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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 September 10 2011 22:11 RogerX wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 22:02 mutantmagnet wrote: Neural parasite with the recent change should have no up front mana cost and should deplete 1 pt of mana per second like cloak. It's the only way NP is going to be frequently used. We already have quite a long time for neural parasite, I dont think this would make much difference.
Funny thing is, that would actually be another major nerf. Feedback would auto kill np infestors then.
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I think they should scrap Neural Parasite and come up with an entire new spell.. this nerf takes away everything that it was used for. Why would you want to neural a non massive unit? I didn't like this spell from the beginning so I really hope they will scrap it for something else in the future.
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On September 10 2011 22:02 Kmickelow wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 21:15 Loodah wrote: I think the main issue with protoss right now is that they can't find a composition that wins a 200 / 200 engagement against either race in the late game. If I max out on colossus / stalker / temp - I still lose convincingly against brood infestor as long as I'm not way way ahead on upgrades (which I shouldn't be). Then the zerg can also remax much more quickly. That doesn't make any sense. I can try to get air units, but infestors already are the best answer to air units for zerg. Our twilight upgrades are useless because of fungal. Our upgrades (after the patch) are turned against us by the only units we have that actually scale decently with upgrades ( colossus).
We are the race that has trouble defending multiple locations because our units suck in small numbers. By default we should be the race with the most powerful maxxed army. Just doesn't hold true any more because other races are actually learning how to use their incredibly powerful spell casters.
Also, there's not much we can do to pressure the late lair other than DT rush or stargate rush which are both easily nullified by queens and spores. Either that or two base all ins - which are the only options with decent win percentages. It's really hard to play a macro game against a zerg who gets the max number of drones in 12 minutes and then pumps nonstop units.
Dont engage broodlord infestor etc. Kill bases and try to catch them off guard. Blink stalkers ftw. Its same idea with tank pushes.
What's the endgame plan though? Blink Stalkers are obviously great for base harassment and maybe even sniping some expoes, but how do you seal the deal? You're eventually gonna have to engage the big Z army.
Also, the difficulty I'm having with this at the moment is that, while Blink Stalkers are pretty mobile, their mobility is easily matched by speedlings, while the rest of your army can't keep up. It's very easy to lose all/a lot of your stalkers to a simple Speedling attack, since your sentries can't come along.
To me, that playstyle feels very much like a balancing act between some economic advantage and utter failure.
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On September 10 2011 22:12 -_- wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 22:11 RogerX wrote:On September 10 2011 22:02 mutantmagnet wrote: Neural parasite with the recent change should have no up front mana cost and should deplete 1 pt of mana per second like cloak. It's the only way NP is going to be frequently used. We already have quite a long time for neural parasite, I dont think this would make much difference. Funny thing is, that would actually be another major nerf. Feedback would auto kill np infestors then.
You could just spam some fungals/infested terrans to put your energy at a good level, so it wouldn't be a nerf in that sense. I guess you could argue about the micro aspect though in my opinion that shouldn't be a problem.
Edit: Didn't think of that feedback would in any case end the neural parasite due to mana per second so in that way it's worse.
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On September 10 2011 22:03 Philip2110 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 21:52 BushidoSnipr wrote: This infestor NP change seems pretty widely hated. I've heard that qxc and IdrA disapprove of the change, so maybe Blizzard will think twice. IdrA doesnt approve of a zerg nerf? I dont believe you
It's unpossible!
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A protoss deathball WITH HTs is still the strongest army, BUT, HTs right now sucks balls to use compared to ghosts and infestors... they do not cloak, they need 33 seconds to be able to do 1 storm after being warped, they are too slow which mean you cannot retreat from a battle without losing most of them or all of them and they are really hard to split because of this slow speed and they always stay behind compared to the army and bringing them in front or/middle army makes them too easy to just immediately die to broodlords and/or fungaled and not able to throw decent storms.
Also (at least this is true vs Z) you cannoy really rely on pure zealot late game so you gotta dump gas in other units that are not high templars so you will never match the number of infestors he has with your hts which renders the thing harder.
PvT is probably even worst (althought you have more gas to use in hts and archons) since EMP is so effective, ghosts are now much more easier to mass with the new cost they have frigging cloak which is easy to abuse by throwing all those 1000 scans terrans have late game and snipe the obvserver which have way too less hp to be microed around and must be put in front cuz of EMP's huge range.
I'm biased more than probably but the problem is that HT are not good enough compared to infestors and ghosts right now.
