the colossus is the most hated unit not only in the protoss arsenal, but in the whole game, topping most "what unit should be removed" polls.
it is often blamed to single-handedly cause the deathball syndrome in sc2 with its concept of a frail a-move long range aoe unit.
it made people miss the micro-intensive reaver ever since WoL came out.
the question is: is there any realistic way of making the colossus an interesting unit? because frankly, i highly doubt blizzard will ever remove it. it has become an iconic unit in its own right, for better or worse...
so i want to hear some opinions on how colossus could be fixed without completely reworking the concept of the unit.
i ll start with a few ideas of my own and add ideas of other posters, once we get enough i ll add a poll in the OP
pro: kind of fits the concept of a huge unit, will make deathballs less mobile
con: won't matter for mothership-deathballs, making the deathball slower might not really solve its problems
- instead of an automatic attack, give colossi an ability with cooldown that "casts" aoe damage on a given spot, focussing its lasers there
pro: makes colossi very micro intense and gets rid of them being an a-move unit, would probably lead to interesting new game mechanics (for example casting colossus beams in front of cannons or on the flank of an army to eliminate ling flanks)
con: makes them more similar to HTs
- make the colossus attack mana-based to increase its cooldown after the first few shots. think of it similar to the reaver mechanic that made rebuilding their shots take longer than actually firing them.
pro: new game mechanic that is not in place for any other unit. might make colossi more interesting for hit and runs but less powerful in prolonged deathball vs deathball engagements, thus possibly turning it more into a strong midgame unit instead of an integral part of the maxed out deathball (espeally in pvp). could lead to new micro-tactics against colossi (eg walk a few single marines into the deathball to drain their energy before attacking)
cons: might not do any of the above really. will make EMP affect colossi as well which im not sure is a good thing
- make the colossus aoe do damage in a different way than to dealing it in a horizontal line, making it more-micro intense to aim it perfectly. maybe combine with a slower rate of fire to make best use of this effect.
pro: makes colossus more micro-intense and encourages creating a good arc vs the deathball even more
cons: does not really fix the deathball issue
- colossus needs to siege up before firing
pro: makes it less mobile
cons: does not fit with the unit design, too similar to siege tank
- make the colossus use air upgrades instead of ground upgrades
pro: only a very slight change, but would make going colossus more of a comittment. also would set protoss up for easier transition into carriers lategame
cons: doesnt change much
- double its damage and its cooldown to make every shot count more
pro: makes it more crucial to aim shots and gives more room to micro cols without losing shots
cons: was already like this in the beta and got patched, because it was deemed to powerful and discouraged microing against colossus since units die so fast
- make the colossus attack 'charge up' like the voidray, doing more damage the longer it stays focused. maybe combine this with making the attack a castable spell
pro: micro intensive, interesting game mechanic
cons: might be hard to balance. might be too hard to use for casuals
poll:
Poll: whats your favourite idea to fix colossi?
colossi are fine, dont change them (101)
52%
change the shape of the aoe from horizontal line to something more microable (34)
17%
make colossi use air upgrades instead of ground upgrades (15)
8%
decrease movement speed (14)
7%
increase damage per shot and increase cooldown (10)
5%
swap automatic attack for a castable permanent aoe effect (8)
4%
make colossi need to 'siege up' or 'power up' before attacking (8)
4%
make colossus attack do more damage over time (like voidray) (4)
2%
make the attack mana-based to increase cooldown after first 2-3 shots (2)
1%
196 total votes
Your vote: whats your favourite idea to fix colossi?
(Vote): colossi are fine, dont change them (Vote): decrease movement speed (Vote): swap automatic attack for a castable permanent aoe effect (Vote): make the attack mana-based to increase cooldown after first 2-3 shots (Vote): change the shape of the aoe from horizontal line to something more microable (Vote): make colossi need to 'siege up' or 'power up' before attacking (Vote): make colossi use air upgrades instead of ground upgrades (Vote): increase damage per shot and increase cooldown (Vote): make colossus attack do more damage over time (like voidray)
There is no saving the Colossus. Here are some changes we can shrink it's size, so it can't be hit by air, Change it to shooting these little blue orbs called Scarabs that cost minerals and reduce it's movement speed by 50% and allowing 2 to fit in a warp Prism.
Yes I know I just describe the Reaver but if you asked ever Protoss player what they would want 99% of them would say Reavers over Colossus. Though Blizzard won't remove for some reason or another I really don't know.
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.
Its very unlikely the collosus will be changed, one of the core aspects of PvT and ZvP balance is based around how the collosus is now, changing it now will require blizzard to pretty much rebalance from the ground up instead of balancing from an already (decently) balanced platform.
But seeing as how the are willing to cut the warhound, if we're convincing enough, they might do it
On September 15 2012 17:34 dynwar7 wrote: Be careful what you wish for. If blizzard remove colossi, most Protoss will truly be so mad since they are so used to a moving such a strong unit.
Are you seriously asking blizz to remove colossi? Think more thoroughly please...
Yeah, blizzard is really at a crossroads right now.
They have become so big that they need to keep their majority casual audience satisfied, and the easiest way to do this is with powerful Amove units, but this will hurt their esports ambitions since people will just get bored watching Amove units over and over again. (thank goodness stim micro saved their asses on this one)
People also really dont like change, alot of people are already complaining badly about the Warhound loss, a collosus removal will probably cause epic trolling on the blizzard forums.
The reason why Protoss are so prone to deathball with colossus is because all Protoss ground units share a single upgrade. If robo upgrades were separate from gateway upgrades, (as it is for Terran) then maybe each unit could receive an individual buff and Protoss could be more reminiscent of BW.
A suggestion I made some time ago was: Make the colossus shots delayed. Simply make the colossus take 0.5-2 seconds to target an area and charge the laser beam(s) before firing. Perhaps replace the sweeping attack with a focussed beam that deals circular aoe. This will make micro much more important when using the colossus, but also when playing against it. It will however not change the usefullness of it in lower leagues.
The problem still remains that the colossus is too mobile for its own good - making it slower and/or removing its wall climbing will allow it to be buffed a bit in damage (making it more positional).
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.
Or if the colossus did splash like a big X on the ground. Only the center portion of bad guys would take damage from both beams, and most of the units lining up will stand safely between the two lines. You'd have to move the colossus a bit to the side to make it shoot more targets.
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.
Or if the colossus did splash like a big X on the ground. Only the center portion of bad guys would take damage from both beams, and most of the units lining up will stand safely between the two lines. You'd have to move the colossus a bit to the side to make it shoot more targets.
This is how you fix the colossus.
this idea is awesome, going to include it in the OP
Make it much slower or force it to "siege" to fire.
You could then make the model slower and remove cliff walking as nobody uses it and you couldn't hide it on top of your army. Having it smaller means AtA isn't so prevelant and it gives the carrier a chance against bio terrans as they won't have vikings.
If colossus were to be removed, it had to be done before beta started. It's too late now. But maybe tweaking speed, some castable ability etc. will be possible.
On September 15 2012 17:50 GorGor wrote: The reason why Protoss are so prone to deathball with colossus is because all Protoss ground units share a single upgrade. If robo upgrades were separate from gateway upgrades, (as it is for Terran) then maybe each unit could receive an individual buff and Protoss could be more reminiscent of BW.
Protoss upgrades in WoL are exactly the same as they were in BW (i.e. ground upgrades and air upgrades).
On September 15 2012 19:15 zeross wrote: and how do you plan the colossus to survive vikings and stimmed marauder if you have to flank it, meaning separating it from your main army ?
There are a number of ways. First of all, the enemy has two flanks. Put colossi on both. Second, you can rebalance life/damage so that it takes more viking hits, or that it's just really worth it to sacrifice the colossus if it is able to shoot just a few times. Third, run away. Preferably walk over some zealots when you do. It can walk over cliffs and units for a reason. Fourth, spread out the rest of your army too. Fifth, use phoenix against vikings. They're pretty good.
They will not remove the colossus because that mean they must remove corruptor too if they don't want a freshly "dead" unit. As a Zerg i also blame the colossus for forcing me to make corruptor wich are another fail designed unit.
Just make thermal lance an activated ability. You get the increased range for X secs, and you are rewarded/penalized if you hit/miss the correct activation timing.
On September 15 2012 17:34 dynwar7 wrote: Be careful what you wish for. If blizzard remove colossi, most Protoss will truly be so mad since they are so used to a moving such a strong unit.
Are you seriously asking blizz to remove colossi? Think more thoroughly please...
Do something with it...
Poll from May 14, 2012
Poll: Which unit would you most like to see removed?
Colossus (1057)
67%
Marauder (181)
11%
Roach (92)
6%
Other (70)
4%
Infestor (69)
4%
Corruptor (39)
2%
Mothership (23)
1%
Banshee (22)
1%
Carrier (18)
1%
Nydus Worm (10)
1%
1581 total votes
Your vote: Which unit would you most like to see removed?
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.
haha genius idea, describing the state before the first change done to colossus happened because they were to easy to micro. Well played.
Personally i find the colossus more micro intensive then the reaver. Shuttle reaver of course is more micro intensive, but not taking the reaver with you in a shuttle and drop them when you meet the opponent. At the end the colossus is a perfectly fine morph of the lurker into the sc2 world matching the sc2 pathfinding ai for huge damage if the opponent attacks without any form of positioning and of course a run over if the colossus isn't targetfired properly. Sounds like a perfect description of the lurker to me. Yeah Blizzard stole pretty obvious from bw.
The reaver port into sc2 was way to good though was nerfed heavily and moved to a lower tier for that, but that made it almost useless and we see it only occasionally and welks its not on the protoss side anymore.
Oh and i think the infestor took over the role of the unit that most people want to see changed. Atleast when they made a question round in one tournament about: "what unit would you want to have changed?" The infestor was the unit that got the most picks. Of course that were only pros that were asked, so not a large pool of opinions.
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.
haha genius idea, describing the state before the first change done to colossus happened because they were to easy to micro. Well played.
Personally i find the colossus more micro intensive then the reaver. Shuttle reaver of course is more micro intensive, but not taking the reaver with you in a shuttle and drop them when you meet the opponent. At the end the colossus is a perfectly fine morph of the lurker into the sc2 world matching the sc2 pathfinding ai for huge damage if the opponent attacks without any form of positioning and of course a run over if the colossus isn't targetfired properly. Sounds like a perfect description of the lurker to me. Yeah Blizzard stole pretty obvious from bw.
The reaver port into sc2 was way to good though was nerfed heavily and moved to a lower tier for that, but that made it almost useless and we see it only occasionally and welks its not on the protoss side anymore.
Oh and i think the infestor took over the role of the unit that most people want to see changed. Atleast when they made a question round in one tournament about: "what unit would you want to have changed?" The infestor was the unit that got the most picks. Of course that were only pros that were asked, so not a large pool of opinions.
doubt you ever microed reaver properly...
also the units further away from the lurker were able to dodge the shot with proper micro, as far as i know you cant dodge the collosus shot after the shoot animation began
ps: my idea is a collosus shoot thats attack animation is slower and shoots in a line so units that are at the end of the line can dodge the shot (comparable to lurker attack) also the shoot should be a little bit stronger in damage but slower reload speed and maybe you can see the "reload" animation (maybe the lasers charging)
An idea i had for the Colossus that isn't so outlandish is give the Colossus a slow acceleration, so that when it starts to move or when it stops moving, it takes some time for it to get up to speed. The shot should also be more powerful but shoot more slowly, requiring the Colossus to come to a complete stop and "charge up" for a moment before releasing a powerful laser barrage.
I think this would make the unit more micro-intensive, as it would have to be babysat a little bit more, and the shot would be more interesting and fun to spectate, since it will do heavier damage like a Reaver, so each shot matters more.
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.
This is probably best change because it's simple and effective.
If the Colossus can one shot workers, it will finally be worthwhile for to harass with them via Warp prism micro (and maybe we can see the return of the iconic Shuttle harass). Nerfing attk-cooldown to compensate would keep its DPS in check.
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.
haha genius idea, describing the state before the first change done to colossus happened because they were to easy to micro. Well played.
Personally i find the colossus more micro intensive then the reaver. Shuttle reaver of course is more micro intensive, but not taking the reaver with you in a shuttle and drop them when you meet the opponent. At the end the colossus is a perfectly fine morph of the lurker into the sc2 world matching the sc2 pathfinding ai for huge damage if the opponent attacks without any form of positioning and of course a run over if the colossus isn't targetfired properly. Sounds like a perfect description of the lurker to me. Yeah Blizzard stole pretty obvious from bw.
The reaver port into sc2 was way to good though was nerfed heavily and moved to a lower tier for that, but that made it almost useless and we see it only occasionally and welks its not on the protoss side anymore.
Oh and i think the infestor took over the role of the unit that most people want to see changed. Atleast when they made a question round in one tournament about: "what unit would you want to have changed?" The infestor was the unit that got the most picks. Of course that were only pros that were asked, so not a large pool of opinions.
The lurker had to burrow everytime it wanted to attack, it took up HUGE space in your army and it deals damage in a line in front of it, damage which can be dodged. How is that similar to a unit which can walk over cliffs, doesn't take up space in an army, doesn't require positioning (aside from, hur dur retreat when focused by vikings and keep walking over army at all time) and deals damage in a line perpendicular to a line connecting the collusus and his attacking point; and the damage can not be evaded. Collussus more micro intense than the reaver, lol'd. Even if you're not using it in a shuttle it's more micro intense. The collusus doesn't have any micro besides right clicking shit and moving it back when it's get focused. Stop imagining collusus micro please! The reaver takes up a lot of space, you need to remake scarabs, and you need to focus it's fire if you want any 'sick' damage done with it. You can't retreat it when it gets focus fired cause it can barely move on it's own so positioning is incredibly important. So anyone competent is always taking it with shuttles unless you're defending a base with them.
The infestor is a terrible unit, I'd love to see it get changed or removed and other zerg units buffed because of it.
The ideas about attack dodging and the likes are good. First and foremost a small tweak I'd like to see would be make them slower so they can't get pace with the rest of the ball. This way you force repositioning and good control on the Protoss player, and will separate good from bad.
I can't see them (sadly) getting rid of the unit or radically redesigning it, but tweaking it a little is worth a go
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.
On September 15 2012 17:18 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: Yes I know I just describe the Reaver but if you asked ever Protoss player what they would want 99% of them would say Reavers over Colossus. Though Blizzard won't remove for some reason or another I really don't know.
A change I always had in midn was changing its upgrades to air since it works more like an air unit than a ground unit. This way you had to commit a bit more when you go colossus instead of ht. Also it prepares for the carrier transition (lategame pvz). I think its easily understandable cause it already can be hit by air, moves like an air unit, gives vision like an airunit from high ground (it attacks and gets revealed unlike groundunits), give vision like an airunit (give highgroundvision) etc
what do you think on this take? Cause i dont think Blizzard will change the colossus with cooldowns/design of the attack. its easily done and has a huge impact. it also helps you scouting against protoss. "he is upgrading in cybercore? he must be going colossus" you could also trick your opponent like done in tvX with banshee cloak. research hallucination instead of airattack to trick him to think you go colossus
On September 15 2012 17:18 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: [...] if you asked ever Protoss player what they would want 99% of them would say Reavers over Colossus. Though Blizzard won't remove for some reason or another I really don't know.
The warhound was imba as hell, didn't feel mechy at all, was a second marauder and was removed after 1 week of beta. STILL a lot of people went into full QQ mode as it happened and wanted it back. Just check the thread about its removal. Most people would probably think that everyone hated the warhound, but once it actually got removed a lot of people showed up and complained.
Now, the colossus. Since 2 years the backbone of every protoss army, extremly noob friendly and easy to controll. You say 99% would want the reaver over colossi? The truth is that it is probably the other way around.
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.
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.
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).
Its no wonder we hate colossus so much, it is the only long range splash damage unit in the history of starcraft which basically requires no micro or targeting. Its not hard to figure out, just make it strong but more diifficult to be useful.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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...
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!
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.
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.
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....
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.
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).
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
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
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.
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
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...
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
Make it less expensive and cut the range upgrade, buff gateway units, decrease the amount of gas needed for warp prism speed and give it an AoE that works better against workers. This encourages colossi drops and discourages a-move play. Solved. Also if you increase its speed it synergizes with blink-stalkers more and can make for some interesting heavy harassment+recall.
What might be neat is if Colossi splash didn't overlap (like storm, where multiple stacked storms don't do more damage). This could be tricky to balance (buffing the damage to compensate might work). However, it would reward micro because players who can effectively split their Colossus fire (by targeting different areas of the enemy army with each Colossus) will maximize their army's damage output.
On September 16 2012 14:22 jnkw wrote: What might be neat is if Colossi splash didn't overlap (like storm, where multiple stacked storms don't do more damage). This could be tricky to balance (buffing the damage to compensate might work). However, it would reward micro because players who can effectively split their Colossus fire (by targeting different areas of the enemy army with each Colossus) will maximize their army's damage output.
Don't units automatically split fire to avoid overkill in Starcraft 2?
On September 16 2012 14:22 jnkw wrote: What might be neat is if Colossi splash didn't overlap (like storm, where multiple stacked storms don't do more damage). This could be tricky to balance (buffing the damage to compensate might work). However, it would reward micro because players who can effectively split their Colossus fire (by targeting different areas of the enemy army with each Colossus) will maximize their army's damage output.
Don't units automatically split fire to avoid overkill in Starcraft 2?
Not all units. Generally speaking, any unit with a projectile has the potential to overkill. Units like marines (whose attacks aren't implemented with a projectile) don't overkill. That being said, there's no reason why the Colossus couldn't be coded to have the potential to overkill.
On September 15 2012 17:18 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: [...] if you asked ever Protoss player what they would want 99% of them would say Reavers over Colossus. Though Blizzard won't remove for some reason or another I really don't know.
The warhound was imba as hell, didn't feel mechy at all, was a second marauder and was removed after 1 week of beta. STILL a lot of people went into full QQ mode as it happened and wanted it back. Just check the thread about its removal. Most people would probably think that everyone hated the warhound, but once it actually got removed a lot of people showed up and complained.
Now, the colossus. Since 2 years the backbone of every protoss army, extremly noob friendly and easy to controll. You say 99% would want the reaver over colossi? The truth is that it is probably the other way around.
PvP is built around 2 things 4 gates and colossus timings They are one dimensional units and no one like to play with them. Sure they are strong and easy to use and you make a bunch and just a-move to victory. I don't personally like playing like that, playing Protoss the unit is just so boring. Just look at every Poll ever about disliked sc2 units Colossus tops every one.
1. Remove the colossus's ability to be hit by air. 2. Make it somewhat smaller. 3. Reduce it's hp slightly, such as from 150 shield 200 hp to 150 shield 150 hp. 4. Remove the Extended Thermal Lances upgrade. 5. Increase both its cooldown and its one hit damage considerably. Maybe increase both by a factor of 3 giving it 45 damage in one swipe.
