On May 07 2015 08:45 Big J wrote: What they did with the lurker was that they looked at the concept of the unit in broodwar and then tried to translate that to SC2. But SC2 doesn't follow the same rules that are in Broodwar. If you make a unit that should hold ground against low-mid tier compositions, it means it destroys marauders and roaches and hellbats and adepts and ravagers and stalkers in SC2. All of those units have traits like health or speed or damage or gimmicks that marine, zealot, zergling, T1 hydralisk, firebat, vulture and dragoon, goliath don't and didn't have. The result is that the SC2 lurker is just much stronger than it used to be against everything. The power it had in broodwar against marine-like compositions, it has now against marauder-like compositions. Obviously, that makes the lurker even better against the marine-like compositions and much more useful against your higher tier units like ultralisks or thors or colossi.
The same reasons why the lurker was thrown out in the WoL beta still apply in LotV: The unit is hard to make work in an enviroment with the marauder, the roach or the immortal (and others) while the newly introduced baneling was much easier to tweak against marines, hydras and zealots as it didn't have a history of combating armored units like dragoons.
That doesn't mean I'm against the lurker being in the game, but I hope they put more effort in it. Currently it is just a bruteforce buff with more damage, more health and more range.
Range is the same, and I think that fairly similar interactions apply to bio as it did in BW. Except that bio is stronger against it with the Marauder in. And bio has combined the Dropship with medics. Stalkers have blink and Adepts have the shade, + Immortals deal with lurkers better than dragoons. Hellbats are like pre-stim Firebats, and Roaches as as mobile as BW Hydras (with a 10% margin I'd say). Terrans also have banshees now and their Siege tanks can "fly".
I think that the biggest problem is the amount of damage it deals. Back in WoL alpha it had 15+15vs light, but that was ported to the baneling. The old BW damage was 20 if i'm not wrong, but the lurker was more fragile and cheaper, specially on gas. It was thrown after all the Roach/Hydra debate, since Roaches made finally as the T1 unit and Hydras were moved to T2... and they tried to push the Lurker as a Hive unit. And obviously, it wasn't needed at Hive and even less with the need of the range upgrade.
I think that in the end, it's all about getting it figured how to play against it and tweaking the animation attack speed and attack cd itself, some adjustements to damage and HP, and that's it.
I think that from the 5 units we have in the Beta, the Lurker is possibly in the best position of balance right now. Cyclones are still a thing worth complaining, Adepts are obviously overbuffed, Disruptor drops are insane, and Ravager is now a shitty Roach strain that could be fairly more with a few tweaks to both Roach and Ravagers.
The Lurker IMAO is quite balanced for the difficulty of getting good value of it considering how they can be countered, but in some cases I think that is still quite hard (specially PvZ).
Range is not the same. The lurker had 6range in broodwar (with some extra range past the target though; but it couldn't target anything past 6range). It has 9 in LotV currently. The dps went from 13 to 21 (the damage from 20 to 30). The hitpoints went from 125 to 200. Even someone who understands that the values of BW and SC2 cannot be understood the same given that all other units that are in both games have undergone changes, it is quite obvious that the SC2 lurker would vastly outperform the BW lurker if put into similar scenarios. The reasons are as you say, lots of units are in the game that would be very good against the original lurker. But balancing against those breaks the units against the others. A Terran can't play heavy marauderbased, just because this lurker is in the game.
Another thing that needs to be mentioned is that the lurker carries over very few of the original micro interactions with other units, in particular due to the range and health buffs. That is another very important aspect to consider when talking about how the unit is much stronger now.
I think you are right when talking about damage and health tweaks, but I think this will severely change how the unit can be used from the current status as end-all antiground unit.
I'm okay with keeping the Lurker strong right now honestly. Let other races (and Zerg) figure out how to play around it.
Evidently, attacking up a ramp into a bunch of burrowed Lurkers SHOULD be a bad idea (the same way you wouldn't do it against Tanks).
