Poll: Did Blizzard overnerf the Void Ray in 1.1.2?
No, I think they are well-balanced now (638)
45%
Yes! Give me back my 40 dps! (395)
28%
Yes, but they were a bit too buff in 1.1.1 (302)
21%
No, and they are still too OP'd (94)
7%
1429 total votes
Your vote: Did Blizzard overnerf the Void Ray in 1.1.2?
(Vote): Yes! Give me back my 40 dps! (Vote): Yes, but they were a bit too buff in 1.1.1 (Vote): No, I think they are well-balanced now (Vote): No, and they are still too OP'd
Low ranking diamond player curious about the new changes to VR. Let me just repost the 1.1.2 changes to void ray for convenience
Void Ray -Damage level 1 increased from 5 to 6 (+4 armored). -Damage level 2 decreased from 10 (+15 armored) to 8 (+8 armored). -Flux Vanes speed upgrade bonus decreased from 1.125 to 0.703.
I rarely get void ray as they were in 1.1.1 and now that they are nerfed, what role do they play in any match-up? I feel like Blizzard has completely destroyed the mechanics of the void ray as well as its role as an artillery unit vs armored.
- Less incentive to charge due to reduced level 2 damage in conjunction with increased level 1 damage - Less effective vs armored units due to reduction in DPS from ~40DPS to ~25DPS. This makes them less useful vs bcs, carriers (2 units that are rarely seen), thors, and vikings (2 units you are likely to encounter in PvT).
For lack of better wording, I feel like this change has taken away the "essence" of the void ray. I can think of two good reasons why Blizzard would do this and some alternative changes without making VRs unviable.
1. Charged cheeserays slicing through unoccupied bases while the army is making a push: I'm sure everyone has encountered the rogue VR at some point in their SC2 carrier that sneaks out and wins the game with a faster base trade. I don't think that was the VR's intended role so Blizzard decided to drastically reduced the damage to armored units. It would be better if VRs had a building attack that does different DPS vs buildings.
2. VRs were so good that carriers played absolutely no role in the Protoss line-up: carriers aren't great for their cost and the fragility of the interceptors doesn't really help their case. Coupled with the mobility of VRs over Carriers, its easy to see why we rarely see carrier play at all levels of play. I don't really know how to fix carrier other than making interceptors stronger or cheaper, hopefully giving them some support/tanking role.
Please share your thoughts!
note: I am kind of in favor of the Flux Vane nerf. They were so ridiculously fast that if you didn't have aerial AA units, its very unlikely you could stop them.
2. VRs were so good that carriers played absolutely no role in the Protoss line-up: carriers aren't great for their cost and the fragility of the interceptors doesn't really help their case. Coupled with the mobility of VRs over Carriers, its easy to see why we rarely see carrier play at all levels of play. I don't really know how to fix carrier other than making interceptors stronger or cheaper, hopefully giving them some support/tanking role.
Carriers are boss, blizzard is just nerfing void rays until next patch to teach us how boss they are.
Not even kidding, except about only nerfing void rays till next patch.
They were pretty useless uncharged before so the thought is in the right place. 8+8 might be too big of a nerf though, will have to play around with it.
The speed upgrade nerf was definitely needed though. Not really for 1v1 but for team games and it won't really change anything in 1v1 so thats fine.
I don't think 8+8 will be so bad, they'll probably still beat stalkers for cost, except they won't absolutely destroy stalkers any more. Honestly, probably nerfs them hardest in PvP, because of stalkers. Otherwise, looks like they're more combat-worthy units as opposed to purely building harass.
Turning them into more of a core army unit, I think, is good.
VRs now lose badly to stalkers and queens on a cost basis. Any creative soul wanting to find a way to use them against 3 gate robo/colossus can let that dream die now. They are also now ineffective against ultras and most armored air units. VRs are now relegated to early terran harass, albeit a nerfed harass.
On October 15 2010 06:14 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't think 8+8 will be so bad, they'll probably still beat stalkers for cost, except they won't absolutely destroy stalkers any more. Honestly, probably nerfs them hardest in PvP, because of stalkers. Otherwise, looks like they're more combat-worthy units as opposed to purely building harass.
Turning them into more of a core army unit, I think, is good.
What role would a 250/150 slow-building fragile unit have in a core army?
I feel like this change has taken away the "essence" of the void ray.
This. Damage increasing by 60% from 10 to 16 when fully charged -- instead of 400% from 5 to 25 -- is a joke. From a spectator point of view, full charge used to be something to get excited about. It was cool to see people charging on pylons and trying to maintain it by hitting their own units, because it was a HUGE difference. Now, it's just not that serious. Void ray is kind of boring now (regardless of whether or not it is more "balanced").
On October 15 2010 06:15 whoopadeedoo wrote: VRs now lose badly to stalkers and queens on a cost basis. Any creative soul wanting to find a way to use them against 3 gate robo/colossus can let that dream die now. They are also now ineffective against ultras and most armored air units. VRs are now relegated to early terran harass, albeit a nerfed harass.
You realize they hardly do any less damage vs. queens? They actually do +1 uncharged, then -2 charged against queens.
If anything, this makes them better vs 3gate robo/collosus, for those times where your voids are hitting collosus before they're charged.
The issue now is that BCs will be very tough to counter as Protoss. I think that there should have at least been a cost reduction with the nerf, like perhaps 200/125.
On the damage nerf side, I definitely agree with the change in damage to light units -- charged void rays are way too strong against marines, hydras, and queens -- but I'm not sure how I feel about the big reduction in damage to armored units. Presumably this is about buildings dying too quickly. I will have to see how it plays.
I'm confused, I was under the impression that void rays had 3 levels of charge, 1 and 2 have changes, but isn't level 3 the same? If that is the case, I mean what are people complaining about, you just have a harder time charging your void ray. I don't play protoss but thats what i thought was happening lol
On October 15 2010 06:15 whoopadeedoo wrote: VRs now lose badly to stalkers and queens on a cost basis. Any creative soul wanting to find a way to use them against 3 gate robo/colossus can let that dream die now. They are also now ineffective against ultras and most armored air units. VRs are now relegated to early terran harass, albeit a nerfed harass.
You realize they hardly do any less damage vs. queens? They actually do +1 uncharged, then -2 charged against queens.
If anything, this makes them better vs 3gate robo/collosus, for those times where your voids are hitting collosus before they're charged.
I actually ran it through the editor. VRs used to beat queens 1:1. They lose now. I'm not saying this is bad, but it does make VR harass completely unviable vs zerg.
Before charging void rays used to do 5/0.6 = 8,3 dps now they do 10 / 0.6 17 dps UNCHARGED, meaning u can pretty much do constant damage to bc vikings thors and whatever is armored, they just eliminated the cheese-possibility of charging on rock and roflstomping everything ... This wasnt even a nerf (except for the speed ... )
This is so reasonable, they're trying to make Void Rays a good unit and not a gimmicky one-trick-pony. The uncharged buff is huge and they also got buffed vs. armored. The only reduction is in charged damage vs light where it doesn't matter A TON. Maybe if you're playing a one base all in where you have to kill a lot of marines but if you do that you don't deserve balance changes in your favor anyway.
Im torn. Personally I love the nerf just because I have trouble against sneak attack rays who get my base while my army has moved out and puts me in a very...strange position. Its not like drops which can be countered by 1 properly placed siege tank and 2 turrets, or like nydus worms which are countered by literally 2 marines+workers as long as you have sight on your base. (I'm not saying im good at those counters, but they do exist)
2-3 void rays can completely change the complexion of the game. The problem was not void ray rushes (which can be easily scouted) or mass void rays (same, and can be taken down by cheaper marines and vikings, and hey look you've got no ground anymore) it was that 2 or 3 void rays built while losing means you can put the terran, at least, in an awful position even if he had the game won.
But what do I know, I'm silver.
What I dont like about it is that it seems to play into the "power underwhelming" trope of SC2 (relative to BW) that was explained so well in another thread at TL. Siege tanks were nerfed so they dont decimate ground armies in a matter of seconds, high temps cant take out thors auto-instantly anymore, roaches went from being crap-your-pants to "oh, roaches. K." reapers have been rendered almost useless (I believe, don't quote me on this) except as scouts and now void rays.
It makes sense, kind of, but this seems to go against the grain of exciting matches. If you can predict the winner 9 times out of 10 by looking at the army count and composition before the battle thats...going to be a problem.
On October 15 2010 06:15 whoopadeedoo wrote: VRs now lose badly to stalkers and queens on a cost basis. Any creative soul wanting to find a way to use them against 3 gate robo/colossus can let that dream die now. They are also now ineffective against ultras and most armored air units. VRs are now relegated to early terran harass, albeit a nerfed harass.
You realize they hardly do any less damage vs. queens? They actually do +1 uncharged, then -2 charged against queens.
If anything, this makes them better vs 3gate robo/collosus, for those times where your voids are hitting collosus before they're charged.
I actually ran it through the editor. VRs used to beat queens 1:1. They lose now. I'm not saying this is bad, but it does make VR harass completely unviable vs zerg.
i think that was on purpose because void teching is faster than banshee teching so zerg usually have less queens than the ones needed to kill the voidrays... And the queen comes out of the hatchery so the voidray always charge the beam before hitting the queen and it was ridiculous.... just see how idra lost against a protoss in the GSL (it was tester ?).
On October 15 2010 06:21 PeT[uK] wrote: I'm confused, I was under the impression that void rays had 3 levels of charge, 1 and 2 have changes, but isn't level 3 the same? If that is the case, I mean what are people complaining about, you just have a harder time charging your void ray. I don't play protoss but thats what i thought was happening lol
Not since beta have they had 3 stages. Just the two.
Void rays were an interesting concept, but I guess Blizzard just couldn't figure out a way to implement them without being overpowered/underpowered, hopefully it gets replaced...in legacy of the void...
On October 15 2010 06:14 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't think 8+8 will be so bad, they'll probably still beat stalkers for cost, except they won't absolutely destroy stalkers any more. Honestly, probably nerfs them hardest in PvP, because of stalkers. Otherwise, looks like they're more combat-worthy units as opposed to purely building harass.
Turning them into more of a core army unit, I think, is good.
Explain to me how having voidrays mixed into your army is better now than it was before.
I won't argue that it was done on purpose, but what I'm saying is it makes the VR pretty damn useless. Who would build VRs instead of immortals who do and take much more damage to intended armored unit ... for 50 less gas? What role does the VR have now?
On October 15 2010 06:14 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't think 8+8 will be so bad, they'll probably still beat stalkers for cost, except they won't absolutely destroy stalkers any more. Honestly, probably nerfs them hardest in PvP, because of stalkers. Otherwise, looks like they're more combat-worthy units as opposed to purely building harass.
Turning them into more of a core army unit, I think, is good.
Explain to me how having voidrays mixed into your army is better now than it was before.
with speed you can kite stalkers and marines to be able to kill marauders and inmortals without being charged, and since you will be kiting units all the time your void ray will uncharge several times during battles.
On October 15 2010 06:28 kasumimi wrote: Guys I'm sorry for the silly question but I was under the impression VRs had 3 levels of charge? What am I missing? :E
It does, but the second level doesn't change the damage output. It's merely a passover/transition to delay the final damage level.
Personally, I feel like it's a bit too overnerfed. It was quite powerful prior, but now with its reduced range, reduced speed, and reduced total dps I don't think it's worth the 250/150 price tag :\
Void rays are now ordinary and boring. They don't do well in any situation. They are just there and shoot and everyone still thinks they'd have three damage output stages.
On October 15 2010 06:29 whoopadeedoo wrote: I won't argue that it was done on purpose, but what I'm saying is it makes the VR pretty damn useless. Who would build VRs instead of immortals who do and take much more damage to intended armored unit ... for 50 less gas? What role does the VR have now?
Simple answer ? They kill small things faster =X
For example marines recive now 10dps instead of 8,3 marauders 17 dps instead of 8,3 ghosts 10 dps instead of 8,3, void ray is now meant to attack units not building, that is what changed, it will be even more of a coutner to mm ....
Perhaps they should have nerfed vs armored, but switched the damage bonus to massive, that way it could stil counter BCs and Carriers, but not be as cheesy.
On October 15 2010 06:17 Drakan wrote: and when charged they were absolutely imbalanced killing vikings at sight before being able to make 2 shots, or instantly killing marines.
You mean they hard countered bad micro and non-existant scouting.
Yes, how evil of them! 'They always kill my precious vikings because I wasn't able to find the auto-kite-button' *cry*
I'm actually pretty pissed off at this change. They are nerfing it because bads, retards, and casuals who play 2v2 had a problem. Make different stats for 2v2 if there are problems but don't break 1v1 because "void rays r hard in 2v2". Thats prob why reapers got nerfed so hard and are shelved as a unit because of 2v2. This is retarded. Until 2v2 is considered for E-sports dont bother messing up 1v1. Make different stats,.... ugh blizz ur so dumb...
LOL and they nerf speed which is on fleet bacon (typo wut?). I really thought void rays were going to be a cool high skill cap unit with phasing or charge juggling but no, now they are chandeliers in a museum of forgotten wonders. Thx blizzard.
On October 15 2010 06:14 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't think 8+8 will be so bad, they'll probably still beat stalkers for cost, except they won't absolutely destroy stalkers any more. Honestly, probably nerfs them hardest in PvP, because of stalkers. Otherwise, looks like they're more combat-worthy units as opposed to purely building harass.
Turning them into more of a core army unit, I think, is good.
Explain to me how having voidrays mixed into your army is better now than it was before.
with speed you can kite stalkers and marines to be able to kill marauders and inmortals without being charged, and since you will be kiting units all the time your void ray will uncharge several times during battles.
win.
Too bad its like uh... infinietly easier to get some vikings or blink to stop that that to get feet bacon and flux veins. Also stim.
On October 15 2010 06:17 Drakan wrote: LoL @ the complain. Did you read well ? now when uncharged they deal 10dmg to armored units instead of 5.
and when charged they were absolutely imbalanced killing vikings at sight before being able to make 2 shots, or instantly killing marines.
They will be very usefull in battles instead of only using the when they are in masses or to make sneak attacks/cheese when charged.
With speed they can avoid being killed by marines, and kill armored units.
The point you make is what I am ambivalent about. Half the fun of using void rays is to figure out creative ways to keep them charged, since it repays you in dividends if you manage to maintain charge. Now that charged damage has been reduced and uncharged damage has been increased, that gameplay mechanic has changed with less incentive to keep them charged. It adds a bit more flexibility to their playstyle but at the same time weakens their intended role. Another poster pointed out that this is analogous to buffing siege tank unsieged damage, but at the expense of siege mode.
On October 15 2010 06:14 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't think 8+8 will be so bad, they'll probably still beat stalkers for cost, except they won't absolutely destroy stalkers any more. Honestly, probably nerfs them hardest in PvP, because of stalkers. Otherwise, looks like they're more combat-worthy units as opposed to purely building harass.
Turning them into more of a core army unit, I think, is good.
Explain to me how having voidrays mixed into your army is better now than it was before.
with speed you can kite stalkers and marines to be able to kill marauders and inmortals without being charged, and since you will be kiting units all the time your void ray will uncharge several times during battles.
win.
Speed got nerfed, against big targets like immortals, voidrays suck ass now, voidray is marginally better when not charged, but that undermines the whole concept of charge that its built around, and it still cost shitton and takes forever to build.
I mean it can't even beat a queen 1 on 1 anymore. What kind of joke is that?
I feel like this change has taken away the "essence" of the void ray.
