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The next major balance patch - David Kim - Page 25

Forum Index > StarCraft 2 HotS
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Insoleet
Profile Joined May 2012
France1806 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-12-05 14:21:25
December 05 2012 14:20 GMT
#481
On December 05 2012 22:51 winsonsonho wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 05 2012 22:12 Qikz wrote:
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..



Korean are playing on spread base maps :
- Whirlmwind
- Entombed
- Belshir
...

And the HOTS maps have spread bases, and they are pretty cool actually. Maybe they just need more attack paths.

Daybreak would be obviously better without the rocks in the middle of the map. And without the xel nagas, too. They give too much map vision.
Markwerf
Profile Joined March 2010
Netherlands3728 Posts
December 05 2012 14:26 GMT
#482
On December 05 2012 22:51 winsonsonho wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 05 2012 22:12 Qikz wrote:
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..


The map design is limited by maps being somewhat balanced and actually having multiple options.

Suggestions like spreading bases more, putting less minerals per base etc. are stupid because they don't work...
They simply unbalance the game and force the race weakened by it (usually protoss) to do all-ins or die..

Just look at all the maps that were more open, smaller or had bases further apart etc. They just led to protoss doing two base all-ins vs zerg non stop because they could never take a third safely.
Maps with less minerals per base doesn't work either because it inherently screws over one race more than another too. Zerg and terran reach saturation on their minerals MUCH slower than protoss does, zerg because they have more bases and terran because they have orbitals, use scv's for building and just build workers the slowest. Protoss doesn't have any of that and must chrono it's workers to compete. If you would make a map with anything less than 8 patches on the first two bases protoss just wouldn't stand a chance...

Promoting interesting play by map design is good but those different styles you promote have to be viable in the first place. There are simply some restrictions in place for some matches not to be screwed, maps can't be too small or TvZ and PvZ are screwed too much for zerg. Maps can't be too open or PvZ is screwed for protoss (TvP also a bit by the way).

HotS should first tackle the issue of protoss being so stupidly reliant on forcefields against zerg because that is the biggest letdown for map variety and thus play variety at the moment. Forcefield leads to deathball play because they work best if you clump up your army and defend till you have a deathball plus they only work if the first three bases are close enough and have some natural choke leading to them. Protoss is forced to use them though because stalker/sentry/immortal is the only composition that can deal with both zerglings and a roach spam. Zealots are not good enough in ZvP because of roaches so no other style is really viable..
Stratos_speAr
Profile Joined May 2009
United States6959 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-12-05 16:52:06
December 05 2012 14:31 GMT
#483
The two things that promote deathball play are pathing and clumping, not map sizes or unit effectiveness (unit effectiveness can be traced back to these problems). Pathing automatically clumps units as they move; this should be changed so that units roughly stay in formation as they move. Furthermore, units are basically able to dry-hump each other, meaning that ranged units can cram into a small space. Both of these significantly increase their damage output for the space they occupy, nullifying the power of melee units in melee by reducing the amount of surface area they can be attacked on by melee units. They need to be changed in tandem (you can't just change one or another) or else players will just be encouraged to manually clump their units instead of the AI doing it for them. Finally, splash damage (specifically, Siege Tanks and Psi Storm) don't do enough damage; these were nerfed pretty hard early in the game's development. Without high splash damage to deter clumping, you get incentives for deathballs.

To fix this, you need to introduce collision boxes to keep units away from each other, introduce formation moving, and increase splash damage/radius. This will make the gains of deathball play far worse than the risks you take by doing so, meaning that marching a 200/200 army through a small choke will be useless (and usually incredibly detrimental).This will then lead players to maximize the use of their armies, so they will split up armies more often.

