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On September 24 2015 02:04 Cyro wrote:Release interceptor is fairly crazy. I have NO IDEA why it functions like it does and doesn't just act like a way to deploy interceptors regularly to a certain area of the map (instead of having to target a unit, even your own unit). If it just deployed them but they didn't deploy instantly, didn't stay out, didn't allow for carrier moving out of leash range and didn't get lost afterwards, it would be an added micro dimension to the carrier without being a balance problem. Without that ability, zerg seems alright i think, at least much closer to balance. They can do well with economy and vipers are extremely strong Show nested quote +Possibly give corruptors a better ability, because the one they have now is pretty useless I've actually had some really good zergs screw me over with that. There was a kinda bad engagement where toss retreated to cannons and corruptors flew into toss base and ate the stargate pylons and fleet beacon then flew out again. In this particular case it abuses zerg being able to remax fairly fast while protoss needs to produce over time and losing 1 minute of production time can be deadly. They can also contribute heavily to crushing a nexus and/or static defenses instead of floating around doing nothing As funny as it sounds, ultralisks too. Phoenix can't hit them, unupgraded ground units do not work at all against buffed crackling/ultra and carriers do half a damage to them because of their armor level. I don't know how good it actually is but some people do it at master level. Void rays are not that amazing of a unit and the anti-armor damage mainly stands out against corruptors because corruptors can't AA well; if he's going VR heavy it's beneficial to play hydra-viper-spore-queen. Me+friend mainly mix in VR's as a response to corruptors and/or ultralisks.
Considering the corruptors are Zergs anti air, and they're armored, it's an essential problem. But the overriding point is that Protoss should not counter everything with a stargate.
They changed the corruptor ability. It doesn't mention a building attack, I assumed they removed it and replaced it. Am I wrong about that?.
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They changed the corruptor ability. It doesn't mention a building attack, I assumed they removed it and replaced it. Am I wrong about that?.
It's been a week or so since i played air vs zerg, maybe i forgot one of the patch notes
Considering the corruptors are Zergs anti air, and they're armored, it's an essential problem.
That's why people are playing hydra-viper-spore or doing stuff like that stephano style ravager crackling. 8+ (sometimes more) vipers, a bunch of spore crawlers and most free supply on hydras is the hardest to deal with so far for me.
If you make corruptors and engage him when he doesn't have void rays (due to not building them or just having an army trade with you) you'll do ok. If you wait for him to counter your composition you won't do ok; corruptors are not very good in a situation where you both sit at 200/200 for 10 minutes and then hard engage on eachother.
But the overriding point is that Protoss should not counter everything with a stargate.
Again, why?
Why not? That's like saying that terran shouldn't be able to kill every single unit with mech. If a set of units has their own independant upgrades, production and researches then i don't see any problem.
It's not like people are not using a ton of templar to heavily support air toss - it's too good against hydralisk+viper to ignore due to storm and feedback shutting down some of the hardest carrier counters. Our games typically involve quite a lot of dark templar and zealots for base control and multi-pronged harassment too.
I see no reason at all to disallow the core of your army being something other than standard ground+tech style for any race. Mech works (or at least should) in some matchups and phases of the game. There's no reason to stop people building too much supply of air units - especially since like i said, these units have their own upgrade path and their own researches in order to work; you' can't switch your army core from mech to bio and you can't switch army core from air to ground without huge investment. On top of that, they're not being built alone since air toss usually involves at the very least high templar and generally harassment to actually be able to build an expensive tier 3.5 army without dieing.
They don't "counter everything". It's not like there's no way to win against a protoss primarily building air units - it just takes skill to either dismantle them or starve them out. It's being done at the highest levels of play - if the numbers are off, they can be adjusted. Why do you think that this is a design problem?
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Mass air shouldn't be viable for any race because air blobs that kill everything while ignoring terrain are retarded.
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On September 24 2015 08:25 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +They changed the corruptor ability. It doesn't mention a building attack, I assumed they removed it and replaced it. Am I wrong about that?. It's been a week or so since i played air vs zerg, maybe i forgot one of the patch notes Show nested quote +Considering the corruptors are Zergs anti air, and they're armored, it's an essential problem. That's why people are playing hydra-viper-spore or doing stuff like that stephano style ravager crackling. 8+ (sometimes more) vipers, a bunch of spore crawlers and most free supply on hydras is the hardest to deal with so far for me. If you make corruptors and engage him when he doesn't have void rays (due to not building them or just having an army trade with you) you'll do ok. If you wait for him to counter your composition you won't do ok; corruptors are not very good in a situation where you both sit at 200/200 for 10 minutes and then hard engage on eachother.
