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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
The problem is, the helibat isn't even a true mech unit. It's just a firebat that comes out of the factory. Without the tank being buffed mech play really isn't happening. Instead of marine tank, it's just firebat tank. Different units, same army, still not mech.
On February 12 2013 02:31 BlackPride wrote: I agree. Blizzard knows better than anybody what to do. Quit whining and begging for nerfs.
False, blizzards track records is atrocious and has getting worse with each passing year. Its like all the smart people left Blizzard or something.... wait pretty sure that's what happened/happening. It took WoL over 3 years to get to the dilapidated state it is in now, D3 was a COMPLETE failure, don't even get me started on WoW.
They are lucky they are the only ones in the game actually doing real RTS games for eSports or people might have an actual option! and go there instead
Why don't they just take away the biological tag? They're not fast enough to chase down workers in that mode anyway, it's not like they're going to kill much if anything if you pull away when you see it on the mini map. The part that annoys me is the healing.
This sounds like a smart change that might actually fix hellbat drops while still keeping them as an option. I like it and it should quickly be tested in beta. There is not much time left in HotS beta, they need to tune down skytoss a little, have one to two weeks to validate the changes were effective and -while not yet perfect- it might be in good enough state to release.
Their approach is interesting to make hellbats cargo 2, that for sure would be quite a big nerf, but medivac speed is still a problem.
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 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.
Well said well said.
Why didn't they try reavers instead of boring a-move colossus.. I think their ego is too high to acknowledge that broodwar units are far superior.
And hellbats, agree, are just slow boring unit which nullifies core zerg unit - zergling.
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
The problem is, the helibat isn't even a true mech unit. It's just a firebat that comes out of the factory. Without the tank being buffed mech play really isn't happening. Instead of marine tank, it's just firebat tank. Different units, same army, still not mech.
I've seen recently TheStC playing some beautiful TvP BW-style mech with careful mine usage, tanks, hellbats and viking/raven support.. It was surprisingy effective and entertaingin, go check his vods on twitch. Also, Tank currently is in a good position relatively. Of course there are hard counters for both races avaiable, but it's not like Immortal has range 10 and Viper's Blinding Cloud takes 1hour to wear off. Widow Mines in it's current state are very effective against Protoss even later in the game, there are some devastating pushes you can do. For me, the real issue in TvP is Protoss air. Hopefully they are going to lower their damage, increase supply, or lesser their health, they are just pain to deal with.
I love how Dayvie brings up a ZvT... Why not bring up Innovation vs TY, a TvT where Hellbat drops dominated?
Doesn't anyone remember when every Terran built tons of BFH's in TvT and just tried to kill all the other sides workers/Marines? It didn't matter if your first 3 Hellion drop/runbys failed, you only needed the fourth to succeed to win the game. It was the only viable strategy in TvT until BFH's were nerfed. This is almost exactly the same. There is a reason we go to history class in school... people need to learn to see things comparatively to the past.
And that's why Blizzard doesn't need to wait to find out if it is overpowered. Something needs to be done now.
I think this change is really cool. I like that Hellbat drops are nerfed, but the change I like more is the fact that Terran's now have the choice of loading up two Hellbats and drop them, or four normal Hellions, transforming them, and harassing like that. It allows for more options for players, and you're faced with the dilemma that if their army comes back and you still have Hellbats, then they all won't fit in the Medivac, forcing the Terran to then make a sacrifice, while simultaneously rewarding the player who is aware enough to see the army coming, transform back into Hellions, and load up.
On February 12 2013 03:24 Foxxan wrote: It is things like these that makes the game fun. Now you need smart defence to effectively defend against something
More decision, more skill. Not just drone like a robot, then mass units. That is not skill
So much cry about things like these, this is what strategy is about afterall
yeah. I wish they would just return to 40second warpgate research and 1supply/2armor roaches. So much fun. Opponents had to stop building workers at 10, not just 1rax expand every game. *sarcasm*
On topic. Could be interesting, but looks somewhat weird. Such a cheap unit with 4cargo...
I weep; Blizzard releases a perfectly reasonable statement with a perfectly reasonable suggestion and people get mad and one guy even manages to bring some whine about D3 and WoW into it.
On February 12 2013 02:45 Zelniq wrote: 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 honestly feel this way too - I know there have always been people unhappy with the Colossus but I really think more pro players should've made a stink about it. Combining the Void Ray and Pheonix changes, it really seems like the Colossus has been forced out of the equation in PvP which is fine by me, but it gives them some space to actually do a good redesign of the unit if they wanted. It also seems in nearly all match-ups the VR and Pheonix changes combined with the infestor nerf have made a hard counter unit like the Tempest useless.
As to the suggested changes for the Hellbat, I honestly think they're good changes.
On February 12 2013 02:36 Dingodile wrote: larvas and eggs should be immune vs fire attacks. They die almost as drones.
agreed, Huskystarcraft actually had some commentary on this in one of his recent videos. 3-attack Hellbats will 1-shot Larva, and I'd assume 2-shot them without upgrades.
considering the extremely tight cluster that mineral lines, drones, larva, and hellbats tend to be in, this is WAY too strong against Zerg opponents, as it not only kills their UNITS, but also their PRODUCTION capabilities...
On February 12 2013 02:36 Dingodile wrote: larvas and eggs should be immune vs fire attacks. They die almost as drones.
agreed, Huskystarcraft actually had some commentary on this in one of his recent videos. 3-attack Hellbats will 1-shot Larva, and I'd assume 2-shot them without upgrades.
considering the extremely tight cluster that mineral lines, drones, larva, and hellbats tend to be in, this is WAY too strong against Zerg opponents, as it not only kills their UNITS, but also their PRODUCTION capabilities...
Zerg already has a pretty fantastic counter to getting larvae sniped; it's called macro
Honestly the only nerf I think is really needed for the Hellbat is one that should be the most obvious... Remove the Damn Biotag from them... Was a stupid idea from the start to have them turn into a bio unit and let medivacs heal them. Stop them from being healed and players might be able to kill them before they roast entire mineral lines.
I haven't played vs them much but watching a lot of these games I can really see where blizzard is coming from, players just don't seem to react properly(or in some cases at all) against Hellbat drops. Let players tinker around with build counters and wait and see. Early on in WoL I think they were entirely to trigger happy with nerfs and nerfing units into oblivion so I'm kind of happy they are pausing and actually waiting on this one.
On February 12 2013 03:41 SgtCoDFish wrote: I weep; Blizzard releases a perfectly reasonable statement with a perfectly reasonable suggestion and people get mad and one guy even manages to bring some whine about D3 and WoW into it.
i don t see the "perfeclty reasonable suggestion" sorry
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
Not touching the Siege Tank or other units related to Mech play is a dumb excuse for not nerfing a unit which is almost breaking a matchup and turning it into Mech vs Mech every game, IMO.
This change would be kind of odd cus people would just put 4 hellions into a medivac then transform them afterwards as necessary. It buys a little time though at least for the opponent, but still kind of an awkward, poor way to 'fix' a problem.
On February 12 2013 04:05 Zelniq wrote: This change would be kind of odd cus people would just put 4 hellions into a medivac then transform them afterwards as necessary. It buys a little time though at least for the opponent, but still kind of an awkward, poor way to 'fix' a problem.
You wouldn't be able to drop right on top of workers anymore though, not with more than two Hellbats, which is a pretty big nerf to Hellbat drops IMO. Especially since workers move a lot faster than Hellbats.
Not saying that it'll be completely balanced but I still think it's a very good change.
On February 12 2013 04:05 Zelniq wrote: This change would be kind of odd cus people would just put 4 hellions into a medivac then transform them afterwards as necessary. It buys a little time though at least for the opponent, but still kind of an awkward, poor way to 'fix' a problem.
Having to transform them after you drop is another couple of seconds to pull your workers away before they get murdered. That'd go a long way to dealing with the problem.
On February 12 2013 04:05 Zelniq wrote: This change would be kind of odd cus people would just put 4 hellions into a medivac then transform them afterwards as necessary. It buys a little time though at least for the opponent, but still kind of an awkward, poor way to 'fix' a problem.
What would be your suggestion then?
Keep in mind Hellbat in it's current form is really what makes people want to try mech TvP. I think it's a good nerf. It's not another "Oh, Reapers are insane, let's nerf them to oblivion to make sure no one uses them ever"..
I can see removing bio flag from Hellbat as another possibility.
I'd prefer that simply hellbat cannot enter a medivac at all. Whenever you try they transform into hellion first before loading. Would make more sense for me.
On February 12 2013 04:05 Zelniq wrote: This change would be kind of odd cus people would just put 4 hellions into a medivac then transform them afterwards as necessary. It buys a little time though at least for the opponent, but still kind of an awkward, poor way to 'fix' a problem.
I wouldn't be so sure, it's those kinds of mechanical idiosyncrasies that made BW so good. Imagine combining one hellbat with two hellions so that one could fire while the others morphed.
Agreed 100% on this suggestion. Hellbat drops themself are fine, it's just that 4 hellbats that early in the game with medivacs are too hard to deal with unless you have godlike control. 2 hellbats at a time would be better.
On February 12 2013 04:14 Stow.Wif wrote: I'd prefer that simply hellbat cannot enter a medivac at all. Whenever you try they transform into hellion first before loading. Would make more sense for me.
Yeah, that'd be a terrible idea. How would it make sense when a thor can enter a medivac but a hellbat can't?
Also, it would reduce the amount of hellbat/medivac speedboost micro that can be done. One of the issues now is that, after workers or whatever get away from the hellbats, you can pick them back up and fly them to their targets that can no longer escape. This might be the most level-headed balance ideas from Blizzard that I've seen.
On February 12 2013 04:14 Stow.Wif wrote: I'd prefer that simply hellbat cannot enter a medivac at all. Whenever you try they transform into hellion first before loading. Would make more sense for me.
Yeah, that'd be a terrible idea. How would it make sense when a thor can enter a medivac but a hellbat can't?
Well, Thor don't really ENTER the medivac. I guess that 2 hellbat folded under the medivac could be cool too.
On February 12 2013 04:12 Zelniq wrote: good points. it just seemed strange to me to have a unit that can have 2 different cargo sizes.
Having packed a suitcase or two in my day, some things with the same fit better when they are configured it different ways. This is not really shocking at all for me and I think a fine solution to a possible problem.
On another note, the bio tag is weird, but medivacs lose a lot of value with nothing to heal. Its a weird solution, but one that I can get behind.
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.
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.
The units are not to scale. Hellions are cars/buggies, yet the cockpit could not logically fit a driver which is about the size of a civilian from the campaign. Now think of how big a transformer is compared to a guy in a big suit. I think that it's a heck of a lot bigger, while in Hellion mode it packs in more easily since it's relatively sleek and flat in comparison.
It seems really contrived for hellbats to take up as much cargo as a siege tank, when hellions are only half that. I find it odd they don't add an upgrade for the medivac speed boost ability, it would add a fair bit of delay to this tactic. Maybe they feel terran already has too many upgrades, they also removed the siege upgrade.
On February 12 2013 02:36 Dingodile wrote: larvas and eggs should be immune vs fire attacks. They die almost as drones.
agreed, Huskystarcraft actually had some commentary on this in one of his recent videos. 3-attack Hellbats will 1-shot Larva, and I'd assume 2-shot them without upgrades.
considering the extremely tight cluster that mineral lines, drones, larva, and hellbats tend to be in, this is WAY too strong against Zerg opponents, as it not only kills their UNITS, but also their PRODUCTION capabilities...
Zerg already has a pretty fantastic counter to getting larvae sniped; it's called macro
I think you are asking too much from Zerg players.
Jokes aside, i really don't think that this is the right way to go. One of the things that keeps the game entertaining is how a buff/nerf might change the game aside from the primary reason for the change. Admittetly the Queen range buff did not recieved much love from the community, but it did change Zerg much more than anybody would have expected, and it is stuff like that, that keeps the game from getting stale.
I really hope that Blizzard would refrain from patching units in a way, that will only change a very specific strategy.
Bad idea imo, it just makes it more confusing, especially for new players. Find another way to balance it, if they have to switch medivac speed boost to the medivac upgrade.
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.
while not nearly as bad as the warhound, i think the numbers on hellbat are just flat out overtuned for a reactorable 100 mineral unit
when i saw they removed blueflame in one of the latest patches and buffed the normal damage of the hellbat above blueflame level i was just puzzled and still am
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???
I rather have them changing medivac boost, or whatever you call it. Have it take up energy when you use it like cloak or have it cost 25 energy for 5 seconds of boost with cooldown. The way it is now it makes drops very unpredictable. There is also no trade off for speed, you can be fast with drops and heal units. Players should be able to make a choice: do I want to use speed and throw off my opponent or do I want to do a sustained attack and heal units. You shouldn't be able to do both with one medivac
Okay, is it just me or does the hellbat make no sense whatsoever? I mean, it is a unit which is weaker but more mobile in its mech and armored form, and sturdier but less mobile in its bio form. And now it's even supposed to be bigger in its bio form than in its mech form... I cannot be the only one who is seriously bugged because of this...? <.<
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.
Burn
Oh yeah, can anyone hazard a guess to who the Zerg was?
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.
On February 12 2013 04:44 JustPassingBy wrote: Okay, is it just me or does the hellbat make no sense whatsoever? I mean, it is a unit which is weaker but more mobile in its mech and armored form, and sturdier but less mobile in its bio form. And now it's even supposed to be bigger in its bio form than in its mech form... I cannot be the only one who is seriously bugged because of this...? <.<
I as really focused on the fact it was an awesome, trasnforming, flame shooting robot/car, but that is just me. All the "bio/mech" arguments are just for people focused what unit tags it has.
On February 12 2013 04:44 JustPassingBy wrote: Okay, is it just me or does the hellbat make no sense whatsoever? I mean, it is a unit which is weaker but more mobile in its mech and armored form, and sturdier but less mobile in its bio form. And now it's even supposed to be bigger in its bio form than in its mech form... I cannot be the only one who is seriously bugged because of this...? <.<
Gameplay and balance comes before logic.
Why don't battlecruisers take up the whole screen? How can tiny marines shoot them down? It doesn't need to make sense.
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 you seriously trying to imply that four stimmed marauders in a medivac is remotely overpowered? Because you are comparing it to the Hellbats, in the context of them possibly being overpowered. Also 8 marines and 4 marauders ( regardless of upgrades ) both tear down buildings quite quickly, and there is no significant difference between their DPS against buildings (unless perhaps you're looking at TvP super late game where protoss has +3 shields).
Also that's not logic, a person in a power suit is as big as a person in a vehicle? They might be close, but there's no "logic", it's all up to the lore. Units aren't their realistic size in the game either.
Every post you post just seems to be you hating on everything they do. You're criticizing how they're adding "special solutions" ? So you don't want them to fix the game? Assuming you think BW is better in design than SC2, you do realize that not everything made sense in BW either? A zealot took 2 cargo spaces while a vulture also took 2. I'm pretty sure a vulture is bigger than a zealot. I guess since the cargo space isn't exactly realistic nor proportional, they used bad "special solutions" to balance BW.
Edit: Even better examples by Plansix regarding size of units.
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
Now that's a bit of an overstatement, don't you think? It's true that Hellbats are an essential addition to a meching terran, BUT as the game progresses hellbats became ''cheaper'', in a sense that mass MULES and reactors make them quite dispensable. Terran can lose a BIG chunk of his/hers mech army and still set up a decent defensive line, in time to remax. For their price, Hellbats are damn good. If I were Blizz I'd ask gas for the Hellions/Hellbats and maybe nerf the gas price for other mech unit - widow mine/tank.
These drops melt workers pretty fast, and with the boost sometimes it is hard to react fast enough even if you see it comes to get the workers moved out of the way.
However, I don't want them nerfing this type of play, it is fun to watch and fun to execute.
Perhaps there is a way that the shot cycle from the hellbat can be delayed when the unit is initially dropped. It seems like they shoot almost instantly once unloaded and that is the moment where an extra second to a good player paying attention can help the drop do less damage, but as it stands now even if you are paying attention it still isn't enough time to react.
If they change the load capacity then I think nobody messes with the drops anymore and you've removed something from the game that is new and interesting.
Terran needs things that make the race fun to play and are strong, but they always seem to miss the mark going either to strong or to weak.
…how the fuck does a colossi fit into the flying glass umbrella???
Because the colossus is transformed into pure energy and transported that way, afaik.
I am going to call BS on that whole thing and say it is a product of poor design. Then, I am going to use words like fluid, elegant, sensible, logical and majestic to describe the way it was done in BW(ignoring the fact that BW had no colossi and it has nothing to do with the topic). I will then claim that BW had better ways to solve the problems, even though the same stupid crap was in BW too. Then, I will make some more vague statements about positional game play followed by defenders advantage. I will then close my argument by saying Blizzard is clueless, while providing not a single fact to back up any of my claims.
I feel that statement should prove you wrong in every way. I mean, we are talking about a magic, flying space umbrella that can carry people in some from of magic thought web. So why should I have to use evidence to back up any of my claims, since it is a powered by dreams and rainbows?
That’s right, they travel through space as wishes and happy thoughts and you guys complain that the Hellbat takes up more room when it is a robot.
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.
On February 12 2013 06:34 Glurkenspurk wrote: 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!
Or instead of running away your workers all together you could try to spread them out,what I see the most is that players just move all their workers at once, of course the speedy hellbat medivac drop will catch the clumped up workers and decimate them.
As terran player I agree hellbats drops need some attention and proposed change makes sense. Going to Hellbat itself as a unit I belive that slight nerf to base damage with keeping vs light as same level would be needed (from 18+12 to 15+15). Blizzard refused to buff tanks directly in lategame and chose hellbats and widow mines to be "core" of mech army with tanks being "support" like high templars in toss's deathball when you have max 6. People are free to disagree with such approach however I think we should wait and see, maybe that version of mech is going to be more fun to watch and play.
On February 12 2013 06:34 Glurkenspurk wrote: 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!
His point was that with the level of control the Zerg player had, the Terran might as well have gone for Marine drops and done a similar amount of damage winning the game either way.
In other words, the Zerg got out played.
Not saying that Hellbat drops aren't OP, but he has a point.
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???
thats true for a lot of units i dont get your point
also i think if hellbat drops are really that overpowered this might be a good way to balance them, although it is counter-intuitive that only 2 hellbats fit in a dropship
On February 12 2013 06:34 Glurkenspurk wrote: 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!
Or instead of running away your workers all together you could try to spread them out,what I see the most is that players just move all their workers at once, of course the speedy hellbat medivac drop will catch the clumped up workers and decimate them.
How do you spread your workers fast enough to stop a ninja fast medivac from dropping on top of your probes?
You'd have to see the medivac coming, stop everything else you're doing, and do the stop-f1 trick super well to prevent him from being retardedly cost efficient.
At least against other drops you can salvage against a small mistake, but one small mistake against these things just makes you auto lose.
I still think the entire hellion/hellbat design is completely stupid anyway.
First and foremost, obviously they need to be armored units; too many supposed counters like Stalkers and Immortals die to them in throves. After they lose the bio designation, we will see if an HP nerf is still warranted. But please, at least make Hellbats armored. It seems so god damned obvious.
On February 12 2013 06:58 LF[Media] wrote: First and foremost, obviously they need to be armored units; too many supposed counters like Stalkers and Immortals die to them in throves. After they lose the bio designation, we will see if an HP nerf is still warranted. But please, at least make Hellbats armored. It seems so god damned obvious.
No. No. A hundred and ninety-nine thousand times, no. Last thing the game needs is immortalls rolling over mech play. It would make mech just as bad as wings. The immortal would basically be the protoss warhound.
And how are you losing stalkers to hellbats? They have like triple the range and a huge speed advantage.
On February 12 2013 06:58 LF[Media] wrote: First and foremost, obviously they need to be armored units; too many supposed counters like Stalkers and Immortals die to them in throves. After they lose the bio designation, we will see if an HP nerf is still warranted. But please, at least make Hellbats armored. It seems so god damned obvious.
No. No. A hundred and ninety-nine thousand times, no. Last thing the game needs is immortalls rolling over mech play. It would make mech just as bad as wings. The immortal would basically be the protoss warhound.
And how are you losing stalkers to hellbats? They have like triple the range and a huge speed advantage.
Stalkers have awful DPS; they can't kill the Hellbats fast enough before one of three things happens:
1) The Stalkers stop kiting and just run because the Protoss is busy doing macro. This leads to 3) 2) The Stalkers get cornered by a fast unit or prepositioned unit like some Widow Mines, Banshees, or other unit, leading to the death of the Stalkers. 3) The Stalkers get cornered while trying to defend a base, such as the Protoss' third, a probe line, a tech building, or otherwise.
Hellbats are tough units.
I agree that making Hellbats armored would be terrible, though I still think they should be nerfed in some way.
Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
First and foremost, obviously they need to be armored units; too many supposed counters like Stalkers and Immortals die to them in throves. After they lose the bio designation, we will see if an HP nerf is still warranted. But please, at least make Hellbats armored. It seems so god damned obvious.
Uh... The point of Hellbats *was* to act as a tough frontline unit against Stalkers and Immortals, in order to make Mech versus Protoss more viable. Your suggestion would be similar to making Zealots armored, so "supposed counters" like Marauders, Siege Tanks and Stalkers can take them down too. Hellbats were not intended to be hard-countered by Stalkers and Immortals. Anyway, making Hellbats armored would hardly solve the issue being discussed here, the Hellbat drop in TvZ and TvT. (Apparently it is not being discussed for TvP, if you notice.)
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
Ehh, what? I don't see anyone actually massing hellbats like they would mass roaches. The problem comes from medivac mobility combined with the splash for killing workers.
Why would directly compare two units that are used in such radically different ways? They cannot be used like roaches, and never will be due to how terran production works.
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
Ehh, what? I don't see anyone actually massing hellbats like they would mass roaches. The problem comes from medivac mobility combined with the splash for killing workers.
Why would directly compare two units that are used in such radically different ways? They cannot be used like roaches, and never will be due to how terran production works.
What Catz is saying is that if you gave Zerg dropships or made overlords heal, that would be PRECISELY how roaches would be used. And it would be undeniably broken.
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
I like how if CatZ says it, they become truth bombs. This is how facts are found folks, on semi-professional player's streams. I mean, this argument is one step above "It was on the TV, so it must be true".
Conclusion: Marines are IMBA IMBA IMBA and tanks are way to weak plus the energy bars on ghosts really ruin the game since immortals have feedback. Blizzard tries to make Wow into Diablo and they will buff roaches again.
At least that's the way it feels reading this thread. Or any other Hots thread on here. Why do I keep on doing these mistakes? :/
maybe nerf the hp to 125 so its not that big of a problem in tvt cause they actually get oneshot by windowmines? also for the other matchup i feel like u have indeed to wait how it plays out.
I wish they'd just remove medivacs healing hellbats because it straight up makes no sense. Might not be the nerf people want, but part of the problem I think is just how durable these drops are. There's lots of stuff in the game that will evaporate a mineral line in seconds. Most of it doesn't actually put up a fight against a reasonable defense though.
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
I like how if CatZ says it, they become truth bombs. This is how facts are found folks, on semi-professional player's streams. I mean, this argument is one step above "It was on the TV, so it must be true".
Actually, the argument is true because it's true.
How can you possible rationailize a unit that is cheaper than a roach, does aoe splash, and is healable and droppable at tier1?
Hell, why no make viking healable too? A medivac can already pick them up.
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
Ehh, what? I don't see anyone actually massing hellbats like they would mass roaches. The problem comes from medivac mobility combined with the splash for killing workers.
Why would directly compare two units that are used in such radically different ways? They cannot be used like roaches, and never will be due to how terran production works.
What Catz is saying is that if you gave Zerg dropships or made overlords heal, that would be PRECISELY how roaches would be used. And it would be undeniably broken.
Of course it would be broken since zerg can build insane amounts of roaches and overlords for much less effort. Apples and oranges.
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
I like how if CatZ says it, they become truth bombs. This is how facts are found folks, on semi-professional player's streams. I mean, this argument is one step above "It was on the TV, so it must be true".
Actually, the argument is true because it's true.
How can you possible rationailize a unit that is cheaper than a roach, does aoe splash, and is healable and droppable at tier1?
Hell, why no make viking healable too? A medivac can already pick them up.
What the fuck is tier 1? Starport tech?
I can rationalize it just fine, as long as people can defend from it the unit is fine. A unit can be strong and still balanced as long as the counters exist. I'm not saying its 100% fine in its current state, but most likely will be once they nerf it so that medivacs can only hold 2 at a time.
It will still be dealing AOE, getting healed and will be droppable at "tier 1".
All I will say is that this colossus vs lurker design discussion always makes me think the colossus would be awesome if it shot in a lurker style straight line. They would be so epic when used well and such a failure when used poorly ROFL.
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
Not touching the Siege Tank or other units related to Mech play is a dumb excuse for not nerfing a unit which is almost breaking a matchup and turning it into Mech vs Mech every game, IMO.
Wait, aren`t MEC fans suposed to love BW style always (MEC)siege line vs siege line TvT?
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
Not touching the Siege Tank or other units related to Mech play is a dumb excuse for not nerfing a unit which is almost breaking a matchup and turning it into Mech vs Mech every game, IMO.
Wait, aren`t MEC fans suposed to love BW style always (MEC)siege line vs siege line TvT?
