also including how they do balancing, 1 Spreadsheet Calculations 2 Unit Testing Maps-Very Similar to the ones we use except most of the time no terrain 3 Community Feedback
Now some of the things that were noted Marauder stim actually tend to be harmful than helpful as it reduces marauder lifespan Terran has upper hand in the first 12 minutes Protoss dramatically comes back after 12 minutes due to Colossi and Templar Storms Marine stim is quite overpowered rather, But being such a staple unit it's difficult to balance compared to other units.
Void Ray changes were quickly decided due to an alignment of data of all 3 sources suggesting for balancing changes.
However in terms of Terran bio Spreadsheets, Unit Tests and Community Feedbacks don't seem to line up thus the delay for balancing changes.
So I think that's how Blizzard does their balancing. so I guess it looks like this <=Early Game[ Terran OP----------][Balanced] -------------------------------------------------[Protoss OP---------------] ==> Meta Game
Info taken from both SCLegacy.com and the Blizzcon 2010 stream
unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
P can FE fine and T definitely has a massive edge earlygame. Don't know what the above posters are on about.
I'm interested for more information behind the marauder stim note, stimkiting with conc shell early on is part of the power of T because P's slower and more fragile units can be picked apart. I do agree on the marine stim note, however - P doesn't really develop counters to marine balls until T3.
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
Are you kidding? The protoss idea of FE is probably 2gate robo. Terran idea of FE is 1rax techlab. plus my first 3 units (marine + 2 maurauder) still have time to walk to the protoss ramp and force a forcefield or kill at least a stalker + whatever and still walk away fairly intact
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
Is it possible that blizzard is correct and you are wrong? Please ask yourself this and perhaps rewrite your post.
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
Is it possible that blizzard is correct and you are wrong? Please ask yourself this and perhaps rewrite your post.
Thanks for the writeout op.
I laughed hard at this. Agree totally (as a Zerg player)
Although, that topic didn't mention the Marauder portion of the panel, while yours does (also wish there was more information!).
Gag I should've checked it a bit. I figured nobody covered this yet. Further expanding on marauders it seems that they may perform better without stimming as it may increase their survivability. Would anyone care to look into it?
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
It seems to dramatically decrease their lifespan in many situations that they would've done better without all taking 25 dmg right off the bat. While stim may be dps increase but the longer they live the more damage done seems to be their train of thought
On October 25 2010 12:50 Mania[K]al wrote: Why is concussive shells in this game?
Pretty sure if you want balance then an ability like that shouldn't exist.
Sorry but I don't recall this being mentioned in the panel thus I am unable to answer this
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
Maybe they forgot to attack after stimming them.
In all seriousness, this is a bad way to balance the game. Sure, the win ratio is probably around 50/50 right now, but to have a game based where the first portion of the game favors one team while the later portion favors the other is very discouraging in terms of balance.
Although, that topic didn't mention the Marauder portion of the panel, while yours does (also wish there was more information!).
Gag I should've checked it a bit. I figured nobody covered this yet. Further expanding on marauders it seems that they may perform better without stimming as it may increase their survivability. Would anyone care to look into it?
That was the part of the panel where they were talking about their make combat tool, which allows them to spawn specific sets of units and basically have them attack move into one another. In that situation they said that there were situations where the hp loss from using stim made it detrimental (a loss for the marauder force) compared to simply attacking without stim.
Before people blow up about how useless that comparison being (simple a-moves), they very specifically addressed the faults of their various tools (i.e. for make combat, it doesn't take into account pathing or terrain, micro, or how the player got those units). In another example they showed how stalker/zealot was losing to hydralisk/roach in straight make combat scenarios, but replacing the stalkers with immortals for immortal zealot made them win. That said, they recognized that immortal zealot was still not a viable counter because a) it's so susceptible to air that mutalisk would wreck it, and b) how many robotics facilities did this fictional protoss have to produce that many immortals.
So basically, they're saying they don't think marauder stim for damage is really overpowered because of the hp loss, but they did mention that they get a lot out of it for movement (which isn't really addressed by make combat).
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
Maybe they forgot to attack after stimming them.
In all seriousness, this is a bad way to balance the game. Sure, the win ratio is probably around 50/50 right now, but to have a game based where the first portion of the game favors one team while the later portion favors the other is very discouraging in terms of balance.
The Blizzard dudes made the point that it's possible to get a 50/50 win for each race with the balance they have now in PvT, but that's not good enough for them, and PvT is what they're focusing on ATM.
While the OP is a nice write up I don't think it does justice to what the blizzcon panel went over completely.
In regards to PvT the panel said that while the Terran early game was very powerful, after 12 minutes (don't really know how they got that time, could be arbitrary for their own example) the Protoss became very strong and the Terran would usually lose. (See Kiwikaki vs Select at MLG) But if the Terran attacked early with bio usually the Terran would win. (See Select vs Huk, Select vs Nony, etc at MLG)
They went on to say while this could cause a 50/50 split that is not how they want to balance the game. They want it balanced from the second the game begins until the second the game ends. They looked at Marauders but saw through pro and community feedback, spreadsheets, and their own testing that Marauders we're okay and no changes needed. Stim hurts them in the long run as it makes them weaker. I'm inclined to think that Marauders seem overpowered due to Protoss being weak overall early game and Terran bio is a staple for their early game. They mentioned High Templar being a bit too strong with storm and were going to possibly tweak it a bit but I doubt it would make them useless if they did.
Void Rays were nerfed due to all of their sources for their balance reports pointing to a problem with them. If all of their sources didn't agree they weren't going to arbitrarily nerf something. for example if the general community is clamoring for Marauders to be nerfed, but their tests and pro feedback showed the opposite, they were going to keep testing until a possible problem is found, while allowing time to pass. Time is a huge factor as new strategies develop over time and new ways to handle things are discovered. Blizzard does not want to interfere with that and will do small tweaks when they feel it is necessary to.
As far as win percentages went, I think they mentioned that PvT was Protoss favored across the board withing acceptable ranges EXCEPT for Diamond Korea, where Terran was favored. It's aberrations like that that set of red flags and make them watch for things and take closer looks at balance.
I think they're going about this very well with all the ways they look at balance. Give Blizzard more credit IMO, they know what they're doing.
On October 25 2010 13:16 VoodooDog wrote: rine stimm should bring only 50% more firerate, not 100%. Marauder stim should be deleted. Than it will be balanced.
Really??? No way that this minor change won't completely imbalance the matchup...
Stim is the only thing allowing Terran to match Protoss' collosus dps in the lategame imo.
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
Right, and you know more than Blizzard. Perhaps you should check again.
On October 25 2010 13:18 DarkMoon wrote: As far as win percentages went, I think they mentioned that PvT was Terran favored across the board withing acceptable ranges EXCEPT for Diamond Korea, where Protoss was waaay favored. It's aberrations like that that set of red flags and make them watch for things and take closer looks at balance.
It was actually the other way around. Protoss had a 6% advantage in Korea over Terran, a 10% advantage in NA, but Terran had a 4% advantage over protoss only in Diamond Korea. (see: http://www.youtube.com/user/noobclubru#p/u/2/9OYTt_8zYHI at around 7:45)
On October 25 2010 13:18 DarkMoon wrote: As far as win percentages went, I think they mentioned that PvT was Terran favored across the board withing acceptable ranges EXCEPT for Diamond Korea, where Protoss was waaay favored. It's aberrations like that that set of red flags and make them watch for things and take closer looks at balance.
It was actually the other way around. Protoss had a 6% advantage in Korea over Terran, a 10% advantage in NA, but Terran had a 4% advantage over protoss only in Diamond Korea. (see: http://www.youtube.com/user/noobclubru#p/u/2/9OYTt_8zYHI at around 7:45)
My bad. I was going pretty much from memory at that point haha, didn't realize it was up on youtube already
Time to edit my post so I don't look like an idiot.
P can FE fine and T definitely has a massive edge earlygame. Don't know what the above posters are on about.
I'm interested for more information behind the marauder stim note, stimkiting with conc shell early on is part of the power of T because P's slower and more fragile units can be picked apart. I do agree on the marine stim note, however - P doesn't really develop counters to marine balls until T3.
While I agree with you that marauder stim kite is just a little op. However protoss units ARE NOT FRAGILE!
HP (+shields) of units/cost (gas = 1.5 minerals) (the higher the number the better) Marine 0.900 (+.1 with shields)<-->Zealot 1.5 Marauder 0.909<--> Stalker 0.800 Ghost 0.267<--> Reaper 0.400 <--> Sentry 0.400 Tank 0.474<--> Immortal 0.750 Medivac 0.600<--> Warp prism 0.700 Viking 0.457 <--> phoenix 0.600 Banshee 0.467 <--> Void ray 0.526 Battlecruiser 0.647 <--> Carrier 0.621 I left out Hellions, Ravens, Motherships, Cloxen, HT's, DT's, and archons because they have no equivalent on the flip side.
With the exception of Stalkers and Carriers toss gets more or equal beef for its value and where it doesn't the units are in fact faster than terrans (Stalker and Carrier). However early game stalkers Superior speed is easily dealt with by conc shells as the marauders superior dps vs stalkers and 1v1 the marauder will win. Once blink is researched stalkers can kite marauders all day dealing their 14 and blinking away to recharge their shields and coming back to deal another 14 repeatedly while essentially taking 0 damage hence early game T>P and late P>T. Marauders also effectively nullifies zealots as zealots have 0 range and by the time zealots arrive to fight the marauders they will have died from the supporting marines, once charge is researched this again is balanced showing yet again early T>P and late P>T. Once protoss can effectively produce immortals and clloxen at a reasonable rate they hard counter every ground unit combination terran has to offer.
That was just some more proof that Early > Mid = Late <
P can FE fine and T definitely has a massive edge earlygame. Don't know what the above posters are on about.
I'm interested for more information behind the marauder stim note, stimkiting with conc shell early on is part of the power of T because P's slower and more fragile units can be picked apart. I do agree on the marine stim note, however - P doesn't really develop counters to marine balls until T3.
Wait... you mean you actually trust the creator and balancer of said game more than some random posters on the internetz?!
toss units are not beefy. bioball kite gets so many kills vs them and they have medvacs. watch some pro games and see how the toss gets manhandled even with collossus and hts out.
In the late game, it really comes down to who can micro better in my opinion, because toss requires force fields and storms and feedback, terran requires EMP and Collosus sniping as well as stimming out of storms,etc etc
The unit compositions are pretty much exactly the same every game; For P, Collosus/HT, Zealots sentries stalkers, and T, MMM with Vikings/Ghosts
Also, terran have pretty much no problem safely harassing all game long with dropships.
Edit: My point being that the real problem is early game where marauder stim/conc can kite infinite number of lots. I see the problem late game being that terran has to try to minimize splash damage throughout their army from the t3 threats to MMM, but same thing with HTs to prevent EMPs, and even still EMPs can eat through entire protoss armies
On October 25 2010 12:36 CagedMind wrote: I haven't played much lately but is there actually a way for p to fe. The ones I seen before were horribly bad. I question this a lot.
One of my big problems in pvt was that t could expo easier then me.
Watch NEXGenius Blizzcon replays, he fe'd against Select and Loner. 1 gateway expand followed by 3 gateways + robo usually. He lost to a stim timing push by Select due to close positions and an ineffective dt opening. lost 2 games to loner. Other than that, he dominated.
So I think that's how Blizzard does their balancing. so I guess it looks like this <=Early Game[ Terran OP----------][Balanced] -------------------------------------------------[Protoss OP---------------] ==> Meta Game
Although they did say that this is the current state of how things look, I'm pretty sure they said this to say that's NOT how they want the game to be balanced and that is NOT their philosophy. They want it to be viable in all aspects at any time during the game.
Before they do something drastic, i think they meant that they still are waiting for the community to find ways to fix it amongst ourselves.
Although the balance isn't perfect, everyone on TL should have heard what they wanted to hear from the multiplayer panel, and that is that it's not perfect yet, but they'll still looking into changes so it will be just as good as BW or better hopefully.
I may be in the minority but TvP feels balanced to me, As long as it is nonstandard play. If the TvP goes MM and more M(medivac) with gateway, colossus to HT then it goes in the pattern. MM starts out overly strong but gets weaker as the game goes on. Nonstandard early and mid can change it all and this is where changes can hurt nonstandard play.
I am a huge advocate of T 1/1/2 and now with 1.1.2 thors can have a bigger role since storm does not hurt as much and no feedback on them. And Protoss have other options than colossus to HT too. I think the game may be stuck in a bad way with TvP right now but just needs time to adjust out of the comfort zone.
I don't get anyone that think's Blizzard knows what they're doing, I don't think anyone who balanced Sc1 or Wc3 is on the Sc2 Balance team. All we have here is a bunch of artificially created timing imbalances because of racial imbalances and overpowered tech. Not to mention spawn imbalances why haven't those maps been patched yet? -.-
Concussive Shells comes at first confrontation, Stim and Combat shield all come before Charge, Colossi, Psi Storm, but Charge, Colossi and Charge storm are more expensive but more effective tech than CS,Stim,Combat shield so obviously this is going to exist. Poor planning.
On October 25 2010 13:16 VoodooDog wrote: rine stimm should bring only 50% more firerate, not 100%. Marauder stim should be deleted. Than it will be balanced.
good that they talked like 10minutes about stim and said it's fine and they won't take it away from the marauder...
but maybe (hopefully) you're just trolling...
btw, i seriously think zerg should only be able to walk on creep.
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
Maybe they forgot to attack after stimming them.
In all seriousness, this is a bad way to balance the game. Sure, the win ratio is probably around 50/50 right now, but to have a game based where the first portion of the game favors one team while the later portion favors the other is very discouraging in terms of balance.
that's what bowder (or kim, whatever) said too i think... so they're probably going to work on it
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
Maybe they forgot to attack after stimming them.
In all seriousness, this is a bad way to balance the game. Sure, the win ratio is probably around 50/50 right now, but to have a game based where the first portion of the game favors one team while the later portion favors the other is very discouraging in terms of balance.
Wouldn't slightly bigger maps + a buff to terran lategame solve the problem?
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
Maybe they forgot to attack after stimming them.
In all seriousness, this is a bad way to balance the game. Sure, the win ratio is probably around 50/50 right now, but to have a game based where the first portion of the game favors one team while the later portion favors the other is very discouraging in terms of balance.
Wouldn't slightly bigger maps + a buff to terran lategame solve the problem?
Greatly assist it, but there are some builds that bear looking at.
Marine/Raven/Banshee in particular is far too cost effective - part of the problem is how incredible marines are are killing shit, which Bliz has pointed out.
On October 25 2010 14:55 Sorook wrote: What I don't understand is why shouldn't P t3 crush T t1. Should toss be able to punish T for building nothing but MMM?
What the fuck are T supoosed to build? Battlecruisers? WE literally have nothing else
On October 25 2010 15:03 Sorook wrote: Tanks and thors. Now that thors have no energy they are much harder to stop or learn how to cloak ghost and get off some good emps.
Zealot immortal is a even a bigger hard counter to that than collosus to mmm :/
On October 25 2010 12:36 CagedMind wrote: I haven't played much lately but is there actually a way for p to fe. The ones I seen before were horribly bad. I question this a lot.
One of my big problems in pvt was that t could expo easier then me.
Watch NEXGenius Blizzcon replays, he fe'd against Select and Loner. 1 gateway expand followed by 3 gateways + robo usually. He lost to a stim timing push by Select due to close positions and an ineffective dt opening. lost 2 games to loner. Other than that, he dominated.
so 1 gateway FE loses to early push/rush wins against later expansion/no rush/building 2 bunkers for defense(lol@loner... thrice)
On October 25 2010 12:36 CagedMind wrote: I haven't played much lately but is there actually a way for p to fe. The ones I seen before were horribly bad. I question this a lot.
One of my big problems in pvt was that t could expo easier then me.
Watch NEXGenius Blizzcon replays, he fe'd against Select and Loner. 1 gateway expand followed by 3 gateways + robo usually. He lost to a stim timing push by Select due to close positions and an ineffective dt opening. lost 2 games to loner. Other than that, he dominated.
so 1 gateway FE loses to early push/rush wins against later expansion/no rush/building 2 bunkers for defense(lol@loner... thrice)
what exactly does surprise you there?
Nothing, he just said that Protoss - in fact - is able to FE.
On October 25 2010 14:55 Sorook wrote: What I don't understand is why shouldn't P t3 crush T t1. Should toss be able to punish T for building nothing but MMM?
What the fuck are T supoosed to build? Battlecruisers? WE literally have nothing else
You also have Bashees, Ravens, Vikings, Siege tanks, Thors, Hellions, and Ghosts.
Also, yes, battlecruisers can be quite strong against protoss if you get a 3rd base rather than trying to win it on 2. Yamato cannon makes them very dominant against protoss air (VR 1 shotted, Carrier 2 shotted) and stalkers with blink are the only other unit toss can really fight BC's with. Raven/Banshee openings are strong against toss and transition easily into BC production once you have a 3rd.
Huh. huh. Concussive shells really allow for a lot of kiting. -.- 1 gate fe worked when loner allowed it. Every time I see a terran put on early pressure, the success/failure of that pressure seems more down to the terran than the toss' decisions. Without a FF & Ramp you're liable to get rolled over. Maybe on a much bigger map 1gate fe will be viable.
What do you think of concussive shells upgrade taking longer so you can have stalker actually scout the ramp.
Yeah 1gate fe was never a amazing idea. It's something you do not very often. Too easy for terran to crush it. I was asking in case someone figured out something wonky like mothership without the tech lol.
It's been a problems. Back in beta when I was training with msv I just couldn't find a good solution when he could either rush or safe fe or something else.
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
Maybe they forgot to attack after stimming them.
In all seriousness, this is a bad way to balance the game. Sure, the win ratio is probably around 50/50 right now, but to have a game based where the first portion of the game favors one team while the later portion favors the other is very discouraging in terms of balance.
There way is awesome off balancing the game, They get all the facts first.
Look at loner vs genius on scrap station, after storm comes out the game goes vastly in P favour.
Blizzard balances their game by 1a'ing armies into each other and seeing which one is more powerful? That's.. really scary to think that they are that simple-minded about game balance.
I shudder to think how they would have changed BW if they balanced that by having army balls fight each other too..
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
are we playing the same game here? it's ridiculously hard to stop 3 rax when you're FEing, but it's rather easy to stop a 4 gate when you're FEing as terran. Most terrans throw down 2-3 bunkers anyway if they smell something... what can toss do? Make recyclable cannons? no.
On October 25 2010 16:13 Angra wrote: Blizzard balances their game by 1a'ing armies into each other and seeing which one is more powerful? That's.. really scary to think that they are that simple-minded about game balance.
I shudder to think how they would have changed BW if they balanced that by having army balls fight each other too..
-_-'
That's not the whole story. Unfortunately this thread didn't really touch on it, but the thread before it mentioned it: the Blizz multiplayer panel demonstrated the Make Combat tool and mentioned that while it was useful for doing very simple tests, they did not rely on it solely for balance purposes.
On October 25 2010 13:18 DarkMoon wrote: While the OP is a nice write up I don't think it does justice to what the blizzcon panel went over completely.
Agreed, and Angra's post is a good example of what happens when half the information is processed.
I have to agree a lot of progamers i've talked to and listened to have said the same thing in terms of balance if terran doesn't end it in the first 12 mins then toss is most likely going to win. Also if toss does a 1 gate FE build and terran doesn't scout it early enough (Very small timing window) then toss dominates early game and mid game then late game is a smooth slide to victory which i believe needs to be balanced.
On October 25 2010 13:18 DarkMoon wrote: While the OP is a nice write up I don't think it does justice to what the blizzcon panel went over completely.
Agreed, and Angra's post is a good example of what happens when half the information is processed.
pretty much this... paired with the fact that some people refuse to think
On October 25 2010 16:13 Angra wrote: Blizzard balances their game by 1a'ing armies into each other and seeing which one is more powerful? That's.. really scary to think that they are that simple-minded about game balance.
I shudder to think how they would have changed BW if they balanced that by having army balls fight each other too..
cmon, david kim is actually a very good player, he won't allow balancing solely based upon such stupidity, that's for sure
concerning the topic: I would be more than glad if blizz nerfed psi-storm and buffed early PvT; it may come off as a QQ, but seriously: how often have you lost early on because of MINOR mistakes and got steamrolled by MM a-move? in comparison to how often you have won later on because T wasn't able to handle your psi-storm? see where I'm getting? a nerf to MM (they did discuss marauder-stim) would be gigantic, because P-players would probably be able to outplay terrans in midgame with gateway/immortal...maybe establish a quick third etc.; a nerf to psi-storm won't hurt that much, because the better early/mid-game would change everything; who knows, maybe protoss would switch to templars much faster and get carriers with them on a regular basis
This thread is horribly skewed and only presents bits and pieces of the actual panel discussion.
Here's what Dustin Browder actually said (about 11 minutes into part 2 of the above linked video):
We do find Terrans to be very strong in the beginning of the game. I often get run over early on with stim timing pushes, and it wrecks my day every time with massive amounts of nerdrage. We do see in many cases the Protoss being a little strong in the endgame: if the Terrans can be held off, it seems like a combination of colossus and perhaps more impotantly psi storm suddenly gives Protoss an advantage.
And this leads us to believe that there might be a more fundamental design problem here. While we could maybe get to a place here pretty soon where technically they're going 50/50, all that really matters is 'can the terrans win in the first 12 minutes or not,' and if they don't win there then the Protoss win. And while, I suppose, we could say 'that's 50/50, good enough,' that's not the game we want to make, and I'm pretty sure that's not the game you guys want to play.
Overall, the balance panel was really reassuring. Blizzard showed that they regularly communicate with top players and watch top games--they're not just sitting there looking at spreadsheets and saying "the game's fine!" Also, they're not instantly buffing/nerfing things when potentially biased pros are saying that something's an issue when there aren't any stats from ladder or spreadsheets to back up those claims.
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
are we playing the same game here? it's ridiculously hard to stop 3 rax when you're FEing, but it's rather easy to stop a 4 gate when you're FEing as terran. Most terrans throw down 2-3 bunkers anyway if they smell something... what can toss do? Make recyclable cannons? no.
1gate FE is strong against 3rax actually. It's weaker against 2rax, funnily enough (or 3rax with 2 naked raxs producing marines, same thing really). 2rax hits slightly earlier, 3rax hits as the warpgates come online so it fails.
1rax FE fails pretty hard against a good 4gate, actually. Even 2rax FE struggles against a good 4gate.
I dont mean to belittle blizzard's analysis, but when you have a game with as many openings and as much variability as sc2, you cannot say something as specific as "terran has the advantage for the first 12 minutes."
Oftentimes, a game of sc2 is a tug-of-war where the player in the lead changes minute by minute. Let's say terran goes banshee, kills 2 probes, and maintains a looming threat with a live banshee. Then by standard means, terran has the advantage. Now terran overcommits and loses his banshee. The advantage instantaneously switches to protoss. You can't say that in the first 12 minutes, any party has the advantage. In poker, you can say the player with the higher probability of winning may have the "advantage" (even then it's not a real advantage) at discrete points in time, but sc2 is in real-time and thus, far too intricate for such a concrete statement.
And let's say that at the 8 minute mark, the P and T armies collide, and both sides come out about even. Surely, this affects the "terran has the advantage in the first 12 minutes" claim as it basically resets the armies of both players. And I'm sure I don't even have to mention how different build orders can affect the state of the early game.
Basically, my point is that it's too early to say which race has the advantage at what point because there are so many openings and strategies that haven't been discovered yet. It's ridiculous to put a timestamp on the turning point of a game, even if it is an average statistic. Every data set has an average, but the average means nothing without some measure of volatility. At this point, I think it's best to let the game sit for a few months and see where the meta-game goes.
"Every time, the new patches are hard to adjust to, so I hope in the future the changes aren't cataclysmic."~Boxer
On October 25 2010 19:11 xiaofan wrote: I dont mean to belittle blizzard's analysis, but when you have a game with as many openings and as much variability as sc2, you cannot say something as specific as "terran has the advantage for the first 12 minutes."
Oftentimes, a game of sc2 is a tug-of-war where the player in the lead changes minute by minute. Let's say terran goes banshee, kills 2 probes, and maintains a looming threat with a live banshee. Then by standard means, terran has the advantage. Now terran overcommits and loses his banshee. The advantage instantaneously switches to protoss. You can't say that in the first 12 minutes, any party has the advantage. In poker, you can say the player with the higher probability of winning may have the "advantage" (even then it's not a real advantage) at discrete points in time, but sc2 is in real-time and thus, far too intricate for such a concrete statement.
And let's say that at the 8 minute mark, the P and T armies collide, and both sides come out about even. Surely, this affects the "terran has the advantage in the first 12 minutes" claim as it basically resets the armies of both players. And I'm sure I don't even have to mention how different build orders can affect the state of the early game.
Basically, my point is that it's too early to say which race has the advantage at what point because there are so many openings and strategies that haven't been discovered yet. It's ridiculous to put a timestamp on the turning point of a game, even if it is an average statistic. Every data set has an average, but the average means nothing without some measure of volatility. At this point, I think it's best to let the game sit for a few months and see where the meta-game goes.
