DISCLAIMER: This is not a discussion about imbalance. It is purely about excitement value for spectators. If you want to cry about how OP Colossi are, please look elsewhere.
What is hype?
If something is hype, it makes the crowd get excited. Simple as that.
What makes something hype?
If something is hype, it usually includes some or all of these things: 1. Crazy feats of dexterity 2. Unusual/creative play 3. Huge damage in a single blast (or the potential for it) 4. Comebacks
So now you understand what hype is. Anti-hype is bad. It makes for boring games which make for fewer spectators.
Why are Colossi Anti-hype then?
Here's why: The Colossus ball is strong. This is indisputable. With that in mind...
-It does not involve Crazy Feats of Dexterity (1). You sit on your ass and build up, then 1a. Sometimes you move your Colossi back. Whoopdie do.
-It discourages Unusual/Creative Play (2). It's easy and effective. Why NOT use the ball? It's super-common for a reason.
-There is very little variation in how much potential damage can be done in a single shot (3). It used to be cool to see marines/hydras/whatever melt to a few Colossi shots, but I've seen it a thousand times now. I can tell about how a battle is going to go, and it happens SO OFTEN that it doesn't even look that cool any more.
Let's compare the Colossus to the Brood War Reaver: The reaver does 100 damage in a single shot (Colossi do 15 x 2) Slow reaver moves slow. Slow reaver shoots slow.
The reaver is powerful enough on its own to kill a bunch of clumped up units in one shot (3). It's unbelievably slow, so it requires a dropship and excellent micro if you want to use it to harass (1). I've seen reaver shots a thousand times and they are STILL hype.
Here's a related example. Imagine a Corruptor vs a harassing Phoenix. The Corruptor beats the Phoenix, but can't catch it. So when the Corruptor shows up and shoots once or twice, the Phoenix flies away. End of story. Now imagine a Scourge or two vs a harassing Corsair. The Scourge beat the Corsair, but can't catch it. So when the Scourge show up the Corsair has to run all the way back home or GET BLOWN UP IMMEDIATELY. It is a much more tense situation. If the Protoss messes up for an instant, he loses the Corsair. It also helps that they're very close in speed so it looks like a close call every time. Even Vulture mines were hype because of the possibility for huge damage if even one of them wasn't cleared.
So how could the Colossus be more hype? Replace it with the Reaver?
Nope, you wouldn't even have to do something that extreme. Just make the Colossus shoot half as fast at twice the damage (30x2), and make it move slow as hell. This should have little impact on how much dps the Colossus does in a giant ball. It does however, open up the possibility for mineral line harassment and require Colossi to have Warp Prisms with them if they want to get anywhere fast.
For the animation, imagine the Colossus chargin' it's lasers, then releasing a strong blast all at once. Think Yamato Cannon. The charge would build so much hype.
Thoughts? Do you guys still get excited when a player masses Colossi? I sure don't.
So, instead of 4-5 colossus, toss will get 10, and 1 shot the entire zerg army? Tsss... At the moment, if toss go fast colossus vs zerg, lings can take them down even, however, if you upgrade to 2 x 30, then all lings get 1 shotted...? And roaches get 2 shotted? How would zerg counter this at all?
Even tho they attack slower, one volly destroys the entire zerg army in one shot. Now think about terran, same thing happens, the entire terran force gets 1 shotted, even marauders get 2 shotted, and they are supposed to be half decent counters...
At the moment, although they shoot faster than you are suggesting, they hit for less, so getting your army into the position it needs to be into to kill them is easier...
I completely agree, the Colossus not only encourages boring "death ball" play from protoss users but also is extremely easy to use and execute. You really can't use colossus as a harassing unit due to its lack of mobility (Movement speed) as well as it is dead if it comes in contact with an air unit. I personally have felt that the Colossus ruins the game for spectators because if you aren't going death ball with protoss you are taking away the best chance of winning. I think most people might agree that death ball protoss is not nearly as entertaining or skillful as doing a beautiful HT build, but the fact of the matter is the HT builds have timing weaknesses that the Colossus does not. Therefore Blizzard forces Colossus. And with the new Amulet nerf coming out I imagine it will force even more Colossus play.
