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Thanks to Reddit sleuths, everyone can try the LotV test maps by following instructions here. Note: This is not a beta key, it is simply access to Vs. AI and a Unit Tester. I have no idea how cool with this Blizzard is or is not, use at your own risk. |
United Kingdom20320 Posts
The problem with abilities is that when you add an ability that has no advantage of NOT using it. I.e. that Void Ray ability - there's no time where you'd say "Oh I shouldn't use that now" except for when there's no target.
The void ray ability is still a bad example IMO, because it only boosts damage against armored targets and should be saved for targets of priority since it has a moderately long cooldown.
Assuming marines were stimmed 24/7 with no health cost, they'd still be extremely microable - just because of their high damage, squishiness, moderate range and high mobility
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Well of course they'd be microable with additional speed and damage  I'm saying that abilities that have no real downside of using are kinda weird. I mean even if you use the void ray ability againt non armored target you don't really lose anything.
And while most people don't actually consciously make the decision about stimming, there's still a downside to using it in the wrong moment.
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Canada11369 Posts
On April 01 2015 17:20 KeksX wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2015 17:19 Big J wrote:On April 01 2015 17:14 TT1 wrote:every protoss unit has an ability that requires a seperate hotkey  , why cant we just have an a movey unit like the other races? do we really have to hotkey every fucking type of unit separately? sentries have guardian shield/ff, hts have storm, disruptors have their explosion thingy (and theyre most likely gonna replace the collos in most p comps), phoenixs have disruption beam, voids have prismatic alignment and stalkers have blink.. hard life :[ the immortal nerf hurts a shitton vs zerg, protoss doesnt really have an answer to roachs/ravagers blizzard's conception of "exciting micro". Give everything a button that you have to press. If the pathing etc is perfect there's little micro outside of abilities, though. You don't have to correct bad pathing or stupid AI most of the time. Prepositioning + amove is sufficient for most ability-less units.
That's not at all true as far as hold position/ patrol micro (attack-retreat micro) or for that matter drop and reload micro.
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On April 01 2015 17:43 Falling wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2015 17:20 KeksX wrote:On April 01 2015 17:19 Big J wrote:On April 01 2015 17:14 TT1 wrote:every protoss unit has an ability that requires a seperate hotkey , why cant we just have an a movey unit like the other races? do we really have to hotkey every fucking type of unit separately? sentries have guardian shield/ff, hts have storm, disruptors have their explosion thingy (and theyre most likely gonna replace the collos in most p comps), phoenixs have disruption beam, voids have prismatic alignment and stalkers have blink.. hard life :[ the immortal nerf hurts a shitton vs zerg, protoss doesnt really have an answer to roachs/ravagers blizzard's conception of "exciting micro". Give everything a button that you have to press. If the pathing etc is perfect there's little micro outside of abilities, though. You don't have to correct bad pathing or stupid AI most of the time. Prepositioning + amove is sufficient for most ability-less units. That's not at all true as far as hold position/ patrol micro (attack-retreat micro) or for that matter drop and reload micro.
If we're talking about drop and reload micro we're not really talking about amove units anymore are we?
I'm talking about situations where all you really do with your units is pre-spreading them and then letting them fight without you intervening.
There's always something that can be done but things like Blink for example just are something different.
EDIT:
Basically what I'm saying is: You can have micro with every unit, even workers. But the micro that you can get through abilities is something very different (i.e. Blink), whereas abilities that are just passive buffs etc are mostly weird and don't actually get you more micro potential, they just require you to press an additional button.
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I'm talking about situations where all you really do with your units is pre-spreading them and then letting them fight without you intervening.
Well in the case of larger units, such as Colossus and Immortals, they are obvious targets to be focus fired. With proper micro you should be able to pull them back, but unfortunately protoss has been designed around this not really being practical in 99% of all situations.
Moreover, assuming the Immortal had a slightly higher range (around 7), it would also be further rewarded to target fire enemy armored units with it.
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State just said on stream that they removed the blur for DTs. Can someone confirm? And if so, has this been changed for all cloaked units?
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Share beta account plx, I pay good money..
Wish they would just add an option to get beta access for 10 bucks or so, I would pay for it, win-win.
