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A thorough analysis of Force Fields - Page 2

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Dommk
Profile Joined May 2010
Australia4865 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-03-19 12:31:41
March 19 2011 12:28 GMT
#21
On March 19 2011 20:54 DarkRise wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 19 2011 20:23 NormandyBoy wrote:
There is a very simple way of nerfing FF without breaking the protoss early game (defending rushes), just make FF like in the Raynor Party's sentry mini-game. That is to say one sentry can only cast one FF at a time, if it casts another one, the first disappears. This way, protoss players would have to cast the spell more carefully, because if you cast more FF than you have sentries, you're being inefficient.


Whats the point of stacking energy??? 1 FF per sentry is kinda ridiculous, 100 gas is a lot of investment and the unit it self don't deal much damage.
There are a lot of ways to counter forcefields, Morrow/idra use tunneling claws to counter this
And if you know a sentry heavy 4 gate is coming you can have lings intercept these slow sentries or bait forcefields. Also you need skills to execute this and without them gateway units are pretty useless. Roach/MM play is basically soo good against gateway units and will delay your expandsion.

1 FF per sentry IS ridiculous. I dare anyone who says to make this change to play Protoss against heavy aggression with this change made in a custom map, it is quite ridiculous. DO you know why people get 7-8 Sentries with a 3gate expand? Because heavy roach aggression out right kills you if you don't have all those force fields, and even then it is possible to be overrun if you screw up a single force field.

Sentries aren't easy to replace either, just because you cut the army in half doesn't mean you have the DPS to compete sometimes, if you lose sentries early game (and it IS easy to lose them sometimes, or if you overstepped) then you would always be required to have 5-6 sentries making it super difficult to actually tech.

With 3gate expand, it is almost an instant loss if you lose your first 6sentries when you try to shark mode, imagine with this change how impossible it would be,
emc
Profile Joined September 2010
United States3088 Posts
March 19 2011 12:29 GMT
#22
what about sentries starting with 75 energy and force fields cost 75 energy? Therfore you can only use 2 forcefields per sentry with full energy and have to wait a bit longer to cast a 3rd. Maybe that would be too big of a nerf though, cutting forcefield usage from 4 to 2 would be pretty big.
ReketSomething
Profile Blog Joined November 2008
United States6012 Posts
March 19 2011 12:29 GMT
#23
PvP without forcefields...would be even more 1 dimensional...
Jaedong :3
Dommk
Profile Joined May 2010
Australia4865 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-03-19 12:36:09
March 19 2011 12:35 GMT
#24
On March 19 2011 21:29 emc wrote:
what about sentries starting with 75 energy and force fields cost 75 energy? Therfore you can only use 2 forcefields per sentry with full energy and have to wait a bit longer to cast a 3rd. Maybe that would be too big of a nerf though, cutting forcefield usage from 4 to 2 would be pretty big.

I think you would have to change EMP to compensate. EMP was reduced to 100 energy because early ghost pushes were too strong (assuming this from Naniwas leaked notes), imagine after, you would have energy for 1 force field with every banked force field. Force field may be too strong against Zerg but it is definitely not against Terran, it is almost a necessity to just stay alive. Imagine dealing with all those 1base all-ins from Terran with less force fields..
shadowboxer
Profile Joined November 2010
United States224 Posts
March 19 2011 12:39 GMT
#25
On March 19 2011 21:26 TheAwesomeAll wrote:
With a lot of sentrys made in the early game and good micro you can indeed stop your opponents ability to micro, but so does conc shell and FG with a far less investment.


How in the world is fungal growth less of an investment than building 8 sentries early game and never having to build anymore if you play correctly? Reliably teching to infestors is a much bigger investment, it's not like Zerg gets the ability to make infestors from a reliable tech patch against protoss like protoss gets sentries from the cybernetics core. You don't have to go out of your way to get sentries and you don't have to get an energy upgrade for them to reliably use forcefield. Terrible comparison.

Baneling play would be an answer if the counter to it wasn't already figured out. You just turtle as much as you physically can and keep expanding. Sim city every base on your side of the map and don't move out until you're maxed. Zerg currently has no answer to a late game Protoss deathball with proper upgrades and saturated 3rds/4ths anyway, so forcing protoss into the late game only benefits Toss. If you really wanted to get creative with it you could get a few warp prisms and lift your sentries until the banelings are dead and then wall off their army and retreat.
"Hear that? That's God laughing at your plans."
mutantmagnet
Profile Joined June 2009
United States3789 Posts
March 19 2011 12:41 GMT
#26
It was more than godly. MC showed off how easy it is to abuse forcefields.

Everyone knew about blocking the ramp but noone ever built up so many sentries where it can certainly be done with zero risk to the initially weaker protoss army killing off a hatch. "Initially" is an important term here because while a sacrifice is made building so many sentries it only takes a short window of time for the protoss army to switch over to dedicated attacking units and just crush whatever army is thrown at them because overtime the sentries are cutting forces in half.