If collosi did twice the damage, a group of collosi would destroy things instantly. The dps might be the same as the attack speed is lower but a group of collosi would eat everything for breakfast. Collosi are already to slow to run away from most things able to kill it, so lowering the speed would be not needed. Warp prisms are extremely squishy and are to hard to be mostly required for a fast transportation for most users that play the game.
Tbh I'd be down for just giving the reaver back. I don't really mind the colossus but speed prism harass with reavers would be sick.
edit: Warp Prisms aren't so squishy btw. Nearly the same HP as medivacs, they could just give em a couple more, worst case scenario, but warp prisms with speed are like shockingly fast so it'd be awesome to have a reason to use them.
-It does not involve Crazy Feats of Dexterity (1). You sit on your ass and build up, then 1a. Sometimes you move your Colossi back. Whoopdie do.
Yeah, I agree. I never see anything amazing with Colossi. Even in pro games, they just move them back, then move them forward. Something so boring, is so strong...it sucks...(I am a zerg player...)
or if you want to take the OP post even more literal, buff warp prism HP/shield beyond its pitiful state so that colossi can actually be used effectively as neo-reaver drops...
If something is hype, it makes the crowd get excited. Simple as that.
Grammar note: things are not "hype". Something can be hyped, or cause hype, or have hype, but "hype" is not a property that something can simply be.
I don't like this notion of appropriating words for a different purpose. "Hype" has a perfectly functional definition already. If it's "Simple as that", why not just say:
If something is exciting, it makes the crowed get excited.
It says exactly what you want without torturing the English language (more than it gets tortured on a daily basis on the Internet, at least). Just say that Colossi are boring; that's a word that already exists and describes exactly what you're talking about.
Just make the Colossus shoot half as fast at twice the damage (30x2)
Something like that was tried in the beta, and Blizzard changed it to what it is. Because it didn't work.
require Colossi to have Warp Prisms with them if they want to get anywhere fast.
For the animation, imagine the Colossus chargin' it's lasers, then releasing a strong blast all at once. Think Yamato Cannon.
Look, if you want Shuttle/Reaver back, just say so. Don't try to hide what you want by pretending to be compromising. You want the Shuttle/Reaver dynamic back.
I was having this exact conversation lastnight. Putting all balance aside, reavers & colossus share a similar role. Reavers were one of (if not the most) exciting unit in BW, from a spectator perspective at least. That "ohshitohshitohshit" moment as a scarab chases a ball of marines or workers was amazing. Colossus, on the other hand, are probably the most straight forward and uninteresting big AOE damage unit in the game. Colossus are so good that any Protoss is silly not to get them (given a few exceptions), and they rightfully need to be that good for the sake of balance. I just wish they were somehow more interesting, but I don't have an answer to how besides cliche "make it like a reaver".
I totally agree. I was going to make a thread about how the Collusus is helping stagnate the potential for sc2 but don't play toss so I didn't have enough inside knowledge.
For being THE unit in all 3 matchups, a crutch onto which the protoss lay upon, it is such a boring unit. As you said, you just 1 a and then sometimes pull the collusus back. I think it really needs to be redesigned entirely. It's just a huge unit that does alot of damage and little to no micro. And it doing damage isn't that exciting either. You never hear someone go "OMG LOOK AT THAT COLLUSUS DAMAGE!!!"
Banelings require micro and have amazing animations which do one shot damage. Collusus however just live and do more damage. Imagine how boring the baneling would be if it just shot lasers and did a bunch of damage. It isn't just doing a whole bunch of damage that makes it exciting, its how it does it. And this is where the Colossus fails.
For example, imagine if the Collusus's attack consisted of simply a giant hand that you select where to go(sort of like storm). While incredibly weird and not the best example, its a heck of a lot more exciting to see a ton of damage like that. The point is when the Collusus does its own stuff its not exciting. It's the micro that is.
