BTW, I appreciate anyone that takes this much time putting together a thread. It's not easy and when people just come in here, read half of it and then dump on it... well, that's not exactly nice
Thx for the thread...
Thank you, I don't mind criticism, but don't just come in here and tell me "you're wrong" and leave. Instead explain to me why I am wrong, so I can learn too. And chances are, there are probably other people that think like me too, educate them too. I think it just an arrogant and disrespectful view point regardless of how long the OP is to tell people they are wrong without trying to educate them. If you're not going to help someone up fine, but don't stand in there way.
On October 28 2012 02:48 Qikz wrote: I like what you're saying, but I really think the widow mine is actually the best designed unit in the entire game right now.
It's definately the best designed unit in hots.
My issue with the Widow Mine is that it seems most useful for all-ins and cheese. Also, I like units that causals can understand and appreciate. I feel the Flaming Betty does that because it is simple. The Widow Mine is complicated and casuals will get tired of losing to Widow Mine rushes. I also doesn't feel that fun to me, whereas it is always fun to watch flames roast units.
On October 28 2012 02:55 MugenXBanksy wrote: I dunno bro medics and medivacs.... I don't think so maybe if they are just dropships again.
That was the idea... re-read the section, it clearly says take away the ability to heal, and drop the cost of the Medivacs to 100/0 so it doesn't take away gas from Mech.
Making Immortals cheaper does make them more accessible, and I think this is a good thing.
I think the immortal is actually fairly accessible already, but I dont disagree with you, it just feels to me like the immortal works really well in pvp and pvz for the most part. Changing it might have unexpected consequences.
The Carrier is in a bad spot because it takes way to long to build. And even when it's done, it still has to build Interceptors, and then it can't be microed properly, and the Interceptors have no way to heal. If you fix those things, I think it becomes viable. But you can't just leave the Carrier in the spot it is in and expect somehow it to work.
Agreed. And maybe the interceptor + pretty good damage overall is all that the carrier needs to be. At the moment it is such a rare beast that you don't really know what it is capable of.
Because of the nature Zerg, and how they can switch from mass Roach army to mass Corrupters in a mere 40 seconds, for Void Rays to effective counter Corrupters they would have to deal AOE damage, which is an option, but I like Void Rays where they are now.
In WoL I feel like the void ray still has potential that isnt discovered. It just feels to me like a lot of that potential is overshadowed by the tempest now. Especially with a cheaper tempest. Void rays are probably ok in small numbers versus both protoss and terran, it just feels like whatever you build to counter colossus is fairly good against VRs as well. With the new stargate options, we might see entirely colossus less play, which might indirectly make void rays and carriers better.
I do feel very strongly though that Tanks need a buff, we need to adjust the Marine in order to make that buff, and that the Colossus is so much better as an AOE long range unit that it needs to be nerfed somehow in order to make tanks viable, less every Protoss play "crosses the T" against their Terran opponent.
I agree with you to some extent. the tank is by no means weak as it is, it is just weak against protoss. It doesnt have to be that the tank is better against light, maybe just larger splash is enough to make it better overall. I think even a very small change might bring about a completely different look in TvP.
Interestingly, I have yet to lose to a Mech composition, and in one game I had an army of Immortal, Archon and Stalker and he tried to switch into Bio. The result was 1/0 Marines, Ghosts, and Marauders vs 3/3 Immortals and Stalkers. He blanketed me with EMPS, but I still rolled him, and I've never seen anything like it.
The hardest thing for me to deal with in HOTS is Bio compositions that include Widow Mines and Hellbats. Widow Mines give good map control and positional play on their own, without Tanks and Hellbats are great vs Zealots when MMM is behind, even without upgrades.
Well, as I see it, we know from WoL that immortal/archon/stalker doesnt do well versus bio if they are at least somewhat upgraded. I also seem to hear very often that upgrades are what keeps terrans from diversifying. That game of yours might have looked very different with 2/2 bio upgrades for example. Thats where I would start if I wanted to make sure mech is good in TvP, to make sure you can transition out of mech if needed without losing the game.
I also agree on the hellbat. I think it is a dumb upgrade. It takes a mobile and difficult to control unit and makes it into an a-move unit. I'd rather see a nerf to P and/or Z than that tbh.
widow mines though might just be a learning experience for us. I want to give it more time before my verdict.
