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On December 05 2012 15:05 GinDo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 11:56 DaNkS wrote:On December 05 2012 11:43 aka_star wrote:
My number 1 request is to Fix death ball play please! lol thats funny because fixing death ball you should be able to fix it yourself by constantly on the aggression side so you minimize their army. deathball only occurs when you let them get a deathball and 100% of the time if they have a huge deathball you have one as well just saying So true.The way you minimize Death Balls is through aggression and constant trading. Now the real question is how do we stimulate the use of aggression. Force the opponent to invest in units that they already have the tech for, and as a result we deley the ultimate death ball. The issue were having is that some maps are much to big. MUCH TO BIG. And alot allow you to easily turtle on 3 bases.
If you want to force aggression, you increase the number of bases on the map by 1.5x, but decrease the number of resources (patches of minerals, not necessarily how many minerals that patch contains) at each base, and you stop using maps like the current tournament pools, which basically concede three bases to each player. Forcing a player to spread themselves over the map increases the vulnerability of each base, but rewards the player who expands anyway. Then you have to actively deny bases from your opponent (or perform other, effective harass) and Boom, you have aggression.
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It is a symptom of how strongly the game's internal structure favors deathballs that even on the largest maps, you still keep your army together rather than split it up. As maps get bigger, the potential gains from splitting your forces increase, as the amount of time it takes for a deathball to get from place to place increases.
Making maps smaller will NOT discourage deathballs. It just hides the fact that they are deathballs because they have more of a footprint on the entire map, and need less time to travel.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
You don't fix deathballs by FORCING players to split up their armies. You make there be incentives to do so, because it's better play strategically.
You create a balance between the risk/reward aspects of deathball play, and the risk/reward aspects of multitask focused play
Why would say, HerO use warp prisms so much in a time that most Protoss players deathball? Because he's found an actual advantage to doing so, strategically, but also has the ability to execute his style. He's not doing it do be cute, or to please the fans, he's doing it because it can work.
This approach to fixing deathballs also enables more styles to be viable, for more races in different matchups.
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This is amazing news to me. First of all I want to say that I agree with nearly all of the ideas DK is talking about. What I have been observing with the beta up until this point was disappointing and frustrating. This post has single-handedly re-affirmed my belief that Blizzard knows what it is doing.
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On December 05 2012 11:58 ledarsi wrote:
For the last time- a deathball isn't just having a lot of units. The deathball is when you have all your units in one place. As opposed to, say, having 1/3 of your army defending your natural, 1/3 of your army spread over the map covering ramps and positions of interest, and 1/3 of your army attacking an enemy base.
Blizzard needs to create incentives to split your forces and gain combat power from doing so. Otherwise, if you split your army you are asking to get defeated in detail by an opponent's deathball. Which will crush each piece of your forces with minimal casualties.
There`s not enough supply to go around splitting it into 1/3`rds. Even a roach max can at its most get up to just about 50 roaches (100 supply). What can 16 roaches do against anything?
Reduce supply of all units or increase maximum supply and then you can talk about increasing the map sizes and splitting units up.
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Am I the only one thinking that mech with some battlecruisers mixed in with their free 3/3 upgrades is going to be massively overpowered?
Basically, since you're upgrading your ground army you'll have 1/0 corruptors fighting versus 3/3 vikings and 3/3 battlecruisers.
Yes, you can upgrade air upgrades as well, but they take a massive amount of time and planning and will require to forfeit ALL ground upgrades, basically ensuring you'll get roflstomped by tanks and thors.
I'm not liking that change at all.. I agree that vikings are rather weak currently, but I don't think this is the right way to go at things. Honestly, the easiest thing would be to give MECH decent anti air à la Goliath or the original Warhound, so the anti air shares upgrades without making other stuff too strong or reducing the costs of other strategies vastly.
I mean, bcs just got a 1200 minerals and 1200 gas requirement (total air upgrade cost) to be viable completely removed.
