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On December 27 2012 06:24 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 06:07 nomyx wrote:On December 27 2012 04:54 convention wrote:On December 27 2012 03:41 nomyx wrote:On December 26 2012 13:08 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:
I'm back guys, and I wanted to back up what I said with what I believe would be the easiest way to fix fungal (aside from redesigning/removing fungal from the game). This would also show why fungal is such a badly designed spell in order to fix holes that blizzard still couldn't fix in an expansion. You guys ready? Brace yourselves....
THE KAMIKAZE DURRRP SOLUTION
Fungal does no damage
Simple as that. Of course, you get the dumb people coming out (I'm looking at you nomyx) and say dumb stuff like "BUT SPELL HAVE TO DO DAMAGE BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT MAKES THEM COOL AND STUFF". Okay, let me present to you with
THE KAMIKAZE DURRRP COMPROMISE
Fungal does a 5 damage, not stackable (if too low, MAXIMUM 10 damage)
You want to keep the utility of fungal without completely removing fungal from the game? You want to keep zergs from massing infestor and rely solely of fungal to do all the work for them? Then just completely nerf the damage aspects of fungal. This way zergs would be forced to actually SUPPORT their infestors with an army in order to truly do damage and getting "chain fungaled" would only really be an annoyance (okay, a really dumb annoyance) but you wouldn't lose all hope as you do with the current fungal. This way, casting fungals would actually be "amazing fungals" because you used the utility of fungal to EARN yourself a superior position, compared to it's current form right now. With fungal doing little damage, you can even BUFF the other aspects of fungal (HE SAID BUFF FUNGAL! HE'S A LUNATIC!!!!!), and return fungal to it's original instant cast 9 range state. Of course, there are a few reason why blizzard doesn't take this solution, and two in particular stick out to me:
DEATHBALLS OF DEATH IN A BALL OF DEATH
It really shocks me when I read comments that does only "30 damage" which is nothing. 30 guaranteed damage is a lot, especially considering the bonus damage that fungal does to armor (I could be wrong about this but w/e). If fungal didn't do any damage, zergs could throw waves and waves and deathballs and still couldn't do any damage due to the ridiculous cost efficiency of deathballs. Usually I would agree with this.... until I started to think about the new units and spells that blizzard added to the game in HOTS. For everything blizzard does wrong, the new options they gave zerg does mitigate this somewhat. With swarm hosts and vipers, zerg can be able to defend against deathballs easier (free ranged unit and the ability to *sigh* "abduct" and lower the range of units). With these tools, zerg could methodically "break" the deathball into manageable pieces and hopefully it would solve the problem of the deathball.
Lack of reliable zerg anti-air AND air units
This is what really gets me mad. For a so called expansion to follow the quality of how Brood War "balanced" the game for Starcraft 1, apparently blizzard still can't fix the thing that has been bothering zerg since starcraft 1, mutalisks in zvz. Having mutalisk vs mutalisk battles would probably be an extremely interesting matchup with skill, speed, and a gambler's logic, all stuff that blizzard clearly doesn't want so we have to remove the option of going mutalisk in zvz. Of course, the problem goes beyond just mutalisks though in zvz. Zerg clearly has the weakest anti-air options AND the weakest air of all the races in SC2. Now before you guys whine to me about the OP broodlords, remember this, before the strength of fungal, broodlords were considered worthless. They were immobile worthless supply that just begged to be killed by anything floating that hit air. And good luck with those corruptors, floating around with their inferior mobility and their terrible range. Zerg air is weak, and it clearly needed options to make it stronger (Not buffing the mutas dammit!). This is why I feel zerg needed a new capital "ship" like the tempest, not protoss. The problems with protoss air wasn't that it was weak, but TRANSITIONING to it left you too exposed to different elements of terran and zerg. What protoss need was a way to transition, or even more utility to their air composition, not an even stronger capital ship. Zerg needs a reliable form of anti-air as well as stronger air comps, and having faster hydras isn't really enough. Maybe if they had a suicide unit that did reliable burst damage to air if it hit *cough cough* or a capital air unit that "evolved" from mutas that did a small aoe spore damage that would slow the attack speed of those air units *cough cough Cough COUGH COUGH*.
That's about it for me really. I don't think blizzard really wants to do anything good for the game, they just seem to want to appeal to the status quo. Sure they appease the masses by giving dumb, gimmicky stuff (LOOK IT'S A CLAW AND IT GRABS STUFF), but I haven't been impressed so far with how they "fixed" the game. I can ask this though, if you really want to fix fungal, NERF THE DAMAGE. All this stuff about making fungal a slow, a projectile, a root then slow, a field, a "sometimes guaranteed but not always damage and slow and root" doesn't address the fact that if you have a spell with a large amount of utility IT DOESN'T NEED TO DO LARGE AMOUNTS OF DAMAGE.