On March 15 2011 09:11 Senx wrote: Marauders and collosi are good examples of this = Strong, extremely predictable and static behavior.
I disagree with the marauder being a "boring" unit. To see it stim and kite is so exciting to me, not to mention when they drop into a toss's base, the potential for so much damage is enormous! Plus the fact they focus fire many stuff makes it more exciting(unlike the collusus, which just 1 a's).
In my opinion, colossus AoE must be changed. I always wanted colossi to work like a lurker. You see first spike and you got .75 seconds to move your marines away from approaching spikes by moving them left or right. Brings excitement. Make lasers for colossi to have a small delay with indication in ground where it will hit so players can micro their army to dodge that attack. Also make colossi be able to change its lasers beam. Currently it is horizontal but having an option of making it attack vertically too (Cooldown of change will be 3-5 seconds or whatever time it will make sense). Would make colossi a lot more interesting and blink stalkers should beat colossi ball in pvp if microed correctly.
This was my initial reaction to SC2 during beta and my biggest complaint about it since.
The most entertaining aspect of SC:BW (as both a player and a spectator) was the seemingly in-human feats that good players could pull off. It's also why I love SSBM and UT-style FPS games.
I find very little excitement in SC2 outside of marine splits against banelings
I was thinking of the same thing you were, except make their attack an ability that is on a 3-4 second cooldown that can't be auto cast. So it becomes a lot more micro intensive but also allows for colossus harass.
I don't think every unit in the game has to have the ability to do something completely crazy. Why not complain about the Hydralisk? Why not complain about Zealots? It's not like Protoss lacks the ability to perform any of the four things you listed that determine your version of "hype".
Looking at IdrA and Artosis' show IMBALANCED! and through some ridiculous PvZs, last one I've seen is this
Another aspect I want to be clear of right from the bat is that I play terran and have no problem with PvZs, terran can counter collosi easily with vikings, but I hate how every other choice fails. It's like some1 forces you to make a unit, or else he will hard counter you with everything else. Protoss collosus takes the role of many units in the protoss army, so after a certain food count it's not necessary to make, for example, immortals anymore, because the critical number of collosi behaves better against ground armored(ex: roach, hydra, stalker) Talking about immortals, even the protoss counter to collosi fails miserably versus the unit it was designed to counter(in larger numbers not 1 vs 1). My opinion, and I believe not mine alone is that Blizzard did not foresee this. StarCraft II should be a game where every unit has a specific role, not a game where if you get to a certain unit tech there is absolutely no reason to make other units. The problem I've noticed is that protoss ball of collosi and stalkers are almost impenetrable by zerg. So how can zerg cope with other huge siege capacity units? So I've made a couple of comparisons.
Do note: i'm not adressing only zerg's problems here.
1. Terran siege tank Terran siege tanks are too immobile, once you spot a breach in the defence, you can atack one, maybe zealot, marauder or roach drop on other and do some damage. #@@@ like thi won't work on collosus for the obvious reasons: -collosi are too mobile and weak spots in defence are almost inexistent -collosi don't do friendly damage so using an opponent's force against him is impossible vs them
2.The mechanic in BW: reaver + shuttle The reaver was so slow and immobile. So protoss needed shuttles to make them mobile. At first, reaver having no delay when firing right after unloading from shuttles was imballanced vs terran. So they fixed it. But right now the collosus is almost like 2 units in 1. It is mobile and packs a mean punch. It has no delay, atacks right after he stops moving. Also, he goes up cliffs and can escape pursuing land units easily while kiting, not to mention how kiting collosus behaves now.
I am not going to compare it to zerg's siege weapon, neither the guardian from BW or the Broodlord from SC2, for obvious reasons.