If it turns out that it's really imbalanced, they can always nerf it later. I'd rather have a slightly imba unit that people use at the start than a really weak unit (Adept) that nobody uses only to find out weeks later that it's actually quite good in certain cases.
Will help with the beta process.
(Suggestion: maybe give the Lurker some sort of + damage to light buff and decrease its base damage to keep it good vs Bio/Hellions/Lings/Hydras/Zealots/Adepts but decrease its effectiveness vs. ALL ground forces. So it becomes a more situational and anti-harass unit).
Out of curiosity, do lurkers still have the same very slow attack that can easily be avoided if you see it coming as in the Blizzcon previews?
@1:35
I think maybe that video is slowed down to emphasize the micro, since it didn't seem to me in watching LotV streams that the lurker attack was this slow, but I don't know. I suppose the lurker doesn't have SmartFire though? I was thinking of a fanciful micro trick which I'm not sure will work, but there you take a zergling and place it in lurker range with a lateral patrol command to draw out all the lurker attacks while the zergling avoids all damage. And maybe that way it's easier to run your remaining units through the lurker field. (?) (edit: it works, but I'm not sure how practical it is)
By the way, on the topic of promises that Blizzard makes to the community, I think mentioning a new spell for the infestor in the "new expansion update video" and then removing it before beta and not bothering with a replacement even if no one likes neural parasite is a bit dubious. I know Blizzard doesn't remove units, but they've promised to do this in the past. Are they now extending this to promising to remove spells but reneging on this as well? Of course they should make whatever change they want to for the health of the game, but I can imagine someone watching that video (such as myself) to be disappointed.
I think blizz is getting sc2 to a good place. They need to since this is their last opportunity to leave starcraft fan boys like myself with a game we can be proud to associate with.
So will begin by asking a simple, humble question... Is it a problem that Terran shouldn't be allowed to dominate on a single tech path against every race including their own? I always thought of Terran as being a balance between Zerg and Protoss, yet I see toss players do tech transitions more often than Terran. IMO, I think it would be awesome to see Terran be forced into making more difficult tech decisions in the game.
Also, what about the thing where toss is getting the short end of the stick?? Makes sense since Toss players are too afraid of lurkers to do anything but go skytoss. And while I really enjoy seeing the golden armada every now and then, Robo is hella weak right now, they need to bring back the original Immortal! Since when was the Immortal ever considered an OP unit? It would be so good vs hard hitting units like the Ultra and Lurker... The disruptor is great but they need to do something about the fact that they're vulnerable right after discharge... What would be awesome actually is just switching the order of events for the attack where they're vulnerable while charging up the attack but make them invulnerable for a short period post-attack so toss doesn't just immediately lose a shit ton of army supply and invested economy. You can then mess with the health and armor stats if they need to be made more or less resilient in attacking mode. The cyclone is pretty effective agains them all round. So all round that they could, at a stretch, be compared to the warhound, albeit a more micro-centric, less op in more ways than one warhound. The adept could fix that problem though they, sadly, fail to live up to their namesake and are clunky and slow. They need to at least make the attack more responsive though I imagine larger groups of adepts could then be quite dangerous to deal with early on. Isn't that the point though??? You want to be shitting bricks when these guys could be all up in your base!! I have though, an even more sinister and extremist suggestion: make the shades cloaked! That would be soo fuckin scary!!! Scary yet awesome. I think that in assessment the units they've introduced for Toss are great in concept, but need to be tweaked just a bit to make them and Toss more competitive.
I don't really hav much to say about zerg because its soo OP right now. Suck on that other races!!! :D
Unrelated to the topic, but definitely related to the thread, every time someone has a sentence with something bolded as if the reader actually can't read, or starts off with a phrase such as "as a zerg player" as if that qualifies them to say anything on balance or design I pretty much immediately stop reading. Nine times out of ten people who express things in that manner don't have a lot to say beyond the obvious, or the blatantly wrong.