(sorry if I'm overly rude, annoying or insulting. Christmas spirit :D) Fungal isn't stackable, you can put down 10 of them but it will only deal 30 damage (50 less than storm) That's a little misleading. Any competent pro gamer will not take 80 damage from a storm. So I would say that fungal deals the same damage as storm on average, except fungal can be chained making it more powerful. I think people are mixing up terminology, fungal can be chained which is the huge issue. Well, I'd say that fungal being able to be chained isn't a problem if infestors are not massable. The main issue is that having an army of 30 infestors is an ultimate army composition which causes the problem (primarily because ITs are so powerful, not because fungal is chain-able). Exactly, this is what separates a good pro from a bad one. A bad pro will refuse to pre-split his marines, a good pro will split his marines vs banelings and infestors. I am all for people being forced to split up their units, but the problem with fungle is that any units caught by the first fungle can and will likely die. The zerg has the ability to endlessly layer on fungle so the root never ends and there is nothing the opponent can do about it. Any unit, no matter what the cost, can be endlessly rooted and will be unable to retreat. This wouldn’t be bad if infestors functioned like HTs or Ghosts, who typically die after casting their one spell. But in the current meta game, infestors are able to lock down the opposing army and survive almost any engagement when Broodlords are involved. Fungle has a place in the game, but not with a full 4 second root that be reapplied before it expires. If the ability had a 1 second root and did the exact same damage, it would likely be better for everyone.
Again. The concept of splitting against splash is the same for each and every splash ability out there. You split before you get hit. I absolutly cannot emphasize this enough.
Storm is the one and only exception to this, where you can mitigate damage after you get hit - and also is by far the strongest if you don't mitigate it. Up to the point where not preparing for storms has the same outcome as not preparing for anything else, as the damage taken while microing well out of storms is still the same or even more as of any other splash ability.
Banelings, Siege Tanks, Fungal, Colossi etc are all guaranteed full damage the moment they are applied.
The one difference for fungal is that you can guarantee additional fungals after the first on the same units. But that comes for a price: low dps and low burst damage, which especially comes into play vs bigger units (how often have you seen a Thor dying to fungals and how often have you seen it getting killed by siege tanks; even units like roaches - cheap and high HP, medium size - are usually fought more costefficiently by marine, roach(hydra), Colossus, Siege Tank, Marauder than by rather low dps non stacking mass fungal; well and of course by Zerg marines, better known has Infested Terran)
The crux in making the Infestor more manageable in a combat is to give the opponent an easier time preparing for the combat upon seeing infestors - kind of like snail-templar approaching a bio army and the Terran has quite some time unclumping, ordering ghost to snipe them or to just retreat before the storms are being casted.
The crux of preventing mass Infestor strategies to become "good no matter what", is to either make mass Energy less useful (IT nerf) - like with Templar - or to superbuff anti-Infestor strategies to the point where T/P/Z can just answer mass Infestors with a reactive, high winpercentage strategy.
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There's a difference between pre splitting before the splash actually hits your units, and pre splitting before an engagement. In most cases, it's a difference of two seconds or more. For high templar, you can see them slowly approaching and then continue to retreat, split and maneuver after the storm hits. For tanks, there is a considerable time for the Terran to move forward and get into seige mode which gives you plenty of time to react. For banelings, because they are melee they take additional time (particularly off creep) to come to grips with your army. Hellions, while they do decent splash, have medium range, only do well against light units, and can only do their full splash by getting into melee range. Collossi are the only unit which, like the infestor, do not give you much time between when they get into vision range and when the splash begins hitting. However, even with Collossi you can retreat and micro after the initial volley, and throughout the engagement, rushing forward to pick off Collossi, retreating injured units, and so on.
Out of all the forms of splash, fungal is the only one that locks down your units, preventing you from microing once it hits. You might say that all splash requires some level of pre splitting at the pro level, and this is absolutely true. But fungal is the only kind that prevents you from microing DURING the battle. Crucial difference in terms of playing and spectating. It's not fun to have your ability to micro during a major battle removed. It's not fun for a pro, master of all forms of micro, to have to focus only on pre splitting. And while some may say it's "impossible" for a pro to turn a possibly bad engagement where you failed to pre split, into a favorable one through micro, I am going to call bull. I've seen plenty of pros, from BW to SC2, micro out of extremely unfavorable engagements where they had terrible pre positioning, with an impressive 600 apm spike moment of epic micro. Fungals often deny us the opportunity to witness such amazing plays.
Pre-splitting is not the essence of micro, it is merely one part of a complex equation, which fungal oversimplifies to the detriment of the game.
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On a separate note, I'm still hopeful that warpgate will be slightly adjusted so that there is a reason to use both gateways and warpgate. Another idea, as opposed to decreasing warpgate production time, is to have warp gate units come out with shields not fully charged and/or energy lower than normal. A zealot could then warp in with 100/30 and would need to wait for shields to fully charge. A Templar could warp in with 40/20/30, ie also 20 less shields and 20 less energy. Then Templar would need to wait longer after warping in compared with gateway to get energy. Khaydarin Amulet could then be brought back so that Templar can storm immediately if produced from gateways.
I know Blizzard aren't keen on changing warpgate, but warpgate/gateway is badly designed IMO.. :-!