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No more bunkers of love!! (Non-balanced related updates) =(
Really excited about this patch... I feel like the blue hellion nerf was def needed.. as a bio-terran this'll mean i won't lose outright to mech :D
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On September 10 2011 21:03 brachester wrote: hmm, i don''t see neural parasite as a problem (i'm protoss), and since neural parasites main role is to get rid of the oppenents massive units, why remove it? i'm very skeptical about that change
Agreed. I'm Protoss too. Just because infestors are helping Zerg do better, we should nerf them back to the stone age? I disagree with the NP nerf... it'll officially be useless. Hell, keep infestors the way they are now.
Terran is kicking everyone's butt, and we're barely touching them. No idea why. I don't see how any of those changes (except giving us five more seconds against hellion drops) are going to be really game-changing. Them actually getting a raven buff is kind of insane (do they need to have more 1/1/1 options?), and the barracks "nerf" isn't going to do anything.
I can only hope that increasing the immortal range by 1 will completely balance TvP all by itself >.> I do think it's a pretty cool buff, and we'll see if it's hugely helpful or if immortals now end up blocking other units alongside the stalkers. I think it'll be minorly helpful. I still think TvP will be overwhelmingly tilted in Terran's favor though; marines can still cruise through immortals, regardless of the range.
I like using warp prisms for harrass, so that buff makes me happy (and it was rather necessary, in my opinion). Mothership is still not going to be used unless the game is over or for entertainment purposes, and charge's cost should be getting buffed instead of blink's build time being nerfed x.x Sigh. At least robo builds will be better protected against blink stalker in PvP... all the more reason to see colossi vs. colossi
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On September 10 2011 17:04 dogabutila wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 12:54 hashaki wrote:On September 10 2011 12:45 emc wrote: might as well give frenzy back to the infestor that we had in the beta. Remove NP and give us frenzy so we can make our ultras attack faster. Seems like NP is pointless now why even bother with it?
It should be a hive tech research at the very least or even if the infestor was a hive unit but we had something at T2 to compensate (lurkers!). Seriously, cry much? To call an ability useless because you can't use it vs the units it -has been- most used against up untill now is just useless crying. Tanks? Immortals? Templars? Ghosts? You can still NP the shit out of these units and they can do some serious damage. Fact of the matter is that Infestor has been this crazy counter-to-all-units-and-compositions lately and that's just wrong and bad design. Now with a slight nerf of FG and NP it might start balancing out, but I still see Infestors being the bulk of alot of Zerg play even after these nerfs simply becasue it'll still be a strong unit with it's spells. Personally I'd rather see FG do 50% slow (while it still disabled abilities like blink etc) instead of root rather than a damage-reduction as is suggested in this patch. It's been said before, but the "problem" (if there is one) with FG is that is roots AND does quite sick damage. Imagine the whine if Storm had 50% less damage but stunned units under it. Oh my god the crying we'd hear from both Terrans and Zergs and Protoss would just be "pfft, EMP or NP them" (like alot of zergs are saying to P on how to deal with Infestors right now) You know why infestors have to counter everything? Because frankly, all of the other zerg units suck. Try playing zerg. Really. You will see what I mean. You're absolutely right that it's bad design, but it has to be this way because the whole race is designed badly. I play random. and here is my perspective. Rax nerf is annoying, but I can see it being a little too strong sometiems in 2 rax openers. BFH is over nerfed. They were too strong as is, but 5 makes the upgrade worthless. 7 might have been a better compromise. Seeker missle buff.... I guess you could use it for cute things. I saw minigun shoot 2 of them at a banshee and run that into the other teams army the other day. Still not sure it's really useful since it has such a terrible cast range. Immortals buff is v. nice. I hate them gettign stuck behind everything when you change directions (and stalkers being faster) so you have to manually front them in engagements. Blink research time is kinda bad, but I guess it makes sense. People are so good at blink micro now that people need a little bit more time to prepare for blink rush attacks All of the zerg changes are to try and help cover for the infestor nerf. Overseers are cheaper so you can contaminate stuff and it isn't as big a deal if you lose them (or so the blizz theory crafting goes) and the faster ultras make the window smaller. SO hopefully you dont need infestors to carry you for as long. The problem is, infestors will still be way OP in some ways, and wholly deficient in others. And the inherent problem (that infestors are used for everything) won't be solved because....all the other options are still worse. Seriously, ZvP was terribad before. I don't like the idea of fungal not being a stun, but I think it preventing blink is some BS. No other spells in the game disable other spells. I don't think stun should affect massive either. And lastly, the idea that NP shouldn't affect psyonic is a good one. NP HT and storming the crap out of the other ht's is a little too powerful. So really, infestors will still be uber abusive and chainfungaly and base snipe with infested terrans.... so they will still FEEL powerful and OP and stuff, but they won't actually be able to stop mass collo. // and really, people you all need to stop saying OMG you can NP immortals. Who builds them pvz anyways?
