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Edit: Appropriate trade-offs have been added to the newest patch of LotV, removing its status as a Superior Roach. It still fills a similar space as the Roach, but in my opinion it is now a zergling -> baneling type morph where Burrow Regen and Move as well as HP are sacrificed for the addition of a powerful ability. I no longer agree with the title to this thread.
I just checked the stats of the Ravager, and overall it confuses me. ALL of Zerg's other Morph Unit abilities involve some major trade off: a Baneling can only ever attack once and is in most cases slower than zerglings, an Overseer loses the ability to drop creep as well as access Ventral Sacs in exchange for vulnerability to Feedback, a Lurker MUST burrow in order to attack and can no longer attack air units in addition to losing movement speed, a Broodlord is SIGNIFICANTLY slower than a Corruptor and can no longer attack air units.
What sacrifice is made for the Ravager? It's slower than roaches. It is larger than roches.It does not regen HP while burrowed as fast as roaches, and I believe it has 25 less HP than roaches, which is strange considering the general bulkiness of the Ravager model as compared to roaches; the baneling's 5 less hitpoints make sense for a suicide-unit, as they should be more fragile from a flavor and balance standpoint.
Slightly more importantly, the Ravager cannot burrow-move. As blizzard toys more and more with the idea of fast-moving burrowed Roaches, it seems like this is the intended MAJOR tradeoff that a player makes when turning their roaches into ravagers. A zerg player gives up the harassment utility
What is gained by morphing the Ravager? A "skillshot" type ability that gives Zerg a Hatchery-tech non-Queen unit that can hit air. 2 more range, equalling that of a Stalker. Dramatically increased attack speed that retains the Roach's 16 basic attack damage, giving it the 2nd highest DPS of any Zerg unit next to the Ultralisk. This is a Hatchery tech, remember.
So Zerg players can upgrade their roaches in nearly every way with the only limiting factors being available supply and available resources. Slower units are of course a liability in any RTS, but the ability to eliminate forcefields removes most of this "weakness" against Protoss. Roach/Hydra is effectively obsolete with Ravagers; they deal with the same problems better and suffer less from Protoss splash damage due to the sheer size of the Ravager as compared to the Hydralisk. As well, Ravagers are not light units, meaning they do not take increased damage from Phoenix groups lifting, Baneling splash, Hellions/Hellbats with Infernal Pre-Igniters, or the rare Ghost basic attack. In fact, the increased attack speed means the Ravager will always win the close-range no-upgrade 1v1 fight with a Zealot, while prior to the Morph the Zealot would win such a fight. I haven't tested this case, but I assume Ravagers can also outlast a Hellbat in close-range, although this case becomes less relevant in that Ravagers significantly out-range Hellbats while roaches only just barely do.
I've mostly focused on the implications of Ravagers vs Protoss, but I think we can all agree that the Ravager is a problem unit in other matchups as well. This post is to simply stress one key fact:
Ravagers Are Flat Out Better Than Roaches After Your Opponent Gets Reliable Detection
Why keep a roach around for an army unit when you could instead have the unit that boasts the second highest dps of any single Zerg unit next to the Ultralisk. At Hatchery tech.
Let me reiterate:
Morphs in Brood War originally caused a unit to specialize: Mutalisks went from harassment flocks to either aerial siege units or anti-air specialists, while Hydras went from rank-and-file ranged unit to positional ground-based siege/defense unit.
Similarly, SC2 Morphs also specialize a unit: Zergling from cannon-fodder flood unit to sudden burst-damage suicide unit, Overlords from floating supply depots that could drop creep at lair into a floating supply depot with enhanced scouting capability and minor macro disruption, Corrupters went from Air-to-Air fighters with the ability to make units smell 20% worse for 30 seconds into a Guardian-like slow-moving Air-to-Ground siege unit. Hydralisks make the same trade-off they made in Brood War, although they aren't currently Zerg's rank-and-file ranged unit.
What specialty do Ravagers have? What SERIOUS tradeoffs are made in their construction? Mobility isn't a word I associate with roaches, so losing out on that isn't much of a trade off. Model size isn't even a trade-off, it's a bonus when facing the AOE that becomes almost universally necessary in the late game.
If this message reaches Blizzard, I hope they understand that nothing can be added to any unit that would tone down the Ravager. Something must be taken away from this unit in order for it to be a proper Zerg-style morph.
Now the lingering question for us to hash out: What should be removed from the Ravager in order to rectify its current severe design overlap with Roaches?
edit: Removed a mistaken remark about Colossi possessing bonus damage to light units (they have no such bonus), replaced it with more examples.
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On April 19 2015 06:37 hvylobster wrote:
: What should be removed from the Ravager in order to rectify its current severe design overlap with Roaches?
maybe make it viable as lair tech? the biggest concern I have is the threat it poses in early game rushes
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I disagree.
Ravagers are perfect units for the Zerg.
For the past 5 years Zerg had absolutely no way of pressuring the enemy in the first minutes of the game without all-in-ing (and usually a very weak all in for that matter)
This made P and T be greedy and influenced the entire flow of the game. Now the possiblity oif a Ravager push keeps the other races honest in what they can or cannot do.
This is not only a balance issue (as the game can be balanced without such a unit) but also a design issue.
As a Zerg player, I have quit Sc2 in 2010 because of the sheer frustration of having to handle any of the 1 million all-ins and cheezes without any chance of doing the same. It sucked the fun out of the game for me. I have not played since.
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Now the lingering question for us to hash out: What should be removed from the Ravager in order to rectify its current severe design overlap with Roaches?
I think it should be the tier 1 Zerg spell caster, the Ghost/Sentry of Zerg. It should have no attack, or a very crappy one and should have cost for it's spell. There should be more spells added to it aswell.
I think it's already stupid that Viper has 4 spells, out of nowhere, where any other caster has 3.
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Yeah, clearly. While the concept of turning the Roach into something else is good as far as I'm concerned, huge issues with the Roach-Hydralisk-Ravager triangle are bound to arise if Blizzard keeps building on top of the existing flawed fundations.
Some of the issues are:
(1) Roaches should cost 1 supply*.
(2) Roaches should not have Protoss stats.
(3) Hydralisks should cost 1 supply*.
(4) Then, as you say, the Ravager should sacrifice something in order to fulfill a clear role (increasing the supply-efficiency of a Roach-based army seems like the natural role, but how to do that remains to be defined). A unit should not be in the game for the sole purpose of countering a spell.
*Edit for clarity. Read: should be remade as a 1 supply variant of the unit, not halve the current supply value with stats unchanged.
And all of this is linked to the critical Zerg problematic of mass larvae, which prevents the race from applying early game pressure efficiently because of hyper-development.
+ Show Spoiler +On April 19 2015 06:37 hvylobster wrote:
As well, Ravagers are not light units, meaning they do not take increased damage from Phoenix groups lifting, Colossi's Laser Beams. Small mistake here: Colossi don't deal extra damage to Light units.
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I don't have the beta yet, but I have seen my share of LotV and I completely agree with you. It isn't even so much balance that's the problem with the ravager but too much overlap with the roach and even the hydralisk to some extent. It makes for a less interesting game.
Having more dps and health than a hydralisk means all the hydra has to compensate is the ability to hit air and a lair upgrade that makes them faster with more range. Pretty weak difference and definitely less desirable overall. This also indirectly hurts the lurker as there's less of a reason to build the unit it morphs off of.
The roach? The only good advantage I see with roaches is their hatch-tech burrow movement in LotV. Still, it seems better just to make ravagers and bulldoze through shit. It's largely a better roach.
The ravager dps even gets in the way of the main selling point of the unit, which is the cool skillshot aoe. Every time I see the unit in action corrosive bile seems pretty negligible compared to the insane auto-attack from the ravager's dps. It's like, corrosive bile is dodged then the ravagers just move in and wreck shit along with the roaches on the front lines.
==
To the point.
So my vision for the ravager is a unit that should be in the minority of the army as a support unit in the back line. Roaches and hydralisks should be the bulk of the army as tanks and dps respectively with the ravager supporting as an artillery unit. I suggest the following to experiment with:
- The Ravager's auto-attack be completely removed (it's this or severely nerf that dps)
- Cost changed from 25/75 -> 50/50
- HP reduced from 120 -> 100
- Speed increased from 2.55 -> 3.5 (this is faster than a speed roach off creep)
- Corrosive bile cooldown reduced from 7 sec -> 5 sec
- Delay between corrosive bile launch and landing is reduced from 2.5 sec -> 2 sec
Reasoning:
Removing the auto-attack means the ravager does damage solely through corrosive bile. Corrosive bile already seems too easy to dodge currently so to compensate I'm suggesting it be able to be spammed more frequently and there be less of a window for the opponent to move out of the way. Furthermore, I think dramatically buffing the Ravager's speed (in conjunction with a health reduction) gives Zerg a speedy unit to compliment the relatively immobile roach/hydra comp. It also makes it easier to ambush an army with corrosive bile, which doesn't seem to be the case currently.
Combined with a very slight reduction in cost, I think the thing would still be worth building. Corrosive bile is still good for zoning, destroying force fields, and with greater speed it should be easier to land. Most of all though, this transforms the ravager into a very distinct unit within the Zerg's arsenal. It also would be more of a skill-based unit.
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This is a valid concern, I feel, contrary to a lot of the threads that are popping up lately. The Ravager is really only a "better roach", this isn't very interesting as a Zerg mutation.
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Notice how the people talking in this thread don't have beta access and are complaining that the ravager is too much like a protoss unit. Yeah its a good unit that is expensive and you have to make sure it doesn't die!! Finally, zerg has a strong unit besides mutas!!!!!! that is good in tier 1 and tier 2 fights. Woot fungal is good again!! Lurker pushes are good again.
The real problem is zerg was given irradiate and protoss starts with no chronoboost, where normally they jump ahead at the 11 worker mark in the game from chrono. If they had 2 chronos to put directly into warp gate/econ, or a tech, All the zerg/terran pushes wouldn't work. The problem is that zerg armies are at 170 to 115 supply instead of 170-130 like they were before. Play the beta first and do some benchmarks, then we'll talk. protoss is about 40 seconds behind compared to the other two races for the 11 minute hots benchmarks.
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On April 19 2015 06:57 TheDwf wrote:Yeah, clearly. While the concept of turning the Roach into something else is good as far as I'm concerned, huge issues with the Roach-Hydralisk-Ravager triangle are bound to arise if Blizzard keeps building on top of the existing flawed fundations. Some of the issues are: (1) Roaches should cost 1 supply *. (2) Roaches should not have Protoss stats. (3) Hydralisks should cost 1 supply *. (4) Then, as you say, the Ravager should sacrifice something in order to fulfill a clear role (increasing the supply-efficiency of a Roach-based army seems like the natural role, but how to do that remains to be defined). A unit should not be in the game for the sole purpose of countering a spell.*Edit for clarity. Read: should be remade as a 1 supply variant of the unit, not halve the current supply value with stats unchanged. And all of this is linked to the critical Zerg problematic of mass larvae, which prevents the race from applying early game pressure efficiently because of hyper-development. + Show Spoiler +On April 19 2015 06:37 hvylobster wrote:
As well, Ravagers are not light units, meaning they do not take increased damage from Phoenix groups lifting, Colossi's Laser Beams. Small mistake here: Colossi don't deal extra damage to Light units.
+ Show Spoiler +Mistake removed and replaced with more salient examples.
I believe Zerg's hamstrung early-game push potential is either by design or simply a happy accident; instead of directly applying pressure with a muscular army knocking at the enemy's front door, Zerg is able to apply indirect pressure by expanding and producing drones while appearing idle. The threat of Zergling forces on the map is strong enough to deter all but focused/cutesy pressure that hits before queens are out OR contains units that perform exceptionally well against slow Lings (Hellions, Zealots, Stalkers). I don't think every race needs an ATTACK button at every stage of the game; if I want to play scrappy games focused on early pressure, I'll play Protoss or Terran.
The "flawed foundations" are indeed a bit of a problem, as seen by the current state of Zerg without the crutch of the Swarm Host-*crawler siege tactic. Dramatic redesigns of core units may be asking too much, but, as has been argued time and again, what better time to test a sweeping re-balance than a six-month Beta? I know of a better time: One year ago, well before publically spreading the Beta and putting a clock on time left to test a replacement of TWO of a race's core units.
I have a silly idea for the Ravager that defies its aggressive name: Trade the Roach's mid-range ground attack for a longer ranger air-only attack. It would be Unique, as no other race has a dedicated ground-to-air unit. It would be a Specialization, as Zerg's only anti-air units at Hatch tech in LotV are currently the Queen and an ability on the Ravager. Would it be good? I don't know but it is better than "A Stronger, Larger, Slower Roach With a Different Way Of Circumventing a Force-Field", and it's much better than a unit that does nothing without its ability.
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On April 19 2015 07:24 tokinho wrote:
Notice how the people talking in this thread don't have beta access and are complaining that the ravager is too much like a protoss unit. Etc, etc.
Nobody said anything about the Ravager being "too much like a protoss unit". The closest thing anyone said to that was TheDwf, and he was talking about the ROACH. I am trying to point out the problems of the Ravager from a Zerg design perspective. I don't know enough about Protoss to give advice on how to solve its current early-game issues in LotV; perhaps more starting energy on the first Nexus might help? Start a thread on the official forums about it and see if Blizzard takes it into consideration; I can't post there because I don't have the beta, which is why I'm focusing on a single point rather than more broad considerations like the LotV economy.
I don't care about how strong Ravager timings are, as long as they are optional rather than optimal play. I don't particularly care about the stats of units that are not part of the army supporting the Ravager. What I DO care about is consistency in Zerg's Morph Unit mechanic, as severely reducing the trade-off effectively means the original unit may as well be a costly larva until you morph it.
Also of note is the fact that Ravagers are the only Unit Morph in Zerg's history that does not require an upgrade or tech structure of some sort. Even the Overseer requires Lair-tech; the Lair also grants Overlords an ability that is lost when Morphed into Overseers. As neither Overunits can cause any direct damage, swapping Creep-dropping to temporarily deny expansions for a better scout that can slightly delay upgrade/unit construction timings is indeed a meaningful trade off. Not to mention Morphing all of your Overlords is expensive and does not improve its primary function: Floating Supply Depot.