Not only this, it will increase defender's advantage by reducing the effectiveness of clumps of units going through a choke and increasing the effectiveness of splash damage. Increasing defender's advantage will then lead to more aggressive play; part of the reason that you don't see that much aggressive play is because losing one's army is almost a sure loss because you simply can't defend without a roughly even army (this is partly due to macro mechanics, especially for T, not allowing for re-maxing as fast as the other races). However, with more powerful splash, one can run the risk of losing a large chunk of his units early on, but by having strategically placed units at a choke point, he can still defend with fewer units against a counter-attack, so there is hope, and thus a good incentive to be aggressive.

The best part is that this has all been done in the editor; nothing about the game engine needs to be changed. All of these pathing/clumping/damage/radius things are simply number values in SC2's map editor, so they are easily changeable. That said, Blizzard will, of course, never do it, since it will take some noticeable re-balancing efforts, but hey, that's what you get when you design a game terribly.

Another issue with this is Protoss design. The entire race is so horribly designed that the very nature of how it must be played works against non-deathball play and interesting spectating. The power of Warpgates necessitates weak Gateway units and overly-powerful Forcefields, leading to deathball play, and this would also need to be changed if we ended up changing the way pathing, clumping, and splash works.

Oh, and this has all been said a dozen times before, I'm just repeating myself and others.
A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.
Yoshi Kirishima
Profile Blog Joined July 2009
United States10317 Posts
December 05 2012 14:32 GMT
#484
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.


Who says they won't/can't increase the upgrade cost of the new vehicle/air combined upgrades?
Mid-master streaming MECH ONLY + commentary www.twitch.tv/yoshikirishima +++ "If all-in fails, all-in again."
wangstra
Profile Joined March 2011
922 Posts
December 05 2012 14:38 GMT
#485
I really hope a muta speed/acceleration doesn't go through. The whole point of the song and dance between mutas and phenixes is that Toss has a slight edge in the movement department vs slow unit production.
Stratos_speAr
Profile Joined May 2009
United States6959 Posts
December 05 2012 14:44 GMT
#486
On December 05 2012 23:38 wangstra wrote:
I really hope a muta speed/acceleration doesn't go through. The whole point of the song and dance between mutas and phenixes is that Toss has a slight edge in the movement department vs slow unit production.


This is a good point that I didn't even think about. I was merely thinking that Mutalisks are already incredibly effective, especially in large groups, but it's true that the ONLY thing that Phoenixes have on the unit that they were specifically designed to counter is speed and range; when Mutas reach a certain number, they crush equal number of Phoenixes.
A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.
Qikz
Profile Blog Joined November 2009
United Kingdom12022 Posts
December 05 2012 14:56 GMT
#487
Just look at all the maps that were more open, smaller or had bases further apart etc. They just led to protoss doing two base all-ins vs zerg non stop because they could never take a third safely.
Maps with less minerals per base doesn't work either because it inherently screws over one race more than another too. Zerg and terran reach saturation on their minerals MUCH slower than protoss does, zerg because they have more bases and terran because they have orbitals, use scv's for building and just build workers the slowest. Protoss doesn't have any of that and must chrono it's workers to compete. If you would make a map with anything less than 8 patches on the first two bases protoss just wouldn't stand a chance...


I'm sorry I don't agree with this at all.

The maps where bases were spread out early in SC2 were like Steppes of War and Crossfire, incredibly small maps with wide open chokes to the third. Crossfire never lasted very long in the map rotation and games rarely got past 2 bases no matter what races were playing as Agression was so powerful due to all the chokes.

There's an easy, easy way to spread out bases and it be balanced, look at Whirlwind for example, it's not super far away, but it's not super close either and Protoss are fine without having to 2 base all in every game. There's never been enough experementation to even check all this stuff and that's led us to having Cloud Kingdom, Entomed Valley and Ohana which are god awful maps leading to really boring games as Defense is far too easy.

You can't look at this game as WoL anymore and HoTS will hopefully changed part of the early agression things, but I don't even think it's an issue.

