EPT[A] Starbow - Page 309
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
- Change build time - Change movement speed - Make Null Ward very fragile and killed by only 1-2 Marines in the mineral line? Or maybe rework Null Ward completely, so it is not a "mine" like this. Areas where Protoss lack: - No spell that gives area control/manipulate terrain. (Unless Storm counts) - Nothing that slows/weaken enemy units. (Except stun from Stasis Field/Graviton Beam, or direct dmg from Storm.) - Nothing that procects/buff friendly units. (Safeguard can fill that slot.) But ofc its not just about filling the "empty slots". The unit itself and the spells shall of course contribute to a better gameplay, more interesting dynamics and so on. My point is: When the draft for the Sentinel looks good enough in theory, then we know it is worth to start tweaking it in the game. So please continue to discuss it and improve it. Ps. Here is my latest draft for the Sentinel : http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955¤tpage=308#6160 | ||
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
On June 27 2013 22:19 Kabel wrote: Well, all of that can be tweaked. - Change build time - Change movement speed - Make Null Ward very fragile and killed by only 1-2 Marines in the mineral line? Or maybe rework Null Ward completely, so it is not a "mine" like this. Areas where Protoss lack: - No spell that gives area control/manipulate terrain. (Unless Storm counts) - Nothing that slows/weaken enemy units. (Except stun from Stasis Field/Graviton Beam, or direct dmg from Storm.) - Nothing that procects/buff friendly units. (Safeguard can fill that slot.) But 1 cannon/spine crawler + spore would completely shutdown null ward almost regardless of its stats, right? | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
But the current stats in the game makes it killed by one Cannon/Turret/Spore Crawler before it can detonate. (Since it has 7 seconds "setup-time") | ||
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
On June 27 2013 22:22 Kabel wrote: The Null ward is atm an air unit. But the current stats in the game makes it killed by one Cannon/Turret/Spore Crawler before it can detonate. (Since it has 7 seconds "setup-time") Ok. a crawler isn't needed and a turret counters it too. I don't think that the nullward be able to harass with that design, and if all you can do is to set up traps outside the protoss bases, I think it will feel too similar too the other protoss units. I think the biggest thing protoss lacks is some kind of utility-unit when there isn't a battle going on. Terran has vultures and zerg has mutas and zerglings. In order to make the trap-thing interesting, the sentinel also needs to have a harass-threat. Maybe if you gave the null ward a casting range. So let's imagine this; You fly the sentinel into the opponents base. You place a nullward a bit away from the mineral pathes so that its out of range (and perhaps out of detection range as well) of a cannnon. Once the nullward has been set up you can click on the nullward to target the area which shold be damaged/slowed. The nullward could have a range of like 5 or so. This would put the effective range of the nullward close to 9 or so (assuming a radius of 2). Would that be broken? | ||
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SolidSMD
Belgium408 Posts
Later lurkers in TvZ means higher opportunity for a Bio timing push, but bio is already doing fine in TvZ so i am not sure if it is something good. firebats are gone, so i don't think bio pushes will be a big problem. By buffing gateway armies we also risk making protoss too mobile against zerg and terran which could create some kind of stalemale situation. Instead, it IMO creates a more interesting gameplay if the protoss "needs" to do damage early game to the zerg, and the zerg "needs" to do damage in the midgame as protoss benefits from scale to a higher extent than zerg due to storm + reavers. This rewards both players for army trading. This feels too much regular sc2, this will work out until zerg figures everything out and defends it properly. End of WoL protoss just had to do damage with some pressure or do a coinflip allin, or you just got overrun in midgame / lost to infestor/bl ball. Balance should be so that if zerg decently defends the pressure, they are still on equal footing and if they smack down the pressure, they should be ahead. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
