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Letting void rays charge up by time or keeping a charge for a few seconds after a target dies would be absolutely ridiculous.
1 queen can hold a void ray off if something like a spore or another queen is on it's way. If a void ray is fully charged, not only will the queen die, but any reinforcement.
You'd have issues where Toss would just make 1-2 void rays from a stargate opener, and even though zerg knew about it and made extra queens and some spores, if both sides of every base wasn't covered, they would lose everything in convincing fashion.
I mean... it'd really make stargate OP in ZvP. Just open stargate, make 1 void ray, and force zerg to make 5+ spores/queens instantly. As it is now, an extra queen roaming around or just 2 spores that you uproot around your base, is enough to handle the first void ray and you can add on incrementally, so if you knew stargate was coming and prepared, you can come out ahead or okay (depending on how toss uses them). Being forced to make 3+ spores/queens instantly would be ridiculous cost to zerg econ. everyone would just make 1 vr, ez.
As mentioned by others, the grubby comment is ridiculous. 120+ void rays vs 120+ void rays? Where void rays are used, attack upgrades are awesome - against static AA, against buildings, against massive units, and in the numbers void rays tend to be - in small numbers as a damage dealer, with lots of support (phoenixes, zealots, sentries).
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On May 05 2012 04:04 Derrida wrote:Show nested quote +On May 05 2012 03:57 Zrana wrote:
They should really just change them to do a % of the target's hp per second, this charging up/down stuff screws with balance too much so that the time it takes for a VR to kill a zergling and an ultralisk is equal?
Would be too under/overpowered. If you had them say.... do 4% of the target's HP per second, a base would go down instantly. Whereas if you send them on a zergling, you'd deal next to no damage.
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Since you very rarely end up in a situation with only VR's, I think you are all forgetting something: It's not just the +1 attack for VR that works against them, but +1 for Any unit.
The VR's most likely fire at the same targets as other units of the same range(positionwise) hence severely reducing the opportunity to charge up. And as soon as you factor in splash damage from Colosus or storms, the only units VR can really charge up on are Corrupters or maybe roaches if there's 70 of them to begin with.
The overall mechanic of the VR is just plain BAD.
As for early game VR's and overpoweredness, do recall that VR's only been balanced while 1-Basing was the dominant style of play. It's really not that hard to balance the VR for the early game as well as for the late..
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I think the clear solution to this problem is to reduce the voidray damage significanly. Say 30%. That way units dieing too fast will cease to be a problem eliminating the design flaw that attack upgardes reduce their damage.
The MOST reasonable solution is to make it so that attack upgrades REDUCE CHARGE TIME.
edit: make it reduce charge time and not increase the damage of each level of attack
Yes i agree, or a better wording would be. Instead of the length of which it is charging, should be the factor for reaching the next level, it should be, the amount of damage it deals.
Another thing that has been pissing me off forever, is that there is a second base charge animation, but no actual second base damage component.
It would be such a great buff to the unit, if instead of going from 6+4(armored) to 6+4(armored) to 8+6(armored) it would go from 6+4(armored) to 7+5(armored) to 8+6(armored.)
Would erase a lot of the, sometimes this unit wrecks, sometimes this unit stinks.
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They should make voidrays charge after specific amount of damage dealt rather than after a specific amount of time. This'll remove any kind of upgrade imbalance.
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Thought the same thing about a week ago. imo with each attack upgrade the VRs should also charge faster
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Does it really matter ? I can think of a 1 in 1k pvp scenario when one person goes mass air and thus might use mass vr late game ( and thus get upgrade ), but are vr actually used anywhere else in the late game ( so that you can't charge micro them/have money for ups... cuz you don't generaly have money for ups and can charge micro in the vr cheeses, which are the only times i can think of vr actually being used ).
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Definitely an interesting way of seeing it, hadn't thought of it like that. Not that it will ever matter, but still 
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Well there shouldn't be any question about something a progamer spent on for hundreds of hours of his life on. Grubby is almost always right  ).
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On May 07 2012 00:26 Aterons_toss wrote:
Does it really matter ? I can think of a 1 in 1k pvp scenario when one person goes mass air and thus might use mass vr late game ( and thus get upgrade ), but are vr actually used anywhere else in the late game ( so that you can't charge micro them/have money for ups... cuz you don't generaly have money for ups and can charge micro in the vr cheeses, which are the only times i can think of vr actually being used ).