"Every time, the new patches are hard to adjust to, so I hope in the future the changes aren't cataclysmic."~Boxer
I think what they mean at 12 minutes is that Protoss is more likely to have to tools to overpower Terran forces at that moment in time, examples are a good number of colossi or/and templar tech
During the panel, some people in chat were saying Blizzard shouldn't make their point that way, because people are incapable of understanding things like this. Looks like those people are right.
Blizzard's point was that they don't use any single metric to balance the game. Ladder stats, tournament games (not tournament results, but how the games play out), forum feedback, progamer feedback, internal testing, unit testers, math.
Another point was that they have to balance at all skill levels, but they err on the side of the progamers. Meaning that any one of us is probably seeing balance from a myopic, self-serving point of view. They specifically mentioned Marauders as things that they just won't outright nerf because they're so crucial in most matchups (but they'll protect specific targets from marauders if they're too weak against them). Even if 50 food of MM versus 50 food of gateway units attack moving at each other results in Toss losing every time.
A question is in relation to zerg. They said that they don't want zerg to have a scary T2 push, but are required to tech to T3 for their scary armies (to be different from protoss/terran). Is this not the same as saying zerg are weak mid game, and then overpowered late game? How does this differ from the protoss vs terran situation?
They said stim was harmful for marauders in some games not every game. They also said they weren't happy with the idea that Terran is OP in the first 12 min and after that its Protoss that's OP. They said they didn't want to make a game that works like this.
On October 25 2010 20:40 VonLego wrote: A question is in relation to zerg. They said that they don't want zerg to have a scary T2 push, but are required to tech to T3 for their scary armies (to be different from protoss/terran). Is this not the same as saying zerg are weak mid game, and then overpowered late game? How does this differ from the protoss vs terran situation?
it differs because of one very essential unit: the mutalisk
zerg has a possibility to stall extremely well, while the phoenix is nowhere near as effective when it comes down to harassment; currently (= post patch!) I'd say ZvT is about even....if the T is more skilled he will capitalize more early on, if the Z is more skilled, then he will do more harassment-damage; while in PvT, all the P can do until colossi (meaning: not only one but at least 2-3) is sit behind and defend drops; he has no real way to prevent T from getting mapcontrol and macroing up; the FE-sytle is so strong because it actually "embraces" this weakness...making defending and not attacking the way to go; nevertheless a balanced matchup should never leave one race without any options with regards to agression until a certain mark
if ppl start talking about PvT broodwar: yes, here terran was "doomed" to turtle...nevertheless once terran had vultures with mines they could do PAINFUL harassment; in sc2 protoss has nothing to harass terran while teching to their "good stuff"; it's funny that in PvT terran actually has all the harassment-possibilities (hellions, banshees and vikings [yes you can land those and kill pylons and stuff]) although they don't need them since their MM-army is more mobile and generally better early on anyways; really seems like something blizz didn't plan, while I think ZvT and PvZ works how they intended it to
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
If a Protoss FE the Terran can bust through it with a timing attack and it becomes pretty difficult to defend :/
On October 25 2010 20:40 VonLego wrote: A question is in relation to zerg. They said that they don't want zerg to have a scary T2 push, but are required to tech to T3 for their scary armies (to be different from protoss/terran). Is this not the same as saying zerg are weak mid game, and then overpowered late game? How does this differ from the protoss vs terran situation?
no it just says what their design /style intentions are.
I can see marauder stim hurting the maruaders more in most situations. I think a lot of that is not caluculating your stims. There's no doubt that it's benificial when taking out an expansion, or in a maruader vs mostly stalker fight.
On October 25 2010 20:40 VonLego wrote: A question is in relation to zerg. They said that they don't want zerg to have a scary T2 push, but are required to tech to T3 for their scary armies (to be different from protoss/terran). Is this not the same as saying zerg are weak mid game, and then overpowered late game? How does this differ from the protoss vs terran situation?
But the protoss don't have good harrass options to keep the terran in his base and protoss are not superior macroers to the terran by design, in fact if anything it's the opposite with chonoboosts but I will simply ignore those so as to not distract you from the fallacy in your comparison.
Whilst I agree on a lot that was said (I watched the actual video) there are several points that worry me.
They think psi storm OP late game- seriously it takes that long to get out HT's and get them functioning well with a reasonable amount of micro needed. If terran want to keep spamming tier 1 MMM against templar collosus why shouldnt they get their arses handed to them. I really don't get the recent patch history in regards to these changes. Protoss early game has been nerfed with slower zealots and warp gates, Terran mid to late game has been nerfed with changes to tanks and battle cruisers.
I mean I know why the changes were done but in nerfing the terran tier 2/3 they almost force heavy MMM play and by nerfing gateway units they almost force heavy toss tier 2/3 play, obviously these changes were more centered around vZ and mirror match-ups.
Also lol at guy at the end begging for Muta buff- yeah because if there is one unit that definitely could do with being a little stronger is Mutas.
On October 25 2010 20:40 VonLego wrote: A question is in relation to zerg. They said that they don't want zerg to have a scary T2 push, but are required to tech to T3 for their scary armies (to be different from protoss/terran). Is this not the same as saying zerg are weak mid game, and then overpowered late game? How does this differ from the protoss vs terran situation?
That seems more a matter of function than raw power. The shorter range of most zerg units makes it harder for them to break an entrenched position - especially against high ground siege tanks or something like that. On the other, those same units can hold up pretty well in open battle (especially on creep). They just don't deal a killing blow.
I feel a lot of the balance problem lies in the medivacs to be honest, its the ability for terran to stim and kite while healing the initial stim cost prior to the second colossi or fair number of storms that wrecks havoc. No doubt a bio army can tear things up earlier without medivacs, but the concept of forcing stims is somewhat similar to slowing down a mech terran or abusing mech mobility, forcing them to siege unsiege etc, however protoss could probably use a better way to force stims in the open map earlier/less specialized than blink. Maybe reduce stim's speed boost so terran only catches units slowed by a conc shell rather than being able to overtake an entire retreating army? In return I feel like a change to combat shield could do a lot of good, maybe instead of or in addition to the HP boost it has a hardened shield like effect where marines can't take more than 12 damage from a single attack? Maybe require Armory or something for it, just so a barracks terran can't beat a 1 base fast colossus or storm tech.
Maybe these ideas suck, i'm sure stimming to defend against muta / void ray would need a substitute, that or terran will start to incorporate turrets into every build order, but aren't they supposed to be the turtling race? Considering how safe a planatary fortress expansion with turrets is, I can't see slowing down Bio as the worst thing in the world, though similar to the scv health change its one less link between past and present.
As 1900 terran I honestly do not agree Protoss is threadening with all kind of openings where as terran pretty much only has different types of bio openings and some banchee openings. And 3 gate robo is pretty damn strong vs any bio opening. 1 gate robo auto wins vs any banchee/drop opening.
I dont see how terran is more OP in the early game, zealot sentry army is so,so,so strong, the zealots tanks incredible amounts of damage. And yes it can be kited, but on certain maps like LT with small chokes, aggresive play is éasily punished with FFs. While I do think terran has a slight advantage early on its not that huge. Midgame is kinda balanced with protoss having a slightly stronger army but terran able to do drops. As soon as protoss has 6x gas and HT tech it gets incredible hard for terran since protoss are able to warp in huge amounts of HTs ready to storm.
But I do find this MU pretty balanced. Terran just has to enter the lategame with an advantage or play so aggresive that the protoss just dies if he spend money on twillight council/charge/HT tech.
On October 25 2010 21:52 Armsved wrote: As 1900 terran I honestly do not agree Protoss is threadening with all kind of openings where as terran pretty much only has different types of bio openings and some banchee openings. And 3 gate robo is pretty damn strong vs any bio opening. 1 gate robo auto wins vs any banchee/drop opening.
I dont see how terran is more OP in the early game, zealot sentry army is so,so,so strong, the zealots tanks incredible amounts of damage. And yes it can be kited, but on certain maps like LT with small chokes, aggresive play is éasily punished with FFs. While I do think terran has a slight advantage early on its not that huge. Midgame is kinda balanced with protoss having a slightly stronger army but terran able to do drops. As soon as protoss has 6x gas and HT tech it gets incredible hard for terran since protoss are able to warp in huge amounts of HTs ready to storm.
But I do find this MU pretty balanced. Terran just has to enter the lategame with an advantage or play so aggresive that the protoss just dies if he spend money on twillight council/charge/HT tech.
Well at the start till Colo or Storm, Stimmed bio facerolls gateway units, even with immortal support
Its not coincidence that everyone saying, protoss has to survive till Storm
And as you said, it just like with zerg in BW, if protoss gets 3rd, the amount of heavy gas units jumping by far
On October 25 2010 21:52 Armsved wrote: As 1900 terran I honestly do not agree Protoss is threadening with all kind of openings where as terran pretty much only has different types of bio openings and some banchee openings.
protoss has only robotics-openings and the FE or are you referring to the different kinds of gettin robotics? like the oldschool 1 gate with zealot/stalker into robotics, the more army based 2 gate with zealot/stalker/sentry/stalker into robotics, or the more immortal-based 1 gate stalker into faster robotics?
1 gate robo auto wins vs any banchee/drop opening.
what the...kidding, right? if anything then 2 gate robo is stronger because you get more stuff while adding a stargate; 1 gate robo is strongest vs pure rax play because it enables you to get colossi fastest
On October 25 2010 21:05 spacemonkeyy wrote: Whilst I agree on a lot that was said (I watched the actual video) there are several points that worry me.
They think psi storm OP late game- seriously it takes that long to get out HT's and get them functioning well with a reasonable amount of micro needed. If terran want to keep spamming tier 1 MMM against templar collosus why shouldnt they get their arses handed to them.
that's not the point
just imagine terran and protoss having BOTH their complete tech-tree unlocked, all upgrades, everything; both having equal bases; THEN terran has it really hard to beat colossi+templar with gateway support or even carriers mixed in; I have a really high win-percentage when terran let's me "GET" to this point; yes, it's hard to not lose before that...or not be at the disadvantage when having templars (like be behind 1 base or just be behind supply-wise)...but that's not the point; the point is, that a balanced game should NOT have one 200/200 army steamroll over any 200/200 composition your opponent can come up with
On October 25 2010 13:18 DarkMoon wrote: While the OP is a nice write up I don't think it does justice to what the blizzcon panel went over completely.
In regards to PvT the panel said that while the Terran early game was very powerful, after 12 minutes (don't really know how they got that time, could be arbitrary for their own example) the Protoss became very strong and the Terran would usually lose. (See Kiwikaki vs Select at MLG) But if the Terran attacked early with bio usually the Terran would win. (See Select vs Huk, Select vs Nony, etc at MLG)
Referring to Select vs Kiwi @ DC (game2 on metal if memory serves) that is a very very bad example.
Select lost that game because he made worthless Planatary Fortresses at his 3rd/4th (Kiwi couldn't leave his base if he wanted to, it made 0 sense to get them). Was sitting next to and talking to HuK during that game and its pretty clear that Select would of been able to win had he built Orbitals there. I'll actually make a note to watch the replay of that game since it was fairly entertaining, but it was ridiculous how Select was able to stay not only in the game, but also at a dictating position.
Just because a strategy is extremely difficult or impossible for 99% of T players to execute doesn't automatically make it okay if there is no clear appropriate answer to it. A major thing to note is that every single Toss he played against knew exactly what he was doing/going to do, and everyone was even watching the games. Given the nature of sc2 and the fact that no generic/'safe' build exists due to the heavy influence of 'counter'-type play it just seems out of place.
I'm not taking anything away from select as he's clearly an amazing player (I actually haven't taken a game from him in a handful of weeks), but there is definitely something that needs to be adjusted that allows for more flexible play on both ends.
Just my opinion but I think it's pretty obvious the problem lies with mainly Marauder Medivac drops. Nothing near remotely even food/cost can stop it once it is inside of your base. (note I'm cearly omitting extreme late game options). You have to have significantly more resources worth of units or upgrades to allow you to clean up the drop, and at multiple locations accompanied by a large main force, you are simply going to either be out of position resulting in you losing far more worth of units and/or tech and unit producing structures.
I don't have any direct suggestions atm of what should be done because simply put I don't have time to analyze every minuscule ramification each change could inflict, but personally I believe everything roots itself with the MULE and how late game the Economic gain from 3 orbital commands is unable to be outmatched in terms of economy by anything that Protoss can do. Actual late game unit disparity has its ups and downs for each side.
Concerning terran (which is what I have the most experience of), I think we are significantly weaker lategame against both protoss and zerg. Early game terran feels the strongest, but as the game advances this turns around completely, which forces you to play very aggressive with timing pushes and harass. So I think the fundamental problems lie within the terran race moreso than the protoss.
The only matchup where I feel I can macro and expand heavily is TvT.
You can not conclude from strong units to them being the cause of an imbalance. They all add up to the whole picture, like the high factory hp, which allows for safe scouting.
On October 25 2010 22:12 Agh wrote: Just because a strategy is extremely difficult or impossible for 99% of T players to execute doesn't automatically make it okay if there is no clear appropriate answer to it. A major thing to note is that every single Toss he played against knew exactly what he was doing/going to do, and everyone was even watching the games. Given the nature of sc2 and the fact that no generic/'safe' build exists due to the heavy influence of 'counter'-type play it just seems out of place.
Are you saying Select's style has no counter, though? Genius demolished him in 2 games, abusing his late vikings with nice colossus timing attacks, and of course his Korean forcefields ^_^. Given Select's style is bloody hard to do I think it's fair to require sexy FFs and nice timing to beat it.
Just my opinion but I think it's pretty obvious the problem lies with mainly Marauder Medivac drops. Nothing near remotely even food/cost can stop it once it is inside of your base. (note I'm cearly omitting extreme late game options). You have to have significantly more resources worth of units or upgrades to allow you to clean up the drop, and at multiple locations accompanied by a large main force, you are simply going to either be out of position resulting in you losing far more worth of units and/or tech and unit producing structures.
How often do the top Protoss players actually lose for that reason though? It seems like most of the losses are due to timing attacks while the Protoss tries to transition to either colossus or templar (and of course we have to transition to them). It feels like the big problem is that window where T has a stimball which basic gateway alone simply cannot handle, but before the big guns are out.
Maybe it's a regional thing, NA/EU seems to either have better dropping Terrans or the Protoss are worse at defending them.
I don't have any direct suggestions atm of what should be done because simply put I don't have time to analyze every minuscule ramification each change could inflict, but personally I believe everything roots itself with the MULE and how late game the Economic gain from 3 orbital commands is unable to be outmatched in terms of economy by anything that Protoss can do. Actual late game unit disparity has its ups and downs for each side.
On October 25 2010 13:16 VoodooDog wrote: rine stimm should bring only 50% more firerate, not 100%. Marauder stim should be deleted. Than it will be balanced.
User was warned for this post
Marine stim is only a 50% increase in fire rate. I am not sure where you get that it is 100%.
Stimmed marines are superstrong early on, but a few colossi & ht's just totally rapes them so hard. Same thing against baneligns/infestors; either you can do massive damage, or none at all.
I would really love a nerf to marine DPS, but compensate with greater survivability. Even with combat shield they get raped soooo hard by units designed to counter them -- of course everything should be countered, but it just goes way out of hand.
On October 25 2010 13:16 VoodooDog wrote: rine stimm should bring only 50% more firerate, not 100%. Marauder stim should be deleted. Than it will be balanced.
User was warned for this post
Marine stim is only a 50% increase in fire rate. I am not sure where you get that it is 100%.
On October 25 2010 22:44 Yaotzin wrote: It feels like the big problem is that window where T has a stimball which basic gateway alone simply cannot handle, but before the big guns are out.
pretty much this - also consider that protoss "automatically" gets behind in core units because protoss HAS to tech; often I hear even good ppl downtalking protoss-players for getting "outplayed" when terran overruns them with MM while it's obvious that protoss can't have that much "stuff" when you lay down a robotics + bay + range upgrade (!) that all has to pay off; if MM were weaker against gateway-units + immortals (!) then protoss could get colossi considerably later and would be on a more even footing, which would justify a nerf to the "big guns" like storm
?? You're saying Terran has a lategame advantage?
I think he is saying that terran has a huge economical advantage in late midgame which leads to protoss entering lategame WAY behind when they don't do damage with their first 2-4 colossi; which is what I'm experiencing too; notice that this has basicly nothing to do with storm being OP or UP but the supply both players can achieve to get when being equally skilled; meaning, most times when you finally get to templars you will be already significantly behind; which is basicly the reason why many protoss players try to do the big damage before transitioning or even get DTs to harass and force scans; I've been saying this since the very release of the game that mules (without cooldown) are a huge problem that is counter-intuitive to basic rts-mechanisms since it allows for gigantic boosts and ludicrous comebacks; just a recent replay (early game shenanigans were funny but not game-deciding):
cloud was down to 11 scvs at one point....which equals death in a sane rts-world; nevertheless he managed to come back thanks to massive mule-calldown and only lost because his opponent just continued to outplay him
As someone already mentioned I think part of the problem lies therein, that you get Stim, CombatShield & ConcShell and even Ghosts really early. While it takes a damn long time to get Blink/Charge & Fully upgraded HT.
It's obvious that P should be able to survive against the early game Terran upgrades - but the problem is if P get their own upgrades they demolish the Terran armies.
I honestly hope they dont nerf the Protoss endgame options (storm) but try to find a way to give the Terran new endgame options. A Terran version of Adrenal Glands (buff to early game unit, but only available very very late) comes to my mind. Maybe on a non MMM unit.
Edit: removed my example. I think the idea is what counts - dont want to discuss specifics
On October 25 2010 23:03 sleepingdog wrote: I think he is saying that terran has a huge economical advantage in late midgame which leads to protoss entering lategame WAY behind; which is what I'm experiencing too; notice that this has basicly nothing to do with storm being OP or UP but the supply both players can achieve to get when being equally skilled;
Any examples of equal players where the Terran pulls ahead in supply? It seems to be remarkably even to me.
I've been saying this since the very release of the game that mules (without cooldown) are a huge problem that is counter-intuitive to basic rts-mechanisms since it allows for gigantic boosts and ludicrous comebacks; just a recent replay (early game shenanigans were funny but not game-deciding):
cloud was down to 11 scvs at one point....which equals death in a sane rts-world; nevertheless he managed to come back thanks to massive mule-calldown and only lost because his opponent just continued to outplay him
Not sure how this is relevant. MULEs aren't an issue in the early game (where Terran is a bit too strong), because they're just keeping T in the races with P's chronod probes. Perhaps the whole 10 mules onto the gold is an issue, but that's lategame where T needs all the help they can get really.
Medivacs are not very fragile. Stalkers cause 14 damage against 150 hp medivacs, while dragoons caused 20 damage against 150 hp dropships. That's a 30% decrease. I feel like Terran's don't get punished enough for playing a drop oriented game. That's what happens when you exchange proven units like scourges and corsairs with 'cool' units.
I cant see how stim can be a problem. For instance in Broodwar Zerg has trouble and has to pretty much defend or harass in early game to survive and to get Lurkers for instance. I think that is balance and I think it creates a much more dynamic game.
MMM is the scale all this is balancing around. It will destroy Tier 1 units (early game units), equalizes to Tier 2 or Tier 1 supported by limited Tier 3 (mid game) and dies to Tier 2/3 (late game).
The main issue I feel is that it is hard to transition into anything else without creating a huge window for the opponent to act on.
Going Mech is problematic due to Chargelots (which really rape tanks) and Immortals being a far easier transition for P than Mech is for T. T will have to research Siege Tech and get the Tanks in good number before they shine and Thors are so expensive and require an armory. P will most likely already have the Robo and Immortals need no upgrade or tech structure.
Going Air leaves the ground army very vulnerable. Banshees, as good as they are, die to Gateway units with one or two Observers mixed in. Vikings have to land to do damage to anything other than air units or Colossi, again leaving the ground army vulnerable.
This generally leaves T with staying with MMM (leaving no window) and adding Vikings and Ghosts. MMM however dies a lot faster to Storm and Extended Thermal Lance than HT/Colossi do to Ghosts/Vikings.
As mentioned:
Early game: T > P because MMM > Gateway Mid game: T == P because MMM == Gateway + Colossi OR Storm Late game: T < P because MMM < Gateway + Colossi AND Storm
It isn't so much an imbalance in MMM itself, but the fact that T can't effectively transition into anything else.
Hellions? One FF blocks any harass and MMM kites Zealots better, leaving only blue flame drops. Tanks? Chargelots with 150hp taking only 35dmg will eat that alive. Thors? Similar problem, but Immortals hurt a lot here. Vikings? Great against Void Rays and Colossi, that's it. Landing them usually means dead Vikings. Banshees? You can harass and kill a few probes and they help with defense but Stalkers and Observers deal with this just fine. If you really commit to them, P brings Phoenixes. Ravens? PDD is awesome no doubt, but what else can you really use them for that is worth 200 gas? BCs? Good luck staying alive long enough to get them.
You see Protoss say often, 'do something else than MMM', but there isn't really much else to go for that doesn't leave a big window in the early or midgame. 4 gate and 3 gate/robo is so strong early game that not going MMM is very risky for T.
I'd love to see mass Siege Tank/Hellion or Viking/Banshee play, but such builds leave T so vulnerable in the early game that MMM is the more reliable option.
On October 25 2010 23:18 Perscienter wrote: Medivacs are not very fragile. Stalkers cause 14 damage against 150 hp medivacs, while dragoons caused 20 damage against 150 hp dropships. That's a 30% decrease. I feel like Terran's don't get punished enough for playing a drop oriented game.
Oh look it's another worthless direct comparison with BW. They're different games, get over it. Protoss has different ways of dealing with drops, such as warpins and feedback.
That's what happens when you exchange proven units like scourges and corsairs with 'cool' units.
Phoenix are better than corsairs in every way, wtf.
On October 25 2010 23:03 sleepingdog wrote: I think he is saying that terran has a huge economical advantage in late midgame which leads to protoss entering lategame WAY behind; which is what I'm experiencing too; notice that this has basicly nothing to do with storm being OP or UP but the supply both players can achieve to get when being equally skilled;
Any examples of equal players where the Terran pulls ahead in supply? It seems to be remarkably even to me.
I edited "when protoss doesn't attack" in, which is basicly the most important point, sorry for omitting it
what this means is, protoss can't attack early on (before colossi/storm) but can NEITHER just macro up from three bases because 3 orbital commands will just provide for a rofl-economy; this is why you see many protoss players overextending themselves with few colossi because they KNOW they have to do damage or get behind; protoss doesn't attack with colossi because they "want" to but because they "have" to.....to force terran into a PF instead of a 3rd orbital; it's basicly the point where both players stop producing workers and where chrono-boost gets useless considering the economy
my guess is, blizz "thought" that terran would turn out as the turtle-race in PvT where terran would have to "bust out"....and THEN could capitalize with their mules and catch up to the higher probe-count of protoss while having good income due to the mule-calldown; but since terran can actually take the map, this mechanism seems to be "misconceptioned" - it really is a concept to keep a race in the game that is intended to NOT have mapcontrol; which isn't the case in standard PvT right now
On October 25 2010 23:03 sleepingdog wrote: I think he is saying that terran has a huge economical advantage in late midgame which leads to protoss entering lategame WAY behind; which is what I'm experiencing too; notice that this has basicly nothing to do with storm being OP or UP but the supply both players can achieve to get when being equally skilled;
Any examples of equal players where the Terran pulls ahead in supply? It seems to be remarkably even to me.
I edited "when protoss doesn't attack" in, which is basicly the most important point, sorry for omitting it
Yeah I was assuming that. 2 people just macroing up yeah? Always seems really even to me..any examples?
what this means is, protoss can't attack early on (before colossi/storm) but can NEITHER just macro up from three bases because 3 orbital commands will just provide for a rofl-economy; this is why you see many protoss players overextending themselves with few colossi because they KNOW they have to do damage or get behind; protoss doesn't attack with colossi because they "want" to but because they "have" to.....to force terran into a PF instead of a 3rd orbital; it's basicly the point where both players stop producing workers and where chrono-boost gets useless considering the economy
This is mid-late game, where Terran is starting to seriously struggle. 3rd orbital doesn't do shit for them. It's 4.5 more workers, that's nothing man.
On October 25 2010 23:18 Perscienter wrote: Medivacs are not very fragile. Stalkers cause 14 damage against 150 hp medivacs, while dragoons caused 20 damage against 150 hp dropships. That's a 30% decrease. I feel like Terran's don't get punished enough for playing a drop oriented game.
Oh look it's another worthless direct comparison with BW. They're different games, get over it. Protoss has different ways of dealing with drops, such as warpins and feedback.
On October 25 2010 23:45 Perscienter wrote: Especially the absence of splash damage and the low dps against non-armored units like the medivac.
Splash would be useless in SC2. Having them do +armored damage would make them a worse unit.
They are a better, more viable unit that the corsair. They are viable in all matchups. They are anti-air that can actually harass/attack ground. The corsair is pretty much never used except against Zerg. How you can conclude that the corsair is better is beyond me.