This. Damage increasing by 60% from 10 to 16 when fully charged -- instead of 400% from 5 to 25 -- is a joke. From a spectator point of view, full charge used to be something to get excited about. It was cool to see people charging on pylons and trying to maintain it by hitting their own units, because it was a HUGE difference. Now, it's just not that serious. Void ray is kind of boring now (regardless of whether or not it is more "balanced").
A unit that sometimes does 5 and sometimes does 25 is called a poorly designed unit. The old VR was just poorly designed. The new one might not be perfect but it is better at least. Balance is generally boring, that's what makes it balanced~.
On October 15 2010 06:29 whoopadeedoo wrote: I won't argue that it was done on purpose, but what I'm saying is it makes the VR pretty damn useless. Who would build VRs instead of immortals who do and take much more damage to intended armored unit ... for 50 less gas? What role does the VR have now?
Simple answer ? They kill small things faster =X
For example marines recive now 10dps instead of 8,3 marauders 17 dps instead of 8,3 ghosts 10 dps instead of 8,3, void ray is now meant to attack units not building, that is what changed, it will be even more of a coutner to mm ....
VRs fall silly-fast to marines, stimmed or not. It will not be a counter to MM because of +1 attack to marines and +5 to maruaders O.o Again, immortals > VRs for this function. Marines lolpwn VRs more than they do immortals, which says something.
On October 15 2010 06:28 kasumimi wrote: Guys I'm sorry for the silly question but I was under the impression VRs had 3 levels of charge? What am I missing? :E
It does, but the second level doesn't change the damage output. It's merely a passover/transition to delay the final damage level.
Personally, I feel like it's a bit too overnerfed. It was quite powerful prior, but now with its reduced range, reduced speed, and reduced total dps I don't think it's worth the 250/150 price tag :\
Ahhh thanks for clearing this up. So the overall idea is to "buff" uncharged damage and nerf the max charge.
The nerf might be too much but I don't think the unit will become useless like people claim. Catching your opponent of guard with charged VR will can still be devastating.
The whole idea of the void ray was for it to be some kind of glass cannon, where if you micro'd it correctly (Keeping charge up, stopping it from dieing due to it's low hp), you got a huge advantage, and if you didn't you paid a large cost.
Now the void ray is just a unit with a laser beam and a slightly stronger laser beam.
It was one of the most intresting units blizzard had designed, the mechanic was great.
On October 15 2010 06:17 Drakan wrote: LoL @ the complain. Did you read well ? now when uncharged they deal 10dmg to armored units instead of 5.
and when charged they were absolutely imbalanced killing vikings at sight before being able to make 2 shots, or instantly killing marines.
They will be very usefull in battles instead of only using the when they are in masses or to make sneak attacks/cheese when charged.
With speed they can avoid being killed by marines, and kill armored units.
The point you make is what I am ambivalent about. Half the fun of using void rays is to figure out creative ways to keep them charged, since it repays you in dividends if you manage to maintain charge. Now that charged damage has been reduced and uncharged damage has been increased, that gameplay mechanic has changed with less incentive to keep them charged. It adds a bit more flexibility to their playstyle but at the same time weakens their intended role. Another poster pointed out that this is analogous to buffing siege tank unsieged damage, but at the expense of siege mode.
I understand but i've seen many progames being beated by 2 charged void rays and if you don't scout 1 of the 498.125.623 spots where protoss can hide a pylon there is no way to win as Zerg.
What i think is that the Level 2 is WAYYY too nerfed, but it had to be nerfed anyway because it was ridiculous. I got tired of watching protoss winning using this strat against good players in the Garimto stream and another great example was IdrA being absolutely owned with no chance to survive after seeing 2 void rays.
And i understand that many matches were interesting thanks to void ray micro, but they were MANY MORE matches were if a voidray hit a hatchery, a geyser, any structure, is instant win.
On October 15 2010 06:15 whoopadeedoo wrote: VRs now lose badly to stalkers and queens on a cost basis. Any creative soul wanting to find a way to use them against 3 gate robo/colossus can let that dream die now. They are also now ineffective against ultras and most armored air units. VRs are now relegated to early terran harass, albeit a nerfed harass.
You realize they hardly do any less damage vs. queens? They actually do +1 uncharged, then -2 charged against queens.
If anything, this makes them better vs 3gate robo/collosus, for those times where your voids are hitting collosus before they're charged.
I actually ran it through the editor. VRs used to beat queens 1:1. They lose now. I'm not saying this is bad, but it does make VR harass completely unviable vs zerg.
A good zerg player generally has two bases by the time you have voids, which means two queens. On most maps (lol not desert oasis) the second queen can come back, either way.
VRs still do have a purpose in harass, but are now a lot more reasonable as combat units in smaller numbers, imo. Obviously I'll have to play to check.
I like this change, since there is absolutely no way to stop a critical mass of Void Rays. The change of the level 1 attacks makes it a little bit harder for protoss to charge up (At a plyon | your own units etc).
Vikings now might require some micro to kill of a level 1-charged Void Ray (don't know yet).
I guess, this change will make Void Rays a little bit stronger in PvP early game, but preventing them from being "massed". You don't have to care as much about your Void Ray as before, since Level 1-Charge vs. Level 2-Charge won't be that much of a difference. So you have way more time to spend your APM at other things.
Well , at least, that's my opinion. >.<
Maybe they need to adjust its costs or HP/Shield now, since your Void Rays die very quickly without excellent micro. But why do you wanna micro them for such a small damage increase?
On October 15 2010 06:17 Drakan wrote: LoL @ the complain. Did you read well ? now when uncharged they deal 10dmg to armored units instead of 5.
and when charged they were absolutely imbalanced killing vikings at sight before being able to make 2 shots, or instantly killing marines.
They will be very usefull in battles instead of only using the when they are in masses or to make sneak attacks/cheese when charged.
With speed they can avoid being killed by marines, and kill armored units.
The point you make is what I am ambivalent about. Half the fun of using void rays is to figure out creative ways to keep them charged, since it repays you in dividends if you manage to maintain charge. Now that charged damage has been reduced and uncharged damage has been increased, that gameplay mechanic has changed with less incentive to keep them charged. It adds a bit more flexibility to their playstyle but at the same time weakens their intended role. Another poster pointed out that this is analogous to buffing siege tank unsieged damage, but at the expense of siege mode.
I understand but i've seen many progames being beated by 2 charged void rays and if you don't scout 1 of the 498.125.623 spots where protoss can hide a pylon there is no way to win as Zerg.
What i think is that the Level 2 is WAYYY too nerfed, but it had to be nerfed anyway because it was ridiculous. I got tired of watching protoss winning using this strat against good players in the Garimto stream and another great example was IdrA being absolutely owned with no chance to survive after seeing 2 void rays.
And i understand that many matches were interesting thanks to void ray micro, but they were MANY MORE matches were if a voidray hit a hatchery, a geyser, any structure, is instant win.
They should provide zerg a better early AA. The VR was fine. If anything, all they had to do was nerf the supply req from 3 to 4, and that fixes a bunch of the n00b QQs about VR massing.
On October 15 2010 06:14 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't think 8+8 will be so bad, they'll probably still beat stalkers for cost, except they won't absolutely destroy stalkers any more. Honestly, probably nerfs them hardest in PvP, because of stalkers. Otherwise, looks like they're more combat-worthy units as opposed to purely building harass.
Turning them into more of a core army unit, I think, is good.
Explain to me how having voidrays mixed into your army is better now than it was before.
The DPS boost vs armored when uncharged is actually very useful, and I do believe will add to the viability of the voidray as a core army unit. Part of the failure of the phoenix is how weak it is vs armored units, and how the delay of charge for voidrays made beating mass vikings/corruptors almost impossible. Now, the voidray will be able to deal with those pesky armored units protoss hates.
Think of the potential difference a voidray can now make in an engagement versus a zerg, where your voidrays engage the advancing roaches (now doing increased dmg vs armored to protect your zealot advance)- as the hydra army advances, your colossi clean up. 3 voidrays in a formerly pure ground army can (hypothetically) turn the tide.
Not to mention I envision a high templar/voidray/zealot combo being very deadly against a terran bio ball, since you can now deal with the marauders.
EDIT; I also don't believe this will take away from the enjoyment aspect of voidray micro, and I anticipate seeing top level players trying to keep the charge from starting so that they have that bonus vs armored in early game.
Bad change, VR was already trash. Too flimsy and so expensive, the only thing that made it viable was the fact that if charged it could do a ton of damage... Now stimmed marines, queens, missle turrets, and cannons have an easier time against it. Pathetic really, there is absolutely no reason to get this unit in 1v1 at all, in any matchup.
Don't talk about mixing VRs in with Colossus, that is so unviable at higher levels of play. You're going to spend extra on a stargate, and then get 1-4 EXPENSIVE units that the opponent, because they know you are going colossus, has already built a counter for? Be realistic, VRs are not to be seen in any matchup.
hmmm maybe blizzard should scrap the VR and give protoss another air unit thats viable but not OP? and if one VR get killed by one queen they are in reality useless right now against the one race i actualy used it against, NOTHING stops any zerg from getting two queens before i get my VR out. in fact its standard to do that(FE).
I think blizz should unerf mothership siegtanks and carriers. and give zerg their lurkes, toss dragoons, terran vulture, so that the dynamic in all matchups becomes better and semmingly more balanced,
I dont think SC2 is so radically imbalanced as many implies, but blizzard listen to its fans as usual and they will kinda widen the gap between the races if this goes on.
i think blizzard sometimes limits the ways that SC2 can be played and that really is sad because all the countless possibilites are what makes starcraft in generall some of the greatest RTS series of all times. the pros should be the first blizzard goes to when trying to patch the game, because they seem to have really good ideas, at least some of them
well anyways i think carriers just became 110% more viable because the limitation set by the patch
Saying that voidrays do better uncharged is just plain dumb. Voidrays become good when they are charged. Charged. That was the whole idea behind it. I don't want to get voidrays if they are not good charged. I would get another colossus or something.
Now, if I was in a situation where I just happened to have some voidrays and there was a big scary marauder push coming or something, I would happily accept the change. As it stands, voidrays are a big investment to get for 10 damage against armored every 0.6 second. Colossus does 17X2 damage a swipe to multiple targets at range 9. Who in their right minds would get voidrays? Because voidrays are sooooooo good at killing air units?
On October 15 2010 06:17 Drakan wrote: LoL @ the complain. Did you read well ? now when uncharged they deal 10dmg to armored units instead of 5.
and when charged they were absolutely imbalanced killing vikings at sight before being able to make 2 shots, or instantly killing marines.
They will be very usefull in battles instead of only using the when they are in masses or to make sneak attacks/cheese when charged.
With speed they can avoid being killed by marines, and kill armored units.
The point you make is what I am ambivalent about. Half the fun of using void rays is to figure out creative ways to keep them charged, since it repays you in dividends if you manage to maintain charge. Now that charged damage has been reduced and uncharged damage has been increased, that gameplay mechanic has changed with less incentive to keep them charged. It adds a bit more flexibility to their playstyle but at the same time weakens their intended role. Another poster pointed out that this is analogous to buffing siege tank unsieged damage, but at the expense of siege mode.
I understand but i've seen many progames being beated by 2 charged void rays and if you don't scout 1 of the 498.125.623 spots where protoss can hide a pylon there is no way to win as Zerg.
What i think is that the Level 2 is WAYYY too nerfed, but it had to be nerfed anyway because it was ridiculous. I got tired of watching protoss winning using this strat against good players in the Garimto stream and another great example was IdrA being absolutely owned with no chance to survive after seeing 2 void rays.
And i understand that many matches were interesting thanks to void ray micro, but they were MANY MORE matches were if a voidray hit a hatchery, a geyser, any structure, is instant win.
They should provide zerg a better early AA. The VR was fine. If anything, all they had to do was nerf the supply req from 3 to 4, and that fixes a bunch of the n00b QQs about VR massing.
Queens are great AA its just zergs seem to refuse to use them. Once you get 3+ queens Xfuse becomes very very strong as Queens aren't armored. and have 7 range for their air attack.
Void Ray to Queen ratio
1 > 1 2 = 2 (xfuse) 3+ > 3+ (xfuse)
Queens only cost minerals and less supply while remaining useful the whole game. As long as you xfuse (@ 1400D I don't see xfuse almost ever) you can deal with them effectively and will be very very ahead.
The unit is just poorly designed. The charge makes them too strong in large numbers and battles that last a long time. Why would you ever build carriers when you can use these instead?
Now maybe they'll have a niche harass role? I dunno. Just like the reaper they're stupid and gimmicky without any real purpose. I liked the phasing a lot if they could've found a way to make that make sense and be a bit more balanced that would've been ideal.
If Protoss air is now Pheonix and Carrier only... that's pretty sweet anyway isn't it?
as a toss my self, i havent used voidrays since they were range 7. their too expensive, too easily shut down and too fragile.
that is unless you have a fleet of 4-5 going into silly numbers like 15+ of them, voidrays havent really had a decent role for a while now, i prefer to use carriers and have done since beta, people overlookn the fact carriers provide you with a free PDD like effect in unmicro'd battles
On October 15 2010 06:50 tehemperorer wrote: Bad change, VR was already trash. Too flimsy and so expensive, the only thing that made it viable was the fact that if charged it could do a ton of damage... Now stimmed marines, queens, missle turrets, and cannons have an easier time against it. Pathetic really, there is absolutely no reason to get this unit in 1v1 at all, in any matchup.
Don't talk about mixing VRs in with Colossus, that is so unviable at higher levels of play. You're going to spend extra on a stargate, and then get 1-4 EXPENSIVE units that the opponent, because they know you are going colossus, has already built a counter for? Be realistic, VRs are not to be seen in any matchup.
In the HDH NoNy vent phoenix/colossus in every game against IdrA, and I believe similar builds saw use in the GSL. If the Voidray is viable vs Armored, I don't forsee the additional 100/50 being a concern. At the end of day, we'll have to wait and see.
On October 15 2010 06:14 DeckOneBell wrote: I don't think 8+8 will be so bad, they'll probably still beat stalkers for cost, except they won't absolutely destroy stalkers any more. Honestly, probably nerfs them hardest in PvP, because of stalkers. Otherwise, looks like they're more combat-worthy units as opposed to purely building harass.
Turning them into more of a core army unit, I think, is good.
Explain to me how having voidrays mixed into your army is better now than it was before.
The DPS boost vs armored when uncharged is actually very useful, and I do believe will add to the viability of the voidray as a core army unit. Part of the failure of the phoenix is how weak it is vs armored units, and how the delay of charge for voidrays made beating mass vikings/corruptors almost impossible. Now, the voidray will be able to deal with those pesky armored units protoss hates.
Think of the potential difference a voidray can now make in an engagement versus a zerg, where your voidrays engage the advancing roaches (now doing increased dmg vs armored to protect your zealot advance)- as the hydra army advances, your colossi clean up. 3 voidrays in a formerly pure ground army can (hypothetically) turn the tide.
Not to mention I envision a high templar/voidray/zealot combo being very deadly against a terran bio ball, since you can now deal with the marauders.
EDIT; I also don't believe this will take away from the enjoyment aspect of voidray micro, and I anticipate seeing top level players trying to keep the charge from starting so that they have that bonus vs armored in early game.
You don't get void rays for roaches and now there is even less reason. And if you have zealots versus roaches... well I don't know what to say. Sentry/Stalker/Collo is still superior due to the fact that FF blocks roaches from damaging (even with 4 range) while stalker/collo hit them. Once the roaches are down you kill the hydras. If he goes more roach you can get some immortals, if he goes corrupter more stalkers and maybe blink. I'd say get templar but obv feedback doesnt work on them anymore.