Well, TvT is already siege line across the map + marines all over the place in WoL (like in those games between Innovation and Taeja in the GSL), so I guess it's about equal anyways. As long as tanks remain the main unit and not some silly non-mech mech, it should all be fine and dandy as long as all protosses agree to stop expecting to win anything.
To all the silly whiners in this thread, go be silly else where and stop bringing the quality of TL's forums down.
Hellbats are okay, I think its the medivac that is the real culprit here. You can just keep boosting all over the workers and dropping hellbats on top of them. On the other hand we don't want to nerf shit into the ground when we're still in beta. Making the Hellbat take more space seems like the best possible solution tbh. It would be infinitely harder to get even half the amount of kills.
To all the silly people saying silly things like hellbats kill roaches or stalkers or anything thats not light or melee... well you know what, micro more son, banes kill marines unless you micro and split them, now you'll have to actually micro against hellbats because they're a decent unit now. Unlike before they got their damaged buff and they would only kill lings (not even that good against zealots before).
TL;DR Stop silly whining, Hellbats are good, Blizzard's proposed solution is good.
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
I like how if CatZ says it, they become truth bombs. This is how facts are found folks, on semi-professional player's streams. I mean, this argument is one step above "It was on the TV, so it must be true".
Actually, the argument is true because it's true.
How can you possible rationailize a unit that is cheaper than a roach, does aoe splash, and is healable and droppable at tier1?
Hell, why no make viking healable too? A medivac can already pick them up.
What? How can a strat that requires a unit from the factory (t2), that requires an armory (t2.5) and a starport (t3) considered tier 1?
When I didn't have much experience with this site or with SC, I used to hope that Blizzard would read sites like these in order to gain feedback to balance their game. Anymore, I hope to god that they don't.
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
I like how if CatZ says it, they become truth bombs. This is how facts are found folks, on semi-professional player's streams. I mean, this argument is one step above "It was on the TV, so it must be true".
Actually, the argument is true because it's true.
How can you possible rationailize a unit that is cheaper than a roach, does aoe splash, and is healable and droppable at tier1?
Hell, why no make viking healable too? A medivac can already pick them up.
What? How can a strat that requires a unit from the factory (t2), that requires an armory (t2.5) and a starport (t3) considered tier 1?
Because it's CatZ (and his fans). I don't think any of them would be disappointed if HotS being the Zerg expansion meant that was the only race being played.
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
Not touching the Siege Tank or other units related to Mech play is a dumb excuse for not nerfing a unit which is almost breaking a matchup and turning it into Mech vs Mech every game, IMO.
Wait, aren`t MEC fans suposed to love BW style always (MEC)siege line vs siege line TvT?
Well, TvT is already siege line across the map + marines all over the place in WoL (like in those games between Innovation and Taeja in the GSL), so I guess it's about equal anyways. As long as tanks remain the main unit and not some silly non-mech mech, it should all be fine and dandy as long as all protosses agree to stop expecting to win anything.
The "Mech" mech, the "non-mech" mech, why all the sillines in name, while you can just call it siege tank teran, nice and clear.
As long as i watch (through the replays/casters) more and more HOTS games i get more and more to conclusion: Players don't give a shit about defense. That's it. Greedy zergs are only concerning about more and more expansions. No spines, no spores. Nothing. And then all these whiners come across the forums, with their tears, and yell about something being overpowered. I can't believe blizzard is listening to it... If they are about to nerf helions drop this game doesn't worth a dime. Because in the end we'll get the same everything's_nerfed_WOL_crap with just Bio vs infestors vs 4gate.
On February 12 2013 08:22 Calm_down wrote: As long as i watch (through the replays/casters) more and more HOTS games i get more and more to conclusion: Players don't give a shit about defense. That's it. Greedy zergs are only concerning about more and more expansions. No spines, no spores. Nothing. And then all these whiners come across the forums, with their tears, and yell about something being overpowered. I can't believe blizzard is listening to it... If they are about to nerf helions drop this game doesn't worth a dime. Because in the end we'll get the same everything's_nerfed_WOL_crap with just Bio vs infestors vs 4gate.
It's mostly because if they don't play greedy they die to the Terran greedy play, which is extremely hard to punish considering the new Widow Mine and free siege tech. MMM/Mine pushes are also extremely strong now, whether they be 10:00 timings or 2-2 14-16 minute timings.
On February 12 2013 07:49 Sandermatt wrote: Can't you still drop helions and transform them as they land?
It takes a long time, which gives the other player a lot of time to react. A lot of what makes Hellbat drops so good is that you can boost and land your Hellbats right on top of enemy workers, causing massive damage without any way to reliably dodge- only split as if you would against Banelings.
On February 12 2013 07:58 captainwaffles wrote: To all the silly whiners in this thread, go be silly else where and stop bringing the quality of TL's forums down.
Hellbats are okay, I think its the medivac that is the real culprit here. You can just keep boosting all over the workers and dropping hellbats on top of them. On the other hand we don't want to nerf shit into the ground when we're still in beta. Making the Hellbat take more space seems like the best possible solution tbh. It would be infinitely harder to get even half the amount of kills.
To all the silly people saying silly things like hellbats kill roaches or stalkers or anything thats not light or melee... well you know what, micro more son, banes kill marines unless you micro and split them, now you'll have to actually micro against hellbats because they're a decent unit now. Unlike before they got their damaged buff and they would only kill lings (not even that good against zealots before).
TL;DR Stop silly whining, Hellbats are good, Blizzard's proposed solution is good.
The entire point of the beta is to find issues and discuss them so they can be fixed.
You don't understand the point of betas. It's not whining.
On February 12 2013 07:58 captainwaffles wrote: To all the silly whiners in this thread, go be silly else where and stop bringing the quality of TL's forums down.
Hellbats are okay, I think its the medivac that is the real culprit here. You can just keep boosting all over the workers and dropping hellbats on top of them. On the other hand we don't want to nerf shit into the ground when we're still in beta. Making the Hellbat take more space seems like the best possible solution tbh. It would be infinitely harder to get even half the amount of kills.
To all the silly people saying silly things like hellbats kill roaches or stalkers or anything thats not light or melee... well you know what, micro more son, banes kill marines unless you micro and split them, now you'll have to actually micro against hellbats because they're a decent unit now. Unlike before they got their damaged buff and they would only kill lings (not even that good against zealots before).
TL;DR Stop silly whining, Hellbats are good, Blizzard's proposed solution is good.
The entire point of the beta is to find issues and discuss them so they can be fixed.
You don't understand the point of betas. It's not whining.
To be fair, there are also some people that ignore the change Blizzard is discussing and instead just use this as an opportunity to bash Blizzard.
On February 12 2013 07:58 captainwaffles wrote: To all the silly whiners in this thread, go be silly else where and stop bringing the quality of TL's forums down.
Hellbats are okay, I think its the medivac that is the real culprit here. You can just keep boosting all over the workers and dropping hellbats on top of them. On the other hand we don't want to nerf shit into the ground when we're still in beta. Making the Hellbat take more space seems like the best possible solution tbh. It would be infinitely harder to get even half the amount of kills.
To all the silly people saying silly things like hellbats kill roaches or stalkers or anything thats not light or melee... well you know what, micro more son, banes kill marines unless you micro and split them, now you'll have to actually micro against hellbats because they're a decent unit now. Unlike before they got their damaged buff and they would only kill lings (not even that good against zealots before).
TL;DR Stop silly whining, Hellbats are good, Blizzard's proposed solution is good.
The entire point of the beta is to find issues and discuss them so they can be fixed.
You don't understand the point of betas. It's not whining.
What's going on in this thread is absolutely whining
i equate the hellbats similar to a reaver drop with a speed shuttle. early game can do a lot of damage if you dont react properly, and later on in the game you should have zoned out your base such that a shuttle cant get in.
On February 12 2013 07:21 Defacer wrote: Catz just dropped a bunch of truth bombs on his stream about Hellbats.
He explained that hellbats are essentially 100 mineral, Gasless 'roaches' at tier 1 that can be healed by medivacs. And that in 2v2s, him and Drewbie essentially would just mass roaches and medivacs because they knew how ridiculously OP a timing it would be in the early mid-game
Giving Terrans hellbats is as broken an idea as giving Zerg dropships at tier 1. And Catz basically called bullshit on David Kim, saying anyone that doesn't recognize that should be fired from balancing the game.
I like how if CatZ says it, they become truth bombs. This is how facts are found folks, on semi-professional player's streams. I mean, this argument is one step above "It was on the TV, so it must be true".
Actually, the argument is true because it's true.
How can you possible rationailize a unit that is cheaper than a roach, does aoe splash, and is healable and droppable at tier1?
Hell, why no make viking healable too? A medivac can already pick them up.
Because the last time we listened to non-top-tier pros(and by that we just didn't let people figure out what to do(show with their play) and instead listened to vocal members of the community) the game got completely fucked up and we've been left with the current WOL which is really really boring...
Lets wait and see what pro-players come up with before we jump the gun, limit of 2 per drop ship seems like it could really nerf the potential of the unit.
Hellbats are simply too good compared to other units that costs 100 minerals. Medivac speed boost is also too good given that it requires no upgrades. Why am I not surprised that there is a problem?
I don't understand why there are ANY complaints about the proposed solution. Hellbats as a unit aren't the problem, neither are the medivacs aside from how they combine with this unit. Using Medivacs speed boost to help make up for Hellbats slow base speed is a nice form of synergy that requires micro, so I don't think it should be removed completely, just balanced out a bit.
So the proposed solution sounds awesome.
Complaints about it being healable and droppable are silly. And this is coming from someone who plays Zerg as their main. I think it's awesome for Terran that they have a strong, cheap unit - you can't expect each race not to have their own strengths.
The only potential problem is how strong the drops are early game, and the solution they came up with should be perfect - hurting the early game drops without affecting later game much, and still allowing "hellbat/medivac micro" which in the end should be good for the game, since more micro is always a plus.
People on the other side of the fence complaining that it will hurt the units too much, I disagree with that as well. You can still do the drops just will need double as many medivacs. This means you can still do the same "4 hellbat" drops just 42 seconds later. Nothing too major, just a slight delay, which should even things out a bit, and prevent 4 hellbat drops at 6:30 - instead it would be 7:10'ish, which is more than reasonable. Plus a 2nd medivac = more micro.
On February 12 2013 09:21 i)awn wrote: Hellbats are simply too good compared to other units that costs 100 minerals. Medivac speed boost is also too good given that it requires no upgrades. Why am I not surprised that there is a problem?
Because you don't expect other races to have strong units? I don't know why you're not surprised. It's not like this is being done behind a FE or 3OC build. It's fairly obvious when scouting and it crushes greedy and low unit builds.
I havent been keeping track of all the changes in hots over the past few months (it mostly just gave me a headache and I decided to just wait till the game came out to see how it was) but does anyone else see something wrong with medivacs healing a mechanical unit? It doesn't make any sense...if they can heal hellbats why not heal tanks? Im not sure why they put that in the first place.
On February 12 2013 09:27 RedMosquito wrote: I havent been keeping track of all the changes in hots over the past few months (it mostly just gave me a headache and I decided to just wait till the game came out to see how it was) but does anyone else see something wrong with medivacs healing a mechanical unit? It doesn't make any sense...if they can heal hellbats why not heal tanks? Im not sure why they put that in the first place.
The funny trick is that the hellbat has a bio tag, meanwhile it's mech in its hellion form.
On February 12 2013 09:21 Spyridon wrote: I don't understand why there are ANY complaints about the proposed solution. Hellbats as a unit aren't the problem, neither are the medivacs aside from how they combine with this unit. Using Medivacs speed boost to help make up for Hellbats slow base speed is a nice form of synergy that requires micro, so I don't think it should be removed completely, just balanced out a bit.
So the proposed solution sounds awesome.
Complaints about it being healable and droppable are silly. And this is coming from someone who plays Zerg as their main. I think it's awesome for Terran that they have a strong, cheap unit - you can't expect each race not to have their own strengths.
The only potential problem is how strong the drops are early game, and the solution they came up with should be perfect - hurting the early game drops without affecting later game much, and still allowing "hellbat/medivac micro" which in the end should be good for the game, since more micro is always a plus.
People on the other side of the fence complaining that it will hurt the units too much, I disagree with that as well. You can still do the drops just will need double as many medivacs. This means you can still do the same "4 hellbat" drops just 42 seconds later. Nothing too major, just a slight delay, which should even things out a bit, and prevent 4 hellbat drops at 6:30 - instead it would be 7:10'ish, which is more than reasonable. Plus a 2nd medivac = more micro.
I don't think I saw anybody say it was an unreasonable suggestion. I only see people that, more or less, want the unit removed from the game and those defending the unit.
My preferred solution would be to make it so that the medivac can't turn (or can only turn very sluggishly) while boosting. This would make people need to cancel the boost (via hotkey) to use the medivac to support the drop. Once the boost is cancelled, the cooldown goes into effect, and you won't have a boosting medivac re-dropping hellbats at fleeing workers.
This way the hellbat drop remains strong, but workers will actually have a chance to get away.
This would also prevent the ridiculous animations of a boosted medivac dancing back and forth.
Omg, so much whining. Some of you guys are acting like a new metagame will not require embarassing games.
Here is my zerg opinion so far at my level (plat WoL). Yes, hellbats are very very strong. Almost all terrans seems to build them, so you get good practice pretty fast. Let me give you an example.
I played a game today where I got completely owned. Not by the drops. He dropped both my main and nat, and I responded very fast and pulled my drones at both bases. He picked up to chase them, I split them and microed away. All while i was roach pressuring his base. Then my roaches pop at home, I eventually clean up the hellbats, who are trying to jump between bases. I get some spores up too. I watched the replay, I only lost 6 or so drones. Was so proud.
Still lost imediatelly after that.
He basically went 1-1-1, then added two more rax with tech labs and pushed with a bunch of marauders w a few hellbats infront. I was so taxed for APM that a) I was denied mining with almost all my drones for quite a while and b) I barely could squeeze in a few unit production rounds between the INSANE micro required to run around my drones to escape the super fast medivacs while trying to kill his hellbats with a few roaches, splitting the few I had between nat and main. ETc
So when the frankly not that big push comes, the 10-15 roaches I have out get owned by the marauders. It is not even close. It felt like I would have needed more than twice his supply to survive. I felt I played it as good as I could and still I was owned completely by the follow up push. I watched the replay, and because I was so stressed I did not respond more clearly to the dbl reactor baracks that I actually scouted with my pressure. Basically, I die with larvae and money (just apm was empty for along while, but as I come out I rearrange my base and eco instead of max producing imediatelly). I guess that was on me.
To sum up. It is a sick build for terran. The drop itself can easilly flat out win you the game. If you don't you know that zerg resonse will be very predictable, either 4+ queens or roaches, maybe some spines - all which marauders completely own. And with 2-3 hellbat in support, lings will hardly do much vs the marauders. Since terran is trading moderate apm for eco damage and maximum apm you are safe vs attacks and will be guaranteed to have a macro advantage even though you are extremely aggressive.
Guys, this is an example of what HotS will provide. A dangerous early game where you have to be on your toes, at all times.
WoL early game was non existent, so almost all scouting was about responding to mid game choices and later. Is that the best that can be? No, so there needs to be development.
Ppl whine about boring WoL metagame and stale gameplay where casters have to kill time half the game. How the heck do you think it will change? The only way the meta game will develop significantly in a new game (HotS) is by very good players getting owned until somebody actually gets CREATIVE instead of just copying builds, hurr durr...
Is the hellbat too strong? I don't know, it sure feels like one the stronger units in the game right now in terms of harass, but in a straight up fight it just feels normal and just good in a solid way. Perhaps the new meta will be to have base defense as standard (units/turrets/spores/spines/cannons). Maybee .... zerg will obsess about overlord placement and rush to overlord speed, terran will burn scans before 6 minutes, protoss will focus on base defense before detection or be proactive and just ultra aggressive instead, who knows?
One thing is certain, it will COST you MORE to feel safe in HotS.
For me, turtle air toss is still harder to deal with than hellbat drops. Im frustrated too, but instead of whining about it on in internet posts I'm trying to learn to hit him hard before he cannons up his third too much. Won my two first games today vs air-toss. Had not won even one such game before, since december. At my level sure, but still made me happy. Both where kills before he got the big ball up so I guess that is the new meta in that matchup. Hit timing attacks and drain toss during early and midgame, so if late game becomes neccessary you can atleast enter it on better terms. When you think of it, a chunk of something like that is necessary to evolve from WoL ZvP. Of course, zerg still has to be able to deal with air toss in late late game. We'll see if the new meta will have that eventually or not, I sure hope so.
Regardless. Just let it happen, pain is not necessary.
I can't help to think that after the pros figure all this out it will be copied and all the whiners will be happy.
People so fast to always make changes to Terran... Finally Blizzard telling people to figure it out... Too bad they didn't take the same approach when they removed Snipe from the game.
hellbat drops don't bother me at all, mines kill medivacs in 2 shots anyways lol.
also the change haven't been out for very long, and pros haven't even moved onto this game, so wtf are you guys complaining about (I mean that's what you guys said about infestor in wol for about 3 months)
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.
You do realize that mech is supposed to slaughter bio right? Bio only won against Mech in WoL because of Blizzards bad balancing. In BW mech absolutely slaughtered bio and I think that same change should be implemented in SC2 as well to remove the 1a scenarios and turn the game into a chess match like TvT used to be.
On February 12 2013 09:35 Harbinger631 wrote: My preferred solution would be to make it so that the medivac can't turn (or can only turn very sluggishly) while boosting. This would make people need to cancel the boost (via hotkey) to use the medivac to support the drop. Once the boost is cancelled, the cooldown goes into effect, and you won't have a boosting medivac re-dropping hellbats at fleeing workers.
This way the hellbat drop remains strong, but workers will actually have a chance to get away.
This would also prevent the ridiculous animations of a boosted medivac dancing back and forth.
Lmao. Thank god you aren't designing this game. Its like doing drops while doing things back in your main or controlling two drops at once was already so easy... Now you want to add more micro and attention to it?
I dont understand why Blizzard is answering that! In all games TvP,TvT or TvZ I watched played by Pros,they just dont care about defense!!!!
After 1-1-1 reaching tier 3 the less you expect is to deal some damage and if you fail you remain so far behind...People just must try to learn how to defend.
TvT There is totally possible to go for 1rax FE into 3rax and then go for BIO or Marine Tank and defend it.YOu got the time to build a turret and let some marines to kill the medivac,even kill the Hellbats.
TvP YOu can scout so easy and let stalkers just to snipe the medivac and its done...
TvZ Do Z players know about spores???Queens? Many players are making roaches only to stop hellion harass.If you as Z scout your enemy is going for Hellion or BFH drop,wont you build some roaches? I tried this hellbat drop a lot and only 5 Roaches can deal with it even without micro...
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.
You do realize that mech is supposed to slaughter bio right? Bio only won against Mech in WoL because of Blizzards bad balancing. In BW mech absolutely slaughtered bio and I think that same change should be implemented in SC2 as well to remove the 1a scenarios and turn the game into a chess match like TvT used to be.
Says who? Blizzard? Or just you?
The game that was voted the best of 2012 was a TvT where one player went mech and the other bio (MMA vs Gumiho). Just because BW handled a match-up in a certain way doesn't mean that needs to apply to SC2. Hell, it doesn't even mean that the BW approach was the right one. The more varied playstyles, the better. You can have both mech vs mech chess matches as well as fast-paced bio games.
Hellbats are exactly like blue flame hellions early on wings they do way too much damage too fast. You have no time to react before they wipe out huge clumps of workers for not that much risk. I dont know how anyone can not see it I mean its pretty obvious already they are clearly OP right now. When innovation vs TY is both terrans going hellbat drops every game you know there is a problem and its boring because why would anyone with sense not make hellbats early game? The announcers even said no unit in terms of stats matches up to the hellbat. I guess leave them so I can ladder up in hots with drops every game
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.
You do realize that mech is supposed to slaughter bio right? Bio only won against Mech in WoL because of Blizzards bad balancing. In BW mech absolutely slaughtered bio and I think that same change should be implemented in SC2 as well to remove the 1a scenarios and turn the game into a chess match like TvT used to be.
Says who? Blizzard? Or just you?
The game that was voted the best of 2012 was a TvT where one player went mech and the other bio (MMA vs Gumiho). Just because BW handled a match-up in a certain way doesn't mean that needs to apply to SC2. Hell, it doesn't even mean that the BW approach was the right one. The more varied playstyles, the better. You can have both mech vs mech chess matches as well as fast-paced bio games.
BW Bio got destroyed by mech and by just about any protoss build and yet no one seems to think that was imbalanced anymore. Mech vs Zerg was pretty bad too.
i got into the professional broodwar scene kinda late, i wonder how much QQing about balance and shitty game design was being said back then, then when WOL came out all those same people started pretending that BW was absolute perfection just because they have something new to whine about.
The only problem with hellbats is them + speed medivacs. Hellbats as a unit themselves are fine imo. But the ability to speed boost a medivac over top of maynarding workers is like when TvT was only "who could kill the other guys workers first with blue flame hellions."
Right now, if you put 4 hellbats into a medivac, you can drop two on one side of the worker maynard, and two on the other side, almost guaranteeing you will kill a clump of workers.
Then on top of this you have hellbats being able to be healed by the medivac, which is just bad, and makes archons stronger vs mech in TvP.
So my thoughts:
a) it's good that they wait, lots of players aren't used to Terran actually being able to do anything to them anymore offensively. Zergs are used to droning up to 60, only build queens, cannot be harrassed at all. Guess what guys? Now you can be, build spines if you see this coming, stop playing greedy as fuck.
b) if they decide to nerf it, at least they are doing it in a way that does not make the unit useless or hurt anything else. Making it take up more cargo space seems like a good way to nerf specifically the ability to roast worker lines so fast.
c) REVERT THE HELLBAT TO A MECH UNIT. BATTLE HELLION MOTHER FUCKERS! Seriously! It hurts mech tvp when the battle hellion is bio. Archons essentially have an invisible zealot with them in each attack vs hellbats, which is bad.
d) After you revert the unit to a MECH UNIT, change the name back to "Battle Hellion." Hellbat sounds like some retardedly failed wannabe superhero.
Battle hellion sounds like you just came back from a battle in ancient greece and are ready to fuck your wife.
i dont really understand the point of nerfing cargo space; people would just load up hellions and then transform on drop. sure its a little more micro but essentially the same result.
i dont know the best way to balance this, since hellbats are essentially rape on zerglings, it forces the zerg to go into roaches. anytime a strategy is forced I think it's bad, just like robo opening is almost forced in TvP WoL right now (or onesided banshee gg)
On February 12 2013 10:42 avilo wrote: The only problem with hellbats is them + speed medivacs. Hellbats as a unit themselves are fine imo. But the ability to speed boost a medivac over top of maynarding workers is like when TvT was only "who could kill the other guys workers first with blue flame hellions."
Right now, if you put 4 hellbats into a medivac, you can drop two on one side of the worker maynard, and two on the other side, almost guaranteeing you will kill a clump of workers.
Then on top of this you have hellbats being able to be healed by the medivac, which is just bad, and makes archons stronger vs mech in TvP.
So my thoughts:
a) it's good that they wait, lots of players aren't used to Terran actually being able to do anything to them anymore offensively. Zergs are used to droning up to 60, only build queens, cannot be harrassed at all. Guess what guys? Now you can be, build spines if you see this coming, stop playing greedy as fuck.
b) if they decide to nerf it, at least they are doing it in a way that does not make the unit useless or hurt anything else. Making it take up more cargo space seems like a good way to nerf specifically the ability to roast worker lines so fast.
c) REVERT THE HELLBAT TO A MECH UNIT. BATTLE HELLION MOTHER FUCKERS! Seriously! It hurts mech tvp when the battle hellion is bio. Archons essentially have an invisible zealot with them in each attack vs hellbats, which is bad.
d) After you revert the unit to a MECH UNIT, change the name back to "Battle Hellion." Hellbat sounds like some retardedly failed wannabe superhero.
Battle hellion sounds like you just came back from a battle in ancient greece and are ready to fuck your wife.
That is all.
1# master division on and basically only play grandmasters now. I only play mech and get the most crying from tosses and zergs, the protosses are just plain used to 1aing Mech with immortal zealot archon. the zergs are used to getting an insta win when they get to hive tech. Thats not true anymore and it seems to be giving them quite a bit of trouble, i dont think ill be beating grandmasters in the future once they learn to change their strats so i hope they dont nerf widows or battle hellions, or ravens because of the QQing.
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.
someone mad that their op hell bats may be nerfed soon......Don't insult other people surprised your post have not been warned yet.
On February 12 2013 09:35 Harbinger631 wrote: My preferred solution would be to make it so that the medivac can't turn (or can only turn very sluggishly) while boosting. This would make people need to cancel the boost (via hotkey) to use the medivac to support the drop. Once the boost is cancelled, the cooldown goes into effect, and you won't have a boosting medivac re-dropping hellbats at fleeing workers.
This way the hellbat drop remains strong, but workers will actually have a chance to get away.
This would also prevent the ridiculous animations of a boosted medivac dancing back and forth.
Lmao. Thank god you aren't designing this game. Its like doing drops while doing things back in your main or controlling two drops at once was already so easy... Now you want to add more micro and attention to it?
Nobody's making you use the afterburner on the way to the mineral line. If you want to use that extra surprise factor, you'll have to pay for it with higher apm.
Otherwise, feel free to drop and macro like normal, except this time you'll have afterburners ready for a speedy escape.
