Since this whole topic degenerated into the usual balance flamefest where every topic ends up if unmoderated it's time for it to clean up. Locking this down for a while. Any posts made after my post [page 233] not addressing the changes in this patch directly and containting flames or general balance whine will get banned for at least a week. ~Nyovne
There is way too much flaming in this thread right now. Calm down before you post! (Page 271) ~iamke55
On August 26 2011 16:50 captainwaffles wrote: Why do workers have to classified as light? Why not just make SCV's and Probes just mechanical and make drones just biological, then Hellions wouldn't totally rape them and mech play can continue to grow.
I don't think many Terrans actually like mech play all that much. Only Artosis and hard-core Broodwar nostalgics seem to want mech TvT.
I think you're wrong, I haven't heard of any pros (Terran) not liking the metagame shift in TvT. I mean, its just so much more fun and entertaining to watch than watching a blob of marines running into another blob. Mech makes it more like chess or a game of Risk- much more emphasis on what areas of the map you can control.
can you ask ST Bomber, how he plans to deal with the mech TvT metagame thats going on right now. and also if he is also switching into the whole heavy blue flame at the start into tank/marine - Asked by David_G
Bomber: Mech is better than Bio now, Mech imba but I will change to Bio then Mech because Mech vs Mech is not a fun game, I believe I can change it to bio. I am trying bio all the time now.
Great, you found one pro who doesn't like it, I can name 4 off the top of my head GoOdy, Drewbie, Jinro, IMYoda. I would list more but I don't want to put words in anyones mouth unless I'm sure.
I only needed to find one because you said you hadn't heard of ANY terran pro not liking mech.
On August 26 2011 16:50 captainwaffles wrote: Why do workers have to classified as light? Why not just make SCV's and Probes just mechanical and make drones just biological, then Hellions wouldn't totally rape them and mech play can continue to grow.
I don't think many Terrans actually like mech play all that much. Only Artosis and hard-core Broodwar nostalgics seem to want mech TvT.
I think you're wrong, I haven't heard of any pros (Terran) not liking the metagame shift in TvT. I mean, its just so much more fun and entertaining to watch than watching a blob of marines running into another blob. Mech makes it more like chess or a game of Risk- much more emphasis on what areas of the map you can control.
can you ask ST Bomber, how he plans to deal with the mech TvT metagame thats going on right now. and also if he is also switching into the whole heavy blue flame at the start into tank/marine - Asked by David_G
Bomber: Mech is better than Bio now, Mech imba but I will change to Bio then Mech because Mech vs Mech is not a fun game, I believe I can change it to bio. I am trying bio all the time now.
Great, you found one pro who doesn't like it, I can name 4 off the top of my head GoOdy, Drewbie, Jinro, IMYoda. I would list more but I don't want to put words in anyones mouth unless I'm sure.
I only needed to find one because you said you hadn't heard of ANY terran pro not liking mech.
Ah ofc, silly me. Well now bomber is the only one shitting on the parade, I'll keep an eye out for more traitors.
On August 27 2011 02:58 Oboeman wrote: Here's screenshots of the flying unit separation change. In both situations the banshees are clumped and given an attack command on the pf.
I'll let you guess which is the PTR
Cripes, anyone else thinking that's a major buff to lameness like massing voids and banshees? That thor/fungal/archons not looking so good from this shot. How long does the spread take?
OMG... yeah I wanted a nerf to fungal to air, but this makes thor and archons even weaker against air. That is bad in my book. Air needs to be able to be dealt with by ground units, since they already have all the advantages of being air - immune to many attacks, terrain has no affect, positioning, etc. Infestors just take this ground to air to the max because of the root/freeze affect. T and P need these options too EDIT: Clarification, I don't mean T and P need fungal, I mean they need some way to deal with air from the ground... like archons and thors or whatever.
Actually, it almost doesn't matter since magic boxing air units is so super easy in SC2. Now instead of 80% of people doing it 95% of the time, 100% of people will do it 100% of the time since the game does it for you.
