Zealot buff sounds too powerful. Also they should be going for a nicer value, like 16*2. Also interested if it is spelldamage or normal (upgradeable?) damage.
Nothing about PB, Carriers or liberators. :-(
My guess is it is +30 damage not 15 or 16x2, if i am not mistaken, the charge hit currently only does 1 attack
On August 21 2015 07:45 weikor wrote: Well, there should be radical changes. So what if zealot is broken now, then that will get fine tuned.
The worst possible outcome is a mid - release patch to try fix some balance issues. This way everything will get changed in time for the release.
I kinda agree, but I wish they would set their goals more clearly. I remember that the adept was presented as a harass unit for instance, now it's clear they want it to be part of the core of a standard P army while making the zealot more harass focused. Fine, but I would like to see more of those design goals. What do they want to do for the Liberator for instance ?
But I agree we don't care about balance, this will be taken care of in a month when fine tuning begins.
I think they always meant adept to be a core unit, they just fucked up the design a little bit for it to be a core unit and tried to compensate by buffing its stats massively
No nerf to carriers, no nerf to broodlord viper. More unnecessary changes to units that no one asked for. Terrible patch overall.
Why does Blizzard not completely remove larva inject to be fair? Why does Protoss get buffs to compensate for removal of chrono boost while Terran gets nothing for removal of mules?
Spawn Larva is reduced to 2 per injection, and set to autocast by default M.U.L.E. is removed Chrono Boost is removed
As we’ve been discussing over the past few weeks, we’d like to try out these changes on a larger scale. We are aware that these changes may present the need for balance tuning in other areas, so it would be great if everyone can keep this in mind while testing. For example, this type of feedback: “removing Chrono Boost was bad because Blink now takes unreasonably long” isn’t very useful because changing research and build time is easy if we determine that the Chrono Boost change is good.
I still don't understand what kind of feedback they áre looking for...? Still seems like a pure design choice to me, there's nothing quantifiable to test
Macro Mechanics being removed is nothing to test? Uhhh...what?
On August 21 2015 07:15 Captain Peabody wrote: I really hope that adding back in macro mechanics in some form will still be possible, and will still be considered, after this patch. If this works out wonderfully, fine. But if it doesn't, then I hope that everyone figures that out.
Gosh, I'm a bit nervous about this whole thing. The game's being turned upside down.
I simply hope that if the test turns out to be just bad or to require too many changes, they'll consider keeping macro mechanics as they are. Just that. But I'll be perfectly happy if the removal turns out to be great, I definitely think this can match the pace of the game and the economy far better since you'll exhaust minerals more slowly.
I think i will miss the "mindless apm sink" as people named it. It is just fun to play against the game a bit, not every single interaction has to be with the enemy 100%, at least i don't see why. I think Zerg macro will be boring now, but i guess i should try it first...^^
edit: I agree that macro being slower overall is a good thing though
The thing I'm the saddest about is the patch is kinda killing those pristine macro Zergs I'm a huge fan of (Jaedong sometimes, soO). It also limits a lot one of the things I liked the most about Zerg, namely wild tech switches. I think good things can be gotten from that change nevertheless (but don't have autocast queens please).
It's pretty sad though when you watch a first person view of soO during a combat and what he does is presplit stuff and make a concave and all that cool shit and then the action starts and he a-moves and goes inject. (paraphrasing Teoita from TL Strat Chat) The mechanic is rotten. It has two major problems (that are obviously hugely connected): a) it's too important. Regardless what you are currently doing, if you haven't injected injecting is the proper call. During a battle when you think unit control and all that shit can be shown off, even or rather especially the best zergs go inject instead of microing. having 60% of your production on an ability is just too much and completely irreplaceable by any other form of play. b) the inject cannot be stored or postponed. 40seconds over? Well, gotta go inject right now. There is some battle going on? Sorry, micro comes afterwards, right now is inject time or otherwise I just lose out on this resource called larva. Doing muta harass that is going well? Well, let me park them over there for 5seconds because now is inject time.
