The problems is not that you can drop 4 with a single medivac... They are way too powerful for only 100 minerals and they hardcounter the basic core units of protoss and zerg. Once a terran mixes hellbats into his army you can only build some spines or cannons as your mineraldump which is just silly. Especially protoss relies heavily on their zealots in any ground army composition. And as some people already said: Lings don't just trade bad against hellbats. They don't trade at all, it's a one-sided slaughterfest.
They build fast, you can build them 2 at a time, they are lost cost, don't need any further upgrades and hardcounter the core units of protoss and zerg.
Besides: We already had quite some time to play against them. It's not a question of "figuring out an answer to hellbat drops". Even if you see it coming and even if you are prepared you still take damage in almost ever single case. They are stupidly easy to (ab)use, have almost no risk attached to them and can instakill the enemy if he is not 100% prepared. One hellbat-drop during a skirmish can end the game right there and you literally have 2 seconds from spotting the red dot on the minimap to losing all your workers. And even if you transfer your worker away in time he can speedboost and drop right on top of the workertrain.
Hell, just compare oracle harass to hellbat drops. Oracles come at a higher cost, are much easier to shut down, take more APM to babysit and don't really do well in a direct combat. Oracles are a niche units. Hellbats on the other hand are a general purpose unit that just happen to be a perfect worker annihilation-tool aswell.
On February 12 2013 05:39 Nezgar wrote: The problems is not that you can drop 4 with a single medivac... They are way too powerful for only 100 minerals and they hardcounter the basic core units of protoss and zerg. Once a terran mixes hellbats into his army you can only build some spines or cannons as your mineraldump which is just silly. Especially protoss relies heavily on their zealots in any ground army composition. And as some people already said: Lings don't just trade bad against hellbats. They don't trade at all, it's a one-sided slaughterfest.
They build fast, you can build them 2 at a time, they are lost cost, don't need any further upgrades and hardcounter the core units of protoss and zerg.
Besides: We already had quite some time to play against them. It's not a question of "figuring out an answer to hellbat drops". Even if you see it coming and even if you are prepared you still take damage in almost ever single case. They are stupidly easy to (ab)use, have almost no risk attached to them and can instakill the enemy if he is not 100% prepared. One hellbat-drop during a skirmish can end the game right there and you literally have 2 seconds from spotting the red dot on the minimap to losing all your workers. And even if you transfer your worker away in time he can speedboost and drop right on top of the workertrain.
Hell, just compare oracle harass to hellbat drops. Oracles come at a higher cost, are much easier to shut down, take more APM to babysit and don't really do well in a direct combat. Oracles are a niche units. Hellbats on the other hand are a general purpose unit that just happen to be a perfect worker annihilation-tool aswell.
I will agree that their stats are a bit too strong, but it has less to do with their cost and more with how they're designed. Remember it does take an armory as well as tech time to get to a factory + reactor + starport for Hellbat drops, despite their stats being borderline OP as you said, if not completely OP.
On February 12 2013 04:28 Rabiator wrote: Logically these "bio-mech" units should be roughly the size of Marauders (maybe a tiny bit larger) and consequently Marauders should be 4 slots as well then? A fully loaded Medivac of stimmed Marauders can tear down buildings pretty fast, so why didnt they adjust that when they had the chance? "Fixing" the Battle Hellion this way is completely ridiculous but demonstrates once again how they add "special solutions" just to get their crappy design working instead of fixing the basic flaws of the design first. So sad.
Are we really arguing that the Marauders and Hellbats look about the same size compared to the size of the medivac? This is how you have decided you frame your latest “flawed design” post. The Thor is the size of the factory and looks like a bloated suitcase under the medivac. How does it carry 2 tanks, when they are large than the medivac? And more importantly….
…how the fuck does a colossi fit into the flying glass umbrella???