+ Show Spoiler +Terran's Mechanical Unit Toggle mechanic is clear and consistent on all units except the HotS Thor: press the button to sacrifice mobility for a situationally better attack. If you want we can talk about how the Cyclone also breaks this design convention in a way that's detrimental to gameplay, but the problems with a unit that essentially auto-attacks and continues to fire at Siege-Tank range even through Fog of War should be self-evident.
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They should just greatly reduce (by like 60+%) the basic attack damage of the ravager to make it more of a supporting unit. Perhaps increase hp slightly to compensate. It should be used as mobile light siege and a a counter to forcefields. Then it's a very fun unit I think.
And perhaps make the spell only damage buildings after a lair upgrade to counter unstoppable rushes.
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On April 19 2015 08:18 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
They should just greatly reduce (by like 60+%) the basic attack damage of the ravager to make it more of a supporting unit. Perhaps increase hp slightly to compensate. It should be used as mobile light siege and a a counter to forcefields. Then it's a very fun unit I think.
And perhaps make the spell only damage buildings after a lair upgrade to counter unstoppable rushes.
I'd like to see some typed damage in order to alter the problem of excessive Ravager dps. Maybe 8 +8 light, slightly intensifying the Roach > Ravager > Hydra > Roach triangle. That having been said, even that seems excessive. 6 +6 light? Anything lower, and it would seem a little bit pointless, as it wouldn't even 3-shot a Zergling. The bile shot is hard to hit mobile units with, and also does too much damage when it does hit, which means it slaughters buildings. A slightly radius increase in exchange for lower damage seems to be a good call. Maybe also combined with a slight cooldown nerf, like changing it from 7 seconds to 10 seconds.
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Small detail that seems to be often overlooked, the ravager is a 100/100, 3 supply unit. Not exactly the cheapest thing ever, especially in the early game (though the LotV economy helps).
It does feel a bit strong, but given their cost, and their lower health compared to roaches (only 20% lower, but still lower), rushing to mass them as soon as possible is pretty much an all in.
It's not like you can simply use them instead of roaches. There's a choice to make. The initial economy boost from LotV enables rushing for them, but other than one initial timing that could easily be delayed by tweaking some stats, I'm not sure if they're that much of an issue. At least from my extremely low skill viewpoint, where they haven't magically allowed me to not get wrecked yet 
Also as a sidenote, it's the first time, after five years, that zerg has a 'versatile' unit in the early game. Versatile as in ranged, that can hit both ground and air, like terran has with marines and protoss with stalkers. And they're more expensive while coming later (well maybe on par with stalkers there). *And* their anti-air attack is a skill shot that the opponent sees coming quite some time before it hits. Not really a 1-a destroys everything unit like the warhound, or even an auto-kill anything even without vision like the cyclone.
Leaving them at hatch tier may allow queens to go back to their pure macro role instead of being the one unit that has any chance to defend against... basically anything. Reapers? Hellions? Hellbats? Proxy gates? Proxy Oracle? Wouldn't it be nice if Zerg had more than 1 unit able to defend any of this without sacrificing their economy anyway at the same time?
That may very well be why Blizzard didn't put them at Lair tier in the first place.
I'm not saying the ravager should not be touched at all. We're 3 weeks into the beta, anything goes. But Blizzard may have actually thought about it when they made it available right from the start. And I do believe it's in order to help zerg against the various early attacks that have been killing them since WoL given their lack of a versatile early unit. Except for Queens, who had to get a range buff in order to help in this regard. And we know what happened next
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There is no particular need for a specific additional to morphing units.
Brood lords are entirely different units to corruptors.
Banelings are there to help thin the numbers so that the zerglings can perform better due to less of them dying before they reach their intended targets (far less shots received before getting into mêlée range) and help some of the larva spent on zerglings more supply efficient, so again, they're entirely different.
Lurkers also fill completely different roles.
These units are a lot more expensive than the units from which they morph and also use more supply. Depending on the situation, they may be less supply and/or cost efficient, so clearly they already have their disadvantages without needing some specific additional downside decided by you or anyone else.
Because the measurements of damage are much neater if worked out in old game seconds (i.e. Normal speed values rather than Faster speed), I'll be demonstrating with Normal measurements.
On April 19 2015 06:37 hvylobster wrote:
Ravagers Are Flat Out Better Than Roaches After Your Opponent Gets Reliable Detection
Nonsense. 2.5× the attack rate, but for the supply, that's only 1.667× the damage output for supply.
Suppose we consider gas to be twice as valuable as minerals (generally it's considered it's worth more. 2× is just my choice).
Roach: (75 + (25 × 2)) ÷ (16 × 2) = 15.625 cost per point of damage per game second.
Ravager: (100 + (100 × 2)) ÷ (16 ÷ 0.8) = 15 cost per point of damage per game second.
∴ When treating gas as twice as valuable, Roaches actually deal greater damage per second per point of "a resource".
Range needs to be taken into account, the corrosive bile too, the build time for the strength of the unit, but it's simply not completely superior.
Roaches have greatly increased healing while burrowed, can move while burrowed and already have 145 hit points compared to the 120 hit points of the Ravager which (based on 2× value of gas) costs 2.4× as much for 17.24% less hit points.
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I like this thread cause i agree with you completely.
Imo the ravager is BY FAR the worst designed unit in the current beta.
It doesn't fit as a morph unit, it doesn't fit zerg as a whole, it doesn't even fit in a rts game tbh.
Blizzard's only thoughts could have been: "well people think roaches are boring and zerg players hate forcefields, let's make a unit out of the roach which counters it".
While that might actually not even be a bad starting point, the ravager is really their best take on it? cmon...
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Disruptor is also bad. You may say it's cool, but do you think it will be cool once people become even better at splitting armies? It also favours luck than skill.
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I agreed with teh OP before reading the thread, what the OP outlines (unit morph results in a trade off) is exactly what I dislike about the Ravager. I would rather see the Ravager have more HP, but suddenly transform into a melee unit of some sort (keep the mortar, of course) and then work with it from there. Perhaps make the mortar bigger to keep it's use, but it shouldn't be a unit you spam a ton of whenever you can afford it.
Most of the time you have a "morph" unit it isn't the unit you want to mass. For example, with Zergling Baneling, it is rarely beneficial to have more Banelings than Zerglings. Same with Overlord/Overseer, Hydra/Lurker, and Corrupter/BL. You almost always want to keep a large amount of the former unit.
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On April 19 2015 09:45 Fuchsteufelswild wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 06:37 hvylobster wrote:
Ravagers Are Flat Out Better Than Roaches After Your Opponent Gets Reliable Detection Nonsense. 2.5× the attack rate, but for the supply, that's only 1.667× the damage output for supply. Suppose we consider gas to be twice as valuable as minerals (generally it's considered it's worth more. 2× is just my choice). Roach: (75 + (25 × 2)) ÷ (16 × 2) = 15.625 cost per point of damage per game second. Ravager: (100 + (100 × 2)) ÷ (16 ÷ 0.8) = 15 cost per point of damage per game second. ∴ When treating gas as twice as valuable, Roaches actually deal greater damage per second per point of "a resource". Range needs to be taken into account, the corrosive bile too, the build time for the strength of the unit, but it's simply not completely superior. Roaches have greatly increased healing while burrowed, can move while burrowed and already have 145 hit points compared to the 120 hit points of the Ravager which (based on 2× value of gas) costs 2.4× as much for 17.24% less hit points.
C'mon, that cost/dps disparity is pretty negligible in a realistic game. You're going to have more than enough resources to afford them.
He already addressed that there are some advantages to the roach. Is the ravager 100% superior? No, but the problem is when you take into account the sum of their pros/cons the ravager easily comes out on top. It's to the point of if you have the money are there many scenarios you'd want a roach over a ravager? I can't think of many. This is unusual compared to Zerg's other morphs.
I can imagine many scenarios in which I wouldn't want to morph every other unit except this one. Not only that, Zerg units and their morphs tend to compliment each other. The ravager tends to overshadow the unit it morphs from instead.
I mean, this is like if Brood lords had an anti-air attack with more range but with slightly less dps. Corrutors are still faster and maybe slightly better AA, but BLs wreck everything on the ground and are more than capable of defending themselves from air units. If I have the resources, I doubt I'd be keeping too many corruptors around.
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I don't agree with the OP. The ravager loses all of the beefiness of the roach through the morph.
120HP/1armor for 100/100/3 instead of 145HP/1armor for 75/25/2 is a much, much worse statistic, supply and costwise.
You shrug that off with "I believe it has 25HP less", but this is a massive deal. It is 25HP less for 25/75/1 more. Or let me rephrase that:
2000resources spent on ravagers have 1200 hit points.
2000resources spent on roaches have 2900 hit points.
1950resources spent on hydralisks have 1040 hit points.
--> Costwise, ravagers field only 42% of the roaches beefiness. It's around as beefy as a hydralisk. All of that not even taking into account that the ravager is 1:1 minerals-gas, while roaches and hydras are 66% and 50% cheaper on the gas with 3:1 and 2:1 ratios.
But what about "making all your roaches into ravagers if you have enough money". Ok, so for supplies the stats tell us:
30supply on ravagers have 1200hit points.
30supply on roaches have 2175hit points.
30supply on hydras have 1200hit points.
--> Supplywise, the ravager is as beefy as the tanky hydralisk.
The real deal - besides questionable balance/tech level overall - is how the ravager is just a better hydralisk against ground units.
For 1.5times the supply of a hydralisk, 1.33times overall resource cost - in particular, 2times the gas cost - the ravager has like
1.25times the dps of a hydralisk
1.5times the hit points of a hydralisk
1 extra armor
same range as the hydralisk after the upgrade
+ the corrosive bile ability
The combination of ravagers+roaches is statistically already nearly the same as ravagers+hydra on amove. Then there is corrosive bile which is "quite powerful". The only reason to build hydralisks seems to be to morph lurkers or as anti-air.
And that goes to say that the hydralisk and the roach are already quite similar units in many HotS scenarios, e.g. for defenses against Protoss rushes the choice between hydras and roaches is often a stylistic one. They both have up- and downsides of course and the roach is universally just the better unit, but now there will be another unit at similar range and with similar attack-move outcomes as those two.
The ravager design looks fun - yet redundant. It's not going to be a breakthrough for roach/hydra based play like the viper was or the lurker will be. It's not going to be an alternative lategame siege weapon in its current design. It overlaps a ton with the existing ranged core units of zerg and under the assumption that blizzard will get ravager rushes under control, it has no specific role that couldn't be fullfilled by any other unit, besides of course shooting forcefields. A crap spell that should be tweaked or taken out for the sake of all matchups anyways.
Also, I think that zerg has too many longrange gimmicks now. Corrosive bile, old swarm host, new swarm host, abducts, irradiate. I can only hope that 9range lurkers will somehow get rid of that hole in zergs midgame sieging capabilities, otherwise its going to be ability spam all day.
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Ravager is a noob type unit, making Zerg more A-click race and ruining skill ceiling for the game. The unit has no place in SC and should be absolutely removed from the game!
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On April 19 2015 06:57 TheDwf wrote:Yeah, clearly. While the concept of turning the Roach into something else is good as far as I'm concerned, huge issues with the Roach-Hydralisk-Ravager triangle are bound to arise if Blizzard keeps building on top of the existing flawed fundations. Some of the issues are: (1) Roaches should cost 1 supply *. (2) Roaches should not have Protoss stats. (3) Hydralisks should cost 1 supply *. (4) Then, as you say, the Ravager should sacrifice something in order to fulfill a clear role (increasing the supply-efficiency of a Roach-based army seems like the natural role, but how to do that remains to be defined). A unit should not be in the game for the sole purpose of countering a spell.*Edit for clarity. Read: should be remade as a 1 supply variant of the unit, not halve the current supply value with stats unchanged. And all of this is linked to the critical Zerg problematic of mass larvae, which prevents the race from applying early game pressure efficiently because of hyper-development. + Show Spoiler +On April 19 2015 06:37 hvylobster wrote:
As well, Ravagers are not light units, meaning they do not take increased damage from Phoenix groups lifting, Colossi's Laser Beams. Small mistake here: Colossi don't deal extra damage to Light units.
Do we think enough of Blizzard atm to consider those changes realistic at the moment? I think they're willing to make at most one or two moderate design change in lotv, from what we've seen. Not an overhaul like many of us would like.
The ravager does seem like an odd unit, however it is a neat one. Not great, just neat.
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Haha the qq is real. I completly disagree with the first 2 pages of this thread. Have you ever seen a ravager ball yet? People will make roach and ravager like they make ling and baneling. The ravager is 3 supply, and cost an extra 75 gas, they dont have burrow movement and the regeneration, they are slower.
People are complaining because it is strong right now, Its the best designed unit in LOTV in my opinion, just wait for blizzard to balance things up.
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I share your concerns ; that the Ravager is a more evolved version of the roach makes people think that the Roach itself isn't the most evolved Zerg creature, and as a Roach believer I take great offense for that.
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The difference between ravager and roach is pretty clear especially in zvz.
They cannot tank lings at all.
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i like ravagers,its fun to watch.i don't really think it needs nerfing or redesign.it's pretty balanced in ZvT & made ZvZ interesting.even in ZvP,the only thing that made it strong are because of the timing are too quick & the imba eco.i mean zerg can snowball really quickly even with a minor harass with lings,no need for ravagers.maybe map is a factor too im not sure.this is just what i see from watching stream
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On April 19 2015 14:11 BillGates wrote:
Ravager is a noob type unit, making Zerg more A-click race and ruining skill ceiling for the game. The unit has no place in SC and should be absolutely removed from the game!
Completely 100% disagree.
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I like the ravager. It has a skillful mechanic to it. It's sort of like Kog'Maw from LoL. It took actual skill to be good with Kog's ultimate. While I think the unit is currently a bit too strong, I think the basic design of it is pretty solid.
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On April 19 2015 14:11 BillGates wrote:
Ravager is a noob type unit, making Zerg more A-click race and ruining skill ceiling for the game. The unit has no place in SC and should be absolutely removed from the game!