If you can find enough gas to go void ray colossus please explain to me how. It seems getting that comp means you are already winning tbh. I've also heard its phoenix colo that you really want if tis possible to get and assume it will be that until charge juggling can be mastered (but with the VR nerfs I doubt it).
Templar Zealot VoidRay same thing, where do you get the gas? Getting void rays if he goes to marauder heavy is very good and works, but its almost exclusively at the cost of forgoing templar for a bit (but its worth it to snipe marauder or medivacs and force vikings).
It seems like Blizzard doesn't know what to do with the VR and with these changes, VR has just become a huge contradiction. A unit that is meant to be artillery vs. armored units is now better vs. non-armored units, which they will kill without actually being able to charge up to serve their intended purpose vs. armored units. When they do become charged up, the bonus damage has been nerfed such that its kind of trivial. All this for a unit that will fall to 1 queen or 4 marines is a tough sell.
Maybe playing with the charge time / charge retaining time or possibly making use of a 3rd charge level will make VRs more viable, but in the meantime I doubt we'll see very many players build it at 250/150.
Besides the Phoenix there are no viable options for Protoss air. If anyone ever wondered why toss players always predictably go for robo you now have your answer.
On October 15 2010 06:38 DragonDefonce wrote: ... I mean it can't even beat a queen 1 on 1 anymore. What kind of joke is that?
How is that a joke? Toss can 1-base wall (preventing scouting) and rush voids pretty damn quickly. Zerg has no tier 1 AA other than Queens and spore crawlers, and both just give voids two more things to charge on.
As for those people saying that it is now useless against BCs, Ultras, etc. are you even considering the fact that it does DOUBLE damage to those units while charging to it's second level?
On October 15 2010 06:50 tehemperorer wrote: Bad change, VR was already trash. Too flimsy and so expensive, the only thing that made it viable was the fact that if charged it could do a ton of damage... Now stimmed marines, queens, missle turrets, and cannons have an easier time against it. Pathetic really, there is absolutely no reason to get this unit in 1v1 at all, in any matchup.
Don't talk about mixing VRs in with Colossus, that is so unviable at higher levels of play. You're going to spend extra on a stargate, and then get 1-4 EXPENSIVE units that the opponent, because they know you are going colossus, has already built a counter for? Be realistic, VRs are not to be seen in any matchup.
In the HDH NoNy vent phoenix/colossus in every game against IdrA, and I believe similar builds saw use in the GSL. If the Voidray is viable vs Armored, I don't forsee the additional 100/50 being a concern. At the end of day, we'll have to wait and see.
Phoenix are not only faster but light. They can harass workers and tank viking damage which is their point in the battle along with possible lift off. Unless the Terran can micro and FF the colo the shots go to the phoenix first. Phoenix also are good at stopping drops and shooting down fleeing medivacs. I can't speak for NoNy but I am pretty sure he would say something similar to this. I'd really like to see/hear what NoNy thinks about this with replays. I try to use phoenix but I suck too much to really put them to use like he does.
In PvZ phoenix are better because they deal with mutas, queens, workers, overlords, and even low numbers of hydras. Sure Void Rays can do these things but phoenix do them cheaper and faster due to extreme speed and can also handle mutalisks, which Void Rays cant. Phoenix actually deal with queen better as well due to the fact they can lift off other queens so no xfuse. Once 4 queens are out void rays go home.
Void rays were dumb so i can understand why they nerfed them. What bothers me more is that some units like banshees and marauders are just as game changing for P as VRs were for T but they are left alone =/
EDIT: looks like they increases nexus life and reduced medivac speed so i guess blizzard is going in the right direction for PvT and are just taking baby steps
I think the void ray change is great. They had their lvl 1 dmg really buffed so they arent ridiculously bad and easily out maneuvered anymore. How do you beat slow void rays? you engage when they are uncharged thats how or just run away. Now voids wont be so worthless uncharged and won't be stupid imba when charged.
u guys clearly have no idea how to use voids rays.... this is how u do it, u make a small group of 3-6 voids, and when there is a major battle, send yur voids to their base to completely annihilate it. against zerg, u can have voids charge up on ultras or broodlords and they will become cost effective.
On October 15 2010 06:38 DragonDefonce wrote: ... I mean it can't even beat a queen 1 on 1 anymore. What kind of joke is that?
How is that a joke? Toss can 1-base wall (preventing scouting) and rush voids pretty damn quickly. Zerg has no tier 1 AA other than Queens and spore crawlers, and both just give voids two more things to charge on.
As for those people saying that it is now useless against BCs, Ultras, etc. are you even considering the fact that it does DOUBLE damage to those units while charging to it's second level?
If you see a 1 base toss and you poke his front its pretty obvious when you dont see any gas heavy units. You could also, you know, keep an overlord or sac an overlord to scout. Even if he proxied the SG you could see no gas was spent in the base with 2 gas up and invest in another queen.
Queens has +1 range over VR. Same for Spores. Xfuse > VR.
I'm a zerg, and I kind of feel like the game is being squeezed down narrower paths. I really didn't have too much problem with void rays on all but a few maps -- blistering sands, scrap station, less so delta quadrant -- where destructible rocks were too close the base. So there's no vote for me
I want a high ranking protoss user to try mixing in voidrays into the main army. Shit does not compute. I'm not using voidrays. While they might be ok units, they do not do enough to justify the cost.
On October 15 2010 06:38 DragonDefonce wrote: ... I mean it can't even beat a queen 1 on 1 anymore. What kind of joke is that?
How is that a joke? Toss can 1-base wall (preventing scouting) and rush voids pretty damn quickly. Zerg has no tier 1 AA other than Queens and spore crawlers, and both just give voids two more things to charge on.
As for those people saying that it is now useless against BCs, Ultras, etc. are you even considering the fact that it does DOUBLE damage to those units while charging to it's second level?
It is a joke because now you need 2 voidrays to do any harassment against zerg. And queen is really good. Try getting more than 1. And if you can't tell that I am doing voidrays by scouting/looking at my forces, you really need to play more to develop a game sense.
Also, 18 damage every 0.6 seconds to units that have over 500 hp, after spending forever charging, when its so easy to to picked off and so costly to make isn't exactly good.
If they were going to nerf them this hard, perhaps a very small speed upgrade should ensue, to make them easier to micro to balance out the low(er) dps.
On October 15 2010 07:17 Zecias wrote: u guys clearly have no idea how to use voids rays.... this is how u do it, u make a small group of 3-6 voids, and when there is a major battle, send yur voids to their base to completely annihilate it. against zerg, u can have voids charge up on ultras or broodlords and they will become cost effective.
Well now you can't even do that because the charged damage is so crappy.
On October 15 2010 07:17 Zecias wrote: u guys clearly have no idea how to use voids rays.... this is how u do it, u make a small group of 3-6 voids, and when there is a major battle, send yur voids to their base to completely annihilate it. against zerg, u can have voids charge up on ultras or broodlords and they will become cost effective.
On October 15 2010 06:38 DragonDefonce wrote: ... I mean it can't even beat a queen 1 on 1 anymore. What kind of joke is that?
How is that a joke? Toss can 1-base wall (preventing scouting) and rush voids pretty damn quickly. Zerg has no tier 1 AA other than Queens and spore crawlers, and both just give voids two more things to charge on.
As for those people saying that it is now useless against BCs, Ultras, etc. are you even considering the fact that it does DOUBLE damage to those units while charging to it's second level?
It is a joke because now you need 2 voidrays to do any harassment against zerg. And queen is really good. Try getting more than 1. And if you can't tell that I am doing voidrays by scouting/looking at my forces, you really need to play more to develop a game sense.
Also, 18 damage every 0.6 seconds to units that have over 500 hp, after spending forever charging, when its so easy to to picked off and so costly to make isn't exactly good.
And what's wrong with that? Two mutas can't do as much damage as one void could, and that requires fast teching to lair. AND waiting for an eternity for a spire to build.
I don't think voids are that difficult to deal with, but if they got lucky and got to your base while you were out of position, you were forced to either wait or go for the base-trade. Unfortunately, void rays win the base trade battle.
Good job, Blizzard. You just removed another high risk/high reward unit from the game. Look, I feel for the people that were getting stomped by void rays in the silver and gold leagues, but was anyone honestly having problems with void rays in diamond? Whenever I built void rays as toss, I felt like I was taking a risk. Unless my opponent was doing something that I knew that I'd autowin against with void rays (like mass marauder terrans that walled off their choke), I never, ever felt like void rays would give me an easy win. In fact, I knew that if I messed up, I'd die, simply because of how expensive void rays are.
I'll play around a bit with the new void ray, but my hunch is that I'm not going to like what I see.
I feel like this change has taken away the "essence" of the void ray.
This. Damage increasing by 60% from 10 to 16 when fully charged -- instead of 400% from 5 to 25 -- is a joke. From a spectator point of view, full charge used to be something to get excited about. It was cool to see people charging on pylons and trying to maintain it by hitting their own units, because it was a HUGE difference. Now, it's just not that serious. Void ray is kind of boring now (regardless of whether or not it is more "balanced").
A unit that sometimes does 5 and sometimes does 25 is called a poorly designed unit. The old VR was just poorly designed. The new one might not be perfect but it is better at least. Balance is generally boring, that's what makes it balanced~.
It's not like it randomly did 5 or 25. It did 25 when it was charged. It takes skill to pre-charge and maintain the charge, and this is what made the void ray a cool unit. At the pro-level it was probably the most micro-intensive unit in the game.
On October 15 2010 07:44 xDaunt wrote: Good job, Blizzard. You just removed another high risk/high reward unit from the game. Look, I feel for the people that were getting stomped by void rays in the silver and gold leagues, but was anyone honestly having problems with void rays in diamond? Whenever I built void rays as toss, I felt like I was taking a risk. Unless my opponent was doing something that I knew that I'd autowin against with void rays (like mass marauder terrans that walled off their choke), I never, ever felt like void rays would give me an easy win. In fact, I knew that if I messed up, I'd die, simply because of how expensive void rays are.
I'll play around a bit with the new void ray, but my hunch is that I'm not going to like what I see.
It was a tricky strategy to pull off, especially against an active scouter, but it paid off pretty much any time you could get the charge up. Proxy pylon became popular to charge up your void rays and roll over the opponent. I guess the strategy is still available, but I haven't tested how well it works with the changes.
They're useless versus terran now. The only good trade you could possibly get is killing 2 vikings with 1 charged void ray. After that, it goes 4 vikings > 2 charged void rays and 6 viking > 3 charged void rays so the mineral and gas trade is not in your favor. Terran now needs 4 vikings and some rines to be safe from charged void rays, leaving the rest of the money free for units that can handle the protoss ground army
Is it me or is Toss the frontrunner for the race with the most useless units?
I have no idea what Toss is suppose to do against bcs (feedback+blinkers is the only thing that comes to mind) and corrupter/broodlords (nothing comes to mind thanks to corrupters having no energy after 1.12). Planetary Fortresses and ultralisks also are nice benefactors of the VR nerf.
Where's the "Void Rays are significantly stronger now" option?
Yeah, on paper, if you built a proxy pylon or something and used it to charge your VR's up or your opponent was just completely unprepared you could get in and do some serious damage. But as soon as he scouted it or fought off the first wave of VR's they were basically useless for the rest of the game; you could build them, but he'd just chase them off before you did any real damage, all while massing up an army that you can't keep up with. So Protoss would build 1-2 void rays and then stop entirely.
Now you can actually do something resembling damage with them using some hit and run tactics. They don't have to be charged up to start hurting. They don't hurt as much fully charged as they used to, sure, but they did such a ridiculous amount of damage before that that isn't really saying much. There are plenty of units that still do less damage than a charged Void Ray.
To put some math behind it, say you sneak in and attack a Barracks or something. It takes 8 seconds "normal" time for a Void Ray to charge. In the old model, you'd do 5 damage per second (the Void Ray has an attack speed of 1) for 8 seconds, and then 25 damage from then on. So if it takes your opponent 12 seconds to move his units over, you did a total of (5x8) + (25x4) = 140 damage.
Under the new model, you do 10 damage for 8 seconds, followed by 16. So again, if it takes 12 seconds for your opponent to move his units over, you do a total of (10x8) + (16x4) = 144 damage. So we can assume that, for any attack that would have been 12 seconds or shorter before (ie: most harass), this was actually a buff.
(Obviously that's if you're playing on normal speed; it's something like 5.5 seconds for it to charge on Faster, putting the crossover point somewhere around 9 seconds in a real game)
I don't know about anyone else, but the problem I've always had with Void Rays was that they're amazing when you can get them to charge, but completely worthless until they do. It's also very tough to get them to actually charge in a lot of situations. So although they're no longer MONSTER DPS once fully charged, they're still pretty good DPS, and they're not worthless until that point.
I dunno, I think they're a lot more actually usable with this change.
i just did some testing. the voids still work very well. they kill equal food of BCs, vikings, corruptors, mutas, hydras, phoenix.
they still do terrible terrible damage, especially against armored. the only difference is charged voids are less auto win than before. i think 99% of the player base wanted this.
the guy above me made a very good point. for harass and general army composition, voids are now better.
On October 15 2010 08:27 devolore wrote: Where's the "Void Rays are significantly stronger now" option?
Yeah, on paper, if you built a proxy pylon or something and used it to charge your VR's up or your opponent was just completely unprepared you could get in and do some serious damage. But as soon as he scouted it or fought off the first wave of VR's they were basically useless for the rest of the game; you could build them, but he'd just chase them off before you did any real damage, all while massing up an army that you can't keep up with. So Protoss would build 1-2 void rays and then stop entirely.
Now you can actually do something resembling damage with them using some hit and run tactics. They don't have to be charged up to start hurting. They don't hurt as much fully charged as they used to, sure, but they did such a ridiculous amount of damage before that that isn't really saying much. There are plenty of units that still do less damage than a charged Void Ray.
To put some math behind it, say you sneak in and attack a Barracks or something. It takes 8 seconds "normal" time for a Void Ray to charge. In the old model, you'd do 5 damage per second (the Void Ray has an attack speed of 1) for 8 seconds, and then 25 damage from then on. So if it takes your opponent 12 seconds to move his units over, you did a total of (5x8) + (25x4) = 140 damage.
Under the new model, you do 10 damage for 8 seconds, followed by 16. So again, if it takes 12 seconds for your opponent to move his units over, you do a total of (10x8) + (16x4) = 144 damage. So we can assume that, for any attack that would have been 12 seconds or shorter before (ie: most harass), this was actually a buff.
(Obviously that's if you're playing on normal speed; it's something like 5.5 seconds for it to charge on Faster, putting the crossover point somewhere around 9 seconds in a real game)
I don't know about anyone else, but the problem I've always had with Void Rays was that they're amazing when you can get them to charge, but completely worthless until they do. It's also very tough to get them to actually charge in a lot of situations. So although they're no longer MONSTER DPS once fully charged, they're still pretty good DPS, and they're not worthless until that point.
I dunno, I think they're a lot more actually usable with this change.
I'm pretty sure VRs only take 6 seconds of game time to charge. You aren't going to convince me the level 2 nerf is offset by +1 (+4 armor) buff in level 1. The only two things it helps kill appreciably better are roaches and marauders, and when do you build a 250/150 air unit to deal with those?
On October 15 2010 08:02 whoopadeedoo wrote: Planetary Fortresses and ultralisks also are nice benefactors of the VR nerf.
Oh yeah, completely forgot about the PF.
So can't really kill those either. Takes pretty much 100 supply worth army to kill those with reasonable amount of damage back at your ground army from that 40 splash damage.
Didn't use VR against ultras anyway but i'm sure that there has to be another way to make toss take carriers into play than constantly nerfing all the other units.
On October 15 2010 08:27 devolore wrote: Where's the "Void Rays are significantly stronger now" option?
