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On February 09 2013 08:08 i)awn wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 08:02 NicolBolas wrote:On February 09 2013 07:48 i)awn wrote:On February 09 2013 06:43 MstrJinbo wrote:On February 09 2013 06:29 i)awn wrote:On February 09 2013 06:17 awesomoecalypse wrote:
In BW, shields took full damage from every attack, regardless of unit type, meaning that shields would take a lot more damage in many cases from attacks than health would--their interaction with enemy attacks was therefore significantly more complicated than it was in WoL, where shields in terms of damage taken are no different from other health apart from a different armor rating. Bonus damage vs shields may be a change from WoL, but its not unprecedented in SC history. It is still unprecedented. It is completely different actually since shields took that "extra damage" from all other units. There was no units with a bonus attack vs shields and others without, it was all units had "bonus attacks vs shields" which is significantly different as the latter mechanic doesn't matter much because the amount of shield a unit has is balanced around the damage it will take. The baneling does a weird amount of damage to buildings. Seems like some odd tweak to the armor type thing to make it possible for zergs to baneling bust Protoss and terrans. I don't see how a tweak to the damage of the widow mine to one shots gateway units but not queens is unprecedented. How can you not see it? It's very simple, a unit damaging attack is doing more damage to one race and not the other. It completely breaks the basic foundation of the game. There is a reason that such changes, that can "easily" fix a lot of three way balance problems were avoided; up until now when the developers became so desperate before the launch date that they actually resorted to this technique. The spore + damage vs biological is not much better since zerg is the only race with bio fliers. Next thing we might have is void rays doing less damage to shields, you know because they might be a problem in PvP. After that maybe Blink research time will be different depending on whom you're playing against, gonna be longer vs terran and shorter vs Zerg. Here is balance getting fixed the easy way. When developers use these techniques it only means they are avoiding bigger problems that they need to fix. There is a difference between bonus damage vs. shields and bonus damage vs. Protoss. While only Protoss units can have shields (which can still change. Defensive Matrix in SC1 effectively gave individual Terran units shields), not all Protoss units always have shields. The extra damage won't affect a Protoss unit that has run out of shields, for example. Whereas a damage bonus vs Protoss will always affect any Protoss unit, no matter what. Personally, I think this "breaks the foundation of the game" stuff is hyperbolic nonsense. Now, I don't think that it's good to resort to damage bonuses that are highly specific to a race (though ultimately, I don't find it to be so different compared to spells that are highly specific to a race, so long as the unit itself is not race-specific). But there's a difference between "not good" and "utterly unacceptable." And I find your slippery slope argument to be similarly hyperbolic. Having a bonus vs. shields doesn't mean that they'd start modifying research times or damage bonuses vs. specific units. By that logic, giving a flexible damage bonus at all (rather than SC1's global "all concussive does 25% vs small" style) inevitably leads to units with individual damage bonuses against other specific units. The thing is we DO have units with individual damage bonuses against other specific units. All the +bonus vs light, armored, massive, psionic, biological is actually that. However this is now a new ground with +damage vs race which for me is way over the line. EDIT: Just a couple of final words. With all the bonus vs unit type and then vs race (because unit type was not enough) and maybe later research time modification vs each race (which indeed might be a slippery slope argument) at the end of the day, there is one thing that is true regardless: There must to be a line somewhere. For me Blizzard is way over the line with the spore and mine changes.
When I see +35 damage vs Protoss in a patch note, I will agree with you. But +35 damage vs shields is perfectly acceptable. Who knows, in legacy of the void they might give reapers plasma shields. At which point widow mines do bonus damage to reapers.