So the Colossus would have to go into 6 range to deal a mighty blow, making it vulnerable to stuff like marauders firing back. Players would have to micro it in to take a swipe at the opponent's army then quickly run it back before it gets target fired down. A new upgrade could be given to improve its movement speed. This would add more excitement to using it, as it actually has to move into vulnerable range to do its job.
One of the biggest problems I see with Colossi is their burst damage.
Imagine if their attack was a laser that kept focusing on its target area without stopping, constantly doing DPS (lowered damage to compensate). The laser would not stop dealing damage until the unit moves out of range or it dies. Perhaps it could have a somewhat long cooldown in between attacks. That way, it could start attacking a group of Marines and you could move the group back and avoid taking further damage, just like how you don't want Marines sitting in a storm.
It would encourage micro in the following ways:
Colossus player: - Target nearby groups so it's harder for them to run away - Target clumps because targeting a single Marine now hurts more since the target remains on that Marine until he dies - Maybe you want to target a dangerous unit (such as an Ultralisk) to allow the Colossus to fire longer and cooldown less - Target Marauders instead of Marines because Marines die faster = more cooldown
Other player: - You want to take the target unit and move it out of range, both to avoid damage and invoke the long cooldown period. Imagine a poorly controlled Colossus vs. MarineKing. Every time it targets a Marine, MarineKing immediately stims it out of range. End result: almost no damage taken - You can also split units while the Colossus is still firing. Perhaps the Colossus is targeting your Thor and you WANT it to target your Thor. Therefore, you can move all your Marines away and leave the Colossus slowly draining the Thor's health
So make Colossi into a sustained irradiate? Doesn't actually make the unit feel very useful tbh. I like adjusting it to make it more viable in doing things like Alej's Colossus drop PvT
There isn't a hope in hell that Blizzard would remove the Colossus, ask your average dumb player and they'll say it's fine - mainly because it looks cool. I thought it was fine until I read a few threads here, thought about the unit and how it plays in game - it took some time to convince me.
Plus changing it significantly would break the Colossus MP unit from SP, while I admit Blizzard have now stated SP and MP are seperate - they also don't want new users 'trying out that Colossus I used in Campaign!!" to see such a huge difference. They may tweak somethings, maybe - but I imagine there's so many other things on the table that it's mostly a lost cause.
My opinion, make it move a fair bit slower, take longer cooldown on fire rate, increase attack strength slightly, increase HP and decrease damage from AA units (but have them still hurt) That should at least reduce some of the issues with the unit, well I'd like to think so.
Regardless - none of this is going to happen, seriously. It was a miracle Blizzard removed the fucking Warhound and that was probably the most apalling designed unit in an RTS for years, beta or not. It was still a miracle. Colossus, I'd take money no one can convince them of the issues either it.
Much cooler looking attack animation from the Zealots. The physics / detail on the exploding BC and Barracks is far superior than what ultra high details do in SP or MP WoL > The motherships 3 abilities (time bomb, planet cracker and black hole (super Vortex) look awesome - although kinda obviously OP. - Also the damaged mothership burning animations are awesome. How did this game look so much better in 2009?
They should double damage, double cooldown time, and offer a sort of "preview".... like a targeting laser of some sort on the area it is about to attack. This would offer different micro/positional/zoning out area tactics instead of just a-move imo
The Colossus is already being "fixed" with units like the Viper. By snatching Colossi out of deathballs, the Viper limits the use of the unit. The next things needed are a Terran way to handle the Colossus (I'm liking Lockdown more and more), and a significant buff to Storm so that it can be used against Roaches.
First off the poll on the first page makes me ROFL. 2nd most hated unit is infestor? Are you kidding? I hope thats cuz fungel makes your units unmovable. And if its cuz of balance. Wtf is wrong with you? Zerg would be TERRIBLE without the infestor.
Now back to the topic. Lets not try to fix whats broken and remove it from the game huh? Hows that sound? Why would you try to fix a unit that is bad for esports in every single way? It sums up everything people were complaining about in the beta.
Huge ingame power with the only micro requaired being "A-move" and even its model and fireing animation blocks the view of the player, so they cant see whats happening. In what other way can you even screw up a unit?
Idk if I want them to bring back the reaver, the units now already are a bit based off of bw units and I dont want the game to feel too similar. But if they did bring it back, I would like there to be a white line indicating where it is going to shoot, just like seeker missle. That would make it more micro intesnive. And of course have a long cooldown.
Now Im a bit suprised there is such a big outcry about the warhound. But everyone is fine the collossus and was fine apperently. Why did you not complain about the collossus during the beta and have blizzard remove it? Its kinda like you your just taking blizzards bad design into the face and not trying to give any feedback.
Its like people have already lost hope and only complain about bad new units.
On September 16 2012 16:48 Acritter wrote: The Colossus is already being "fixed" with units like the Viper. By snatching Colossi out of deathballs, the Viper limits the use of the unit. The next things needed are a Terran way to handle the Colossus (I'm liking Lockdown more and more), and a significant buff to Storm so that it can be used against Roaches.
I don't want the Colossus to be counterable, it already has plenty of that. It just needs to be fun to use.
People hate the Colossus because there's no skill in using it. It's mobility guarantees almost perfect positioning in a deathball just by a-moving it. The maximum micro you get out of them is moving back a few steps when focused by AA. It makes the PvP matchup bore people to tears. It's the number #1 cause of deathball syndrome. It forces the AA of other races to be obscenely strong to counter it, therefore making all Stargate units less viable. It forces the Gateway units to be weaker due to its strength. And it's terribly dull to watch them from a spectator standpoint. I still have yet to see a colossus induce cheers from a crowd anywhere near that of a reaver. People only seem excited about colossi when they die, which should tell you something.
The only reason the Colossus is still in the game is because it looks cool, and apparently casuals love its model or something. I honestly think that if SC2 is going to have an iconic unit, it should at least be something unique, and not a War of the Worlds ripoff. The Colossus also plays boring, but Blizzard is probably reluctant to do anything because it's so essential for the Protoss to survive that they don't want to go through the effort of rebalancing it, which I think goes against what Blizzard used to stand for.
On September 16 2012 17:05 CrtBalorda wrote: Now Im a bit suprised there is such a big outcry about the warhound. But everyone is fine the collossus and was fine apperently. Why did you not complain about the collossus during the beta and have blizzard remove it? Its kinda like you your just taking blizzards bad design into the face and not trying to give any feedback.
Its like people have already lost hope and only complain about bad new units.
People actually bitched a LOT about the Colossus in WoL beta, and even more after release. It's just that it's so hard to get Blizzard to budge on an issue that most people have given up. Remember how hard we had to scream just for them to put chat channels back? I don't blame people for giving up the fight, Blizzard is very stubborn when they are "happy" with something.
I think the Colossus unit box should be made a lot larger, so that they can't clump together. This will make it less effective to mass them, as well as make them less efficient around choke points. In all, it should reward way better positioning for the Protoss army as well as micro of the Colossi.
When I see these things which are supposed to be towering skyscrapers walking around so close that they can touch each other, I always feel that they should be toppling over once they bump into one another. Seriously, the Colossus doesn't look too bad when it's spreaded out like the Blizzard videos, but once clumped up for laser warfare, they are a nightmare to spectate.
Much cooler looking attack animation from the Zealots. The physics / detail on the exploding BC and Barracks is far superior than what ultra high details do in SP or MP WoL > The motherships 3 abilities (time bomb, planet cracker and black hole (super Vortex) look awesome - although kinda obviously OP. - Also the damaged mothership burning animations are awesome. How did this game look so much better in 2009?
because the game would be too cluttered and confusing with all those physic effects.
-Remove range upgrade -Increase base range by +1 (7 Range) -Remove Cliffwalk ability -Make smaller, cannot be hit by air -Decrease splash radius slightly
Its a very delicate problem. The colossus is obviously a very important unit and changing it will have very big effects. With that in mind, a beta is a very good oppurtunity to atleast play around with small tweaks and changes and im sad that blizzard are so reluctant to experiment with it a bit.
Before the number of vikings and corruptors are large enough, the colossus is the easiest unit to micro. It is huge and can walk over units/cliffs. However, the long range of the unit makes micro irrelevant most times. When viking/corruptor count gets large enough then it is useless to even try to micro the colossus. You are better if maximizing their damage output. Most of the time you will lose most of your colossus either way, so your best bet is to deal as much damage as possible. This does seem like a design flaw to me, since the unit is so microable.
The splash damage and a-move aspect of the unit has bad effects on the game in the lower leagues aswell as pro-level. The colossus makes for bad e-sports because of the stale deathball effect it brings to protoss and the turtling that takes place in order to acquire it. Though, it is not OP at pro-level. In the lower leagues the colossus is OP in the sense that the opponent, especially terran, needs to have superior micro and overall control and engagement skills to break the colossus army. One bad step and 3 colossus will damage a bio ball enough that it might cost you the game.
Since the colossus is a necessary unit for the protoss and the effects would be to big if it was to be changed drastically, im leaning towards either the idea inolving colossus using air upgrades, or the one with were the colossus fires its beam in a straight line. Air upgrades would not give the colossus a more micro-oriented feeling, but it would make it a bit harder for the protoss to switch between HT/colossus tech so easily. There is probably a better solution outhere somewhere, and i wish blizzard would consider experementing a bit with the colossus.
It's definitely not all that you would want to do, but just changing the Extended Thermal Lance upgrade's range bonus (WTF?!)+3 to (normal large bonus)+2 for a total of 8 range would make it a little more micro intensive and its supposed frailty would feel more true because it would be just that much closer to the danger more often.
I think make it more squishy. You have to get a dumb amount of corruptor/viking, or hope the protoss makes a positional error to kill the collosi. Seriously sometimes I feel like I need to make 10 billion corruptors for them to kill colossus fast enough to matter. And then I am usually left with 10 billion corruptors vs a bunch of stalkers.
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).
So you're saying the collussus has splash damage which makes it so the toss doesn't 'just lose'. If this unit singlehandedly can turn a match up like that, my definition of it would be: 'it's sick strong.'
On September 16 2012 11:42 Channel Pressure wrote: 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
I wasn't describing why it's a terrible unit. There are dozens of threads on teamliquid explaining why it's a terrible unit, but if you can't figure it out for yourself, I guess you are the target audience of these kidns of units. And obviously you'd get a replacement unit, I mean how thick are people? You think you can just remove the collussus or infestor and 'be fine'? Obviously not. The collussus is sick strong, but you can make any badly designed unit sick strong.
There's a simple reason why every poll here on teamliquid regarding 'which unit do you absolutely hate/ would you like to see removed' always ends up with collussus at LEAST in the top 3 (as far as I know, number 1 every time).
And nobody in here is talking about balancing issues when we mention things like remove infestor, change fungal growth, remove collusus,... We're talking about the entertainment factor for both spectator and player and the validity of starcraft 2 as an e-sport. Sc2 isn't as exciting to watch as BW, everyone with a brain knows that. Or anyone who isn't biased towards 'hur dur "better" graphics and pathing'.
I'm not having fun when I'm playing with a collusus or an infestor and I'm nto having fun seeing people use the infestor or collussus, I mean if you have fun seeing a zerg chain fungal someone with 10 infestors, lucky you, I wish I was as easily entertained.
It would be cool if you could set how your units defaulted when attacking, so instead of attacking in an arc, you could tell them to stagger without having to do alot of micro.
On September 15 2012 17:34 dynwar7 wrote: Be careful what you wish for. If blizzard remove colossi, most Protoss will truly be so mad since they are so used to a moving such a strong unit.
Are you seriously asking blizz to remove colossi? Think more thoroughly please...
Casual protoss players would be right pissed off. But if you remove the Colossi and give us the reaver, the more active and hardcore players of every race would rejoice!
I for one can easily say I'd MUCH MUCH MUCH rather have my reavers back in place of colossi!
the default higher range and removal of thermal lance is an interesting suggestion. i've never really seen the colossus as a broken or boring unit. I must be easy :D. as an aside the comment on col making it easy for toss to reach platnum with x apm or less. . I think all races have a bit of that. Thats not the point of this thread though so ill leave that alone . I kinda like the blatant war of the worlds ripoff too. I mean if you're going to go there, the marine is a well-known ripoff of Warhammer space marines, and its become just about as iconic in sc as the warhammer marine is. And thats fine. Blizz has a knack for ripping stuff off and making it cool. Steal from the best as tyra banks once said. .
On September 16 2012 16:48 Acritter wrote: The Colossus is already being "fixed" with units like the Viper. By snatching Colossi out of deathballs, the Viper limits the use of the unit. The next things needed are a Terran way to handle the Colossus (I'm liking Lockdown more and more), and a significant buff to Storm so that it can be used against Roaches.
I don't want the Colossus to be counterable, it already has plenty of that. It just needs to be fun to use.
People hate the Colossus because there's no skill in using it. It's mobility guarantees almost perfect positioning in a deathball just by a-moving it. The maximum micro you get out of them is moving back a few steps when focused by AA. It makes the PvP matchup bore people to tears. It's the number #1 cause of deathball syndrome. It forces the AA of other races to be obscenely strong to counter it, therefore making all Stargate units less viable. It forces the Gateway units to be weaker due to its strength. And it's terribly dull to watch them from a spectator standpoint. I still have yet to see a colossus induce cheers from a crowd anywhere near that of a reaver. People only seem excited about colossi when they die, which should tell you something.
The only reason the Colossus is still in the game is because it looks cool, and apparently casuals love its model or something. I honestly think that if SC2 is going to have an iconic unit, it should at least be something unique, and not a War of the Worlds ripoff. The Colossus also plays boring, but Blizzard is probably reluctant to do anything because it's so essential for the Protoss to survive that they don't want to go through the effort of rebalancing it, which I think goes against what Blizzard used to stand for.
The thing is, the Colossus ISN'T counterable. There are checks in place for it, and that's all. There are units you integrate into your composition to help deal with the Colossi, but they never eliminate the threat completely. Compare Mutas in BW ZvT. They are rendered completely obsolete by the first Science Vessel hitting the battlefield. That is the appropriate situation for the Colossus, as well. The lack of a hard counter to Colossi is hurting the entire game. Because we rely on soft counters to handle Colossi, the soft counters need to be far more efficiently produced in order for the soft counter reaction to work. This has created the problems with air play we see in SC2. If, on the other hand, each race had a hard counter to Colossi, the Protoss would be forced to immediately transition out-- into, say, Storm, which is far more interesting. Colossi are only 1-A units when you have large mobs of them. Try working with one or two Colossi, and you'll see that there's a fair amount of micro involved (check out the 1 Colo no range all-in in PvP). By making it non-viable to produce large numbers of Colossi, you increase the microability of the unit.
On September 16 2012 16:48 Acritter wrote: The Colossus is already being "fixed" with units like the Viper. By snatching Colossi out of deathballs, the Viper limits the use of the unit. The next things needed are a Terran way to handle the Colossus (I'm liking Lockdown more and more), and a significant buff to Storm so that it can be used against Roaches.
I don't want the Colossus to be counterable, it already has plenty of that. It just needs to be fun to use.
People hate the Colossus because there's no skill in using it. It's mobility guarantees almost perfect positioning in a deathball just by a-moving it. The maximum micro you get out of them is moving back a few steps when focused by AA. It makes the PvP matchup bore people to tears. It's the number #1 cause of deathball syndrome. It forces the AA of other races to be obscenely strong to counter it, therefore making all Stargate units less viable. It forces the Gateway units to be weaker due to its strength. And it's terribly dull to watch them from a spectator standpoint. I still have yet to see a colossus induce cheers from a crowd anywhere near that of a reaver. People only seem excited about colossi when they die, which should tell you something.
The only reason the Colossus is still in the game is because it looks cool, and apparently casuals love its model or something. I honestly think that if SC2 is going to have an iconic unit, it should at least be something unique, and not a War of the Worlds ripoff. The Colossus also plays boring, but Blizzard is probably reluctant to do anything because it's so essential for the Protoss to survive that they don't want to go through the effort of rebalancing it, which I think goes against what Blizzard used to stand for.
The thing is, the Colossus ISN'T counterable. There are checks in place for it, and that's all. There are units you integrate into your composition to help deal with the Colossi, but they never eliminate the threat completely. Compare Mutas in BW ZvT. They are rendered completely obsolete by the first Science Vessel hitting the battlefield. That is the appropriate situation for the Colossus, as well. The lack of a hard counter to Colossi is hurting the entire game. Because we rely on soft counters to handle Colossi, the soft counters need to be far more efficiently produced in order for the soft counter reaction to work. This has created the problems with air play we see in SC2. If, on the other hand, each race had a hard counter to Colossi, the Protoss would be forced to immediately transition out-- into, say, Storm, which is far more interesting. Colossi are only 1-A units when you have large mobs of them. Try working with one or two Colossi, and you'll see that there's a fair amount of micro involved (check out the 1 Colo no range all-in in PvP). By making it non-viable to produce large numbers of Colossi, you increase the microability of the unit.
Totally agree. Although I disagree with the notion that a hard counter is a good idea. Between ghosts and vikings, the colossus and the HT both have a fairly balanced "counter" to them (so I guess im talking about tvp). That the colossus never becomes obsolete in that matchup makes for very interesting army positioning and strategies, to a level that I believe allows the better player to come out on top (usually). I personally think toss has a much lower margin of error than terran does, but thats not terribly important. A good lategame tvp toss army usually has colossus and storm, as it should, and vs t that winds up leaving you pretty evenly matched.
To the first quote, if you a move your colossus during engagements you'll probably end up fresh out of a colossus against someone of even moderate skill. It is by no means a-move and forget unit between protecting your colossus with other units and microing it, especially when losing a colossus means trading inefficiently, especially vs t.
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).
So you're saying the collussus has splash damage which makes it so the toss doesn't 'just lose'. If this unit singlehandedly can turn a match up like that, my definition of it would be: 'it's sick strong.'
Marines singlehandedly prevent Terran from just losing, so do infestors, so do lings, banelings, so do medivacs, same with stim as an upgrade. Core units make it so that race does not just straight up lose, which is why they are a core unit to begin with. Every race has those core units to build compositions around, what makes collusus more sick strong than the other core units?
Convention I can answer that for Wcr -- nothing. Great anaology with the marines. Gateway units are empowered by colossi much like stimmed bio are by medivacs. I challenge any protoss to defeat stimmed bio with strictly gateway units. I understand this thread is largely about tweaking the colossus to be more interesting? I disagree with the notion that colossus arent interesting, but if blizz could make the colossus better or more interesting for everyone, more power to them.
The difficult challenge is making Colossus a good mechanic without nerfing it, because almost every unit in this game is balanced around that splash capability. Marines, Marauders, Zerglings, Roaches, Swarm Hosts, Broodlords, Banelings, Zealots, Corruptors, Vikings, and Vipers would all have to be completely revamped to deal with the power void.
On September 17 2012 06:58 Cloak wrote: The difficult challenge is making Colossus a good mechanic without nerfing it, because almost every unit in this game is balanced around that splash capability. Marines, Marauders, Zerglings, Roaches, Swarm Hosts, Broodlords, Banelings, Zealots, Corruptors, Vikings, and Vipers would all have to be completely revamped to deal with the power void.