Perhaps there is a way that the shot cycle from the hellbat can be delayed when the unit is initially dropped. It seems like they shoot almost instantly once unloaded and that is the moment where an extra second to a good player paying attention can help the drop do less damage, but as it stands now even if you are paying attention it still isn't enough time to react.
This. They should "reaver" it. Hellbat drops would be fine if they didn't instantly melt anything underneath them when dropped. It's almost like banelings would be if Overlords had a cooldown that boosted them to mutalisk speed.
You guys should check out the TL Attack with Demuslim, where InControl and Catz challenge him to beat a Terran GM with just hellbats. He wins in less than ten minutes.
I'm sure that part of the problem is pros and high level players not properly defending against hellbat drops, but the amount of skill and resources a defending player has to employ seems disproportionately high compared to how easy a strategy it is. I've seen guys like IdrA defend against hellbat drops brilliantly (pulling drones pre-emptively, adding spines in his mineral lines).
Maybe the cargo nerf will be fine, but at the same time, couldn't a player just drop hellions and change them into hellbats? Didn't Terrans already have a fantastic unit for harassing drones, called hellions? Weren't hellbats simply intended to help counter mass zealots and lings?
Part of my issue with the hellbat is that it has strayed pretty far from it's original purpose.
The problem with Hellbats, aside from being really strong with medivacs&medivac boost, is that they make hellions pointless to make. I'd rather the hellion be the harass unit and not hellbats so there at least is a reason to use hellions and get blueflame. I liked that the hellbat was meant to be a part of the army and a meat shield for mech but now it's basically an all-purpose hellion.
On February 12 2013 11:08 Defacer wrote: You guys should check out the TL Attack with Demuslim, where InControl and Catz challenge him to beat a Terran GM with just hellbats. He wins in less than ten minutes.
I'm sure that part of the problem is pros and high level players not properly defending against hellbat drops, but the amount of skill and resources a defending player has to employ seems disproportionately high compared to how easy a strategy it is. I've seen guys like IdrA defend against hellbat drops brilliantly (pulling drones pre-emptively, adding spines in his mineral lines).
Maybe the cargo nerf will be fine, but at the same time, couldn't a player just drop hellions and change them into hellbats? Didn't Terrans already have a fantastic unit for harassing drones, called hellions? Weren't hellbats simply intended to help counter mass zealots and lings?
Part of my issue with the hellbat is that it has strayed pretty far from it's original purpose.
So you'd rather pigeonhole the unit and make it completely one-dimensional? I don't know, I think we'd rather be moving away from that sort of mentality.
The problem with Hellbats, aside from being really strong with medivacs&medivac boost, is that they make hellions pointless to make. I'd rather the hellion be the harass unit and not hellbats so there at least is a reason to use hellions and get blueflame. I liked that the hellbat was meant to be a part of the army and a meat shield for mech but now it's basically an all-purpose hellion.
Hellions are still great for map control. Look at the way Terrans in the GSL right now are using 5-8 Hellions to contain creep spread, and keeping them alive way into the midgame to do it. Hellbats have nothing on that.
its a new strat, give it time before you guys make conclusions(remember all the strats everyone thought was op then a few months later no one complained). Good response by blizzard
Finally Blizzard just explains what the players are doing wrong vs "op" strategies. This is preferred to staying silent and nerfing stuff that doesn't need to be nerfed because they see players are just playing incorrectly.
BLUE FLAME (pre-nerf) drops are the same as HELL BAT drops. BLAME FLAME required upgrade research time but no ARMORY and it isopposite of hellbats. HELL BATS is stronger
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.
then drop NORMAL hellions? seriously, do people even think before they post? and read the damn response from DKim, he clearly states that the zerg was just bad so this isn't necessarily going to be changed.
On February 12 2013 11:53 AnomalySC2 wrote: Finally Blizzard just explains what the players are doing wrong vs "op" strategies. This is preferred to staying silent and nerfing stuff that doesn't need to be nerfed because they see players are just playing incorrectly.
but the problem with this is that this is ONE game, ONE case. Unless you want Dkim and crew to just have a .zip file of thousands of replays with analysis on each and everyone, that's not going to happen. you want specifics? ain't going to happen buddy, time is money and DKim gets paid to do this shit, you think blizzard would prefer him to spend 8 hours of his work day analyzing replays? or actually doing something about what he saw in the replays?
On February 12 2013 10:42 avilo wrote: The only problem with hellbats is them + speed medivacs. Hellbats as a unit themselves are fine imo. But the ability to speed boost a medivac over top of maynarding workers is like when TvT was only "who could kill the other guys workers first with blue flame hellions."
Right now, if you put 4 hellbats into a medivac, you can drop two on one side of the worker maynard, and two on the other side, almost guaranteeing you will kill a clump of workers.
Then on top of this you have hellbats being able to be healed by the medivac, which is just bad, and makes archons stronger vs mech in TvP.
So my thoughts:
a) it's good that they wait, lots of players aren't used to Terran actually being able to do anything to them anymore offensively. Zergs are used to droning up to 60, only build queens, cannot be harrassed at all. Guess what guys? Now you can be, build spines if you see this coming, stop playing greedy as fuck.
b) if they decide to nerf it, at least they are doing it in a way that does not make the unit useless or hurt anything else. Making it take up more cargo space seems like a good way to nerf specifically the ability to roast worker lines so fast.
c) REVERT THE HELLBAT TO A MECH UNIT. BATTLE HELLION MOTHER FUCKERS! Seriously! It hurts mech tvp when the battle hellion is bio. Archons essentially have an invisible zealot with them in each attack vs hellbats, which is bad.
d) After you revert the unit to a MECH UNIT, change the name back to "Battle Hellion." Hellbat sounds like some retardedly failed wannabe superhero.
Battle hellion sounds like you just came back from a battle in ancient greece and are ready to fuck your wife.
That is all.
1# master division on and basically only play grandmasters now. I only play mech and get the most crying from tosses and zergs, the protosses are just plain used to 1aing Mech with immortal zealot archon. the zergs are used to getting an insta win when they get to hive tech. Thats not true anymore and it seems to be giving them quite a bit of trouble, i dont think ill be beating grandmasters in the future once they learn to change their strats so i hope they dont nerf widows or battle hellions, or ravens because of the QQing.
If only I was the master race of Terran. Unfortunately I can only cry imbalance because everyone knows that zerg and toss players are knuckle dragging neanderthals that can only do one strategy and never improve so blizz balances around their whining.
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.
then drop NORMAL hellions? seriously, do people even think before they post? and read the damn response from DKim, he clearly states that the zerg was just bad so this isn't necessarily going to be changed.
On February 12 2013 11:53 AnomalySC2 wrote: Finally Blizzard just explains what the players are doing wrong vs "op" strategies. This is preferred to staying silent and nerfing stuff that doesn't need to be nerfed because they see players are just playing incorrectly.
but the problem with this is that this is ONE game, ONE case. Unless you want Dkim and crew to just have a .zip file of thousands of replays with analysis on each and everyone, that's not going to happen. you want specifics? ain't going to happen buddy, time is money and DKim gets paid to do this shit, you think blizzard would prefer him to spend 8 hours of his work day analyzing replays? or actually doing something about what he saw in the replays?
Maybe DK just shouldn't give examples any more and just do stuff and not tell us why? I mean, since when he gives examples people freak out. When he doesn't, people freak out. When they patch things quickly, people freak out that they didn't let players learn to deal with it. Or if they don't patch things quickly, people claim they have no understanding of the game for not patching out the broken shit.
Or maybe the argument can be boiled down to "This is bullshit, Blizzards stance does not mirror my opinion. They clearly should have their jobs. Let me find some stuff that backs my opinion up and claim it is everyone opinion."
I am sure if it turns out to be broken, Blizzard will handle it. I like the, "We here you, but we want more data. But if it turns out to be busted, here is our plan to fix the busted thing." approach.
On February 12 2013 11:08 Defacer wrote: You guys should check out the TL Attack with Demuslim, where InControl and Catz challenge him to beat a Terran GM with just hellbats. He wins in less than ten minutes.
I'm sure that part of the problem is pros and high level players not properly defending against hellbat drops, but the amount of skill and resources a defending player has to employ seems disproportionately high compared to how easy a strategy it is. I've seen guys like IdrA defend against hellbat drops brilliantly (pulling drones pre-emptively, adding spines in his mineral lines).
Maybe the cargo nerf will be fine, but at the same time, couldn't a player just drop hellions and change them into hellbats? Didn't Terrans already have a fantastic unit for harassing drones, called hellions? Weren't hellbats simply intended to help counter mass zealots and lings?
Part of my issue with the hellbat is that it has strayed pretty far from it's original purpose.
Well, to be fair, units like MSC, tempest, oracles, widow mines have strayed as well. Not sure about Zerg units since most Zerg mainly just use WoL units.
On February 12 2013 11:08 Defacer wrote: You guys should check out the TL Attack with Demuslim, where InControl and Catz challenge him to beat a Terran GM with just hellbats. He wins in less than ten minutes.
I'm sure that part of the problem is pros and high level players not properly defending against hellbat drops, but the amount of skill and resources a defending player has to employ seems disproportionately high compared to how easy a strategy it is. I've seen guys like IdrA defend against hellbat drops brilliantly (pulling drones pre-emptively, adding spines in his mineral lines).
Maybe the cargo nerf will be fine, but at the same time, couldn't a player just drop hellions and change them into hellbats? Didn't Terrans already have a fantastic unit for harassing drones, called hellions? Weren't hellbats simply intended to help counter mass zealots and lings?
Part of my issue with the hellbat is that it has strayed pretty far from it's original purpose.
So you'd rather pigeonhole the unit and make it completely one-dimensional? I don't know, I think we'd rather be moving away from that sort of mentality.
The problem with Hellbats, aside from being really strong with medivacs&medivac boost, is that they make hellions pointless to make. I'd rather the hellion be the harass unit and not hellbats so there at least is a reason to use hellions and get blueflame. I liked that the hellbat was meant to be a part of the army and a meat shield for mech but now it's basically an all-purpose hellion.
Hellions are still great for map control. Look at the way Terrans in the GSL right now are using 5-8 Hellions to contain creep spread, and keeping them alive way into the midgame to do it. Hellbats have nothing on that.
Hellions are crap for creep contain now with the 6 queen openings.
On February 12 2013 11:08 Defacer wrote: You guys should check out the TL Attack with Demuslim, where InControl and Catz challenge him to beat a Terran GM with just hellbats. He wins in less than ten minutes.
I'm sure that part of the problem is pros and high level players not properly defending against hellbat drops, but the amount of skill and resources a defending player has to employ seems disproportionately high compared to how easy a strategy it is. I've seen guys like IdrA defend against hellbat drops brilliantly (pulling drones pre-emptively, adding spines in his mineral lines).
Maybe the cargo nerf will be fine, but at the same time, couldn't a player just drop hellions and change them into hellbats? Didn't Terrans already have a fantastic unit for harassing drones, called hellions? Weren't hellbats simply intended to help counter mass zealots and lings?
Part of my issue with the hellbat is that it has strayed pretty far from it's original purpose.
Fuck "original purpose", I am the player, I will define what my units do. Liquid Hero did not listen when they told him that the colossi was not a harassment unit to be used with drop micro.
These are new units and part of learning to deal with really strong, aggressive plays like the battle hellion drop is trial and error. What do you think it was like playing protoss for the first year of SC2, dealing with drop play from Terrans? I will tell you, a lot of trial and error. Putting down pylons in medivac paths, catching them, losing to stupid drops that shouldn't have worked. Did it seem over powered? Totally. Did people learn to deal with it? Yes. No one knows how to deal with hellbat drops, and that is what makes them awesome. Once people figure out the exact number of units needed to deal with them efficiently and how, they will become less awesome.
I am not going to stay that the hellbat does not seem super powerful and the cargo nerf sounds reasonable. But I don't want them to nerf the unit itself. I want overpowered crap in the game and to get better at stopping it. I am tired of games where I can't be aggressive for the first 10 minutes without going all in. I want to be in my opponents face and punish him for messing up, and I don't want to spend a mint doing it.
I want to kill you and build up a huge army if I don't kill you with my aggression. Really, is that to much to ask?
Fuck "original purpose", I am the player, I will define what my units do. Liquid Hero did not listen when they told him that the colossi was not a harassment unit to be used with drop micro.
So, Blizzard should just make random changes to units without considering the reasons why they changed them in the first place? Now look who sounds like a crazy person.
Out of curiosity, why did Blizzard make hellbats healable? Where they really doing that badly in previous patches?
Fuck "original purpose", I am the player, I will define what my units do. Liquid Hero did not listen when they told him that the colossi was not a harassment unit to be used with drop micro.
So, Blizzard should just make random changes to units without considering the reasons why they changed them in the first place? Now look who sounds like a crazy person.
Out of curiosity, why did Blizzard make hellbats healable? Where they really doing that badly in previous patches?
Man, you won't let this go. Also, that's not what I said at all and you are just spouting random crap. The unit is fine and kinda awesome as a robot car. It may need some tweaking, but all and all it is a unit people are being creative with.
On February 12 2013 10:42 avilo wrote: The only problem with hellbats is them + speed medivacs. Hellbats as a unit themselves are fine imo. But the ability to speed boost a medivac over top of maynarding workers is like when TvT was only "who could kill the other guys workers first with blue flame hellions."
Right now, if you put 4 hellbats into a medivac, you can drop two on one side of the worker maynard, and two on the other side, almost guaranteeing you will kill a clump of workers.
Then on top of this you have hellbats being able to be healed by the medivac, which is just bad, and makes archons stronger vs mech in TvP.
So my thoughts:
a) it's good that they wait, lots of players aren't used to Terran actually being able to do anything to them anymore offensively. Zergs are used to droning up to 60, only build queens, cannot be harrassed at all. Guess what guys? Now you can be, build spines if you see this coming, stop playing greedy as fuck.
b) if they decide to nerf it, at least they are doing it in a way that does not make the unit useless or hurt anything else. Making it take up more cargo space seems like a good way to nerf specifically the ability to roast worker lines so fast.
c) REVERT THE HELLBAT TO A MECH UNIT. BATTLE HELLION MOTHER FUCKERS! Seriously! It hurts mech tvp when the battle hellion is bio. Archons essentially have an invisible zealot with them in each attack vs hellbats, which is bad.
d) After you revert the unit to a MECH UNIT, change the name back to "Battle Hellion." Hellbat sounds like some retardedly failed wannabe superhero.
Battle hellion sounds like you just came back from a battle in ancient greece and are ready to fuck your wife.
That is all.
1# master division on and basically only play grandmasters now. I only play mech and get the most crying from tosses and zergs, the protosses are just plain used to 1aing Mech with immortal zealot archon. the zergs are used to getting an insta win when they get to hive tech. Thats not true anymore and it seems to be giving them quite a bit of trouble, i dont think ill be beating grandmasters in the future once they learn to change their strats so i hope they dont nerf widows or battle hellions, or ravens because of the QQing.
If only I was the master race of Terran. Unfortunately I can only cry imbalance because everyone knows that zerg and toss players are knuckle dragging neanderthals that can only do one strategy and never improve so blizz balances around their whining.
How long was sc2 played before mass infestator builds were discovered viable?
On February 12 2013 10:42 avilo wrote: The only problem with hellbats is them + speed medivacs. Hellbats as a unit themselves are fine imo. But the ability to speed boost a medivac over top of maynarding workers is like when TvT was only "who could kill the other guys workers first with blue flame hellions."
Right now, if you put 4 hellbats into a medivac, you can drop two on one side of the worker maynard, and two on the other side, almost guaranteeing you will kill a clump of workers.
Then on top of this you have hellbats being able to be healed by the medivac, which is just bad, and makes archons stronger vs mech in TvP.
So my thoughts:
a) it's good that they wait, lots of players aren't used to Terran actually being able to do anything to them anymore offensively. Zergs are used to droning up to 60, only build queens, cannot be harrassed at all. Guess what guys? Now you can be, build spines if you see this coming, stop playing greedy as fuck.
b) if they decide to nerf it, at least they are doing it in a way that does not make the unit useless or hurt anything else. Making it take up more cargo space seems like a good way to nerf specifically the ability to roast worker lines so fast.
c) REVERT THE HELLBAT TO A MECH UNIT. BATTLE HELLION MOTHER FUCKERS! Seriously! It hurts mech tvp when the battle hellion is bio. Archons essentially have an invisible zealot with them in each attack vs hellbats, which is bad.
d) After you revert the unit to a MECH UNIT, change the name back to "Battle Hellion." Hellbat sounds like some retardedly failed wannabe superhero.
Battle hellion sounds like you just came back from a battle in ancient greece and are ready to fuck your wife.
That is all.
1# master division on and basically only play grandmasters now. I only play mech and get the most crying from tosses and zergs, the protosses are just plain used to 1aing Mech with immortal zealot archon. the zergs are used to getting an insta win when they get to hive tech. Thats not true anymore and it seems to be giving them quite a bit of trouble, i dont think ill be beating grandmasters in the future once they learn to change their strats so i hope they dont nerf widows or battle hellions, or ravens because of the QQing.
If only I was the master race of Terran. Unfortunately I can only cry imbalance because everyone knows that zerg and toss players are knuckle dragging neanderthals that can only do one strategy and never improve so blizz balances around their whining.
How long was sc2 played before mass infestator builds were discovered viable?
The infestor wasn't discovered; it was buffed so that it would be a good midgame unit against Protoss, and then people used it to win lots and lots of ZvP games.
The infestor was also used in ZvT before the patch, but people found it lacking, since choosing them over mutalisks forfeited map-control and the ability to harass. When Patch 1.3 was implemented, Fungal Growth could destroy massive groups of marines, regardless of Medivac healing, allowing Zergs to end games with a few clicks.
On February 12 2013 11:08 Defacer wrote: You guys should check out the TL Attack with Demuslim, where InControl and Catz challenge him to beat a Terran GM with just hellbats. He wins in less than ten minutes.
I'm sure that part of the problem is pros and high level players not properly defending against hellbat drops, but the amount of skill and resources a defending player has to employ seems disproportionately high compared to how easy a strategy it is. I've seen guys like IdrA defend against hellbat drops brilliantly (pulling drones pre-emptively, adding spines in his mineral lines).
Maybe the cargo nerf will be fine, but at the same time, couldn't a player just drop hellions and change them into hellbats? Didn't Terrans already have a fantastic unit for harassing drones, called hellions? Weren't hellbats simply intended to help counter mass zealots and lings?
Part of my issue with the hellbat is that it has strayed pretty far from it's original purpose.
Fuck "original purpose", I am the player, I will define what my units do. Liquid Hero did not listen when they told him that the colossi was not a harassment unit to be used with drop micro.
These are new units and part of learning to deal with really strong, aggressive plays like the battle hellion drop is trial and error. What do you think it was like playing protoss for the first year of SC2, dealing with drop play from Terrans? I will tell you, a lot of trial and error. Putting down pylons in medivac paths, catching them, losing to stupid drops that shouldn't have worked. Did it seem over powered? Totally. Did people learn to deal with it? Yes. No one knows how to deal with hellbat drops, and that is what makes them awesome. Once people figure out the exact number of units needed to deal with them efficiently and how, they will become less awesome.
I am not going to stay that the hellbat does not seem super powerful and the cargo nerf sounds reasonable. But I don't want them to nerf the unit itself. I want overpowered crap in the game and to get better at stopping it. I am tired of games where I can't be aggressive for the first 10 minutes without going all in. I want to be in my opponents face and punish him for messing up, and I don't want to spend a mint doing it.
I want to kill you and build up a huge army if I don't kill you with my aggression. Really, is that to much to ask?
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.
The units are not to scale. Hellions are cars/buggies, yet the cockpit could not logically fit a driver which is about the size of a civilian from the campaign. Now think of how big a transformer is compared to a guy in a big suit. I think that it's a heck of a lot bigger, while in Hellion mode it packs in more easily since it's relatively sleek and flat in comparison.
Hellions arent THAT BIG and Marauders are a lot bigger than Marines ... Buggies arent that huge and they are a lot smaller than a tank.
The whole point of that comment was a bit of sarcasm directed at Blizzards awful balancing skills where they are throwing everything overboard just to make "their vision" work.
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.
The units are not to scale. Hellions are cars/buggies, yet the cockpit could not logically fit a driver which is about the size of a civilian from the campaign. Now think of how big a transformer is compared to a guy in a big suit. I think that it's a heck of a lot bigger, while in Hellion mode it packs in more easily since it's relatively sleek and flat in comparison.
Hellions arent THAT BIG and Marauders are a lot bigger than Marines ... Buggies arent that huge and they are a lot smaller than a tank.
The whole point of that comment was a bit of sarcasm directed at Blizzards awful balancing skills where they are throwing everything overboard just to make "their vision" work.
Funny that the people who complain loudest about balance don't even play the beta... How come every topic you join your contributions are non-constructive and complaining about the balance when you don't play HotS? Things like this make me wish the HotS forum was actually exclusive to HotS players...
Meanwhile, the proposed solution is about balance, who gives a crap about if units are to scale or not? Battlecruisers aren't to scale with the BC's in the FMV's either.... so what?? What the hell does that have to do with the balance of the game or game design? If you are going to complain about their balancing skills you should at least have a complaint that has something to do with the balance... Instead you complain about the visuals when that should be completely irrelevant when it comes to balance.
my question would be if hellbats take up 4 cargo space than would hellions still take up 2?
And I think this was mentioned on the Pulse or something but IMO a better solution is to make the medivac speed boost an upgrade out of a tech lab, not really expensive just don't let em get it right off the bat. In WoL you could deal with drops by sniping medivacs. In HOTS you literally cant kill the medivac without fast moving air units of your own, and the hellbat drop comes pretty fast
its actually pretty funny to see arguments on unit size over balance. If you want to argue that way why not complain that a thor can be carried by a medivac yet only 8 marines can be carried lol
...anyways strange to see them take this cargo approach when it just seems more natural to nerf the damage that they do at first (upgrade brings them to current form) because....correct me if Im wrong but they get 18 damage spash no upgrade required correct?
On February 12 2013 15:33 SuperYo1000 wrote: its actually pretty funny to see arguments on unit size over balance. If you want to argue that way why not complain that a thor can be carried by a medivac yet only 8 marines can be carried lol
...anyways strange to see them take this cargo approach when it just seems more natural to nerf the damage that they do at first (upgrade brings them to current form) because....correct me if Im wrong but they get 18 damage spash no upgrade required correct?
why would they do that and possibly create balance problems(nerfing tvp mech) when they could fix it with an easy cargo space nerf.
On February 12 2013 15:33 SuperYo1000 wrote: its actually pretty funny to see arguments on unit size over balance. If you want to argue that way why not complain that a thor can be carried by a medivac yet only 8 marines can be carried lol
Exactly. But when that guys name pops up you shouldnt take him seriously. He has been popping up on every topic complaining about balance.... and he indicated that he doesn't even play HotS.
...anyways strange to see them take this cargo approach when it just seems more natural to nerf the damage that they do at first (upgrade brings them to current form) because....correct me if Im wrong but they get 18 damage spash no upgrade required correct?
In my opinion the cargo approach solves the problem perfectly.
If a Hellbat marched across the map to fight with you, he's not OP.
Medivacs alone aren't OP - you don't see them doing incredible damage like this alone.
The primary problem is the Hellbat + Medivac synergy. Medivacs and a bit of micro make up for the Hellbat's weakness (slow speed). But this isn't necessarily a bad thing - it's a good synergy if you can use one unit to make up for the other weaknesses. So it's good that they don't remove it completely. It's just a bit too easy atm when you can carry 4 of those per Medivac.
4 per Medivac produces many problems. It's available so early (you can have 4 of them dropping in to your base at 6:30), it's fairly easy to micro for the damage it does, and that many Hellions in your base so early can match enemies armies at that time due to the low cost of Hellbats. The cheap price of them isn't a problem in general, but when it comes to early game it's an issue since the other races need to use gas for their units that counter Hellbats, and gas is only getting going by the time the Hellbats are in.
So this solution is perfect to address the problem. They won't be so numerous early on. The unit itself isn't going to be nerfed. Neither are Medivacs. The strategy will still be viable, just take 42 seconds more for the opener, and a little more micro, which gives adequate time to not get demolished. And it will still be available to drop 4 in your enemy base at around 7:10 - which is very reasonable compared to the other races.
Taking all that in to consideration, I don't see any problems with the proposed fix. It's always a great thing when units/strats will still be viable post-nerf, and this one definitely won't be overdoing it.
I just played a game vs Terran that was using these drops.
I placed 3 Spine Crawlers & 2 Spores per Hatch. (3 Spines inside line, 2 Spores near gases).
My mineral line read 3/3 17/16 3/3 prior to attack. He dropped with just 1 medivac & 4 Hellbats. My defense: 3 Spines/2 Spores/1 Queen My units lost: 2/3 12/16 3/3 (He killed 6 drones) His units lost: 4 Hellbats
Total this up: 5x Drones for static defense=250 Static defense=500 7 drones killed by random fire=350 Drone back those 7=350 nearly 1500 minerals
He lost 400 minerals & the Medivac escaped.
About two minutes later he drops again but with 8 total hellbats.
My mineral line was slaughtered down to 4 drones with all static defenses in line still.
Zerg is now forced to incorporate Roach Warren into every build vs Terran, along with extreme measures of static defenses.