Yeah, on paper, if you built a proxy pylon or something and used it to charge your VR's up or your opponent was just completely unprepared you could get in and do some serious damage. But as soon as he scouted it or fought off the first wave of VR's they were basically useless for the rest of the game; you could build them, but he'd just chase them off before you did any real damage, all while massing up an army that you can't keep up with. So Protoss would build 1-2 void rays and then stop entirely.
Now you can actually do something resembling damage with them using some hit and run tactics. They don't have to be charged up to start hurting. They don't hurt as much fully charged as they used to, sure, but they did such a ridiculous amount of damage before that that isn't really saying much. There are plenty of units that still do less damage than a charged Void Ray.
To put some math behind it, say you sneak in and attack a Barracks or something. It takes 8 seconds "normal" time for a Void Ray to charge. In the old model, you'd do 5 damage per second (the Void Ray has an attack speed of 1) for 8 seconds, and then 25 damage from then on. So if it takes your opponent 12 seconds to move his units over, you did a total of (5x8) + (25x4) = 140 damage.
Under the new model, you do 10 damage for 8 seconds, followed by 16. So again, if it takes 12 seconds for your opponent to move his units over, you do a total of (10x8) + (16x4) = 144 damage. So we can assume that, for any attack that would have been 12 seconds or shorter before (ie: most harass), this was actually a buff.
(Obviously that's if you're playing on normal speed; it's something like 5.5 seconds for it to charge on Faster, putting the crossover point somewhere around 9 seconds in a real game)
I don't know about anyone else, but the problem I've always had with Void Rays was that they're amazing when you can get them to charge, but completely worthless until they do. It's also very tough to get them to actually charge in a lot of situations. So although they're no longer MONSTER DPS once fully charged, they're still pretty good DPS, and they're not worthless until that point.
I dunno, I think they're a lot more actually usable with this change.
I'm pretty sure VRs only take 6 seconds of game time to charge. You aren't going to convince me the level 2 nerf is offset by +1 (+4 armor) buff in level 1. The only two things it helps kill appreciably better are roaches and marauders, and when do you build a 250/150 air unit to deal with those?
So true. People are saying that voidrays are still usable, when the truth is there are units that do what the voidray does now better and cheaper, so it just simply isn't worth getting voidrays.
yeah, void rays are pretty much completely obsolete at this point. they just really don't do enough to justify their extremely high cost. their damage is comparable now to a stimmed marauder which is just ludicrous given the cost of these two units.
personally i feel this nerf was due to team games/lower level ladder games because theres just no way that anyone at a pro or high diamond level though void rays were so overpowered that they needed a 40% damage nerf AND a speed nerf. how many times did we see a void ray in a gsl match? i think it was under 10. i'll be very surprised if we see them at all in gsl 2; carriers, despite being pretty poor for the cost are way better than a void ray hitting for 8+8.
They seem pretty useless now. Yes, their uncharged DPS is better now, but for their cost it's still not very good. 17DPS against armored... For 250/150? And they do barely more DPS than a single Marine against anything that isn't armored. With more than 1/3 their charged DPS lopped off the top, they're no longer game-changing when they get charged up, just finally pulling their weight for the cost.
Enough with all this pure out-of-context theorycraft, though. Let's look at actual matchups and see if they still have a role:
PvP: as has been said a billion times on this thread already, while they used to be good enough against Stalkers to be a viable option, they no longer are. Maybe they could be a very situational option against a mass Zealot into Robo build, but the old PvP VR builds are probably dead in the water and if there is a new one, it's a pretty narrow timing window against a single enemy build.
PvT: they can't deal with Vikings very effectively with nerfed charged DPS, so I can't really see them being useful after the initial harass phase. Taking one extra tick to kill a Marine while charged probably isn't the end of the world, although it sure doesn't help, but significantly less charged DPS to turrets will allow them to shut down VR harass much more efficiently.
PvZ: a 250/150 T2 air harass unit losing in a 1-on-1 fight with a Queen? Yeah, VR harass is dead in this matchup.
As for the Banshee comparison ("Banshee tech takes longer which is why it's fair that VRs lose to a Queen 1:1 while Banshees win")... Pylon-Gateway-Core-Stargate takes (25+65+50+60) = 200 seconds build time, and (100/0+150/0+150/0+150/100) = 550/100 in building cost to tech to VRs. For Banshees, you need Depot-Rax-Factory-Starport with a tech lab somewhere along the way, for (30+60+60+50) = 200 seconds build time, and (100/0+150/0+150/100+150/100+50/25) = 600/225 in cost to tech to Banshees (not counting time on tech lab since it doesn't delay your other tech). The tech paths take the same build time and Banshee tech costs only 50/125 more (just over the cost of the one Sentry Protoss will need to stay alive on a fast tech build, which Terran can achieve with a walloff), and once the tech is done, banshees cost a full 100/50 less apiece. Banshees are really not any significantly slower or more difficult to tech to (and come on, 1/1/1 for Terran is a much more stable build to transition into the midgame than 1 gate -> Stargate for Toss), and they are clearly more effective than VRs at it once they're out.
Obviously, VRs and Banshees are different units from different races, so that above analysis in no way "proves VRs are overnerfed" or whatever; I just felt the need to answer some erroneous claims that this nerf was necessary to prevent VR rush in PvZ from being worse than Banshee rush in TvZ.
I'd be willing to bet this is due more to balance in team games than 1v1. In 3v3 and 4v4 you see a lot of mass Void Rays and the outcome is always stupid.
I have to agree completely with solistus... thankfully I rarely play P.
also the people complaining about void rays vs zerg are sort of funny, theres a reason no one uses that strategy in top level games (yes, i know idra lost to lotze making a fake robotics + proxy void rays and sitting in his base with one sentry to block the ramp) and its that void rays are worthless against zerg. the only MU they were really even solid in was tvp, and they weren't even good enough to be anything standard there. they certainly weren't good enough to be nerfed.
On October 15 2010 08:55 sk` wrote: I'd be willing to bet this is due more to balance in team games than 1v1. In 3v3 and 4v4 you see a lot of mass Void Rays and the outcome is always stupid.
I have to agree completely with solistus... thankfully I rarely play P.
I refuse to believe blizzard is stupid enough to balance team games at the cost of 1v1. I simply refuse.
On October 15 2010 08:28 bulge wrote: i just did some testing. the voids still work very well. they kill equal food of BCs, vikings, corruptors, mutas, hydras, phoenix.
they still do terrible terrible damage, especially against armored. the only difference is charged voids are less auto win than before. i think 99% of the player base wanted this.
the guy above me made a very good point. for harass and general army composition, voids are now better.
You can't base it on food counts. Basing it on resources is much better, but it's not even adequate. You need to factor in everything, from resources to food count to build times to tech levels, etc.
In actual gameplay, void rays used to beat BCs (as intended), lost to vikings (you can't just test it by a-moving), fared on par against corrupters (as intended), did not fare well against muta swarms, totally sucked against hydras, and beat phoenixes (because phoenixes are made of glass and do no damage to armored). None of these matchups got better for the VR except phoenixes mutas, and we all know how often VRs are used to fight phoenixes and mutas. The bottom line is what they were intended to fight, they now fight a lot less effectively.
What do they harass better now? The amazing +1 damage to workers?
On October 15 2010 06:25 Autofire2 wrote: What I dont like about it is that it seems to play into the "power underwhelming" trope of SC2 (relative to BW) that was explained so well in another thread at TL. Siege tanks were nerfed so they dont decimate ground armies in a matter of seconds, high temps cant take out thors auto-instantly anymore, roaches went from being crap-your-pants to "oh, roaches. K." reapers have been rendered almost useless (I believe, don't quote me on this) except as scouts and now void rays.
It makes sense, kind of, but this seems to go against the grain of exciting matches. If you can predict the winner 9 times out of 10 by looking at the army count and composition before the battle thats...going to be a problem.
I'm probably being stupid, but that sounds contradictory to me. Surely siege tanks decimating ground armies in a matter of seconds, high templar insta-gibbing Thors etc etc heightened the predictability of a battle's outcome, based purely on army count and composition.
The void ray may prove to be effective for sniping tanks, especially when sentries can use FF to keep the marines from coming back. I imagine 2 void rays will kill 4-5 tanks pretty quickly, though I haven't tested as of yet.
I really agree with a poster before- the void ray was an all in unit before because of how flimsy they were; if you didn't surprise your opponent, your tech was useless and you're going to get rolled. Now the void ray seems prone for some type of harass.
Or, they may prove to be very effective late game counters for corruptors, 1-2 to protect your colossus? Seems that Protoss has lacked a viable air counter for the corruptor, this may be one?
why would you use void rays to snipe siege tanks when you can now use phoenixes which are almost half the cost, build quicker, and are more versatile......
Void rays actually do have a niche in the protoss arsenal, now there's a sagging hole. In pvt with battlecruisers, void rays are the only things that can really dps them down, stalker fire id quite piddly. In PvZ against either ultralisks (they force hydras, and can't be blocked by lings, unlike the immortal) or broodlords (they do pretty decent against corrupters as well, with feedback/storm).
The only problem was void ray cheese, not so much in pvt, but in pvp, if you leave your base you die. PvP, zealot voidray was sick against stalkers, depending on the situation.
The only change I agree with is the speed nerf. Other than that I have not noticed a large misuse of the Void Ray in 1.1.1. The only time I saw people consider them IMBA found themselves in 2 situations:
1) They had no counter built at the time 2) They allowed VR's to reach that critical mass where they do become unstoppable
I think all the changes made today were to ultimately make Zerg more appealing, which I think we will see the numbers shift slightly over the next month or so. The nerf was a little overboard in my opinion; the damage output seemed appropriate to me before the patch.
As for the complaints about in some post regarding the range nerf in prior patches, I feel that was completely necessary as cliff harassment was definitely a huge advantage for Protoss.
Note: I am strictly a Terran player so I have zero bias in this situation.
Toss air is just in a horrible place now. The void ray was practically the only consistently good unit, with the phoenix coming in a distant second. I rarely made a void ray in PvT or PvP, it seems robo or templar tech is always a better option in most lategames anyway. Plus blink stalkers do a better job at holding AA units off your collosi then phoenixes do.
So my stargate use is pretty much limited to my PvZ phoenix opening. That doesn't seem like a great design.
On October 15 2010 08:55 sk` wrote: I'd be willing to bet this is due more to balance in team games than 1v1. In 3v3 and 4v4 you see a lot of mass Void Rays and the outcome is always stupid.
I have to agree completely with solistus... thankfully I rarely play P.
The flux vanes nerf was definitely a team game move. The problem is that the logic is "well this never sees use in 1v1, so let's nerf it for team games".
Man Void Rays where one of my favorite units, not because they where very strong when charged, but because of the gimmick that came with them. This just makes them weird, and not as fun.
compared with the original carriers, this new carrier that:
no longer heals interceptors when they return moves slower attacks slower
sucks complete balls. being underrated means that people simply don't think it's good, when it in fact is. the sc2 carrier is not the case. it just sucks.
oh and, vikings?
there is a reason why the koreans make fun of the carrier (and the warp prism and the mothership for that matter)
If they nerf Void Rays, they should at least do something about the carrier. By the time late game comes around and you actually have the infrastructure to build carriers, the opponent probably has upgrades.
Against any type of unit with high armor like Ultras and BCs, carriers are abysmal due to their 5 x2 damage. Make the damage 10 flat for each interceptor and I'll use carriers.
I believe they do almost double damage compared to BW, no? Not that such comparisons mean anything.
Against any type of unit with high armor like Ultras and BCs, carriers are abysmal due to their 5 x2 damage. Make the damage 10 flat for each interceptor and I'll use carriers.
Get upgrades too? It does seem like much of the "carriers suck" feeling stems from trying to fight +3 attack units with 0/0/0 carriers and suchlike.
Are you kidding Protoss lost the right to super powerful void ray after doing so many retardedly OP 3 gate 1 star all ins. You only have yourselves to blame.
On October 15 2010 10:08 Yaotzin wrote: Vikings don't counter carriers.
I believe they do almost double damage compared to BW, no? Not that such comparisons mean anything.
they're a pretty good counter.
10 vikings can focus fire a single carrier within a group barely before the first wave of interceptors (did you know that they actually fire in two waves now, which sucks even more?) hits them.
carrier range is 8. viking range is 9.
if the 5-ish group of carriers (which would be a fairly realistic scenario in a pvt late game, if the p was stupid enough to use them) don't focus fire, no vikings get killed before they can start attacking the second one. and of course, focus firing carriers is not efficient on anything that are not buildings or other massive air units due to overkill, wasting that godly DPS.
not like carriers can outrun the vikings, nor can the carriers attack while moving. (they can move while the interceptors are out, but only until 14 range)
only way i've managed to use them effectively is if you managed to keep them hidden somewhere and then attacking a base while the army is somewhere else. hopefully you attack the base with the starports.
Against any type of unit with high armor like Ultras and BCs, carriers are abysmal due to their 5 x2 damage. Make the damage 10 flat for each interceptor and I'll use carriers.
Get upgrades too? It does seem like much of the "carriers suck" feeling stems from trying to fight +3 attack units with 0/0/0 carriers and suchlike.
People don't upgrade air until they actually have air units. Are you suggesting that I sacrifice ground upgrades or units for air upgrades in order to strengthen a unit I won't use till late game?
If my opponent and I were about even and pop out Tier 3 units at the same time with all things being equal, the higher armored units are very resilient to carriers upgrades or no upgrades.
Against any type of unit with high armor like Ultras and BCs, carriers are abysmal due to their 5 x2 damage. Make the damage 10 flat for each interceptor and I'll use carriers.
Get upgrades too? It does seem like much of the "carriers suck" feeling stems from trying to fight +3 attack units with 0/0/0 carriers and suchlike.
the problem with that line of thinking is that noone prepares air upgrades for a unit 99% of the time is gotten reactively in order to break open a turtling terran. you'd never get +3/+3 in time to counter the raping that marines + vikings are doing to your interceptors and carriers
People don't upgrade air until they actually have air units.
I do
I'll get +1 air attack if I even think the game might go late. That way if I end up building carriers they won't completely suck (or phoenixes against zerg)
i think void rays might actually be pretty effective still against armored units, whoever thought they were fine before never played team games, which is prolly the main reason why they were nerfed
also, their upgraded speed used to be downright ridiculous
void rays will still be massable in team games, but not uncounterable once charged.
as for 1on1s, they are less of a cheesy midgame allin unit, and more of a tactical unit forcing different unit composition on your opponent (forcing z away from roach, which will be rly strong now, forcing terr to make something else than marauders
Seriously why wouldn't zerg just go all roach now? 2 queen / hatch and they are fine.
Void ray was kinda like the reason why that doesn't happen or atleast you would be able to make it stop at some point.
How are you supposed to defend expos from mass roach? With range 4 they can kill cannons, shoot over forcefields and kiting with stalkers will be harder.
It's true that void rays weren't seen so often in games but it doesn't mean that they didn't have any purpose.
On October 15 2010 10:57 Delarchon wrote: How are you supposed to defend expos from mass roach? With range 4 they can kill cannons, shoot over forcefields and kiting with stalkers will be harder. .
On October 15 2010 10:08 Yaotzin wrote: Vikings don't counter carriers.
I believe they do almost double damage compared to BW, no? Not that such comparisons mean anything.
they're a pretty good counter.
10 vikings can focus fire a single carrier within a group barely before the first wave of interceptors (did you know that they actually fire in two waves now, which sucks even more?) hits them.
