Unlisted Patchnote: Hellbat dmg-per-upgr 'fixed' - Page 3

On February 24 2013 12:33 Rabiator wrote:

Define "better" please. Just because a Battle Hellion can one-shot a Zergling doesnt mean it will be able to do so. The Zergling is MUCH faster than the terran unit, so "better" clearly comes from a highly subjective point of view where you conveniently disregard the downsides of a unit. Please dont do that and be objective or refrain from using the word "better".

Another thing is that with such asymmetric units you cant ever give stats to the units to make them all totally balanced, so please refrain from the "boohoo their units are better than mine" whining, because thats not how the game works and you should know better.

"Balanced" is a stupid concept and rather impossible to achieve exactly. Sadly Blizzard tries to do it and really "needs to" because the game relies on too many units being produced. They totally failed to "balance" the unit production boosts of the three races in their initial concept of SC2 and we have to suffer the consequences ever since.

On February 24 2013 12:49 Infernal_dream wrote:


Sorry what? Your first paragraph doesn't make any sense. "Just because it can one shot doesn't mean it will." Unless i'm a dumbass, if it has the stats to do something then that something is going to happen. You can't talk about how lings will just run past them, or avoid them. Because eventually y ou're going to be forced to fight. You're ignoring that entire situation and going on a rant about how blizzard shouldn't actively be trying to balance the game. The situation is lings vs. Battlehellions at +3. It doesn't matter if the ling is faster. You can't physically run it in, get an attack off, then run it out before the hellion destroys it.

On February 24 2013 05:33 Zelniq wrote:


I'd say if you really had a concern, it should be with the base damage rather than the upgrades

On February 24 2013 16:10 Rabiator wrote:

Thanks for unintentianally adding another argument to my point ... one-shotting "in theory" doesnt mean it will happen for splash attacks. Even if a Battle Hellion has the MAX DAMAGE to one-shot a Zergling doesnt mean it will, because not all the area of the attack is "covered in max damage". The attack is a cone attack and thus probably has a reduced effect further away from the unit (unlike the usual "line attacks" which have full damage everywhere). I am guessing it has a reduced damage at range though, since the description of the unit in the Liquipedia doesnt specify this but the splash damage page only has the Baneling at max damage fully throughout the area (all other area attacks have three zones), but that effect is more like a spell and not an attack.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Splash_damage

"Being forced to fight" is rather subjective as well, since the Zergling has the greater mobility it will be the one which chooses to attack (or not) most of the time and attacking something other than the Battle Hellions (unless they are attacking crucial bases directly). You dont win the game by killing the enemy army; you win it by killing the buildings. Except for the really early game rushes I would suggest building something else to defend your bases against Battle Hellions ... Spine Crawlers.

I am not saying that Blizzard shouldnt balance the game (how you came to that conclusion is beyond me). I am rather saying that they should stop ignoring the fact that their game is terribly hard to balance because of certain basic design decisions and that they should fiddle more with these things to make balancing easier. To be able to have creative maps which are viable the game MUST HAVE a tough balance which doesnt rely upon timings. Sadly the current state of the game requires a crapton of "timing adjustments" and a very very precise balancing and thus we have to live with rather limited choice of maps.

"Balance" is a concept which has gone rampant through the gaming world, but which doesnt bother us anywhere else. Do you cry foul when the top team of your sports league plays the bottom one and wins simply because their players are better? Probably not. But if one unit in Starcraft can easily beat ONE other unit people are whining as if the four year old next to them in the sandbox took their shovel. Its the same for most "competitive games" and was really really terrible for the class development of WoW already. "Balance" ruined Dungeons & Dragons by taking out flavour and uniqueness of classes with the terrible 4th edition even though the concept is completely irrelevant for an "us against them" type of game. Balance for a computer game must be wide, strong and simple instead of razor thin and complicated.

On February 24 2013 16:10 Rabiator wrote:

Thanks for unintentianally adding another argument to my point ... one-shotting "in theory" doesnt mean it will happen for splash attacks. Even if a Battle Hellion has the MAX DAMAGE to one-shot a Zergling doesnt mean it will, because not all the area of the attack is "covered in max damage". The attack is a cone attack and thus probably has a reduced effect further away from the unit (unlike the usual "line attacks" which have full damage everywhere). I am guessing it has a reduced damage at range though, since the description of the unit in the Liquipedia doesnt specify this but the splash damage page only has the Baneling at max damage fully throughout the area (all other area attacks have three zones), but that effect is more like a spell and not an attack.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Splash_damage

On February 24 2013 14:23 Mongolbonjwa wrote:
Why do you think its "bug fix"? They are tweaking numbers, and its certainly a balance chance. Its not like they somehow accidentally gave hellbats some other upgrade value that also ended up in tooltips. If it wasnt in tooltips, it would have been a bug.

On February 24 2013 16:50 Sapphire.lux wrote:

If you want to whine, whine about Blizzard design not that lings get one shot in the late, late game by the designated (hard)counter unit.

Hellbats are as overpowered as Tanks are underpowered. Why the Hell are they making everything as strong as possible just to avoid a tank buff is beyond me. I mean, it simplifies the play having an all round 1a unit instead of having to rely only on good positioned tanks/ mines, but it's so ugly...

On February 24 2013 19:03 Big J wrote:


Maybe because people already use as many tanks as they can get away with in TvT and TvZ?
Yeah, I'm also for some tank buff to make them a stable unit in TvP, and make them better vs Ultras. But I can totally understand that blizzard does not want to create a mess by making one of the best Terran units for two matchups even more powerful.

On February 24 2013 19:15 Sapphire.lux wrote:

Blizzard has very well paid game designers that are supposed to think of ways to make the game good without fucking up anything. There is no excuse. Especially when community made mods show more understanding and problem solving abilities then the official devs.

If they can't do it, then they can join the project Jay Wilson is working on now.

On February 24 2013 19:42 Big J wrote:


And the game is good. It might not be the best it could be but nothing ever is.

Go ask progamers what they think of having monthly design/balance changes whenever someone on some forum makes a point that could be true or could as well be bullshit because it is untested. Yet gets a lot of followers.
Go ask them about implementing FRB tomorrow. I can very much agree with many of those ideas and do very well have very different ideas from blizzards ones. I cannot agree however with destroying the high quality, exciting esports competition we have right now to test some ideas, well-thought out as they may be.

On February 24 2013 19:03 Big J wrote:


Maybe because people already use as many tanks as they can get away with in TvT and TvZ?
Yeah, I'm also for some tank buff to make them a stable unit in TvP, and make them better vs Ultras. But I can totally understand that blizzard does not want to create a mess by making one of the best Terran units for two matchups even more powerful.

On February 24 2013 16:50 Sapphire.lux wrote:

If you want to whine, whine about Blizzard design not that lings get one shot in the late, late game by the designated (hard)counter unit.

Hellbats are as overpowered as Tanks are underpowered. Why the Hell are they making everything as strong as possible just to avoid a tank buff is beyond me. I mean, it simplifies the play having an all round 1a unit instead of having to rely only on good positioned tanks/ mines, but it's so ugly...

On February 24 2013 18:53 Big J wrote:


Because apparently every other unit follows the upgrade rule:

base damage --> upgrade
1-14 --> +1
15-24 --> +2
25-34 --> +3
35-44 --> +4
etc.

The Hellbat does 18damage and 30 vs light. So it's upgrades should be +2(+1vs light).
There are not expection to this rule as far as I know. The +1(+1 vs light) was from the time when hellbats did 10(+9 vs light) damage and apparently blizzard forgot to adjust the upgrades when they changed the damage.