LotV closed beta announced to start on March 31 - Page 62

On March 30 2015 16:17 Musicus wrote:


Completely agree! Although stasis word, disruptor, Adept and the new warp prism are all super strong too, the problem could just be that Protoss just can't survive vs Stephano style attacks with Ravagers. Terran changes seem to be the weakest or least impactful ones right now.

On March 30 2015 10:30 Tresher wrote:

New Ultralisk Armor is even crazier. Fully upgraded lings vs fully upgraded Ultra: Ultra can kill 300 lings still having half HP. You need 689 lings to kill the Ultra.
He can also kill 34 Marines. I think Terran needs to go Mech vs Zerg. You need some serious Firepower to pierce that Armor. Maybe even Tanks might need a buff to armored. Marauders also get crushed easily now with the x2 Attack.

Parasitic Bomb seems to only affect air Units. Colossus included. Against Vikings it does not seem to be that useful, you can just land them. Of course there should not be a ground Army nearby .

On March 30 2015 10:30 Tresher wrote:

New Ultralisk Armor is even crazier. Fully upgraded lings vs fully upgraded Ultra: Ultra can kill 300 lings still having half HP. You need 689 lings to kill the Ultra.
He can also kill 34 Marines. I think Terran needs to go Mech vs Zerg. You need some serious Firepower to pierce that Armor. Maybe even Tanks might need a buff to armored. Marauders also get crushed easily now with the x2 Attack.

Parasitic Bomb seems to only affect air Units. Colossus included. Against Vikings it does not seem to be that useful, you can just land them. Of course there should not be a ground Army nearby .

On March 30 2015 17:39 OtherWorld wrote:

Why not go bio and transition into mech though? With Ravagers it looks like to me that mech will be more vulnerable early on (before the meching player gets a reasonable Tank+Medivac count). I'm happy about the Ultra change btw, right now it is not particularly weak, but it is way too easily hard countered by cheap units. With this + the Marauder change it should be less hard-counter-y

On March 30 2015 16:17 Musicus wrote:


Completely agree! Although stasis word, disruptor, Adept and the new warp prism are all super strong too, the problem could just be that Protoss just can't survive vs Stephano style attacks with Ravagers. Terran changes seem to be the weakest or least impactful ones right now.

I will probably switch back to random in early lotv, zerg is looking lots of fun and lots of new composition, protoss new units looking great and the new warp prism should be lots of fun.

hopefully terran can make bio play a little bit more diverse as well, their micro eventually becomes dull after so many games.

On March 30 2015 19:57 KeksX wrote:


Probably referring to the old faulty version where corrosive bile had a massive radius right?

On March 30 2015 19:46 Hider wrote:


This is overall what I feel as well, though I think I might just play full zerg. Protoss is likely gonna suffer real bad through the changes to the economy mobility wise, so not sure I will enjoy them. Zerg on the other hand looks to be a race with the most new options.

What Blizzard should have done to terran
Honestly I tried to think of a new idea for a terran bio unit. But I just couldn't come up with anything as a new unit isn't what terran needs. Instead what terran needs is redesigns to their existing stuff. That includes:

- Raven
- Ghost
- More transformation synergy for mechplay
- Stronger harass for mech in the midgame
- Siege Tanks must be able to be used more aggressively
- Mech play must be strong enough in the lategame to defend multiple bases at once while simultaenously buffing the options for the enemy to deal damage to trade.
- Reaper lacks utility after early game

At best, it seemed to me that they buffed Viking trasnformation slightly and gave Siege Tanks pick-up micro play. But these are very small band-aid fixes in the larger picture. Must say I am very dissapointed in how many opportunites they missed here. I could write another essay on my proposed changes to the above issues, but I take a break with the writing for now.

On March 30 2015 19:25 Hider wrote:
Just gonna make a little prediction-comment with regards to what I think will work out well and what won't.

Disruptor:
I think this is a pretty solid idea overall, though I would have liked to see this along w/ a Collosus redesign in order to boost the micro opportunities of the Col while giving both of the units unique roles. But the Disruptor gives toss a way to defend expos in the late game against a larger army which is good. IMO the importance of critical mass should be minimized and instead micro should have more of an impact. However as with lots of AOE units, it's possible that this could feel a bit too unforgiving to play against though I still think the tradeoff is overall positive.

Ravager
This is a great concept. Giving micro opportunites vs Forcefields and adding late game viability to "Roaches" while adding skillshots into the game. I hope, however, that this unit doesn't feel massable and that you just randomly spam the shots while in an engagement. The unit might therefore need a few tweeks during the beta.

Lurker
In my opinion I had seen the Lurker be much more like in BW where it has less HP and moves faster so it could be used offensively as well as defensively (9 range is good though). But I guess Blizzard felt that they wanted to create very seperate roles for the Lurker and the Banelign. I still think that would be doable with a more mobile Lurker as Siege Tanks would be alot better vs Lurkers and worse vs Banelings which would create different reactions from the terran player.

Overall though, I like games that are more back-and-fourth and having a solid defenders advantage in the midgame along with the economy rewarding more bases could potentially do that. So I am definitely positive towards the Lurker.