Seriously though, the correct fix is get rid of chain fungals... against air and ground please.
Fungal should just not root/freeze units in the air. The damage part is fine against air, IMO.
I like the ultralisk change, I've held my finger over the ultra button a lot of times having second thoughts about how long it takes for them to reinforce.
I like most of these changes. Some of them are interesting (immortal range and barracks build time for example) that I guess kind of surprised me because there hasn't been too much brought up about them.
I'm not sure Blue Flame is worth it for only a plus 5 damage buff...at the minimum it probably won't be seen as often as it has been seen.
On August 27 2011 00:10 Reborn8u wrote: Since release there has been significant nerfs to both protoss and terran's early game. For example: supply before barracks, reaper nerfs, now 5 more seconds on barracks, bunker nerfs, stim nerf. Toss has had forge build time nerf, zealot build time nerf, warp gate research nerf, pylon nerf (this does affect forge expands imo). Even some significant mid/late game nerfs, blue flame, thors, and for toss several voidray nerfs, templar energy upgrade, mothership nerf (which is now getting a buff but it's almost an irrelevant unit anyway). At the same time zerg has had a lot of buffs, roach, fungal affecting blink, completely freezing units instead of slowing, damage bonus vs armored, huge dps increase, and now they are getting an ultralisk and overseer buff.
I'm really concerned that zerg may end up with an upgrade, economy, army, and mobility advantage at every stage of the game after the 7 minute mark. Meaning Terrans + Protoss will not have the ability to do enough damage to keep zerg in check at any stage.
I don't feel the immortal and prism buff, while helpful, is going to turn protoss around in it's pathetic statistics the last few months. If I'm not mistaken protoss has had the worst statistics in tournaments and holding places in GM since the start of this year. Considering it's the most played race, that is pretty damn bad. As for terran, I think limiting the amount of powerful builds that can simply win the game in 12 minutes is good, but I'm always hesitant to agree with any nerf to a races core units or core production. I definitely think terran needs some help in the late game, seems like the weakest race after 3 bases to me.
For zerg I'd like to see fungal tuned down a bit, it fills every role right now. Zergs are going roach infestor in every matchup and doing damn good with it. I say tune down the infestor, IMO they shouldn't be born with so many abilities, some should require research (fungal,infested, and burrow move all for free) and buff hydras or corruptors. So zerg actually has to make an anti air unit to counter air units. As it is now, zergs doesn't even need them because fungal or infested terrans provide all the anti air they need as well as infestors provide detection, aoe dmg, anti-micro, anti massive unit and harass. If you removed nydus, contamination, corruption, hydras, and changelings from the game most zergs wouldn't even notice. lol.
BTW If I've forgotten anything or misrepresented any facts please feel free to correct me in a non-douche baggy manner. My memory is far from perfect.
Completely agree, man. As strange as it seems, I think Zerg is the most powerful race right now. I also agree with the Terran buffs you presented, althought I play Protoss.
I agree as well. Definitely late game it's the case once economy gets cooking. Terran and Toss usually get their wins within first 10-15 min after that it's unlikely and about to get more unlikely the way they will get ultras out on a tech switch..
"original OP says zerg gets "lots" of buffs and then names roach and infestor which is two.... so two is a lot? zerg has also gotten major nerfs, ones that stick out to me are roach food nerf and armor nerf. queen speed as well as spine/spore burrow time are all small nerfs that made a noticeable impact. corruptors no longer being able to "goop" was also a very important nerf but it was OP before i suppose. plus the number of buffs/nerfs a race gets is not really relevant to how strong it is anyways.
as the game gets longer, Terran is the strongest due to orbitals, planetaries, and medvac drops. orbitals give mules which requires less scvs and frees up more supply for army. planetaries + turrets enable expos to be defended w/o units and frees up more supply for "main" army. medvac drops (and maybe even nukes) are the most cost effective and supply effective harass options which also indirectly allows for more supply for the "main" army. granted this may be due to the relative weakness of the "final" Terran army. however, if T adds in ravens (pdd is so good in large battles, HSM can be good late game too which allows for energy buildup), and maybe 2-3 battlecruisers, i think the late game Terran army composition can be pretty formidable."
