On December 20 2012 03:57 Arakash wrote: dont forget that the Zerg player also has to aim and that starcraft 2 commands aren't as instant as in other games, so I think the pure mathematical approach with 0.5s traveling time is screwed, since there is also a standard 0.4s input delay from battle.net which makes hitting projectile fungal harder. ( )
Interesting, I always figured this was because the connection to blizzard servers was crappy from Australia.
Well, with a 0.4s delay, dodging is literally impossible. So, like I said, same situation as WoL, where you have to pre-split units. Except now if you've already ordered your units to split and get caught in that exact moment, your units have ~0.2 more seconds to follow the move command you already gave them.
For the zerg player... I think, after a while they'll get used to aiming slightly ahead of the moving units. As long as they aim slightly ahead, the other player can't react in time to dodge it, so it depends purely on if they can hit the right spot. Really, this is something that they shouldn't have trouble with after the first few weeks.
So if the Zerg aims ahead, what prevents you from changing your movement preemtively as well when you see an infestor so that the projectile will miss, if the Zerg really fires it that blindly?
at best this is just a random crapshoot rather than an actual test of skill against skill though. one player fires blindly, the other dodges blindly is not good game design.
Which is still way better than a onesided dodge, which only one player can influence.
I disagree. Making the projectile dodgable tests at least one player's skill. It turns Fungal from an ability which makes countermicro impossible into an ability which heavily incentivizes countermicro. Like Marines vs. Banelings, it brings in higher potential for "wow" moments--and just like with banelings, fungal being dodgable ensures you never want to be relying solely on fungal, but rather using it to support other compositions. Banelings are one-sided too--perfect marine micro is not something pure banelings can counter with any amount of good control. That doesn't mean we should alter the cool marine-baneling dynamic into one where random chance decides what happens.
Random crapshoot determining whether the opponent's army is rendered utterly incapable of micro is not a good thing.,
It just means that it is useless in highlevel play. I cannot see someone like MKP, Life or Parting ever getting hit by a projectile that is designed to be dodgeable. Hence, the ability won't get used for such purposes.
"Random crapshoot" at least means that it is going to be useful. It also means that you can just walk away from a unit with such a power upon seeing them, like you do with Tanklines. And I haven't heard that tanklines are badly designed.
Banelings are dodgable. Storms are dodgable, if not in their entirety, than to an extent that vastly reduces their damage output. Both are still used consistently in even pro level matches. The reality is, positioning is important. An ability that is powerful if it hits, but dodgable, still has an important use in forcing your opponent out of position, and in punishing them if they insist on trying to hold their current one. It is also true that even for pros, once army sizes get large enough, simultaneously perfectly controlling every unit becomes impossible--more banelings land, and more storms hit, as players have more and more to control. The same would be true of Fungal, with the additional change that once one Fungal hits, they all hit, since you can chain fungal.
The idea that the previous iteration of Fungal would never be used in pro matches is absurd. What is true, is that it would not be the core backbone of the Zerg army upon which everything else relies--but that is imo very much a feature, not a bug.
No. Neither of them are completly dodgeable. You can mitigate their damage, hence let banelings explode on fewer units, storms go off on fewer units on less duration. But when they go off they will do damage to something.
I'm also not talking about whether this speed change is good or not. That's something only GSL/Proleague etc can show us. I'm against the notion that everything should be dodgeable. Out of all the ways to do damage in SC2, there are like 2 that are completly dodgeable (HSM, Yamato... and only very fast units can do that). All the other splash abilities (including any form of fungal) can be mitigated by preemtive spreading, and in the case of storm even reactionary. That's it. You can't spread after a tank or colossus hits you. You are prespread or not.
Fungal growth would never be *completely* dodgeable. The problem is, in the current form it's *completely* undodgeable. It might as well not be a projectile. Making it into a projectile should have put it into a middle ground where you can get some of your units out of the radius, but not completely ignore it. But right now, nothing is different. If you think this is fine, you can say it, but most people think that fungal growth in it's current form is a problem.
A lot of people were under the impression that it was too dodgeable with 10speed. With 15 speed it's still probably only like 75% of EMP speed.
I can't tell you which values are correct. That's what the beta is for. The range buff to 10 however is stupid. Probably.
My personal opinion on everyone discussing the speed and dodge-ability and what not...is that theorycraft is just not suitable for this topic..it's best to just try it in real games to see a feel for it...or you can get some of that idea from watching pro games with it as well. cus even for myself in a unit tester it wasn't enough to get a clear idea really
IMO, Infestors are actually more fun to watch/use and versatile than some other zerg options...
Hahahahahahahahahaha! Fun to use but definately not fun to watch.SC2 Tournaments barely get 40K viewers these days.
putting aside infestor/broodlord.. is mass roach/hydra/corruptor a-move blobs more fun to watch than games involving infestors? if you think so, then you either forgot those days or weren't here I think. That's my point. it's more dull. many zvt games for example involving key infestor usage are very exciting and loved. it's not the infestor that's the problem, it's more the other issues I underlined in my post (ZvP mostly)
Honestly? Yes. You can do a lot more anyway with the roach/hydra composition in general and can have them attack multiple pathways instead of 1 blob.
Also roach/hydra/corruptor will never be back, it would be roach/hydra/viper which is pretty powerful and already provides more entertaining games. I am not sure how much you are paying attention to hots but in zvp the match up is already more entertaining then WoL will ever be in zvp. If the zerg is going roach/hydra/viper the toss is going to be going chargelot/archon/templar (this is the most common response so far).
The zerg will have to split his units or storm will wreck him like non other. There are a lot more battles and not just the 1 big battle that ends and x player wins, not as long turtling because zerg doesn't want protoss to get the mass air army and no reason to turtle anymore because bl/corr/infestor is dead anyway since tempests do 80 damage to them (no I am not complaining I am 100% glad they hard counter broods so hard).
Ultras are viable vs protoss now to, so a zerg can transition into ultra/ling/bane in a long game instead of having to go broodlords.