No they don't. Are you talking pre-upgrade or something? If so that's kinda irrelevent..
carrier range is 8. viking range is 9.
if the 5-ish group of carriers (which would be a fairly realistic scenario in a pvt late game, if the p was stupid enough to use them) don't focus fire, no vikings get killed before they can start attacking the second one. and of course, focus firing carriers is not efficient on anything that are not buildings or other massive air units due to overkill, wasting that godly DPS.
No, the first wave + the stalkers sitting underneath them will kill your vikings quite easily. It's the same situation as with colossi vs vikings, with the difference being the carriers will demolish the vikings if you let them shoot even once, whereas colossi can't shoot back.
People don't upgrade air until they actually have air units. Are you suggesting that I sacrifice ground upgrades or units for air upgrades in order to strengthen a unit I won't use till late game?
No, but you can get a bunch of upgrades (yay chrono spam ^_^) out while making your first couple carrier batches. Could also get a couple upgrades while opening phoenix, they're not overly expensive, especially weapon (most important for carriers ofc). Or hell, yeah, just get a couple weapon upgrades while you drop the stargates or something. It's like 250/250, not a big deal later on.
It's an overall buff to the void ray in all situations even its good as part of your army. It does double DPS vs armored now while uncharged is more than enough to compensate for the 40% nerf to charged dmg vs armored. Its insane now in PVP.
On October 15 2010 11:16 tournamentnow wrote: It's an overall buff to the void ray in all situations even its good as part of your army. It does double DPS vs armored now while uncharged is more than enough to compensate for the 40% nerf to charged dmg vs armored. Its insane now in PVP.
I can't recall many instances where I engaged AA units without being charged. It was already a questionable risk to attack 3 stalkers with the old charged damage ... how in the world is it better with 40% less damage? The only thing that this patch helps is VRs sniping marauders or roaches running around without AA support, or a single stalker lost on the map.
Apparently the best part about the void ray change is that half the community is no longer misinformed about the void ray having three different levels of charge damage.
It takes a good 10 sec for 1 vr to kill 1 roach as they both move at the same speed and marauder is faster than vr with stim. And the unit costs 250/150 from the stargate which was not the strongest tech branch even before patch. Really not worth it.
This combined to the roach buff... This patch is going to be a rough ride.
On October 15 2010 06:29 whoopadeedoo wrote: I won't argue that it was done on purpose, but what I'm saying is it makes the VR pretty damn useless. Who would build VRs instead of immortals who do and take much more damage to intended armored unit ... for 50 less gas? What role does the VR have now?
Simple answer ? They kill small things faster =X
For example marines recive now 10dps instead of 8,3 marauders 17 dps instead of 8,3 ghosts 10 dps instead of 8,3, void ray is now meant to attack units not building, that is what changed, it will be even more of a coutner to mm ....
On October 15 2010 12:17 starcraft2leverage wrote: Apparently the best part about the void ray change is that half the community is no longer misinformed about the void ray having three different levels of charge damage.
There is no 3rd level, or technically, there is no second level. There used to be a step between charged and uncharged, but Blizzard removed it. Now it's binary ... charged or uncharged with nothing in between. That middle step is still considered a level by blizzard (at least before this patch), but that level is exactly the same as level 1 (uncharged). Makes sense?
The Void Ray as it is post-1.1.2 would probably be fine if it came with a cost reduction. It was only previously cost effective after charging up, where it became one of, if not the most, cost effective unit in the game.
It's still not great pre-charge and post-charge is obviously a significant difference. A cost reduction would certainly fit well in keeping the unit in play. The upgrade should just be removed or replaced with something else. It was a rather stupid thing in the first place, but I'm only one person so meh
If a Void Ray is intended to be used in an army now, a Void Ray will do 13.3 DPS to unarmored, and 26.7 DPS to armored units.
Whereas, ONE stimmed Marine will do 10.5 DPS to all targets. This means THREE Marines (150 minerals) will do more DPS to armored or unarmored (e.g. to a Void Ray) than a Void Ray does! (which costs 250/150, and needs to charge up to even do more DPS than one marine!)
This should be really sombering. I can't imagine why one would use a Void Ray now in any competitive game.
Level 1 charge on overlords is pretty fucking sexy now, I must say.
They were a bit overkill when charged before, particularly in late game scenarios when they're all over the place with speed, but also the early game ones where they just get 1 or 2 charged up and ruins the game.
Ridiculously over-nerfed. I have tried them in-game and tested them in the unit-tester. Terrible against small units as they were before (insignificant change when uncharged, terrible nerf when charged), useless against armored anti-air when uncharged (no real change), but now awful against armored anti-air even when charged.
I now see no viable role for the Void-ray now. Completely useless IMO. Wouldn't be shocked to see them fall into disuse at all levels of play. They beat nothing that isn't far better served dealing with by Stalkers or Phoenixes.
Yeh I don't really see why I'd even build them now.
PS. Yeh, I mean I can use them to harass, but mutas/banshees are so much better at that and don't cost a ton of money. Maybe if there were a 100mins cheaper I'd use em.
Yeh I don't really see why I'd even build them now.
PS. Yeh, I mean I can use them to harass, but mutas/banshees are so much better at that and don't cost a ton of money. Maybe if there were a 100mins cheaper I'd use em.
agreed , they shouldn't have gone below 10 +10armoured for level 2 If it was still to powerful then just increase the time it takes to fully charge the void can we at least have a PSI storm buff? since this patch is another nerf for HT ; blizzard needs to chuck protoss a bone for a change
Played some games today where VRs were built. It is hilarious how long a VR takes to kill a building now. I guess that just means more time to charge up, huh? :D
It's not going to effect my gameplay very much as toss, but Blizz really f'ed up here. We now have another trophy air unit that no one will build. Nerfing the phoenix would complete the circle.
On October 15 2010 11:16 tournamentnow wrote: It's an overall buff to the void ray in all situations even its good as part of your army. It does double DPS vs armored now while uncharged is more than enough to compensate for the 40% nerf to charged dmg vs armored. Its insane now in PVP.
What a misleading statement by using percentages.
Voidrays got an additional +5 uncharged damage to armored units while losing while losing 9 damage charged. And let's not forget that any competent Protoss player will have his Void rays precharged before any major battle so uncharged damage is negligible. That's like buffing Viking ground damage by 300% then nerfing it's aerial damage by 200% and calling it a buff overall since 300% > 200%.
At least they fixed the phoenix bug where it wouldn't cancel gravity field after the unit died. That was soooo annoying.
On October 15 2010 12:24 Yaotzin wrote: Huh? Level one is pure buff.
Well, good luck microing your VRs so it doesn't kill the pylon. You can do it....... if you're fast enough, you literally only have 1 cycle to do it, you have to stop BEFORE the VR charging sound is done, hope there is no lag..
+1 shields will let you charge 3 +1 weapon VRs on a pylon, but no amount of shields will let you charge 3 +2 weapon VRs on a pylon....
so we'll probably be seeing more cyber core/assimilator chargers.
But hey, at least we can kill those depots faster, right? OH WAIT, they have more HP!
Well, at least we can kill those tech labs faster...
On October 15 2010 10:13 PositiveZero wrote: Are you kidding Protoss lost the right to super powerful void ray after doing so many retardedly OP 3 gate 1 star all ins. You only have yourselves to blame.
how is a 3 gate 1 star an all in when you can easily transition out of it if it does fail..
completely useless unit now, same with reaper they could've removed the void rays altogether
what ppl don't see is, that void rays now also suck in lategame vs zerg - because their high dps was really the only justification to get them vs ultras even when supported with hydra and/or corruptor
I mean, I get that terrans are happy now because finally they are "officially" cleared from any scouting-needs since there doesn't remain a protoss-timing-attack that could potentially do damage.....but doing this in a way that makes the void ray a redundant unit that isn't cost effective if your opponent doesn't mass tanks makes little sense
if blizz were unhappy with charge why not remove this altogether and give void rays standard-DPS that can even be halfway compared to banshees....
also the nerf for flux vanes is ludicrous: you have to build a frickin fleat beacon for that, meaning that flux vanes cost 450/350 with 140 sec build; if you shouldn't get a halfway-decent upgrade for 450/350 then I don't understand how the world works anymore
Not a cost effecitve unit.... was not balanced before this patch... is not balanced after this patch. I think reapers and void rays both need the desert oasis treatment (remove them). VRs dont even perform vs thors all that well post patch esp. given range requirements the fact that thors are supported by cheap units that counter pretty bad. These units are really really bad now. If they lowered the cost a bit to bring it in line with the units new level of power I think it might be okay, but at 250/150 its hard to justifiy building one. It loses miserably to units mixed into every standard army in every MU.
On October 15 2010 08:27 devolore wrote: Where's the "Void Rays are significantly stronger now" option?
Yeah, on paper, if you built a proxy pylon or something and used it to charge your VR's up or your opponent was just completely unprepared you could get in and do some serious damage. But as soon as he scouted it or fought off the first wave of VR's they were basically useless for the rest of the game; you could build them, but he'd just chase them off before you did any real damage, all while massing up an army that you can't keep up with. So Protoss would build 1-2 void rays and then stop entirely.
Now you can actually do something resembling damage with them using some hit and run tactics. They don't have to be charged up to start hurting. They don't hurt as much fully charged as they used to, sure, but they did such a ridiculous amount of damage before that that isn't really saying much. There are plenty of units that still do less damage than a charged Void Ray.
To put some math behind it, say you sneak in and attack a Barracks or something. It takes 8 seconds "normal" time for a Void Ray to charge. In the old model, you'd do 5 damage per second (the Void Ray has an attack speed of 1) for 8 seconds, and then 25 damage from then on. So if it takes your opponent 12 seconds to move his units over, you did a total of (5x8) + (25x4) = 140 damage.
Under the new model, you do 10 damage for 8 seconds, followed by 16. So again, if it takes 12 seconds for your opponent to move his units over, you do a total of (10x8) + (16x4) = 144 damage. So we can assume that, for any attack that would have been 12 seconds or shorter before (ie: most harass), this was actually a buff.
(Obviously that's if you're playing on normal speed; it's something like 5.5 seconds for it to charge on Faster, putting the crossover point somewhere around 9 seconds in a real game)
I don't know about anyone else, but the problem I've always had with Void Rays was that they're amazing when you can get them to charge, but completely worthless until they do. It's also very tough to get them to actually charge in a lot of situations. So although they're no longer MONSTER DPS once fully charged, they're still pretty good DPS, and they're not worthless until that point.
I dunno, I think they're a lot more actually usable with this change.
I'm pretty sure VRs only take 6 seconds of game time to charge. You aren't going to convince me the level 2 nerf is offset by +1 (+4 armor) buff in level 1. The only two things it helps kill appreciably better are roaches and marauders, and when do you build a 250/150 air unit to deal with those?
head to head though an uncharged void ray takes 9 seconds on "faster" gameplay to kill 1 roach. 9 seconds... and high 7 low 8s for a marauder. Its worthless... most large battles dont last much more than that.
It was an interesting unit, both to use and watch, and now its completely ruined. It was never about the first level of charge, even if it did almost no damage it would be fine. So buffing that has made them worse if anything because they now do more damage when being pre charged. They can no longer do great DPS to buildings or for example Vikings. Carrier isn't viable either its just too expensive and time consuming to build.
Imo, What they should have done was made it +8 +17 to armoured. Took the damage away from normal and put it back on Armoured, so it isn't as effective against Hydralisks and Marines anymore but still as good at killing buildings and big armoured units like it supposed too.
I don't really understand the point of void rays now, except for fighting BCs (recently nerfed themselves and out of fashion currently). In PvP stalkers totally answer them now, the only thing that let them do stuff in PvP was that if they got charged they could rip through stalkers. In PvZ do they do anything? Queens are more effective than before against them (VRs gained 1 dmg when uncharged and lost 2 dmg when charged).
They didn't even necessarily get better against marines or banshees or hydras or anything when not precharged. Basically they are horrible wastes of a ton of resources.
I have to agree here with the majority. The VR's nerf-buff only could serve against small amounts of cheap units; as soon anything gets massed, forget it. Better spend your resources in spamming pylons before the enemy arrives waiting for Blizzard to do something intelligent.
On October 15 2010 17:13 gm.tOSS wrote: The lonely carrier must be so happy.
Carriers are awesome, the only problem is it's hard to tech to Fleet Beacon without getting some other tech to not die, as gateway units need support.
I don't like this change. VRs are a major investment and a capable support unit, which just got neutered. It's fine to reduce the damage so that 1 VR doesn't win the game, but tweak the cost too.
I think it is funny how terran are complaing about vr's being imba but in order for them to work you basically have to catch terran by surprise and get them charged which basically means a failure in scouting on their part, as where terran basically dictates that there must be an early robo and an observer out due to the fact that there terran is always 2 minutes away from cloaked banshees as soon as a starport is out.
The Voidray would beat the queen even more so since it does 1 extra damage. Its pretty significant because the first 2 levels of the voidray do the same damage, and the third level get a slight nerf.
I really dont understand where you guys are coming from. The void ray is doing what its designed to do. Killing armoured Units. Now its not a gimmicky unit used for sneaking into bases and killing buildings ALTHOUGH it can still do this since now it deals even MORE damage precharged(level1/2) against buildings. It can also support a regular army, and kill thors(which are made viable patch 1.1.2) and bcs.
On October 15 2010 19:13 apexplosive wrote: I really dont understand where you guys are coming from. The void ray is doing what its designed to do. Killing armoured Units. Now its not a gimmicky unit used for sneaking into bases and killing buildings ALTHOUGH it can still do this since now it deals even MORE damage precharged(level1/2) against buildings. It can also support a regular army, and kill thors(which are made viable patch 1.1.2) and bcs.
no-one uses voids for their precharge how often does it have to be said?? compare the new VR to the banshee 150/100 banshee - can cloak , actually kills buildings faster than VR now
VR 250/150 - no cloak , nerfed speed upgrade , very mediocre against air units
I think VR should get longer range so it could serve its purpose of Anti-Armor unit. i think blizzard should redesign VRs into become support units instead of light standalone sneak attack units.
so in a way i agree with apexplosive but VRs are not a good Anti-Armor support unit as the immortal. The only thing the VR does better is the ability to kill Air.(support unit-wise)
well they are not a good option anymore and i will have to find another way to punish Zergs FE.(that was it main role pre-patch)
HI, first post and I'm a bit of a newb. I think the changes were mainly about balance in the lower divisions. I think I saw something recently where TvP was pretty level in Diamond but toss was 5or more 5% in Bronze/Silver. You'd imagine this might have a little to do with Terran players often being people coming directly in from the campaign and not being used to these types of harass and in TvZ Terran has (had?) most of the early harass.
blizz really screwed up with the void ray-unit....which is especially bad because it seems like they tried hard to implement a cool new unit that has a completely new mechanic - and it was a utter failure
their range was nerfed because their damage was too high; now their damage was nerfed, shouldn't they get their range back?
very sad to see that the "old" units from BW (still) work fine, while the "new" ones cause so much trouble; hopefully they remove the void ray at some point (protoss expansion?) and give protoss a useful air unit that serves its purpose either as strong anti-ground or as strong anti-air(armored); this patch is like they removed the void ray from the game - I couldn't think of one situation except mass-ultras+broodlords where I would ever want to get them; also the speed-upgrade was rarely used on pro-level......no idea what this is all about, all the ppl here claming the speed-nerf is fine when nobody ever got it anyways
On October 15 2010 19:13 apexplosive wrote: I really dont understand where you guys are coming from. The void ray is doing what its designed to do. Killing armoured Units. Now its not a gimmicky unit used for sneaking into bases and killing buildings ALTHOUGH it can still do this since now it deals even MORE damage precharged(level1/2) against buildings. It can also support a regular army, and kill thors(which are made viable patch 1.1.2) and bcs.
no-one uses voids for their precharge how often does it have to be said?? compare the new VR to the banshee 150/100 banshee - can cloak , actually kills buildings faster than VR now
VR 250/150 - no cloak , nerfed speed upgrade , very mediocre against air units
Oh really? Lets compare them.
