Nice read, while I'm not sure if just doing that would make the game VERY interesting to watch it certainly can't hurt.

problem is I don't think blizzard wants to do that, harder game = less sales T_T

(and before someone says easy to learn hard to master in reply, not mastering the spell which is hard leads to getting stomped on Battle.Net and thus leads to less fun with it and less sales for blizzard. from a Noob who can't master said spell point of view of course.)

NuKedUFirst

Canada3139 Posts

July 23 2010 14:57 GMT

#82

Very nice article and grats on 20006!

Ichabod

United States1659 Posts

July 23 2010 14:57 GMT

#83

Wonderful post,

On a side note, contaminate discussion would be interesting, but it's just not seen often enough. (As I see it, a couple key contaminates at technical (lair morph, warpgates, misc. key upgrades) bottlenecks could really have a huge effect)

Meff

Italy287 Posts

July 23 2010 15:08 GMT

#84

On July 23 2010 23:27 AncienTs wrote:
gut feeling tells me that fazing is a bug and will/ought to be removed...

but then again fazing requires so much focus that you can lose time managing other important things, namely, macroing

Well, it's definitely a bug, no doubt about it.

As for whether it should be removed, I'll disagree with the OP and state that I do not really find fazing to be all that good of a quirk of the engine. In abstract, I have to say that I am wary of effectiveness multipliers, particularly on units that already have their sort of multiplier built in (the charge-up mechanic). Stacking those is a very quick way to break a game.

More concretely, I think that at the moment there's already enough tension when void rays rushes hit. A little mismanagement can cost somebody the entire game (in zerg's case: produce the appropriate building/units, coordinate queens, probably defend from the zealot push that comes together with the VR attack). Little micro tricks should help the defender in this case, at least in my opinion.
Also, the bug that allows you to pretty much insta-kill unlimited numbers of small units (as long as you have enough void rays to one-shot them one at a time you can just shift-click them) follows exactly the same dynamic as fazing. That one, however, is pretty much one-sided.

s.a.y

Croatia3840 Posts

July 23 2010 15:09 GMT

#85

Congrats on 20k !

I think that throughout the years people will come up with more of this abilities and make the game as good as SC:BW is.

feather6

48 Posts

July 23 2010 15:18 GMT

#86

Nice post!

I think there is an interesting point to be made with fungal growth. Putting aside balance for a moment, a cast time would make FG harder to land and more exciting when it hit. Why, however, is something like plague so exciting (PLAAAAGUU!), when it is so similar to fungal growth? Plague is instant cast after all.

I think people just aren't used to the damage. A plague from the expensive, slow, weak defiler (hey, just like the infestor!) can cripple an entire army, and people know exactly what that red graphic means and freak out as a defiler charges towards the enemy. Will the tanks kill it? Will he juke the plague? Ahhh!

Well placed fungal growths on an army can be just as devastating as a good plague, and should be just about as hard or easy to land. I know I get excited when an mmm ball gets slammed by FG and a bunch of flanking lings come running in. Are people just not used to thinking of FG as just as powerful as plague? Is it because the graphic is less 'scary'? Does anyone else think FG already has a 'wow factor'?

Also, lol @ forcefield giving a 'small' edge. Look at Idra vs Tester on scrap station in the King of the Beta tournament to see that 'small' edge in action in their 200/200 battle.

DuneBug

United States668 Posts

July 23 2010 15:24 GMT

#87

Threads like this are what i love about TL. well along with the other awesomeness.

Was not aware of void ray 'fazing', but now really want to try it out!

I liked what you mentioned about EMP / Guardian shield. What if an EMP disabled one guardian shield, but didn't actually 'emp'. 100 energy for 100 energy? Or exploded on the edge of the shield, instead of its intended target. that'd be pretty cool.

Nothing wrong with the baneling though. I think the fact that it explodes when killed is the best part about it. When I was starting out as zerg i thought banelings sucked, I would never be able to use them because i wasn't korean and would end up exploding all my banelings on one marauder or something because of bad attack-move. Then I saw a vid that said basically never put your banelings on attack-move just use move and get them as close as possible. Let enemy fire do the rest.

Also re: fungal growth it actually used to have a cast animation it seems odd that people forgot. I recall it looking similar to the infested terran. It was pretty tough to aim, especially against stimmed troops or zerglings or charging zealots, mutalisks, phoenix.. aka everything that fungal growth is useful for killing.

Phil4994

United States143 Posts

July 23 2010 15:25 GMT

#88

Beautifully written post and definitely gives hope that SC2 can be just as good or greater than SC BW if Blizzard bolsters the idea of "wow" factors. This was a great read and hits the many points that people are worrying about. Now if only we could know what Dustin Browder is thinking....