On December 20 2012 03:57 Arakash wrote: dont forget that the Zerg player also has to aim and that starcraft 2 commands aren't as instant as in other games, so I think the pure mathematical approach with 0.5s traveling time is screwed, since there is also a standard 0.4s input delay from battle.net which makes hitting projectile fungal harder. ( http://youtu.be/ByD29uiJYjc )
Interesting, I always figured this was because the connection to blizzard servers was crappy from Australia.
Well, with a 0.4s delay, dodging is literally impossible. So, like I said, same situation as WoL, where you have to pre-split units. Except now if you've already ordered your units to split and get caught in that exact moment, your units have ~0.2 more seconds to follow the move command you already gave them.
For the zerg player... I think, after a while they'll get used to aiming slightly ahead of the moving units. As long as they aim slightly ahead, the other player can't react in time to dodge it, so it depends purely on if they can hit the right spot. Really, this is something that they shouldn't have trouble with after the first few weeks.
So if the Zerg aims ahead, what prevents you from changing your movement preemtively as well when you see an infestor so that the projectile will miss, if the Zerg really fires it that blindly?
at best this is just a random crapshoot rather than an actual test of skill against skill though. one player fires blindly, the other dodges blindly is not good game design.
Which is still way better than a onesided dodge, which only one player can influence.
I disagree. Making the projectile dodgable tests at least one player's skill. It turns Fungal from an ability which makes countermicro impossible into an ability which heavily incentivizes countermicro. Like Marines vs. Banelings, it brings in higher potential for "wow" moments--and just like with banelings, fungal being dodgable ensures you never want to be relying solely on fungal, but rather using it to support other compositions. Banelings are one-sided too--perfect marine micro is not something pure banelings can counter with any amount of good control. That doesn't mean we should alter the cool marine-baneling dynamic into one where random chance decides what happens.
Random crapshoot determining whether the opponent's army is rendered utterly incapable of micro is not a good thing.,
It just means that it is useless in highlevel play. I cannot see someone like MKP, Life or Parting ever getting hit by a projectile that is designed to be dodgeable. Hence, the ability won't get used for such purposes.
"Random crapshoot" at least means that it is going to be useful. It also means that you can just walk away from a unit with such a power upon seeing them, like you do with Tanklines. And I haven't heard that tanklines are badly designed.
usesless...do you really believe that?....is a 6 range storm that can be moved out of useless? Its amazing to see people defend an ability that is sooo easy to use and brand it useless because its not instant chainable.
Did I say one word about the ability right now or even actually being useless? I'm exclusively talking against the idea that any ability should be completly dodgeable with good reactions. Then it will become useless on highlevel play.
But it wont be completely dodgeable, also with the previous speed they werent even close to it. It has been shown before, i'll do it again.
Old one had 8 range, 10 speed. That means it takes 0.8 blizzard seconds to reach. Thats around 0.6 real seconds. Now lets assume average network delay + realistic reaction speed of a pro is around 0.3 seconds. (Where realistic reaction speeds includes doing something useful with information you see, that takes more time than smashing your mouse button when you see a color change in an online test). So now we got 0.3 real seconds left, lets be nice and that is 0.5 blizzard seconds. Fungal has 2 radius, so to get out from center you need a 4 speed unit. And lets say you are running to the right, than units that were left of the center still get caught, and with fungal once caught, those units are lost.
So with old speed only a handful of the fastest units in game could actively evade the majority of fungal root, but not completely. Units like vikings didnt had a chance in hell of getting away, possibly the units at the edge could get away, but even if you had alot faster reaction than those 0.3 seconds still not all units would get away.
Now why did many people miss? Combination of people using random movements to confuse the enemy, and simply practise. If a zerg pro had the new fungal, and you let him fungal a bunch of mutas flying past in a straight line, he would miss the majority. Simply because you need to practise with how far ahead of the mutas you should throw the fungal. But they never got time to practise (and most were toying with other units), since blizzard now changed it again. And then if it was 9 range you wouldnt have this outrage, but increasing the range on the most hated ability is asking for trouble.
On December 20 2012 03:42 DemigodcelpH wrote: I'm laughing at the feeble kind of logic Zerg players tend to come up with to justify terrible changes to the game.
"You can dodge it" (hint: 15 speed is undodgable) "Longer range gives it more chances to be dodged, so the buff is okay" (LOL)
What's sad is that this was DK's actual thought process.
The logic in that is 100% sound. Are you saying longer traveling distance with constant speed does not yield more time to react? If anything, the assessment that 15 speed is dodgeable is mistaken. If have no idea if it is. It needs to be tested. If it isn't it would be logical to expect them to slow it down again since they apparently want it to be dodgeable.
It's not dodgeable besides with blink stalkers. Even if they fire from a range of 10 you're not going to dodge it since most units FoV isn't even 10.
Interesting, I always figured this was because the connection to blizzard servers was crappy from Australia.
Well, with a 0.4s delay, dodging is literally impossible. So, like I said, same situation as WoL, where you have to pre-split units. Except now if you've already ordered your units to split and get caught in that exact moment, your units have ~0.2 more seconds to follow the move command you already gave them.
For the zerg player... I think, after a while they'll get used to aiming slightly ahead of the moving units. As long as they aim slightly ahead, the other player can't react in time to dodge it, so it depends purely on if they can hit the right spot. Really, this is something that they shouldn't have trouble with after the first few weeks.
So if the Zerg aims ahead, what prevents you from changing your movement preemtively as well when you see an infestor so that the projectile will miss, if the Zerg really fires it that blindly?
at best this is just a random crapshoot rather than an actual test of skill against skill though. one player fires blindly, the other dodges blindly is not good game design.
Which is still way better than a onesided dodge, which only one player can influence.
I disagree. Making the projectile dodgable tests at least one player's skill. It turns Fungal from an ability which makes countermicro impossible into an ability which heavily incentivizes countermicro. Like Marines vs. Banelings, it brings in higher potential for "wow" moments--and just like with banelings, fungal being dodgable ensures you never want to be relying solely on fungal, but rather using it to support other compositions. Banelings are one-sided too--perfect marine micro is not something pure banelings can counter with any amount of good control. That doesn't mean we should alter the cool marine-baneling dynamic into one where random chance decides what happens.