If you had Fighting Spirit in the Pool right now, it would be perfectly fine although the third is quite far because to get into the base you have a 1 wide ramp. You could have 2-3 sentries with max energy or even less and 2-3 forcefields would keep the army out long enough to get your army over there. I honestly think the whining that goes on about how hard it is for a protoss to take a third base that's far away is simply ridiculous in PvX, ZvX. It's only hard due to bad map design and the maps where it's easy to take a third base are incredibly boring.

A map for example where the third base was far away PROMOTES A MIDGAME. It forces people to have an army (especially zergs!) to actually either defend or attack to secure your third base and leads to much more interesting games. Don't you think it's wrong that due to maps like Ohana, zerg players rarely build units until they're at 80 drones and are stillk super safe on 3 bases? It's crazy and it's all down to map design.
FanTaSy's #1 Fan | STPL Caster/Organiser | SKT BEST KT | https://twitch.tv/stpl
Grendel
Profile Joined November 2010
Belgium126 Posts
December 05 2012 15:02 GMT
#488
On December 05 2012 23:32 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Show nested quote +
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.


Who says they won't/can't increase the upgrade cost of the new vehicle/air combined upgrades?


So to fix X, they do Y, making issue Z. Doesn't seem like the best solution to me..
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland24404 Posts
December 05 2012 15:05 GMT
#489
On December 05 2012 23:56 Qikz wrote:
Show nested quote +
Just look at all the maps that were more open, smaller or had bases further apart etc. They just led to protoss doing two base all-ins vs zerg non stop because they could never take a third safely.
Maps with less minerals per base doesn't work either because it inherently screws over one race more than another too. Zerg and terran reach saturation on their minerals MUCH slower than protoss does, zerg because they have more bases and terran because they have orbitals, use scv's for building and just build workers the slowest. Protoss doesn't have any of that and must chrono it's workers to compete. If you would make a map with anything less than 8 patches on the first two bases protoss just wouldn't stand a chance...


I'm sorry I don't agree with this at all.

The maps where bases were spread out early in SC2 were like Steppes of War and Crossfire, incredibly small maps with wide open chokes to the third. Crossfire never lasted very long in the map rotation and games rarely got past 2 bases no matter what races were playing as Agression was so powerful due to all the chokes.

There's an easy, easy way to spread out bases and it be balanced, look at Whirlwind for example, it's not super far away, but it's not super close either and Protoss are fine without having to 2 base all in every game. There's never been enough experementation to even check all this stuff and that's led us to having Cloud Kingdom, Entomed Valley and Ohana which are god awful maps leading to really boring games as Defense is far too easy.

You can't look at this game as WoL anymore and HoTS will hopefully changed part of the early agression things, but I don't even think it's an issue.

If you had Fighting Spirit in the Pool right now, it would be perfectly fine although the third is quite far because to get into the base you have a 1 wide ramp. You could have 2-3 sentries with max energy or even less and 2-3 forcefields would keep the army out long enough to get your army over there. I honestly think the whining that goes on about how hard it is for a protoss to take a third base that's far away is simply ridiculous in PvX, ZvX. It's only hard due to bad map design and the maps where it's easy to take a third base are incredibly boring.

A map for example where the third base was far away PROMOTES A MIDGAME. It forces people to have an army (especially zergs!) to actually either defend or attack to secure your third base and leads to much more interesting games. Don't you think it's wrong that due to maps like Ohana, zerg players rarely build units until they're at 80 drones and are stillk super safe on 3 bases? It's crazy and it's all down to map design.

Very interesting read. I mean I'm a guy who I think understands a lot of the game quite well, but you clearly understand approaches to map design on a level beyond me.
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
Decendos
Profile Joined August 2011
Germany1338 Posts
December 05 2012 15:22 GMT
#490
nice post qikz. i think maps where main, natural and 3rd base are far away from each other (while still having pretty small chokes so P can defend) would make for much better gameplay and harrass options. you could even attack into the small chokes but you would have to thin out the defends first by doing a WP/medivac drop/mutaharrass in the main while attacking the 3rd or things like that. would love to see more spread out bases and a lot more attack paths on maps.
WombaT
Profile Blog Joined May 2010
Northern Ireland24404 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-12-05 15:27:52
December 05 2012 15:27 GMT
#491
On December 06 2012 00:22 Decendos wrote:
nice post qikz. i think maps where main, natural and 3rd base are far away from each other (while still having pretty small chokes so P can defend) would make for much better gameplay and harrass options. you could even attack into the small chokes but you would have to thin out the defends first by doing a WP/medivac drop/mutaharrass in the main while attacking the 3rd or things like that. would love to see more spread out bases and a lot more attack paths on maps.