Congrats on 20k

chongu

Malaysia2594 Posts

July 23 2010 15:27 GMT

#89

Baller article.... Tons of analysis provided.... nice pics and vids :DDD

TitCriss

Canada39 Posts

July 23 2010 15:27 GMT

#90

Fungal Growth should be instant. Before there was a delay and Terran players almost never got caught by a fungal growth. The DPS of Fungal Growth is ridiculously low for it to be non-instant.

Nerfing baneling. I know that it is a game and sometimes there is some really strange things in a game but this is ridiculous. A bomb is a bomb. Shoot a bomb or detonate the bomb and you have the same damage.

Fazing voidray. If it isn't remove I go protoss.

MarioMD

United States22 Posts

July 23 2010 15:30 GMT

#91

Excellent read. Very well written.

Lots of interesting ideas. I was immediately resistent to the idea of the guardian shield stopping EMP, but I like the idea that a ghost can snipe sentries as well. An interesting idea.

Is there damage decriment to the the banelings explosive damage as the area increases like most AOE or is it a flat number? If so I'm not sure I feel any need for them to deal less damage if they are exploding upon death. Even if it isn't though I'm not sure it would be helpful. Usually the "action" happening with banelings explosions goes down so fast that I feel it may be difficult to appreciate whether inidividual banelings did less damage to this or that because of some micro.

Once again, excellent read, very well written, excellent ideas that I think I'd like to see implemented in some way.

koppik

United States676 Posts

July 23 2010 15:37 GMT

#92

Isn't Blizzard getting rid of fazing for void rays?

DustinB:: "We are aware of the Void Ray fazing and we will be addressing that. I was not personally aware of underground casting of Infestor abilities. I'll go take a look.=)"

At least they're "addressing" it. I don't think "fazing" is such an issue, though. Getting a critical number of void rays that will "one-shot" marines and queuing them up is kind of a game-breaker. The void rays kill marines as fast as they can target them at that point.

Uranium

United States1077 Posts

July 23 2010 15:38 GMT

#93

Fungal growth only does 36 damage fyi. Good article otherwise.

Smartcast and extremely clumped units really broke the options for AoE spells in Starcraft 2.

andeh

United States904 Posts

July 23 2010 15:40 GMT

#94

I think fungal growth has a pretty large wow factor. Similarly to plague(no cast time/animation), except instead of seeing if 1hit zerglings rape an army, it's waiting to see if he is going to be able to get use out of fungal growth by killing the fungal growthed units.

Or seeing fg be used like forcefield and create a wall of units that just messes units getting into position.

But I would say FG does not have the same wow factor as plague, maybe because its not immediate.

Kickchon

Germany12 Posts

July 23 2010 15:42 GMT

#95

Very nice read, indeed the "wow" factor should depend on both players actions.

I think storms hp/dmg/running speed balancing could be achieved by progressivly increasing its damage over time. So you want to move your units out of the storm, quickly.

789

United States959 Posts

July 23 2010 15:44 GMT

#96

Really nice article, I enjoyed reading it. One minor thing I'd like to point out - that picture of the Void Seeker. The Void Seeker wasn't an early version of the void ray, it is Zeratul's ship in the campaign.

I'd like Blizzard to keep fazing in, but only at the uncharged level. Fazing with a charged beam is just ridiculously powerful. Also only being able to faze at uncharged level presents the player with a decision - to faze or to charge.

-fj.

Samoa462 Posts

July 23 2010 15:44 GMT

#97

How about storm deals 9% of a units hp + a small flat amount 10 times over the duration of the spell

Of course with a cap so BC's don't get raped so hard by it.

Also the travel times on fungal and emp are huge nerfs that would make these spells almost unusable, they would need AoE and possibly damage buffs to be worthwhile again.

I really like the guardian shield / emp interaction though. fits well with lore.

1 emp will end any guardian shield it touches, but will have no other effect.

So if the terran spams out emps and the protoss spams out shields at the perfect timing, no emps will land. or something like that.

Maybe instead of buffing the damage on EMP it could stun for a short time. like 0.5 seconds or so.

koppik

United States676 Posts

July 23 2010 15:52 GMT

#98

I think players don't run from storm as much because it's almost a given that a good Protoss will just storm the area the units are running towards as well. Since storm doesn't stack, you might as well stay and attack if there are more than like two templar.

Whiplash

United States2929 Posts

July 23 2010 16:00 GMT

#99

EXCELLENT article, I really agree on almost all spells with the wow factors. I think guardian shield blocking out EMP would be a great dynamic to add as well.