This isn't true because we're rolling out HotS which inherently breaks everything in the game. There is no better time than now to completely revamp a unit.
Yes, Marines are balanced around Colossi. Without Colossi, Marine/Ghost would probably roll over the Protoss army. However, maybe with the addition of Mothership Core, the Oracle, the Tempest.... aww who am I kidding, the Protoss army would still get rolled over.
I mean just read the reasoning behind its removal o_O
On a second note: The colossus in the demo seems alot more interesting than what we see now. Sort of like a voidray but different.
yeah, Liquipedia is really aweful when it comes down to unit descriptions and usage and stuff like that. The reaver was taken out because it did too much damage. Plain and simple.
On September 15 2012 17:50 GorGor wrote: The reason why Protoss are so prone to deathball with colossus is because all Protoss ground units share a single upgrade. If robo upgrades were separate from gateway upgrades, (as it is for Terran) then maybe each unit could receive an individual buff and Protoss could be more reminiscent of BW.
It's because of the issues warp gate creates. It has nothing to do with upgrades. At all.
i thought the reason the reaver was removed was due to the improvements in pathing scarbs weren't interesting they, would hit 100% of the time. Don't know why this made it unbalanced though.
I would like to see a change or removal of the colossus, one less beam attack.
I mean just read the reasoning behind its removal o_O
On a second note: The colossus in the demo seems alot more interesting than what we see now. Sort of like a voidray but different.
yeah, Liquipedia is really aweful when it comes down to unit descriptions and usage and stuff like that. The reaver was taken out because it did too much damage. Plain and simple.
Yet its compensated by some of the slowest MS a unit can have in a game, with one of the slowest projectiles to hit enemy units in the game coupled with requiring money for ammo and being a rather low on hitpoints.. (They could have always gone back to the "old" scarab and the way it behaved instead of hitting 100% as well).
I dont think its the case of "too much damage" because that can always be balanced. But its obvious when you compare the reaver to a colssus that the former is much harder to really get its worth via micro.
I don't know, Colossus is supposed to be a support unit, yet it does the most dps in the protoss army while the gateway units act like a meatshield. Something is wrong there, isn't it?
What if, instead of the pure dps machine, like the current colossus is now, Protoss had a true support unit built from the robo bay? Here is a little idea that I came up with a moment ago. =============================================== Here's a pic so my post will draw more attention! Of course the unit should look more protoss-y
Let's call the unit a Ravager, I know, lame name, whatever.
I don't really know if it should be attackable from both air and ground or what it's movement speed should be - but probably not faster than the colossus so microing it with warp prisms would be rewarding.
The main point is that it would shoot a wide beam of energy in a straight line that would deal minimal damage and apply a stacking debuff to every enemy unit on its path. The units affected by the debuff would receive increased damage for a short amount of time - be it a percentage increase or X damage per hit increase like Devourer in brood war did.
The unit could possibly have an ability that would shot a beam dealing a lot more damage, but firing it would cost resources and require a channel time before the improved beam is shot.
So, in a nutshell, it's a slow hellion with pathetic-dps, siege-range beam attack that makes units affected more vulnerable. It doesn't do much damage on its own, but combined with stalkers and zealots it is a deadly threat.
Here are some example stats that will probably be heavily op or up: -hp, shields, armor, resource cost and build time the same as colossus -attack damage: 12(+1) -attack range: 10 -beam width: 1 (hellion's is 0.15 and storm's aoe is 1.5) -cooldown: 2 seconds -projectile speed: let's say a half of the tempest's one, so you can perhaps use blink micro or dodge it with stimmed bio -every attack applies a debuff that increases damage taken by 1 per stack, stacks 3 times.
ability overcharge: costs 75 minerals, 6 seconds channeling time before fire, beam width and range the same as in Ravager's normal attack deals 60 damage + 80 vs armored and buildings - you can wreck some serious havoc in the worker line or quickly kill defensive buildings; the enemy can see the direction where the beam will travel, so it won't be so easy to kill workers with it, unless you catch the enemy by surprise.
Here you go, pure support 'colossus'! Any feedback?
I mean just read the reasoning behind its removal o_O
On a second note: The colossus in the demo seems alot more interesting than what we see now. Sort of like a voidray but different.
yeah, Liquipedia is really aweful when it comes down to unit descriptions and usage and stuff like that. The reaver was taken out because it did too much damage. Plain and simple.
Yet its compensated by some of the slowest MS a unit can have in a game, with one of the slowest projectiles to hit enemy units in the game coupled with requiring money for ammo and being a rather low on hitpoints.. (They could have always gone back to the "old" scarab and the way it behaved instead of hitting 100% as well).
I dont think its the case of "too much damage" because that can always be balanced. But its obvious when you compare the reaver to a colssus that the former is much harder to really get its worth via micro.
Broodlords are very slow and very powerful. I haven't seen anybody yet that said those were very hard to micro. Similar with Thors or Sieged Tanks or BCs.
And not everything can be balanced. If you want a unit with big damage and big splash like the reaver, it will destroy any form of clumped low tier unit compositions like bio.
Edit: Well, it could probably be balanced, but it would probably destroy something like the viability of bio, or roaches, or it would violate unit design principles and probably have nothing in common with a BW reaver anymore.
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I actually agree with this. Remove cliffwalk, remove walking over units, remove it's vulnerability to AA units. Probably increase it's range 9 to 10 to make up for it's 'loss' of range due to units being in front of tit now?
The collosus needs to be removed, or changed into a midgame siege unit. Currently now each race has at least one positional unit that is a "Nope sorry, can't attack here" unit. Siege tanks + widow mines, Swarm hosts + viper dark cloud. Protoss really doesn't have one of these. The tempest is blizzards attempt at giving Protoss a proper "Siege unit", but its horribly situational and does nothing to deal with mass low tech armies.
The Reaver could fill this position. Make it incredibly strong against mass low tech armies, and have it balanced by its extremely low mobility.
But Blizzard could also come up with something new. A mid game siege unit that is easy to use, difficult to master. I for example would love to see some kind of mortar unit. Similar to the Reaver, it has low mobility, and its "mortal shell" would have a second or two delay from when it fires to when it lands. This means that it has great defensive ability. You just sit back and have the mortars. But makes it difficult to attack with as the Terran can kite it fairly easily. It also gives the the opportunity to see some great marine splitting to dodge the mortar shells. This mortar can also have a mode where instead of auto firing, you can target it to fire at a random patch of land so you can fire it preemptively, or set it up somewhere to shell a kitting Terran army. It could also be used as a mid game harass with speed prism.
This mortar idea promotes position play, advanced micro, and would allow many advanced and superior players to use it in a way that lesser players can't. But it can also be easy to use. Not so good at aggression, but fantastic at defense.
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I agree with the person you quoted. And disagree with you. Nobody says "Colossus are broken because of 2 things, cliffwalk, and unit walk (as while you want to combine those, those are 2 completely different mechanics). The colossus is not broken at all, and so the changes in the OP are not trying to suggest changes to make the Colossus more interesting, but rather changes to nerf the colossus because the OP doesn't like them (if you read all the changes you will see every one is a completely unwarranted nerf). Like the above said. It's not broken, it doesn't require fixing, and in all reality it isn't a bad unit, it's just overhyped as one. Sure it does terrible terrible damage with limited micro. And the micro it is able to do (target firing, proper positioning, etc.) is all micro that might go unnoticed to the average spectator. But all races have limited micro units. Think marauder, or line baneling infestor ultra, or brood lords, these units don't take much micro, but because YOU (meaning a lot of people) think they are more pleasing (or for the other amount of people they aren't Protoss and just hate colossus cause they get crushed by them). You think it's warranted to want one to change and not the others. Well the mechanic of a seige unit that is vulnerable to AA (why they designed Vikings to be low health high range anti-armored) is a pretty damn good mechanic. You just want to overlook that because you don't like getting fried by colossus A moving is all. Well let me tell you, a Pro still makes much better use of colossi than the average player, and makes for a very positional game. And to the OP. I think your post is just a big psuedo balance whine and am surprised after all the suggestions you've made on how it needs to be nerfed that this thread wasn't closed.
On September 17 2012 07:30 Daylight85 wrote: Reavers were such a staple unit in SC:BW, would be amazing if it returned, even at the expense of the colossus.
colossi are perfect the way they are, and im saying this as a terran dying a gazillion times to colossi
the only problem i see in colossi, if there are some, is the way they fit into the protoss arsenal:
protoss has such a balanced army, hardy yet cheap meatshields, 2 very gimmicky casters that can help your AE or even make up for bad positioning (forcefields) and its still pretty mobile i mean its so well designed that i admire the work blizzard did there
same can be said of zerg, where you have the choice to go for strong medium mobile units, superfast harass units and/or strong casters which all transitions very nicely into hive without any real sacrifies
i miss that kind of compositions in many terran games, especially in tvp where you are forced to play a highly agressive uber mobile style. there is almost no room for so many cool units that could be made out of a factory or a starport
how about making its attacks damage friendly units, this might seems like a small change but it will force the protoss moving his collosi around to avoid killing its own zealots , in exchange they could remove its AA vulnerability (the collosi would have to move foward to hit infront of the zealots) , also its realy small change not realy changing any match up , just make it abit more micro intesnive unit while taking advantage its" walking over units " mechanism
On September 17 2012 11:52 Serp87 wrote: how about making its attacks damage friendly units, this might seems like a small change but it will force the protoss moving his collosi around to avoid killing its own zealots , in exchange they could remove its AA vulnerability (the collosi would have to move foward to hit infront of the zealots) , also its realy small change not realy changing any match up , just make it abit more micro intesnive unit while taking advantage its" walking over units " mechanism
Again you are posting this assuming colossi in it's current state are IMBALANCED. And nobody at high level play or any of blizzards designer feel like the unit is imbalanced. I can understand people wanting it to be more interesting/fun to watch. But your suggestion is an absolute nerf (suggesting imbalance with the unit.) not only that but a terrible terrible nerf. You can't make a unit like that do splash damage to their own units. Then in PvP you'd blink on top of your opponents army, and in any battle involving zealots you'll have to focus fire with EVERY SINGLE colossus in order to not splash your zealots. Which would invariably cause you to just roll over and die for overkilling with colossus on top of overextending them to not hit the front lines the zealots are attacking.
Like I said again. The colossus is not considered imbalanced, just considered BORING. There is a BIG BIG difference. Which is why I said in my previous post that this whole thread I'm surprised isn't closed. Every change the OP suggested is a nerf (suggesting imbalance, and the OP balance whining) on top of the name "How to FIX the colossus". Clearly a balance whine thread.
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I agree to you. As much as I want SC2 to be a micro intensive in battles, there's no really other way you can fight late game T/Z with without collosus, unless your'e way ahead in army supply and upgrades. It would be more broken if Protoss will only rely in storms in terms of AoE damage (if they want collosus to be removed) versus Z/T's armored units. Collosus is fragile enough alreayd imo, the only match-up it will fix if its is removed is PvP. I agree its boring, but Protoss really has no choice but to make a deathball to win in late game 'most' of the time.
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I agree with the person you quoted. And disagree with you. Nobody says "Colossus are broken because of 2 things, cliffwalk, and unit walk (as while you want to combine those, those are 2 completely different mechanics). The colossus is not broken at all, and so the changes in the OP are not trying to suggest changes to make the Colossus more interesting, but rather changes to nerf the colossus because the OP doesn't like them (if you read all the changes you will see every one is a completely unwarranted nerf). Like the above said. It's not broken, it doesn't require fixing, and in all reality it isn't a bad unit, it's just overhyped as one. Sure it does terrible terrible damage with limited micro. And the micro it is able to do (target firing, proper positioning, etc.) is all micro that might go unnoticed to the average spectator. But all races have limited micro units. Think marauder, or line baneling infestor ultra, or brood lords, these units don't take much micro, but because YOU (meaning a lot of people) think they are more pleasing (or for the other amount of people they aren't Protoss and just hate colossus cause they get crushed by them). You think it's warranted to want one to change and not the others. Well the mechanic of a seige unit that is vulnerable to AA (why they designed Vikings to be low health high range anti-armored) is a pretty damn good mechanic. You just want to overlook that because you don't like getting fried by colossus A moving is all. Well let me tell you, a Pro still makes much better use of colossi than the average player, and makes for a very positional game. And to the OP. I think your post is just a big psuedo balance whine and am surprised after all the suggestions you've made on how it needs to be nerfed that this thread wasn't closed.
Then they'll buff some other part of Protoss, like bring back KA. Much better than having a unit that's ultra-efficient in battle without even trying.
What about Broodlords? They're even more A-move and less interesting to watch. They're like the least micro'd unit ever. Let's remove the Broodlord too. If we're going to start the a-move witch hunt, let's remove all those other units too that have very basic micro capabilities.
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I agree with the person you quoted. And disagree with you. Nobody says "Colossus are broken because of 2 things, cliffwalk, and unit walk (as while you want to combine those, those are 2 completely different mechanics). The colossus is not broken at all, and so the changes in the OP are not trying to suggest changes to make the Colossus more interesting, but rather changes to nerf the colossus because the OP doesn't like them (if you read all the changes you will see every one is a completely unwarranted nerf). Like the above said. It's not broken, it doesn't require fixing, and in all reality it isn't a bad unit, it's just overhyped as one. Sure it does terrible terrible damage with limited micro. And the micro it is able to do (target firing, proper positioning, etc.) is all micro that might go unnoticed to the average spectator. But all races have limited micro units. Think marauder, or line baneling infestor ultra, or brood lords, these units don't take much micro, but because YOU (meaning a lot of people) think they are more pleasing (or for the other amount of people they aren't Protoss and just hate colossus cause they get crushed by them). You think it's warranted to want one to change and not the others. Well the mechanic of a seige unit that is vulnerable to AA (why they designed Vikings to be low health high range anti-armored) is a pretty damn good mechanic. You just want to overlook that because you don't like getting fried by colossus A moving is all. Well let me tell you, a Pro still makes much better use of colossi than the average player, and makes for a very positional game. And to the OP. I think your post is just a big psuedo balance whine and am surprised after all the suggestions you've made on how it needs to be nerfed that this thread wasn't closed.
Then they'll buff some other part of Protoss, like bring back KA. Much better than having a unit that's ultra-efficient in battle without even trying.
If you bring back KA, no protoss would ever lose against terran. You could just remove collosi from the game at that point. We never saw the true power of KA since it was removed at a time when a very few people were using HT. You also can't buff gateway units very much otherwise protoss would all switch to PartinG style against terran (mass gateway units) and pretty easily dominate, and do nothing but blink stalker/8 gate all-ins against zerg. The game is pretty well balanced at this point, so making a huge nerf to collosi would have everything spiral out of control really quickly.
On September 17 2012 12:33 Cloak wrote: What about Broodlords? They're even more A-move and less interesting to watch. They're like the least micro'd unit ever. Let's remove the Broodlord too. If we're going to start the a-move witch hunt, let's remove all those other units too that have very basic micro capabilities.
I have to say, I've always wondered about this to. BL require by far the least amount of micro of every unit, but yet it is collosi that people complain as being too a-move friendly. I think people tend to lose more often to collosi because they don't produce enough corruptors/vikings more often then they do from BLs, so they whine more about that unit. And at the end of the day, this thread is a balance whine. Those polls on the first page are obviously biased being the thread title implies the collosi is the major problem.
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I agree with the person you quoted. And disagree with you. Nobody says "Colossus are broken because of 2 things, cliffwalk, and unit walk (as while you want to combine those, those are 2 completely different mechanics). The colossus is not broken at all, and so the changes in the OP are not trying to suggest changes to make the Colossus more interesting, but rather changes to nerf the colossus because the OP doesn't like them (if you read all the changes you will see every one is a completely unwarranted nerf). Like the above said. It's not broken, it doesn't require fixing, and in all reality it isn't a bad unit, it's just overhyped as one. Sure it does terrible terrible damage with limited micro. And the micro it is able to do (target firing, proper positioning, etc.) is all micro that might go unnoticed to the average spectator. But all races have limited micro units. Think marauder, or line baneling infestor ultra, or brood lords, these units don't take much micro, but because YOU (meaning a lot of people) think they are more pleasing (or for the other amount of people they aren't Protoss and just hate colossus cause they get crushed by them). You think it's warranted to want one to change and not the others. Well the mechanic of a seige unit that is vulnerable to AA (why they designed Vikings to be low health high range anti-armored) is a pretty damn good mechanic. You just want to overlook that because you don't like getting fried by colossus A moving is all. Well let me tell you, a Pro still makes much better use of colossi than the average player, and makes for a very positional game. And to the OP. I think your post is just a big psuedo balance whine and am surprised after all the suggestions you've made on how it needs to be nerfed that this thread wasn't closed.
Then they'll buff some other part of Protoss, like bring back KA. Much better than having a unit that's ultra-efficient in battle without even trying.
If you bring back KA, no protoss would ever lose against terran. You could just remove collosi from the game at that point. We never saw the true power of KA since it was removed at a time when a very few people were using HT. You also can't buff gateway units very much otherwise protoss would all switch to PartinG style against terran (mass gateway units) and pretty easily dominate, and do nothing but blink stalker/8 gate all-ins against zerg. The game is pretty well balanced at this point, so making a huge nerf to collosi would have everything spiral out of control really quickly.
On September 17 2012 12:33 Cloak wrote: What about Broodlords? They're even more A-move and less interesting to watch. They're like the least micro'd unit ever. Let's remove the Broodlord too. If we're going to start the a-move witch hunt, let's remove all those other units too that have very basic micro capabilities.
I have to say, I've always wondered about this to. BL require by far the least amount of micro of every unit, but yet it is collosi that people complain as being too a-move friendly. I think people tend to lose more often to collosi because they don't produce enough corruptors/vikings more often then they do from BLs, so they whine more about that unit. And at the end of the day, this thread is a balance whine. Those polls on the first page are obviously biased being the thread title implies the collosi is the major problem.
The Broodlord is a siege unit with low mobility. And if you 1A broodlords at a protoss with a mothership, you are going to lose. They still aren't that exciting as a unit, but they also aren't as boring as a Colossus.