I don't see how the late game SC2 Protoss army is imbalanced PvT since I spent years playing PvT in SC1 where a Terran army of equal supply almost always beat me and a 200/200 2-2 Terran army was nearly unstoppable and many maps made it easy for Terran to get 3 bases and turtle until they had a huge army. Protoss could have 5 bases vs 3 bases and hit 200 supply 3 minutes before Terran and have nowhere to attack and 5k minerals saved up and 25 gateways but the Terran army moves out carefully and kills wave after wave of Protoss units and wins the game. That wasn't imbalanced... that's just how the matchup was. So perhaps the tables are turned now. But if it's a fact that a late game protoss army generally owns a late game terran army of equal supply, that does not have anything to do with balance. That's the kind of thing that makes a matchup unique. It creates an interesting dynamic. As long as the race with the weaker late game army has a more explosive economy, which I think SC2 Terran has, it should be balanced.
Maybe the maps have to change but I think on a big macro map, SC2 Terran can out-expand SC2 Protoss, build all orbitals because they actually don't want to ever fight at their bases, and in the late game have 20-30 less workers (for 20-30 supply bigger army) while keeping up in econ with mules. I think a difficult tech switch to battlecruisers (vikings left over from fighting colossi to support against void rays and marauders that don't even need medivac support to kill stalkers) would be a good point for late game tvp to hinge upon. It's what protoss had to do in SC1 with carriers.
I think mid to late game PvT is tough because Terran players (me included up until recently) are attempting to counter Colossi with Vikings which quite frankly are useless versus Colossi when the Protoss is 3 or 4 gating with a heavy Stalker combo. I still struggle with HTs because even when I manage to get EMP off on the entire army if you're engaged in the vicinity of the Protoss base or a pylon they need only warp in 3 or 4, hit t -> left click 4 times and your ground forces are ruined.
I'm working out timings on an opening/mid-game versus a Protoss that goes 3 or 4 gate w/ Colossi that involves Thor w/ 250mm Strike Cannons since in theory they should nullify any worry of Colossi. I came to this conclusion by looking at stats in general:
Colossi cost versus Thor Cost: Equal Build Times: Colossi takes 10 seconds longer (60 seconds versus 50 seconds) Strike Cannon: Cooldown is 50 seconds, stuns the target and deals 500 damage over 6 seconds. One Colossus isn't going to hold up to that since shield + health is about 350 (not including upgrades). Convenient that Colossi build time is 50 seconds, the cooldown is 50 seconds on strike cannon and it does way more damage than even a fully upgraded Colossus can absorb if I'm calculating it correctly.
If it works as advertised (I haven't had a chance to test it online yet), engage, hit 1 Colossi per 1 Thor and not only are they stunned the DOT will nuke them without any further action being required allowing the Terran's army to focus on the Stalker/Zealot. When Strike Cannon was energy based it was useless because the HT could nullify its ability with one cast of Feedback. With how the timings line up I can see this being very effective when Vikings aren't an option.
I'll avoid getting into the Psi Storm discussion because everyone is biased about it versus Ghosts EMP and Feedback etc. I have my own thoughts on what changes are needed (perhaps to both HT and Ghosts) but I'll keep it to myself.
On October 26 2010 00:10 Liquid`Tyler wrote: I don't see how the late game SC2 Protoss army is imbalanced PvT since I spent years playing PvT in SC1 where a Terran army of equal supply almost always beat me and a 200/200 2-2 Terran army was nearly unstoppable and many maps made it easy for Terran to get 3 bases and turtle until they had a huge army. Protoss could have 5 bases vs 3 bases and hit 200 supply 3 minutes before Terran and have nowhere to attack and 5k minerals saved up and 25 gateways but the Terran army moves out carefully and kills wave after wave of Protoss units and wins the game. That wasn't imbalanced... that's just how the matchup was. So perhaps the tables are turned now. But if it's a fact that a late game protoss army generally owns a late game terran army of equal supply, that does not have anything to do with balance. That's the kind of thing that makes a matchup unique. It creates an interesting dynamic. As long as the race with the weaker late game army has a more explosive economy, which I think SC2 Terran has, it should be balanced.
Maybe the maps have to change but I think on a big macro map, SC2 Terran can out-expand SC2 Protoss, build all orbitals because they actually don't want to ever fight at their bases, and in the late game have 20-30 less workers (for 20-30 supply bigger army) while keeping up in econ with mules. I think a difficult tech switch to battlecruisers (vikings left over from fighting colossi to support against void rays and marauders that don't even need medivac support to kill stalkers) would be a good point for late game tvp to hinge upon. It's what protoss had to do in SC1 with carriers.
I think the main issue is the AoE firepower that End tier Protoss units have to offer that allows them to overpower the Terran Biomasses, Siege tanks and vikings do offer some sort of counter action against them however I think blizzard's major concern is Templar tech's ability to warp in anywhere and storm right away. in 200/200 battles macro start to matter less as there is not much more you can produce. Since Biomass is a Terran's prime method of confronting any type enemy threat.
On October 26 2010 00:10 Liquid`Tyler wrote: I don't see how the late game SC2 Protoss army is imbalanced PvT since I spent years playing PvT in SC1 where a Terran army of equal supply almost always beat me and a 200/200 2-2 Terran army was nearly unstoppable and many maps made it easy for Terran to get 3 bases and turtle until they had a huge army. Protoss could have 5 bases vs 3 bases and hit 200 supply 3 minutes before Terran and have nowhere to attack and 5k minerals saved up and 25 gateways but the Terran army moves out carefully and kills wave after wave of Protoss units and wins the game. That wasn't imbalanced... that's just how the matchup was. So perhaps the tables are turned now. But if it's a fact that a late game protoss army generally owns a late game terran army of equal supply, that does not have anything to do with balance.
Blizz said in that panel that they don't want it like this. They want it pretty even at all stages of the game, rightly imo. Having the matchup be a game of "kill Protoss in <12ish minutes or die" can be balanced but it's not good gameplay.
Just out of curiosity, it used to be almost Kanon to go ghost for emp vs protoss nowadays I don't get to see much ghost action at all in my v Terran match ups,
On October 25 2010 23:03 sleepingdog wrote: cloud was down to 11 scvs at one point....which equals death in a sane rts-world; nevertheless he managed to come back thanks to massive mule-calldown and only lost because his opponent just continued to outplay him
There's something that bugs me about posts like this. Somebody says "well he was down 11 SCVs which means he should lose the game, but MULEs suddenly saved him" and treats this concept like MULEs are somehow overpowered or that they shouldn't be counted amongst the Terrans workers.
MULEs indeed look overpowered when you call a bunch of them at once, because they result in a ginormous income spike and don't show up on the supply counts or worker counts in the observer tabs.
But if you count them amongst the Terrans worker force, you get a much more accurate picture. According to Liquipedia, each Mule is about as efficient as 4 SCVs at mining minerals. And if the Terran only uses Mules from his Orbital Command, he can keep 1 up per OC indefinitely.
So if you think of it that each OC is adding 4 to the SCV count, and each scan is costing 300 minerals rather than energy, you get a much clearer picture. Since it's standard to make your main and natural OCs and only think about Planetaries at your 3rd and later bases, it's likely that using this rubrick, Cloud was only down 3 workers in the afformentioned game.
Which does not equal death in a 'sane rts-world'.
Sorry, not much to do with the thread, but it's a statement I see people making on these forums over and over, and it's dumb and needs to be explained.
On October 26 2010 00:10 Liquid`Tyler wrote: I don't see how the late game SC2 Protoss army is imbalanced PvT since I spent years playing PvT in SC1 where a Terran army of equal supply almost always beat me and a 200/200 2-2 Terran army was nearly unstoppable and many maps made it easy for Terran to get 3 bases and turtle until they had a huge army. Protoss could have 5 bases vs 3 bases and hit 200 supply 3 minutes before Terran and have nowhere to attack and 5k minerals saved up and 25 gateways but the Terran army moves out carefully and kills wave after wave of Protoss units and wins the game. That wasn't imbalanced... that's just how the matchup was. So perhaps the tables are turned now. But if it's a fact that a late game protoss army generally owns a late game terran army of equal supply, that does not have anything to do with balance.
Blizz said in that panel that they don't want it like this. They want it pretty even at all stages of the game, rightly imo. Having the matchup be a game of "kill Protoss in <12ish minutes or die" can be balanced but it's not good gameplay.
That's not what I'm saying. The dynamic I'm talking about means each race has an equal chance of winning at all stages of the game but they have different strengths. Basically, one race has a better economy and the other race has a more efficient army. You don't have to kill the Protoss in the first 12 minutes, but if you try to kill him and fail when you had the option to out-expand him, then perhaps you deserve to lose. What Blizzard wants is for the chance to win to be even. They don't want every option for every race to be even. That kills strategy and makes the game boring due to lack of diversity.
If at the 10 minute mark the Terran has two equally strong options: power up and do a timing attack at 12 minutes or expand again and head toward a switch to BC's, then that's bad for the game. Those options shouldn't be equally strong. One of those options should actually be better than the other one so that there's a meaningful strategic decision there, not just a stylistic decision of "do I like to play aggressive or do I like to play for a long game"
My point is just that one late game army being stronger than another does not automatically mean imbalance. Whatever terms people put the armies in to say that they're imbalanced aren't detailed enough because I can do the same for SC1 PvT and it makes Terran look overpowered when they're not. It's just my guess that people want each race to be able to make the same kinds of decisions and be even the whole time, but that is a bad line of thought because SC is a game of 3 unique races. If both races are making the same kinds of decisions, it's likely that that set of decisions is better for one of the races than it is for the other.
On October 25 2010 23:18 Perscienter wrote: Medivacs are not very fragile. Stalkers cause 14 damage against 150 hp medivacs, while dragoons caused 20 damage against 150 hp dropships. That's a 30% decrease. I feel like Terran's don't get punished enough for playing a drop oriented game. That's what happens when you exchange proven units like scourges and corsairs with 'cool' units.
Dropships did not heal, dragoons did not blink, apples and oranges. 11 stalkers blinking under a fleeing medivac will one shot it, that seems fragile enough as it is. I think the speed nerfs to medivacs were enough to make it possible to punish dropship play, if not going slightly overboard.
On October 25 2010 20:58 DamageInq wrote: I can see marauder stim hurting the maruaders more in most situations. I think a lot of that is not caluculating your stims. There's no doubt that it's benificial when taking out an expansion, or in a maruader vs mostly stalker fight.
Ive read through 3 pages already and they talked about TWEAKING marauders and found that during the TWEAKS it was actually LESS beneficial to stim marauders, NOT the way the game is set up CURRENTLY.
Listening is fundemental ;D
And P can FE easily, learn the build orders and use good FF's. People who i see struggle PvT either try to make stargate units and die or dont make enough sentries (if any).
Also im fairly certain that "12 minute" number is completely fucking arbitrary and people are quoting it like its gospel. It was just an example of what they didnt want the game to be.
And to nony im sure you are quite better than me currently but you have to admit the game is completely different. Blizzard has all these fucking maps that have canals and pathways to feed units through and colossus and ht absolutely crush that. I disagree that T can outexpand P lategame as well especially since P can use warped in HT and DT to defend + its pretty hard for terran to expand when theres 4-5 colossus right in your face and tanks + PF does nothing against them with the lance upgrade.
I think maps are a huge part of this entire problem and we need some wide open center luna style maps (imagine playing PvT on maps where you army is constantly splitting down fucking hallways or force you to run into a narrow passage if you want to attack + a more mobile terran army (since we know P in SC2 is a lot more mobile than T in BW))
The one thing I Would advocate is having observers either build faster, cost less, or placed in a different building. If drops are really such an issue its mainly due to people scouting HORRIBLY bad as protoss in this game. I see maybe 1 or 2 observers max. If you have the map just defend like you did in BW and use a pylon ring + observers. Currently while making colossus or immortal making a ton of observers can be hard so I can understand why that would be an issue so maybe move them to nexus with an upgrade at the robotics or something (or some add on after robotics like in BW)
On October 25 2010 20:58 DamageInq wrote: I can see marauder stim hurting the maruaders more in most situations. I think a lot of that is not caluculating your stims. There's no doubt that it's benificial when taking out an expansion, or in a maruader vs mostly stalker fight.
Ive read through 3 pages already and they talked about TWEAKING marauders and found that during the TWEAKS it was actually LESS beneficial to stim marauders, NOT the way the game is set up CURRENTLY.
Listening is fundemental ;D
And P can FE easily, learn the build orders and use good FF's. People who i see struggle PvT either try to make stargate units and die or dont make enough sentries (if any).
Also im fairly certain that "12 minute" number is completely fucking arbitrary and people are quoting it like its gospel. It was just an example of what they didnt want the game to be.
I think it's supposed to represent when colossi come into play heavily.
That said it's still a misc number since it doesn't account for anything, as you say.
On October 25 2010 14:55 Sorook wrote: What I don't understand is why shouldn't P t3 crush T t1. Should toss be able to punish T for building nothing but MMM?
MMM is not a tier 1 unit composition, whereby even usage of the word tier gives rise to ambiguity.
They say they're hesitant to touch core units like the Marine, but they were quick to nerf Zealots because the Silvers couldn't handle proxy 2-Gate. I'd say slap a 5s production nerf on Marines and see what happens. Slows down timing pushes and doesn't affect late game all that much.
On October 26 2010 01:15 Cloak wrote: They say they're hesitant to touch core units like the Marine, but they were quick to nerf Zealots because the Silvers couldn't handle proxy 2-Gate. I'd say slap a 5s production nerf on Marines and see what happens. Slows down timing pushes and doesn't affect late game all that much.
Hahaha funny thing is they already hit the marine with a production nerf back in beta so stop whining :/
On October 26 2010 01:15 Cloak wrote: They say they're hesitant to touch core units like the Marine, but they were quick to nerf Zealots because the Silvers couldn't handle proxy 2-Gate. I'd say slap a 5s production nerf on Marines and see what happens. Slows down timing pushes and doesn't affect late game all that much.
Hahaha funny thing is they already hit the marine with a production nerf back in beta so stop whining :/
Except apparently it's a fact that Marines are OP according to Blizzard. Obviously that minimal nerf wasn't enough. Be glad they're not putting a 35% DPS nerf on Marines.
On October 26 2010 01:15 Cloak wrote: They say they're hesitant to touch core units like the Marine, but they were quick to nerf Zealots because the Silvers couldn't handle proxy 2-Gate. I'd say slap a 5s production nerf on Marines and see what happens. Slows down timing pushes and doesn't affect late game all that much.
Hahaha funny thing is they already hit the marine with a production nerf back in beta so stop whining :/
Except apparently it's a fact that Marines are OP according to Blizzard. Obviously that minimal nerf wasn't enough. Be glad they're not putting a 35% DPS nerf on Marines.
On October 26 2010 01:15 Cloak wrote: They say they're hesitant to touch core units like the Marine, but they were quick to nerf Zealots because the Silvers couldn't handle proxy 2-Gate. I'd say slap a 5s production nerf on Marines and see what happens. Slows down timing pushes and doesn't affect late game all that much.
Hahaha funny thing is they already hit the marine with a production nerf back in beta so stop whining :/
What I am seeing that may change would may be A. Stim Duration B. Stim Cost C. Stim Effect D. All of the Above
On October 26 2010 01:15 Cloak wrote: They say they're hesitant to touch core units like the Marine, but they were quick to nerf Zealots because the Silvers couldn't handle proxy 2-Gate. I'd say slap a 5s production nerf on Marines and see what happens. Slows down timing pushes and doesn't affect late game all that much.
Hahaha funny thing is they already hit the marine with a production nerf back in beta so stop whining :/
Except apparently it's a fact that Marines are OP according to Blizzard. Obviously that minimal nerf wasn't enough. Be glad they're not putting a 35% DPS nerf on Marines.
Do you find marines op?
It has nothing to do with me. I'm not a korean pro. They're extremely OP and are impossible to stop. Maka Prime has already made 11 replays proving their OPedness. That's what a criminal attorney would call decisive evidence.
Feels like everyone's thinking about this wrong. It's not about P > T in late game, or T < P in early game. It's about numbers. MMM is stronger the smaller the encounter. TvP is about keeping the unit count low in order to have his MMM at peak efficiency.
This is highly dependent on the T being consistently aggressive, but that's how MMM has always worked. Watch Select or qxc's TvP if you want an idea of how this works. The main problem with this is that it means the T must be talented at multitasking with smaller armies, which leaves a hole open balance wise at lower levels of play.
Now, MMM is by no means weak in large encounters. Watch Loner vs. NEXGenius on Metalopolis of their first set, absolutely demolishing an equivalent army of colossus+gateway units with MMM Viking. That game ended with a 5k mineral army for Loner still alive.
Dustin Browder seemed to be hinting at Templar being the imba problem in PvT late game, and that saddens me. Looking into all PvX matchups, templar are nearly non existant at the top level of play. While I agree, they are a very solid late game addition to just about any army, they still don't see any use at all in comparison to the colossus.
PvP=Protoss has no solid counter to the colossus, no corruptor or viking-esque unit. So it is really the only late game unit, ending with a battle of "who has more colossus.
PvT=90% of the GSL PvT's have a fast transition into colossus for a midgame and end with a 2 base colossus all in. Despite P having a 'definite' advantage in the late game, "pro" tosses don't feel like they can safely get there without dying.
PvZ=Nearly the same as PvT, a slightly slower transition into colossus for the midgame is the most common PvZ, usually a slightly delayed double robo. After this, rarely does the composition skew from colossus+immortal+stalker with eventual blink.
Though I think warp in storm is a very powerful tool, a nerf to it would make PvX matchups even more tedious then they are now, reinforcing the "robo is the only tech path" mindset. I personally would be sad to see templar literally not seen at all in the pro scene. At least this GSL there's been 2 games where templar have been used, unlike the last season.
On October 26 2010 01:15 Cloak wrote: They say they're hesitant to touch core units like the Marine, but they were quick to nerf Zealots because the Silvers couldn't handle proxy 2-Gate. I'd say slap a 5s production nerf on Marines and see what happens. Slows down timing pushes and doesn't affect late game all that much.
Hahaha funny thing is they already hit the marine with a production nerf back in beta so stop whining :/
Except apparently it's a fact that Marines are OP according to Blizzard. Obviously that minimal nerf wasn't enough. Be glad they're not putting a 35% DPS nerf on Marines.
Why not instead of doing something irrational they just tweak the Marine slightly... like making the attack speed SLIGHTLY slower (by .0x amounts, nothing crazy)
On October 26 2010 01:15 Cloak wrote: They say they're hesitant to touch core units like the Marine, but they were quick to nerf Zealots because the Silvers couldn't handle proxy 2-Gate. I'd say slap a 5s production nerf on Marines and see what happens. Slows down timing pushes and doesn't affect late game all that much.
Hahaha funny thing is they already hit the marine with a production nerf back in beta so stop whining :/
What I am seeing that may change would may be A. Stim Duration B. Stim Cost C. Stim Effect D. All of the Above
They obviously said that they tried toying with stim and it didn't worked
PvT=90% of the GSL PvT's have a fast transition into colossus for a midgame and end with a 2 base colossus all in. Despite P having a 'definite' advantage in the late game, "pro" tosses don't feel like they can safely get there without dying.
PvZ=Nearly the same as PvT, a slightly slower transition into colossus for the midgame is the most common PvZ, usually a slightly delayed double robo. After this, rarely does the composition skew from colossus+immortal+stalker with eventual blink.
The main thing imo is that teching to ht's, there is a rather large window where protoss is sitting around with a whole bunch invested into tech, without being able to field an army with the stuff the tech brings. Robotech let's you get an immortal or two which can absolutely slaughter marauders, and allow for a safe expo in addition. Fast colossus against T is the safer way to play against MMM, the other requiring forcefielding like a champ.
Personally, I prefer SG builds against zerg, I like my map control.
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
Maybe they forgot to attack after stimming them.
In all seriousness, this is a bad way to balance the game. Sure, the win ratio is probably around 50/50 right now, but to have a game based where the first portion of the game favors one team while the later portion favors the other is very discouraging in terms of balance.
This is what DoTA does. Just wanted to point that out, since I find DoTA to be an abyssmal game.
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
Ok, PM me your bnet account and let's play. You play toss and do a 1 or 2 gate FE, and I'll play Terran with a 3-rax opening, and i'll do a timing push 6 minutes in with stim/slow and let's see how you hold up. If a Toss fast expands, they can't have more than 2 gates, which isn't much. Early game the Terran bioball has the most bang for the buck with stimpack. Toss can only come out on top in an early game battle if it's close to a choke where forcefields can push the fight in your favor. But otherwise you are on the backfoot waiting for storm or colo.
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
Are you kidding? The protoss idea of FE is probably 2gate robo. Terran idea of FE is 1rax techlab. plus my first 3 units (marine + 2 maurauder) still have time to walk to the protoss ramp and force a forcefield or kill at least a stalker + whatever and still walk away fairly intact
Lol if you think Protoss's idea of a FE is 2 gate robo then you don't play enough. Protoss "standard" FE is one gate, core then nexus not 2 gate core robo nexus or w/e.
Also both can FE safely if timings by the other player aren't not spot on. For instance a Protoss can hold off a 3 rax stim build with a one gate FE if terran doesn't time their attack well the same way terran can hold off a 3 gate robo build while doing a 1 rax FE if protoss doesn't hit the timing window they need.
Also a forcefield is small price to pay for a toss when it means getting extra time to get one more unit out to deal with your force or to split your units up and get free kills. I wouldn't try to prove someone wrong with words like "probably" and "whatever".
On October 26 2010 00:10 Liquid`Tyler wrote: I don't see how the late game SC2 Protoss army is imbalanced PvT since I spent years playing PvT in SC1 where a Terran army of equal supply almost always beat me and a 200/200 2-2 Terran army was nearly unstoppable and many maps made it easy for Terran to get 3 bases and turtle until they had a huge army. Protoss could have 5 bases vs 3 bases and hit 200 supply 3 minutes before Terran and have nowhere to attack and 5k minerals saved up and 25 gateways but the Terran army moves out carefully and kills wave after wave of Protoss units and wins the game. That wasn't imbalanced... that's just how the matchup was. So perhaps the tables are turned now. But if it's a fact that a late game protoss army generally owns a late game terran army of equal supply, that does not have anything to do with balance.
Blizz said in that panel that they don't want it like this. They want it pretty even at all stages of the game, rightly imo. Having the matchup be a game of "kill Protoss in <12ish minutes or die" can be balanced but it's not good gameplay.
My point is just that one late game army being stronger than another does not automatically mean imbalance. Whatever terms people put the armies in to say that they're imbalanced aren't detailed enough because I can do the same for SC1 PvT and it makes Terran look overpowered when they're not. It's just my guess that people want each race to be able to make the same kinds of decisions and be even the whole time, but that is a bad line of thought because SC is a game of 3 unique races. If both races are making the same kinds of decisions, it's likely that that set of decisions is better for one of the races than it is for the other.
really good point, many people who are stuck in the 2-base vs 2-base scheme don't pay enough attention to this; it's funny because in all of the match-ups with zerg it's common agreement that zerg has to out-expo to stay "even" while the opponent has to try to prevent zerg from going crazy macro-mode; in TvP few terrans actually try to take the map before protoss can get a considerable number of colossi out....many are content with being aggressive from 2-bases; maybe that's not how it will turn out to be the best way to go in the long run, who knows this right now?
On October 25 2010 23:03 sleepingdog wrote: cloud was down to 11 scvs at one point....which equals death in a sane rts-world; nevertheless he managed to come back thanks to massive mule-calldown and only lost because his opponent just continued to outplay him
So if you think of it that each OC is adding 4 to the SCV count, and each scan is costing 300 minerals rather than energy, you get a much clearer picture. Since it's standard to make your main and natural OCs and only think about Planetaries at your 3rd and later bases, it's likely that using this rubrick, Cloud was only down 3 workers in the afformentioned game.
go and watch the game then
it was like 34 vs 11 workers, mass-mule-calldown ment nearly equal mineral-income; maybe you like, maybe the majority of TL likes it...well, I don't like it because I've been playing RTS-games for 10 years now and one player losing 2/3 of economy always meant death; and I always got the feeling: yeah, well deserved; sorry if you disagree, it's just how I feel
On October 25 2010 12:31 wishbones wrote: unhh i thinkt hey got the part wrong where terran has upper hand in first twelve minutes sorry to say, but toss can fe super safely and terran cannot without getting worried. so check again blizzard!
Ok, PM me your bnet account and let's play. You play toss and do a 1 or 2 gate FE, and I'll play Terran with a 3-rax opening, and i'll do a timing push 6 minutes in with stim/slow and let's see how you hold up. If a Toss fast expands, they can't have more than 2 gates, which isn't much. Early game the Terran bioball has the most bang for the buck with stimpack. Toss can only come out on top in an early game battle if it's close to a choke where forcefields can push the fight in your favor. But otherwise you are on the backfoot waiting for storm or colo.
Your example doesn't hold any ground at all because all you're going to "prove" is that a build that is designed to put on early pressure against a more greedy build will win, which everyone knows. That's like me saying "Okay you play as terran and do a 1 rax FE and I'll play as toss and do a 4 warp gate timing push at 6 miuntes and we'll see if you can last." Of course you won't because 4 gate is a good build to do against a terran who FE's off of one rax the same way a 3 rax bio timing push is a good build to do against a toss who 1 gate FE's.