No, I don't want bcs to be useless, but this is just a buff of VAST proportions that people haven't realised yet.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On December 05 2012 17:25 Madkipz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 11:58 ledarsi wrote:
For the last time- a deathball isn't just having a lot of units. The deathball is when you have all your units in one place. As opposed to, say, having 1/3 of your army defending your natural, 1/3 of your army spread over the map covering ramps and positions of interest, and 1/3 of your army attacking an enemy base.
Blizzard needs to create incentives to split your forces and gain combat power from doing so. Otherwise, if you split your army you are asking to get defeated in detail by an opponent's deathball. Which will crush each piece of your forces with minimal casualties. There`s not enough supply to go around splitting it into 1/3`rds. Even a roach max can at its most get up to just about 50 roaches (100 supply). What can 16 roaches do against anything? Reduce supply of all units or increase maximum supply and then you can talk about increasing the map sizes and splitting units up.
You can split Roaches up doing Stephano style pushes. They hit at such a time that Protoss don't have the numbers to be everywhere at once, so you can exploit that. Stephano also made this approach so good because he was good enough to micro his roaches on multiple fronts.
Even though it was a bit annoying, even Stephano roach made for better games than the current turtling to Bl/Infestor
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On December 05 2012 17:25 Madkipz wrote:
There`s not enough supply to go around splitting it into 1/3`rds. Even a roach max can at its most get up to just about 50 roaches (100 supply). What can 16 roaches do against anything?
Reduce supply of all units or increase maximum supply and then you can talk about increasing the map sizes and splitting units up.
This is precisely my point. One third of your army is useless by itself. The game should be better designed so that this does not happen. At a certain size threshold, a force should become reasonably stable regardless of opposition, much as in BW. In SC2, small forces being completely annihilated with zero damage done to the enemy will mean you should never use forces of that size or smaller.
Reducing supply costs across the board is an excellent step in the right direction to effect exactly that- 16 two-supply roaches could be 32 one-supply roaches. And 32 little roaches will perform much better in isolation against a deathball of little roaches than 16 big roaches will against a deathball of big roaches.
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On December 05 2012 14:36 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 14:35 Wombat_NI wrote:On December 05 2012 14:32 Crawdad wrote:On December 05 2012 13:03 SigmaoctanusIV wrote:
Huh?? Tempest are not that amazing late game I would like something better at fighting Mass muta switches.
Just like most other units in the game, they are amazing at a specific role, which includes the annihilation of both T3 Zerg units (does the Viper count as a T3 unit?). It's definitely a problem for Ultralisks, which were already unpopular in the matchup. I'm a little worried about the implications for BLs, but with the Infestor being "heavily nerfed" and the Void Ray being buffed, I think that Protoss players will find a way without Vortex. The Tempest merely lets us deal with Inf/BL deathballs, by building another form of deathball.  Well it's not like you need many, 2 tempests will 1 shot a broodlord (unless I am mistaken they do 60 vs massive and broods have 120 health iirc or is it 150?). So not like you have to mass tempests.
Please blade, tell me that you are trolling.
Brood Lords with 120 hp would be hardly strong, even with Infestors. They are massive, have 225 HP, and 1 armor. Vipers have 120 hp, and they are not massive, so Tempests do 30 damage to them. So, either way, you need 4 shots from Tempests to kill those units.
On December 05 2012 17:52 Grendel wrote:
Am I the only one thinking that mech with some battlecruisers mixed in with their free 3/3 upgrades is going to be massively overpowered?
Basically, since you're upgrading your ground army you'll have 1/0 corruptors fighting versus 3/3 vikings and 3/3 battlecruisers.
Yes, you can upgrade air upgrades as well, but they take a massive amount of time and planning and will require to forfeit ALL ground upgrades, basically ensuring you'll get roflstomped by tanks and thors.
I'm not liking that change at all.. I agree that vikings are rather weak currently, but I don't think this is the right way to go at things. Honestly, the easiest thing would be to give MECH decent anti air à la Goliath or the original Warhound, so the anti air shares upgrades without making other stuff too strong or reducing the costs of other strategies vastly.
I mean, bcs just got a 1200 minerals and 1200 gas requirement (total air upgrade cost) to be viable completely removed.
No, I don't want bcs to be useless, but this is just a buff of VAST proportions that people haven't realised yet.