No, you literally cannot be more clueless than this...
At first I didn't like Ravagers that much when I took a look at their stats, having less HP than a Roach felt strange to me for a unit that is so much bigger and slower. Also they feel like HydraRoaches and you don't want to build much Hydras if your enemy doesn't have air units so I wanted for them to change the design. However, the more I was looking at these games the more I liked Ravagers, people stopped massing them and are using them with Lings/Banelings/Roaches just to zone out enemy or force them to split more. They are also better than any other Zerg unit in the early game for busting the walls.
I don't know, I kind of like them right now but I would still change them a little bit to make them more different from Roaches and Hydras.
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Imo Ravagers are a good unit, finally the zerg has the option to apply pressure in the early game, the mortar type ability is also very useful allowing zergs to do something against the unbreakable forcefields/wall combo.
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On April 19 2015 06:56 Kranyum wrote:
I disagree.
Ravagers are perfect units for the Zerg.
For the past 5 years Zerg had absolutely no way of pressuring the enemy in the first minutes of the game without all-in-ing (and usually a very weak all in for that matter)
This made P and T be greedy and influenced the entire flow of the game. Now the possiblity oif a Ravager push keeps the other races honest in what they can or cannot do.
This is not only a balance issue (as the game can be balanced without such a unit) but also a design issue.
As a Zerg player, I have quit Sc2 in 2010 because of the sheer frustration of having to handle any of the 1 million all-ins and cheezes without any chance of doing the same. It sucked the fun out of the game for me. I have not played since.
In return though no one was able to pressure the Zerg after that bad Queen buff, because they have map control from the get go and almost free defenders advantage. So the other races had to go for a do or die as well or go into a macro game against a race that can produce way more workers, which makes harassment rather inefficient if you lose the units.
A race shouldn't be the best at defending and attacking in one stage of the game tbh. That removes alot of interaction. I love ZvX as there are is some back and forth because there are a couple of role switches on the Zerg side depending on the game phase.
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On April 19 2015 09:45 Fuchsteufelswild wrote:
Nonsense. 2.5× the attack rate, but for the supply, that's only 1.667× the damage output for supply.
Suppose we consider gas to be twice as valuable as minerals (generally it's considered it's worth more. 2× is just my choice).
Roach: (75 + (25 × 2)) ÷ (16 × 2) = 15.625 cost per point of damage per game second.
Ravager: (100 + (100 × 2)) ÷ (16 ÷ 0.8) = 15 cost per point of damage per game second.
∴ When treating gas as twice as valuable, Roaches actually deal greater damage per second per point of "a resource".
Not really that relevant in this case, but this is why you use units in your calculations, and look at them for interpretation. If the unit of your result is cost/dps, and the roach number is higher, this means that it costs more to do the same amount of DPS with roaches, or formulated differently, you do less dps for the same amount of ressources. In this case the difference is neglectible, but still. Please check what the results of your calculations actually mean before using them in an argument.
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On April 19 2015 20:35 FeyFey wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 06:56 Kranyum wrote:
I disagree.
Ravagers are perfect units for the Zerg.
For the past 5 years Zerg had absolutely no way of pressuring the enemy in the first minutes of the game without all-in-ing (and usually a very weak all in for that matter)
This made P and T be greedy and influenced the entire flow of the game. Now the possiblity oif a Ravager push keeps the other races honest in what they can or cannot do.
This is not only a balance issue (as the game can be balanced without such a unit) but also a design issue.
As a Zerg player, I have quit Sc2 in 2010 because of the sheer frustration of having to handle any of the 1 million all-ins and cheezes without any chance of doing the same. It sucked the fun out of the game for me. I have not played since.
In return though no one was able to pressure the Zerg after that bad Queen buff, because they have map control from the get go and almost free defenders advantage. So the other races had to go for a do or die as well or go into a macro game against a race that can produce way more workers, which makes harassment rather inefficient if you lose the units. A race shouldn't be the best at defending and attacking in one stage of the game tbh. That removes alot of interaction. I love ZvX as there are is some back and forth because there are a couple of role switches on the Zerg side depending on the game phase.
That happened when exactly, in WoL? HotS changed that a lot, just with introduction of Hellbats/Widow Mines/Mothership Core/Faster Reapers/Speed Medivacs etc.
Not only that you can apply pressure to the Zerg right now, but you also see top Zergs dying to those "pressure" builds from both races a billion of times.
Zerg is using larvae for units and worker production, if they need to produce a lot of workers they can't produce units at the same time and just because of that fact harassment is rather efficient if you aren't trading horribly. Yes, if you lose 2 Banshees and 6 Hellions for 10 Drones, it is inefficient...
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On April 19 2015 21:23 Ramiz1989 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 20:35 FeyFey wrote:On April 19 2015 06:56 Kranyum wrote:
I disagree.
Ravagers are perfect units for the Zerg.
For the past 5 years Zerg had absolutely no way of pressuring the enemy in the first minutes of the game without all-in-ing (and usually a very weak all in for that matter)
This made P and T be greedy and influenced the entire flow of the game. Now the possiblity oif a Ravager push keeps the other races honest in what they can or cannot do.
This is not only a balance issue (as the game can be balanced without such a unit) but also a design issue.
As a Zerg player, I have quit Sc2 in 2010 because of the sheer frustration of having to handle any of the 1 million all-ins and cheezes without any chance of doing the same. It sucked the fun out of the game for me. I have not played since.
In return though no one was able to pressure the Zerg after that bad Queen buff, because they have map control from the get go and almost free defenders advantage. So the other races had to go for a do or die as well or go into a macro game against a race that can produce way more workers, which makes harassment rather inefficient if you lose the units. A race shouldn't be the best at defending and attacking in one stage of the game tbh. That removes alot of interaction. I love ZvX as there are is some back and forth because there are a couple of role switches on the Zerg side depending on the game phase. That happened when exactly, in WoL? HotS changed that a lot, just with introduction of Hellbats/Widow Mines/Mothership Core/Faster Reapers/Speed Medivacs etc.
Yes. Faster Reapers. Speed Medivacs. Faster, mobile Tank shots. Faster, stronger timings. This is always the same problem. As long as the primitive violence of hyper-development will not be dealt with, the following chain of events will keep happening:
Naturally, violence calls for violence.
Mr. Viewer does not see that his short-term demands may spectacularly backfire in the future (see part I), fueling an “always more” drug-like logic, piling up artificial entertainment upon forced excitement in a rabid succession of blurry, shiny images. What will Mr. Viewer then do, once he's tired of the spectacle? He will say, “This game is shit” and sail away.
Proof? Just above:
On April 19 2015 20:03 polpot wrote:
Imo Ravagers are a good unit, finally the zerg has the option to apply pressure in the early game, the mortar type ability is also very useful allowing zergs to do something against the unbreakable forcefields/wall combo.
(1) Because of hyper-development, if they want to attack in the early game, Zergs tend to launch violent proxy attacks to bust walls (hence ZvT bane busts 2010-2015+).
(2) But Protoss has Forcefield to block Baneling busts + Warpgate as an auto-punishment mechanic (fail your all-in = die to X gate pressure a few minutes later).
(3) So we need a new tool to deal with Forcefield. And thus we introduce a counter to Forcefield: enter Corrosive Bile.
The result of the intrusive creationist approach is a game of cubes. You insert cubes of different shapes into other cubes of different shapes according to the will of the designer.
And then we have a problem, because Protoss just die to Ravager pushes. Timings have the strength of an all-in without being all-in. So we get stronger defensive measures (historically: removal of Siege Mode, Mines, Queen patch, MSC, etc.). And the game becomes “stale”. So we introduce new Blue Flame Hellions: Hellbat drops, Medivac boost, muta regen, Oracles, Disruptors, invincible Ravager Warpgate, etc. Result:
SC2 games, because of hyper-development, tend to degenerate towards (1) all-ins; (2) passive macro; (3) worker bowling.
And the razzia never ends, until no one is left to play the game of cubes.
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On April 19 2015 06:57 ejozl wrote:Show nested quote +Now the lingering question for us to hash out: What should be removed from the Ravager in order to rectify its current severe design overlap with Roaches? I think it should be the tier 1 Zerg spell caster, the Ghost/Sentry of Zerg. It should have no attack, or a very crappy one and should have cost for it's spell. There should be more spells added to it aswell. I think it's already stupid that Viper has 4 spells, out of nowhere, where any other caster has 3.
Yay, more units like sentries and ghosts ^__^
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Ravagers are good, and that's bad.
They are never bad, and that's not good.
There is no race I'd rather nerf, than Zerg.
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On April 19 2015 06:57 TheDwf wrote:
A unit should not be in the game for the sole purpose of countering a spell.
This sums up how awful forcefield design is.
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On April 19 2015 23:35 Umpteen wrote:
Ravagers are good, and that's bad.
They are never bad, and that's not good.
I, on the contrary, think it would be bad if they weren't good. Why would you introduce bad units?
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On April 19 2015 23:40 neptunusfisk wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 23:35 Umpteen wrote:
Ravagers are good, and that's bad.
They are never bad, and that's not good.
I, on the contrary, think it would be bad if they weren't good. Why would you introduce bad units?
Why would you introduce units when there are bad units in the game?
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On April 19 2015 23:39 royalroadweed wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 06:57 TheDwf wrote:
A unit should not be in the game for the sole purpose of countering a spell.
This sums up how awful forcefield design is.
I still think focefields aren't really the problem.
The problem is:
1. They are usable early on, thus you can fairly easily produce a lot of them (and gain a lot of energy by building them early) -> forcefields are spamable
2. The general mechanical barrier for casting a spell is too low in sc2. Smartcast DESTROYS what you actually can do with spell design
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On April 20 2015 00:05 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 23:39 royalroadweed wrote:On April 19 2015 06:57 TheDwf wrote:
A unit should not be in the game for the sole purpose of countering a spell.
This sums up how awful forcefield design is. I still think focefields aren't really the problem. The problem is: 1. They are usable early on, thus you can fairly easily produce a lot of them (and gain a lot of energy by building them early) -> forcefields are spamable 2. The general mechanical barrier for casting a spell is too low in sc2. Smartcast DESTROYS what you actually can do with spell design
@1) The thing is, forcefields aren't that useful later on once the range of units picks up and all sorts of countermechanics like medivacs, burrow movement, air units (mutalisks sniping the sentries), massive>forcefield start kicking in.
On top of that there is a gas tension between sentries and other units, in particular the other two gateway units: HTs/Archons to begin with.
And that is still just the strategical point of view. The gamemechanics view is rather simple for me:
1) creating a longlasting, invulnerable barrier is hardly more entertaining than having free units prevent moveouts
2) once my army is split by forcefields, there is little I can do to safe them. Unless I have certain gimmicks of course.
3) forcefield is a formation killer and unit mover on a large scale. My opponent gets to move my armies around, which is a complete loss of control for the player.
4) at the very least, units should block forcefields from being produced instead of being pushed around by them. A particular stupid case are forcefield donuts that can compress armies in smaller spaces than they should take. That's just a case of bug abuse that hasn't been fixed, I guess because blizzard has no clue how to stop the bug from occuring with the pathing engine they use.
5) the spell artificially messes up the pathing AI. Units that try to retreat through forcefields instead of going long ways around them or finding the holes in them is just bad pathing that no other walling mechanic or map feature produces. Either the units are always dumb, or they are always clever. Messing up the AI is just a terrible extra gimmick on the forcefield.
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1.) Well i am not really saying that forcefields would work in sc2 later in the game too well.
I just don't believe in this: "it reduces micro from the opponent => it's bad" tbh.
As i said, this is really only a problem when the protoss can just spam them, no matter how bad your forcefields are, you will get value out of it.
On the other hand there were situations where the protoss had a very limited amount of ff availabe, he casted them perfectly (no overlap, no spam) and these situations are exciting imo. I can appreciate it.
1) Well i don't agree with that, the one is a very active process, the other not so much.
2) Sure, but you can argue that this SHOULD be that way. If there is no risk/reward, well there is no point in adding this gameplay action. (i completely agree though that it is frustrating, especially when the enemy can just spam it IMO)
3) I think this is more of a map problem cause toss absolutely needs ff, i agree, but that's not really a problem with the spell itself so much, it's rather the current implementation
4) Again, if you can make these just by spaming 10 forcefields, it's boring and i agree with you. If you have to hit them nearly perfectly (almost no overlap, etc) i think it would be no big deal.
5) Again the implemenation, i agree with that obviously.
I know that you don't agree with my second point in my initial post, but i really think this spamable (be it through cd OR the low mechanical requirement of casting itself => it's worth to build a lot of casters), is hurting sc2 more than it is helping it.
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On April 20 2015 01:02 The_Red_Viper wrote:
1.) Well i am not really saying that forcefields would work in sc2 later in the game too well.
I just don't believe in this: "it reduces micro from the opponent => it's bad" tbh.
As i said, this is really only a problem when the protoss can just spam them, no matter how bad your forcefields are, you will get value out of it.
On the other hand there were situations where the protoss had a very limited amount of ff availabe, he casted them perfectly (no overlap, no spam) and these situations are exciting imo. I can appreciate it.
1) Well i don't agree with that, the one is a very active process, the other not so much.
2) Sure, but you can argue that this SHOULD be that way. If there is no risk/reward, well there is no point in adding this gameplay action. (i completely agree though that it is frustrating, especially when the enemy can just spam it IMO)
3) I think this is more of a map problem cause toss absolutely needs ff, i agree, but that's not really a problem with the spell itself so much, it's rather the current implementation
4) Again, if you can make these just by spaming 10 forcefields, it's boring and i agree with you. If you have to hit them nearly perfectly (almost no overlap, etc) i think it would be no big deal.
5) Again the implemenation, i agree with that obviously.
I know that you don't agree with my second point in my initial post, but i really think this spamable (be it through cd OR the low mechanical requirement of casting itself => it's worth to build a lot of casters), is hurting sc2 more than it is helping it.
We are getting pretty deep into philosophical territory if you want to reason your second point with me, which is why I skipped it. The easier to reason part of it is this view of mine:
I don't agree with your second point because for any game the handling of a vanilia mechanic itself should be as easy as possible. The hard part should be the correct application of it and the combination with other mechanics.