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On December 27 2012 10:14 Zahir wrote:
There's a difference between pre splitting before the splash actually hits your units, and pre splitting before an engagement. In most cases, it's a difference of two seconds or more. For high templar, you can see them slowly approaching and then continue to retreat, split and maneuver after the storm hits. For tanks, there is a considerable time for the Terran to move forward and get into seige mode which gives you plenty of time to react. For banelings, because they are melee they take additional time (particularly off creep) to come to grips with your army. Hellions, while they do decent splash, have medium range, only do well against light units, and can only do their full splash by getting into melee range. Collossi are the only unit which, like the infestor, do not give you much time between when they get into vision range and when the splash begins hitting. However, even with Collossi you can retreat and micro after the initial volley, and throughout the engagement, rushing forward to pick off Collossi, retreating injured units, and so on.
You say that there is a difference, yet you keep on mixing them together completely. Like, what you do against Storms, Fungal, Banelings... is all presplitting before the splash actually hits your units.
Of course you set up presplit, but the part that people call "dodging" is all your first category: presplitting during a combat.
On December 27 2012 10:14 Zahir wrote:
Out of all the forms of splash, fungal is the only one that locks down your units, preventing you from microing once it hits. You might say that all splash requires some level of pre splitting at the pro level, and this is absolutely true. But fungal is the only kind that prevents you from microing DURING the battle. Crucial difference in terms of playing and spectating. It's not fun to have your ability to micro during a major battle removed. It's not fun for a pro, master of all forms of micro, to have to focus only on pre splitting. And while some may say it's "impossible" for a pro to turn a possibly bad engagement where you failed to pre split, into a favorable one through micro, I am going to call bull. I've seen plenty of pros, from BW to SC2, micro out of extremely unfavorable engagements where they had terrible pre positioning, with an impressive 600 apm spike moment of epic micro. Fungals often deny us the opportunity to witness such amazing plays.
Pre-splitting is not the essence of micro, it is merely one part of a complex equation, which fungal oversimplifies to the detriment of the game.
That's simply not true. Any form of focus firing prevents micro during a battle by killing units. Dead unit == no micro. Fungaled unit == no movement. I feel like people missunderstand the concept of fungal at that part. It is meant to put units in a state in which you are left with the choice to fight for them or leave them to probably die. Like Siege Tanks that are leapfroging, or Colossi/Tempest that are approaching you, the idea is that you can force engagements with fungal.
Yeah, carpet fungal prevents any micro at that part. But are 15fungals any different from 15storms? I carpet storm everything, you run out and I just storm again and in the end I'm still guaranteed to have done 20damage per second to each and every of your units for an extended periode of time.
But that's not even the real point, it's just a sidenote. The real deal is, that if you get a clump of units fungaled, you already screwed up. The point of antifungal micro is the same as the point of antistorm micro. Anticipating the area at which you the spell will be casted and presplitting just in the nick of time upon seeing the spellcaster approach. + Show Spoiler +At this point I think it is a real pity that there is no better animation for fungal. Unlike with very visual storms, forcefields and banelings, it is absolutely not clear when someone outmicroed a fungal for the viewer. (the projectile really helps with that, making battles including fungal much more enjoyable)
Number of Infestors aside (which is the main problem by far; too useful infestors lead to too many fungals and too little profit from sniping infestors at the begin of a combat), the other significant difference between storm and templar is - as you said - how little time you have between spotting them and starting to split your units. Speed and range are the core components of this, radius and burrow movement the other ones. I think it is pretty safe to say at this point, that even with only 8range on fungal left, it is really hard to split fast enough with 9-11sight against a 2.925speed unit (on creep) - that's 56%more speed than the templar has.
+ Show Spoiler +If you asked me, this is what blizzard should do in January for WoL and HotS:
Infestor speed 2.25-->2.0, Creep Speed multiplier from 1.3-->1.1 or 1.0
More visual burrow movement
Fungal to range 8 and add the fungal projectile (15speed) to WoL.
Marine sight range 9-->10
Zealot sight range 9-->10
Not sure about further nerfing ITs in WoL or HotS. Rather in HotS, then in WoL.
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On December 27 2012 11:26 Big J wrote:+ Show Spoiler +If you asked me, this is what blizzard should do in January for WoL and HotS:
Infestor speed 2.25-->2.0, Creep Speed multiplier from 1.3-->1.1 or 1.0
More visual burrow movement
Fungal to range 8 and add the fungal projectile (15speed) to WoL.
Marine sight range 9-->10
Zealot sight range 9-->10
Not sure about further nerfing ITs in WoL or HotS. Rather in HotS, then in WoL.
The Infestor changes sound good, but instead of changing the Creep modifier, why not nerf their speed to HT speed so that they have Medivac speed on Creep?
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Well lets see, terran still has shit... Widow mines are worthless; against toss, just m core and stalker, and against zerg one spore and spines and thats it. And that unit just blows late game because people catch it quick. The thor still sucks and the new attack does nothing. And the medivac boost is neat but not game changing, at least that;s how it feels. I swear terrans are supposed to be early game beasts, but they are soo hard countered by the other races and our late game sucks. Blizzard is retarded. They cannot balance the game or make it enjoyable at this point. Oh and the raven hsm change has made the raven even more useless, if that was even possible. Grats blizzard, HOTS should be called Having OnlyTerran Sucks....