If we go straight to roach? Just create mines & drop them in the line since we cannot afford the spore for detection. Or just delay mining greatly. Then throw down a couple mines near your base as you safely fill the mineral line with SVC's
If we go static defenses to counter it? We slaughter our economy and wrap so many minerals into defending one phase of the game. Terran can double expand behind this since they know we do not have the minerals to counter & we only have Zerg-lings to attack the home-front that has Hellbats there to slaughter.
If we go both? Well congrats, we defended this attack but we're stuck so far behind that Terran can get 3 bases up by the time you get across the map.
I realize I went to extreme measures to defend this attack, as I am trying this out due to "finding" a counter. But this is just ridiculous to deal with right now.
1/1/1-Drop-(create expansion while moving out)-transition into a timing with 1/1 Tanks-Medivacs-Marines vs Zerg.
Reasoning: Zerg has to kill their economy to defend or lose a huge amount of it for hellbats. We are forced to get roaches & tanks love a squash a roach. Bane speed will be hard to grab with roaches being required & won't have a significant amount of banes to deal with it.
They aren't really over-powered in my mind it's just the phase of the game they come in. My two cents
They aren't really over-powered in my mind it's just the phase of the game they come in. My two cents
Yup exactly. That's why I feel this is a great solution.
On February 12 2013 16:03 NukeD wrote: So why couldnt you just load up 4 hellions in a medivac, drop them in mineral line and then transform them to hellbats?
They take like 4-5 seconds to change forms.
But it's not the Hellbats that are the problem. They are relatively slow and could be avoided. The problem is Medivacs with the speed boost can pick them up, turbo after you, drop right on top of you, repeat... and with more than 2 your units will die in a single shot. They can repeat this, and they can have it dropping in your base at 6:30. Which is a bit early, and extremely difficult to deal with - on the verge of "random" - even with some static defenses.
Even if you do a typical 7 Roach opener these units can drop in your base before the Roaches are even out, at which time another Medivac will be heading in soo, and properly dropping multiple Hellbats right on the Roaches could actually beat them if performed right. Roaches can hold their own w/ micro w/o the Medivacs, but so many on early drops is pretty crazy. You don't need a perfect composition, but you need it out extremely early AND to have some base defenses in place. And there's no clear way to tell exactly which harass is coming by scouting unless you happen to catch a Hellbat alive (which by that time you only have seconds until they are in your base).
On February 12 2013 16:15 800800 wrote: Cost 100 mineral and 0 gas, have 135hp, do 30 dmg vs light, 2 range and do splash damage. Problem?
I think it's healthy for the game that they are a strong unit. I don't want to see the unit become weaker for Terrans. The cargo nerf is pretty mild long term and should be sufficient.
It's pretty lame to have to do spores + spines at every base just incase they try the harass, and even if they do it's got a big random factor...
Even if you respond with perfect speed and pull your drones away and attack the hellbats with roaches, the medivac can move so much faster than the roaches that it can pick up the hellbats and drop them on your runned drones. Rinse and repeat.
It takes an enormous amount of attention and reaction speed and crisis management to not get outright destroyed immediately, and even if you defend it, you're still behind. What I saw IdrA doing with putting a spore out in the middle of his base for the drones to run to, but even with that, the medivac and all the hellbats can die, but he's still gutting your mineral line.
That zerg player that ran his ball of roaches around to defend the hellbats that blizzard mentioned, you know why? Because it takes a fucking ball of roaches to kill 4 hellbats with a medivac.
Static defense is way too weak to deal with hellbat drops. Where do you have your cannons or spines when defending against a drop? Usually in or behind the mineral line. What do you do when you see a drop coming towards your worker?
Option 1: You let the cannons/spines do the work, send a group of units over there / warp in a bunch of units and leave the worker at the minerals. The medivac unloads and he puts his hellbats on hold position. Be amazed how long it takes your stuff to clean up the hellbats and be amazed on how fast your workers die. Option 2: You transfer your worker away in time. He speedboosts past your static defense and drops right on top of your workertrain. Everything dies.
You can't stop a medivac with 3 cannons in place. You can't even stop it with 3-4 stalkers in place. Zerg and protoss both don't have viable units to deal with a hellbat drop and that's due to the hellbat having no real hard counter.
As some other already said: The hellbat is even in a full army composition powerful. He counters the core units of both protoss and zerg because zealot/ling are both melee units. It's just way too cheap for his stats and it comes quite early in the game. You have to commit too many ressources to deflect the drop to be able to apply any pressure against the terran at all. He can turtle up, tech and triple expand behind it without the worries of having to deal with a game ending push from the enemy all the while he has tools to end the game right there with his low cost drops. A terran doesn't take any risks at all with his hellbat drops.
When it comes to cost you could compare it to a collosus drop. Both cost roughly equal amounts (500/100 to 500/200) of money. Compare them and gaze at how awesome hellbat drops really are. They come earlier, are slightly cheaper, deal way more damage and are less of a risk. They are even better than stormdrops.
Looking at the argument so far is funny. The vast majority commenting here are terrans and even among them a fair amount of people admit that hellbats are too good of a unit. The other terrans are "nah, hellbats are fine, l2p", "hellbats are only a problem in TvT, they are fine in the other matchups" or "I only need 2 widowmines to shut it down, no problem".
The problem has been around for quite some time now, it's just recently that it got more attention because everyone saw the korean pros do it. It's not a problem that JUST NOW appeared out of thin air and it will stay a problem until the nerfbat hits the hellbat.
If you got structures on the edges it makes it way easier to respond. And also looking on the map. I still do not believe they are played enough to say it is op. Even though pros lose to it - doesn't necessarily mean they have to be nerfed.
Well, after some more games...every TvT is hellbat drop or anti-hellbat drop. Incredibly stupid. It's exactly the same as 2 shot blue flame hellions, whoever suicides more hellions into SCVS gets an advantage -_-
I don't even think it's the medivac speed, it's the healing.
Will be interesting to see if 2 weeks from now...maybe we all just suck at defending hellbats, otherwise TvT is pretty broken again lol.
As for TvZ...pretty funny, if Zerg only builds queens + drones they die a swift death (like they should). You can't play greedy vs hellbat + healing.
Could not 3 supply work? You could still only drop 2 hellbats, but you could bring 2 marines or a Marauder (or I guess technically another Hellion and transform it on the ground). I agree that 4-hellbat drops are pretty crazy, but I would argue that they should first go for 3 cargo space, then up to 4 if the drops are still considered too strong by those who are actually good enough to judge.
On February 12 2013 17:09 Fen1kz wrote: so helldrops is overpowered and oracle play no? :D are kiddin me? :D
A single AA static defense can shut down oracle harass. The same can't be said for hellbat drops.
On February 12 2013 17:31 Zealously wrote: Could not 3 supply work? You could still only drop 2 hellbats, but you could bring 2 marines or a Marauder (or I guess technically another Hellion and transform it on the ground). I agree that 4-hellbat drops are pretty crazy, but I would argue that they should first go for 3 cargo space, then up to 4 if the drops are still considered too strong by those who are actually good enough to judge.
Wow... so 4 hellbats 2 medivacs reaching the enemy base at 7:12 isn't good enough... u want 4 hellbats 4 marines?
How would the unit icons even look if they covered 3 slots? lol
In response to some theorycrafting here, you dont have permanent speed boost on your medivac (that said I am still in favor of making it an upgrade, reducing hellbat damage and lettnig blueflame affect them again). They cannot just drop on your workertrain since they already used speedboost to get to your mineral line asap to lower your reaction time. Still then you should have ovis spread out so you cant get surprised. Besides that it is just like against regular hellion drops, you need to spread them out, if you keep them all together then yes they will die.
But the cargo nerf is imo just stupid. It will just be really confusing for players if such a unit suddenly takes 4 cargo spaces. It might be attractive from a balance pov, since you are specifically nerfing one tactic (which people for a large part just need to get experience dealing with*), but that is like giving marines bonus damage to stalkers (random example). It might be nice for balance, but it is not what you want.
* Look at how reapers in TvT HotS evolved. First it was just a matter who made more reapers, but while it took a while, in the end it was far more than that and reaper agression could be held without too much issues. Granted I still wasnt a big fan of the state of the game then, but the current gimmick that the reaper is, isnt much better.
On February 12 2013 17:31 Zealously wrote: Could not 3 supply work? You could still only drop 2 hellbats, but you could bring 2 marines or a Marauder (or I guess technically another Hellion and transform it on the ground). I agree that 4-hellbat drops are pretty crazy, but I would argue that they should first go for 3 cargo space, then up to 4 if the drops are still considered too strong by those who are actually good enough to judge.
Wow... so 4 hellbats 2 medivacs reaching the enemy base at 7:12 isn't good enough... u want 4 hellbats 4 marines?
How would the unit icons even look if they covered 3 slots? lol
you need to start reading better
medivacs have 8 spaces. ooookay? if each hellbat takes 3 spaces instead of 4 (which would fit 2) , you'll still only be able to have only 2 hellbats (ref if your math is bad: 2 28/3 = 2.666 ...you'll fit 2 hellbats and 2 marines
not 4 hellbats and 4 marines maybe if hellbats were only 1 cargospace.
On February 12 2013 17:09 Fen1kz wrote: so helldrops is overpowered and oracle play no? :D are kiddin me? :D
A single AA static defense can shut down oracle harass. The same can't be said for hellbat drops.
On February 12 2013 17:31 Zealously wrote: Could not 3 supply work? You could still only drop 2 hellbats, but you could bring 2 marines or a Marauder (or I guess technically another Hellion and transform it on the ground). I agree that 4-hellbat drops are pretty crazy, but I would argue that they should first go for 3 cargo space, then up to 4 if the drops are still considered too strong by those who are actually good enough to judge.
Wow... so 4 hellbats 2 medivacs reaching the enemy base at 7:12 isn't good enough... u want 4 hellbats 4 marines?
How would the unit icons even look if they covered 3 slots? lol
you need to start reading better
medivacs have 8 spaces. ooookay? if each hellbat takes 3 spaces instead of 4 (which would fit 2) , you'll still only be able to have only 2 hellbats (ref if your math is bad: 2 28/3 = 2.666 ...you'll fit 2 hellbats and 2 marines
not 4 hellbats and 4 marines maybe if hellbats were only 1 cargospace.
The editor doesnt allow 3cargo units. Only 1,2,4,8.
Not that it wouldnt be doable, but it seems very unintended.
On February 12 2013 17:09 Fen1kz wrote: so helldrops is overpowered and oracle play no? :D are kiddin me? :D
A single AA static defense can shut down oracle harass. The same can't be said for hellbat drops.
On February 12 2013 17:31 Zealously wrote: Could not 3 supply work? You could still only drop 2 hellbats, but you could bring 2 marines or a Marauder (or I guess technically another Hellion and transform it on the ground). I agree that 4-hellbat drops are pretty crazy, but I would argue that they should first go for 3 cargo space, then up to 4 if the drops are still considered too strong by those who are actually good enough to judge.
Wow... so 4 hellbats 2 medivacs reaching the enemy base at 7:12 isn't good enough... u want 4 hellbats 4 marines?
How would the unit icons even look if they covered 3 slots? lol
you need to start reading better
medivacs have 8 spaces. ooookay? if each hellbat takes 3 spaces instead of 4 (which would fit 2) , you'll still only be able to have only 2 hellbats (ref if your math is bad: 2 28/3 = 2.666 ...you'll fit 2 hellbats and 2 marines
not 4 hellbats and 4 marines maybe if hellbats were only 1 cargospace.
The editor doesnt allow 3cargo units. Only 1,2,4,8.
Not that it wouldnt be doable, but it seems very unintended.
yeah, but IF it was possible.
and even then you won't have 4 hellbats 4 marine drops like he said ... which was all I was addressing
On February 12 2013 17:54 Spyridon wrote: Wow... so 4 hellbats 2 medivacs reaching the enemy base at 7:12 isn't good enough... u want 4 hellbats 4 marines?
How would the unit icons even look if they covered 3 slots? lol
That looks fairly useless to me (4 hellbats, 2 medivacs), it simply costs too much. One of the main problems in this discussion is that people want to defend 1 base all-ins with fast expands, probably also fast thirds, without taking any damage whatsoever.
So what if you lose 5 drones to a one base all in? You are still enormously ahead.
On February 12 2013 17:09 Fen1kz wrote: so helldrops is overpowered and oracle play no? :D are kiddin me? :D
A single AA static defense can shut down oracle harass. The same can't be said for hellbat drops.
On February 12 2013 17:31 Zealously wrote: Could not 3 supply work? You could still only drop 2 hellbats, but you could bring 2 marines or a Marauder (or I guess technically another Hellion and transform it on the ground). I agree that 4-hellbat drops are pretty crazy, but I would argue that they should first go for 3 cargo space, then up to 4 if the drops are still considered too strong by those who are actually good enough to judge.
Wow... so 4 hellbats 2 medivacs reaching the enemy base at 7:12 isn't good enough... u want 4 hellbats 4 marines?
How would the unit icons even look if they covered 3 slots? lol
you need to start reading better
medivacs have 8 spaces. ooookay? if each hellbat takes 3 spaces instead of 4 (which would fit 2) , you'll still only be able to have only 2 hellbats (ref if your math is bad: 2 28/3 = 2.666 ...you'll fit 2 hellbats and 2 marines
not 4 hellbats and 4 marines maybe if hellbats were only 1 cargospace.
The editor doesnt allow 3cargo units. Only 1,2,4,8.
Not that it wouldnt be doable, but it seems very unintended.
yeah, but IF it was possible.
and even then you won't have 4 hellbats 4 marine drops like he said ... which was all I was addressing
Yeah, I get what you mean.
However, the person you were quoting did talk about two medivacs. So he is actually right about 4hellbats+4marines.
like seriously 29 to light damage AOE on a 100 mineral unit with 130hp is just out of control, even if they cut the damage in half hellbats would be perfectly viable still
not to mention that with one button click it turns into one of the fastest unit in the game, the unit is just way way overtuned
On February 12 2013 18:49 Tsubbi wrote: i dont think such a minor nerf is close to enough
like seriously 29 to light damage AOE on a 100 mineral unit with 130hp is just out of control, even if they cut the damage in half hellbats would be perfectly viable still
not to mention that with one button click it turns into one of the fastest unit in the game, the unit is just way way overtuned
Like roaches? They are beefy, fast and they are doing a lot of damage for 75/25. And they are more massable than Hellbats. I mean I have yet to see a single game when a Terran maxes out on Hellbat at ~11 minutes.
I dont mind the Hellbat Drop nerf, if they are keeping the stats for it.
On February 12 2013 18:49 Tsubbi wrote: i dont think such a minor nerf is close to enough
like seriously 29 to light damage AOE on a 100 mineral unit with 130hp is just out of control, even if they cut the damage in half hellbats would be perfectly viable still
not to mention that with one button click it turns into one of the fastest unit in the game, the unit is just way way overtuned
No, it would be pretty darn useless unit if its damage was cut in half. The unit has an attack speed of 2 for fucks sake.
On February 12 2013 18:49 Tsubbi wrote: i dont think such a minor nerf is close to enough
like seriously 29 to light damage AOE on a 100 mineral unit with 130hp is just out of control, even if they cut the damage in half hellbats would be perfectly viable still
not to mention that with one button click it turns into one of the fastest unit in the game, the unit is just way way overtuned
Like roaches? They are beefy, fast and they are doing a lot of damage for 75/25. And they are more massable than Hellbats. I mean I have yet to see a single game when a Terran maxes out on Hellbat at ~11 minutes.
I dont mind the Hellbat Drop nerf, if they are keeping the stats for it.
Yeah but roaches don't fly in on cracked out medivacs and annihilate entire mineral lines in 2 seconds. lol
Saw a great game with Catz. He basically pushed with slow burrow roaches after he expanded as the terran was massing hellbats and dropships. At the 7 minute mark he managed to break the terran's wall and into the expansion with good burrow micro.
Of course, if the terran held or built a better wall Catz would have been fucked, but still ... yay?
On February 12 2013 19:21 Defacer wrote: Can hellbats get into bunkers?
Saw a great game with Catz. He basically pushed with slow burrow roaches after he expanded as the terran was massing hellbats and dropships. At the 7 minute mark he managed to break the terran's wall and into the expansion with good burrow micro.
Of course, if the terran held or built a better wall Catz would have been fucked, but still ... yay?
if we saw the same game it was a 1 base roach burrow allin ^^
On February 12 2013 17:09 Fen1kz wrote: so helldrops is overpowered and oracle play no? :D are kiddin me? :D
A single AA static defense can shut down oracle harass. The same can't be said for hellbat drops.
On February 12 2013 17:31 Zealously wrote: Could not 3 supply work? You could still only drop 2 hellbats, but you could bring 2 marines or a Marauder (or I guess technically another Hellion and transform it on the ground). I agree that 4-hellbat drops are pretty crazy, but I would argue that they should first go for 3 cargo space, then up to 4 if the drops are still considered too strong by those who are actually good enough to judge.
Wow... so 4 hellbats 2 medivacs reaching the enemy base at 7:12 isn't good enough... u want 4 hellbats 4 marines?
How would the unit icons even look if they covered 3 slots? lol
you need to start reading better
medivacs have 8 spaces. ooookay? if each hellbat takes 3 spaces instead of 4 (which would fit 2) , you'll still only be able to have only 2 hellbats (ref if your math is bad: 2 28/3 = 2.666 ...you'll fit 2 hellbats and 2 marines
not 4 hellbats and 4 marines maybe if hellbats were only 1 cargospace.
Funny, your the one that needs better reading comprehension. You ignored the time, and the fact that i said TWO medivacs.
You can currently make 1 medivac at around 6 mins which reaches the opponents base with 4 hellbats at 6:30.
Medivacs take 42 seconds to be created.
Therefore you can have 2 Medivacs at your opponents base at 7:12.
Your reading comprehension is bad... If you are going to go around trying to correct people and insulting their reading comprehension... Maybe you should... You know... Read what they wrote?
On February 12 2013 17:09 Fen1kz wrote: so helldrops is overpowered and oracle play no? :D are kiddin me? :D
A single AA static defense can shut down oracle harass. The same can't be said for hellbat drops.
On February 12 2013 17:31 Zealously wrote: Could not 3 supply work? You could still only drop 2 hellbats, but you could bring 2 marines or a Marauder (or I guess technically another Hellion and transform it on the ground). I agree that 4-hellbat drops are pretty crazy, but I would argue that they should first go for 3 cargo space, then up to 4 if the drops are still considered too strong by those who are actually good enough to judge.
Wow... so 4 hellbats 2 medivacs reaching the enemy base at 7:12 isn't good enough... u want 4 hellbats 4 marines?
How would the unit icons even look if they covered 3 slots? lol
you need to start reading better
medivacs have 8 spaces. ooookay? if each hellbat takes 3 spaces instead of 4 (which would fit 2) , you'll still only be able to have only 2 hellbats (ref if your math is bad: 2 28/3 = 2.666 ...you'll fit 2 hellbats and 2 marines
not 4 hellbats and 4 marines maybe if hellbats were only 1 cargospace.
The editor doesnt allow 3cargo units. Only 1,2,4,8.
Not that it wouldnt be doable, but it seems very unintended.
I see. Did not know that.
And @Spyridon: I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I was suggesting that hellbats take up 3 cargo space instead of 4, because I feel that 4 might be overkill. If a 2-hellbat, 2-marine/1-marauder drop is still considered too strong by, again, those who are good at the game, then I think it could be changed to 4 cargo space. Just because something is difficult to hold off with the standard greed does not mean it should be nerfed into oblivion at first sight. I think making hellbats 4 cargo supply is a bad move.
But, apparently the editor does not allow 3 cargo space so this discussion is unnecessary.
While i generally like the idea of more cargo space for hellbats. Am i the only one who has concerns that such spezific buffs and nerfs (also like +15dmg for spores to bio) make the game even more complicated for new players and spectators?
I see why they do that, it makes balancing much more easy. But it seems like a double-edged sword to me
On February 12 2013 20:19 doggy wrote: While i generally like the idea of more cargo space for hellbats. Am i the only one who has concerns that such spezific buffs and nerfs (also like +15dmg for spores to bio) make the game even more complicated for new players and spectators?
I see why they do that, it makes balancing much more easy. But it seems like a double-edged sword to me
I agree. Changes like +35 vs. Shields for Widow Mines are solutions, but they are hardly elegant ones. I think, if possible, Blizzard should strive towards making non-specific changes that still accomplish whatever is needed.
On February 12 2013 20:19 doggy wrote: While i generally like the idea of more cargo space for hellbats. Am i the only one who has concerns that such spezific buffs and nerfs (also like +15dmg for spores to bio) make the game even more complicated for new players and spectators?
I see why they do that, it makes balancing much more easy. But it seems like a double-edged sword to me
I don't understand why people keep bringing this up. I mean, does it matter how many units load into a medivac for a new player? Seriously, anyone who is not familiar with the game surely won't care. All that matters is that medivac can carry units. They load up into it, it flies them away and unloads. It doesn't matter if it's 2, 4 or 6. It's not complicated. Neither it is for lower league players/spectators. This is not rocket science, it's a simple knowledge of again a simple fact that you can only load 2 hellbats into 1 medivac. Just the same as the fact that roach only attacks ground.
Exactly the same thing can be said about spores. It absolutely does not affect the spectating experience if spores kill mutalisks x2 faster or slower. It's not like you can see both mutalisks and medivacs being killed by a spore in a single pro game where you might have wondered why does the mutalisk die to it x2 faster. And even if you watched some 2v2 tournament (do they even exist), would you really be able to notice such a small fact given there's a heavy amount of each flying unit on the filed? No. You're just looking for reasons to bash blizzard for anything they do no matter if it's good or bad.
These changes are needed. And I am personally happy with both spore and hellbat (if they actually decide to make it happen) changes. WIth this they might just have a quite enjoyable game at release.
I dont see any real hard counter to Hellbats somehow in PvT mech play.
Drop scenario: Even if you spot the medivac in time, you have very very little time to react.
large numbers of Zelots just dissapear after the first 2 shot of 4 Hellbats even moderate Numbers of Stalkers can't kill hellbats fast enough.
Big Battles: Tank Thor battlehals Zelots just dissapear as they charge in, no matter how many you got (so I stopped builing them when I see more then 4 hellbats on the field)
Stalkers are useless against tanks anyway. So you have to stay on immortale, archon which are capable to deal with the army atm.
The big problem will be, when terrans somewhen realise what ghosts are capable against this composition. I see dark times coming when the meta games switches to a few ghosts + Hellbats + Tanks + Thor. I don't see any counter to this. Even voidsrays are to fragil to engage this army.
Drops is such a good tool to discriminate people with mediocre multitask, both for the offender and defender. Plus it favors aggression... Sure it is very strong, but vulture with mines were also extremly strong, arguably stronger, yet Blizzard managed to balance the game around that.
Besides, all this reminds me too well of the reaper issues in beta. Reaper into marauder was called a free-win strat for several months, yet when Blizzard decided to implement the nerf patch, its win ratio wasn't far higher than 50%.
On February 12 2013 20:19 doggy wrote: While i generally like the idea of more cargo space for hellbats. Am i the only one who has concerns that such spezific buffs and nerfs (also like +15dmg for spores to bio) make the game even more complicated for new players and spectators?
I see why they do that, it makes balancing much more easy. But it seems like a double-edged sword to me
I don't understand why people keep bringing this up. I mean, does it matter how many units load into a medivac for a new player? Seriously, anyone who is not familiar with the game surely won't care. All that matters is that medivac can carry units. They load up into it, it flies them away and unloads. It doesn't matter if it's 2, 4 or 6. It's not complicated. Neither it is for lower league players/spectators. This is not rocket science, it's a simple knowledge of again a simple fact that you can only load 2 hellbats into 1 medivac. Just the same as the fact that roach only attacks ground.
Exactly the same thing can be said about spores. It absolutely does not affect the spectating experience if spores kill mutalisks x2 faster or slower. It's not like you can see both mutalisks and medivacs being killed by a spore in a single pro game where you might have wondered why does the mutalisk die to it x2 faster. And even if you watched some 2v2 tournament (do they even exist), would you really be able to notice such a small fact given there's a heavy amount of each flying unit on the filed? No. You're just looking for reasons to bash blizzard for anything they do no matter if it's good or bad.
These changes are needed. And I am personally happy with both spore and hellbat (if they actually decide to make it happen) changes. WIth this they might just have a quite enjoyable game at release.
I agree to you that this change is needed. It just seems to me like blizzard gave up on balancing the game without spezific changes like that. The game is already so complicated that a lot of people just don't wanna watch it because they need a ton of time until they actually understand what theyre seeing. By adding such spezific changes this impact on non-sc2 players will just get bigger. Just by watching the last weeks we have (i add the cargo change to this) already 3 of such changes. If blizzard continues to do that this will become more of an issue.
I would agree if all possibilities to apply balance with "regular" changes fail, but we're in a beta. Its not like anything is broke and all X MLGs were won by strategy Y. If needbe i agree to add such balance changes, i just feel like its wrong to already start doing that in a beta.
This isn't a good solution imo. Just seems like blizzard are trying to dodge the real issue here... please just make it so they aren't healed by medivacs<-- why are blizzard so against this..
On February 12 2013 21:43 Rorra wrote: This isn't a good solution imo. Just seems like blizzard are trying to dodge the real issue here... please just make it so they aren't healed by medivacs<-- why are blizzard so against this..
No kidding. I think you need to choose either they get repaired, OR healed by the medivacs. One guy sent hellbats w/scv drop and i could not kill them at all.