Banshees deal 24 damage per hit with cooldown of 1.25 Void rays deal 10 damage per hit with cooldown of 0.6 (assuming building) Uncharged
It takes 6 seconds for a void ray to charge to level 3. Lets say a building has 1500 hp (CC) In the first 6 seconds, the Voidray would deal 100 damage, the Banshee would deal 115.2 damage.
Then the Voidray will start doing 16 damager per hit with a cooldown of 0.6, which means 32 damage in 1.2 seconds. I think the Void ray can easily deal extra 15 health damage in the a few seconds.
This patch just makes the Void ray a better army support unit than a Gimmicky unit.
So I am pretty disappointed by the max DPS being lowered, after consideration and some experimentation, I think the VR needs a buff with weapon upgrades to be effective late game (+2 per level against armor instead of +1 when charged only), and it needs to get it's 1 armor back, but is otherwise fine. VR price might be lowered in minerals but the gas price should be the same or else it will be possible to continually pump VRs from 2 stargates on one base, which I think would defeat the purpose of the nerf.
First let me explain how I use VRs in my build. I tech to an early stargate, so that I can get 5-6 gateway units and a VR at 5 minutes. Then I use the VR to harass while I expand and switch to robo tech or tech to carrier/mothership + lots of gateways.
- VR will not kill the enemy base, but it will still kill his workers or supply buildings if he ignores it. So it still pins him to the base.
- VR is slightly weaker against an opponent with bad reaction time, but against, say, a zerg player who has his Queen there attacking before you can even charge on his extractor, it's just as good since you're doing more damage while charging on the first queen. It will probably take 2 VRs to kill a fast expo instead of just one, now.
- Because of lowered armor and damage nerf, terran will probably never fall to VRs, but it still might make him make turrets (don't make turrets vs void rays now, btw, terrans, marines are too good against VRs due to them losing their 1 armor), and VRs are still good to have on defense to clean up marauders after your stalker army dies killing all his marines, and speedrays still outrun vikings, but only just, making him choose between stutter step micro and trying to get back to his base.
- Previously, I felt my opening was strongest against Protoss, this is the thing that I wonder about the most, however, it will probably still cause him to spam stalkers. If so then my opening will still be effective, if not, I will have to do something else. I will probably not be able to hold off a 4 warp gate rush when the Protoss goes all stalkers anymore. This will be the hardest thing to adjust to, and it definitely makes this mirror match even more extremely boring. Improving the weapon with the upgrade would make it possible to hold off a stalker waprin, as you could chrono boost the weapon upgrade on your cyber core. Protoss recently have been getting good at hiding 4 WG from a scouting worker, so I will have to make the call blind.
- VRs now beat just over equal resources in corrupters ( 7 corrupters = 4 VRs). It would be nice if it was better, but at least this means carriers are viable, but does require more void rays than before.
- VRs beat thors, but not if they are repaired. Before, you could sometimes focus down a thor being repaired but no longer. Terrans, get your thors! And remember you can repair battlecruisers like they were thors, too!
- Although the reward is less for microing the charged Void Rays, it is greater for microing uncharged void rays, especially on the defense. So, although I am dissapointed that I no longer have the incentive to get really good with VR micro, my general micro skills will improve from using VRs in a fight.
The void ray changes are a definite rebalancing, not a nerf. I played a game where there was lots of void ray on viking action, and void rays in a straight up fight absolutely destroy vikings now because of the 6 +4 damage stage 1 attack. Vikings, when microed, will still beat the void rays. Interestingly, the change to the speed upgrade means a group of void rays has more difficulty overtaking and destroying a group of vikings. I checked the editor, and upgraded Void Ray has a speed of about 2.95, whereas a viking has 2.75. Previously an upgraded voidray had a speed of 3.25, which is a pretty big speed drop. They definitely feel more sluggish.
I did some simulation on the effectiveness of the pre-1.1.2 void ray in comparison to the post-1.1.2 void ray, versus some common enemies they face in a one-on-one fight (I realize it's unrealistic to expect a void ray will fight just 1 marine or just 1 stalker, but I was more interested in how fast the new void ray kills those units)
According to liquidpedia, a void ray will stay on damage level one for 13 attack cycles, and then be bumped up to damage level three. A stalker, having 80 shields, and 80 hitpoints with 1 armour:
Pre-1.1.2 13 x 5 dmg = 65 damage (charge up period) 4 x 25= 96 damage (factoring for armour)
A pre-1.1.2 void ray take 17 attack cycles to destroy a stalker (10.2 seconds)
1.1.2 void ray
13 x (6+4) = 125 damage (charge up period, adjusting for armour) 3 x 16 = 45 damage (adjusting for armour)
A 1.1.2 void ray take 16 attack cycles to destroy a stalker (9.6 seconds)
Versus viking
Pre 1.1.2
13 x 5 = 65 damage (charge up period) 3 x 25 = 75 damage (charged, kills viking)
Total: 16 cycles (9.6 seconds)
1.1.2
13 x (6+4) = 130 damage (kills viking during charge period)
Total: 13 cycles (7.8 seconds)
I decided to calculate the damage curves where a Pre-1.1.2 void ray becomes more efficient, and it takes 20 attack cycles (12 seconds) versus unarmoured targets for the old void ray to become more efficient (135 damage mark). Against armoured targets, it takes 23 attack cycles (260 damage mark, 13.8 seconds) before the old void ray is more efficient.
My conclusions from the above data: (This ignores pre-charging, which while relevant, is not what I'm discussing)
-A 1.1.2 void ray will kill any non-armoured target of less than 135 HP faster than a pre-1.1.2. That means it is:
More efficient than before vs: Mutalisks, zerglings, banelings, reapers, banshees, marines, ghosts, SCVs, probes, drones, pheonixes, autoturrets.
Less efficient vs queens, archons
-A 1.1.2 void ray will kill an armoured target of less than 260 HP faster than a pre - 1.1.2
More efficient than before vs: Vikings, stalkers, Missile Turrets, Maurauders, Roaches, Corrupters, Broodlords
Less efficient vs carriers, mothership, battlecruisers, thors, photon cannons, spore crawlers.
In summary, an analysis of the available data shows the void rays was rebalanced rather than nerfed. It is not a one-trick pony, but leaning towards being a strong aerial assault unit efficient at destroying armored targets. Because of the changes in their damage dynamics, they are more efficient at harassment now - rather than "harassment with the hope of leveling the guy's base".
The major change to fully charged damage also means that it is more feasible to take down void rays that are wrecking your base: they wreck your base slower, and they wreck your mass of guys you send at them slower.
On October 15 2010 20:59 MikeT wrote: The void ray changes are a definite rebalancing, not a nerf. I played a game where there was lots of void ray on viking action, and void rays in a straight up fight absolutely destroy vikings now because of the 6 +4 damage stage 1 attack. Vikings, when microed, will still beat the void rays. Interestingly, the change to the speed upgrade means a group of void rays has more difficulty overtaking and destroying a group of vikings. I checked the editor, and upgraded Void Ray has a speed of about 2.95, whereas a viking has 2.75. Previously an upgraded voidray had a speed of 3.25, which is a pretty big speed drop. They definitely feel more sluggish.
I did some simulation on the effectiveness of the pre-1.1.2 void ray in comparison to the post-1.1.2 void ray, versus some common enemies they face in a one-on-one fight (I realize it's unrealistic to expect a void ray will fight just 1 marine or just 1 stalker, but I was more interested in how fast the new void ray kills those units)
According to liquidpedia, a void ray will stay on damage level one for 13 attack cycles, and then be bumped up to damage level three. A stalker, having 80 shields, and 80 hitpoints with 1 armour:
Pre-1.1.2 13 x 5 dmg = 65 damage (charge up period) 4 x 25= 96 damage (factoring for armour)
A pre-1.1.2 void ray take 17 attack cycles to destroy a stalker (10.2 seconds)
1.1.2 void ray
13 x (6+4) = 125 damage (charge up period, adjusting for armour) 3 x 16 = 45 damage (adjusting for armour)
A 1.1.2 void ray take 16 attack cycles to destroy a stalker (9.6 seconds)
Versus viking
Pre 1.1.2
13 x 5 = 65 damage (charge up period) 3 x 25 = 75 damage (charged, kills viking)
Total: 16 cycles (9.6 seconds)
1.1.2
13 x (6+4) = 130 damage (kills viking during charge period)
Total: 13 cycles (7.8 seconds)
I decided to calculate the damage curves where a Pre-1.1.2 void ray becomes more efficient, and it takes 20 attack cycles versus unarmoured targets for the old void ray to become more efficient (135 damage mark). Against armoured targets, it takes 23 attack cycles (260 damage mark) before it is more efficient.
My conclusions from the above data: (This ignores pre-charging, which while relevant, is not what I'm discussing)
-A 1.1.2 void ray will kill any non-armoured target of less than 135 HP faster than a pre-1.1.2. That means it is:
More efficient than before vs: Mutalisks, zerglings, banelings, reapers, banshees, marines, ghosts, SCVs, probes, drones, pheonixes, autoturrets.
Less efficient vs queens, archons
-A 1.12 void ray will kill an armoured target of less than 260 HP faster than a pre - 1.1.2
More efficient than before vs: Vikings, stalkers, Missile Turrets, Maurauders, Roaches, Corrupters, Broodlords
Less efficient vs carriers, mothership, battlecruisers, thors, photon cannons, spore crawlers.
In summary, an analysis of the available data shows the void rays was rebalanced rather than nerfed. It is not a one-trick pony, but leaning towards being a strong aerial assault unit efficient at destroying armored targets. Because of the changes in their damage dynamics, they are more efficient at harassment now - rather than "harassment with the hope of leveling the guy's base".
The major change to fully charged damage also means that it is more feasible to take down void rays that are wrecking your base: they wreck your base slower, and they wreck your mass of guys you send at them slower.
So against 1 stalker, 1 void ray is better, but against 2 or more stalkers, it's worse. Also, when you have multiple void rays attacking, they will be less likely to even get to their charge cause they will be more likely to kill their units without gaining the charge. In any sort of battle above very small #s of units it's much weaker. When would VR counts = stalker counts?
That's a good analysis, but there are some targets you simply should never have engaged without precharging: marines, missile turrets and stalkers. (Ideally queens, but there's either one of them, so go for it, or there's five of them with energy for transfuse and you shouldn't fight that). Now, you should never engage these targets with void rays at all, even if they theoretically take more damage if you should be crazy enough to charge on them. That is not a rebalance, that is a nerf.
Two stalkers have a combined life of 320, which is above the threshold where the old void rays were more efficient. However, a charged void ray was too efficient vs. stalkers - I remember many times having a single charged void ray in my opponent's base, two stalkers come up, and it melts both stalkers while sustaining only some health damage.
In PvP, in a straight up fight, army versus army, the new void ray is superior because the damage they do versus stalkers and other armoured units while charging up. There's no longer this 7.8 second window in an army engagement where void rays are doing piddly damage - they do actually pretty good damage now versus armoured units - they actually frontload their damage better (loading damage at the beginning of the battle. I'm speaking in terms of ball versus ball battles including zealots, stalkers, sentries, maybe immortals / collosi on one side and void rays on the other) They are inferior when they are snuck-in to wreck your base, because them being charged isn't quite so scary now.
I decided to try them out just for fun to see if they were really nerfed as badly as everyone was saying. They've had a slight role shift. They're more viable as a main army unit and less as a cheese / cheap win unit.
Haven't really read the thread except OP nor played since patch. I think the patch is a move in the right direction. Blizzard is trying to change them from the gimmicky play/cheese they pre-patch were forced into.
We will see if this is an overnerf with time, but this change tells me that Blizzard is actually trying to make the VR a more staple unit, which can only be positive. I trust blizzard to not be afraid to buff the VR if they were overzealous with the nerfhammer(which I don't particulary believe they were).
I welcome the void ray nerf. It used to totally overshadow carrier and once a numbers are out on the field it's completely broken. It utterly and totally break team games.
I hope Blizzard eventually takes a look at Protoss air arsenal.
VR: cost ineffective and gimmicky unit that is horrible vs anything that can fight back.
Carrier: cost ineffective unit that is hard countered by a couple vikings/corruptors (and protoss has no hard counter to corruptors anymore)
Phoenix: gimmicky paper unit. terrible at dealing with ground (they get bonus dmg vs stuff such as marines/hydras/lings; units that you're never going to graviton anyway) and only get bonus dmg vs mutas/fellow phoenixes...
When Zerg and Terran see enemy air units or colossi, they think "corruptor/viking". When a protoss sees the same thing, they have to think "erp... time to slam more gates and spam more stalkers"
If you want us to use void rays as an army support unit, please make them cheaper. Protoss air was already probably the least-used tech tree; VR harrass was one of the few reasons you'd take it (along with pheonix-muta kiting and Funday Monday).
VRs as they are now do not a core-army unit make. They have separate upgrades, a separate tech tree, and probably won't even be the most mobile anti-air/anti-ground unit you'll have (blink stalkers).
Signed,
The Protoss Players (+ Random!)
PS: I agree that charged rays were probably too good, but post-patch they're just not worth the price when I could pump my gateway/robo forces instead. Make them cheaper, or quicker to build, or Protoss air is going to be even more underused than it is now.
On October 15 2010 11:16 tournamentnow wrote: It's an overall buff to the void ray in all situations even its good as part of your army. It does double DPS vs armored now while uncharged is more than enough to compensate for the 40% nerf to charged dmg vs armored. Its insane now in PVP.
What a misleading statement by using percentages.
Voidrays got an additional +5 uncharged damage to armored units while losing while losing 9 damage charged. And let's not forget that any competent Protoss player will have his Void rays precharged before any major battle so uncharged damage is negligible. That's like buffing Viking ground damage by 300% then nerfing it's aerial damage by 200% and calling it a buff overall since 300% > 200%.
That was a really bad example, everyone would mass 48 damage ground mode vikings, that would actually be a huge buff and you can't nerf damage by 200%, unless you make the unit deal negative damage, i.e. actually healing it's target.
On October 15 2010 21:39 Phrencys wrote: I hope Blizzard eventually takes a look at Protoss air arsenal.
VR: cost ineffective and gimmicky unit that is horrible vs anything that can fight back.
Carrier: cost ineffective unit that is hard countered by a couple vikings/corruptors (and protoss has no hard counter to corruptors anymore)
Phoenix: gimmicky paper unit. terrible at dealing with ground (they get bonus dmg vs stuff such as marines/hydras/lings; units that you're never going to graviton anyway) and only get bonus dmg vs mutas/fellow phoenixes...
When Zerg and Terran see enemy air units or colossi, they think "corruptor/viking". When a protoss sees the same thing, they have to think "erp... time to slam more gates and spam more stalkers"
this in a nutshell
although I realize you can't really compare the races, what protoss lacks is a straightforward air-unit that is just "good" vs either ground or air (armored); as it is, all 3 protoss air units are highly situational, as you summarized; not particularly "bad" but not a unit you will feel comfortable fighting your opponent with; phoenixes are awsome for harass, but you definitely can't fight anything with them except mutas; carriers have their place in PvT, but get so hardcore-owned by vikings, you better have mass-stalkers or a couple of storms ready or you are toast; void rays didn't fill this empty hole in protoss-tech before the patch and don't fill it now; they are too expensive for what they do in battle, you will never be able to picture a situation where you'd prefer the void ray over ANYTHING ELSE - this is the core problem, you have always some other units that are much more worth their cost; a colossus just costs 50/50 more --> in 90% of the cases I'd take this colossus over one void ray any day; gas-wise you can get one HT instead of one void ray; again, the storm will be so much better, I'd gladly take it; due to 0 armor (nerfed because high dps) and low range (nerfed because high dps) void rays suck when the opponent had some marines, or some hydras; they die way too quickly to justify their extremely high cost; giving them 1 armor back would've maybe meant balance because rays then wouldn't die to marines so incredibly fast...