Well, the warp prism deconstructs units it is carrying into atomic memory and then reconstructs them, so a colossus isn't a problem. (that's the lore anyway). On the other hand, why can't it carry 30 colossi or 100 zealots? =p
Hellbats DO NOT hard counter lings. They hard counter ling FLANKS. Hard countering lings implies that the lings can do literally nothing but die. Unlike BFH hellions, which DO hard counter lings (beat them in a directly microed engagement, out in the open and increase with effectiveness as they engage), hellbats do not hard counter lings. They are completely incapable of chasing them and completely incapable of holding map control against them. A crowd of lings can easily run by a few hellbats before they can even move. Building 10 hellbats does not suddenly render 30 lings useless. It makes them harder to use in a direct engagement, but exactly why is this an issue?
They do not hard counter mass numbers of roaches. They are completely useless against air. They pretty much can only harass worker lines when backed up by one quarter their number of medivacs - a unit that is ONLY good for THEM. They are a good mech unit and one I am happy to play with. This whole obsession with its bio and mech flags is not only asanine but also completely ignores why it even has those flags in the first place.
The whole "we can't use our mineral dumps anymore". Protoss is especially guilty of this complaint. Hello? You know a little unit called the immortal? Prior to HoTS it froze out AN ENTIRE BUILDING and you are complaining that it is no longer efficient to throw 35 chargelots from a forward pylon into an entrenched mech army? Zerg mineral dumps..? When has that been important lategame, exactly?
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 have no idea how David Kim got his job. This clearly shows how little knowledge he has about the game. Quite sad really. It's like they don't even understand the fact that speed booster + the battle hellions is almost the core of the issue. But, alas, we cannot expect anything anymore.
I assume we'll start to see a whole new meta game evolve around cheesing T before they cheese you in early HotS. It's already happening in PvT. Zergs will find some way I'm sure. -sigh- ;(
I don't see why anyone would bother to deal with the hellbat drops since all they need to do is wait and blizzard will pretty execute the nerf that they are planning to do. Personally I'd rather see that medivac speed boost as an upgrade. That in it self would be a pretty huge nerf to hellbat drops. But suppose that is one way to deal with the issue.
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 have no idea how David Kim got his job. This clearly shows how little knowledge he has about the game. Quite sad really. It's like they don't even understand the fact that speed booster + the battle hellions is almost the core of the issue. But, alas, we cannot expect anything anymore.
I assume we'll start to see a whole new meta game evolve around cheesing T before they cheese you in early HotS. It's already happening in PvT. Zergs will find some way I'm sure. -sigh- ;(
But doesn't their suggested nerf imply that they do recognized speed booster + hellbats as the problem? If you can only carry 2, you can't do nearly as much damage.
On February 12 2013 04:28 Rabiator wrote: Logically these "bio-mech" units should be roughly the size of Marauders (maybe a tiny bit larger) and consequently Marauders should be 4 slots as well then? A fully loaded Medivac of stimmed Marauders can tear down buildings pretty fast, so why didnt they adjust that when they had the chance? "Fixing" the Battle Hellion this way is completely ridiculous but demonstrates once again how they add "special solutions" just to get their crappy design working instead of fixing the basic flaws of the design first. So sad.
Are we really arguing that the Marauders and Hellbats look about the same size compared to the size of the medivac? This is how you have decided you frame your latest “flawed design” post. The Thor is the size of the factory and looks like a bloated suitcase under the medivac. How does it carry 2 tanks, when they are large than the medivac? And more importantly….
…how the fuck does a colossi fit into the flying glass umbrella???
Well, the warp prism deconstructs units it is carrying into atomic memory and then reconstructs them, so a colossus isn't a problem. (that's the lore anyway). On the other hand, why can't it carry 30 colossi or 100 zealots? =p
Colossi are larger and therefore take up more atomic memory (I'm just guessing but that's probably what Blizz would say).
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 have no idea how David Kim got his job. This clearly shows how little knowledge he has about the game. Quite sad really. It's like they don't even understand the fact that speed booster + the battle hellions is almost the core of the issue. But, alas, we cannot expect anything anymore.
I assume we'll start to see a whole new meta game evolve around cheesing T before they cheese you in early HotS. It's already happening in PvT. Zergs will find some way I'm sure. -sigh- ;(
Lol. PvT was a rush match up for Protoss LONG before the hellbat buff. Blink stalker all-ins, VR all-ins, and proxy oracles.