Calm Before the Storm is the best example of an approach to map design that leads to bad NR games.

A Protoss player had both pretty small chokes for both the natural and third, and they were pretty close together. There was also not the kind of other exploitable Terran in terms of a lot of good airspace for say, Terrans to exploit to balance out those strengths that enabled Protoss to take safe naturals and subsequently safe thirds.

Hence Calm Before the Storm kind of became the ultimate 'Protoss' map for a while.
'You'll always be the cuddly marsupial of my heart, despite the inherent flaws of your ancestry' - Squat
Alex1Sun
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
494 Posts
December 05 2012 15:49 GMT
#492
Sounds perfect! I'm happy! Also plz make carriers stronger if microed well (i.e. Nony's post).
This is not Warcraft in space!
Yoshi Kirishima
Profile Blog Joined July 2009
United States10317 Posts
December 05 2012 15:58 GMT
#493
On December 06 2012 00:02 Grendel wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 05 2012 23:32 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
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.


Who says they won't/can't increase the upgrade cost of the new vehicle/air combined upgrades?


So to fix X, they do Y, making issue Z. Doesn't seem like the best solution to me..


You can't go pure anything anyways. Mechers' banshees/ravens/vikings will benefit, so it won't make more problems.
Mid-master streaming MECH ONLY + commentary www.twitch.tv/yoshikirishima +++ "If all-in fails, all-in again."
Madkipz
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Norway1643 Posts
December 05 2012 16:13 GMT
#494
On December 05 2012 20:48 summerloud wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 05 2012 17:25 Madkipz wrote:
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



Maybe. I think supply max need to be upped, and units need to get their supply reduced to the point where the amount of units on the screen take up at least two screens of width, and tanks can properly leapfrog. It just looks like so few units overall when we talk about a deathbal. :<
"Mudkip"
winsonsonho
Profile Joined October 2012
Korea (South)143 Posts
December 05 2012 16:18 GMT
#495
On December 05 2012 23:26 Markwerf wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 05 2012 22:51 winsonsonho wrote:
On December 05 2012 22:12 Qikz wrote:
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..


The map design is limited by maps being somewhat balanced and actually having multiple options.

Suggestions like spreading bases more, putting less minerals per base etc. are stupid because they don't work...
They simply unbalance the game and force the race weakened by it (usually protoss) to do all-ins or die..

Just look at all the maps that were more open, smaller or had bases further apart etc. They just led to protoss doing two base all-ins vs zerg non stop because they could never take a third safely.
Maps with less minerals per base doesn't work either because it inherently screws over one race more than another too. Zerg and terran reach saturation on their minerals MUCH slower than protoss does, zerg because they have more bases and terran because they have orbitals, use scv's for building and just build workers the slowest. Protoss doesn't have any of that and must chrono it's workers to compete. If you would make a map with anything less than 8 patches on the first two bases protoss just wouldn't stand a chance...

Promoting interesting play by map design is good but those different styles you promote have to be viable in the first place. There are simply some restrictions in place for some matches not to be screwed, maps can't be too small or TvZ and PvZ are screwed too much for zerg. Maps can't be too open or PvZ is screwed for protoss (TvP also a bit by the way).