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Well i think non smartcast is pretty close to that philosophy too tbh.
You choose the unit(s) you wanna control and do so (press the button -> activate the spell)
It's not really different (mechanically) than selecting all your marines and stimming them.
You select all => every single one will stim
You select all high templer => every single one will storm
It's coherent, it makes sense.
You obviously will say that there is no situation ever where storming with all of them at the exact same position will be the intent of the player. Sure, but why did you select all of them in the first place?
In the end i simply don't see that selecting specific units is a bad thing in a rts game, it only makes sense tbh (and it allows stronger spells without the fear of it being too strong when the player decides to spam it through massing the spellcaster)
Sometimes you just have to look at it at a case to case perspective, even if it would violate (kinda) your initial POV
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On April 20 2015 02:14 The_Red_Viper wrote:
Well i think non smartcast is pretty close to that philosophy too tbh.
You choose the unit(s) you wanna control and do so (press the button -> activate the spell)
It's not really different (mechanically) than selecting all your marines and stimming them.
You select all => every single one will stim
You select all high templer => every single one will storm
It's coherent, it makes sense.
You obviously will say that there is no situation ever where storming with all of them at the exact same position will be the intent of the player. Sure, but why did you select all of them in the first place?
In the end i simply don't see that selecting specific units is a bad thing in a rts game, it only makes sense tbh (and it allows stronger spells without the fear of it being too strong when the player decides to spam it through massing the spellcaster)
Sometimes you just have to look at it at a case to case perspective, even if it would violate (kinda) your initial POV
Well, this leads up to the second part why I'm against treating spellcasters differently. There is no initial difference between a spell, an attack, a move command or any other command you give the unit. A marine commanded to attack is an as specialized action as a marauder sent to attack as a high templar sent to storm.
Each of those commands should be implemented so its usage is as easy as possible. Smartcasting is plainly more fitting to casting storms than not having it.
A unit having its own idle-attack behavior is simply more fitting than an idle-noresponse behavior. An attack move command is simply more fitting than the unit actually just going to the clicked place and shooting the ground. A harvest resource command is simply more enjoyable if you don't have to send the unit to harvest, send it back and repeat.
A spell is also just a command given to a unit to fullfill a certain of its capabilities. Some of them are different in the way that they use additional local resources - energy, charges - besides the more frequent local resources like cooldown times, but others like the corrosive bile are just alternate attacks that haven't been automated properly. And that doesn't even mean that they haven't been automated properly for intenteded reasons, it could very well be that the game developers haven't found a good way to do so.
You see, I'm not treating spellcasters any differently than other units. There is no magical rule that tells me how a spellcaster is a different category of unit and a spell a different category of ability. Even in broodwar, spellcasters could be core army units and their spells core forms of attacking the opponent (e.g. the Science Vessel, high templar). But of course, moreso in SC2 with its smartcasts and different designs (sentry, infestor, high templar). Therefore I don't see the point in stupifying the attack of the high templar, when we don't do it with the zealot.
So I'd strongly aruge the other way around: make it so that the high templar becomes as similar to a mover-shooter as possible and try to remove its feedback and storm buttons if some better form of control is available.
This is one of the things that I believe blizzard has gotten absolutely right with the cyclone. The lock-on should be on autocast. The only reason not to have it on autocast - given its inexistent costs and low cooldown - is if your opponent tries to abuse it, which is countermicro and should be rewarded. But given a random combat scenario in which you don't targetfire, there is little reason not to just lock onto whatever gets into your range.
This is of course a player perspective, which I think is the most important perspective when designing a game.
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finally Z has a hatchtech unit that comes early and can harrass wall offs (in wol and hots Z just couldnt harrass T or P AT ALL without completely going all in). they need to let it be hatchtech without any techbuilding just morphed from roaches so Z can finally attack without going all in early game.
as far as their stats go i agree they might be too strong but thats what a beta is for. i guess making them faster and letting corrossive bile hit faster while nerfing their autoattack hard would be a nice fix. i dont like completely removing the autoattack since that would be too much of a hit or miss unit but nerfing it a lot would be good.
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What if corrosive bile didn't do any damage to ground units and merely destroyed forcefields unless the Ravager was burrowed?
I know that's seems to overlap with the lurker on a superficial level, but their attacks deal completely different types of splash, and have to be dealt with in differing ways. You could give them a really slow burrow time to balance it, as well as making them visible, yet still cloaked, while burrowed. That way you don't just have a bunch of souped-up HydraRoaches running around, popping off siege tank blasts, unless they are chasing air units or leveling a bunch of forcefields. It would even make a fair bit of sense, since an artillery unit usually wants to brace itself for the kickback before firing a hefty shot. And with the volcano look of the unit, it would even make sense for the glowing tip to be visible while burrowed.
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It should be noted that the ravager could be considered a negative thing. It means you can fit less units and therefore less dps in the same area/concave. I think the unit is perfect for zerg for the same reason a lot of other people are feeling the same. It allows early agression and makes the sentry less of a safe unit. The sentry is not useless, but it is a lot less massable as it is less reliable.
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Ravager is duuuuuummb. Just give the ability to break forcefields to the lurker.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Just make Ravagers not able to attack, so they will be like Zerg equivalent of Sentries.
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I'd rather have them remove the roach, put hydras at hatch tech, and then allow hydras to morph into either lurkers or ravagers at lair tech (and then make ravager have tankier stats similar to roaches, but preserving hydra dps). It would give Zerg what they most want (anti air at hatch tech) while making the hydra relevant as a unit again, preserving the identity of one of my favorite units from bw (which has been destroyed in sc2)., and then allowing the ravager to be a stronger unit that can fill a specific role (tankier anti-ground with a unique ability) instead of making us ask the question "roach, ravager, or hydra?".
For the sake of this theory crafting, make hydras have armor so hellions don't melt them in the early game (which is probably one reason blizz decided to put in a new armored unit at hatch tech). Thanks for nothing, hellions.
I've never understood the reason to put hydras at lair tech and include roaches as a new, hydra-that-is-armored-and-can't-attack-air unit, but maybe that's just me.
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On April 20 2015 04:51 Existor wrote:
Just make Ravagers not able to attack, so they will be like Zerg equivalent of Sentries.
This really does seem like the best trade-off to make with it.
Keeps it from encroaching too heavily on the function of the roach and hydra, while complimenting both with it's own unique zoning abilities while destroying forcefields.
Think it would also help in reducing their rushing potency.
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Arguing that ravagers don't fit Zerg design because they're morphed makes zero sense; the concept that morphed units are very different from the units they morph from isn't some core part of Zerg design, it's a coincidence that morphed units have in common. Nothing is made terribly inconsistent in the nature of playing Zerg if the ravager doesn't fit that pattern.
Let's put it a different way. If the Ravager was a unit that you made from larva (not from morphing a roach), with a cost of 100/100 and a supply of 3 and a build time of t(roach build) + t(ravager morph), would you still be complaining that the ravager needs changes?
If yes, then invoking "but but it's morphed from roaches, it has to be different!" is besides the point here, because your problem is with the unit, not that it morphs from a roach.
And as mentioned before, the increase in supply cost is a huge tradeoff.
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I think that Ravagers weren't in a bad direction at their Blizzcon iteration, where they had 180HP, far less DPS.
However, in their actual version, Ravagers make little sense to me. At their cost, and considering their stats, they overlap with Hydralisks as DPS ground units.
Ravagers: 120HP with 20DPS, 100/100/3 (40HP/supply, 33/33 cost per supply, 6.66 DPS per supply).
6 range, 2.75 speed (HotS value refernce, no timescale conversion). No need to upgrade.
Skillshot with 8-9 range that deals heavy damage against immobile units.
Hatch Tech.
Hydralisk: 80 HP, 16 DPS, 100/50/2 (40HP/supply, 50/25 supply, 8 DPS per supply).
5 range (6 with upgrade), 2.25 speed (2.81 with upgrade). Need to upgrade. (150/150 upgrade)
Lair Tech. (150/100)
Blizzcon Ravager was quite different. 180 HP, 12 DPS, 100/100/3. (60HP/supply, 4DPS/supply). Stats-wise, the role of Ravagers was far more similar to a Roach, while actual Ravagers are stat-wise far more similar to Hydralisks on combat.
Funny to say that maths don't lie much, if you go and test same supply of Hydras(upgraded) vs Ravagers on the unit tester, they trade very similar in very close fights. Obviously, Ravager size plays against the positioning in fights.
Even if numbers aren't all, they are suspiciously close. The gas difference per supply is also quite interesting to consider, specially if we think at the time Ravagers hit the field. considering 30 supply Ravagers and Hydras (10 Ravagers, 15 hydras) have a difference of gas cost of 280, which is more or less the estructural cost of getting access to upgraded hydralisks (250), (considering moving to Lair anyways in both cases, even if Ravagers don't need it). That means that, in the early game, you can go up to a pressure-supply of Ravagers at the same cost it would cost you to get to the same supply of Hydras, without having to wait the total combined build time of Hydra Den + upgrade (around 2:30 mins).
So it's not like they have really achieved a very substantial difference with Roach/Ravager stats over Roach/Hydralisk compo considering effiency per supply and costs. Ravaeger compos are theoretically slightly ahead, specially with the extra DPS that some good biles can provide.
And in the early game their strength, specially provided by the time saving.
Hydralisks are in most cases less useful as plainly fighting units now, with their pressence only reinforced by their Lurker mutation.
However I think that Ravagers have shown a good option for early game pressure, but the same effect could be achieved by moving Hydralisks to hatch tech with their AA functionality delayed, and with small tweaks. Range upgrade at Lair would allow them to attack air instead of 6 range. 6 range from the start would allow hydras to keep better with bio, and trade quite decently with Hellions because of the range advantage. That would create new gameflow interactions, with Hydralisks being vulnerable to air openings, but allowing them to counter air by almost the same time they can do now. For example, imagine ZvP against Oracle/Phoenix openings. The time cost to get air counter to air is Lair+Den (80+45s). It could be the same cost (45+80s upgrade,) without really forcing the player to go Lair. However that requirement could be set again if Hydra pressence becomes too common or too early, depending on how viable it gets and the new build orders that could be created around this. Gas costs are also a natural balancer.
However, that would mean that Roaches or Hydralisks might need to be slighlty rebalanced, specially with the new econ.
Anyways, Roach/Ravager adjustements are going to become a need in short future, as their strength is quite noticeable, specially in ZvP. And even more if we introduce a new econ model that benefits expansion like Double Harvest/ BW economy. I've always thought that the 120HP makes far more sense for Roaches if they had more speed and maybe better HP regen, something that makes quite sense as they are "assault" units (their ingame-definition).
Maybe we need to definitely move Ravagers to Lair tech as Lurkers are, and give them some more utility.
The good conceptual introduction with the Ravager is the skillshot, something quite interesting to play against Mech (sieged tanks), Forcefileds, and static defense, forcing engagements and punishing turtles. The Ravager doesn't need to be the early/midgame glass cannon of Zerg. I think that a more "artillery" approach would be nice, by having 7/8 range by default and being less damage-efficient, but maybe more tanky, like mini-siege tanks with no splash, allowing the Zerg army to have better ranged units while other cheap ones (zerglings, roaches) engage and tank damage. Most ranged units move around 6 range, so it makes some sense. Also more HP would make sense on a ravager since they are also "concieved" to act as a counter to units like Siege tanks that are immobile and have strong firepower.
Damage and CD can be readjusted to balance Corrosive bile.
My thoughts.
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On April 20 2015 05:40 goofyballer wrote:
Arguing that ravagers don't fit Zerg design because they're morphed makes zero sense; the concept that morphed units are very different from the units they morph from isn't some core part of Zerg design, it's a coincidence that morphed units have in common. Nothing is made terribly inconsistent in the nature of playing Zerg if the ravager doesn't fit that pattern.
Let's put it a different way. If the Ravager was a unit that you made from larva (not from morphing a roach), with a cost of 100/100 and a supply of 3 and a build time of t(roach build) + t(ravager morph), would you still be complaining that the ravager needs changes?
If yes, then invoking "but but it's morphed from roaches, it has to be different!" is besides the point here, because your problem is with the unit, not that it morphs from a roach.
And as mentioned before, the increase in supply cost is a huge tradeoff.
The reason morphed units tend to have substantial trade-offs is that morph allows one to recycle a unit already on the field anywhere they want on the map. Thus eliminating any travel distance from production facilities to the desired location of said unit. The trade-off is to keep things balanced and present an interesting choice for the Zerg in giving up the unit for an entirely different function. This also gives it another distinguishing feature from warp-ins.
As for whether I'd complain about the ravager if it wasn't a morph. Well, let's see..
- Inherent range 6 (+1 more than the hydra before upgrade and +2 more than the roach)
- Zoning/forcefield-killing spell with range 9 that doesn't interrupt the attack animation
- greater dps and hp than the hydra
- only 25 less hp than the roach, but 40 more than the hydra
- hatch tech
Yeah, I think I'd still complain as there's still the overlap between the roach and hydra. It simply needs more to differentiate it. Yeah hydras hit air, roaches can burrow to regen health and both have speed upgrades, but that's pretty uninspiring in my book.
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It's funny how people come to the same concerns - overlap with roach/hydra + corrosive bile being an antiforcefield sidekick ability - that I have voiced since they revealed the unit at blizzcon. Though I still think the unit looks at least more fun than most other units in the game and has great strategic potential to break walls in the early game.
Dear blizzard, please greatly tune down the autoattack for more focus on the corrosive bile or plainly make the corrosive bile the standard attack for the ravager (in some form). Possibly with an attack ground option.
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The Ravager right now as a unit makes no sense. It is huge visually yet has only 125 hp. Its tech requirements are too low and its dps is ridiculously high, even higher than a hydras. The corrosive bile ability serves no purpose other than to waste the time of both players: it is easy to cast and easy to dodge. My suggest to change the ravager: Increase HP to 145 (same as roaches), make it lair tech, increase morph time to around 18 seconds, remove corrosive bile and replace its regular attack with a slow dodgeable projectile attack that lobs balls of green goo with 2 sec cooldown. The green goo does about 30 damage and detonates with a small aoe after 10 seconds or if an enemy unit touches it, kind of like the biogun from unreal tournament. Now the unit actually can serve a clear purpose, which is to deny territory for the enemy to manuver on.
