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Ever since Blizzard finally acknowledged that Entomb was a shitty spell (and therefore that the Oracle wasn't working, since Entomb was its primary spell), the SC2 community has been crawling with suggestions for a replacement.
As we all know, Blizzard announced the new spell yesterday, Time Warp
Time Warp - Creates a warp field at the target location that reduces enemy ground units' movement speed by 50%
We were aiming for a spell that gets us two main things with this last spell. One was something players can use in combination with Pulsar Beam when harassing the opponent's base. Second was something Protoss players can use in combination with their army. We feel this ability meets both requirements.
While the exact numbers in terms of range, size of aoe, energy cost, duration of effect may all need fine tuning... think for once Blizzard has gotten the concept of the spell exactly right. With Time Warp as its primary spell, the Oracle is actually a good unit. I don't mean good just in the sense of "effective", I mean it is well-designed, good for gameplay, and will add new strats to Protoss gameplay without rendering old units pointless.
So what makes Time Warp such a good, smart addition to the Protoss arsenal?
1.) It opens up Protoss gameplay options, and therefore gives map makers more freedom.
Protoss have a problem--they basically cannot hold bases right now without heavy reliance on forcefield.. This makes it all but impossible to take a 3rd base, unless the map has a 3rd base that is easily defended with FF. This forces map makers to limit themselves, and make every map have an easy-to-take, easy-to-defend 3rd, which leads to stale "15 min no rush" type gameplay. Regardless of whether it is "balanced", locking Protoss into needing forcefields to hold bases has severe and unfun implications for the game overall.
Time Warp fulfills a lot of what Forcefield gave Protoss, albeit in different ways. It allows Zealots to much more easily close the distance, and it breaks up enemy forces in a way that means, for example, it becomes much harder to overrun Protoss with a big Roach Timing Push. Forcefield does this in a very hard-control way, by literally preventing any movement. Time Warp isn't quite that severe--it actually allows for at least some countermicro--but it will definitely really break up the concentrated dps of stuff like Roach balls, and it certainly makes Zealots more effective and allows Stalkers and Immortals to get in more free shots before enemies close the distance.
But there are important differences between them. Oracles aren't slow like Sentries, and Time Warp isn't as utterly dependant on a narrow choke that you can totally block off. Time Warp is much less map dependant than Forcefield for effectiveness, and much easier to deploy across larger distances. This means it isn't nearly as limiting for map makers--you can put a 3rd base farther away or make it more open, and know that Time Warp can effectively support a base defense in a way that FF would not.
2.) It allows for harassment without being one dimensional.. The Oracle was created to be a harassing unit that wouldn't sit around in the deathball. Entomb did that, but in an extremely binary way that allowed for exactly one use. You hit the mineral line, over and over again. There was no thought to it, nor skill.
Time Warp, like Entomb, slows down mining without killing things directly. In this case, it literally slows the workers' movement as they mine (and unlike Entomb, it can therefore effect gas mining). But there are so many other uses for Time Warp beyond slowing down mining. You can use it to slow down an enemy force to allow for defenses/reinforcements to arrive. You can use it mid-fight to let Zealots close the distance. You can use it to help cover your own retreat. You can use it to set up Storms, making sure fewer units escape. This is a multifaceted spell that can contribute to many different compositions and strategies in many different ways.
3.) It meshes well with the Protoss army...except for Forcefield. I've seen some people complaining that Protoss, the race with forcefield, is getting more crowd control.
But what these people ignore is that Time Warp isn't a supplement to Forcefield, its a replacement. It isn't about "Time Warp AND Forcefield", its "Time Warp OR Forcefield."
Why is this?
First, there's the simple matter of cost. Oracles cost a boatload of gas, and so do Sentries, and at the stage of the game when you'll be getting either unit Protoss are very gas starved. If you're getting Oracles for Time Warp, you are simply not going to be able to afford many Sentries.
Second, the two abilities have very, very low synergy--there are actually pretty bad diminishing returns in trying to use them together: good forcefields will trap the enemy anyway so they cant move where they want. Who cares if they're slowed while not moving? Sure, slowing enemies makes it easier to land good ffs...but thats a crutch. Good players land good FF's in real time at normal speed anyway. Any time an enemy is both forcefielded and time warped, one of those abilities is being wasted.
The great benefit of Time Warp isn't that it works well with FF--it doesn't. Its that it offers an alternative to FF. You need forcefields less when you have Time Warp--you can actually catch enemies with slow zealots if they're time warped, you can retreat fairly easily, enemy balls will be broken up by passing through them, etc. This means that a player can decide to put their gas in Oracles rather than Sentries, and open up a more mobile playstyle, without either crippling their defense or leaving their gateway forces way too weak without FF support.
And as an alternative to FF, Time Warp is simply much more fun. Enemies can at least move some, so there are opportunities for countermicro. And Oracles are fast, so you can get aggressive and not have it be an all-in the way it usually is with Sentries (since Sentries are so slow they tend to get picked off during retreats).
4.) It synergizes well with the Oracle's other stats, and allows for more skill in use. Oracles are fragile, expensive, fast flyers. This gives them a valuable getaway ability, and opens up possibilities to better harass Terran and Zergs with Queen-heavy compositions, by allowing you to slow some marines or queens in one area, then fly over and hit somewhere else. And precise placement can have a big effect in army engagements. Basically, there is much more potential for a skilled player to use an Oracle better than an average player--and since unlike Fungal or FF this doesn't entirely stop movement, it doesn't simply end all enemy micro either.
I genuinely think Blizzard has knocked this out of the park. This is exactly what Protoss needs to open up a more fun and flexible playstyle--and if Protoss are more flexible, that means better maps, better matchups and better games.
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How do you know its good? Are you a beta-tester? Did you try it?
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You say that its an option between FF and time warp and not both.
When given a choice I would have to guess that an overwhelming percentage of toss players would choose FF.
Why wouldn't you? Who cares about slowing down units when you can take them out of the fight completely (by keeping them out of range).
However you are wrong, It will be used in conjuction with the army and be OP as hell. Which is fine.
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Good summary of why the ability is a good add. My biggest worry about the ability is that they won't want to give it the specifics it needs to be useful (specifically, I'm worried they'll make the radius too small or make it too much of an energy hog).
I actually like the concept of the building-only attack, too. But I'm not sure it's useful enough to spend energy on, and I'm not sure it does enough damage. Also, if it's going to be a serious ability it's going to need to turn off repair/regeneration for an extended period of time. Shield damage on protoss buildings and non-critical damage to terran buildings just isn't going to matter.
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I disagree, I don't like the skill at all:
-It does not replace forcefield, forcefield can split the enemy army and buy time in defenses, the only way Time Warp can replace FF is in retreating/catching situations, and I believe the sentry would still be better.
-I don't see it being good in Harass lol, with 24 workers in a mineral line slowing workers does not mean shit since the workers would still harvest in the same speed... also, if the AoE and duration is good enough to make it anywhere near useful for harass, it will be totally broken in battle situation. You maybe could use it with some WP and HT, but that is robo, stargate and templar tech...
-It practically does not synergize with any stargate unit since it doesn't affect air and the units used to counter protoss air are usually air units too, you can't use it to retreat your carriers/tempest or even to make your void-rays catch the vikings who are kiting.
-why the fuck Blizz wants to add another skill to use while controlling the protoss deathball... this is not warcraft.
EDIT: also, like the guy after me pointed out, TW+Storm looks stupidly strong.
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Not sure if another AoE is need for Protoss. Time wrap plus storm seems like a deadly combo.
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On October 26 2012 00:00 rpgalon wrote:
I disagree, I don't like the skill at all:
-It does not replace forcefield, forcefield can split the enemy army and buy time in defenses, the only way Time Warp can replace FF is in retreating/catching situations, and I believe the sentry would still be better.
-I don't see it being good in Harass lol, with 24 workers in a mineral line slowing workers does not mean shit since the workers would still harvest in the same speed... also, if the AoE and duration is good enough to make it anywhere near useful for harass, it will be totally broken in battle situation. You maybe could use it with some WP and HT, but that is robo, stargate and templar tech...
-It practically does not synergize with any stargate unit since it doesn't affect air and the units used to counter protoss air are usually air units too, you can't use it to retreat your carriers/tempest or even to make your void-rays catch the vikings who are kiting.
-why the fuck Blizz wants to add another skill to use when controlling the protoss deathball... this is not warcraft.
I'd love if posts had an "like button"
I tottatly agree...I can't see any commentator sayind "OMFG, look at that TimeWarp well placed...such a nice micro"
lol
Another retarded spell...blizz spells is like 100mana for 10 seg effect then 60 sec waiting till next use ! LOL
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I agree with the guy above me, however I do like how it helps to kill a deathball and mindless 1a gameplay because if you get all your units caught in it, your gonna be in trouble..
They can work on fine tuning the balance later, I like how they made a spell that is good in concept rather than just mindlessly changing numbers around to fiddle with the balance
edit: the guy 2 posts above me
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On October 26 2012 00:00 rpgalon wrote:
I disagree, I don't like the skill at all:
-It does not replace forcefield, forcefield can split the enemy army and buy time in defenses, the only way Time Warp can replace FF is in retreating/catching situations, and I believe the sentry would still be better.
-I don't see it being good in Harass lol, with 24 workers in a mineral line slowing workers does not mean shit since the workers would still harvest in the same speed... also, if the AoE and duration is good enough to make it anywhere near useful for harass, it will be totally broken in battle situation. You maybe could use it with some WP and HT, but that is robo, stargate and templar tech...
-It practically does not synergize with any stargate unit since it doesn't affect air and the units used to counter protoss air are usually air units too, you can't use it to retreat your carriers/tempest or even to make your void-rays catch the vikings who are kiting.
-why the fuck Blizz wants to add another skill to use when controlling the protoss deathball... this is not warcraft.
You're right about the harassment part. Slowing movement speed by 50% reduces mining speed by about 25% (slightly more - a little more than half a worker's time is spent moving), so assuming it lasts 15 seconds or less, it shouldn't result in more than 200 resouces lost per use (assuming 16 workers on minerals and 6 on gas, and that it can hit all these simultaneously, which is quite a bit larger than I assume they'll let Time Warp be). Realistically, I don't think it'll result in more than 100 resources lost (if they design it to have a wider area and a lower duration).
It isn't supposed to synergize with other stargate units. It's supposed to synergize with zealots and Stalkers (the earliest unit you can get for defense). It's actually designed quite thoughtfullly for that purpose - provided sufficient area and small enough energy cost.
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I think we're gonna have to try it before passing this kind of judgement, that's the problem with this community always over thinking and jumping waaaaaaaaay ahead of the present, looking towards the future is good, but an essay on how a spell will change a race with no real info on the spell or testing is absurd
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On October 26 2012 00:15 Slago wrote:
I think we're gonna have to try it before passing this kind of judgement, that's the problem with this community always over thinking and jumping waaaaaaaaay ahead of the present, looking towards the future is good, but an essay on how a spell will change a race with no real info on the spell or testing is absurd
Really? What if i told you that marines can now fly?
Wouldnt you be able to figure out that it woudl be OP?
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Where did Blizz announce this?
Anyway. It sounds good, but it will be hard to balance so it would be good harass and not too strong in the battle.
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On October 26 2012 00:15 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 00:00 rpgalon wrote:
I disagree, I don't like the skill at all:
-It does not replace forcefield, forcefield can split the enemy army and buy time in defenses, the only way Time Warp can replace FF is in retreating/catching situations, and I believe the sentry would still be better.
-I don't see it being good in Harass lol, with 24 workers in a mineral line slowing workers does not mean shit since the workers would still harvest in the same speed... also, if the AoE and duration is good enough to make it anywhere near useful for harass, it will be totally broken in battle situation. You maybe could use it with some WP and HT, but that is robo, stargate and templar tech...
-It practically does not synergize with any stargate unit since it doesn't affect air and the units used to counter protoss air are usually air units too, you can't use it to retreat your carriers/tempest or even to make your void-rays catch the vikings who are kiting.
-why the fuck Blizz wants to add another skill to use when controlling the protoss deathball... this is not warcraft. You're right about the harassment part. Slowing movement speed by 50% reduces mining speed by about 25% (slightly more - a little more than half a worker's time is spent moving), so assuming it lasts 15 seconds or less, it shouldn't result in more than 200 resouces lost per use (assuming 16 workers on minerals and 6 on gas, and that it can hit all these simultaneously, which is quite a bit larger than I assume they'll let Time Warp be). It isn't supposed to synergize with other stargate units. It's supposed to synergize with zealots and Stalkers (the earliest unit you can get for defense). It's actually designed quite thoughtfullly for that purpose - provided sufficient area and small enough energy cost.
the thing is, early/mid game the sentry synergize with stalker and zealot better than the oracle will ever be able to. and later you want to stay away from zealots and stalkers, also, the stalker don't need the oracle, blink stalkers can retreat/catch without any help from the oracle.
Blizz can do so much better than this, I even think that phase shield and phase shift were overall better skills...
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wow, cool when do we get to play with it?
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On October 26 2012 00:15 Slago wrote:
I think we're gonna have to try it before passing this kind of judgement, that's the problem with this community always over thinking and jumping waaaaaaaaay ahead of the present, looking towards the future is good, but an essay on how a spell will change a race with no real info on the spell or testing is absurd
As I don't have the Beta i have to think, and by thinking this hability will be powerful or useless. If it gets powerful they will nerf so it'll be useless !
I can only see this going well with storms, but HT and Stargate is kinda veryyyy late and it does not help with protoss early game problem !
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On October 26 2012 00:15 Slago wrote:
I think we're gonna have to try it before passing this kind of judgement, that's the problem with this community always over thinking and jumping waaaaaaaaay ahead of the present, looking towards the future is good, but an essay on how a spell will change a race with no real info on the spell or testing is absurd
Using your logic, so are threads decrying the Warhound.
I mean, when you haven't even seen the release version of the unit - how can you know whether it'll be a good unit or a bad unit? The answer is that you can tell either from past experiences with the unit or through well-thought-out analysis of the unit's potential. Analysis without testing can be wrong, but so can testing without proper analysis. For instance, how long after the WG nerf did people not realize you could have enough sentries that you didn't have to worry about 4-gate in tech builds if you hit your FFs right?
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On October 25 2012 23:50 hpTheGreat wrote:
You say that its an option between FF and time warp and not both.
When given a choice I would have to guess that an overwhelming percentage of toss players would choose FF.
Why wouldn't you? Who cares about slowing down units when you can take them out of the fight completely (by keeping them out of range).
However you are wrong, It will be used in conjuction with the army and be OP as hell. Which is fine.
Because, on a map that doesn't guarantee FF to be effective, players WILL want to use a more versatile time warp.
I think time warp is needed to have quite a long duration AND big aoe to work well for early base defense though. That might in turn be absolutely devastating for terran bio as soon as HTs are out
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On October 26 2012 00:15 Slago wrote:
I think we're gonna have to try it before passing this kind of judgement, that's the problem with this community always over thinking and jumping waaaaaaaaay ahead of the present, looking towards the future is good, but an essay on how a spell will change a race with no real info on the spell or testing is absurd
I can't imagine what you mean: nobody *ever* does that here /SARCASM OVERLOAD -- "HELP ME SHARON I CAN'T STOP BEING SARCASTIC!!!"
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On October 26 2012 00:23 The_DarkAngelz wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 00:15 Slago wrote:
I think we're gonna have to try it before passing this kind of judgement, that's the problem with this community always over thinking and jumping waaaaaaaaay ahead of the present, looking towards the future is good, but an essay on how a spell will change a race with no real info on the spell or testing is absurd As I don't have the Beta i have to think, and by thinking this hability will be powerful or useless. If it gets powerful they will nerf so it'll be useless ! I can only see this going well with storms, but HT and Stargate is kinda veryyyy late and it does not help with protoss early game problem !
I disagree, this makes Stargate openings a lot more viable (or it should, anyway)
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Who cares if it synergizes with other air units? Is that really a requirement for units nowadays? The point is Time Warp can be used to do things that protoss has been lacking! It can allow for strategic retreats, which protoss has been sorely lacking due to the low speed of their units in the early/mid game. It can also allow small groups of zealot stalker to catch up to marine marauder. ForceField couldn't be used this way because of the slow movement speed of the sentry. With a faster flying Oracle, you can flank groups of enemy units and slow down their best escape route by placing it right behind them. This allows for toss to get more aggressive in the midgame (which has always been especially rare after opening stargate!). This means less turtle to death ball and more skirmishes throughout the game. And it encourages opponents to keep their units from clumping to reduce the effectiveness of Time Warp.
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To me this is a very encouraging move. Protoss needs more flexibility and less coinflip strats. And the spell makes the unit way more sexy. Announcements like that are restoring my faith into this expansion! At least it makes a new patch worth trying.
