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On October 21 2015 22:45 avilo wrote:
Are people really OK with LOTV essentially boiling down to "whoever spams their OP air units?"
Just bumping this thread again for serious discussion. A lot of people might not be aware the game is like this, or might not believe that it is.
Imo blizzard needs to make ground anti-air units stronger and perhaps nerf the health of things like carriers/tempests/broods/liberators or something.
Liberator and Carrier nerfed this latest patch with a message from DK about wanting to change ( a nerf is a very specific type of change) things incrementally over time rather than a sudden giant change which results in an over-nerf.
Also, Siege Tank firing time increased after being dropped by a Medivac effectively weakens the versatility of the Medivac.
So 3 flying units got hit by the nerf stick on this patch... i think your message got through and i think others agreed with you who don't go on TL.Net.
i think your basic message is correct and i think DK and the team have responded in a correct fashion 
good work sir.
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Air units may be getting hit a little bit with this patch, but they're still too strong as a whole. Look at the air units in BW. They either wrecked other air units, or they had pea-shooters against ground units. It's not until you reach the top of the tech tree do you get air units that can do some proper damage. When your air units get too strong and they're able to assert dominance over ground units, you have a very fundamental problem. Ground units are supposed to be more powerful by design, because they have to obey the terrain. Air units do not, they can move however they please, so in exchange the designers of BW made them weak against ground to compensate. When you look at the Banshee, and the Oracle and the Liberator, you see air units doing things ground units should be doing, it completely violates that sacred design axiom air units had in BW. What we've been seeing is that finally reaching an extreme.
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Brood Lords have been buffed in so many ways since HotS, they have a faster attack speed, a faster movement speed, longer range, and a better build time. With how well Zerg has been doing it doesn't seem like they need all of these improvements.
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On October 25 2015 10:09 jalstar wrote:
Brood Lords have been buffed in so many ways since HotS, they have a faster attack speed, a faster movement speed, longer range, and a better build time. With how well Zerg has been doing it doesn't seem like they need all of these improvements.
???
they got 1.5extra range, non of the other things is true! The game time has been set to real time, thus the movement speed, attack speed and build time values seem to be better for all units, but they are actually just converted by a factor ~1.38.
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On October 25 2015 11:32 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2015 10:09 jalstar wrote:
Brood Lords have been buffed in so many ways since HotS, they have a faster attack speed, a faster movement speed, longer range, and a better build time. With how well Zerg has been doing it doesn't seem like they need all of these improvements. ??? they got 1.5extra range, non of the other things is true! The game time has been set to real time, thus the movement speed, attack speed and build time values seem to be better for all units, but they are actually just converted by a factor ~1.38.
Oh I forgot, range still seems really strong though.
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The range should have stayed 9.5, and channel the power of ass. Blizzard fucked up.
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one of two things will happen. 1. nothing gets changed and the game remains broken 2. something gets changed and the game remains broken. the game has spiraled out of control with OP units since HOTS with Terran getting huge buffs to three units they use all the time, widow mines hellbats and medivacs while zerg plays against this basically same as they do in WoL because they were given nothing of value to help them in HOTS. Destroying swarm hosts and rendering Terran turtle mech an auto - win against zerg to finish off HOTS is just the beginning of the wreckage of the game, as will be seen once LoTV comes out... but never fixed.
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Well ofc sky army should stomp ground one, otherwise it wouldn't make sense.
I think the catch was, that this sky army is much much harder to get and such strategies are fairly easy to be shut down in the middle.
If that wasn't the case, every GSL would be 200/200 BC & carriers
I am afraid however that this "catch" is removed in LOTV, with the forced expanding and reduced build time of massive flyers...
I think the solution always been the same - hard/very risky to get but worth when having.
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On October 26 2015 05:15 Gasi wrote:
Well ofc sky army should stomp ground one, otherwise it wouldn't make sense.
Why would that not make sense? Of course it makes sense.
The air units have better mobility. They can ignore terrain and are usually faster. This allows them to outmaneuver the enemy and harass the opponents bases without having to engage their army head on. This is how it was in BW and it worked very well. What reason is there to not make it work in SC2?
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On October 26 2015 05:25 RoomOfMush wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2015 05:15 Gasi wrote:
Well ofc sky army should stomp ground one, otherwise it wouldn't make sense. Why would that not make sense? Of course it makes sense. The air units have better mobility. They can ignore terrain and are usually faster. This allows them to outmaneuver the enemy and harass the opponents bases without having to engage their army head on. This is how it was in BW and it worked very well. What reason is there to not make it work in SC2?