Random crapshoot determining whether the opponent's army is rendered utterly incapable of micro is not a good thing.,
It just means that it is useless in highlevel play. I cannot see someone like MKP, Life or Parting ever getting hit by a projectile that is designed to be dodgeable. Hence, the ability won't get used for such purposes.
"Random crapshoot" at least means that it is going to be useful. It also means that you can just walk away from a unit with such a power upon seeing them, like you do with Tanklines. And I haven't heard that tanklines are badly designed.
Banelings are dodgable. Storms are dodgable, if not in their entirety, than to an extent that vastly reduces their damage output. Both are still used consistently in even pro level matches. The reality is, positioning is important. An ability that is powerful if it hits, but dodgable, still has an important use in forcing your opponent out of position, and in punishing them if they insist on trying to hold their current one. It is also true that even for pros, once army sizes get large enough, simultaneously perfectly controlling every unit becomes impossible--more banelings land, and more storms hit, as players have more and more to control. The same would be true of Fungal, with the additional change that once one Fungal hits, they all hit, since you can chain fungal.
The idea that the previous iteration of Fungal would never be used in pro matches is absurd. What is true, is that it would not be the core backbone of the Zerg army upon which everything else relies--but that is imo very much a feature, not a bug.
No. Neither of them are completly dodgeable. You can mitigate their damage, hence let banelings explode on fewer units, storms go off on fewer units on less duration. But when they go off they will do damage to something.
I'm also not talking about whether this speed change is good or not. That's something only GSL/Proleague etc can show us. I'm against the notion that everything should be dodgeable. Out of all the ways to do damage in SC2, there are like 2 that are completly dodgeable (HSM, Yamato... and only very fast units can do that). All the other splash abilities (including any form of fungal) can be mitigated by preemtive spreading, and in the case of storm even reactionary. That's it. You can't spread after a tank or colossus hits you. You are prespread or not.
Fungal growth would never be *completely* dodgeable. The problem is, in the current form it's *completely* undodgeable. It might as well not be a projectile. Making it into a projectile should have put it into a middle ground where you can get some of your units out of the radius, but not completely ignore it. But right now, nothing is different. If you think this is fine, you can say it, but most people think that fungal growth in it's current form is a problem.
A lot of people were under the impression that it was too dodgeable with 10speed. With 15 speed it's still probably only like 75% of EMP speed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw9tZ-noLwc
I can't tell you which values are correct. That's what the beta is for. The range buff to 10 however is stupid. Probably.
At 10 speed, it's really hard to hit faster units like phoenixes or mutalisks. But if you're using it against marines, you'll still more than likely get at least half of them. The problem is that there's no way for fungal growth to be in the anti-air/anti-harass role without being so fast that it's completely undodgeable in normal battles.
On December 20 2012 03:42 DemigodcelpH wrote: I'm laughing at the feeble kind of logic Zerg players tend to come up with to justify terrible changes to the game.
"You can dodge it" (hint: 15 speed is undodgable) "Longer range gives it more chances to be dodged, so the buff is okay" (LOL)
What's sad is that this was DK's actual thought process.
The logic in that is 100% sound. Are you saying longer traveling distance with constant speed does not yield more time to react? If anything, the assessment that 15 speed is dodgeable is mistaken. If have no idea if it is. It needs to be tested. If it isn't it would be logical to expect them to slow it down again since they apparently want it to be dodgeable.
It's not dodgeable besides with blink stalkers. Even if they fire from a range of 10 you're not going to dodge it since most units FoV isn't even 10.
I would refer you to zelniqs post above. Why not test it and then have answers that are based on evidence? Your FoV point can be countered easily by theorycraft, but what for? You could be right, you could be wrong. Let a test be a test.
On December 20 2012 05:16 Zelniq wrote: My personal opinion on everyone discussing the speed and dodge-ability and what not...is that theorycraft is just not suitable for this topic..it's best to just try it in real games to see a feel for it...or you can get some of that idea from watching pro games with it as well. cus even for myself in a unit tester it wasn't enough to get a clear idea really
I think it's pretty clear this incarnation of fungal in the hands of masters/GM level players, it's even stronger than wings of liberty fungal.
You get 10 range, almost siege/viking range on fungal now, so essentially once you land 1 "money fungal" now you're able to fungal from 10 range away (about 11 max range because of fungal radius) which is a huge BUFF to mass infestor, and on top of this more infestors in your mass of infestors can shoot off their fungals in the back of the pack of infestors.
Overall, it's basically the worst change i've possibly ever seen in an RTS game being developed, and the community is right to have the "WTF" reaction because they actually just BUFFED the infestor.
"I don't even..." seems quite appropriate to me. Hopefully blizzard realizes the mistake they just did. What's worrying is that this change ever went through in the first place. Was this a change suggested by a player somewhere and then fed to Dkim? It makes zero sense in any capacity.
IMO, Infestors are actually more fun to watch/use and versatile than some other zerg options...
Hahahahahahahahahaha! Fun to use but definately not fun to watch.SC2 Tournaments barely get 40K viewers these days.
putting aside infestor/broodlord.. is mass roach/hydra/corruptor a-move blobs more fun to watch than games involving infestors? if you think so, then you either forgot those days or weren't here I think. That's my point. it's more dull. many zvt games for example involving key infestor usage are very exciting and loved. it's not the infestor that's the problem, it's more the other issues I underlined in my post (ZvP mostly)
To answer your question, yes, units other than the infestor are more fun to watch, they promote micro, flanking, etc. And what the hell? "Infestor usage is very exciting and loved." That's pretty much the opposite sentiment of 99% of the community.
So if the Zerg aims ahead, what prevents you from changing your movement preemtively as well when you see an infestor so that the projectile will miss, if the Zerg really fires it that blindly?
at best this is just a random crapshoot rather than an actual test of skill against skill though. one player fires blindly, the other dodges blindly is not good game design.