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 have no idea how David Kim got his job. This clearly shows how little knowledge he has about the game. Quite sad really. It's like they don't even understand the fact that speed booster + the battle hellions is almost the core of the issue. But, alas, we cannot expect anything anymore.
I assume we'll start to see a whole new meta game evolve around cheesing T before they cheese you in early HotS. It's already happening in PvT. Zergs will find some way I'm sure. -sigh- ;(
Yes and then players will figure out how to defend those cheeses, then players will figure out new cheeses and learn how to defend those.
Its called the evolution of the metagame. Without it, SC2 would be incredibly dull. Cheeses should be annoying, powerful and irritating to deal with unless you've encountered them before. Stupid tactics should always have a chance to work purely because they are stupid.
It is a problem when a race can build 200 supply of one unit and utterly crush everything that comes their way. Fortunately that will never happen to the hellbat because it can only fire out to two range. It is a problem when a composition is literally impossible to beat. Fortunately, that is not terran mech which has countless counters and a large number of units which are still not being fully employed against it (hi viper).
In a specific situation what you do is employ a nerf that effects the least amount of units. People are complaining about medivac speed when all medivac speed really does is mean you can't render a base immune to medivac drops with one infestor and a spore. What I really think they are complaining about is that they can't defend drop centred play. Mass drops are going to be a possibility for terran, since their army is more mobile. That is a GOOD thing. It's a micro heavy strategy. Being available early has no real impact on the game because the speed boost just allows a medivac to get into position and potentially drop A unit or two before being shot down.
On February 12 2013 04:28 Rabiator wrote: Logically these "bio-mech" units should be roughly the size of Marauders (maybe a tiny bit larger) and consequently Marauders should be 4 slots as well then? A fully loaded Medivac of stimmed Marauders can tear down buildings pretty fast, so why didnt they adjust that when they had the chance? "Fixing" the Battle Hellion this way is completely ridiculous but demonstrates once again how they add "special solutions" just to get their crappy design working instead of fixing the basic flaws of the design first. So sad.
Are we really arguing that the Marauders and Hellbats look about the same size compared to the size of the medivac? This is how you have decided you frame your latest “flawed design” post. The Thor is the size of the factory and looks like a bloated suitcase under the medivac. How does it carry 2 tanks, when they are large than the medivac? And more importantly….
…how the fuck does a colossi fit into the flying glass umbrella???
Well, the warp prism deconstructs units it is carrying into atomic memory and then reconstructs them, so a colossus isn't a problem. (that's the lore anyway). On the other hand, why can't it carry 30 colossi or 100 zealots? =p
Colossi are larger and therefore take up more atomic memory (I'm just guessing but that's probably what Blizz would say).
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 have no idea how David Kim got his job. This clearly shows how little knowledge he has about the game. Quite sad really. It's like they don't even understand the fact that speed booster + the battle hellions is almost the core of the issue. But, alas, we cannot expect anything anymore.
I assume we'll start to see a whole new meta game evolve around cheesing T before they cheese you in early HotS. It's already happening in PvT. Zergs will find some way I'm sure. -sigh- ;(
Yes and then players will figure out how to defend those cheeses, then players will figure out new cheeses and learn how to defend those.
Its called the evolution of the metagame. Without it, SC2 would be incredibly dull. Cheeses should be annoying, powerful and irritating to deal with unless you've encountered them before. Stupid tactics should always have a chance to work purely because they are stupid.
It is a problem when a race can build 200 supply of one unit and utterly crush everything that comes their way. Fortunately that will never happen to the hellbat because it can only fire out to two range. It is a problem when a composition is literally impossible to beat. Fortunately, that is not terran mech which has countless counters and a large number of units which are still not being fully employed against it (hi viper).
In a specific situation what you do is employ a nerf that effects the least amount of units. People are complaining about medivac speed when all medivac speed really does is mean you can't render a base immune to medivac drops with one infestor and a spore. What I really think they are complaining about is that they can't defend drop centred play. Mass drops are going to be a possibility for terran, since their army is more mobile. That is a GOOD thing. It's a micro heavy strategy. Being available early has no real impact on the game because the speed boost just allows a medivac to get into position and potentially drop A unit or two before being shot down.
