-win with 6 gates: it's a viable and strong strategy, but one that can be countered. EDIT: I'm sure in in 1998 people were screaming that Arbiters (THEY CLOAK EVERYTHING!) and Dark Swarm (MY MARINES AND TANKS ARE USELESS!) were utterly broken. Their philosophical ancestors are roaming these forums today. I hope instead of nerf hammers, we see development of the metagame. | ||
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resilve
United Kingdom678 Posts
To take ANYTHING he does, and apply "balance" to it, for even high masters - is stupid. What he does will not affect 95% of players in this game, so dont act as if FF needs to be fixed for the majority of the game. A lot of complaints in this thread seem to assume that sentries have much more energy than they do - you cant rush early game and have crazy amounts of FF - the only reason MC seemed to have such is because he was SO sentry heavy early, and tricked July into thinking this was for defensive reasons (multiple times). In lots of the games, the reasons he had so many FF's was because he made a CRAZY amount of sentries. Given all of these modifiers -it is crazy to assume or claim that FFs are the problem, because guess what - if you make a huge amount of sentries, you have a lot of FFs. | ||
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pwnasaurus
Canada190 Posts
thread: July did not research burrow early enough - he got a hydra den instead then didn't build hydras /thread | ||
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Aequos
Canada606 Posts
On March 20 2011 09:21 MadCatZ wrote: we were talking about TvP see how your logic does not work? you should think before you speak His argument is that saying Zerg needs T3 to deal with Protoss T1 is similar to Protoss needing T3 to deal with Terran T1. He makes the point that if Protoss could use early weapons/armor/shield upgrades to combat Terran T1 (without T3) then Zerg can use early burrow/overlord drop research to fight Protoss T1 (without T3). On the topic of forcefields; I'm obviously biased, playing Protoss, but I think that they are fine as they are right now. If you remember the days of mass Mutalisk from Zerg, you'll see that Protoss needed to discover the 6gate push to combat it efficiently once it got to late game. It wasn't about killing the mutalisks - it was about killing the Zerg before he got Mutalisks in any significant number. It relied on mutalisks being really, really, really awful in head-on engagements, and equally awful at base racing, so they'd be forced to fight as they spawned. I think this might be a similar issue for Zerg. Sentries, as has been pointed out, are really awful at 1 vs 1 engagements for dealing damage or tanking damage. Their sole use is accumulating energy to make the fight easier with forcefields (by separating the army so it can be slaughtered). I think that Zerg will be forced to come out with a safer way of lowering their energy to keep them from becoming unstoppable on the assault - perhaps a much greater commitment to early game speedlings or roaches, or a fast burrow. The point is to exploit some weakness of the build, which is a lot of energy and a slow moving army. In this case, it really is a case of "find something to prevent the issue" rather than a "how can I deal with it once it's at my base killing my stuff"? | ||
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MonsieurGrimm
Canada2441 Posts
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pwnasaurus
Canada190 Posts
On March 20 2011 09:40 MonsieurGrimm wrote: What if forcefields deteriorated faster when placed on creep? It would reinforce the creep mechanic (which is a really interesting one), it would help zerg out at defending these early pushes involving sentries (which you're a fool if you think are perfectly balanced, being able to cut half a zerg army off when you're doing an already incredibly powerful timing attack? Come on.), and it wouldn't hurt Protoss at all when it comes to defending early attacks - it would just reinforce the sentry's role as a defensive unit. This sounds like an incredible suggestion. I would love to see something like this on the PTR. Even if they down to 10-12 instead of 15 sec it would make a huge difference. | ||
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
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Bayyne
United States1967 Posts
I just think, after reading many well thought out posts and suggestions, that immediately jumping to balance discussion of a unit right after one best of 7 might be too premature. I definitely think there are strats, build orders, and play styles that can deal with mass sentries. | ||
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TeWy
France714 Posts
Sentries have been left untouched since the release of the game... MC is imba, not sentries. | ||
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morimacil
France921 Posts