Yes, not to whine before we even test things, but it seems it would be really good and really hard to stop.
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On December 05 2012 19:26 Ramiz1989 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 14:36 blade55555 wrote:On December 05 2012 14:35 Wombat_NI wrote:On December 05 2012 14:32 Crawdad wrote:On December 05 2012 13:03 SigmaoctanusIV wrote:
Huh?? Tempest are not that amazing late game I would like something better at fighting Mass muta switches.
Just like most other units in the game, they are amazing at a specific role, which includes the annihilation of both T3 Zerg units (does the Viper count as a T3 unit?). It's definitely a problem for Ultralisks, which were already unpopular in the matchup. I'm a little worried about the implications for BLs, but with the Infestor being "heavily nerfed" and the Void Ray being buffed, I think that Protoss players will find a way without Vortex. The Tempest merely lets us deal with Inf/BL deathballs, by building another form of deathball. Well it's not like you need many, 2 tempests will 1 shot a broodlord (unless I am mistaken they do 60 vs massive and broods have 120 health iirc or is it 150?). So not like you have to mass tempests. Please blade, tell me that you are trolling. Brood Lords with 120 hp would be hardly strong, even with Infestors. They are massive, have 225 HP, and 1 armor. Vipers have 120 hp, and they are not massive, so Tempests do 30 damage to them. So, either way, you need 4 shots from Tempests to kill those units.
which is more than fine dont you think? 12 tempest kill 15 BLs in 16,5 seconds with focus fire. the first 3 BLs will be dead before they get off one shot. so effectively its 15 BLs in 13,2 seconds. 15 (!!) BLs and/or viper dead in 13,2 ingame seconds! and not only that. you also forced 20-30 corruptor to kill the 12 tempest which in combinateion with the BL/viper killing is insane. thats 100-120 supply. so basically the whole zerg army rofl.
they really need to do something so tempest counters BLs but not viper and ultras. for example: let the overall damage to massive the same, but make it lower to non-massive and make it hit air-to-air only. so tempest counter BLs, carrier, BCs but not every massive unit in the game and even high-gas-non-massive units like vipers, infestors or HT.
if that is not enough, take down hp to 300 or 350 since right now it has the best hp/supply ratio of ALL UNIT IN THE GAME...and that is on a range 15 unit lol.
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Northern Ireland26225 Posts
On December 05 2012 18:39 ledarsi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 17:25 Madkipz wrote:
There`s not enough supply to go around splitting it into 1/3`rds. Even a roach max can at its most get up to just about 50 roaches (100 supply). What can 16 roaches do against anything?
Reduce supply of all units or increase maximum supply and then you can talk about increasing the map sizes and splitting units up. This is precisely my point. One third of your army is useless by itself. The game should be better designed so that this does not happen. At a certain size threshold, a force should become reasonably stable regardless of opposition, much as in BW. In SC2, small forces being completely annihilated with zero damage done to the enemy will mean you should never use forces of that size or smaller. Reducing supply costs across the board is an excellent step in the right direction to effect exactly that- 16 two-supply roaches could be 32 one-supply roaches. And 32 little roaches will perform much better in isolation against a deathball of little roaches than 16 big roaches will against a deathball of big roaches.
In terms of max v max engagements you're right I guess. I don't feel that Starcraft 2 doesn't entirely neglect the idea of splitting your army for strategic gain though, it just doesn't do so frequently enough.
1. Bio scaling quite linearly, small groups of bio are still beneficial to use in multi-task intensive, aggressive ways.
2. Protoss not scaling in this way, but that's due being more reliant on tech units.
3. Stephano style Roach styles benefiting from splitting, hitting at a timing in which Protoss have to split against it very prudently.
4. Protoss not really having the ability to split their armies and gain a benefit vs Zerg.
In this case, the phenomenon you described, I agree with, but I don't believe it's 100% a core problem with SC2's entire design at the core. It's more prevalent in certain matchups than others, so is also a problem with racial interaction.