Its hard to think of ideas that would increase micro but not buff the unit too much. Ideally I'd like a unit to replace the colossus that is still useful at low levels, but could be much more powerful if micro'd well. Increasing the skill gap. Anyway, the only change I can think of that doesn't completely wreck the concept is to change the way the laser beam(s) work. Instead of a-moving and the laser moving around to do splash damage, the laser could be the opposite of a void ray's beam- it gets weaker as it continues to fire. Like maybe the first "beam cross" where the lasers do a semi-circle would be more powerful than the second. They could do a total of three crosses, with the third being the weakest. Then the micro would be target fire, stop command after 1st beam cross, target fire, etc. Just a thought
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I agree with the person you quoted. And disagree with you. Nobody says "Colossus are broken because of 2 things, cliffwalk, and unit walk (as while you want to combine those, those are 2 completely different mechanics). The colossus is not broken at all, and so the changes in the OP are not trying to suggest changes to make the Colossus more interesting, but rather changes to nerf the colossus because the OP doesn't like them (if you read all the changes you will see every one is a completely unwarranted nerf). Like the above said. It's not broken, it doesn't require fixing, and in all reality it isn't a bad unit, it's just overhyped as one. Sure it does terrible terrible damage with limited micro. And the micro it is able to do (target firing, proper positioning, etc.) is all micro that might go unnoticed to the average spectator. But all races have limited micro units. Think marauder, or line baneling infestor ultra, or brood lords, these units don't take much micro, but because YOU (meaning a lot of people) think they are more pleasing (or for the other amount of people they aren't Protoss and just hate colossus cause they get crushed by them). You think it's warranted to want one to change and not the others. Well the mechanic of a seige unit that is vulnerable to AA (why they designed Vikings to be low health high range anti-armored) is a pretty damn good mechanic. You just want to overlook that because you don't like getting fried by colossus A moving is all. Well let me tell you, a Pro still makes much better use of colossi than the average player, and makes for a very positional game. And to the OP. I think your post is just a big psuedo balance whine and am surprised after all the suggestions you've made on how it needs to be nerfed that this thread wasn't closed.
Then they'll buff some other part of Protoss, like bring back KA. Much better than having a unit that's ultra-efficient in battle without even trying.
If you bring back KA, no protoss would ever lose against terran. You could just remove collosi from the game at that point. We never saw the true power of KA since it was removed at a time when a very few people were using HT. You also can't buff gateway units very much otherwise protoss would all switch to PartinG style against terran (mass gateway units) and pretty easily dominate, and do nothing but blink stalker/8 gate all-ins against zerg. The game is pretty well balanced at this point, so making a huge nerf to collosi would have everything spiral out of control really quickly.
On September 17 2012 12:33 Cloak wrote: What about Broodlords? They're even more A-move and less interesting to watch. They're like the least micro'd unit ever. Let's remove the Broodlord too. If we're going to start the a-move witch hunt, let's remove all those other units too that have very basic micro capabilities.
I have to say, I've always wondered about this to. BL require by far the least amount of micro of every unit, but yet it is collosi that people complain as being too a-move friendly. I think people tend to lose more often to collosi because they don't produce enough corruptors/vikings more often then they do from BLs, so they whine more about that unit. And at the end of the day, this thread is a balance whine. Those polls on the first page are obviously biased being the thread title implies the collosi is the major problem.
The Broodlord is a siege unit with low mobility. And if you 1A broodlords at a protoss with a mothership, you are going to lose. They still aren't that exciting as a unit, but they also aren't as boring as a Colossus.
Interestingly enough, if you 1A colossi against a protoss with a mothership, and they get vortexed, you are going to lose as well. Just like BLs, and any siege unit for that matter, you need to have a good spread or you risk getting them all killed off by the opponents splash units. And if any of your siege units get caught in front of your army, your expensive units will die. For that matter, colossi function extremely similar to BLs. What exactly is it that makes colossi more boring than BLs?
On September 16 2012 16:48 Acritter wrote: The Colossus is already being "fixed" with units like the Viper. By snatching Colossi out of deathballs, the Viper limits the use of the unit. The next things needed are a Terran way to handle the Colossus (I'm liking Lockdown more and more), and a significant buff to Storm so that it can be used against Roaches.
I don't want the Colossus to be counterable, it already has plenty of that. It just needs to be fun to use.
People hate the Colossus because there's no skill in using it. It's mobility guarantees almost perfect positioning in a deathball just by a-moving it. The maximum micro you get out of them is moving back a few steps when focused by AA. It makes the PvP matchup bore people to tears. It's the number #1 cause of deathball syndrome. It forces the AA of other races to be obscenely strong to counter it, therefore making all Stargate units less viable. It forces the Gateway units to be weaker due to its strength. And it's terribly dull to watch them from a spectator standpoint. I still have yet to see a colossus induce cheers from a crowd anywhere near that of a reaver. People only seem excited about colossi when they die, which should tell you something.
The only reason the Colossus is still in the game is because it looks cool, and apparently casuals love its model or something. I honestly think that if SC2 is going to have an iconic unit, it should at least be something unique, and not a War of the Worlds ripoff. The Colossus also plays boring, but Blizzard is probably reluctant to do anything because it's so essential for the Protoss to survive that they don't want to go through the effort of rebalancing it, which I think goes against what Blizzard used to stand for.
The thing is, the Colossus ISN'T counterable. There are checks in place for it, and that's all. There are units you integrate into your composition to help deal with the Colossi, but they never eliminate the threat completely. Compare Mutas in BW ZvT. They are rendered completely obsolete by the first Science Vessel hitting the battlefield. That is the appropriate situation for the Colossus, as well. The lack of a hard counter to Colossi is hurting the entire game. Because we rely on soft counters to handle Colossi, the soft counters need to be far more efficiently produced in order for the soft counter reaction to work. This has created the problems with air play we see in SC2. If, on the other hand, each race had a hard counter to Colossi, the Protoss would be forced to immediately transition out-- into, say, Storm, which is far more interesting. Colossi are only 1-A units when you have large mobs of them. Try working with one or two Colossi, and you'll see that there's a fair amount of micro involved (check out the 1 Colo no range all-in in PvP). By making it non-viable to produce large numbers of Colossi, you increase the microability of the unit.
Totally agree. Although I disagree with the notion that a hard counter is a good idea. Between ghosts and vikings, the colossus and the HT both have a fairly balanced "counter" to them (so I guess im talking about tvp). That the colossus never becomes obsolete in that matchup makes for very interesting army positioning and strategies, to a level that I believe allows the better player to come out on top (usually). I personally think toss has a much lower margin of error than terran does, but thats not terribly important. A good lategame tvp toss army usually has colossus and storm, as it should, and vs t that winds up leaving you pretty evenly matched.
To the first quote, if you a move your colossus during engagements you'll probably end up fresh out of a colossus against someone of even moderate skill. It is by no means a-move and forget unit between protecting your colossus with other units and microing it, especially when losing a colossus means trading inefficiently, especially vs t.
I don't actually think that having the Colossus as a permanent fixture of the army is a good thing. Look at the Reaver in BW PvT, for example. It often serves as an early pin for harassment and AOE against Tanks, but is later phased out for Storm. Similar effect in PvP, but less pronounced as players choose to keep their Reaver count at 2 instead of taking them out entirely. Only in PvZ will the Reaver stay forever, with the hilarious Corsair/Reaver strategy. That timed obsolescence was a good thing. It meant that Protoss had a way to get powerful AOE early to support its units while still having powerful AOE later on in the form of the High Templar. It's only when we deal with the combination of Colossi and Storms at the same time that the two become overpowering, and Storm has to be nerfed down to a pitiful 80 damage. If Colossi are a timing-specific unit, then suddenly Storm can be brought back to the fore.
Oh, and you can still switch back into Colossi after the Terran stops making Lockdown Casters. It's just a little more interesting.
Reavers only get "obsolote" because Terrans put defenses against them in place basically everywhere or paid a high price if the Protoss found a hole in the defense and was trying to exploit it. It would actually be the same with Colossi in SC2 IF Mech/Tanks would truely work... But the Colossi would have like no use anymore at all because it can't harass and in general is not dealing his damage in BIG junks. A reaver firing 3-4 Scarabs could allready be worh it, no matter at what stage in the game...
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I agree with the person you quoted. And disagree with you. Nobody says "Colossus are broken because of 2 things, cliffwalk, and unit walk (as while you want to combine those, those are 2 completely different mechanics). The colossus is not broken at all, and so the changes in the OP are not trying to suggest changes to make the Colossus more interesting, but rather changes to nerf the colossus because the OP doesn't like them (if you read all the changes you will see every one is a completely unwarranted nerf). Like the above said. It's not broken, it doesn't require fixing, and in all reality it isn't a bad unit, it's just overhyped as one. Sure it does terrible terrible damage with limited micro. And the micro it is able to do (target firing, proper positioning, etc.) is all micro that might go unnoticed to the average spectator. But all races have limited micro units. Think marauder, or line baneling infestor ultra, or brood lords, these units don't take much micro, but because YOU (meaning a lot of people) think they are more pleasing (or for the other amount of people they aren't Protoss and just hate colossus cause they get crushed by them). You think it's warranted to want one to change and not the others. Well the mechanic of a seige unit that is vulnerable to AA (why they designed Vikings to be low health high range anti-armored) is a pretty damn good mechanic. You just want to overlook that because you don't like getting fried by colossus A moving is all. Well let me tell you, a Pro still makes much better use of colossi than the average player, and makes for a very positional game. And to the OP. I think your post is just a big psuedo balance whine and am surprised after all the suggestions you've made on how it needs to be nerfed that this thread wasn't closed.
Then they'll buff some other part of Protoss, like bring back KA. Much better than having a unit that's ultra-efficient in battle without even trying.
If you bring back KA, no protoss would ever lose against terran. You could just remove collosi from the game at that point. We never saw the true power of KA since it was removed at a time when a very few people were using HT. You also can't buff gateway units very much otherwise protoss would all switch to PartinG style against terran (mass gateway units) and pretty easily dominate, and do nothing but blink stalker/8 gate all-ins against zerg. The game is pretty well balanced at this point, so making a huge nerf to collosi would have everything spiral out of control really quickly.
On September 17 2012 12:33 Cloak wrote: What about Broodlords? They're even more A-move and less interesting to watch. They're like the least micro'd unit ever. Let's remove the Broodlord too. If we're going to start the a-move witch hunt, let's remove all those other units too that have very basic micro capabilities.
I have to say, I've always wondered about this to. BL require by far the least amount of micro of every unit, but yet it is collosi that people complain as being too a-move friendly. I think people tend to lose more often to collosi because they don't produce enough corruptors/vikings more often then they do from BLs, so they whine more about that unit. And at the end of the day, this thread is a balance whine. Those polls on the first page are obviously biased being the thread title implies the collosi is the major problem.
The Broodlord is a siege unit with low mobility. And if you 1A broodlords at a protoss with a mothership, you are going to lose. They still aren't that exciting as a unit, but they also aren't as boring as a Colossus.
Interestingly enough, if you 1A colossi against a protoss with a mothership, and they get vortexed, you are going to lose as well. Just like BLs, and any siege unit for that matter, you need to have a good spread or you risk getting them all killed off by the opponents splash units. And if any of your siege units get caught in front of your army, your expensive units will die. For that matter, colossi function extremely similar to BLs. What exactly is it that makes colossi more boring than BLs?
Nothing. Both units are fine. People don't give the Broodlord as much shit because: The Broodlord is very similar to the Guardian The Guardian is a Broodwar unit Everything that was in Broodwar must not be critizised
The Colossus is not similar to a Broodwar unit A new units mean that SC2 isn't Broodwar with better graphics Therefore give the Colossus shit
The Guardian was one of the most horrible BW units, almost on par with the scout. The only reason they were sligthly interesting was because they were very risky to use, and rarely did any kind of good to the Zerg using them.
Stop assuming people are saying BW units = great, WoL units = bad. What we ARE saying is: Units with no micro = bad, units with micro/counter micro = good.
Colossi "micro themselves", and need something to make them interesting. The unit concept is exellent, but the execution is horrible. Other units that needs changing or removal are Marauders (boring unit with an anti micro mechanic), Infesters (fungals kills the micro for your opponent) and Roaches (kinda uninspired jack-of-all-trades unit - think of the old 200 food roach armies and tell me those are exiting). On the other hand Sentries, Stalkers, Hellions, Vipers, Swarm hosts, Oracles, Widow mines and a lot of the units kept from BW are exiting and fun to see and use. Some of them could use tweaks, but otherwise they are great units (sentries can stop micro though, but in a more fun way than fungals or concussive).
The best design of any unit goes to the BW Tank though. There were simply so many uses for those (and so many counter plays) that they always brought exitement to the field. Its also worth noting that Tanks were quite easy to use if your opponent wasn't much better than you. All in all - easy to learn, hard to master and was exiting.
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I agree with the person you quoted. And disagree with you. Nobody says "Colossus are broken because of 2 things, cliffwalk, and unit walk (as while you want to combine those, those are 2 completely different mechanics). The colossus is not broken at all, and so the changes in the OP are not trying to suggest changes to make the Colossus more interesting, but rather changes to nerf the colossus because the OP doesn't like them (if you read all the changes you will see every one is a completely unwarranted nerf). Like the above said. It's not broken, it doesn't require fixing, and in all reality it isn't a bad unit, it's just overhyped as one. Sure it does terrible terrible damage with limited micro. And the micro it is able to do (target firing, proper positioning, etc.) is all micro that might go unnoticed to the average spectator. But all races have limited micro units. Think marauder, or line baneling infestor ultra, or brood lords, these units don't take much micro, but because YOU (meaning a lot of people) think they are more pleasing (or for the other amount of people they aren't Protoss and just hate colossus cause they get crushed by them). You think it's warranted to want one to change and not the others. Well the mechanic of a seige unit that is vulnerable to AA (why they designed Vikings to be low health high range anti-armored) is a pretty damn good mechanic. You just want to overlook that because you don't like getting fried by colossus A moving is all. Well let me tell you, a Pro still makes much better use of colossi than the average player, and makes for a very positional game. And to the OP. I think your post is just a big psuedo balance whine and am surprised after all the suggestions you've made on how it needs to be nerfed that this thread wasn't closed.
Then they'll buff some other part of Protoss, like bring back KA. Much better than having a unit that's ultra-efficient in battle without even trying.
If you bring back KA, no protoss would ever lose against terran. You could just remove collosi from the game at that point. We never saw the true power of KA since it was removed at a time when a very few people were using HT. You also can't buff gateway units very much otherwise protoss would all switch to PartinG style against terran (mass gateway units) and pretty easily dominate, and do nothing but blink stalker/8 gate all-ins against zerg. The game is pretty well balanced at this point, so making a huge nerf to collosi would have everything spiral out of control really quickly.
On September 17 2012 12:33 Cloak wrote: What about Broodlords? They're even more A-move and less interesting to watch. They're like the least micro'd unit ever. Let's remove the Broodlord too. If we're going to start the a-move witch hunt, let's remove all those other units too that have very basic micro capabilities.
I have to say, I've always wondered about this to. BL require by far the least amount of micro of every unit, but yet it is collosi that people complain as being too a-move friendly. I think people tend to lose more often to collosi because they don't produce enough corruptors/vikings more often then they do from BLs, so they whine more about that unit. And at the end of the day, this thread is a balance whine. Those polls on the first page are obviously biased being the thread title implies the collosi is the major problem.
The Broodlord is a siege unit with low mobility. And if you 1A broodlords at a protoss with a mothership, you are going to lose. They still aren't that exciting as a unit, but they also aren't as boring as a Colossus.
Interestingly enough, if you 1A colossi against a protoss with a mothership, and they get vortexed, you are going to lose as well. Just like BLs, and any siege unit for that matter, you need to have a good spread or you risk getting them all killed off by the opponents splash units. And if any of your siege units get caught in front of your army, your expensive units will die. For that matter, colossi function extremely similar to BLs. What exactly is it that makes colossi more boring than BLs?
Nothing. Both units are fine. People don't give the Broodlord as much shit because: The Broodlord is very similar to the Guardian The Guardian is a Broodwar unit Everything that was in Broodwar must not be critizised
The Colossus is not similar to a Broodwar unit A new units mean that SC2 isn't Broodwar with better graphics Therefore give the Colossus shit
The Broodlord is hard to get and very slow with a unique attack, this makes it interesting IMO. Power vs weaknesses
The Colossus doesn't have mobility problems and this makes it just another death ball unit but without to much room for crazy micro. For me, it just isn't exciting...yet all other Protoss units seem to gravitate around it, and this is not the case with the Broodlord.
In general, my problem with the Colossus is that there isn't a lot of stuff a pro can do with it that a silver player can not. This plus it's commonality make it a boring unit. Very low skill cap if you will. For such a big unit that plays such an important role, you would expect to get all excited when they hit the field in a pro game, but that's never the case.
My first suggestion would be to make it unable to walk over your own units.
Have you tried playing 2v2 with an ally having a large army and you only your colossus? It doesn't feel as death-ball like then and you need to micro it much more to get of effective shots.
Having the colossus sitting on top of all your other units adds so much to this "Ball" feeling as everything is so stacked up.
I might add, after reading some of the other comments, I think this shouldn't be about imbalanced or not, at least on a numbers' level. It should be about designing units that create interesting and rewarding gameplay. Especially encouraging micro and thoughtful engagement and strategy + counter-strategy from both players. Whereever you can add that without ruining balance in a way that can't be solved with some numbertweaking it should be done imo.
On September 17 2012 08:46 ampson wrote: The colossus can't be fixed. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
The only thing that's broke about it is the way it can stand on top of your army.
If they made it unable to cliffwalk/stand on top of armies then deathballs wouldn't be as bad.
I agree with the person you quoted. And disagree with you. Nobody says "Colossus are broken because of 2 things, cliffwalk, and unit walk (as while you want to combine those, those are 2 completely different mechanics). The colossus is not broken at all, and so the changes in the OP are not trying to suggest changes to make the Colossus more interesting, but rather changes to nerf the colossus because the OP doesn't like them (if you read all the changes you will see every one is a completely unwarranted nerf). Like the above said. It's not broken, it doesn't require fixing, and in all reality it isn't a bad unit, it's just overhyped as one. Sure it does terrible terrible damage with limited micro. And the micro it is able to do (target firing, proper positioning, etc.) is all micro that might go unnoticed to the average spectator. But all races have limited micro units. Think marauder, or line baneling infestor ultra, or brood lords, these units don't take much micro, but because YOU (meaning a lot of people) think they are more pleasing (or for the other amount of people they aren't Protoss and just hate colossus cause they get crushed by them). You think it's warranted to want one to change and not the others. Well the mechanic of a seige unit that is vulnerable to AA (why they designed Vikings to be low health high range anti-armored) is a pretty damn good mechanic. You just want to overlook that because you don't like getting fried by colossus A moving is all. Well let me tell you, a Pro still makes much better use of colossi than the average player, and makes for a very positional game. And to the OP. I think your post is just a big psuedo balance whine and am surprised after all the suggestions you've made on how it needs to be nerfed that this thread wasn't closed.
Then they'll buff some other part of Protoss, like bring back KA. Much better than having a unit that's ultra-efficient in battle without even trying.
If you bring back KA, no protoss would ever lose against terran. You could just remove collosi from the game at that point. We never saw the true power of KA since it was removed at a time when a very few people were using HT. You also can't buff gateway units very much otherwise protoss would all switch to PartinG style against terran (mass gateway units) and pretty easily dominate, and do nothing but blink stalker/8 gate all-ins against zerg. The game is pretty well balanced at this point, so making a huge nerf to collosi would have everything spiral out of control really quickly.
On September 17 2012 12:33 Cloak wrote: What about Broodlords? They're even more A-move and less interesting to watch. They're like the least micro'd unit ever. Let's remove the Broodlord too. If we're going to start the a-move witch hunt, let's remove all those other units too that have very basic micro capabilities.