On October 25 2010 22:12 Agh wrote: Just because a strategy is extremely difficult or impossible for 99% of T players to execute doesn't automatically make it okay if there is no clear appropriate answer to it. A major thing to note is that every single Toss he played against knew exactly what he was doing/going to do, and everyone was even watching the games. Given the nature of sc2 and the fact that no generic/'safe' build exists due to the heavy influence of 'counter'-type play it just seems out of place.
#1 Are you saying Select's style has no counter, though? Genius demolished him in 2 games, abusing his late vikings with nice colossus timing attacks, and of course his Korean forcefields ^_^. Given Select's style is bloody hard to do I think it's fair to require sexy FFs and nice timing to beat it.
Just my opinion but I think it's pretty obvious the problem lies with mainly Marauder Medivac drops. Nothing near remotely even food/cost can stop it once it is inside of your base. (note I'm cearly omitting extreme late game options). You have to have significantly more resources worth of units or upgrades to allow you to clean up the drop, and at multiple locations accompanied by a large main force, you are simply going to either be out of position resulting in you losing far more worth of units and/or tech and unit producing structures.
#2 How often do the top Protoss players actually lose for that reason though? It seems like most of the losses are due to timing attacks while the Protoss tries to transition to either colossus or templar (and of course we have to transition to them). It feels like the big problem is that window where T has a stimball which basic gateway alone simply cannot handle, but before the big guns are out.
Maybe it's a regional thing, NA/EU seems to either have better dropping Terrans or the Protoss are worse at defending them.
I don't have any direct suggestions atm of what should be done because simply put I don't have time to analyze every minuscule ramification each change could inflict, but personally I believe everything roots itself with the MULE and how late game the Economic gain from 3 orbital commands is unable to be outmatched in terms of economy by anything that Protoss can do. Actual late game unit disparity has its ups and downs for each side.
#3 ?? You're saying Terran has a lategame advantage?
1. What I was implying is that Selects style does not have a direct 'counter' in the sense that you are unable to do something to completely null and void it, despite knowing exactly what is going to happen. You just simply have to outplay and properly anticipate/position. Note that I'm perfectly fine with this aspect, however sc2 doesn't seem to have the niche Broodwar has where each race has a more or less set standard that can keep you in the game without some form of high risk.
2. Quite more than you would think actually. Basically until you have the observer out you are in the in the dark, and that certain specific builds can take you out of the game, which I think should be a part of the game, but as of now it seems very finicky.
3. No, which is why I included the unit disparities in the last sentence. Once Protoss is able to fund High Templars, Protoss definitely has a unit advantage.
However as Tyler mentioned already in this thread that Terran is able to combat that by a larger army force brought on by mules.
On October 25 2010 20:58 DamageInq wrote: I can see marauder stim hurting the maruaders more in most situations. I think a lot of that is not caluculating your stims. There's no doubt that it's benificial when taking out an expansion, or in a maruader vs mostly stalker fight.
Ive read through 3 pages already and they talked about TWEAKING marauders and found that during the TWEAKS it was actually LESS beneficial to stim marauders, NOT the way the game is set up CURRENTLY.
Listening is fundemental ;D
I can see why this would be true since Marne DPS is higher per cost and the Marauders need to tank for the Marines. However they really need to quantify this more. I think it would be highly dependent on the matchup with Marauders doing double damage vs armored. For example stimming and focus firing Colossus would definitely seem to be worth it. I would also be curious to know if this was equally true when using Medivacs.
On October 25 2010 23:45 Perscienter wrote: Especially the absence of splash damage and the low dps against non-armored units like the medivac.
Splash would be useless in SC2. Having them do +armored damage would make them a worse unit.
They are a better, more viable unit that the corsair. They are viable in all matchups. They are anti-air that can actually harass/attack ground. The corsair is pretty much never used except against Zerg. How you can conclude that the corsair is better is beyond me.
Didn't say that. Phoenix is rarely used against Protoss, slightly more against Zerg. It just can't fight a high number of light air units. The unit has a different role.
Sad, how everyone seems to demand damage nerfs for the marine. If all the overpowered stuff like 3 stages void rays with bombastic dps against armored, rax first openings, reapers with early speed, burrow on tier one, lesser research and build times for carrier and psionic storm etc. wouldn't have been removed, maybe noone would cry. Do you really want to turn this wheel further?
On October 25 2010 23:03 sleepingdog wrote: cloud was down to 11 scvs at one point....which equals death in a sane rts-world; nevertheless he managed to come back thanks to massive mule-calldown and only lost because his opponent just continued to outplay him
So if you think of it that each OC is adding 4 to the SCV count, and each scan is costing 300 minerals rather than energy, you get a much clearer picture. Since it's standard to make your main and natural OCs and only think about Planetaries at your 3rd and later bases, it's likely that using this rubrick, Cloud was only down 3 workers in the afformentioned game.
go and watch the game then
it was like 34 vs 11 workers, mass-mule-calldown ment nearly equal mineral-income; maybe you like, maybe the majority of TL likes it...well, I don't like it because I've been playing RTS-games for 10 years now and one player losing 2/3 of economy always meant death; and I always got the feeling: yeah, well deserved; sorry if you disagree, it's just how I feel
Okay, having watched the game, and accounting for each OC being roughly = to 4 workers. Only talking about worker counts here. If it's +/- 1 worker I'll call it even.
Spoilering my analysis since it's long as crap and most people don't want to read it.
Terran gets OC at 3:45 and immediately Mules, getting to 19/17
At 5:30 Terran is ahead 24/20
Around 7:00 it's even again, 23/23
Around 10:00 Protoss pulls ahead, 31/28. However, at this point they're both on 1 base and Protoss is oversaturated, so likely Terran is still ahead here since Mules allow him to oversaturate some degree.
Terran gets a second OC, and remains ahead until 15:00 when Protoss's natural finishes.
At 15:00 Protoss is ahead by 2, 35/37
At 17:00 Terran moves OC to the natural and is ahead again, 35/32
At 19:00 Terran is ahead 38/32
At 20:30 a big attack throws Terran down to 19/35. However, by now the entire Protoss main is mined out, making Protoss oversaturated again. Effective worker count should be about 19/30.
24:00 Terran barely holds off the next attack. Protoss is now up 21/37, but still mining only one base, so effectively only 21/30.
29:30 Terrans main has just now mined out. Protoss is up still at 28/38, but still on one mining base, so effectively 28/30. Terran has basically caught up.
32:30 Terran is even again, 30/30. Note Terran has denied Protoss's 3rd twice.
33:30 Protoss's 3rd finally goes up.
35:30 Protoss wins game.
In conclusion, based on the 1 OC = 4 worker rubrick, which is very applicable for this game since Cloud almost never scanned, Terran was ahead on workers very nearly the whole game up until the 20 minute mark.
At that point a big attack made him 10 (only 10) workers behind, and he started to lose the game. His armies were not big enough.
Protoss got pretty far ahead in workers at this time, but since he was only mining off 1 base to the Terrans 2, his higher worker count wasn't helping efficiently.
By 32:30 Terran has actually caught back up to even in the worker count by denying Protoss's 3rd twice, but the damage has been done, and he is eventually overrun.
Pretty weird game, but the fact is Mules allow Terrans to be ahead on income with similar base numbers, because they can saturate more efficiently, and neither player took a goddamn 3rd base for 33 minutes of a 35 minute game.
I really don't see the problem, other than it being a weird game, overall.
Ignoring the vitriol and silliness dominating this thread, up to this point:
Damn this makes me think Blizzard is smart. I always figured they deserved more credit than they got, but I wasn't sure they were awesome enough to want the game balanced at every stage of it-- I even, almost, thought that was too ideal to hope for and was pretty happy with PvT.
Damn I'm excited for future patches and expansions really make this an art.
On October 26 2010 04:22 Maaku wrote: I love people trying to prove blizzard wrong, when they have a shit loads of tools to come to their conclusions.
I love discussion too : )
It's interesting to hear what different people are experiencing with regards to the PvT matchup in SC2 (I play toss). The only time conversation is counter-productive is when players have 'jumped to conclusions', or even reached conclusions at all, when it is quite obvious an individual player, or forum group, cannot reach the educated conclusion on balance - there are just too many factors that play a part!
I think that this is what Blizzard is trying to reassure the player base of, namely that there are a myriad of things considered when making balance changes, and these include all of the levels of play and multiple play modes. This attempt will almost always go in one ear and out the other of a player because most/all players are focused on one mode of play, don't have direct access/experience with all of the information, or have a bias based on what they do play or have experienced. All that an individual player can do is contribute to the discussion with their own findings, we are not equipped to conclude.
As a Protoss player I can offer my own experience/insight on the matter, but I don't presume it is the same as what everyone else feels or arrives at:
I find Terran is hard to break early and this is a function of their race, units, buildings, etc. Therefore, it isn't surprising that P is seen as 'underpowered' in the early game 'because' the P's ability to deal damage to T's vital functions, and hence competitive options, are all hindered by a wall or group of defensive units. I think it is kind of ironic that the T's ability to defend in turn gives them the green-light to be agressive in the early game, but it isn't surpirsing. The Terran has 'many' harrassment options earlier on which can potentially soften the P player up enough so that an early engagement is preferable/sucessful for the T.
Altogether though, I find that an early push from a T is balanced with an early defense by a P if the P has not been weakened greatly by one of the many harassment options available to T, has similar micro capabilities, and makes use of their early upgrades/casts. The imbalance perceived is mostly due to the fact that P can only break-even on the first engagement and almost always in a defensive role (P can't successfuly push until they get Collosi or something else) and that the micromanagement involved with stim-kiting is 'easier' than managing forcefields together with making the right map/terrain decisions that are necessary to defend sucessfuly.
Early game vs. T ghosts are the thing I have the most trouble with, granted it isn't that easy to match them with Templar, and defending against EMP (cloaked too) without Feedback is what I consider to be another slightly more difficult micro function when compared to targeting EMP at units that will likely group at some point or other.
The Fast Expand dynamic is what really throws a wrench in my perception of this matchup. In this thread you will see posts indicating that P can safely FE and in the next post that they can't. I think the reason for the difference in opinions is map distances, as well as attempts at FE'ing at different skill levels. FE'ing, and it's success or failure on equal skill levels (my opinion), comes down to map/scout based decision making. I honestly don't think you should go into any matchup with the strategy to FE no matter what. I think you have to consider the map positions, your opponent, and what they seem to be doing to start out with. I think a wrong decision in this respect should be punishable, because having a second base early is incredibly strong especially with added Chronoboost/Mule-Scan.
As far as end game balance goes I think LiquidTyler and Agh raise the most interesting points, namely that P and T play a lot differently and there is a culmination of this in the late game when Mules pile up and Planetary Fortresses limit attack options. Honestly, I think late game P v T is pretty balanced. I do think P gets a LOT more late game options, but this is in contrast to T's early game harass options. I also haven't seen much 'even-army' late game high level P v T, probably because T settles a lot of it early on, or the T's harass early-mid is enough to cripple the P or the T, the latter if the T is unsuccessful and wasted too many resources in attempted harass. I guess a lot of this matchup comes down to the the early T harass and how well it is or isn't defended.
It's an interesting discussion. And I'm sure there could be tweaks to abilities, their costs, and timings that could imrpove or ruin the matchup - the game is still in its infancy after all ^^ I'm not sure what to address, but I think the center of things, or what changes would have the greatest impact, are those made to the Marauder or the Stalker.
Things are definitely getting better but I'm not getting the warm fuzzies some people seem to be getting now. They waited too long to do something about Reapers and then when they do they practically remove them from the game. It should have been obvious that when they changed Roaches to 2 supply they would need some form of compensation. The Void Ray change doesn't seem particularly well done. I absolutely agree VR's were a problem in team games but it seems questionable if Protoss will have an adequate counter to BC's now. It would be more reassuring if Blizzard would start thinking in terms of groups of units instead of justifying single unit nerfs or buffs.
Lol, I wonder if Blizz is stimming marauders in their base and racing them or something
I'm really not sure how they can say marauder stim is harmful...
Rest was quite interesting though. When they say Terran is stronger for 1st 12 minutes, do they mean that Terran should be winning in that time, or somehow setting Protoss back so the later game is more balanced?
On October 26 2010 09:15 Subversion wrote: Lol, I wonder if Blizz is stimming marauders in their base and racing them or something
I'm really not sure how they can say marauder stim is harmful...
Rest was quite interesting though. When they say Terran is stronger for 1st 12 minutes, do they mean that Terran should be winning in that time, or somehow setting Protoss back so the later game is more balanced?
Wish they'd been a little more specific
I'm not sure about the timing but when Protoss is able to get both Colossus and HT's things start turn in their favor. However it's not apparent if Ravens and Ghosts are being fully utilized by Terrans yet. It will be interesting to see if we get some new builds in the later stages of GSL 2 now that the patch has been out for a while.
On October 25 2010 14:55 Sorook wrote: What I don't understand is why shouldn't P t3 crush T t1. Should toss be able to punish T for building nothing but MMM?
What the fuck are T supoosed to build? Battlecruisers? WE literally have nothing else
I whole heartedly agree with this statement. Too many people keep saying that all T builds is MMM, but so too could you say P only builds Z/S/S (S = stalkers and sentries), these are staple units first of all. Secondly, if like some people were raging about, stim and/concussives were either removed are majorly nerfed there is very little for the T to build otherwise. BCs are only ok as damage sinks but are pretty functionally useless, Air in general is shut down by Obs, HTs, and of course Phoenix. The other mech left are Thors and tanks, granted thors can survive a bit now, they're are still probably the least useful of between Ultras and Collo (this is of course a bad comparison since Thors are the easiest/fastest to tech too, but you get the idea).
I caught this part of the panel and didn't they say stimmed marauders were bad only in certain situations (probably small numbers). I may be wrong but does anyone have a video of this discussion? Also i noticed in their tests they didn't kite any units in the unit testing maps but maybe that was only to show how they do it.
On October 25 2010 22:24 Bagi wrote: Concerning terran (which is what I have the most experience of), I think we are significantly weaker lategame against both protoss and zerg.
Terran are only weaker at the late game because of how poorly everyone (I'm talking about all three races) is playing the game at the late stage even the (vast majority of) pros.
When Terrans get into the late game it usually is a bio ball and if it is TvT a tank viking wall. Terrans haven't figured out how to transition into their final tier unit the Battlecruiser and build up a supporting army of units to assist the BC core.
Of course it is pretty damn difficult to make such a transition because BCs require Starports and when people utilize starports they spend a lot of gas already on Banshees (and then transition down to tanks) or medivacs.
This problem with building allocation also plagues the protoss but what they can achieve with two robos supporting Warp Gates is far more powerful than what Terrans can do with two factories or two starports supporting a bunch of barracks.
Zerg don't have this endgame issue of building allocation but their high tech units share a critical weakness of being only able to engage ground.
Agreed with what most people are saying. Do not touch the HT's, they are already hard enough to make work right and HT's are pretty much only really strong against MMM, which is much quicker to get. So why Nerf a counter to an early game tactic.
As I said before this is a problem with terran players actually getting out of the mass bioball mindset when they see collosus and HT's. MMM heavy play should not be successful as an all game tactic because it is so strong early game, it is quick to get and is relatively versatile and strong.
As in PVP people are starting to work on phoenix immortal builds to counter mass collosus, terran players need to start trying some builds that move away with just getting MORE MMM with a side of ghost and vikings.
You also forgot they they use pro feedback. The Void Ray change was based on MakaPrimes information about a zealot sentry voidray build that was overpowered. But yeah, the real turning point is when the Protoss can safely warp in Templar with the amulet to stop harass and weaken pushes and the like. Marines are the key support/damage dealing unit and storm rips them apart.
And of course this was backed up by the finals; the games Loner won, he did so with an early push. Once it got to three bases, he lost.
On October 26 2010 13:13 spacemonkeyy wrote: Agreed with what most people are saying. Do not touch the HT's, they are already hard enough to make work right and HT's are pretty much only really strong against MMM, which is much quicker to get. So why Nerf a counter to an early game tactic.
As I said before this is a problem with terran players actually getting out of the mass bioball mindset when they see collosus and HT's. MMM heavy play should not be successful as an all game tactic because it is so strong early game, it is quick to get and is relatively versatile and strong.
As in PVP people are starting to work on phoenix immortal builds to counter mass collosus, terran players need to start trying some builds that move away with just getting MORE MMM with a side of ghost and vikings.
The issue is you CAN'T leave MMM, at least not entirely. Ghosts generally get shut down by colossus based strategies, in the early game at least (Huk's words not mine), and seem situational at best. I'd love to say "Well transition into mech like BW," but it's not feasible, especially with the tank nerf now, and the ones throughout the beta. That and Thors are awful against Protoss and hellions, while nice, have nowhere near the reliability they should have. So yeah, it's more of a game design problem where Terran plays like a less mobile Protoss.
I think a few posters have made very adequate points concerning PvT in the late game.
Normally (even in pro replays I see and GSL and BlizzCon and the such) once a Terran sees Collosus, the number of vikings is way overcompensated so that once the protoss has switched to HT's, the terran has all this supply that is taken by units that are now useless (even on feet form). Say there is 6 vikings, that is 12 supply that is semi-useless in 200/200 battles. That could have been 6 marauders or even better, ghosts as we all know which help IMMENSELY versus HT's. Even when they don't EMP the High templar, EMPing the main force of stalkers/sentries/zealots is almost equivalent to a instant psi storm with larger range that can't be dodged.
So maybe it is just me, but I think that the problem late game is that Terran just has a few useless units laying around that contribute little, if any, to 200/200 battles.
On October 26 2010 13:42 xAPOCALYPSEx wrote: I think a few posters have made very adequate points concerning PvT in the late game.
Normally (even in pro replays I see and GSL and BlizzCon and the such) once a Terran sees Collosus, the number of vikings is way overcompensated so that once the protoss has switched to HT's, the terran has all this supply that is taken by units that are now useless (even on feet form). Say there is 6 vikings, that is 12 supply that is semi-useless in 200/200 battles. That could have been 6 marauders or even better, ghosts as we all know which help IMMENSELY versus HT's. Even when they don't EMP the High templar, EMPing the main force of stalkers/sentries/zealots is almost equivalent to a instant psi storm with larger range that can't be dodged.
So maybe it is just me, but I think that the problem late game is that Terran just has a few useless units laying around that contribute little, if any, to 200/200 battles.
Yeah, that's a large factor of it, but it just feels like there is no late game army that works for Terran. In one of Loner's games he had banshees and vikings and ghosts and marine marauder against a Templar colossus gateway unit army and there was still very little he could do.
On October 26 2010 13:42 xAPOCALYPSEx wrote: I think a few posters have made very adequate points concerning PvT in the late game.
Normally (even in pro replays I see and GSL and BlizzCon and the such) once a Terran sees Collosus, the number of vikings is way overcompensated so that once the protoss has switched to HT's, the terran has all this supply that is taken by units that are now useless (even on feet form). Say there is 6 vikings, that is 12 supply that is semi-useless in 200/200 battles. That could have been 6 marauders or even better, ghosts as we all know which help IMMENSELY versus HT's. Even when they don't EMP the High templar, EMPing the main force of stalkers/sentries/zealots is almost equivalent to a instant psi storm with larger range that can't be dodged.
So maybe it is just me, but I think that the problem late game is that Terran just has a few useless units laying around that contribute little, if any, to 200/200 battles.
Myeah, in one way I wonder if not the fact that collossi can be targeted by air only units like vikings is the bane of terran. It would seem like an advantage at first glance but if you removed this, making vikings and phoenix etc incapable of shooting collossi then I think you could in turn nerf the collosus itself. Perhaps reduce the range or reduce the damage or the splash range of the colossus to make it more approachable by ground. In the end the status quo would remain, the collossus would get a huge buff by now not being vulnerable to corruptor/viking and then getting an equal nerf.
The result would I think be that you could now actually approach the colossus with ground forces which would still end up in a balanced fight but you would not have to skew your unit comp to get there.
However I think the problem might actually still be with the high templar because banshee's are actually far far stronger against collossi. They do more damage and they are actually useful after the collossus is dead. But feedback is just so damn strong. It does not make sense that you should have to research the cloak ability only to have a way to drain your own units of energy to not have them be oneshotted by templar, or that you should have to get ghosts to emp your own battlecruisers to not lose them.
Feedback is great and it is an important tool but perhaps there is a way to streamline it a bit better. I don't think that feedback should be able to kill a unit at full health which is often the case when you are doing a medivac drop. I think that it would be reasonable that no matter what unit, if it is at full energy when being feedbacked, it should not lose more than 50% of its hp.
One option to even it out would be to nerf the damage of feedback or even remove it completely but give feedback an different effect besides draining the energy ot the target unit.
Perhaps drain all energy and stun the unit for a certain amount of time. Like a single target fungal growth. This would make feedback very useful still against drops but in a more sensible way. A medivac comes in, protoss warps in a templar and drains the medivac of energy and stuns it for five seconds with one spell. The terran can still actually do something though and unload the units and protoss will have to bring in some units to kill the drop off or he needs to intercept the drop from the start with both stalkers and a templar and not just one templar.
All in all the feedback ability should be just as good against everything in this form but the way it is good would make more sense and actually give the terran the ability to respond, rather than just seeing all the banshee's disappear without a chance to react.
Additional thought, maybe a lot would change if colossi could not walk over units but had the same collision as all other units in the game. No matter how open the map in a late game situation you rarely fight in a spot open enough to let two 200/200 armies engage while being able to form a full concave.
Colossi are actually better and better the later the game goes on and the larger the armies grow because of the fact that they can neatly sit on top of the protoss deathball in the center and not take up as much terrain. As a terran who experiments with thors in the lategame against protoss I kind of get a feel for how different it would be for the protoss colossi army to fight if colossi just like thors would get stuck behind units unless microed correctly.
On October 26 2010 14:24 VanGarde wrote: Myeah, in one way I wonder if not the fact that collossi can be targeted by air only units like vikings is the bane of terran. It would seem like an advantage at first glance but if you removed this, making vikings and phoenix etc incapable of shooting collossi then I think you could in turn nerf the collosus itself. Perhaps reduce the range or reduce the damage or the splash range of the colossus to make it more approachable by ground. In the end the status quo would remain, the collossus would get a huge buff by now not being vulnerable to corruptor/viking and then getting an equal nerf.
The result would I think be that you could now actually approach the colossus with ground forces which would still end up in a balanced fight but you would not have to skew your unit comp to get there.
What a horrible proposal. I don't understand complaints about colossi except in PvP. They are very, very expensive. Their initial short range makes them extremely vulnerable to vikings, banshees, thors and marauders. What's the problem? Vikings in the late game are also not that bad. They allow you to do a lot of harassment. With siege tanks, vikings and ghosts the Terran still outranges everything the Protoss has.
Blizzard should make the thor to be able to use his anti-air attacks against colossi, though.
On October 26 2010 14:24 VanGarde wrote: However I think the problem might actually still be with the high templar because banshee's are actually far far stronger against collossi. They do more damage and they are actually useful after the collossus is dead. But feedback is just so damn strong. It does not make sense that you should have to research the cloak ability only to have a way to drain your own units of energy to not have them be oneshotted by templar, or that you should have to get ghosts to emp your own battlecruisers to not lose them.
Feedback is great and it is an important tool but perhaps there is a way to streamline it a bit better. I don't think that feedback should be able to kill a unit at full health which is often the case when you are doing a medivac drop. I think that it would be reasonable that no matter what unit, if it is at full energy when being feedbacked, it should not lose more than 50% of its hp.
One option to even it out would be to nerf the damage of feedback or even remove it completely but give feedback an different effect besides draining the energy ot the target unit.
Perhaps drain all energy and stun the unit for a certain amount of time. Like a single target fungal growth. This would make feedback very useful still against drops but in a more sensible way. A medivac comes in, protoss warps in a templar and drains the medivac of energy and stuns it for five seconds with one spell. The terran can still actually do something though and unload the units and protoss will have to bring in some units to kill the drop off or he needs to intercept the drop from the start with both stalkers and a templar and not just one templar.
All in all the feedback ability should be just as good against everything in this form but the way it is good would make more sense and actually give the terran the ability to respond, rather than just seeing all the banshee's disappear without a chance to react.
If you want to counter feedback, use up the energy of the banshees and medivacs before a battle.
On October 26 2010 14:24 VanGarde wrote: Myeah, in one way I wonder if not the fact that collossi can be targeted by air only units like vikings is the bane of terran. It would seem like an advantage at first glance but if you removed this, making vikings and phoenix etc incapable of shooting collossi then I think you could in turn nerf the collosus itself. Perhaps reduce the range or reduce the damage or the splash range of the colossus to make it more approachable by ground. In the end the status quo would remain, the collossus would get a huge buff by now not being vulnerable to corruptor/viking and then getting an equal nerf.
The result would I think be that you could now actually approach the colossus with ground forces which would still end up in a balanced fight but you would not have to skew your unit comp to get there.
What a horrible proposal. I don't understand complaints about colossi except in PvP. They are very, very expensive. Their initial short range makes them extremely vulnerable to vikings, banshees, thors and marauders. What's the problem? Vikings in the late game are also not that bad. They allow you to do a lot of harassment. With siege tanks, vikings and ghosts the Terran still outranges everything the Protoss has.