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On December 05 2012 19:35 Decendos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 19:26 Ramiz1989 wrote:On December 05 2012 14:36 blade55555 wrote:On December 05 2012 14:35 Wombat_NI wrote:On December 05 2012 14:32 Crawdad wrote:On December 05 2012 13:03 SigmaoctanusIV wrote:
Huh?? Tempest are not that amazing late game I would like something better at fighting Mass muta switches.
Just like most other units in the game, they are amazing at a specific role, which includes the annihilation of both T3 Zerg units (does the Viper count as a T3 unit?). It's definitely a problem for Ultralisks, which were already unpopular in the matchup. I'm a little worried about the implications for BLs, but with the Infestor being "heavily nerfed" and the Void Ray being buffed, I think that Protoss players will find a way without Vortex. The Tempest merely lets us deal with Inf/BL deathballs, by building another form of deathball. Well it's not like you need many, 2 tempests will 1 shot a broodlord (unless I am mistaken they do 60 vs massive and broods have 120 health iirc or is it 150?). So not like you have to mass tempests. Please blade, tell me that you are trolling. Brood Lords with 120 hp would be hardly strong, even with Infestors. They are massive, have 225 HP, and 1 armor. Vipers have 120 hp, and they are not massive, so Tempests do 30 damage to them. So, either way, you need 4 shots from Tempests to kill those units. which is more than fine dont you think? 12 tempest kill 15 BLs in 16,5 seconds with focus fire. the first 3 BLs will be dead before they get off one shot. so effectively its 15 BLs in 13,2 seconds. 15 (!!) BLs and/or viper dead in 13,2 ingame seconds! and not only that. you also forced 20-30 corruptor to kill the 12 tempest which in combinateion with the BL/viper killing is insane. thats 100-120 supply. so basically the whole zerg army rofl. they really need to do something so tempest counters BLs but not viper and ultras. for example: let the overall damage to massive the same, but make it lower to non-massive and make it hit air-to-air only. so tempest counter BLs, carrier, BCs but not every massive unit in the game and even high-gas-non-massive units like vipers, infestors or HT. if that is not enough, take down hp to 300 or 350 since right now it has the best hp/supply ratio of ALL UNIT IN THE GAME...and that is on a range 15 unit lol.
Sure, not saying they are bad, just talking about the mistake. I agree with the Tempest problem, and I am looking forward to the way of fixing it.
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On December 05 2012 17:25 Madkipz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 11:58 ledarsi wrote:
For the last time- a deathball isn't just having a lot of units. The deathball is when you have all your units in one place. As opposed to, say, having 1/3 of your army defending your natural, 1/3 of your army spread over the map covering ramps and positions of interest, and 1/3 of your army attacking an enemy base.
Blizzard needs to create incentives to split your forces and gain combat power from doing so. Otherwise, if you split your army you are asking to get defeated in detail by an opponent's deathball. Which will crush each piece of your forces with minimal casualties. There`s not enough supply to go around splitting it into 1/3`rds. Even a roach max can at its most get up to just about 50 roaches (100 supply). What can 16 roaches do against anything? Reduce supply of all units or increase maximum supply and then you can talk about increasing the map sizes and splitting units up.
The point is that "16 Roaches can do A LOT with proper micro against 16 Roaches" ... thus the goal must be to get rid of the deathball through OTHER MEANS than making "1/3rd strategies" efficient. The only way to do it is to fiddle around with unit pathing and unit selection limits.
Forcing the deathball to be disbanded by buffing units like the Siege Tank will backfire wildly, because those Siege Tanks will be totally OP when they first come out of the production line ... because the opponent wont have enough to deal with them yet. General mechanics is the only answer that will work without making the game hopelessly overcomplicated.
On December 05 2012 19:37 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 18:39 ledarsi wrote:On December 05 2012 17:25 Madkipz wrote:
There`s not enough supply to go around splitting it into 1/3`rds. Even a roach max can at its most get up to just about 50 roaches (100 supply). What can 16 roaches do against anything?
