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http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7894179582
We're hearing your feedback on Hellbat drops being overpowered. We've also been watching all the tournament games and as many highest level pro streams as possible.
They're really powerful, but we're still seeing a lot of players who really haven't had the time to learn to deal with them yet.
For example, in last week's MLG qualifier matches, a top end korean Zerg player lost 3 of 4 matches just to Hellbat drops. However, in this specific series, we were definitely seeing flaws in play. The Zerg player had roaches in 1 single ball and moved to defend vs. each dropship coming into multiple locations. Against this type of Zerg defense, just the normal Marine drops would have done just as much damage.
If a nerf is needed, we'd probably increase the cargo space on Hellbats to 4 so that we can only affect this specific scenario. We'll do our best to determine what's correct for this strategy, but please remember we're looking into every major community concern and carefully analyzing them.
I feel like they're not looking very closely at how the Hellbat affects TvT Mech vs Bio, which I elaborate on in post #4 in the thread.
At the same time, I think this will address the problem of extremely strong Hellbat drops though, while if you want to do a Hellbat/MM drop you can drop them in Hellion mode and then transform as the Zerg starts to respond.
I think that this is a good first step towards making the Hellbat a balanced unit, after they made it overpowered. Assuming they make the change, of course.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
Weird change. Why not just disable unit unload when speed boost is turned on?
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On February 12 2013 02:24 Existor wrote:
Weird change. Why not just disable unit unload when speed boost is turned on?
Because you can't turn it off manually, making drops very annoying to pull off if you want to use the speed boost.
Besides, the speed boost is just icing on the already extremely strong Hellbat drops.
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shut up man, they doing the best they can, This is what the community does, WHINE WHINE WHINE . Then blizzard comes in and nerfs, the strategy is effectively removed from the game. Less Variation in gameplay results. Boring stagnant metagame upon us.
I really hope blizzard gives the middle figur to all mass whiners. This crap about nerfing all the time destroys the game. The approach they might take ( about more cargo capacity for hellbats) is sound decision that wont completely eliminate the strategy but will weaken it. And THATS THE POINT.
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Does this mean their supply cost and the space they take up in medivacs would be different numbers???
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On February 12 2013 02:27 johnny123 wrote:
shut up man, they doing the best they can, This is what the community does, WHINE WHINE WHINE . Then blizzard comes in and nerfs, the strategy is effectively removed from the game. Less Variation in gameplay results. Boring stagnant metagame upon us.
I really hope blizzard gives the middle figur to all mass whiners. This crap about nerfing all the time destroys the game. The approach they might take ( about more cargo capacity for hellbats) is sound decision that wont completely eliminate the strategy but will weaken it. And THATS THE POINT.
You can still do Hellbat drops, you just can't drop four Hellbats; only enough to one-shot some workers, not enough to one-shot the better part of a mineral line. The cost is still fairly low, too.
It's not like they're nerfing the entirety of the Hellbat- only this part.
On February 12 2013 02:29 NukeD wrote:
Does this mean their supply cost and the space they take up in medivacs would be different numbers???
Yes. It's similar to how the Siege Tank takes up four cargo spaces while it costs 3 supply, and the Thor takes up 8 while it costs 6 supply.
Considering how beefy Hellbats are compared to Hellions I think it can be explained lore-wise.
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I agree. Blizzard knows better than anybody what to do. Quit whining and begging for nerfs.
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I suppose the nerf cargo would also affect hellion drops?
But that would vastly downpowering the damage of hellion drops. 3 hellion shots kill one worker. Now you would need 2 medivac to do the same potential damage as pre-nerf would.
I am still not sure if the medivac healing is really needed. The medivac healing only benefit bio style now mixed with hellbats and hellbats are a little too strong for the cost imo.
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On February 12 2013 02:31 ETisME wrote:
I suppose the nerf cargo would also affect hellion drops?
But that would vastly downpowering the damage of hellion drops. 3 hellion shots kill one worker. Now you would need 2 medivac to do the same potential damage as pre-nerf would.
I am still not sure if the medivac healing is really needed. The medivac healing only benefit bio style now mixed with hellbats and hellbats are a little too strong for the cost imo.
No, just Hellbats. They didn't say anything about Hellions.
Medivac healing is a bit separate from Hellbats one-shotting mineral lines, and now I really don't think it matters that much at all since there are only two Hellbats per Medivac now.
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larvas and eggs should be immune vs fire attacks. They die almost as drones.
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Some widow mines in a good place with a viking can shut down a medivac. You can scout it very easily with a reaper of a scan .I thing that in TvT the drop hellbat is pretty easy to defend when it's scout.
We need a little more time to know if it's seriously unstoppable in TvZ and TvP. But for me if a nerf should be done , the cargo space is the better choice.
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I remember watching Soulkey vs Last, and yes it looked like Soulkey hadn't prepared for these types of drops at all, as mentioned in the TL recap he's probably busy preparing for his GSL match. Last clearly had practised HotS specific build orders over Soulkey, and Soulkey in his defence did not bother attempting to split roaches.
