Patch 8 Discussion - Page 50

On April 08 2010 22:51 Kaboo wrote:
Stalkers are fun to use now Thanks mr Patch

On April 08 2010 22:51 Zoltan wrote:


I dont really agree with that... they had thier tier 1.5 and tier 2.0 units nerfed... not their tier 3s.... any lategame action is jut slightly less powerful, just like the rest of their game. TBH- the last game i played before the patch i lost to a zerg EVEN AFTER i killed his FE (before he had a single harvester on it) with reapers, and harassed his main's mineral line, and then killed his next expo while taking a 2nd and a 3rd. You know how he beat me? Mass hydras, nothing else, vs my hellions, thors, marauders, marines, and medivacs. (at about = supply for each battle too!). Just saying that MAYBE< just maybe, the hydra nerf was needed.

Since the patch ive only played 4 games, and they were all TVT. Have to admit im liking that mu better now- 4 games 4 wins all mech baby! (single rax no addon making marines into factory into fast starport to feign banshees, then armory and +2 more facs for thors and sieges. Was beautiful).

On April 08 2010 22:51 Zoltan wrote:


I dont really agree with that... they had thier tier 1.5 and tier 2.0 units nerfed... not their tier 3s.... any lategame action is jut slightly less powerful, just like the rest of their game. TBH- the last game i played before the patch i lost to a zerg EVEN AFTER i killed his FE (before he had a single harvester on it) with reapers, and harassed his main's mineral line, and then killed his next expo while taking a 2nd and a 3rd. You know how he beat me? Mass hydras, nothing else, vs my hellions, thors, marauders, marines, and medivacs. (at about = supply for each battle too!). Just saying that MAYBE< just maybe, the hydra nerf was needed.

Since the patch ive only played 4 games, and they were all TVT. Have to admit im liking that mu better now- 4 games 4 wins all mech baby! (single rax no addon making marines into factory into fast starport to feign banshees, then armory and +2 more facs for thors and sieges. Was beautiful).

On April 08 2010 07:46 TerranUp16 wrote:


Checking the effectiveness of Marines v Roaches is ofc the first thing I'm going to be doing but Marines melted to Roaches previously and I don't see these changes altering that much at all- and that's not at all a matter of micro.



TheLittleOne's games interested me certainly, but I've also seen his strategies crushed as easily as they have dominated. They're very interesting diversions, much like the kinds of really interesting TvZ builds that Fantasy regularly hauls out, but I don't see them being anywhere near the kind of standard play that would define the game and its status as a spectator sport.

As for it being beta, that means absolutely nothing if Blizzard doesn't leverage that fact to make serious changes to push the game in the direction it needs/they want it to go to reach the kind of success they want, then it being in "beta" means absolutely nothing.

It's notable to mention Dawn of War 2 here, a game which came into beta interestingly until much of what made the game unique was nerfed into boredom by release. The game comes out and gets some applause for its different approach to singleplayer but gets hammered for its lackluster MP. About five months pass (and I think Ebbert had been dished off to Blizzard by this time) and Relic comes out with a beta patch, 1.5 "There is Only War" and it's like a complete re-imagining of the game and its balance and the utility of its units. It completely brings back what gave the game potential and more importantly makes it incredibly fun.

Fast-forward to today and the recently-released Chaos Rising, while it introduced a few balance issues that will hopefully be addressed in 2.2, largely improved the game significantly yet again, making it yet more fun and plenty deeper. Problem is, the game is still fighting against demons it incurred on vanilla launch day. Because the design and balance of the units and the meta-game were at the time quite less than desirable, players and critics alike dismissed it quickly and because there was no apparent potential induced that the issue was likely the "lack of base-building and macro". Looking at the game now, those are not issues at all and actually are very nice design components that grant the game a ton of micro depth and which have it require plenty of micro-oriented multi-tasking compared to SC/SC2's focus of a more even split between macro and micro multi-tasking, and despite there only being one true base structure, DoW 2 has quite sufficient macro components to grant it plenty of depth and a proper meta-game (many of those macro-components have just been streamlined and relocated from what traditional RTS players are used to). However, despite that the game's MP has more or less been fixed, anyone who hasn't bothered with the game in a bit won't even realize that even if given a precise breakdown of what was fixed because they're still of the opinion that it's the lack of base-building that was the primary issue.

Applying the above two paragraphs to StarCraft 2, the current specific issue seems to be that the Roach, Marauder, and Immortal are harming SC2's meta-game and unit balance while more specifically the massing of Roaches and/or Marauders currently makes the game quite un-fun and not very entertaining to watch. These are the real issues, but the larger, perceived issues that stem from these are that there is no/little micro depth in SC2, that it's all about blob versus blob, that it's a game of hard counters (even though the relationships between MOST units is that of soft counters), etc... And those are things that SC2 could carry to its grave if those issues are not addressed.

However, SC2 is helped a bit by in large terms staying nearer to SC1 in terms of core gameplay mechanics whereas Dawn of War 2 was a major departure from Dawn of War 1 and from just about all other RTS games (it even featured many significant departures from Company of Heroes, its most immediate predecessor), so I think SC2 has a better shot as a "second chance" if it does manage to fix its underlying issues. Nonetheless, I don't think it's a situation Blizzard or anyone else really wants SC2 to have to be in at any point...

On April 08 2010 23:04 PanzerDragoon wrote:

Standard play doesn't define the "spectator" sport. Standard play is pretty vanilla. The most exciting games are the unorthodox ones, which is what made Boxer so popular.

On April 08 2010 23:25 lolaloc wrote:

Good thing we have TLO for this. LOL

On April 08 2010 22:59 kickinhead wrote:


I rly don't get why Zerg think that Z-lategame is down the drain now because the Units got nerfed. Z still has by far the best Macro, they can expand all over the place, defend much easier than any other race and the only thing they have to do is not get raped by a timing-attack.

have you guys ever played Zerg in SC1? Z would get raped hardcore by timing-attacks, if they didn't react appropriately soon enough by stopping Drone-production and pumping out Units, but Z could get extremely far ahead economically if they knew the timing to expand and drone up and win by sheer masses.

That's just how you're supposed to play Z now. I've watched tons of replays of Z and Z is always ahead economically in the mid and lategame and even if every single Unit had 10-15% HP less, if Zerg macroed and defended right, Zerg would've won the game. It's all about knowing when to expand and produce drones (which they can abuse even harder than in SC1 thanks to the Queen, an extremely powerful eco-machine) and when to start massing up Units.

I get that it's hard atm to know the timing-attacks and stuff, but that is a hard thing for basically everyone playing the beta right now, so if players loose to timing-attacks, just look at the drone-count and compare it to the army-count, if the income is ridiculously high and you have much more Drones than the enemy has workers, you should've just massed up Units to defend the attack.

On April 09 2010 00:18 TheElitists wrote:
so ZvZ has evolved from who can mass more roaches to who can mass more hydras *facepalm*

On April 09 2010 00:22 lolaloc wrote:

I am curious on why did you arrive into this conclusion seeing as roaches are nerfed.

On April 09 2010 00:25 TheElitists wrote:


been getting a lot of ZvZs today and every game I play they're tries to use a mixed army or a ling army or a muta army or a roach army all fell to mass hydras. Maybe Hydra Baneling might be the new way to go not sure.

On April 08 2010 17:08 Chen wrote:

I dont play zerg and can think of 1/2 a dozen of "finesse" techniques that can do alot of damage/help you with without massing and A-moving. your turn to think instead of whining and claiming its not possible/wont work.