A lot of complaints in this thread seem to assume that sentries have much more energy than they do - you cant rush early game and have crazy amounts of FF - the only reason MC seemed to have such is because he was SO sentry heavy early, and tricked July into thinking this was for defensive reasons (multiple times). In lots of the games, the reasons he had so many FF's was because he made a CRAZY amount of sentries. Given all of these modifiers -it is crazy to assume or claim that FFs are the problem, because guess what - if you make a huge amount of sentries, you have a lot of FFs. Hm? Your reasoning, is that since MC made a ton of sentries for a ton of forcefields, FF cant be a problem? I think if anything, the fact that such a good player made such a huge amounts of sentries (which are pretty bad in straight up combat), and used so many forcefields for such a convincing win, should show that they are pretty powerful. A small look at the engagements: Game 1: 11 forcefields, 7 initial sentries Game 2: 17 forcefields off 11 sentries, adding some more sentries and some more forcefields after being inside july's nat. Game 3: 9 forcefields off 10 sentries (he lost there) game 4: 18 forcefields off 7 sentries game 5: 19 forcefields off 10 sentries, then 7 more from the surviving initial sentries So yeah, when you put that in numbers, it really starts to be a LOT of forcefields  MC made a lot of sentries in the first place, I mean, 7-11 sentries is quite a lot of them, but damn, thats also an incredible amount of forcefields he gets out of them, and ofc, they are perfectly placed | ||
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cheesemaster
Canada1975 Posts
On March 20 2011 09:40 MonsieurGrimm wrote: What if forcefields deteriorated faster when placed on creep? It would reinforce the creep mechanic (which is a really interesting one), it would help zerg out at defending these early pushes involving sentries (which you're a fool if you think are perfectly balanced, being able to cut half a zerg army off when you're doing an already incredibly powerful timing attack? Come on.), and it wouldn't hurt Protoss at all when it comes to defending early attacks - it would just reinforce the sentry's role as a defensive unit. thats actually a really good idea, i dont want to see a huge change in time, bot down to 12 or 11 seconds sure | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44898 Posts
No other change is needed. Just because MC has incredible FF execution and great micro doesn't mean that we need everyone to start complaining about it. /discussion | ||
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RedHelix
250 Posts
On March 20 2011 09:15 hellohilo wrote: I'd just like to finish with this: to all the players who cry "FF needs to be nerfed," instead try to find new ways to exploit the weaknesses of it. While I never really played SC1, I've frequently heard the argument that, in SC1, because every race had theoretically "OP" units, the games were much more exciting. So, instead of crying and whining to Blizzard to help you out, maybe think about the other player's point of view, and how you can exploit their styles of gameplay rather than "balancing" them to conform to your own "standard" gameplay. The difference is this time around zerg doesn't really have that "OP" unit or spell anymore, at least not against protoss. Versus Terran we have the mutalisk, when the mutalisk comes out the game completely changes, aggression needs to be more thought out and the terran needs to worry about defending his base etc. Versus protoss i feel like zerg has no scary units for them, protoss is extremely strong in all parts of the game, early, mid and late and theres no unit, spell or mechanic that could really make a protoss worry, in fact i've seen pro level games where the protoss never scouts once during a 20 minute game and still rolfstomps any army the zerg has. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States44898 Posts
On March 20 2011 09:58 RedHelix wrote: The difference is this time around zerg doesn't really have that "OP" unit or spell anymore, at least not against protoss. Versus Terran we have the mutalisk, when the mutalisk comes out the game completely changes, aggression needs to be more thought out and the terran needs to worry about defending his base etc. Versus protoss i feel like zerg has no scary units for them, protoss is extremely strong in all parts of the game, early, mid and late and theres no unit, spell or mechanic that could really make a protoss worry, in fact i've seen pro level games where the protoss never scouts once during a 20 minute game and still rolfstomps any army the zerg has. Roaches can burrow under a forcefield, which makes forcefields useless. That's pretty OP, right? If roaches didn't have tunneling claws, then Zerg might have a case against FFs. | ||
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