Well i would rather give zerg more micro potential (so there actually is a decision if you don't have enough apm to do both "at the same time") than just deleting one choice from the game. b) is the same for other races and their production cicles, you don't get the seconds back if you miss to build a marine. For zerg this is less of a problem because in the end you can just build all the units at once (in theory) I would agree that the initial eggs per inject was too high though (and thus it was too important to actually inject) On the other hand zerg macro is already pretty easy WITH inject tbh, so i don't know...
Zerg has a ton of micro potential. You cannot fix this problem with giving zerg "more micropotential". Pick any microheavy composition you want in the game (zerg, terran or protoss), put it on zerg production and you will always end up with the same problem: injecting is going to be more efficient than microing those units. It's plainly too strong/important of an ability. I don't want to get into this too heavily, I did in various threads and I don't see the point discussing it over and over again with the same arguments. Two things I want to mention regardless: 1) I get your point that maybe nerfing or something could work out, but at the end of the day I'm happy if they remove negative stuff from the game instead of bandaiding over it again and again. Yes, it might work but what are the chances that blizzard is going to do this? And then when they do it, what are the chances that they are getting it right so that it becomes more of a decision and not so punishing in particular for weaker players? Slim, slim, slim... Having it gone is in my opinion a great improvement - for arguments I won't reiterate - to the status quo (though I will try to keep an open mind until further testing). 2) TL Strat Chat covers the discussion about injects exceptionally well in my opinion and anyone interested in this topic should watch it
(if time stamp doesn't work, go to around 45:30 to get to the inject discussion)
Chargelot harass is going to be so huge now. 8 zealots x 30 initial charge damage = 240, Wipe a mineral line pretty damn quick. Which is really going to hurt terran without mules.
I still worry about the cyclone, it just isnt a fun unit to fight against, theres no real counter to the lock-on. I cant remember who wrote that article that said "fun is not an argument", but that couldn't be further from the truth in my opinion. I suppose we shall how things work out. It is only the beta but I fear the allotted time they've given
On August 21 2015 04:32 Lappen.464 wrote: I just had a dream of.... of thounsands of Planetarys....
You dont need that many orbitals now do you? So why not expand and when you are afraid of an attack morph the expo to a planetary. And there is no need to build a oribital rite after barracks rite?
Haven't tried this out yet, but I want to see how successful I can do with a natural planetary instead of a bunker since I won't need the money for MULEs.
A supply calldown will still "give" you money, if not as much as MULEs. It grants you about 120 minerals (100 minerals as the cost of a Depot + ~20 as opportunity cost for the building SCV). It's not quite 270 as for MULEs, but you receive (or, rather, not lose) it instantly (at least the 100 part), and it is also permanently saved money, while MULEs just speed up the collection of resources you may mine anyway. On the downside, you have to still build a Depot to call down extra supplies on them. So while you will surely not need that many Orbitals, especially late game, you may consider building one or two because constant supply calldowns do generate some money for you.
Constant supply call downs? There is a unit cap, so 10 call downs then, less considering supply from CCs, maybe more for replacing sniped supply depots. Not saying that removing macro boosters is a bad thing but it does not take long before the only thing to use energy for is scans and there is no longer any tactical decision to it.
On August 21 2015 09:01 Loccstana wrote: No nerf to carriers, no nerf to broodlord viper. More unnecessary changes to units that no one asked for. Terrible patch overall.
Why does Blizzard not completely remove larva inject to be fair? Why does Protoss get buffs to compensate for removal of chrono boost while Terran gets nothing for removal of mules?
I think any protoss on this forum would trade your 50 energy free supply depot or scan against that almost useless - 20 sec on wargate they got
Strongly opposed to just deleting Chrono Boost (where strategic choices can be made) and Auto-inject (something that differentiates good and bad players). I'm okay with getting rid of MULE if and only if they can find something else that makes Orbital energy more meaningful.
I wonder if more frequent scans will become a tool that Terran can use to cater their builds against their opponent. I agree that the supply drop loses its value at a certain point in most matches.