Which is still way better than a onesided dodge, which only one player can influence.
I disagree. Making the projectile dodgable tests at least one player's skill. It turns Fungal from an ability which makes countermicro impossible into an ability which heavily incentivizes countermicro. Like Marines vs. Banelings, it brings in higher potential for "wow" moments--and just like with banelings, fungal being dodgable ensures you never want to be relying solely on fungal, but rather using it to support other compositions. Banelings are one-sided too--perfect marine micro is not something pure banelings can counter with any amount of good control. That doesn't mean we should alter the cool marine-baneling dynamic into one where random chance decides what happens.
Random crapshoot determining whether the opponent's army is rendered utterly incapable of micro is not a good thing.,
It just means that it is useless in highlevel play. I cannot see someone like MKP, Life or Parting ever getting hit by a projectile that is designed to be dodgeable. Hence, the ability won't get used for such purposes.
"Random crapshoot" at least means that it is going to be useful. It also means that you can just walk away from a unit with such a power upon seeing them, like you do with Tanklines. And I haven't heard that tanklines are badly designed.
Banelings are dodgable. Storms are dodgable, if not in their entirety, than to an extent that vastly reduces their damage output. Both are still used consistently in even pro level matches. The reality is, positioning is important. An ability that is powerful if it hits, but dodgable, still has an important use in forcing your opponent out of position, and in punishing them if they insist on trying to hold their current one. It is also true that even for pros, once army sizes get large enough, simultaneously perfectly controlling every unit becomes impossible--more banelings land, and more storms hit, as players have more and more to control. The same would be true of Fungal, with the additional change that once one Fungal hits, they all hit, since you can chain fungal.
The idea that the previous iteration of Fungal would never be used in pro matches is absurd. What is true, is that it would not be the core backbone of the Zerg army upon which everything else relies--but that is imo very much a feature, not a bug.
No. Neither of them are completly dodgeable. You can mitigate their damage, hence let banelings explode on fewer units, storms go off on fewer units on less duration. But when they go off they will do damage to something.
I'm also not talking about whether this speed change is good or not. That's something only GSL/Proleague etc can show us. I'm against the notion that everything should be dodgeable. Out of all the ways to do damage in SC2, there are like 2 that are completly dodgeable (HSM, Yamato... and only very fast units can do that). All the other splash abilities (including any form of fungal) can be mitigated by preemtive spreading, and in the case of storm even reactionary. That's it. You can't spread after a tank or colossus hits you. You are prespread or not.
Fungal growth would never be *completely* dodgeable. The problem is, in the current form it's *completely* undodgeable. It might as well not be a projectile. Making it into a projectile should have put it into a middle ground where you can get some of your units out of the radius, but not completely ignore it. But right now, nothing is different. If you think this is fine, you can say it, but most people think that fungal growth in it's current form is a problem.
A lot of people were under the impression that it was too dodgeable with 10speed. With 15 speed it's still probably only like 75% of EMP speed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw9tZ-noLwc
I can't tell you which values are correct. That's what the beta is for. The range buff to 10 however is stupid. Probably.
At 10 speed, it's really hard to hit faster units like phoenixes or mutalisks. But if you're using it against marines, you'll still more than likely get at least half of them. The problem is that there's no way for fungal growth to be in the anti-air/anti-harass role without being so fast that it's completely undodgeable in normal battles.
And that's good. Countering small, clumping units like marines is exactly the designed purpose of fungal (and similar spells). I'm all for making it skilldependend to which degree, but if one player makes the strategical choice to run marines into infestors, than the Infestor player should be in the better position. Not so much if the Terran brings siege tanks (because they should be a superior choice to infestors - and hopefully are now with the IT changes)
IMO, Infestors are actually more fun to watch/use and versatile than some other zerg options...
Hahahahahahahahahaha! Fun to use but definately not fun to watch.SC2 Tournaments barely get 40K viewers these days.
putting aside infestor/broodlord.. is mass roach/hydra/corruptor a-move blobs more fun to watch than games involving infestors? if you think so, then you either forgot those days or weren't here I think. That's my point. it's more dull. many zvt games for example involving key infestor usage are very exciting and loved. it's not the infestor that's the problem, it's more the other issues I underlined in my post (ZvP mostly)
Honestly? Yes. You can do a lot more anyway with the roach/hydra composition in general and can have them attack multiple pathways instead of 1 blob.
Also roach/hydra/corruptor will never be back, it would be roach/hydra/viper which is pretty powerful and already provides more entertaining games. I am not sure how much you are paying attention to hots but in zvp the match up is already more entertaining then WoL will ever be in zvp. If the zerg is going roach/hydra/viper the toss is going to be going chargelot/archon/templar (this is the most common response so far).
The zerg will have to split his units or storm will wreck him like non other. There are a lot more battles and not just the 1 big battle that ends and x player wins, not as long turtling because zerg doesn't want protoss to get the mass air army and no reason to turtle anymore because bl/corr/infestor is dead anyway since tempests do 80 damage to them (no I am not complaining I am 100% glad they hard counter broods so hard).
Ultras are viable vs protoss now to, so a zerg can transition into ultra/ling/bane in a long game instead of having to go broodlords.
all good points..as usual blade. and yeah after i remembered viper..im like ah fuck my posts kind of feel dumb now. the viper allows so many possibilities and makes games more interesting especially by discouraging colossus play.
one thing though..are we completely sure bl/corr/infestor is dead? corruptors counter tempests so hard
@ avilo i was just saying there have been plenty of exciting zvt games involving infestors/fungal..not that infestors are loved and exciting.
On December 20 2012 05:16 Zelniq wrote: My personal opinion on everyone discussing the speed and dodge-ability and what not...is that theorycraft is just not suitable for this topic..it's best to just try it in real games to see a feel for it...or you can get some of that idea from watching pro games with it as well. cus even for myself in a unit tester it wasn't enough to get a clear idea really
I think it's pretty clear this incarnation of fungal in the hands of masters/GM level players, it's even stronger than wings of liberty fungal.