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On December 27 2012 13:06 dreadlordx wrote:
Well lets see, terran still has shit... Widow mines are worthless; against toss, just m core and stalker, and against zerg one spore and spines and thats it. And that unit just blows late game because people catch it quick. The thor still sucks and the new attack does nothing. And the medivac boost is neat but not game changing, at least that;s how it feels. I swear terrans are supposed to be early game beasts, but they are soo hard countered by the other races and our late game sucks. Blizzard is retarded. They cannot balance the game or make it enjoyable at this point. Oh and the raven hsm change has made the raven even more useless, if that was even possible. Grats blizzard, HOTS should be called Having OnlyTerran Sucks....
Just pure whining nonsense with nothing to back it up.
Your joke is also written wrong the way you wrote it.
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On December 27 2012 13:31 PanN wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 13:06 dreadlordx wrote:
Well lets see, terran still has shit... Widow mines are worthless; against toss, just m core and stalker, and against zerg one spore and spines and thats it. And that unit just blows late game because people catch it quick. The thor still sucks and the new attack does nothing. And the medivac boost is neat but not game changing, at least that;s how it feels. I swear terrans are supposed to be early game beasts, but they are soo hard countered by the other races and our late game sucks. Blizzard is retarded. They cannot balance the game or make it enjoyable at this point. Oh and the raven hsm change has made the raven even more useless, if that was even possible. Grats blizzard, HOTS should be called Having OnlyTerran Sucks....
Just pure whining nonsense with nothing to back it up. Your joke is also written wrong the way you wrote it.
I have a beta moron, and I was hi masters in WoL. You don't even play and think you have some great insight. Keep dreaming, buy your game and stay in gold league where you belong.
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On December 27 2012 14:02 dreadlordx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 13:31 PanN wrote:On December 27 2012 13:06 dreadlordx wrote:
Well lets see, terran still has shit... Widow mines are worthless; against toss, just m core and stalker, and against zerg one spore and spines and thats it. And that unit just blows late game because people catch it quick. The thor still sucks and the new attack does nothing. And the medivac boost is neat but not game changing, at least that;s how it feels. I swear terrans are supposed to be early game beasts, but they are soo hard countered by the other races and our late game sucks. Blizzard is retarded. They cannot balance the game or make it enjoyable at this point. Oh and the raven hsm change has made the raven even more useless, if that was even possible. Grats blizzard, HOTS should be called Having OnlyTerran Sucks....
Just pure whining nonsense with nothing to back it up. Your joke is also written wrong the way you wrote it. I have a beta moron, and I was hi masters in WoL. You don't even play and think you have some great insight. Keep dreaming, buy your game and stay in gold league where you belong.
Resorting to bullshit then using said bullshit to hide the fact that you're wrong. Thanks for proving to me you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You made various claims yet couldn't even make the effort to back up a single one of them, on top of being a jerk, you're also beyond lazy. Congratulations...
Also the medivac boost is amazing, and complaining about spores and spines stopping widow mines is ridiculous. Of course a spore and spines stop widow mines in the front, you still have a giant field where they're useful for awhile though you know? They're very strong when used by good players.
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On December 27 2012 14:10 PanN wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 14:02 dreadlordx wrote:On December 27 2012 13:31 PanN wrote:On December 27 2012 13:06 dreadlordx wrote:
Well lets see, terran still has shit... Widow mines are worthless; against toss, just m core and stalker, and against zerg one spore and spines and thats it. And that unit just blows late game because people catch it quick. The thor still sucks and the new attack does nothing. And the medivac boost is neat but not game changing, at least that;s how it feels. I swear terrans are supposed to be early game beasts, but they are soo hard countered by the other races and our late game sucks. Blizzard is retarded. They cannot balance the game or make it enjoyable at this point. Oh and the raven hsm change has made the raven even more useless, if that was even possible. Grats blizzard, HOTS should be called Having OnlyTerran Sucks....
Just pure whining nonsense with nothing to back it up. Your joke is also written wrong the way you wrote it. I have a beta moron, and I was hi masters in WoL. You don't even play and think you have some great insight. Keep dreaming, buy your game and stay in gold league where you belong. Resorting to bullshit then using said bullshit to hide the fact that you're wrong. Thanks for proving to me you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. You made various claims yet couldn't even make the effort to back up a single one of them, on top of being a jerk, you're also beyond lazy. Congratulations...
Are you seriously retarded or illiterate? Look at my first post, I said widow mines are useless and pointed out the counters to them. And anyone that follows the game know for a fact that TVP late game is terrible, and TVZ is also terrible with brood infestor. You are seriously stupid, and you have never played hots or know what you are talking about. Good to see you prove yourself wrong within your own critique.
User was temp banned for this post.