On June 27 2013 22:38 SolidSMD wrote: I agree with everything danko said over the last few pages. firebats are gone, so i don't think bio pushes will be a big problem. This feels too much regular sc2, this will work out until zerg figures everything out and defends it properly. End of WoL protoss just had to do damage with some pressure or do a coinflip allin, or you just got overrun in midgame / lost to infestor/bl ball. Balance should be so that if zerg decently defends the pressure, they are still on equal footing and if they smack down the pressure, they should be ahead. This will only occur if zerg has the stronger late game army. The key is too make late game balanced, but that's a completely different topic and unrelated to early game/midgame dynamic. Both races actually doesn't have to be equally cost effective late game, but if one race is more cost effective it needs to have a significant disadvantage in terms of production mechanics or mobility. In zvX at the end of WOL, zerg was superior in every single way throughout the game. Please also note that the suggestions I have presented are completely different to the all'insh timing push'es in WOL. All of my suggestions are intended to make pressure less of a risk instead of increasing the reward. For instance early acces to warp prism without the warp in ability will force the zerg to delay his muta timing, and instead get units out to deal with the harass earlier. If he does go for a quick hydra rush, then the toss can run around with the warp prism and deny the zerg a 3rd, which means that the zerg doesn't get so far ahead (as he does now). But at this point, I just don't understand why the costs of tech structures haven't been reduced yet. I wonder, Kabel, what is your thought proces in that regard? Do you see any unintended consequences? If you believe some timings could come too quickly, couldn't that be adjusted by increasing the build times. For instance you could increase build time of robo bay to delay reaver drop. | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
Fundamental problem isn't cost inefficiency but cost of defence, and lack of window for counter. Response to scouted treat should be much more efficient. Not only this would allow toss to react but also would give some money left to invest in harassment tool as well. Right now I'm suggesting solution allowing to buff gateway basically only in pvz (dmg vs armored same as medium). Charge: I just dont think hydra/zealot/marine micro should be most important aspect in battle. More important should be positioning and outthinking opponent luring into lurkers, etc. In smaller battles its still possible to hide hydras behind buildings, morph them into lurkers, while trying to surround and block with zealots. It's not one dimensional, and already not that simple. Sentinel: Give forcefield to sentinel. I'm serious. Just with limited hps. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
The Sentinel should have two abilities. 1) A defensive battle-oriented ability (as suggested by Kabel), and 2) A "nullward trap". Let me describe how I think the latter should work; - 7 seconds after having being set up, the trap is capable of using its weapon, "rupture" (which is a straight-line attack). - Each rupture attack deals 25 damage. - After one rupture has been fired, the trap can fire again after a 40 second cooldown. - Each rupture attack is manual, so you must decide your self, what you want to attack. The rupture attack animation begins at the location of the trap and 7 range into the direction you point at. It will do damage to everything in between. - Each sentinel can place one trap each 120th second. -Each trap should be roughly the size of an auto-turret, so 2 sentinels can't place two traps on top of each other which would make harassing workers too deadly. This will create a gamedynamic where you can use sentinels for map presence and place traps at key location. But if you find your self close to one of the opponents bases, you might as well just set up a trap there. They can kill workers by them selves, but if you just have one of them, it will take over 40 seconds for the trap to kill workers. Compared to the widow mine it is more forgiven for two reasons; 1) The set-up time before the nullward can attack is larger. 2) It doesn't one-shot workers. The reason it doesn't take up energy is that I don't want the opportunity cost of the ability to be very high. If for instance, your playing against an opponent with good multitasking and solid defense, then it may never be optimal to set up traps for harass purposes. Instead you may just want to use the battle-oriented ability only. Since the two abilities doesn't really syngergize, I fear that if both cost energy, then players will just one of them superor, and only use one of them. In terms of gameplay, this sentinel will add the following; 1) More positional play. 2) Both the sentinel it self and the nullward trap has a lot of micro potential. 3) Unlike a normal AOE ability, the opponent can actually micro against the straigt-line attack if he attacks in a flank. 4) It gives the protoss player a unit which can work for it self, but also along with other units (the battle micro ability). 5) Uncertainty, while still being relatively forgiving to play against. Some times it will happen that 2 traps kill 10 marines in a second. But as long as small mistakes doesn't outright kill the opponent, then I think the uncertainty-element is to be prefered over predictable gameplay. The nice thing about the sentinel is that you can't really just take your sentinels and attack your opponent, because the traps (which were used to kill the marines) are unmoveable and its other battle-oriented ability is mostly a defense ability. So while you have gained a lead, the opponent will still have a chance to make a comeback. - | ||
