EPTBeta Balance Update #14 - Page 7
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LionsFist
Australia164 Posts
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HeyImFinn
United States250 Posts
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StarscreamG1
Portugal1653 Posts
On February 14 2013 10:09 IAmMajiC wrote: This game needs more aggression! Hellbat drops are only really a "problem" in TvT, but I'm sure Terrans would figure something out, like they always have. Not true. | ||
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Badfatpanda
United States9719 Posts
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avilo
United States4100 Posts
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larse
1611 Posts
It loses blue flame visually and functionally It gets a cargo space increase from 2 to 4 It obtains a biological tag, It receives the ability to be healed by medivac, because of the biological tag It but can't go into bunkers even though all biological Terran units can get into bunker All these "rules" just don't seem clean in terms of design and confusing for new players. There are "hidden rules" in other units as well but so far I think hellbat is the most idiosyncratic unit in the game. | ||
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
Still think baneling bombs and oracles are worse though. (though baneling bomb tech is damn expensive even against the hellbat tree) | ||
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Ben...
Canada3485 Posts
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wUndertUnge
United States1125 Posts
On February 14 2013 10:20 larse wrote: There are all these weird "rules" of hellbat when it transforms from hellion: It loses blue flame visually and functionally It gets a cargo space increase from 2 to 4 It obtains a biological tag, It receives the ability to be healed by medivac, because of the biological tag It but can't go into bunkers even though all biological Terran units can get into bunker All these "rules" just don't seem clean in terms of design and confusing for new players. There are "hidden rules" in other units as well but so far I think hellbat is the most idiosyncratic unit in the game. Yeah, I hear you. I went crazy when I heard about the bio tag until I saw the portrait and thought of it more as just a dude in a suit like a marine or marauder. Agreed, though, it is a bit strange. Not game killing, but certainly weird. | ||
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BigRedDog
461 Posts
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Akaann
Switzerland82 Posts
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Pookie Monster
United States303 Posts
On February 14 2013 09:00 Noocta wrote: Tell that to 3 mines ultra fast 75 mineral vulture. Being powerfull and cheap is fine for this kind of unit. Exactly Yet another example of a BW unit that was at least as powerful as its SC2 counterpart and everyone though BW was the most well balanced game in the universe. I have a lot of respect for Blizzard that they deal with you whining twerps with such grace. | ||
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Prevolved
United States573 Posts
On February 14 2013 10:20 FeyFey wrote: the patch will make it easy to play in the next days. People won't expect it that much anymore and then people that already did some neat Hellion/Hellbat drop tricks will kill them even harder. Guess the QQ will increase this week, unless everyone stops doing it now, as only the micro intensive drops will deal damage against decent opponents. Still think baneling bombs and oracles are worse though. (though baneling bomb tech is damn expensive even against the hellbat tree) Oracles can be stopped by one missile turret in your mineral line. 4 hellbats, you have to pull all workers, if you don't, all those probes are dead in 2 seconds. plus they either fly in with the medivac speed giving you not as much time, or they escape with it. not sure if worse | ||
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Henk
Netherlands578 Posts
On February 14 2013 10:28 Prevolved wrote: Oracles can be stopped by one missile turret in your mineral line. 4 hellbats, you have to pull all workers, if you don't, all those probes are dead in 2 seconds. plus they either fly in with the medivac speed giving you not as much time, or they escape with it. not sure if worse Lol, oracles destroy missile turrets. | ||
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ArcticFox
United States1092 Posts
On February 14 2013 10:05 Wyrd wrote: This is solid. Obviously 2 hellbats die quicker than 4 and can't do as much damage. Especially with the anti-hellbat drop meta beginning to develop, such as placing your spine crawlers outside the mineral line so the hellbats' auto-attack forces them away from the drones as dayvie mentioned a bit ago, this might actually be the only nerf they need. Now it's a much more costly investment of 2 medivacs if the terran wants to go for the deadly 4-hellbat drop. Still, a lot of it is going to depend on how quick people can react to a medivac afterburning its way into your mineral line. It's the combination of the two that really bring the whole strategy into question. That bolded part is what irks me. The metagame on how to defend against them is just starting to develop. It could be that changing hellbat cargo space from 2 to 4 is a necessary change, might even be the correct one. But they weren't left alone long enough to see if people would develop a plan against them -- the second something happens where it's shown to be an extremely strong early game strategy in a major tournament, it's knee-jerk nerfed. Same thing happened to blue flame right after MLG Columbus 2011. Same thing happens to a lot of Terran strategies. I don't think Blizzard cares about balancing the game, per se. I think they care about having longer games. When something early on causes massive damage (hellbats, reapers, blue flame, 1/1/1, warhounds, blink timings, etc), it's "immediately" (in blizzard time, that means in the ~1 month or less range) nerfed, while if something later in the tech tree seems to be too powerful, they will wait months, if at all, before any changes are made. This makes it possible for more epic games because of a higher chance for games to go longer, but when your philosophy is based around "asymmetric balance" where Terran is supposed to be the race with the "early game advantage", and you keep only nerfing the early game without examining how these things affect the late game, you end up with...well, to put it bluntly, Wings of Liberty. Again -- this change might be the right one. But I honestly don't know, because it's just too quick. I don't want all these quick changes to things to happen again, where we end up with another Wings of Liberty balance nightmare, where asymmetric balance basically means "which race will dominate all the tournaments this patch?" I'd much rather see longer gaps between these patches, where the players are given time to come up with clever solutions to problems, and if something actually turns out to be too powerful, *then* the nerfbat can come out. I just hope for better things for the Heart of the Swarm, but I see the balance team taking the same path that they did with Wings, and it makes me sad.  | ||
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Infernal_dream
United States2359 Posts
On February 14 2013 10:28 Pookie Monster wrote: Exactly Yet another example of a BW unit that was at least as powerful as its SC2 counterpart and everyone though BW was the most well balanced game in the universe. I have a lot of respect for Blizzard that they deal with you whining twerps with such grace. Herp derp. Different games. Different engines. Different mechanics. Different units. Everything in BW was overpowered. It was also a bigger gamble. Doing a reaver drop could win or lose you the game. Doing a hellbat drop doesn't hurt the terran too much unless you're doing some 7rr shit from 10 patches ago. User was warned for herp derp | ||
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Pookie Monster
United States303 Posts
On February 14 2013 10:31 Infernal_dream wrote: Herp derp. Different games. Different engines. Different mechanics. Different units. Everything in BW was overpowered. It was also a bigger gamble. Doing a reaver drop could win or lose you the game. Doing a hellbat drop doesn't hurt the terran too much unless you're doing some 7rr shit from 10 patches ago. yeah thats why they are nerfing the drop mechanism that much makes sense, people are saying the hellbat itself is too powerful even outside of doing drops because its "only 100 minerals". its also 1/4 the speed of a zergling, cannot shoot up like a marine and has less than half its range, and has 0 passive abilities other than the ability to change into a shittier version of itself. It also requires a structure that costs 100 gas in order to be built, these things aren't coming out of barracks. | ||
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JacobNX01a
United States65 Posts
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D_K_night
Canada615 Posts
On February 14 2013 10:41 JacobNX01a wrote: this still isn't enough, having a mineral only unit that deals that much splash damage and can still be healed by medivacs is just ridiculous it's also a unit which requires the armory to build, which is consistently and constantly ignored. | ||
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Jinky
United States64 Posts
On February 14 2013 09:10 Dvriel wrote: 8 mins is "early timing"??? I wroti this 1000 times in other threads and will continue: Terran need Factory,Starport,Medivac and Armory to do this drop.All this costs much more than one Roach Warren and 5 Roaches per base,because this amount of them kils the hellbats easy and fast enough,but really,if you see your enemy going for 8 min heavi bio drop,would you still making only drones??? You probably go for Baneling nest and heavy lings.Spines and spores arent the answer to this drop. Well, let's look at the numbers and what actually is going on here: Zerg costs 2 queens (you'll get these anyway, but they still factor in for the necessary larvae to get roaches, and they also help defend) 1 roach warren 10 roaches (5 per base, assuming 2 bases mining at this point in game) *hidden cost of 11 drones used/lost-- (ie. roach warren uses a drone, 10 roaches that could have been drones) = 1200 minerals / 250 gas (and 11 drones lost as roaches/warren) Terran costs 1 factory w/ reactor 1 armory 1 starport 4 hellbats 1 medivac = 1000 minerals / 450 gas Most of the Terran expense goes toward infrastructure which will be used immediately for the midgame and also throughout the rest of the game. Most of the Zerg expense goes into Roaches instead of infrastructure, plus the hidden cost of all the drones that are essentially "pre-killed" (ie. larvae forced to be used on a stupid number of roaches instead of on drones). So, if the Zerg does this roach defense, it is roughly equal to the Terran cost directly, but the hidden costs are too much: the Terran gets great infrastructure, forces the Zerg to stay at home for quite a while, and the Zerg loses out drastically in infrastructure and economy that it should have been building up more. Meanwhile, as we have seen how the pro games go, the Terran is happily expanding behind this while the Zerg is running around trying to keep its drones alive. If the Zerg survives, he looks up and sees that the Terran is on 3 bases with great infrastructure compared to his own 3 bases with minimal army and not enough drones. Do the real math before postulating with such conviction. I think this hellbat nerf is headed in the right direction because it won't require Zerg to have to invest so much in defense against what should essentially be "harass." It might be just enough to do the trick. We'll have to see how it plays out in the high-level games. | ||
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