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On September 16 2012 05:06 Decendos wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 04:55 Fig wrote:On September 16 2012 04:19 SC2John wrote:I agree that the colossus is flawed and probably the biggest problem with SC2. However, I think it's far too late to rebalance or remove the colossus, so we're stuck with it. If anything, I think if Blizzard continues to push positional units like SH and Spider Mines, the game will evolve into a state in which colossus numbers are thinned out (something we're actually already seeing, excluding PvP). In the end, the thing I'm MORE worried about is the colossus actually becoming completely useless and underused. On September 16 2012 04:10 petrie911 wrote:
Colossi already are slower than the rest of the ball. Chargelots (2.75) and Stalkers (2.9531) both move faster than Colossi (2.25). Those are silly stats lol. The fact that all of protoss has movement speed and attack speed all within about second variation of each other means that they just fit into a ball better. When we compare this to stimmed marines/tanks/medivacs or Broodlord/corruptor/infestor, we get 3 REALLY distinctive speeds. Ok I'm sorry, but if you really think that terran units have more variable movespeeds than toss, you are mistaken. There is a reason why it's called a bioball. Stim changes speeds sure, but that's a bonus, not a detriment. Marine- 2.25 Marauder- 2.25 Ghost- 2.25 Tank- 2.25 Raven- 2.25 Medivac- 2.5 Viking- 2.75 and now add the time the siege unit (tank) needs until it can attack. and then add the 0 seconds the siege unit (colossus) needs until it can attack. colossus needs to be more of a siege unit. either a lot slower (BL like) or needs to siege before attacking (tank like). would add a lot more positional play and a lot more space control (especially in PvP you wouldnt need to build mass colossi).
I've been waiting for them to fix the colossus for years now. Everyone talks about how it doesn't make any sense as a siege unit. As you say, it doesn't have any of the weaknesses you would expect a siege unit to have. But it does have a weakness, and it's possibly the worst designed weakness in the whole of SC2.
The colossus can be attacked by anti-air.
Now some people may see this as a unique and interesting idea. I'm sure Blizzard thought so when they came up with it. But what it actually leads to is stagnant game play.
Because of this weakness, the counter to the colossus is vikings or corruptors. Coincidentally, this is also the counter to all stargate units. If you look at WoL right now, you can use anti-air to deal with observers/warp prisms/colossi/phoenixes/void rays/carriers/mothership. (for HotS, add oracles and Tempests to this list.) That's a total of 9 units! Does this make any sense? No. Does it make sense for 3 of the 4 Robo units to be vulnerable to anti-air? No, it's bad game design.
It's boring for the opponent, because they only build one unit against all of these. It's also boring for the protoss, because so many of their units overlap with this weakness. And because the colossus is so strong in all other aspects to offset this anti-air vulnerability, it makes most stargate units barely viable, which just perpetuates this cycle.
I agree the colossus should be more of a siege unit (either slower, stationary when firing, or whatever) But the most important and basic change they need to make along the way is get rid of the vulnerability to anti-air.
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I'm afraid that if Blizz doesn't change the Colossus,  will continue to be thw worst race (from a Esports POV) for another 2 years.
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I think a bigger problem is that Vikings and Corruptors counter all Stargate units. If the enemy has one unit that invalidates an entire tech path, why use it? We see a similar problem with Immortals and the Factory in WoL.
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remove the colossus, blizzard must prove that they had a change of heart with their design philosophy, actually wanting to make sc2 harder and have a high skill ceiling for every race, as it is now, they just do PR patches to please the loudest whiners just enough so they can safely cash in with the addon.
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On September 15 2012 17:19 -NegativeZero- wrote:
Increase its attack damage so it can at least 1 shot marines and workers, but increase the cooldown so it is more effective and more feasible to manually target each shot to get the maximum AoE damage.
Yes. double its damage, and its cooldown, give its som kind of charge up animation. Also make it move a bit slower.
You have to make every shot do max damage, opponents with fast reactions can micro away. You can use it for more effective harrass.
It's still not a Reaver, but that won't happen anyways.
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They don't have to make it a reaver, but I think a unit that pretty much has to be carried around in a warp prism is very interesting.
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Ok I'm sorry, but if you really think that terran units have more variable movespeeds than toss, you are mistaken. There is a reason why it's called a bioball. Stim changes speeds sure, but that's a bonus, not a detriment.