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
On June 27 2013 23:28 Danko__ wrote: Hider: Fundamental problem isn't cost inefficiency but cost of defence, and lack of window for counter. Response to scouted treat should be much more efficient. Not only this would allow toss to react but also would give some money left to invest in harassment tool as well. Right now I'm suggesting solution allowing to buff gateway basically only in pvz (dmg vs armored same as medium). Charge: I just dont think hydra/zealot/marine micro should be most important aspect in battle. More important should be positioning and outthinking opponent luring into lurkers, etc. In smaller battles its still possible to hide hydras behind buildings, morph them into lurkers, while trying to surround and block with zealots. It's not one dimensional, and already not that simple. Sentinel: Give forcefield to sentinel. I'm serious. Just with limited hps. The problem is that you can't scout and react because investing in scouting is too expensive. For instance you can't just go robo on 2 base, get an observer out, scout sprie and then tech to corsairs. Even with a corsair-buff, you would just get outnumbered by the zerg player. Buffing stalkers a bit won't really have an effect as it still will be inefficient to get an early observer. A +1 damage increase to stalkers will just make stalkers a slightly better all round unit which doesn't really reward reactionary play at all. Instead you will be rewarded for building stalkers against everything. +1 to stalkers also won't really make early game harassing more efficient. Actually, stronger stalkers (combined with weaker mutalisks) could be counterproductive in terms of rewarding actionpacked gameplay, as the zerg player will have a much more difficult time harassing/engaging/army trading in the midgame. I would argue that it is actually a good thing that 10 mutalisks can take out 7-8stalkers for instance. If stalkers become too cost efficient vs mutas, then the zerg can't really harass the protoss player in the midgame. So while we may obtain a balanced game, we have actually just created a bad matchup dynamic where neither the protoss nor the zerg has any reliable tools to attack each other in the early game or midgame. | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
On June 28 2013 00:15 Danko__ wrote: You can quite easly scout gas timing andsee if zerg gets 3rd. That's all you need. Right now zerg just grows too fast. I think 4 lings will be enough to make sure you can't scout gas timings with a probe or a zealot, and I think suciding 2 zealots is too much. Instead it would just be so much more awesome if you could harass with a warp prism (without warp in ability) at like the 6-7 minute mark with 2-3 zealots and 1-2 stalkers. While harassing you will also be able to scout, and with good micro you will be able to save the injured units and then you fly away, after you forced the zerg too make too many hydras or lings relative to drones. If he overmakes hydras, you could then tech to reavers, will be relatively cheap since you already have robo facility, and use your warp prism to deny his 3rd if he tries to attack you. This will create a much more skil-rewarding and actionpacked game and is IMO a better way of balancing the game than buffing gateway units. | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
On June 28 2013 01:10 Danko__ wrote: To have this early tech u need early gas. If you will start gas after pool finishes then there is now way to have early lurkers/mutas. Later on. toss can send 3 zealots without big risk due to recall. Zerg has to spend money on something, all-in, tech or eco/hatches. I think its quite fair in that matter. You start the 1st gas before you start pool actually. Then you can obv. go quick lair and follow up with a lurker contain/all in or muta opening. However, the second gas can be delayed so a probe can't scout it. As you point out 3 zealots can be used to scout, but the problem with that is that I think investing that much into zealots (even though you can save them) is probably a mistake vs mutalisks. I think you need to dumb all your minerals into stalker + cannons and then take a 3rd around the 10th minute mark. With 3 zealots you probably won't be able to take a 3rd before the 11-12 minute mark, and with such a late 3rd you basically