On August 21 2015 09:01 Loccstana wrote: No nerf to carriers, no nerf to broodlord viper. More unnecessary changes to units that no one asked for. Terrible patch overall.
Why does Blizzard not completely remove larva inject to be fair? Why does Protoss get buffs to compensate for removal of chrono boost while Terran gets nothing for removal of mules?
Because the mechanics are of different importance for their races and not "equally strong". Like anything in the game they are assymetric.
Larva inject is 60% of zerg's production. If you remove it, zerg loses out on 60% of their drones, 60% of their income. And 60% of their other unit production. They halve it so Zerg loses 30% of their current production already. Meanwhile even if you chronoboost as hard as you can (you can only chrono half of the time if you do it everytime you have 25energy) on your nexus it is 25% more probes and 25% of their income. 25% faster upgrades, 25% more unit production. For Terran the comparison is a bit harder because it's not a production but a direct income thing. But a mule makes for 28% more mineral income on a saturated base. And they even leave supply drops in the game whose value also make for like 10.4% of the mineral income of a saturated base. So Terran loses only ~18% income anyways (for as long as supply drops matter). I.e. taking out inject isn't "fair", it would remove zerg as playable race. Hatcheries on their own are outproduced by Nexi and CCs already because they have to produce overlords and - in the sense that they have to make the drones for - buildings too. A zerg would have to fit like 2 extra hatches into their build just to be able to keep up in production with a 2-3rax 1base terran...
I believe the solution they are going for isn't too bad of a starting point for keeping balance. If they removed inject larva alltogether they'd have to give zerg huge compensation buffs (or the other races huge nerfs). Obviously they could just buff hatcheries' larva production as compensation, but even that wouldn't be quite so easy because zerg wouldn't have to invest into that (queens cost money; just buffing hatches doesn't) and because it would also work in the 2mins before queens hit the field, e.g. hugely buff 12pools and similar stuff.
Anyone who claims with a high degree of certainty that 'their' race is nerfed, really misses the point.
I do think that overall 'let's tech straight to carrier/BC' is nerfef because it's just going to be so much slower, so easier for an opponent to scout and react. That's a good thing.
I also think that early zerg attacks that require little larva are relatively buffed (roach rush?). That's probably not as good.
How the hell are they going to release LotV in 2015? I mean, there's what 4½ months to go and the game does not seem even close to completion. How are they going to balance anything for the release? Such huge last minute changes...
They should've just brought back the reaver to begin with and removed the Colossus altogether how nerfed it's become. What's the point of keeping the Coloussus in the game when the Disruptor/Reaver can essentially do the same thing?
Been playing SC2 and SCBW for over 10 year now and it feels like this time Blizzard is trying too hard to completely re-invent/re-design Protoss after all the whinging from the community about 'Protoss imba'. Can't wait for LoTV release simply to see how bad Protoss has become. Ironic given this game was meant to be all about the Protoss race. Maybe when no Protoss wins any tournaments (like early SC2:WoL with the exception of MC), THEN people will wake up.
We want to have a clear difference between Zealots and Adepts. We believe Adepts are more effective than Zealots in large, extended engagements. Therefore, we wanted to look for a change that would make Zealots clearly better in harassment situations. However, because Zealot burst damage will be effective in direct engagements as well, we’ll be monitoring exactly when Zealots outperform Adepts and vice-versa.
So the adept takes the role of the zealot, but they want to change the zealot? I agree that the zealot and adept overlap a bit, but the zealot has had a role for 5 years, why change it rather than finding a niche for the new unit? The only change I'd suggest for the zealot is changing charge into just a speed increase (without the charge bit).
Rapid Deployment Medivac upgrade removed
New upgrade added: High Capacity Fuel Tanks - Increases the speed boost duration of Ignite Afterburners by 50%
The current upgrade for Medivacs is too big of an upgrade to the in-combat cases. We want to try out a buff that mostly affects the harassment and retreat cases. We’ll see how this new upgrade goes before we make a call on what to do in this area going forward.
Why do they keep buffing the medivac? It's already probably the strongest unit in the game. I hate that terran is being balanced around fast drop ships that can heal.
EPT