Blizzard should make the thor to be able to use his anti-air attacks against colossi, though.
Just want to mention real quick, Vikings are terrible ground units and using them for harass is fairly limited, due to the 3 second transformation time and requirement of being over open ground first.
On October 26 2010 14:24 VanGarde wrote: However I think the problem might actually still be with the high templar because banshee's are actually far far stronger against collossi. They do more damage and they are actually useful after the collossus is dead. But feedback is just so damn strong. It does not make sense that you should have to research the cloak ability only to have a way to drain your own units of energy to not have them be oneshotted by templar, or that you should have to get ghosts to emp your own battlecruisers to not lose them.
Feedback is great and it is an important tool but perhaps there is a way to streamline it a bit better. I don't think that feedback should be able to kill a unit at full health which is often the case when you are doing a medivac drop. I think that it would be reasonable that no matter what unit, if it is at full energy when being feedbacked, it should not lose more than 50% of its hp.
One option to even it out would be to nerf the damage of feedback or even remove it completely but give feedback an different effect besides draining the energy ot the target unit.
Perhaps drain all energy and stun the unit for a certain amount of time. Like a single target fungal growth. This would make feedback very useful still against drops but in a more sensible way. A medivac comes in, protoss warps in a templar and drains the medivac of energy and stuns it for five seconds with one spell. The terran can still actually do something though and unload the units and protoss will have to bring in some units to kill the drop off or he needs to intercept the drop from the start with both stalkers and a templar and not just one templar.
All in all the feedback ability should be just as good against everything in this form but the way it is good would make more sense and actually give the terran the ability to respond, rather than just seeing all the banshee's disappear without a chance to react.
If you want to counter feedback, use up the energy of the banshees and medivacs before a battle.
I don't like to see feedback's balance touched.
I would like to have Feedback be left alone as well, but your proposal on wasting Banshee/Medivac energy is incredibly stupid. I really hope you are being facetious.
On October 26 2010 10:09 mutantmagnet wrote: Terran are only weaker at the late game because of how poorly everyone (I'm talking about all three races) is playing the game at the late stage even the (vast majority of) pros.
When Terrans get into the late game it usually is a bio ball and if it is TvT a tank viking wall. Terrans haven't figured out how to transition into their final tier unit the Battlecruiser and build up a supporting army of units to assist the BC core.
The BC core? Are you actually being serious?
The only race that can viably switch to mass T3 units is Zerg, and that's because they can produce a critical mass of them before fielding them. Battlecruisers are impossible to bring into TvT because the opponent will already have enough vikings to take them down. Same with TvP, blink stalkers absolutely demolish small numbers of BCs, and a critical mass of Mutas will do the same. Unless you manage to hide them until you have 5-6 BCs with plenty of energy for Yamatoing, your opponent will already have cost-effective counters to them without even needing to plan for it.
And it's generally bad to spend 2400/1800 on units you're not going to use for 4-5 minutes.
BCs (and Carriers for that matter) will never be a "core unit". And they're really not suited for endgame as much as they are suited for beefing up midgame armies as support units.
Thors should maybe counter Colossi better. They're reasonably mobile and they're not useless in a lategame anti-HT army like Vikings are.
Basically, switch roles between Vikings and Thors as anti-air. Vikings should counter light with AE damage, Thors should counter massive/armored with single target damage. Their role as anti-mutalisk has been negated anyway by magic boxing.
This would bring Thors into TvP and Vikings into TvZ.
i don't get why blizzard is so morbidly fixed on to a single unit and try to balance the entire game around that broken unit.. instead of just fixing the broken unit..
On October 26 2010 16:57 MassAirUnits wrote: I would like to have Feedback be left alone as well, but your proposal on wasting Banshee/Medivac energy is incredibly stupid. I really hope you are being facetious.
No, I'm not. One stim before a battle and a few sniper rounds can turn the tides in your favour. Would you rather like to get your banshees, ghosts and medivacs one-shot?
On October 26 2010 10:09 mutantmagnet wrote: Terran are only weaker at the late game because of how poorly everyone (I'm talking about all three races) is playing the game at the late stage even the (vast majority of) pros.
When Terrans get into the late game it usually is a bio ball and if it is TvT a tank viking wall. Terrans haven't figured out how to transition into their final tier unit the Battlecruiser and build up a supporting army of units to assist the BC core.
The BC core? Are you actually being serious?
The only race that can viably switch to mass T3 units is Zerg, and that's because they can produce a critical mass of them before fielding them. Battlecruisers are impossible to bring into TvT because the opponent will already have enough vikings to take them down. Same with TvP, blink stalkers absolutely demolish small numbers of BCs, and a critical mass of Mutas will do the same. Unless you manage to hide them until you have 5-6 BCs with plenty of energy for Yamatoing, your opponent will already have cost-effective counters to them without even needing to plan for it.
And it's generally bad to spend 2400/1800 on units you're not going to use for 4-5 minutes.
BCs (and Carriers for that matter) will never be a "core unit". And they're really not suited for endgame as much as they are suited for beefing up midgame armies as support units.
Yeah I was being serious. The counters to BC in TvZ is definitely not Mutas. Even in BW with their less amazing stats BC curb stomped Mutas. The counters are going to be Corruptors, Infestors and possibly Hydra if the battle takes place in an area they can achieve large surface. The issue is that to support BCs besides the fact they come from Starports is that the units needed to protect them against viable counters here are extremely gas intensive and thus you can't afford to lose such units if used earlier in a fight with a bio ball but many people do lose them.
In TvP Stalkers by themselves are not so hot when it comes to Battlecruisers. The only really useful units are Templars supported by Stalkers and carriers (a unit just as hard for Protoss to transition to). Void Rays aren't as good as they used to be so it's hard to say how they would fair now.
In TvT I would be less inclined to see BCs as being useful due to Viking Wars as you mentioned but Vikings are the only viable threat. Without them Battlecruisers really bring a lot to the table by being able to muscle over siege tank lines, can be healed by multiple SCVs like the Thor and get around terrain hazards with a need for dropships. It might be pissible to create a mix of support units to make BCs viable on this match up but I'm less sure about this one than the others.
Just want to mention real quick, Vikings are terrible ground units and using them for harass is fairly limited, due to the 3 second transformation time and requirement of being over open ground first.
Vikings on the ground are terrible? Wow sucks for the Stalker since a Viking (ground) beats a Stalker 1on1.
On October 26 2010 10:09 mutantmagnet wrote: Terran are only weaker at the late game because of how poorly everyone (I'm talking about all three races) is playing the game at the late stage even the (vast majority of) pros.
When Terrans get into the late game it usually is a bio ball and if it is TvT a tank viking wall. Terrans haven't figured out how to transition into their final tier unit the Battlecruiser and build up a supporting army of units to assist the BC core.
The BC core? Are you actually being serious?
The only race that can viably switch to mass T3 units is Zerg, and that's because they can produce a critical mass of them before fielding them. Battlecruisers are impossible to bring into TvT because the opponent will already have enough vikings to take them down. Same with TvP, blink stalkers absolutely demolish small numbers of BCs, and a critical mass of Mutas will do the same. Unless you manage to hide them until you have 5-6 BCs with plenty of energy for Yamatoing, your opponent will already have cost-effective counters to them without even needing to plan for it.
And it's generally bad to spend 2400/1800 on units you're not going to use for 4-5 minutes.
BCs (and Carriers for that matter) will never be a "core unit". And they're really not suited for endgame as much as they are suited for beefing up midgame armies as support units.
While I will agree with your assessment that Vikings are a little ridiculous vs armored, I think he was referring to TvP. I dont agree with the core part but massing Vikings out of reactored Starpots is a little shortsighted. It leaves Terrans vulnerable to a Tech switch. Vikings are easier but BC's are a better long term strategy. For every 2 BC's you instantly erase 1 Collossus from battle and they are good for tanking damage.
The one thing which concerned me when watching the video of the session was when the blizzard panellist began to discuss stim and immediately dismissed the speed component of it, saying it wasn't important. However, most analyses I've seen indicate that it is the mobility advantage and the power of kiting that makes Terran seem so strong in early-game PvT. I've never heard any specific complaints about the dps bonus of stim on marauders outside of building sniping*, which has already been at least partially addressed.
I'm not too concerned with the specifics of the PvT match-up, because even if some changes are still to come I feel it's fairly close to balanced overall, but I am concerned by the possibility that Blizzard developers may be ignoring important aspects of the game when considering game balance.
*To clarify this, I've seen people whine that "marauders shouldn't have stim", but then you can find players whining about any aspect of the game. I've never seen any serious attempt to justify this complaint for situations other than building sniping.
On October 27 2010 01:26 Pepe- wrote: Am I the only one thinking the weak Stalker is causing the problems early game?
See, while I think Stalker's could be used to solve the solution, I REALLY like how terrible Stalkers and Hydralisks are. If they were even slightly too strong, the game could very easily become Stalker/Hydra spam. Well-rounded units like them really must be hell to balance.
The "problem" is incredibly complex and will generally come down to many things, I suspect.
Fixing early game: For one, slowing down Terran early game. Tons of ways to do this .Research times, build-time adjustments, etc. Might even make sense to add some more upgrades that are only available in late-game for the standard MM ball. Alternatively, speeding up Protoss. Faster charge, faster storm, etc. This would balance early game and break the rest.
Fixing mid-game: Mid-game is relatively balanced, which is part of my tweaking early-game is so hard for Blizzard, I imagine, as any nerf or buff in early game will break mid-game.
I think the only problem might be too many "build order losses". I can't think of many examples right now, but for both sides there seem to be many situations where if you do Y and they do X, you insta-lose. It should be harder to out-right lose in mid-game, but players should be able to secure significant advantages here. The Void Ray tweaks, I believe, were mainly meant to prevent the type of situation I'm talking about.
I still think Void Rays should be tweaked to be viable as a "containment" unit like Banshees or Mutas. 2.25 base speed and SO terrible versus any amount of marines makes them hard to use in this role. I want Void Rays to be something you can use without winning or losing instantly.
Late Game: Terran needs something to do that isn't MMM. The Thor change was a great first step in that direction. Siege tanks are terrible versus Protoss. In super late-game, Ghosts become far harder to use effectively than High Templar.
I think in the end, siege-tanks will need to be buffed in the TvP matchup slightly. Protoss has SO many ways of mitigating then, Immortals with hardened shields, Phoenixes, Blink Stalkers, Chargelots-- even HTs do very well. Siege tanks being powerful against Protoss would allow Terran to make better use of its slow big units, Thors, BCs, etc. Terran would be the powerful, lumbering, slow race in late-game if they don't go MMM, and Protoss would be the mobile, flexibly army. As it is now, Terran has to stick MMM to deal with the Protoss mobility.
Of note is that Protoss' shields can be used to balance units to do better against Protoss without affecting other matchups.
Also, some adjustments to Hellions to make them better in the TvP matchup, other than for killing probes, would be great.
On October 27 2010 01:26 Pepe- wrote: Am I the only one thinking the weak Stalker is causing the problems early game?
I Just wished Stalkers could attack faster
yeah stalker upgrades and dps in general is just absolutely pathetic.
does anyone else feel like thors are so freaking out of place? i mean does terran mech need more firepower when it already has tanks? this unit is huge, bigger like 5 supply depots, it sidesteps on the roles of tanks and marauders too much and its anti-air is kinda like a crapshoot. basically if you opponent doesnt pay attention and stacks mutas then 1 or 2 shots will kill a whole flock of mutas, otherwise its this slowass missile turret almost as big as a planetary fortress.
On October 27 2010 01:26 Pepe- wrote: Am I the only one thinking the weak Stalker is causing the problems early game?
I Just wished Stalkers could attack faster
yeah stalker upgrades and dps in general is just absolutely pathetic.
does anyone else feel like thors are so freaking out of place? i mean does terran mech need more firepower when it already has tanks? this unit is huge, bigger like 5 supply depots, it sidesteps on the roles of tanks and marauders too much and its anti-air is kinda like a crapshoot. basically if you opponent doesnt pay attention and stacks mutas then 1 or 2 shots will kill a whole flock of mutas, otherwise its this slowass missile turret almost as big as a planetary fortress.
Thors are kinda like Anti Air Siege tanks only traded firepower for mobility
On October 27 2010 01:26 Pepe- wrote: Am I the only one thinking the weak Stalker is causing the problems early game?
See, while I think Stalker's could be used to solve the solution, I REALLY like how terrible Stalkers and Hydralisks are. If they were even slightly too strong, the game could very easily become Stalker/Hydra spam. Well-rounded units like them really must be hell to balance.
Stalker feel weak to me at the moment... they are even worse than Immortals (even when fighting non-armored!) if you are fighting ground units that doesnt kite you due to higher dps per cost(same non-armored), more life, not losing half of their dps when half life is lost and for example not "wasting" attacks on Medivacs randomly. Move speed and Range difference arent that important in mid to big battles.
A buff to their dps wont make them too strong soon.
On October 27 2010 02:13 Achilles wrote: Here's a novel idea. Give stalkers a slower, stronger attack, with a potential range upgrade at the cybernetics core.
4 range (+2 ups) 20 attack ground and air, but also much slower.
Oh yea, I'm onto something.
Its called a dragoon lol
if they do that PDD will be stronger. Imo we should do the opposite. Faster and weaker. But thats an hydralisk
On October 27 2010 02:13 Achilles wrote: Here's a novel idea. Give stalkers a slower, stronger attack, with a potential range upgrade at the cybernetics core.
4 range (+2 ups) 20 attack ground and air, but also much slower.
Oh yea, I'm onto something.
Its called a dragoon lol
if they do that PDD will be stronger. Imo we should do the opposite. Faster and weaker. But thats an hydralisk
On October 27 2010 02:13 Achilles wrote: Here's a novel idea. Give stalkers a slower, stronger attack, with a potential range upgrade at the cybernetics core.
4 range (+2 ups) 20 attack ground and air, but also much slower.
concussive shell is the retarded thing here, they want reason why T is op early game? thats the answer that definately shouldnt be fcking 50/50 and 50 seconds research time. It should be a T2 upgrade.
M is ok itself, it is the slow that makes a team of 3 marauders and 2 marines in a medivac so god damn cost effective, this is beyond imagination how they can not see that
on the stage they said that they do want marauder to dominate early game, well ok.
stimmed marauder takes 2 stalkers alone already, the slow is just overkill for the early game
conc shell should be a t2 upgrade, much like reaper upgrade right now, that would be the actuall counter for immortals or colossus (stim hit slow snipe run away) terran defifuckinately does not need 50% snare at 3rd min into the game, there is no way P can be agressive against T when conc shell is researched, this is so stupid
T is already safe with its bunkers that cost 0
if they want to make a change to TvP early game, they should consider giving factory requirement to conc shell for marauders
consequence will be much balanced earliest game while marauder will still be as powerful as it is right now during medivac drops or at early mid game when P actually has any chance to defend of in the open field
rather than camp on 1 base hope to get colossus in time
if they want to fix late game, they should give it some time, imo
Storm is so much underused right now, that T dont really respond correctly to it, EMP already has bigger range and is cheaper
tbh i dont really know why T players dont do 3 rax ghost exp play, it completely deals with any robo, gateway units just melt before colossus kills anything when there are 2 colossus up at most
P uses colossus over storm so that T dont have that much practice against storm, so they bang die when P gets both colossus and storm
Bio is already so god damn cost effective that storm probably doesnt need a change, its just terran players mentally change themselves not to rush into protoss who has storms, i guess its much like trying to 4 gate t who has 3 bunkers up ramp
simple switch from bio to tanks will do with the storm on defence, on offence as well when you get enough tanks, much of a problem to switch from bio to vikings to tanks ghost?
and blue flame helions ofc, P will be zealot heavy
On October 26 2010 14:10 MythicalMage wrote: Yeah, that's a large factor of it, but it just feels like there is no late game army that works for Terran. In one of Loner's games he had banshees and vikings and ghosts and marine marauder against a Templar colossus gateway unit army and there was still very little he could do.
Last week i watched a clan war serie on gomtv, it was prime vs tsl i think? Maka was playing for prime and he won every match. One of the match was vs a protoss, Maka was the best player of this i have no doubt, the end game was Collosus + templar + chargelots vs Marauder + ghost + medeveac.
The way maka could dodge storm and heal up, emp templars and control his army was just amazing. His Marauders just wouldnt die. The ghost made it so templar had a rough time and, kept gateway counts units down because they died faster, so colossus didnt have a huge wall of fodder in front of them and marauder with stim could maneuver around and snipe collosus. Terran are not using ghost nearly enough.
agreed with friend23 on everything about marauders. i also think conc shells should be 100/100 or more, definately not 50/50.
also, they cant nerf storm. storm has already been nerfed to hell, its damn near useless in pvp. i think the main problem is the combo of amulet upgrade and warpgates.
as a protoss player, i would be fine without the amulet upgrade if they buff protoss in another way, such as removing dark shrine altogether and dts only require archives or a research ability, or making storm research faster. as it stands, templar is a huge investment that is really weak when you transition then it spikes up in terms of power when you get tons of high templar with amulet upgrade. making dark templar more accessible is an indirect way to slow down the terran because they will have to turret up. only thing is zerg needs a devasting invisible unit.
On October 26 2010 14:10 MythicalMage wrote: Yeah, that's a large factor of it, but it just feels like there is no late game army that works for Terran. In one of Loner's games he had banshees and vikings and ghosts and marine marauder against a Templar colossus gateway unit army and there was still very little he could do.
Last week i watched a clan war serie on gomtv, it was prime vs tsl i think? Maka was playing for prime and he won every match. One of the match was vs a protoss, Maka was the best player of this i have no doubt, the end game was Collosus + templar + chargelots vs Marauder + ghost + medeveac.
The way maka could dodge storm and heal up, emp templars and control his army was just amazing. His Marauders just wouldnt die. The ghost made it so templar had a rough time and, kept gateway counts units down because they died faster, so colossus didnt have a huge wall of fodder in front of them and marauder with stim could maneuver around and snipe collosus. Terran are not using ghost nearly enough.
The problem isnt that Ghost doesnt counter HTs, its that p can warp in storm on demand.
On October 27 2010 02:13 Achilles wrote: Here's a novel idea. Give stalkers a slower, stronger attack, with a potential range upgrade at the cybernetics core.
4 range (+2 ups) 20 attack ground and air, but also much slower.
On October 27 2010 01:26 Pepe- wrote: Am I the only one thinking the weak Stalker is causing the problems early game?
See, while I think Stalker's could be used to solve the solution, I REALLY like how terrible Stalkers and Hydralisks are. If they were even slightly too strong, the game could very easily become Stalker/Hydra spam. Well-rounded units like them really must be hell to balance.
The "problem" is incredibly complex and will generally come down to many things, I suspect.
Fixing early game: For one, slowing down Terran early game. Tons of ways to do this .Research times, build-time adjustments, etc. Might even make sense to add some more upgrades that are only available in late-game for the standard MM ball. Alternatively, speeding up Protoss. Faster charge, faster storm, etc. This would balance early game and break the rest.
Fixing mid-game: Mid-game is relatively balanced, which is part of my tweaking early-game is so hard for Blizzard, I imagine, as any nerf or buff in early game will break mid-game.
I think the only problem might be too many "build order losses". I can't think of many examples right now, but for both sides there seem to be many situations where if you do Y and they do X, you insta-lose. It should be harder to out-right lose in mid-game, but players should be able to secure significant advantages here. The Void Ray tweaks, I believe, were mainly meant to prevent the type of situation I'm talking about.
I still think Void Rays should be tweaked to be viable as a "containment" unit like Banshees or Mutas. 2.25 base speed and SO terrible versus any amount of marines makes them hard to use in this role. I want Void Rays to be something you can use without winning or losing instantly.
Late Game: Terran needs something to do that isn't MMM. The Thor change was a great first step in that direction. Siege tanks are terrible versus Protoss. In super late-game, Ghosts become far harder to use effectively than High Templar.
I think in the end, siege-tanks will need to be buffed in the TvP matchup slightly. Protoss has SO many ways of mitigating then, Immortals with hardened shields, Phoenixes, Blink Stalkers, Chargelots-- even HTs do very well. Siege tanks being powerful against Protoss would allow Terran to make better use of its slow big units, Thors, BCs, etc. Terran would be the powerful, lumbering, slow race in late-game if they don't go MMM, and Protoss would be the mobile, flexibly army. As it is now, Terran has to stick MMM to deal with the Protoss mobility.
Of note is that Protoss' shields can be used to balance units to do better against Protoss without affecting other matchups.
Also, some adjustments to Hellions to make them better in the TvP matchup, other than for killing probes, would be great.
the tank part is very very sensitie
i posted on bnet forums a suggestion to increase tanks damage but slow shooting rate so that it hits like a truck and has slow attack speed, effect of this would be increasing the amount of tanks needed to achieve its critical mass
pre patch it was 13 tanks, you dominate, i wish it was like 20+ to dominate,
still, any 7 + tanks + bio is terribly hard to overcome, immortals work only in small battles, phoenixes work in even smaller battles,
as for me, anytime t goes tank heavy the only viable lategame response is carriers atm
On October 26 2010 14:10 MythicalMage wrote: Yeah, that's a large factor of it, but it just feels like there is no late game army that works for Terran. In one of Loner's games he had banshees and vikings and ghosts and marine marauder against a Templar colossus gateway unit army and there was still very little he could do.
Last week i watched a clan war serie on gomtv, it was prime vs tsl i think? Maka was playing for prime and he won every match. One of the match was vs a protoss, Maka was the best player of this i have no doubt, the end game was Collosus + templar + chargelots vs Marauder + ghost + medeveac.
The way maka could dodge storm and heal up, emp templars and control his army was just amazing. His Marauders just wouldnt die. The ghost made it so templar had a rough time and, kept gateway counts units down because they died faster, so colossus didnt have a huge wall of fodder in front of them and marauder with stim could maneuver around and snipe collosus. Terran are not using ghost nearly enough.
thats what i just said about the late game, T just cant use Ghosts properly right now, cause storm is underused, they just have not enough practice
ghost is just such a hard counter to hts
you can emp, it has longer range than feedback
you can 2 shot snipe, lower energy cost
you can just fking cloak and target fire hts with 3 ghosts
you can cloak and snipe or cloak and emp
you can scan and take out observers with vikings, you already have them cuz p was first going colossus, then do the cloak job
or you can just have enough tanks and move forward slowly so that any hts that come just DIE
its not like T lacks tools vs Storm, this aspect of the game just needs time
On October 27 2010 02:45 Condor Hero wrote: agreed with friend23 on everything about marauders. i also think conc shells should be 100/100 or more, definately not 50/50.
also, they cant nerf storm. storm has already been nerfed to hell, its damn near useless in pvp. i think the main problem is the combo of amulet upgrade and warpgates.
as a protoss player, i would be fine without the amulet upgrade if they buff protoss in another way, such as removing dark shrine altogether and dts only require archives or a research ability, or making storm research faster. as it stands, templar is a huge investment that is really weak when you transition then it spikes up in terms of power when you get tons of high templar with amulet upgrade. making dark templar more accessible is an indirect way to slow down the terran because they will have to turret up. only thing is zerg needs a devasting invisible unit.
thanks man,
and about the amulet + warpgates, yes, cause you warp in and throw a storm, not only once it happened to me (i pref storm over colossus vs t bio) that after i already lost whole army and he was coming for me, i managed to threw 4 good storms so that last HT scores 20 kills and suddenly im back in game
this is pretty stupid
amulet could be removed, but only if feedback is a viable counter to ghost, currently emp has higher range so it is not (yet you can always miss, but we cant take that into consideration)
then without amulet it would rely on 'be ready' with hts and have them prepeared, that would make ht be usable almost only defensively or when you already outmacroed enemy and almost won
just removing the amulet will be an overkill to storm
On October 27 2010 02:45 Condor Hero wrote: agreed with friend23 on everything about marauders. i also think conc shells should be 100/100 or more, definately not 50/50.
also, they cant nerf storm. storm has already been nerfed to hell, its damn near useless in pvp. i think the main problem is the combo of amulet upgrade and warpgates.
as a protoss player, i would be fine without the amulet upgrade if they buff protoss in another way, such as removing dark shrine altogether and dts only require archives or a research ability, or making storm research faster. as it stands, templar is a huge investment that is really weak when you transition then it spikes up in terms of power when you get tons of high templar with amulet upgrade. making dark templar more accessible is an indirect way to slow down the terran because they will have to turret up. only thing is zerg needs a devasting invisible unit.
thanks man,
and about the amulet + warpgates, yes, cause you warp in and throw a storm, not only once it happened to me (i pref storm over colossus vs t bio) that after i already lost whole army and he was coming for me, i managed to threw 4 good storms so that last HT scores 20 kills and suddenly im back in game
this is pretty stupid
amulet could be removed, but only if feedback is a viable counter to ghost, currently emp has higher range so it is not (yet you can always miss, but we cant take that into consideration)
then without amulet it would rely on 'be ready' with hts and have them prepeared, that would make ht be usable almost only defensively or when you already outmacroed enemy and almost won
just removing the amulet will be an overkill to storm
On October 26 2010 10:09 mutantmagnet wrote: Terran are only weaker at the late game because of how poorly everyone (I'm talking about all three races) is playing the game at the late stage even the (vast majority of) pros.