Respond faster and you'll be fine.
I don't think we're playing the same game if the above is your ultimatum to this unit.
The best place to look to see if the Hellbat/Speed-Medivac needs some adjustment is TvT. Just look at the recent series between Ty and Innovation*. Base trades that starts of with 4 Hellbats and a Medivac. That's just silly. Four (if not five) of the games decided by who killed the most with their Hellbats.
It does look like it's partially the mobility the medivac gives that's the problem. The other issue might be the damage to units like Roaches at the same time as we have really high survivability. It just seems a bit to high for a 100 mineral unit is easily massed and just murders light units.
On February 12 2013 06:07 blackbrrd wrote: The best place to look to see if the Hellbat/Speed-Medivac needs some adjustment is TvT. Just look at the recent series between Ty and Innovation*. Base trades that starts of with 4 Hellbats and a Medivac. That's just silly. Four (if not five) of the games decided by who killed the most with their Hellbats.
It does look like it's partially the mobility the medivac gives that's the problem. The other issue might be the damage to units like Roaches at the same time as we have really high survivability. It just seems a bit to high for a 100 mineral unit is easily massed and just murders light units.
If it costed 25-50 gas to turn into a Hellbat, I doubt much would change anyway. It's a little more all-in but Hellbat drops would still be extremely strong.
The HP of the unit however is too high IMO which I talk about in the post mentioned in the OP. It's just extremely good all around except for it's range, and even that is compensated by the supporting units it can go with and the crazy high HP it has.
That said, I still think that if this gets implemented it's a great change for Hellbat drops. It's much more difficult to drop right on top of enemy workers and insta-gib them since you can only drop up to two instead of four right on top.
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 have no idea how David Kim got his job. This clearly shows how little knowledge he has about the game. Quite sad really. It's like they don't even understand the fact that speed booster + the battle hellions is almost the core of the issue. But, alas, we cannot expect anything anymore.
I assume we'll start to see a whole new meta game evolve around cheesing T before they cheese you in early HotS. It's already happening in PvT. Zergs will find some way I'm sure. -sigh- ;(
Yes and then players will figure out how to defend those cheeses, then players will figure out new cheeses and learn how to defend those.
Its called the evolution of the metagame. Without it, SC2 would be incredibly dull. Cheeses should be annoying, powerful and irritating to deal with unless you've encountered them before. Stupid tactics should always have a chance to work purely because they are stupid.
It is a problem when a race can build 200 supply of one unit and utterly crush everything that comes their way. Fortunately that will never happen to the hellbat because it can only fire out to two range. It is a problem when a composition is literally impossible to beat. Fortunately, that is not terran mech which has countless counters and a large number of units which are still not being fully employed against it (hi viper).
In a specific situation what you do is employ a nerf that effects the least amount of units. People are complaining about medivac speed when all medivac speed really does is mean you can't render a base immune to medivac drops with one infestor and a spore. What I really think they are complaining about is that they can't defend drop centred play. Mass drops are going to be a possibility for terran, since their army is more mobile. That is a GOOD thing. It's a micro heavy strategy. Being available early has no real impact on the game because the speed boost just allows a medivac to get into position and potentially drop A unit or two before being shot down.
Respond faster and you'll be fine.
I don't think we're playing the same game if the above is your ultimatum to this unit.
