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Whether or not this was a design decision, the Disruptor is a very very micro intensive unit. It behaves in a similar fashion to the High Templar and other castor units in that it does absolutely nothing if it is not microed - so the micro floor is already high. With good micro it can be very effective and can be kept alive with a warp prism in much the same way as the Reaver. The difference being that the Disruptor needs to be picked up somewhere in the front lines of the opposing army, hopefully after having killed or at least damaged a good portion of it. It is very much a reincarnation of the Reaver, in that it is basically a controlled, more powerful, costly, reusable Scarab. The issue I find with the 'Scarab' is that it is generally harder to use and keep alive than the Reaver.
To list some of the important differences - the Disruptor differs from the Reaver in that it:
- can do a lot more damage with a single hit (probably less micro per Disrupter for a pro because of cooldown)
- is more mobile
- needs more micro to be useful (higher skill floor - not sure about the skill ceiling)
- when it 'attacks' it is more vulnerable (needs more micro to keep alive)
Blizzard have said that they are aware of the issues with the Disruptor and are looking at fixes. I feel however that any fixes are only going to make it a more complex unit which is not good for the game for a number of reasons. I feel it will always have the one glaring flaw of being too similar to the High Templar in that it cannot do damage without an ability. The Collosus, in contrast to both the Reaver and Disruptor, was very powerful and was only marginally more powerful with increased skill. This in my opinion is the major reason the Collosus was a horribly designed unit. Protoss needed a powerful and expensive unit but it was so easy to use and abuse that it was given an Achilles heel, it's fragility to air. So a bad design was 'fixed' with a bad design and now has been redesigned superbly by making it essentially useless. I think units generally need to be useful/good in the hands of a less skilled player and much better in the hands of a very skilled player.
The Reaver will always be a superior unit in my opinion. It did good AOE damage and could be useful defensively and offensively without much micro, but when microed well became a lot more useful and powerful. This is definitely in contrast with how the Disrupter operates and I think does the opposite of what Blizzard wants it to do - be useful to noobs and pros and counterable by noobs and pros. But Blizzard like to make things as new as possible and 'cool' as possible even if they have to do more work, waste their own time and make their 'fans' unhappy. This I think is the fatal flaw - if you want to recreate something and do not generally take what is tried and tested and worked well in the past and build on it incrementally you will most likely get a mess. They seem to not want to bring the Reaver back but they bring it's flawed cousin in instead. If blizzard bring the Reaver back or at least it's very similar brother(Dark Reaver perhaps - lol), LOTV will be better for it and I'm sure many in the community will celebrate with wine, beer, and/or delicious juice or even sparkling water.
The silver lining waffle:
+ Show Spoiler +It's great that Blizzard are communicating way more and more openly, the Lurker is back, Protoss have a strong Gateway unit, and Forcefields are more easily countered, among many other things (you might have noticed that Terran need some love - maybe a Goliath instead of the Cyclone). If the partnership between Blizzard and the community can keep growing in strength, we can iron out a lot more of the flaws in this great game together. Everything has flaws, but you do a good job when you do your best in minimising the flaws.
Replies don't help as much as polls so let's vote on the unit that is taking the place of the Collosus:
Poll: Disruptor, Reaver or something elseThe Disruptor is awesome (15) 25% The Disruptor will be awesome with some changes (11) 19% The Reaver is superior (9) 15% Please design a totally new unit Blizzard (24) 41% 59 total votes Your vote: Disruptor, Reaver or something else (Vote): The Disruptor is awesome
(Vote): The Disruptor will be awesome with some changes
(Vote): The Reaver is superior
(Vote): Please design a totally new unit Blizzard
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Well this was a fail in terms of replies  . And the title should have maybe been: "Some thoughts on the Disruptor and Poll".
Anyways, seeing as there is some more conversation on the disruptor these days I'd also like to add that I dislike the all or nothing behaviour of the Disruptor. It either leads to the disruptor making up very well for it's high micro requirement and cost or very much wasting it all.
Any comments on my opening post would also be appreciated even if it's to say that I was totally illogical.
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I think there is an abundance of these threads and people have gotten tired of talking about it.
Blizzard said themselves in a statement that they're looking into the Disruptor. So it's subject to change and there isn't much of a point talking at length about it right now.
In my opinion the Disruptor is a fun unit that interacts well with the Warp prism and encourages both micro by the player using it and counter micro by the opponent. That said, it does feel all or nothing in that if it detonates it annihilates everything and if it doesn't get a good hit it simply just dies VERY cost ineffectively.
Maybe tuning down the damage and the cooldown would be good fixes, but there is still the worry that unless it kills everything near it it just dies instantly before it can be saved.
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Once opponent gets to a certain level of skill, distruptor would get obsolete. They are just another gimmicky protoss unit imo. No belief in them.