And now my rebuttal good sir,
Your counting all the infestor buffs as 1 buff, fungal growth alone got 4 buffs, stopping blink/siege/viking liftoff, freezing units not slowing, dps doubled, and bonus for armored. At the same time the units that counter them got nerfed, Ht's and Ghosts. Roaches got range and the nerfs you mentioned are from beta,(you forgot roach regeneration was no research also) I am talking about release. But if you wanna go beta, warp research got nearly doubled, immortal build time got nerfed, range increase for immortals got removed (I think that was in beta), mothership build time nerf, sentry got 2 dmg nerf, and I'm sure Ive forgotten some. But imo the beta changes are irrelevant anyway because all of the races had ridiculous stuff in beta, but since you brought them up I thought I'd point out toss still got nerfed hard in beta. Also didn't spores recently get a root time buff recently? Ultras also got a buff that no spell other than dmg affects them and they break down FF's.
The main point of what I was saying wasn't merely about the buffs or nerfs. I was merely pointing out how protoss and terran has had their early game signifigantly weakened over the last year but zerg has not. Which is when you need to slow them down, the earlier the better. I'm concerned how the pace of the game has shifted to zergs favor in the early, mid and late game in so many categories. They have a huge mobility advantage, and creep gives them free vision of huge areas, they can out produce and remax much faster, and having an econ advantage as soon as they take their natural. But infestors alone give them a huge tech advantage as well.
A big part of this is due to the fact that infestors counter everything (at least for protoss but almost every terran unit as well) It basically counters every protoss tech path, it stops charge and blink, it detects DT's (and infestors are actually much scarier worker harass units than dt's) IMO fungal > psi storm in terms of dps and the fact that fungal can't be dodged or micro'd out of in any way,(it's like a FF surround and psi storm put together). Once the first fungal lands they can keep fungaling till everything dies, and the dmg is stack-able unlike storm. It counters air play with fungal and infested terrans, and neural parasite and fungal deal with colossus and immortals very well. It is not always possible to hit them with feedback either. Because usually infestors are at the back of the zerg army, which means the HT's must be at the front of the toss army to be in range for feedback. Ht's die really fast and fungal kills them just as good as anything else, when their are 50 roaches in front of the infestors the Ht's evaporate in a second. It takes vastly greater control IMO to deal with the infestors than it does to deal with the ht's. Even with better control it is still sometimes impossible because protoss simply can't have enough gas to produce the amount of HT's and have time for them to charge energy needed to feedback so many infestors. Unless the protoss is ahead in economy for some reason.
Think about the gas costs of protoss's tech and army just to deal with the roaches (sentries 100gas each, twilight 100gas, templar archives 200 gas, storm 200 gas, robo 100 gas, warp 50 gas, blink 150 gas, colossus 200 gas, robo support 200 gas, colossus range 200 gas, immortals 100 gas.obs 75 gas) Obviously, protoss isn't going to get all of these but, they will need some combination of them just to not get run over by roaches that cost 25 gas each and cost 0 gas to tech to. Zerg can get lair, roach speed and infestors out for a total of 300 gas (100 gas for lair, 100 gas for roach speed, 100 gas for infestation pit). Thats the gas equivalent to warp 1 stalker and 2 sentries. Think about that for a minute. I realize they are different races but should the race that automatically gets the better economy and production get tech that is so much cheaper and counters so many things? Infestors just do way too many things too well and roach infestor takes way too much to deal with imo.