And I'm calling bullshit that the Broodlord is more mobile than the marine/medivac combo, the blink stalker or anything else protoss as long as recall and warpins exists*.
The only GtA unit with a low enough mobility to varant countering the broodlord is the Thor (discussable to begin with due to medivac boost pickups), and the Thor has a very strong antiground attack, so it would still be unreasonable if such a universal combat unit could counter an AtG-specialist.
Sure if you create a Goliath that can't shoot ground and moves at Broodlord speed you have a sure point, but no such unit design is present in SC2. The closest to that is a unit that can lift/land to switch between only AtA and only GtG mode, the viking, which consequently is the unit of choice against Broodlords. Similar arguments can be made for the BC. That's why such units like the broodlord/BC are bad design to begin with, they are either underpowered (the HotS scenario) or force air to air combat (the LotV and WoL scenario with BLs) or megaspecialized combat GtA units (which there aren't any) to exist.
*maybe if you cut one of them, but as it stands many units can be created in 5seconds on the frontlines and any army can retreat to a nexus from anywhere in 2seconds. Warp Prisms and mobile play has been figured out as one of the best methods to counter broodlords, the Protoss ground army takes the initiative with superior mobility when fighting broodlords. No mobility disadvantage to be seen, rather the opposite.
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fml 
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What are you trying to say? That it is correct that air units beat ground units in a straight up fight? That this is how it should be?
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On October 26 2015 07:47 RoomOfMush wrote:
What are you trying to say? That it is correct that air units beat ground units in a straight up fight? That this is how it should be?
The rule you are making that air units have to lose to ground units because of mobility advantages is not true for many air units that just don't have the movement speed to actually make them mobile.
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On October 26 2015 09:42 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2015 07:47 RoomOfMush wrote:
What are you trying to say? That it is correct that air units beat ground units in a straight up fight? That this is how it should be? The rule you are making that air units have to lose to ground units because of mobility advantages is not true for many air units that just don't have the movement speed to actually make them mobile.
It's true for most air units. Get a marine based army directly under your air units like carriers and battlecruisers? They generally die. That's why you have to abuse the mobility of air units and position them properly. Here mobility is about how they move around the map, ignoring terrain. The problem with broodlords is an issue of pathing and range. This makes the only reasonable response to them air based. This inevitably leads to design that strengthens air and proposals to strengthen air which would be bad for the game.
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On October 26 2015 09:53 TheWinks wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2015 09:42 Big J wrote:On October 26 2015 07:47 RoomOfMush wrote:
What are you trying to say? That it is correct that air units beat ground units in a straight up fight? That this is how it should be? The rule you are making that air units have to lose to ground units because of mobility advantages is not true for many air units that just don't have the movement speed to actually make them mobile. It's true for most air units. Get a marine based army directly under your air units like carriers and battlecruisers? They generally die. That's why you have to abuse the mobility of air units and position them properly. Here mobility is about how they move around the map, ignoring terrain. The problem with broodlords is an issue of pathing and range. This makes the only reasonable response to them air based. This inevitably leads to design that strengthens air and proposals to strengthen air which would be bad for the game.
So the statement about Marines and BCs is not really true. In a supply for supply scenario (6:1) BCs win pretty hardcore, even in somewhat higher ratios (like 8:1, 9:1 or 10:1) BCs still win. You need like 11:1 or 12:1 to beat BCs.
The Broodlord is an even more focused antiground unit, because the BC still has a decent antiair attack and at least one strong combat spell that also targets air. The way the broodlord kills ground units so efficiently (range, broodlings) is only the symptome, the reason why it has to do that is that it can't shoot air and is slow and not a "counterunit" (like if it had increased damage vs armored, but less vs light) which would make it easier to counter them with specific ground units at least.
So in short, the broodlord and to a lesser extend the BC are designed to fuck over ground units in combat. If you want to counter them, just by design you are forced into either air units, or specific counters with vast amounts of bonus damage specifically designed to beat such units. The latter one simply doesn't exist on the ground in SC2. A cyclone or goliath with vast amounts of extra vs armored and enough range would be a theoretical possibility, but then those units would be kind of bad vs most other units, including other air units like light air.