Now move on and look at the next issues.
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I love it! Thank you Blizzard for moving in the right direction.
SC:BW was easy to learn, impossible to master.
Just as every chess piece has multi-dimensions to it, so too should SC2 units and abilities.
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so you want toss to be able to slow my army force field then storm cool........sarcasm
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I'm hoping you can cast it with some decent range. Time warp won't be nearly as cool if it's a suicide spell against anything but roaches.
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On October 26 2012 00:54 starslayer wrote:
so you want toss to be able to slow my army force field then storm cool........sarcasm
Countered by a solid cloaked EMP.
:-)
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On October 26 2012 00:54 starslayer wrote:
so you want toss to be able to slow my army force field then storm cool........sarcasm
2 different techs with researched storm, in battle 150 energy cast (75 for time warp 75 for storm).........
you should be able to mount a counter strategy by then
zerg can do it for 75 energy no research and locked you down completely
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To buff the harassing role you might slow down mining rate as well, although that would bring this spell back to 100% binary harass.
Idea:
As is, timewarp needs huge aoe and duration to be really effective and that is kinda boring in battle; just slow mo.
If it would work like Warlocks slow (maybe channeling but i dislike stuff like that), you could lower the aoe and it would still be good. (warlocks slow increases its effect every second). Cast in battle, it can be dodged as long as you get out of the aoe as fast as possible but will really punish slow reactions; it can be cast preempively to block enemies' retreat or support your own; as harass it can be evaded by getting the workers out of the area fast, if you don't react fast enough it will reach its full effect and the workers will mine extremely slowly.
I like time warp, but i think the version i outlined is more dynamic. If anyone with browder-impressing writing skills agrees, pass it on!
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Really nice changes, a lot of interesting potential and means the oracle can be useful throughout a game.
Also about using it with storm. Trapping units between chargelots and forcefields and then storming is if anything stronger. However it does not happen all that often due to the heavy gas cost of sentries and templar.
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Good post, and I do agree that time warp is a much more exciting and dynamic spell than what the oracle had before. However I don't really understand why it has to slow movement speed like so many spells before it (fungal, concessive shells, and forcefields to an extent). Debuffs are always fun, but why not some buffing for the aiur force? Personally I think that instead of -50% movement speed why not (numbers not exact) +50% movement speed?
Suddenly with +50% movement speed zealot archon oracle…would just be awesome. Also since the spell affects an area (I read that right, right?) then good time warp usage would be so much more important, unless you want to deal with super stimmed marines (omfg!), or speedy speedlings. This kind of dynamic would also be more interesting with blizzards other suggestion: the decrease to locust/broodling/infested terran life, since if you want to decrease the time that they exist you would also increase their movement speed! You could also play around then with like +shield/health regen and other factors to make the spell more of a late game field control kind of spell, rather than just a simple movement speed buff/defuff.
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I am still waiting for the patch to test it, but so far I am not impressed.
- its slow will inevitably mean your zealots will get stuck in it, the same way they get stuck in storm, meaning that it cannot make zealots better, honestly it'll probably make them worse, since their units will get out of the effect first and any units inside will be easily kited.
- its gas cost means less gas for psi storm, while this MIGHT give you a way to keep your opponent from baiting psi storms, and give you a way to slow down the attack so you don't have to sacrifice your army to convince them to stand under the psi storm, it will probably just bait time warps AND psi storms.
- if it really doesn't affect air there is no way to use this against broodlords, which means vortex is still a necessity.
The only way I would bother to use this ability is if it decreases attack speed as well as movement. Unfortunately, the oracle patch doesn't seem to be up yet, so I can't see how its implemented. But it's way too early to say it's any good.
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Ok
What about:
Time Warp -
Increase Protoss Units Movement Speed and Negates root/slow effects
VERY SMALL Radius (1.0),
6-15s duration, 50-75 energy
Can be used on ground/air units
why?
-can be used to retreat key units like a colossus or a small group of sentries/HT, but can't be used to save your army from a bad engagement.
-can be used in warp prism with zealots(let's say the skill affects units inside the prism) making the drop far deadlier for worker harass.
-is not really good in making the ground protoss deathball faster and deadlier since the radius is really small, you can only affect few units, so you can't really catch a retreating army (unless you have lot's of oracles, but then your army will be far weaker since oracles are 3 supply and can't attack).
-can be used to Help Void-rays a lot, making them able to retreat from a bad situation (2 viking), or able to catch retreating units a little longer.
-Makes air units far more resilient but not stronger, the biggest problem of protoss air is they are a One-engagement unit, you can never retreat(except phoenix), they can be easily snipped or get caught out of position because of the opponent AA range and strength.
-Unlike ground units you can micro and stack your air units to get the buff on a lot of them. it gives more micro to the A-move late game protoss air, makes the air more reliable since it's no longer a Do-or-Die situation without giving them more power.
-Helps deal with infestor lock, you can use air without being afraid of one fungal=dead air and help the templars reaching the infestors.
-It does not negate the opponent micro, or make storm OP
-I can see so many uses for this skill
I hope you guys can back me up on this idea
EDIT:
On October 26 2012 01:23 GattAttack wrote:
Good post, and I do agree that time warp is a much more exciting and dynamic spell than what the oracle had before. However I don't really understand why it has to slow movement speed like so many spells before it (fungal, concessive shells, and forcefields to an extent). Debuffs are always fun, but why not some buffing for the aiur force? Personally I think that instead of -50% movement speed why not (numbers not exact) +50% movement speed?
Suddenly with +50% movement speed zealot archon oracle…would just be awesome. Also since the spell affects an area (I read that right, right?) then good time warp usage would be so much more important, unless you want to deal with super stimmed marines (omfg!), or speedy speedlings. This kind of dynamic would also be more interesting with blizzards other suggestion: the decrease to locust/broodling/infested terran life, since if you want to decrease the time that they exist you would also increase their movement speed! You could also play around then with like +shield/health regen and other factors to make the spell more of a late game field control kind of spell, rather than just a simple movement speed buff/defuff.
looks like you had almost the same Idea as I did and posted it before me while I was writing =P
I hope blizzard goes this Buff style instead of the Debuff one...
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I am a Zerg player and I agree with this post. Blizzard will have to tweak the spell stats (radius, cost, duration etc etc.) but it's a spell that is useful/interesting and can be balanced, unlike Entomb.
HoTS looks awesome for Protoss, I hope Blizzard will fix Zerg issues before release (Hydralisks/Overseers and our stupid Tier 2 Broodlord, also knows as Swarm Host)
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On October 26 2012 01:25 GoldenH wrote:
I am still waiting for the patch to test it, but so far I am not impressed.
- its slow will inevitably mean your zealots will get stuck in it, the same way they get stuck in storm, meaning that it cannot make zealots better, honestly it'll probably make them worse, since their units will get out of the effect first and any units inside will be easily kited.
- its gas cost means less gas for psi storm, while this MIGHT give you a way to keep your opponent from baiting psi storms, and give you a way to slow down the attack so you don't have to sacrifice your army to convince them to stand under the psi storm, it will probably just bait time warps AND psi storms.
- if it really doesn't affect air there is no way to use this against broodlords, which means vortex is still a necessity.
The only way I would bother to use this ability is if it decreases attack speed as well as movement. Unfortunately, the oracle patch doesn't seem to be up yet, so I can't see how its implemented. But it's way too early to say it's any good.
Only affects enemy units.
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Where they announced this? I haven't seen it.
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On October 26 2012 01:26 rpgalon wrote:Ok What about: Time Warp - Increase Protoss Units Movement Speed and Negates root/slow effectsVERY SMALL Radius (1.0),
6-15s duration, 50-75 energyCan be used on ground/air unitswhy? -can be used to retreat key units like a colossus or a small group of sentries/HT, but can't be used to save your army from a bad engagement. -can be used in warp prism with zealots(let's say the skill affects units inside the prism) making the drop far deadlier for worker harass. -is not really good in making the ground protoss deathball faster and deadlier since the radius is really small, you can only affect few units, so you can't really catch a retreating army (unless you have lot's of oracles, but then your army will be far weaker since oracles are 3 supply and can't attack). -can be used to Help Void-rays a lot, making them able to retreat from a bad situation (2 viking), or able to catch retreating units a little longer. -Makes air units far more resilient but not stronger, the biggest problem of protoss air is they are a One-engagement unit, you can never retreat(except phoenix), they can be easily snipped or get caught out of position because of the opponent AA range and strength. -Unlike ground units you can micro and stack your air units to get the buff on a lot of them. it gives more micro to the A-move late game protoss air, makes the air more reliable since it's no longer a Do-or-Die situation without giving them more power. -Helps deal with infestor lock, you can use air without being afraid of one fungal=dead air and help the templars reaching the infestors. -It does not negate the opponent micro, or make storm OP -I can see so many uses for this skill I hope you guys can back me up on this idea EDIT: Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 01:23 GattAttack wrote:
Good post, and I do agree that time warp is a much more exciting and dynamic spell than what the oracle had before. However I don't really understand why it has to slow movement speed like so many spells before it (fungal, concessive shells, and forcefields to an extent). Debuffs are always fun, but why not some buffing for the aiur force? Personally I think that instead of -50% movement speed why not (numbers not exact) +50% movement speed?
Suddenly with +50% movement speed zealot archon oracle…would just be awesome. Also since the spell affects an area (I read that right, right?) then good time warp usage would be so much more important, unless you want to deal with super stimmed marines (omfg!), or speedy speedlings. This kind of dynamic would also be more interesting with blizzards other suggestion: the decrease to locust/broodling/infested terran life, since if you want to decrease the time that they exist you would also increase their movement speed! You could also play around then with like +shield/health regen and other factors to make the spell more of a late game field control kind of spell, rather than just a simple movement speed buff/defuff. looks like you had almost the same Idea as I did and posted it before me while I was writing =P I hope blizzard goes this Buff style instead of the Debuff one...
lol you could probe stack though to get crazy fast mining ...
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I like it the theory behind it. Blizzard should give it some time in the beta to see what happens.
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This is another spell that limits micro in the game, which broodwar had VERY little of (yes ensnare exists but its not a main spell by any means) so evrething that limits micro im strongly against. Good players should be able to micro better and not be hindered by game design.
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It's not a perfect spell, but so far it;s much better than Emtomb, shouldn't we all agree on that?
There are many tweak can be done on this spell. Like it will reduce speed of Light units more than Massive units as an example? It's not hard to tweak the stats, I care more about the gameplay, will the spell be fun to use?
One thing Time Warp has that FF doesn't that it can give wide position advantage (enemy will lose a lot of DPS and take a while to get in range if Protoss can throw down a big Time Warp in the middle of the field). It costs way too much more if you do this with FF so you will either cut enemy army in half or prevent them from attacking.
So Time Warp might give Protoss a Siege position perhaps? (since Time Warp might last a lot longer than FF)
My only problem that why doesn't this spell effect air? This will finally make Phoenix can kill Muta, or stop weird Air play cheese from Terran. If this spell effect Air maybe Air of all races will get decent buffs so we will see more air combinations.
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On October 26 2012 02:00 Jmanthedragonguy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 01:26 rpgalon wrote:Ok What about: Time Warp - Increase Protoss Units Movement Speed and Negates root/slow effectsVERY SMALL Radius (1.0),
6-15s duration, 50-75 energyCan be used on ground/air unitswhy? -can be used to retreat key units like a colossus or a small group of sentries/HT, but can't be used to save your army from a bad engagement. -can be used in warp prism with zealots(let's say the skill affects units inside the prism) making the drop far deadlier for worker harass. -is not really good in making the ground protoss deathball faster and deadlier since the radius is really small, you can only affect few units, so you can't really catch a retreating army (unless you have lot's of oracles, but then your army will be far weaker since oracles are 3 supply and can't attack). -can be used to Help Void-rays a lot, making them able to retreat from a bad situation (2 viking), or able to catch retreating units a little longer. -Makes air units far more resilient but not stronger, the biggest problem of protoss air is they are a One-engagement unit, you can never retreat(except phoenix), they can be easily snipped or get caught out of position because of the opponent AA range and strength. -Unlike ground units you can micro and stack your air units to get the buff on a lot of them. it gives more micro to the A-move late game protoss air, makes the air more reliable since it's no longer a Do-or-Die situation without giving them more power. -Helps deal with infestor lock, you can use air without being afraid of one fungal=dead air and help the templars reaching the infestors. -It does not negate the opponent micro, or make storm OP -I can see so many uses for this skill I hope you guys can back me up on this idea EDIT: On October 26 2012 01:23 GattAttack wrote:
Good post, and I do agree that time warp is a much more exciting and dynamic spell than what the oracle had before. However I don't really understand why it has to slow movement speed like so many spells before it (fungal, concessive shells, and forcefields to an extent). Debuffs are always fun, but why not some buffing for the aiur force? Personally I think that instead of -50% movement speed why not (numbers not exact) +50% movement speed?
Suddenly with +50% movement speed zealot archon oracle…would just be awesome. Also since the spell affects an area (I read that right, right?) then good time warp usage would be so much more important, unless you want to deal with super stimmed marines (omfg!), or speedy speedlings. This kind of dynamic would also be more interesting with blizzards other suggestion: the decrease to locust/broodling/infested terran life, since if you want to decrease the time that they exist you would also increase their movement speed! You could also play around then with like +shield/health regen and other factors to make the spell more of a late game field control kind of spell, rather than just a simple movement speed buff/defuff. looks like you had almost the same Idea as I did and posted it before me while I was writing =P I hope blizzard goes this Buff style instead of the Debuff one... lol you could probe stack though to get crazy fast mining ...
hahaha, but you can not, the only thing you would get is probes awaiting more in the line before they can finally start harvesting... you could put 2 probes on gas and use the skill on then, but that would be a little stupid =P.... it just help to show how many ideas we could get from this change.
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i'm finally starting to love that unit.
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Uses i can think beyond simply.... cast on choke to slow incoming units.
- Chargelots vs roaches on creep
- Support for void rays chasing stuff (although this would be minimal)
- Setting a path of these on the ramps leading to high ground mains on 4 player maps while warping inside with prism. Hard to tell how useful this would be on larger ramps without knowing the radius of the spell
- Cast on top of infested terrans recently hatched to turn them in turtles, they are already slow as hell off creep.
- Cast on hydras to troll zerg players thinking they were finally useful 
- Cast on the attack path of swarm hosts.
- Used in combination with forcefields vs zerg on small/medium chokes to slice a piece of the army and kite the rest taking almost no damage.
- Used in conjunction with storm drops to maximize kills.
I'm sure there's a lot more but overall id say its mostly just a tool to give protoss some control over zerg, Could be useful vs terran but its hard to theorize much when EMP basically kills this in any real battle beyond laying a slow highway between bases you are harassing.
edit: removed some stuff involving air, dint realize this was ground only
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Meh I don't like it that much.
First of all as a harassment spell it seems pretty silly unless they change some of it's workings on workers. Considering movement is only a part of the gathering minerals mechanisms this will only slow mining by ~25%, in fact it will probably not even slow mining much if a base is fully saturated (3 workers per mineral, 3 on gas). Perhaps if they make the actual mining slower as well it could do something. (it would be cool if it actually slowed every enemy thing, like making units, building buildings, researching techs etc).
I also disagree how it may not synergize with FF. Sure casting both at the same time won't do anything but time warp seems like an ideal spell to chase an army with so you can box them afterwards. For example zerg prods at the third with roaches, you fly in and time warp them and they can't escape before your sentry mix arrives and boxes them.
In that way i'm afraid the spell will deter players from attacking protoss even more nor help protoss attack themselves very much which actually encourages the "15 mins no rush" type of games we often see now.
Finally I fail to see how this can replace FF for defending the third. In PvT i can understand as this potentially let's your zealots get hits in for which you'd otherwise use a FF box but in PvZ i don't trust it. PvZ is the only matchup that restricts map building imo, ie all maps have a fairly closed third because of this matchup otherwise being broken on it. Yet I don't see how you can hold roaches or multi-prong ling attacks with timewarp instead of FF yet unless it has some HUGE area of effect. Stalker/sentry/immortal is the only combo that deals with both lings and roaches early on because it's all ranged, can abuse ff and does good bonus damage against roaches. Zealots still do poorly against roaches even if their speed is down to 50% because zealots can't focus and don't do bonus damage vs armored.
Maybe that in combination with purify this time warp will be enough to play sentryless against Z which would open up the map pool to allow maps with tough thirds etc. Still without any things that really benefit terran/protoss on open maps, maps like that will remain zerg maps probably.