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United Kingdom20320 Posts
On April 01 2015 18:20 Uni1987 wrote:
Share beta account plx, I pay good money..
Wish they would just add an option to get beta access for 10 bucks or so, I would pay for it, win-win.
They likely will eventually. They did it for Heroes already, did they do it for hearthstone? Either way, a LOT of people would pay a significant price premium to get into beta 6 months before release
On April 01 2015 18:17 Big J wrote:
State just said on stream that they removed the blur for DTs. Can someone confirm? And if so, has this been changed for all cloaked units?
Think i saw DT blur on grubby stream, not sure tho
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Think i saw DT blur on grubby stream, not sure tho
It seems to me that its only the weapon that blurs when it atacks.
Anyway, been multtiasking quite a bit between streams. Still not sure LOTV is really the game for me. Yes, Disruptors and Ravagers seem fun as hell, but so much of the dumb stuff is still there. Like I can't bother dealing with Oracles and protoss having no map control early midgame.
I was also curious about Adepts, but it doesn't seem like there is any real outplay potential w/ them. Yeh, okay they can be buffed a bit, but I feel it needs a larger change to be "awesome". The shadow-concept is still cool though, so I want them to experiment more w/ this, but I don't have my hopes too high.
But the worst thing is that there are so many units that now cannot be attacked unless the enemy specifically builds a hardcounter against it. Not sure the end-product (unless your playing Disruptor vs Ravager) really is gonna be more fun.
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United Kingdom20320 Posts
On April 01 2015 18:38 Hider wrote:It seems to me that its only the weapon that blurs when it atacks. Anyway, been multtiasking quite a bit between streams. Still not sure LOTV is really the game for me. Yes, Disruptors and Ravagers seem fun as hell, but so much of the dumb stuff is still there. Like I can't bother dealing with Oracles and protoss having no map control early midgame. I was also curious about Adepts, but it doesn't seem like there is any real outplay potential w/ them. Yeh, okay they can be buffed a bit, but I feel it needs a larger change to be "awesome". And there are so many units that now cannot be attacked unless the enemy specifically builds a hardcounter against it. Not sure the end-product (unless your playing Disruptor vs Ravager) really is gonna be more fun.
It's an early beta, everything is super chaotic (wider changes than HOTS) and it's gonna be up with iteration for like 8 months - and people will figure out the units more in a matter of days to weeks
I was also curious about Adepts, but it doesn't seem like there is any real outplay potential w/ them. Yeh, okay they can be buffed a bit, but I feel it needs a larger change to be "awesome". The shadow-concept is still cool though, so I want them to experiment more w/ this, but I don't have my hopes too high.
I think they'd be more fun if you could reactivate at will, but you were forced to teleport at the time limit.
Maybe if you had the timer ticking down, and at any point before it finished, you could activate early or cancel completely. That adds a bit more than "he's going to teleport in 5 seconds" - you have to ask IF he is going to teleport, and then if yes, when?
I do like the unit concept, but i can see it's not working too well right now. I think that's a problem with numbers/balance stuff and maybe ability tweaks rather than the entire concept being bad though. Kinda good mobility unit from gateway with anti-light splash damage? sweet :D
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Italy12246 Posts
On April 01 2015 16:57 TT1 wrote:u cant blink outside of blink range
Are you 100% sure on this? I just tested it in single player and it seemed to be identical to hots
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It's an early beta, everything is super chaotic (wider changes than HOTS) and it's gonna be up with iteration for like 8 months - and people will figure out the units more in a matter of days to weeks
My complaint isn't about figuring out though. You don't need to figure out that there is no countermicro against Cyclones when they can start to attack you at range 9 and can move back up to range 14. Blizzard had multiple months to adress this issue between alpha and beta (because it was obvious back then) but they thought this was a balanceissue just and tweaked the numbers a bit.
The same thing applies to Siege Tank drops, Swarm Hosts, Banshee's and Warp Prism.
The figuring out proces will be about learning new builds on how to scout and react to these threads, but that doesn't change that the interaction sucks. The micro interactions are actually something that's really intutive and can be felt within a couple of hours of gameplay.