When Terrans get into the late game it usually is a bio ball and if it is TvT a tank viking wall. Terrans haven't figured out how to transition into their final tier unit the Battlecruiser and build up a supporting army of units to assist the BC core.
The BC core? Are you actually being serious?
The only race that can viably switch to mass T3 units is Zerg, and that's because they can produce a critical mass of them before fielding them. Battlecruisers are impossible to bring into TvT because the opponent will already have enough vikings to take them down. Same with TvP, blink stalkers absolutely demolish small numbers of BCs, and a critical mass of Mutas will do the same. Unless you manage to hide them until you have 5-6 BCs with plenty of energy for Yamatoing, your opponent will already have cost-effective counters to them without even needing to plan for it.
And it's generally bad to spend 2400/1800 on units you're not going to use for 4-5 minutes.
BCs (and Carriers for that matter) will never be a "core unit". And they're really not suited for endgame as much as they are suited for beefing up midgame armies as support units.
i dont agree, youre not supposed to go 4starport BC out of 3 expos but find a way to flawly transition into them at ~35th min into the game, out of 1 starport
and not use it like during the BC campaign mssion but as a support
same goes for P, carrier is so great when you bring a few, as a support, while still having 100/200 supply of core units
if he focus fire, micro it so that it takes hits but doesnt die, still, you just earned 4 seconds of free shotting on enemy out of your 100/200 army at the enemy, he doesnt focus fire? even better BC carrier and BL have so freaking high DPS that it will do good for you
there is no more scourges in this game, you an use them against Z well, TvT probably not, against P? just emp your own BCs
On October 27 2010 03:06 Pepe- wrote: you can remove amulet if you buff storm again, cant you?
maybe, but seeing that you can 2 shot a HT with 1 cloaked banshee, or 2 shot snipe it with cloaked ghost, it might be very very tough against P, doing that should be propabably followed by a bio nerf, but we dont want that, or gateway units buff, unless storm buff will be insane
but that will be bad as well since it would then be about 'if T can kill HTs before they storm', thats much like same what we got now 'can P survive long enough to get storm'
another thing is that P will never win a 200/200 battle against T no matter what, however if it happens to be a macro game with 200/200, P has much faster production time due to gateways
P feels much like Z at that point, thats an issue as well
On October 26 2010 14:10 MythicalMage wrote: Yeah, that's a large factor of it, but it just feels like there is no late game army that works for Terran. In one of Loner's games he had banshees and vikings and ghosts and marine marauder against a Templar colossus gateway unit army and there was still very little he could do.
Last week i watched a clan war serie on gomtv, it was prime vs tsl i think? Maka was playing for prime and he won every match. One of the match was vs a protoss, Maka was the best player of this i have no doubt, the end game was Collosus + templar + chargelots vs Marauder + ghost + medeveac.
The way maka could dodge storm and heal up, emp templars and control his army was just amazing. His Marauders just wouldnt die. The ghost made it so templar had a rough time and, kept gateway counts units down because they died faster, so colossus didnt have a huge wall of fodder in front of them and marauder with stim could maneuver around and snipe collosus. Terran are not using ghost nearly enough.
The problem isnt that Ghost doesnt counter HTs, its that p can warp in storm on demand.
The protoss could indeed warp ht on demand, and maka Marauders medevacs ghosts still dominated him. An emp on a templar is just has good has killing him on short term, it cannot do anything. By keeping the army count low ghost are much more effective too since its easier to emp a bigger fraction of his army with fewer ghost.
you forget with this warp in that each ht cost 150 gas, that is 150 gas that instantly die after casting 1 storm, unless you somehow manage to warp it into archon, but even when it is dead before it finishes merging
On October 25 2010 13:18 DarkMoon wrote: As far as win percentages went, I think they mentioned that PvT was Terran favored across the board withing acceptable ranges EXCEPT for Diamond Korea, where Protoss was waaay favored. It's aberrations like that that set of red flags and make them watch for things and take closer looks at balance.
It was actually the other way around. Protoss had a 6% advantage in Korea over Terran, a 10% advantage in NA, but Terran had a 4% advantage over protoss only in Diamond Korea. (see: http://www.youtube.com/user/noobclubru#p/u/2/9OYTt_8zYHI at around 7:45)
My bad. I was going pretty much from memory at that point haha, didn't realize it was up on youtube already
Time to edit my post so I don't look like an idiot.
yeah and few moments after they say that korean diamond it is 40% for P 60% for T
What I think would make SC2 great, is to make early all-ins more difficult, this by giving spider-mines, lurkers, and tougher stalkers to the game.
in mid game, everything looks fine, this is mostly because players had found a "balance" in their back and forth. Here the balance is in the players, not in the game itself.
in late game I'd again try to hinder the "all-in attack move", how? I haven't thought about that.
I'd reduce the supply of those 6-supply units to 5, and those 3-supply to 2 (and make banshee armored, cheaper and way weaker damage-wise)
Well whenever Blizzard says they're keeping an eye on some Protoss unit (HTs this week), that means it's going to get nerfed, no questions asked. The only thing to debate now is how badly Protoss'll take it up the ass. Coconut or Pineapple?
On October 27 2010 06:47 Cloak wrote: Well whenever Blizzard says they're keeping an eye on some Protoss unit (HTs this week), that means it's going to get nerfed, no questions asked. The only thing to debate now is how badly Protoss'll take it up the ass. Coconut or Pineapple?
most likely terrans bio will also take a hit question is if both races will be nerfed how much higher winrate of zergs will be now ~~ (hard to imagine more tvz rape than now but guess its comming)
On October 27 2010 06:47 Cloak wrote: Well whenever Blizzard says they're keeping an eye on some Protoss unit (HTs this week), that means it's going to get nerfed, no questions asked. The only thing to debate now is how badly Protoss'll take it up the ass. Coconut or Pineapple?
I don't know the both sound horrifying but I think Pineapple would hurt more due to its spiky nature
On October 27 2010 06:47 Cloak wrote: Well whenever Blizzard says they're keeping an eye on some Protoss unit (HTs this week), that means it's going to get nerfed, no questions asked. The only thing to debate now is how badly Protoss'll take it up the ass. Coconut or Pineapple?
On October 27 2010 03:22 Friend23 wrote: another thing is that P will never win a 200/200 battle against T no matter what, however if it happens to be a macro game with 200/200, P has much faster production time due to gateways
???
The exact opposite is much closer to reality. If P has either colossus/stalker against a T without many vikings or immortal/templar/stalker/zealot against a T who produces enough vikings to make colossi ineffective, a protoss 200/200 will absolutely wreck a T 200/200 army. Unless T gets perfect EMPS, protoss usually crushes late game, and can reinforce much faster.
This isn't even taking into account carriers, which are absolutely brutal late game if P manages to get them.
On October 27 2010 03:22 Friend23 wrote: another thing is that P will never win a 200/200 battle against T no matter what, however if it happens to be a macro game with 200/200, P has much faster production time due to gateways
???
The exact opposite is much closer to reality. If P has either colossus/stalker against a T without many vikings or immortal/templar/stalker/zealot against a T who produces enough vikings to make colossi ineffective, a protoss 200/200 will absolutely wreck a T 200/200 army. Unless T gets perfect EMPS, protoss usually crushes late game, and can reinforce much faster.
This isn't even taking into account carriers, which are absolutely brutal late game if P manages to get them.
Vikings, Siege tanks, collosus is out of the picture, just siege move the Protoss and he won't stand a chance. Late game Terran can tear Protoss to pieces if he moves away from pure mmm, Tanks, Ravens, Ghosts all are a bane to protoss army, i have seen BC with Marauders on ground for later game T. Since only ground that can do something is stalker and maras rape em.
Templars are strong only until mid-high diamond versus terran, at top diamond templars get torn by pro microed ghosts.
I think the problem Terran is having winning late game is that 99% of the people who play Terran never tech up. They stick with MMM all game with some vikings.
If they tech'd up like Protoss and Zerg do I think they would be fine, Ghosts/ Thors /BC/Raven can do work in late game, but Terran never seems to want to abandon their original build. You never see a Toss go 4 gate into 7 gate into 10 gate and expect to win at the 30 minute mark with all stalkers and zealots (no matter how upgraded). Same goes for zerg.
I play Toss and SOOOOOO many Terrans never end up even getting a single ghost or Thor against me unless they are Thor rushing or doing an early timing push with a ghost.
On October 27 2010 03:22 Friend23 wrote: another thing is that P will never win a 200/200 battle against T no matter what, however if it happens to be a macro game with 200/200, P has much faster production time due to gateways
???
The exact opposite is much closer to reality. If P has either colossus/stalker against a T without many vikings or immortal/templar/stalker/zealot against a T who produces enough vikings to make colossi ineffective, a protoss 200/200 will absolutely wreck a T 200/200 army. Unless T gets perfect EMPS, protoss usually crushes late game, and can reinforce much faster.
This isn't even taking into account carriers, which are absolutely brutal late game if P manages to get them.
Vikings, Siege tanks, collosus is out of the picture, just siege move the Protoss and he won't stand a chance. Late game Terran can tear Protoss to pieces if he moves away from pure mmm, Tanks, Ravens, Ghosts all are a bane to protoss army, i have seen BC with Marauders on ground for later game T. Since only ground that can do something is stalker and maras rape em.
Okay, but have you actually watched any high level PvT games?
When you say things like "just siege move the protoss and he won't stand a chance" and "i have seen BC with marauders on ground for later game T," you're not exactly making it easy for me to take you seriously. The only map where siege is even close to OP against protoss is steppes of war, and that's more of a middle game concern. It can be very annoying on metal as well, but that's mostly just for controlling the center gold expansions. As for BC/marauder, I haven't really seen that be effective in any recent games.
Watch, for example, NEXGenius' PvT. At blizzcon, most of the games he loses are from either a) attemping a cheesy DT rush, b) losing to a timing attack after 1 gate expanding or c) never switching out of colossus 25 minutes into the game. And even in other games where he sticks with pure stalker/colossus against marauder/medivac/viking, he manages to win. Games where he actually transitioned to HT, he absolutely crushed, like one of his games on scrap station against loner.
There's a reason SeleCT had to abuse medivac drops heavily to do well at MLG, QXC abused drops so heavily in NY, and why none of the other terrans did very well against HuK or KiWiKaKi. The only way for terran to do well against protoss currently is with early aggression or harassment all over the place, because late game they get steamrolled and it's not even close.
I seems pretty obvious that Blizzard made a design error with Colossi.
Right now, in PvP, they have no counter (although I'm trying VR-oriented builds after the patch, they are not nearly reliabe), so the MU degrades to colossi wars. In PvT in PvZ the only thing that balances them out are air units designed specifically to counter them. This leads to stupid plays revolving around using vikings to kill the colossi before they obliterate your ground army. Seriously, if not for colossi, nothing would ever justify a range 9 air superiority fighter. I feel that all protoss MU's are revolving around this unit on both the protoss and the opponent size.
Colossi were meant as an exciting replacement for Reavers, but Reavers had atrocious scalability. Slow projectile travel time, crawling speed and enormous amount of overkill made them useless en masse, but very good as sniper units in small skirmishes. Colossi, on the other hand, are VERY massable, even though they deal way less raw damage. Continuing on the subject, the scalability and automatic targeting for Reavers made them a completely different tech choice than HT. They were essentially doing very different things, while Colossi and HT in SC2 are largely competing (with Colossi winning, I've yet to see a 1.2 patch replay with anyone not going colossi first, regardless of the matchup). As a side effect, protoss early-mid game has taken a severe hit since they don't have anything to harass with. Prisms are just as good as shuttles were, but you have literally nothing to drop. There's no wonder protoss is weak in early game and strong in late.
Another thing that bothers me the most is the early availability of Concussive shells. I don't for once think the ability is too strong on it's own, call it a racial feature. But even though I have a fast harass-oriented unit at the start of the game, I cannot use it. Almost no protosses open offensively in PvT now, you just build your units and stay at base until you have an observer. Why? Because there is a possibility that terran goes fast concussive. Unlike BW, where it was common to probe the terran wall with your first goon, you cannot do it because you won't be able to run away. I would want to do something else than fast expo in PvT but I cannot, both because of early reaper threat (1 stalker stays at base) and because of the possibility of encountering a mass build with concussive at his ramp and losing all my stalkers there, sealing the game.
I do not see any reasons in TvP, TvZ or TvT to push the concussive shells upgrade further in the tech tree.
on concussive: although I'm not sure if or how to fix this, let me just say that I think it's weird that the 200/200 ability "charge" does NOT in any way "counter" the 50/50 concussive; all terran has to do is wait for the charge to come, then stim and start the kite; all chargelots will die...it's not even that hard to do; many times charge even works against protoss because the slow ball (stalker/sentry slowed down by colossi) can't keep up with chargelots; chargelots charge in, get kited and die before colossi even get in range; nowadays I manually micro my chargelots with move-command-spam to avoid the charge-in; charge is really only doing well if you let two armies a-move against each other
Just chargelots will be kited but when you have storm colossi and forcefield, it becomes awesome. FF stops maras from kiting left and right, and even if u mess up, the colossi get hits in which is what your zealots are there for. Storm just annihilates him if he's sloppy or you're good at predicting.
Maybe charge could reset when hit by a conc shell? Makes zealots unkitable by Marauders
I think that it is quite interesting that they are talking about maurader stim is more harmful then helpful.
In a few select cases I have toyed with only stimming my marines and just leaving the maurader's non stimmed and just try to use the concussive kiting (non stimmed) to the best of my abillity
On October 27 2010 23:24 Knee_of_Justice wrote: Just chargelots will be kited but when you have storm colossi and forcefield, it becomes awesome. FF stops maras from kiting left and right, and even if u mess up, the colossi get hits in which is what your zealots are there for. Storm just annihilates him if he's sloppy or you're good at predicting.
Maybe charge could reset when hit by a conc shell? Makes zealots unkitable by Marauders
I think it'd be cool if Zealots took reduced damage during charging, and have a buff that increase his damage of his next 2 hits everytime it charges
It's like T players telling Z players to "use ur tech, nydus moar" when Z get crushed by a T ball. P telling T to use their tech; have you ever played or seen a TvP? Compare the impact 6 colossus have to 6 thors.
Show replays where T uses a high-tech army like alot of BC/Thors/banshee/Ghost/tanks and actually outright wins in a 200/200 battle, I'd be suprised if P ever went below 100 supply.
T is OP first 12 mins, midgame balanced, then P is OP. That really feels like an accurate description; question would be how to P's early and T's late without affecting the Z matchups. (although some early buff to P would certainly help against the roach buff)
(imho 250mm cannons into 9 range is one good option....)
On October 27 2010 23:54 KaiserJohan wrote: It's like T players telling Z players to "use ur tech, nydus moar" when Z get crushed by a T ball. P telling T to use their tech; have you ever played or seen a TvP? Compare the impact 6 colossus have to 6 thors.
Show replays where T uses a high-tech army like alot of BC/Thors/banshee/Ghost/tanks and actually outright wins in a 200/200 battle, I'd be suprised if P ever went below 100 supply.
T is OP first 12 mins, midgame balanced, then P is OP. That really feels like an accurate description; question would be how to P's early and T's late without affecting the Z matchups. (although some early buff to P would certainly help against the roach buff)
(imho 250mm cannons into 9 range is one good option....)
Ah I remember back when I was Terran and I tried to Thor "lockdown" my opponent's colossi, didn't work out too well.
On October 27 2010 03:22 Friend23 wrote: another thing is that P will never win a 200/200 battle against T no matter what, however if it happens to be a macro game with 200/200, P has much faster production time due to gateways
???
The exact opposite is much closer to reality. If P has either colossus/stalker against a T without many vikings or immortal/templar/stalker/zealot against a T who produces enough vikings to make colossi ineffective, a protoss 200/200 will absolutely wreck a T 200/200 army. Unless T gets perfect EMPS, protoss usually crushes late game, and can reinforce much faster.
This isn't even taking into account carriers, which are absolutely brutal late game if P manages to get them.
Vikings, Siege tanks, collosus is out of the picture, just siege move the Protoss and he won't stand a chance. Late game Terran can tear Protoss to pieces if he moves away from pure mmm, Tanks, Ravens, Ghosts all are a bane to protoss army, i have seen BC with Marauders on ground for later game T. Since only ground that can do something is stalker and maras rape em.
Watch, for example, NEXGenius' PvT. At blizzcon, most of the games he loses are from either a) attemping a cheesy DT rush, b) losing to a timing attack after 1 gate expanding or c) never switching out of colossus 25 minutes into the game. And even in other games where he sticks with pure stalker/colossus against marauder/medivac/viking, he manages to win. Games where he actually transitioned to HT, he absolutely crushed, like one of his games on scrap station against loner.
There's a reason SeleCT had to abuse medivac drops heavily to do well at MLG, QXC abused drops so heavily in NY, and why none of the other terrans did very well against HuK or KiWiKaKi. The only way for terran to do well against protoss currently is with early aggression or harassment all over the place, because late game they get steamrolled and it's not even close.
Might I suggest watching those NEXGenius games with only having NEX's vision? Many of the choices he makes are completely blind with NO scouting whatsoever and he just got lucky in his games against Select. I really expected better play out of him. Yeah, he won. But only because apparently they were playing some kind of NR20 ruleset that didn't require scouting or pressure.
One game in particular, NEX vs Select on LT (round 1). Nex had six sentries and one stalker and was tossing up his expansion. If you switch to his vision at around 6-7 minute mark (7:13 to be exact. I just watched it yesterday and was completely appalled), 1) he doesn't even have the Terran base scouted, 2) has no clue what the Terran is doing. I restate: he doesn't even have vision of a barracks or CC. It's just empty space. 3) he just blindly chose a build and rolled the dice. If the terran was doing a 3 rax pressure, he would have no idea about it and he would have lost easily. I mean, come on, he didn't even have control of his watchtower.
Not saying NEX is a bad player, but I wouldn't use his games as a benchmark.
Or maybe SelecT is so utterly predictable Genius didn't feel a need to bother scouting him?
Wait I just checked the game and you're completely and utterly wrong. He's seen his expo and 2 raxes so he knows he's 2rax FEing (as usual). You sure you meant the LT game?
On October 28 2010 00:05 Yaotzin wrote: Or maybe SelecT is so utterly predictable Genius didn't feel a need to bother scouting him?
Wait I just checked the game and you're completely and utterly wrong. He's seen his expo and 2 raxes so he knows he's 2rax FEing (as usual). You sure you meant the LT game?
Hmm, I'm pretty sure. It was game 2 after the DT rush. Unless the "vision" feature is broken?
Uh, no, he doesn't have any knowledge of an expansion until he brings his obs in at 7 minutes into the game. His unit composition is 6 sentries and 1 stalker which would NOT hold his expansion at all. Likewise, select doesn't even scout him.
Worked for me :0 He saw the 2 raxes with his scouting probe before it died, then his obs went and saw the expansion. Pretty much standard scouting, other than not taking the watchtower which he should've done.
While I can see why Blizz is coming to the TvP conclusions that they are, I'm not convinced that late game storm is OP. There are a lot of options late game to be explored, and while warp-in amulet storm is powerful vs bio (mostly marines)... what if Terrans can find builds and compositions that aren't vulnerable to storm late game?
Seems to me that either ghosts or banshess plus observer hunting has potential. What does it take, 3 vikings to one shot an observer? Also PDD + drops or PDD + banshee(s) vs workers would seem excellent if it could be squeezed in once Protoss start cannon defending. You can spot observers along the way or know if your harass would be a surprise. PDD protects from warped in stalkers or cannons.
And in a tight busy match (read no cannons made yet), one banshee even without cloak in a base during a small battle can be game changing.
Also I like Loner's play. Banshee harass worked out great for him in a lot of recent matches vs P. Ghosts. I liked his attempt at tank + bunker slow push in that one Xel'Naga Caverns but he got overzealous (moved up too soon) and Genius performed a really nicely timed warp-prism drop flank that I doubt many others could repeat.
Anyway, early game there aren't so many options. Late game, there are potentially many.
And really, since Voidrays are basically a tiny threat now, Terran should explore more tech options. I think recent pro play is just reflecting the knowledge that early bio is the best early option, so many are all going bio then don't transition. Loner being the biggest exception from what I've seen.
Given time, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Nada go for a heavy mech style. Or someone like Boxer develop some excellent harass and micro-defense vs storm late game vs P.
And last, this sounds crazy, but has anybody tried semi late game bunker pushes or just take middle defense with the upgraded bunkers? With upgraded bunkers (6 marines or 4 marines + 1 marauder) you have more damage that you can stim and focus fire attacks at the bunker level... backed by tanks/banshee vs stalkers/colossi... I dunno it seems like it'd have potential.
On October 25 2010 20:58 DamageInq wrote: I can see marauder stim hurting the maruaders more in most situations. I think a lot of that is not caluculating your stims. There's no doubt that it's benificial when taking out an expansion, or in a maruader vs mostly stalker fight.
I think maps are a huge part of this entire problem and we need some wide open center luna style maps (imagine playing PvT on maps where you army is constantly splitting down fucking hallways or force you to run into a narrow passage if you want to attack + a more mobile terran army (since we know P in SC2 is a lot more mobile than T in BW))
The one thing I Would advocate is having observers either build faster, cost less, or placed in a different building. If drops are really such an issue its mainly due to people scouting HORRIBLY bad as protoss in this game. I see maybe 1 or 2 observers max. If you have the map just defend like you did in BW and use a pylon ring + observers. Currently while making colossus or immortal making a ton of observers can be hard so I can understand why that would be an issue so maybe move them to nexus with an upgrade at the robotics or something (or some add on after robotics like in BW)
Maps are not a big problem. Both P and T has units that can utilize the narrow spaces for optimal splash damage (Tanks, Colossus).
Making Observer faster will not change the fact that T > P early game.
I refuse to believe that P > T late game, even with Colossus. Terran needs to find different unit combination and stop using T1 units against Protoss's T3 units. Of course T1 is not supposed to take down T3 units. A more Mech army with marauders seems more suitable, especially because marines are so small that it eats up Colossus splash.
The way I see it, Marauders are the biggest problem with T > P early game. They could use a heavy nerf. (Perhaps 50% reduction in CS's slow or a cooldown)
On October 28 2010 11:32 lastmotion wrote: I refuse to believe that P > T late game, even with Colossus. Terran needs to find different unit combination and stop using T1 units against Protoss's T3 units. Of course T1 is not supposed to take down T3 units. A more Mech army with marauders seems more suitable, especially because marines are so small that it eats up Colossus splash.
I also have a hard time believing this - we've seen protoss use carriers in lategame vs terran WAY more often than terran use battlecruisers; why? there is simply no way, terran could convince me that BCs are "harder" to get; and when protoss goes for chargelots/HTs, BCs counter this hard; if protoss switches back to more stalkers, then marauders/tanks will do better; also, very few terrans make effective use of ravens; protoss pretty much uses ALL his units vs terran throughout the game - zealots/stalker/sentry/immortal into colossi, then tech-switch to chargelots/HTs, very lategame into carriers; terran most of the time stubbornly refuses any tech-switch vs protoss...like....at all; all you read is blah P>T lategame; yeah tanks die vs charge-lots...but nobody says terran should produce "mass"-tanks?
also I've lost some games because terran added some blue-flame hellions and did ridiculous damage vs my chargelots because I couldn't "prevent" the charge - again: charge working against protoss; and hellions are super-easy to afford later on but guess what - terrans prefer to lift the factory off and scout with it....I mean, how can you argue imbalance when some terrans even refuse to make factory-units throughout the whole game? when protoss on the other hand produces basicly every unit they have?
also I've lost some games because terran added some blue-flame hellions and did ridiculous damage vs my chargelots because I couldn't "prevent" the charge - again: charge working against protoss; and hellions are super-easy to afford later on
I've actually started disabling autocast charge once armies get sufficiently large... kinda silly to have 12 zealots swarming around 1 marauder...
On October 25 2010 20:58 DamageInq wrote: I can see marauder stim hurting the maruaders more in most situations. I think a lot of that is not caluculating your stims. There's no doubt that it's benificial when taking out an expansion, or in a maruader vs mostly stalker fight.
I think maps are a huge part of this entire problem and we need some wide open center luna style maps (imagine playing PvT on maps where you army is constantly splitting down fucking hallways or force you to run into a narrow passage if you want to attack + a more mobile terran army (since we know P in SC2 is a lot more mobile than T in BW))
The one thing I Would advocate is having observers either build faster, cost less, or placed in a different building. If drops are really such an issue its mainly due to people scouting HORRIBLY bad as protoss in this game. I see maybe 1 or 2 observers max. If you have the map just defend like you did in BW and use a pylon ring + observers. Currently while making colossus or immortal making a ton of observers can be hard so I can understand why that would be an issue so maybe move them to nexus with an upgrade at the robotics or something (or some add on after robotics like in BW)
Maps are not a big problem. Both P and T has units that can utilize the narrow spaces for optimal splash damage (Tanks, Colossus).
Making Observer faster will not change the fact that T > P early game.
I refuse to believe that P > T late game, even with Colossus. Terran needs to find different unit combination and stop using T1 units against Protoss's T3 units. Of course T1 is not supposed to take down T3 units. A more Mech army with marauders seems more suitable, especially because marines are so small that it eats up Colossus splash.