This is what I believe needs to be done and I don’t know why they are being so slow about it. Hellbat needs to be its own unit. It’s cool to have it transform from a hellion ect but it’s a 100 mineral units and there are limitation set on that. I would put the hellion in the category with marines,zelots and lings and we all know all these units with upgrades as speed,charge,stim,combat shield, adrenal glans makes them more effective but they can still fight other mineral units without being one sided. It really doesn’t make sense having a mineral unit that hard counters every other mineral unit in the game and have aoe attack for 100 minerals with the only drawback of being slow.
Blizzard already removed so the blue flame upgrade so it doesn’t affect the hellion and also made it so u can build them directly in the factory. Its attack and hp is not even the same as the hellion itself. In every way possible it’s a different unit but they still refuse to separate it from the hellion and in that sense they can’t change the cost for it since that would nerf the hellion.
Some people might say that the hellion transformation falls in the line of the mech units where we have Vikings, siege tank and thors that can switch between different mods. One thing to keep in mind is all of the other mech units are also gas based and not only mineral as the hellion. Also the transformation changes doesn’t completely change the unit. The siege tank may get splash when in siege mode but with the offset of being immobile and shooting slower. The siege tank don’t get a hp boost on its life and then a extra ability on top of that when being in siege mode and it even cost more minerals and gas then a battle hellion. Now look at the hellion that only is a mineral unit on what I get from its transformation ability.
My opinion what needs to happen is to make it own unit that can be build after armory and add a slight gas cost on it or a increase in mineral cost. As long as its connected to the hellion it can’t be too strong . After that is done I rather se a another transformation ability on the battle hellion and since the mineral cost and gas cost can be tweaked now when it’s not connected to the hellion we have less limitation on it. For instance it could transform to a ground unit that is immobile with single target air unit (missle turret) or maybe even a sc1 goliath. You could add a haywire missile ability or maybe transform it to warhound like unit. I would like to se a mode thet supports bio and that could be as the battle hellion in its current form and a mode that supports mech.There are allot of possibilities I just wish they could do this change and play around with what to do before beta ends
On February 12 2013 21:32 GaliX wrote: I dont see any real hard counter to Hellbats somehow in PvT mech play.
Drop scenario: Even if you spot the medivac in time, you have very very little time to react.
large numbers of Zelots just dissapear after the first 2 shot of 4 Hellbats even moderate Numbers of Stalkers can't kill hellbats fast enough.
Big Battles: Tank Thor battlehals Zelots just dissapear as they charge in, no matter how many you got (so I stopped builing them when I see more then 4 hellbats on the field)
Stalkers are useless against tanks anyway. So you have to stay on immortale, archon which are capable to deal with the army atm.
The big problem will be, when terrans somewhen realise what ghosts are capable against this composition. I see dark times coming when the meta games switches to a few ghosts + Hellbats + Tanks + Thor. I don't see any counter to this. Even voidsrays are to fragil to engage this army.
anybody can follow my thoughts?
So you are worried about a composition that will directly die to any kind of air play by toss? Not to mention there is still very little a mech player can do against blink stalkers, besides 3 base turtling. But the moment he moves out blink stalkers can ruin his day.
And on the defense the toss has photon overcharge, that deals pretty well with drops.
I don't understand why people keep bringing this up. I mean, does it matter how many units load into a medivac for a new player? Seriously, anyone who is not familiar with the game surely won't care. All that matters is that medivac can carry units.
Yes it matters, just like spore buff matters alot. This is like saying it is fine if siege tanks get bonus damage vs armored against terran, vs light against zerg, and only fire at air target vs toss, because they fire anyway so someone who is unfamiliar with the game surely wont care.
All those random differences make it needlessly harder to figure out.
And on the defense the toss has photon overcharge, that deals pretty well with drops.
Hellbats will kill 497 probes before photon overcharge does anything. Just sayin'. The problem Protoss had in WoL with hellions (early game), and in HotS with hellbats, is DPSing them down before they do their damage. A stalker takes 14 shots (20 seconds) to kill a hellbat. And now the medivacs can't even be intercepted with good positioning because of the speedboost.
Really I think Blizz's solution is quite ok. The problem was the synergy between hellbats and medivacs, so they take an approach to dealing with the problem that doesn't involve nerfing one unit or the other, just their special synergy. Kinda neat actually.
On February 12 2013 21:32 GaliX wrote: I dont see any real hard counter to Hellbats somehow in PvT mech play.
Drop scenario: Even if you spot the medivac in time, you have very very little time to react.
large numbers of Zelots just dissapear after the first 2 shot of 4 Hellbats even moderate Numbers of Stalkers can't kill hellbats fast enough.
Big Battles: Tank Thor battlehals Zelots just dissapear as they charge in, no matter how many you got (so I stopped builing them when I see more then 4 hellbats on the field)
Stalkers are useless against tanks anyway. So you have to stay on immortale, archon which are capable to deal with the army atm.
The big problem will be, when terrans somewhen realise what ghosts are capable against this composition. I see dark times coming when the meta games switches to a few ghosts + Hellbats + Tanks + Thor. I don't see any counter to this. Even voidsrays are to fragil to engage this army.
anybody can follow my thoughts?
Dealing with a meching player? Expand aggressively ala Protoss brood war and transition into Sky protoss. I heard void rays do exceptionally well against tank/hellbat/thor and a couple of tempests annihilate thors without ever receiving any damage. Is this your idea of a 'no solution'? You should also see how VR overcharge, used in conjunction with timewarp decimate an entire viking fleet with ease which allows you free reign of the entire ground army. Maybe you should explore more protoss before complaining about the lack of good solutions protoss can field against mech. Last i checked, top tier terrans still have difficulty trading mech against robo based armies.
Edit: Storms are also exceptional in fighting hellbats, they cannot split effectively and are naturally clumped when they attack.
And on the defense the toss has photon overcharge, that deals pretty well with drops.
Hellbats will kill 497 probes before photon overcharge does anything. Just sayin'. The problem Protoss had in WoL with hellions (early game), and in HotS with hellbats, is DPSing them down before they do their damage. A stalker takes 14 shots (20 seconds) to kill a hellbat. And now the medivacs can't even be intercepted with good positioning because of the speedboost.
Really I think Blizz's solution is quite ok. The problem was the synergy between hellbats and medivacs, so they take an approach to dealing with the problem that doesn't involve nerfing one unit or the other, just their special synergy. Kinda neat actually.
Especially when you got blink stalkers should intercept them fine, even without blink I wouldnt really want to fly over a group of stalkers. But if you do photon overcharge you can just kill the medivac, then the hellbats are just sitting ducks. Very slow sitting ducks. The remaining time of the photon overcharge will also kill the hellbats, yes it costs some mining time, the terran also invested into it (especially if we are talking about 1-1-1).
Anyway I am not arguiing that it isnt a effective solution, just that I dont even consider it close to being a neat solution. It is a very ugly solution. It is like saying marines are too good against roaches, so they get -2 damage vs roaches. Also an effective solution, but I also really wouldnt call that a neat solution.
And on the defense the toss has photon overcharge, that deals pretty well with drops.
Hellbats will kill 497 probes before photon overcharge does anything. Just sayin'. The problem Protoss had in WoL with hellions (early game), and in HotS with hellbats, is DPSing them down before they do their damage. A stalker takes 14 shots (20 seconds) to kill a hellbat. And now the medivacs can't even be intercepted with good positioning because of the speedboost.
Really I think Blizz's solution is quite ok. The problem was the synergy between hellbats and medivacs, so they take an approach to dealing with the problem that doesn't involve nerfing one unit or the other, just their special synergy. Kinda neat actually.
Especially when you got blink stalkers should intercept them fine, even without blink I wouldnt really want to fly over a group of stalkers. But if you do photon overcharge you can just kill the medivac, then the hellbats are just sitting ducks. Very slow sitting ducks. The remaining time of the photon overcharge will also kill the hellbats, yes it costs some mining time, the terran also invested into it (especially if we are talking about 1-1-1).
Anyway I am not arguiing that it isnt a effective solution, just that I dont even consider it close to being a neat solution. It is a very ugly solution. It is like saying marines are too good against roaches, so they get -2 damage vs roaches. Also an effective solution, but I also really wouldnt call that a neat solution.
It's not like that at all, because it's a specific unit damage nerf you're analogising, precisely what Blizzard are avoiding doing.
By the time I have plenty of blink stalkers, yea it's not a problem. I don't think Zerg are complaining about hellbat drops at the 15 minute mark, rather early on when they don't/can't have out what they need to deal with it...
Without the devastating effect of hellbat drops (insert strike at 7min), THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE TO META. THERE WILL NEVER BE A NEED TO LEAVE UNITS AS SPOTTERS.
HotS will become WoL v2.0 The same sh*t all over again, 1) Defend against X drop by building Y units of Z, then A-move and resume macro. 2) Build deathball, stutter step, mass up infrastructure for the remax, 3) rebuild army post engagement, 4) repeat step 1 until win.
I don't even bother watching WoL anymore, I'm bored to tears, the excitement is gone. Spectating SC2 has become BORING. Ask any casters and look at their viewership. It is shit compared to '11 Thanks to all the crybabies crying IMBA IMBA (and Dustin lacking a spine): I have FALLEN ASLEEP WATCHING A LIVE CAST, let that sink in for awhile.
1) reaper harass/expand is dead 2) early Thor drops are dead 3) ghost openings are dead 4) 2 rax pressure into expand is dead And that's just for Terran!
I'm sorry but you are the cancer killing SC2. L2play or stick to WoL and your precious timings.
On February 12 2013 21:32 GaliX wrote: I dont see any real hard counter to Hellbats somehow in PvT mech play.
Drop scenario: Even if you spot the medivac in time, you have very very little time to react.
large numbers of Zelots just dissapear after the first 2 shot of 4 Hellbats even moderate Numbers of Stalkers can't kill hellbats fast enough.
Big Battles: Tank Thor battlehals Zelots just dissapear as they charge in, no matter how many you got (so I stopped builing them when I see more then 4 hellbats on the field)
Stalkers are useless against tanks anyway. So you have to stay on immortale, archon which are capable to deal with the army atm.
The big problem will be, when terrans somewhen realise what ghosts are capable against this composition. I see dark times coming when the meta games switches to a few ghosts + Hellbats + Tanks + Thor. I don't see any counter to this. Even voidsrays are to fragil to engage this army.
anybody can follow my thoughts?
Dealing with a meching player? Expand aggressively ala Protoss brood war and transition into Sky protoss. I heard void rays do exceptionally well against tank/hellbat/thor and a couple of tempests annihilate thors without ever receiving any damage. Is this your idea of a 'no solution'? You should also see how VR overcharge, used in conjunction with timewarp decimate an entire viking fleet with ease which allows you free reign of the entire ground army. Maybe you should explore more protoss before complaining about the lack of good solutions protoss can field against mech. Last i checked, top tier terrans still have difficulty trading mech against robo based armies.
Edit: Storms are also exceptional in fighting hellbats, they cannot split effectively and are naturally clumped when they attack.
mhh storm is right, I forgott about this.
The problem with skytoss is, that high terran hit something like a Pre Brutlords timing to me often. I have a couple voids but not enough. But all in all you are right
Just wait till more players will drop Mules for repair alongside the hellbat drop. Try to outdps a mule repair supported by a medivac + you can destroy/steal 30 minerals if they react late. Met a few players who knew how much they need to stop a hellbat drop. But they never were prepared for Hellbat + Mule calldown. Sorry if that was already mentioned, saw the worker repair comments. But why load in workers if you can summon super workers without taking spots in the Medivac.
In TvT I currently press the Load in ScV button of my CC at badly defended bases quiet often, NeoSteel is nice to have in TvT haha. But it is good that everyone does the Hellbat drops, really helps you train against it. Still fail sometimes in PvT with my cannon placement, but usually I can intercept the Medivacs before anyway (don't even think that I mean Stalkers). I think it is easy to stop compared to defending a Reaver drop as Terran. And they basically derp like Zealots when they aren't controlled.
Making the Hellbat 4 dropsupply would probably trigger a way deadlier thing. Dropping 1 Hellbat and 2 Hellions that will roast your Workers (race specific upgrades for the Hellions included for optimized worker roasting) because you thought you had to retreat from 2 Hellbats as fast as possible and lined them up. Okay I guess Hellbat followed bei 3 Hellions is more deadly to Zerg and Terran.
I just hope they don't overkill most harassment options again like they did in Wings. As it would result in more powerful harassment units in the next expansion.
And on the defense the toss has photon overcharge, that deals pretty well with drops.
Hellbats will kill 497 probes before photon overcharge does anything. Just sayin'. The problem Protoss had in WoL with hellions (early game), and in HotS with hellbats, is DPSing them down before they do their damage. A stalker takes 14 shots (20 seconds) to kill a hellbat. And now the medivacs can't even be intercepted with good positioning because of the speedboost.
Really I think Blizz's solution is quite ok. The problem was the synergy between hellbats and medivacs, so they take an approach to dealing with the problem that doesn't involve nerfing one unit or the other, just their special synergy. Kinda neat actually.
Especially when you got blink stalkers should intercept them fine, even without blink I wouldnt really want to fly over a group of stalkers. But if you do photon overcharge you can just kill the medivac, then the hellbats are just sitting ducks. Very slow sitting ducks. The remaining time of the photon overcharge will also kill the hellbats, yes it costs some mining time, the terran also invested into it (especially if we are talking about 1-1-1).
Anyway I am not arguiing that it isnt a effective solution, just that I dont even consider it close to being a neat solution. It is a very ugly solution. It is like saying marines are too good against roaches, so they get -2 damage vs roaches. Also an effective solution, but I also really wouldnt call that a neat solution.
I don't think nearly as awkward as your example. In fact, this solution has already been implemented with banes that cost half supply and morph from lings, yet take 2 cargo space in ovies.
The biggest problem of hellbats drop is the timing. The timing is so good that your opponent will hardly able to get the necessary units to deal with it effectively. This is worst in TvT, if the other T go for a marine opening he will just lose.
In ZvT ZvP, i think a good simcity will help defense hellbat drop alot easier.
With regards to the points made I think a simple few points I feel would work this is
1) This ones quite harsh but further post with regards what someone mentioned with using energy for the boost. To get that kinda speed maybe it should empty considerable amounts of energy, like a energy 'dump'. This would allow the drop to do two things a) Quick speed into the base and then drop the hellbats but slow to get out b) slow into the base and then can pick up and boost to get out.
A allows people a few more seconds for the drop, just like a hellion drop or marine/maurader drop but then gives players chance to snipe it as it flees. While B allows again, possible reaction time but allows a quicker exit
2) Definately agree whole heartedly that the Bio tag removed, its still a guy in a robot suit. Same as Viking transforms from land to air is 'a guy moving around the craft as it transforms' kinda thing from SC2 SP campaign notes.
3) The taking up space arguement is good as well, but dont bring up scale of things, nothing in the game is really in scale at all IMO period. Maybe allow them to keep the 4 if points 1 and 2 were used as a nerf as such.
4) Force an upgrade : Terran have alot of upgrades already but still is anoption on medicav for the boost.
I've watched many Pro streams and casters say, 'Meta game' stuff changes, tactics change, I'd say by April/May HoTS will be balanced regarding this Terran thing either balanced by nerf or by tactics. I still remember when it was 1base v 1base with zealots for walls with Gate-Core...things change as maps and skills allow.
On February 12 2013 23:07 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Without the devastating effect of hellbat drops (insert strike at 7min), THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE TO META. THERE WILL NEVER BE A NEED TO LEAVE UNITS AS SPOTTERS.
Ok, but it's hardly fair to expect Terrans to keep the game entertaining for you all by themselves. What do you propose giving Zergs and Protoss that has an excellent chance of zeroing their opponent's economy at the 7 minute mark (barring impeccable spotting and micro) for a small investment and minimal risk of loss?
And since all things should be equitable on the receiving end, too, how might we ensure Terrans and Protoss are confined to a single precautionary defensive build order (like Zerg are now versus HBD)?
People want these builds left in, and then complain when their race's late game is left weak because the bullshit early wins and no extra early losses distort Blizzard's balance stats.
On February 12 2013 15:53 Neverblink wrote: I just played a game vs Terran that was using these drops.
I placed 3 Spine Crawlers & 2 Spores per Hatch. (3 Spines inside line, 2 Spores near gases).
My mineral line read 3/3 17/16 3/3 prior to attack. He dropped with just 1 medivac & 4 Hellbats. My defense: 3 Spines/2 Spores/1 Queen My units lost: 2/3 12/16 3/3 (He killed 6 drones) His units lost: 4 Hellbats
[snip]
About two minutes later he drops again but with 8 total hellbats.
My mineral line was slaughtered down to 4 drones with all static defenses in line still.
Zerg is now forced to incorporate Roach Warren into every build vs Terran, along with extreme measures of static defenses.
[snip]
I am zerg and I play the beta. Did you pull your drones as you saw the medivac approaching when your well placed overlords spotted the drop?
4) Force an upgrade : Terran have alot of upgrades already but still is anoption on medicav for the boost.
.
I don't think it should be an upgrade but it should cost energy on the medivac to use the afterburners around 75 energy to use it, first of all it delays the drop with afterburners by 40 sec, so you get alot more time to react if they drop without it.
It also makes the medivac upgrade a lot stronger since it makes it's healing more energy efficient = more energy left over after fights = more drops.
It gives some counterplay for protoss and terrran with feedback and emp to stop medivac's from rushing into your base with afterburners after a fight if you feedback/emp them.
I can't believe people are complaining about this being removed because it's an "New exciting strategy". Really? Over half of a mineral dying before the alert even goes off is exciting? You must enjoy not earning your victories.
4) Force an upgrade : Terran have alot of upgrades already but still is anoption on medicav for the boost.
.
I don't think it should be an upgrade but it should cost energy on the medivac to use the afterburners around 75 energy to use it, first of all it delays the drop with afterburners by 40 sec, so you get alot more time to react if they drop without it.
It also makes the medivac upgrade a lot stronger since it makes it's healing more energy efficient = more energy left over after fights = more drops.
It gives some counterplay for protoss and terrran with feedback and emp to stop medivac's from rushing into your base with afterburners after a fight if you feedback/emp them.
This makes so much sense it will be silly if they don't do it.
Although I thought the same thing when people were suggesting snipe be nerfed against massive and instead they nerfed it so a ghost can't even kill a marine or baneling in one snipe shot.
On February 12 2013 20:19 doggy wrote: While i generally like the idea of more cargo space for hellbats. Am i the only one who has concerns that such spezific buffs and nerfs (also like +15dmg for spores to bio) make the game even more complicated for new players and spectators?
I see why they do that, it makes balancing much more easy. But it seems like a double-edged sword to me
From a game design perspective, it's actually a very lazy solution to a very complicated problem. And it does sacrifice the games watchability and teachability.
The units, attributes and categories are getting increasingly niche and inconsistent. There is no internal logic; no way to visibly distinguish among the races and units what is mech, bio, light, massive or psionic, and what does bonus damage to-what.
Why is Hellion a biological unit in Hellbat form, but a Viking isn't when landed? Why can a landed Viking be picked up in a drop ship, but not go into a bunker like a Hellbat? Why do spores do bonus damage to biological air, and not light air? Does that mean they do bonus damage to Vipers? Or are Viper's psionic? Why are Ghost psionic, when they are obviously smaller and more frail than marines, which are light?
Of course a lot of snobs and "Masters" on this board seem to care less and less about good overall, consistent design and broadening the audience. Their ambivalence to these ad-hoc changes and Blizzards laziness pretty much guarantees that the audience for SC2 will always be limited to hardcore players and fans. But that's the direction that David Kim is taking SC2 with his band-aid approach to game balance and design.
4) Force an upgrade : Terran have alot of upgrades already but still is anoption on medicav for the boost.
.
I don't think it should be an upgrade but it should cost energy on the medivac to use the afterburners around 75 energy to use it, first of all it delays the drop with afterburners by 40 sec, so you get alot more time to react if they drop without it.
It also makes the medivac upgrade a lot stronger since it makes it's healing more energy efficient = more energy left over after fights = more drops.
It gives some counterplay for protoss and terrran with feedback and emp to stop medivac's from rushing into your base with afterburners after a fight if you feedback/emp them.
This makes so much sense it will be silly if they don't do it.
Although I thought the same thing when people were suggesting snipe be nerfed against massive and instead they nerfed it so a ghost can't even kill a marine or baneling in one snipe shot.
It's probably because a boost with a fixed energy cost would be extremely awkward to use, considering that medivacs are constantly burning energy. Woops you accidentally healed 3 energy too much and couldn't escape with that drop, gg. You could argue that it increases the skill ceiling when you force terrans to keep an eye on medivac energy while microing 3 drops at once, but to me it seems like a bit much.
If you have to add a cost to the boost, make it so that the boost burns energy like normal healing does, maybe at an accelerated rate. That way medivacs with low energy might still get a few crucial seconds of boost, and there's less energy management required: just make sure theres a little purple left.
Still, I can understand why Blizzard is hesitant to do this. Medivacs are already quite demanding to use properly, adding more barriers for noobs would be pretty harsh.
4) Force an upgrade : Terran have alot of upgrades already but still is anoption on medicav for the boost.
.
I don't think it should be an upgrade but it should cost energy on the medivac to use the afterburners around 75 energy to use it, first of all it delays the drop with afterburners by 40 sec, so you get alot more time to react if they drop without it.
It also makes the medivac upgrade a lot stronger since it makes it's healing more energy efficient = more energy left over after fights = more drops.
It gives some counterplay for protoss and terrran with feedback and emp to stop medivac's from rushing into your base with afterburners after a fight if you feedback/emp them.
This makes so much sense it will be silly if they don't do it.
Although I thought the same thing when people were suggesting snipe be nerfed against massive and instead they nerfed it so a ghost can't even kill a marine or baneling in one snipe shot.
It's probably because a boost with a fixed energy cost would be extremely awkward to use, considering that medivacs are constantly burning energy. Woops you accidentally healed 3 energy too much and couldn't escape with that drop, gg. You could argue that it increases the skill ceiling when you force terrans to keep an eye on medivac energy while microing 3 drops at once, but to me it seems like a bit much.
If you have to add a cost to the boost, make it so that the boost burns energy like normal healing does, maybe at an accelerated rate. That way medivacs with low energy might still get a few crucial seconds of boost, and there's less energy management required: just make sure theres a little purple left.
Still, I can understand why Blizzard is hesitant to do this. Medivacs are already quite demanding to use properly, adding more barriers for noobs would be pretty harsh.
While I agree a fixed cost wouldn't work out too well, a high rate drain could be very good, this would force players to have to want to commit to doing the boost or not. It would also make abusing the speed via positioning less of an issue because the medivac is not as big a threat offensively without energy.
As I've highlighted in your post. Have you played protoss in hots? If you want to talk about noob friendly, they have so many casters currently. Sentry MSC Templar Oracle. As a new player, microing 4 units spells is not easy by any means. So I don't feel that this is a good argument to make for nerfing medivacs. Not to mention how unforgiving the mismicro of those units is.
The level of whine is the community is too damn high! How can you guys complain about a unit being "overpowered" when the game is still far too young for anyone to know. I'm sorry zerg you can't make only drones until the 8 minute mark anymore, im sorry zerg you can't really on a mineral only unit for defence anymore. I think that using a 4 queen opening with 2 spines and a spore at each base can delay the first drop until you get roaches out.
To the guy saying " I have to make a roach warren every zvt" it's 150 minerals, and you can probably get an OV scout to see if its factory tech or not so you don't have to commit to roaches blindly.
Yes the hellbat drop is strong but nerfing units into the ground makes the game boring and easy to play. I think that people need to realize that terran sacrifices a ton of resources to open up hellbat drop, and that investing heavily in defence won't set you behind... the terran just teched straight to goddamn armoury....
On February 12 2013 23:07 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Without the devastating effect of hellbat drops (insert strike at 7min), THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE TO META. THERE WILL NEVER BE A NEED TO LEAVE UNITS AS SPOTTERS.
Ok, but it's hardly fair to expect Terrans to keep the game entertaining for you all by themselves. What do you propose giving Zergs and Protoss that has an excellent chance of zeroing their opponent's economy at the 7 minute mark (barring impeccable spotting and micro) for a small investment and minimal risk of loss?
And since all things should be equitable on the receiving end, too, how might we ensure Terrans and Protoss are confined to a single precautionary defensive build order (like Zerg are now versus HBD)?
People want these builds left in, and then complain when their race's late game is left weak because the bullshit early wins and no extra early losses distort Blizzard's balance stats.
Well, Blizzard 'fixed' early game TvZ in WoL but still left T3 Terran weak as shit. So It is hard for terrans to be understanding.
On February 12 2013 23:07 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Without the devastating effect of hellbat drops (insert strike at 7min), THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE TO META. THERE WILL NEVER BE A NEED TO LEAVE UNITS AS SPOTTERS.
Ok, but it's hardly fair to expect Terrans to keep the game entertaining for you all by themselves. What do you propose giving Zergs and Protoss that has an excellent chance of zeroing their opponent's economy at the 7 minute mark (barring impeccable spotting and micro) for a small investment and minimal risk of loss?
And since all things should be equitable on the receiving end, too, how might we ensure Terrans and Protoss are confined to a single precautionary defensive build order (like Zerg are now versus HBD)?
