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singularity14
44 Posts
So, why not split up the deathball by splitting up the individual collosus? For example, make it so the collosus lasers cannot stack (of course buff damage accordingly). This will both force players to spread out their collosus + make fewer collosus as at some point there will be nothing to be gained from more collosus. This may also make players create multiple small armies with each small army having its own set of collosus for support. What do you guys think? | ||
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ArcticRaven
France1406 Posts
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anon734912
South Africa19 Posts
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Tuczniak
1561 Posts
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singularity14
44 Posts
On November 05 2012 05:46 ArcticRaven wrote: Great idea - but how do you suggest it be implemented ? Maybe make the colossus have no attack, but a cooldown-based aoe attack ? I was thinking just not letting the laser damage stack (like storm). So they could all fire at a single area but the damage would be the equivalent of a single laser. This would force protoss player to spread the collosus so their lasers cover different areas. | ||
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ArcticRaven
France1406 Posts
On November 05 2012 06:21 singularity14 wrote: I was thinking just not letting the laser damage stack (like storm). So they could all fire at a single area but the damage would be the equivalent of a single laser. This would force protoss player to spread the collosus so their lasers cover different areas. Yes, I know - but that is impossible if they stay as normal attacks with current game mechanics. For the sake of consistency, I think it's better to have it change. | ||
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Freeborn
Germany421 Posts
I think only to a lesser degree. Second question why do protoss use deathballs? Simple answer: because protoss units by themselves suck, especially gateway units. And of course because collossi can walk on top of the smaller units. To be able to make protoss units worth their money, protoss has to use FF and collossi to maximise AoE damage while restricting attack surface area. My real hope for HotS is that Forcefield is removed/nerfed and gateway units are strengthened to be able to fight without ALWAYS having to go for collossus. I would be fine with a warpgate nerf as well. It's just super boring to always rush for collossus and always set perfect forcefields or die. It's even boring to watch. If small groups of protoss units would have a chance of survival you would see them more often. As it is they lose vs barracks units and i most cases vs speedlings AND they can NEVER retreat. Thats the main reason why no protoss ever ventures out in smaller groups. If you are outmatched you are dead. And the stupid mothership core does not really help since you can have only one it supports the notion of one big army. So fucking boring. The Deathball is a symptom not a problem. Ask yourself : why do people use deathballs and then solve the underlying problems... | ||
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Tedde93
Sweden169 Posts
On November 05 2012 05:46 ArcticRaven wrote: Great idea - but how do you suggest it be implemented ? Maybe make the colossus have no attack, but a cooldown-based aoe attack ? You could make all collosi in an area around the collosi have a joined attacks where the area would be like a pylon radius so they all attack the same point so the damage would be 30*X on a single point where x is amount collosi leading to having to many collosi will do alot of overkill damage. | ||
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RinconH
United States512 Posts
Toss would need to get some small buffs to balance it though. | ||
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Zanzabarr
Canada217 Posts
On November 05 2012 08:05 Freeborn wrote: Ok one question, does any race besides protoss have deathballs? I think only to a lesser degree. Second question why do protoss use deathballs? Simple answer: because protoss units by themselves suck, especially gateway units. And of course because collossi can walk on top of the smaller units. To be able to make protoss units worth their money, protoss has to use FF and collossi to maximise AoE damage while restricting attack surface area. My real hope for HotS is that Forcefield is removed/nerfed and gateway units are strengthened to be able to fight without ALWAYS having to go for collossus. I would be fine with a warpgate nerf as well. It's just super boring to always rush for collossus and always set perfect forcefields or die. It's even boring to watch. If small groups of protoss units would have a chance of survival you would see them more often. As it is they lose vs barracks units and i most cases vs speedlings AND they can NEVER retreat. Thats the main reason why no protoss ever ventures out in smaller groups. If you are outmatched you are dead. And the stupid mothership core does not really help since you can have only one it supports the notion of one big army. So fucking boring. The Deathball is a symptom not a problem. Ask yourself : why do people use deathballs and then solve the underlying problems... More or less how I feel about the Protoss race as well. Sure would be nice to actually see a FF nerf and gateway unit buff, allowing protoss to actually be effective in small numbers, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. It's pretty lame being stuck in your base until you are ready to try and end the game with one big attack, and having the outcome of engagements swing in massive favor one way or the other depending on whether or not you had perfect forcefields (especiallly againt zerg, where if your large forcefield wall has a small gap in it for a couple seconds, instead of destroying a portion of their army while the other half is blocked off, the forcefields are essentially useless, as their whole army can run through this gap at lightspeed in a split second.) | ||
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734pot
Australia294 Posts