The way I see it, Marauders are the biggest problem with T > P early game. They could use a heavy nerf. (Perhaps 50% reduction in CS's slow or a cooldown)
Just making it so that you require a factory or something for concussive would make early game would be 100% fine imo.
also I've lost some games because terran added some blue-flame hellions and did ridiculous damage vs my chargelots because I couldn't "prevent" the charge - again: charge working against protoss; and hellions are super-easy to afford later on
I've actually started disabling autocast charge once armies get sufficiently large... kinda silly to have 12 zealots swarming around 1 marauder...
On October 25 2010 20:58 DamageInq wrote: I can see marauder stim hurting the maruaders more in most situations. I think a lot of that is not caluculating your stims. There's no doubt that it's benificial when taking out an expansion, or in a maruader vs mostly stalker fight.
I think maps are a huge part of this entire problem and we need some wide open center luna style maps (imagine playing PvT on maps where you army is constantly splitting down fucking hallways or force you to run into a narrow passage if you want to attack + a more mobile terran army (since we know P in SC2 is a lot more mobile than T in BW))
The one thing I Would advocate is having observers either build faster, cost less, or placed in a different building. If drops are really such an issue its mainly due to people scouting HORRIBLY bad as protoss in this game. I see maybe 1 or 2 observers max. If you have the map just defend like you did in BW and use a pylon ring + observers. Currently while making colossus or immortal making a ton of observers can be hard so I can understand why that would be an issue so maybe move them to nexus with an upgrade at the robotics or something (or some add on after robotics like in BW)
Maps are not a big problem. Both P and T has units that can utilize the narrow spaces for optimal splash damage (Tanks, Colossus).
Making Observer faster will not change the fact that T > P early game.
I refuse to believe that P > T late game, even with Colossus. Terran needs to find different unit combination and stop using T1 units against Protoss's T3 units. Of course T1 is not supposed to take down T3 units. A more Mech army with marauders seems more suitable, especially because marines are so small that it eats up Colossus splash.
The way I see it, Marauders are the biggest problem with T > P early game. They could use a heavy nerf. (Perhaps 50% reduction in CS's slow or a cooldown)
Just making it so that you require a factory or something for concussive would make early game would be 100% fine imo.
No, it would not - it would make proxy gate builds impossible to defend ;/ Marauders are actually completely useless vs stalkers until you have concussive, because the P can fight until his shields are gone and then run away.
On October 28 2010 11:32 lastmotion wrote: I refuse to believe that P > T late game, even with Colossus. Terran needs to find different unit combination and stop using T1 units against Protoss's T3 units. Of course T1 is not supposed to take down T3 units. A more Mech army with marauders seems more suitable, especially because marines are so small that it eats up Colossus splash.
I also have a hard time believing this - we've seen protoss use carriers in lategame vs terran WAY more often than terran use battlecruisers; why? there is simply no way, terran could convince me that BCs are "harder" to get; and when protoss goes for chargelots/HTs, BCs counter this hard; if protoss switches back to more stalkers, then marauders/tanks will do better; also, very few terrans make effective use of ravens; protoss pretty much uses ALL his units vs terran throughout the game - zealots/stalker/sentry/immortal into colossi, then tech-switch to chargelots/HTs, very lategame into carriers; terran most of the time stubbornly refuses any tech-switch vs protoss...like....at all; all you read is blah P>T lategame; yeah tanks die vs charge-lots...but nobody says terran should produce "mass"-tanks?
also I've lost some games because terran added some blue-flame hellions and did ridiculous damage vs my chargelots because I couldn't "prevent" the charge - again: charge working against protoss; and hellions are super-easy to afford later on but guess what - terrans prefer to lift the factory off and scout with it....I mean, how can you argue imbalance when some terrans even refuse to make factory-units throughout the whole game? when protoss on the other hand produces basicly every unit they have?
Here is why you dont see BCs, Ravens, Banshees or any other unit with mana: Feedback. Ravens are amazingly good up until they start dying as soon as the protoss sees them.
Also, carriers are far superior to BCs in this matchup, vikings are a complete joke vs them, as are pretty much every other terran anti-air option save for turrets really.
Hellions are nice, but zealots are not the problem for terran.
On October 28 2010 11:15 Blacklizard wrote: While I can see why Blizz is coming to the TvP conclusions that they are, I'm not convinced that late game storm is OP. There are a lot of options late game to be explored, and while warp-in amulet storm is powerful vs bio (mostly marines)... what if Terrans can find builds and compositions that aren't vulnerable to storm late game?
Seems to me that either ghosts or banshess plus observer hunting has potential. What does it take, 3 vikings to one shot an observer? Also PDD + drops or PDD + banshee(s) vs workers would seem excellent if it could be squeezed in once Protoss start cannon defending. You can spot observers along the way or know if your harass would be a surprise. PDD protects from warped in stalkers or cannons.
And in a tight busy match (read no cannons made yet), one banshee even without cloak in a base during a small battle can be game changing.
Also I like Loner's play. Banshee harass worked out great for him in a lot of recent matches vs P. Ghosts. I liked his attempt at tank + bunker slow push in that one Xel'Naga Caverns but he got overzealous (moved up too soon) and Genius performed a really nicely timed warp-prism drop flank that I doubt many others could repeat.
Anyway, early game there aren't so many options. Late game, there are potentially many.
And really, since Voidrays are basically a tiny threat now, Terran should explore more tech options. I think recent pro play is just reflecting the knowledge that early bio is the best early option, so many are all going bio then don't transition. Loner being the biggest exception from what I've seen.
Given time, I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Nada go for a heavy mech style. Or someone like Boxer develop some excellent harass and micro-defense vs storm late game vs P.
And last, this sounds crazy, but has anybody tried semi late game bunker pushes or just take middle defense with the upgraded bunkers? With upgraded bunkers (6 marines or 4 marines + 1 marauder) you have more damage that you can stim and focus fire attacks at the bunker level... backed by tanks/banshee vs stalkers/colossi... I dunno it seems like it'd have potential.
In my opinion, if all protoss had late-game was storm, the matchup would be either fine or T favored - the problem is when P can afford colossi/storm, then T is just fucked. Completely and utterly fucked :/
Vs only HT you dont need to waste money (and starport production time that could be used to replace the medivacs you inevitably lost in the last battle now that they are slow as fuck) on vikings, and you can actually micro against storm. In addition, ghosts are every bit as good as HTs making the matchup fair imo.
Then you add colossus and it all breaks.
I dont think mech is good on most maps because its just too immobile, has no map control features (spider mines are gone), is too gas heavy (tanks and emp and vikings), and is only good in HUGE fights.
Mech is nothing like in SC1 where small parts of your army can still be effective when faced with a bigger force, you either keep your army together or it dies.
Yes, if you have 200/200 worth of tank hellion there is nothing on the ground that is going to kill this, but toss 1) doesnt have to fight you 2) doesnt have to build ground units.
I don't understand why they would say stim reduces the life span of the marauder. Could they get more obvious? That's why you get medivacs.. hmm.. It seems as thought they just want to avoid that subject.
I'de like to see marauder stim + concussive nerfed but then some changes to terran late game to make them stronger with that being their main weakness.
I don't think someone should rely on t1 units the WHOLE game. Zerg get ultras.. protoss get Colossus or storm.. terran just get MMM. All game. This game is focused on economy (which leads to late game) but terran gameplay is only focused on early game / early game units (= not economy). Know what I'm sayin?
On October 28 2010 20:37 Zythian wrote: I don't understand why they would say stim reduces the life span of the marauder. Could they get more obvious? That's why you get medivacs.. hmm.. It seems as thought they just want to avoid that subject.
I'de like to see marauder stim + concussive nerfed but then some changes to terran late game to make them stronger with that being their main weakness.
I don't think someone should rely on t1 units the WHOLE game. Zerg get ultras.. protoss get Colossus or storm.. terran just get MMM. All game. This game is focused on economy (which leads to late game) but terran gameplay is only focused on early game / early game units (= not economy). Know what I'm sayin?
There really is nothing else worth making... In some cases siege tanks, maybe =/ Believe me, I dont actually WANT to play marine marauder ghost viking for 50 minutes vs colossus/ht -.-
EDIT: Actually I guess we are saying the same thing here.
I don't know if this has been said yet, but THORS! These things are cost effective against everything the protoss has except maybe void rays and after the void ray nerf I don't think they are that good against them especially with vikings and/or marines to support.
On October 28 2010 20:08 Liquid`Jinro wrote: No, it would not - it would make proxy gate builds impossible to defend ;/ Marauders are actually completely useless vs stalkers until you have concussive, because the P can fight until his shields are gone and then run away.
Wouldn't stim fix this problem? If the marauders stim when the stalkers turn to run, they'll be faster.
On October 28 2010 20:08 Liquid`Jinro wrote: Here is why you dont see BCs, Ravens, Banshees or any other unit with mana: Feedback. Ravens are amazingly good up until they start dying as soon as the protoss sees them.
Also, carriers are far superior to BCs in this matchup, vikings are a complete joke vs them, as are pretty much every other terran anti-air option save for turrets really.
agree, feedback is awsome - nevertheless feedback does actually very little damage to BCs if they don't "save energy up", I would go so far and say it's not really worth it compared to the possibly "lost" storm
as far as carriers go, I've seen some socke-games where his carriers die insanely fast when EMPed; probably the game hasn't been developed in lategame enough, but imo EMP is amazing vs protoss air, can really shut carriers down since they are impossible to "save" vs vikings after EMP
Recently i switched to T, after having PvT as my best matchup and faring well vs 1.8-2.1k players on EU
Fair enough to say, i dont really care who they buff or nerf, ill just play the race that is better, and thats terran right now.
The only race that has remotely difficult mechanics are zerg so its not like its hard to learn both races
my personal opinion is that TvP is basically in the terrans favour most of the game and then evens out VERY late, and then slight advantage for protoss when you get to end, end game colossi AND tempar
The problem is that if you play terran and fail to do some kind of game winning advantage before 30 minutes into the game, you've basically failed as terran... there are SO many tools to cripple protoss before then, with such a large variety of builds
I actually think that FE'ing as terran can be a mistake a lot of the time, it is definately correct on a lot of maps depending on rush distances (ironically, the closer the rush distance, the better a 2 rax FE is) - yet it seems every 2k terran is completely addicted to the build because it has no weaknesses. Why FE as a terran when you can 1 base on certain maps and completely crush a protoss expand before 10 minutes? I don't buy the KCDC bs, after playing hundreds and hundreds of games on both sides, i know exactly how to dismantle a 1 gate FE like that with late pushes due to protoss tech being behind - protoss willl alwatys lose a straight up fight with colossi or templar, and thus FE gives you a HUGE window to build a tech adv as terran and then crush protoss before he gets either just from 1 base of units.
On October 27 2010 23:54 KaiserJohan wrote: It's like T players telling Z players to "use ur tech, nydus moar" when Z get crushed by a T ball. P telling T to use their tech; have you ever played or seen a TvP? Compare the impact 6 colossus have to 6 thors.
Show replays where T uses a high-tech army like alot of BC/Thors/banshee/Ghost/tanks and actually outright wins in a 200/200 battle, I'd be suprised if P ever went below 100 supply.
T is OP first 12 mins, midgame balanced, then P is OP. That really feels like an accurate description; question would be how to P's early and T's late without affecting the Z matchups. (although some early buff to P would certainly help against the roach buff)
(imho 250mm cannons into 9 range is one good option....)
I've been saying this over and over since beta. T was OP early game and UP late game. The fact the maps are so small and that T had a good early game (esp compared to Z) was masking the fact that T late game is terrible. I'm glad it's being recognized that TvP is NOT balanced and never has been. Hopefully ZvT starts to get the same recognition now that T early game is crippled.
On October 27 2010 23:54 KaiserJohan wrote: It's like T players telling Z players to "use ur tech, nydus moar" when Z get crushed by a T ball. P telling T to use their tech; have you ever played or seen a TvP? Compare the impact 6 colossus have to 6 thors.
Show replays where T uses a high-tech army like alot of BC/Thors/banshee/Ghost/tanks and actually outright wins in a 200/200 battle, I'd be suprised if P ever went below 100 supply.
T is OP first 12 mins, midgame balanced, then P is OP. That really feels like an accurate description; question would be how to P's early and T's late without affecting the Z matchups. (although some early buff to P would certainly help against the roach buff)
(imho 250mm cannons into 9 range is one good option....)
I've been saying this over and over since beta. T was OP early game and UP late game. The fact the maps are so small and that T had a good early game (esp compared to Z) was masking the fact that T late game is terrible. I'm glad it's being recognized that TvP is NOT balanced and never has been. Hopefully ZvT starts to get the same recognition now that T early game is crippled.
First, read my post and other people's posts up there.
T > Z still in early game. The supply before rax change only made sure T can't be aggressive in the very beginning; they can still be aggressive before Z reaches lair tech and that requirement is nullified if T also chooses a more macro-orientated game, like expo earlier.
Z was never > T late game. Yes Ultras + Broods are devastating but it still dies to Terran 200/200 mech army. The only reason why people view late game Z as overpowered was because early + mid game Z was so underpowered that when Ultras + Broods came out, they noticed the huge difference in power-up from Zerg. No, hive tech for Z only makes ZvT balanced again.
What other significant changes were there in ZvT? Roach 1 range increase? Roaches are still roasted by Marauders + Tanks, that 1 range increase affected a lot more in ZvP than ZvT. Stop over-exaggerating. Those 2 last patches barely touched on the main issues (MULE, Marauders, PFs, Repair rate, Turrets, etc.)
On October 27 2010 23:54 KaiserJohan wrote: It's like T players telling Z players to "use ur tech, nydus moar" when Z get crushed by a T ball. P telling T to use their tech; have you ever played or seen a TvP? Compare the impact 6 colossus have to 6 thors.
Show replays where T uses a high-tech army like alot of BC/Thors/banshee/Ghost/tanks and actually outright wins in a 200/200 battle, I'd be suprised if P ever went below 100 supply.
T is OP first 12 mins, midgame balanced, then P is OP. That really feels like an accurate description; question would be how to P's early and T's late without affecting the Z matchups. (although some early buff to P would certainly help against the roach buff)
(imho 250mm cannons into 9 range is one good option....)
I've been saying this over and over since beta. T was OP early game and UP late game. The fact the maps are so small and that T had a good early game (esp compared to Z) was masking the fact that T late game is terrible. I'm glad it's being recognized that TvP is NOT balanced and never has been. Hopefully ZvT starts to get the same recognition now that T early game is crippled.
First, read my post and other people's posts up there.
T > Z still in early game. The supply before rax change only made sure T can't be aggressive in the very beginning; they can still be aggressive before Z reaches lair tech and that requirement is nullified if T also chooses a more macro-orientated game, like expo earlier.
Z was never > T late game. Yes Ultras + Broods are devastating but it still dies to Terran 200/200 mech army. The only reason why people view late game Z as overpowered was because early + mid game Z was so underpowered that when Ultras + Broods came out, they noticed the huge difference in power-up from Zerg. No, hive tech for Z only makes ZvT balanced again.
What other significant changes were there in ZvT? Roach 1 range increase? Roaches are still roasted by Marauders + Tanks, that 1 range increase affected a lot more in ZvP than ZvT. Stop over-exaggerating. Those 2 last patches barely touched on the main issues (MULE, Marauders, PFs, Repair rate, Turrets, etc.)
Though with the siege tank doing less damage towards light units perhaps Hydralisks can be considered a play against Tanks
On October 27 2010 23:54 KaiserJohan wrote: It's like T players telling Z players to "use ur tech, nydus moar" when Z get crushed by a T ball. P telling T to use their tech; have you ever played or seen a TvP? Compare the impact 6 colossus have to 6 thors.
Show replays where T uses a high-tech army like alot of BC/Thors/banshee/Ghost/tanks and actually outright wins in a 200/200 battle, I'd be suprised if P ever went below 100 supply.
T is OP first 12 mins, midgame balanced, then P is OP. That really feels like an accurate description; question would be how to P's early and T's late without affecting the Z matchups. (although some early buff to P would certainly help against the roach buff)
(imho 250mm cannons into 9 range is one good option....)
I've been saying this over and over since beta. T was OP early game and UP late game. The fact the maps are so small and that T had a good early game (esp compared to Z) was masking the fact that T late game is terrible. I'm glad it's being recognized that TvP is NOT balanced and never has been. Hopefully ZvT starts to get the same recognition now that T early game is crippled.
First, read my post and other people's posts up there.
T > Z still in early game. The supply before rax change only made sure T can't be aggressive in the very beginning; they can still be aggressive before Z reaches lair tech and that requirement is nullified if T also chooses a more macro-orientated game, like expo earlier.
Z was never > T late game. Yes Ultras + Broods are devastating but it still dies to Terran 200/200 mech army. The only reason why people view late game Z as overpowered was because early + mid game Z was so underpowered that when Ultras + Broods came out, they noticed the huge difference in power-up from Zerg. No, hive tech for Z only makes ZvT balanced again.
What other significant changes were there in ZvT? Roach 1 range increase? Roaches are still roasted by Marauders + Tanks, that 1 range increase affected a lot more in ZvP than ZvT. Stop over-exaggerating. Those 2 last patches barely touched on the main issues (MULE, Marauders, PFs, Repair rate, Turrets, etc.)
Though with the siege tank doing less damage towards light units perhaps Hydralisks can be considered a play against Tanks
Who uses Hydras in professional-level ZvT? I'm sure there might be exceptions but mostly, no. It has also been said that lings die in the same number of hits before & after patch
On October 28 2010 20:08 Liquid`Jinro wrote: No, it would not - it would make proxy gate builds impossible to defend ;/ Marauders are actually completely useless vs stalkers until you have concussive, because the P can fight until his shields are gone and then run away.
Wouldn't stim fix this problem? If the marauders stim when the stalkers turn to run, they'll be faster.
There is no conceivable way for you to get stim by the time it matters. Concussive, on the other hand, can be gotten by the time you have 1 marauder.
The earliest stim that you can physically get is at something like 3 marauders...
On October 28 2010 20:08 Liquid`Jinro wrote: No, it would not - it would make proxy gate builds impossible to defend ;/ Marauders are actually completely useless vs stalkers until you have concussive, because the P can fight until his shields are gone and then run away.
Wouldn't stim fix this problem? If the marauders stim when the stalkers turn to run, they'll be faster.
There is no conceivable way for you to get stim by the time it matters. Concussive, on the other hand, can be gotten by the time you have 1 marauder.
The earliest stim that you can physically get is at something like 3 marauders...
On October 27 2010 23:54 KaiserJohan wrote: It's like T players telling Z players to "use ur tech, nydus moar" when Z get crushed by a T ball. P telling T to use their tech; have you ever played or seen a TvP? Compare the impact 6 colossus have to 6 thors.
Show replays where T uses a high-tech army like alot of BC/Thors/banshee/Ghost/tanks and actually outright wins in a 200/200 battle, I'd be suprised if P ever went below 100 supply.
T is OP first 12 mins, midgame balanced, then P is OP. That really feels like an accurate description; question would be how to P's early and T's late without affecting the Z matchups. (although some early buff to P would certainly help against the roach buff)
(imho 250mm cannons into 9 range is one good option....)
I've been saying this over and over since beta. T was OP early game and UP late game. The fact the maps are so small and that T had a good early game (esp compared to Z) was masking the fact that T late game is terrible. I'm glad it's being recognized that TvP is NOT balanced and never has been. Hopefully ZvT starts to get the same recognition now that T early game is crippled.
First, read my post and other people's posts up there.
T > Z still in early game. The supply before rax change only made sure T can't be aggressive in the very beginning; they can still be aggressive before Z reaches lair tech and that requirement is nullified if T also chooses a more macro-orientated game, like expo earlier.
Z was never > T late game. Yes Ultras + Broods are devastating but it still dies to Terran 200/200 mech army. The only reason why people view late game Z as overpowered was because early + mid game Z was so underpowered that when Ultras + Broods came out, they noticed the huge difference in power-up from Zerg. No, hive tech for Z only makes ZvT balanced again.
What other significant changes were there in ZvT? Roach 1 range increase? Roaches are still roasted by Marauders + Tanks, that 1 range increase affected a lot more in ZvP than ZvT. Stop over-exaggerating. Those 2 last patches barely touched on the main issues (MULE, Marauders, PFs, Repair rate, Turrets, etc.)
Z late game kinda owns T late game, not because of their units being superior but because they can reproduce much faster. And it definitely should be this way.
The exception would be if the terran decides to re-create the Maginot Line and just not move past his half of the map until the map is mined out ;/
my personal opinion is that TvP is basically in the terrans favour most of the game and then evens out VERY late, and then slight advantage for protoss when you get to end, end game colossi AND tempar
IMO it shifts into protoss favour as soon as you even approach getting maxed out.
The thing is, the style of play that seems most favoured by Korean tosses now is just so god damn defensive and passive that there is very little you can do to force the kind of game that favours Terran. The scrappier a game is, the better for Terran - but when the protoss just refuses to fight you before he has HTs AND colossi, it just gets kind of retarded.
Yes, harass is great, but not when the toss isnt leaving his main/nat (and on some maps, this can include his 3rd as its as easy to defend as his main and nat anyway), since there isnt much to distract him. Yeah, you will get a couple of pylons or whatever, big deal -.-
So many of the maps have gigantic rush distances too, making FEs annoying as hell to deal with unless you FE yourself (Scrap, Shakuras, XelNaga sort of, cross pos Metal). Then you have the retarded maps with rock backdoors into your main meaning you cant FE but the toss (or zerg for that matter) can zzzzzz
I feel really whiny right now, but I really think this matchup is going to end up completely unplayable once a certain level of play is reached by protoss (note: this does not mean that I think toss players are currently worse than terran, I just think the game hasnt evolved enough - once it does, I think so much of the shit terran relies on to win TvPs is gonna stop working).
Oh and slow medivacs are a joke, you lose soo many of them now just because they cant even keep up when you stim kite -.-
Yes, harass is great, but not when the toss isnt leaving his main/nat (and on some maps, this can include his 3rd as its as easy to defend as his main and nat anyway), since there isnt much to distract him. Yeah, you will get a couple of pylons or whatever, big deal -.-
Well, if Protoss could play more aggresive I'm sure they would, but the way it is now, your only option is to play defensive as until you have enough tech other wise you get steam rolled by Terran Bio/mech.
I feel really whiny right now, but I really think this matchup is going to end up completely unplayable once a certain level of play is reached by protoss (note: this does not mean that I think toss players are currently worse than terran, I just think the game hasnt evolved enough - once it does, I think so much of the shit terran relies on to win TvPs is gonna stop working).
I think your blowing this out of proportion. You have matches like Genius vs Loner on Scrap Station @Blizzcon where they were neck and neck the entire game (into late game as well), but Genius ended up pulling through when he grabbed the gold, but upuntil then, the entire match was even despite the fact that the Terran did not do a single drop or use a single ghost effectively. (Loner built a single ghost right at the end which got FB'd straight away).
Feedback as an argument against BattleCruisiers was somewhat legitimate a few months ago, but not anymore considering every single smart Terran EMP's their own BC's before every engagement.
On October 25 2010 20:58 DamageInq wrote: I can see marauder stim hurting the maruaders more in most situations. I think a lot of that is not caluculating your stims. There's no doubt that it's benificial when taking out an expansion, or in a maruader vs mostly stalker fight.
I think maps are a huge part of this entire problem and we need some wide open center luna style maps (imagine playing PvT on maps where you army is constantly splitting down fucking hallways or force you to run into a narrow passage if you want to attack + a more mobile terran army (since we know P in SC2 is a lot more mobile than T in BW))
The one thing I Would advocate is having observers either build faster, cost less, or placed in a different building. If drops are really such an issue its mainly due to people scouting HORRIBLY bad as protoss in this game. I see maybe 1 or 2 observers max. If you have the map just defend like you did in BW and use a pylon ring + observers. Currently while making colossus or immortal making a ton of observers can be hard so I can understand why that would be an issue so maybe move them to nexus with an upgrade at the robotics or something (or some add on after robotics like in BW)
Maps are not a big problem. Both P and T has units that can utilize the narrow spaces for optimal splash damage (Tanks, Colossus).
Making Observer faster will not change the fact that T > P early game.
I refuse to believe that P > T late game, even with Colossus. Terran needs to find different unit combination and stop using T1 units against Protoss's T3 units. Of course T1 is not supposed to take down T3 units. A more Mech army with marauders seems more suitable, especially because marines are so small that it eats up Colossus splash.
The way I see it, Marauders are the biggest problem with T > P early game. They could use a heavy nerf. (Perhaps 50% reduction in CS's slow or a cooldown)
no one uses tanks because they suck tvp especially vs colossus. Suck.
They are gas heavy and 3 food and are bad. Zealots fucking rape them + they leave you imobile as shit. The moment you overextend you get rolled and P produces units battle a million times faster than you because of warp in.
With all due respect i myself too play this extremely defensive style, becaus getting caught out in the open against a bio ball with medivac support seems suicide against T.
At the very least i feel you need zealot charge or your army will never ever reach the Terran ball kiting you.
And to people saying stuff about stim marauders against stalkers etc.