I have to say, I've always wondered about this to. BL require by far the least amount of micro of every unit, but yet it is collosi that people complain as being too a-move friendly. I think people tend to lose more often to collosi because they don't produce enough corruptors/vikings more often then they do from BLs, so they whine more about that unit. And at the end of the day, this thread is a balance whine. Those polls on the first page are obviously biased being the thread title implies the collosi is the major problem.
The Broodlord is a siege unit with low mobility. And if you 1A broodlords at a protoss with a mothership, you are going to lose. They still aren't that exciting as a unit, but they also aren't as boring as a Colossus.
Interestingly enough, if you 1A colossi against a protoss with a mothership, and they get vortexed, you are going to lose as well. Just like BLs, and any siege unit for that matter, you need to have a good spread or you risk getting them all killed off by the opponents splash units. And if any of your siege units get caught in front of your army, your expensive units will die. For that matter, colossi function extremely similar to BLs. What exactly is it that makes colossi more boring than BLs?
Nothing. Both units are fine. People don't give the Broodlord as much shit because: The Broodlord is very similar to the Guardian The Guardian is a Broodwar unit Everything that was in Broodwar must not be critizised
The Colossus is not similar to a Broodwar unit A new units mean that SC2 isn't Broodwar with better graphics Therefore give the Colossus shit
The Broodlord is hard to get and very slow with a unique attack, this makes it interesting IMO. Power vs weaknesses
The Colossus doesn't have mobility problems and this makes it just another death ball unit but without to much room for crazy micro. For me, it just isn't exciting...yet all other Protoss units seem to gravitate around it, and this is not the case with the Broodlord.
In general, my problem with the Colossus is that there isn't a lot of stuff a pro can do with it that a silver player can not. This plus it's commonality make it a boring unit. Very low skill cap if you will. For such a big unit that plays such an important role, you would expect to get all excited when they hit the field in a pro game, but that's never the case.
You don't have to tell me why the Broodlord is cool, I like Broodlords and Colossi.
And yeah, the Colossus isn't a supermicro intense unit, but I don't see the problem with it. Like siege tanks, the interesting part about Colossus isn't that the unit itself is hard to use, it's the way it influences the strategies of players and the units they use, that make it exciting. Just look at stuff like: viking vs Colossus and how often games become tense because a Protoss has to expose his colossi in a retreat (I'm hoping for something similar in PvP with the Tempest). Or fungal/tanks/colossi vs colossi, when standing over your own units backfires. And then just the simple strategic use of Colossus. When to implement how many. People just lose because they cannot walk the thin line that is colossuscount (too many and you lose to the airforces, too few and you can't get the right effect) Colossus/Immortal play is one of the only things that seems to give Protoss strategical depth, while anything else comes down to outmassing your opponent with gateway units.
That being said, I do agree that the colossus could be improved with some small tweaks to increase it's micropotential. (faster turning, instant damage that allows you to break the animiation and move the colossus, and then some small tweaks to it's stats, like a small damage and health nerf)
I guess the best fix would be to make it attack with a beam starting at the colossus feet and moving away in a straight line (think lurkers), so that it can be dodged (potentially breaks the death-ball and encourages flanking with colossus, makes the colossus less effective in big death-balls, and more of a mid-game unit that forces a lot of micro and has to be microed itself). Also increase damage to 55, so that the colossus can one-shoot marines and workers, but decrease its firing rate (makes colossus-prism drops interesting and micro-intensive).
On September 17 2012 19:26 Alex1Sun wrote: I guess the best fix would be to make it attack with a beam starting at the colossus feet and moving away in a straight line (think lurkers), so that it can be dodged (potentially breaks the death-ball and encourages flanking with colossus, makes the colossus less effective in big death-balls, and more of a mid-game unit that forces a lot of micro and has to be microed itself). Also increase damage to 55, so that the colossus can one-shoot marines and workers, but decrease its firing rate (makes colossus-prism drops interesting and micro-intensive).
The Colossus used to have high damage/high cooldown, but Blizzard changed it for who knows what reason.
The problem with the colossus its not only his micro efficiency, because the colossus rules the midgame, and they're needed not an option, and are such a bad unit with a lot of drawbacks without bring anything really strong or interesting. Look after 2 years of metagame what colossi brings to protoss,in every match-up....
The problem of this topic is... there's no way to modify the colossus without loose the colossus, it will be an another unit, and for sc2 the colossus its iconic in some way, so hard to remove for blizzard, and blizzard doesnt take new units from the ideas of the community..
Frankly, from a protoss perspective, i will be fine without any huge composition change in hots, if they fix the stargate path and replace the colossus.. but for now, they're in a lot of troubles with warhound, carriers, etc etc..
On September 17 2012 19:26 Alex1Sun wrote: I guess the best fix would be to make it attack with a beam starting at the colossus feet and moving away in a straight line (think lurkers), so that it can be dodged (potentially breaks the death-ball and encourages flanking with colossus, makes the colossus less effective in big death-balls, and more of a mid-game unit that forces a lot of micro and has to be microed itself). Also increase damage to 55, so that the colossus can one-shoot marines and workers, but decrease its firing rate (makes colossus-prism drops interesting and micro-intensive).
The Colossus used to have high damage/high cooldown, but Blizzard changed it for who knows what reason.
The same reason wyh every other splash unit got changed and nerfed: If you do a lot of damage with the first volley, it doesn't matter that your dps is the same or slightly lower, because you kill so much stuff so early on in the battle, that you simply receive way less damage and therefore the unit is more powerful.
It makes a huge difference, whether after the first Colossus shots you have 40units left or 30units left. Also it increases the micropotential against Colossus armies, as poking is not as deadly for you.
On September 17 2012 19:26 Alex1Sun wrote: I guess the best fix would be to make it attack with a beam starting at the colossus feet and moving away in a straight line (think lurkers), so that it can be dodged (potentially breaks the death-ball and encourages flanking with colossus, makes the colossus less effective in big death-balls, and more of a mid-game unit that forces a lot of micro and has to be microed itself). Also increase damage to 55, so that the colossus can one-shoot marines and workers, but decrease its firing rate (makes colossus-prism drops interesting and micro-intensive).
The Colossus used to have high damage/high cooldown, but Blizzard changed it for who knows what reason.
The same reason wyh every other splash unit got changed and nerfed: If you do a lot of damage with the first volley, it doesn't matter that your dps is the same or slightly lower, because you kill so much stuff so early on in the battle, that you simply receive way less damage and therefore the unit is more powerful.
It makes a huge difference, whether after the first Colossus shots you have 40units left or 30units left. Also it increases the micropotential against Colossus armies, as poking is not as deadly for you.
I Agree. This is why if you want to decrease attack speed and increase damage, it's better to combine it with a different (more micro intensive for colossus) and semi-dogdable (more micro-intensive for colossus opponents) attack pattern.
On September 17 2012 11:52 Serp87 wrote: how about making its attacks damage friendly units, this might seems like a small change but it will force the protoss moving his collosi around to avoid killing its own zealots , in exchange they could remove its AA vulnerability (the collosi would have to move foward to hit infront of the zealots) , also its realy small change not realy changing any match up , just make it abit more micro intesnive unit while taking advantage its" walking over units " mechanism
Again you are posting this assuming colossi in it's current state are IMBALANCED. And nobody at high level play or any of blizzards designer feel like the unit is imbalanced. I can understand people wanting it to be more interesting/fun to watch. But your suggestion is an absolute nerf (suggesting imbalance with the unit.) not only that but a terrible terrible nerf. You can't make a unit like that do splash damage to their own units. Then in PvP you'd blink on top of your opponents army, and in any battle involving zealots you'll have to focus fire with EVERY SINGLE colossus in order to not splash your zealots. Which would invariably cause you to just roll over and die for overkilling with colossus on top of overextending them to not hit the front lines the zealots are attacking.
Like I said again. The colossus is not considered imbalanced, just considered BORING. There is a BIG BIG difference. Which is why I said in my previous post that this whole thread I'm surprised isn't closed. Every change the OP suggested is a nerf (suggesting imbalance, and the OP balance whining) on top of the name "How to FIX the colossus". Clearly a balance whine thread.
1) I said that in exchange of its friendly fire attack it wont be considered as air unit anymore, meaning you need to get close to the colossus to kill it, making it more micro intensive ( moving it around in the deathball) 2)"battle involving zealots you'll have to focus fire with EVERY SINGLE colossus in order to not splash your zealots" - this will make the colossus from A-move unit to micro intensive unit (and tbh there isnt much units require micro for protoss in a deathball) = aka more fun to watch = more rewarding for better players. not to mantion in most cases there isnt so many colossus (2-6).
On September 17 2012 11:52 Serp87 wrote: how about making its attacks damage friendly units, this might seems like a small change but it will force the protoss moving his collosi around to avoid killing its own zealots , in exchange they could remove its AA vulnerability (the collosi would have to move foward to hit infront of the zealots) , also its realy small change not realy changing any match up , just make it abit more micro intesnive unit while taking advantage its" walking over units " mechanism
Again you are posting this assuming colossi in it's current state are IMBALANCED. And nobody at high level play or any of blizzards designer feel like the unit is imbalanced. I can understand people wanting it to be more interesting/fun to watch. But your suggestion is an absolute nerf (suggesting imbalance with the unit.) not only that but a terrible terrible nerf. You can't make a unit like that do splash damage to their own units. Then in PvP you'd blink on top of your opponents army, and in any battle involving zealots you'll have to focus fire with EVERY SINGLE colossus in order to not splash your zealots. Which would invariably cause you to just roll over and die for overkilling with colossus on top of overextending them to not hit the front lines the zealots are attacking.
Like I said again. The colossus is not considered imbalanced, just considered BORING. There is a BIG BIG difference. Which is why I said in my previous post that this whole thread I'm surprised isn't closed. Every change the OP suggested is a nerf (suggesting imbalance, and the OP balance whining) on top of the name "How to FIX the colossus". Clearly a balance whine thread.
1) I said that in exchange of its friendly fire attack it wont be considered as air unit anymore, meaning you need to get close to the colossus to kill it, making it more micro intensive ( moving it around in the deathball) 2)"battle involving zealots you'll have to focus fire with EVERY SINGLE colossus in order to not splash your zealots" - this will make the colossus from A-move unit to micro intensive unit (and tbh there isnt much units require micro for protoss in a deathball) = aka more fun to watch = more rewarding for better players. not to mantion in most cases there isnt so many colossus (2-6).
Its like terrans need to focus fire with tanks.
so basically collosus would get a superhuge buff in zvp where zealots arent really used and stalker/sentry/collosus push would get even better...
just make it siege or slower and leave the stats as is. easiest thing ever to try in the beta and just patch it back if it doesnt work out.
Make the Extended Thermal Lance a siege upgrade. This will make it more taxing to use and reduce the deathball syndrome.
edit: leave everything else as is, ie you can still walk it, but not with extended range which will only be available when in siege mode thus making it behave similar to siege tanks.
On September 15 2012 17:34 dynwar7 wrote: Be careful what you wish for. If blizzard remove colossi, most Protoss will truly be so mad since they are so used to a moving such a strong unit.
Are you seriously asking blizz to remove colossi? Think more thoroughly please...
Yes, I'm asking Blizzard to fix Colossi and Winfestors. They are broken units and need to be removed. Protoss get upset? Who says we can't upset the Protoss?
The easiest way would be to make colossi only able to target the ground (and not units themselves). Make it look like a death=star charge-up (so it has attack delay) and only can attack that ground spot until commanded otherwise. Something similar to how the mothership attack looks and works, but in a small spray area as current. Friendly fire (reduced or full) optional.
Pro: Requires micro to get any/largest effectiveness without the micro being too hard. Opponent has ability to micro out of the way of additional shots, as toss would have to guess where you're going next.
Con: uhh ... can't think of any outside of what currently plagues colossi.
On September 18 2012 01:56 Spinoza wrote: Make the Extended Thermal Lance a siege upgrade. This will make it more taxing to use and reduce the deathball syndrome.
edit: leave everything else as is, ie you can still walk it, but not with extended range which will only be available when in siege mode thus making it behave similar to siege tanks.
I wish people could just understand one thing, as what I've said is on the last like 3 pages. THE COLOSSUS IS NOT IMBALANCED. What you are proposing is a nerf, and ultimately you are saying that IT IS IMBALANCED. This is not the case and as such no nerfs are required. Besides your suggestion is absolutely terrible, colossus would not be effective against Vikings without being behind your army, and this requires CONSTANT movement of trying to pull Vikings in, micro your hurt colossi to save them, etc. Same goes for ZvP. Without constantly being mobile. On creep your going to get decimated by the speed of the Zerg army.
As for the other guys suggestion about making them not targetable by air in exchange for another nerf, Vikings were designed around colossus specifically. If you want to have them also rework Vikings, and possibly even corruptors. Then ultimately after all the compensation was made it would still be a nerf. This is why this thread is so damn stupid, everyone (including the OP) is just using their bias against colossi to suggest some nerfs that aren't justified and would require a complete rework of other mechanics to even have them make sense even if the nerf WAS justifiable. Please guys like I said the colossus is not imbalanced, people consider it BORING. There is a very huge difference between these 2 things. So if you want any of your suggestions to be taken seriously, then make it a change that isnt a nerf. But rather simply a change (but keep in mind for it to make sense it can't conflict with other units balance and design). Oh wait, the colossus is so deeply imbedded in design that that's virtually impossible. See why this is going no where?
On September 18 2012 01:56 Spinoza wrote: Make the Extended Thermal Lance a siege upgrade. This will make it more taxing to use and reduce the deathball syndrome.
edit: leave everything else as is, ie you can still walk it, but not with extended range which will only be available when in siege mode thus making it behave similar to siege tanks.
I wish people could just understand one thing, as what I've said is on the last like 3 pages. THE COLOSSUS IS NOT IMBALANCED. What you are proposing is a nerf, and ultimately you are saying that IT IS IMBALANCED. This is not the case and as such no nerfs are required. Besides your suggestion is absolutely terrible, colossus would not be effective against Vikings without being behind your army, and this requires CONSTANT movement of trying to pull Vikings in, micro your hurt colossi to save them, etc. Same goes for ZvP. Without constantly being mobile. On creep your going to get decimated by the speed of the Zerg army.
As for the other guys suggestion about making them not targetable by air in exchange for another nerf, Vikings were designed around colossus specifically. If you want to have them also rework Vikings, and possibly even corruptors. Then ultimately after all the compensation was made it would still be a nerf. This is why this thread is so damn stupid, everyone (including the OP) is just using their bias against colossi to suggest some nerfs that aren't justified and would require a complete rework of other mechanics to even have them make sense even if the nerf WAS justifiable. Please guys like I said the colossus is not imbalanced, people consider it BORING. There is a very huge difference between these 2 things. So if you want any of your suggestions to be taken seriously, then make it a change that isnt a nerf. But rather simply a change (but keep in mind for it to make sense it can't conflict with other units balance and design). Oh wait, the colossus is so deeply imbedded in design that that's virtually impossible. See why this is going no where?
I couldnt agree more. You can propose little tweaks to the colossus (more micro to keep it alive in a trade off for some health or small tweaks to how it exactly attacks, like more damage per shot less dps) but fundamentally the colossus will and [u]should[\u] stay the same.
colossus is fine and i like it changing it in any way other than buff would hurt my protoss heart, most hated unit and other polls are all zerg and terran votes
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.
Or if the colossus did splash like a big X on the ground. Only the center portion of bad guys would take damage from both beams, and most of the units lining up will stand safely between the two lines. You'd have to move the colossus a bit to the side to make it shoot more targets.
This is how you fix the colossus.
Been saying this one forever. It deserves to be repeated.
On September 18 2012 03:28 Berailfor wrote: As for the other guys suggestion about making them not targetable by air in exchange for another nerf, Vikings were designed around colossus specifically. If you want to have them also rework Vikings, and possibly even corruptors. Then ultimately after all the compensation was made it would still be a nerf. This is why this thread is so damn stupid, everyone (including the OP) is just using their bias against colossi to suggest some nerfs that aren't justified and would require a complete rework of other mechanics to even have them make sense even if the nerf WAS justifiable. Please guys like I said the colossus is not imbalanced, people consider it BORING. There is a very huge difference between these 2 things. So if you want any of your suggestions to be taken seriously, then make it a change that isnt a nerf. But rather simply a change (but keep in mind for it to make sense it can't conflict with other units balance and design). Oh wait, the colossus is so deeply imbedded in design that that's virtually impossible. See why this is going no where?
But this is EXACTLY the problem. Because the other races ANTI-AIR is designed around killing the colossus, the entire protoss armada is useless!
Vikings and corruptors should be balanced around the rest of the air units in the game, not around killing the colossus.
I don't consider the colossus imba. I don't think it inheritly needs a nerf. I just want sky-toss to be a viable proposition and it's not because of the colossus.
How about adding a blind angle for their attack so that units that get close to it cannot be attacked? Same thing as with Siege Tank only perhaps even more so. Their ability to shoot underneath themselves is silly anyways.
EDIT: this might actually fix PvP too as zealots would become much more efficient versus colossi.
On September 18 2012 12:06 Kharnage wrote: But this is EXACTLY the problem. Because the other races ANTI-AIR is designed around killing the colossus, the entire protoss armada is useless!
Vikings and corruptors should be balanced around the rest of the air units in the game, not around killing the colossus.
I don't consider the colossus imba. I don't think it inheritly needs a nerf. I just want sky-toss to be a viable proposition and it's not because of the colossus.
True enough. Colossus is THE reason why toss air sucks because T/Z's air have to counter colossus.
I'm shocked terrans are okay with the idea of the reaver re-appearing. Did you never see BW videos showing one scarab one-shot 8 hydras? If you ball up your units for one second, a scarab will one-shot 20 marines. I'd just bring two warp prisms with reavers and drop them flanking your army... Believe me, I'd love using the reaver...
I can see it now... drop two reavers in your mineral line from a speed prism... kill every single SCV in two volleys... move on to your next base...
Or, bring my first reaver to break your bunker + expansion... you can't repair since a single scarab will one-shot all repairing SCVs, in addition to doing > 100 damage to the bunker... You can't run out to attack me, since you'll lose a dozen units to the first scarab before reaching me...
Or, siege your planetary with a couple of reavers... You can't repair without losing all of your SCVs in a volley or two...
On September 18 2012 13:01 trbot wrote: I'm shocked terrans are okay with the idea of the reaver re-appearing. Did you never see BW videos showing one scarab one-shot 8 hydras? If you ball up your units for one second, a scarab will one-shot 20 marines. I'd just bring two warp prisms with reavers and drop them flanking your army... Believe me, I'd love using the reaver...
The Reaver would be nerfed to oblivion because of the new pathing engine.
On September 18 2012 13:01 trbot wrote: I'm shocked terrans are okay with the idea of the reaver re-appearing. Did you never see BW videos showing one scarab one-shot 8 hydras? If you ball up your units for one second, a scarab will one-shot 20 marines. I'd just bring two warp prisms with reavers and drop them flanking your army... Believe me, I'd love using the reaver...