It's not worth it arguing with these guys man. People let their bias cloud their judgment and aren't capable of making an objective analysis of a unit, let alone an entire matchup. The problem isn't the drops, it's the Hellbat. A drop is a drop is a drop. You counter it the same way you counter any other drop, regardless of what it has in it; you scout for it, you try to see it coming, you try to intercept it or at least anticipate it. This works against any kind of drop, but it doesn't work against the Hellbat drop. Why? Because Hellbats kill workers quicker than almost any unit kills THEM. It takes an Immortal 7 shots to kill ONE Hellbat. A Hellbat can beat a Stalker 1 on 1. Dropping Hellbats ON TOP OF Stalkers, Immortals, Roaches, Thors, Seige Tanks, etc. is a common tactic, and as silly as it sounds, it WORKS. They can not only decimate an entire mineral line before being killed, but against pretty much anything but an air unit, they can then take a lot of combat units down with them. I don't have a problem with them hard-countering Zealots, Zerglings, and Marines into oblivion; it's gratuitous and excessive, but I really don't. I have a problem with them hard-countering Immortals and Archons, and soft-countering Stalkers and Roaches. The only units that solidly beat them are air units. If they got a health nerf and were "Armored" units and Stalkers, Marauders, Immortals, Void Rays etc. did bonus damage to them, the issue would probably be fixed. I think this will be the only ultimate solution that will fix the problem, because while the drops ARE a big issue, they aren't the ONLY issue. Hellbats are too strong in straight up engagements. Far too strong. They trade WAY more than cost-effectively against Stalkers, they trade more cost-effectively than they should with Roaches, and they absolutely ANNIHILATE Immortals beyond what any hard counter should be, especially considering that intuition would say that the absolute reverse SHOULD be the case for the good of the metagame and for the good of balance. I have strong opinions on this unit, as I have seen the worst of it in the hands of some of the best players, and I have seen what this unit will eventually do; devolve all Terran matchups into something ridiculous and broken, with units beating units they should never be beating, units losing to things they should counter, and base-trades galore. Make no mistake, it must be fixed before Blizzard gets TOO used to it as is, a la the Colossus, because after some time we will hit a point of no return, where they will steadfastly refuse to change it for fear of the potential effects it could have on the metagame. After some time out of the beta-phase, we have seen that the Blizzard balance team becomes averse to great change.
On February 12 2013 04:28 Rabiator wrote: Logically these "bio-mech" units should be roughly the size of Marauders (maybe a tiny bit larger) and consequently Marauders should be 4 slots as well then? A fully loaded Medivac of stimmed Marauders can tear down buildings pretty fast, so why didnt they adjust that when they had the chance? "Fixing" the Battle Hellion this way is completely ridiculous but demonstrates once again how they add "special solutions" just to get their crappy design working instead of fixing the basic flaws of the design first. So sad.
Are we really arguing that the Marauders and Hellbats look about the same size compared to the size of the medivac? This is how you have decided you frame your latest “flawed design” post. The Thor is the size of the factory and looks like a bloated suitcase under the medivac. How does it carry 2 tanks, when they are large than the medivac? And more importantly….
…how the fuck does a colossi fit into the flying glass umbrella???
Well, the warp prism deconstructs units it is carrying into atomic memory and then reconstructs them, so a colossus isn't a problem. (that's the lore anyway). On the other hand, why can't it carry 30 colossi or 100 zealots? =p
Colossi are larger and therefore take up more atomic memory (I'm just guessing but that's probably what Blizz would say).
They need to download more RAM.
They go with a bad ISP and a shitty router so the upload is capped
Terran already got completely screwed in wol because of constant whining and never trying to play better from players which resulted in way too many nerfs/buffs. Lets hold off for awhile and wait for people to improve as much as they did in wol and im sure alot of the issues will disappear with time.
Even with camera hotkeys and perfect vision between your bases it's impossible to split up your army fast enough to defend a speed medivac battle hellion drop without spending like 5x the resources of his drop to defend it.
The fact that David Kim cannot see the difference between marine drops and battle hellion drops is mindblowing. Marine drops can't erase a mineral line instantly after dropping. Marine drops can be stopped without sending half of your army to defend them. Marines even have to injure themselves to deal proper damage!
Yes; you shouldn't be doomed to lose a game just because you let ONE drop get by and into your mineral line; their insane health pool and the toughness that comes with being "bio" units and thus not getting dealt bonus damage by the ONLY units they don't basically one-shot means they inevitably stay long enough to roast entire mineral lines, which sadly doesn't take long at all. They even deal well with static defenses, like Photon Cannons and Spine Crawlers. Even if you shut down 90% of drops, the 10% that do get through will deal insane economic damage in the time it takes your army to respond. It's a problem.
EPT