Okay well the crackling style relies on scattering your opponent around the map. That's not possible on alot of maps, and over time toss are going to learn to deal with that. I'm sure it's worth practicing but the problem of late game composition still remains. Ravager again it will work in the early game along with a bunch of crackings, but not as part of a late game composition. The high viper count is good but it's a desperation move and too much reliant on a few PB and lack of splitting along with the opponent not having high templar. There is just not a solid zerg composition that can go head to head with toss air. Toss are going to build voidrays. The whole plan of 'build spores and spines' - but in the same breath say: "you cannot let the toss get maxed". Well the idea you must kill toss before they max otherwise you lose, that's just bad game design and it makes no sense. The hydras get shredded by carriers, storms, archons.
On September 24 2015 08:25 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +But the overriding point is that Protoss should not counter everything with a stargate. Again, why?
Because we need to be able to counter things.
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Okay well the crackling style relies on scattering your opponent around the map. That's not possible on alot of maps, and over time toss are going to learn to deal with that. I'm sure it's worth practicing but the problem of late game composition still remains. Ravager again it will work in the early game along with a bunch of crackings, but not as part of a late game composition.
I heard stephano was using them lategame. There's a post describing it somewhere and there are multiple styles to deal with toss trying to go air.
There is just not a solid zerg composition that can go head to head with toss air. Toss are going to build voidrays
Maybe sometimes, building voidrays early makes you more vulnerable.
Because we need to be able to counter things.
You can counter things. There are multiple ways to deal with toss building air that usually involve either picking them apart or choking them out. In the event that you're gonna let both sides get maxed, you probably want hydra/ravager with a ton of static defense and vipers but it's probably not a good idea to aim to passively go max vs max against a toss who is greedily going economy+air - that's a situation that would be much more likely to come up if the zerg was behind.
The whole plan of 'build spores and spines' - but in the same breath say: "you cannot let the toss get maxed"
This is not the plan. The plan is to build spores if you're letting the toss get maxed and would otherwise bank money after getting your composition. There's usually a better plan if you're equal or especially if you're ahead at all in the game.
The high viper count is good but it's a desperation move and too much reliant on a few PB and lack of splitting
No, when you have 4 vipers it's a bit of a desperation move and random. When you have 12 vipers and you're poking around, forcing army movement and gripping units to pick stuff off before engaging and throwing 10 parasitic bombs on his stuff, that's a very solid army core with heavy support from the strongest anti-air unit in the game.
There is little problem at the highest level of play here, design-wise.
Because we need to be able to counter things.
Rax units with support (medivac, lib) reasonably counter literally everything V protoss. Stargate units with support (HT, dt, zealot warp ins, photon cannon blobs) reasonably counter everything vs zerg.
Would you like both to be redesigned? I wouldn't really mind it but it would take a huge amount of work to redesign sc2 units, tech and army interactions from the ground up - it's probably not gonna happen with a month of beta left.
Once again, numbers can be tweaked if balance is an issue. I don't feel like there's a huge problem at the higher levels aside from maybe release interceptor but i have never liked that mechanic (for reasons i have explained several times in the last few days on this forum) and it'll probably be changed/removed. For overall design, i don't see a big problem and it doesn't seem to be vastly different to how many other compositions in the game work.
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Again, cracking ravager relies on moving the opponent around and this does not always work; over time toss will adapt to this style. As the metagame develops, what Zerg needs is a solid late game composition to deal with protoss mass air. The closest they have to that, at the moment, is viper corruptor ultra and alot of static defense.
The problem I have with this style is, mainly, that it is boring and dumb. But also Zergs stature is not that great.
I haven't played a ton of games with the style, but at a glance it seems Protoss has everything they need to counter and deal with what Zerg does while Zerg is in an increasingly inferior position.
I am not commenting on TvP since I know nothing about it and it has nothing to do with this discussion.
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Again, cracking ravager relies on moving the opponent around and this does not always work
A lot of the strength of Ravager relates to being able to zone slow air units and rendering cannons nearly useless - they have almost double the range of photon cannons, far higher range than any protoss air unit and can guarantee hits on multiple buildings per artillery shot. Have you seen dozens of pro level crackling ravager games to make asessments like that? I only heard about it today but i really don't want to play against a zerg who incorporates 13 range ravagers now.
As the metagame develops, what Zerg needs is a solid late game composition to deal with protoss mass air.
I'm sure the styles shown today will develop into some general meta that works decently. If not, there'll be balance tweaks to allow for it.
I am not commenting on TvP since I know nothing about it and it has nothing to do with this discussion.
I relate to TvP because most of your complaints are more visible and common in other matchups than in protoss vs zerg and changing them in one but not both wouldn't make much sense.
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If you want to start a thread about Terran bio you can do that. Here we are discussing PvZ toss mass air which is a completely different phenomenon.