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Blizzard really backed themselves into a corner with the Infestor, mostly due to the fact that most of the suggestions posted are already in other spells. You can't just make it a slow, because then it overlaps with the Oracles Time Warp. You can't just make it deal damage with no root, because then it's just another Psi Storm. Neural Parasite sort of overlaps with Abduct also, although it's mostly useless now due to the range nerf. It would be better to just remove Fungal entirely and maybe lower the cost of Infestors while nerfing Infested Terrans. That way they can just be a pure harassment unit and let the Viper be the spell caster.
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On December 27 2012 11:26 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 10:14 Zahir wrote:
There's a difference between pre splitting before the splash actually hits your units, and pre splitting before an engagement. In most cases, it's a difference of two seconds or more. For high templar, you can see them slowly approaching and then continue to retreat, split and maneuver after the storm hits. For tanks, there is a considerable time for the Terran to move forward and get into seige mode which gives you plenty of time to react. For banelings, because they are melee they take additional time (particularly off creep) to come to grips with your army. Hellions, while they do decent splash, have medium range, only do well against light units, and can only do their full splash by getting into melee range. Collossi are the only unit which, like the infestor, do not give you much time between when they get into vision range and when the splash begins hitting. However, even with Collossi you can retreat and micro after the initial volley, and throughout the engagement, rushing forward to pick off Collossi, retreating injured units, and so on. You say that there is a difference, yet you keep on mixing them together completely. Like, what you do against Storms, Fungal, Banelings... is all presplitting before the splash actually hits your units. Of course you set up presplit, but the part that people call "dodging" is all your first category: presplitting during a combat.
This is true, but there is a big difference between presplitting "during a combat", as you say, and only having the chance to presplit before the combat begins. Let me try and phrase it differently. Within a normal starcraft 2 battle there are two phases, the dancing around and pre splitting, positioning, seiging up, and what all that occurs before the battle. Then once battle commences, one army crashes into another and there is continuous micro on both sides. With fungal, the micro that occurs during the battle is decreased, due to large numbers of units being immobilized. Or, if you don't even like me categorizing things into "before" and "during", then just know that fungal reduces the total amount of micro possible for the opposing player. Yes, focus firing units to kill them also achieves this... in a way... but sniping units does not reduce micro by much, honestly. You can only take out one unit at a time, as opposed to fungal which can lock down entire groups.
I don't like arguing based purely on theory, so I won't say that immobilizing units is always bad. In this case, it's a combination of factors including 1)large AOE, 2) root, 3) almost instant cast, 4) unit is somewhat 'massable', to use others' terminology. If you look at games streaming, replays, or just play the game yourself it's impossible not to notice how fungal changes battles, placing heavy emphasis on splitting units before the infestors can get into range, while removing most of the micro that would normally occur after two armies clash. Of all the units/abilities in starcraft, only forcefield and vortex have a similar effect. Vortex has been drastically changed while forcefield... is still an anti micro ability, but not quite as bad as fungal... well, usually. If any one of these factors were reduced fungal wouldn't be such a problem.
I still believe that if Blizzard tweaks the numbers to be closer to patch 8, with less range and speed on the projectile, fungal would actually promote exciting micro rather than stifling it. It's fun to watch pros dodge a potentially crippling spell with great twitch micro right after seeing the projectile come out. It's also fun to watch pros anticipate enemy movements and corner them into a devastating fungal, then chain fungaling to take out a large number of units. But what happens right now is more along the lines of... the infestors roll in, fungal hits almost instantly and the enemy units, if not presplit, are very predictably going to be locked down. I disagree that this is a similar situation to storm; 15 fungals vs 15 storms, you say the targetted units will take damage no matter what, which is true, but at least in the 15 storms they CAN run out, even if the result is taking moderate damage. They can run, reposition, stim or rush some units forward to try and snipe the exposed HTs, and perhaps flee with the bulk of their army. With carpet fungals a micro-intensive response such as this would be impossible; instead, what would happen next is the rest of the zerg army, perhaps assisted by chain fungals, would clean up the masses of helpless, unmicroable enemy units.
I honestly feel we're going in circles here, because I know you know this is how fungal in its present incarnation works. You also acknowledge that the infestor/fungal need to be toned down in some way. We just differ on how we think the unit/spell should be changed and why. I can respect your point of view, because probably, if infestors were as slow as HT they wouldn't be as big of a problem. However, I feel that the 'deathball' of infestor/BL/corrupter would still be incredibly hard to stop or micro against. Your solutions, I feel, would simply encourage the opposing player's army to split up and abuse the immobility of the zerg army to force a 'base race' like scenario. Whereas returning to a patch 8 fungal would allow the Terran and Protoss armies to engage the Zerg main army much more frequently, using precision micro to pick off units while dodging fungals.
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This is true, but there is a big difference between presplitting "during a combat", as you say, and only having the chance to presplit before the combat begins. Let me try and phrase it differently. Within a normal starcraft 2 battle there are two phases, the dancing around and pre splitting, positioning, seiging up, and what all that occurs before the battle. Then once battle commences, one army crashes into another and there is continuous micro on both sides. With fungal, the micro that occurs during the battle is decreased, due to large numbers of units being immobilized. Or, if you don't even like me categorizing things into "before" and "during", then just know that fungal reduces the total amount of micro possible for the opposing player. Yes, focus firing units to kill them also achieves this... in a way... but sniping units does not reduce micro by much, honestly. You can only take out one unit at a time, as opposed to fungal which can lock down entire groups.