Either way I think I really have to play with it first to really judge it. Still the idea that there is another spell restricting movement in the game soon scares me to think we will see even less back and forth action. Games like Ryung vs Flash today are awesome because there was constant movement and back and forth action over the map. Spells that severely restrict movement (fungal, concussive, graviton beam, ff and now time warp) stop that 'dancing' game back and forth because one or both parties can no longer escape with minimal losses. Soon anytime you move out on the map as zerg against protoss you have to afraid: "what if he was just preparing a big attack? he will timewarp my roaches and crush them before i can retreat!". When prodding is no longer safe harassment dies out and the game resorts to camping or going all-in. Much like protoss is forced to play in WoL because they can never retreat safely (because of concussive shell and speedlings).
On the other hand, blizzard has a very difficult job to do trying to fix all problems with protoss in the oracle:
- protoss overreliance on sentries => oracle must enable sentryless play and make third base play possible on maps with an open third
- protoss lack of harassment options => must be good harass unit (ignoring the fact that protoss already had harass options on the stargate but dustin browder is so stupid to force the oracle as a stargate unit..)
- protoss deathball syndrome => must not reinforce the deathball but it must have some small combat use or be utterly boring like the previous oracle
It's very hard to come up with an ability set that fulfills these three requirements, time warp might be close but i'm afraid it will turn out terrible by promoting boring gameplay as the spell punishes attractive gameplay too much (harassment)
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This is a cool spell in concept. Hopefully the numbers can be balanced correctly.
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I like the idea lets wait to see it in play before we go crazy about it though
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On October 26 2012 02:48 Markwerf wrote:
On the other hand, blizzard has a very difficult job to do trying to fix all problems with protoss in the oracle:
- protoss overreliance on sentries => oracle must enable sentryless play and make third base play possible on maps with an open third
- protoss lack of harassment options => must be good harass unit (ignoring the fact that protoss already had harass options on the stargate but dustin browder is so stupid to force the oracle as a stargate unit..)
- protoss deathball syndrome => must not reinforce the deathball but it must have some small combat use or be utterly boring like the previous oracle
It's very hard to come up with an ability set that fulfills these three requirements, time warp might be close but i'm afraid it will turn out terrible by promoting boring gameplay as the spell punishes attractive gameplay too much (harassment)
I think the idea of making the skill a movement speed buff in a really small AoE, instead of an enemy movement speed debuff, does fulfill your 3 points:
-can be used to retreat key units making them faster and able to run away, also the oracle damage skill will probably delay the 3rd zerg base allowing protoss to also delay their 3rd base if they go air play.
-using the speed buff on a Zealot drop squad will make those zealots able to chase scvs making the harass far strong, not only that you will also be able to harass with void-ray/tempest and get away with the speed buff once corruptors/viking appear.
-since the radius would be really small, you can only use the skill on small group of units like a group of HT or 2 colossus... except if it's a protoss air deathball since you can micro and stack the air units to buff them, but that would not make the air fleet stronger, just more resilient since you could use the skill for a fast retreat, it would also give some micro potential to the A-move that is the current protoss air fleet.
-and it does not negate the opponent micro.
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Just a bad version of fungal, the spell that is making infestors broken.
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United States4883 Posts
It needs to affect all units, not just enemy units.
My take on it.
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it is completely useless. not worth the price of the oracle (and stargate). not worth the micro required. people will favor using force fields.
there's a reason why no one used Ensnare in BW
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On October 26 2012 03:25 blabber wrote:
it is completely useless. not worth the price of the oracle (and stargate). not worth the micro required. people will favor using force fields.
there's a reason why no one used Ensnare in BW
lol, don't even compare the tvp of now to the tvp of BW, we use bio now ...
time warp can:
- hold units in place for longer so storms are extra devastating
- stop units from retreating so the protoss can kill everything
- stop units from chasing so the protoss can retreat
- negate a stim
- make kiting and splitting impossible
It can be an amazing addition to the lategame protoss army, and as a terran player I don't think protoss needs this.
The oracle was meant to be used for harassment, I believe with time warp it will mainly be used in battles.
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On October 26 2012 03:18 Laurens wrote:
Just a bad version of fungal, the spell that is making infestors broken.
correction: Just a bad version of fungal on one of the fastest flying units in the game
so if you are not chasing zerglings/mutalisks you should be able to 100% catch them units while retreating. You know how every moveout vs marauders with stim and concussive results and no blink done is an all in, as in if you lose the battle there is no retreat and you straight up lose? Well, this awesome spell does just that.
Will make for interesting games, as i will never leave my base ever again, instead turtle it out until i get my Brood Lord cloud going. Enjoy the game!
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I can't believe it! They finally got rid of entomb which I've been complaining about in one line posts since it's introduction. I might actually play starcraft 2 again.
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Bisutopia19239 Posts
This is definitely not a useless ability but I'm not sure I'm crazy about it. It will prevent marauder micro and and I can seeit being used with worker slow + zealot harassment. Lots of potential and lots of issues. I'm up for anything that's better than entomb though.
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On October 26 2012 03:33 Cirqueenflex wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 03:18 Laurens wrote:
Just a bad version of fungal, the spell that is making infestors broken. correction: Just a bad version of fungal on one of the fastest flying units in the gameso if you are not chasing zerglings/mutalisks you should be able to 100% catch them units while retreating. You know how every moveout vs marauders with stim and concussive results and no blink done is an all in, as in if you lose the battle there is no retreat and you straight up lose? Well, this awesome spell does just that. Will make for interesting games, as i will never leave my base ever again, instead turtle it out until i get my Brood Lord cloud going. Enjoy the game!
So what you're saying is it allows toss to punish foolish attacks like the other two races do? But less powerfully than Fungal?
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Man I really starting to like where Blizzard is going right now
Pulsar Beam is like on of the coolest harass styles...
Even though it needs some buffs I guess (maybe)
Makes me wanna play HotS Protoss :D
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hmmm, sounds a lot like ensnare to me? And that spell hardly ever saw the light of day. Might as well give P the corsair back with disruption web. O wait, Z has that with the viper and blinding cloud....in all seriousness we will just have to wait and see what happens
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On October 26 2012 03:29 Laurens wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 03:25 blabber wrote:
it is completely useless. not worth the price of the oracle (and stargate). not worth the micro required. people will favor using force fields.
there's a reason why no one used Ensnare in BW lol, don't even compare the tvp of now to the tvp of BW, we use bio now ... time warp can: - hold units in place for longer so storms are extra devastating - stop units from retreating so the protoss can kill everything - stop units from chasing so the protoss can retreat - negate a stim - make kiting and splitting impossible It can be an amazing addition to the lategame protoss army, and as a terran player I don't think protoss needs this. The oracle was meant to be used for harassment, I believe with time warp it will mainly be used in battles.
first off, Ensnare in BW was a Zerg ability, and force fields do all this except BETTER
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So much discussion and yet its not even in the beta yet. I admit I do like the concept, but it scary how many people have already made up their minds and no one has any hands on experience with it yet....
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I haven't been so excited since the launch of the beta!!
When I played Toss it felt exactly the same, Mothership core helps but you still have the same army, some people mass Tempests but I only make a few late game when they're viable, so it didn't come in to play much, and I never used the Oracle before because I hated it and I new entombed would for sure be removed, it was just too ridiculous.
Now it really feels like Toss has an epic new unit, with multiple uses, that requires micro and good decisions. Can't wait to try it!
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On October 26 2012 00:18 hpTheGreat wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 00:15 Slago wrote:
I think we're gonna have to try it before passing this kind of judgement, that's the problem with this community always over thinking and jumping waaaaaaaaay ahead of the present, looking towards the future is good, but an essay on how a spell will change a race with no real info on the spell or testing is absurd Really? What if i told you that marines can now fly? Wouldnt you be able to figure out that it woudl be OP?
No it wouldn't be OP.
First off it would be a spell the allows Marines to fly, right? After all, he clearly stated that he is talking about SPELLS.
So you have to factor in how much it costs to get said spell that lets Marines fly.
Then you need to know how much energy it costs to activate the spell.
Finally, how long does the spell last and how many Marines you can use it on, at any given time.
All of these are factors and can significantly impact the timing of when this strat is viable, and thus whether the opposition can reasonably defend against it.
And for Christ's sake a Medivac technically allows marines to fly and I don't think people scream, "MEDIVAC OP, MEDIVAC OP!"
Seriously people, please think before opening your mouth.
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United States7483 Posts
Time Warp should debuff enemy units and buff friendly units in the area of effect.
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So they want to remove terran bio play completely from hots i see. Toss got their own "fungal baneling" (time warp +storm) combo now and also collossi in the back and terran has.,......?
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On October 26 2012 04:40 Sweetness.751 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 00:18 hpTheGreat wrote:On October 26 2012 00:15 Slago wrote:
I think we're gonna have to try it before passing this kind of judgement, that's the problem with this community always over thinking and jumping waaaaaaaaay ahead of the present, looking towards the future is good, but an essay on how a spell will change a race with no real info on the spell or testing is absurd Really? What if i told you that marines can now fly? Wouldnt you be able to figure out that it woudl be OP? No it wouldn't be OP. First off it would be a spell the allows Marines to fly, right? After all, he clearly stated that he is talking about SPELLS. So you have to factor in how much it costs to get said spell that lets Marines fly. Then you need to know how much energy it costs to activate the spell. Finally, how long does the spell last and how many Marines you can use it on, at any given time. All of these are factors and can significantly impact the timing of when this strat is viable, and thus whether the opposition can reasonably defend against it. And for Christ's sake a Medivac technically allows marines to fly and I don't think people scream, "MEDIVAC OP, MEDIVAC OP!" Seriously people, please think before opening your mouth.
Whether a spell would be OP or not is beside the point. People aren't liking Time Warp because it's OP, UP, or neutral - they like it because the actual intended functionality of the spell is something they could see being useful (while still being counterable).
Let's say I wanted to make a spell that destroyed all buildings in a certain area. I could balance that. I could put it on a unit that's ridiculously expensive, make it super lategame, and make the unit move so slowly that most of the time it shouldn't work (and I could also do the opposite - I could make it insanely OP, therefore there is probably some middle ground where it's remotely balanced).
That doesn't make it a good ability. People would still hate it because it's either a ridiculously expensive unit that is very hard to use that ends up doing nothing, or a unit which does something, and therefore costs someone their expansion. It's binary and play off of hidden information, and people hate that.
The reason people like the ability is because it could (with the right characteristics) accomplish the purpose of Forcefield (in that it provides zealots and stalkers the opportunity to shine with a zealots damage and a stalkers range without their downfall which is the zealot's slowness and the stalker's micro-intensiveness) - without the part people hate about forcefield (which is that you can't micro against it). That's why people like the *concept*. It allows for control on the part of both players. Or, it could be awful with the wrong characteristics and they could instantly scrap it without ever getting it to the place people want it to get.
That doesn't change the point of this post, which was that the concept (and not the specifics) has the potential to add good gameplay. If you can't understand why without seeing an example (and are unable to simply "theorycraft") I would suggest that the beta forum may not be the forum for you to watch. Everything in here is theorycrafting and testing with very small sample sizes. That may make it less rigorous in terms of making an argument, but most of the people posting here aren't here for the rigor - they're here for the very theorycrafting some in this thread are decrying.
Why is it that when someone makes a post saying "The warhound is bull*^(&" everyone is behind it, and we all come together as a community to tell Blizzard no, but when someone makes a post saying "hey, this ability could be really good guys" there are so many who say "how do you know? it might be awful!" and "you should think before you open your mouth".
You know, don't you, that this is why we can't have nice things?
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So many game devs in this thread, lol.
Let it play out before you bash it, especially if you are in copper league.
On October 26 2012 05:22 WeRRa wrote:
So they want to remove terran bio play completely from hots i see. Toss got their own "fungal baneling" (time warp +storm) combo now and also collossi in the back and terran has.,......?
Siege Tanks
Widow Mines
Hunter Seeker
You want more AoE?
And no, running around with tier 1 units the entire game is not supposed to be viable; unfortunately WoL just happened to be balanced around it. Terran can counter every combination that you described with STRATEGY (read - not 1 t a click).
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This spell isn't even in the game yet. We don't know how big it's radius is, how long it lasts... nothing. Wait until we know more about it to praise it.
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I must be psychic or something. I suggested something like the time warp in a post right before this was announced.
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Thats weird I have a dream about this kind of ability long time ago and what it will do to help toss ...
wow now I feel like nostradamus !! xD
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On October 26 2012 05:40 scph wrote:
I must be psychic or something. I suggested something like the time warp in a post right before this was announced.
On October 26 2012 05:55 therockmanxx wrote:
Thats weird I have a dream about this kind of ability long time ago and what it will do to help toss ...
wow now I feel like nostradamus !! xD
You guys are on to something. Nice warpmind.
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While I do like this spell and where it's going, I also see a complication. Balancing its harassment affect versus its combat utility. Let's look at what aspects they could change.
-Radius. More powerful in combat.
-Energy cost. More powerful in combat.
-Slow %. Equalish.
-Duration. More powerful in harassment. I wonder if it targets area or units though.
All in all, it seems like it will be difficult to keep balanced while still being a powerful harassment tool at the same time. (although making it slow mining rate will help)
Also, my theorycraft is failing me. How can this new Oracle help Air Protoss play?
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On October 26 2012 06:05 LockeTazeline wrote:
While I do like this spell and where it's going, I also see a complication. Balancing its harassment affect versus its combat utility. Let's look at what aspects they could change.
-Radius. More powerful in combat.
-Energy cost. More powerful in combat.
-Slow %. Equalish.
-Duration. More powerful in harassment. I wonder if it targets area or units though.
All in all, it seems like it will be difficult to keep balanced while still being a powerful harassment tool at the same time. (although making it slow mining rate will help)
Also, my theorycraft is failing me. How can this new Oracle help Air Protoss play?
Actually, Slow % is less effective in combat to a point.
Let me explain what I mean: let's say you have zealots v marines and the marines have to run all the way across the zone (something that takes them about 8 seconds we'll say - about half a walloff with FFs, since they lock the unit in combat for 15 seconds). That makes the marine's speed 1.125. A zealot spends about half his time attacking, so the rest of the time he spends moving anyway (i.e. while his attack is cooling down he can catch up to the unit earlier, but if he can't attack yet, doesn't actually deal more damage). In this way, additional slow against marines (no stim) is redundant - while additional slow against speedlings may still yield additional damage.
On the other hand, additional % slow will always reduce resource output of a mining base.
Also, duration matters insofar as if the duration is lower than the time it takes a unit to run across it, a subtraction in duration may be equivalent (in some situations) to a subtraction in area.
In general, I think you've hit the nail on the head - though it is worth noting that how much it affects the combat situation depends largely on what you're combatting.
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Dammit. I saw time and I thought they meant the ingame clock.
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holy wow this looks so amazingly awesome
TIME WARP THE MINERAL LINES
ALL THE MINERAL LINES
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So basically it's an 'anti-stim' spell to be able to micro better? Seems nice to me. I'm curious to how it will play out. It'd be pretty cool to have a double immortal drop to kill greater spire, and slow the army with this spell, so it can't retreat in time. I can imagine it will be quite strong.
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All in all, it seems like it will be difficult to keep balanced while still being a powerful harassment tool at the same time. (although making it slow mining rate will help)
I don't think this is really true. Balance the spell's stats it for army support so its useful but not imba, then if its too weak at harassment, just have the timeslow also effect harvesting rate to a certain extent so the harass is potent but not gamebreakingly strong. Thats a very easy, straightforward fix that makes perfect intuitive sense from both a gameplay perspective and a "lore"/flavor perspective.
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Time Warp will give the Protoss whole new /dance options though--"let's do the Time Warp again!"
(It's just a jump to the left....)
OK, I'm not taking my post too seriously. I apologize.
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Interesting.
Gonna go try this out now. didnt realise a new patch was out...
the OP makes this sound pretty decent, time to find out whether or not his theory crafting is on the money or not!
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One other thing about this spell--it will introduce some inherent separation into armies.
Think about it. A force is hit by a warp field. They charge forward to get out--as the front row leaves the warp they speed up and pull ahead of the other units which are still slowed, introducing separation between them. When the next ones leave they speed up and pull ahead of the ones behind them, but the gap between them and the ones in front of them remains because they're the same speed.Instead of a simple clump, units become more scattered (akin to the way Chargelots spread out from each other when closing with the enemy, and for roughly the same reason, albeit at a much slower pace), reducing their effective dps until they stop to regoup.
This also introduces an interesting dynamic with aoe. Units inside the time warp are more vulnerable to it, but in leaving there may well be situations where they are less vulnerable to it do to spreading effect. It'll be interesting to see people test that.
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Nice post and the usual boatload of preposterous theory crafting from mediocre players whose results will never ever bear on any issue related to balance in a million years.
