Beta Balance Update #10 - Page 86

On December 31 2012 15:03 Whitewing wrote:


Hellions aren't nearly as bad as you seem to think they are, in large numbers they actually trade cost efficiently vs. a lot of their supposed 'counters' since they all deal splash damage. Once you get to the point where a group of hellions can one shot, say, a stalker, you'll actually see them annihilate groups of stalkers that are way more expensive. It's not all that uncommon to see a bunch of hellions roasting roaches alive when the roaches don't heavily outnumber them once you get to your critical mass of hellions.

With regards to your comments on the marauder, I can say only this: Will people PLEASE stop thinking about units in a vacuum? We're not playing under arbitrary mono-battle rules in the game unless we want to, nobody is forcing you to not make medivacs. Therefore, it is completely reasonable to assume medivacs. Marauders with medivacs are awesome. I don't really know what else to say. Maruaders are ridiculously good.

On December 31 2012 12:02 Filter wrote:


The loss of the Goliath is what really kills mech in most mu's (Immortal aside). Thors are super expensive, super slow and take forever to build. There's also no real way to have a good mix of them, if Thors were smaller and 2 supply you could easily mix the right number for your opponents comp, with the current Thor you can't do that really. Supply heavy units/Power units really hurt strategic decisions.

On December 31 2012 18:41 Godwrath wrote:
When will blizzard realize that building mines isn't exciting ?

On December 31 2012 18:41 Godwrath wrote:
When will blizzard realize that building mines isn't exciting ?

On December 31 2012 12:02 Filter wrote:
The loss of the Goliath is what really kills mech in most mu's (Immortal aside). Thors are super expensive, super slow and take forever to build. There's also no real way to have a good mix of them, if Thors were smaller and 2 supply you could easily mix the right number for your opponents comp, with the current Thor you can't do that really. Supply heavy units/Power units really hurt strategic decisions.

On December 31 2012 21:18 Xequecal wrote:


You know, I still don't understand why the Goliath worked to defend mech from mass Mutalisks in BW but the Viking doesn't work at all against Mutalisks in SC2. The Viking does cost more, but it also has much higher DPS against Mutalisks than the Goliath did, (6.8 vs 10) and of course has the advantage of being a flying unit.

On December 31 2012 21:23 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Doesn't the goliath attack a lot faster? On liqupiedia it says the cooldown is 22 (not sure what measurement that is).

On December 31 2012 21:31 Xequecal wrote:


15 = 1 second in BW. It does 20 explosive damage which means 10 damage to mutalisks. 10 / (22/15) = 6.8. The viking is just a straight 10 DPS against mutas.

On December 31 2012 21:54 Big J wrote:


24 frames on Fastest, 15 on normal.
So the Goliath damage per real second is 10.909 vs mutalisks.

The Viking does 10 damage per blizzard second, which means to get it on real seconds, you have to multiplicate with 1.38. (1 shot per blizzard second means 1.38shots per real second, as blizzard time is faster than real time).
So Vikings have 13.8 damage per real second vs mutalisks.

On December 31 2012 21:18 Xequecal wrote:


You know, I still don't understand why the Goliath worked to defend mech from mass Mutalisks in BW but the Viking doesn't work at all against Mutalisks in SC2. The Viking does cost more, but it also has much higher DPS against Mutalisks than the Goliath did, (6.8 vs 10) and of course has the advantage of being a flying unit.

On December 31 2012 21:18 Xequecal wrote:


You know, I still don't understand why the Goliath worked to defend mech from mass Mutalisks in BW but the Viking doesn't work at all against Mutalisks in SC2. The Viking does cost more, but it also has much higher DPS against Mutalisks than the Goliath did, (6.8 vs 10) and of course has the advantage of being a flying unit.

On December 31 2012 21:18 Xequecal wrote:


You know, I still don't understand why the Goliath worked to defend mech from mass Mutalisks in BW but the Viking doesn't work at all against Mutalisks in SC2. The Viking does cost more, but it also has much higher DPS against Mutalisks than the Goliath did, (6.8 vs 10) and of course has the advantage of being a flying unit.

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*.

On January 01 2013 00:33 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:
Sorry to rehash on an old topic in here, but since I had most of this written up I might as well go ahead and post it.

I can't help but facepalm at the amount of posts defending fungal here. I've tried to explain that fungal is bad design to fill in the holes of the bad design of the zerg race, yet instead of wanting fixes for the zerg RACE people just want "tone down" fungal and make it less "massable". Let me make an analogy. Let's look at abduct. We've spent a lot of post explaining why abduct is not that great of a spell right? That the only way to balance abduct would be to make it so you couldn't abduct. Okay, let's take it a step further. What if in order to "fix" abduct blizzard said "okay, abduct is too weak and we need to have it be able to kill high tech units so we increased the range of abduct and made it so when abduct hits, 100 points of damage is done to the enemy unit that is being abducted. This would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? But why would it be ridiculous? There are two questions in my mind people would have immediately about a change that I just mentioned (remember, these would be hypothetical to the hypothetical change):

1. Why does something with so much utility need to be given even more power?

Everybody knows how strong vipers are. It's obvious how much utility that can be gained by pulling a unit away from position, either denying your opponent positioning, or just saving your own high value targets. So with such a large amount of utility why is it warranted to give abduct even MORE utility? This would change the viper’s abduct from a “game-changing” spell to a “game-breaking” one. There just wouldn’t be any reason not to use it. Plus, with binding cloud, it would be essentially riskless to go in there, abduct some units (and instantly kill them) to immediately make the viper extremely cost efficient.