Catch 22 Argument isn't it?
VR is bad, so it's not used alot, hence it doesn't matter.
If VRs were good, they would be used alot, and then they would matter! (Even though there is no problem?!)
As for cheeses:
If you give VRs faster charging with each upgrade, it wouldn't change cheeses much, since its 'very easy' to charge up 1-2 VRs in a cheese strat already --> So the upgrade wouldn't matter.
Lategame however, you cannot individually micro and Charge-Juggle 8 VRs, hence the faster charging up will have an effect.
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Why not just make it charge after X number of damage rather than after Y seconds?
Doesn't affect un-upgraded VRs at all, but makes it so that there is no situation in which an un-upgraded VR is ever better than an upgraded one.
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Some still bring up the 120 void rays thing. This was just one quick experiment, but there's more to the +1 discussion. Foremost the inability to charge up on some units where an unupgraded voidray could charge up on. Even though these situations are rare, it should be fixed. I also really liked what Goolpsy said:
On May 07 2012 01:18 Goolpsy wrote:
Catch 22 Argument isn't it?
VR is bad, so it's not used alot, hence it doesn't matter.
If VRs were good, they would be used alot, and then they would matter! (Even though there is no problem?!)
Many people complain about void rays being overpowered if you change the mechanic. I just want to make clear that this doesn't have to be the case at all. Everything eventually is a matter of balance. If something works well, the only thing left to do is balancing it to make sure the game can be played normally. The same thing goes for void rays. Once the mechanic is changed and this 'bug' is fixed, they only have to make sure it's balanced.
The thing we want to see is that if you upgrade air weapons, there is no situation in which an upgraded void ray would be unable to charge (whereas an unupgraded void ray would be able to charge). Thus, eliminating any downsides of upgrading air weapons for void rays. Always giving it a positive effect, just like all the other units that get upgraded.
On May 07 2012 01:32 iSTime wrote:
Why not just make it charge after X number of damage rather than after Y seconds?
Doesn't affect un-upgraded VRs at all, but makes it so that there is no situation in which an un-upgraded VR is ever better than an upgraded one.
This results in upgraded void rays charging faster, thus giving them a very minor damage buff. That can be balanced out though.
I think the best solution is to create something like an energy bar that goes up to 15. Each time damage lands the void ray gets +1 energy. While not attacking, the energy will drain.
This will result in the void ray having to charge, not getting a buff, and also it fixes the whole upgrade issue, because it doesn't matter if the unit dies, as long as you keep attacking the void ray will eventually be charged. It also adds a nice little strategy for terrans or maybe even protoss to EMP/Feedback the void ray and make it lose it's charge.
That's what I've come up with though. I don't mind any different changes, I just want to see it fixed eventually :D
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Where's the thumbs-up button on teamliquid?!
On May 07 2012 01:39 Darkomicron wrote:
I think the best solution is to create something like an energy bar that goes up to 15. Each time damage lands the void ray gets +1 energy. While not attacking, the energy will drain.
This will result in the void ray having to charge, not getting a buff, and also it fixes the whole upgrade issue, because it doesn't matter if the unit dies, as long as you keep attacking the void ray will eventually be charged. It also adds a nice little strategy for terrans or maybe even protoss to EMP/Feedback the void ray and make it lose it's charge.
That's what I've come up with though. I don't mind any different changes, I just want to see it fixed eventually :D
Excellent suggestion!
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Thanks for posting this. From now on when I go cannon rush into Void Rays in team games I'll make sure to just upgrade the armor. And if 20 0/0 VR's survive from the numbers listed in the first post, then it makes perfect sense.
EDIT: I'm not a balance guru, but I don't see why making it so upgraded Void Rays charge faster, or making a max charge damage value which would then put Blizzard in a situation where they could make upgraded Void Rays have a higher max damage when fully charged, wouldn't fix the problem.
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On May 07 2012 01:39 Darkomicron wrote:Show nested quote +On May 07 2012 01:32 iSTime wrote:
Why not just make it charge after X number of damage rather than after Y seconds?