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I still hold the positoin that the Hydra and/or Roach needs to be changed to fit in the Ravager (so they don't overlap). Don't agree with making it more spellcaster focussed. I think its interesting as a "normal" unit with a skillshot, but its stats obviously needs to be refined somewhat.
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On April 19 2015 07:46 hvylobster wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 06:57 TheDwf wrote:Yeah, clearly. While the concept of turning the Roach into something else is good as far as I'm concerned, huge issues with the Roach-Hydralisk-Ravager triangle are bound to arise if Blizzard keeps building on top of the existing flawed fundations. Some of the issues are: (1) Roaches should cost 1 supply *. (2) Roaches should not have Protoss stats. (3) Hydralisks should cost 1 supply *. (4) Then, as you say, the Ravager should sacrifice something in order to fulfill a clear role (increasing the supply-efficiency of a Roach-based army seems like the natural role, but how to do that remains to be defined). A unit should not be in the game for the sole purpose of countering a spell.*Edit for clarity. Read: should be remade as a 1 supply variant of the unit, not halve the current supply value with stats unchanged. And all of this is linked to the critical Zerg problematic of mass larvae, which prevents the race from applying early game pressure efficiently because of hyper-development. + Show Spoiler +On April 19 2015 06:37 hvylobster wrote:
As well, Ravagers are not light units, meaning they do not take increased damage from Phoenix groups lifting, Colossi's Laser Beams. Small mistake here: Colossi don't deal extra damage to Light units. + Show Spoiler +Mistake removed and replaced with more salient examples. I don't think every race needs an ATTACK button at every stage of the game; if I want to play scrappy games focused on early pressure, I'll play Protoss or Terran.
I respectfully disagree, I think all races should have viable attack and defense options at all points in the game (at least reasonable options for each).
Aggression has a tendency toward advantage in sc2. In other words, 1 zerg is attacking another zerg with ling bane. The attacking player has the advantage, in that he controls the pace of the attack and when he returns to droning. The attacker knows how much he will commit to an attack while the defender is left guessing. Therefore, if one player is always defending... typical for zerg... then imo he is put at a disadvantage (typically this is true, unless the defender of course guesses perfectly and then responds correctly).
Otherwise don't we just run into another current zerg issue... The early game is basically just expand, drone, defend? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Let's not forget, fun is also a HUGE and LEGITIMATE component of the game... I stopped play sc2, because it just became an miserable experience and I felt mostly bitter after every game I played. Most of WOL and early HOTS didn't feel that way to me, typically I was excited to play and the game felt evolving to me.
Being a zerg player eventually I got so bored, I switched to terran simple to have millions of viable opening options! Learning and trying all the different ones was extremely fun! IMO every race will have sooo much more playability and fun if they can open in a multitude of ways.
(and I'm sorry... one base bane doesn't count, I mean non-allin openings. Even zerg two base attacks feel very allin-ish).
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On April 19 2015 22:54 TheDwf wrote:Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 21:23 Ramiz1989 wrote:On April 19 2015 20:35 FeyFey wrote:On April 19 2015 06:56 Kranyum wrote:
I disagree.
Ravagers are perfect units for the Zerg.
For the past 5 years Zerg had absolutely no way of pressuring the enemy in the first minutes of the game without all-in-ing (and usually a very weak all in for that matter)
This made P and T be greedy and influenced the entire flow of the game. Now the possiblity oif a Ravager push keeps the other races honest in what they can or cannot do.
This is not only a balance issue (as the game can be balanced without such a unit) but also a design issue.
As a Zerg player, I have quit Sc2 in 2010 because of the sheer frustration of having to handle any of the 1 million all-ins and cheezes without any chance of doing the same. It sucked the fun out of the game for me. I have not played since.
In return though no one was able to pressure the Zerg after that bad Queen buff, because they have map control from the get go and almost free defenders advantage. So the other races had to go for a do or die as well or go into a macro game against a race that can produce way more workers, which makes harassment rather inefficient if you lose the units. A race shouldn't be the best at defending and attacking in one stage of the game tbh. That removes alot of interaction. I love ZvX as there are is some back and forth because there are a couple of role switches on the Zerg side depending on the game phase. That happened when exactly, in WoL? HotS changed that a lot, just with introduction of Hellbats/Widow Mines/Mothership Core/Faster Reapers/Speed Medivacs etc. Yes. Faster Reapers. Speed Medivacs. Faster, mobile Tank shots. Faster, stronger timings. This is always the same problem. As long as the primitive violence of hyper-development will not be dealt with, the following chain of events will keep happening: Show nested quote +Mr. Viewer does not see that his short-term demands may spectacularly backfire in the future (see part I), fueling an “always more” drug-like logic, piling up artificial entertainment upon forced excitement in a rabid succession of blurry, shiny images. What will Mr. Viewer then do, once he's tired of the spectacle? He will say, “This game is shit” and sail away. Proof? Just above: Show nested quote +On April 19 2015 20:03 polpot wrote:
Imo Ravagers are a good unit, finally the zerg has the option to apply pressure in the early game, the mortar type ability is also very useful allowing zergs to do something against the unbreakable forcefields/wall combo. (1) Because of hyper-development, if they want to attack in the early game, Zergs tend to launch violent proxy attacks to bust walls (hence ZvT bane busts 2010-2015+). (2) But Protoss has Forcefield to block Baneling busts + Warpgate as an auto-punishment mechanic (fail your all-in = die to X gate pressure a few minutes later). (3) So we need a new tool to deal with Forcefield. And thus we introduce a counter to Forcefield: enter Corrosive Bile. Show nested quote +The result of the intrusive creationist approach is a game of cubes. You insert cubes of different shapes into other cubes of different shapes according to the will of the designer. And then we have a problem, because Protoss just die to Ravager pushes. Timings have the strength of an all-in without being all-in. So we get stronger defensive measures (historically: removal of Siege Mode, Mines, Queen patch, MSC, etc.). And the game becomes “stale”. So we introduce new Blue Flame Hellions: Hellbat drops, Medivac boost, muta regen, Oracles, Disruptors, invincible Ravager Warpgate, etc. Result: Show nested quote +SC2 games, because of hyper-development, tend to degenerate towards (1) all-ins; (2) passive macro; (3) worker bowling. And the razzia never ends, until no one is left to play the game of cubes.
I think you have some real wisdom on the flaws of sc2. I agree with about 90% of what you're saying (assuming I'm actually correctly understanding that much of your article  ), you make REALLY good points about hard counters.
Fuck hard counters.
I really hope Blizzard goes all-in with changes. Little baby steps won't make sc2 a great game imo. The time is now.
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I think Ravager is a very well designed unit.
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This is one of the things that I believe blizzard has gotten absolutely right with the cyclone. The lock-on should be on autocast.
I agree. Real micro has always been about how you move your units in reaction to how the enemy moves his units. Forcing a lot of button-spams is an inefficient way of increasing the skillcap.
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On April 20 2015 02:50 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2015 02:14 The_Red_Viper wrote:
Well i think non smartcast is pretty close to that philosophy too tbh.
You choose the unit(s) you wanna control and do so (press the button -> activate the spell)
It's not really different (mechanically) than selecting all your marines and stimming them.
You select all => every single one will stim
You select all high templer => every single one will storm
It's coherent, it makes sense.
You obviously will say that there is no situation ever where storming with all of them at the exact same position will be the intent of the player. Sure, but why did you select all of them in the first place?
In the end i simply don't see that selecting specific units is a bad thing in a rts game, it only makes sense tbh (and it allows stronger spells without the fear of it being too strong when the player decides to spam it through massing the spellcaster)
Sometimes you just have to look at it at a case to case perspective, even if it would violate (kinda) your initial POV Well, this leads up to the second part why I'm against treating spellcasters differently. There is no initial difference between a spell, an attack, a move command or any other command you give the unit. A marine commanded to attack is an as specialized action as a marauder sent to attack as a high templar sent to storm. Each of those commands should be implemented so its usage is as easy as possible. Smartcasting is plainly more fitting to casting storms than not having it. A unit having its own idle-attack behavior is simply more fitting than an idle-noresponse behavior. An attack move command is simply more fitting than the unit actually just going to the clicked place and shooting the ground. A harvest resource command is simply more enjoyable if you don't have to send the unit to harvest, send it back and repeat. A spell is also just a command given to a unit to fullfill a certain of its capabilities. Some of them are different in the way that they use additional local resources - energy, charges - besides the more frequent local resources like cooldown times, but others like the corrosive bile are just alternate attacks that haven't been automated properly. And that doesn't even mean that they haven't been automated properly for intenteded reasons, it could very well be that the game developers haven't found a good way to do so. You see, I'm not treating spellcasters any differently than other units. There is no magical rule that tells me how a spellcaster is a different category of unit and a spell a different category of ability. Even in broodwar, spellcasters could be core army units and their spells core forms of attacking the opponent (e.g. the Science Vessel, high templar). But of course, moreso in SC2 with its smartcasts and different designs (sentry, infestor, high templar). Therefore I don't see the point in stupifying the attack of the high templar, when we don't do it with the zealot. So I'd strongly aruge the other way around: make it so that the high templar becomes as similar to a mover-shooter as possible and try to remove its feedback and storm buttons if some better form of control is available. This is one of the things that I believe blizzard has gotten absolutely right with the cyclone. The lock-on should be on autocast. The only reason not to have it on autocast - given its inexistent costs and low cooldown - is if your opponent tries to abuse it, which is countermicro and should be rewarded. But given a random combat scenario in which you don't targetfire, there is little reason not to just lock onto whatever gets into your range. This is of course a player perspective, which I think is the most important perspective when designing a game.
I am not quite getting your point i am afraid.
If anything having no smartcast behaves like these other commands. You have 10 marines, you select them all and attack move towards point x/y. Every single marine will do as you say.
You select all your high templar and cast storm on point x/y, every single high templar will storm there.
It's constant, it behaves like every other command in the game.
Smartcast is different though, it basically tells me when i select all my high templar and storm : "hey player! You cannot be that dumb, this makes no sense!".
Sure, it is easier, but it is also inconsistent imo. It's almost like i select my whole army and focus fire unit X and the game decides for me that i only need half my army and changes the command so i don't lose dps.
Would it be easier? Yes. But it also would be inconsistent if you ask me.
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While I think the idea of making a spells ability "destroys forcefields" is stupid, I also think force field has way too strong of an impact in earlier and midgame. They could always just make it like a timewarp or reduce the duration by a lot. This would at least gives Zergs some ability to control their units instead of just derping around.
But I wouldn't say that the ravager is a bad unit because it has the ability to destroy FFs. It's just silly.
Regarding the cyclone and auto cast... In general, auto cast mechanics are bad, and make the unit gimmicky (see widow mine). While there is some potential for an opponent to micro against it, you can no longer micro it. It adds little to the micro depth of the player using it.
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On April 20 2015 22:13 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2015 02:50 Big J wrote:On April 20 2015 02:14 The_Red_Viper wrote:
Well i think non smartcast is pretty close to that philosophy too tbh.
You choose the unit(s) you wanna control and do so (press the button -> activate the spell)
It's not really different (mechanically) than selecting all your marines and stimming them.
You select all => every single one will stim
You select all high templer => every single one will storm
It's coherent, it makes sense.
You obviously will say that there is no situation ever where storming with all of them at the exact same position will be the intent of the player. Sure, but why did you select all of them in the first place?
In the end i simply don't see that selecting specific units is a bad thing in a rts game, it only makes sense tbh (and it allows stronger spells without the fear of it being too strong when the player decides to spam it through massing the spellcaster)
Sometimes you just have to look at it at a case to case perspective, even if it would violate (kinda) your initial POV Well, this leads up to the second part why I'm against treating spellcasters differently. There is no initial difference between a spell, an attack, a move command or any other command you give the unit. A marine commanded to attack is an as specialized action as a marauder sent to attack as a high templar sent to storm. Each of those commands should be implemented so its usage is as easy as possible. Smartcasting is plainly more fitting to casting storms than not having it. A unit having its own idle-attack behavior is simply more fitting than an idle-noresponse behavior. An attack move command is simply more fitting than the unit actually just going to the clicked place and shooting the ground. A harvest resource command is simply more enjoyable if you don't have to send the unit to harvest, send it back and repeat. A spell is also just a command given to a unit to fullfill a certain of its capabilities. Some of them are different in the way that they use additional local resources - energy, charges - besides the more frequent local resources like cooldown times, but others like the corrosive bile are just alternate attacks that haven't been automated properly. And that doesn't even mean that they haven't been automated properly for intenteded reasons, it could very well be that the game developers haven't found a good way to do so. You see, I'm not treating spellcasters any differently than other units. There is no magical rule that tells me how a spellcaster is a different category of unit and a spell a different category of ability. Even in broodwar, spellcasters could be core army units and their spells core forms of attacking the opponent (e.g. the Science Vessel, high templar). But of course, moreso in SC2 with its smartcasts and different designs (sentry, infestor, high templar). Therefore I don't see the point in stupifying the attack of the high templar, when we don't do it with the zealot. So I'd strongly aruge the other way around: make it so that the high templar becomes as similar to a mover-shooter as possible and try to remove its feedback and storm buttons if some better form of control is available. This is one of the things that I believe blizzard has gotten absolutely right with the cyclone. The lock-on should be on autocast. The only reason not to have it on autocast - given its inexistent costs and low cooldown - is if your opponent tries to abuse it, which is countermicro and should be rewarded. But given a random combat scenario in which you don't targetfire, there is little reason not to just lock onto whatever gets into your range. This is of course a player perspective, which I think is the most important perspective when designing a game. I am not quite getting your point i am afraid. If anything no smartcast behaves like these other commands. You have 10 marines, you select them all and attack move towards point x/y. Every single marine will do as you say. You select all your high templar and cast storm on point x/y, every single high templar will storm there. It's constant, it behaves like every other command in the game. Smartcast is different though, it basically tells me when i select all my high templar and storm : "hey player! You cannot be that dumb, this makes no sense!". Sure, it is easier, but it is also inconsistent imo. It's almost like i select my whole army and focus fire unit X and the game decides for me that i only need half my army and changes the command so i don't lose dps. Would it be easier? Yes. But it also would be inconsistent if you ask me.