How can it be "pretty clear" when the patch hasn't been out nearly long enough to come to that sort of conclusion? This is exactly what Zelniq is arguing against (for good reason).
IMO, Infestors are actually more fun to watch/use and versatile than some other zerg options...
Hahahahahahahahahaha! Fun to use but definately not fun to watch.SC2 Tournaments barely get 40K viewers these days.
putting aside infestor/broodlord.. is mass roach/hydra/corruptor a-move blobs more fun to watch than games involving infestors? if you think so, then you either forgot those days or weren't here I think. That's my point. it's more dull. many zvt games for example involving key infestor usage are very exciting and loved. it's not the infestor that's the problem, it's more the other issues I underlined in my post (ZvP mostly)
Honestly? Yes. You can do a lot more anyway with the roach/hydra composition in general and can have them attack multiple pathways instead of 1 blob.
Also roach/hydra/corruptor will never be back, it would be roach/hydra/viper which is pretty powerful and already provides more entertaining games. I am not sure how much you are paying attention to hots but in zvp the match up is already more entertaining then WoL will ever be in zvp. If the zerg is going roach/hydra/viper the toss is going to be going chargelot/archon/templar (this is the most common response so far).
The zerg will have to split his units or storm will wreck him like non other. There are a lot more battles and not just the 1 big battle that ends and x player wins, not as long turtling because zerg doesn't want protoss to get the mass air army and no reason to turtle anymore because bl/corr/infestor is dead anyway since tempests do 80 damage to them (no I am not complaining I am 100% glad they hard counter broods so hard).
Ultras are viable vs protoss now to, so a zerg can transition into ultra/ling/bane in a long game instead of having to go broodlords.
all good points..as usual blade. and yeah after i remembered viper..im like ah fuck my posts kind of feel dumb now. the viper allows so many possibilities and makes games more interesting especially by discouraging colossus play.
one thing though..are we completely sure bl/corr/infestor is dead? corruptors counter tempests so hard
@ avilo i was just saying there have been plenty of exciting zvt games involving infestors/fungal..not that infestors are loved and exciting.
well actually it would be bad if BL infestor is completely dead. it should be weaker but removing options from the game would be sad (see muta removement in ZvT).
On December 20 2012 04:19 awesomoecalypse wrote: [quote]
at best this is just a random crapshoot rather than an actual test of skill against skill though. one player fires blindly, the other dodges blindly is not good game design.
Which is still way better than a onesided dodge, which only one player can influence.
I disagree. Making the projectile dodgable tests at least one player's skill. It turns Fungal from an ability which makes countermicro impossible into an ability which heavily incentivizes countermicro. Like Marines vs. Banelings, it brings in higher potential for "wow" moments--and just like with banelings, fungal being dodgable ensures you never want to be relying solely on fungal, but rather using it to support other compositions. Banelings are one-sided too--perfect marine micro is not something pure banelings can counter with any amount of good control. That doesn't mean we should alter the cool marine-baneling dynamic into one where random chance decides what happens.
Random crapshoot determining whether the opponent's army is rendered utterly incapable of micro is not a good thing.,
It just means that it is useless in highlevel play. I cannot see someone like MKP, Life or Parting ever getting hit by a projectile that is designed to be dodgeable. Hence, the ability won't get used for such purposes.
"Random crapshoot" at least means that it is going to be useful. It also means that you can just walk away from a unit with such a power upon seeing them, like you do with Tanklines. And I haven't heard that tanklines are badly designed.
Banelings are dodgable. Storms are dodgable, if not in their entirety, than to an extent that vastly reduces their damage output. Both are still used consistently in even pro level matches. The reality is, positioning is important. An ability that is powerful if it hits, but dodgable, still has an important use in forcing your opponent out of position, and in punishing them if they insist on trying to hold their current one. It is also true that even for pros, once army sizes get large enough, simultaneously perfectly controlling every unit becomes impossible--more banelings land, and more storms hit, as players have more and more to control. The same would be true of Fungal, with the additional change that once one Fungal hits, they all hit, since you can chain fungal.
The idea that the previous iteration of Fungal would never be used in pro matches is absurd. What is true, is that it would not be the core backbone of the Zerg army upon which everything else relies--but that is imo very much a feature, not a bug.
No. Neither of them are completly dodgeable. You can mitigate their damage, hence let banelings explode on fewer units, storms go off on fewer units on less duration. But when they go off they will do damage to something.
I'm also not talking about whether this speed change is good or not. That's something only GSL/Proleague etc can show us. I'm against the notion that everything should be dodgeable. Out of all the ways to do damage in SC2, there are like 2 that are completly dodgeable (HSM, Yamato... and only very fast units can do that). All the other splash abilities (including any form of fungal) can be mitigated by preemtive spreading, and in the case of storm even reactionary. That's it. You can't spread after a tank or colossus hits you. You are prespread or not.
Fungal growth would never be *completely* dodgeable. The problem is, in the current form it's *completely* undodgeable. It might as well not be a projectile. Making it into a projectile should have put it into a middle ground where you can get some of your units out of the radius, but not completely ignore it. But right now, nothing is different. If you think this is fine, you can say it, but most people think that fungal growth in it's current form is a problem.
A lot of people were under the impression that it was too dodgeable with 10speed. With 15 speed it's still probably only like 75% of EMP speed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw9tZ-noLwc
I can't tell you which values are correct. That's what the beta is for. The range buff to 10 however is stupid. Probably.
At 10 speed, it's really hard to hit faster units like phoenixes or mutalisks. But if you're using it against marines, you'll still more than likely get at least half of them. The problem is that there's no way for fungal growth to be in the anti-air/anti-harass role without being so fast that it's completely undodgeable in normal battles.
And that's good. Countering small units like marines is exactly the designed purpose of fungal. I'm all for making it skilldependend to which degree, but if one player makes the strategical choice to run marines into infestors, than the Infestor player should be in the better position. Not so much if the Terran brings siege tanks (because they should be a superior choice to infestors - and hopefully are now with the IT changes)
It's not just marines, but everything. Fungal growth counters *everything* and is completely undodgeable. Winning automatically because you chose to build infestors is wrong. Having unit compositions hard-counter each other without any regard for in-battle micro or any level of skill at all is, at least in my opinion, bad.