I think such a situation is more of an anomaly at higher level play. If July had clued in faster to the situation he would've had more of his army already at the bottom of the ramp.


But when MC wasn't abusing a ramp he simply built more sentries to just gratuitously seperate the zerg army with contemptuous ease.

In that situation I think forcefield mechanic needs to change where it acts like a combination of stasis, dweb and the current forcefield. Thus it prevents units from attacking into and out of it, it prevents units moving into the field but any unit under it can move out of it and special abilities still function against units under the forcefield.

Forcefield eesentially needs more tradeoffs in the same manner darkswarm provided tradeoffs even though zerg stat wise was better off taking advantage of dark swarm.
Dalavita
Profile Joined August 2010
Sweden1113 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-03-19 12:43:46
March 19 2011 12:43 GMT
#27
I think zergs need to use their lings to snipe sentries, probes and pylons, and for the zerg to do flank attacks against heavy FF usage, and research burrow early and always burrow units when they get separated by force fields. Am I clueless?
emc
Profile Joined September 2010
United States3088 Posts
March 19 2011 12:43 GMT
#28
On March 19 2011 21:35 Dommk wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 19 2011 21:29 emc wrote:
what about sentries starting with 75 energy and force fields cost 75 energy? Therfore you can only use 2 forcefields per sentry with full energy and have to wait a bit longer to cast a 3rd. Maybe that would be too big of a nerf though, cutting forcefield usage from 4 to 2 would be pretty big.

I think you would have to change EMP to compensate. EMP was reduced to 100 energy because early ghost pushes were too strong (assuming this from Naniwas leaked notes), imagine after, you would have energy for 1 force field with every banked force field. Force field may be too strong against Zerg but it is definitely not against Terran, it is almost a necessity to just stay alive. Imagine dealing with all those 1base all-ins from Terran with less force fields..


yeah you're right, what about bringing back burrow on hatchery tech? I think the best way to deal with heavy sentry play is with baneling mines because a lot of sentries usually means no robotics. Just a thought, but perhaps early baneling mines at hatch tech might break ZvT?

The other kind of solution is to make hydras faster off creep either default or through an upgrade. Hydras destroy gateway units but get crushed with proper forcefields.
Rain.cz
Profile Joined July 2010
Czech Republic227 Posts
March 19 2011 12:44 GMT
#29
i would make it on cooldown instead of energy
I'm in Golden league, don't take my opinions seriously
Cabinet Sanchez
Profile Joined February 2011
Australia1097 Posts
March 19 2011 12:47 GMT
#30
As others have stated, maybe FF is too harsh against Z - but there just so happens to be a race which we're fucked against without them. Maybe look there first and we'll discuss fiddling with FF. Especially 2 units which start with M.
Dalavita
Profile Joined August 2010
Sweden1113 Posts
March 19 2011 12:49 GMT
#31
On March 19 2011 21:47 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
As others have stated, maybe FF is too harsh against Z - but there just so happens to be a race which we're fucked against without them. Maybe look there first and we'll discuss fiddling with FF. Especially 2 units which start with M.


Force fields are to strong against zerg, nerf terran.

What? if anything zerg should get some ability to stay alive against force fields.

Burrow at hatch tech for instance.
perestain
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany308 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-03-19 12:51:55
March 19 2011 12:49 GMT
#32
thanks for spoiling gsl finals.
on another note, protoss could be taken out of the game without ff, since t and z early pushes are not defendable without them.
No matter how hot it gets, sooner or later there's a cool breeze coming in.
Owii
Profile Joined July 2010
United States357 Posts
March 19 2011 12:50 GMT
#33
The main issue that I see with force fields, as has been pointed out by others, is how one-sided the ability is compared to spells from BW. Dark Swarm, Irradiate, Storm, etc are interesting abilities because they pit the ability of the caster vs the ability of the defender. The defender has to react properly to them or they get rolled. That's why in some games these spells would seem completely unstoppable, and in some they would be a wasted investment. The defender's ability to micro out of them determined their effectiveness.

In SC2, each race has a spell that the opponent cannot react to. Fungal Growth, EMP, and FF can all be negated before they are cast (with good units spread, getting burrow, etc etc), but they can't be dealt with on-the-fly at all. That's just bad game design imo. There's no give and take, no reactionary response, it's just "I hope I scout it in time so I can prepare".
Cabinet Sanchez
Profile Joined February 2011
Australia1097 Posts
March 19 2011 12:53 GMT
#34
On March 19 2011 21:49 Dalavita wrote:
Show nested quote +
On March 19 2011 21:47 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:
As others have stated, maybe FF is too harsh against Z - but there just so happens to be a race which we're fucked against without them. Maybe look there first and we'll discuss fiddling with FF. Especially 2 units which start with M.


