On November 14 2017 13:18 Athenau wrote:Show nested quote +On November 14 2017 12:34 Boggyb wrote:On November 14 2017 09:58 Athenau wrote:On November 14 2017 09:47 Boggyb wrote:On November 14 2017 09:13 Athenau wrote:On November 14 2017 09:06 Boggyb wrote:On November 14 2017 08:59 Athenau wrote:On November 14 2017 08:50 Boggyb wrote:On November 14 2017 07:51 Athenau wrote:I don't understand the rationale behind this "wait and see" attitude, apart from blatant self-interest.
Because sometimes things aren't imbalanced but appear to be because players aren't responding correctly.
Take Adept Phoenix vs. Terran last year. Terran's refused to adapt their play style, got murdered (trying to drop against an opponent with lots of phoenix? LOL), then screamed IMBA. Was that really imbalanced? We have no way of knowing because Blizzard immediately nerfed adepts rather than forcing Terran players to figure it out then changing things if they couldn't.
You completely missed the point. Balance is not the issue. What is the point of doing a redesign if the gameplay that arises is
worse than before?
Do you really think, for example, that T/P players will find a response that makes massing infestors
unviable? And if so, do you think that we should wait months waiting for this miracle to materialize?
Infestors need to be nuked from orbit. That's the
one issue which doesn't require a wait and see. The fact that a player like Scarlett who has never won anything of note was in an unlosable position against a multi-GSL champion despite not entering late game massively ahead is more than enough evidence that the unit is broken. Pretty much everything requires a lot more evidence to make informed decisions.
Why not put super-fast Oracles in that category as well? How does having potentially game-ending damage available that early in the game make things better? Wasn't one of their goals for this patch to tone that sort of stuff down?
The shield battery and stalker changes, I agree, need more time, if only because the general direction is good even if balance might need tweaking. But I don't see any reason for Oracles to stay the way they are. "Lol ur dead" isn't fun for anyone even if it somehow ends up balanced.
How do you slow down double chrono proxy oracle enough without destroying stargate openings?
Which stargate openings do you want to preserve that would get destroyed by slowing down proxy oracle?
And who says you need to keep the Oracle itself the way it is? Why not do something radical like remove pulsar beam and reduce stasis ward energy cost to 25? Or make the beam a regular weapon (no energy cost, benefits from upgrades) at the cost of lower damage. There's lots of things they can try, but the first step is acknowledging that it's a problem even if the solution isn't immediately apparent.
If you slow down proxy oracle, you slow down non-proxied, non-double chrono'd oracles which already have a very tight window to get damage against players who know what they are doing.
If you change Oracles such that they cannot do harassment damage, you completely kill Stargate openings as you'd have absolutely zero way to get early damage or pressure. Opening Stargate would signal to your opponent to play super greedy as you couldn't do anything to touch them for ages.
So if the only reason to open stargate is to get damage done with Oracles, then what's the loss? It's not like Protoss doesn't have other ways to apply early pressure (new stalkers and shield battery come to mind).
Put it another way. There are two cases.
We keep Oracles as is. Best case, Terrans find a response, and the number of viable Terran openings go down (because they now have to account for the earlier timing).
On the other hand, we delay the Oracle timing or redesign the unit. Worst case, stargate openings against Terran are dead, but the unit is still useful in the mid/late game. The number of Protoss openings go down, the number of Terran openings stay the same.
In both cases one side loses a bit of diversity. But at least the latter gets rid of a frustrating mechanic.
And for people complaining about this being unfair to Protoss, keep in mind that Terran has already lost an opening (mine drop), and for the same reason (lowering the occurrence of sudden, game-ending damage).
So, what's the virtue of the first approach? Was there some early-game disparity that super-fast Oracles were supposed to address that makes them worth the downside? Did Protoss have too few openings? Terran too many?
EPT