Look at the other marine 'counter' psi-storm. Terran players can dodge *most* of the storm if they're good enough, but it's still enough to put the Protoss player in a better position. Not the case with fungal growth. Unless you're completely horrible at the game (which is usually a tenuous assumption), your fungal growths will land on everything, everything, everything.
IMO, Infestors are actually more fun to watch/use and versatile than some other zerg options...
Hahahahahahahahahaha! Fun to use but definately not fun to watch.SC2 Tournaments barely get 40K viewers these days.
putting aside infestor/broodlord.. is mass roach/hydra/corruptor a-move blobs more fun to watch than games involving infestors? if you think so, then you either forgot those days or weren't here I think. That's my point. it's more dull. many zvt games for example involving key infestor usage are very exciting and loved. it's not the infestor that's the problem, it's more the other issues I underlined in my post (ZvP mostly)
Honestly? Yes. You can do a lot more anyway with the roach/hydra composition in general and can have them attack multiple pathways instead of 1 blob.
Also roach/hydra/corruptor will never be back, it would be roach/hydra/viper which is pretty powerful and already provides more entertaining games. I am not sure how much you are paying attention to hots but in zvp the match up is already more entertaining then WoL will ever be in zvp. If the zerg is going roach/hydra/viper the toss is going to be going chargelot/archon/templar (this is the most common response so far).
The zerg will have to split his units or storm will wreck him like non other. There are a lot more battles and not just the 1 big battle that ends and x player wins, not as long turtling because zerg doesn't want protoss to get the mass air army and no reason to turtle anymore because bl/corr/infestor is dead anyway since tempests do 80 damage to them (no I am not complaining I am 100% glad they hard counter broods so hard).
Ultras are viable vs protoss now to, so a zerg can transition into ultra/ling/bane in a long game instead of having to go broodlords.
all good points..as usual blade. and yeah after i remembered viper..im like ah fuck my posts kind of feel dumb now. the viper allows so many possibilities and makes games more interesting especially by discouraging colossus play.
one thing though..are we completely sure bl/corr/infestor is dead? corruptors counter tempests so hard
@ avilo i was just saying there have been plenty of exciting zvt games involving infestors/fungal..not that infestors are loved and exciting.
well actually it would be bad if BL infestor is completely dead. it should be weaker but removing options from the game would be sad (see muta removement in ZvT).
I just wish my zerg opponents would realize mutas are useless so they would stop beating me with them: They are not useless.
On December 20 2012 03:57 Arakash wrote: dont forget that the Zerg player also has to aim and that starcraft 2 commands aren't as instant as in other games, so I think the pure mathematical approach with 0.5s traveling time is screwed, since there is also a standard 0.4s input delay from battle.net which makes hitting projectile fungal harder. ( http://youtu.be/ByD29uiJYjc )
Interesting, I always figured this was because the connection to blizzard servers was crappy from Australia.
Well, with a 0.4s delay, dodging is literally impossible. So, like I said, same situation as WoL, where you have to pre-split units. Except now if you've already ordered your units to split and get caught in that exact moment, your units have ~0.2 more seconds to follow the move command you already gave them.
For the zerg player... I think, after a while they'll get used to aiming slightly ahead of the moving units. As long as they aim slightly ahead, the other player can't react in time to dodge it, so it depends purely on if they can hit the right spot. Really, this is something that they shouldn't have trouble with after the first few weeks.
So if the Zerg aims ahead, what prevents you from changing your movement preemtively as well when you see an infestor so that the projectile will miss, if the Zerg really fires it that blindly?
at best this is just a random crapshoot rather than an actual test of skill against skill though. one player fires blindly, the other dodges blindly is not good game design.
Which is still way better than a onesided dodge, which only one player can influence.
I disagree. Making the projectile dodgable tests at least one player's skill. It turns Fungal from an ability which makes countermicro impossible into an ability which heavily incentivizes countermicro. Like Marines vs. Banelings, it brings in higher potential for "wow" moments--and just like with banelings, fungal being dodgable ensures you never want to be relying solely on fungal, but rather using it to support other compositions. Banelings are one-sided too--perfect marine micro is not something pure banelings can counter with any amount of good control. That doesn't mean we should alter the cool marine-baneling dynamic into one where random chance decides what happens.
Random crapshoot determining whether the opponent's army is rendered utterly incapable of micro is not a good thing.,
It just means that it is useless in highlevel play. I cannot see someone like MKP, Life or Parting ever getting hit by a projectile that is designed to be dodgeable.
Actually you can. Otherwise no one would ever hit anything with the rocket weapon in quake or unreal tournament, which as you might not know, is a projectile with a somewhat slow speed, so players need to predict the oponent's trajectory and aim there.
Being a projectile actually means now it's up to both players to be smart, one to predict the other's path, the other to not be predictable and analyze as best as possible the trajectory of the fungal ball in the limited time he has.
IMO, Infestors are actually more fun to watch/use and versatile than some other zerg options...
Hahahahahahahahahaha! Fun to use but definately not fun to watch.SC2 Tournaments barely get 40K viewers these days.
putting aside infestor/broodlord.. is mass roach/hydra/corruptor a-move blobs more fun to watch than games involving infestors? if you think so, then you either forgot those days or weren't here I think. That's my point. it's more dull. many zvt games for example involving key infestor usage are very exciting and loved. it's not the infestor that's the problem, it's more the other issues I underlined in my post (ZvP mostly)
Honestly? Yes. You can do a lot more anyway with the roach/hydra composition in general and can have them attack multiple pathways instead of 1 blob.
Also roach/hydra/corruptor will never be back, it would be roach/hydra/viper which is pretty powerful and already provides more entertaining games. I am not sure how much you are paying attention to hots but in zvp the match up is already more entertaining then WoL will ever be in zvp. If the zerg is going roach/hydra/viper the toss is going to be going chargelot/archon/templar (this is the most common response so far).