All we gotta do is wait and be patient...I personally wouldn't mind a Hellbat nerf with a siege tank buff though 
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hellbat drops used to be harsh because people were caught off guard with how much damage they do even when you have forces in your mineral line to defend people treated them like standard hellion drops. They arent so bad anymore though.
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Hellbat drops are an exciting part of the game and should not be removed from the game
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On February 12 2013 02:36 Dingodile wrote:
larvas and eggs should be immune vs fire attacks. They die almost as drones.
Eggs have 200 HP, and Larvae can be morphed into Drones if you need to spend them or die quickly, so I don't see why this is a huge issue.
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On February 12 2013 02:39 Supert0fu wrote:
Hellbat drops are an exciting part of the game and should not be removed from the game
It's not being removed, just nerfed. It's unsure how much weaker it will be, remember that the first two Hellbats did still do large amounts of damage- the additional two made it a bit ridiculous though.
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United States7166 Posts
My problem with hellbats has never been the drops, though I do think the medivacs coming with the boost by default is a little much (as many have suggested, an upgrade makes more sense).
I just think any unit that completely hard counters another one is poor design.
It'd be different if there was micro that you could do to reduce the effectiveness (like marines vs banelings, split vs clumped).. but there's nothing like that for lings vs hellbats unfortunately, they just get dominated incredibly hard. At least with blue-flame hellions, if you surrounded them you could kill them all because their HP wasn't that high and their splash isn't as effective vs a ling surround, though still lose more in Units Lost tab.
It's similar to how hydras vs colossus function..due to the way the colossus attack is designed, unit-splitting micro is ineffective, they're going to die no matter what you do. I much prefer the other directional line-attack, that lurkers had in BW. There if you A-moved your marines would all get melted as they run in, but if you split them up it drastically improved their effectiveness.
A year ago, I'd really been hoping they'd rework the colossus in HotS. IMO it's the unit that holds back the Protoss matchups the most (once the colossus/army count gets high enough, it all but forces all races to go air, making the matchups very 1-dimensional and stale).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I don't want to have to make other units besides the zergling vs hellbats. You already want to make other units besides lings vs blue flame hellions for example, it's just at least they have some use vs them on creep. Lings vs hellbats however are almost useless, especially if they have a medivac.
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On February 12 2013 02:45 Zelniq wrote:
My problem with hellbats has never been the drops, though I do think the medivacs coming with the boost by default is a little much (as many have suggested, an upgrade makes more sense).
I just think any unit that hard counters another one is poor design.
It'd be different if there was micro that you could do to reduce the effectiveness (like marines vs banelings, split vs clumped).. but there's nothing like that for lings vs hellbats unfortunately, they just get dominated incredibly hard. At least with blue-flame hellions, if you surrounded them you could kill them all, though still lose more in Units Lost tab, because their HP wasn't that high and their splash isn't as effective vs a ling surround.
It's similar to how hydras vs colossus function..due to the way the colossus attack is designed, unit-splitting micro is ineffective, they're going to die no matter what you do. I much prefer the other directional line-attack, that lurkers had in BW. There if you A-moved your marines would all get melted as they run in, but if you split them up it drastically improved their effectiveness.
A year ago, I'd really been hoping they'd rework the colossus in HotS. IMO it's the unit that holds back the Protoss matchups the most (once the colossus/army count gets high enough, it all but forces all races to go air, making the matchups very 1-dimensional and stale).
Blizzard would disagree; they think you should just learn to play the game and produce hard counters (roach or something, i dunno)
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On February 12 2013 02:45 Zelniq wrote:
My problem with hellbats has never been the drops, though I do think the medivacs coming with the boost by default is a little much (as many have suggested, an upgrade makes more sense).
I just think any unit that hard counters another one is poor design.
It'd be different if there was micro that you could do to reduce the effectiveness (like marines vs banelings, split vs clumped).. but there's nothing like that for lings vs hellbats unfortunately, they just get dominated incredibly hard. At least with blue-flame hellions, if you surrounded them you could kill them all, though still lose more in Units Lost tab, because their HP wasn't that high and their splash isn't as effective vs a ling surround.
It's similar to how hydras vs colossus function..due to the way the colossus attack is designed, unit-splitting micro is ineffective, they're going to die no matter what you do. I much prefer the other directional line-attack, that lurkers had in BW. There if you A-moved your marines would all get melted as they run in, but if you split them up it drastically improved their effectiveness.
A year ago, I'd really been hoping they'd rework the colossus in HotS. IMO it's the unit that holds back the Protoss matchups the most (once the colossus/army count gets high enough, it all but forces all races to go air, making the matchups very 1-dimensional and stale).
I think that the biggest reason this is true is because of their large health pool, which I touch on in the post I mentioned in the OP. It lets Hellbats stay alive for so long that they just keep on firing versus the Zerglings even though they are doing tons of damage, it just isn't enough especially with Medivacs healing them.
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I'm a Terran, current TvT doesn't bother me at all, and I have to say hellbats taking 4 slots in medivac would make sense 
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EPT