Swarm Host
Yes ok, this is better than the current SH. But the goal in itself shouldn't be to reward more harass. Rather, the goal should be create more scenarios where micro from both players are rewarded. This is imo why Marine drops are fun as they create scenarios for micro, while free units flying on to the enemy with no real counterplay (except for retreating) isn't gonna be particularly fun. I would have prefered that this unit just got removed tbh, but not really a big deal as I think it will be almost impossible to balanace it anyway so it will have a very niche role/see no play.

Ultralisk 4 armor
The issue now with Ultralisk vs bio is that they are actually insanely good vs bio play if you try to take a straight up fight (as you do vs Muta/bling by spreading out instead of retreating). Therefore you need to kite infiniteliy vs Utralisks, which is very doable as they are so slow. This change here only reinforces the issue. I would much rather prefer Ultralisk receiving a significant off-creep speed upgrade.

Siege Tank drop pick up
I actually made this suggestion back in HOTS beta in order to add countermicro to Blinding Cloud. Later on I suggested that Starbow implemented a version where Siege tanks could be picked up but when unloaded they would come out in tank mode.

But I am not a fan of what Blizzard is doing here as I fear that Siege tanks + medivac can basically kite various stuff forever creating a cat/mouse-effect. Only way to shut this down is through AA units which creates the classical hardcounter problem.
Instead, I would prefer that the unsuege duration was reduced significantly (from 3 to 1.25) when the Widow Mine upgrade as researched as well and siege-duration could be reduced slightly as well (from 3 to 2.5 secs) The reason for this is twofold:

(1) It buffs Siege tanks drops, but not in an "imbalanced" way as the LOTV-version.
(2) It makes it easier to use Siege Tanks aggressively out on the map.

I actually believe that Siege tanks are too immobile relative to their BW counterparts. in BW, units moved way worse which effectively meant that Siege Tanks - relatively speaking - were slightly more mobile against larger armies. Maintaining the BW-stats here when adding in warpgate and giving zerg a ton more units (and thus grating zerg mapcontrol in the midgame vs terran) is an error.

In BW Siege Tanks wasn't as much as a defensive unit as a positional unit. They were often used to break Lurker lines in the midgame, and I want to see the same thing occur here. But they do need to unsiege/siege slightly faster for that to occur.

For Blinding Cloud I would prefer an AOE increase along with max range reduction of 7-8 (this was BigJ who showed me this in a unittest map like 2 years ago. Honestly it makes it a lot more fun).

Cyclone
Not a fan of this unit. I guess it's ok if it gives terran mech play a way to killl enemey static defense/armored units so Hellions/Banshees can harass better in the mid/late game, but I think there are much better ways to do it, and in a lot of situations there are no real countermicro against it.

Banshee
Yes, the movement speed upgrade was needed and something I have been suggesting a long time ago. Banshee's absolutely should be faster than Overseers so Mutas don't hardcounter cloaked banshees. But I believe Banshee's should be balanced around less HP so the enemy doesn't need to send the majority of his forces to deal with Banshee harass.

The thing I like about Muta harass as terarn is that a small group of Marines can deal with a larger group of Mutas, which means I (for the most part) doesn't get locked in my own base.

Immortal
Yes, it's good that HS got removed. But replacing it with a click-to-activate ability isn't the right solution. IMO this is what I would have liked to see with the Immortal:

- 7 range
- 0 Damage point
- 2.75 movemement speed
- Sligthly less damage vs armored/cheaper production-wise.

The effect of these changes would be the following:

(1) You could focus fire enemy units easier with the Immortal
(2) You could easier move out on the map with Immortals without commiting (nerfing the all-in or nothing issue protoss has).
(3) Immortal in warp prism would be gigantically buffed as it attacks instantly and has higher range. This makes the 7-range pick up change unncesary.
(4) You can easier apply countermicro by pulling back an injured Immortal if it gets focus fired.

Warp Prism
The change to the Warp Prism it just another indicator of what Blizzard really lacks in their understanding of game design. They think it's fun when one player can do something that the enemy has no answer to... unless he builds that one unit that hardcounters it (AA). It's not gonna be fun to play against a Warp Prism drop where you cannot attack the Warp Prism. I am a big fan of dropplay but this isn't the way to do it.

Oracle
I am fine - conceptwise - with the Stasis Ward, but the real issue of the Oracle was that it didn't have a proper moving shot and instead had insanely high damage vs light. Fix this first and an Oracle along with Stasis ward could be hella fun.

Adept
This seems pretty fun, but it's obviously not the real fix protoss needs.

Economy
The only way the economy can work is if protoss gets a strong and mobile enogh army to take bases at a much faster rate. Also I am not sure how on earth mech can take bases faster as well. The weird thing is that it seems to me that the races with the most mobility has received even more options/unchanged while the compositions that are immobile hasn't receved any compensation buffs.

Blizzard said they have tested the new economy and likes it, but I don't give a lot of credit to their internal testings. For some reason the Lurker, Viper Oracle made it through despite it being blatantly obvious to me that they were awfully designed (blinding cloud only dumb vs mech though) 2 weeks into my beta experience with HOTS.