Reduce supply of all units or increase maximum supply and then you can talk about increasing the map sizes and splitting units up. This is precisely my point. One third of your army is useless by itself. The game should be better designed so that this does not happen. At a certain size threshold, a force should become reasonably stable regardless of opposition, much as in BW. In SC2, small forces being completely annihilated with zero damage done to the enemy will mean you should never use forces of that size or smaller. Reducing supply costs across the board is an excellent step in the right direction to effect exactly that- 16 two-supply roaches could be 32 one-supply roaches. And 32 little roaches will perform much better in isolation against a deathball of little roaches than 16 big roaches will against a deathball of big roaches. In terms of max v max engagements you're right I guess. I don't feel that Starcraft 2 doesn't entirely neglect the idea of splitting your army for strategic gain though, it just doesn't do so frequently enough. 1. Bio scaling quite linearly, small groups of bio are still beneficial to use in multi-task intensive, aggressive ways. 2. Protoss not scaling in this way, but that's due being more reliant on tech units. 3. Stephano style Roach styles benefiting from splitting, hitting at a timing in which Protoss have to split against it very prudently. 4. Protoss not really having the ability to split their armies and gain a benefit vs Zerg. In this case, the phenomenon you described, I agree with, but I don't believe it's 100% a core problem with SC2's entire design at the core. It's more prevalent in certain matchups than others, so is also a problem with racial interaction.
As with every "critical number unit" bio doesnt scale in a linear fashion, but rather skyrockets in efficiency once they have large enough numbers to only take 1 shot from a Siege Tank for example before killing it. Those numbers are appallingly small btw. Roaches can do the same with Stalkers from pretty low numbers and I have seen a game where the Roaches were fleeing but stopped to shoot one volley at the pursuing Stalkers to kill one of them and then returning to run away. The key efficiency is "eliminating one big opposing unit in one shot as a group" and that is something which didnt exist in BW due to the movement mechanics and I doubt "critical numbers" is a good thing for SC2.
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Why will you split your army if there is only one attack path?
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siege tank is a bad example i think because a siege tank buff could just be available with an upgrade so 1-1-1 or timing pushes dont become OP simply because the upgrade cant be finished at that time. and later in the game the opponent has things like tempest and viper which punish mass tank play.
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On December 05 2012 20:32 Zaurus wrote:
Why will you split your army if there is only one attack path?
There is more than one path on every map except Steppes of War ...
On December 05 2012 15:21 phyre112 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 15:05 GinDo wrote:On December 05 2012 11:56 DaNkS wrote:On December 05 2012 11:43 aka_star wrote:
My number 1 request is to Fix death ball play please! lol thats funny because fixing death ball you should be able to fix it yourself by constantly on the aggression side so you minimize their army. deathball only occurs when you let them get a deathball and 100% of the time if they have a huge deathball you have one as well just saying So true.The way you minimize Death Balls is through aggression and constant trading. Now the real question is how do we stimulate the use of aggression. Force the opponent to invest in units that they already have the tech for, and as a result we deley the ultimate death ball. The issue were having is that some maps are much to big. MUCH TO BIG. And alot allow you to easily turtle on 3 bases. If you want to force aggression, you increase the number of bases on the map by 1.5x, but decrease the number of resources (patches of minerals, not necessarily how many minerals that patch contains) at each base, and you stop using maps like the current tournament pools, which basically concede three bases to each player. Forcing a player to spread themselves over the map increases the vulnerability of each base, but rewards the player who expands anyway. Then you have to actively deny bases from your opponent (or perform other, effective harass) and Boom, you have aggression.
Such a form of aggression is good for more interesting gameplay, but it is terrible as an attempt to balance Zerg, where the answer to Broodlord/Infestor mostly is "dont let him get there". There should still be units which can go head to head with a full BL/Infestor army and win - for all races and strategies - and this isnt the case.
Forcing the deathball to disband through spread out aggression only works against immobile deathballs and Roach-Infestor can be very mobile on any map size due to Nydus worms. Terrans might be somewhat mobile with Medivacs, but that means taking risks as well. Its not a good solution for the deathball syndrome ...
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On December 05 2012 17:25 Madkipz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 11:58 ledarsi wrote:
For the last time- a deathball isn't just having a lot of units. The deathball is when you have all your units in one place. As opposed to, say, having 1/3 of your army defending your natural, 1/3 of your army spread over the map covering ramps and positions of interest, and 1/3 of your army attacking an enemy base.