Marine- 2.25
Marauder- 2.25
Ghost- 2.25
Tank- 2.25
Raven- 2.25
Medivac- 2.5
Viking- 2.75
There is a problem with this however, and that is that terran death ball is naturally far less wieldy and synergistic than a protoss death ball by far. The natural composition of a protoss deathball is forgiving, in the sense that protoss WANT the colossus at the back of the deathball. Not only that, but although the colossus is slow (see: the same speed as the vast majority of terran units) it can walk over cliffs to take a direct route across the map which makes it 10x less cumbersome than thors, or ultras, or especially siege tanks. Due to this the natural death ball composition works nicely. Zealots can charge in once the units already engage so the fact their speed is lower than stalkers actually makes them more effieient as once the units actually engage the stalkers and zealots attack at the same time, and zealots can still fill the role as the most effective tanking unit in the game. Not only that, but stalkers can blink under the vikings, so due to charge autocast, stalker blink, and colossus cliffwalk the protoss are begging the enemy to engage them directly, as there is no hard counter to a protoss death ball. Even siege tanks can be nullified with zealot charge and if the terran has elaborate positioning the toss can just walk into his main with colossus and blink in with stalker. If the engagement looks like it may be unfavorable (unlikely) the toss can force field, defensive storm, mass recall, or at the very worst blink away and leave zealots behind to enable a retreat in any engagement.
Now let's look at the terran "deathball." Medivacs which you want behind your army in a support role fly over cliffs and at a much faster speed. Selecting your army and clicking to move forces the units to clump as they are all trying to converge on a single location. True for all races, however zerg can combat this with ultra high speed units. The ball of units you describe (marines and marauders) move at the slowest speeds in the game. This would be advantageous in a game which did not have splash damage, however this is not the case. What it results in is the slowest moving, and most fragile unit composition in the game. A slow, bunched up mass, lacking a tanking unit, or siege unit, that is inherently fragile to the splash damage of banelings, colossus, high templar, or infestors. You respond "DUH you have to SPLIT the marines." That is exactly my point. The natural clumping effect works against terran, and yet strengthens the protoss deathball. Colossus splash is specifically and tactically designed to exploit the concave formed during an engagement of ranged units, it doesn't deal friendly fire like siege tanks, seeker missles, or nukes, and it benefits from the same upgrades as the rest of the deathball. Can you imagine if mech and bio shared upgrades for terran in the same way the (CHEAPER) protoss upgrades effect all of their ground units?
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didn't read the whole post because the wall of text was too long. for the openening question: How to fix the Colossus? My answer is very short and simple...
Remove Colossus -> Add Reaver again (Brood War original AOE Dealer of Protoss)...
Why? Because of the introduction of the colossus (which is countered by air! for example vikings and corruptors) they cut a transition the protoss could make. When u went reavers, u could secretly transition into air and surprise opponnents. now u only can make transition into HTs. Very one sided and not very surprising huh? In matches where u make colossus and lose them, u now only can go to HTs or other ground stuff because he already got AA-Units u first have to deal with, which makes a hidden transition impossible! Another thing is that the reaver was WAY more micro intensive than the colossus is...
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Am I the only one mystified by the colossus hate? . .
Whats wrong with it? It fills an extremely crucial role toss has, particularly in pvz & pvt, which is splash and good army positioning. Vikings hard counter it? Okay, good army control can off-set that. Also due to the multi-function of corruptors in pvz I don't know that itd be fair to say the presence of corruptors in pvz point to the goofiness of colossi. Yeah, I must be missing something becuase I am genuinely at a loss as to why the colossus is the recipient of so much backlash. Granted its not perfect, paritcularly in lategame pvt where their can be some interesting colossus/bio ball trades. . . But at least mid game and late-mid game, the colossus is as essential as its alternative HT.
Ide have to think about it more. . But I can at least say the colossus isn't a massively broken unit. Not even kind of broken. Just maybe a tweak of some kind. Plus its cool!
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On September 15 2012 19:10 gedatsu wrote:
The problem with colossus is not the size, the vulnerability to anti-air, the speed, the fact that it does a lot of splash, the fact that it can walk over units and cliffs, or anything of that sort. In fact, the speed, the splash and the walking over thing are all good things that encourage micro. We want things that are better when microed.