A mild tangent:
You cannot determine how good something is in a vacuum. People haven't even seen a single player use this spell yet the death of Terran has already been predicted. Given where we are in the beta and that the top tier pros aren't even playing HOTS regularly it's extremely difficult to determine how good or bad some spell or ability is at this point. It's actually kind of unfortunate that the top pros are too busy with WOL to play HOTS since they won't have an ability to impact game development. What changes should be made should be heavily based on top tier pros (as in top 10 in the world or better in their respective races). These are the players whose input, but mostly play, counts the most.
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Time warp ain't a harassment spell guys. You're not gonna spend precious energy on slowing workers for a few seconds.
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So whats Bio gonna do in a maxed out battle if they can't even dodge Storms?
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Time warp used with colossi/ht support is gonna be such a slaughter.
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this spell only makes sense if blizzard finally reworks the two overpowered spells that achieve what time warp does, but much more:
forcefields
fungal
i dont dare to hope yet that this will be the case ::/
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Its an awesome ability that can be use in combat and for harrasing econm (Which is what Blizzard want)
However it seems wierd to have 2 kind of support spellcasters in ur army when you defending ur base
Forcefields and timewarps on ramp !!
Probably it might need an upgrade to increase radious and/or duration to balance late/early game
I think we are gonna see this 2 units (sentry & oracle) in the battlefield because making a couple of sentries is always safe (they dont need any tech so you can always get some) and oracles is an almost must have new units (harras, scout, delay push). Balancing might be a little b**** hahaha
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On October 26 2012 00:21 Tuczniak wrote:
Where did Blizz announce this?
Anyway. It sounds good, but it will be hard to balance so it would be good harass and not too strong in the battle.
In the hidden forums... The EU forums that is!
http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/5724354244#1
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On October 26 2012 02:00 Jmanthedragonguy wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 01:26 rpgalon wrote:Ok What about: Time Warp - Increase Protoss Units Movement Speed and Negates root/slow effectsVERY SMALL Radius (1.0),
6-15s duration, 50-75 energyCan be used on ground/air unitswhy? -can be used to retreat key units like a colossus or a small group of sentries/HT, but can't be used to save your army from a bad engagement. -can be used in warp prism with zealots(let's say the skill affects units inside the prism) making the drop far deadlier for worker harass. -is not really good in making the ground protoss deathball faster and deadlier since the radius is really small, you can only affect few units, so you can't really catch a retreating army (unless you have lot's of oracles, but then your army will be far weaker since oracles are 3 supply and can't attack). -can be used to Help Void-rays a lot, making them able to retreat from a bad situation (2 viking), or able to catch retreating units a little longer. -Makes air units far more resilient but not stronger, the biggest problem of protoss air is they are a One-engagement unit, you can never retreat(except phoenix), they can be easily snipped or get caught out of position because of the opponent AA range and strength. -Unlike ground units you can micro and stack your air units to get the buff on a lot of them. it gives more micro to the A-move late game protoss air, makes the air more reliable since it's no longer a Do-or-Die situation without giving them more power. -Helps deal with infestor lock, you can use air without being afraid of one fungal=dead air and help the templars reaching the infestors. -It does not negate the opponent micro, or make storm OP -I can see so many uses for this skill I hope you guys can back me up on this idea EDIT: On October 26 2012 01:23 GattAttack wrote:
Good post, and I do agree that time warp is a much more exciting and dynamic spell than what the oracle had before. However I don't really understand why it has to slow movement speed like so many spells before it (fungal, concessive shells, and forcefields to an extent). Debuffs are always fun, but why not some buffing for the aiur force? Personally I think that instead of -50% movement speed why not (numbers not exact) +50% movement speed?
Suddenly with +50% movement speed zealot archon oracle…would just be awesome. Also since the spell affects an area (I read that right, right?) then good time warp usage would be so much more important, unless you want to deal with super stimmed marines (omfg!), or speedy speedlings. This kind of dynamic would also be more interesting with blizzards other suggestion: the decrease to locust/broodling/infested terran life, since if you want to decrease the time that they exist you would also increase their movement speed! You could also play around then with like +shield/health regen and other factors to make the spell more of a late game field control kind of spell, rather than just a simple movement speed buff/defuff. looks like you had almost the same Idea as I did and posted it before me while I was writing =P I hope blizzard goes this Buff style instead of the Debuff one... lol you could probe stack though to get crazy fast mining ...
If only movement speed (not mining speed) is effected it would not change mining rate once you are saturated.
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On October 26 2012 00:08 vthree wrote:
Not sure if another AoE is need for Protoss. Time wrap plus storm seems like a deadly combo.
It's a really hardcore nerfed version of the SC1:BW Maelstorm+Psystorm combo which was like a storm with doubled damage and fungaled units that cant move out of the storm.
Hope you realize that this combo is over 12 years old, you better get used to that new weakened one and prepare your ghosts to focus the oracle. Or maybe just use your vikings to snipe that thing, it's out of paper.
This unit concept is good and actually amazingly raises the skillgap between good players and lucky players. Stuff like this is always good!
Offtopic:
At the end of the day i'm still wondering for 2 years now, why they gave zerg one of the greatest abilitys protoss had (maelstorm (fungal) and mindcontrol). I want that dark archon back, these abilitys were way better balanced in protoss hands because they haven't that amazing income and banks to invest into 30 infestors/dark archons. Not to mention that the maelstorm the dark archon had, didnt do any damage. so in order to maximize the skill u actually had to combine 2 units (high templar and a dark archon <- the dark archon alone are already 2 units.. the DT and an HT, but the dark archon didnt even had a single skill that actually did dmg, not even a standard attack). Infestors are just 2 units merged in one + the addition of infested terrans -.-
If i listen to what i just said the infestor already sounds OP when you only talk about the concept of that unit.
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United Kingdom20285 Posts
On October 26 2012 08:33 DeCoup wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 02:00 Jmanthedragonguy wrote:On October 26 2012 01:26 rpgalon wrote:Ok What about: Time Warp - Increase Protoss Units Movement Speed and Negates root/slow effectsVERY SMALL Radius (1.0),
6-15s duration, 50-75 energyCan be used on ground/air unitswhy? -can be used to retreat key units like a colossus or a small group of sentries/HT, but can't be used to save your army from a bad engagement. -can be used in warp prism with zealots(let's say the skill affects units inside the prism) making the drop far deadlier for worker harass. -is not really good in making the ground protoss deathball faster and deadlier since the radius is really small, you can only affect few units, so you can't really catch a retreating army (unless you have lot's of oracles, but then your army will be far weaker since oracles are 3 supply and can't attack). -can be used to Help Void-rays a lot, making them able to retreat from a bad situation (2 viking), or able to catch retreating units a little longer. -Makes air units far more resilient but not stronger, the biggest problem of protoss air is they are a One-engagement unit, you can never retreat(except phoenix), they can be easily snipped or get caught out of position because of the opponent AA range and strength. -Unlike ground units you can micro and stack your air units to get the buff on a lot of them. it gives more micro to the A-move late game protoss air, makes the air more reliable since it's no longer a Do-or-Die situation without giving them more power. -Helps deal with infestor lock, you can use air without being afraid of one fungal=dead air and help the templars reaching the infestors. -It does not negate the opponent micro, or make storm OP -I can see so many uses for this skill I hope you guys can back me up on this idea EDIT: On October 26 2012 01:23 GattAttack wrote:
Good post, and I do agree that time warp is a much more exciting and dynamic spell than what the oracle had before. However I don't really understand why it has to slow movement speed like so many spells before it (fungal, concessive shells, and forcefields to an extent). Debuffs are always fun, but why not some buffing for the aiur force? Personally I think that instead of -50% movement speed why not (numbers not exact) +50% movement speed?
Suddenly with +50% movement speed zealot archon oracle…would just be awesome. Also since the spell affects an area (I read that right, right?) then good time warp usage would be so much more important, unless you want to deal with super stimmed marines (omfg!), or speedy speedlings. This kind of dynamic would also be more interesting with blizzards other suggestion: the decrease to locust/broodling/infested terran life, since if you want to decrease the time that they exist you would also increase their movement speed! You could also play around then with like +shield/health regen and other factors to make the spell more of a late game field control kind of spell, rather than just a simple movement speed buff/defuff. looks like you had almost the same Idea as I did and posted it before me while I was writing =P I hope blizzard goes this Buff style instead of the Debuff one... lol you could probe stack though to get crazy fast mining ... If only movement speed (not mining speed) is effected it would not change mining rate once you are saturated.
You would need 4 or 5 probes on a far mineral patch instead of 3, and you would need 3-4 on a close one instead of ~2.2
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The last thing toss needed was another spell that supplements the death ball amazingly well.
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On October 25 2012 23:50 hpTheGreat wrote:
You say that its an option between FF and time warp and not both.
When given a choice I would have to guess that an overwhelming percentage of toss players would choose FF.
Why wouldn't you? Who cares about slowing down units when you can take them out of the fight completely (by keeping them out of range).
However you are wrong, It will be used in conjuction with the army and be OP as hell. Which is fine.
I disagree... sentries aren't always in range to cast forcefield, plus at deathball sizes it can be harder to manipulate forcefields. Oracles have the bonus of being able to run forward, time warp a section of the opponents army (or more) and force the opponent to stand their ground or take the loss. It could turn into an interesting "dance" of sorts between protecting your army (opponent) and keeping your oracles alive, especially if oracles become helpful to late game scenarios.
On October 26 2012 07:04 CruelZeratul wrote:
So whats Bio gonna do in a maxed out battle if they can't even dodge Storms?
Build ghosts. 
Yes Oracle storm sounds powerful, but oracles cost a lot of gas. There's a reason people don't FF-storm. Every oracle built in the lategame is one less high templar; keep that in mind.
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On October 26 2012 05:25 Maxyim wrote:So many game devs in this thread, lol. Let it play out before you bash it, especially if you are in copper league. Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 05:22 WeRRa wrote:
So they want to remove terran bio play completely from hots i see. Toss got their own "fungal baneling" (time warp +storm) combo now and also collossi in the back and terran has.,......? Siege Tanks Widow Mines Hunter Seeker You want more AoE? And no, running around with tier 1 units the entire game is not supposed to be viable; unfortunately WoL just happened to be balanced around it. Terran can counter every combination that you described with STRATEGY (read - not 1 t a click).
Widow Mines hardly do AoE and tanks+ravens in tvp in wich troll world do you live? Terran got 1 semi useful spell wich is emp and this only saves you of getting totally owned by protoss AoE and now another one, really no need for it.
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hey looks its a zerg queen 
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Should cause some interesting decision making in whether to harass or support your army if blizz balance it right.
Also, I wonder was the spell would look like visually, you cant exactly "see" time
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This is perfect! Remove force field, nerf warpgate, buff Gateway units, nerf Colo, and Protoss is much better designed.
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On October 26 2012 00:22 rpgalon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 00:15 Treehead wrote:On October 26 2012 00:00 rpgalon wrote:
I disagree, I don't like the skill at all:
-It does not replace forcefield, forcefield can split the enemy army and buy time in defenses, the only way Time Warp can replace FF is in retreating/catching situations, and I believe the sentry would still be better.
-I don't see it being good in Harass lol, with 24 workers in a mineral line slowing workers does not mean shit since the workers would still harvest in the same speed... also, if the AoE and duration is good enough to make it anywhere near useful for harass, it will be totally broken in battle situation. You maybe could use it with some WP and HT, but that is robo, stargate and templar tech...
-It practically does not synergize with any stargate unit since it doesn't affect air and the units used to counter protoss air are usually air units too, you can't use it to retreat your carriers/tempest or even to make your void-rays catch the vikings who are kiting.
-why the fuck Blizz wants to add another skill to use when controlling the protoss deathball... this is not warcraft. You're right about the harassment part. Slowing movement speed by 50% reduces mining speed by about 25% (slightly more - a little more than half a worker's time is spent moving), so assuming it lasts 15 seconds or less, it shouldn't result in more than 200 resouces lost per use (assuming 16 workers on minerals and 6 on gas, and that it can hit all these simultaneously, which is quite a bit larger than I assume they'll let Time Warp be). It isn't supposed to synergize with other stargate units. It's supposed to synergize with zealots and Stalkers (the earliest unit you can get for defense). It's actually designed quite thoughtfullly for that purpose - provided sufficient area and small enough energy cost. the thing is, early/mid game the sentry synergize with stalker and zealot better than the oracle will ever be able to. and later you want to stay away from zealots and stalkers, also, the stalker don't need the oracle, blink stalkers can retreat/catch without any help from the oracle. Blizz can do so much better than this, I even think that phase shield and phase shift were overall better skills...
Since when did Sentries chase enemy units that are retreating, actually reach them and manage to slow them down enough for the rest of the army to kill it?
But i have to say that i dont think there is any "spell" that can balance out the game and make it more interesting, they just need to figure out a way to make it more worth your while multitasking with your army instead of just gathering a deathball and push. - The thing that made BW so awesome for me is that the games were almost always fast paced and non-linear, you would have stuff going on everywhere all the time. - Atm in SC2 it feels like a viewer who watches alot of games and know the Meta, can almost predict before the game what will happen, the earlygame varies almost every game, but if a game reaches 15+ minutes then every game looks just like any other game.
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Do we know yet if the anti-building ability is single or multi-target? Like... does one Oracle flying into a group of supply depots damage all of them within range?
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I think it will be interesting to see if this changes the BL Infestor combo. Slow broodlings will get slaughtered before they have a chance to do anything, hopefully forcing a change in the meta-game.
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I am not saying that Time Warp is a bad design - it certainly is better than the previous two most used "battlefield changing spells" (FF and FG), but there is an issue with these things which makes the whole thing rather "lopsided" and "imbalanced". If we look at the spells which "change the battlefield" you will notice someone is being left out ... and that isnt a good thing, because of the imbalance it creates.
Zerg
Fungal Growth
Protoss
Force Field
Vortex
Time Warp
Terran
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Personally I dont like this and I think Terrans should be able to "build destructible debris" (REAL walls) for a relatively low cost. As a military commander that is one of the first things I would have told my troops to learn when facing hordes of Zerg and psychic aliens. Bunkers are luxury apartments and much too expensive for just a handful of guys and I would like to protect the expensive hardware much better.
EDIT: I would have much preferred for Blizzard to change Fungal Growth into a "movement slow" instead of a "movement lockdown" spell and Forcefield to be destructible instead, but now they give Protoss yet another "battlefield modifier" and on a flying unit ... which makes it immune to Roaches and Zerglings and so on. That is VERY powerful and will probably save A LOT of Colossi over time and might thus be overpowered.
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hopefully this mean blizz will remove ffi
elds completely from the game!
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On October 26 2012 13:28 Rabiator wrote:
I am not saying that Time Warp is a bad design - it certainly is better than the previous two most used "battlefield changing spells" (FF and FG), but there is an issue with these things which makes the whole thing rather "lopsided" and "imbalanced". If we look at the spells which "change the battlefield" you will notice someone is being left out ... and that isnt a good thing, because of the imbalance it creates.
Zerg
Fungal Growth
Protoss
Force Field
Vortex
Time Warp
Terran
-
Personally I dont like this and I think Terrans should be able to "build destructible debris" (REAL walls) for a relatively low cost. As a military commander that is one of the first things I would have told my troops to learn when facing hordes of Zerg and psychic aliens. Bunkers are luxury apartments and much too expensive for just a handful of guys and I would like to protect the expensive hardware much better.
EDIT: I would have much preferred for Blizzard to change Fungal Growth into a "movement slow" instead of a "movement lockdown" spell and Forcefield to be destructible instead, but now they give Protoss yet another "battlefield modifier" and on a flying unit ... which makes it immune to Roaches and Zerglings and so on. That is VERY powerful and will probably save A LOT of Colossi over time and might thus be overpowered.
Exactly, any spell that controls the movement of the enemy units is bad from the last 2 years of SC2 experience. It shows that people at Blizzard just doesn't know generalization. It's so obvious that all the movement control spells in WOL are those people hate so much. The Time Warp will be criticized to hell after 1 year into HOTS release, just like the situation of fungal growth and force field now. People blindly love it in TL, BN, and Reddit. I just can't believe people just don't learn lessons. Just like all the financial crises. Sigh.
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On October 26 2012 13:56 HowardRoark wrote:
hopefully this mean blizz will remove ffi
elds completely from the game!
What would be the point of the Sentry without Forcefield?
Forcefield is "necessary" as the early defense for Protoss (as if Cannons and wall-ins wouldnt do the job) and will probably remain. Sadly Blizzard seems to be bent on Starcraft becoming a "real time ACTION" game and thus they wont do anything to help defensive structures.