Agreed, when you compare Terrans to Zerg, with the exception of nerfed Reapers, every unit in the Terran army is played and serves a critical roll, where Hydralisks, Corrupters and Ultralisks are unplayable and don't achieve their desired mission statement. Therefore Infestors have to play triple duty in a Zerg army, from stopping Thors and Colossi to Battle Cruisers and Carriers or Archons because the Zerg army doesn't have a basic, unit composition that can counter these threats effectively. Infestors are essentially an overpowered crutch, compensating for the poorly designed tech tree and unit architecture, and that's what they really need to address before they nerf the Infestor.
As I see it, here is how Zerg's tech tree and unit composition needs to be changed to balance the army and nerf the Infestor.
Hydralisks and Corrupters are not performing their designated roll as anti-air, anti-massive units in the Zerg army because A) Hydralisks are not cost effective in exchange for their damage and survivability and B) Corrupters are completely reactionary units for anti-air, anti-massive that serve no other strategic purposes when compared to Vikings and to a lesser extent Phoenix in the Zerg army.
For Hydralisks, it's just a question of cost effectiveness, at 100/50 a single Hydralisk is a laughable investment compared to a 125/50 Stalker or a 100/25 Marauder in terms of its damage or survivability, and the gas requirement gives Hyralisks an early game resource cap that doesn't allow it to combine efficiently with Roaches, Mutalisks or Banelings. So Hydralisks need to reduce their gas cost, and perhaps their mineral cost as well in order to be more economical. Perhaps moving back to the Broodwar era statistics for Hydralisks and/or giving Hyrdralisks a bonus damage vs. massive would bring them back into play vs. Terran and Protoss. Also they definitely need range and movement upgrades available at the Hydralisk Den, they're the only unit in the game you can't upgrade and they're too easily outmaneuverd and outranged.
Corrupters are just badly designed units, Mutalisks give Zerg their harass unit and they provide defense vs. Banshee and Void Rays while still being able to fight Vikings and Phoenix head on with a numerical advantage. If Zerg need a dedicated answer to air and massive, I think replacing Corrupters with Scourge serves the same purpose of air superiority and "suicide bomber" vs massives while providing the fast, cost efficient scout(s) in the mid game that the Zerg is lacking. Archons and Ultralisks can always be changed back from massive to normal to prevent Scourge from being a hard counter to elite ground units and that way they're only a reactive answer vs. air and Thor, Colossus that are better at responding to Thor, Colossus than Corrupters and serve a secondary purpose by being fast, flying scouts that come in multiples to prevent Zerg from sacrificing OLs.
Mutalisks can be the morphing unit for Brood Lords, and Corrupters can be redesigned to be a Greater Spire morph for Mutalisks like in Brood War.
The last unit that needs to be addressed is Ultralisks, because Blizzard doesn't seem to understand its not Ultralisk's build time that matters but its tech tree placement. I think if you keep Ultralisk build time constant, but you exchange Ultralisk Cavern with Infestor Pit in the tech tree you can give Zerg the playable, mid-game siege unit they're looking for and now Terran and Protoss will have to wonder whether or not Tier 2 will open up air harass with Mutalisks or a full frontal assult with Ultralisks.
At that point, I think all you have to do to balance Infestors is to nerf Neural Parasite on Massive, and then make Neural Parasite the baseline spell and turn Fungal Growth into a Lair, researchable spell for Queens to keep the timing.
Granted that is a lot of juggling, but I think it'll work to get Hydralisks and Ultralisks to be playable on Tier 2 and still have an anti-air, anti-massive option in Scourge that alleviates scouting concerns. I'm not certain tho' if the Corrupter to Scourge change is actually necessary for anti-massive, because it's possible Ultralisks would be the best counter to Thor, Colossus by itself and you could skip your Spire to tech into Tier 3 quicker off just the Ultralisk Den to pick up Nerfed Infestors with baseline Neural Parasite if you wanted to avoid air.
Those are just some rough thoughts on this, but I think it addresses the basic problems of their force structure in theory with a little tweaking.
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NP was good but it wasnt op. It is a skill based solely on mindcontrolling massive units though, thats like patching the game so hellions dont do damage to workers
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I dont really see it making live, it would just break the entire race, they're probably trying stuff on the PTR like they did with fungal or bunker
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If this goes live, i will switch to Toss 100%, because without NP the deathball timing push is just an autowin. Yes, infestors were a bit too strong, but thats only because all other Zerg units are really BAD. Buff Corrupters and Hydras majorly or Zerg will be weaker than ever before.