People want these builds left in, and then complain when their race's late game is left weak because the bullshit early wins and no extra early losses distort Blizzard's balance stats.
Well, Blizzard 'fixed' early game TvZ in WoL but still left T3 Terran weak as shit. So It is hard for terrans to be understanding.
T3 Terran is not weak at all. It's just hard to get to that stage. Try to play as Zerg to beat a Skyterran, it's damn near impossible to win.
On February 13 2013 01:54 Maesy wrote: I can't believe people are complaining about this being removed because it's an "New exciting strategy". Really? Over half of a mineral dying before the alert even goes off is exciting? You must enjoy not earning your victories.
Yes, it's like Real Madrid football team scored 3 goals against Arsenal in the first 20min of the game, there's excitement because the pressure is great on Arsenal to make up the deficit.
Likewise if EVERY SC2 game plays out like the last twelve, folks will get bored, which is why everyone loves Manchester United, because they almost never play the same way twice.
On February 12 2013 15:53 Neverblink wrote: I just played a game vs Terran that was using these drops.
I placed 3 Spine Crawlers & 2 Spores per Hatch. (3 Spines inside line, 2 Spores near gases).
My mineral line read 3/3 17/16 3/3 prior to attack. He dropped with just 1 medivac & 4 Hellbats. My defense: 3 Spines/2 Spores/1 Queen My units lost: 2/3 12/16 3/3 (He killed 6 drones) His units lost: 4 Hellbats
[snip]
About two minutes later he drops again but with 8 total hellbats.
My mineral line was slaughtered down to 4 drones with all static defenses in line still.
Zerg is now forced to incorporate Roach Warren into every build vs Terran, along with extreme measures of static defenses.
[snip]
LOL!!!
3 spines+2 spores=500 minerals.
Instead of this,you could do the RW(150min) and 5 Roaches(375 min 125 gas) makes total of 525 and 125 gas and he would lose the Hellbats without any drones killed.Is is really so difficult to understand that if enemy goes for a doom drop,you maybe need a doom counter strategy to stop it? He built early starport,medivac and even Armory to try this,why wouldnt you build RW and make 5 roaches per hatch???
BFH killed so many drones before the Nerf and Blizz had to do something.The moment they nerf it,Zerg also start to make Simcity with Spines,queens and evo chambers...WTF?? How much time do you need to realise you need roaches to stop this specific drop????
On February 12 2013 20:19 doggy wrote: While i generally like the idea of more cargo space for hellbats. Am i the only one who has concerns that such spezific buffs and nerfs (also like +15dmg for spores to bio) make the game even more complicated for new players and spectators?
I see why they do that, it makes balancing much more easy. But it seems like a double-edged sword to me
From a game design perspective, it's actually a very lazy solution to a very complicated problem. And it does sacrifice the games watchability and teachability.
The units, attributes and categories are getting increasingly niche and inconsistent. There is no internal logic; no way to visibly distinguish among the races and units what is mech, bio, light, massive or psionic, and what does bonus damage to-what.
Why is Hellion a biological unit in Hellbat form, but a Viking isn't when landed? Why can a landed Viking be picked up in a drop ship, but not go into a bunker like a Hellbat? Why do spores do bonus damage to biological air, and not light air? Does that mean they do bonus damage to Vipers? Or are Viper's psionic? Why are Ghost psionic, when they are obviously smaller and more frail than marines, which are light?
Of course a lot of snobs and "Masters" on this board seem to care less and less about good overall, consistent design and broadening the audience. Their ambivalence to these ad-hoc changes and Blizzards laziness pretty much guarantees that the audience for SC2 will always be limited to hardcore players and fans. But that's the direction that David Kim is taking SC2 with his band-aid approach to game balance and design.
My god, what the crap are you talking about. Who questions the unit labeling in the game and why specific units are psionic or not? Every single game that is out there has these weird tags on them. League of Legends, BW, DotA and even Magic: the Gathering have tags that define their units and abilities that are more or less effective based on those tags. That is not going to change, ever. As long as the lasers light stuff on fire and the missles explode, people will get a grasp on the game.
Also, saying a balance change is lazy and then not backing that up with anything beyond a rant how Masters players and snobs will disagree with you does not make right. Also, can we stop calling balance changes "lazy"? It has become the go-to argument for people who just want to complain, but don't really want to back up their arguments with anything.
On February 12 2013 15:53 Neverblink wrote: I just played a game vs Terran that was using these drops.
I placed 3 Spine Crawlers & 2 Spores per Hatch. (3 Spines inside line, 2 Spores near gases).
My mineral line read 3/3 17/16 3/3 prior to attack. He dropped with just 1 medivac & 4 Hellbats. My defense: 3 Spines/2 Spores/1 Queen My units lost: 2/3 12/16 3/3 (He killed 6 drones) His units lost: 4 Hellbats
[snip]
About two minutes later he drops again but with 8 total hellbats.
My mineral line was slaughtered down to 4 drones with all static defenses in line still.
Zerg is now forced to incorporate Roach Warren into every build vs Terran, along with extreme measures of static defenses.
[snip]
LOL!!!
3 spines+2 spores=500 minerals.
Instead of this,you could do the RW(150min) and 5 Roaches(375 min 125 gas) makes total of 525 and 125 gas and he would lose the Hellbats without any drones killed.Is is really so difficult to understand that if enemy goes for a doom drop,you maybe need a doom counter strategy to stop it? He built early starport,medivac and even Armory to try this,why wouldnt you build RW and make 5 roaches per hatch???
BFH killed so many drones before the Nerf and Blizz had to do something.The moment they nerf it,Zerg also start to make Simcity with Spines,queens and evo chambers...WTF?? How much time do you need to realise you need roaches to stop this specific drop????
It takes nine Roach shots to take down one Hellbat, so it takes two seconds for five Roaches to kill one Hellbat. On paper this seems fine, however it is possible to drop a Hellbat then pick it right back up after it attacks, wasting a number of the Roach attacks while the Hellbat(s) take very little damage.
Also, four Hellbats beat five Roaches, especially well with this kind of micro, making focus firing to kill off the Hellbats faster and prevent healing impossible.
Another thing is that you can go for a Hellbat drop similar to how you can go Hellion/Banshee off of a 1 Barracks FE and be safe against most things due to the fact that you can easily start Banshees, Tanks, or Widow Mines using the Barracks to build the necessary add-on's.
Considering that you can then go for a two base Marauder/Hellbat all-in right after with +1 Mech armor instead of +1 attack on Bio or really any number of things after this timing, this is OP.
I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
On February 12 2013 23:07 Hattori_Hanzo wrote: Without the devastating effect of hellbat drops (insert strike at 7min), THERE WILL BE NO CHANGE TO META. THERE WILL NEVER BE A NEED TO LEAVE UNITS AS SPOTTERS.
Ok, but it's hardly fair to expect Terrans to keep the game entertaining for you all by themselves. What do you propose giving Zergs and Protoss that has an excellent chance of zeroing their opponent's economy at the 7 minute mark (barring impeccable spotting and micro) for a small investment and minimal risk of loss?
And since all things should be equitable on the receiving end, too, how might we ensure Terrans and Protoss are confined to a single precautionary defensive build order (like Zerg are now versus HBD)?
People want these builds left in, and then complain when their race's late game is left weak because the bullshit early wins and no extra early losses distort Blizzard's balance stats.
If you've been paying attention to the Patches, you can see thatBlizzard is going with the flow of the community. Zergs are given three massive boosts to early detection in HotS to compliment the current metagame of expand early and fast: A) removed Evo requirement for spore crawler B) Overseer at Lair C) Overlord speed at Lair
Zerg also have the option to have the fastest land unit available before 6 min.
On February 12 2013 15:53 Neverblink wrote: I just played a game vs Terran that was using these drops.
I placed 3 Spine Crawlers & 2 Spores per Hatch. (3 Spines inside line, 2 Spores near gases).
My mineral line read 3/3 17/16 3/3 prior to attack. He dropped with just 1 medivac & 4 Hellbats. My defense: 3 Spines/2 Spores/1 Queen My units lost: 2/3 12/16 3/3 (He killed 6 drones) His units lost: 4 Hellbats
[snip]
About two minutes later he drops again but with 8 total hellbats.
My mineral line was slaughtered down to 4 drones with all static defenses in line still.
Zerg is now forced to incorporate Roach Warren into every build vs Terran, along with extreme measures of static defenses.
[snip]
LOL!!!
3 spines+2 spores=500 minerals.
Instead of this,you could do the RW(150min) and 5 Roaches(375 min 125 gas) makes total of 525 and 125 gas and he would lose the Hellbats without any drones killed.Is is really so difficult to understand that if enemy goes for a doom drop,you maybe need a doom counter strategy to stop it? He built early starport,medivac and even Armory to try this,why wouldnt you build RW and make 5 roaches per hatch???
BFH killed so many drones before the Nerf and Blizz had to do something.The moment they nerf it,Zerg also start to make Simcity with Spines,queens and evo chambers...WTF?? How much time do you need to realise you need roaches to stop this specific drop????
It takes nine Roach shots to take down one Hellbat, so it takes two seconds for five Roaches to kill one Hellbat. On paper this seems fine, however it is possible to drop a Hellbat then pick it right back up after it attacks, wasting a number of the Roach attacks while the Hellbat(s) take very little damage.
That would pretty much be the reason why zerg should have queens attacking the medivac and the more queens the zerg has the better as tends to be the case most of the time.
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 do realize that all you're doing in your post is whining...
On February 13 2013 02:54 LightSpectra wrote: I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
Can't tell if you are being scarcastic or not. You do know that David Kim is ranked very highly as a Global player right? From the last report, which is a bit old, he was ranked top 500 world wide. That is a bit higher than diamond rank.
I play Z. I havent played a ton of beta recently but I've been using Tangsc's roach pressure build. As long as I scout and see that the T is 1 basing I end up with 8 roaches+burrow, 24 drones, 2 queens and 2 hatcheries (Main and natural). This is the bare minimum I can have. The drop is strong, but the T rushes for the drop and is 1basing. It is hard to defend, but if I do an ok job (at least in my experience) Burrow plus queens targeting the medivac is good too. I dont think investing in alot of D is bad. Im not 100% positive if its viable, but I feel like I can add spines/spores if I really need to as well. Once I defend, I can counter and delay his expo with my burrow roaches and drone up.
TLDR; I don't think the drop is game breaking, at most it needs a slight nerf. There are options to deal with it and if you recognize it I think you can punish the T.
My god, what the crap are you talking about. Who questions the unit labeling in the game and why specific units are psionic or not? Every single game that is out there has these weird tags on them. League of Legends, BW, DotA and even Magic: the Gathering have tags that define their units and abilities that are more or less effective based on those tags. That is not going to change, ever. As long as the lasers light stuff on fire and the missles explode, people will get a grasp on the game.
Wow, you really live in a bubble, don't you?
All those games you mentioned --League of Legends, BW, DotA and Magic the Gathering -- you know they're only for die-hard nerds, right? That they're so mired in lore and gimmick abilities and niche units, only nerds have the patience to give a shit? The average person -- even one that might be interested in watching competitive gaming -- could give two shits about them?
If this is the best RTS can do in terms of actual design, I'm out. It's too inscrutable and far up it's own ass.
Lazy design. With increasingly small-minded defenders.
On February 13 2013 02:54 LightSpectra wrote: I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
Can't tell if you are being scarcastic or not. You do know that David Kim is ranked very highly as a Global player right? From the last report, which is a bit old, he was ranked top 500 world wide. That is a bit higher than diamond rank.
I hate to break this to you, but that article is full of trolling.
But I bet you really thought "David Kim was generally regarded as the best player in the beta, even though he did not participate in any tournaments" was genuine, didn't you?
My god, what the crap are you talking about. Who questions the unit labeling in the game and why specific units are psionic or not? Every single game that is out there has these weird tags on them. League of Legends, BW, DotA and even Magic: the Gathering have tags that define their units and abilities that are more or less effective based on those tags. That is not going to change, ever. As long as the lasers light stuff on fire and the missles explode, people will get a grasp on the game.
Wow, you really live in a bubble, don't you?
All those games you mentioned --League of Legends, BW, DotA and Magic the Gathering -- you know they're only for die-hard nerds, right? That they're so mired in lore and gimmick abilities and niche units, only nerds have the patience to give a shit? The average person -- even one that might be interested in watching competitive gaming -- could give two shits about them?
If this is the best RTS can do in terms of actual design, I'm out. It's too inscrutable and far up it's own ass.
Lazy design. With increasingly small-minded defenders.
On February 12 2013 15:53 Neverblink wrote: I just played a game vs Terran that was using these drops.
I placed 3 Spine Crawlers & 2 Spores per Hatch. (3 Spines inside line, 2 Spores near gases).
My mineral line read 3/3 17/16 3/3 prior to attack. He dropped with just 1 medivac & 4 Hellbats. My defense: 3 Spines/2 Spores/1 Queen My units lost: 2/3 12/16 3/3 (He killed 6 drones) His units lost: 4 Hellbats
[snip]
About two minutes later he drops again but with 8 total hellbats.
My mineral line was slaughtered down to 4 drones with all static defenses in line still.
Zerg is now forced to incorporate Roach Warren into every build vs Terran, along with extreme measures of static defenses.
[snip]
LOL!!!
3 spines+2 spores=500 minerals.
Instead of this,you could do the RW(150min) and 5 Roaches(375 min 125 gas) makes total of 525 and 125 gas and he would lose the Hellbats without any drones killed.Is is really so difficult to understand that if enemy goes for a doom drop,you maybe need a doom counter strategy to stop it? He built early starport,medivac and even Armory to try this,why wouldnt you build RW and make 5 roaches per hatch???
BFH killed so many drones before the Nerf and Blizz had to do something.The moment they nerf it,Zerg also start to make Simcity with Spines,queens and evo chambers...WTF?? How much time do you need to realise you need roaches to stop this specific drop????
It takes nine Roach shots to take down one Hellbat, so it takes two seconds for five Roaches to kill one Hellbat. On paper this seems fine, however it is possible to drop a Hellbat then pick it right back up after it attacks, wasting a number of the Roach attacks while the Hellbat(s) take very little damage.
That would pretty much be the reason why zerg should have queens attacking the medivac and the more queens the zerg has the better as tends to be the case most of the time.
Yeah, but with the speed boost and low DPS of Queens, the Medivac can easily fly away and start dropping on Drones somewhere else.
My god, what the crap are you talking about. Who questions the unit labeling in the game and why specific units are psionic or not? Every single game that is out there has these weird tags on them. League of Legends, BW, DotA and even Magic: the Gathering have tags that define their units and abilities that are more or less effective based on those tags. That is not going to change, ever. As long as the lasers light stuff on fire and the missles explode, people will get a grasp on the game.
Wow, you really live in a bubble, don't you?
All those games you mentioned --League of Legends, BW, DotA and Magic the Gathering -- you know they're only for die-hard nerds, right? That they're so mired in lore and gimmick abilities and niche units, only nerds have the patience to give a shit? The average person -- even one that might be interested in watching competitive gaming -- could give two shits about them?
If this is the best RTS can do in terms of actual design, I'm out. It's too inscrutable and far up it's own ass.
Lazy design. With increasingly small-minded defenders.
League of Legends has 32 million players registered players world wide and 12 million active players a day. That is more players than the current CoD or WoW. As many people play that game actively as watched the mid season premiere of the Walking Dead, which is one of the most popular shows on TV. Do you ever get tired of being wrong?
My god, what the crap are you talking about. Who questions the unit labeling in the game and why specific units are psionic or not? Every single game that is out there has these weird tags on them. League of Legends, BW, DotA and even Magic: the Gathering have tags that define their units and abilities that are more or less effective based on those tags. That is not going to change, ever. As long as the lasers light stuff on fire and the missles explode, people will get a grasp on the game.
Wow, you really live in a bubble, don't you?
All those games you mentioned --League of Legends, BW, DotA and Magic the Gathering -- you know they're only for die-hard nerds, right? That they're so mired in lore and gimmick abilities and niche units, only nerds have the patience to give a shit? The average person -- even one that might be interested in watching competitive gaming -- could give two shits about them?
If this is the best RTS can do in terms of actual design, I'm out. It's too inscrutable and far up it's own ass.
Lazy design. With increasingly small-minded defenders.
LoL and DotA are for die hard nerds? I hope you are joking right? Right?
On February 12 2013 15:53 Neverblink wrote: I just played a game vs Terran that was using these drops.
I placed 3 Spine Crawlers & 2 Spores per Hatch. (3 Spines inside line, 2 Spores near gases).
My mineral line read 3/3 17/16 3/3 prior to attack. He dropped with just 1 medivac & 4 Hellbats. My defense: 3 Spines/2 Spores/1 Queen My units lost: 2/3 12/16 3/3 (He killed 6 drones) His units lost: 4 Hellbats
[snip]
About two minutes later he drops again but with 8 total hellbats.
My mineral line was slaughtered down to 4 drones with all static defenses in line still.
Zerg is now forced to incorporate Roach Warren into every build vs Terran, along with extreme measures of static defenses.
[snip]
LOL!!!
3 spines+2 spores=500 minerals.
Instead of this,you could do the RW(150min) and 5 Roaches(375 min 125 gas) makes total of 525 and 125 gas and he would lose the Hellbats without any drones killed.Is is really so difficult to understand that if enemy goes for a doom drop,you maybe need a doom counter strategy to stop it? He built early starport,medivac and even Armory to try this,why wouldnt you build RW and make 5 roaches per hatch???
BFH killed so many drones before the Nerf and Blizz had to do something.The moment they nerf it,Zerg also start to make Simcity with Spines,queens and evo chambers...WTF?? How much time do you need to realise you need roaches to stop this specific drop????
It takes nine Roach shots to take down one Hellbat, so it takes two seconds for five Roaches to kill one Hellbat. On paper this seems fine, however it is possible to drop a Hellbat then pick it right back up after it attacks, wasting a number of the Roach attacks while the Hellbat(s) take very little damage.
That would pretty much be the reason why zerg should have queens attacking the medivac and the more queens the zerg has the better as tends to be the case most of the time.
Yeah, but with the speed boost and low DPS of Queens, the Medivac can easily fly away and start dropping on Drones somewhere else.
I'd say queens DPS is decent enough and it is because of the speed boost you want as zerg to have as much as queens as you can to at least force the medivac to retreat and not to go after drones. Plus transfuse can be really handy keeping roaches alive. Not only that, queens are very useful in every point of the game. I don't know why blizzard won't just make the medivac boost an upgrade. It seems the most obvious fix for the early hellbat drops or am I just missing something?
On February 13 2013 02:54 LightSpectra wrote: I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
Can't tell if you are being scarcastic or not. You do know that David Kim is ranked very highly as a Global player right? From the last report, which is a bit old, he was ranked top 500 world wide. That is a bit higher than diamond rank.
I hate to break this to you, but that article is full of trolling.
But I bet you really thought "David Kim was generally regarded as the best player in the beta, even though he did not participate in any tournaments" was genuine, didn't you?
That is why I did not cite that part, but referenced his rating in the top 500 in the world wide ranking, which has a cite on SC2ranks. And no, I did not take that other part very seriously. But you get an "A" for effort in snarky posting, but still fail provide any evidence prove that David Kim NA Diamond player, beause you are wrong.
On February 13 2013 02:54 LightSpectra wrote: I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
Can't tell if you are being scarcastic or not. You do know that David Kim is ranked very highly as a Global player right? From the last report, which is a bit old, he was ranked top 500 world wide. That is a bit higher than diamond rank.
I hate to break this to you, but that article is full of trolling.
But I bet you really thought "David Kim was generally regarded as the best player in the beta, even though he did not participate in any tournaments" was genuine, didn't you?
What the fuck are you talking about? David Kim was easily one of the best, if not the best player in WoL beta and then went on to make Grandmasters several times as random, even after the game was figured out, and got pretty high ranks at that.
On February 13 2013 02:54 LightSpectra wrote: I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
Can't tell if you are being scarcastic or not. You do know that David Kim is ranked very highly as a Global player right? From the last report, which is a bit old, he was ranked top 500 world wide. That is a bit higher than diamond rank.
I hate to break this to you, but that article is full of trolling.
But I bet you really thought "David Kim was generally regarded as the best player in the beta, even though he did not participate in any tournaments" was genuine, didn't you?
What the fuck are you talking about? David Kim was easily one of the best, if not the best player in WoL beta and then went on to make Grandmasters several times as random, even after the game was figured out, and got pretty high ranks at that.
Don't do it. You will ruin their careful crafted arguments that all the people at Blizzard are gold level players and don't understand the game. The idea that someone working for them could kick the shit out of most NA masters players will blow their minds.
On February 12 2013 15:53 Neverblink wrote: I just played a game vs Terran that was using these drops.
I placed 3 Spine Crawlers & 2 Spores per Hatch. (3 Spines inside line, 2 Spores near gases).
My mineral line read 3/3 17/16 3/3 prior to attack. He dropped with just 1 medivac & 4 Hellbats. My defense: 3 Spines/2 Spores/1 Queen My units lost: 2/3 12/16 3/3 (He killed 6 drones) His units lost: 4 Hellbats
[snip]
About two minutes later he drops again but with 8 total hellbats.
My mineral line was slaughtered down to 4 drones with all static defenses in line still.
Zerg is now forced to incorporate Roach Warren into every build vs Terran, along with extreme measures of static defenses.
[snip]
LOL!!!
3 spines+2 spores=500 minerals.
Instead of this,you could do the RW(150min) and 5 Roaches(375 min 125 gas) makes total of 525 and 125 gas and he would lose the Hellbats without any drones killed.Is is really so difficult to understand that if enemy goes for a doom drop,you maybe need a doom counter strategy to stop it? He built early starport,medivac and even Armory to try this,why wouldnt you build RW and make 5 roaches per hatch???
BFH killed so many drones before the Nerf and Blizz had to do something.The moment they nerf it,Zerg also start to make Simcity with Spines,queens and evo chambers...WTF?? How much time do you need to realise you need roaches to stop this specific drop????
It takes nine Roach shots to take down one Hellbat, so it takes two seconds for five Roaches to kill one Hellbat. On paper this seems fine, however it is possible to drop a Hellbat then pick it right back up after it attacks, wasting a number of the Roach attacks while the Hellbat(s) take very little damage.
That would pretty much be the reason why zerg should have queens attacking the medivac and the more queens the zerg has the better as tends to be the case most of the time.
Yeah, but with the speed boost and low DPS of Queens, the Medivac can easily fly away and start dropping on Drones somewhere else.
I'd say queens DPS is decent enough and it is because of the speed boost you want as zerg to have as much as queens as you can to at least force the medivac to retreat and not to go after drones. Plus transfuse can be really handy keeping roaches alive. Not only that, queens are very useful in every point of the game. I don't know why blizzard won't just make the medivac boost an upgrade. It seems the most obvious fix for the early hellbat drops or am I just missing something?
If the afterburners required an upgrade, depending on the cost I really doubt that someone would get it considering that it would likely be researched from a tech lab on the Starport which doesn't happen especially often.
Queen DPS is 9, 8 vs units with one armor such as Medivacs. Assuming 3 Queens are attacking the Medivac- one at one hatch plus the two extra for creep spread, that's 7 Blizzard seconds where the Medivac will need to stay in range of the Queens. Not exactly the best for the Zerg and plenty of time to fly the Medivac away using the boosters.
Even if the Zerg has five Queens attacking the Medivac the Terran still has four seconds to pick up and run, though he will have to retreat instead of attacking if he wants his Medivac to survive.
Either way the Terran has a lot of time to run and or drop somewhere else.
On February 13 2013 02:54 LightSpectra wrote: I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
Can't tell if you are being scarcastic or not. You do know that David Kim is ranked very highly as a Global player right? From the last report, which is a bit old, he was ranked top 500 world wide. That is a bit higher than diamond rank.
I have been ranked in high masters before and have been playing almost nonstop since WoL beta... and I would feel extremely uncomfortable and unqualified with balancing SC2 by myself. There are many things that may feel imbalanced at first but I still want to spend more time playing with-- and the more I play the more I realize how limited my point of view and experiences really are. Ideally there should be more than just one person in charge of balance, maybe a voting committee of top GM players of each race and from different servers.
On February 13 2013 02:54 LightSpectra wrote: I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
Can't tell if you are being scarcastic or not. You do know that David Kim is ranked very highly as a Global player right? From the last report, which is a bit old, he was ranked top 500 world wide. That is a bit higher than diamond rank.
I have been ranked in high masters before and have been playing almost nonstop since WoL beta... and I would feel extremely uncomfortable and unqualified with balancing SC2 by myself. There are many things that may feel imbalanced at first but I still want to spend more time playing with-- and the more I play the more I realize how limited my point of view and experiences really are. Ideally there should be more than just one person in charge of balance, maybe a voting committee of top GM players of each race and from different servers.
Voting is the worst way to do it and should never be done. Blizzard has a team that works on it and uses more that just their experience on the ladder to balance the game, they have tons of information we simply do not have. Being good at playing the game is nice, but that is not the only reason they hired David Kim. The degree in computer science might be a bigger reason. Anyways, I am just pointing out that he is not bad at the game at all.
My god, what the crap are you talking about. Who questions the unit labeling in the game and why specific units are psionic or not? Every single game that is out there has these weird tags on them. League of Legends, BW, DotA and even Magic: the Gathering have tags that define their units and abilities that are more or less effective based on those tags. That is not going to change, ever. As long as the lasers light stuff on fire and the missles explode, people will get a grasp on the game.
