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I'm glad Artosis pointed out how Mutalisks can't dance or attack without stopping anymore (when they were talking about ZvZ and comparing to BW and saying whether not having Scourge makes it less interesting).
That's one of the biggest features I miss from BW - Being able to attack and move without stopping.
It's not just a "mindless rapidly click" mechanic either, whenever you attacked with Mutalisk, you had to make sure the Mutalisk were facing the direction of the target you wanted to attack (before you actually attacked the target) or else the Mutalisk will lose speed (you can give the Mutalisk an attack target directly, then click away after they attack to make it easier). The mechanic had a lot of depth (it wasn't just how fast you clicked because you also had to pay attention to the direction the unit is facing if you were attack moving or hold positioning, or in case of manually targeting units, you also needed precision since you don't want to misclick and accidentally attack move to an area instead of attacking a unit directly).
It was simple to learn but hard to master, and it made air units more fun overall. (One of my favorite moments in BW is when Fantasy danced his Wraiths all around Flash ground units in the last Ro4 OSL. The Wraiths were moved in a way that they were like interceptors from Carriers, except manually controlled.)
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Really, really, enjoyable show. Such good insight and the balance discussion was very thoughtful and not over the top as it could've been if there were some unnamed guests on the show.
Sad that whenever Artosis asked about Mech, it was shut down as not a good option  Hopefully it'll still play some kind of role. Agree with Moonglade that the new ZvZ is much better than the old, but everyone seems to dislike it. PvZ is incredibly boring and definitely needs some fixes, especially the voidray.
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I don't have the bandwidth to watch the show and only have my mobile to browse, so if anyone could give me a link to the mp3, I'd be much obliged.
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United Kingdom12042 Posts
On March 29 2013 18:58 AxionSteel wrote:Sad that whenever Artosis asked about Mech, it was shut down as not a good option
Pretty much just got to this bit and it's sad, but I think theognis although he's a great player is the perfect person to talk about this, because I mean there's been pretty damn good korean terrans getting mech to work in all the matchups and there's plenty of pros I've seen win weekly cups with pretty much only mech. There's still a long way to go, but with more practice I honestly think mech will become a lot bigger use wise than in WoL.
TvT I think people will eventually learn how to deal with doom drops with good tank splitting, I'm doing it on ladder in the early game and I pretty sure people at higher levels will eventually be looking in to it too. Mech I don't think is dead at all really.
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On March 29 2013 21:05 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 18:58 AxionSteel wrote:Sad that whenever Artosis asked about Mech, it was shut down as not a good option Pretty much just got to this bit and it's sad, but I think theognis although he's a great player is the perfect person to talk about this, because I mean there's been pretty damn good korean terrans getting mech to work in all the matchups and there's plenty of pros I've seen win weekly cups with pretty much only mech. There's still a long way to go, but with more practice I honestly think mech will become a lot bigger use wise than in WoL. TvT I think people will eventually learn how to deal with doom drops with good tank splitting, I'm doing it on ladder in the early game and I pretty sure people at higher levels will eventually be looking in to it too. Mech I don't think is dead at all really.
Seems rather uncommon in TvZ, and apart from GoOdy, I dunno who is using it consistently vs Protoss  I saw TheStC use it once and it worked, although it was incredibly hard, tempests seem so, so, so strong vs mech. TvT, yeah maybe we'll see it in the GSL and especially in Pro league I think, but I'm pretty sure Marine Tank is still far more common, we'll see!
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I feel like PDDs would be incredibly good against Tempests.
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You might be right, considering how slow they fire. Have very little experience watching such situations. Wish we could see more!
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Hi JP. Just wanted to give a big thanks for keeping up with your word about doing this show once a week. Having a consistent time table makes all the difference and its the day I look forward to the most! Keep it goin =D
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On March 29 2013 21:58 AxionSteel wrote:
You might be right, considering how slow they fire. Have very little experience watching such situations. Wish we could see more!
I think the utility of Ravens have not been explored enough due to the high gas cost, which terrans couldn’t previously afford. I am interested to see what terrans are able to do with it, since the widow mine has such a lean gas cost and providing a lot of the same security as the siege tanks. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see it used more and more for both PDD and detection. It has a lot of really cool uses, like dealing with tempest. I could also see it used for a strong timing attack against protoss to cancel out the nexus cannon.
It is an exciting time and I hope Blizzard keeps pushing under used upgrades and abilities. It will only improve the game and make it more interesting.
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Good show! It seems we can have nice balance discussions after all. It's also nice and sad at the same time to see my opinions on mech being over all weak be shared by the guests.
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Vs Zerg, Mechanic is just complete shit.