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zzz... what I get for correcting the wrong ratios
Edit: I'm not saying I'm a fan of all of this, but that's just how I see it. Viable Broodlords/BCs means you have to counter it with air, because there is no +50% vs armored 10range, can't shoot ground GtA unit in the game.
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United Kingdom20276 Posts
I think both protoss and terran could use better G2A - maybe in the form of buffed stalker. Cyclone is.. interesting at the moment, very strong air to air sometimes. Since fairly standard PvT is 1gate nexus phoenix, a guy went rax-gas-factory-cc-cc and built cyclones and actually denied phoenix/wp really hard against me, i've seen them do quite a lot of damage in fights vs air too in their current state so maybe it's a bit soon to say "remove cyclone, add goliath". I have no idea if that kind of opening is any good but he was one of the very few guys getting them out on the field so that i could see them.
So the statement about Marines and BCs is not really true. In a supply for supply scenario (6:1) BCs win pretty hardcore, even in somewhat higher ratios (like 8:1, 9:1 or 10:1) BCs still win. You need like 11:1 or 12:1 to beat BCs.
That sounds like a pretty bad ratio - 2x supply required - until you realize that it takes a hell of a lot more than 30 marines to kill 15 liberators :D
Honestly the gas cost is the main thing stopping terrans doing crazy stuff every game with them. A guy recently dropped three extra starports on reactors at 9 minutes and i was very very worried that he would produce 24 liberators in barely over 2 minutes, but he didn't have the gas to do so. He went viking instead which is way worse against carriers.
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On October 26 2015 11:23 Cyro wrote:I think both protoss and terran could use better G2A - maybe in the form of buffed stalker. Cyclone is.. interesting at the moment, very strong air to air sometimes. Since fairly standard PvT is 1gate nexus phoenix, a guy went rax-gas-factory-cc-cc and built cyclones and actually denied phoenix/wp really hard against me, i've seen them do quite a lot of damage in fights vs air too in their current state so maybe it's a bit soon to say "remove cyclone, add goliath". I have no idea if that kind of opening is any good but he was one of the very few guys getting them out on the field so that i could see them. Show nested quote +So the statement about Marines and BCs is not really true. In a supply for supply scenario (6:1) BCs win pretty hardcore, even in somewhat higher ratios (like 8:1, 9:1 or 10:1) BCs still win. You need like 11:1 or 12:1 to beat BCs. That sounds like a pretty bad ratio - 2x supply required - until you realize that it takes a hell of a lot more than 30 marines to kill 15 liberators :D Honestly the gas cost is the main thing stopping terrans doing crazy stuff every game with them. A guy recently dropped three extra starports on reactors at 9 minutes and i was very very worried that he would produce 24 liberators in barely over 2 minutes, but he didn't have the gas to do so. He went viking instead which is way worse against carriers.
Oh well, that ratio is what you get when the marines "blink" under the BCs. In general you would need quite more as well against BCs. 
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This is what Blizzard does, and has always done in expansions... add air units. From Brood War to Frozen Throne to HOTS now to LOTV, most of the new units are air units.
They just add more air units and make the dynamics between them increasingly important at the expense of other interactions.
Blizzard knows you need more air units!
The proper dynamic between air and ground units is exemplified with Mutalisks and Marines. Marines win the straight up fight, but Mutalisks enjoy the mobility advantage.
Though they ignore terrain, "Capital Ships" aren't mobile, but are super strong and worse they can stack all over each other which makes them incredibly overpowered. That and some of them are "siege units" which just gives them another ridiculous advantage. It is a terrible game design dynamic.
And worst of all, their counters are air based... terrain and positional play are replaced with slow A-move flying units.
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I think its only meh, that they give every race an aerial siege unit. BW also had air units being the omega of everything, but the lower air tech, was just insane against air while only doing little damage to ground. And Air had to fight directly with the ground units, because ground usually had the higher range. That made sure you can't just slowly produce your lategame air, since the enemy will trade really well against it, but the moment air is massed, they swoop in over a cliff unload their damage and be gone again. Which wouldn't be possible now, since Battlecruiser can't hit and run anymore.
In short, BW air had holes in their composition, not so in Sc2, because they want every race to be able to do every strategy. Which in the end makes the game really one dimensional, since one thing works the best from start to finish everywhere. But ground has the same issue in Sc2.
The game is still asymmetrical designed, as in the unit types work differently, but every race has everything.
And well static air actually traded extremely well against air units.
The game is still assymetrical designed as to the unit types work differently. But every race has all unit types.
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EPT
