On December 12 2010 17:21 Ryalnos wrote: At the moment, the Void Ray is a glass cannon. I think I like this (at least it's fast/high acceleration).
Luvin the void ray. Starts with 1 higher base speed than others, lasers are fairly okay but the beam is just win in a bottle. Rays can also get amazing farm if you get 3 speedups, because you'll be equal speed/faster than everyone else, so its easier to take risks and farm super close to their prisms/vessels.
Has anyone used blink? it looks kinda useful for evading but im not sure if its really worth it o.o
I'd like to see how Void Ray fares with a lot of upgrades, but it's hard to get that far.
The problems are:
-Only one kind of dps at a time (have to switch between beams instead of having missiles + lasers) -No fighters (not a big deal really)
As others have commented, it's damn hard to farm. And Energy Nova is the weakest of the AoE farming spells I've seen - the radius around you that it affects seems small. I'd like to see the laser weapon fire faster or something so that if you could spam charge (to boost damage) its farming capabilities would still be nice.
Here are my thoughts on the voidray after losing and winning several battles with it. The main thing it's good at is chasing, because it cannot win a straight up firefight, nor hope to outrange an enemy with it's main mode of DPS. It may have a useful role as a spellcaster, but I haven't experimented with that yet (Although I see great potential for chrono-rift), but as it stands, void rays will only be a bonus to your team if you are already winning.
One thing I noticed it CAN do though, is farm semi-effectively throughout the game with it's beam weapon, because it will ALWAYS one-shot fighters, for most of the game. However, its turn speed is fairly slow, and its firing arc is quite tiny, making it hard to use it for farming.
Suggestion: Increase the firing arc for the prismatic beam.
This should make Void Rays rather good at farming and give them a distinct advantage, as well as making them better chasers (since they won't have to hug the enemy ship's butt to be able to do damage).
Anyway, since they are so squishy, they are a great liability in most fights, the only way they're going to be able to pull their own weight is if you're already winning. Since their main source of DPS is a weapon that only fires forward, they cannot help but commit to teamfights, and they are screwed if it goes badly. I think giving it like a 90-135 degree firing arc on the prismatic beam will give void rays the ability to skirmish without being like "HEY I'M A SITTING DUCK CHANNELING THIS BEAM AT 7 RANGE AND I HAVE NO HP" and without having to invest in lasers, which they won't even be using half the time.
Well I haven't tried the void ray out yet, but I had been thinking about what it would be like to introduce very unique units to the game and figured some problems would arise that people have mentioned. It is hard to balance things out when the capital ships are at times painfully slow.
Perhaps a good way to balance things would be to allow good compositions to be favorable such as having creeps do more damage, so the capital's ships job would be to tank more of the white damage. There are obvious problems with that, but either way I think the game will need to be changed if unique ships are to be added in and be balanced. On the other hand if they aren't added in the game will remain-quite frankly-bland.
I'm loving this map, i've tried the void ray a little but it didn't convince me, i agree it looks more like a glass cannon with more glass than cannon.
If there is a tournament i'll def watch it, i'm not sure about the longevity of this game though, dota had a far more complicated map with more farming options + lots of items and more heroes, i would love to see this evolve into something more complex to be played in a more competitive way.
On December 12 2010 11:46 baconbits wrote: you forget that other ships hp is fixed (only shield upgrades) and shields don't benefit from armor upgrades. Leviathans can upgrade their total hp and therefore their armor effects their total lifespan instead of only 8k hp worth of it. And if they are upgrading armor through the roof you should start upping bile swarm instead of tentacles since it is more bursty or take the caster route.
also frenzy + corruption doing 50% more damage, 50% faster and the 20% from corruption helps negate any armor anyway.
Then change the armor upgrade to adding armor to reg armor and shield armor at the same time, if you would spec armor completely as BC (with a bit of laser upgrades) you can negate virtually every bit of damage
On December 12 2010 11:46 baconbits wrote: you forget that other ships hp is fixed (only shield upgrades) and shields don't benefit from armor upgrades. Leviathans can upgrade their total hp and therefore their armor effects their total lifespan instead of only 8k hp worth of it. And if they are upgrading armor through the roof you should start upping bile swarm instead of tentacles since it is more bursty or take the caster route.
also frenzy + corruption doing 50% more damage, 50% faster and the 20% from corruption helps negate any armor anyway.
Then change the armor upgrade to adding armor to reg armor and shield armor at the same time, if you would spec armor completely as BC (with a bit of laser upgrades) you can negate virtually every bit of damage
When you say it it sounds like you actually have any influence over the mechanics upgrades. "Then do this and that" is a stupid advice iof you actually CAN´T do it.