What happens is that they make roaches and hydralisks, and that's not a composition that hellbat thor deals with. So you need a LOT of siege tanks in your army to deal with his army. As a consequence, once Zerg has 3 vipers on the map you basically lose every engagement because you have to unsiege and split up your siege tanks every time you're hit with a blinding cloud while his army is destroying the hellbats and thors. Or if you pre split your siege tanks, he'll grab your front tanks and kill them without taking many unit losses because the tanks are not firing all together.
Roach Hydra Viper just murders Mechanic play really really really hard, on top of the amount of shit Zerg players can do to fuck with the mech player in the mid game. Your only real hopes are to either hit a really strong pre-hive timing and break one of your opponent's ligaments, or play an extremely passive game with mines, turrets, vikings until you have a cloud of ravens and hope he runs his roach hydra viper repeatedly into the meat grinder.
+ Ladder pool for HOTS right now is terrible for mechanic. Daybreak + Newkirk only reasonable maps and even then Newkirk it's really difficult to take the top bases even though split map is impossible for Zerg.
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United Kingdom12042 Posts
On March 29 2013 22:27 Gamegene wrote:
Vs Zerg, Mechanic is just complete shit.
What happens is that they make roaches and hydralisks, and that's not a composition that hellbat thor deals with. So you need a LOT of siege tanks in your army to deal with his army. As a consequence, once Zerg has 3 vipers on the map you basically lose every engagement because you have to unsiege and split up your siege tanks every time you're hit with a blinding cloud while his army is destroying the hellbats and thors. Or if you pre split your siege tanks, he'll grab your front tanks and kill them without taking many unit losses because the tanks are not firing all together.
Roach Hydra Viper just murders Mechanic play really really really hard, on top of the amount of shit Zerg players can do to fuck with the mech player in the mid game. Your only real hopes are to either hit a really strong pre-hive timing and break one of your opponent's ligaments, or play an extremely passive game with mines, turrets, vikings until you have a cloud of ravens and hope he runs his roach hydra viper repeatedly into the meat grinder.
+ Ladder pool for HOTS right now is terrible for mechanic. Daybreak + Newkirk only reasonable maps and even then Newkirk it's really difficult to take the top bases even though split map is impossible for Zerg.
I don't agree with that at all. Why are you even using thors when you have vikings and turrets?
The ideal composition is tanks, hellbats and viking support. As long as you're not stupid you'll never get everything clouded and even if you do your hellbats should give you enough buffer long enough for you to either move the very few tanks he's managed to cloud or wait for the cloud to run out while the rest of your tanks are firing. Your vikings at this point can either be sniping his vipers before the battle or during it meaning he has to fully commit to actually push into you and that's before you even factor in mines and turrets. The only way the game will go like you do is if you play mech completely the wrong way. Mech is a turtle style and always has been, it;'s about slow pushing which, unsurprisingly works a hell of a lot better now with turrets out front as you push and I'm really not sure how the zerg players you're talking about are going to have so many vipers to shut down your really well spread tanks.
I'd also argue about the map pool being bad for mech, from personal experience I'd say that Whirlwind is probably one of the better vs zerg maps as mech as you can get to four bases pretty easily and also due to the ramps and the chokes coming into the middle of your base, roach hydra should never give you any issues. The biggest map I'd say is the worst is most likely Bel'shir Vestige as there's no rampy chokes you can abuse with smaller armies to hold off larger attacks. As long as you don't rush for a third base and build up a decent army, neo planet S is also amazing for mech.
The big problem with the maps being big isn't roach hydra, or even muta ling (not that that's very common against mech), the problem is ultras but they're a problem with basically every single map for bio and tanks as ultras are so good now. I really wish people would rather than say what's bad about mech, would actually start looking into the good parts. Sure it's never going to be standard and I'm just going to have to deal with that, but it's certainly a ton more viable than people are making it out to look. Vipers really are not the be all and end all of mech. They're only that if you're an idiot with positioning :p
The ideal situation with mech is to look to transition into SkyTerran. It's the same in pretty much every matchup and it always has been. Admittedly with voidrays being so good it's not a great idea in TvP as you really only ever want vikings as they're so cheap against skytoss, but in TvT and TvZ you should always be aiming for SkyTerran and if turtling up is the way you've got to do it, so be it. You can weather so many storms as mech in TvZ and you can be really hard to break as long as you're good enough with the positioning/use of buildings etc.
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I generally liked the *balance discussion* they did in the last show, but there is one thing I have to criticize.
I know that the main focus of the show is pro play and pro games, but I find it bad that not a single word was lost about balance in the lower levels.