already lost. The difference between warp prism harass and "rift harass" is that warp prism harass does a better job of forcing the zerg player to build less drones (as he can get past an eventual spine crawler or 2 without taking damage). The warp prism will do a lot of damage against a muta player (as he will have close to zero units at that point in time), and unless the zerg wants to do invest in heavy mutalisk play on 20 drones or so, I expect that the zerg will build less mutalisks and heavier droning early on, which will allow the protoss player to take a quicker 3rd. Against a hydra/lurker player it will do less direct damage, but instead the warp prism can be used to delay/deny a 3rd later on in the game which is quite important as a lurker contain can be used to "outexpand" the protoss protoss player But obviously, with the current costs of tech structures and warp prism, rift harass is significiantly more cost effective and probably underused at the moment. But that is also why I want to reduce costs --> To make it a stronger nonallinsh alternative early game. Obviously the corsair should have a buff and if the archon is completely underpowered, then it should be buffed as well, but in terms of pure gateway units, I don't think it create good games if the optimal opening is always something like 3-4 gates with mass zealot + stalker --> take a 3rd --> tech. I like to see much more of the the; 1-2 gates --> tech --> scout/harass --> react --> take a 3rd. | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
You start the 1st gas before you start pool actually. Then you can obv. go quick lair and follow up with a lurker contain/all in or muta opening. However, the second gas can be delayed so a probe can't scout it. As you point out 3 zealots can be used to scout, but the problem with that is that I think investing that much into zealots (even though you can save them) is probably a mistake vs mutalisks. I think you need to dumb all your minerals into stalker + cannons and then take a 3rd around the 10th minute mark. With 3 zealots you probably won't be able to take a 3rd before the 11-12 minute mark, and with such a late 3rd you basically already lost. The difference between warp prism harass and "rift harass" is that warp prism harass does a better job of forcing the zerg player to build less drones (as he can get past an eventual spine crawler or 2 without taking damage). The warp prism will do a lot of damage against a muta player (as he will have close to zero units at that point in time), and unless the zerg wants to do invest in heavy mutalisk play on 20 drones or so, I expect that the zerg will build less mutalisks and heavier droning early on, which will allow the protoss player to take a quicker 3rd. Against a hydra/lurker player it will do less direct damage, but instead the warp prism can be used to delay/deny a 3rd later on in the game which is quite important as a lurker contain can be used to "outexpand" the protoss protoss player But obviously, with the current costs of tech structures and warp prism, rift harass is significiantly more cost effective and probably underused at the moment. But that is also why I want to reduce costs --> To make it a stronger nonallinsh alternative early game. Obviously the corsair should have a buff and if the archon is completely underpowered, then it should be buffed as well, but in terms of pure gateway units, I don't think it create good games if the optimal opening is always something like 3-4 gates with mass zealot + stalker --> take a 3rd --> tech. I like to see much more of the the; 1-2 gates --> tech --> scout/harass --> react --> take a 3rd. Zerg is just op and can do whatever he wants. You will see, few small tweaks and zerg will start to consider that he can be attacked and killed. | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
http://www.twitch.tv/kanban85 | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
Sentinel: Give forcefield to sentinel. I'm serious. Just with limited hps. I have indeed played with the thought. Some modified version of Force Field. I fear it would lead to worse gameplay: - They help to promote Protoss deathballs. Keep a high number of Sentinels together with the main army so you can unleash a lot of Force Fields. In small numbers are they not so useful. In high numbers are they great. - Force Field on a flying unit might be hard to balance: fly and block choke points/ramps so easily. @Hiders idea for Null ward + Show Spoiler + Ok, this is my suggestion for the sentinel (building a bit upon the previous idea). The Sentinel should have two abilities. 