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On February 09 2013 08:03 i)awn wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 07:53 Thieving Magpie wrote:On February 09 2013 07:48 i)awn wrote:On February 09 2013 06:43 MstrJinbo wrote:On February 09 2013 06:29 i)awn wrote:On February 09 2013 06:17 awesomoecalypse wrote:
In BW, shields took full damage from every attack, regardless of unit type, meaning that shields would take a lot more damage in many cases from attacks than health would--their interaction with enemy attacks was therefore significantly more complicated than it was in WoL, where shields in terms of damage taken are no different from other health apart from a different armor rating. Bonus damage vs shields may be a change from WoL, but its not unprecedented in SC history. It is still unprecedented. It is completely different actually since shields took that "extra damage" from all other units. There was no units with a bonus attack vs shields and others without, it was all units had "bonus attacks vs shields" which is significantly different as the latter mechanic doesn't matter much because the amount of shield a unit has is balanced around the damage it will take. The baneling does a weird amount of damage to buildings. Seems like some odd tweak to the armor type thing to make it possible for zergs to baneling bust Protoss and terrans. I don't see how a tweak to the damage of the widow mine to one shots gateway units but not queens is unprecedented. How can you not see it? It's very simple, a unit damaging attack is doing more damage to one race and not the other. It completely breaks the basic foundation of the game. There is a reason that such changes, that can "easily" fix a lot of three way balance problems were avoided; up until now when the developers became so desperate before the launch date that they actually resorted to this technique. The spore + damage vs biological is not much better since zerg is the only race with bio fliers. Next thing we might have is void rays doing less damage to shields, you know because they might be a problem in PvP. After that maybe Blink research time will be different depending on whom you're playing against, gonna be longer vs terran and shorter vs Zerg. Here is balance getting fixed the easy way. When developers use these techniques it only means they are avoiding bigger problems that they need to fix. EMP deals 100 damage to shields.... this does 35... Um.... Uh.... ??????????????????????????????????????????? EMP is a unit ability and not a unit attack. EMP only deals damage to shields and not to the armor. EMP deals no damage at all to zerg or terran. EMP removes only energy and shields which are both "energy" in essence and are both rechargeable. EMP is not a unit damaging attack again.
The WM 'attack' is considered an ability as it isn't affected by armor nor things like hardened shell. Seeing as we are talking specifically about the +35 dmg to shields, that doesn't do damage to the armor, nor to terran and zerg.
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Yeah, + damage vs shields and + damage vs protoss is very different. Because it will do reduced damage once the shields are gone.
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I understand that some people are a little lost about the overlord speed, but I actually think that overlord speed was moved to hatch tech for zergs to be able to deal with widow mines more effectively.
Muta ling bane is not cost effective vs mines; but once you have overlords floating around it becomes a different story.
I hope the spore changes in combination with the infestor nerf is sufficient to prevent zvz from being a muta vs muta war.
Unlike what some people are saying; I believe it makes a huge difference; it's usually the first few mutas that make the difference vs the non-muta player.
Only thing that is missing is a hydra buff vs air (not vs ground). Once that is done, I think the skytoss issue vs zerg will be fixed.
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United States7483 Posts
On February 09 2013 08:44 DeCoup wrote:
Yeah, + damage vs shields and + damage vs protoss is very different. Because it will do reduced damage once the shields are gone.
Mechanically it is different, philosophically it is not the case.
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On February 09 2013 09:06 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 08:44 DeCoup wrote:
Yeah, + damage vs shields and + damage vs protoss is very different. Because it will do reduced damage once the shields are gone. Mechanically it is different, philosophically it is not the case.
No they are not the same philosophically either. Blizzard has often used damage modifiers to tweak balance this is no different
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On February 09 2013 09:06 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 08:44 DeCoup wrote:
Yeah, + damage vs shields and + damage vs protoss is very different. Because it will do reduced damage once the shields are gone. Mechanically it is different, philosophically it is not the case.
Then why are people not in arms of the +100 AoE damage to protoss that Ghosts have?