Edit: Making slow projectile AoE attacks could also be interesting, as using them would require prediction of unit movement. Some sort of baneling launcher, or just giving them the ability to jump, which could help the fact that one of zerg's major forms of AoE has the considerable disadvantage of being melee. | ||
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Tedde93
Sweden169 Posts
On November 05 2012 09:26 Zanzabarr wrote: More or less how I feel about the Protoss race as well. Sure would be nice to actually see a FF nerf and gateway unit buff, allowing protoss to actually be effective in small numbers, but I'm not sure that is going to happen. It's pretty lame being stuck in your base until you are ready to try and end the game with one big attack, and having the outcome of engagements swing in massive favor one way or the other depending on whether or not you had perfect forcefields (especiallly againt zerg, where if your large forcefield wall has a small gap in it for a couple seconds, instead of destroying a portion of their army while the other half is blocked off, the forcefields are essentially useless, as their whole army can run through this gap at lightspeed in a split second.) I have been playing quite alot of HotS and I can't really say that most of this is actually true anymore, you don't have to go collossi every game anymore, the tempest is pretty good. Saying that protoss is the only race that has a "death ball" is very stupid, there isn't a single race that doesn't have a deathball. Ever played a pvt? Terrans goes gets a bio deathball. The way to get away from the deathball is to create incentive to split and attack in differant locations, one way of doing this would be lowering the range on ALL units making all the ranged units that are out of range useless. | ||
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Fig
United States1324 Posts
Second, it's pretty silly that people still think of protoss as being the only race to have a deathball. Terrans run around with a huge ball of mmm+ghost+viking overhead. The surface area on that thing is the same as a protoss. And zergs are the worst offenders at the moment, not out of necessity, but out of sheer power of the broodlord+infestor combo. | ||
Falling
Canada11369 Posts
The issues are much more fundamental including it's crazy mobility in which it can ignore terrain as well as any army on the ground. But the big issue is how the Collosus actually attacks. Burst damage and the cool down in between is a big deal To make the Collosus more microable, you'd have to look at these things: 1) Burst damage (Front loaded damage, time in between shots) 2) Speed 3) Speed between attacking and moving and moving and attacking 4) Relatively low hit points. (Although with how fast things die in SC2, this point might be moot.) (Oracle stuff is out of date, but the principles remain relevant. 6:10 for Reaver-Collosus comparison) The mobility, combined with the rate of fire (and non-directional arc damage) means that to be balanced, it must be vulnerable to air. Once it's vulnerable to air, it is very difficult to operate independently from the main army. Aka an unit stuck in the deathball rather than being used for raids, offense and defence. | ||
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Belha
Italy2850 Posts
Still, I'm 100% sure that collosi are not a problem in high level play (except the boring late PvP). Right now, I would prefer to see a rework on the infestor. | ||
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archonOOid
1983 Posts
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734pot
Australia294 Posts
On November 05 2012 11:46 Belha wrote: Nice idea. Still, I'm 100% sure that collosi are not a problem in high level play (except the boring late PvP). Right now, I would prefer to see a rework on the infestor. I think that any form of AoE that is easy to use is bad for interesting gameplay. The colossus is one of the prime examples of an easy to use AoE; it does massive damage with its attack, has a long range, can walk up cliffs and over other units. | ||
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Hattori_Hanzo
Singapore1229 Posts
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MasterCynical
505 Posts
On November 05 2012 06:21 singularity14 wrote: I was thinking just not letting the laser damage stack (like storm). So they could all fire at a single area but the damage would be the equivalent of a single laser. This would force protoss player to spread the collosus so their lasers cover different areas. This will encourage your opposing player to clump their units up as much as possible when you're going colossus. It will also nerf colossus too much when defending chokes, tight areas and ff'd units. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 05 2012 11:01 Falling wrote: There are a lot of design problems with the Collosus. It's more than lasers stacking because in fact in Collosus vs Collosus battles, Protoss are already trying to spread out into a concave. The issues are much more fundamental including it's crazy mobility in which it can ignore terrain as well as any army on the ground. But the big issue is how the Collosus actually attacks. Burst damage and the cool down in between is a big deal To make the Collosus more microable, you'd have to look at these things: 1) Burst damage (Front loaded damage, time in between shots) 2) Speed 3) Speed between attacking and moving and moving and attacking 4) Relatively low hit points. (Although with how fast things die in SC2, this point might be moot.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9_ZIBOlydA&feature=player_embedded (Oracle stuff is out of date, but the principles remain relevant. 