In some ways this is the same problem with terran, while mules do provide them with tons of late game minerals, the terran late game units and tech are very gas heavy, and take forever to produce and if they trade armies with them, they will die before they can reproduce as powerful an army as compared to protoss or zerg. Also, terrans upgrades are split up much more, air, bio, mech. So when they transition into late game units they are behind on upgrades.
/end balance whine
its lazy of me to jus point out one thing in ur long response (which im sure has many good points) but im going to stick with the stuff related to my own original response. if ur talking about buffs since release im not sure what buff u mean by fungal freezing instead of slowing. when did fungal ever only slow in release, was that in alpha or something? spores got a root buff AFTER getting a root nerf and its still overall slower than it was b4. u call ultras smashing down FF a buff to zerg? are u joking? all massive can do that...
ur wrong if u think zergs only have been buffed and not nerfed. all races have gotten their fair share. more zerg nerfs: broodlord armor, broodlord speed, slight dps and HP nerf on hydra (maybe beta?)
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Absolutely zerg has been nerfed since release. But their early game hasn't had any nerf that is close to comparing to warp gate +20 seconds, zealot build time, forge build time, or terrans barracks after supply, barracks +5 build time. bunker nerf. (the earliest of these is the forge change which I think was 8 months ago, and roaches got a range buff around the same time) These things greatly affect everything that happens after them. It would be the equivalent to nerfing spawning pool build time, larva inject, lings themselves, spine crawlers, evoulution chamber, I'm sure any zerg can see all the domino affects this would have.
They've made it harder to safely expand vs zerg, harder to pressure zerg, and harder to defend zerg all ins. This has made zerg much better off in the early game, and infestors essentially give them a free ride into the late game where the zerg race really shines. What I'm trying to say in a nutshell is I believe the changes to Terran and Protoss early game in patches and the buffs to infestors are actually just shifting the imbalances, not eliminating them.
Yo I heard that it takes 140 marines to beat 35 immortals. Thank Cyro, we didn't kno this valid statistic was so important so I decided to post it under the patch notes. Especially with 7 warp prism harass following hios 1gate 5robo build.
On the patch side of things, I love it, tho the nerf on hellions is a bit ridiculous (I'm protoss) they seemed fine, now the upgrade is varely plausible... Needs price decrease 100/100 maybe, or atleast decrease in time. Also the blink increase seems redundant with the new ramp advantage... Robo play going to become the 4gate of pvp, everyones going to do it........ Sadface.
We barely see the raven enough nevermind in TvZ, with the new seeker missle upgrade i'm thinking about more uses for it and came to the conclusion that... Ravens are really dam good anyways i'll try to list some stuff
-PDD Blocks muta and brolord shots, firstly for mutas this is insanley useful, you can use it to defend harass, bring it with drops, put a pdd down and he can't clean it up with just mutas, put it with your tanks. Broodlords late game have really slow fire rate so that'll help insanley aswell -Auto Turret, mineral line harassment, general gunnage during fights, not the best spell honestly -Soon to be buffed seeker missle, here's some stats, the seeker missle does 100 damage and splashes, a Thor has 6 damage x4, that's 124 damage with one missle and one thor shot, guess what unit has 120 health and clumps up a lot? Mutalisks, if they however get +1 armour that damage will only put the muta onto 2 health (5 damage reductions and regenerate one health between the two hits) the last time we ever saw people get air carapace was never so whatever, you can replace the thor with 4 marine shots (marines do 6 damage with no + attack) but that doesn't have splash. These also one shot banelings/speedlings so you could use it as an easy targeted siege shot
The most important part to this is, the raven... it's a detector, with burrowed banelings (banelings banelings whoooaaa) being so common nowadays this is insanley useful, not to mention it spots for creep without using a scan aswell. You could just midway through the match switch the tech lab on your barracks after you grab all your marine ups and stick it onto your starport, wewt
Only problem is all non-autoturret spells need more energy than the raven spawns with (even with the reactor upgrade, with reactor they have 75 pdd/seeker cost 100/125), discuss!