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Oh finaly infestor now doesnt counter everything... that is refreshing It was really stupid.. i felt like only thing i could do was zealot archon into immortal HT etc etc.. although its pretty strong push i figured so i guess all bad goes for something good good change... Time to slip off zerg collectors of protoss tears haha
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On September 10 2011 23:14 SharkStarcraft wrote: If this goes live, i will switch to Toss 100%, because without NP the deathball timing push is just an autowin. Yes, infestors were a bit too strong, but thats only because all other Zerg units are really BAD. Buff Corrupters and Hydras majorly or Zerg will be weaker than ever before. are you basicly saying NP was the only way how zergs could win against protoss? Have you not been around for last 2 months?
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I think the NP shouldn't be effective against massive air units, other than that its fine
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On September 10 2011 22:24 Goliathsorrow wrote: A protoss deathball WITH HTs is still the strongest army, BUT, HTs right now sucks balls to use compared to ghosts and infestors... they do not cloak, they need 33 seconds to be able to do 1 storm after being warped, they are too slow which mean you cannot retreat from a battle without losing most of them or all of them and they are really hard to split because of this slow speed and they always stay behind compared to the army and bringing them in front or/middle army makes them too easy to just immediately die to broodlords and/or fungaled and not able to throw decent storms.
Also (at least this is true vs Z) you cannoy really rely on pure zealot late game so you gotta dump gas in other units that are not high templars so you will never match the number of infestors he has with your hts which renders the thing harder.
PvT is probably even worst (althought you have more gas to use in hts and archons) since EMP is so effective, ghosts are now much more easier to mass with the new cost they have frigging cloak which is easy to abuse by throwing all those 1000 scans terrans have late game and snipe the obvserver which have way too less hp to be microed around and must be put in front cuz of EMP's huge range.
I'm biased more than probably but the problem is that HT are not good enough compared to infestors and ghosts right now.
That's the right way to explain the status-quo of Protoss... It's supposed to have the greatest lategame army when in fact Terran and Zerg are just strongeer cause of ghost and Infestor.
We can see games with mass infestor, mass ghost (mvp vs july 4-5 days ago) but i'll never see mass HT... they're a step behind
Anyway the infestor NP's nerf will not affect Protoss deathball... the fungal still online and deal 10 dps... remember that
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On September 10 2011 23:28 WeaVerPrime wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 22:24 Goliathsorrow wrote: A protoss deathball WITH HTs is still the strongest army, BUT, HTs right now sucks balls to use compared to ghosts and infestors... they do not cloak, they need 33 seconds to be able to do 1 storm after being warped, they are too slow which mean you cannot retreat from a battle without losing most of them or all of them and they are really hard to split because of this slow speed and they always stay behind compared to the army and bringing them in front or/middle army makes them too easy to just immediately die to broodlords and/or fungaled and not able to throw decent storms.
Also (at least this is true vs Z) you cannoy really rely on pure zealot late game so you gotta dump gas in other units that are not high templars so you will never match the number of infestors he has with your hts which renders the thing harder.
PvT is probably even worst (althought you have more gas to use in hts and archons) since EMP is so effective, ghosts are now much more easier to mass with the new cost they have frigging cloak which is easy to abuse by throwing all those 1000 scans terrans have late game and snipe the obvserver which have way too less hp to be microed around and must be put in front cuz of EMP's huge range.
I'm biased more than probably but the problem is that HT are not good enough compared to infestors and ghosts right now. That's the right way to explain the status-quo of Protoss... It's supposed to have the greatest lategame army when in fact Terran and Zerg are just strongeer cause of ghost and Infestor. We can see games with mass infestor, mass ghost (mvp vs july 4-5 days ago) but i'll never see mass HT... they're a step behind Anyway the infestor NP's nerf will not affect Protoss deathball... the fungal still online and deal 10 dps... remember that
Lol Protoss lategame < T / Z lategame because mass HT < mass infestor / ghost is such a terrible oversimplification -_-.
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but i'll never see mass HT... they're a step behind
And it's gonna be even worse if the patch hit live, protoss are just gonna mindlessy mass colossus again because they wont have valid counter, again I'm zerg and all for buffing HT personaly, they're a counter to infestor but are somewhat painful to use
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I just played a pvz on ptr and the zerg used neural parasite on my collossus. I thought NP couldn't be used on massive units...
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Give back hydra speed upgrade =p
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