David Kim on potential beta changes (Feb 4th,2013) - Page 15

On February 05 2013 23:23 Obamanation666 wrote:
I know that a lot of you want to see big changes, but I think overlord speed is a really significant change. This upgrade will practically pay for itself. No more sacrificial overlords, and their will be no hiding your tech. I think this will really affect PvZ, where it's absolutely crucial for protoss to hide their tech early game. This will shut down oracle or dt harass hard.

On February 05 2013 23:37 MilesTeg wrote:


I don't want to be insulting, but how can you think for one second that this will be used. For a cheaper cost, you can make units that will actually help you fight whatever is coming. Most of the time you'll get a pretty good idea of what's coming without scouting anyway. You're never going to spend the equivalent of teching to Lair just because you think "hmm I think I might need to scout in 1 minute".

I'd genuinely want to know the reasoning, because apparently David Kim agrees with you.

On February 05 2013 23:23 Obamanation666 wrote:
I know that a lot of you want to see big changes, but I think overlord speed is a really significant change. This upgrade will practically pay for itself. No more sacrificial overlords, and their will be no hiding your tech. I think this will really affect PvZ, where it's absolutely crucial for protoss to hide their tech early game. This will shut down oracle or dt harass hard.

On February 05 2013 23:40 Insoleet wrote:
The fact that broodlords are not even a bit viable in ZvP is sad. Tempest killing broodlords in 3 shots ? This means that zerg has, once again, only 1 viable lategame : it's ultralisks vipers.
Tempest already outrange broodlords, they shouldn't kill them in 3 shots... that's too weird.

On February 06 2013 00:05 awesomoecalypse wrote:
I like all the changes, but I'd like to see some more as well. Specifically...

A reasonable nerf to Protoss air, that still leaves it as a fully viable tech tree but not a nearly unbeatable one when massed. For example, remove Void Ray extended range (that is, Voids have 6 range, but once they're attacking it extends by 2 to follow enemies who try to retreat, which makes it much harder to micro against Voids, so just give them 6 range flat), and raise Tempest supply cost to 6 like other capital ships. Both Voids and Tempests would still be strong units with clear roles, but it'd be easier to micro against Voids, and Tempest supply cost would slightly weaken an air deathball, which would push the overall tech tree back in the direction of "stronger than WoL, but not too strong."

A buff to Terran mech vs. Protoss. Ideally, something that would help Tanks--now that siege is no longer an upgrade, there's room to give Tanks a new upgrade that would help their scaling into the lategame without making them too strong when they first come out. Something like an upgrade that gives bonus damage to shields would help bring back some of the BW TvP mech dynamic (where Tanks shredded Shields since they always did full damage to them), without making them imba in other matchups.


I know some people want to see massive changes that redesign the entire game, but frankly I think even these two fixes--a slight nerf to Toss air, and a buff to mech in TvP--would go a long, long way towards making the game better, without requiring that Blizzard go back to the drawing board a couple months from putting HotS out.

On February 05 2013 21:28 [F_]aths wrote:

I am losing my faith to ... the faith in the community.

Is anyone really expecting a fully balanced game at launch date?

On February 05 2013 17:47 T.O.P. wrote:

Oracles cost 150/150. Don't mislead people

On February 06 2013 00:48 Telenil wrote:
I have to agree with that. I'm a Protoss player and I know tempests have a low dps for their cost, but they have good burst damage and a huge range. 80 (up to 95!) damage per shot to massive air feels it's complete overkill. It would be a very hard counter to these strategies even with 60 damage, at 80, it just makes them obsolete.

On February 05 2013 22:46 Zelniq wrote:
guys Blizzard will definitely address the skytoss issue for zerg, they always fix problems like this but sometimes they take a long time to do it/wait for potential answers to arise like they did when zergs found an answer to mass void ray/colossus in WoL back in 2011 (the infestor). I'm pretty sure they're going to have to make a change this time, as I don't see any answers popping up for zergs, but I'm very curious how they'll do it. My guess is they still will be hesitant to do something about the lackluster hydra which would be my favorite response, but instead probably nerf void ray, maybe their instacharge ability. Maaaaaaaybe a corruptor change but probably not as they're already effective antiair vs a large number of units. And they are so scared of infestor buffs which really was the main way zerg had to deal with voidray/colo in WoL 2011. What else is there.. viper can help support but still they need some backbone unit to actually kill the air, and vipers are also very vulnerable to feedback and come late in the game. Zerg has no mobile tier 1 antiair units, and only 1 mobile ground-to-air unit in their entire tech tree..one that is very low hp and is extremely vulnerable to splash and even regular units (it's a common misconception that you need splash vs hydra, zealot/stalker works just fine vs them esp with their abilities researched)

I never understood that really why zerg only gets 1 ground-to-air unit which imo makes the best sort of gameplay (as opposed to air-to-air), since it utilizes map terrain features and makes it so only 1 side gets the bonus of circumventing terrain. terran/protoss each now have 3 ground-to-air units, marine/thor/widowmine, stalker/sentry/archon. And our 1 ground-to-air unit isn't even very good still, vs 3 of the 5 protoss air units (and horrible vs BCs), and it's the only 3 protoss air that will be massed vs zerg (so, not oracles nor tempests, although note oracles actually melt hydras fast too, they just die faster if theyre the ones being targeted. So if hydras are attacking something else, the oracles actually pay for themselves several times over with how fast they melt the hydras btw).

Furthermore, hydras scale poorly with upgrades is another issue that my want to be looked at. And one big issue i've always had is their horrible attack animation.. their wind-up time is so long, with their attack speed so fast, together it makes them awful for trying to stutter step, limiting what a good player can do with them and it's better to just make them A-move in most cases. The solutions to both of these problems could work well together, as they could reduce their attack speed and simultaneously increase base damage to even it out, but give them +2 per upgrade to make them scale better, and should also fixing their dumb attack wind-up time, allowing for more potential for micro/stutterstepping.


I was pretty disappointed when I found out zerg would be getting no new anti-air units in hots, and our current one's 'buff' just isn't enough, as if the only thing that sucked about hydras was their move speed off creep.

But like I said they've been so hesitant to change hydras for some reason (they've been lackluster for all of WoL and that's suited them just fine, and make an irrelevant change in hots beta that doesn't effect their damage nor hp). I really only expect them to not make any significant changes to zerg's antiair but instead nerf protoss's air

On February 06 2013 01:46 Mrvoodoochild1 wrote:

you have to get a stargate do you not?