The core idea is that units should have a common sense and the commands you give them should combine the obvious tasks. And that I don't differentiate between a spell command or any other command.
An example common sense on units is retaliation and aggro radius. Units don't just sit there and take shots since Broodwar, a major advancement that made the game more enjoyable than WC2 (at least I think it was still there in WC2, at least in some forms; haven't played it in a looooong time  ).
The standard command isn't "sit here and do nothing" for an idle unit anymore. You need to specifically tell a unit to do nothing now (hold position). Why? Because it was figured out that this behaviour is more efficient than the original, reverse and "more consistent" behaviour of a unit doing nothing unless told to do something.
An example of a smart command is the attack command. The attack command is not a simple "attack this target/location" in modern RTS games. It's rather a semi-optimal combination of move and attack commands:
- if target == unit: move to unit and attack it
- else if target == location: take the shortest way to move as close as possible to that location and take out all units on the way there
Why? Why don't we get an error message if we use the attack command on an empty space and why do we have this super-automation tool of attack-move built into it that removes the skill to manually attack targets on your way to the opponent? Because it makes the command clever. The engine tells itself: "He cannot be that dumb. He wants to move there and attack stuff on his way, not try to shoot into the empty space from across the map."
This is the way all units and commands should be designed, hence, smartcast for spells that you never want to use 2times at the same location at once. Hence, autocast for the lock-on since you rather waste it to kill a zergling faster, than only use it 25% of the time.
As I said, this makes sense for the players. It makes the game more enjoyable to play, which is the biggest reason why we play games in the first place.
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Nice post.
I can totally see that it makes sense to reduce options for the player which aren't intentional in theory (like all your hts storming at the same time on the same area).
But at the same time i also think it is still inconsistent with the basic rule: "if i tell my unit to do X, it has to do X".
I already gave an example in the posts before why i think smartcasting violates this.
It gets even more problematic if there are spells which stack and you actually would want to use all of them at once.
With smartcast i have to click fast to do it cause the game decides for me that it simply cannot be my intention.
So i don't agree with your general statement that everything should be as easy as possible, it rather should be reasonable (which is why you should look at it from case to case imo).
PS: I also don't agree that it makes the game more enjoyable at all. Maybe for the spaming one, absolutely not for the one who now has to deal with 500 storms at once
But i guess we won't agree on that
PS2: ravagers still suck, blizzard pls remove
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On April 20 2015 23:34 The_Red_Viper wrote:
Nice post.
I can totally see that it makes sense to reduce options for the player which aren't intentional in theory (like all your hts storming at the same time on the same area).
But at the same time i also think it is still inconsistent with the basic rule: "if i tell my unit to do X, it has to do X".
I already gave an example in the posts before why i think smartcasting violates this.
I fully agree that there should be "force" commands that dumb down commands. One thing that has always bugged me out that there was no way to click on locations that are under a unit. For example to give an attack-move command onto the middle of my opponents army.
Or a move command for my mutalisks to the location of the Thor, instead of the "follow this unit"-command that gets initiated when you move command on a unit. In a design philosophy in which we want to give the player maximum control while designing clever commands and units, the command should be usable with Alt+Button to dumb the command down to its vanilia function. Or vis-verca.
e.g. with Templar you could press Alt+Storm to make all of them storm at one location. Or vis-verca, only Alt+Storm activates smartcast. A philosophical question, whether the clever command should be the standard, or the consistant one should be. But the player should always have both options to ensure maximum control.
(attack ground for splash attacks is also something to consider with this)
It gets even more problematic if there are spells which stack and you actually would want to use all of them at once.
With smartcast i have to click fast to do it cause the game decides for me that it simply cannot be my intention.
Yup, spelldesign and commanddesign go hand-in-hand. The proposed Alternative command mode would give you that control back.
Games these days are still learning, in particular the RTS genre still feels very 90ies-esque in terms of how you command your units.
It's annoying to have these spamabilites, though the rapidfire trick makes it rather simple in SC2 once you have learned it.
PS2: ravagers still suck, blizzard pls remove
Meh, they are overpowered right now and too much of a core unit for something with that spell. They are one of the most interesting additions to LotV if done right in my opinion. But right now they are overused and need to be either strategically limited (=you don't want many of them for some reason) or their ability needs to be redesigned that it doesn't become a spamfest.
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On April 20 2015 05:10 CakeSauc3 wrote:
I'd rather have them remove the roach, put hydras at hatch tech, and then allow hydras to morph into either lurkers or ravagers at lair tech (and then make ravager have tankier stats similar to roaches, but preserving hydra dps). It would give Zerg what they most want (anti air at hatch tech) while making the hydra relevant as a unit again, preserving the identity of one of my favorite units from bw (which has been destroyed in sc2)., and then allowing the ravager to be a stronger unit that can fill a specific role (tankier anti-ground with a unique ability) instead of making us ask the question "roach, ravager, or hydra?".
For the sake of this theory crafting, make hydras have armor so hellions don't melt them in the early game (which is probably one reason blizz decided to put in a new armored unit at hatch tech). Thanks for nothing, hellions.
I've never understood the reason to put hydras at lair tech and include roaches as a new, hydra-that-is-armored-and-can't-attack-air unit, but maybe that's just me.
I think that there is enough room for both roach AND hydra on lair tech
Hydras could be scaled down with theirs dps and cost (to 75/25 1 supply for example) and roaches would still provide tank function. Maybe roaches could be redone with less health (100-125 ?) but 1 supply or even more hardcore redesign with 2 armour base but less dps?
Ravager and lurker could be moved to lair tech + some upgades for hydras and roaches - that may encourage to stay longer on more basic units and play more "swarmy" style.
As for ravager alone maybe if it would work like a mortar while being burrowed? Burrow couple ravagers in front of opponents wall, attack with 'skillshots' which after the hit would leave small 'corrosive puddle' dealing some AoE damage also vs buildings ? Maybe to much overlap with lurker idk
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What more anti-air do Zerg need really? They have queens and evo-less spores. Putting hydra at lair(edit: hatch) and making them cheaper/weaker would just make Stargate and Starport openers pretty much worthless.
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I love that people take it for granted that Zerg should have shitty anti-air before Lair, and they should be able to do damage by default by just building a banshee or an oracle or two.
Why should your Stargate/Starport openers be guaranteed to do damage directly or indirectly by forcing a ton of static defense, and even then getting some kills by abusing dead zones, tanking with shield damage etc? What guaranteed harass damage does Zerg get in the early game if you defend?
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On April 21 2015 02:59 sitromit wrote:
I love that people take it for granted that Zerg should have shitty anti-air before Lair, and they should be able to do damage by default by just building a banshee or an oracle or two.
Why should your Stargate/Starport openers be guaranteed to do damage directly or indirectly by forcing a ton of static defense, and even then getting some kills by abusing dead zones, tanking with shield damage etc? What guaranteed harass damage does Zerg get in the early game if you defend?
This may come as a shock but the asymetrical nature of the races in Starcraft mean that not every race has the same advantages and disadvantages
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On April 21 2015 02:34 Tenks wrote:
What more anti-air do Zerg need really? They have queens and evo-less spores. Putting hydra at lair and making them cheaper/weaker would just make Stargate and Starport openers pretty much worthless.
Well, it is more about increasing options and possibilites for zerg players early game. Hydras could be more mobile, nimble and fragile unit but dealing more dps and allow for easier anit air defense, roaches would remain strong, tanky but slightly less mobile (till speed upg) and slow dps allowing for pressuring fortified positions and easier dealing with groud attacks but without AA.
What You say is valid concern. I am not also a fun of evo-less spores. On the other hand, queens are not that strong AA vs phenixes or banshees, hydras are light units and get bonus dmg from both these units and already there are cases when Protoss players goes for a lot of phoenixes and tries to pick hydras when they are divided (as they spawn etc). Also early weaker/cheaper hydras wouldn't have neither speed nor range and would deal less dps so it might be not that bad with air openers against zerg
Additionally, I know that they are different games, but in BW Protosses open a lot with stargate vs zerg where hydras are on lair tech and corsairs cannot even pick up hydras and try to fight them.
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On April 21 2015 02:17 egrimm wrote:Show nested quote +On April 20 2015 05:10 CakeSauc3 wrote:
I'd rather have them remove the roach, put hydras at hatch tech, and then allow hydras to morph into either lurkers or ravagers at lair tech (and then make ravager have tankier stats similar to roaches, but preserving hydra dps). It would give Zerg what they most want (anti air at hatch tech) while making the hydra relevant as a unit again, preserving the identity of one of my favorite units from bw (which has been destroyed in sc2)., and then allowing the ravager to be a stronger unit that can fill a specific role (tankier anti-ground with a unique ability) instead of making us ask the question "roach, ravager, or hydra?".
For the sake of this theory crafting, make hydras have armor so hellions don't melt them in the early game (which is probably one reason blizz decided to put in a new armored unit at hatch tech). Thanks for nothing, hellions.
I've never understood the reason to put hydras at lair tech and include roaches as a new, hydra-that-is-armored-and-can't-attack-air unit, but maybe that's just me. I think that there is enough room for both roach AND hydra on lair tech Hydras could be scaled down with theirs dps and cost (to 75/25 1 supply for example) and roaches would still provide tank function. Maybe roaches could be redone with less health (100-125 ?) but 1 supply or even more hardcore redesign with 2 armour base but less dps? Ravager and lurker could be moved to lair tech + some upgades for hydras and roaches - that may encourage to stay longer on more basic units and play more "swarmy" style. As for ravager alone maybe if it would work like a mortar while being burrowed? Burrow couple ravagers in front of opponents wall, attack with 'skillshots' which after the hit would leave small 'corrosive puddle' dealing some AoE damage also vs buildings ? Maybe to much overlap with lurker idk
The 1-supply thing for 75/25 hydras has been posted many times... But Hydralisks are already almost useless due to how relatively easily you can hardcoutner them with Mech, Storms and Adepts, so when nerfing them, they are going to be pretty bad.
Also, 80HP per supply on a very strong DPS unit is broken. If you'd want to have it balanced, the DPS should be decreased a lot. Consider a recreation of the BW hydralisk, that would have a marine-like base damage with small bonus damage to armored. That would imply cutting base DPS at least in half to fit the BW hydra model. Bio would trash hydras even more easily, new Adepts would destroy them even easier, and it would aslo became far weaker against light air (Phoenixes, Oracles, Mutas, Banshees) in case of not giving it different AA attack, something that would become problematic to balance considering the AA strength of LotV Zerg.
What's more, if you reduce Hydralisk DPS, it would become simply less efficient as ground to ground fighter than the actual roach. THat's why they moved them to Lair over the alpha developement and were tuned up heavily on DPS. Because Roaches had twice the health and decent DPS at the same cost than a 1-supply, balanced Hydralisk, so they were far more cost/efficient. Mass supply of Hydralisks would be also in a hard position to balance considering how efficient remaxing mechanisms are in SC2. This is not BW anymore, and the Hydralisk cannot be in a BW position without much balancing problems for many reasons, even if the concept is quite appealing. That would imply a big rework of the Zerg race.
I think that at 100/50 and 2 supply the Hydralisk is quite viable as a unit, in the same line as Stalkers and Marauders in terms of cost and supply, and always gets protected by cheaper units like Zerglings or tanking Roaches.
IMAO the really big problem with Hydralisks is that they have been always expensive to tech to because of their upgrade cost, and have been always poorly balanced, being a bit too fragile based around DPS (you can see they buffed their DPS a year ago instead of their tankiness). Now that Protoss have recieved good Hydralisk counter units (Adept and Disrutpor), we can buff Hydralisks without that much concern on ZvP side.
+10 HP and 1 armor would be really strong buff in exchange for the reverted DPS buff.
Also, the Lair requirement could be reworked a bit if we readjust the time their Antiair capabilities hit the field.
Maybe, Hydralisks could be Hatch tech but without having antiair, needing an upgrade to attack air available directly at hatch tech but having 6 range by default. This way Zerg early game would be richer and Hydralisks far more viable to attack with LingHydra or Roach Hydra since their DPS is quite significant, and we could move and rework Ravagers a bit. It also would make sense to leave mutations for Lair tech.
Or maybe we need to allow Queens to keep building from a mutating Hatchery, and make Hydralisk upgrades cheaper like Roach ones and maybe shorter. Replace range upgrade for an HP buff for example, maybe at Hive tech. I've always felt that Lair gets delayed too much (balance around Spore evidences that), and Hydras hit the field quite late and with an urgent need to upgrade.
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On April 21 2015 03:01 Tenks wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2015 02:59 sitromit wrote:
I love that people take it for granted that Zerg should have shitty anti-air before Lair, and they should be able to do damage by default by just building a banshee or an oracle or two.
Why should your Stargate/Starport openers be guaranteed to do damage directly or indirectly by forcing a ton of static defense, and even then getting some kills by abusing dead zones, tanking with shield damage etc? What guaranteed harass damage does Zerg get in the early game if you defend? This may come as a shock but the asymetrical nature of the races in Starcraft mean that not every race has the same advantages and disadvantages
This may come as a shock but just because the game is asymmetrical, doesn't mean that Zerg needs to have no anti-air before Lair. Other races have had various weaknesses generously compensated for over time, why should one of Zerg's biggest weaknesses not get a long overdue buff?
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On April 21 2015 03:06 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2015 02:17 egrimm wrote:On April 20 2015 05:10 CakeSauc3 wrote:
I'd rather have them remove the roach, put hydras at hatch tech, and then allow hydras to morph into either lurkers or ravagers at lair tech (and then make ravager have tankier stats similar to roaches, but preserving hydra dps). It would give Zerg what they most want (anti air at hatch tech) while making the hydra relevant as a unit again, preserving the identity of one of my favorite units from bw (which has been destroyed in sc2)., and then allowing the ravager to be a stronger unit that can fill a specific role (tankier anti-ground with a unique ability) instead of making us ask the question "roach, ravager, or hydra?".