Force fields are to strong against zerg, nerf terran.

What? if anything zerg should get some ability to stay alive against force fields.

Burrow at hatch tech for instance.


Hey look I agree it's a horrible spell against Z and I play P - I feel for Z players, I really do.
However we need FF vs T, that's just how it is. If they can make positive changes for all parties that doesn't make me angry.

I think the queen should be able to cast a spell on the FF to drop it - costing energy of course. I think that might be fair.
Willes
Profile Joined April 2010
Germany199 Posts
March 19 2011 12:54 GMT
#35
Just look at progames and compare expanding speed beetween P and Z, you know the answer, the P simply can safeexpand as fast as the Z can, because of FF.
FF is a really great feature which makes the game fun to watch, but early FF combined with warpintech is just so strong in the earlygame.
Z has hard times with trying to expand faster then the P, the 1st expand is pretty safe because of FF, and while expanding as fast Z the P can pressure alot because he isnt cutting eco, and all this results from FF and warpin.

Suggestions to reduce this problem:
- reduce the earlygame quantity of FF
- higher techtime for FF
- higher techtime for warpins


mfg
Immanis
Profile Joined October 2010
United States21 Posts
March 19 2011 12:57 GMT
#36
I do agree that there is a trend that any time one race wins there is immediate QQ... now i'm not saying that this thread is exactly that but on the bnet forums it is rampant.

TL is really the only place for decent discussion. With that said, FF are needed by Protoss in the current meta game... Terran stim would really break any Toss gateway army with absolute efficiency. I'm certain that most of us have seen how Idra has dealt with them with burrow and tunneling claws... as the game evolves and even with the upcoming expansions... we will, hopefully, look back and see that FF are really not OP.... well hopefully
mczbot
Profile Joined October 2010
Germany70 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-03-19 13:03:07
March 19 2011 13:01 GMT
#37
well i bashed my heads about this skill so much time already, and i only came to one valid conclusion that makes sense (in my brain that is):

1) forcefields arent able to block ramps. so you need lets say at least 2 or 3 forcefields up to build a concave around your or the oponents ramp
2) sentrys need to research a energy upgrade in order to forcefield right after warpin (shouldnt cost much, lets say 50/50 or 100/50 as sentrys are a gasheavy investment)
3) zerg needs a way to deal with the energy units in general (such as ht/sentry). solution: fungal'd units are unable to cast spells (but that might be too powerfull of a skill with the upcomming patch)
Hollis
Profile Joined January 2011
United States505 Posts
Last Edited: 2011-03-19 13:10:50
March 19 2011 13:07 GMT
#38
I just really think Zerg needs some unambiguous BUFFS, to NUMBERS ie damage, hp, movement speed, -unit cost, etc etc. And not all these weird "philosophy" changes that just shuffle around the specific applications for abilities, changes no one asked for or wanted.

Forcefield seems ridiculous vs Zerg partly because Zerg already struggles with Protoss just based on unit cost inefficiency and the fact that Protoss+micro is far, far more powerful than Zerg+micro.

You need FF against Terran? Fair enough. But it's way too good vs Zergs.

What I mean is, I get really irritated when people scream that someone has really amazing Forcefields, or whatever else. Why? Because I ask this question: What does a Zerg player have that can turn amazing micro into such a crazy advantage?

Like Blink. Yeah it takes some crazy micro to pull off, and it's certainly impressive, but the better micro the stronger your army, to the point where you become nearly unkillable. How is your opponent supposed to deal with it? If you can get sufficient micro are you supposed to be unbeatable? How is that fair, or interesting?
Dalavita
Profile Joined August 2010
Sweden1113 Posts
March 19 2011 13:08 GMT
#39
On March 19 2011 22:07 Hollis wrote:
What I mean is, I get really irritated when people scream that someone has really amazing Forcefields, or whatever else. Why? Because I ask this question: What does a Zerg player have that can turn amazing micro into such a crazy advantage?


Ling speed, spreading your mass ling group up and individually targeting different sentries, using burrow to burrow all of your trapped units, attacking from flanks.

Those are some micro things you could do.
sleepyguy
Profile Joined March 2011
United States272 Posts
March 19 2011 13:08 GMT
#40
Just throwing these out there:

1. What if FF duration was lowered from 15 to 10 seconds? 15 seconds seems way too long.

orand

2. Have FF become a channeled ability that drains energy (for example 15 energy per second) and the sentry can't attack while channeling

or/and

3. Make FF an aoe ability that surronds said sentry at it's current position? Sort of like a static field that makes the sentry immune to damage, but also takes the sentry out of the battle for the duration? This way they are still viable defensively as the sentry must be in position, say ramp, to turn on or cast it's FF. Offensively the sentry would be need to get in position before opponents notice and opponents would have to snipe or retreat accordingly, making it more of a micro race?

Very new to RTS and sc2 in general, would love some feedback
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