The problem is the horizontal direction of the splash damage. Because that is exactly how the enemy units automatically position themselves when they try to attack it. The colossus doesn't have to micro - the enemy does it for him!
What we want is a colossus that can walk freely over the battlefield, but only does high damage when you manage to position it correctly. Speed and cliff/unit walk are two things that will let the colossus do exactly this. What we need to change is where the splash damage lands. Imagine if colossus did damage in a straight line from itself, like a lurker. It would still be able to kill a lot of marines, but only when you're able to flank them. Taking them on head on will be highly inefficient.
This is how you fix the colossus.
I love this idea so so much. There's so many possibilities there: let the laser grow stronger as it moves further away (slowly) from the Colossus (meaning you have need to use your supporting units to push the enemy far away from your siege units. You can't just have colossus anywhere in your death ball so long as it's not being focus fired). Give it a long, relatively slow moving attack animation, meaning the protoss player needs to carefully aim, and the opponent needs to dance to try and avoid the damage.
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I feel like such a meanie sometimes, but seriously...You know nothing about game design. You know nothing about Blizzard's design process. You're thinking and judging based on your balls and your eyes and not your brain. I guess terran 'despises' the colossus as much as they love the fact that the stalker is a piece of shit. Every other Protoss unit on that list has bigger design flaws than the colossus. Sentry: Why isn't the model for this unit a bandaid? Immortal: Too slow to build and too expensive which is why you only see them in timings. Phoenix: Worst harass unit. Loses to every air unit except mutas and vikings and you just lose to lings/roaches anyway. Void Ray: Utter failure of a unit.
The interplay of ghosts/vikings and HTs/colossi is probably the biggest unit composition chess match in the game. Reaver would be so much more one dimensional.
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How about reducing the colossus damage and make it increase slowly while the colossus is attacking (like the void ray), but with the difference that if he moves, the damage back to the initial value? It's good for defense (with force fields for example) and requires more micro to attack....
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On September 16 2012 09:48 Channel Pressure wrote:
Am I the only one mystified by the colossus hate? . .
Whats wrong with it? It fills an extremely crucial role toss has, particularly in pvz & pvt, which is splash and good army positioning. Vikings hard counter it? Okay, good army control can off-set that. Also due to the multi-function of corruptors in pvz I don't know that itd be fair to say the presence of corruptors in pvz point to the goofiness of colossi. Yeah, I must be missing something becuase I am genuinely at a loss as to why the colossus is the recipient of so much backlash. Granted its not perfect, paritcularly in lategame pvt where their can be some interesting colossus/bio ball trades. . . But at least mid game and late-mid game, the colossus is as essential as its alternative HT.
Ide have to think about it more. . But I can at least say the colossus isn't a massively broken unit. Not even kind of broken. Just maybe a tweak of some kind. Plus its cool!
The collusus is not cool. It doesn't have an interesting role. It's not exciting to watch, it's not exciting to play with. The collusus is a unit which is ruining starcraft. The collusus gets used a lot because it's sick strong, not because it's a well designed unit.
If I design a clown shaped balloon held by a little child which deals massive splash damage and fires every 1 second, can walk up cliffs, ignores collision and has pretty sick health, you can believe people would fuckign use this unit.
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On September 16 2012 10:54 wcr.4fun wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 09:48 Channel Pressure wrote:
Am I the only one mystified by the colossus hate? . .
Whats wrong with it? It fills an extremely crucial role toss has, particularly in pvz & pvt, which is splash and good army positioning. Vikings hard counter it? Okay, good army control can off-set that. Also due to the multi-function of corruptors in pvz I don't know that itd be fair to say the presence of corruptors in pvz point to the goofiness of colossi. Yeah, I must be missing something becuase I am genuinely at a loss as to why the colossus is the recipient of so much backlash. Granted its not perfect, paritcularly in lategame pvt where their can be some interesting colossus/bio ball trades. . . But at least mid game and late-mid game, the colossus is as essential as its alternative HT.
Ide have to think about it more. . But I can at least say the colossus isn't a massively broken unit. Not even kind of broken. Just maybe a tweak of some kind. Plus its cool! The collusus is not cool. It doesn't have an interesting role. It's not exciting to watch, it's not exciting to play with. The collusus is a unit which is ruining starcraft. The collusus gets used a lot because it's sick strong, not because it's a well designed unit. If I design a clown shaped balloon held by a little child which deals massive splash damage and fires every 1 second, can walk up cliffs, ignores collision and has pretty sick health, you can believe people would fuckign use this unit.