On October 28 2012 03:04 Fenris420 wrote: I agree with you to some extent. the tank is by no means weak as it is, it is just weak against protoss. It doesnt have to be that the tank is better against light, maybe just larger splash is enough to make it better overall. I think even a very small change might bring about a completely different look in TvP.
Larger splash is a good idea to help combat deathballs.
Another concern about Tanks though is that a small number need to be viable defensive force against Warpgate counter attacks, the same way they are against Bio counter attacks in TvT. You can lose a lot of units quickly to Tanks in TvT, but not so in TvP. Larger splash wouldn't address this, but maybe it shouldn't.... maybe the Flaming Betty and Warhound should cover this role.
And I am not saying that one Tank should be able to hold a ton of units, it is just that Tanks are way too weak in small numbers to do anything against a Warpgate counter attack, because those units can take so many shots. Really the Flaming Betty and Warhound might cover this role more though, maybe Larger Splash is the way to go.
EDIT: Actually, I think larger splash would be a big problem for TvZ, eating up Zerglings and Banelings too quickly.
Thanks for the post OP, anyone who puts in this much effort deserves respect! I really like your changes, with the exception of the hellbat widow mine one, I believe these units have their place in the game very much so, as long as we make workers immune to blue flame upgrade, like we should've done in April 2011. Also, anyone else notice the subtle Star Wars references?
I'm really interested about what you have to say because just the amount of text, editing, and tons of pictures really shows that it would be something worth reading but sadly my head is blowing up around the third paragraph. Would it by any chance possible for you, to put some TL;DR summary to the end? Would be greatly appreciated. I think tanks need some buff in general, so I'm all with you on that.
Bane, personally want to add that I thoroughly enjoyed your comments and found some of the remarks here so far flippant. I've seen random posts with much less thought get far more traffic that too me just because you've raised brought up tanks again doesn't make it any less interesting.
I am convinced as well that tanks need an increase in damage. Mech TvP not light on gas, I don't see how getting enough ghosts and maintaining them is at all a solution (barracks?, medivacs?, upgrades?).
I really do think Protoss Stargate could do with some of your suggestions. I like the idea behind the phoenix transformation but I'm wondering if something like the pre release "overload" would fit?
I would love to come back to this thread later.
Aside: Finally because of this I ended of scouring youtube and ended up with this video I personally had never seen and I thought I had seen most of the pre release stuff.
One thing I liked about their previous direction was they actually were interested in demonstrating scale. Battleships felt like capital ships, Nexi felt like monolithic buildings. The game was damn near cinematic.
On October 28 2012 09:52 wangstra wrote: I like the idea behind the phoenix transformation but I'm wondering if something like the pre release "overload" would fit?
If Overload is going to be an ability on the Phoenix, then it couldn't be too powerful because Phoenixes are cheap and then you'd end up using a lot of supply in Phoenixes in order to counter Corrupters and that cuts into our army size. So we'd run into the same problem Phoenixes have now vs Mutalisks. Sure, they are a great counter to Mutalisks, but they can't do much else, especially when Infestors come onto the the field, so Blink Stalkers and HT/Archon is much more efficient.
With transformation, you're adding a cost to the each Phoenix individually, so they can be the powerful unit they need to be. Overload could have a role there, that is actually a really good idea, so masses of Zerg flyers would have to avoid Overloading Tempests. That would be fun.
On October 28 2012 04:19 PVJ wrote: Would it by any chance possible for you, to put some TL;DR summary to the end? Would be greatly appreciated. I think tanks need some buff in general, so I'm all with you on that.
I guess I should, I know it is really long. I'll add a TL;DR later.
On October 28 2012 02:32 kcdc wrote: The mech stuff is unfocused, makes unfounded assumptions and bad conclusions.
Care to elaborate?
I don't much meaningful connection from one paragraph to the next, and the points don't seem to build toward anything. For example, you spend a lot of time talking about how tanks are better on tiny maps, but you don't do anything with that point. Do you want the tiny maps back? If not, why talk about map size? Is it supporting some other concept? I can't tell what purpose the long map discussion serves.
i think mines are so powerful, but what i hate most is the huge cooldown what makes them a lucky unit more than a skilled one. you can´t just rely in a mine shot when u need!(i think they doesn´t have the hold position like brood war luker) the same with swarm host. thx for the thread, i like the fact u use more than feelings to look for a fix
On October 28 2012 02:32 kcdc wrote: The mech stuff is unfocused, makes unfounded assumptions and bad conclusions.