The zerg will have to split his units or storm will wreck him like non other. There are a lot more battles and not just the 1 big battle that ends and x player wins, not as long turtling because zerg doesn't want protoss to get the mass air army and no reason to turtle anymore because bl/corr/infestor is dead anyway since tempests do 80 damage to them (no I am not complaining I am 100% glad they hard counter broods so hard).
Ultras are viable vs protoss now to, so a zerg can transition into ultra/ling/bane in a long game instead of having to go broodlords.
all good points..as usual blade. and yeah after i remembered viper..im like ah fuck my posts kind of feel dumb now. the viper allows so many possibilities and makes games more interesting especially by discouraging colossus play.
one thing though..are we completely sure bl/corr/infestor is dead? corruptors counter tempests so hard
@ avilo i was just saying there have been plenty of exciting zvt games involving infestors/fungal..not that infestors are loved and exciting.
It's only exciting when the infestors all explode in puddles of gore because of how much everybody hates them. Nobody enjoys seeing the 'BRILLIANT FUNGALS'.
On December 20 2012 04:52 Zelniq wrote: disclaimer: A lot of this will probably be fairly obvious to some people..and I realize now that I could very well be wrong about some of this stuff, especially thinking about the Viper now after I've written this up.
Infestor infestor everywhere..that's all I see and read and hear these days..when I think the underlying issues here lie with other units such as the colossus/force field and the other non infestor zerg units. And there is no easy fix..you nerf/remove FF and protoss too weak..you buff earlygame gateway units and warpin too strong..protoss relies simlarly on the colossus. But that is the root of why you can't simply 'nerf the infestor and buff other units.' (i'll explain this more below). Also, they're actually more interesting than most of the other zerg units IMO: roaches/hydras/corruptors/swarm hosts/broods are all incredibly dull and make dull games. infestor/broodlord/spine turtling is the major issue here imo, and that may hopefully be dealt with by other solutions than simply nerfing infestor.
Then there's the problems involving anti-air..zerg often relies heavily on several infestors vs air. In WoL, if you were to remove the infestor right now, voidray/colossus/stalker would be too difficult. And in hots.. gives hydras all the speed you want, or buff them all you want, they're still going to melt vs 9 range colossi (however there is some potential for Viper's abduct to be the indirect answer to dealing with zerg's antiair issues by giving them a more reasonable answer to the colossus. I'm editing this part in btw, I dunno how I forgot this when I wrote all this up). Corruptors are not effective at dealing with voidray/colossus/stalker. Zerg's antiair is still weak in HotS and relies on the infestor, which may still be too weak with all of the new strong protoss air units (all new units are air, all existing air units have changed/improved. phoenix +1 range, void ray no longer charge, buff to carrier..). Mutas are great and fun vs protoss except when they go phoenix and then you're completely screwed which is kind of a silly dynamic imo, and zerg has no other units(disregarding queens/spores here) that can attack air besides those 3 crappy ones (mutas/hydras/corruptors). Corruptors are of course good at killing tempests/carriers at least, but not good enough of a solution because of void rays and stalkers, and just their inability to attack ground. So unless zerg's other antiair options get better, infestors have to retain their strength vs air.
And it's not like I'm a fan of the design of Infestor's spells. Fungal limits micro potential (only encourages players to split beforehand, tho with the new missile there is some potential for dodge or bait micro moves), infested terrans are just summons of boring units that cant be microed because they hardly move, neural is too hard to balance and once again opponents are unable to control their units from an infestor spell. It's hardly a support role and can often be the best damage dealers in the game so that encourages massing them which reduces their appeal.
But even so, because roaches/hydras/corruptors are so boring to watch or play with or even against as really all pros can do to 'micro' them is set up some concave pre-fight then a-move, infestors currently are more entertaining to watch from a spectator pov, and to use from a player perspective. There's more micro/skill..more finesse and requires care to keep them alive while using a lot of their spells, some interesting uses for burrow with them and harassing bases in small numbers, strength of infestor drops which are fun..a few niche uses of neural parasite like if you burrow 1-2 and sneak em behind their push to neural certain key units (usually spellcasters) to use their spells on themselves can sometimes work (like in zvz, sneak a couple behind where they always keep their infestor pack protected, neural a couple and fungal the pack 3 times which is easy when youre using their infestors to do it, or on a ghost to emp the other ghosts, or a templar to feedback other templar. risky/tough but rewarding and interesting). Do you really want all that (and more potential I didn't list) to be gone so that boring units like hydras/roaches that have almost no interesting micro mostly because of their lack of movement + their attack animation (can't stutter step like marines/stalkers) will be standard? like i said because of things like colossus/ff that won't even be possible without major changes to protoss, but even if it was..without any cool new micro added like marines/stalkers can do, as of right now they're really dull a-move-only type unitse. What else is there.. swarm hosts spawn slow unmicroable spawns that to me can often be more boring than even a-moving roach/hydra? if ling/baneling was more viable somehow that would be great cus they're fun, but because of FF it's really tough or sometimes impossible to make them work..
And it's not like Fungal is completely bad designed, there are a couple redeeming qualities..mostly I think with how if you combine it with other stuff it opens up nice possibilities such as Fungal + baneling drop or even ground banelings, Fungal + Blinding Cloud or Abduct, Fungal + Swarm Hosts, and maybe more.
I mean really the biggest problem I think people have with Infestors is the turtle type of games behind tons of spines and broods. that problem can be solved in other ways besides just nerfing the infestor, which Blizzard hopes the tempest will do.
anyways..TL;DR: IMO, Infestors are actually more fun to watch/use and versatile than some other zerg options like roach/hydra/corruptor/swarm host/broodlord + Show Spoiler [disagree? my thoughts] +
IMO, Infestors are actually more fun to watch/use and versatile than some other zerg options...