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On February 09 2013 09:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On February 09 2013 08:44 DeCoup wrote:
Yeah, + damage vs shields and + damage vs protoss is very different. Because it will do reduced damage once the shields are gone. Mechanically it is different, philosophically it is not the case. Then why are people not in arms of the +100 AoE damage to protoss that Ghosts have?
people like to whine, no matter what the patch is, there is always a group that decides that it is horrible and that typically say "I aint buying HOTS bliz now"
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On February 09 2013 09:32 SuperYo1000 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 09:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On February 09 2013 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On February 09 2013 08:44 DeCoup wrote:
Yeah, + damage vs shields and + damage vs protoss is very different. Because it will do reduced damage once the shields are gone. Mechanically it is different, philosophically it is not the case. Then why are people not in arms of the +100 AoE damage to protoss that Ghosts have? people like to whine, no matter what the patch is, there is always a group that decides that it is horrible and that typically say "I aint buying HOTS bliz now"
I know that--but I do understand their contempt. Their mistake is that they don't realize *why* they're upset.
An EMP shutting down shields makes sense flavor wise. So when a Ghost/Science Vessel blasts an EMP and drains all shields and energy it makes complete sense because that's what we imagine an EMP doing.
A missile shot from the ground does not make sense as isolated shield damage. Let's say for arguments sake that that missile drains 35 shields instead of deals 35 damage to shields. Why doesn't it affect energy the way emp does? Even Feedback "drains" shields (mostly because shields take the damage first when you cast feedback on a protoss unit) so the relationship makes sense.
Let me put it this way. If instead of saying "+35 damage to shields" it simply cast a tiny emp at the target location draining 35 shields and 35 energy--people would not freak out because it would make sense to them.
They mistakenly think that their problem with it is that it is unprecedented when in reality its the weakest of the "anti-shield" abilities out there. The problem they have is that they can't grokk why it works the way it does.
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We can view the spore bonus damage as a bonus damage vs biological. We can view the +shield damage of the WM as a bonus damage vs shields. The truth is the spore now has bonus damage vs zerg and the WM has bonus damage vs Protoss. "We already have armor modifiers then why not race modifiers" is not a valid argument.
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On February 09 2013 09:50 i)awn wrote:
We can view the spore bonus damage as a bonus damage vs biological. We can view the +shield damage of the WM as a bonus damage vs shields. The truth is the spore now has bonus damage vs zerg and the WM has bonus damage vs Protoss. "We already have armor modifiers then why not race modifiers" is not a valid argument.
Technically, this is not true.
In 2v2, a P/Z team can use phoenixes to lift up biological units that are in range of a Spore Crawler and the Spore Crawler *will* attack those biological units with the extra +15 damage whether or not the lifted unit is a zealot or a marauder.
The WM also deals no extra damage if you've depleted the units shields (say with an EMP)
Even EMP is much closer in execution as an anti-protoss effect.
So no, these are not anti-race effects.
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On February 09 2013 09:40 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 09:32 SuperYo1000 wrote:On February 09 2013 09:29 Thieving Magpie wrote:On February 09 2013 09:06 Whitewing wrote:On February 09 2013 08:44 DeCoup wrote:
Yeah, + damage vs shields and + damage vs protoss is very different. Because it will do reduced damage once the shields are gone. Mechanically it is different, philosophically it is not the case. Then why are people not in arms of the +100 AoE damage to protoss that Ghosts have? people like to whine, no matter what the patch is, there is always a group that decides that it is horrible and that typically say "I aint buying HOTS bliz now" I know that--but I do understand their contempt. Their mistake is that they don't realize *why* they're upset. An EMP shutting down shields makes sense flavor wise. So when a Ghost/Science Vessel blasts an EMP and drains all shields and energy it makes complete sense because that's what we imagine an EMP doing. A missile shot from the ground does not make sense as isolated shield damage. Let's say for arguments sake that that missile drains 35 shields instead of deals 35 damage to shields. Why doesn't it affect energy the way emp does? Even Feedback "drains" shields (mostly because shields take the damage first when you cast feedback on a protoss unit) so the relationship makes sense. Let me put it this way. If instead of saying "+35 damage to shields" it simply cast a tiny emp at the target location draining 35 shields and 35 energy--people would not freak out because it would make sense to them. They mistakenly think that their problem with it is that it is unprecedented when in reality its the weakest of the "anti-shield" abilities out there. The problem they have is that they can't grokk why it works the way it does.
