HotS balance update #8 - Page 102

On December 08 2012 22:38 Rabiator wrote:

The point why I am complaining here is that there are too many abilities which are easily abuseable in WoL already and yet "the community" is cheering when Blizzard is about to add even more of them in their next expansion. The whole point is that "too much mobility" is limiting the map makers and the KeSPA maps were really refreshing after the GOM maps, but also easily abuseable due to the racial skills.

Thus I would love to see Blizzard FIXING THE BASICS FIRST before adding new nifty stuff to the game.

Oh and in case you didnt see my complaint about game 6 yet just scroll up to HERE ... some new stuff will blatantly remove excitement for the price of efficiency. Everything has a price and most of the new stuff is over the top.

Yet another of my "ideas" which people have called "potentially awesome" was to use the Viper to simply drag your own Ultralisks around and maybe even into the base of someone else ... thus circumventing any defensive front or army. Dragging them out of a fight is also an option (instead of losing them), but thats not all you can do with that spell since it also works on enemy units. Ultralisk drag

The point is also that Zerg and Protoss get a new bunch of broken spells on top of their already broken abilities and Terrans get nothing. The game wont be fun anymore next year if Blizzard doesnt fix that drastically ... and fixing involves nerfing/removing a lot of stuff.

On December 09 2012 00:11 UPro-BW wrote:
How do you like me now patchzerg?!?

On December 09 2012 00:48 NeonFox wrote:


ZvT is different but manageable. ZvP on the other hand, omg... I'm not trying to get to lategame against protoss anymore.

On December 08 2012 21:00 Saigon2246 wrote:
Interesting and VERY brave changes overall. Some random comments:

1. Like the Thor change, I was thinking something like that myself too.

2. Hydra change is a step in the right direction, but may not be enough, some additional buff ideas: get rid of grooved spines. Supply cost is ok I guess, but how about making it cost 90/30.

3. Hunter seeker missile: now it totally overlaps with the Yamato cannon, this was a bad idea. It needs splash and proper speed to hit targets surely but still enable the opponent to split and counter-micro. I would love to see in big championships TvP big lategame battles where HSMs go off, starting very slowly, pointing to the target, but turning to ultra-fast speed rapidly while the Protoss player does some crazy splits reducing the damage, then the bio stims and storms go off... That would have the suspense and thrill...

4. I like the Ultralisk changes as burrow charge looked kinda silly. I know SC2 is supposed to be realistic, but still...

4. I don't like both the Widow Mine and the Swarm Host. I feel that there is a basic conceptual problem with these units. The thing is that the very long cooldown makes this units randomly effective. And you have to mass them to actually accomplish something. I believe these units doesn't fit into SC. Perhaps it would be better for Blizzard to admit they cannot come up with anything better than the Spider mine and the Lurker. Even if they brought back these units, it still wouldn't be Brood War, so I don't see why not give them a try at least.

5. Just watched HD's video about the zerg changes. Fungal sems VEEEERY slow. You will be pretty hard to hit stimmed bio with that. Missed fungals=zerg lost the game, so I think this is too much. I honestly don't understand why Blizzard doesn't implement the most obious nerf, slow instead of rooting.

After watching the video below, I guess I take that back, it looks like it has the same speed as EMP. But I still don't think this was the obvious nerf to fungal.

On December 09 2012 00:55 Antares777 wrote:
I don't understand why so many units get these odd abilities and upgrades. The Void Ray's ability seems unnecessary and rather uninteresting. I hope they come up with a better solution to make it a viable unit than adding a temporary damage boost with a cool down. That's just not creative or interesting at all. And the Widow Mine, does it really need an upgrade to burrow faster?

I really like some of the changes though. Decreasing the cost of the Dark Shrine is awesome, Dark Templar are not used very much unless for some rush. I think they have a lot of potential as a unit, and this change will help them become a more viable strategy in different ways. Nerfing the Infestor is a very good idea. Zerg is so dependent on them it's ridiculous. I also like that they moved Hydralisk speed upgrade to Lair tech, Zerg Lair tech needs to be more powerful so that they don't skip tier 2 stuff and go directly to tier 3.

On a side note, I'm a bit worried about increasing the speed of Mutalisks and Reapers. They were already very fast.

On December 09 2012 00:57 Decendos wrote:


you think so? i think its the opposite. you just cant win vs MMM now in my opinion if he splits and micros well. if there is any awesome comp to deal with MMM now, please let me know. mech is doable if you just viperrush and go roach hydra corruptor support. after that its all about microing, positioning and keeping viper alive vs vikings/ghosts. it gets hard if he transitions into skyterran since after infestornerf zerg has no good AA to deal with 200/200 skyterran that has instant 3/3 after meching.

ZvP on the other hand is still very hard but tempest now dont kill you as fast. you at least have a timing window now at which BLs are viable and then techswitch into ultralisks. but haven played that many games and was ahead in them anyway so dont know about that.

On December 09 2012 01:10 NeonFox wrote:


Yeah bio is a lot harder to deal with, since the only buff to zerg that helps against bio is the ultralisk and the viper, which both come super late. Also the fungal nerf is actually massive against bio, it's very easy to dodge with stimmed units. I've been having some success with macro muta play into ultralisks. Mech is now a lot easier to deal with like you said with roach/hydra/viper.

Protoss on the other hand can now go into reactive double starports if they scout mutas, phoenix hardcounter them to death with the extra native range. Stargate play is insane in the lategame, I've actually lost to mass voidray (not even kidding the guy turtled on 3 base and went carrier voidray) with infestor hydra lol, the on-command full charge is brutal.

Maybe I'm just much worse at ZvP than the other matchups (and that's very possible I never liked that matchup) but it seems a lot harder now, they get to scout everything with hallucination and they can deny scouting from the early to lategame with the mothership core and stargate tech.

Now that I think about it it's actually how hard it is to scout now that's impacting the matchup the most. Mothership core can spot up ledges very early on to kill spotting overlords. It can also find the overlord that's positioned to scout around 7:00 and such have a stalker/sentry already in position to kill it. It can also sit on top of the watchtowers denying any lings holding it until the midgame.

Edit : Not balance whine, just my observations so far from playing Hots since the patch.

On December 09 2012 02:36 convention wrote:

I feel like everyone knows that zerg will put an overlord by your base, so its easy to find. What i've been doing is putting an overlord farther away and doing an overseer scout. Sure it's 50 early game gas, but you can usually get away with it alive. Plus DTs being more common, it's even more vital you know what you are going against.

On December 09 2012 00:59 pOriishan wrote:

#1. Thor change isn't that good, it's all about Energy is removed so that thor can't longer be feedback

On December 09 2012 03:09 Bagi wrote:

Maybe from a TvP viewpoint, but for TvZ the thor change is just amazing as a counter to BLs.

On December 09 2012 03:12 s3rp wrote:


They're still pretty meh by themselves. Less useless but far from good. Which is fine because Vikings now have Upgrades and there's no reason to not have a few Starports.

On December 08 2012 21:21 Hren wrote:
It was bothering me, so I tested it.

+ Show Spoiler +

I guess it is kinda slower judging from the eye? I'm really not sure anymore.

On December 09 2012 04:28 TimENT wrote:
Everyone seriously just needs to ignore TheRabidDeer and Rabiator in this thread.

On December 09 2012 04:28 TimENT wrote:
Everyone seriously just needs to ignore TheRabidDeer and Rabiator in this thread.