HotS Balance Update #5 [10/5/12] - Page 21

On October 06 2012 17:00 Garmer wrote:
this is ridiculous and stupid, very stupid

On October 06 2012 16:26 althaz wrote:
Widow mine ability is good, although I'd prefer if it could load up a few missiles at once (maybe 2-3) with a much longer reload time after that. So the 4th missile would come out MUCH slower, but the first three would come out fairly quickly, making a minefield powerful for delay and ground-control, but less powerful in terms of sustained DPS.

It would make it possible to effectively "clear" a minefield and safely move your army through (you would have a minute or so to move through after your hallucinations/zerglings/infested terrans or whatever have cleared the minefield.

Overall though, I quite like the Widow Mine changes.

Unfortunately, the Oracle changes on the other hand...The Oracle recently received Phase Shield, probably one of the best abilities (in terms of design, not power) that Blizzard has ever come up with. It mitigated fungal growth (a terrible ability that is nevertheless necessary for balance reasons), enabling Protoss players with enough skill to combat infestor-broodlord, whilst being mostly useless for those players without the sense of timing and mechanical abilities to manage the spell. It also made the Oracle not a complete waste of money, which also made opening stargate viable in a matchup where, combined with phase shield, a toss stargate army might be able to truly compete with a zerg one in the late-game.

Now the Oracle is a decent enough harass unit that can NEVER pay for itself if zerg/terran scouts the stargate and builds a handful of static defence (two missile turrets or spore crawlers per base prevent all oracle harass on the mineral lines, meanwhile Protoss is out 300 gas (which is worse than losing a nexus) for absolutely nothing.

The oracle was an awesome unit after the last patch, now it is shit. It NEEDS some utility in battles for it to worthwhile, or it needs to be a ridiculously overpowered harass unit. Or it needs to cost only minerals. Only one of those things is a good idea, IMO.

How bliz could make such a dumb move and such a smart one (the Widow mine change is quite clever) in one patch is quite astounding.

On October 06 2012 17:07 Wombat_NI wrote:

Pretty much this, it seems to me that Blizzard don't know what they are doing, or lack some kind of underlying philosophy with what they are trying to accomplish. They're doing both good and bad things with this patch, but I just don't really see any logical progression, it's just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks. Perhaps people feel I'm being harsh.

While everybody was rejoicing about the return of the carrier, I myself loved the design potential of phase shield. It gave the oracle a bit of utility and synergy with the rest of the army from the period in which its harassment potential was generally countered by static defences and the likes.

I really don't get why they just straight got rid if an interesting ability. The only ability in the game incidentally that could make pure airtoss actually viable by mitigating the godawful catch-all spell that is fungal. The replacement ability is close to useless which makes it even more disappointing.

On October 06 2012 17:13 Ribbon wrote:


Phase shield has exactly one purpose: Counter fungal.

I think Fungal needs to be reworked pretty significantly, rather than such a specific spell added to the game that's useless against all units but one.

Void Siphon is pretty lame, though. I'd rather it be an AOE thing cast on the oracle itself, where you'd fly around and did the damage/mineral thing to any enemy building the Oracle came close to for 30 seconds. That's a much more dynamic version of the same idea.

On October 06 2012 17:08 Rabiator wrote:
Just when I thought it couldnt get weirder Blizzard surpr... disappoints me.

The Widow Mine is really terrible and it has become a sort of Swarm Host now (launching a "free unit" every 40 seconds) in becoming a burrowed missile launcher with a slow ass fire rate. If the Widow Mine still is able to act as a mine itself this seems a bit much, because you get two lines of defense from that killing a few initial Banelings with Missiles and then getting the rest with blowing up themselves. At 160 single target damage the missile deals the highest amount of instant single target damage in the game I believe ... plus a small AoE effect. I wonder how much it gets bigger from upgrades.

The new Oracle idea is stupid, because gathering resources from damaging buildings seems a bit odd. In any case this feels like a revamped MULE (getting minerals for energy) without the need to gather from a node. I wonder if you can aim this at your own buildings, but since they specifically mention opponent buildings I hope they didnt make this mistake. The ability also costs a flat amount of 50 energy and lasts until cancelled. Whoever came up with that stupid idea?

On October 06 2012 17:14 nenshoua wrote:
If you want proper testing send more invites to master and gm players for pete sake...most pros dont even bother with the beta anymore...

On October 06 2012 17:35 InVerno wrote:


This.
At first I liked the idea behind the phase shield, but then... very gimmicky, rewards clumping, design flaw because the oracle its not intended to work with an army due to his low hp. At the end, with phase shield, the fungal can still in the game like in wol because "hey p, do an oracle and you will be fine" .. no, fungal needs a rework.

The siphon its pretty sad. Even if they buff it, its a T2 3.5 speed unit, with a 7Range spell.. cant be strong without be op in early, and unusefull in lategame. The original idea behind the oracle is way different, its something like "white weapon harass" .. not meant to deal damage. Why dont try the phase shift again? The disruptor web or what was.. was way better.

On October 06 2012 17:05 Ribbon wrote:
I like how the Widow Mine has been turned into another type of siege tank. It's a much mechier unit now.

On October 06 2012 17:56 Big J wrote:
Has anybody yet gotten a fast widow mine in the enemies mineral line with the new patch?
I saw morrow do this on the old patch:
proxy factory, lift in the main of Protoss, build a widow mine, go for probes

now with the new widow mine, wouldn't that be too hard to deal with for a protoss?
If you have no Robo down, it takes you 80-95 seconds to get observers (85 for a canon) from this point on. Even if you sac a probe to assure mining for another 30-40 seconds, you get at least 3probe kills and a lot of lost mining time like that.

Just a thought

On October 06 2012 18:00 KrazyTrumpet wrote:


Yeah, I think people are focusing a bit too much on the details and not appreciating the actual design change of the unit. Dismissing it as stupid because the cooldown time is too long or whatever is rather silly. Yes, the numbers need to be tweaked, but I think a lot of people would agree that the fundamental design of the unit is MUCH better than it was before, and certainly now worthy of a unit that costs supply.

I will agree with lots of the criticisms in this thread so far about the particular number associated with the new design, but that's a much easier fix than overhauling actual design of the unit.

On October 06 2012 18:07 Rabiator wrote:

No ... Starcraft doesnt have many units per side and you dont want to have two which perform a similar job. There have been quite a few units already which were scrapped because of this. Not only is the Widow Mine performing like the Siege Tank (ranged AoE), but it also performs like the Swarm Host (spawning free sources of damage regularly while being burrowed). Terrible concept no matter how good/balanced it is.