On August 27 2011 02:58 Oboeman wrote: Here's screenshots of the flying unit separation change. In both situations the banshees are clumped and given an attack command on the pf.
I'll let you guess which is the PTR
Cripes, anyone else thinking that's a major buff to lameness like massing voids and banshees? That thor/fungal/archons not looking so good from this shot. How long does the spread take?
On August 27 2011 05:09 Blacklizard wrote: Actually, it almost doesn't matter since magic boxing air units is so super easy in SC2. Now instead of 80% of people doing it 95% of the time, 100% of people will do it 100% of the time since the game does it for you.
Seriously though, the correct fix is get rid of chain fungals... against air and ground please.
Fungal should just not root/freeze units in the air. The damage part is fine against air, IMO.
It could be much worse than that though because magic boxing at least stops focus firing, this could potentially auto magic box whilst targeting specific unit/building etc. Can someone try muta vs thor without a magic box? I'm on EU so I can't try it (and most folk magic box when appropriate on this server)
They've made it harder to safely expand vs zerg, harder to pressure zerg, and harder to defend zerg all ins.
Isn't that the point of Zerg? It's the race you should be afraid to venture outside your ramp against in the early game.
And for the record, Zerg all-ins are still relatively weak and far fewer in number than the other races. You can't possibly think 20 ling all-in or 7RR even compares to terran 1/1/1 or the old toss 4WG. Zerg hasn't had that strong of an all-in since beta.
pretty terrible patch notes tbh. I wish blizzard would find more elegant ways of balancing their game instead of just "DUUUUURRRR terran can 2 rax lets lets make barracks build slower by some arbitrary amount without even examining or taking into account how this might affect terran strategies and timings. but atleast people think we are on top of balancing our game."
On August 27 2011 05:47 flooky wrote: pretty terrible patch notes tbh. I wish blizzard would find more elegant ways of balancing their game instead of just "DUUUUURRRR terran can 2 rax lets lets make barracks build slower by some arbitrary amount so people think we are on top of balancing our game."
yeah im sure they put absolutely no thought into their changes at all
I absolutely love the range of immortals being increased. I think it's exactly what is needed for a revival of the immortal, one of my favorite units in the game
On August 27 2011 05:47 flooky wrote: pretty terrible patch notes tbh. I wish blizzard would find more elegant ways of balancing their game instead of just "DUUUUURRRR terran can 2 rax lets lets make barracks build slower by some arbitrary amount so people think we are on top of balancing our game."
Minor tweaks to build/research times, pre-req changes, and unit ability tweaks will almost always just shift the balance issues around. They cannot really address the underlying game-design issues that are at the root of imbalances.
Expansions are the perfect opportunity to address these things because you will typically have to address the core functionality of the game-design itself in order to create the finished product.
The most dramatic effects these patches usually impart, is on the meta-game. However, there have been some really huge changes to the game through these patches, but that is only because they are making big changes to stats (SD pre-req, KA, Roach Range, Infestor DPS buff, Reaper, Flux Veins, etc ...).
This Patch is actually really ambitious. +Major Immortal buff +Death of the BFH +Leashing of the Opestor +Rise of the Ultra!
On August 27 2011 05:47 flooky wrote: pretty terrible patch notes tbh. I wish blizzard would find more elegant ways of balancing their game instead of just "DUUUUURRRR terran can 2 rax lets lets make barracks build slower by some arbitrary amount without even examining or taking into account how this might affect terran strategies and timings. but atleast people think we are on top of balancing our game."
I don't think that is their thought process, how do you know they havn't taken terran strategies and timings into account?
EPT![[image loading]](http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc304/HailToTheOboe/Screenshot2011-08-2613_52_30-1.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i214.photobucket.com/albums/cc304/HailToTheOboe/Screenshot2011-08-2613_49_52.jpg)
Now instead of 80% of people doing it 95% of the time, 100% of people will do it 100% of the time since the game does it for you. 