Wow, you really live in a bubble, don't you?
All those games you mentioned --League of Legends, BW, DotA and Magic the Gathering -- you know they're only for die-hard nerds, right? That they're so mired in lore and gimmick abilities and niche units, only nerds have the patience to give a shit? The average person -- even one that might be interested in watching competitive gaming -- could give two shits about them?
If this is the best RTS can do in terms of actual design, I'm out. It's too inscrutable and far up it's own ass.
Lazy design. With increasingly small-minded defenders.
You literally just named the most successful competitive games in modern history.
My god, what the crap are you talking about. Who questions the unit labeling in the game and why specific units are psionic or not? Every single game that is out there has these weird tags on them. League of Legends, BW, DotA and even Magic: the Gathering have tags that define their units and abilities that are more or less effective based on those tags. That is not going to change, ever. As long as the lasers light stuff on fire and the missles explode, people will get a grasp on the game.
Wow, you really live in a bubble, don't you?
All those games you mentioned --League of Legends, BW, DotA and Magic the Gathering -- you know they're only for die-hard nerds, right? That they're so mired in lore and gimmick abilities and niche units, only nerds have the patience to give a shit? The average person -- even one that might be interested in watching competitive gaming -- could give two shits about them?
If this is the best RTS can do in terms of actual design, I'm out. It's too inscrutable and far up it's own ass.
Lazy design. With increasingly small-minded defenders.
You literally just named the most successful competitive games in modern history.
Yea I don't know what hes on about. If he doesn't want the game to have a large fanbase with die-hard fans why is he even into gaming or posting on this forum...
Back on point though. The debate about "unit labels" is completely useless, the only significance is how it affects balance.
My god, what the crap are you talking about. Who questions the unit labeling in the game and why specific units are psionic or not? Every single game that is out there has these weird tags on them. League of Legends, BW, DotA and even Magic: the Gathering have tags that define their units and abilities that are more or less effective based on those tags. That is not going to change, ever. As long as the lasers light stuff on fire and the missles explode, people will get a grasp on the game.
Wow, you really live in a bubble, don't you?
All those games you mentioned --League of Legends, BW, DotA and Magic the Gathering -- you know they're only for die-hard nerds, right? That they're so mired in lore and gimmick abilities and niche units, only nerds have the patience to give a shit? The average person -- even one that might be interested in watching competitive gaming -- could give two shits about them?
If this is the best RTS can do in terms of actual design, I'm out. It's too inscrutable and far up it's own ass.
Lazy design. With increasingly small-minded defenders.
You literally just named the most successful competitive games in modern history.
Yea I don't know what hes on about. If he doesn't want the game to have a large fanbase with die-hard fans why is he even into gaming or posting on this forum...
Back on point though. The debate about "unit labels" is completely useless, the only significance is how it affects balance.
Considering "labels" are used in every board game, card game, RPG, RTS, and other game as ways to easily set units, abilities and resources apart. It is one of the dumbest arguments people make on TL in their "lazy design arguments".
e ensure Terrans and Protoss are confined to a single precautionary defensive build order (like Zerg are now versus HBD)?
People want these builds left in, and then complain when their race's late game is left weak because the bullshit early wins and no extra early losses distort Blizzard's balance stats.[/QUOTE]
If you've been paying attention to the Patches, you can see thatBlizzard is going with the flow of the community. Zergs are given three massive boosts to early detection in HotS to compliment the current metagame of expand early and fast: A) removed Evo requirement for spore crawler B) Overseer at Lair C) Overlord speed at Lair
Zerg also have the option to have the fastest land unit available before 6 min.
And yet... Seriously guys...[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure what point you're making. In all honesty I don't know if the build is broken or not - what I disagree with is the idea that ALMOST broken builds make for a livelier game. 4gate PvP was almost broken; did that make PvP a hotbed of innovation? No: it stifled it completely.
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.
I don't think that cargo space solves the problem, Medivacs can still unload 4 Hellions and transform them into Battle Hellions in order to circumvent the supply cap. The real problem is that building a Reactor and an Armory is far more cost efficient than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniter, there is something very wrong with only researching Drilling Claws at the Tech Lab in HOTS compared to researching Siege Tech and Infernal Pre-Igniter in WoL. The cost efficiency and the relative utility of the Armory is way too high IMO.
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.
I don't think that cargo space solves the problem, Medivacs can still unload 4 Hellions and transform them into Battle Hellions in order to circumvent the supply cap. The real problem is that building a Reactor and an Armory is far more cost efficient than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniter, there is something very wrong with only researching Drilling Claws at the Tech Lab in HOTS compared to researching Siege Tech and Infernal Pre-Igniter in WoL. The cost efficiency and the relative utility of the Armory is way too high IMO.
That takes a lot of extra time and you can't drop nearly as many Hellbats right on top of the enemy workers, plus you have a chance to kill one or even two of the Hellions before they turn into Hellbats.
The stats on the Hellbat itself are still OP, but this is a very solid nerf to Hellbat drops, letting them keep Hellbat stats relatively similar to how good they are right now.
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.
I don't think that cargo space solves the problem, Medivacs can still unload 4 Hellions and transform them into Battle Hellions in order to circumvent the supply cap. The real problem is that building a Reactor and an Armory is far more cost efficient than building a Tech Lab and researching Infernal Pre-Igniter, there is something very wrong with only researching Drilling Claws at the Tech Lab in HOTS compared to researching Siege Tech and Infernal Pre-Igniter in WoL. The cost efficiency and the relative utility of the Armory is way too high IMO.
That takes a lot of extra time and you can't drop nearly as many Hellbats right on top of the enemy workers, plus you have a chance to kill one or even two of the Hellions before they turn into Hellbats.
The stats on the Hellbat itself are still OP, but this is a very solid nerf to Hellbat drops, letting them keep Hellbat stats relatively similar to how good they are right now.
I also want to add that it essentially removes the OP part, which is the pick-up and redrop on escaping units.
I have been playing in the BETA almost whole time it has been available. The first time someone tried battle helion dropping me I did the same thing I do to any drop. I selected my drones and moved them to another base. I can drop tons of replays where I easily avoid any damage from them. If you have good overlord placement you can see medivacs coming from a mile away. When the game has gone on too long to see everything you need to add static defense. It is not hard to avoid this. I am only diamond and i have no problem dodging these harrasments. Stim marines are much much scarier or quick widow mines before I get any mobile detections. Stop bitching you noobs and try to figure out how to have better map awareness and you will be happy when you see a medivac coming because its a win for you. Pathetic how much people think whining will make Blizzard change the game for them so they don't have to get used to this new harrassment.
On February 13 2013 05:27 Niska wrote: I have been playing in the BETA almost whole time it has been available. The first time someone tried battle helion dropping me I did the same thing I do to any drop. I selected my drones and moved them to another base. I can drop tons of replays where I easily avoid any damage from them. If you have good overlord placement you can see medivacs coming from a mile away. When the game has gone on too long to see everything you need to add static defense. It is not hard to avoid this. I am only diamond and i have no problem dodging these harrasments. Stim marines are much much scarier or quick widow mines before I get any mobile detections. Stop bitching you noobs and try to figure out how to have better map awareness and you will be happy when you see a medivac coming because its a win for you. Pathetic how much people think whining will make Blizzard change the game for them so they don't have to get used to this new harrassment.
lol that's the reason hellbat drops are so strong btw is because even when you pull drones when you see the medivac coming a mile away the medivac is so fast it drops on top of your pulled drones. Now you are diamond so this is probably why you have never had this happen to you, but at a little bit higher level of play you will notice pulling your drones doesn't mean they won't die when the medivac hits speed and lands on top of them as they are running away ^_^.
So in short at least know what people are complaining about specifically before you make a stupid post showing you have no idea what you are talking about.
I disagree Blade.. I play very good people in HOTS including masters. I have seen you play and you are by no means a pro. Better than me but not a pro. I'm not saying its perfect but people are saying helions in their mineral line.. pull your drones.. fine the drop ship chases your drones? Slipt them.. There are many ways to deal with them and if the Terran is 1basing you, you should be able to replace any drones if you make the right decisions within 2 larva injects. I have also seen many zergs do fine agasint great players like Dragon, MillForGG.. Do you think it is OP? If so please show me a replay where you had no option to defend. I believe it won't exist.
On February 13 2013 05:43 Niska wrote: I disagree Blade.. I play very good people in HOTS including masters. I have seen you play and you are by no means a pro. Better than me but not a pro. I'm not saying its perfect but people are saying helions in their mineral line.. pull your drones.. fine the drop ship chases your drones? Slipt them.. There are many ways to deal with them and if the Terran is 1basing you, you should be able to replace any drones if you make the right decisions within 2 larva injects. I have also seen many zergs do fine agasint great players like Dragon, MillForGG.. Do you think it is OP? If so please show me a replay where you had no option to defend. I believe it won't exist.
You can split, but even in TvT it's like fighting ranged Banelings which don't suicide when they attack, and you can keep dropping them over and over and over.
Seriously, you don't want to fight ranged Banelings.
So your telling me I can't split? It just is not possible? that is your expert observation? Well I disagree. Splitting works very well. While they are dropping up and down all over I have 3 queens shooting the medivac, I have my forces splitting up to deal with it. I played a game TODAY where after the intial harrass I just left banelings at my bases. It worked wonderfully. I am not saying im a pro but you guys are arguing to argue.Give me some facts some real situations where you had no choice to defend. Your just blowing smoke up your asses right now. I will gladly posts my replays of this happpening and you can comment on that. Please the do the same and give me something.
On February 13 2013 05:27 Niska wrote: I have been playing in the BETA almost whole time it has been available. The first time someone tried battle helion dropping me I did the same thing I do to any drop. I selected my drones and moved them to another base. I can drop tons of replays where I easily avoid any damage from them. If you have good overlord placement you can see medivacs coming from a mile away. When the game has gone on too long to see everything you need to add static defense. It is not hard to avoid this. I am only diamond and i have no problem dodging these harrasments. Stim marines are much much scarier or quick widow mines before I get any mobile detections. Stop bitching you noobs and try to figure out how to have better map awareness and you will be happy when you see a medivac coming because its a win for you. Pathetic how much people think whining will make Blizzard change the game for them so they don't have to get used to this new harrassment.
lol that's the reason hellbat drops are so strong btw is because even when you pull drones when you see the medivac coming a mile away the medivac is so fast it drops on top of your pulled drones. Now you are diamond so this is probably why you have never had this happen to you, but at a little bit higher level of play you will notice pulling your drones doesn't mean they won't die when the medivac hits speed and lands on top of them as they are running away ^_^.
So in short at least know what people are complaining about specifically before you make a stupid post showing you have no idea what you are talking about.
I love Hellbats in late game situations to stop ling run-bys and mass Zealot warp prism play. That being said, since Hellbats are Bio-Mechanical, what if Blizzard designed a change that restricted Medivacs to boost with ONLY Bio units.
This means Bio-Mechanical or any other Mech would essentially be "too-heavy" to boost, giving you more time to react, etc.
On February 13 2013 05:27 Niska wrote: I have been playing in the BETA almost whole time it has been available. The first time someone tried battle helion dropping me I did the same thing I do to any drop. I selected my drones and moved them to another base. I can drop tons of replays where I easily avoid any damage from them. If you have good overlord placement you can see medivacs coming from a mile away. When the game has gone on too long to see everything you need to add static defense. It is not hard to avoid this. I am only diamond and i have no problem dodging these harrasments. Stim marines are much much scarier or quick widow mines before I get any mobile detections. Stop bitching you noobs and try to figure out how to have better map awareness and you will be happy when you see a medivac coming because its a win for you. Pathetic how much people think whining will make Blizzard change the game for them so they don't have to get used to this new harrassment.
lol that's the reason hellbat drops are so strong btw is because even when you pull drones when you see the medivac coming a mile away the medivac is so fast it drops on top of your pulled drones. Now you are diamond so this is probably why you have never had this happen to you, but at a little bit higher level of play you will notice pulling your drones doesn't mean they won't die when the medivac hits speed and lands on top of them as they are running away ^_^.
So in short at least know what people are complaining about specifically before you make a stupid post showing you have no idea what you are talking about.
I love Hellbats in late game situations to stop ling run-bys and mass Zealot warp prism play. That being said, since Hellbats are Bio-Mechanical, what if Blizzard designed a change that restricted Medivacs to boost with ONLY Bio units.
This means Bio-Mechanical or any other Mech would essentially be "too-heavy" to boost, giving you more time to react, etc.
I think that that's silly considering how Marauders are big guys in really heavy armored suits with grenades and stuff, while Hellions are unarmored buggies with a flamethrower on top.
Well with this change early game hellbat drops are out of the equasion in my opinion. It's not worth it anymore to tech to starport and armory to just drop 2 hellbats. On the other hand hellbats will probably be used for frontal attacks rather than worker line harass a lot more often now. In tvt it will still be a problem to defend a hellbat elevator when expanding.
I am not sure if this is the nerf that we need or the nerf that we deserve.
I've only watched streams of HOTS, but it looks OP from what I've seen. It just decimates the mineral line and seem to take a lot to kill from the tier 1 units.
On February 13 2013 05:27 Niska wrote: I have been playing in the BETA almost whole time it has been available. The first time someone tried battle helion dropping me I did the same thing I do to any drop. I selected my drones and moved them to another base. I can drop tons of replays where I easily avoid any damage from them. If you have good overlord placement you can see medivacs coming from a mile away. When the game has gone on too long to see everything you need to add static defense. It is not hard to avoid this. I am only diamond and i have no problem dodging these harrasments. Stim marines are much much scarier or quick widow mines before I get any mobile detections. Stop bitching you noobs and try to figure out how to have better map awareness and you will be happy when you see a medivac coming because its a win for you. Pathetic how much people think whining will make Blizzard change the game for them so they don't have to get used to this new harrassment.
lol that's the reason hellbat drops are so strong btw is because even when you pull drones when you see the medivac coming a mile away the medivac is so fast it drops on top of your pulled drones. Now you are diamond so this is probably why you have never had this happen to you, but at a little bit higher level of play you will notice pulling your drones doesn't mean they won't die when the medivac hits speed and lands on top of them as they are running away ^_^.
So in short at least know what people are complaining about specifically before you make a stupid post showing you have no idea what you are talking about.
I love Hellbats in late game situations to stop ling run-bys and mass Zealot warp prism play. That being said, since Hellbats are Bio-Mechanical, what if Blizzard designed a change that restricted Medivacs to boost with ONLY Bio units.
This means Bio-Mechanical or any other Mech would essentially be "too-heavy" to boost, giving you more time to react, etc.
I think that that's silly considering how Marauders are big guys in really heavy armored suits with grenades and stuff, while Hellions are unarmored buggies with a flamethrower on top.
On February 13 2013 06:08 Baum wrote: Well with this change early game hellbat drops are out of the equasion in my opinion. It's not worth it anymore to tech to starport and armory to just drop 2 hellbats. On the other hand hellbats will probably be used for frontal attacks rather than worker line harass a lot more often now. In tvt it will still be a problem to defend a hellbat elevator when expanding.
I am not sure if this is the nerf that we need or the nerf that we deserve.
It's still a lot like a ranged Baneling which if you tech to it off of a 1 barracks FE you can still do a bit of damage while setting up your infrastructure to go Mech. It takes slightly more investment than hellion/banshee but considering the strength of the Hellbat, the fact that you have a Medivac that you can use for whatever you like, plus you can use Widow Mines to delay mining at the Zerg's third for X amount of time, I think it could still be very strong.
[/QUOTE] I think that that's silly considering how Marauders are big guys in really heavy armored suits with grenades and stuff, while Hellions are unarmored buggies with a flamethrower on top.[/QUOTE]
Yea, it is silly now that I think about it more. [/QUOTE]
Why is this silly? You can't have a grenadier throwing from a moving car, it's too damm hard. Plus bomb people will tell you it's possible to blow themselves up, hence the heave armour of Marauders. Not sure how they can throw well with all the armour though. Maybe they are all former quarterbacks who can't do anything else like Tebow.
Not sure how they can throw well with all the armour though. Maybe they are all former quarterbacks who can't do anything else like Tebow.
Marauders don't throw grenades; they propel them from launchers inside the arm component, similar to how the Firebat launches flames out its arms. Take a look at the unit model and artwork to see what I'm talking about.
On February 13 2013 02:54 LightSpectra wrote: I don't understand why NA Diamond players like David Kim are balancing the game. Blizzard should hire some semi-retired Korean gamer like Polt for balancing.
Can't tell if you are being scarcastic or not. You do know that David Kim is ranked very highly as a Global player right? From the last report, which is a bit old, he was ranked top 500 world wide. That is a bit higher than diamond rank.
I hate to break this to you, but that article is full of trolling.
But I bet you really thought "David Kim was generally regarded as the best player in the beta, even though he did not participate in any tournaments" was genuine, didn't you?
What the fuck are you talking about? David Kim was easily one of the best, if not the best player in WoL beta and then went on to make Grandmasters several times as random, even after the game was figured out, and got pretty high ranks at that.
It's because David Kim knows every strategic response or timing or micro/macro trick in the entire game. He helped design it, he knows how to identify exactly what it is you're doing and exactly how to kill it, even if the metagame currently doesn't.
I think they should nerf hellbat damage a little bit, make them take up 2 space each in cargo, and maybe nerf the medivac speed.. just a little bit maybe, theres really no need for medivacs to be that fast!
i don't understand all the terrans complaining about tvt, i 1 rax expo and can hold the drop easily. Just make cc in your main and make marines non stop and get a tank asap. A lot of the time they cant even get in your base if you have your marines positioned correctly.
On February 13 2013 06:53 EleanorRIgby wrote: i don't understand all the terrans complaining about tvt, i 1 rax expo and can hold the drop easily. Just make cc in your main and make marines non stop and get a tank asap. A lot of the time they cant even get in your base if you have your marines positioned correctly.
How does a Tank help against a drop that drops right on top of your workers?
The whole point of not nerfing medivac speed is to not screw all of the other balances up. I'd rather they just do the cargo nerf then decide to nerf everything involving a mediva. It's ONE all in that honestly isn't as bad as people make it out to be. It's the same thing with the previous reapers. I had no problem holding it with a few marauders, but it got re-nerfed to being useless. No one bothered to really look for solutions with specific timings, rather than just random timings for defenses.
On February 13 2013 06:53 EleanorRIgby wrote: i don't understand all the terrans complaining about tvt, i 1 rax expo and can hold the drop easily. Just make cc in your main and make marines non stop and get a tank asap. A lot of the time they cant even get in your base if you have your marines positioned correctly.
How does a Tank help against a drop that drops right on top of your workers?
Additional splash damage to your workers from your own tank mixed with hellbat splash is the obvious solution. Just add more chaos.
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.
Hellbats are specifically designed for TvP mech. If you touch Hellbat as it is even slightly, it will ruin any attempt to mech TvP forever (Blizzard will not buff tank, period). I see in TvZ they hard counter lings, but you should not rely on lings TvZ against a mech players at all. I haven't seen them in not mech compositions I believe. For standard WoL TvZ you only do this Hellbat drop and this might get nerfed.
So yeah, in HotS, your lings are less effective, but we gained whole new perspective in TvP. Not to mention, there is now similarly hard counter to Tanks as Immortal in Viper. I don't complain, it makes for beautiful interesting and action-packed game.
The problem is, the helibat isn't even a true mech unit. It's just a firebat that comes out of the factory. Without the tank being buffed mech play really isn't happening. Instead of marine tank, it's just firebat tank. Different units, same army, still not mech.
I've seen recently TheStC playing some beautiful TvP BW-style mech with careful mine usage, tanks, hellbats and viking/raven support.. It was surprisingy effective and entertaingin, go check his vods on twitch. Also, Tank currently is in a good position relatively. Of course there are hard counters for both races avaiable, but it's not like Immortal has range 10 and Viper's Blinding Cloud takes 1hour to wear off. Widow Mines in it's current state are very effective against Protoss even later in the game, there are some devastating pushes you can do. For me, the real issue in TvP is Protoss air. Hopefully they are going to lower their damage, increase supply, or lesser their health, they are just pain to deal with.
I still don't understand the fascination people have with "mech". hellbats seem ridiculously strong, and so they're going to nerf one aspect of them that doesn't really make sense (cargo size, but only when transformed) on a unit that already has some weird/bad design associated with it (Medivac healing when transformed, hard counter to light). whole situation seems ugly. Why not just wait to balance them and nerf something that makes sense (Medivac healing, upgrade to transform, etc).
On February 13 2013 06:53 EleanorRIgby wrote: i don't understand all the terrans complaining about tvt, i 1 rax expo and can hold the drop easily. Just make cc in your main and make marines non stop and get a tank asap. A lot of the time they cant even get in your base if you have your marines positioned correctly.
It's because they are greedy and move out to the low ground immediately and can't handle defending both locations.
On February 12 2013 04:14 Stow.Wif wrote: I'd prefer that simply hellbat cannot enter a medivac at all. Whenever you try they transform into hellion first before loading. Would make more sense for me.
Yeah, that'd be a terrible idea. How would it make sense when a thor can enter a medivac but a hellbat can't?
Lore reasons aren't equated in gameplay. Also almost nothing is to scale in game. Kerrigan is shown to be huge in gameplay (bigger than tanks and as big as a Thor) but obviously in cutscenes, she's just the size of any human. (Blizzard themselves said they only made Kerrigan big to make it easier to differentiate her from other units and most stuff aren't to scale in gameplay)
Plus you can't load a MULE (which is smaller than a Thor and a tank) in a Medivac at all, so they can do the same with Hellbats.
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
The funny thing is if you have Zerg, NP a Protoss or Terran (or both at the same time), you can load a Colussus in an Overlord or even a Medivac. (You can't NP a Colossus and load it, you have to NP a probe, then build a Colossus, then finally load it into your overlord or if you have also NP Terran units, load it into a Medivac).
Blizzard could make it so Medivac and Overlords can't load Colossus if they wanted to (they could add a Validator that excludes Colossus, similar to how only Terran bio units can go inside a Bunker)... but since they didn't (and you can load a giant Colossus, bigger than a Thor, inside a Medivac), that means Hellbats can totally take up 4 spaces instead of 2 !
Yep, you can load a Colussus in a Medivac if you wanted to (though in 1v1 cases, this is impossible unless KeSPA decides to add "fun" maps with neutral SCVs and Probes for the Zerg to NP, like in some maps in BW where they added a Neutral Command Center so you can infest the CC and use Infested Terrans against Protoss or Zerg).
Anyway the point is, arguing over scaling and trying to apply it into gameplay scenarios is pointless since nothing is really to scale (in actual lore).
On February 13 2013 13:12 frostalgia wrote: It won't change the Hellbat Drop timing, just get a Reactor ahead of time and hit with double the healing rate.
Instead, why not make Hellbats transform into Hellions first before loading into Medivacs?
In your solution only hellions can enter medivacs and only hellbats can be healed by medivacs. That is a very ugly solution imo. If adding a reactor and second medivac does not effect the drop timing then Terrans would be doing that now for the double healing. This change will effect the timing, which will result in the victim having more defense up by the time it arrives and/or the attacker having slightly worse econ due to the additional gas mining/investement cost.
I would prefer if they fixed the hellbat stats instead of this. The hellbat will probably still turn out to be too strong in direct engagements. I also think that the medivac speed should not be an upgrade because if you look at WOL I think you can see that drop play has been really useless for a very long time especially against Zerg. The Speed boost makes drop play a lot less risky because it enables you to retreat and that's something that terran definitely needed. Probably the cool down should be a bit longer though.
On February 13 2013 18:34 Baum wrote: I would prefer if they fixed the hellbat stats instead of this.
Imo an easy one would be nerfing its bonus vs light and re-adding blue flame upgrade to affect hellbat. Then they toast workers alot slower, and in early game allow lings to be a bit more useful when they are used, but not upset balance late game.
On February 13 2013 06:53 EleanorRIgby wrote: i don't understand all the terrans complaining about tvt, i 1 rax expo and can hold the drop easily. Just make cc in your main and make marines non stop and get a tank asap. A lot of the time they cant even get in your base if you have your marines positioned correctly.
How does a Tank help against a drop that drops right on top of your workers?
How does "a Tank" help against anything? Sure you could siege it up and hit stuff (including your workers) from afar, but no one would go for workers when they could drop right onto a single defenseless sieged tank ...
Spamming Marines is much better at defending against a drop ... unless the opponent also assaults your front at the same time. Building a single bunker close to the mineral line would probably help immensely, but dont forget to put at least one Marine inside or else the windows are not lit up and the enemy can see the bluff. Since you can sell the bunker later on and four Marines arent that much to pull away from your fighting force it should be a reasonable enough defense for critical times.
Making hellbats require blueflame would pretty much mean they wouldn't be used against Z/P as a support unit for bio any more. Having to switch your addons around and researching a 150/150 upgrade while building one at a time pretty much means you are better off just building more bio instead. At least your bio will be upgraded and microable.
The part I love about the current hellbat is that you can just slap a reactor on your idle factory and start producing good support units for your army. Take that away and the unit becomes too inconvenient unless you are going mech with multiple factories.
On February 13 2013 13:12 frostalgia wrote: It won't change the Hellbat Drop timing, just get a Reactor ahead of time and hit with double the healing rate.
Instead, why not make Hellbats transform into Hellions first before loading into Medivacs?
lolwut? No, the one base hellbat drop can't afford reactored medivacs and hit at the same timing... When I do the gas first build, I can actually barely afford all that shit, the drop is pretty all in.