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Playing with only one style (buildings + upgrade tiers) of units + support is very much the same thing. Asking for terran to be forced to upgrade vehicle attack and armor and build a bunch of factories to win when playing bio would likewise be considered silly because that's just not how the game is designed right now for any race. I don't have any other analogy but that one is pretty much perfect
I think terran being able to win with only bio or only mech upgrades and protoss being able to win with only ground or only air upgrades is a design strength, not weakness - and i strongly believe that you should make sweeping changes to all races relating to that or leave all of them alone
Here we are discussing PvZ toss mass air
The design of being able to win with one style of units + support was brought up
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Focus on PvZ mass air and stop deferring the discussion to other topics which I cannot discuss (I am Zerg) and which ultimately are not equivalent for a hundred reasons.
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Sure if you don't wanna discuss that area of tech/unit design you are free to leave it. That's a pretty long and hard discussion that could go 10 pages long so i'd rather not discuss it either; i'm not the one who wanted it to be changed.
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Do you understand that this is a different matchup? That the stargate is not the barracks? You think in generalities. If I said to you: "Zerg can win every TvZ with ling muta bane". Well that's alot different than if I said to you: "Zerg can win every game with broodlord infestor queen". It's not an equal comparison, because the two are ~fundamentally different~. Ok?
By the way, while we're on this dumb topic, Terran still needs a starport. They still need medivacs and vikings. Right?
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The game design of basing your army around one particular set of units+upgrades with support is not unique to PvZ nor is it bad in my opinion
By the way, while we're on this dumb topic, Terran still needs a starport. They still need medivacs and vikings. Right?
Sure, toss is dead every time without a templar archive too. That's the "with support" part - both only research one set of upgrades though they have two or even three sets
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Oh. So you get.... a few templar at the end and that's your argument? Even so the whole notion is irrelevant, this is just a word game.
I think we're already said everything meaningful about Toss air. I want the devs to look at this.
You aren't contributing anything except blabber at this point so we're done. Goodbye
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On September 24 2015 10:19 crazedrat wrote:
Oh. So you get.... a few templar at the end and that's your argument? Even so the whole notion is irrelevant, this is just a word game.
I think we're already said everything meaningful about Toss air. I want the devs to look at this.
You aren't contributing anything except blabber at this point so we're done. Goodbye
I'm contributing a fair amount and i was done before you made the last two posts yet you kept posting
I don't think posting on a forum about game design/balance and only being happy or listening to replies that agree with you is a good thing; way too many people are getting heated over LOTV stuff and not willing to discuss or change their opinions based on that so i will happily engage with anyone reasonable and do so
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It's like I'm bickering with my little brother; talking in circles while babbling off schizophrenic brain impulses.
On September 24 2015 09:08 Athenau wrote:
Mass air shouldn't be viable for any race because air blobs that kill everything while ignoring terrain are retarded.
Yes. I remember how boring and odd infestor broodlord was during WOL. At that time I was high level Zerg, but I refused to use infestor broodlord. Even against Toss I didn't use it, because it was boring and dumb; it made for bad games, I knew it needed a nerf.
Maybe this touches on the deeper problem which is that I think this mass air is a horrible style. There's nothing fun about it, it's not engaging... it's like a 20 minute stalemate and then you collide in an uninteresting fight. A few things happen in between but they're mostly negligible.
The fight itself is mechanically odd. I don't like that kind of bizarre combat. I know blizzard likes the compelling aspect of imperfection but mass corruptor viper static defense vs. mass toss air takes oddity to a whole new level of uninteresting.
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it's like a 20 minute stalemate and then you collide in an uninteresting fight
That is not my experience with PvZ legacy of the void air. Harass is much stronger so even air cores will use adepts, phoenix and DT for it; you can choke people out by controlling bases much easier than in HOTS (as either the zerg or the protoss) and leads seem to translate into victories for either side faster than before
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Besides some flamboyant things which may happen it's ultimately a passive style with a stalemate on both sides, massing static defense into one massive battle which is not that fun to control.
Remove the tempest, toss doesn't need it any more.
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Just want to remind people that this discussion is about:not how to stop 200 supply air toss,its about how to stop 200 supply air toss and on that case ravager is not enough and hydra is a very bad choice unless you can abduct the all carrier army which is not possible,best way is ultra-tanks+kill archons/templers+viper-wont kill carrier but add a nice damage,corrupter-really best anti carrier unit,spore-you got tons of money so why not?
thing is with the release interceptors ability no matter how i micro the army il always loss the fight since il loss all my army till i actully kill all the carrier since il always fight the 200 supply army cuz the interceptors wont die with the carrier and i really dont understand how there is even 1 1! good logic reason to keep it in the game and i didnt see one so far so people need to tell it to bliz and if thats not enough we can start talking about a more major nerf but i dont think it will be needed on master+ rank
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you should really be annoying as hell though vs a protoss who's going full skytoss, you can't just let him take expands, otherwise you are kind of asking for a loss
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EPT