For the sake of this theory crafting, make hydras have armor so hellions don't melt them in the early game (which is probably one reason blizz decided to put in a new armored unit at hatch tech). Thanks for nothing, hellions.
I've never understood the reason to put hydras at lair tech and include roaches as a new, hydra-that-is-armored-and-can't-attack-air unit, but maybe that's just me. I think that there is enough room for both roach AND hydra on lair tech Hydras could be scaled down with theirs dps and cost (to 75/25 1 supply for example) and roaches would still provide tank function. Maybe roaches could be redone with less health (100-125 ?) but 1 supply or even more hardcore redesign with 2 armour base but less dps? Ravager and lurker could be moved to lair tech + some upgades for hydras and roaches - that may encourage to stay longer on more basic units and play more "swarmy" style. As for ravager alone maybe if it would work like a mortar while being burrowed? Burrow couple ravagers in front of opponents wall, attack with 'skillshots' which after the hit would leave small 'corrosive puddle' dealing some AoE damage also vs buildings ? Maybe to much overlap with lurker idk The 1-supply thing for 75/25 hydras has been posted many times... But Hydralisks are already almost useless due to how relatively easily you can hardcoutner them with Mech, Storms and Adepts, so when nerfing them, they are going to be pretty bad.
Well they're bad against units that deal strong AoE because they easily clump (siege tanks, storm, colo) and/or units that deal +light dmg (Hellion, and actually no unit from gateway? Well archon has bonus vs bio so...).
But that units comes rather late to a game are are small in numbers, so if you move hydra to earlier part of the game you prolong its lifespan as it is longer useful. Hydras trade very well with gateway units and fairly against bio which is considerable achievement Also you want to have some roaches to tank and some hydras to deal dmg not only one type of unit.
Additionally, later on, as your opponent amasses sizeble army of siege tanks/colo you morph leftover hydras into lurkers instead of sacing whole army for muta remax or whatever as it is right now with roaches.
Also, 80HP per supply on a very strong DPS unit is broken. If you'd want to have it balanced, the DPS should be decreased a lot. Consider a recreation of the BW hydralisk, that would have a marine-like base damage with small bonus damage to armored. That would imply cutting base DPS at least in half to fit the BW hydra model. Bio would trash hydras even more easily, new Adepts would destroy them even easier, and it would aslo became far weaker against light air (Phoenixes, Oracles, Mutas, Banshees) in case of not giving it different AA attack, something that would become problematic to balance considering the AA strength of LotV Zerg.
The decrease in dps probably should be significant however that does not necessarily mean that hydras would become trash because they're gonna be in bigger numbers!
100/50 2 supply -> 75/25 1 supply would allow for more units on the field. I also suggested to change roach into 1 supply unit to recreate that 'swarm of expendable units' feeling of zerg. What that also would allow is stronger max out of zerg ground which coupled with proper economy model (like DH) would allow for more uneconomical trades from Z's.
What's more, if you reduce Hydralisk DPS, it would become simply less efficient as ground to ground fighter than the actual roach.
That's way roach also should be redisgned to follow 1 supply tank, slow dps design as mentioned earlier
Mass supply of Hydralisks would be also in a hard position to balance considering how efficient remaxing mechanisms are in SC2. This is not BW anymore, and the Hydralisk cannot be in a BW position without much balancing problems for many reasons, even if the concept is quite appealing. That would imply a big rework of the Zerg race.
Hydras already are strongly countered by AoE units, don't think that it is gonna change. Siege tanks/colo/strom still gonna be massive against them. On the other hand we all know that zerg's are having a hard time against both mech & strong Protoss deathballs after the SH redisgn, especially when going for roach/hydra compostition. So even if change of hydralisk would mean they are stronger in mid/late game then it is only good for balance of late game.
Actually I am not sure what's your stance on the matter because in earlier part of the post You said that hydras wil be bad after such change and later You say that they may become OP
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On April 21 2015 04:00 egrimm wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2015 03:06 JCoto wrote:On April 21 2015 02:17 egrimm wrote:On April 20 2015 05:10 CakeSauc3 wrote:
I'd rather have them remove the roach, put hydras at hatch tech, and then allow hydras to morph into either lurkers or ravagers at lair tech (and then make ravager have tankier stats similar to roaches, but preserving hydra dps). It would give Zerg what they most want (anti air at hatch tech) while making the hydra relevant as a unit again, preserving the identity of one of my favorite units from bw (which has been destroyed in sc2)., and then allowing the ravager to be a stronger unit that can fill a specific role (tankier anti-ground with a unique ability) instead of making us ask the question "roach, ravager, or hydra?".
For the sake of this theory crafting, make hydras have armor so hellions don't melt them in the early game (which is probably one reason blizz decided to put in a new armored unit at hatch tech). Thanks for nothing, hellions.
I've never understood the reason to put hydras at lair tech and include roaches as a new, hydra-that-is-armored-and-can't-attack-air unit, but maybe that's just me. I think that there is enough room for both roach AND hydra on lair tech Hydras could be scaled down with theirs dps and cost (to 75/25 1 supply for example) and roaches would still provide tank function. Maybe roaches could be redone with less health (100-125 ?) but 1 supply or even more hardcore redesign with 2 armour base but less dps? Ravager and lurker could be moved to lair tech + some upgades for hydras and roaches - that may encourage to stay longer on more basic units and play more "swarmy" style. As for ravager alone maybe if it would work like a mortar while being burrowed? Burrow couple ravagers in front of opponents wall, attack with 'skillshots' which after the hit would leave small 'corrosive puddle' dealing some AoE damage also vs buildings ? Maybe to much overlap with lurker idk The 1-supply thing for 75/25 hydras has been posted many times... But Hydralisks are already almost useless due to how relatively easily you can hardcoutner them with Mech, Storms and Adepts, so when nerfing them, they are going to be pretty bad. Well they're bad against units that deal strong AoE because they easily clump (siege tanks, storm, colo) and/or units that deal +light dmg (Hellion, and actually no unit from gateway? Well archon has bonus vs bio so...). But that units comes rather late to a game are are small in numbers, so if you move hydra to earlier part of the game you prolong its lifespan as it is longer useful. Hydras trade very well with gateway units and fairly against bio which is considerable achievement Also you want to have some roaches to tank and some hydras to deal dmg not only one type of unit. Additionally, later on, as your opponent amasses sizeble army of siege tanks/colo you morph leftover hydras into lurkers instead of sacing whole army for muta remax or whatever as it is right now with roaches. Show nested quote +
Also, 80HP per supply on a very strong DPS unit is broken. If you'd want to have it balanced, the DPS should be decreased a lot. Consider a recreation of the BW hydralisk, that would have a marine-like base damage with small bonus damage to armored. That would imply cutting base DPS at least in half to fit the BW hydra model. Bio would trash hydras even more easily, new Adepts would destroy them even easier, and it would aslo became far weaker against light air (Phoenixes, Oracles, Mutas, Banshees) in case of not giving it different AA attack, something that would become problematic to balance considering the AA strength of LotV Zerg.
The decrease in dps probably should be significant however that does not necessarily mean that hydras would become trash because they're gonna be in bigger numbers! 100/50 2 supply -> 75/25 1 supply would allow for more units on the field. I also suggested to change roach into 1 supply unit to recreate that 'swarm of expendable units' feeling of zerg. What that also would allow is stronger max out of zerg ground which coupled with proper economy model (like DH) would allow for more uneconomical trades from Z's. Show nested quote +
What's more, if you reduce Hydralisk DPS, it would become simply less efficient as ground to ground fighter than the actual roach.
That's way roach also should be redisgned to follow 1 supply tank, slow dps design as mentioned earlier Show nested quote +
Mass supply of Hydralisks would be also in a hard position to balance considering how efficient remaxing mechanisms are in SC2. This is not BW anymore, and the Hydralisk cannot be in a BW position without much balancing problems for many reasons, even if the concept is quite appealing. That would imply a big rework of the Zerg race.
Hydras already are strongly countered by AoE units, don't think that it is gonna change. Siege tanks/colo/strom still gonna be massive against them. On the other hand we all know that zerg's are having a hard time against both mech & strong Protoss deathballs after the SH redisgn, especially when going for roach/hydra compostition. So even if change of hydralisk would mean they are stronger in mid/late game then it is only good for balance of late game. Actually I am not sure what's your stance on the matter because in earlier part of the post You said that hydras wil be bad after such change and later You say that they may become OP
So you want to have, no matter what, 1 supply units that are extremely inneficient at 75/25 cost.....while forcing the redesign of a whole race.
Gl playing against mech or forcefield with even less efficient units, gl optimizing cpu usage.
Why would you want to have +50 1-supply of shitty Roaches or Hydras that cannot form a concave to shoot (making them useless) and get even more countered by AoE? It makes no sense to redesing the whole game for that.
BTW, 1-supply innefficient units would be a waste of larva. They would be far less larva efficient.
Gl trying to be aggro on 2base if Zerg units are even less efficient than now.
Zerg doesn't need 1-supply units, they already have 0.5 supply units that are very strong (Cracklings and Banelinsg) and can deal decently with the only other army that can mass 1-supply units (Terran marines). What it needs is to have more efficient mining on lower worker counts (Aka DH/BW econ) , decreasing worker supply and decreased supply cost for mid-lategame units like Lurkers, Ravagers and SH.
BTW, I talked about a theoreticall 1-supply hydra and how you balance them. You can read.
With BW Hydra type of damage, they would suck.
With SC2 Hydra type of damage, they would be extremely OP, leading to a very noticeable nerf. Nerfed, we would have a 1-supply Hydralisk that is less efficient than our 2 supply roach we have right now.
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On April 21 2015 04:39 JCoto wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2015 04:00 egrimm wrote:On April 21 2015 03:06 JCoto wrote:On April 21 2015 02:17 egrimm wrote:On April 20 2015 05:10 CakeSauc3 wrote:
I'd rather have them remove the roach, put hydras at hatch tech, and then allow hydras to morph into either lurkers or ravagers at lair tech (and then make ravager have tankier stats similar to roaches, but preserving hydra dps). It would give Zerg what they most want (anti air at hatch tech) while making the hydra relevant as a unit again, preserving the identity of one of my favorite units from bw (which has been destroyed in sc2)., and then allowing the ravager to be a stronger unit that can fill a specific role (tankier anti-ground with a unique ability) instead of making us ask the question "roach, ravager, or hydra?".
For the sake of this theory crafting, make hydras have armor so hellions don't melt them in the early game (which is probably one reason blizz decided to put in a new armored unit at hatch tech). Thanks for nothing, hellions.
I've never understood the reason to put hydras at lair tech and include roaches as a new, hydra-that-is-armored-and-can't-attack-air unit, but maybe that's just me. I think that there is enough room for both roach AND hydra on lair tech Hydras could be scaled down with theirs dps and cost (to 75/25 1 supply for example) and roaches would still provide tank function. Maybe roaches could be redone with less health (100-125 ?) but 1 supply or even more hardcore redesign with 2 armour base but less dps? Ravager and lurker could be moved to lair tech + some upgades for hydras and roaches - that may encourage to stay longer on more basic units and play more "swarmy" style. As for ravager alone maybe if it would work like a mortar while being burrowed? Burrow couple ravagers in front of opponents wall, attack with 'skillshots' which after the hit would leave small 'corrosive puddle' dealing some AoE damage also vs buildings ? Maybe to much overlap with lurker idk The 1-supply thing for 75/25 hydras has been posted many times... But Hydralisks are already almost useless due to how relatively easily you can hardcoutner them with Mech, Storms and Adepts, so when nerfing them, they are going to be pretty bad. Well they're bad against units that deal strong AoE because they easily clump (siege tanks, storm, colo) and/or units that deal +light dmg (Hellion, and actually no unit from gateway? Well archon has bonus vs bio so...). But that units comes rather late to a game are are small in numbers, so if you move hydra to earlier part of the game you prolong its lifespan as it is longer useful. Hydras trade very well with gateway units and fairly against bio which is considerable achievement Also you want to have some roaches to tank and some hydras to deal dmg not only one type of unit. Additionally, later on, as your opponent amasses sizeble army of siege tanks/colo you morph leftover hydras into lurkers instead of sacing whole army for muta remax or whatever as it is right now with roaches.
Also, 80HP per supply on a very strong DPS unit is broken. If you'd want to have it balanced, the DPS should be decreased a lot. Consider a recreation of the BW hydralisk, that would have a marine-like base damage with small bonus damage to armored. That would imply cutting base DPS at least in half to fit the BW hydra model. Bio would trash hydras even more easily, new Adepts would destroy them even easier, and it would aslo became far weaker against light air (Phoenixes, Oracles, Mutas, Banshees) in case of not giving it different AA attack, something that would become problematic to balance considering the AA strength of LotV Zerg.
The decrease in dps probably should be significant however that does not necessarily mean that hydras would become trash because they're gonna be in bigger numbers! 100/50 2 supply -> 75/25 1 supply would allow for more units on the field. I also suggested to change roach into 1 supply unit to recreate that 'swarm of expendable units' feeling of zerg. What that also would allow is stronger max out of zerg ground which coupled with proper economy model (like DH) would allow for more uneconomical trades from Z's.
What's more, if you reduce Hydralisk DPS, it would become simply less efficient as ground to ground fighter than the actual roach.
That's way roach also should be redisgned to follow 1 supply tank, slow dps design as mentioned earlier
Mass supply of Hydralisks would be also in a hard position to balance considering how efficient remaxing mechanisms are in SC2. This is not BW anymore, and the Hydralisk cannot be in a BW position without much balancing problems for many reasons, even if the concept is quite appealing. That would imply a big rework of the Zerg race.
Hydras already are strongly countered by AoE units, don't think that it is gonna change. Siege tanks/colo/strom still gonna be massive against them. On the other hand we all know that zerg's are having a hard time against both mech & strong Protoss deathballs after the SH redisgn, especially when going for roach/hydra compostition. So even if change of hydralisk would mean they are stronger in mid/late game then it is only good for balance of late game. Actually I am not sure what's your stance on the matter because in earlier part of the post You said that hydras wil be bad after such change and later You say that they may become OP So you want to have, no matter what, 1 supply units that are extremely inneficient at 75/25 cost.....while forcing the redesign of a whole race. Gl playing against mech or forcefield with even less efficient units, gl optimizing cpu usage.