Hahahahahahahahahaha! Fun to use but definately not fun to watch.SC2 Tournaments barely get 40K viewers these days.
putting aside infestor/broodlord.. is mass roach/hydra/corruptor a-move blobs more fun to watch than games involving infestors? if you think so, then you either forgot those days or weren't here I think. That's my point. it's more dull. many zvt games for example involving key infestor usage are very exciting and loved. it's not the infestor that's the problem, it's more the other issues I underlined in my post (ZvP mostly)
, and are too vital for zerg especially for anti-air to nerf to oblivion like some seem to want, and buffing other zerg units isn't some easy solution to fix that issue, because of things like the colossus, force field, etc. And actually a lot of the other zerg units like hydras that people keep asking to be buffed are I think going to make for very boring a move blob games due to their design.
The worst thing with FG by far, is the chain-fungle. A slow, unavoidable death for almost all units in the game. Chain fungle from 10 range makes infestors even less exposed then in WOL. Mass Infestor is without a doubt a much uglier composition then roach/hydra/ ling/ whatever. There is no equivalent in the game (or any other game) for a unit that is the answer to everything. You never wander "do i want infestors now?". And having the "core unit" be a unit that just stops micro is depressing for a game like Starcraft.
Which is still way better than a onesided dodge, which only one player can influence.
I disagree. Making the projectile dodgable tests at least one player's skill. It turns Fungal from an ability which makes countermicro impossible into an ability which heavily incentivizes countermicro. Like Marines vs. Banelings, it brings in higher potential for "wow" moments--and just like with banelings, fungal being dodgable ensures you never want to be relying solely on fungal, but rather using it to support other compositions. Banelings are one-sided too--perfect marine micro is not something pure banelings can counter with any amount of good control. That doesn't mean we should alter the cool marine-baneling dynamic into one where random chance decides what happens.
Random crapshoot determining whether the opponent's army is rendered utterly incapable of micro is not a good thing.,
It just means that it is useless in highlevel play. I cannot see someone like MKP, Life or Parting ever getting hit by a projectile that is designed to be dodgeable. Hence, the ability won't get used for such purposes.
"Random crapshoot" at least means that it is going to be useful. It also means that you can just walk away from a unit with such a power upon seeing them, like you do with Tanklines. And I haven't heard that tanklines are badly designed.
Banelings are dodgable. Storms are dodgable, if not in their entirety, than to an extent that vastly reduces their damage output. Both are still used consistently in even pro level matches. The reality is, positioning is important. An ability that is powerful if it hits, but dodgable, still has an important use in forcing your opponent out of position, and in punishing them if they insist on trying to hold their current one. It is also true that even for pros, once army sizes get large enough, simultaneously perfectly controlling every unit becomes impossible--more banelings land, and more storms hit, as players have more and more to control. The same would be true of Fungal, with the additional change that once one Fungal hits, they all hit, since you can chain fungal.
The idea that the previous iteration of Fungal would never be used in pro matches is absurd. What is true, is that it would not be the core backbone of the Zerg army upon which everything else relies--but that is imo very much a feature, not a bug.
No. Neither of them are completly dodgeable. You can mitigate their damage, hence let banelings explode on fewer units, storms go off on fewer units on less duration. But when they go off they will do damage to something.
I'm also not talking about whether this speed change is good or not. That's something only GSL/Proleague etc can show us. I'm against the notion that everything should be dodgeable. Out of all the ways to do damage in SC2, there are like 2 that are completly dodgeable (HSM, Yamato... and only very fast units can do that). All the other splash abilities (including any form of fungal) can be mitigated by preemtive spreading, and in the case of storm even reactionary. That's it. You can't spread after a tank or colossus hits you. You are prespread or not.
Fungal growth would never be *completely* dodgeable. The problem is, in the current form it's *completely* undodgeable. It might as well not be a projectile. Making it into a projectile should have put it into a middle ground where you can get some of your units out of the radius, but not completely ignore it. But right now, nothing is different. If you think this is fine, you can say it, but most people think that fungal growth in it's current form is a problem.
A lot of people were under the impression that it was too dodgeable with 10speed. With 15 speed it's still probably only like 75% of EMP speed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw9tZ-noLwc
I can't tell you which values are correct. That's what the beta is for. The range buff to 10 however is stupid. Probably.
At 10 speed, it's really hard to hit faster units like phoenixes or mutalisks. But if you're using it against marines, you'll still more than likely get at least half of them. The problem is that there's no way for fungal growth to be in the anti-air/anti-harass role without being so fast that it's completely undodgeable in normal battles.
And that's good. Countering small units like marines is exactly the designed purpose of fungal. I'm all for making it skilldependend to which degree, but if one player makes the strategical choice to run marines into infestors, than the Infestor player should be in the better position. Not so much if the Terran brings siege tanks (because they should be a superior choice to infestors - and hopefully are now with the IT changes)
It's not just marines, but everything. Fungal growth counters *everything* and is completely undodgeable. Winning automatically because you chose to build infestors is wrong. Having unit compositions hard-counter each other without any regard for in-battle micro or any level of skill at all is, at least in my opinion, bad.
Look at the other marine 'counter' psi-storm. Terran players can dodge *most* of the storm if they're good enough, but it's still enough to put the Protoss player in a better position. Not the case with fungal growth. Unless you're completely horrible at the game (which is usually a tenuous assumption), your fungal growths will land on everything, everything, everything.
I disagree. ITs used to be good vs Tanks and Thors and Archons and Immortals. Fungal isn't really costefficient against those. It's not even that great against some medium sized units like roaches or marauders (obviously great against stalkers, because it prevents blink). That's why you see Zergs throwing mass ITs in ZvZ. 3 ITs>1Fungal in WoL, when you fight roach/hydra. (and also that's why you see hydras in ZvZ, as once you have a good infestor count to fungal everything and spam a lot of ITs, it's more costefficient to have some hydras than more infestors; though infestors are more supplyefficient)
Also, if you get like 2 full hits of psi storms on a mostly marine based army, even the best reactions won't safe you. So no, the counter to psi storm is not dodgin them, but to build less marines and more marauders and ghosts and preventing to get hit in the first place.
EPT