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The problem I have with disruptors is that it honestly feels like Blizzard is trying to shoehorn baneling micro against Protoss, and naturally scaling up a baneling makes it more all-or-nothing. It's kind of the same feeling I had with the widow mine; they're all big-hitting expendables. And again Blizzard is trying to make a big-hitting expendable not expendable, so it's all just a medley of contradictory design philosophies.
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United States2629 Posts
I honestly think the Disruptor is an overall great design, but it overlaps with High Templars and Colossus already. Since HTs are pretty iconic to the game, I would be okay if the colossus was removed or changed significantly to another role.
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give the disruptor Cloak, Feedback, and Vortex (the old mothership spell) and it will be a good unit.
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On July 09 2015 08:08 Spect8rCraft wrote:
The problem I have with disruptors is that it honestly feels like Blizzard is trying to shoehorn baneling micro against Protoss, and naturally scaling up a baneling makes it more all-or-nothing. It's kind of the same feeling I had with the widow mine; they're all big-hitting expendables. And again Blizzard is trying to make a big-hitting expendable not expendable, so it's all just a medley of contradictory design philosophies.
And Protoss should not have an expendable unit, it goes against their racial trait and 'history'. But I'm sure blizzard will try make it less expendable, but I do not see how they will find an elegant solution, if they do Kudos to them..
On July 09 2015 09:12 Brutaxilos wrote:
I honestly think the Disruptor is an overall great design, but it overlaps with High Templars and Colossus already. Since HTs are pretty iconic to the game, I would be okay if the colossus was removed or changed significantly to another role.
It is definitely an interesting unit but it has some glaring flaws gameplay-wise imo. I agree that it does overlap more with High Templar than the Reaver would but I will also take the Disruptor over the Collosus any day.
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I think if the High Templar wasnt in the game the Disruptor would be great. But right now, to me it feels like these two units do pretty much the same thing. A unit you have to babysit and micro in order to deal high AoE damage that can hit your own units if you are not careful.
I think what was good about the Reaver was the auto-attack in combination with a really slow attack speed. The slow attack speed made each individual shot so very important. The difference between good micro and bad micro was to control where the scarab would go and land. Target fire units in the center for maximum splash damage. But do it in a way that the scarab will find its target.
Sometimes slow attack speed can actually be a source for micro potential if each individual attack counts and target firing makes a huge difference.
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What about it generating a shield based on how many units it killed with the blast?
Would reward good micro immensely and fix the vulnerability issue in a fair way.
I just love the unit, but it indeed needs some work, would love to hear some feedback on the shield idea.
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On July 10 2015 03:42 EddieSC wrote:
What about it generating a shield based on how many units it killed with the blast?
Would reward good micro immensely and fix the vulnerability issue in a fair way.
I just love the unit, but it indeed needs some work, would love to hear some feedback on the shield idea.
Well the problem is that if it kills everything it doesn't need the shields and if it doesn't, IT DOES because it's at melee range with no attack.
So that idea is backwards from what the Disruptor actually needs.
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Great update to the Disruptor Blizzard...  Somehow you've actually made this unit a whole lot worse. lol
As I discussed in the OP, this unit is going to be impossible to fix into a non-gimmicky, balanced and enjoyable unit. I would place bets on that. Good luck Blizzard!
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I'm not sure if it is worse than before, but now it very similar to a High Templar.
Radius for both abilities is 1.5
Disruptor costs 100/200 vs High Templar 50/150 (not counting storm)
Both units benefit greatly from Warp prism use
Both have aoe abilities.
Both are from two different tech paths.
The main differences is that ghosts counter high templars whereas disruptors have....no counters when they attack or immediately after they attack. With a 3-second invulnerability and faster moving speed immediately after the attack, warp prisms will be able to be within range to pick it up without being automatically in the range of vikings.
I would personally like to see something that provided perhaps a more skillful use as described above, but I cannot say that this iteration is inherently bad or worse.
I mean, really, if we look at any of the aoe that is in game, I don't think that many people would describe it as "enjoyable."
I mean, how often have we heard complains about storm, widow mines, fungal growth, blinding cloud. I think tanks and hellions are really the only aoe that people don't really complain about. Or, how often have we heard complaints about ghosts, high templars, vipers, infestors, or the already-mentioned widowmines?
What I am saying is that I doubt any aoe that Blizzard makes for Protoss will truly be "enjoyed" by the community..
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On July 17 2015 23:22 FrkFrJss wrote:
What I am saying is that I doubt any aoe that Blizzard makes for Protoss will truly be "enjoyed" by the community..
To be prefecty fair. A huge amount of people within the community didn't even WANT another high tier AoE unit. A good amount people wanted Gateway to improve so their relieant on that didn't need to exist. So yeah. They can try as much as they want, but there's going to be a decent size segement that detest the notion of another AoE unit. Though, a very binary concept didn't help the Disruptor to be well loved as a whole.
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EPT