I am not saying that hydras need to be extremely cost inneficient neither do roaches. Hydras have to be weaker than their 100/50 2 supply high dps version in terms of dps to become less binary & glass cannon type unit.
Hydras are rarely seen vs mech because there are to fragile for they cost which such change might help with. Also I don't want zerg's to play only tier1 units vs compostion that is highly efficient but immobile like mech. If game goes to later stages and your roaches and hydras trade too cost inefficiently you can morph them into ravagers/lurkers or do whatever you want with probably much higher income form bases you acquired when having mobile but cost ineffective army.
I don't really understand the cpu argument. Aren't people playing 4v4 on ladder without bigger issues?
Why would you want to have +50 1-supply of shitty Roaches or Hydras that cannot form a concave to shoot (making them useless) and get even more countered by AoE?
I fail do understand how 2x amount of units with same hp can be more countered by AoE?
15 hydras will take more space than 10 and probably your opponent would have to use for example 2 storms instead of 1 to cover whole group.
BTW, 1-supply innefficient units would be a waste of larva. They would be far less larva efficient.
Zerlings are highly larva inefficient but still are really valuable tool. Roaches on the other hand are really larve efficient but highly supply inefficient which means that zerg player have to build a lot of overlords and cannot have lot of roaches AND other units because of fast impending supply cap.
It is discussion of what is more valuable, larvae or money? Answer is it depends. Also with 3 hatch build and queens I feel like zergs have rather planty larvae to work with but I may be wrong of course
What it needs is to have more efficient mining on lower worker counts (Aka DH/BW econ) , decreasing worker supply and decreased supply cost for mid-lategame units like Lurkers, Ravagers and SH.
I agree, actualy lower worker counts is what all races need and dimishing economy is also what I support. However I don't think that it is in contradiction with 1 supply basic zerg units like roach and hydra.
With BW Hydra type of damage, they would suck.
With SC2 Hydra type of damage, they would be extremely OP, leading to a very noticeable nerf. Nerfed, we would have a 1-supply Hydralisk that is less efficient than our 2 supply roach we have right now.
I believe that there is middle ground between yours 2 versions, but It could only be verified if someone would implement such change and test it thoroughly.
HotS Roach has 145 hp, deals 8 dps and costs 75/25/2
HotS Hydra has 80 hp, deals 16 dps and costs 100/50/2
new Hydra could have 80 hp, deal 11-12 dps and cost 75/25/1
new Roach could have 120 hp (but 2 armour base), deal 8 75/25/1
I am not saying that changing Hydra & Roach to 1 supply versions would work but I am rather optimistic with such change and willingly see tried out by blizzard
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No smartcast for storm would be odd given that the spell doesn't stack, so there is no single scenario where you would want this to happen.
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On April 21 2015 16:40 Grumbels wrote:
No smartcast for storm would be odd given that the spell doesn't stack, so there is no single scenario where you would want this to happen.
Yeah I don't really see why people are arguing about smartcast when this is true. There are times when you want to focus on attacking one unit. You never want to cast two storms at the same time in the same place.
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The role of the hydra is the problem I think that is just more revealed by the ravager.
ravager vs roach is alright at the moment, the roach is more cost effective in straight up combat but the ravager adds a decent ability and slight supply effectiveness. Plus the benefit of growing your army through upgrading instead of egg usage which is great. Thus a roach mix with ravagers mixed in as the army get's larger is good.
However the hydra is just pushed out now pretty much, if it wasn't already. The hydra was a less effective roach to begin with when it came to ground fights, even against units that countered armored with the exception of the immortal. So it had a marginal role to begin with but had a use for AA and mixing in when your army became large as the larger range of the hydra mixed better with some roaches then even more roaches. Now the ravager completely replaces the hydra for the few exceptions when you need AA that muta/corruptor/spores can't handle.
I think this sort of thing is very hard to solve, when you keep most zerg units generic. Ie with no bonus against an armor type it is virtually impossible to create units that won't push eachother out. Roaches, ravagers and hydra's all sit in the ranged fairly fast ground unit role which just overlap. It's what happened with immortals and stalkers too, immortals had slightly better combat stats but stalkers were faster to produce and more manouvrable leading to stalkers almost pushing out immortals. And there it was easy to make immortals good enough to make but limited by production, with zerg production the problem is harder to solve.
Either way you'll end up with a case where hydra's or roaches won't be seeing much play in a matchup, it's simply more effective to get one than both if they are so similar.
Ravagers need to have a much more unique spin more focussed on their ability, for example just keeping the roach stats (hp and range) but add the ability only, perhaps buffed a bit. Hydra's would still have a niche for larger range unit and with the lurker upgrade available could have some use perhaps.
Overall though the ravager seems to address the problem of forcefield mostly which seems clunky. Burrow movement, lurkers, flying disposable units etc all seem to adress forcefield already. I don't see how ravager is needed in addition to this. At this point I feel they are just better off replacing the forcefield alltogether because it wouldn't suprise me if forcefield became near extinct with sentries just becoming a 1 or 2 of in the army for guardian shield and scouting.
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I think this sort of thing is very hard to solve, when you keep most zerg units generic. Ie with no bonus against an armor type it is virtually impossible to create units that won't push eachother out. Roaches, ravagers and hydra's all sit in the ranged fairly fast ground unit role which just overlap
Agree with this. I would definitely suggest to change damage value slightly. Not enough to create a hardcounter feeling, but enough to reward players for getting Hydras in certain situations, Roaches in another and Ravagers in a 3rd situation.
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On April 21 2015 19:30 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +I think this sort of thing is very hard to solve, when you keep most zerg units generic. Ie with no bonus against an armor type it is virtually impossible to create units that won't push eachother out. Roaches, ravagers and hydra's all sit in the ranged fairly fast ground unit role which just overlap Agree with this. I would definitely suggest to change damage value slightly. Not enough to create a hardcounter feeling, but enough to reward players for getting Hydras in certain situations, Roaches in another and Ravagers in a 3rd situation.
Yes, I can also get behind this. It's kind of hard to have these units differentiate if they have no bonus damages at all. Also, given the addition of the light adept and Protoss needing a bit stronger early-midgame now, I think making the hydra like 10+4vsarmored (instead of plain 12) and the roach like 14+4vs light (instead of plain 16) wouldn't be a terrible idea.
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As long as the ravager is an amove unit like the roach with a spell on top of it i will fight for the one truth!
Ravagers suck, pls remove (or redesign them completely)
It still boggles my mind that you guys are ok with a morphing unit being that similar to the initial unit.
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On April 21 2015 21:42 The_Red_Viper wrote:
As long as the ravager is an amove unit like the roach with a spell on top of it i will fight for the one truth!
Ravagers suck, pls remove (or redesign them completely)
It still boggles my mind that you guys are ok with a morphing unit being that similar to the initial unit.
I don't agree that it is that similar. It has its stats reversed. And the corrosive bile is quite a distinguishing factor.
And well, I'm actually arguing all over the place for making those differences more significant.
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Spitball suggestion:
What if the ravager became a melee unit like the aberration? Y'know, that big clunky anti-armor guy from the campaign? If the intent for the ravager was to break down or bypass walls (that's what I'm assuming corrosive bile's primary function is, given its hatch-tech availability), give it some high anti-armor (or, if that's too dangerous, specifically anti-building) DPS for smashing them down; when the game goes later such that a (relatively) slow melee unit isn't gonna cut it, the corrosive bile can still be used for zoning purposes while you transition to something more stable, like roach/hydra. Conversely, one could morph excess roaches into ravagers in the lategame to do some building sniping.
Of course, this is 125% theorycrafting.
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On April 21 2015 21:52 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2015 21:42 The_Red_Viper wrote:
As long as the ravager is an amove unit like the roach with a spell on top of it i will fight for the one truth!
Ravagers suck, pls remove (or redesign them completely)
It still boggles my mind that you guys are ok with a morphing unit being that similar to the initial unit. I don't agree that it is that similar. It has its stats reversed. And the corrosive bile is quite a distinguishing factor. And well, I'm actually arguing all over the place for making those differences more significant.
Look at the other morphing units and then tell me that the roach and the ravager aren't that similar.
Obviously they changed some stats, but in the end the ravager still functions quite similarly.
Blizzard's only concept was to make a unit which counters forcefields and giving the roach that role one way or another.
So they created a high dps roach, wow how original -.-
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On April 21 2015 22:03 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2015 21:52 Big J wrote:On April 21 2015 21:42 The_Red_Viper wrote:
As long as the ravager is an amove unit like the roach with a spell on top of it i will fight for the one truth!
Ravagers suck, pls remove (or redesign them completely)
It still boggles my mind that you guys are ok with a morphing unit being that similar to the initial unit. I don't agree that it is that similar. It has its stats reversed. And the corrosive bile is quite a distinguishing factor. And well, I'm actually arguing all over the place for making those differences more significant. Look at the other morphing units and then tell me that the roach and the ravager aren't that similar. Obviously they changed some stats, but in the end the ravager still functions quite similarly. Blizzard's only concept was to make a unit which counters forcefields and giving the roach that role one way or another. So they created a high dps roach, wow how original -.-
Given how horrible blizzard is at getting their designs to work the way they want, them trying to create a high dps roach is a good indication how little the unit has in common with the original roach.
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On April 21 2015 22:24 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2015 22:03 The_Red_Viper wrote:On April 21 2015 21:52 Big J wrote:On April 21 2015 21:42 The_Red_Viper wrote:
As long as the ravager is an amove unit like the roach with a spell on top of it i will fight for the one truth!
Ravagers suck, pls remove (or redesign them completely)
It still boggles my mind that you guys are ok with a morphing unit being that similar to the initial unit. I don't agree that it is that similar. It has its stats reversed. And the corrosive bile is quite a distinguishing factor. And well, I'm actually arguing all over the place for making those differences more significant. Look at the other morphing units and then tell me that the roach and the ravager aren't that similar. Obviously they changed some stats, but in the end the ravager still functions quite similarly. Blizzard's only concept was to make a unit which counters forcefields and giving the roach that role one way or another. So they created a high dps roach, wow how original -.- Given how horrible blizzard is at getting their designs to work the way they want, them trying to create a high dps roach is a good indication how little the unit has in common with the original roach.
Huh?
I am talking about the most basic concept.
The roach is range ground to ground unit which is used as a basic ground army unit.
The Ravager is exactly like that, the spell is the only difference here.
Compare that with the Hydra -> Lurker, Zergling -> Baneling, Corruptor -> Broodlord
It's just extremely underwhelming to me, that i hate the spell itself is the icing on the cake
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On April 21 2015 22:39 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On April 21 2015 22:24 Big J wrote:On April 21 2015 22:03 The_Red_Viper wrote:On April 21 2015 21:52 Big J wrote:On April 21 2015 21:42 The_Red_Viper wrote:
As long as the ravager is an amove unit like the roach with a spell on top of it i will fight for the one truth!
Ravagers suck, pls remove (or redesign them completely)
It still boggles my mind that you guys are ok with a morphing unit being that similar to the initial unit. I don't agree that it is that similar. It has its stats reversed. And the corrosive bile is quite a distinguishing factor. And well, I'm actually arguing all over the place for making those differences more significant. Look at the other morphing units and then tell me that the roach and the ravager aren't that similar. Obviously they changed some stats, but in the end the ravager still functions quite similarly. Blizzard's only concept was to make a unit which counters forcefields and giving the roach that role one way or another. So they created a high dps roach, wow how original -.- Given how horrible blizzard is at getting their designs to work the way they want, them trying to create a high dps roach is a good indication how little the unit has in common with the original roach. Huh? I am talking about the most basic concept. The roach is range ground to ground unit which is used as a basic ground army unit. The Ravager is exactly like that, the spell is the only difference here. Compare that with the Hydra -> Lurker, Zergling -> Baneling, Corruptor -> Broodlord It's just extremely underwhelming to me, that i hate the spell itself is the icing on the cake
The ravager is a glasscanon type of unit, the roach is quite far at the top of tankiest units in the game.
4-->6range also used to be quite a difference in the game. I guess not that much anymore since the new median seems to be 9range.
Yes, it is more similar than the other morphs. Which I couldn't care less for, as long as it ends up as a unique, playable and fun unit.
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Just wanna give some impressions from a LotV player with around 90 games of Zerg or so in it. The ravager is very different from the roach.
1st Very different cost 1 roach is 2 food 75min 25 gas / 1 ravager is 3 food 100min 100 gas
2nd different range roach 4 range / ravager 6 range
3rd different dps roach as +/- 1.5 attack speed / ravager has 0.6 attack speed both have same dmg (16+2 for each upgrade )
4th different size, this makes the roach better in terms of mobility
5th different skills, roach has a harass/runaway skill in burrow movement + healing / ravager has a displacement attack
6th different hp roach 145hp/ ravager 120hp
(notes on corrosive bile, excellent for low hp buildings, useful against units, good players don't get hit by it. Instead u learn to use the skill to force movement out of your opponent, either by putting it in the way so they can't move forward or in the bk so they can't runaway, etc...)
TLDR While to viewers they may seem similar, their roles are different, because of their different stats and very different costs one is a mass-able unit(roach) while the other isn't. Making a lot of ravagers usually means for every ravager that u have u have 4 less roaches, so balance is key.
PS: Personally I like to make a lot of roaches, move in to my opponent base and reinforce with lings while morphing my damaged roaches so I get more from the morph(they come bk full hp), never having more than 5 or 6 at a time, if they aren't dying I get bk to reinforcing with roaches. Since getting a 8 more roaches is better than having 2 more ravagers, the limiting factor is the gas not the minerals and people tend to forget how it changes everything.
Bazik
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Ravagers are extremely noobish A-click type units. I mean you have the zerglings, you have hydras, you have lurkers now, you have vipers, etc.. why the hell do we get another mindless A-click type unit?
I still hate the roach for being such a unit, and now we got 2 such units for the Zerg. Not only is it completely unzergy, but its completely noob type unit.
I feel like any unit that reduces skill and makes the game more mindless A-click should be removed.
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Yup. There's no a trade-off. It''s just a "this unit is now better" button.
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EPT