On February 13 2013 13:12 frostalgia wrote: It won't change the Hellbat Drop timing, just get a Reactor ahead of time and hit with double the healing rate.
Instead, why not make Hellbats transform into Hellions first before loading into Medivacs?
lolwut? No, the one base hellbat drop can't afford reactored medivacs and hit at the same timing... When I do the gas first build, I can actually barely afford all that shit, the drop is pretty all in.
Everything you said is true except the part about it being all in. The build has constant scv production, gets you a lot of useful infrastructure and because of the 111 allows you to follow up with a wide range of compositions. You can also follow up with a second CC/orbital straight after the last hellion is in production and be fairly safe against counters with a bunker and your initial few marines. Edit: Making marines and mines behind the attack to follow up the CC can hold most comps and is quite gas light. You can use the excess gas for either upgrades or a couple of starport units to help hold counters or apply followup pressure to secure your expo.
Remove the possibility of drop units while the mediback is using the speed boost and the hellion drop (and new drops in general) will be less powerfull, the boost only will be used to escape not to drop units in the middle of runing drones for example. That and move some +light damage to blue flame hellbat upgrade.
It's not that hard to counter. When I play zerg I win the game if he goes for a fast hellbat drop. Queens and roaches + 1spore +1 spine at mineral line.
On February 13 2013 22:17 llIH wrote: It's not that hard to counter. When I play zerg I win the game if he goes for a fast hellbat drop. Queens and roaches + 1spore +1 spine at mineral line.
You can blindly prepare for everything, and if he doesn't do it your behind. On most maps it is hard to scout the armory in time or at all with overlords. The interesting thing is WHAT triggers your response. I have started doing 9 drone scout on most maps vs terran, if I scout gas I like to do a roach ling attack. It works wonders vs most gas first builds. Much better than blindly getting spines and spores.
On February 13 2013 22:17 llIH wrote: It's not that hard to counter. When I play zerg I win the game if he goes for a fast hellbat drop. Queens and roaches + 1spore +1 spine at mineral line.
You can blindly prepare for everything, and if he doesn't do it your behind. On most maps it is hard to scout the armory in time or at all with overlords. The interesting thing is WHAT triggers your response. I have started doing 9 drone scout on most maps vs terran, if I scout gas I like to do a roach ling attack. It works wonders vs most gas first builds. Much better than blindly getting spines and spores.
If this is the case, then the game is well balanced in in regards to hellbats.
So whenever I´m playing against or with a korean and try to wish them best of luck and that I won´t resort to the abusive strategy of hellbat-drops they answer something like "미국인인척하지마똥싸는개세야", does anyone know what this means?
On February 13 2013 22:17 llIH wrote: It's not that hard to counter. When I play zerg I win the game if he goes for a fast hellbat drop. Queens and roaches + 1spore +1 spine at mineral line.
You can blindly prepare for everything, and if he doesn't do it your behind. On most maps it is hard to scout the armory in time or at all with overlords. The interesting thing is WHAT triggers your response. I have started doing 9 drone scout on most maps vs terran, if I scout gas I like to do a roach ling attack. It works wonders vs most gas first builds. Much better than blindly getting spines and spores.
It's awful if Terran does hellion banshee on one base (which I sometimes do even in WoL, and not just me, MKP as well :D). But I think it's indeed good in current HotS metagame.
On February 13 2013 22:17 llIH wrote: It's not that hard to counter. When I play zerg I win the game if he goes for a fast hellbat drop. Queens and roaches + 1spore +1 spine at mineral line.
You can blindly prepare for everything, and if he doesn't do it your behind. On most maps it is hard to scout the armory in time or at all with overlords. The interesting thing is WHAT triggers your response. I have started doing 9 drone scout on most maps vs terran, if I scout gas I like to do a roach ling attack. It works wonders vs most gas first builds. Much better than blindly getting spines and spores.
What is a terran going to do off of 1 base? You don't have to scout the armory to know what's up. The reaction to something like this is all but blind.
In TvT i haven't had trouble defending it, I just drop a scan on the base if i see something that indicates this build (often a factor near a starport lol) And then I actually make my own helions, or a MM combo and just defend it. IT can be hard if the player is microing hard but you really shouldn't lose too much to it if you are aware of what is going on.
On February 13 2013 22:17 llIH wrote: It's not that hard to counter. When I play zerg I win the game if he goes for a fast hellbat drop. Queens and roaches + 1spore +1 spine at mineral line.
You can blindly prepare for everything, and if he doesn't do it your behind. On most maps it is hard to scout the armory in time or at all with overlords. The interesting thing is WHAT triggers your response. I have started doing 9 drone scout on most maps vs terran, if I scout gas I like to do a roach ling attack. It works wonders vs most gas first builds. Much better than blindly getting spines and spores.
What is a terran going to do off of 1 base? You don't have to scout the armory to know what's up. The reaction to something like this is all but blind.
If you have not scouted the gas he could still be doing a marine all in. If you scout the gas he can still be doing hellion expands. The terran player can also deny scouting of the factory with marines if he realy wants to. And if you see a gas and no factory, he all of a sudden have alot more options. If zerg is forced to react by building spines and spores just upon seeing an early gas , else they might flat out die to this, is a clear indicator by itself.
Clearly a terran player can do more than a battle hellion all in off 1 gas. On most maps terrans can deny much overlord scouting as well. I am not saying it is imbalanced or anything yet tho. Just that the timing with the speed medivacs seem to be a bit strong. He will be able to catch up to your drones before they have arrived at your natural btw.
On February 13 2013 22:17 llIH wrote: It's not that hard to counter. When I play zerg I win the game if he goes for a fast hellbat drop. Queens and roaches + 1spore +1 spine at mineral line.
You can blindly prepare for everything, and if he doesn't do it your behind. On most maps it is hard to scout the armory in time or at all with overlords. The interesting thing is WHAT triggers your response. I have started doing 9 drone scout on most maps vs terran, if I scout gas I like to do a roach ling attack. It works wonders vs most gas first builds. Much better than blindly getting spines and spores.
What is a terran going to do off of 1 base? You don't have to scout the armory to know what's up. The reaction to something like this is all but blind.
If you have not scouted the gas he could still be doing a marine all in. If you scout the gas he can still be doing hellion expands. The terran player can also deny scouting of the factory with marines if he realy wants to. And if you see a gas and no factory, he all of a sudden have alot more options. If zerg is forced to react by building spines and spores just upon seeing an early gas , else they might flat out die to this, is a clear indicator by itself.
Clearly a terran player can do more than a battle hellion all in off 1 gas. On most maps terrans can deny much overlord scouting as well. I am not saying it is imbalanced or anything yet tho. Just that the timing with the speed medivacs seem to be a bit strong. He will be able to catch up to your drones before they have arrived at your natural btw.
If you are not able to determine a hellion expand from a 1 base hellbat drop you are not trying hard enough. If you want to know sacrifice an overlord and you will know and on most maps you can actually have an overlord near both gases and the natural.
On February 13 2013 22:17 llIH wrote: It's not that hard to counter. When I play zerg I win the game if he goes for a fast hellbat drop. Queens and roaches + 1spore +1 spine at mineral line.
You can blindly prepare for everything, and if he doesn't do it your behind. On most maps it is hard to scout the armory in time or at all with overlords. The interesting thing is WHAT triggers your response. I have started doing 9 drone scout on most maps vs terran, if I scout gas I like to do a roach ling attack. It works wonders vs most gas first builds. Much better than blindly getting spines and spores.
It's awful if Terran does hellion banshee on one base (which I sometimes do even in WoL, and not just me, MKP as well :D). But I think it's indeed good in current HotS metagame.
It seems it's the only real bread and butter in TvT wol. Doesn't work in any other match up . I agree with hots, been using it alot versus zerg, and they seem to suddenly don't know how to defend it, or get caught completely off guard. It's ironic considering they no longer need evos to build spores.
On February 14 2013 00:40 TheOnlyRedViper wrote: Show nested quote +
If you have not scouted the gas he could still be doing a marine all in. If you scout the gas he can still be doing hellion expands. The terran player can also deny scouting of the factory with marines if he realy wants to. And if you see a gas and no factory, he all of a sudden have alot more options. If zerg is forced to react by building spines and spores just upon seeing an early gas , else they might flat out die to this, is a clear indicator by itself.
Clearly a terran player can do more than a battle hellion all in off 1 gas. On most maps terrans can deny much overlord scouting as well. I am not saying it is imbalanced or anything yet tho. Just that the timing with the speed medivacs seem to be a bit strong. He will be able to catch up to your drones before they have arrived at your natural btw.
That is a lot of 'ifs'. Also what you're describing (marine all ins with no gas) is also present in WoL and bears the same threat, Hots or not. You should be able to scout these things with your drone either way, or send a sacrificial overlord past 5-6 minute mark to confirm what is approaching. You do not have to build spores for no apparent reason and without confirmative scouting. In hots, you do not need an evo chamber to build spores, defense can be readied in 20 seconds.
You also didn't mention queens as a part of the defense. A typical opening of 4 queens should give ample creep spread and AA defense, and are great for mid/late game injects and tranfuses. I don't know why it's not possible to 'scout' the terran when you can easily send 1 ling periodically to check if the natural has been saturated. Past 6 mins and you don't see a CC in the natural, you do not continue droning, you build defenses and start army production. Your issues sound like mechanical errors combined with poor map awareness. It's practically the same as scouting a protoss with no nexus after 5 minutes, you know there's an attack coming.
I support the change to 4 cargo spaces per hellbat, however, players should always prepare at least a few roaches, and actually stutter the hellbats while focusing the medvac with queens. I mean if the T rushes Hellbats, they would have nothing else other than the initial drop and follow up hellbats with no real economy behind that. Defend the drop, you're ahead, build more roaches to cover your base and proceed to expand to a third.
On February 13 2013 23:05 DrAbuse wrote: So whenever I´m playing against or with a korean and try to wish them best of luck and that I won´t resort to the abusive strategy of hellbat-drops they answer something like "미국인인척하지마똥싸는개세야", does anyone know what this means?
Google Translate tells me it means this: "Encase one Do not shit masquerading as American Seya".
On February 13 2013 23:05 DrAbuse wrote: So whenever I´m playing against or with a korean and try to wish them best of luck and that I won´t resort to the abusive strategy of hellbat-drops they answer something like "미국인인척하지마똥싸는개세야", does anyone know what this means?
Google Translate tells me it means this: "Encase one Do not shit masquerading as American Seya".
That must be what they mean.
Yeah in layman terms, they're essentially BMing you in korean. Contrary to what you believe and see in Korean pros, most of the actual Korean players on Bnet aren't too polite to Americans or foreigners for that matter. You could say they're effectively racist towards people outside their own race, but this is a fact.
On February 13 2013 23:05 DrAbuse wrote: So whenever I´m playing against or with a korean and try to wish them best of luck and that I won´t resort to the abusive strategy of hellbat-drops they answer something like "미국인인척하지마똥싸는개세야", does anyone know what this means?
Google Translate tells me it means this: "Encase one Do not shit masquerading as American Seya".
On February 13 2013 23:05 DrAbuse wrote: So whenever I´m playing against or with a korean and try to wish them best of luck and that I won´t resort to the abusive strategy of hellbat-drops they answer something like "미국인인척하지마똥싸는개세야", does anyone know what this means?
Google Translate tells me it means this: "Encase one Do not shit masquerading as American Seya".
That must be what they mean.
Yeah in layman terms, they're essentially BMing you in korean. Contrary to what you believe and see in Korean pros, most of the actual Korean players on Bnet aren't too polite to Americans or foreigners for that matter. You could say they're effectively racist towards people outside their own race, but this is a fact.
racist is a hard word
when you step in my local football ground (euro football sorry US) and no one knows you better be a) a nice guy or b) got some serious skills
when you walk in and talk shit "well i play fair trust me and i wish you best luck" ... man you´ll have a hard time better come armored
On February 13 2013 23:05 DrAbuse wrote: So whenever I´m playing against or with a korean and try to wish them best of luck and that I won´t resort to the abusive strategy of hellbat-drops they answer something like "미국인인척하지마똥싸는개세야", does anyone know what this means?
Google Translate tells me it means this: "Encase one Do not shit masquerading as American Seya".
That must be what they mean.
Yeah in layman terms, they're essentially BMing you in korean. Contrary to what you believe and see in Korean pros, most of the actual Korean players on Bnet aren't too polite to Americans or foreigners for that matter. You could say they're effectively racist towards people outside their own race, but this is a fact.
racist is a hard word
when you step in my local football ground (euro football sorry US) and no one knows you better be a) a nice guy or b) got some serious skills
when you walk in and talk shit "well i play fair trust me and i wish you best luck" ... man you´ll have a hard time better come armored
just sayin
Could someone put this through Google Translator, too? :D
On February 13 2013 23:05 DrAbuse wrote: So whenever I´m playing against or with a korean and try to wish them best of luck and that I won´t resort to the abusive strategy of hellbat-drops they answer something like "미국인인척하지마똥싸는개세야", does anyone know what this means?
Google Translate tells me it means this: "Encase one Do not shit masquerading as American Seya".
That must be what they mean.
Yeah in layman terms, they're essentially BMing you in korean. Contrary to what you believe and see in Korean pros, most of the actual Korean players on Bnet aren't too polite to Americans or foreigners for that matter. You could say they're effectively racist towards people outside their own race, but this is a fact.
racist is a hard word
when you step in my local football ground (euro football sorry US) and no one knows you better be a) a nice guy or b) got some serious skills
when you walk in and talk shit "well i play fair trust me and i wish you best luck" ... man you´ll have a hard time better come armored
just sayin
Could someone put this through Google Translator, too? :D
Sry that you need google translator to understand common sense =(
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 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.
Yes, I completely agree. I just wanna point out the important idea this guy says. There should be no superhard counter in t1/t2 like lings vs hellbats. I just feel like there is not much use for the zerglings in the game anymore. And once some mines get burrowed, lings cannot move or they all risk blowing up. So it is either pointless to make lings because they don't move or it is frustrating because you have to be careful not to meet a mine or a hellbat.
The first very important change that should be done is: The ability of widow mine should be in style of seeker missile. It selects a target, waits 5 seconds and then shoots. So you have a chance to decrease the damage if you are good enough. Same as with seeker missile. Raven is more expensive but mobile. Widow mine is immobile but cheaper. ------- OR Alternative solution. ------- Widow mines cannot burrow on creep. If the creep gets over the mine, the mine cannot be activated. This will force terran to be a little bit more active to gain map control and it will at least stop the zerg's frustration and fear when he is moving on creep. Generally, burrowing mines on creep? Come on it doesn't make any sense.
The second change. A hellion transforming into a hellbat and suddenly being biological? What the hell! It doesn't make any sense. Do you always pump a soul into a machine when it is transforming? How can a medivac heal a machine? My brain is frozen on this one.
I dont get why the medivacs just arbitrarily have the speed boost. Its retarded game design if you ask me. Its the same principal as warp gate research- theres no reason to not use it. It lends itself to mindless play and lack of variety in the games. The hellbats drops are just symptoms indicating a bigger problem.
On February 14 2013 05:04 Aveng3r wrote: I dont get why the medivacs just arbitrarily have the speed boost. Its retarded game design if you ask me. Its the same principal as warp gate research- theres no reason to not use it. It lends itself to mindless play and lack of variety in the games. The hellbats drops are just symptoms indicating a bigger problem.
I disagree. Having the speed boost makes for more dynamic drop play. It's not a matter of using it or not using it, it's a matter of how you use it and when you use it.
On February 12 2013 22:05 Anomi wrote: This is what I believe needs to be done and I don’t know why they are being so slow about it. Hellbat needs to be its own unit. It’s cool to have it transform from a hellion ect but it’s a 100 mineral units and there are limitation set on that. I would put the hellion in the category with marines,zelots and lings and we all know all these units with upgrades as speed,charge,stim,combat shield, adrenal glans makes them more effective but they can still fight other mineral units without being one sided. It really doesn’t make sense having a mineral unit that hard counters every other mineral unit in the game and have aoe attack for 100 minerals with the only drawback of being slow.
Blizzard already removed so the blue flame upgrade so it doesn’t affect the hellion and also made it so u can build them directly in the factory. Its attack and hp is not even the same as the hellion itself. In every way possible it’s a different unit but they still refuse to separate it from the hellion and in that sense they can’t change the cost for it since that would nerf the hellion.
Some people might say that the hellion transformation falls in the line of the mech units where we have Vikings, siege tank and thors that can switch between different mods. One thing to keep in mind is all of the other mech units are also gas based and not only mineral as the hellion. Also the transformation changes doesn’t completely change the unit. The siege tank may get splash when in siege mode but with the offset of being immobile and shooting slower. The siege tank don’t get a hp boost on its life and then a extra ability on top of that when being in siege mode and it even cost more minerals and gas then a battle hellion. Now look at the hellion that only is a mineral unit on what I get from its transformation ability.
My opinion what needs to happen is to make it own unit that can be build after armory and add a slight gas cost on it or a increase in mineral cost. As long as its connected to the hellion it can’t be too strong . After that is done I rather se a another transformation ability on the battle hellion and since the mineral cost and gas cost can be tweaked now when it’s not connected to the hellion we have less limitation on it. For instance it could transform to a ground unit that is immobile with single target air unit (missle turret) or maybe even a sc1 goliath. You could add a haywire missile ability or maybe transform it to warhound like unit. I would like to se a mode thet supports bio and that could be as the battle hellion in its current form and a mode that supports mech.There are allot of possibilities I just wish they could do this change and play around with what to do before beta ends
I agree, especially that it seems illogical to make a mineral only unit that hard counters the other races mineral only units. And if the only drawback is being slow, that is partially negated by letting it transform into hellions. In all ways, it seems like they should be different units. I bet Blizzard hopes it works out because if Zerg or Protoss invest heavily in air, the Terran will not have a marine count to fall back on if they are going mostly hellbats. Well maybe this will work, but only Zerg can generate an air army quickly. Protoss does it through a very slow process, so Terran will not be caught by surprise. Does Blizzard assume or want Protoss to open air and always go air against Terran in HotS?
It really seems like these units are too good. I'm not at all surprised of everybody complaining about them as the current HotS beta plays.
10 Drone scout (1) 15 Hatch 16 Gas (2) 16 Pool 17 Overlord 17 Drone 18 Zergling (scout, 3) 19 Zergling 20-21 Queen (4) 21-23 Queen 24 Overlord 25-36 Drone 30 Gas at natural (5) 36 Roach Warren 36 x 3 Overlords Produce roaches until out of gas/minerals (Usually get 10)
If they went straight Hell Bat drop then you are busting down that door and crippling his economy. If he proceeds to attack your main base then transfer drones, split into two group; one goes on right side path & one on left. Key is to drop two spines in the opposite of the base he's attempting to go after. The two queens and two spines will be more then enough to hold off until a few roaches spawn to take care of this.
1) Scout for gas. If you spot gas then you are most likely witnessing Hellbats in some form. Continue build. 2) 16 Gas is so you can gather up a lot to produce 10+roaches 3) Scout with this zergling. Make sure you spot that they haven't expanded or misread the build. Place 1 ling in natural mineral line if no expansion down there. 4) Drop a creep tumor to "link" creep spread in-between natural & main base. Allows the queen to tank some damage during drone transfer. 5) Gas at natural is for the extra boost of gas for more roaches. Also, if you are forced to leave one base then you are still mining gas for roaches(needed for hellbats)
My transition out of this has been. Start Lair upon leaving base with roaches (Next 100 gas) Grab both gases that you don't currently have. Throw down Spire and make 10 Mutalisks (he'll probably grab tanks for roaches) Expand to grab more gas After you see the very first Thor then I throw down Infestation Pit Hive Tech Viper/Roach/Hydra
I post the transition because it's not an All-in defending this one build order (Hellbat drop). I went from being destroyed by Hellbats to manging every Terran game.
(I'm sure this build had been made by someone else so I do not take any credit for this)
On February 14 2013 05:04 Aveng3r wrote: I dont get why the medivacs just arbitrarily have the speed boost. Its retarded game design if you ask me. Its the same principal as warp gate research- theres no reason to not use it. It lends itself to mindless play and lack of variety in the games. The hellbats drops are just symptoms indicating a bigger problem.
I disagree. Having the speed boost makes for more dynamic drop play. It's not a matter of using it or not using it, it's a matter of how you use it and when you use it.
I guess, but you could say the same thing for stim, blink, burrow, etc. its the fact that its not an upgrade that bothers me, i feel like it shouldnt just be there for someone to use whenever (especially given how weve seen how strong it is)
On February 14 2013 05:04 Aveng3r wrote: I dont get why the medivacs just arbitrarily have the speed boost. Its retarded game design if you ask me. Its the same principal as warp gate research- theres no reason to not use it. It lends itself to mindless play and lack of variety in the games. The hellbats drops are just symptoms indicating a bigger problem.
I disagree. Having the speed boost makes for more dynamic drop play. It's not a matter of using it or not using it, it's a matter of how you use it and when you use it.
I guess, but you could say the same thing for stim, blink, burrow, etc. its the fact that its not an upgrade that bothers me, i feel like it shouldnt just be there for someone to use whenever (especially given how weve seen how strong it is)
I do agree with that. I think having the boosters be part of the caduceus reactor upgrade, for example, would make a lot of sense.
On February 14 2013 05:04 Aveng3r wrote: I dont get why the medivacs just arbitrarily have the speed boost. Its retarded game design if you ask me. Its the same principal as warp gate research- theres no reason to not use it. It lends itself to mindless play and lack of variety in the games. The hellbats drops are just symptoms indicating a bigger problem.
I disagree. Having the speed boost makes for more dynamic drop play. It's not a matter of using it or not using it, it's a matter of how you use it and when you use it.
I guess, but you could say the same thing for stim, blink, burrow, etc. its the fact that its not an upgrade that bothers me, i feel like it shouldnt just be there for someone to use whenever (especially given how weve seen how strong it is)
I do agree with that. I think having the boosters be part of the caduceus reactor upgrade, for example, would make a lot of sense.
On February 14 2013 05:04 Aveng3r wrote: I dont get why the medivacs just arbitrarily have the speed boost. Its retarded game design if you ask me. Its the same principal as warp gate research- theres no reason to not use it. It lends itself to mindless play and lack of variety in the games. The hellbats drops are just symptoms indicating a bigger problem.
I disagree. Having the speed boost makes for more dynamic drop play. It's not a matter of using it or not using it, it's a matter of how you use it and when you use it.
I guess, but you could say the same thing for stim, blink, burrow, etc. its the fact that its not an upgrade that bothers me, i feel like it shouldnt just be there for someone to use whenever (especially given how weve seen how strong it is)
I do agree with that. I think having the boosters be part of the caduceus reactor upgrade, for example, would make a lot of sense.
Indeed. There is a reason protoss has to spend 100M and 100G for the warp prism speed upgrade (that's beside the robotics bay cost interms of time and resources) to speed up their warp prism. Fast dropships are not things you can just give that early especially if you're giving it for free. That said, drop play is really something interesting and we don't want to make these upgrades too expensive (the protoss one is really too expensive given that you have to build a robotic bay and when you do that you really wanna utilize your "robo bay" 200M and 200G investment with something other than warp prism speed.)
The thing is terran really relies on doing damage to be able to compete in the late game and one of the big problems of WOL was that drop play became more and more ineffective as people got better at dealing with it and developed safe strategies especially against Zerg it became useless to drop since they could afford to spend minerals on spines and spores and often your drop would just get fungaled anyway. I think with Protoss getting more agressive tools in the cheaper dark shrine and the oracle and two very powerful defensive abilities with Planetary Nexus and Mass Recall. I think terran really needs something like the speed buff to keep up. Making it an upgrade would really feel bland since you would have to get a techlab just for that while you would actually want to pump double medivacs from a reactored starport instead. Maybe the cooldown is too low or the speed buff a bit too big but please don't make this ability an upgrade.
On February 14 2013 05:04 Aveng3r wrote: I dont get why the medivacs just arbitrarily have the speed boost. Its retarded game design if you ask me. Its the same principal as warp gate research- theres no reason to not use it. It lends itself to mindless play and lack of variety in the games. The hellbats drops are just symptoms indicating a bigger problem.
I disagree. Having the speed boost makes for more dynamic drop play. It's not a matter of using it or not using it, it's a matter of how you use it and when you use it.
You use it when it's up. Where is the dynamic in that ? There is no trade-off... There is no reason to not use it. There should be energy cost for the boost or it should be upgrade. About the hellbat. I think that blizzard made huge mistake with that unit. It is meant to be tankier, slower version of the hellion and it kinda is, but the problem here is its damage. Right now its tankier , slower and dealing more damage version of the hellion which is wrong concept in my opinion. The tanky units are meant to take the damage and they should do less dmg than the fast, agile units that are the true damage dealers. Otherwise we have this situation where you drop 4 hellbats in the worker line and nothing can kill them before the workers are dead, or 5 hellbats killing infinite amount of zerglings etc, etc. To fix that problem I think blizzard should do 2 things. Lower the dmg of the hellbat, raise the dmg of the siege tanks(or just make it 50 flat). In this case we will have hellbats tanking dmg, while the true damage dealers are killing stuff.
EPT
Hire me Blizzard!
I have to make a roach warren every zvt" it's 150 minerals, and you can probably get an OV scout to see if its factory tech or not so you don't have to commit to roaches blindly. 
