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Given the large public hullabaloo over Hellbats and Medivac Ignite Afterburners (Hellbats Review Thread after the results of WCS (and every other TvT played in the last few months) I've gone ahead and modified a melee map on Neo Planet S LE to test some ideas.
The map can be found in the Americas Server Arcade by searching for Medivac Speed Boost or by the full name Medivac Speed Boost Community PTR. You'll see an icon that looks like this:
+ Show Spoiler +
I wanted to do something a little more original than requiring energy or requiring an additional upgrade. So, using the philosophy that DK and Co. have supposedly moved toward (small changes) the first iteration of the map contains the following modification:
- Medivacs now have a small drawback after using Ignite Afterburners
- After the duration of the speed boost (8 seconds), the Medivac's engines have to recharge and movement speed is temporarily slowed to 1.4062 (~44% reduction)
- The detrimental effect lasts 2 seconds after which normal flight (2.5 movement speed) is restored
This should in effect still incentivize utilizing afterburners to get out of tight spots with drops and would also discourage abusing the boost too much offensively.
On the other hand, you could still use it to drop hellbats onto armies as is currently done but once they're dropped the medivacs are sitting ducks.
I've tested it a bit and you can still cross long distances faster by using the afterburner, even taking the temporary speed decrease into account...just not as much as before. In addition, timing the boost is more critical when dropping over turrets as the speed decrease means 1 turret can easily take you out if you boost too soon.
Please post replays and feedback in this thread.
I look forward to some constructive criticism based on actual gameplay.
Cheers.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Lyz8Oof.jpg)
Credit to ~ZergRex for the pic.
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4 seconds is too long for such a severe speed penalty, imo. Maybe like 2 seconds.
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Rather than an instant speed reduction from blazing-fast to slow-as-dirt, I think deceleration would be the cleanest way to execute this.
It allows the Terran player to observe that his Medivac is becoming vulnerable and act accordingly, thus rewarding attentiveness to their drops and encouraging micro while they're paying the additional attention.
Should make for a good PTR, I'm curious to see how this will affect... well, every Terran matchup, lol.
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I think it's an interesting idea. The exact # of seconds or severity of deceleration can of course be changed, but the core idea is pretty cool I think. It makes the boosts more meaningful and requires the user to have some skill, rather than just brainlessly using the ability whenever it's off cooldown like most terrans do at the moment.
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
I personally like that there are no penalties for using spare APM on abilities, it's helping to raise the skill bar and making the tournaments more interesting. The last thing we want are turtle fests.
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I'm glad that the community started making their own PTRs.
We shouldn't rely on Blizzard all the time, since they're busy doing nothing.
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Ah yes, let's guarantee a medivac kill for any flying unit whatsoever.
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Thanks for the feedback so far. I've changed the slow duration to 2 seconds. We'll see how that goes for now. Keep in mind that the reduction in speed is actually less than concussive shell slow effect (yes, I realize that doesn't effect air units, I'm just trying to provide some perspective).
I'd also appreciate anyone who posts replays here of non-ai games (or PM me the link if you like).
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you dont really need a -speed penalty. all the units youd normally use to snipe medivacs are faster already, muta, phoenix, stalker, etc. and static turrets do a good job of killing them in their normal speed anyways
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On June 10 2013 23:25 Sated wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2013 22:25 Evangelist wrote:
Ah yes, let's guarantee a medivac kill for any flying unit whatsoever. Sounds like Terran will have to think about how to use drops/engage with their army properly instead of using Ignite Afterburners as an, "Oh shit I fucked up!" button... I like the idea, but 4 seconds seems a little bit much.
Well since we are talking about "I fucked up" buttons, why don't we point our fingers at recall =D
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Recall has given protoss the ability to engage in the early game at all. Gateway units are so gimpy and so expensive that if you lose a handful of sentries/stalkers before 8:00, you're pretty much dead. It also has the interesting choice of using energy that would otherwise be used for a nexus cannon. This is a very significant trade off and therefore an interesting choice.
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On June 11 2013 00:49 RFDaemoniac wrote:
Recall has given protoss the ability to engage in the early game at all. Gateway units are so gimpy and so expensive that if you lose a handful of sentries/stalkers before 8:00, you're pretty much dead. It also has the interesting choice of using energy that would otherwise be used for a nexus cannon. This is a very significant trade off and therefore an interesting choice.
How are you ever going to lose a "handful of sentries/stalkers" if you don't have any units from going MSC --> 2x Forge Robo off 1 gate.
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That is one specific build that abuses a timing that zergs are weak to when they take a fast 3rd, not a general use of the MSC as an "I fucked up" button. Perhaps zergs need to be a little safer before taking a third now?
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On June 11 2013 01:05 Nightsz wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2013 00:49 RFDaemoniac wrote:
Recall has given protoss the ability to engage in the early game at all. Gateway units are so gimpy and so expensive that if you lose a handful of sentries/stalkers before 8:00, you're pretty much dead. It also has the interesting choice of using energy that would otherwise be used for a nexus cannon. This is a very significant trade off and therefore an interesting choice. How are you ever going to lose a "handful of sentries/stalkers" if you don't have any units from going MSC --> 2x Forge Robo off 1 gate.
If you allow this to happen, you just deserve the loss anyway.
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Unfortunately I don't think I can do any testing (I don't own HotS, :-P) and I've never used the Map Editor so I don't understand its limitations, but is deceleration a possibility for this ability or does it have to be a flat movement speed decrease?
To me it seems very clunky to go from just Fast to Really Slow while also limiting the parameters of time with regards to the slow effect.
I think deceleration will allow for more maneuverability with deciding appropriate values of speed to hit that sweet spot.
Plus what my last post said about it, yada yada. :-P
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...It's been more than a month since the MLG where people started thinking that "afterburners might be abusive" - we're at a historical low of Terrans in GSL and winrates are overall even, I don't think afterburners needs to be tweaked. It was just something that people needed to get used to dealing with, and they have.
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While this is an interesting idea I'd still support a cooldown increase over a slowdown afterwards. Also since stimmed units are faster than medivacs players often use the boosters to get away with their ground army, this might screw that up a bit.
I was thinking about maybe a reduction in healing after using the boosters instead. This promotes using it to get away instead of spamming it. Obviously not a huge reduction but something like 30-40% so while you CAN boost past static defense but your drop will be less effective. This would also help with the hellbat drops.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On June 10 2013 23:25 Sated wrote:Show nested quote +On June 10 2013 22:25 Evangelist wrote:
Ah yes, let's guarantee a medivac kill for any flying unit whatsoever. Sounds like Terran will have to think about how to use drops/ engage with their army properly instead of using Ignite Afterburners as an, "Oh shit I fucked up!" button... I like the idea, but 4 seconds seems a little bit much.
Are you serious? It's commonly accepted that T has the hardest late game army to control o.0
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The problem with your solution is that it helps tvt and hurts the balance of pvt and zvt. Standard 4m vs zerg and bio vs protoss would require an additional change in order to keep them at current balance. A change specifically to hellbat damage at the timing that a first helbat drop hits is more desireable as this effects tvt standard play but not pvt or zvt. David Kim's fix is a lot easier to do to a professional esport for this reason. The less matchups effected by a single change, the better for everyone involved with a career in playing.
Not a bad idea overall it just changes every T matchup in a way that would require significant reworking of play by players and possibly hurt balance in two matchups while fixing one.
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Wow! Good thread! I hope Blizzard will see this post! 
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VtO1ItL.png)