False. For two main reasons :
1/The amount of micro in an army that will face fungal is higher than in any other situation (yes, storm is behind), as more pre-split, more positioning and often more tank-micro is involved that for any other army. Not even considering focus firing.
2/All kind of micro is not denied. As I said so much times, fungal does not silence standard fire from units. So you can still focus fire with tanks, marauder packs, etc.
3/Even if a certain type of micro (split) was denied IN combat, why the hell should we ban it ? Why a spell could not prevent units from moving, IF the downsides of the spell are balanced ?
I don't like arguing based purely on theory, so I won't say that immobilizing units is always bad. In this case, it's a combination of factors including 1)large AOE, 2) root, 3) almost instant cast, 4) unit is somewhat 'massable', to use others' terminology. If you look at games streaming, replays, or just play the game yourself it's impossible not to notice how fungal changes battles, placing heavy emphasis on splitting units before the infestors can get into range, while removing most of the micro that would normally occur after two armies clash. Of all the units/abilities in starcraft, only forcefield and vortex have a similar effect. Vortex has been drastically changed while forcefield... is still an anti micro ability, but not quite as bad as fungal... well, usually. If any one of these factors were reduced fungal wouldn't be such a problem.
Yeah, you quite get it : there are ways to change fungal without saying that rooting is the problem.
If we compare :
1) AOE is quite the same as storm, for less dps, no micro considered. I suppose they have quite the same because the rooting effect compensate for dps.
2)yeah
3)Blizz going in the right way, making it far more dodgable than storm
4)indeed, but it's not fungal anymore.
And for the battle change, yeah, so does storm. It's just that at low level play, it's easier to dodge storm than fungal. I really think that fungal is the most demanding spell to deal with until high level of play. Simply because it demands tactical sense, a lot of micro and a really clear strategy. All that you don't have (together) until top europe master/GM.
I still believe that if Blizzard tweaks the numbers to be closer to patch 8, with less range and speed on the projectile, fungal would actually promote exciting micro rather than stifling it. It's fun to watch pros dodge a potentially crippling spell with great twitch micro right after seeing the projectile come out. It's also fun to watch pros anticipate enemy movements and corner them into a devastating fungal, then chain fungaling to take out a large number of units. But what happens right now is more along the lines of... the infestors roll in, fungal hits almost instantly and the enemy units, if not presplit, are very predictably going to be locked down. I disagree that this is a similar situation to storm; 15 fungals vs 15 storms, you say the targetted units will take damage no matter what, which is true, but at least in the 15 storms they CAN run out, even if the result is taking moderate damage. They can run, reposition, stim or rush some units forward to try and snipe the exposed HTs, and perhaps flee with the bulk of their army. With carpet fungals a micro-intensive response such as this would be impossible; instead, what would happen next is the rest of the zerg army, perhaps assisted by chain fungals, would clean up the masses of helpless, unmicroable enemy units.
Yeah but danger is to over-nerf them. I'm protoss, but i know how much Zerg needs this to stay alive. What would be really interesting is to see how the success-when-cast-rate evolves for zerg. I feel like Blizz want this rate to get lower, using this tool to nerf fungal. So it's not a "real" nerf since if every fungal could land in a game (that was casted), result would be the same (considering infestors don't actually have to die to cast it). But i think this is heading in the right direction. This direction is : forcing the zerg player's micro more to get the same done. And in fact this is huge. Everybody knows how, when you cast a projectile-spell, you always miss units of the pack you targeted you would not have missed if it was for the old fungal (instant).
I honestly feel we're going in circles here, because I know you know this is how fungal in its present incarnation works. You also acknowledge that the infestor/fungal need to be toned down in some way. We just differ on how we think the unit/spell should be changed and why. I can respect your point of view, because probably, if infestors were as slow as HT they wouldn't be as big of a problem. However, I feel that the 'deathball' of infestor/BL/corrupter would still be incredibly hard to stop or micro against.
It's because you don't get two things :
1/change the numbers before the concept (and the builds before the numbers)
2/if infestor is nerfed the way it is said by BigJ, then Zerg won't easily go into inf/bl anymore
Your solutions, I feel, would simply encourage the opposing player's army to split up and abuse the immobility of the zerg army to force a 'base race' like scenario. Whereas returning to a patch 8 fungal would allow the Terran and Protoss armies to engage the Zerg main army much more frequently, using precision micro to pick off units while dodging fungals.
Hard to predict what this will cause and change : this always goes beyond predictions.
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On December 27 2012 12:56 Crawdad wrote:Show nested quote +On December 27 2012 11:26 Big J wrote:+ Show Spoiler +If you asked me, this is what blizzard should do in January for WoL and HotS:
Infestor speed 2.25-->2.0, Creep Speed multiplier from 1.3-->1.1 or 1.0
More visual burrow movement
Fungal to range 8 and add the fungal projectile (15speed) to WoL.