On October 26 2012 14:00 larse wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 13:28 Rabiator wrote:
I am not saying that Time Warp is a bad design - it certainly is better than the previous two most used "battlefield changing spells" (FF and FG), but there is an issue with these things which makes the whole thing rather "lopsided" and "imbalanced". If we look at the spells which "change the battlefield" you will notice someone is being left out ... and that isnt a good thing, because of the imbalance it creates.
Zerg
Fungal Growth
Protoss
Force Field
Vortex
Time Warp
Terran
-
Personally I dont like this and I think Terrans should be able to "build destructible debris" (REAL walls) for a relatively low cost. As a military commander that is one of the first things I would have told my troops to learn when facing hordes of Zerg and psychic aliens. Bunkers are luxury apartments and much too expensive for just a handful of guys and I would like to protect the expensive hardware much better.
EDIT: I would have much preferred for Blizzard to change Fungal Growth into a "movement slow" instead of a "movement lockdown" spell and Forcefield to be destructible instead, but now they give Protoss yet another "battlefield modifier" and on a flying unit ... which makes it immune to Roaches and Zerglings and so on. That is VERY powerful and will probably save A LOT of Colossi over time and might thus be overpowered. Exactly, any spell that controls the movement of the enemy units is bad from the last 2 years of SC2 experience. It shows that people at Blizzard just doesn't know generalization. It's so obvious that all the movement control spells in WOL are those people hate so much. The Time Warp will be criticized to hell after 1 year into HOTS release, just like the situation of fungal growth and force field now. People blindly love it in TL, BN, and Reddit. I just can't believe people just don't learn lessons. Just like all the financial crises. Sigh.
They "love" that spell because it is less terrible than the other two ...
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United States7483 Posts
On October 26 2012 14:00 larse wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 13:28 Rabiator wrote:
I am not saying that Time Warp is a bad design - it certainly is better than the previous two most used "battlefield changing spells" (FF and FG), but there is an issue with these things which makes the whole thing rather "lopsided" and "imbalanced". If we look at the spells which "change the battlefield" you will notice someone is being left out ... and that isnt a good thing, because of the imbalance it creates.
Zerg
Fungal Growth
Protoss
Force Field
Vortex
Time Warp
Terran
-
Personally I dont like this and I think Terrans should be able to "build destructible debris" (REAL walls) for a relatively low cost. As a military commander that is one of the first things I would have told my troops to learn when facing hordes of Zerg and psychic aliens. Bunkers are luxury apartments and much too expensive for just a handful of guys and I would like to protect the expensive hardware much better.
EDIT: I would have much preferred for Blizzard to change Fungal Growth into a "movement slow" instead of a "movement lockdown" spell and Forcefield to be destructible instead, but now they give Protoss yet another "battlefield modifier" and on a flying unit ... which makes it immune to Roaches and Zerglings and so on. That is VERY powerful and will probably save A LOT of Colossi over time and might thus be overpowered. Exactly, any spell that controls the movement of the enemy units is bad from the last 2 years of SC2 experience. It shows that people at Blizzard just doesn't know generalization. It's so obvious that all the movement control spells in WOL are those people hate so much. The Time Warp will be criticized to hell after 1 year into HOTS release, just like the situation of fungal growth and force field now. People blindly love it in TL, BN, and Reddit. I just can't believe people just don't learn lessons. Just like all the financial crises. Sigh.
I don't recall anyone from Brood War complaining about how overpowered the BW Queen was, and it had a spell very similar to time warp.
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On October 26 2012 14:03 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 14:00 larse wrote:On October 26 2012 13:28 Rabiator wrote:
I am not saying that Time Warp is a bad design - it certainly is better than the previous two most used "battlefield changing spells" (FF and FG), but there is an issue with these things which makes the whole thing rather "lopsided" and "imbalanced". If we look at the spells which "change the battlefield" you will notice someone is being left out ... and that isnt a good thing, because of the imbalance it creates.
Zerg
Fungal Growth
Protoss
Force Field
Vortex
Time Warp
Terran
-
Personally I dont like this and I think Terrans should be able to "build destructible debris" (REAL walls) for a relatively low cost. As a military commander that is one of the first things I would have told my troops to learn when facing hordes of Zerg and psychic aliens. Bunkers are luxury apartments and much too expensive for just a handful of guys and I would like to protect the expensive hardware much better.
EDIT: I would have much preferred for Blizzard to change Fungal Growth into a "movement slow" instead of a "movement lockdown" spell and Forcefield to be destructible instead, but now they give Protoss yet another "battlefield modifier" and on a flying unit ... which makes it immune to Roaches and Zerglings and so on. That is VERY powerful and will probably save A LOT of Colossi over time and might thus be overpowered. Exactly, any spell that controls the movement of the enemy units is bad from the last 2 years of SC2 experience. It shows that people at Blizzard just doesn't know generalization. It's so obvious that all the movement control spells in WOL are those people hate so much. The Time Warp will be criticized to hell after 1 year into HOTS release, just like the situation of fungal growth and force field now. People blindly love it in TL, BN, and Reddit. I just can't believe people just don't learn lessons. Just like all the financial crises. Sigh. I don't recall anyone from Brood War complaining about how overpowered the BW Queen was, and it had a spell very similar to time warp.
Who says those spells are overpowered. What I said it's that those are badly-designed spells. The movement control spells promote those annoying situations for both players and spectators. Force field is widely considered annoying for players. And fungal, force field, and vortex are all not awesome to spectate.
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On October 26 2012 14:03 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 14:00 larse wrote:On October 26 2012 13:28 Rabiator wrote:
I am not saying that Time Warp is a bad design - it certainly is better than the previous two most used "battlefield changing spells" (FF and FG), but there is an issue with these things which makes the whole thing rather "lopsided" and "imbalanced". If we look at the spells which "change the battlefield" you will notice someone is being left out ... and that isnt a good thing, because of the imbalance it creates.
Zerg
Fungal Growth
Protoss
Force Field
Vortex
Time Warp
Terran
-
Personally I dont like this and I think Terrans should be able to "build destructible debris" (REAL walls) for a relatively low cost. As a military commander that is one of the first things I would have told my troops to learn when facing hordes of Zerg and psychic aliens. Bunkers are luxury apartments and much too expensive for just a handful of guys and I would like to protect the expensive hardware much better.
EDIT: I would have much preferred for Blizzard to change Fungal Growth into a "movement slow" instead of a "movement lockdown" spell and Forcefield to be destructible instead, but now they give Protoss yet another "battlefield modifier" and on a flying unit ... which makes it immune to Roaches and Zerglings and so on. That is VERY powerful and will probably save A LOT of Colossi over time and might thus be overpowered. Exactly, any spell that controls the movement of the enemy units is bad from the last 2 years of SC2 experience. It shows that people at Blizzard just doesn't know generalization. It's so obvious that all the movement control spells in WOL are those people hate so much. The Time Warp will be criticized to hell after 1 year into HOTS release, just like the situation of fungal growth and force field now. People blindly love it in TL, BN, and Reddit. I just can't believe people just don't learn lessons. Just like all the financial crises. Sigh. I don't recall anyone from Brood War complaining about how overpowered the BW Queen was, and it had a spell very similar to time warp.
The Queen wasnt really overpowered, because Ensnare cost 75 energy and only slowed the units movement and attack speed down but didnt deal damage or lock them down entirely. There also werent that many Queens used usually and that made it "bearable". With the expensive Colossi and the critical importance of saving them Time Warp will be MUCH stronger and you didnt have 30% of your army clumped up in one spot in BW which was threatened to be overwhelmed by the enemy as you can easily have in SC2. The general mechanics of
- spread out units (for attacker and defender),
- limited number of units per control group and
- lack of "expensive siege units which everything revolves around"
made Ensnare in BW "theoretically overpowered" but practically not. It is the same stupid dilemma which SC2 faces on every corner and apparently you didnt see it.
tl;dr
BW didnt have deathballs and tightly clumped up armies and thus Ensnare was ok ...
ADDENDUM: In BW "overpowered" didnt matter because you didnt hit the whole army with just a few spells; in SC2 "overpowered" is a HUGE problem because you can lose TONS of units with a few of critically placed spells or AoE attacks. This is the real reason why SC2 is terrible and why it makes adding "new and funky units" hard. They are simply terribly hard to balance ... much harder than they should be and thus Blizzard *should be* focusing on making the game more like BW so they can go funky with their units in the expansions. Sadly they are too stubborn to admit the failure of the WoL design.
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Time warp seems like a much more interesting spell than entomb, so I really like this change. Time warp also opens up an opportunity for Blizzard to find alternatives to forcefield and fungal that do not immobilize targets and remove vortex from the game.
Using time warp on broodlords could make catching up to them and vortexing them with a mothership significantly easier (and possibly overpowered), and time warp could represent an alternative to forcefield in the mid to late game which wouldn't deny micro and wouldn't play such a significant role in determining the outcome of battles.
With forcefield replaced by time warp, fungal growth in its current form would not be as important in denying mid-game protoss pushes, and fungal could be changed to a movement slow or something similar.
The reason I think fungal, forcefield, and vortex should be changed/removed is summarized by Gretorp in this post: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=376188
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I like it already I think it gives another good factor that protoss needs to use REALLY WELL to get the spell working you can't just go do it somewhere enemy's army retreat path, because you have to take in consider that the retreating army can split to multiple paths, so you have to think ahead what would be the best place to put it to get the biggest part of the army slowed.
Just like force field you have to put them good places, but you can't really catch already fleeting army with them because they can be e.x. stimmed or just have incredible speed like lings and roaches etc. so with combined with Time Warp you can have a slight chance with good placed time warp to make them slower and catch them with force field.
Including storm you have to think where the army is and going to be when the high templar is nearing enemy's army.
Force Field and Storm are the current X factors that play good role in protoss army and now including Time Warp I think it's going to just blossom more like in example make time warp and cast storm or cast time warp and cast force field.
These are my thoughts EU Protoss GM
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-wrong thread-
sorry for posting
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On October 26 2012 07:04 kcdc wrote:
Time warp ain't a harassment spell guys. You're not gonna spend precious energy on slowing workers for a few seconds.
well, you might if it's got a long duration, and/or slows mining rate as well as movement. long duration won't be too useful in an army fight.
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I can already see the mass of terrans complaining that they can no longer micro. Ive seen like 7 threads already of how about fungal should not have its rooting effect. Time warp is basically a light version of fungal in the sense that it will allow slower units to catch faster units (stimmed marine marauder?) and will also prevent retreats.
The potential for time warp and storm is amazing, I wonder how it will all play out...
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On October 26 2012 15:46 theBlues wrote:
I can already see the mass of terrans complaining that they can no longer micro. Ive seen like 7 threads already of how about fungal should not have its rooting effect. Time warp is basically a light version of fungal in the sense that it will allow slower units to catch faster units (stimmed marine marauder?) and will also prevent retreats.
The potential for time warp and storm is amazing, I wonder how it will all play out...
Well can you blame them? Micro is the only thing keeping terran alive. Try and do a 1a against a protoss with collosus and storm and tell me what happens. If you limit how bio can be microed, then terran could be in alot of trouble, espcially seing as mech aint gonna be viable for release, so its bio or die
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This breaks bio lategame, I don't know if that's a good idea, despite me being a toss player. Storm would have to be changed.
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If this is a cool new gameplay mechanic, let it play out without crying imbalance from the get go. We have no idea how this might fit into the new meta, and the responses Terran may come up with over time. Let it be and see how it goes.
This kind of over reaction may be why we cant have nice things despite always shouting that we want nice things.
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On October 26 2012 00:00 rpgalon wrote:
EDIT: also, like the guy after me pointed out, TW+Storm looks stupidly strong. Keep it in perspective, force fields + storm sounds a lot scarier on paper, and it isn't that big of a deal in real games.
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I feel like the last thing Protoss ever needed was another zoning ability
with all that long ranged Units (Carrier,Tempest,Colossus) and already storms and ff in the portfolio - I dont see any need for this kind of Spell.
tbh it feels like an ultra shitty fungal (no full stun/dmg XD
but to judge about it we need some weeks to pass...
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On October 26 2012 14:08 larse wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 14:03 Whitewing wrote:On October 26 2012 14:00 larse wrote:On October 26 2012 13:28 Rabiator wrote:
I am not saying that Time Warp is a bad design - it certainly is better than the previous two most used "battlefield changing spells" (FF and FG), but there is an issue with these things which makes the whole thing rather "lopsided" and "imbalanced". If we look at the spells which "change the battlefield" you will notice someone is being left out ... and that isnt a good thing, because of the imbalance it creates.
Zerg
Fungal Growth
Protoss
Force Field
Vortex
Time Warp
Terran
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Personally I dont like this and I think Terrans should be able to "build destructible debris" (REAL walls) for a relatively low cost. As a military commander that is one of the first things I would have told my troops to learn when facing hordes of Zerg and psychic aliens. Bunkers are luxury apartments and much too expensive for just a handful of guys and I would like to protect the expensive hardware much better.
EDIT: I would have much preferred for Blizzard to change Fungal Growth into a "movement slow" instead of a "movement lockdown" spell and Forcefield to be destructible instead, but now they give Protoss yet another "battlefield modifier" and on a flying unit ... which makes it immune to Roaches and Zerglings and so on. That is VERY powerful and will probably save A LOT of Colossi over time and might thus be overpowered. Exactly, any spell that controls the movement of the enemy units is bad from the last 2 years of SC2 experience. It shows that people at Blizzard just doesn't know generalization. It's so obvious that all the movement control spells in WOL are those people hate so much. The Time Warp will be criticized to hell after 1 year into HOTS release, just like the situation of fungal growth and force field now. People blindly love it in TL, BN, and Reddit. I just can't believe people just don't learn lessons. Just like all the financial crises. Sigh. I don't recall anyone from Brood War complaining about how overpowered the BW Queen was, and it had a spell very similar to time warp. Who says those spells are overpowered. What I said it's that those are badly-designed spells. The movement control spells promote those annoying situations for both players and spectators. Force field is widely considered annoying for players. And fungal, force field, and vortex are all not awesome to spectate.
That might be a bit more subjective than saying something like "entomb is just not awesome to spectate"
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Zerg
Fungal Growth
Protoss
Force Field
Vortex
Time Warp
Terran
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More or less this. Entomb was terrible, extremely poorly designed, and should be gone. This is agreeable. However Protoss definitely doesn't need anymore utility and another AoE.
On October 26 2012 13:28 MiND.GaMeS wrote:This unit concept is good and actually amazingly raises the skillgap between good players and lucky players. Stuff like this is always good!
Not really. From a skill-cap perspective timewarp + storm spam is an "instawin" combo. Theoretically it takes silver level APM to preform, and master level APM to dodge.
It'll lead to a lot of lesser Protoss players getting wins they don't deserve, however it isn't out exactly yet. We'll have to wait and see.
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I like how the Oracle is forcing Terran to have to use all 3 production air-land-bio to fend off a Protoss.
Challenge accepted.
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It sounds like one big giant premature ejaculation to me... How can you trumpet this without giving it some time
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I can't wait to see the blink stalkers dodging marauder and stalker shots if it ends up slowing projectiles
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On October 26 2012 17:41 aka_star wrote:
It sounds like one big giant premature ejaculation to me... How can you trumpet this without giving it some time
Exactly. I think that the whole community is overreacting.
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Well if everyone else can see the future... SO CAN I NOW.
Lategame PvT is now going to be Templar/Oracle or Oracle/Colossus but not both because of gas limitations.
We will see Protoss players get more ballsy with their early stalkers and gateway units in general since the Oracle can balance the slow from Marauders.
see how easy that was?
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On October 26 2012 18:02 MasterCynical wrote:
Well if everyone else can see the future... SO CAN I NOW.
Lategame PvT is now going to be Templar/Oracle or Oracle/Colossus but not both because of gas limitations.
We will see Protoss players get more ballsy with their early stalkers and gateway units in general since the Oracle can balance the slow from Marauders.
see how easy that was?
oracles won't come out before 3rd base lol, otherwise a standard medivac push just rolls the protoss over.
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don't know, while the ability to slow units is right, i think that it doesn't fit the protoss race
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I think this is a step in the right direction for the oracle.
Tho, I would like to see a version of the spell that also slow mining and firing speed but might reduce the percentage a bit. This would make the spell better for harass and defence, and not so "you can't escape my deathball lol".
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aoe slow along with force fields and storms ! ouch !
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Yeah this sounds great. Btw, can we give the marauder a machine gun?
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This got me excited enough for me to create an account.
I think the idea is awesome, for reasons stated above, but the timeslow + storm, or even colossi seems a bit strong.
I think a cool idea would be to put a short time for the oracle to cast it, like 2 seconds ( blizzard seconds). It would make the harrasment more interesting, less shift move/cast/go out ( a banshee needs to stay in the base a few second to kill even one probe), and would make it more difficult to cast on an army ( it's possible for a bioball to stim and start to run away, or zerg ball to retreat,etc...). Fun micro and tension i feel.