So, drawing a line after what i said earlier, the collosus has 3 major problems. 1. Mobility: Unlike the siege tank, collosus has huge damage at high range and can escape if an entranced position is atacked. 2. Instant damage: Unlike reavers, as soon as collosi gets in range of their targets, the damage is dealt. There is no delay and no way to escape that AOE. As a related thing, even in BW, when you saw lurkers burrow, tanks sieging up you could back off, but in SC2 if you get overpowered, you pretty much lose your army. 3. Shields: Collosi are so mobile and have so much damage, I said it. But looking at how they enter a place, take just shields damage and leave like nothing happened is ridiculous.
So, after having all the above said I can propose 3 fixes for the collosus: 1. make it have a delay, so it has to stand still for a bit before he can atack, or at least before he can use his 9 range atack, just use his 6 range. 2. make collosus do less damage to armored units. 3. make a unit ability in each race who can do damage directly to life, instead of shields(similar to plaguuuuu in BW) - also an idea for HotS. 4. nerf collosus speed, either regular speed or acceleration (when he stands still, cpl of seconds after he starts moving, the collosus is slower) 5. any combination of the above, everything or nothing.
That isn't what hype means, saying a unit is hype or anti-hype doesn't make sense unless your trying to make this a new term in which case I hope it never catches on. Your right about collosi though
Most of the units in sc2 are relatively dull compared to sc1. Only times I feel tense are baneling attacks and a few other situations. But compared to reavers, dark swarms, spider mines, crazy lockdowns, theres just way less gosu stuff.
@OP, exactly my thoughts man :O I miss the effects mines, reavers, scourges, hold-lurkers and bunch of other stuff from BW had on crowd... Now we only have banelings >_> screw balance i want FUN
I have the same feeling. Its one reason why im so sad reavers and scourge are no longer in the game. I have the same feeling about bw storms vs sc2 storms where bw storms did more damage over a longer period of time, rewarding players who micro, micro causes lots of hype. That reason also makes me sad to see infestors FG projectile being scrapped in the patch 1.3 notes. But to me, the only time hype is involved with a colossus ball is when it gets overwhelmed. Mainly due to there not being a solid viable way to destroy colossus even when you know its coming.
I used to want the colossus to have a slower attack speed but now I dont think that would be the best way to go about it with this issue. I just dont like units that have so much going their way, like with your comparison with it to the reaver. The reaver is extremely immobile and attacks much slower, however the colossus attacks at a decent rate and its 100x more mobile than the reaver, even being able to scale terrain. So what bw players ended up inventing shuttle-reaver micro which rewarded the better player and was extremely entertaining to watch. Another reason that the colossus is "anti-hype" as the op stated, is that pretty much anyone can execute them to the extent of the pros. When you see something thats very hard to execute it causes more hype. But when things are easy to execute, you look at it and say "meh I could do that.."
I am against nerfing the colossus. Blizzards approach to balance so far as it seems, is to just nerf whatever seems to be too strong. The problem actually lies within the game design. It would be much better if there were a better way to deal with colossus instead of just nerfing them. That was the best part about bw, each race had so many seemingly overpowered units and abilities but there was always an answer to it because the game design was as perfect as i've seen in any game.
Luckily we have 2 expansions left for Blizzard to fix the game design so I have no worries for its future because I trust Blizzard will be able to fill in the gaps.
who says the colussus was supposed to be a hype unit? even if your right, so what? it seems like your directly comparing it to the reaver a bit too much.
for example, what hype units do Terran have? and a better question, why does hype have to be something a specific unit brings? why cant it be a combination of units and upgrades or a unit + terrain advantages.
So how could the Colossus be more hype? Replace it with the Reaver?
Nope, you wouldn't even have to do something that extreme. Just make the Colossus shoot half as fast at twice the damage (30x2), and make it move slow as hell. This should have little impact on how much dps the Colossus does in a giant ball. It does however, open up the possibility for mineral line harassment and require Colossi to have Warp Prisms with them if they want to get anywhere fast.
For the animation, imagine the Colossus chargin' it's lasers, then releasing a strong blast all at once. Think Yamato Cannon. The charge would build so much hype.
Thoughts? Do you guys still get excited when a player masses Colossi? I sure don't.