The Reaver would be nerfed to oblivion because of the new pathing engine.
It'll have to be strong enough to replace the colossus, or protoss players will fail in PvT. That tells me it'll still have to do serious burst damage, since its rate of fire is substantially lower than the colossus'... Either way it'll have to be as potent a threat as the colossus, and I won't even have to worry about it being vulnerable to air...
You have to admit that it's also -far- more amenable to worker harrass, by design.
I voted for Collosus because it replaced the reaver which was an extremely fun unit to use. Not because of the overly exaggerated problems people bring up.
On September 18 2012 03:28 Berailfor wrote: As for the other guys suggestion about making them not targetable by air in exchange for another nerf, Vikings were designed around colossus specifically. If you want to have them also rework Vikings, and possibly even corruptors. Then ultimately after all the compensation was made it would still be a nerf.
And you don't think there will be a compensation on Stargate? As it is I never use Stargate against Terrans and rarely against Zerg. Sure Colossus is deeply rooted in core balance currently, and I do not believe a drastic change just to make the unit more "exciting" is a good idea.
But I'd like to think there will be a way to gradually change the Colossus' role by the time LotV hits. It's so tedious to having to rely upon the damn thing just to get out of my base.
On September 18 2012 03:28 Berailfor wrote: As for the other guys suggestion about making them not targetable by air in exchange for another nerf, Vikings were designed around colossus specifically. If you want to have them also rework Vikings, and possibly even corruptors. Then ultimately after all the compensation was made it would still be a nerf.
And you don't think there will be a compensation on Stargate? As it is I never use Stargate against Terrans and rarely against Zerg. Sure Colossus is deeply rooted in core balance currently, and I do not believe a drastic change just to make the unit more "exciting" is a good idea.
But I'd like to think there will be a way to gradually change the Colossus' role by the time LotV hits. It's so tedious to having to rely upon the damn thing just to get out of my base.
That's why i'm opening with storm
But it's stupid that protoss can't tech switch from robo to stargate, even by suprise the way they can from robo to templar tech. Every terran should immediately build a ghost acadamy as soon as they have 5 vikings because it's the only place protoss have left to go.
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.
Or if the colossus did splash like a big X on the ground. Only the center portion of bad guys would take damage from both beams, and most of the units lining up will stand safely between the two lines. You'd have to move the colossus a bit to the side to make it shoot more targets.
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.
Or if the colossus did splash like a big X on the ground. Only the center portion of bad guys would take damage from both beams, and most of the units lining up will stand safely between the two lines. You'd have to move the colossus a bit to the side to make it shoot more targets.
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.
Or if the colossus did splash like a big X on the ground. Only the center portion of bad guys would take damage from both beams, and most of the units lining up will stand safely between the two lines. You'd have to move the colossus a bit to the side to make it shoot more targets.
This is how you fix the colossus.
I agree! This sound fantastic!
LOL... you guys do realize what happens when you break up the deathball, right? Colossi get instantly sniped, and you lose instantly. The problem is the splash damage, and how gateway units have to be nerfed to hell so that when you add that splash in they're not extremely OP.
Do you really think you'll be able to keep your colossi alive when you have to move them into the flanks of your main army to do damage? Not gonna happen...
On September 18 2012 03:28 Berailfor wrote: As for the other guys suggestion about making them not targetable by air in exchange for another nerf, Vikings were designed around colossus specifically. If you want to have them also rework Vikings, and possibly even corruptors. Then ultimately after all the compensation was made it would still be a nerf. This is why this thread is so damn stupid, everyone (including the OP) is just using their bias against colossi to suggest some nerfs that aren't justified and would require a complete rework of other mechanics to even have them make sense even if the nerf WAS justifiable. Please guys like I said the colossus is not imbalanced, people consider it BORING. There is a very huge difference between these 2 things. So if you want any of your suggestions to be taken seriously, then make it a change that isnt a nerf. But rather simply a change (but keep in mind for it to make sense it can't conflict with other units balance and design). Oh wait, the colossus is so deeply imbedded in design that that's virtually impossible. See why this is going no where?
But this is EXACTLY the problem. Because the other races ANTI-AIR is designed around killing the colossus, the entire protoss armada is useless!
Vikings and corruptors should be balanced around the rest of the air units in the game, not around killing the colossus.
I don't consider the colossus imba. I don't think it inheritly needs a nerf. I just want sky-toss to be a viable proposition and it's not because of the colossus.
I disagree. If you open Stargate, you can have an air army before Vikings or Corruptors should be available. And you can at least beat Corruptors/Mutalisks in an air to air battle. The problem is not at all, that the other races air is superior. The problem is that Terran just laughs about any form of airball that does not contain 10+ capital ships or 20+ supermobile ground+air attackers, because you know, pressing 'T' is a really good skill to have against air. And on the other side we have zerg, where you can go air against early on, but what do you do if zerg goes air? Build more air? Yeah... look at your keyboard and then just under 'T' you will find 'F'. Zergs really love if you build more air...
Oracle Phase Shield hopefully solves the fungal problem, Mech play vs Protoss hopefully gives Protoss the chance to play Stargate against Terran once in a while, though against bio... let's put it this way, due to interceptors, Carriers are the only capital ship that does lose a maxed engagement against a mineral only unit and I don't think the tempest will do any better (might be wrong though!)
--> In all those euqtions, the Colossus doesn't play a role. It only plays a role, if you go Colossus, and then want to switch into Stargate and in that situations, I guess it mostly comes down to how fast can you really switch... If you could pump 4 Carriers at a time, the 5 Corruptors that haven't been morphed into Broodlords (yet) and the 10vikings that need to focus the Colossi won't be enough.
On September 18 2012 13:01 trbot wrote: I'm shocked terrans are okay with the idea of the reaver re-appearing. Did you never see BW videos showing one scarab one-shot 8 hydras? If you ball up your units for one second, a scarab will one-shot 20 marines. I'd just bring two warp prisms with reavers and drop them flanking your army... Believe me, I'd love using the reaver...
I can see it now... drop two reavers in your mineral line from a speed prism... kill every single SCV in two volleys... move on to your next base...
Or, bring my first reaver to break your bunker + expansion... you can't repair since a single scarab will one-shot all repairing SCVs, in addition to doing > 100 damage to the bunker... You can't run out to attack me, since you'll lose a dozen units to the first scarab before reaching me...
Or, siege your planetary with a couple of reavers... You can't repair without losing all of your SCVs in a volley or two...
yeah, that's the whole point why the reaver didn't make it. Too powerful in the SC2 enviroment. Of course you could nerf it down to 35damage, 1.0radius AoE with 4sec cooldown, or you could do 70damage with hardly any AoE. What that thing would have in common with a reaver would be a different question...
How about making a collosus shoot like a reaver? This covers so much of the problems with the colosus, as in adding more micro(target firing),making protoss more fun, having a unit that can finally be used effectivily again for worker harrass (every protoss's dream from BW). It would not completely change the whole balance of the game cuz still countered the same way, wouldn't be stealing a unit completely (the reaver ofc) from BW (one of blizzards concerns). It would still be nooby friendly, would be more exciting to watch and would also create so much hype for HOTS having a reaver-like unit back. Please keep in mind that obviously the dmg, atk speed etc. would have to be tweaked to be more balanced. but I think it could be done.
I think the best way would be to remove the colossus altogether and replace it with another unit or two.
That said, maybe a change of the colossus back to a sort of attack like in the alpha(⁇) where it was kinda like a void ray's attack. It could be single target damage with short-range AoE that deals bonus damage vs light (or not)
In addition or instead (not quite sure which), the colossus could also be slower. It's cliff scaling makes it very mobile even if it's slower than a standard unit, and it's high health and shields still makes it very hard to kill due to running away. This might not be necessary though considering HotS's viper or terran's new unit.
On September 18 2012 17:05 Jsmith9292 wrote: How about making a collosus shoot like a reaver?
While it'd probably be nice, it wouldn't make any damn sense at all. Might as well just replace the colossus with a modified reaver.
Personally on the wacky side of ideas, I thought that a carrier that shoots kamikaze interceptors would be really cool. It would probably make carriers ridiculous and overpowered if the interceptors could attack regularly too though. Maybe a protoss would have to choose one type of carrier or another (and not able to change back, at least quickly)
On September 17 2012 07:47 Tritanis wrote: I don't know, Colossus is supposed to be a support unit, yet it does the most dps in the protoss army while the gateway units act like a meatshield. Something is wrong there, isn't it?
What if, instead of the pure dps machine, like the current colossus is now, Protoss had a true support unit built from the robo bay? Here is a little idea that I came up with a moment ago. =============================================== Here's a pic so my post will draw more attention! Of course the unit should look more protoss-y
Let's call the unit a Ravager, I know, lame name, whatever.
I don't really know if it should be attackable from both air and ground or what it's movement speed should be - but probably not faster than the colossus so microing it with warp prisms would be rewarding.
The main point is that it would shoot a wide beam of energy in a straight line that would deal minimal damage and apply a stacking debuff to every enemy unit on its path. The units affected by the debuff would receive increased damage for a short amount of time - be it a percentage increase or X damage per hit increase like Devourer in brood war did.
The unit could possibly have an ability that would shot a beam dealing a lot more damage, but firing it would cost resources and require a channel time before the improved beam is shot.
So, in a nutshell, it's a slow hellion with pathetic-dps, siege-range beam attack that makes units affected more vulnerable. It doesn't do much damage on its own, but combined with stalkers and zealots it is a deadly threat.
Here are some example stats that will probably be heavily op or up: -hp, shields, armor, resource cost and build time the same as colossus -attack damage: 12(+1) -attack range: 10 -beam width: 1 (hellion's is 0.15 and storm's aoe is 1.5) -cooldown: 2 seconds -projectile speed: let's say a half of the tempest's one, so you can perhaps use blink micro or dodge it with stimmed bio -every attack applies a debuff that increases damage taken by 1 per stack, stacks 3 times.
ability overcharge: costs 75 minerals, 6 seconds channeling time before fire, beam width and range the same as in Ravager's normal attack deals 60 damage + 80 vs armored and buildings - you can wreck some serious havoc in the worker line or quickly kill defensive buildings; the enemy can see the direction where the beam will travel, so it won't be so easy to kill workers with it, unless you catch the enemy by surprise.
Here you go, pure support 'colossus'! Any feedback?
Funny thing. This is a similar idea I had had for a around 2 years on how to make the collosus interesting.
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.
Or if the colossus did splash like a big X on the ground. Only the center portion of bad guys would take damage from both beams, and most of the units lining up will stand safely between the two lines. You'd have to move the colossus a bit to the side to make it shoot more targets.
This is how you fix the colossus.
I disagree to some of your points. It's speed and firing rate are awkward and make it nasty to micro without a shuttle/warp prism. If you could warp prism micro and get the same results as a reaver, then that would be fun. But it doesn't work; why? And why is it just not fun to micro?
- colossus's damage is so low, it's not worth it to micro 1 or 2 of them compared to microing one or two reavers. It's better to a move, or a move and focus fire or stutter step back or whatever. It's better to have a lot of them all a moving, rather than a couple tactically placed ones. - the colossus is so big, it bumps up against other colossis and makes PvP a real nightmare when you have mass colossus wars. It's no fun at all. - stutter step with colossi is just kinda annoying. Stutter step with terran bio is really fun. I think it's the speed and damage output and size of the units/ease of getting them to do what you want them to do.
So basically, driving a colossus is like driving a bus. Driving a clump of stimmed marines and marauders is like driving a porsche. One is a pain, one is a blast.
What can be done to the colossus to make it more fun?
- More damage with microed well. - Less damage when a-moved. - More agile (smaller colossion box with other colossi?). Or make it do enough damage so you can warp prism micro them to good effect. - INSTANT GRATIFICATION. This is the biggest missing piece the more I think of it. Reavers give instant gratification. Stimmed bio does as well. The colossus just slowly chips away at things unless you have 5+ of them. - PATHING. They are the one unit in SC2 that never does what you tell it to do consistently.
I dunno, but it would be so cool to get a more fun colossus. It has potential.
Make Colossi push gateway units around them and require them to have at least a minimal space. I dont mean there should be no unit inbetween their legs ... they should create a "ripple" in the ground units instead of having zero effect.
Colossus gain an ability to "sit down" (and "stand up" too, of course). While in that position, Colossus cannot move, lose a little of attack range but Colossus cannot be targeted by anti-air attacks.
Why is there no "replace the coloss with a micro friendly unit" option in the poll?
Anyways thats what I'd do, you can't really fix it without removing the fact that air units are the only real counter thingy, that has ruined late game protoss air throughout wol, and imo if you gonna remove that you might as well scrap the entire unit. There is obviously something about the reaver that made blizz remove it (given there are alpha screenshots/videos of the reaver in star 2), though I fear similiar to the tank nerf that was just because it was used on super small map. I highly doubt they'll bring back the reaver so imo they should just replace by a completly new robo unit. One that has a solid ground counter to it from every race, does a lot of damage if microd well and sucks really badly if not done so.
Also if terran mechs again vP and since Zerg has viper I really don't see how reaver would too bad in star 2.
On September 19 2012 03:07 Lorch wrote: Why is there no "replace the coloss with a micro friendly unit" option in the poll?
Anyways thats what I'd do, you can't really fix it without removing the fact that air units are the only real counter thingy, that has ruined late game protoss air throughout wol, and imo if you gonna remove that you might as well scrap the entire unit. There is obviously something about the reaver that made blizz remove it (given there are alpha screenshots/videos of the reaver in star 2), though I fear similiar to the tank nerf that was just because it was used on super small map. I highly doubt they'll bring back the reaver so imo they should just replace by a completly new robo unit. One that has a solid ground counter to it from every race, does a lot of damage if microd well and sucks really badly if not done so.
Also if terran mechs again vP and since Zerg has viper I really don't see how reaver would too bad in star 2.
Yeah, I was going to say; the most viable option would be to simply remove the unit and replace it with something else. Maybe blizzard should have thought of this instead of removing the carrier.
What do we hate about the Colossus? - Lacking micro possibilities on Attacker's side - Lacking micro possibilities on Defender's side - Lacking Excitement on spectators side - boring A-move unit
How does it work right now? - Two beams of AOE, from the side to the middle. Very fast shot animation, no option for defender to micro out of it, because its attack is too fast. - Positioning not important, because it is best when the Colossus is right behind your army, flanking doesn't bring benefit because of how the AOE is right now. - targeting not important, because when you a-move and colossus is behind your army and in front of opponent's army, it's the best outcome
How to fix: Attack undergoes the following change:
Attack Phase 1: After a 1 second "preparation" where it turns its head to the target, the Colossus shoots an almost instant fucking powerful AOE shot in a straight line to the target that wreaks havoc on all affected units in the way Attack Phase 2 Beam divides into two beams that go slowly horizontally from the middle to the sides, about the same AOE size that it has right now (but over the time of ~2,5 seconds). Attack is ofc much weaker than Phase 1 and weaker than Colossus attack as it is right now.
This fixes everything. Yes. Everything.
Why? Asshole explain. Pics or it didn't happen.
Alright, step by step:
1) Positioning Suddenly, positioning has become a lot more important. Because the enemy's army will stand in a concave in front of yours, the powerful AOE shot will not have its maximum efficiancy if you shoot it vertically in the concave, but horizontally from the flank.
2) Micro on Attacker's side
2.1) Targeting Targeting? Why the fuck is targeting important now!? Look: If you A-move your colossus now, it will target the closest enemy unit to it. That means: The extremely bad ass fucking Phase 1 AOE shot will hit only the unit it has targeted and maybe 2 of its side neighbour units because it will auto-target the closest one. Phase 2 AOE shot will ofc hit more units horizontally.
Awesome micro required for targeting: The most effective shot you can do with your new Colossus is when you flank and target a unit in the concave that is in max range. If you estimate the perfect distance in range Phase 1 AOE shot is raping enemy units in a range 9 line. If you target a unit that is out of range, Colossus -as any other unit- has to walk in distance and can be attacked on its way till it is in range. So attacker has to make good decisions, safe shot range ~7 or risk shot range 9? If you don't flank but decide to leave your Colossus safe behind your army, targeting an enemy unit that is in the back of the concave will still lead to a very useful shot, because the units in front of the target will take lots of damage as well.
2.2) Positioning As explained above, the best way to use your new colossus is not having it behind your army, but to flank. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't deal any damage when not microed. Phase 2 AOE will deal its damage, but way less than skillfully used. If flanking is too risky, leave it behind your army but manually target a unit that is in the back of the concave to get a good shot.
3) Micro for defenders Enemy Colossus moves it head. Fuck. There's probalby not much time to react to the Phase1 shot, but you do have enough time to run your units out of the way for the Phase 2 AOE. Its slow.
4) Spectators Well, do I really have to explain how awesome it is for spectators if the Colossus worked like this!? Yes? i'm not gonna waste energy on writing that.
On September 19 2012 02:35 ZeroClick wrote: My suggestion:
Colossus gain an ability to "sit down" (and "stand up" too, of course). While in that position, Colossus cannot move, lose a little of attack range but Colossus cannot be targeted by anti-air attacks.
On September 19 2012 06:04 Leviance wrote: Colossus fix
What do we hate about the Colossus? - Lacking micro possibilities on Attacker's side - Lacking micro possibilities on Defender's side - Lacking Excitement on spectators side - boring A-move unit
How does it work right now? - Two beams of AOE, from the side to the middle. Very fast shot animation, no option for defender to micro out of it, because its attack is too fast. - Positioning not important, because it is best when the Colossus is right behind your army, flanking doesn't bring benefit because of how the AOE is right now. - targeting not important, because when you a-move and colossus is behind your army and in front of opponent's army, it's the best outcome
How to fix: Attack undergoes the following change:
Attack Phase 1: After a 1 second "preparation" where it turns its head to the target, the Colossus shoots an almost instant fucking powerful AOE shot in a straight line to the target that wreaks havoc on all affected units in the way Attack Phase 2 Beam divides into two beams that go slowly horizontally from the middle to the sides, about the same AOE size that it has right now (but over the time of ~2,5 seconds). Attack is ofc much weaker than Phase 1 and weaker than Colossus attack as it is right now.
This fixes everything. Yes. Everything.
Why? Asshole explain. Pics or it didn't happen.
Alright, step by step:
1) Positioning Suddenly, positioning has become a lot more important. Because the enemy's army will stand in a concave in front of yours, the powerful AOE shot will not have its maximum efficiancy if you shoot it vertically in the concave, but horizontally from the flank.
2) Micro on Attacker's side
2.1) Targeting Targeting? Why the fuck is targeting important now!? Look: If you A-move your colossus now, it will target the closest enemy unit to it. That means: The extremely bad ass fucking Phase 1 AOE shot will hit only the unit it has targeted and maybe 2 of its side neighbour units because it will auto-target the closest one. Phase 2 AOE shot will ofc hit more units horizontally.