Also for people who didn´t know, the carrier had also cloak and it is not op to have cloak. At least the carrier had other decent spells so cloak was a waste of mana. Void Ray doesn´t have that great spells. Chrono rift + Chrono rift + Chrono rift maybe. Everything else is meh or crazy expensive then meh.
Everyone get 25 mineral speed boost + rest in pris beam.
Share control.
Gather up 6 voids in a ball, right click nearest enemy. Definitely allow them to get closer to your base first. He will die before the 6 of them can kill one of you. Repeat over and over while they are in full retreat (or if they aren't simply kill them all).
The DPS you have doing this is insane and perfectly focused, while the 6 ball makes you hard to target. Additionally, you are faster than they are unless they went heavily into speed. Simply target someone that didn't to annihilate them, then follow on against their allies.
The skill ceiling on this map is about a 1/10. This map will not go anywhere in the competitive scene =/. Which sucks, cause the guy making it seems to know what he's doing and there are very limited amounts of good custom team games out there.
On December 12 2010 22:53 saltygrapes wrote: I've said it before and I'll say it again
The skill ceiling on this map is about a 1/10. This map will not go anywhere in the competitive scene =/. Which sucks, cause the guy making it seems to know what he's doing and there are very limited amounts of good custom team games out there.
I kinda agree but this game has potential, it's not like dota was build in a day :D
On December 12 2010 22:53 saltygrapes wrote: I've said it before and I'll say it again
The skill ceiling on this map is about a 1/10. This map will not go anywhere in the competitive scene =/. Which sucks, cause the guy making it seems to know what he's doing and there are very limited amounts of good custom team games out there.
I kinda agree but this game has potential, it's not like dota was build in a day :D
Yeah but the actual makeup of how the map is played gives it no skill ceiling. There's not much the author can do without completely changing what the map actually is. There's no last hitting, very little decision making outside of what upgrades to get and where to be, and no abilities that require much skill to use properly.
On December 12 2010 16:24 DiracMonopole wrote: Is there any real use for the purifier beam? It does more damage, but only until the prismatic beam is upgraded, and with charge up, prismatic comes out way ahead.
The mana burn with charge? It doesn't take long to burn most of a person's mana, and you can switch target easily to potentially take out 2 the energy of 2 ships. I kinda like it, and it improves the utility of the ship massively.
As for general thoughts on the voidray:
- I felt pretty confused in terms of what to upgrade, there are many skills and they don't all interlink that well. Another problem is that the VR seems really dependent on both weapon upgrades and spells and thus on energy upgrades. To get maximum damage out of it you have to have high damage and attack speed and enough energy to charge as much as possible and/or blink/cloak yourself out of trouble. - I like the shield upgrade alot, but again I think finding enough money to upgrade this as well is an issue - These money problems are all compounded by the fact that it's not that easy to farm with the VR. The base speed increase is useful, but not being able to have secondary weapons firing on fighters while you're focusing down a ship adds up to alot of lost money. The energy blast doesn't really have a large enough blast radius to be used effectively for farming either. - Blink is pretty useless at the moment, due to the way you have to blink within range of the spell, rather than being able to blink in a direction outside the spell range. This is not how blinks works in normal SC2, so I think a fairly simple fix should make it more useable. - Not having a range increase on the main beam attack ends up being a bit of an issue late game, as people can pummel you from pretty far away before you even get to them, which would be alright if it weren't for survivability issues linked to what I talked about above. - I'd love to see upgrades for prismatic beam (maybe making it cause a % increase in damage dealt to the target) just because I think it's a cool ability, and I like the idea of switching weapons often to suit the situation
Anyway, despite all this I really enjoyed playing the VR. I'm gonna try doing some different builds and seeing what happens.
On another note, how awesome is Carrier + Storm. I think the reason I'm saying VR farming is bad is because storm + warp with no cooldown is just too brilliant for farming.
For ray farming start with 3 speed, 2 lazor and go have fun around their prisms. If you see someone running, move into their retreat path and beam them dooown. Then go back to farming :D
When you have ~500-900 minerals go back, get 200 and 400 speed upgrades and spend the rest in prism beam's ASpeed and Damage and if you want 1 or 2 laser damage upgrades.
In one game where i got superfarm the beam was dealing 110 every .23 seconds. Stuff melted ^.^
If the VR can survive long enough and farm well (which I'm seeing is helped by using charge with lasers) then it can get absolutely nasty DPS. I had ~700 with perma-charge on 500 creep kills.