First, I tried to find the video interview at MLG where all of the pros were asked which unit they disliked the most, all of the said the infestor except nestea saying hydras.
But people use the colossus, not because it is sick strong, but because without splash damage protoss just straight up loses. PartinG for instance, will often never get collosi, instead he gets a lot of HT as his form of splash (against terran). Being he is the best PvT player in the world, I would say that the HT style is possibly stronger than the collosi style. Against zerg, there is no other unit that can prevent infestors from moving forward for easy fungals, and the only other unit that is good against lots of ling is zealots, which are very poor units against every other zerg unit (while storms are good in certain situations, they don't have prolonged AOE which you do need against zerg).
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I dunno wcr. . Nothing in your post really demonstrated why the colossus is such a poorly designed unit. As Convention said, people don't build colossus because its "sick strong" (have you ever tried fighitng with just a colossus?), its a necessairy component to the protoss army after a point, if you are choosing to nagivate the robo tech tree. Protoss units all work very well together with the ultimate goal of collectively dealing damage and trading extremely efficiently with other races, with the possible exception of pvp. It isn't even close to ruining starcraft. . . I would cringe of the colossus disappeared from the protoss unit arsenal. How would we deal with terran 10 minute ish timings? Storm? Well there goes every protoss's win ratio against terran from about diamond down. Its a great unit, its not too strong, at all, entertaining to watch, someone mentioned the ghost-viking/colossus ht positional chess match . . . I totally agree. My opinion doesnt carry much weight but im just not convinced the colossus is some utterly broken unit that needs attention like the warhound did. But thats the feeling im getting from this thread
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I'm probably going to bite off more than I can chew here, but if you nerf/remove the Colossus you'd have to buff Stalkers/base Zealot speed (or drastically reduce the cost of Charge).
As it is, the Colossus is basically needed in PvT because Tank/Marine/Medevac/Raven (plus Marauders if Protoss is really Stalker heavy) is really effective against stalker/zealot, and vikings outrange all Protoss air units by a pretty significant margin (Carrier aside), before factoring in bonus damage to armoured (which all Protoss air units are except the Phoenix, but Phoenixes vs Vikings would be...pretty ineffective). And even if Carriers are still really good, enough Marines will demolish Interceptors in seconds leaving you with a 600 resource paperweight floating impotently around. They wouldn't even need Vikings to stop you, but it'd be even more one sided if they got them anyways.
Immortals would see more use, but it would take a lot of crying and whining before the meta-game transitioned to that, and I'm not sure how effective it would be. Marines would tear apart Immortals pretty easily, Tank/Raven would still render the Stalkers worthless, and Zealots would just jog around psychotically like a dog with a Twinkie hanging in front of him. In an A-move deathball vs an A-move bioball the Colossi will win, sure, but wasn't everyone crying about bioball A-move for the longest time anyways? Terran has a strong tier 1 unit that can potentially change the flow of the game (as MKP shows in "impossible wins" again and again) and the trade-off is that it requires some pretty crazy micro to really get the most out of the unit. Protoss have mediocre units that need to function together, and their only really effective high-tech unit is the Colossus (although of late Carriers are starting to show in a big way). As Convention said, HT play is showing up more in higher levels, but the Colossus is a strong mid-late game unit that rounds out an army that is basically forced by the individual weaknesses of its units to bunch up into the "deathball."
If anything changed about the Colossus, I would say that making it faster (not quite as fast as a Stalker but close) and lower the build time, weapon damage, health, and cost but KEEP the cliff-walking, perhaps we'd see more harassment use out of it. Colossi/Warp Prism can make for some crazy micro and interesting games, but that's a huge chunk of resources (500/200 + 200/100 Robo) that would be more micro intensive and probably do less damage than a Marine drop (500/100 + 150/100 Starport) when you factor in that eight marines do 56 DPS (84 stimmed) compared to a Colossus' 18.2 DPS. The harassment potential is there, but if the enemy moves their workers the Colossus, unless it's in a godly position, will kill 3 workers and then limply slap a tech building until it either retreats or gets shot. If Colossi were cheap enough to make a decent harassment force on their own (ie. without support) perhaps Protoss would be inspired to harass similarly to reapers/infestors instead of hiding in their bases and building up the deathball.