Awesome micro required for targeting: The most effective shot you can do with your new Colossus is when you flank and target a unit in the concave that is in max range. If you estimate the perfect distance in range Phase 1 AOE shot is raping enemy units in a range 9 line. If you target a unit that is out of range, Colossus -as any other unit- has to walk in distance and can be attacked on its way till it is in range. So attacker has to make good decisions, safe shot range ~7 or risk shot range 9? If you don't flank but decide to leave your Colossus safe behind your army, targeting an enemy unit that is in the back of the concave will still lead to a very useful shot, because the units in front of the target will take lots of damage as well.
2.2) Positioning As explained above, the best way to use your new colossus is not having it behind your army, but to flank. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't deal any damage when not microed. Phase 2 AOE will deal its damage, but way less than skillfully used. If flanking is too risky, leave it behind your army but manually target a unit that is in the back of the concave to get a good shot.
3) Micro for defenders Enemy Colossus moves it head. Fuck. There's probalby not much time to react to the Phase1 shot, but you do have enough time to run your units out of the way for the Phase 2 AOE. Its slow.
4) Spectators Well, do I really have to explain how awesome it is for spectators if the Colossus worked like this!? Yes? i'm not gonna waste energy on writing that.
On September 19 2012 06:04 Leviance wrote: Colossus fix
What do we hate about the Colossus? - Lacking micro possibilities on Attacker's side - Lacking micro possibilities on Defender's side - Lacking Excitement on spectators side - boring A-move unit
How does it work right now? - Two beams of AOE, from the side to the middle. Very fast shot animation, no option for defender to micro out of it, because its attack is too fast. - Positioning not important, because it is best when the Colossus is right behind your army, flanking doesn't bring benefit because of how the AOE is right now. - targeting not important, because when you a-move and colossus is behind your army and in front of opponent's army, it's the best outcome
How to fix: Attack undergoes the following change:
Attack Phase 1: After a 1 second "preparation" where it turns its head to the target, the Colossus shoots an almost instant fucking powerful AOE shot in a straight line to the target that wreaks havoc on all affected units in the way Attack Phase 2 Beam divides into two beams that go slowly horizontally from the middle to the sides, about the same AOE size that it has right now (but over the time of ~2,5 seconds). Attack is ofc much weaker than Phase 1 and weaker than Colossus attack as it is right now.
This fixes everything. Yes. Everything.
Why? Asshole explain. Pics or it didn't happen.
Alright, step by step:
1) Positioning Suddenly, positioning has become a lot more important. Because the enemy's army will stand in a concave in front of yours, the powerful AOE shot will not have its maximum efficiancy if you shoot it vertically in the concave, but horizontally from the flank.
2) Micro on Attacker's side
2.1) Targeting Targeting? Why the fuck is targeting important now!? Look: If you A-move your colossus now, it will target the closest enemy unit to it. That means: The extremely bad ass fucking Phase 1 AOE shot will hit only the unit it has targeted and maybe 2 of its side neighbour units because it will auto-target the closest one. Phase 2 AOE shot will ofc hit more units horizontally.
Awesome micro required for targeting: The most effective shot you can do with your new Colossus is when you flank and target a unit in the concave that is in max range. If you estimate the perfect distance in range Phase 1 AOE shot is raping enemy units in a range 9 line. If you target a unit that is out of range, Colossus -as any other unit- has to walk in distance and can be attacked on its way till it is in range. So attacker has to make good decisions, safe shot range ~7 or risk shot range 9? If you don't flank but decide to leave your Colossus safe behind your army, targeting an enemy unit that is in the back of the concave will still lead to a very useful shot, because the units in front of the target will take lots of damage as well.
2.2) Positioning As explained above, the best way to use your new colossus is not having it behind your army, but to flank. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't deal any damage when not microed. Phase 2 AOE will deal its damage, but way less than skillfully used. If flanking is too risky, leave it behind your army but manually target a unit that is in the back of the concave to get a good shot.
3) Micro for defenders Enemy Colossus moves it head. Fuck. There's probalby not much time to react to the Phase1 shot, but you do have enough time to run your units out of the way for the Phase 2 AOE. Its slow.
4) Spectators Well, do I really have to explain how awesome it is for spectators if the Colossus worked like this!? Yes? i'm not gonna waste energy on writing that.
I appreciate the fact that you're trying, but flanking with a colossus versus terran is suicide. Stimbio just runs up and kills it instantly. Of course, if you don't have blink stalkers underneath it, vikings just flank your colo and pick it off, too.
In short:
if you don't have a pack of zealots under it, stimbio rapes it. if you don't have a pack of stalkers under it, vikings rape it.
On September 19 2012 06:04 Leviance wrote: Colossus fix
What do we hate about the Colossus? - Lacking micro possibilities on Attacker's side - Lacking micro possibilities on Defender's side - Lacking Excitement on spectators side - boring A-move unit
How does it work right now? - Two beams of AOE, from the side to the middle. Very fast shot animation, no option for defender to micro out of it, because its attack is too fast. - Positioning not important, because it is best when the Colossus is right behind your army, flanking doesn't bring benefit because of how the AOE is right now. - targeting not important, because when you a-move and colossus is behind your army and in front of opponent's army, it's the best outcome
How to fix: Attack undergoes the following change:
Attack Phase 1: After a 1 second "preparation" where it turns its head to the target, the Colossus shoots an almost instant fucking powerful AOE shot in a straight line to the target that wreaks havoc on all affected units in the way Attack Phase 2 Beam divides into two beams that go slowly horizontally from the middle to the sides, about the same AOE size that it has right now (but over the time of ~2,5 seconds). Attack is ofc much weaker than Phase 1 and weaker than Colossus attack as it is right now.
This fixes everything. Yes. Everything.
Why? Asshole explain. Pics or it didn't happen.
Alright, step by step:
1) Positioning Suddenly, positioning has become a lot more important. Because the enemy's army will stand in a concave in front of yours, the powerful AOE shot will not have its maximum efficiancy if you shoot it vertically in the concave, but horizontally from the flank.
2) Micro on Attacker's side
2.1) Targeting Targeting? Why the fuck is targeting important now!? Look: If you A-move your colossus now, it will target the closest enemy unit to it. That means: The extremely bad ass fucking Phase 1 AOE shot will hit only the unit it has targeted and maybe 2 of its side neighbour units because it will auto-target the closest one. Phase 2 AOE shot will ofc hit more units horizontally.
Awesome micro required for targeting: The most effective shot you can do with your new Colossus is when you flank and target a unit in the concave that is in max range. If you estimate the perfect distance in range Phase 1 AOE shot is raping enemy units in a range 9 line. If you target a unit that is out of range, Colossus -as any other unit- has to walk in distance and can be attacked on its way till it is in range. So attacker has to make good decisions, safe shot range ~7 or risk shot range 9? If you don't flank but decide to leave your Colossus safe behind your army, targeting an enemy unit that is in the back of the concave will still lead to a very useful shot, because the units in front of the target will take lots of damage as well.
2.2) Positioning As explained above, the best way to use your new colossus is not having it behind your army, but to flank. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't deal any damage when not microed. Phase 2 AOE will deal its damage, but way less than skillfully used. If flanking is too risky, leave it behind your army but manually target a unit that is in the back of the concave to get a good shot.
3) Micro for defenders Enemy Colossus moves it head. Fuck. There's probalby not much time to react to the Phase1 shot, but you do have enough time to run your units out of the way for the Phase 2 AOE. Its slow.
4) Spectators Well, do I really have to explain how awesome it is for spectators if the Colossus worked like this!? Yes? i'm not gonna waste energy on writing that.
On September 19 2012 06:04 Leviance wrote: Colossus fix
What do we hate about the Colossus? - Lacking micro possibilities on Attacker's side - Lacking micro possibilities on Defender's side - Lacking Excitement on spectators side - boring A-move unit
How does it work right now? - Two beams of AOE, from the side to the middle. Very fast shot animation, no option for defender to micro out of it, because its attack is too fast. - Positioning not important, because it is best when the Colossus is right behind your army, flanking doesn't bring benefit because of how the AOE is right now. - targeting not important, because when you a-move and colossus is behind your army and in front of opponent's army, it's the best outcome
How to fix: Attack undergoes the following change:
Attack Phase 1: After a 1 second "preparation" where it turns its head to the target, the Colossus shoots an almost instant fucking powerful AOE shot in a straight line to the target that wreaks havoc on all affected units in the way Attack Phase 2 Beam divides into two beams that go slowly horizontally from the middle to the sides, about the same AOE size that it has right now (but over the time of ~2,5 seconds). Attack is ofc much weaker than Phase 1 and weaker than Colossus attack as it is right now.
This fixes everything. Yes. Everything.
Why? Asshole explain. Pics or it didn't happen.
Alright, step by step:
1) Positioning Suddenly, positioning has become a lot more important. Because the enemy's army will stand in a concave in front of yours, the powerful AOE shot will not have its maximum efficiancy if you shoot it vertically in the concave, but horizontally from the flank.
2) Micro on Attacker's side
2.1) Targeting Targeting? Why the fuck is targeting important now!? Look: If you A-move your colossus now, it will target the closest enemy unit to it. That means: The extremely bad ass fucking Phase 1 AOE shot will hit only the unit it has targeted and maybe 2 of its side neighbour units because it will auto-target the closest one. Phase 2 AOE shot will ofc hit more units horizontally.
Awesome micro required for targeting: The most effective shot you can do with your new Colossus is when you flank and target a unit in the concave that is in max range. If you estimate the perfect distance in range Phase 1 AOE shot is raping enemy units in a range 9 line. If you target a unit that is out of range, Colossus -as any other unit- has to walk in distance and can be attacked on its way till it is in range. So attacker has to make good decisions, safe shot range ~7 or risk shot range 9? If you don't flank but decide to leave your Colossus safe behind your army, targeting an enemy unit that is in the back of the concave will still lead to a very useful shot, because the units in front of the target will take lots of damage as well.
2.2) Positioning As explained above, the best way to use your new colossus is not having it behind your army, but to flank. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't deal any damage when not microed. Phase 2 AOE will deal its damage, but way less than skillfully used. If flanking is too risky, leave it behind your army but manually target a unit that is in the back of the concave to get a good shot.
3) Micro for defenders Enemy Colossus moves it head. Fuck. There's probalby not much time to react to the Phase1 shot, but you do have enough time to run your units out of the way for the Phase 2 AOE. Its slow.
4) Spectators Well, do I really have to explain how awesome it is for spectators if the Colossus worked like this!? Yes? i'm not gonna waste energy on writing that.
Very similar to what I proposed on page 1.
Then your solution probably suffers from the same flaw... How will the colossus live for more than 5 in-game seconds if you flank with it? Any decent protoss player knows colossi are utterly worthless versus terran without a ground army immediately close by to protect them.
I challenge you to walk 5 colossi into a stimbio army and see what happens. If terran has sufficient marauder numbers, the colossi will all go down in the first 10 seconds of battle, at which point he can either immediately rape your measly gateway army, or retreat with minimal damage and hit you when his production cycle pops, before you can build your colo numbers back up.
On September 19 2012 06:04 Leviance wrote: Colossus fix
What do we hate about the Colossus? - Lacking micro possibilities on Attacker's side - Lacking micro possibilities on Defender's side - Lacking Excitement on spectators side - boring A-move unit
How does it work right now? - Two beams of AOE, from the side to the middle. Very fast shot animation, no option for defender to micro out of it, because its attack is too fast. - Positioning not important, because it is best when the Colossus is right behind your army, flanking doesn't bring benefit because of how the AOE is right now. - targeting not important, because when you a-move and colossus is behind your army and in front of opponent's army, it's the best outcome
How to fix: Attack undergoes the following change:
Attack Phase 1: After a 1 second "preparation" where it turns its head to the target, the Colossus shoots an almost instant fucking powerful AOE shot in a straight line to the target that wreaks havoc on all affected units in the way Attack Phase 2 Beam divides into two beams that go slowly horizontally from the middle to the sides, about the same AOE size that it has right now (but over the time of ~2,5 seconds). Attack is ofc much weaker than Phase 1 and weaker than Colossus attack as it is right now.
This fixes everything. Yes. Everything.
Why? Asshole explain. Pics or it didn't happen.
Alright, step by step:
1) Positioning Suddenly, positioning has become a lot more important. Because the enemy's army will stand in a concave in front of yours, the powerful AOE shot will not have its maximum efficiancy if you shoot it vertically in the concave, but horizontally from the flank.
2) Micro on Attacker's side
2.1) Targeting Targeting? Why the fuck is targeting important now!? Look: If you A-move your colossus now, it will target the closest enemy unit to it. That means: The extremely bad ass fucking Phase 1 AOE shot will hit only the unit it has targeted and maybe 2 of its side neighbour units because it will auto-target the closest one. Phase 2 AOE shot will ofc hit more units horizontally.
Awesome micro required for targeting: The most effective shot you can do with your new Colossus is when you flank and target a unit in the concave that is in max range. If you estimate the perfect distance in range Phase 1 AOE shot is raping enemy units in a range 9 line. If you target a unit that is out of range, Colossus -as any other unit- has to walk in distance and can be attacked on its way till it is in range. So attacker has to make good decisions, safe shot range ~7 or risk shot range 9? If you don't flank but decide to leave your Colossus safe behind your army, targeting an enemy unit that is in the back of the concave will still lead to a very useful shot, because the units in front of the target will take lots of damage as well.
2.2) Positioning As explained above, the best way to use your new colossus is not having it behind your army, but to flank. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't deal any damage when not microed. Phase 2 AOE will deal its damage, but way less than skillfully used. If flanking is too risky, leave it behind your army but manually target a unit that is in the back of the concave to get a good shot.
3) Micro for defenders Enemy Colossus moves it head. Fuck. There's probalby not much time to react to the Phase1 shot, but you do have enough time to run your units out of the way for the Phase 2 AOE. Its slow.
4) Spectators Well, do I really have to explain how awesome it is for spectators if the Colossus worked like this!? Yes? i'm not gonna waste energy on writing that.
Very similar to what I proposed on page 1.
Then your solution probably suffers from the same flaw... How will the colossus live for more than 5 in-game seconds if you flank with it? Any decent protoss player knows colossi are utterly worthless versus terran without a ground army immediately close by to protect them.
I challenge you to walk 5 colossi into a stimbio army and see what happens. If terran has sufficient marauder numbers, the colossi will all go down in the first 10 seconds of battle, at which point he can either immediately rape your measly gateway army, or retreat with minimal damage and hit you when his production cycle pops, before you can build your colo numbers back up.
Combine it with forcefields. Anyway I wouldn't mind if they made it so that AA couldn't target the collosus. Vikings/corrupters vs collosus are very uninterresting. Might need a few other tweaks to make this work balance wise.
On September 19 2012 06:04 Leviance wrote: Colossus fix
What do we hate about the Colossus? - Lacking micro possibilities on Attacker's side - Lacking micro possibilities on Defender's side - Lacking Excitement on spectators side - boring A-move unit
How does it work right now? - Two beams of AOE, from the side to the middle. Very fast shot animation, no option for defender to micro out of it, because its attack is too fast. - Positioning not important, because it is best when the Colossus is right behind your army, flanking doesn't bring benefit because of how the AOE is right now. - targeting not important, because when you a-move and colossus is behind your army and in front of opponent's army, it's the best outcome
How to fix: Attack undergoes the following change:
Attack Phase 1: After a 1 second "preparation" where it turns its head to the target, the Colossus shoots an almost instant fucking powerful AOE shot in a straight line to the target that wreaks havoc on all affected units in the way Attack Phase 2 Beam divides into two beams that go slowly horizontally from the middle to the sides, about the same AOE size that it has right now (but over the time of ~2,5 seconds). Attack is ofc much weaker than Phase 1 and weaker than Colossus attack as it is right now.
This fixes everything. Yes. Everything.
Why? Asshole explain. Pics or it didn't happen.
Alright, step by step:
1) Positioning Suddenly, positioning has become a lot more important. Because the enemy's army will stand in a concave in front of yours, the powerful AOE shot will not have its maximum efficiancy if you shoot it vertically in the concave, but horizontally from the flank.
2) Micro on Attacker's side
2.1) Targeting Targeting? Why the fuck is targeting important now!? Look: If you A-move your colossus now, it will target the closest enemy unit to it. That means: The extremely bad ass fucking Phase 1 AOE shot will hit only the unit it has targeted and maybe 2 of its side neighbour units because it will auto-target the closest one. Phase 2 AOE shot will ofc hit more units horizontally.
Awesome micro required for targeting: The most effective shot you can do with your new Colossus is when you flank and target a unit in the concave that is in max range. If you estimate the perfect distance in range Phase 1 AOE shot is raping enemy units in a range 9 line. If you target a unit that is out of range, Colossus -as any other unit- has to walk in distance and can be attacked on its way till it is in range. So attacker has to make good decisions, safe shot range ~7 or risk shot range 9? If you don't flank but decide to leave your Colossus safe behind your army, targeting an enemy unit that is in the back of the concave will still lead to a very useful shot, because the units in front of the target will take lots of damage as well.
2.2) Positioning As explained above, the best way to use your new colossus is not having it behind your army, but to flank. That doesn't mean, however, that it can't deal any damage when not microed. Phase 2 AOE will deal its damage, but way less than skillfully used. If flanking is too risky, leave it behind your army but manually target a unit that is in the back of the concave to get a good shot.
3) Micro for defenders Enemy Colossus moves it head. Fuck. There's probalby not much time to react to the Phase1 shot, but you do have enough time to run your units out of the way for the Phase 2 AOE. Its slow.
4) Spectators Well, do I really have to explain how awesome it is for spectators if the Colossus worked like this!? Yes? i'm not gonna waste energy on writing that.
Very similar to what I proposed on page 1.
Then your solution probably suffers from the same flaw... How will the colossus live for more than 5 in-game seconds if you flank with it? Any decent protoss player knows colossi are utterly worthless versus terran without a ground army immediately close by to protect them.
I challenge you to walk 5 colossi into a stimbio army and see what happens. If terran has sufficient marauder numbers, the colossi will all go down in the first 10 seconds of battle, at which point he can either immediately rape your measly gateway army, or retreat with minimal damage and hit you when his production cycle pops, before you can build your colo numbers back up.
Combine it with forcefields. Anyway I wouldn't mind if they made it so that AA couldn't target the collosus. Vikings/corrupters vs collosus are very uninterresting. Might need a few other tweaks to make this work balance wise.
If you rely on forcefield to keep terran away from your flanking colossi, then your sentries won't be positioned to keep terran inside firing range, and they will just run away after you've dumped sentry energy. At that point, you can only continue pushing for a short while before you have no energy, and terran can just rape your flanking colossi.
I think we could go a long way towards fixing the colossus by making them unable to walk over units or cliffs BUT make it a cool-down ability (it could have a cool animation where it gets taller). Then it would do AoE damage to all ground (allied inc.) it walks over.