HotS should first tackle the issue of protoss being so stupidly reliant on forcefields against zerg because that is the biggest letdown for map variety and thus play variety at the moment. Forcefield leads to deathball play because they work best if you clump up your army and defend till you have a deathball plus they only work if the first three bases are close enough and have some natural choke leading to them. Protoss is forced to use them though because stalker/sentry/immortal is the only composition that can deal with both zerglings and a roach spam. Zealots are not good enough in ZvP because of roaches so no other style is really viable..


They should never have tried to balance things by altering how close or easy the third is to hold.. They should have tried to balance it instead by making Protoss strong enough unit-wise to hold a third independent of map design or force-fields.
Novacute
Profile Joined September 2011
Australia313 Posts
December 05 2012 16:57 GMT
#496
I'm not sure if the hellbat changes is warranted, since the hellbat's effectiveness vs Zerglings is astounding with the blue flame upgrade. I can see why they're buffing them against melee - specifically Zealots, as they're not as effective as they should be. This will probably be a fine line for them. Alternatively, could they be thinking of increase the base armour to 1 instead?
Markwerf
Profile Joined March 2010
Netherlands3728 Posts
December 05 2012 17:17 GMT
#497
On December 06 2012 01:57 Novacute wrote:
I'm not sure if the hellbat changes is warranted, since the hellbat's effectiveness vs Zerglings is astounding with the blue flame upgrade. I can see why they're buffing them against melee - specifically Zealots, as they're not as effective as they should be. This will probably be a fine line for them. Alternatively, could they be thinking of increase the base armour to 1 instead?


It's probably another drastic attempt to get mech to work vs protoss, since chargelot/archon/immortal still beats a well set up mech army if you don't manage to cover the entire protoss army with EMPs.
It is however a very stupid change, hellbats already dominate zerglings way too hard and fixing mech is a completely futile attempt that seems to be destroying the rest of the game while they try it.
Plansix
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
United States60190 Posts
December 05 2012 17:28 GMT
#498
On December 05 2012 23:56 Qikz wrote:
Show nested quote +
Just look at all the maps that were more open, smaller or had bases further apart etc. They just led to protoss doing two base all-ins vs zerg non stop because they could never take a third safely.
Maps with less minerals per base doesn't work either because it inherently screws over one race more than another too. Zerg and terran reach saturation on their minerals MUCH slower than protoss does, zerg because they have more bases and terran because they have orbitals, use scv's for building and just build workers the slowest. Protoss doesn't have any of that and must chrono it's workers to compete. If you would make a map with anything less than 8 patches on the first two bases protoss just wouldn't stand a chance...


I'm sorry I don't agree with this at all.

The maps where bases were spread out early in SC2 were like Steppes of War and Crossfire, incredibly small maps with wide open chokes to the third. Crossfire never lasted very long in the map rotation and games rarely got past 2 bases no matter what races were playing as Agression was so powerful due to all the chokes.

There's an easy, easy way to spread out bases and it be balanced, look at Whirlwind for example, it's not super far away, but it's not super close either and Protoss are fine without having to 2 base all in every game. There's never been enough experementation to even check all this stuff and that's led us to having Cloud Kingdom, Entomed Valley and Ohana which are god awful maps leading to really boring games as Defense is far too easy.

You can't look at this game as WoL anymore and HoTS will hopefully changed part of the early agression things, but I don't even think it's an issue.

If you had Fighting Spirit in the Pool right now, it would be perfectly fine although the third is quite far because to get into the base you have a 1 wide ramp. You could have 2-3 sentries with max energy or even less and 2-3 forcefields would keep the army out long enough to get your army over there. I honestly think the whining that goes on about how hard it is for a protoss to take a third base that's far away is simply ridiculous in PvX, ZvX. It's only hard due to bad map design and the maps where it's easy to take a third base are incredibly boring.

A map for example where the third base was far away PROMOTES A MIDGAME. It forces people to have an army (especially zergs!) to actually either defend or attack to secure your third base and leads to much more interesting games. Don't you think it's wrong that due to maps like Ohana, zerg players rarely build units until they're at 80 drones and are stillk super safe on 3 bases? It's crazy and it's all down to map design.