1) A defensive battle-oriented ability (as suggested by Kabel), and 2) A "nullward trap". Let me describe how I think the latter should work; - 7 seconds after having being set up, the trap is capable of using its weapon, "rupture" (which is a straight-line attack). - Each rupture attack deals 25 damage. - After one rupture has been fired, the trap can fire again after a 40 second cooldown. - Each rupture attack is manual, so you must decide your self, what you want to attack. The rupture attack animation begins at the location of the trap and 7 range into the direction you point at. It will do damage to everything in between. - Each sentinel can place one trap each 120th second. -Each trap should be roughly the size of an auto-turret, so 2 sentinels can't place two traps on top of each other which would make harassing workers too deadly. This will create a gamedynamic where you can use sentinels for map presence and place traps at key location. But if you find your self close to one of the opponents bases, you might as well just set up a trap there. They can kill workers by them selves, but if you just have one of them, it will take over 40 seconds for the trap to kill workers. Compared to the widow mine it is more forgiven for two reasons; 1) The set-up time before the nullward can attack is larger. 2) It doesn't one-shot workers. The reason it doesn't take up energy is that I don't want the opportunity cost of the ability to be very high. If for instance, your playing against an opponent with good multitasking and solid defense, then it may never be optimal to set up traps for harass purposes. Instead you may just want to use the battle-oriented ability only. Since the two abilities doesn't really syngergize, I fear that if both cost energy, then players will just one of them superor, and only use one of them. In terms of gameplay, this sentinel will add the following; 1) More positional play. 2) Both the sentinel it self and the nullward trap has a lot of micro potential. 3) Unlike a normal AOE ability, the opponent can actually micro against the straigt-line attack if he attacks in a flank. 4) It gives the protoss player a unit which can work for it self, but also along with other units (the battle micro ability). 5) Uncertainty, while still being relatively forgiving to play against. Some times it will happen that 2 traps kill 10 marines in a second. But as long as small mistakes doesn't outright kill the opponent, then I think the uncertainty-element is to be prefered over predictable gameplay. The nice thing about the sentinel is that you can't really just take your sentinels and attack your opponent, because the traps (which were used to kill the marines) are unmoveable and its other battle-oriented ability is mostly a defense ability. So while you have gained a lead, the opponent will still have a chance to make a comeback. I aim to add abilities/spells that are easy to understand and use. Especially now when I add a competely new unit to the game. The frustration you described for me when you tried my first draft of the Sentinel... You had no idea what you should do with the unit. I think we will get a similar scenario with your suggestion. (AND with my own suggestion for that matter!) Sentinel places a Ward in the air. This Ward itself must be individually microed to even attack. Most players will not be able to manage more than.. maybe five wards across the map? Most players will be like WTF ?? Yes, it would achieve the five things you mention. But I think it can be done in an easier way. It must be done in an easier and more self explanatory way! @Why did you remove December and Xiphias solution to the Null ward? I did not remove it. I just continued upon it. They had a flying caster who placed a Null ward on the ground. The Ward itself needed a manually activation from the player to work at all. You could either detonate it so it drained 15% of all enemy units in a large radius. You could also choose to detonate it so it "trapped" enemy units within a field. I did not think it was bad. I just thought it could be further improved. (Which is quite ironic since I have failed to do so..) - Manual activation limits the need of building more Nullifiers. (As the unit was called back then.) Most players can not handle more than a certain number of wards on the field anyway. - Detonation that dealt instant dmg felt quite close to the Spider mine. I wanted to seperate it further from the Spider mine by: - Make it be an air unit that works both vs ground and air. - Have an effect over time instead of instantly. - Effect a larger area, rather than having a powerful burst effect within a small area. Whie at the same time keep it user friendly. Oh well oh well... | ||
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Hider
Denmark9433 Posts