Why? One of the reasons the Toss death-ball is so ez (and why playing against Toss can be so infuriating), is that it's so forgiving from an army control standpoint. You basically have to get a sick flank off as Terran/Zerg just to make it an even fight, let alone win it easily, and even if they don't see you until you're right on top of their units they can re-arrange extremely easily (zealot charge, stalker blink back, colossus unit walk, sentry FF, don't insult micro by trying to claim this is difficult, I'm a random player, you can't fool me ) If Toss can't re-arrange as easily, then it'd actually matter if Terran/Zerg can surprise their opponent. So if Toss want's to not lose their Colossi because their 60apm didn't permit them to notice the incoming hordes, now they have to choose between AoE their entire army to move them back or simply keeping them up front where they're most ineffective/exposed.
Why this won't affect high level balance (after all, this discussion really has nothing to do with high level play...) The race with invisible observer units that does the least marching their army all over the map should be able at a pro level to know roughly where their opponent is and arrange their army accordingly. If Colossus can't walk over friendly it probably would make it easier because they'd hold their position in a formation better. I'm sorry but I don't think that not letting your Colossus walk out in front is too much to ask of even a platinum player, so if they can handle that the game is really not much different. It'd make Toss more like old BW T mech, where positioning was everything and failing to get your spider mines the perfect distance from your tanks and sieging up effectively resulted in blowing yourself up, but if done correctly it's virtually impossible to beat in a heads up fight. I wouldn't mind that one bit.
Why it might add something interesting to the game Anybody remember SV eraser moves? How about a warp prism and a colossus fly into a base (similar gas cost to old HT drop) and the colossi walks around your mineral line? It'd be a funny no energy harassment that P has always complained about not having
It should be a lot slower and suffer from some degree of overkill. A deathball isn't too bad if it's slow as hell. Overkill would mean you have to micro your collosus or they'll all shoot at the two flanking marauders.
the weakness for conventional rts siege unit was their mobility or lack of it, the colossus completely breaks that law thus theres no fixing it when it simply does not follow the fundamental laws of a siege unit.
On September 21 2012 23:59 reminisce12 wrote: the weakness for conventional rts siege unit was their mobility or lack of it, the colossus completely breaks that law thus theres no fixing it when it simply does not follow the fundamental laws of a siege unit.
Because no other RTS game has changed siege units weakness from low mobility to can be hit by long range AA units, then it must be fundamentally broken? Just because it isn't a conventional siege unit, doesn't mean it is broken, it just means it is an unconventional siege unit. In response for mobility, it was given a huge glaring weakness that you see exploited very often by terran players (hover vikings over dead air space and pick off a collosi before the battle). Conventional RTS workers cost money and last unit they are killed by other units. MULES mine really quickly then die after a set time and don't cost money. Does that make MULES fundamentally broken?
On September 21 2012 21:24 YumYumGranola wrote: I think we could go a long way towards fixing the colossus by making them unable to walk over units or cliffs BUT make it a cool-down ability (it could have a cool animation where it gets taller). Then it would do AoE damage to all ground (allied inc.) it walks over.
Why? One of the reasons the Toss death-ball is so ez (and why playing against Toss can be so infuriating), is that it's so forgiving from an army control standpoint. You basically have to get a sick flank off as Terran/Zerg just to make it an even fight, let alone win it easily, and even if they don't see you until you're right on top of their units they can re-arrange extremely easily (zealot charge, stalker blink back, colossus unit walk, sentry FF, don't insult micro by trying to claim this is difficult, I'm a random player, you can't fool me ) If Toss can't re-arrange as easily, then it'd actually matter if Terran/Zerg can surprise their opponent. So if Toss want's to not lose their Colossi because their 60apm didn't permit them to notice the incoming hordes, now they have to choose between AoE their entire army to move them back or simply keeping them up front where they're most ineffective/exposed.
Why this won't affect high level balance (after all, this discussion really has nothing to do with high level play...) The race with invisible observer units that does the least marching their army all over the map should be able at a pro level to know roughly where their opponent is and arrange their army accordingly. If Colossus can't walk over friendly it probably would make it easier because they'd hold their position in a formation better. I'm sorry but I don't think that not letting your Colossus walk out in front is too much to ask of even a platinum player, so if they can handle that the game is really not much different. It'd make Toss more like old BW T mech, where positioning was everything and failing to get your spider mines the perfect distance from your tanks and sieging up effectively resulted in blowing yourself up, but if done correctly it's virtually impossible to beat in a heads up fight. I wouldn't mind that one bit.
Why it might add something interesting to the game Anybody remember SV eraser moves? How about a warp prism and a colossus fly into a base (similar gas cost to old HT drop) and the colossi walks around your mineral line? It'd be a funny no energy harassment that P has always complained about not having
You've shown in this post that you didn't understand the conversation up until now. This is a strict nerf to the colossus, and it comes off as QQ. Anyone worth listening to in this thread knows this is not a balance discussion. The fact that you're a random player doesn't legitimize your argument, either... Your play style might just favour protoss play. If you're floating in bronze-mid diamond, I can see why you'd think this. Of course, you'd be wrong. You say protoss army control is forgiving, but that's nonsense. One small mistake in positioning will result in you losing the backbone of your army to 9-range viking missiles or emp. Once this backbone is rendered useless, you die instantly. You can't run, since terran and zerg armies are substantially faster than you. No one cares if you can save your 12 stalkers. As for forgiving army control, how about terran's ability to stim and run away whenever they like?
By the way, I play with over 100a/epm, without any spam whatsoever. The fact that I can't save my armies from terran hordes has nothing to do with my ability to notice what's going on or react in time. It has everything to do with the facts that on wide-open maps, your units are 50% faster than mine when stimmed, and you can form a gigantic concave instantly (at which point splash becomes rather ineffective), and that on more congested maps, your vikings float over impassable terrain, firing from impunity.
making it just fire scarab-esque shots would be great, no mineral cost, just a slow, powerful AoE marauder shot. time to split and dodge against, retains strong aoe.
[QUOTE]On September 22 2012 01:01 convention wrote: [QUOTE]On September 21 2012 23:59 reminisce12 wrote: MULES mine really quickly then die after a set time and don't cost money. Does that make MULES fundamentally broken?[/QUOTE]
yes
the game balances himself for the most part. but the mule is a broken mechanics in certain situations like warpins and larva.
On September 21 2012 22:45 Phoobie wrote: Make it a true tough siege unit,
-Attack speed reduced by 15%
Makes it's attacks more about burst rather then clean sweaping the ground
-Range increased to 10
better poke and sieging potential, supports more positional based play
-No longer ignores unit collision
help spread out the death ball a bit
-Reduce movement speed to 2.15
a weakness of colossus based play, more vulnerable to counter attack
-Health and/or Shields increased
tougher to compensate for unit collision and slower speed, may also make worth while for drops.
just my thoughts
this is exactly what i believe the colossus should be as well
I agree, I hated the change where they decreased the damage and increased the firing rate.
If you make the colossus more immobile in addition, it needs to be tougher against air attacks to compensate, otherwise protoss will get rolled by vikings.
Hey if you want the colossus to have more micro involved, why don't you just add some stupid mechanic that allows you to get a small gain for no cost? And which allows the opponent to negate your gain if he outplays you?? Instead of getting lucky with emergent systems being tuned to perfection as they were in brood war, this is what blizzard has done with SC2 so far. And hey, it's not so bad right? Mules, Injects, Chrono?
How about this.
The best game designs tell a story, work as fair rules in the greater game system, and last but not least, are built around the technology that drives the game, not the other way around.
The Spartan Laser from Halo 3 is an example of a design element that works well with the existing technology. Due to latency, FPS games are often plagued by confusing or impossible situations when each client's game world diverges. But the charge time before it fires allows all clients to synchronize the firing event - this reduces the possibility of divergence or "lag". Not only that, but it tells a story too, about the strength and cutting-edge nature of the weapon. And again, it's fair, both players can see the charge happening and react to the coming firing event, making the weapon fit into the game without setting anything out of balance.
I would argue that the same could be done for the colossus. While there are questions of nerfs to 1a colossus users and possible buffs to professional colossus users that could upset matchups, isn't this what you wanted anyway? Make the colossus have to charge before firing. 1.5x damage and 1.5x reload time. Give the user a button and key that signals the colossus to begin charging. make the charge process visible to both players. Allow the colossus user to give his colossus separate targets individually while they are charging if he wishes. Allow the opposing player to cancel the attack by moving out of range.
On September 22 2012 05:11 -fj. wrote: Make the colossus have to charge before firing. 1.5x damage and 1.5x reload time. Give the user a button and key that signals the colossus to begin charging. make the charge process visible to both players. Allow the colossus user to give his colossus separate targets individually while they are charging if he wishes. Allow the opposing player to cancel the attack by moving out of range.
Okay you kind of took a round-about path by using the Halo example (<3 spartan laser), but I have always thought that this would make an infinitely more exciting AND skillful colossus, for both players. I'm glad others are with me. ^^
On September 22 2012 05:11 -fj. wrote: Make the colossus have to charge before firing. 1.5x damage and 1.5x reload time. Give the user a button and key that signals the colossus to begin charging. make the charge process visible to both players. Allow the colossus user to give his colossus separate targets individually while they are charging if he wishes. Allow the opposing player to cancel the attack by moving out of range.
Okay you kind of took a round-about path by using the Halo example (<3 spartan laser), but I have always thought that this would make an infinitely more exciting AND skillful colossus, for both players. I'm glad others are with me. ^^
This actually sounds kinda useless versus terran... You start charging... Terran (a) laughs at the fact that your main damage dealers are now firing slower, stims his marauders, and kills your colossi with marauders and vikings and you lose, or (b) kills a bunch of your gateway units then runs away, negating your charge, only to return a few second later and repeat. Besides that, how is 1.5x damage going to help you fight a bio army? No one will use this charging ability, because it will still be 2 colo hits to kill a marine (but more time in between shots for them to kill your shit before dying), and not much different versus marauders. It just gives terran more time to split units and avoid splash damage, or to use the insane DPS of marauders to work down colossi before they can get off more than a shot or two.
On September 21 2012 22:45 SnipedSoul wrote: It should be a lot slower and suffer from some degree of overkill. A deathball isn't too bad if it's slow as hell. Overkill would mean you have to micro your collosus or they'll all shoot at the two flanking marauders.
This is how things currently work... Stalkers, immos and colossi do suffer from overkill. Notably unlike your siege tanks, by the way... In fact, siege tanks are the only unit in the game to have smart fire, which eliminates overkill.
On September 22 2012 05:11 -fj. wrote: Make the colossus have to charge before firing. 1.5x damage and 1.5x reload time. Give the user a button and key that signals the colossus to begin charging. make the charge process visible to both players. Allow the colossus user to give his colossus separate targets individually while they are charging if he wishes. Allow the opposing player to cancel the attack by moving out of range.
Okay you kind of took a round-about path by using the Halo example (<3 spartan laser), but I have always thought that this would make an infinitely more exciting AND skillful colossus, for both players. I'm glad others are with me. ^^
This actually sounds kinda useless versus terran... You start charging... Terran (a) laughs at the fact that your main damage dealers are now firing slower, stims his marauders, and kills your colossi with marauders and vikings and you lose, or (b) kills a bunch of your gateway units then runs away, negating your charge, only to return a few second later and repeat. Besides that, how is 1.5x damage going to help you fight a bio army? No one will use this charging ability, because it will still be 2 colo hits to kill a marine (but more time in between shots for them to kill your shit before dying), and not much different versus marauders. It just gives terran more time to split units and avoid splash damage, or to use the insane DPS of marauders to work down colossi before they can get off more than a shot or two.
Reavers are a much better idea than this.
The idea is just a warm-up time before a shot is fired. Obviously you would need to adjust the damage and timing to make it playable. The more one-shot a unit is, the more space-control it is. (It is hard to attack into it.)
I don't think shuttle reaver would add anything to TvP engagements, it would just be (much) better for harass.
- It is really easy to use. You make them, they fry everything and that's it. It can be cool in your first games, but after that it is just feels boring.
- They require a macro response instead of a micro/tatical response. If you know they're going collossi, you need Vikings or Corruptors. And then it's over. You die if you don't get enough Viking and you win if you get the right amount. That's it by the Terran's side.
I think ANY unit that have splash damgage should be really hard to use. Eitheir requiring positioning/setitng up or heavy micro. The same with Hard Counters... If a unit really kills something ridiculous fast, it should require good micro to do it. In general, i really don't like the idea of giving easier gameplay to units that have great impact on the field. Roaches, Marauders and wtv T1 units can be a-move caralessy, but units that can kill your army within 1 or 2 seconds shouldn't be a-move friendly at all.
If you want to change something don't make the unit weaker, just make it different. For example I would try: Slower with collision, no longer targetable by air-air weapons.
just remove it and add the reaver... and give the warp prism another speed upgrade. Because controlling/stimming marines has become a cakewalk compared to brood war. Or just get rid of the retarded clumping ai and get up this game on so many levels it's unimaginable.
On September 22 2012 06:35 Herect wrote: [...] I think ANY unit that have splash damgage should be really hard to use. Eitheir requiring positioning/setitng up or heavy micro. The same with Hard Counters... If a unit really kills something ridiculous fast, it should require good micro to do it. In general, i really don't like the idea of giving easier gameplay to units that have great impact on the field. Roaches, Marauders and wtv T1 units can be a-move caralessy, but units that can kill your army within 1 or 2 seconds shouldn't be a-move friendly at all.
(1) Stim-bio kills everything ridiculously fast... as fast as any splash damage in the game. (2) Without splash damage, protoss cannot win vs terran after stim.
Definitely change the aoe-type to a different template, I'd even be ok with doing lurker style line attacks, it would mean you'd want to flank with the colossus even more, but they wouldn't be as absolutely killer vs deathballs
On September 22 2012 06:35 Herect wrote: [...] I think ANY unit that have splash damgage should be really hard to use. Eitheir requiring positioning/setitng up or heavy micro. The same with Hard Counters... If a unit really kills something ridiculous fast, it should require good micro to do it. In general, i really don't like the idea of giving easier gameplay to units that have great impact on the field. Roaches, Marauders and wtv T1 units can be a-move caralessy, but units that can kill your army within 1 or 2 seconds shouldn't be a-move friendly at all.
(1) Stim-bio kills everything ridiculously fast... as fast as any splash damage in the game. (2) Without splash damage, protoss cannot win vs terran after stim.
Stim-bio still kills ridiculous fast, but it's really fragile against all AoE and against forcefields, one miss click and your lose you army. It is not a-move friendly at all. The Glass Cannon concept at his prime.
I don't like these relationships at all. I would prefer a terran composition more durable and less dependendant on micro/timings and more on positioning on PvT. But playing bio really requires map control, skirmish action, micro. Collosus is just a sad unit, it is a more safe AoE option than Templars, but it does not receive benefits from positioning and micro, it is just there to dumb kill or get dumb killed by Vikings/Corruptors. Terrans just get angrier when they see them, and Protosses, bored.
Protoss needs AoE on Robo, but the Collosus and even the Reaver aren't cool options in Sc2.
I'm for a change in AOE type of splash dmg as well. I comepletely agree with the flaws in horizontal splash dmg someone mentioned in the earlier pages. Your opponent's army does the micro for you by going in a concave.... Make it in a straight line so flanks could be used. Warp-prisms could also be used to keep collosus safe during flanks? A slight buff to wp speed could help if they are still too vulnerable? Also collosus vulnerability too air should be removed as well. Then maybe even viking/corrupter could be nerfed a bit to make toss air more viable.
(1) Stim-bio kills everything ridiculously fast... as fast as any splash damage in the game. (2) Without splash damage, protoss cannot win vs terran after stim.
Blizzard should experiment with two things in my opinion:
A: make colossus have a siege ability. In non siege mode, the core of the colossus folds into the legs and the colossus moves at a normal good pace speed. The non-siege mode will not be attacked by air units as it is compacted. In siege mode it would come out of the folded position into its current position and be vulnerable to air while being able to do the normal attack. Also it should be slower than the non-siege mode. Colossus would take skill to use, and it would eliminate that death ball a-move feeling.
Retreating colossus would require extra micro and skill from the toss players (un siege and retreat). Colossus can also unseige when all ground units are killed, to protect it from air units. But if the toss players gets caught with all of his colossus unseiged, the opponent would get an opportunity to do some extra damage (like un seiged tanks).
B: bring back the reaver. Imagine the play style with warp prisons and reaver, the drops, the warpins. Protoss harassment would be fun to watch, also the drop micro along with the reinforcement via warp prism would take some serious micro.
(1) Stim-bio kills everything ridiculously fast... as fast as any splash damage in the game. (2) Without splash damage, protoss cannot win vs terran after stim.
Psi Storm?...
Psi storm is splash. Are you saying it's acceptable for every PvT to consist of protoss rushing to templar tech, every game, just to compete with stim-bio? (And that it's okay for terrans to have a linear tech path to every beat toss, rushing to grab ghosts?)
Here are two facts every half decent player (and most scrubs) should accept: (1) Protoss needs AoE to fight terran after stim. (2) Having only one AoE tech. path is terrible for the matchup, and for spectators, in part, because of (1).
On September 22 2012 10:50 PiPoGevy wrote: Just remove it lol
(1) Stim-bio kills everything ridiculously fast... as fast as any splash damage in the game. (2) Without splash damage, protoss cannot win vs terran after stim.
Psi Storm?...
Psi storm is splash. Are you saying it's acceptable for every PvT to consist of protoss rushing to templar tech, every game, just to compete with stim-bio? (And that it's okay for terrans to have a linear tech path to every beat toss, rushing to grab ghosts?)
Here are two facts every half decent player (and most scrubs) should accept: (1) Protoss needs AoE to fight terran after stim. (2) Having only one AoE tech. path is terrible for the matchup, and for spectators, in part, because of (1).
listen to this guy, Without AoE Protoss just loses every PvT and thus imbalance. Terrans have to be able to control their bio well to be successful. The guy that said Bio is a Glass cannon is 100% wrong Bio with medivacs is the most efficient army in the game.
I want to get rid of colossus because it will help Terrans from having to go blind vikings every game. Though you might have to nerf or change medivac cause then you would just have to fight Terrans that have 20 medivacs and huge clumps of bio being throw at you constantly tell you are out of minerals. I don't know blizzard is in a pickle with the Colossus because it's not broken or unbalanced it's just a shitty unit that no one likes.
On September 16 2012 09:33 MiND.GaMeS wrote: 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...
In their mighty attempt to make a bad game, they have done the same with medivac. Shuttle was a wildcard, you gad to make sure your opponent didn't have a clue about it, and it was a huge investment early game that could only be compensated by the huge damage you could do.
Now you need to go shuttle every single game no matter what because some absolute idiot at blizzards has had the genius idea to mix it with medic...... How to make the game way poorer for no reason at all.
EPT
to harass with them via Warp prism micro (and maybe we can see the return of the iconic Shuttle harass). Nerfing attk-cooldown to compensate would keep its DPS in check.
. I kinda like the blatant war of the worlds ripoff too. I mean if you're going to go there, the marine is a well-known ripoff of Warhammer space marines, and its become just about as iconic in sc as the warhammer marine is. And thats fine. Blizz has a knack for ripping stuff off and making it cool. Steal from the best as tyra banks once said. . 
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/s5ZjA.jpg)
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