Just my two cent. Glad to be finally part of TL
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Time Warp seems like it would discourage micro to a lesser degree than forcefield or fungal growth. I'm not sure I'm on board with it. I'll be curious how it is viewed after a few weeks of use in the beta.
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On October 26 2012 08:58 WeRRa wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 05:25 Maxyim wrote:So many game devs in this thread, lol. Let it play out before you bash it, especially if you are in copper league. On October 26 2012 05:22 WeRRa wrote:
So they want to remove terran bio play completely from hots i see. Toss got their own "fungal baneling" (time warp +storm) combo now and also collossi in the back and terran has.,......? Siege Tanks Widow Mines Hunter Seeker You want more AoE? And no, running around with tier 1 units the entire game is not supposed to be viable; unfortunately WoL just happened to be balanced around it. Terran can counter every combination that you described with STRATEGY (read - not 1 t a click). Widow Mines hardly do AoE and tanks+ravens in tvp in wich troll world do you live? Terran got 1 semi useful spell wich is emp and this only saves you of getting totally owned by protoss AoE and now another one, really no need for it.
Widow Mines do plenty of AoE.
Tanks in TvP is the new metagame in HotS. I take it that you are not in beta?
I live on Earth.
EMP, that's one that I left off, thanks. Semi-useful? That's cute.
Thank you for your input.
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On October 27 2012 00:16 Maxyim wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 08:58 WeRRa wrote:On October 26 2012 05:25 Maxyim wrote:So many game devs in this thread, lol. Let it play out before you bash it, especially if you are in copper league. On October 26 2012 05:22 WeRRa wrote:
So they want to remove terran bio play completely from hots i see. Toss got their own "fungal baneling" (time warp +storm) combo now and also collossi in the back and terran has.,......? Siege Tanks Widow Mines Hunter Seeker You want more AoE? And no, running around with tier 1 units the entire game is not supposed to be viable; unfortunately WoL just happened to be balanced around it. Terran can counter every combination that you described with STRATEGY (read - not 1 t a click). Widow Mines hardly do AoE and tanks+ravens in tvp in wich troll world do you live? Terran got 1 semi useful spell wich is emp and this only saves you of getting totally owned by protoss AoE and now another one, really no need for it. Widow Mines do plenty of AoE. Tanks in TvP is the new metagame in HotS. I take it that you are not in beta? I live on Earth. EMP, that's one that I left off, thanks. Semi-useful? That's cute. Thank you for your input.
I live on Earth too and have HOTS, and Tanks are still terrible in TvP. The Widow Mine and Hellbats are more effective in combination with standard MMM than with Tanks.
I haven't lost one game to Mech Terran in HOTS, but several versus MMM + Widow Mines and Hellbats, and a few more to 1 base all-ins based around the Widow Mine.
On October 26 2012 19:55 TalonBot wrote:
aoe slow along with force fields and storms ! ouch !
Yep, this change is probably game breaking to TvP. MMM will die.
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On October 26 2012 17:58 Ramiz1989 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 17:41 aka_star wrote:
It sounds like one big giant premature ejaculation to me... How can you trumpet this without giving it some time Exactly. I think that the whole community is overreacting.
The same way we complain without giving it time.
It seems like it fulfills the usefulness of FF (making gateway units better without making high tech units better) without removing the opponent's opportunity to micro. We like micro, and acknowledge that gateway units are awful without the control of an FF or a Time Warp. Therefore, the addition of an FF which allows for micro seems like a good addition.
Using reason, we can draw these conclusions are *possible* given the right stats. We don't know if it'll have those stats, but this is one of the rare times in which it is *possible* for an ability to make the game better. Why shouldn't we be happy about that - especially if we are willing to decry units that "just look like an awfully designed unit" (like the Warhound, which fits that assessment IMO)?
Yep, this change is probably game breaking to TvP. MMM will die.
Can't I already FF you into storms anyway? And I don't need to unlock a new tech path to do that. And I can warp them into the field of battle. And having sentries and templar on the same battlefield hasn't "killed MMM in TvP yet". Why not? They both take a boatload of gas, so for every FF I use to "lock you into" storm, it eats into the amount of storms that I can possibly have. Same deal with Time Warp, but moreso, since stargates are built using gas (and Oracles cost more gas than sentries).
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On October 27 2012 00:16 Maxyim wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 08:58 WeRRa wrote:On October 26 2012 05:25 Maxyim wrote:So many game devs in this thread, lol. Let it play out before you bash it, especially if you are in copper league. On October 26 2012 05:22 WeRRa wrote:
So they want to remove terran bio play completely from hots i see. Toss got their own "fungal baneling" (time warp +storm) combo now and also collossi in the back and terran has.,......? Siege Tanks Widow Mines Hunter Seeker You want more AoE? And no, running around with tier 1 units the entire game is not supposed to be viable; unfortunately WoL just happened to be balanced around it. Terran can counter every combination that you described with STRATEGY (read - not 1 t a click). Widow Mines hardly do AoE and tanks+ravens in tvp in wich troll world do you live? Terran got 1 semi useful spell wich is emp and this only saves you of getting totally owned by protoss AoE and now another one, really no need for it. Widow Mines do plenty of AoE. Tanks in TvP is the new metagame in HotS. I take it that you are not in beta? I live on Earth. EMP, that's one that I left off, thanks. Semi-useful? That's cute. Thank you for your input.
"Tanks in TvP is the new metagame in HotS."
LOL
why make such blatant lies?
Even morrow has given up on mech now, he made a nicely detailed post on bnet as to why it sucks.
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This coul be funny to try on mineral lines also.
Not sure how big the field is and how long it lasts, but every worker inside mines at half speed.
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On October 27 2012 00:34 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 17:58 Ramiz1989 wrote:On October 26 2012 17:41 aka_star wrote:
It sounds like one big giant premature ejaculation to me... How can you trumpet this without giving it some time Exactly. I think that the whole community is overreacting. The same way we complain without giving it time. It seems like it fulfills the usefulness of FF (making gateway units better without making high tech units better) without removing the opponent's opportunity to micro. We like micro, and acknowledge that gateway units are awful without the control of an FF or a Time Warp. Therefore, the addition of an FF which allows for micro seems like a good addition. Using reason, we can draw these conclusions are *possible* given the right stats. We don't know if it'll have those stats, but this is one of the rare times in which it is *possible* for an ability to make the game better. Why shouldn't we be happy about that - especially if we are willing to decry units that "just look like an awfully designed unit" (like the Warhound, which fits that assessment IMO)? Can't I already FF you into storms anyway? And I don't need to unlock a new tech path to do that. And I can warp them into the field of battle. And having sentries and templar on the same battlefield hasn't "killed MMM in TvP yet". Why not? They both take a boatload of gas, so for every FF I use to "lock you into" storm, it eats into the amount of storms that I can possibly have. Same deal with Time Warp, but moreso, since stargates are built using gas (and Oracles cost more gas than sentries).
How can you say that a slow aoe doesnt remove opportunity to micro? And how can you say that this spell doesnt make high tech units better? Gateway units may suck early game but ask your self why a late game protoss army PvT has 25 zealots in it.
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They sure did get it right. This change just has me salivating. So much potential.
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Technically a snared unit has all the micro capabilities of an unsnared unit, only slower.
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On October 26 2012 00:08 vthree wrote:
Not sure if another AoE is need for Protoss. Time wrap plus storm seems like a deadly combo.
I agree, but doesn't brood lord and infestor sounds crazy as well? Or Archon and vortex? There are many deadly combo's that require the timing and micro to pull off. But we shall see I guess, it does seem OP on paper atm.
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On October 27 2012 01:21 Endall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 00:08 vthree wrote:
Not sure if another AoE is need for Protoss. Time wrap plus storm seems like a deadly combo. I agree, but doesn't brood lord and infestor sounds crazy as well? Or Archon and vortex? There are many deadly combo's that require the timing and micro to pull off. But we shall see I guess, it does seem OP on paper atm.
I just can't wait for speed warp prism with templars and oracle support.
You thought storm drops were fun before...
More than twice the micro for twice the reward.
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On October 27 2012 00:55 Fjodorov wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2012 00:34 Treehead wrote:On October 26 2012 17:58 Ramiz1989 wrote:On October 26 2012 17:41 aka_star wrote:
It sounds like one big giant premature ejaculation to me... How can you trumpet this without giving it some time Exactly. I think that the whole community is overreacting. The same way we complain without giving it time. It seems like it fulfills the usefulness of FF (making gateway units better without making high tech units better) without removing the opponent's opportunity to micro. We like micro, and acknowledge that gateway units are awful without the control of an FF or a Time Warp. Therefore, the addition of an FF which allows for micro seems like a good addition. Using reason, we can draw these conclusions are *possible* given the right stats. We don't know if it'll have those stats, but this is one of the rare times in which it is *possible* for an ability to make the game better. Why shouldn't we be happy about that - especially if we are willing to decry units that "just look like an awfully designed unit" (like the Warhound, which fits that assessment IMO)? Yep, this change is probably game breaking to TvP. MMM will die. Can't I already FF you into storms anyway? And I don't need to unlock a new tech path to do that. And I can warp them into the field of battle. And having sentries and templar on the same battlefield hasn't "killed MMM in TvP yet". Why not? They both take a boatload of gas, so for every FF I use to "lock you into" storm, it eats into the amount of storms that I can possibly have. Same deal with Time Warp, but moreso, since stargates are built using gas (and Oracles cost more gas than sentries). How can you say that a slow aoe doesnt remove opportunity to micro? And how can you say that this spell doesnt make high tech units better? Gateway units may suck early game but ask your self why a late game protoss army PvT has 25 zealots in it.
The micro is the same, the units just move slower. Kiting works exactly the same, it's just less effective while in the zone.
Compare to FF: where kiting is... well, you just never get to kite.
It doesn't make high tech units better because there's an oppotunity cost (primarily, related to gas as a limiting factor for tech unit production. For every Oracle you make, you'll make 1 less templar if gas is the limiting factor (which is usually the case) - and when you construct your stargate, you're giving up an additional 1 templar. Are 3 Templar and 2 Oracles better than 6 Templar? Perhaps. Perhaps not (this is why you never see protoss building up a ton of sentries and a ton of templar, even though sentries could prevent you from leaving storms). It probably depends. The reason they work so brilliantly with zealots and stalkers is that these units are more mineral-focused in what it takes to make them.
PvT includes a lot of chargelot play for three reasons: the first is as previously stated - everything powerful takes gas and the zealot is the only mineral-only unit protoss has. The second is that charge adds an amazing (this is a tech ability) amount of usefulness to the zealot. The third is that terran has no unit which counters the zealot as hard as the marauder (one of the staples of MMM) counters the stalker (the other mineral-heavy-ish unit for protoss).
One of these reasons zealots are involved in the lategame is out of necessity.
One of these reasons zealots are involved in the lategame is because of a tech that comes out pretty late.
One of these reasons zealots are involved in the lategame is not true in heart of the swarm (hellbats are very much so cost-efficient against zealots).
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One other thing: bio is much more vulnerable to timewarp than mech, for obvious reasons--Tanks, Hellbats and Mines are all low mobility units anyway, more based around positioning than kiting. If Blizzard does the right thing and buffs mech so it becomes viable in TvP, then lategame timewarp+storm combos won't be a problem, because by then T should have transitioned into mech anyway.
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On October 27 2012 02:49 awesomoecalypse wrote:
One other thing: bio is much more vulnerable to timewarp than mech, for obvious reasons--Tanks, Hellbats and Mines are all low mobility units anyway, more based around positioning than kiting. If Blizzard does the right thing and buffs mech so it becomes viable in TvP, then lategame timewarp+storm combos won't be a problem, because by then T should have transitioned into mech anyway.
unfortunately our ground units don't use the same upgrades like some other races, so 'transitioning' is extremely hard. You start mech and stick with it, or don't go mech at all.
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On October 27 2012 03:09 Laurens wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2012 02:49 awesomoecalypse wrote:
One other thing: bio is much more vulnerable to timewarp than mech, for obvious reasons--Tanks, Hellbats and Mines are all low mobility units anyway, more based around positioning than kiting. If Blizzard does the right thing and buffs mech so it becomes viable in TvP, then lategame timewarp+storm combos won't be a problem, because by then T should have transitioned into mech anyway. unfortunately our ground units don't use the same upgrades like some other races, so 'transitioning' is extremely hard. You start mech and stick with it, or don't go mech at all.
By this logic, you should never build air units or transition to air in TvT or TvZ. But people do it - and it's often effective. I think you'll find the same is true in TvP with mech, provided that they do follow through with their intent to make mech viable in lategame TvP.
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Zerg upgrades are actually analogous, meaning that they have 2 class of ground units. Protoss uniquely suffer from needing 3 upgrades for every unit. The point being, strategic composition is paramount, upgrades are gravy.
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Great post, agree wholeheartedly that this is a great idea, but props to the people here who were working on suggesting the exact same thing.
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On October 26 2012 07:04 CruelZeratul wrote:
So whats Bio gonna do in a maxed out battle if they can't even dodge Storms?
same thing they do against fungal but 50% faster I guess?
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On October 27 2012 04:47 Danule wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 07:04 CruelZeratul wrote:
So whats Bio gonna do in a maxed out battle if they can't even dodge Storms? same thing they do against fungal but 50% faster I guess?
If they're slowed, then they'll take pleasure in knowing that the person who made an Oracle instead of a High Templar (and paid for a stargate to boot) gave up two HTs to slow him (Oracle + stargate = 300 gas = 2 templar = 2 storms + archon). Is that a good trade? I have a hard time believing the answer is "yes" unless the area is huge.
Dodge them as much as you can with the knowledge that fewer storms and archons are there.
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In my opinion... if you already have FF then why do you need another spell that does the close to same thing? The fact that it doesn't permanently stop movement the way FF does makes it seem even less useful to me. No matter though, we are both theorycrafting anyways.
The real problem of the oracle does not only lie in its own abilities... But the entire tech tree of the stargate. You always need to transition into either robo or twilight tech. Whereas that is not the case in the other two tech trees. That is because protoss air units are underpowered due to the lack of "terrible terrible damage" that storms and collo can unleash. All the Phoneix does in each match up is light harass and containment, exactly what the oracle does. The voidray is too vulnerable to its counters. The oracle does not belong in the stargate tech tree. If you need a new harassment unit then it belongs to robo-tech since you can already harass with phoenix or blink.
Actually... No. You can harass with warp prisms. Blizzard is on the right track by trying to introduce a useful stargate unit (tempest) but it doesn't make the army strong enough. You don't really need the oracle if you buff the phoenix or warp prism as a harassment unit. Blink was buffed too, now that you have hallucination without research.
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This spell is kind of worrying, a slowed army is going to be grinded my zealot, storm, colossi. In this case I would play mech but...
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just tested it . is horrible ( worker harras ) radius should be increased.
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This ability is ok but !!!!! BUT it should slow down ATC speed to be usful right now its not that good ability...
to this ability work with army need to SLOW ATC SPEED most important thing right now !!!
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On October 27 2012 08:53 bole wrote:
This ability is ok but !!!!! BUT it should slow down ATC speed to be usful right now its not that good ability...
to this ability work with army need to SLOW ATC SPEED most important thing right now !!!
This would be so broken.
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On October 26 2012 01:01 Hattori_Hanzo wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2012 00:54 starslayer wrote:
so you want toss to be able to slow my army force field then storm cool........sarcasm Countered by a solid cloaked EMP. :-)
Agreed.
Someone said that the two protoss units and their spells would be imbalanced.
I say a single ghost with cloak and an EMP nullifies it pretty darn fast, by hitting Either the templar OR the Oracle.
I actually really really like this, as I won't need to use sentries as much, and I can go different ways, instead of the usual Colossus first vs terran (need obs and colossus to take out mines) and going Stargate for an Oracle opener with Tempests to deal with mines.
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On October 27 2012 08:53 bole wrote:
This ability is ok but !!!!! BUT it should slow down ATC speed to be usful right now its not that good ability...
to this ability work with army need to SLOW ATC SPEED most important thing right now !!!
This would be so broken.
how and whay ? simply right now this ability dont do nothing.. how to use this vs terran bio or what ? Force fealds still bather then this ability ... that is a fact....
Tunder storm + Time warp dont also that much.. vs bio..terran .. how simply few Viking come in and ghost and they rape still protoss combo...easy oricle have Low Hp Vikings easy own them... and ghost EMP easy for terrans ageant to conter toss with bio...
this new ability is made to i think help toss vs Bio terran but i dont think that is duing...
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timewarp is really not that strong right now. By itself it does almost nothing, as harrass its useless. But together with pulsar beam it makes the oracle a really useful unit.