On the subject of bio, 4m vs lmb is still imo the highest level of skill displayed in sc2, at least on the mechinal side of things, to be frank, I don't want to see a transition to mech in the same way I hate seeing transitions to swarmhosts. They're boring as fuck to watch.
I do like the idea of wicked strong zoning units though.
On May 18 2015 09:38 bo1b wrote: Why would they buff ultras like this... urgh
Unrelated to the topic, but definitely related to the thread, every time someone has a sentence with something bolded as if the reader actually can't read, or starts off with a phrase such as "as a zerg player" as if that qualifies them to say anything on balance or design I pretty much immediately stop reading. Nine times out of ten people who express things in that manner don't have a lot to say beyond the obvious, or the blatantly wrong.
On the subject of bio, 4m vs lmb is still imo the highest level of skill displayed in sc2, at least on the mechinal side of things, to be frank, I don't want to see a transition to mech in the same way I hate seeing transitions to swarmhosts. They're boring as fuck to watch.
I do like the idea of wicked strong zoning units though.
A problem that I've faced with LBM vs bio in LotV is that its very difficult to get enough bio infrastructure out to compete properly against a committed muta-ling-bling player while also allowing for the earlier fourth and air support that is necessary to compete with ultras and lurkers. If they go through with some change to the ghost, though, then I don't think this will be a problem anymore.
On May 18 2015 09:38 bo1b wrote:Unrelated to the topic, but definitely related to the thread, every time someone has a sentence with something bolded as if the reader actually can't read, or starts off with a phrase such as "as a zerg player" as if that qualifies them to say anything on balance or design I pretty much immediately stop reading. Nine times out of ten people who express things in that manner don't have a lot to say beyond the obvious, or the blatantly wrong.
79% of statistics are made up on the spot :p most times i see "as a [race] player" it's just a way of qualifying the post to account for what could be perceived bias or add some general context to how you're approaching design. it can mean "i'm not a protoss whining about zerg, this is my opinion about my own race" or "i'm not GM with all races or anything, my perspective is only as a terran ladder player". it can also be filler, sure, but what can't?
On May 18 2015 09:38 bo1b wrote:Unrelated to the topic, but definitely related to the thread, every time someone has a sentence with something bolded as if the reader actually can't read, or starts off with a phrase such as "as a zerg player" as if that qualifies them to say anything on balance or design I pretty much immediately stop reading. Nine times out of ten people who express things in that manner don't have a lot to say beyond the obvious, or the blatantly wrong.
79% of statistics are made up on the spot :p most times i see "as a [race] player" it's just a way of qualifying the post to account for what could be perceived bias or add some general context to how you're approaching design. it can mean "i'm not a protoss whining about zerg, this is my opinion about my own race" or "i'm not GM with all races or anything, my perspective is only as a terran ladder player". it can also be filler, sure, but what can't?
Exactly! It wasn't meant at all to make people feel like I am some legit source of information, but in fact the contrary.
On May 18 2015 09:38 bo1b wrote: Why would they buff ultras like this... urgh
On the subject of bio, 4m vs lmb is still imo the highest level of skill displayed in sc2, at least on the mechinal side of things, to be frank, I don't want to see a transition to mech in the same way I hate seeing transitions to swarmhosts. They're boring as fuck to watch.
I do like the idea of wicked strong zoning units though.