Care to elaborate?
I don't much meaningful connection from one paragraph to the next, and the points don't seem to build toward anything. For example, you spend a lot of time talking about how tanks are better on tiny maps, but you don't do anything with that point. Do you want the tiny maps back? If not, why talk about map size? Is it supporting some other concept? I can't tell what purpose the long map discussion serves.
Here is how I write: I make a statement, I then support said statement with evidence.
Here was the statement: No unit has suffered more from the ever evolving map pool than the Siege Tank. It was the very first sentence I wrote.
The evidence followed, I spent time talking about how Tanks were powerful on tiny maps and supported the statement with evidence. Do I want tiny maps back? No. The purpose was to show that Siege Tanks had become much weaker (as it put it in the statement "suffered") than the damage nerf had intended because of the changing map pool for the reasons I listed in the OP. It all ties into the statement. Then I talk about how positional play (read: Siege Tank play) should work. I then suggest a buff to fix the problem so Siege Tanks can work with current maps. Then I say it won't be enough, we'll have to change the Immortal and Colossus to make it work. And I give evidence why we need to make that change. Then I suggest changing the Marine because Marine + Tanks with a buff would be overpowered. Then I suggest adding the Medic to neutralize a Marine nerf ect...
The article builds toward an end result where Mech is balanced, viable, and fun. It also does the same for Protoss Stargate units, and allows us to remove Vortex.
I cleaned up the first section a bit, and simplified the early paragraphs while making it more obvious. Hopefully now you can understand what I wrote and we can have a discussion.
On October 27 2012 17:54 Fenris420 wrote: Your warhound with marauders would own everything.
I gave this a lot of thought before I wrote the article, and don't think it is true.
First, they don't share upgrade trees, so it would be expensive to field both. Let's also think about what could counter Warhound/Marauder is each matchup. Immortals would destroy the combination in TvP. Siege Tanks would be the answer in TvT (in fact it wouldn't be any different than fighting Marine/Marauder really except that Warhound/Marauder is less mobile). In TvZ Fungal Growth is the answer. Because both units have the same armor type it isn't that difficult to counter, and remember you can't kite as well with Goliaths mixed with to stimmed Marauders as you can with Marines.
I havent read the whole thing, but I agreed with a lot until I came to this:
On October 27 2012 15:50 BronzeKnee wrote: ________________________________________________________
The Revenge of the Marine ________________________________________________________
There is though, one last thing standing in the way of the Siege Tank receiving a damage buff.
The Marine.
"Been waitin' on you." Yeah, well I was waiting on my HOTS key.
Marines are strong the second you get them, they require no upgrades to be powerful, though they scale wonderfully with upgrades. And since they are a mineral only unit, you can combine this powerful all-purpose mineral unit with gas units from the Factory and/or Starport to create incredibly powerful timings attacks, such as the 1-1-1 or 1-1-2, or powerful pressure builds.
Thus, we can't simply buff the Siege Tank without risking early Tank/Marine or Tank/Marine/Banshee pushes becoming too powerful. The only option then, is to nerf the Marine.
Nerfing the Marine is very problematic though. Terran depends on the Marine in combination with Bunkers for early defense, especially for gasless economic openings. Furthermore, we want to avoid reducing the power of Bio in order to make Mech viable. Trading one for another doesn't make the game better, just different.
You fail to look at WHY Marines (and Roaches and Stalkers and ...) are so strong in the first place (*1) and the reason is the same as for many other units: You can easily have LOTS of them in a rather tight clump and this maximizes their "dps per area used for the army". This is the biggest mistake Blizzard made with the game, because they only look at the individual numbers of the units and not at their "critical mass numbers".
Since tight formation is also basically the definition of "deathball" (at least for me) and since people HATE the deathball and want to get rid of it or at least have viable alternatives to it, I have personally come to the conclusion that nerfing the movement and unit selection would solve LOTS of problems and after that you could "unnerf" the Siege Tank again since it wont hit that many units anymore.
If Blizzard was feeling supercool they would make it so you could CHOOSE between super tight formation and wide open one and give the player the choice to risk having most of his force annihilated by a few Siege Tank shots.
(*1) Their combat values are roughly the same as in BW and yet they seem to be MUCH stronger.