I have yet to try this, but I think a zealot heavy army with timewarp will be strong vs bio now.
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Time Warp should also affect mining rate, because it doesn't affect mining time significantly enough. That would be a good way to bolster its use without touching the combat aspect like messing with radius/duration/%.
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Agreed, I'm having a blast with the Oracle right now.
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From the streams I've seen timewarp is ridiculously ineffective and doesn't hold a candle to the other 'movement constrainers' (ff and fungal).
Think about it... It does no damage, doesn't affect health, doesn't affect dps, doesn't grant detection...so largely speaking it is somewhat irrelevant. It would only matter in that it can prevent enemy units from reaching a battle as fast or escaping a battle as fast. But movement speed is important over a large distance. For example, who would care if a marine moved 50% slower if ti was just for one space? The counter to time-warp is easy...you just walk out of it...50% movement speed for a 3.5 radius is NOTHING.
All this talk of time-warp being amazing reminds me of the talk that blinding cloud was going to be OP...but in reality it turned out to be a joke because of how easy it was to micro out the cloud and how small it was. If I really don't want my units escaping, I play as zerg, use fungal and get a 100% reduction in movement speed + damage + detection. Or as protoss I use forcefield which can not only block units 100%, but push units around and block access to buildings.
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Yet you are still not willing to take a bet on the fact that it will be gone within the next two patches.
Time Warp is an aweful spell which is on the one hand a completely unnecessary batte field buff for protoss and yet another uncounterable battefield manipulating anti micro spell.
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On October 29 2012 00:25 Fungal Growth wrote:
From the streams I've seen timewarp is ridiculously ineffective and doesn't hold a candle to the other 'movement constrainers' (ff and fungal).
Think about it... It does no damage, doesn't affect health, doesn't affect dps, doesn't grant detection...so largely speaking it is somewhat irrelevant. It would only matter in that it can prevent enemy units from reaching a battle as fast or escaping a battle as fast. But movement speed is important over a large distance. For example, who would care if a marine moved 50% slower if ti was just for one space? The counter to time-warp is easy...you just walk out of it...50% movement speed for a 3.5 radius is NOTHING.
All this talk of time-warp being amazing reminds me of the talk that blinding cloud was going to be OP...but in reality it turned out to be a joke because of how easy it was to micro out the cloud and how small it was. If I really don't want my units escaping, I play as zerg, use fungal and get a 100% reduction in movement speed + damage + detection. Or as protoss I use forcefield which can not only block units 100%, but push units around and block access to buildings.
It's a rather easy fix though for the Time Warp, just make it slow down abilities and dps by 50% as well.
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On October 25 2012 23:44 ElMeanYo wrote:
How do you know its good? Are you a beta-tester? Did you try it?
do you really need to ask that when he takes the time to make this post with explanations?
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Buffing timewarp to lower dps is rediculous; protoss deathball is already sick strong as it is, it dosn't need more lategame buffs. Give it more early/mid oriented units like the widowmine for terran to allow for more flexible openings. Oracle is a step in the right direction though
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Oracles are amazing atm, if you can survive the counter all-in they may do.
Currently i've been building about 5 of them midgame after a quick expo.
Dropping 2 slows on the workers, then sniping w/e buildings I can.
Against protoss and zerg, you kill shit soo fast with 5 of them. You can snipe a hatch and ignore the queen. Straight up.
It will prolly get nerfed. But im loving it.
Edit. I guess i only mentioned the harrass part. Using it with your army is really nice as well. Mass gw styles are legit now, even in pvp, since you can add the tempest. Charge/Archon/Tempest with some Oracles is a really good pvp comp. Colo/Tempest is really good in pvt and pvz. Thats the two endgame comps ive been working on in my mu's. Fun stuff.
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Hate to be the cynic, but I feel this should be mentioned.
Time warp as it is, is a very "generic" ability. When blizzard decides to tune this to... For instance, have 5-15 second duration and move speed reduced to 10%. You're going to see the uses of this spell be reduced.
I'm not saying it will be tuned exactly like that, they might buff the duration to 60 secs... But don't expect this spell to be the jack of all trades spell for Protoss. Especially with blizzard being infamous for overtuning.
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On October 29 2012 06:24 Prodigal wrote:
Hate to be the cynic, but I feel this should be mentioned.
Time warp as it is, is a very "generic" ability. When blizzard decides to tune this to... For instance, have 5-15 second duration and move speed reduced to 10%. You're going to see the uses of this spell be reduced.
I'm not saying it will be tuned exactly like that, they might buff the duration to 60 secs... But don't expect this spell to be the jack of all trades spell for Protoss. Especially with blizzard being infamous for overtuning.
Not really.
They could nerf the dps it does to buildings, and nerf the slow, it'd still be usefull.
Any AOE spell, even if its 10 percent, is usefull if you have the apm to perform the action in a lategame army. The aoe slow will always be usefull imo. Now the dps to buildings could get nerfed hard enough to make it worthless for harrass.
Cause currently the dps it does to buildings is insane. I get 5 and just run around killing any hatch that only has 1 queen at iit without losing a single one with some micro
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On October 29 2012 06:28 ohampatu wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2012 06:24 Prodigal wrote:
Hate to be the cynic, but I feel this should be mentioned.
Time warp as it is, is a very "generic" ability. When blizzard decides to tune this to... For instance, have 5-15 second duration and move speed reduced to 10%. You're going to see the uses of this spell be reduced.
I'm not saying it will be tuned exactly like that, they might buff the duration to 60 secs... But don't expect this spell to be the jack of all trades spell for Protoss. Especially with blizzard being infamous for overtuning. Not really. They could nerf the dps it does to buildings, and nerf the slow, it'd still be usefull. Any AOE spell, even if its 10 percent, is usefull if you have the apm to perform the action in a lategame army. The aoe slow will always be usefull imo. Now the dps to buildings could get nerfed hard enough to make it worthless for harrass. Cause currently the dps it does to buildings is insane. I get 5 and just run around killing any hatch that only has 1 queen at iit without losing a single one with some micro
The hell? I was only talking about time warp which DOES NOT effect attack speed. So it's not directly attacking death balls.
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People have short memory it seems.
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Canada13389 Posts
On October 29 2012 06:28 ohampatu wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2012 06:24 Prodigal wrote:
Hate to be the cynic, but I feel this should be mentioned.
Time warp as it is, is a very "generic" ability. When blizzard decides to tune this to... For instance, have 5-15 second duration and move speed reduced to 10%. You're going to see the uses of this spell be reduced.
I'm not saying it will be tuned exactly like that, they might buff the duration to 60 secs... But don't expect this spell to be the jack of all trades spell for Protoss. Especially with blizzard being infamous for overtuning. Not really. They could nerf the dps it does to buildings, and nerf the slow, it'd still be usefull. Any AOE spell, even if its 10 percent, is usefull if you have the apm to perform the action in a lategame army. The aoe slow will always be usefull imo. Now the dps to buildings could get nerfed hard enough to make it worthless for harrass. Cause currently the dps it does to buildings is insane. I get 5 and just run around killing any hatch that only has 1 queen at iit without losing a single one with some micro
I think that if you nerf the damage the oracle does then it will become useless. If you get away with making five and dont die back at home then I don't understand. I cant make five without a roach counter doing some serious damage. And I definitely cant take a fast third if I make that many.
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On October 29 2012 07:58 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2012 06:28 ohampatu wrote:On October 29 2012 06:24 Prodigal wrote:
Hate to be the cynic, but I feel this should be mentioned.
Time warp as it is, is a very "generic" ability. When blizzard decides to tune this to... For instance, have 5-15 second duration and move speed reduced to 10%. You're going to see the uses of this spell be reduced.
I'm not saying it will be tuned exactly like that, they might buff the duration to 60 secs... But don't expect this spell to be the jack of all trades spell for Protoss. Especially with blizzard being infamous for overtuning. Not really. They could nerf the dps it does to buildings, and nerf the slow, it'd still be usefull. Any AOE spell, even if its 10 percent, is usefull if you have the apm to perform the action in a lategame army. The aoe slow will always be usefull imo. Now the dps to buildings could get nerfed hard enough to make it worthless for harrass. Cause currently the dps it does to buildings is insane. I get 5 and just run around killing any hatch that only has 1 queen at iit without losing a single one with some micro I think that if you nerf the damage the oracle does then it will become useless. If you get away with making five and dont die back at home then I don't understand. I cant make five without a roach counter doing some serious damage. And I definitely cant take a fast third if I make that many.
Meanwhile, Toss is completely obliterating the Zerg in a base race.
EDIT: Or not. I guess all of the Queens combined could take them out by camping at one Hatch.
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On October 29 2012 01:48 Seiniyta wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2012 00:25 Fungal Growth wrote:
From the streams I've seen timewarp is ridiculously ineffective and doesn't hold a candle to the other 'movement constrainers' (ff and fungal).
Think about it... It does no damage, doesn't affect health, doesn't affect dps, doesn't grant detection...so largely speaking it is somewhat irrelevant. It would only matter in that it can prevent enemy units from reaching a battle as fast or escaping a battle as fast. But movement speed is important over a large distance. For example, who would care if a marine moved 50% slower if ti was just for one space? The counter to time-warp is easy...you just walk out of it...50% movement speed for a 3.5 radius is NOTHING.
All this talk of time-warp being amazing reminds me of the talk that blinding cloud was going to be OP...but in reality it turned out to be a joke because of how easy it was to micro out the cloud and how small it was. If I really don't want my units escaping, I play as zerg, use fungal and get a 100% reduction in movement speed + damage + detection. Or as protoss I use forcefield which can not only block units 100%, but push units around and block access to buildings. It's a rather easy fix though for the Time Warp, just make it slow down abilities and dps by 50% as well.
right......
That would just make the oracle another deathball unit with a marginal harass upside.
Time warp as it stands is a terrible ability on the oracle which is just a complete failure by blizzard so far.
Anything that would actually give it an aoe ability good for combat would just reinforce the current boring protoss gameplay.
Unfortunately I don't think blizzard will make anymore drastic changes to the game and only work with the current models and visuals they have programmed already for the WoL or HotS alpha.
Time warp needs a buff to be actually cool, it's probably just going to be an area or slow effect increase. Given they can't increase the slow effect too much (it would make it too strong as mineral harassment) i'll think they increase the area next patch.
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On October 29 2012 08:00 Antylamon wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2012 07:58 ZeromuS wrote:On October 29 2012 06:28 ohampatu wrote:On October 29 2012 06:24 Prodigal wrote:
Hate to be the cynic, but I feel this should be mentioned.
Time warp as it is, is a very "generic" ability. When blizzard decides to tune this to... For instance, have 5-15 second duration and move speed reduced to 10%. You're going to see the uses of this spell be reduced.
I'm not saying it will be tuned exactly like that, they might buff the duration to 60 secs... But don't expect this spell to be the jack of all trades spell for Protoss. Especially with blizzard being infamous for overtuning. Not really. They could nerf the dps it does to buildings, and nerf the slow, it'd still be usefull. Any AOE spell, even if its 10 percent, is usefull if you have the apm to perform the action in a lategame army. The aoe slow will always be usefull imo. Now the dps to buildings could get nerfed hard enough to make it worthless for harrass. Cause currently the dps it does to buildings is insane. I get 5 and just run around killing any hatch that only has 1 queen at iit without losing a single one with some micro I think that if you nerf the damage the oracle does then it will become useless. If you get away with making five and dont die back at home then I don't understand. I cant make five without a roach counter doing some serious damage. And I definitely cant take a fast third if I make that many. Meanwhile, Toss is completely obliterating the Zerg in a base race. EDIT: Or not. I guess all of the Queens combined could take them out by camping at one Hatch.
Or the Oracles may run OOE.
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I doubt that time warp will be removed from the game. They'll probably reduce the mineral mining time by 50% as well as movement speed to buff it slightly.
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I dislike it. Not good enough at harassing, too good against armies.
I was thinking buff entomb HP (make it close to double) and make it have melee range (same cast size, but hovering over the whole mineral field makes it more vulnerable, as opposed to hovering it a bit back, but only catching a few minerals)
Give the oracle some energy steal that rips energy off of things. This would be amazing against orbitals, queens, and nexi/sentries/mscore in pvp (must also be a low-range spell, like 3 range or something so that it must be microed well)
Just some ideas for skill based harrassment. I feel as if time warp is too good in engagements and crappy for harassment. I also don't know why blizz thinks time warp requires more skill than entomb; It doesn't. Also, pulsar is hit or miss. You kill the building, then you're way ahead. If you dont, then it was a waste.
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If nobody posted this before here is the math for TW on mineral lines: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=378449
You reduce mining by 15%-30% for 30 seconds.
That's nothing - just a waste of energy.
And timewarp so far is really not very powerful, but I think it has it's uses when combined with the fact that you may have oracle anyway for scouting and harrass.
But if they now change timewarp to counter timed spells like infested terrans that would make it really nice.
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There is no question that Time Warp is a massive improvement over Entomb. However I can think of a few changes that would make it even more interesting. Centering the area of effect on the Oracle, and making it affect all units (not just enemies) would greatly increase the effect of micro on the spell. As suggested it is a cast-and-forget spell, much like most other spells in the game. Having the cast create a field around the Oracle which the player controls by manually moving the Oracle is even more interesting. This may warrant increasing its area of effect, and making the spell cheaper or with a much greater duration. Or even making it a toggle with a cooldown or activation cost (a la Ghost cloak) so it cannot be toggled on and off freely.
I also think it would be interesting to make the effect greater as the affected unit gets closer to the Oracle, much like radial splash damage increases towards the center of the area of effect. Three or four gradations of effect would be sufficient, possibly ranging from a 50% slow very close to the Oracle, to a 10% slow in the outermost (and largest) region.
It would also be an improvement to make Time Warp affect everything in the game. This means unit movement, unit attack animations, projectile speeds, building production, research, etc. On both sides. Popping your own Oracle's Time Warp on top of your own deathball being a suicidal mistake, but one that does not directly cause actual damage to yourself.
And lastly, I think it would be an improvement to make the Oracle's Time Warp stackable, but with diminishing returns. Suppose one Oracle's 10% slow is applied to a unit or other object. The second Oracle at the same distance also applies a 10% slow, but because the time factor is already at 90%, it only reduces it by 9%. A third Oracle at the same range would do 8%, and so on. This means a field of well-spaced, microed Oracles can create regions where time is MASSIVELY distorted, interspersed in other regions where it is less distorted. Protoss moves their army in more advantageous areas to be less slowed, relatively, than their opponent. And they can move the Oracles as well to maximize the effect.
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I d like to see spells that require alot of micro in order to have the maximum effect.
Not only is the time warps aeo too big to require much skill, the ability itself makes the opponents micro less efficient. Its not a bad idea in general, its just doesnt feel right for starcraft because in my eyes, starcraft should be exiting to watch and hard to master.
AND its some kind of spherical field...AGAIN! Where is the creativity? Why not let the player paint sime kind of TUBE on the map using the mouse? Each square costing x energy? THAT would be cool.
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On October 29 2012 08:11 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2012 01:48 Seiniyta wrote:On October 29 2012 00:25 Fungal Growth wrote:
From the streams I've seen timewarp is ridiculously ineffective and doesn't hold a candle to the other 'movement constrainers' (ff and fungal).
Think about it... It does no damage, doesn't affect health, doesn't affect dps, doesn't grant detection...so largely speaking it is somewhat irrelevant. It would only matter in that it can prevent enemy units from reaching a battle as fast or escaping a battle as fast. But movement speed is important over a large distance. For example, who would care if a marine moved 50% slower if ti was just for one space? The counter to time-warp is easy...you just walk out of it...50% movement speed for a 3.5 radius is NOTHING.
All this talk of time-warp being amazing reminds me of the talk that blinding cloud was going to be OP...but in reality it turned out to be a joke because of how easy it was to micro out the cloud and how small it was. If I really don't want my units escaping, I play as zerg, use fungal and get a 100% reduction in movement speed + damage + detection. Or as protoss I use forcefield which can not only block units 100%, but push units around and block access to buildings. It's a rather easy fix though for the Time Warp, just make it slow down abilities and dps by 50% as well. right...... That would just make the oracle another deathball unit with a marginal harass upside. Time warp as it stands is a terrible ability on the oracle which is just a complete failure by blizzard so far. Anything that would actually give it an aoe ability good for combat would just reinforce the current boring protoss gameplay. Unfortunately I don't think blizzard will make anymore drastic changes to the game and only work with the current models and visuals they have programmed already for the WoL or HotS alpha. Time warp needs a buff to be actually cool, it's probably just going to be an area or slow effect increase. Given they can't increase the slow effect too much (it would make it too strong as mineral harassment) i'll think they increase the area next patch.