Blizzard needs to create incentives to split your forces and gain combat power from doing so. Otherwise, if you split your army you are asking to get defeated in detail by an opponent's deathball. Which will crush each piece of your forces with minimal casualties. There`s not enough supply to go around splitting it into 1/3`rds. Even a roach max can at its most get up to just about 50 roaches (100 supply). What can 16 roaches do against anything? Reduce supply of all units or increase maximum supply and then you can talk about increasing the map sizes and splitting units up.
i really wish supply cap was raised a little bit. even 230 might help make a 4th base more desirable
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On December 05 2012 17:52 Grendel wrote:
Am I the only one thinking that mech with some battlecruisers mixed in with their free 3/3 upgrades is going to be massively overpowered?
Basically, since you're upgrading your ground army you'll have 1/0 corruptors fighting versus 3/3 vikings and 3/3 battlecruisers.
Yes, you can upgrade air upgrades as well, but they take a massive amount of time and planning and will require to forfeit ALL ground upgrades, basically ensuring you'll get roflstomped by tanks and thors.
I'm not liking that change at all.. I agree that vikings are rather weak currently, but I don't think this is the right way to go at things. Honestly, the easiest thing would be to give MECH decent anti air à la Goliath or the original Warhound, so the anti air shares upgrades without making other stuff too strong or reducing the costs of other strategies vastly.
I mean, bcs just got a 1200 minerals and 1200 gas requirement (total air upgrade cost) to be viable completely removed.
No, I don't want bcs to be useless, but this is just a buff of VAST proportions that people haven't realised yet.
1. If Terran techs to battle cruisers after 3/3 mech upgrades then we are talking ULTRA late game ~+30 mins or so which will only occur in a very small percentage of games where Terran currently is currently forced into a single viable build (which is mass raven (wtf?)) anyway.
2. Cattlebruisers are gas heavy and the most recent explorations within WOL are making it more and more apparent that the most effective counter to mech is mass expansion from the zerg. If the zerg is to exploit the immobility of mech they should be forced to use that advantage and secure additional bases earlier and thus starve the Terran of gas (again we are talking super late game here.)
3. This is exactly the way I feel when I see fully upgraded Colossus coming at me as a Terran when the protoss doesn't even have to upgrade them. Also this goes for all units coming out of the Robo for Protoss. Also fungal growth ignores upgrades so it's not like Z can't just blanket/chain fungal anyway.
4. Everyone knows that late game Terran needs a significant buff since during all matchups the dominant strategy from opponents is to turtle to tier 3 and "A move" to victory.
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United Kingdom12024 Posts
On December 05 2012 20:32 Zaurus wrote:
Why will you split your army if there is only one attack path?
Exactly.
The reason people don't split there armies is bases are so close together that youj never need to split your army to defend. In Ohana you literally sit in one choke with your whole army and your entire three bases are defended.
Map design is what's causing deathballs, not the game.
EDIT: I realise the game doesn't help, but look at Fantasy vs CrazyHydra on Arkanoid from the KT/T1 showmatch and tell me that they deathballed.
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On December 05 2012 22:12 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 05 2012 20:32 Zaurus wrote:
Why will you split your army if there is only one attack path? Exactly. The reason people don't split there armies is bases are so close together that youj never need to split your army to defend. In Ohana you literally sit in one choke with your whole army and your entire three bases are defended. Map design is what's causing deathballs, not the game. EDIT: I realise the game doesn't help, but look at Fantasy vs CrazyHydra on Arkanoid from the KT/T1 showmatch and tell me that they deathballed.
I love how this has turned into a another deathball debate :-P Why don't the Koreans make some maps that have bases more spread out like bw for tournaments? Then blizzard can copy like they did destructible rocks..
I like almost all the ideas for balance update.. What happened to carrier change? And please do something with the collosus.. It promotes Protoss deathball and is too powerful for its ease of use and mobility. It is also a crutch for Protoss like the infestor is for zerg wol..
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EPT