On October 15 2010 21:16 MikeT wrote: Two stalkers have a combined life of 320, which is above the threshold where the old void rays were more efficient. However, a charged void ray was too efficient vs. stalkers - I remember many times having a single charged void ray in my opponent's base, two stalkers come up, and it melts both stalkers while sustaining only some health damage.
Unless the opponent had the skill to kite your VR, which I ran into a few times. It is possible to only take one hit from the VR, make your hit, then run away, in this way 2 stalkers can kill a VR. It is silly to warp in units under a VR of course. Never do this.
On October 15 2010 21:16 MikeT wrote:In PvP, in a straight up fight, army versus army, the new void ray is superior because the damage they do versus stalkers and other armoured units while charging up. There's no longer this 7.8 second window in an army engagement where void rays are doing piddly damage - they do actually pretty good damage now versus armoured units - they actually frontload their damage better (loading damage at the beginning of the battle. I'm speaking in terms of ball versus ball battles including zealots, stalkers, sentries, maybe immortals / collosi on one side and void rays on the other) They are inferior when they are snuck-in to wreck your base, because them being charged isn't quite so scary now.
I decided to try them out just for fun to see if they were really nerfed as badly as everyone was saying. They've had a slight role shift. They're more viable as a main army unit and less as a cheese / cheap win unit.
I completely disagree because their pre-charge damage still has them only doing slightly more damage than one stalker. It is simply not worthwhile to risk your VR for this, their slow speed means they will be targeted first. Even after charging, their damage is equivalent to 2.75 stalkers. This is more reasonable but only barely equal cost if you lose your void ray. It may be ok if you are defending from a ramp or choke where you can be sure they will not be able to run up to your void ray and you can pull it back when it loses it's shield. However otherwise I will prefer to charge it on my own buildings and only use it in an emergency.
There was actually a very large stealth nerf to vr on top of this.... NOT MY RESEARCH BUT TRUE
a charged voidray costs 250m/150g/3s and deal 16*1/1 damage/s vs armored without upgrades. upgrades are an undocumented change as well, because prepatch they did
10(+3 per upgradelevel) + 15(+1 per upgrade level) vs armored -> 25,29(L1),33(L2),37(L3) vs armored
now the do
8(+1 per upgrade level) + 8(+0 per upgrade level) vs armored -> 16,17(L1),18(L2),19(L3) vs armored
so the actual change is - 18 damage vs armored fully upgraded and charged, you could say the damage was halfed.
Upgrades are not always relevant in vr play, but most were able to squeeze out at least +1 before the 3gate 1stargate push....
On October 15 2010 21:39 Phrencys wrote: I hope Blizzard eventually takes a look at Protoss air arsenal.
VR: cost ineffective and gimmicky unit that is horrible vs anything that can fight back.
Carrier: cost ineffective unit that is hard countered by a couple vikings/corruptors (and protoss has no hard counter to corruptors anymore)
Phoenix: gimmicky paper unit. terrible at dealing with ground (they get bonus dmg vs stuff such as marines/hydras/lings; units that you're never going to graviton anyway) and only get bonus dmg vs mutas/fellow phoenixes...
When Zerg and Terran see enemy air units or colossi, they think "corruptor/viking". When a protoss sees the same thing, they have to think "erp... time to slam more gates and spam more stalkers"
carrier is cost effective against viking and corruptors. carrier can defeat 3 vikings with mininmal micro and 2 corruptors.
I can't vote, the options don't reflect the actual truth - which is that the change is in the purpose and meaning of void rays, not in their strength. There is no nerf/buff/balancing here. For all we know, void rays could be balanced in both cases simultaneously (old and new version); they now just have different purpose in the game.
I like the changes to the void ray. Maybe it will affect the PvP matchup (read hopefully). I now see non-charged void rays as more of a threat against armored targets than before. Since most Protoss make stalkers along with the Robo centric army in PvP and non charged void rays got a rather significant boost to damage against armored. In my opinion front-loaded damage is better than back-loaded since stalkers could kill all your void rays before they got charged pre 1.1.2. Now void rays will do more damage before they are destoryed. I'm not saying it will revolutionize the matchup, but I do see it as a step in the right direction!
What was the reason the 3 stage was remove from the beta? It would be kind of cool to have an actual 3 stage damage. 6(4) to 7(5) to 8(8) or whatever numbers comes out balanced.
You can theorycraft the numbers all day but if they are cost ineffective in the actual game your numbers arent going to much matter. There are too many variables to just look at a unit/cost based on strictly the numbers. While the numbers might be relevant to some arguments, they should not be the complete basis for an argument as that would be the rough equivalent of all the protoss who mass stalkers expecting to beat mass marauders... or even calling them OP. You have to look at realistic army mixes. VRs were a late game seige breaking unit for me and pretty crucial to me being able to take on PFs. My issue with them now has alot to do with how they interact with other units. WIth such short range any supported armored target will be safe against the VR component of your army (they have no choice but to fly in range of shit that can kill them easily, which is actually every ground based anti-air unit in the game except for the thor). It doesnt make much sense to fly any over your army, the damage they add to your mix is inconsequential when compared to their gas/mineral cost and what you COULD have had. Stargate openers always felt risky because they were... because theres a good chance that this slow transitioning race would have a building they could no longer use slightly too early in the game to recover.
An issue in PvT that arises from this is that it becomes near impossible to open phoenix either due to the void ray change. Here's why...even before this patch there were some timing thor pushes that were actually pretty strong against the phoenix, who cant lift them. Thors do so much dps straight away that gateway armies fall to them horrible (especially when repaired). So a typical game like this against thor push would involve a phoenix getting pumped, me flying over their base with it and seeing a quick armory... then stopping phoenix production... and trying to get a void ray to defend myself against the thor. Since thor is a gas heavy tech, they are normally accompanied by a crapload of marines and maybe a few marauders that they can squeeze in for the extra gas.
Well as you know, marines crap on void rays, crap on rangeless collossus, and they crap on immortals. Against a good terran, this two thor push will not be defendable without robotech. It comes too soon to switch over from stargate tech and basically, as you guys that play protoss know... your robo or stargate gets you your more reliable scouting information than your sacrificial probe so having to choose robo every game is definitely not something im looking forward to.
I really think the thor pushes will become more prevalent in the near future esp knowing that you cant soften them with templar (necessary change imo).
so TLDR: I dont mind opening robo I just dont like the fact that I have to.
The only issue I have with it is that they kept the charge time the same.
It was a pain to counter BC with VR before the nerf. A lot of BC with yamatos aren't easily countered by void rays. You had to let die half of your VR to yamato and BC dps before they were charged up and start killing BCs.
Now I don't know, Voids will make far better damage at the start of the battle but I wonder how it balances out on the whole battle. Sure mass BC are rare but it hapeens here and there late PvT and there is still this fast BC with scvs auto repair that can be really troublesome.
To be completely honest, I never thought much of voidrays until lately. They were a fun thing to do in 2s when you rushed voidrays and decimated your opponents lairs and tech buildings.
One time I was doing a 4v4 random and I decided to mass voidrays, just to see what it was like. The results were quite impressive. Backed by my allies ground armies, I was able to build up a charge on their battlecruisers and absolutely rip through them. None of my allies even thought to get capital ship anti-air (We had a couple of thors and hydras, but the BCs were positioned on a cliff so it was hard to aim at) so I had to say I might have been one of the deciding factors of the match.
Looking at the patch notes now, I seriously question the options that protoss have against capital ships. Carriers get blown apart by yamacruisers, phoenixes can't do shit against armored targets, and blink stalkers makes them extremely vulnerable to the terran's ground army. What exactly do toss have that can counter capital ships?
I understand that blizzard wants to move the unit into a more 'standard' place in an army by dealing modest damage in charge level 1 and unarmored units, but for their price they are just not viable at this point of the game.
Basically, I have 3 suggestions for the way this can go.
1. (Someone mentioned this) Keep the void rays damage as of post-patch, but instead of +8 bonus against armored make it +15 massive. This way it keeps it's niche as a capital ship/unit sniper as terran and zerg both have.
2. Lower the cost of void rays. That simple. 200/125 would help, but many players still wouldn't find the cost justified.
3. Retain its original charge bonus damage against armored, but reduce its base damage.
Basically, to find a solution for the void ray problem, we (and blizzard) have to set a goal in what kind of unit the void ray is supposed to be.
I think the VR's cost is correct. I have actually evaluated the effectiveness of the unit and, true to its design, it either works super effectively, or falls hard and flat. In terms of investment, it is probably the most risky unit in the P arsenal, as its risk/rewards comparison is quite polar.
Either you focus down the 2 queens with a gateway + 2 void army and win, or you miss-micro for one second and lose two of them, dooming you to the snowball effect for the rest of the match.
EDIT: No, you don't want 7 range. As a P player I openly acknowledge this as being ultra OP in just the same way as when a reaper could kite a roach (pre-patch). Every AA defensive structure would HAVE to be the furthest structure from the center of a base or else the VR can pick off without reproach every one of these structures, even ones next to the AA defense.
On October 16 2010 04:17 tehemperorer wrote: I think the VR's cost is correct. I have actually evaluated the effectiveness of the unit and, true to its design, it either works super effectively, or falls hard and flat. In terms of investment, it is probably the most risky unit in the P arsenal, as its risk/rewards comparison is quite polar.
Either you focus down the 2 queens with a gateway + 2 void army and win, or you miss-micro for one second and lose two of them, dooming you to the snowball effect for the rest of the match.
EDIT: No, you don't want 7 range. As a P player I openly acknowledge this as being ultra OP in just the same way as when a reaper could kite a roach (pre-patch). Every AA defensive structure would HAVE to be the furthest structure from the center of a base or else the VR can pick off without reproach every one of these structures, even ones next to the AA defense.
Since everybody 2gate robos in PvP, I think now the VR can find a nice snuggly home in PvP (I made an argument like this in another thread btw)
VR's now do base damage of 10- just under the threshold of immorts, and I think by the time the voird ray charges almost all of the shields will be drained anyway-enough to kill an immort out of position easily. And since PvP is one giant colo mosh pit atm, voidrays can be now be a reasonable addition to the toss' army composition without being this gimmicky harass unit. I'm not saying that VR's will stop colos as well as vikings/ corrupters do, but I think it will add some dynamics to PvP. And maybe Carriers were just looking for some VR support to be loved again
@KaoReal: If by that you mean they are expensive, involve high risk/high reward, and can be the winning unit if you focus down the queens, then yes.
@Zvendetta: VRs are not really a good choice in PvP because some players do almost exclusively stalkers and then colossi, but you might want to try 2gate robo stargate... It is a timing attack, and will beat FE play or a fast colossi strat. It is a 2 gateway force, plus 2 immortals and 2 phoenix, and the transition is colossi
To everyone saying that Void Rays should accompany your army now as an army unit, what's the point? They require separate tech that is only situationally useful, are more expensive than 2 stalkers in gas which is needed for stuff that is hugely useful (colossi/templar/upgrades, etc), yet do less dps when charging than 2 stalkers and only moderately more after charged against armored. If they manage to get charged that is, since now they will be less likely to gain a charge as the unit they are firing against will die more often than before the patch. Against light, 2 stalkers do more DPS than uncharged VRs significantly and more than charged by a little.
Stalkers also can be warped in, come from the most versatile production building that is cheap and also doesn't cost gas, can gain blink for superior micro-ability, have the same range. 3 stalkers (same gas cost as a VR, less if you add stargate gas cost) blow a VR out of the water and do more DPS than a charged VR against everything.
And to top it off, you can't pre-charge nearly as well before going into battle, which is what used to make them shine in army confrontations. It's less effective and hurts your stuff more.
I'd like to see replays posted from those suggesting VRs are better balanced and just as (if not more) useful now, but in an altered role. I know it's only been a little over a day, but I'll patiently wait for any replays.
Apparently, Terrans can still complain about Void Rays being OP.
But Void Rays are still reasonable against a queen or two. I need to get used to them being weaker, but my strategy still works. I would have kept my VRs in the old days. I lose this game, but only because I haven't played in a couple days and my APM is slipping.
Here's one where I killed his expo (but really, he should have been able to defend it, i think he just made too many zerglings), then my Void Rays help out against his corruptors, but he just didn't have enough corrupters because he was on one base for so long.
This is a bit much. I understand reducing the damage on VR's a little, but Blizz has made the VR pretty much useless for its cost. Also, why nerf the speed? It's not like it was cheap to get the speed upgrade (Beacon + tech).
RIP Toss air: VR is slow garbage now, Carriers too expensive, too slow to build, too slow to move, and tech intensive, and the Phoenix is a situational POS.
I think it should be pretty clear that for the cost they are ridiculously underpowered now. They either need to lower the cost or raise the DPS. Consider which you would rather have 2 Void rays (500/300) or 4 mutas (400/400)?
They are costly, fragile, slow (until upgraded), and are part of a tech tree that is basically worthless in early to mid game now.
Protoss Air was already 'dead' before the VR nerf. I've concluded that the nerf doesn't really matter. Actually they shouldn't buff the VR (besides make it more useful with attack upgrades and give the 1 armor back) - they should buff the carrier. Give it 1 more damage, so that this big, beefy unit actually does more damage than the VR, instead of the exact same. Carriers did not have the DPS to take out battlecruisers being repaired before, and they still don't. Carriers did not have the DPS to handle corrupters before, and they still don't. Either give the protoss some spell to deal with these heavy armored units or buff the VR/Carrier.
I didn't think they were really OP before, although I've certainly had my share of voidray losses. I thought they were too good with the charge and too weak without so the damage rework seems like a good change to me.
As for the flux vanes change, I did think that was just strait up too much speed for that heavy a unit.
I'm wondering if this will mean more voids in armies now that the charge won't be quite so much of a hassle and they'll still be pretty good against armored without it. It seems like it'll make voids considerably more popular in pvp.
Why would they be useful in PvP now when the only reason they could be used before was that they could chew through stalkers when charged? Are you really going to attack stalkers with uncharged void rays now because it's "better"?
Finally got a decent PvT game, looks like my strat still works even with the change.
They are significantly weaker against protoss 4WG, and it takes slightly longer to kill an expo. Notably, I cannot decide just to pump gateway units + VRs and expand; I have to make a robotics facility first. But they are of more use midgame if I manage to save them. I do think the Void Ray use will be limited in other cases. A few big changes have occured, Void Ray no longer seem useful as a counter weapon; eg if they go to attack your base, you won't be able to do major damage with 4-5 void rays, so you'll need to go for the mineral line instead of just eating through buildings. They are much better to keep with your main army. I find this a little disappointing, because it amplifies the Protoss "one big army" effect. But it is acceptable I suppose.
I guess some of my replays are being downloaded, so I hope they are being useful? If there is any situation you want to see VRs in, please let me know and I'll try to arrange it in a game.
Voids are actually really good against Vikings now. I mean, they're kitable without the speed upgrade, but in a straight-up fight Voids beat them quite handily, and once they have the speed upgrade Vikings (still) can't kite. Since Vikings are one of the primary reasons Terran kicks the crap out of Toss in the air, I think this is pretty significant, and definitely a straight buff, as it was very rare that you'd have precharged Void Rays for an air to air battle with Vikings.