6:10 for Reaver-Collosus comparison) The mobility, combined with the rate of fire (and non-directional arc damage) means that to be balanced, it must be vulnerable to air. Once it's vulnerable to air, it is very difficult to operate independently from the main army. Aka an unit stuck in the deathball rather than being used for raids, offense and defence. Thank you for showing the difference between Reaver and Colossus and how the Reaver is more interesting than the Colossus. One sentence you said does push me into another "rant" again though, because "it doesnt kill anything outright" is true not only for the Colossus, but also for the Siege Tank. The culprit which caused this is obviously the tighly packed units which would be obliterated too easily by high damage burst attacks, so Blizzard changed it to more continuous low damage attacks. Without the tight formations it would be possible to have high damage burst attacks (although the precisely aimed Colossus attacks are too good for that compared with the kinda random Reaver energy balls - which can be blocked, right?) again. Thus I cannot understand why people are still not crying out over the tight formation and unlimited unit selection more and why there are too many idiots who say things like "I like the deathball". That junk limits micro, limits the creativity of the devs and most certainly limits the creativity of the players by making one tactic much more efficient than any others. Cutesy micro like that for the Reaver or the Carrier has no place in a game with massive blobs of infantry which tears them apart too easily and you wont have much time for any micro with the huge number of units on the battlefield anyways. Culprit #2 are the production speed boosts ... which cause the battlefield to be full of units. Personally I have always liked the Reaver much more because of the "lottery shot" and the excitement it causes. When one of those energy balls is stuck on the scenery for a second or two before eliminating either half a dozen workers or none at all you have more excitement than with that "War of the Worlds" quadrupod. | ||
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Evangelist
1246 Posts
A - reduce the power of the colossus in head to head engagements B - allow for some clever range increasing micro with the Colossus C - force protoss players to flank armies that are in a concave D - allow protoss players to deal with so called "deathballs" with a little more ease than they do currently E - increase the direct damage output of the colossus without making it overpowered# F - allow for subtle ground unit micro to deal with the colossus No need to do anything else. It'd also make colossus wars far more interesting (with people microing their colossi so you don't engage at point blank) and also engaging (imagine long range colossi dodging each others beams). Very subtle change, but one that would keep the ideal of the unit but make it far more interesting to use, position and play against. | ||
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GorGor
78 Posts
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Fragile51
Netherlands15767 Posts
On November 05 2012 18:29 GorGor wrote: How about just remove the broken colossus just like the warhound? Because unlike the warhound the colossus actually fills a rather important role and no protoss player would ever be able to play a macro game in PvZ without it. It needs to be either replaced, reworked, or left the fuck alone, not removed entirely. | ||
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ch4ppi
Germany802 Posts
On November 05 2012 18:05 Evangelist wrote: Change the attacking mode to two parallel beams moving away from the Colossus with the same attacking properties as the Lurker (ie dodgable). That would: A - reduce the power of the colossus in head to head engagements B - allow for some clever range increasing micro with the Colossus C - force protoss players to flank armies that are in a concave D - allow protoss players to deal with so called "deathballs" with a little more ease than they do currently E - increase the direct damage output of the colossus without making it overpowered# F - allow for subtle ground unit micro to deal with the colossus No need to do anything else. It'd also make colossus wars far more interesting (with people microing their colossi so you don't engage at point blank) and also engaging (imagine long range colossi dodging each others beams). Very subtle change, but one that would keep the ideal of the unit but make it far more interesting to use, position and play against. This is by far the best thing that could happen to the game. Also it should be stronger attacks and the collossus should be slower... God, just thinking of this idea makes me feel good  | ||
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Glockateer
United States254 Posts
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iKill
Denmark861 Posts
On November 05 2012 08:05 Freeborn wrote: Ok one question, does any race besides protoss have deathballs? I think only to a lesser degree. Second question why do protoss use deathballs? Simple answer: because protoss units by themselves suck, especially gateway units. And of course because collossi can walk on top of the smaller units. To be able to make protoss units worth their money, protoss has to use FF and collossi to maximise AoE damage while restricting attack surface area. My real hope for HotS is that Forcefield is removed/nerfed and gateway units are strengthened to be able to fight without ALWAYS having to go for collossus. I would be fine with a warpgate nerf as well. It's just super boring to always rush for collossus and always set perfect forcefields or die. It's even boring to watch. If small groups of protoss units would have a chance of survival you would see them more often. As it is they lose vs barracks units and i most cases vs speedlings AND they can NEVER retreat. Thats the main reason why no protoss ever ventures out in smaller groups. If you are outmatched you are dead. And the stupid mothership core does not really help since you can have only one it supports the notion of one big army. So fucking boring. The Deathball is a symptom not a problem. Ask yourself : why do people use deathballs and then solve the underlying problems... Zerg has a deathball, Terran has a deathball (if they go air that is). Thing about the toss deathball is that colossi stack on top of other ground units, so you get the effect of air units without actually having to go air. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 05 2012 08:05 Freeborn wrote: Ok one question, does any race besides protoss have deathballs? This really depends upon your definition of "deathball". Some people cling too much to the "ball" part of it and expect a round shape of the army to be important and then you more or less limit that to Protoss only. If you dont cling to that term too much however every "all fighting units are in one big clump"-army is a deathball. Terran bio is a deathball just as Roach or ling/bling is and Infestors certainly travel in one big clump over the map. Thus the term should be seen more as "all fighting units act together" definition as opposed to drop harrassment or positional siege play for example, which has the units spread all over the map. On November 05 2012 08:05 Freeborn wrote: The Deathball is a symptom not a problem. Ask yourself : why do people use deathballs and then solve the underlying problems... Yep, the "all in one army" is definetely a symptom and fixing it is rather easy. 1. The clumping and auto-tight movement mechanics allow it or more precisely FORCE IT. 2. The unit selection mechanics allow it. 3. There is NO PENALTY because AoE has been nerfed to be only slightly irritating instead of threatening. "Deathball is a symptom" is a very good analysis and the solution to the problem is relatively easy to see, but sadly Blizzard doesnt seem to get it. On November 05 2012 18:59 Glockateer wrote: What makes deathballs so desirable is the lack of game changing AOE and the lack of overkill. For example, baneling vs marine requires you to spread out and makes for some of the more interesting engagements. Overkill requires you to spread out tanks/collosus for maximum damage and allows for a higher base damage. Zerg kind of lack a solid non-fungal splash unit like the lurker. Errr ... Baneling mines? | ||
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Qikz
United Kingdom12023 Posts
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 05 2012 19:32 Qikz wrote: The big thing with collosus is they shouldn't be able to stand over the army. In BW the units ALL moved kinda clunky and the important part was being able to micro well enough to maximize the efficiency. You had the time to do it too, because there werent that many units on the battlefield (screen) to control. In SC2 that all changes and units have "perfect" movement patterns without any clunkiness. Thus the intrinsic mobility of the units has become a prime reason why certain units are good and others arent. The amount of micro shifted from controlling a single or a few units to moving tight clumps of them. The Colossus excels due to its design concept of standing / walking in the middle of a bunch of guarding "infantry" and its ability to cliffwalk. The efficiency of that unit stands and falls with the deathball (tight unit formation) and lack of punishment for clumping your units. Fix that and the Colossus ceases to be such a huge problem. | ||
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XenoX101
Australia729 Posts
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denyeverything
25 Posts
On November 05 2012 05:42 singularity14 wrote: Most people (including Blizzard) agree gameplay involving deathballs is undesirable. The main reason why deathballs are favored for protoss is to strengthen the collosus (stalkers are in the deathball to protect collosus against anti-air, zealots and archons are in the deathball to tank damage). So, why not split up the deathball by splitting up the individual collosus? For example, make it so the collosus lasers cannot stack (of course buff damage accordingly). This will both force players to spread out their collosus + make fewer collosus as at some point there will be nothing to be gained from more collosus. This may also make players create multiple small armies with each small army having its own set of collosus for support. What do you guys think? not a bad idea, but if they don't stack they will be terrible (single target DPS is actually quite low). and if they don't need to stack then they will be way too powerful. | ||
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sona
Canada52 Posts
As a terran, instead of looking at colossus and instantly going for viking, a bold player with extremely good micro should be about to control his army and take down colossus (in small numbers). I wish someone would make a mod for this for video demonstration. Micro would be something like dodging storms. Also, toss players will have to micro their colossus to hit the best targets or immobile targets (like seige tanks against banelings). The problem is that there is no need of skill required to use this unit. | ||
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xPrimuSx
95 Posts
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
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aka_star
United Kingdom1546 Posts
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xPrimuSx
95 Posts
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
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TheHourglass
11 Posts
But have the both... | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10363 Posts
On November 06 2012 11:35 xPrimuSx wrote: Based on the ideas people are throwing up I'm just going to post this video by InR01. Some of you might have seen this already, it's made the rounds in the forums before. One thing I'd change to make it a bit more interesting is to have the bombs be loaded like the Reaver (but free). If you constantly have it attack then after an initial burst of 4 it would go down to 1 bomb at a time, but if you wait a few seconds (longer than the actual attack cooldown) it would store up to an additional 3 bombs giving it a high amount of burst damage. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poXELaHhqnE Even the effect itself (it being not as "instant") makes it already look much more fun. I like this idea! | ||
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mishimaBeef
Canada2259 Posts
Will need some adjustments to other stats... But I'm concerned with tanks vs colossi | ||
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Hattori_Hanzo
Singapore1229 Posts
Too bad Blizzard cut their radius. | ||
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mishimaBeef
Canada2259 Posts
On November 06 2012 14:29 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: EMP was a great "incentive" for Protoss to split their army. Too bad Blizzard cut their radius. have faith brother WoL for mayor HoTS for senator LoTV for president | ||
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