Marine sight range 9-->10
Zealot sight range 9-->10
Not sure about further nerfing ITs in WoL or HotS. Rather in HotS, then in WoL. The Infestor changes sound good, but instead of changing the Creep modifier, why not nerf their speed to HT speed so that they have Medivac speed on Creep?
I dont think thats the problem
Maybe just make zerg mechanics harder
Creep spread range : 7 instead of 11 (like they wanted to do in an earlier patch)
Max larvaes / hatcheries : 16 instead of 24
It's ok if creeps give op speed if it needs godlike mechanics to really abuse it
imo, fungle doesnt really need a nerf different than 8 range. It's anti-deathball and it punishes players playing with dumbball. It's ok.
But there are too much IT in 1 infestor. 3 supply infestor would be good.
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Maybe they could make the infestor's fungal growth into an area control ability rather than a direct damage ability. Something along the lines of it contaminating an area of ground for say 15s, doing increasing damage per second for units that remain in it. Start off at 8 and then 12, then 18 or something.
The third ability could be changed to an ability which allows the infestor to immobilise air units.
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4713 Posts
I can not for the life of me understand why people consider fungal a good spell, I seriously can't, it must a broken neural synapse somewhere.
As someone already pointed out engagements are two part affairs, the preparation stage and the actual battle.
In phase one, pre battle micro starts, regardless of composition both armies will seek to gain the most favorable position or engage int he most cost efficient way, which also involves but is not limited to pre-splitting, sieging/unsieging etc. To say that one unit forces out more micro then the others is idiotic. All units/compositions require heavy pre-battle micro. In TvT you need to pre-split and form great concaves or your units melt to tank fire, same in TvP but with some added pre-splits to also minimize storm damage, same in TvZ ling, bling, muta.
Once the battle actually starts micro doesn't stop, in TvT you can continue to improve your concave, split, focus fire tanks etc, in TvP you do all that + also constantly micro back and forth and continue to split and dodge storms, same in TvZ except you dodge and split against banes not storms.
Against infestors however, one mistake at any point in the pre-battle or the battle phase can cost you the entire game, you can get your entire army fungled, opening up the possibility to follow up fungals and guaranteeing the loss of your entire army. Not only does it prevent more then half of available battle micro, but it does damage to boot.
In no other MU does any one mistake in any phase of the fight impact you so badly, in TvT you can still pull back if you notice a battle is going badly for you, yes you will take lots of unnecessary damage on your army, from siege damage, but you won't instantly lose all of it or your position.
In TvP you can prevent a lot of damage from good splits and concaves and, again you can pull back and try to regroup without instantly losing everything.
In TvZ, ling, bling, muta you can't really retreat from the fight but you can still work on being as cost efficient as possible with good splits and focus fire.
Most of these are well liked MUs, what do they all have in common? At no point can one mistake result in the loss of half your options to retaliate, as well as your entire army. Not paying attention to your army will still punish you, but you can, still retaliate, react and at least trade cost efficiently or salvage some of your army.
Against infestors though, any miss-micro means that you not only lost your whole army, you most likely are going to lose it cost inefficiently, and if you get fungaled you are opened up to more follow up damage.
This spell is the singular worst spell in entire game. The only redeeming factor for Blizz is that, we can honestly say we didn't anticipate smart casting + early and easily accessible casters to lead to this situation, now we however understand.
Fungal is bad in design, fungal is bad in execution, fungal is boring since it limits micro, fungal is boring because you know guaranteed follow up damage will come if only one hits.
Now that we are aware of this issue we should be pushing hardest and strongest towards units/casters/abilities that don't limit micro, that, on the contrary, encourage it.
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I understand your point Destruction, and i agree.
So now, let's think. How could fungle be a speel which promotes micro before and during fights, without being a copy of the psi storm ? That's the hard point.
I would suggest something like this :
- Fungle is a small ball of moister, growing
- After 1 sc it explodes and insta-lock all units arround (and damages them)
This way, terrans / protoss have to micro as hell, it forces the opponent to take another position or being locked down
Blink stalkers all ins are not a problem in Hots since the swarmhost is just too cost effective against it.
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To say that one unit forces out more micro then the others is idiotic. All units/compositions require heavy pre-battle micro.
Yeah but consequences are totally different. If you don't pre-split your units VS storm, it's not THAT a danger IF you move them with a really, really high sense of the game (dodging all storms before they actually land).
Vs Infestor, you can't simply assume you will use other tricks when the battle starts. That's why this phase one must be of special concern for all players that play against zerg. That's why infestor requires so much pre-split, perfect tank positioning and perfect hit&run micro, not to talk about perfect engage and mapcontrol.
Against infestors however, one mistake at any point in the pre-battle or the battle phase can cost you the entire game, you can get your entire army fungled, opening up the possibility to follow up fungals and guaranteeing the loss of your entire army. Not only does it prevent more then half of available battle micro, but it does damage to boot.