They're also better at quickly defending against that bane of all Toss--Marauders. Previously, if Marauders dropped into your base and your Void wasn't charged, they would likely take out your nexus before you could effectively respond. Now the Void can pitch in effectively on defense right away, and the Nexus has more hp.
Voids are also, somewhat ironically, even better when massed, which I think runs counter to what Blizzard intended. It was basically impossible to get charge on 10+ Voids, but now even uncharged Voids are quite dangerous.
This is a big nerf to one specific use--precharging or proxying Voids, then using them to wipe out a base almost instantly. It is a small nerf to another use, using them to bring down capital ships (Blink Stalkers are probably the unit of choice for that now).
But in terms of actually making Void Rays useful in a normal battle, useful in defense, and useful in the battle vs. Terran for air dominance, I think its a pretty decent buff.
Are the people saying that VRs die v. Queens one-on-one actually testing this, because from my tests this is not at all true. The Queen gets the VR down into its health (no shields), but still dies.
The guy saying that said he did it by a map editor, I think he set the queen to the wrong stats, maybe gave it 1000 HP or something. I have had no problems killing queens with my VRs in actual games, see my posted replay.
On October 16 2010 12:42 GoldenH wrote: The guy saying that said he did it by a map editor, I think he set the queen to the wrong stats, maybe gave it 1000 HP or something. I have had no problems killing queens with my VRs in actual games, see my posted replay.
On October 16 2010 12:42 GoldenH wrote: I have had no problems killing queens with my VRs in actual games, see my posted replay.
I have >.> I ended up in a very strange situation, where the game hung in the balance between my 3 VRs vs just two queens with one more on the way. Well these two queens with a few transfusion completely beat my 3 VRs. They gunned one down to the red (which i pulled back and microed) by the time he had to use one transfusion. In the end I got one queen down with another popping out and taking down my last VR..
Their damage is pitiful, have the survivability of a paper plane, and cost almost as much as a capital ship. I just don't understand what Blizzard thinks we're to do with them...
They wouldn't have beat 2 queens that could transfuse each other pre-nerf anyway. If he's skipping Spawn Larvaes you should consider that a huge victory, and then go straight for the drones. I don't care how good the zerg player is, transfuse on drones isn't going to save them
For those of you suggesting that void rays be used as a core army unit for dps vs armored targets. the uncharged DPS of void rays(only can use this since its the only thing that was buffed) is 16.6. the DPS of 2 stalkers vs armored is 19.5. 2 stalkers costs about the same as 1 void ray not factoring in cost of the starport. 2 stalkers also tank more damage than 1 void ray does. If they really wanted to make it an army unit they should have given it the 1 armor/range back and/or decreased cost/increased HP.
On October 16 2010 18:46 Chen wrote: For those of you suggesting that void rays be used as a core army unit for dps vs armored targets. the uncharged DPS of void rays(only can use this since its the only thing that was buffed) is 16.6. the DPS of 2 stalkers vs armored is 19.5. 2 stalkers costs about the same as 1 void ray not factoring in cost of the starport. 2 stalkers also tank more damage than 1 void ray does. If they really wanted to make it an army unit they should have given it the 1 armor/range back and/or decreased cost/increased HP.
You are doing it wrong. Why shouldn't void rays get to factor in their charged attack in a army unit comparison?
Larger armies of ground units would block each other making some of them unable to attack. Since void rays are flying units this means that you are less affected by chokes and can have a larger number of units participating in the combat. A combination of zealots, stalkers, collossus and void rays could be put together to create a really compact army ball.
also, please stop talking about queens - THEY ARE NOT ARMOURED. it's exactly like someone saying "ZOMG reapers have been massively gimped against queens" - no they ain't, because they're faster than creep queens without nitro packs already.
i'm pretty sure that voidrays OWN even harder in early game against marines in 1.1.2...
the only down side is that they're a lot weaker against battlecruisers and buildings... but the damage against those was rediculous. he baits stim while sniping at your refinery from the cliff, then comes in without charge and kills 5-6 marines - then you simply can't build anti air fast enough unless you have like 5 rax. just a single voidray requires like 4-5 rax to effectively counter.
imo voidray makes banshee look like trash. get detection and the banshee is just a flying marauder that costs 4 times more gas, takes twice as long to build and has very limited cloak time..
I think the change was completely appropriate. Now you can use an uncharged void ray for something and charged void-rays aren't insane. I still disagree with the mechanic in general but pragmatically it fixes a few of the issues. They should probably drop the cost slightly however or something like that to compensate, but that remains to be seen.
In my humble opinion te void ray is now ok damage wise. but blizzard created a imbalance by not lowering its cost. the unit is not worth 250/150. but the voidrays are ok for now to play. what blizzard still needs to fix is protoss air concept and giving them some counter to the late game units like corruptors and battlecruisers ... the voidray could not fullfill that role prepatch so the changes affect protoss AA capability post patch even more. but right now the stats of the unit work quit right. as i mentioned the costs are too high now.
Lol @ posters comparing voids to immos and stalkers. Did they forget that flying is a bonus? I think it is easy to forget* that when half the stuff in the game can't shoot you, you don't need as much survivability. Oh and you can still boogie over cliffs and even into the abyss of the map.
I think the change is fantastic. Not only does it nerf those voidray all-ins which might have been a little too strong against terran it also drastically changes their ability to just be used as a combat unit.
Against colossi for example they are actually better now as they do much more damage straight up now. The stage 1 damage against colossi has more then doubled which is huge (9 vs 4 since colossi have 1 armor) which makes them a much better counter against colossi now. Fast colossi builds are not viable anymore in PvP because stalker heavy builds can easily make voids to counter those now.
Against zerg and terran they are simply a unit they should be now, a counter to tier 3 air. Voidray rushes can still work ok in some scenario's as well.
they are basically different units now. i'm not opposed to balancing the unit, but it's sad that they just decided to play it safe and make them boring.
this patch is ridicoulles , Void Rays are so useless to charge ...... please decrease damage when not charged and increase when charged it worked way better , if the opposing player didn't see void rays incoming it is his problem for his lack of scouting . A few voids taking out a base is pretty fair if u compare them with mutalisk wich can when massed take a mineral line out in 5 seconds -.-'' . Void Rays are the spellbreakers from war 3 tft all over again ( there identity and uses change so much that nobody knows the exact usage anymore )
I think it's good. Now players don't lose immediately if the stargate is hidden and the toss charges up on a phoenix or some destructible rocks or something.
i haven't had much trouble with them because most of the time i either scout the stargate or scout the complete lack of any units or buildings in his base and know that there's a stargate somewhere on the map. but on maps like kulas and desert oasis post-patch, i would still lose to them because i can't stop them from being charged up on rocks (probably the big reason those maps were removed from the pool, though i don't see how it can't be done on shakuras)
but they didn't nerf void rays for us dia players. they were nerfed for the bronze league players. i have 2 friends who were trying to get into starcraft, but ended up just quitting the game because in bronze league, players can barely hold off worker rushes. let alone void ray rushes. players ragequitting the game is bad for business.
still, i think void rays will have their place. they can still do a lot of damage if the opponent is caught off guard by them, and they're great units once zergs reach hive tech.
Anyone that thinks its a buff that Void Rays do better damage un-charged is either a troll or just doesn't understand them. Unless you have 10+ Void Rays, they are SO easy to charge, that unless you are in Bronze you would always find a way to charge them before engaging, so the uncharged DPS REALLY doesn't matter Blizzard is really just trying to make them into an A-Move unit it seems like
i hate the new voidrays, tried them in few games, lost and wont even consider buying them again
for such a high price u get a low dps unit that dies instantly if not micro'd.. good against collosus? good vs marines?good vs hydras? good vs stalkers? this has got to be some kind of a joke that only bronze ppl understand, it takes like 3 or 4 seconds to kill a MARINE with CHARGED voidray LOL (50 minerals vs 250/150, dont give me that ligh/armored crap) i even read somewhere that 3 charged voidrays cant kill a turret that is beeing repaired
out of 4 air units that P has i feel like only phoenixes are worth buying, the rest just dont qualify for their price
even tho its useless to argue here, but like many others i feel like it was unnecessary nerf.. in pro games it was not often that i saw voidrays, now i think ill see even less of them
I'm in favor of the nerf: it's as if every other game i would play against protoss i push my army into their base and am in the process of destroying it only, to my dismay, to see 6 voidrays destroying my base.
On October 17 2010 05:26 Callthedocta wrote: I'm in favor of the nerf: it's as if every other game i would play against protoss i push my army into their base and am in the process of destroying it only, to my dismay, to see 6 voidrays destroying my base.
On October 16 2010 23:40 Markwerf wrote: I think the change is fantastic. Not only does it nerf those voidray all-ins which might have been a little too strong against terran it also drastically changes their ability to just be used as a combat unit.
Against colossi for example they are actually better now as they do much more damage straight up now. The stage 1 damage against colossi has more then doubled which is huge (9 vs 4 since colossi have 1 armor) which makes them a much better counter against colossi now. Fast colossi builds are not viable anymore in PvP because stalker heavy builds can easily make voids to counter those now.
Against zerg and terran they are simply a unit they should be now, a counter to tier 3 air. Voidray rushes can still work ok in some scenario's as well.
Who cares about the stage 1 damage, that's not gonna kill colossi, it has to get charged to make an impact on the health either way, and it's either dead by then (meaning it was pretty worthless and you should have made different stuff with that money cause it's not a cost effective tank and is not meant for tanking at all), or would have been doing 24 dmg until the fight is over or it dies instead of 15 before the patch. How is it better now?
i believe the new changes balanced the void rays much better and you no longer need to have them charged in order for them to be effective ish... 2 void rays will now kill 2 queens where as before they would only kill the queens being fully charged before they hit the queens.
On October 17 2010 05:26 Callthedocta wrote: I'm in favor of the nerf: it's as if every other game i would play against protoss i push my army into their base and am in the process of destroying it only, to my dismay, to see 6 voidrays destroying my base.
this is the reason it got nerfed -_- lol 6 void rays..
The only problem with Void Rays was their ability to take out non armoured units so fast once in a mass. Example, Hydras, Marines. So why didn't they just lower the base damage and relay that back to armoured? The Void ray is expensive, well all Protoss air is expensive for what it does. It was a glass cannon, and can quickly fall to the correct counter. They are plenty of other units that are not balanced for team games.
Ive tried using Void Rays, and now they are the least cost efficient unit in the game for Protoss, total rubbish. They were always good for killing buildings and it isn't hard to scout a Stargate and prepare for them.
On October 17 2010 05:14 iNkopwnz wrote: i hate the new voidrays, tried them in few games, lost and wont even consider buying them again
for such a high price u get a low dps unit that dies instantly if not micro'd.. good against collosus? good vs marines?good vs hydras? good vs stalkers? this has got to be some kind of a joke that only bronze ppl understand, it takes like 3 or 4 seconds to kill a MARINE with CHARGED voidray LOL (50 minerals vs 250/150, dont give me that ligh/armored crap) i even read somewhere that 3 charged voidrays cant kill a turret that is beeing repaired
Try playing Hydralisks - it has been like that for Zerg for the whole time...
-> the mechanics behind the void ray are broken and need fixing.
with the current machnics in game, you can not make them "balanced", they will allways be either way to powerfull or a joke of a unit, no matter waht you do.
It was a buff they do better against vikings,corruptors,stalkers now in fight. Only pre charging abuse was nerfed, so more mass void lategame strats soon
So now uncharged is 10/0.6=16.7dps against armor 6/0.6=10dps against other
Charged is 16/0.6 = 26.7 dps against armor 8/0.6 = 13.333 dps against other
For a comparison : Stalker is 14/1.44=10dps against armor 10/1.44 = 7dps against other
Since Voids fly and are more than double the cost of stalkers, this looks ok to me, charged they are slightly stronger than 2 stalkers and fly (like 2.5). Uncharged they are slightly weaker (1.5), and still fly. Might consider testing them a bit more than the backstab strategies they were good for before.
Forgot to count armor which goes into the stalker side because they shoot slower so armor negates less damage for them.
Also, void rays are super fragile for their cost, they cant blink and they dont participate in the great meat shield for the colossi. They are near useless now.
I've also played around with Voids since the patch and they are utterly useless for the cost.
What a disaster, Toss officially have no viable air options for harass such such as Muta's and Cloaked Banshee...both these are 100x more useful then any Toss air unit.
At least the old voids were somewhat of a deterrent, forcing Zerg and Terran to stay honest if they saw a stargate, now they can push out and harass at will.
This nerf was way too heavy, keep the old speed upgrade and slightly increase the charged damage again.
Voids blow now. Queens rape them, and against Terran they don't have a big enough impact anywhere. I honestly won't build them now.
I think they were fine as a "drop the hammer" tool against unprepared players pre-patch. Maybe the stages could have used a little tweaking, and I think the charging mechanic was poorly-implemented, but the fact remains that right now their DPS has been nerfed to an unusable level.
So now we're down to Phoenixes. I'll probably never build Stagates now.
On October 18 2010 04:38 Proximo wrote: I've also played around with Voids since the patch and they are utterly useless for the cost.
What a disaster, Toss officially have no viable air options for harass such such as Muta's and Cloaked Banshee...both these are 100x more useful then any Toss air unit.
At least the old voids were somewhat of a deterrent, forcing Zerg and Terran to stay honest if they saw a stargate, now they can push out and harass at will.
This nerf was way too heavy, keep the old speed upgrade and slightly increase the charged damage again.
This is just wrong. I'm annoyed about this nerf, and I feel it really hurts Toss, but for other reasons. Phoenix are still a solid harass unit. They can hurt zerg so badly. The lose map control completely due to the fact that they can't ovie scout anymore, and you can easily take out drones. It also forces them down certain tech roots.
My issue (as others have said) is this hurts the Toss late game a LOT. I really feel they need +damage to massive.
I'm sad that they nerfed this unit. I'm a terran player and when scouted properly I could hold it (with 21 CC). Terran actually had to scout and pay attention. The only thing I need to fear now is a DT. Blizzard should stop with nerfing things right away.
Void Rays have always been a hit or miss unit. In other words, if you can get them charged up in the back of the base, you can effectively destroy the opponent; if you get caugh trying you really don't do any damage and lost 250/150 * the number of void rays.
Before- Void Rays were not cost effective at all unless all the circumstances were perfect (charged, surprise attack, enemy lacks anti air or out of possition) in which case they were TOO cost effective. Now- Void Rays are still not cost effective, when all the circumstances are perfect they are cost effective AT BEST.
I understand blizzards intention. We don't want units with that huge of a gap of effectiveness. But if the unit is going to be viable while uncharged, it needs to be either faster or do more damage.
I'd like to add to that- During GSL and other high tier tournaments going on post patch I have not seen 1 protoss player build a void ray.
I firmly believe that they are heading in the right direction with these changes. Flux Vanes could potentially alter the outcome of teamgames on their own (though, to be fair, that was mainly the case in lower divisions). Buffing the uncharged damage while nerfing the charged one was also a good change.
The problem is that they are still damn expensive, while only serving as a surprise unit. The changes won't change them from a "strong when not scouted"-type of cheese unit to an "I'll mix Void Rays into my composition because they serve a purpose"-type of unit.
On October 19 2010 21:16 DamageInq wrote: I'd like to add to that- During GSL and other high tier tournaments going on post patch I have not seen 1 protoss player build a void ray.
then you've probably been asleep for quite a while
1. Inca used them in his third game on xel naga; won thanks to a choking opponent 2. choya used thim in his third game on LT; lost because void rays are a BO-loss vs mass-rax into expo
EPT
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