Doesn't affect un-upgraded VRs at all, but makes it so that there is no situation in which an un-upgraded VR is ever better than an upgraded one. This results in upgraded void rays charging faster, thus giving them a very minor damage buff. That can be balanced out though.
Actually, you can't balance it out.
If upgraded Voidrays would charge faster, their average DPS will increase exponentially relative to the original DPS per weapon upgrade in certain situations, this means that you will always skew the damage output if you compensate the faster charge by messing with the base stats of the Voidray.
The average DPS also depends on the amount of HP a Voidray has to kill. When it has to kill an infinite amount of HP, obviously it's average DPS will approach the DPS of the charged state of the Voidray. If all Voidrays would have to kill an infinite amount of HP, there would be no reason for a re-balance since both versions would do the same amount of average DPS.
However, there is also an optimal amount of target HP that allows for a maximum advantage in DPS over the original Voidray. This is further complicated by the fact that there is a different optimal HP amount for armored and non-armored targets. Also note that if you lower the base stats on the Voidray, it will always do less damage if it faces enough units because, given enough time, a faster charge will have less influence on damage output.
Furthermore, if the charge is damage based and you encounter a target with armor upgrades, charging will take a lot longer. If you thought the current Voidray mechanics were weird, let me boggle your mind with the mechanics this 'fixed' Voidray will display: it will take longer to kill a Zealot with +3 armor and depleted shields, than it would to kill a +3 armor Zealot WITH shields.
The current Voidray is fully charged after 13 cycles, meaning that a damage based charge will need to do 78 damage to light units (13 cycles * 6 base damage) in order to charge up. If you apply this to the Zealot i mentioned, you will see that this 'fixed' Voidray will chew through the unupgraded shields and gather a charge much faster than it would when it attacks a Zealot with depleted shields. If you do the math, you'll see that the Zealot without shields will take 4 more shots to die. Now THAT's weird.
Long story short, you can fiddle with the cooldown or the attack values all you want but you're going to end up with a Voidray that has a different and skewed average DPS output and it isn't a minor difference. You would have to change the base stats of the Voidray (which will have an effect in all engagements) in order to solve a problem that is mostly theoretical.
Damaged based charge = bad.
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Excellent post, Elp. Then I guess my previous suggestion is a lot better!
On May 07 2012 01:39 Darkomicron wrote:
I think the best solution is to create something like an energy bar that goes up to 15. Each time damage lands the void ray gets +1 energy. While not attacking, the energy will drain.
This will result in the void ray having to charge, not getting a buff, and also it fixes the whole upgrade issue, because it doesn't matter if the unit dies, as long as you keep attacking the void ray will eventually be charged. It also adds a nice little strategy for terrans or maybe even protoss to EMP/Feedback the void ray and make it lose it's charge.
That's what I've come up with though. I don't mind any different changes, I just want to see it fixed eventually :D
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instead of the damage increase, it should het a radius increase!
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On May 07 2012 08:53 lycan wrote:
instead of the damage increase, it should het a radius increase!
and after ten seconds it kills everything on the whole map, right?
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As for damage as charge-up, you could always use 'Pre-mitigation damage' and the armor problem is solved.
As for the expoential damage increase, think of it like this:
DPS for VR = %Of-time-Attacking-while-lvl1*BaseDmg + %Of-time-attacking-while-lvl2*Charged-upDmg
The funny thing is; if you try doing the math of how large a reduction in charge-up time you need to skew the DPS the wanted 5%, it's along the lines of 20% charge-up reduction per upgrade !! (The key thing is to identify how often it is attacking as lvl1 and how often it is attacking while charged up)
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Void Rays are super bad in large battles regardless. Try finding how many stalkers it takes to remove 2 voids, then see how many it takes to remove 8. Then consider how Interceptors get killed by both of Protoss' late game spells, and then cry at how fail the toss air toolset is. Hopefully the new siege version of the Tempest will fix this.
The prismatic beam mechanic will essentially never trigger in the mid game or later. Basically, you should always expect void rays to have the weaker damage amount.
But really, you just shouldn't make void rays imo, unless you're up against a Zerg who has committed too hard to corrupter/broodlord. They're so much worse than Phoenixes, which are amazing enough to justify getting Stargates anyway and are good enough to avoid having to make the almost-as-fail-as-void-rays, the Stalker.
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EPT