Actually it's false.
Same goes for storm. Take one storm on your whole army and you die, i've made the testing : 360 dps if you take it on small units (ghosts).
You make the same mistake as others : you emphasize one point, neglecting all others to make you sound right.
Units fungaled can still shoot and focus fire. Units under storm can't if they don't wanna die. If you let you army get fungaled/stormed/emp in a whole, well, you played bad. Sorry to tell you. And as a toss i was EMPed so much...But i know that i was not spreading my units enough, or killing the ghosts.
In no other MU does any one mistake in any phase of the fight impact you so badly, in TvT you can still pull back if you notice a battle is going badly for you, yes you will take lots of unnecessary damage on your army, from siege damage, but you won't instantly lose all of it or your position.
Well, as you say for fungal, if you let your whole army (your own words) take enough tank shots to cover it all with splash (no overkill-surface scenario), you can retreat if you want, you just lost (if the other player is not stupid). Let's say your whole army takes the damage of 4 siege tanks with perfect surface, well, you died. That's why TvT has those trench warfares. Because siege mode is not forgiving either.
In TvP you can prevent a lot of damage from good splits and concaves and, again you can pull back and try to regroup without instantly losing everything.
Come on. "In ZvT, you can prevent a lot of trouble by good pre-split, good tank position and you can hit and run with your non fungaled units, that, bu the way, continue to inflict damage to their actual death".
Most of these are well liked MUs, what do they all have in common? At no point can one mistake result in the loss of half your options to retaliate, as well as your entire army. Not paying attention to your army will still punish you, but you can, still retaliate, react and at least trade cost efficiently or salvage some of your army.
Think ! If you lose to one mistake, it's one single fungal that made you lose. So you must be Parting, or MKP ? Why not tell that 1 force field makes you lose in PvZ (i've seen it : one on the choke of the main, it's over).
Against infestors though, any miss-micro means that you not only lost your whole army, you most likely are going to lose it cost inefficiently, and if you get fungaled you are opened up to more follow up damage.
Not ANY miss-micro, several flaws in micro. To lose your whole army to fungal, you must really screw up hard. Have you ever seen a pro lose its whole army to fungal ? No (or extreme bad play).
Don't forget you have to get perfect control on the festors OUT of creep, and even on creep, you lose them easily to tank or small (3/4 units) groups of commandos. And if you will have to spam two fungals on it, or lose some lings/HP to make it die.
Whereas storm does kill by itself, AND allows you to add damage when units retreat and take colossi shots for free.
his spell is the singular worst spell in entire game. The only redeeming factor for Blizz is that, we can honestly say we didn't anticipate smart casting + early and easily accessible casters to lead to this situation, now we however understand.
So you say it's the worst spell...but it's not because of the spell ? Nice !
Fungal is bad in design, fungal is bad in execution, fungal is boring since it limits micro, fungal is boring because you know guaranteed follow up damage will come if only one hits.
Amen ! What is that except a credo you repeat to make people believe it ?
And i'm toss. It's just i take time to think about think before judging.
The design in itself is interesting, numbers might be wrong.
Now that we are aware of this issue we should be pushing hardest and strongest towards units/casters/abilities that don't limit micro, that, on the contrary, encourage it.
If you don't read other people's posts, no one can help you.
EDIT : and if the philosophy of this is that WoL or HoTs must be forgiving, well, you don't get this game. Every single mistake you make in the game, if you don't force one on your oponent, have consequences that are added on your lost ressources tab.
Now if you tell me that fungal is fatality, meaning that this mistake from you is forced anyway because of the design, well, you clearly don't get the balance of the spell. Root is not the problem : the problem are the numbers.
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On December 27 2012 21:47 Insoleet wrote:
I understand your point Destruction, and i agree.
So now, let's think. How could fungle be a speel which promotes micro before and during fights, without being a copy of the psi storm ? That's the hard point.
I would suggest something like this :
- Fungle is a small ball of moister, growing
- After 1 sc it explodes and insta-lock all units arround (and damages them)
This way, terrans / protoss have to micro as hell, it forces the opponent to take another position or being locked down
Blink stalkers all ins are not a problem in Hots since the swarmhost is just too cost effective against it.
How about simply adding a debuff that stops units from being chain fungaled? That way infestors will still be powerful in the army, but it can't consists of only them. Also promotes micro and timing from zerg side with banelings and such.
Stop responding to people who are defending the current status of fungal please. People hate playing against it, people hate playing with them, its anti climactic and looks boring, and the spectators hate it. There isn't anything more to it. It needs to go.I honestly don't think people play the same game as us sometimes.
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How about simply adding a debuff that stops units from being chain fungaled?
I will say it again : before considering a design change, think in numbers. If you add a debuff, the following issues will appear :
-how many time debuff ?
-magic debuff would be a new single-purpose effect in the game
-why couldn't it apply to storm, EMP, etc ?
Does it make the game easier in mechanics ? No, it's the contrary. It's an interesting idea, but first, you have to get as far as possible with simple ideas ! Simple ideas like range, mana cost, etc.
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