I do agree with what you have said, there is one more thing I would like to add. EMP does not deal damage against zerg or Terran. It does no damage at all. So we don't have one unit that is doing different damage to different races. You can say that it deals 0 damage to one race and 100 to the other but in practice the EMP is not being used at all vs zerg or Terran (not for the sake of damaging at least); WM is actually doing damage vs Terran and vs Zerg and it's actually being used like any other damaging unit that deals damage vs other units regardless of race. Except now it is dealing damage vs all units with some extra vs Protoss. So what does that mean? That means that we can have units that deal more damage vs specific races.
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On February 09 2013 09:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 09:50 i)awn wrote:
We can view the spore bonus damage as a bonus damage vs biological. We can view the +shield damage of the WM as a bonus damage vs shields. The truth is the spore now has bonus damage vs zerg and the WM has bonus damage vs Protoss. "We already have armor modifiers then why not race modifiers" is not a valid argument. Technically, this is not true. In 2v2, a P/Z team can use phoenixes to lift up biological units that are in range of a Spore Crawler and the Spore Crawler *will* attack those biological units with the extra +15 damage whether or not the lifted unit is a zealot or a marauder. The WM also deals no extra damage if you've depleted the units shields (say with an EMP) Even EMP is much closer in execution as an anti-protoss effect. So no, these are not anti-race effects.
Well the tag doesn't say +bonus vs Protoss or +bonus vs Zerg you might as well use that argument. I'm not really just arguing for the sake of labeling things I'm arguing for the sake of unit damage modifiers now having specific race modifiers which is over the line for me not because I like to worship some line but because this approach has significant implications in terms of match up design. In different match ups units are actually not the same ones anymore; they are modified for each match up which is a poor design. At the end of the day things will work and people might have no problem with it and they are free. I'm not forcing people to hate that balance approach; who am I to tell them what to like?
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On February 09 2013 10:07 i)awn wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 09:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On February 09 2013 09:50 i)awn wrote:
We can view the spore bonus damage as a bonus damage vs biological. We can view the +shield damage of the WM as a bonus damage vs shields. The truth is the spore now has bonus damage vs zerg and the WM has bonus damage vs Protoss. "We already have armor modifiers then why not race modifiers" is not a valid argument. Technically, this is not true. In 2v2, a P/Z team can use phoenixes to lift up biological units that are in range of a Spore Crawler and the Spore Crawler *will* attack those biological units with the extra +15 damage whether or not the lifted unit is a zealot or a marauder. The WM also deals no extra damage if you've depleted the units shields (say with an EMP) Even EMP is much closer in execution as an anti-protoss effect. So no, these are not anti-race effects. Well the tag doesn't say +bonus vs Protoss or +bonus vs Zerg you might as well use that argument. I'm not really just arguing for the sake of labeling things I'm arguing for the sake of unit damage modifiers now having specific race modifiers which is over the line for me not because I like to worship some line but because this approach has significant implications in terms of match up design. In different match ups units are actually not the same ones anymore; they are modified for each match up which is a poor design. At the end of the day things will work and people might have no problem with it and they are free. I'm not forcing people to hate that balance approach; who am I to tell them what to like?
The thing is, there really is very little room to expand on this "new design approach". Protoss are the only race with a unique health type, which is why the fact that it is +damage vs shields, rather than +damage vs protoss is significant. If it was +damage vs Protoss, then you could imagine, say, +damage vs Terran. But there is no Terran or Zerg equivalent of shields. Maybe more units will be added with +damage vs shields (tbh I kinda hope so, because I'm a bit nostalgic for the BW dynamic where shields went down super quickly), but I don't see how Blizzard can use this approach to do the same for Terran or Zerg. The closest they can get is something like +damage vs bio, which would affect zerg the most but really affects all races.
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There is an equivalent of '+ damage to shields'.
'+ damage to biological/air'.