Y'know I usually don't pay much mind to these kind of threads, but I think you have a valid point here. Collo deathball is just plain boring, I agree. I like your suggestion, it would definitely involve more micro and open up creative play. But, as usual, I'm not sure how the balance of all this would work. As a T player for one, I can just imagine vikings being just 10x more devastating vs that suggestion and leaving a P way too vulnerable for my bio ball.
Maybe the collo is just non entertaining and there's nothing we can really do about it. I don't know
Collosi having a "siege mode" would actually be quite interesting to see in practice and would make it much more dynamic have a minimum range while sieged and dealing less dmg while unsieged.
On March 15 2011 08:54 Shlowpoke wrote: Now imagine a Scourge or two vs a harassing Corsair. The Scourge beat the Corsair, but can't catch it. So when the Scourge show up the Corsair has to run all the way back home or GET BLOWN UP IMMEDIATELY
IMO we should keep the colossus and add scourge back. Create hype with colossus trying to dodge clouds of scourgyyyyy. Would be more exciting than any change to the colossus.
Edit: I realize blizzard probably won't bring back any of the units they removed but i do think we should think about some of the units that "counter" the colossus as well because currently vikings and corrupters are pretty boring as well.
At least the colossus is sort of a glass-cannon unit. It has relatively low health compared to the amount it costs and the damage it deals, and it can be easily sniped by AA. But overall, I can't really disagree that colossi are not as hype as a lot of alternatives.
On the other hand, the way colossi walk across cliffs and shoot criss-crossing laser beams of fiery death is really visually appealing. Somehow it still gives me chills after seeing it a million times.
Edit: P.S. ExquisiteRed, I'm guessing you don't pay attention to the 2D fighter community. Using "hype" as an adjective similar in meaning to "exciting" (or as a noun roughly meaning "excitement") is pretty common slang there and in a few other places by now.
I like the colossus as a unit, and i think it fits protoss very well. Though i agree it doesn't require that much skill, in a way it's good, as it's noob friendly, but on the other hand it's visually appealing, and fits toss style and phylosphy well. What is wrong is that toss has to rely on it so much, as one of component of almost all their strategies, specially now that KA is being removed, then it's going to be seen pretty much in all matchups and all games. I wish it was only a choice. For instance, toss being able to chose going with colossus, HT, reavers, carriers, etc, or even a mix. What we see now is P going colossus every game, and having it always as the savior, since most other units suck by themselves without good damage dealers like colossus and HT. Colossus drop would also be good, if warp prisms moved faster. Warp prism upgrade is probably toss's most unused upgrade, along with shileds lvl 3. Might as well remove it, make it cheaper / quicker, or increase Warp prism's speed by default, to encourage all kinds of drops.
@MindRush If you would nerf the colossus, i'm sorry, but protoss w/l ratio would just plummet with a laughable HT and a nerfed colossus, not even worth playing P anymore, so you should mention the consequences of such drastic measure, or something to compensate that nerf with. Oh, and colossus is not that mobile as you think. Apart from the cliff moving. Terrans bioball with a bunch of medivacs goes stimmed all the time, zerg pretty much all units are faster than average, so toss units are actually among the slowest, except for tanks. Actually, what a lot of terrans do vs colossus builds is drop on lots of places since the army is so immobile.
It's true. Coming from a Protoss player I can't argue the OP. Unfortunately the game is balanced around these boring dynamics and we're gonna have to wait until the expansion for any sort of dramatic changes like this.
On March 15 2011 09:09 Nanic wrote: reaver drops in sc2 :D that´s kinda interesting but sry guys sc2 isn´t made for the microkings
I would disagree, have you forgotten the baneling? Different units require more micro then others, however the Collusi doesn't compare to the reaver. But the game still involves micro, BW was hard not because of micro but because it was just hard to manage your economy and be everywhere at once. Not just microing reavers and other units.