FIX IT? Making it reduce attack speed is insanely OP. Not even fungal does that. Fungal also doesnt reduce damage. Toss already has tons of DPS in a deathball. If time warp became more OP, it would cause 4 collossi to decimate entire armies that clump up in the time warp. As i always say, the oracle is just another deathball unit. It sucks at harrass (like time warping workers is useless and requireds no skill) and is great in armies.The way blizz has done it is encouraging the boring and stupid protoss deathball play, and since zerg ground fails against AoE, time warp will make that worse, encouraging infestor/BL deathballing instead of mid-game play that dies to any sort of Toss AoE.
tl;dr:
toss already has too good options for army. Oracle is not good enough at harrass and too good in engagements. Way too good...
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On October 30 2012 23:10 NonameAI wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2012 08:11 Markwerf wrote:On October 29 2012 01:48 Seiniyta wrote:On October 29 2012 00:25 Fungal Growth wrote:
From the streams I've seen timewarp is ridiculously ineffective and doesn't hold a candle to the other 'movement constrainers' (ff and fungal).
Think about it... It does no damage, doesn't affect health, doesn't affect dps, doesn't grant detection...so largely speaking it is somewhat irrelevant. It would only matter in that it can prevent enemy units from reaching a battle as fast or escaping a battle as fast. But movement speed is important over a large distance. For example, who would care if a marine moved 50% slower if ti was just for one space? The counter to time-warp is easy...you just walk out of it...50% movement speed for a 3.5 radius is NOTHING.
All this talk of time-warp being amazing reminds me of the talk that blinding cloud was going to be OP...but in reality it turned out to be a joke because of how easy it was to micro out the cloud and how small it was. If I really don't want my units escaping, I play as zerg, use fungal and get a 100% reduction in movement speed + damage + detection. Or as protoss I use forcefield which can not only block units 100%, but push units around and block access to buildings. It's a rather easy fix though for the Time Warp, just make it slow down abilities and dps by 50% as well. right...... That would just make the oracle another deathball unit with a marginal harass upside. Time warp as it stands is a terrible ability on the oracle which is just a complete failure by blizzard so far. Anything that would actually give it an aoe ability good for combat would just reinforce the current boring protoss gameplay. Unfortunately I don't think blizzard will make anymore drastic changes to the game and only work with the current models and visuals they have programmed already for the WoL or HotS alpha. Time warp needs a buff to be actually cool, it's probably just going to be an area or slow effect increase. Given they can't increase the slow effect too much (it would make it too strong as mineral harassment) i'll think they increase the area next patch. FIX IT? Making it reduce attack speed is insanely OP. Not even fungal does that. Fungal also doesnt reduce damage. Toss already has tons of DPS in a deathball. If time warp became more OP, it would cause 4 collossi to decimate entire armies that clump up in the time warp. As i always say, the oracle is just another deathball unit. It sucks at harrass (like time warping workers is useless and requireds no skill) and is great in armies.The way blizz has done it is encouraging the boring and stupid protoss deathball play, and since zerg ground fails against AoE, time warp will make that worse, encouraging infestor/BL deathballing instead of mid-game play that dies to any sort of Toss AoE. tl;dr:
toss already has too good options for army. Oracle is not good enough at harrass and too good in engagements. Way too good...
Please for the love of god stop bolding random out of context words. It makes your post unreadable
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On October 30 2012 23:28 Solarist wrote:Show nested quote +On October 30 2012 23:10 NonameAI wrote:On October 29 2012 08:11 Markwerf wrote:On October 29 2012 01:48 Seiniyta wrote:On October 29 2012 00:25 Fungal Growth wrote:
From the streams I've seen timewarp is ridiculously ineffective and doesn't hold a candle to the other 'movement constrainers' (ff and fungal).
Think about it... It does no damage, doesn't affect health, doesn't affect dps, doesn't grant detection...so largely speaking it is somewhat irrelevant. It would only matter in that it can prevent enemy units from reaching a battle as fast or escaping a battle as fast. But movement speed is important over a large distance. For example, who would care if a marine moved 50% slower if ti was just for one space? The counter to time-warp is easy...you just walk out of it...50% movement speed for a 3.5 radius is NOTHING.
All this talk of time-warp being amazing reminds me of the talk that blinding cloud was going to be OP...but in reality it turned out to be a joke because of how easy it was to micro out the cloud and how small it was. If I really don't want my units escaping, I play as zerg, use fungal and get a 100% reduction in movement speed + damage + detection. Or as protoss I use forcefield which can not only block units 100%, but push units around and block access to buildings. It's a rather easy fix though for the Time Warp, just make it slow down abilities and dps by 50% as well. right...... That would just make the oracle another deathball unit with a marginal harass upside. Time warp as it stands is a terrible ability on the oracle which is just a complete failure by blizzard so far. Anything that would actually give it an aoe ability good for combat would just reinforce the current boring protoss gameplay. Unfortunately I don't think blizzard will make anymore drastic changes to the game and only work with the current models and visuals they have programmed already for the WoL or HotS alpha. Time warp needs a buff to be actually cool, it's probably just going to be an area or slow effect increase. Given they can't increase the slow effect too much (it would make it too strong as mineral harassment) i'll think they increase the area next patch. FIX IT? Making it reduce attack speed is insanely OP. Not even fungal does that. Fungal also doesnt reduce damage. Toss already has tons of DPS in a deathball. If time warp became more OP, it would cause 4 collossi to decimate entire armies that clump up in the time warp. As i always say, the oracle is just another deathball unit. It sucks at harrass (like time warping workers is useless and requireds no skill) and is great in armies.The way blizz has done it is encouraging the boring and stupid protoss deathball play, and since zerg ground fails against AoE, time warp will make that worse, encouraging infestor/BL deathballing instead of mid-game play that dies to any sort of Toss AoE. tl;dr:
toss already has too good options for army. Oracle is not good enough at harrass and too good in engagements. Way too good... Please for the love of god stop bolding random out of context words. It makes your post unreadable
I bold for emphasis. Maybe i should italicize instead?
And its not random. If i say "i love time warp" and i then say "i love time warp," do you see it as the same subtext? Or what if i said "I Love Time Warp"?
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I do like timewarp but I think the building attacking spell is boring. I'd like to see that spell upgraded or replaced, or something.
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This is going to be a really tough skill to balance. The oracle is fast and it's flying. With this ability it can shut down drops, harassing the main base, taking out expos, and trapping an army moving out on the map. As far as I can tell, Bio doesn't stand a chance once this ability is learned how to be used effectively.
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Canada13389 Posts
On October 31 2012 00:02 happyness wrote:
This is going to be a really tough skill to balance. The oracle is fast and it's flying. With this ability it can shut down drops, harassing the main base, taking out expos, and trapping an army moving out on the map. As far as I can tell, Bio doesn't stand a chance once this ability is learned how to be used effectively.
It doesnt trap an army mid map and it doesnt do much against drops since the medivacs are flying. Also, being able to timewarp a drop will be a skill in and of itself so I see this as nothing but good.
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On October 31 2012 00:21 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 00:02 happyness wrote:
This is going to be a really tough skill to balance. The oracle is fast and it's flying. With this ability it can shut down drops, harassing the main base, taking out expos, and trapping an army moving out on the map. As far as I can tell, Bio doesn't stand a chance once this ability is learned how to be used effectively. It doesnt trap an army mid map and it doesnt do much against drops since the medivacs are flying. Also, being able to timewarp a drop will be a skill in and of itself so I see this as nothing but good.
It can trap any army that is attempting to move through a choke.
And terrain denial is not even the worst aspect of the spell.
It's usage in battles will be.
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On October 31 2012 00:27 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 00:21 ZeromuS wrote:On October 31 2012 00:02 happyness wrote:
This is going to be a really tough skill to balance. The oracle is fast and it's flying. With this ability it can shut down drops, harassing the main base, taking out expos, and trapping an army moving out on the map. As far as I can tell, Bio doesn't stand a chance once this ability is learned how to be used effectively. It doesnt trap an army mid map and it doesnt do much against drops since the medivacs are flying. Also, being able to timewarp a drop will be a skill in and of itself so I see this as nothing but good. It can trap any army that is attempting to move through a choke. And terrain denial is not even the worst aspect of the spell. It's usage in battles will be.
Yeah. It encourages deathballing, because time warp ensures that trades go in your favor, even if they retreat.
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Entomb is bad because it has one use only. Force field is bad because it is absolute (can't move units, can't destroy the FF).
Time warp is good because its uses are more varied than entomb and less absolute than FF. Time warp should replace FF on the sentry and the Oracle should be removed from the game. QED.
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On October 31 2012 00:59 deo1 wrote:Entomb is bad because it has one use only. Force field is bad because it is absolute (can't move units, can't destroy the FF). Time warp is good because its uses are more varied than entomb and less absolute than FF. Time warp should replace FF on the sentry and the Oracle should be removed from the game. QED.
4 gates it is! All match ups, 90% of the time (mix it up with 2 gate proxy)
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Timewarp is really not that powerful, some of you guys have some misconception there.
The investment in stargate and oracle is pretty huge.
It will in many cases make you straight up lose a game vs terran if he is out for an early attack build because the time warp effect in a battle is minimal (unless the enemy loses and tries to run away but then he lost anyway).
And I just want to say it again: Pulsar beam is great. It finally gives toss a good harrass option with a fast unit, that stays usefull later in the game to deny expansions.
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On October 31 2012 00:31 NonameAI wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 00:27 pmp10 wrote:On October 31 2012 00:21 ZeromuS wrote:On October 31 2012 00:02 happyness wrote:
This is going to be a really tough skill to balance. The oracle is fast and it's flying. With this ability it can shut down drops, harassing the main base, taking out expos, and trapping an army moving out on the map. As far as I can tell, Bio doesn't stand a chance once this ability is learned how to be used effectively. It doesnt trap an army mid map and it doesnt do much against drops since the medivacs are flying. Also, being able to timewarp a drop will be a skill in and of itself so I see this as nothing but good. It can trap any army that is attempting to move through a choke. And terrain denial is not even the worst aspect of the spell. It's usage in battles will be. Yeah. It encourages deathballing, because time warp ensures that trades go in your favor, even if they retreat.
Both of you are forgetting that FF can be used for exactly the same purpose. You can FF a choke. You can FF a retreating army. The Oracle is a pretty poor addition to the deathball, too. It has no attack, and although it's special ability is nice - it does nothing that FFs can't do, and FFs come from gateways and are cheaper to get ( 1 sentry = 50/100 for 4 FFs in a big fight, 1 Oracle = 150/150 for 2 Time Warps in a fight).
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On October 26 2012 00:14 Aveng3r wrote:
I agree with the guy above me, however I do like how it helps to kill a deathball and mindless 1a gameplay because if you get all your units caught in it, your gonna be in trouble..
They can work on fine tuning the balance later, I like how they made a spell that is good in concept rather than just mindlessly changing numbers around to fiddle with the balance
edit: the guy 2 posts above me
Well no, its not really gonna help with deathball. If AOE spells would fix DB, then why are there still big clumps of marine marauder running around even when toss has storm and collossi?
What this ability will do is make you spread your units abit, yes, but not fix deathball. If anything, it just adds to the protoss deathball, and strays further and further from the harassment unit it was supposed to be.
If this ability replaced force field, I would be ok with it, because forcefield is even worse. But keep forcefield AND have this ability? nope, the same problems will pop up.
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On October 31 2012 01:18 Treehead wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 00:31 NonameAI wrote:On October 31 2012 00:27 pmp10 wrote:On October 31 2012 00:21 ZeromuS wrote:On October 31 2012 00:02 happyness wrote:
This is going to be a really tough skill to balance. The oracle is fast and it's flying. With this ability it can shut down drops, harassing the main base, taking out expos, and trapping an army moving out on the map. As far as I can tell, Bio doesn't stand a chance once this ability is learned how to be used effectively. It doesnt trap an army mid map and it doesnt do much against drops since the medivacs are flying. Also, being able to timewarp a drop will be a skill in and of itself so I see this as nothing but good. It can trap any army that is attempting to move through a choke. And terrain denial is not even the worst aspect of the spell. It's usage in battles will be. Yeah. It encourages deathballing, because time warp ensures that trades go in your favor, even if they retreat. Both of you are forgetting that FF can be used for exactly the same purpose. You can FF a choke. You can FF a retreating army. The Oracle is a pretty poor addition to the deathball, too. It has no attack, and although it's special ability is nice - it does nothing that FFs can't do, and FFs come from gateways and are cheaper to get ( 1 sentry = 50/100 for 4 FFs in a big fight, 1 Oracle = 150/150 for 2 Time Warps in a fight).
Time warp is cast by a flying unit that is faster than a sentry.
Moreover the spell has twice the FF duration greater area and no weakness to massive units.
Even if it would work on it's own the combination of area spells will prove too much for terran bio-style to handle.
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how about giving time warp to sentries... and forcefields to oracles??? Of course toss early game options like perhaps stalkers and cannons might have to be buffed, but this spell distribution would perhaps be more balanced
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My thoughts about time warp.
its a fixed bubble on the ground, and having it be called time warp would suggest all time in the bubble would be slowed, which it is not.
If the name time warp is kept and the fixed bubble graphic remains i would expect all time in the bubble to be slowed.
- movement speed.
- repair time
- build time
- mining time
- perhaps even projectile speeds.
- all units inside this bubble should be affected, your own units and enemy units.
If you want to make sure that your own units are not affected, dont make the animation be a fixed bubble on the ground but rather something more like fungal which sticks to the units its casted on.
If the whole bubble idea is something they insist on running with and they dont want the effects to affect friendly units then i would argue for a different name to the ability. I guess they could say, well the protoss that casted the timewarp communicated the precise shield modulation needed to counteract the effect of said timewarp to all friendly units so thats why they are not affected.. but i think its a far fetch.
other then that, i think it's cool.
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I love the idea, but like Artimo ^ said, this spell would be more interesting if really every aspect of that bubble is slowed. This way, through bad usage you can shaft yourself by slowing yourself, but through good usage the enemy is slowed. This allows for different strats/tactics and means higher skill= better outcome. This can still be used to harrass mineral lines etc.
Also at late game perhaps 50 percent could be too much of a tip in one direction for the 200/200 battle. But the numerical aspect isn't too important, because that will be adjusted. Love the idea.
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If you make it reduce damage then it will just become something you HAVE to use (because it's so good in any situation), and then the whole game needs to be balanced around that. It's exactly what happened with FF.
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On October 31 2012 01:44 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 31 2012 01:18 Treehead wrote:On October 31 2012 00:31 NonameAI wrote:On October 31 2012 00:27 pmp10 wrote:On October 31 2012 00:21 ZeromuS wrote:On October 31 2012 00:02 happyness wrote:
This is going to be a really tough skill to balance. The oracle is fast and it's flying. With this ability it can shut down drops, harassing the main base, taking out expos, and trapping an army moving out on the map. As far as I can tell, Bio doesn't stand a chance once this ability is learned how to be used effectively. It doesnt trap an army mid map and it doesnt do much against drops since the medivacs are flying. Also, being able to timewarp a drop will be a skill in and of itself so I see this as nothing but good. It can trap any army that is attempting to move through a choke. And terrain denial is not even the worst aspect of the spell. It's usage in battles will be. Yeah. It encourages deathballing, because time warp ensures that trades go in your favor, even if they retreat. Both of you are forgetting that FF can be used for exactly the same purpose. You can FF a choke. You can FF a retreating army. The Oracle is a pretty poor addition to the deathball, too. It has no attack, and although it's special ability is nice - it does nothing that FFs can't do, and FFs come from gateways and are cheaper to get ( 1 sentry = 50/100 for 4 FFs in a big fight, 1 Oracle = 150/150 for 2 Time Warps in a fight). Time warp is cast by a flying unit that is faster than a sentry. Moreover the spell has twice the FF duration greater area and no weakness to massive units. Even if it would work on it's own the combination of area spells will prove too much for terran bio-style to handle.
True, the Oracle is flying and faster than the sentry. True, the area is greater. True, it's more useful against Thors (and in PvP where balance isn't an issue).
For this price, one Oracle costs twice as many resources as one sentry(1.5 times as much gas) has half the number of uses of its control spell at max energy, costs an extra food, doesn't have anything with the combat utility of Guardian Shield, has a lesser scouting ability (revelation) and has no attack.
It's much worse in the early game (where FF on the ramp is king), and only slightly better (mostly due to its speed) when attacking, and in the lategame (where massive units are even possible).
And on top of all that, it's built from the stargate, which (maybe you haven't heard) isn't exactly the most powerful tree protoss has.
I like the Oracle, but for this one thing it suddenly has for it, it has a lot of things still weighing it down.
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EPT