I aim to add abilities/spells that are easy to understand and use. Especially now when I add a competely new unit to the game. The frustration you described for me when you tried my first draft of the Sentinel... You had no idea what you should do with the unit. I think we will get a similar scenario with your suggestion. (AND with my own suggestion for that matter!) Sentinel places a Ward in the air. This Ward itself must be individually microed to even attack. Most players will not be able to manage more than.. maybe five wards across the map? Most players will be like WTF ?? Yes, it would achieve the five things you mention. But I think it can be done in an easier way. It must be done in an easier and more self explanatory way! Then you need to give it an attack. I don't really see any other way it can be a harass-threat. The problem with the current sentinel/old nullifier is that they are not really good enough at anything to be worth your excessive apm. Regarding, "damage over time" I think thats a quite boring effect, and I doubt anyone wanna build a units which is only capable of killing something if they stay within a certain area for 15 seconds. So if you are going to give it relatively "boring spells", then the neccesity of adding an attack to it becomes even higher. I think it is important that we use the "damage given/APM" used-ratio. Without a huge change to the sentinel I think this ratio will always be extremely low, as people doesn't really consider the damage to be worth anything if the opponent can just go out of the radius and regenerate/heal/repair. Regarding my suggested ability, I don't really think the ability is that hard to understand; You place a trap, which you need to manually attack. There isn't really more to it, and since you know its a "line" attack, its kinda obvious how you are gonna use it. Its actually very much like a widow mine, which you have to manually micro. But even that can be changed, if that's makes it too hard for less skilled players, by making it aumotically attack every 40th second. So when I describe this to new players I could say; "The nullifier has an ability to place a mine/trap, which works similarly to the widow mine, but does less damage and has a straight line attack instead of an AOE attack" As long as you can describe the ability in one sentence, I don't think the ability is particularly hard to understand. | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
So a chain of thought based upon that list. If it should do more damage to stronger units and not feel like a mine the HP-percentage damage is probably one of the cleanest solutions. If it should be capable of killing workers, it should however not be "current life" percentage. Now, there immidiatly rises the problem of if it does x% damage over time, it will kill workers as well as anything else. And to kill with damage percentage, the value would need to be reasonable high (e.g. 10% per second). With a flying nullward, it may be extremely strong to cast upon a standing army with no AA right there - like siege tanks. Some different ideas based upon a Nullward that gets setup and then damages an area with Percentage lifedrain. The damage is done to moving targets only. + Show Spoiler + Workers move all the time, so they would get damaged. An army that goes on the map is moving. Set on a choke point, units that get rallied through get damaged. However a siege line and an opponent in a defensive position is not, the nullward would be of little use to cast upon those targets, even if he doesn't have detection and antiair. It would also provide a very interesting countermicro to stepping into a nullward: hold/stop until the nullward is cleaned up/the effect runs out. Additionally the nullwards effect area should be small enough that pulling through won't kill your stuff, but you may think twice if you want to sacrifice 100Ultralisk HP just to run through it - while 5 extra damage on workers would not be unforgiving, if a player panicks and pulls instead of stops. E.g. Energy: 50 Creates a Nullward (short setup time for before the Nullward is ready to go). The Nullward creates a 2radius Nullfield which drains 10% life per second of any moving unit in that area. Extra damage to hovering targets. + Show Spoiler + Very simple. Workers and vultures hoover. Everything else doesn't. You can harass workers (and vultures) with it, but everything else doesn't care as much. the Nullward does not kill targets. It stasises* up a set amount of units. + Show Spoiler + This is obviously stronger when stronger units step into it. However, workers always want to move or you lose mining time. The stasis would even block other workers from mining properly and after it wears of, the workers would need to be manually readjusted. E.g. Energy: 25 Creates a Nullward (short setup time for before the Nullward is ready to go). The Nullward casts a 10 second stasis onto a unit in the range of 3 every 2seconds. (so it has an autocast stasis with a 2second cooldown and up to 5 targets can be affected at once) *is that a word, and did I write it correctly? Edit: hope it's a little clearer now. It's a chain of thought post, that developed into giving concrete solutions as well.  | ||
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