After finishing reading I really liked everything you said. I really liked your argument for bringing back the medic. If I understood you correctly, you argued for a stronger siege tank. However, this would make 1-1-1 timings too powerful. So, we have to weaken it and one way to do that is by making the marine weaker. However, we still want Bio to remain strong. How can we do this? More available, cheaper, and earlier healing. Hmm, but we cant have earlier Medivacs, so perhaps if we have the medic fill this role. Hey! If we have the medic, we can give Mech easier access to drops by making the Medivac a plain ol' dropship that doesn't require gas! So in the end, Mech is more viable, and bio is more flexible. If that is not what you were saying, please enlighten =D
After reading through everything I really wanted to find some parts I did not like. My first instinct was to say, Why add in medics when we could alter medivacs and/or Caduceus Reactor (Medivac Upgrade) to perhaps solve the equation. But in the end, I like the Medic. it is a simple solution and I really like the idea of a mineral only dropship.
Second - The Second thing I worried about is whether slower Collosus would be a terrible thing, making them much more vulnerable. But I don't think they would be and it would give them more identity since they are the thing limiting the speed of your army.
Third - Are Early Hellions with the Flaming Betty just too powerful? We want the Flaming Betty to be decent but don't want them to be imbalanced. Perhaps that could be another upgrade, in order to delay when they enter the field. Vultures had an upgrade in order to get Spider Mines, and also had its other upgrade. So, it has precedent.
Fourth - Your change to the Immortal is simple. I am worried about whether the reduced durability of immortals makes them still worth it. But I'm sure health/shields can be tweaked to make them still viable.
Regarding Phoenix "morphing" into tempests. I think one way to make it more unique, and differentiate it from corruptor to Bloodlord transformation is to make it so it can only occur in a power field. Its a little thing that probably won't matter that much, but it adds a touch of flavor. Also could have the animation involve tapping into the pylon for energy creating an interesting visual effect.
All, in all I think that what you are proposing certainly changes alot, but is interesting and seems sound. Even if this thread is buried or someone comes (with good evidence) tearing apart your arguments, I appreciate the effort it took create it.
The idea of the Flaming Betty is nice and much better than Widow mine and Hellion transformation together, BUT it has one problem: It is too cheap! There either needs to be an upgrade which is higher up in the tech tree OR it should cost some resources to build the turrets. Otherwise you would just build lots of Hellions very early and block the expos of your opponent with 2-4 of these turrets. Against Zerg this would be devastating!
I also like the idea of getting rid of the stupid Thor and instead getting the Goliath back. The giant and slow ass Thor is simply too easy to abuse by opponents.
Make sure to post this on the BNet forums, so that the dev's dont miss this. Great post and although allot of these suggestions need testing! ----> BETA!!!
I love your suggestions about Perdition Turrets/Flaming Betties. I think that would be a fantastic alternative to the current state of the Widow Mine.
Right now Widow Mines aren't working in my opinion. They're too strong, and overlap roles with the Siege Tank FAR too much, and they have a drastic impact on detection as you've already pointed out. Your usage of the word "coinflippy" feels very appropriate to describe the kind of dynamic they add to the game.
Perdition Turrets just seem like a better overall answer, and combined with a change to the way the Siege Tank deals damage, could greatly improve the positional style of Mech play vs Protoss.
I don't agree with your stance on Medics though.
Medics can't come back to the Barracks because early game Medic/Marauder would just be overpowered. You could hit with Medic/Marauder/Marine so much earlier than you can do anything similar in Wings of Liberty and it'd just be too powerful for the early game, an area where Terran is actually strong and not weak.
If you want to bring Medics back, you have to also nerf the Marauder. Nerfing just the Marine won't do it.
Long read but IMO, bloody brilliant. I want to play the game you have imagined Medics, flame turrets! Medicvacs would have to become just drop ships again but with medics in them - we are all good. You really gave it a lot of thought and I was happy reading it and playing it out in my head. Great post and great thinking.
How can a thread like this receive praise? It proposes a million changes which completely reworks the game in several different areas. Untestable. Also without inner structure.
I can not understand why kindof everyone on tl wants the tank to hard counter the immortal. The immortal was designed to be protoss answer to tanks. As it happens, protoss doesnt need an answer to tanks as every single unit they have does decently against tanks on their own and in synergy with each other, tanks are just shit. The immortal is just the topping of the tank rape cake that is protoss. As always, the answer in my mind is increased unit radius, massive tank buff, increased protoss early defense and a better early protoss answer to marines so the 111 doesn't bork.
EPT