Well, Marauders just downright kill stalkers cost for cost, it's not even a fair comparison, so i fail to see the point people are making there. In my opinion it's kind of silly that just marauders beat just stalkers but i can live with it, stalkers are just pretty damn hard to utilize offensively, and the good old goon micro across the map from BW just seems pointless.
All balance issues aside, which i won't really join in the flamefest on i think there's an inherent design flaw with PvT; It's not very much fun.
It's pretty boring to just stand in your base and wank until you reach a certain tech pattern, there's no activity on the map, there's no early battle for map control.
I certainly miss the BW PvT, there was a lot more activity going on and it was certainly more dynamic.
There were certain bio attacks in BW that relied on killing off your opponent before storm was out, because Storm pretty much hardcountered bio. I still consider this to be true.
So unless Blizz intends to totally dumb down these AoE abilities and make them even less interesting than they've already made them, the only solution is for Terran to go mech as they did in BW against toss, because i just can't see bio faring well against Storm. If Storm no longer kills bio, who would ever bother making it? The templar tech tree is pretty shitty already since they split up DT's and HT's in two very expensive tech patterns.
On October 28 2010 20:08 Liquid`Jinro wrote: No, it would not - it would make proxy gate builds impossible to defend ;/ Marauders are actually completely useless vs stalkers until you have concussive, because the P can fight until his shields are gone and then run away.
Wouldn't stim fix this problem? If the marauders stim when the stalkers turn to run, they'll be faster.
There is no conceivable way for you to get stim by the time it matters. Concussive, on the other hand, can be gotten by the time you have 1 marauder.
The earliest stim that you can physically get is at something like 3 marauders...
On October 28 2010 20:08 Liquid`Jinro wrote: No, it would not - it would make proxy gate builds impossible to defend ;/ Marauders are actually completely useless vs stalkers until you have concussive, because the P can fight until his shields are gone and then run away.
Wouldn't stim fix this problem? If the marauders stim when the stalkers turn to run, they'll be faster.
There is no conceivable way for you to get stim by the time it matters. Concussive, on the other hand, can be gotten by the time you have 1 marauder.
The earliest stim that you can physically get is at something like 3 marauders...
On October 27 2010 23:54 KaiserJohan wrote: It's like T players telling Z players to "use ur tech, nydus moar" when Z get crushed by a T ball. P telling T to use their tech; have you ever played or seen a TvP? Compare the impact 6 colossus have to 6 thors.
Show replays where T uses a high-tech army like alot of BC/Thors/banshee/Ghost/tanks and actually outright wins in a 200/200 battle, I'd be suprised if P ever went below 100 supply.
T is OP first 12 mins, midgame balanced, then P is OP. That really feels like an accurate description; question would be how to P's early and T's late without affecting the Z matchups. (although some early buff to P would certainly help against the roach buff)
(imho 250mm cannons into 9 range is one good option....)
I've been saying this over and over since beta. T was OP early game and UP late game. The fact the maps are so small and that T had a good early game (esp compared to Z) was masking the fact that T late game is terrible. I'm glad it's being recognized that TvP is NOT balanced and never has been. Hopefully ZvT starts to get the same recognition now that T early game is crippled.
First, read my post and other people's posts up there.
T > Z still in early game. The supply before rax change only made sure T can't be aggressive in the very beginning; they can still be aggressive before Z reaches lair tech and that requirement is nullified if T also chooses a more macro-orientated game, like expo earlier.
Z was never > T late game. Yes Ultras + Broods are devastating but it still dies to Terran 200/200 mech army. The only reason why people view late game Z as overpowered was because early + mid game Z was so underpowered that when Ultras + Broods came out, they noticed the huge difference in power-up from Zerg. No, hive tech for Z only makes ZvT balanced again.
What other significant changes were there in ZvT? Roach 1 range increase? Roaches are still roasted by Marauders + Tanks, that 1 range increase affected a lot more in ZvP than ZvT. Stop over-exaggerating. Those 2 last patches barely touched on the main issues (MULE, Marauders, PFs, Repair rate, Turrets, etc.)
Z late game kinda owns T late game, not because of their units being superior but because they can reproduce much faster. And it definitely should be this way.
The exception would be if the terran decides to re-create the Maginot Line and just not move past his half of the map until the map is mined out ;/
my personal opinion is that TvP is basically in the terrans favour most of the game and then evens out VERY late, and then slight advantage for protoss when you get to end, end game colossi AND tempar
IMO it shifts into protoss favour as soon as you even approach getting maxed out.
The thing is, the style of play that seems most favoured by Korean tosses now is just so god damn defensive and passive that there is very little you can do to force the kind of game that favours Terran. The scrappier a game is, the better for Terran - but when the protoss just refuses to fight you before he has HTs AND colossi, it just gets kind of retarded.
Yes, harass is great, but not when the toss isnt leaving his main/nat (and on some maps, this can include his 3rd as its as easy to defend as his main and nat anyway), since there isnt much to distract him. Yeah, you will get a couple of pylons or whatever, big deal -.-
So many of the maps have gigantic rush distances too, making FEs annoying as hell to deal with unless you FE yourself (Scrap, Shakuras, XelNaga sort of, cross pos Metal). Then you have the retarded maps with rock backdoors into your main meaning you cant FE but the toss (or zerg for that matter) can zzzzzz
I feel really whiny right now, but I really think this matchup is going to end up completely unplayable once a certain level of play is reached by protoss (note: this does not mean that I think toss players are currently worse than terran, I just think the game hasnt evolved enough - once it does, I think so much of the shit terran relies on to win TvPs is gonna stop working).
In my experience what you're saying is completely true.
Unless i'm being majorly outplayed by my Terran opponent i just can't see myself losing a game against bio when i've reached storm, even with EMP i have to fuck up my templar control so badly to lose the game, it's not even funny.
On October 28 2010 20:08 Liquid`Jinro wrote: No, it would not - it would make proxy gate builds impossible to defend ;/ Marauders are actually completely useless vs stalkers until you have concussive, because the P can fight until his shields are gone and then run away.
Wouldn't stim fix this problem? If the marauders stim when the stalkers turn to run, they'll be faster.
There is no conceivable way for you to get stim by the time it matters. Concussive, on the other hand, can be gotten by the time you have 1 marauder.
The earliest stim that you can physically get is at something like 3 marauders...
Would you be willing to go into more detail on the sort of Protoss build you're thinking about here Jinro? I'm having trouble coming up with one that could exploit this window effectively.
Tanks are definitely good in certain builds. And cloaked banshees early are sick good even if the protoss has multiple (!) observers. You can keep tagging the Protoss from the sides of minerals on a lot of maps. So glad Boxer was able to show this at a pro level. If Boxer had left 1 or 2 SCVs for nearby repair he might have even gotten more kills in game 1. And defending vs banshees forces stalkers or phoenixes, which usually die horribly to marine-tank.
Proxying starports is of course the next step in evolution to make banshees even better. I love using banshees vs Toss! I hate fighting banshees as Toss!
Check out Boxer's banshees and tanks vs CoreJJang:
I think if a Terran uses tricks like these very well, at worst they can be ahead going into late game. I mean for ever 100 gas observer, Protoss is that much further from his needed tech to fight high dps terran ground.
I do take to heart Jinro's comments about P more often playing defensive for long periods and being able to defend harass much better. Still, I think this could allow Terran to be a "half" expansion ahead of P. And also open up opportunities to push hard like we saw in the Boxer games.
I guess my point is, Terran seems to have a lot of opportunities to avoid late late game where tech and bases are even. Still, time will tell.
Wouldn't ideal balance be the game being balanced throughout? I question toss being OP late game though. We've seen colossi into templar be super effective but if terran would just get ghosts out and not be so damn greedy and get more than 2 they wouldn't have many issues.
On October 29 2010 02:27 Liquid`Jinro wrote: Oh and slow medivacs are a joke, you lose soo many of them now just because they cant even keep up when you stim kite -.-
Definitely agree here. I don't know what Blizz was thinking. I never even saw a match where Terran drop was unstoppable. Heck, most of the time it looked like it required a player an order of magnitude better than their opponent to pull off drop play.
Zerg drops on the other hand are super good (because once you upgrade, they are free - you already have a ton of overlords - and they're really fast). But it seems like most zerg don't use them because zerg is so good they don't even need to, so they end up being lazy. The exception of course being the few good zerg like fruitdealer.
QXC huk IEM was quite a good showcase on how ridiculous that strategy is. Select also did a similar build at MLG.
Each drop would wipeout a similar sized defending force constantly chipping away at the army. Even if the dropship was lost... the terran seemed to maintain the initiative as the loss was not going to result in the terran being punished. That can be seen by the repeated overdropping in some cases by these terrans.
It's just intersting how Terrans complaint about these AoE units, while tosses try to explain that they flat out die without them. Gateway units exist soley to be damage sponges.
Also interesting there's no talk of the basic cheapness of the Mmm ball.
Also that everyone seems to ignore that ghosts do fantastic damage against light units like zealots.
On October 25 2010 12:58 Chairman Ray wrote: Marauder stim harms marauders? Did they offer an explanation?
Maybe they forgot to attack after stimming them.
In all seriousness, this is a bad way to balance the game. Sure, the win ratio is probably around 50/50 right now, but to have a game based where the first portion of the game favors one team while the later portion favors the other is very discouraging in terms of balance.
BW is kind of like that, T is ahead until lurkers or mutas. Z is ahead till tanks/sci. Then Z has to hold on till defiler tech comes up.
On October 29 2010 10:40 NATO wrote: Zerg drops on the other hand are super good (because once you upgrade, they are free - you already have a ton of overlords - and they're really fast). But it seems like most zerg don't use them because zerg is so good they don't even need to, so they end up being lazy. The exception of course being the few good zerg like fruitdealer.
Medivac Speed: 2.5 Overlord w/ up speed: 0.4687 (+1.4062)=1.88
Overlords are slower than Medivacs or Warp Prisms, so they aren't "really fast".
Edit: On topic imo, Terran mech balls need a buff, due to loss of spider mines for scouting/map control.
On October 25 2010 13:16 VoodooDog wrote: rine stimm should bring only 50% more firerate, not 100%. Marauder stim should be deleted. Than it will be balanced.
A Terran is always guaranteed to make it to the 0:01 second mark (start of their OPness) Protoss has a what, 50% chance to make it to the stage of the game where THEY become op..
Think about it
100% of the PvT's terran is OP 50% of the PvT's Protoss is OP
On October 29 2010 13:37 CellTech wrote: Terran is obviously favored EVERY game in a PvT.
A Terran is always guaranteed to make it to the 0:01 second mark (start of their OPness) Protoss has a what, 50% chance to make it to the stage of the game where THEY become op..
Think about it
100% of the PvT's terran is OP 50% of the PvT's Protoss is OP
?? are u trying to say that early game advantage > late game advantage because sometimes u never get to late game but u always have to go thru early game?
My perspective as a protoss player that has played sc1 and now sc2 with one race sience 1998
Lategame on EU/US servers at the moment in Diamond and Lower lvls is Amove Terrans and Amove Storm Protosses, Now there reason for the diffrence on the Korean server is the constant dropship harass with more aggressive exping instead of going for one attack where u eather loose or win. infact atm even in Pro games in EU/US u see one big battle lategame and its game. in GSL u see more of Dropship harass, and never one HUGE LOL battle where your chances of winning are 50/50.
Atleast my 0.00000000000000000001% on this issue.
i think Terran is hugely favored in this matchup, and yet i have more then 50% win rate at 2100+ points. but when i watch a replay i eather just lost or won, i see huge mistakes from the terran that a Zerg/protoss player couldnt have made if they wanted to be at this lvl. obviously i make mistakes aswell. but not as huge ones.
obviously im far from good enugh to think i can come with good feedback to this matchup or any in that matter. witch makes the stats that Blizzard presented kinda "useless", Some Races are easier at the lower levels. like Protoss, make gateways get warpgate attack, Bronze level. Terran, Make Orbital, keep Mules up, Addons, and so on. Voidrays where a proof of this back in the beta even afther the range nerf. People at the lower lvls had sick problems with voidrays whilst Diamond players had close to no issues with them unless they were proxxied.
Leats quote chill on this from a Podcast with Djwheat, "Starcraft Players usually think they are better then they actually are" therefore the huge threads and the ignorance when comming to the issue of balance. THIS includes me.
Edit reason, So many stupid reply's to this thread its annoying me: Instead of typing in this thread like a moron trying to say your the new boxer and the only thing thats stopping you is the "balance" try to come with some reasonable comments instead of saying "THIS IS IMBALANCED FIXX FOR ME PLZ SO I CAN GO GSL AND WIN MUNEH"
I like seeing all the posts that are summed up as "this should be removed then it will be balanced" and it's like "marines upgrades should slow them down and take their guns away".
I really like that blizzard seems to be on the right track here. The matchup feels really balanced for a fleeting moment when colossus and templar hit the field but before khaydarin. Here's some changes I'd really like to see:
- Ghost academy requires factory - Stim re-increased to 150/150 (not sure on this one) - Concussive shells research time increased by 10 seconds - Khaydarin amulet removed
Colossus are manageable due to their immobility and inability to be insta-warped anywhere, even if they dominate at critical mass. You can at least try to play the 'exploit my opponent's mobility' game. If you try that against templar, you fly past an observer and your medivacs get insta-killed by feedback and a couple stalkers and all your units die. The only thing that feels really terrible about this matchup is that templars with khaydarin can hard-counter every single terran army in the game between feedback and storm except thor-heavy armies, which are already very bad against chargelots, and are natural in every templar composition.
These changes would really even out TvP early game, and possibly fix TvP late game. The only issue I see is that the stim change may further hurt TvZ balance.
Khaydarin amulet shouldn't even exist, to be honest. You shouldn't be able to warp in units anywhere to instantly shut down harassment, feedback medivac drops, kill entire bio balls from high ground you warped onto, etc. You shouldn't be able to warp in 300 gas of units and nearly instantly kill an entire mineral line.
I don't think ghosts are a problem by themselves, but it's EMP plus STIM and concussive shells bio that is the problem. If you could just run away, then it wouldn't be a problem as your shields could come back up as many terran do when they see storm. But with stim and concussive shells and EMP, suddenly you take out half their health slow them down and dps them for 50% bonus dmg. Add like 3 vikings and collosus in any number are basically useless.
Without Kaydarin Amulet, a Protoss player would be unable to reinforce an army with Templar. If anything, the Amulet upgrade should be built into the psionic storm upgrade.
i don't know about the lategame conclusion. it seems to me Ts are very one-dimensional in how they play. mostly bio bio bio w/ air support. granted my opinion is based off of what i see in tournaments.
On November 02 2010 16:20 iEchoic wrote: Khaydarin amulet shouldn't even exist, to be honest. You shouldn't be able to warp in units anywhere to instantly shut down harassment, feedback medivac drops, kill entire bio balls from high ground you warped onto, etc.
So any time the terran manages to EMP your templar (or most of them) you type out 'gg' instantly or hope he just doesn't feel like attacking for 40 seconds?
Also high templar are the only cost-effective way to shut down harassment. You cannot deal with a medivac drop without superior gateway unit count nearby or having enough gateways (and resources) to warp in a huge force at any given moment in time, which is a big problem if you ever want to leave your base with an actual army.
The real solution will come by Terrans in general becoming better at ghost usage and actually bothering to micro and split their main armies instead of 1a -> attempt to tank the storm because why not.
Theres no reason you should have 2-3 storms hit your entire clumped up army instead of 5-6+ at which point the HTs are much less cost-effective or even cost in-effective.
And really when it comes down to it why shouldn't HT counter MMM?
On November 02 2010 16:20 iEchoic wrote: Khaydarin amulet shouldn't even exist, to be honest. You shouldn't be able to warp in units anywhere to instantly shut down harassment, feedback medivac drops, kill entire bio balls from high ground you warped onto, etc.
And really when it comes down to it why shouldn't HT counter MMM?
Because Blizz nerfed BCs and Tanks to death so that's kind of the only option left.
I don't have an opinion on whether Khaydarin should be removed or not, but some of the reasons that have been given in this thread for keeping it in the game are not valid.
On November 02 2010 16:20 iEchoic wrote: Khaydarin amulet shouldn't even exist, to be honest. You shouldn't be able to warp in units anywhere to instantly shut down harassment, feedback medivac drops, kill entire bio balls from high ground you warped onto, etc.
So any time the terran manages to EMP your templar (or most of them) you type out 'gg' instantly or hope he just doesn't feel like attacking for 40 seconds?
Yes. I don't see that as a problem. Similarly, it's game over for Terran mech if you get caught with your Tanks unsieged or game over for Terran bio if you miss-micro against Banelings or Templar. For Zerg it's game over if you don't magic box your Mutas against Thor. Certain playstyles require you to flawlessly execute certain micro aspects of the game.
Also high templar are the only cost-effective way to shut down harassment. You cannot deal with a medivac drop without superior gateway unit count nearby or having enough gateways (and resources) to warp in a huge force at any given moment in time, which is a big problem if you ever want to leave your base with an actual army.
And other races don't have the same problem? Even without Khaydarin, Protoss can still have the fastest response to drops because of warp in. The fact that dealing with harassment would be harder without Khaydarin is not really a valid reason since all races have to face large difficulties when dealing with drops.
On November 02 2010 16:20 iEchoic wrote: I really like that blizzard seems to be on the right track here. The matchup feels really balanced for a fleeting moment when colossus and templar hit the field but before khaydarin. Here's some changes I'd really like to see:
- Ghost academy requires factory - Stim re-increased to 150/150 (not sure on this one) - Concussive shells research time increased by 10 seconds - Khaydarin amulet removed
Colossus are manageable due to their immobility and inability to be insta-warped anywhere, even if they dominate at critical mass. You can at least try to play the 'exploit my opponent's mobility' game. If you try that against templar, you fly past an observer and your medivacs get insta-killed by feedback and a couple stalkers and all your units die. The only thing that feels really terrible about this matchup is that templars with khaydarin can hard-counter every single terran army in the game between feedback and storm except thor-heavy armies, which are already very bad against chargelots, and are natural in every templar composition.
These changes would really even out TvP early game, and possibly fix TvP late game. The only issue I see is that the stim change may further hurt TvZ balance.
Khaydarin amulet shouldn't even exist, to be honest. You shouldn't be able to warp in units anywhere to instantly shut down harassment, feedback medivac drops, kill entire bio balls from high ground you warped onto, etc.
Why take away Protoss' only viable tier 3 tech dealing with a huge mass of t1? You remove that, you break pvz out-right when the tech swap late game comes from roach hydra to ling ultra. We sink our 150 gas into a unit and have to wait another 30 seconds just to be able to use it? no thanks. Khaydarin amulet with the added amount of storms just forces the terran to micro a hell of a lot more than needed, but still with stims movement speed you can escape it before taking full damage, and at best you'll take half the damage.
Dropping cannons or leaving a few stalkers isn't going to do us any good either burning that much minerals and wasted resources for "What if.." and even then, we would need more than just a few units to stop 4 marauder or the 8 marine drop. Sure if you fly in the wrong direction and stalkers start shooting the medivac before the unload we can hold it off, but 1 scan and you're dodging it completely. Not to mention all the air space behind the mains on most maps.
Carriers are awful as in they take just as long as a dt shrine comes out and still have to wait for the extra interceptors to be made, we've already seen countless mothershit moments to further prove why nobody makes them except as a joke.
Terran can use their early game aggression to secure a big enough econ lead to be able to constantly deal with the storms damage and harass. Not to mention, one drop including a tech snipe or a nexus snipe can win you the game immediately from that point. P is put into a deeper hole to climb out of for the next 10 minutes playing defensive trying to regain the lost mining from the lost nexus.
The bioball is by far the most efficient army even with stims hit to hp of the units.
I'm ignoring ghosts because that just comes down to who can out-play who, sure there's a timing window using ghosts, but once templar hit the field, it becomes who gets the first spell off. It's like watching two boxers punching each other completely exhausted without any defence and neither will collapse till their body gives up and the winner is decided.
I think the whole problem people have with the bioball lies within the micro and the smart fire from the engine without overkilling, and the slow is just an added bonus for an all ranged army. Soon as T stims and starts microing around the P / Z's army with the added movement speed with the small time frame, the engine can basically let T orb walk with their shots long enough and have them all auto-target the nearest units and take them out completely and hit them all effectively with slow (considering there's a decent 2:1 marine:marauder mix ) thus making it seem extremely difficult to deal with considering the melee units are borderline dead once they are able to strike the terran if he stops briefly during this time frame. I'm not saying to remove this aspect, I'm just pointing it out of how drastically it can change the tide of battle with the right control.
I think if they nerf the bioball ever so slightly in regards of balancing out tvp and not drastically hurting tvz too much we would start to see a lot more mech play in tvp. I would go as far as to say buff to either the stalker or sentry again and it would help it out a bit while ignoring the bioball.
I think somewhere along the lines in beta when they were nerf / buffing they tweaked the early game a bit too much because in this game, if you change one unit ( roach / reaper lastest patch ) you effect every match up and not just the intention of a specific match up of blizzards desired results.
On November 02 2010 17:28 Corwin wrote: I don't have an opinion on whether Khaydarin should be removed or not, but some of the reasons that have been given in this thread for keeping it in the game are not valid.
They are very valid, your reasons to dismiss them not so much.
Yes. I don't see that as a problem. Similarly, it's game over for Terran mech if you get caught with your Tanks unsieged or game over for Terran bio if you miss-micro against Banelings or Templar. For Zerg it's game over if you don't magic box your Mutas against Thor. Certain playstyles require you to flawlessly execute certain micro aspects of the game.
None of those are remotely comparable. For one, none of those are anywhere near as fatal. Waiting 40 seconds to the sole counter to the present threat is as game ending as it gets.
Moreover, this is not about mis-miscroing your own units in a battle, its about your opponent ending your game in two seconds with a faster unit that has an AoE spell that outranges its counter (feedback), can cloak, with a race that can scan ahead for both observers and the HTs. A terran player can also retreat if they miss key EMPs, a protoss player cannot if they have been EMP'd. They are done.
Lastly, its about balance of skill. You not seeing a problem in that the most popular, cost-effective TvP build that works from the start of the game onwards, that already has a solution to the only protoss late-game counter in the much easier to execute EMP, should also have that counter be game-ending?
You think its acceptable that protoss players only solution to late game PvT is to hope they a) have prepared enough templar with their army because theres its almost impossible to disengage without doing significant damage since you can't reinforce with more templar b) don't get EMP'd, c) terran doesn't micro away effectively, and d) can win the game right then or somehow wait out 40 seconds for more storms to be available?
Really?
And other races don't have the same problem? Even without Khaydarin, Protoss can still have the fastest response to drops because of warp in. The fact that dealing with harassment would be harder without Khaydarin is not really a valid reason since all races have to face large difficulties when dealing with drops.
No, they do not. All the races have to deal with drops, but they do not have equal responses thus not the same problem.
Zerg has infestors, mutalisks and the fastest ground units in the game. Probably the easiest race to deal with mid-late game drops.
Terran have stim, have planetary fortresses for expansions, have seige tanks, and can quickly return with their own medivacs. And of course it doesn't take a superior terran army to stop a drop.
Protoss is by far the most susceptible race to drops. High Templars are a key factor in handling late-game harassment. If you remove that you are down to warpgates and locking a protoss player in his base against harassment.
On November 02 2010 16:20 iEchoic wrote: I really like that blizzard seems to be on the right track here. The matchup feels really balanced for a fleeting moment when colossus and templar hit the field but before khaydarin. Here's some changes I'd really like to see:
- Ghost academy requires factory - Stim re-increased to 150/150 (not sure on this one) - Concussive shells research time increased by 10 seconds - Khaydarin amulet removed
Colossus are manageable due to their immobility and inability to be insta-warped anywhere, even if they dominate at critical mass. You can at least try to play the 'exploit my opponent's mobility' game. If you try that against templar, you fly past an observer and your medivacs get insta-killed by feedback and a couple stalkers and all your units die. The only thing that feels really terrible about this matchup is that templars with khaydarin can hard-counter every single terran army in the game between feedback and storm except thor-heavy armies, which are already very bad against chargelots, and are natural in every templar composition.
These changes would really even out TvP early game, and possibly fix TvP late game. The only issue I see is that the stim change may further hurt TvZ balance.
Khaydarin amulet shouldn't even exist, to be honest. You shouldn't be able to warp in units anywhere to instantly shut down harassment, feedback medivac drops, kill entire bio balls from high ground you warped onto, etc. You shouldn't be able to warp in 300 gas of units and nearly instantly kill an entire mineral line.
Feedback costs 50 energy, you can feedback right away, even before the amulet, when your unit spawn
On October 25 2010 14:17 SaDGoWu wrote: I don't get anyone that think's Blizzard knows what they're doing,
Then you need to think harder before you post. Blizzard has way more insight than what you can come up with. Everything you pointed out in your post, they have already considered. I don't get how you can think Blizzard doesn't know what they are doing. You should leave balancing issues to professionals. Those who make a living doing it. To claim that you can better balance the game than blizzard is like claiming you can beat a professional starcraft player. Not impossible, but highly improbable.
In addition, Blizzard has already done a fantastic job balancing compared to other games.
EPT
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