I think it is bad that lower ranked players (and that is the general part of the SC II players) are not beeing talked about and have no saying. But I think that it is very important to also hear their perspective or talk about their perspektive or talk how some strategies or units affect the lower levels of play.
If SC II becomes to elitist and to difficult to play people will stop playing it, resulting in fewer people being interested in the game resulting in fewer people watching streams fewer ad revenues and that's generally bad for esports.
I know that balancing is very delicate and I do not make any suggestions on what is imba or not,
but what I would like to see is a bit of a focus change in te balance discussion, I mean they can talk about pro games and players 80-90% of the show time, but I would like to see 10-20% of the time where they talk about balance in the lower leagues, balance that 80-90% of the starcraft players experience and on their opinion and ideas how to make it a better experience for the casual player.
Yeah I said the bad word "casual player". What I would like to see is a better experience for the casual player. It can be done to have a good casual experience an also high level of pro play, this has been shown in other games, and I am sure this can be done in SC II.
Summary:: Balance is not all about the pro play. I would like to have seen 10-20% suggestions on how to make the game more accessible and fun for the 90-95% of players that are not pro players. I would also like to see a discussion on how certain tactics and units change in strength considering the level of play.
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On March 29 2013 22:48 Holy_AT wrote:
Summary:: Balance is not all about the pro play. I would like to have seen 10-20% suggestions on how to make the game more accessible and fun for the 90-95% of players that are not pro players. I would also like to see a discussion on how certain tactics and units change in strength considering the level of play.
That's not a balance discussion. A balance discussion talks about strenghts and weaknesses of units, unit composition and strategies, not a players incompetence to use them. If you lose to something you can't deal with it, you didn't lose because of balance. And if the solution to your losses is just "learn to play better", then it would be insane to change the entire game just so you don't have to do that. Because it is absolutely impossible to balance a game for different skill levels. As we can see with the discrepancy between Korean and foreign Terrans, it's not even easy to balance the game between different skill levels among pros.
Of course it's frustrating to lose to one base void rays in bronze, but that's something you can't prevent. As long as units have strengths and weaknesses, someone can find a strategy that exploits a certain strenth and a low level player will feel that it is imbalanced when in reality he just hasn't found the (most likely simple) solution to his problem.
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Austria24422 Posts
I came here to see the "intelligent and mature discussion" and was not disappointed!
Very very cool episode. I love the insight these guys brought to the table.
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On March 29 2013 22:52 blackone wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2013 22:48 Holy_AT wrote:
Summary:: Balance is not all about the pro play. I would like to have seen 10-20% suggestions on how to make the game more accessible and fun for the 90-95% of players that are not pro players. I would also like to see a discussion on how certain tactics and units change in strength considering the level of play. That's not a balance discussion. A balance discussion talks about strenghts and weaknesses of units, unit composition and strategies, not a players incompetence to use them. If you lose to something you can't deal with it, you didn't lose because of balance. And if the solution to your losses is just "learn to play better", then it would be insane to change the entire game just so you don't have to do that. Because it is absolutely impossible to balance a game for different skill levels. As we can see with the discrepancy between Korean and foreign Terrans, it's not even easy to balance the game between different skill levels among pros. Of course it's frustrating to lose to one base void rays in bronze, but that's something you can't prevent. As long as units have strengths and weaknesses, someone can find a strategy that exploits a certain strenth and a low level player will feel that it is imbalanced when in reality he just hasn't found the (most likely simple) solution to his problem.
Meh I think its always balanced around some kind of skill level, lets just say pro players could split marines and lings or blink stalkers and what not like an AI with 1000 APM, the game would look completely different then what you are used to see now. Units that once seemed strong would be completely useless and other units would seem very powerful.
So you see it is always based on some kind of skill level. Tactics and the strength of units do not only evolve out of the game but of the synergy of player and the game.
And I am not talking about some one base void ray kind of play, that belongs to the wol release were players were figuring out stuff, I haven't seen this level of play you describe for month or even a year.
The main reason is because the experience throughout the game has risen and most players have quit trying to do multiplayer.
I really would like to see a statistic that shows how many of the players that bought hots are playing 10-20 games per week of ranked/unkranked games (not counting custom games) and how many of the players that bought WOL have already transitioned to HOTS.
I also didnt say that it was easy or that it should be only balanced on the lower levels, all I said was that it would have been nice to also loose a few words on the situation that most players are experiencing.
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Great show !
Moonglade looked so handsome with his beard and his great balance idea for the mine ^_^
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Canada16217 Posts
Great episode of Sotg! I can't thank JP enough for sotg, such an awesome show.
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EPT