Agreed and the promoting a mid game is the best way to have a robust end game.

I would also like to point out that most "amateur" players(myself included) on terrible multitaskers. This means that the idea using 2 or 3 sentries, separate from your main army, to defend a third base is terrifying to them. Missing one forcefield or failing to repair a bunker quickly could cost them a game a group of attack-moved units. Naturally, they look at maps designed like that and immediately voice their displeasure and claim the map favors “not the race I am playing”.

It’s a problem that Blizzard is going to have. Challenging your player base is hard, because there will always be a group that feels they are “top players” the game is the reason for the loss, rather than a hole is their skill-set.
I have the Honor to be your Obedient Servant, P.6
TL+ Member
Novacute
Profile Joined September 2011
Australia313 Posts
December 05 2012 18:02 GMT
#499
On December 06 2012 02:17 Markwerf wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 06 2012 01:57 Novacute wrote:
I'm not sure if the hellbat changes is warranted, since the hellbat's effectiveness vs Zerglings is astounding with the blue flame upgrade. I can see why they're buffing them against melee - specifically Zealots, as they're not as effective as they should be. This will probably be a fine line for them. Alternatively, could they be thinking of increase the base armour to 1 instead?


It's probably another drastic attempt to get mech to work vs protoss, since chargelot/archon/immortal still beats a well set up mech army if you don't manage to cover the entire protoss army with EMPs.
It is however a very stupid change, hellbats already dominate zerglings way too hard and fixing mech is a completely futile attempt that seems to be destroying the rest of the game while they try it.



Lol, seems like it to me too. Why don't they just introduce the warhound back in a weaker form, or better yet, let viking attack air units in it's ground form. This will boost the overall effectiveness of mech. While they're at it, increasing siege tank damage through upgrade improvements will also make it ALOT more viable. I don't get why they fail to see such obvious areas of improvements. It seems like HOTS should be renamed to The Mech Killer instead.
LavaLava
Profile Joined January 2012
United States235 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-12-05 18:03:04
December 05 2012 18:02 GMT
#500
On December 06 2012 02:17 Markwerf wrote:
Show nested quote +
On December 06 2012 01:57 Novacute wrote:
I'm not sure if the hellbat changes is warranted, since the hellbat's effectiveness vs Zerglings is astounding with the blue flame upgrade. I can see why they're buffing them against melee - specifically Zealots, as they're not as effective as they should be. This will probably be a fine line for them. Alternatively, could they be thinking of increase the base armour to 1 instead?


It's probably another drastic attempt to get mech to work vs protoss, since chargelot/archon/immortal still beats a well set up mech army if you don't manage to cover the entire protoss army with EMPs.
It is however a very stupid change, hellbats already dominate zerglings way too hard and fixing mech is a completely futile attempt that seems to be destroying the rest of the game while they try it.


Yeah, you can't do what they've done, which is essentially base 2 entire games on Countering Siege Tanks, and then expect Siege Tanks to be the backbone of any army.

You CANNOT buff Siege Tanks enough to actually survive against their long list of hard-counters, because by the time they're that good, you look down and realize they do 80 damage a shot, and everything not on that list is just instant mincemeat.

So they try to just make every other Factory unit into a Godawful high powered mess, to kind of "make up for the fact" that you made some Siege Tanks. Warhound was unbeatable on the ground, Widow Mine has insane damage, and now they want to make the Battle Hellion better against melee units- but they already destroy essentially infinite Zerglings... so unless that's some kind of janky spell we're talking about, making them viable against Zealots is going to make them plain embarrassing versus Zerglings.

Here are some BAD IDEAS if you really really needed to make Tanks work:

No Immortals/hardened Shield
Phoenix redesigned until it isn't a Phoenix
Slower Chargelots
No Viper
No Tempest
No Blink
TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE


Yeah... doesn't sound good at all. You'd have to gut the whole game pretty bad.
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