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Russian Federation9 Posts
You know, this "+ shields" thing is absolutely terrible. And I'm sure blizz will fix that. Yeah, u may compare this with EMP, but (!) EMP has unique beautiful design, that just "drains energy". It is logical, simple and sci-fi based thing. Here we see completely different story: There is a balance hole. They need to fix it, and just abuse all the logic and game philosophy. Why should WM deal more damage against shields? That's weird and stupid.
That's kind of balance fix, that spoils all the story. Better lack in raw linear balance sometimes, but gain better logic in such an epic game.The same way I feel about siege upgrade, it's sweet buff, but terrible step back in terms of uniqueness.
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4713 Posts
I'm not sure why all of you are so up in arms about the extra damage vs specific things like shields or bio, if you need to complain so much about this then where is all the bitching regarding archons? Shouldn't archons technically be the biggest offender here given that it hard counters an entire race (all zerg units are bio)?
Really bonus damage vs specific armor types or affix types is no problem at all for balancing purposes, you guys should actually be complaining at the fact that Blizzard is buffing and nerfing shit left and right based on some of their bad decisions from earlier on.
First Blizzard resolves to nerf infestors, and for good reason, they want to promote better gameplay, however at the same time they also try to buff other zerg units, to encourage more gameplay revolving around them. Thus you end up with the muta buff, to both speed and regen, however now all of a sudden ZvZ becomes a potential mess because catching and killing mutas is near impossible, which leads into the entire clusterfuck of problems we have now where they have ping ponged nerfs and buffs back and forth, ranging from the speed and range of the fungal projectile to now the spore buff.
One might argue that if they hadn't buffed mutas so extremely they wouldn't have had too also try and buff so extremely in other areas, and in fact I would find it totally reasonable to revert the muta speed buff and halve the current regen, it would still leave mutas useful, but they wouldn't be so retardedly strong in ZvZ and you wouldn't need so many stupid other fixes to balance them.
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Am I getting this right people. Are you whining about the WM + shield damage not being a pretty enough solution?! When in ever did "We have a balance issue, the best way to fix it is this" not become the right way of doing it? Do you have a better solution at hand that would effectively do the same thing?
Please. I'd rather have a fun and balanced game as opposed to one which you personally think is "right".
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On February 09 2013 08:56 Ulargg wrote:
I understand that some people are a little lost about the overlord speed, but I actually think that overlord speed was moved to hatch tech for zergs to be able to deal with widow mines more effectively.
Muta ling bane is not cost effective vs mines; but once you have overlords floating around it becomes a different story.
I hope the spore changes in combination with the infestor nerf is sufficient to prevent zvz from being a muta vs muta war.
Unlike what some people are saying; I believe it makes a huge difference; it's usually the first few mutas that make the difference vs the non-muta player.
Only thing that is missing is a hydra buff vs air (not vs ground). Once that is done, I think the skytoss issue vs zerg will be fixed.
Why throw 100/100 early into overlord speed against widow mines when you can build a spore crawler for 125 minerals?
I just can't see a reasonable justification for it being hatch tech. The first 200 gas Zerg uses is crucial in every matchup. Depending how it is used it can win or cost Z the game.
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On February 09 2013 11:25 sagefreke wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 08:56 Ulargg wrote:
I understand that some people are a little lost about the overlord speed, but I actually think that overlord speed was moved to hatch tech for zergs to be able to deal with widow mines more effectively.
Muta ling bane is not cost effective vs mines; but once you have overlords floating around it becomes a different story.
I hope the spore changes in combination with the infestor nerf is sufficient to prevent zvz from being a muta vs muta war.
Unlike what some people are saying; I believe it makes a huge difference; it's usually the first few mutas that make the difference vs the non-muta player.
Only thing that is missing is a hydra buff vs air (not vs ground). Once that is done, I think the skytoss issue vs zerg will be fixed.
The first 200 gas Zerg uses is crucial in every matchup. Depending how it is used it can win or cost Z the game.
Hav u considered that the game might change? You know, cuz it's a different game with new units and therefore new timings, new builds, new everything.
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EPT