I do have a bit of hope that Blizzard will find ways to buff toss early midgame (because this is an obvious issue), but it wouldn't surprise me if they buffed the "wrong" variables.
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Cyclone seems a bit too powerful haha (and I'm Terran). Disruptor is exciting, I like it.
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United Kingdom20320 Posts
On April 01 2015 18:46 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +It's an early beta, everything is super chaotic (wider changes than HOTS) and it's gonna be up with iteration for like 8 months - and people will figure out the units more in a matter of days to weeks My complaint isn't about figuring out though. You don't need to figure out that there is no countermicro against Cyclones when they can start to attack you at range 9 and can move back up to range 14. Blizzard had multiple months to adress this issue between alpha and beta (because it was obvious back then) but they thought this was a balanceissue just and tweaked the numbers a bit. The same thing applies to Siege Tank drops, Swarm Hosts, Banshee's and Warp Prism (too a lesser extent for the two latter though). The figuring out proces will be about learning new builds on how to scout and react to these threads, but that doesn't change that the interaction sucks. The micro interactions are actually something that's really intutive and can be felt within a couple of hours of gameplay.
Cyclone i agree is kinda stupid, siege tank drops are interesting IMO~ I have not seen any abuse from banshee speed or warp prism pickup range yet
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siege tank drops are interesting IMO
My theory is that Siege Tank drops are the kind of thing that seems cool initially. But then you realize that there is zero countermicro to it. What can you do without blink/air as toss? What can you do as zerg without abduct/Mutas? Very quickly it's gonna be lame to see Roaches chase after a Siege tank + medivac without having any chance of ever catching up to it.
This is a hardcounter-problem that will restrict the meta because certain builds won't become viable. Aren't you simply gonna instadie if you open Robo-units vs a terran player w/ decent micro?
That said, I do agree though that it could be fun if it was a mid/late-game thing only, and a solution here is make it require an upgrade.
But it just sucks that Blizzard doesn't seem aware that all of the "can't catch you"-interactions aren't fun. In Sc2 we already see this to a degree (e.g. Mutas vs non-air toss, upgraded Phoenix vs Mutas, and bio vs toss), and they just added a bunch more.
What's really the thought proces here? Look at this example:
--> Cyclone attacks a Roach
--> Your natural intution is to move the Roach back
--> But you get punished here for attempting to micro as you potentially could have got 1-2 attacks of before the Roach would die
The Cyclone with its up to 14-15 range is a huge micro-killer. I don't know why they didn't test something like this:
My cyclone suggestion
- 3.25 movement speed (from around 2.8 I believe)
- Initial Lock range = 5 (from 6)
. Maximum range = 8-9 (from 14-15)
This would effectively result in a lot more countermicro optons as you (realistically) could get out of the max-range with good micro. That's unless the terran player would micro his Cyclone absolutely brilliantly!
Moreover, the small boosts in movement speed would boosts its synergy with Hellions as a harass-unit, and it would also be able to outrange static defense w/ its maximum range.
So while I do see theoretical solutions, my point is more that I am very sceptical as Blizzard has an awfull track-record when it comes to improving bad microinteractions in the game. HOTS beta only got better balanced over time. The microinteractions on the other hand were never improved despite all of the flaws (Oracles and SHs were lame from day1).
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Yeah, I kind of agree with Hider on tank drops. I'm much more excited about disruptor + warpprism. Now that's some fun micro scenarios in perspective.
I can see tanks being unable to being picked up just after shooting (for like, the duration of the attack cooldown).
And cyclone's lock ability shouldn't keep the vision of the unit imo.
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Will the ladder be changed considerably or why is there no ranked ladder yet?
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Italy12246 Posts
Beta just went online i guess they'll activate ladder later
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Units can also have characteristics with their presence.
We shouldn't just look at units and their counter micro and judge if it has a place in the game or not.
phenoix opening doesn't offer a lot of counter micro but it is interesting because it allows protoss to have map control early on, force zerg to play blind.
Muta against protoss another example, finding holes in defense, force protoss to turtle, complete map dominance.
It helps to make game a lot more dynamic even if there isn't a lot of micro actions going on.
Also I don't think siege tank drop is that effective after the meta stabilized. Hard to say of cause
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EPT