I think they should up the ultra supply count to balance their obvious OPness at this point. I mean marines do fuck all to Ultras. Rapid fire massage. Thors though... Thor may just be the ticket vs Ultras. Regarding switching to mech being an issue, how could you possibly compare that to Swarm Hosts? SHs are universally accepted to be bad units. Like they're really horrible. It wasn't mech that resulted in the hour long snooze-fests of HoTs, but the SH. Plus Terran players don't need to switch completely to mech or anything, just continue doing what they've always done by sprinkling mech units where necessary. People go hellbat drops into bio, hellions and reapers in the early game, marine marauder with tank or thor support in the mid to late game. Why couldn't they switch to something hardier in mech that comes out faster than lurkers but takes the punishment. Lurkers take a while to pop and cost quite a bit, so if you can punish a zerg player rushing for them or identify the tech switch during the game then you may be able to make the necessary adjustments in time. Ravens and hunter seeker could be good for breaking lurker lines? Terran don't really need gas for marines anyways... :p They may need to make some SLIGHT adjustments to the Lurker's responsiveness though. At the moment they're like Porches while they need to feel more like really deadly SUVs, less like a highly mobile, core army unit and more like a siege unit [slightly slower to move, burrow, attack etc.]
On May 18 2015 09:38 bo1b wrote:Unrelated to the topic, but definitely related to the thread, every time someone has a sentence with something bolded as if the reader actually can't read, or starts off with a phrase such as "as a zerg player" as if that qualifies them to say anything on balance or design I pretty much immediately stop reading. Nine times out of ten people who express things in that manner don't have a lot to say beyond the obvious, or the blatantly wrong.
79% of statistics are made up on the spot :p most times i see "as a [race] player" it's just a way of qualifying the post to account for what could be perceived bias or add some general context to how you're approaching design. it can mean "i'm not a protoss whining about zerg, this is my opinion about my own race" or "i'm not GM with all races or anything, my perspective is only as a terran ladder player". it can also be filler, sure, but what can't?
Exactly! It wasn't meant at all to make people feel like I am some legit source of information, but in fact the contrary.
On May 18 2015 09:38 bo1b wrote: Why would they buff ultras like this... urgh
On the subject of bio, 4m vs lmb is still imo the highest level of skill displayed in sc2, at least on the mechinal side of things, to be frank, I don't want to see a transition to mech in the same way I hate seeing transitions to swarmhosts. They're boring as fuck to watch.
I do like the idea of wicked strong zoning units though.
I think they should up the ultra supply count to the B_W 8 once more to balance they're obvious OPness at this point. I mean marines do fuck all to Ultras. Rapid fire massage. Thors though... Thor may just be the ticket vs Ultras. What's the Thor repair like in-field? Any good? Regarding switching to mech being an issue, how could you possibly compare that to Swarm Hosts? SHs are universally accepted to be bad units. Like they're really horrible. It wasn't mech that resulted in the hour long snooze-fests of HoTs, but the SH. Plus Terran players don't need to switch completely to mech or anything, just continue doing what they've always done by sprinkling mech units where necessary. People go hellbat drops into bio, hellions and reapers in the early game, marine marauder with tank or thor support in the mid to late game. Why couldn't they switch to something hardier in mech that comes out faster than lurkers but takes the punishment. Lurkers take a while to pop and cost quite a bit, so if you can punish a zerg player rushing for them or identify the tech switch during the game then you may be able to make the necessary adjustments in time. Ravens? Terran don't really need gas for marines anyways... :p
Unexistant, as they took that ability away many patches ago.
On May 19 2015 08:00 Archer13 wrote: I think they should up the ultra supply count to the B_W 8 once more to balance they're obvious OPness at this point.
On May 19 2015 08:00 Archer13 wrote: I think they should up the ultra supply count to the B_W 8 once more to balance they're obvious OPness at this point.
BW ultras cost 4 supply.
Ahhh can I not get anything right...?? Cheers dude.
how can a mirror be unbalanced ? remindes me of some pvp i played early wol when the other p flaming me sentrys would be imbalanced and i was thinking wtf man you can build them too how can a mirror be ever imbalanced at all
On April 26 2015 09:26 Loccstana wrote: Marauder overnerfed, Ultra overbuffed
no dude marauder nerf is fine and was needed, can terrans plz stop adding their whine in topics when theres absolute NOTHN about terran in the topic ? it rly starts getting anoying hearing it everywhere ...
EPT
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