On December 12 2010 22:53 saltygrapes wrote: I've said it before and I'll say it again
The skill ceiling on this map is about a 1/10. This map will not go anywhere in the competitive scene =/. Which sucks, cause the guy making it seems to know what he's doing and there are very limited amounts of good custom team games out there.
I kinda agree but this game has potential, it's not like dota was build in a day :D
Yeah but the actual makeup of how the map is played gives it no skill ceiling. There's not much the author can do without completely changing what the map actually is. There's no last hitting, very little decision making outside of what upgrades to get and where to be, and no abilities that require much skill to use properly.
Just because it's not like DotA EXACTLY doesn't mean it's bad. For this game, it seems like the authors going for a more micro/unit movement based game. (The importance of speed upgrades, the eventual introduction of asteroids, etc.) I like that. If I wanted to play DotA I'd play DotA. But I don't.
On December 12 2010 18:18 Vod.kaholic wrote: Here are my thoughts on the voidray after losing and winning several battles with it. The main thing it's good at is chasing, because it cannot win a straight up firefight, nor hope to outrange an enemy with it's main mode of DPS. It may have a useful role as a spellcaster, but I haven't experimented with that yet (Although I see great potential for chrono-rift), but as it stands, void rays will only be a bonus to your team if you are already winning.
One thing I noticed it CAN do though, is farm semi-effectively throughout the game with it's beam weapon, because it will ALWAYS one-shot fighters, for most of the game. However, its turn speed is fairly slow, and its firing arc is quite tiny, making it hard to use it for farming.
Suggestion: Increase the firing arc for the prismatic beam.
This should make Void Rays rather good at farming and give them a distinct advantage, as well as making them better chasers (since they won't have to hug the enemy ship's butt to be able to do damage).
Anyway, since they are so squishy, they are a great liability in most fights, the only way they're going to be able to pull their own weight is if you're already winning. Since their main source of DPS is a weapon that only fires forward, they cannot help but commit to teamfights, and they are screwed if it goes badly. I think giving it like a 90-135 degree firing arc on the prismatic beam will give void rays the ability to skirmish without being like "HEY I'M A SITTING DUCK CHANNELING THIS BEAM AT 7 RANGE AND I HAVE NO HP" and without having to invest in lasers, which they won't even be using half the time.
They'd be kinda rigged if they could use both weapons at once
Can blink/cloak/ fly faster than other ships as means of escape /best turn rates
On December 12 2010 22:53 saltygrapes wrote: I've said it before and I'll say it again
The skill ceiling on this map is about a 1/10. This map will not go anywhere in the competitive scene =/. Which sucks, cause the guy making it seems to know what he's doing and there are very limited amounts of good custom team games out there.
I kinda agree but this game has potential, it's not like dota was build in a day :D
Yeah but the actual makeup of how the map is played gives it no skill ceiling. There's not much the author can do without completely changing what the map actually is. There's no last hitting, very little decision making outside of what upgrades to get and where to be, and no abilities that require much skill to use properly.
Just because it's not like DotA EXACTLY doesn't mean it's bad. For this game, it seems like the authors going for a more micro/unit movement based game. (The importance of speed upgrades, the eventual introduction of asteroids, etc.) I like that. If I wanted to play DotA I'd play DotA. But I don't.
That has nothing to do with my point. My point is this game takes no skill whatsoever therefore it will flame out at the competitive level. Not that it's not enough like dota
On December 12 2010 22:53 saltygrapes wrote: I've said it before and I'll say it again
The skill ceiling on this map is about a 1/10. This map will not go anywhere in the competitive scene =/. Which sucks, cause the guy making it seems to know what he's doing and there are very limited amounts of good custom team games out there.
I really couldn't agree more. It is a well designed game and I do enjoy it, but when the main focus is getting generic upgrades that get cancelled out by the upgrade of opponents and farming creeps is completely mindless. Before anyone flames me... yes I understand there are different builds and different spells, but the fact is all of them are so forgiving. You can be losing a 1v1 and have PLENTY of time to turn around and run. For it to be very successful it will need to get more competitive, and currently with slow moving ships that you a-move most of the game, or simply cast a single damage spell with, there is too much room for error and it becomes difficult for more skilled players to get an edge.
Wow I am writing this poorly... the point is I do agree that it will need to be revamped in order to be competitive... and competition will make it very popular (though if the creator is content with it being a popular game amongst casuals thats fine) otherwise it will just be that game that people play once in awhile for fun... not the one that has a bunch of clans playing it.
Don't get me wrong, I am sure that there will still be clans for it, but... well if you don't understand what I'm trying to say at this point then just forget it. I know I'm not being the most coherent right now.
EPT