This would still leave a gaping hole in the main army though, which is why I think any change to the Colossus would echo through the Stalkers/Zealots. The unit is so tightly knit that any change could easily turn the once formidable deathball into a steaming pile of poo.
Or they could just leave it alone. The deathball has been pretty well dealt with for quite a while now since Terran started getting Vikings and Zerg started building units other than Zerglings and Mutas.
TL:DR: Changing Colossi would ruin the Protoss for a long time and it's probably best to let it be until the meta-game stops changing every 4 months.
Edit: Accidentally said Phoenixes vs Void Rays when I meant Phoenixes vs Vikings
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I agree, honestly the colossus is fine. Pv anything would become incredibly linear as you would be relegated to the twilight tech tree. It would make building a robo bay unreasonably risky (immortal timing followed up by a giant swing back to the twilight tech tree?). . And it would make pvz much less interesting. I know twilight builds have gotten more popular in pvz, but robo builds are still great and still very viable.
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On September 16 2012 09:48 Channel Pressure wrote:
Am I the only one mystified by the colossus hate? . .
Whats wrong with it? It fills an extremely crucial role toss has, particularly in pvz & pvt, which is splash and good army positioning. Vikings hard counter it? Okay, good army control can off-set that. Also due to the multi-function of corruptors in pvz I don't know that itd be fair to say the presence of corruptors in pvz point to the goofiness of colossi. Yeah, I must be missing something becuase I am genuinely at a loss as to why the colossus is the recipient of so much backlash. Granted its not perfect, paritcularly in lategame pvt where their can be some interesting colossus/bio ball trades. . . But at least mid game and late-mid game, the colossus is as essential as its alternative HT.
Ide have to think about it more. . But I can at least say the colossus isn't a massively broken unit. Not even kind of broken. Just maybe a tweak of some kind. Plus its cool!
the reason there is so much colossus hate, is that it is an extremely easy to use unit that enables players with 60 apm or less to get to platinum league, which is more or less impossible with terran and zerg
the unit not only has a low skill floor but a low skill ceiling, as the unit's ease of use is not so big a deal at GM level play
but at lower levels, the amount of work needed to deal with colossus play is far harder than the amount of work to execute colossus play. seeing as your average TL member is not competing in major tournaments, the unit gets a lot of rage directed at it
the fact that its counter relationships are completely one dimensional (complete ground supremacy but vulnerable to anti-air) does not exactly help
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On September 16 2012 12:49 Zanno wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2012 09:48 Channel Pressure wrote:
Am I the only one mystified by the colossus hate? . .
Whats wrong with it? It fills an extremely crucial role toss has, particularly in pvz & pvt, which is splash and good army positioning. Vikings hard counter it? Okay, good army control can off-set that. Also due to the multi-function of corruptors in pvz I don't know that itd be fair to say the presence of corruptors in pvz point to the goofiness of colossi. Yeah, I must be missing something becuase I am genuinely at a loss as to why the colossus is the recipient of so much backlash. Granted its not perfect, paritcularly in lategame pvt where their can be some interesting colossus/bio ball trades. . . But at least mid game and late-mid game, the colossus is as essential as its alternative HT.
Ide have to think about it more. . But I can at least say the colossus isn't a massively broken unit. Not even kind of broken. Just maybe a tweak of some kind. Plus its cool! the reason there is so much colossus hate, is that it is an extremely easy to use unit that enables players with 60 apm or less to get to platinum league, which is more or less impossible with terran and zerg but at lower levels, the amount of work needed to deal with colossus play is far harder than the amount of work to execute colossus play. seeing as your average TL member is not competing in major tournaments, the unit gets a lot of rage directed at it
So it seems like you're a plat level terran or zerg player who just likes to qq. Try playing toss and see if it's really that easy. I have 2 accounts, a diamond zerg and a diamond toss account. When playing toss my apm is naturally around 90, when playing zerg it's around 110. Apparently I "improve" when playing zerg, eh? Just because it's more apm taxing doesn't mean it's harder...
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Why not make an upgrade for the col? There would be the range and there would be the Beam upgrade. Collsi would attack with one beam and only do aoe with the units it hits, with the upgrade you'd get two beams but itd require some micro to activate the second beam, itd be auto attack with 1 beam, and micro with the other
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EPT