2. Even with the ability to do something as powerful as pulling something away it STILL isn't enough to eliminate high-threat units?

This should be the thing that should worry players the most. With a skill as powerful as abduct, the fact that it still wouldn't be enough to kill high target units that it WARRANTED a buff to abduct would be ringing alarm bells in people's heads. Just think about it, you have a spell with one of the strongest utilities in the game, one that can be game-changing by itself….and it STILL isn’t enough to be able to do the utility it’s been designed for? Maybe at this point, blizzard should be looking at fixing the overall RACE itself instead of using band-aid solutions that only serve to make the game worse.

Do see the parallels here? I could use these exact same arguments (albeit changed a little due to the different context) for fungal. I mean, why does fungal even do so much in the first place? And stop using the “MOBA” argument to defend fungal. I guarantee you if there was a spell in a MOBA with a 4 second root with some dot damage with partial silence that could be spammed people would be whining left and right how broken that spell would be. There’s a huge difference between a MOBA and an RTS. In a MOBA you have hundreds of heroes each with their own utility that you can pick and choose (albeit with mind games) to get the composition you want. In Starcraft 2 there are just 3 races with GIVEN units and utility. Plus, I don’t even think starcraft 2 has as many “units” as Dota 2 has “heroes”. STOP USING MOBA AS AN EXCUSE FOR BROKEN SPELLS. I mean jeez, people are even using “MOBA” logic to spells, such as making fungal a root to a tapering slow, some dot damage that “doesn’t have to root if you don’t want it too”. Look, IN AN RTS SPELLS SHOULD BE SIMPLE, EASY TO UNDERSTAND, AND JUST PROVIDE A SPECIFIC UTILITY, NOT ALL THE UTILITY YOU NEED. Just the fact that people are going to ridiculous lengths to try and “balance” fungal should speak enough about how broken fungal is.

Finally for all those people still saying that fungal isn’t broken, what would happen if we applied the same argument and logic that is used to defend fungal for other units and spells? You know marine stim? Why does it need to cost health? How about every time you stim not only do you get the increased speed and damage you actually GAIN health. Why even stop there? You know high Templar storm? How about every storm actually FOLLOWS the unit being stormed so that unit can get hit. Oh, and siege mode? Every time you hit an enemy unit with siege mode they get a .5 second “non-stackable” ministun. What’s that? That’s retardedly broken? Hell naw, this would actually ENCOURAGE micro from the opponent because they would have to presplit when facing against siege tanks. Plus it doesn’t stack.

People need to stop looking at spells like fungal and think “this is what SC2 is about”. Because it’s not. SC2 is about well-designed UNITS each with their own strong utility that helps define the race as a whole. I guarantee you if zerg was well-designed, and had any unit that required skill that was jaw dropping, NOBODY here would be trying to justify fungal the way it is today. Nowadays the only zerg that I can think of that uses a specific unit so well is Life and his zerglings, but the thing is using zerglings like Life does is extremely difficult to where it seems only Life is able to use them in that manner. THEN WHY AREN’T WE ENCOURAGING MORE OF THAT? The more difficult something is, the more people will try to emulate it, and the more the GAME ITSELF GROWS AS A WHOLE. Who is really “known” for using fungal? LOL EVERY ZERG IS :D :D :D :D. All kidding aside, I’ve seen that many people said that there should be changes where fungal isn’t as spammable as it is currently. Then why even have damage on fungal in the first place unless you intended for fungal to be spammed for the damage? *HINT HINT HINT COUGH COUGH COUGH* If you think that zerg is too reliant on fungal, then maybe you should have blizzard look at these issues with zerg before buffing fungal (I’ve written them earlier on why changing fungal could be a problem and I still think they apply here):



Whew, that's it from me. Why do I even write these long posts anyway if nobody likes to read them and the people that do always nitpick everything that the post is not about? Whatever, I feel that these things had to be said.

On January 01 2013 00:48 Hider wrote:
Yeh, don't use that much time on people who don't get proper game design. RIght now the people who defend fungal growth is just a minority, and there will always be some of them.

On January 01 2013 00:03 Whitewing wrote:


I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was all that unusual in a purely mech composition to have a lot of hellions. The point was that they have a critical mass because they deal splash damage where they actually just trade well with almost anything on the ground that doesn't also deal splash, it doesn't have to be light. Splash damage is pretty good. Banelings are easy to micro against with hellions until fungal is out (at which point zergs usually stop making banelings), and yeah, forcefield can help prevent hellion micro, but hellions actually just dominate protoss in the early game until splash damage is out due to how expensive everything toss has is and how lousy they are at actually killing hellions. Stalkers kinda do shit for damage.

Your comment on dream compositions is laughable. People make compositions, period. What the composition is depends on the matchup and how it develops, but they are never pure marauder once you get out of silver league.

I really wish people would stop with the negative hyperbole 'My opponent can just forcefield me, hellions are useless always!'

On January 01 2013 01:07 Rabiator wrote:
The thing isnt that you could have 20 Hellions, but these have to be clumped up to hit that one Stalker and thats what is so ridiculous about it. Half of that number might work, but as I said no smart player should miss the obvious weak point of massive numbers of Hellions. Forcefield does ruin the day of Hellions and if they cant kill their opponents due to being "limited in numbers" then the whole idea of "Hellions could be used to kill Stalkers" is revealed as the pipe dream it is. The whole maneuverability and space required for those Hellions is a big problem you neglect to consider; it might work on an open space, but most maps arent that open ...