All the old ZOMFG moments from SC1 are gone now, with the exception of the nuke which no one uses anyway. Reaver=dead, spider mine=dead, scourge=dead, plague=dead. It really feels to me like blizzard wanted it to be easy to play midlevel, and were willing to sacrifice super high level play inorder to do so. People have been saying this ever since beta, what with all the MBS and smart cast hate thats been flooding TL forums for years now. The only HOLYSHITHEDIDWHAT moments now are from the hunterseeker missile (no one uses), and psy storm (getting nerfed), and nukes which are so easy to avoid as to make them near useless. Standard macro play is much stronger, which is all well and good, its just boring as hell to watch. "Oh look player one has a giant army, oh look the army just 1a attacked into player 2's base, oh look gg wow I didnt see that coming."
Maybe it's just me, but I get a lot more excited as a spectator seeing Ultras run into a battle than colossus. It was kinda the same in BW, where you might hear "ULLTTRRAAAAAAAAA!! ULTRA ULTRA ULTRA!" but you would never ever ever hear "COLOOOSSSUUUSSS" in SC2. The Ultra is not much more dynamic or interesting than the colossus, but I think it's safe to say that they are more exciting to watch. Is it just because they're more rare to see?
Just bringing this up to try to gauge what makes a relatively boring unit at the base level more interesting than another boring unit.
That's a really interesting point about what makes thigns exciting. I don't think that Blizzard will (or should) make such a change at this point in the game, but that kind of thing is something for them to keep in mind for HotS.
On March 15 2011 09:11 Meatloaf wrote: Agreed , I use P and try to stay out of colossi builds because how boring they are to my eyes....
Its funny because when i play against terran they build some Vikings anyway almost always
I try to as well but it's really tough, and even harder in PvP when it makes it past 4gate garbage. I always used to use Colossi vs. Terran but then they started making vikings. When High Templars first became popular you'd get attacked by a terran with 20 vikings that would do nothing while the entire army got fried by storms, but then Terrans caught on and built ghosts so I'm back to colossi with phoenix support to take out viking and it seems to be working so far (almost too well to a point, it seems to even work okay against mech if you have zealots to tank damage from thors and use the phoenixes to harrass expansions).
To me the colossus doesn't live up to its namesake. Colossus implies a gigantic, slow, hard-hitting unit that seldom hits, but when it does it hits hard. The current Colossus is relatively quick, attacks quickly, and doesn't do huge amounts of damage except in groups of 2 or more. To me, it should be like the mothership (if it didn't suck), a huge, highly expensive unit that changes the entire game once it hits the field, which isn't until the very end of the game or at least in the late game.
why does colossus need to be the unit that has 'hype'? why can't colossus be standard and storm drops be 'hype'? tanks are good, but not 'hype' why is that a problem? i don't get what everyone hates so much about colossi and i play zerg! as for amazing micro tricks, have patience, marine micro is still pretty new, who knows what else people will work out soon?
Watching sansenith's HT play was so refreshing & exciting I wish it could stay next patch. I like how units were all over the place being micro'd instead of one giant blob of a cluster fuck vs another giant blob of a cluster fuck. It's boring and not really exciting anymore especially when the game is decided off 1-2 single huge battles because they cost an insane amount of resources and time to be built.
The sad thing is that it's not just the colossus - it's almost every single unit in the game. Even the most "exciting" units like infestors and high templar with storm can't compare to things like lurkers, defilers, reavers and spider mines.
I agree with the idea of the OP. This is a very interesting topic for me. I like the ideas that Mindrush and Valthus have put forth to add excitement. I always thought it was a mistake to take out scourge. They were such a great unit for excitement. Will the drop get killed by scourge? Will the vessel pull back to the mnm before it gets killed? Can Jaedong pull off the muta vs scourge micro?
My initial reaction (when first starting to play SC2) to the Collossi was "OMG that is the coolest thing ever! It walks up cliffs, shoots awesome cross laser things that set stuff on FIRE! OMG this is baller, war of the worlds here I come."
Then you play against them in every single game and they stop being as cool...
All balance discussion aside, Collossi need something. Currently there is no reason not to make them Vs Z, and that in itself is detrimental to an E-sport. Like everyone else has said Blizz need to make the game entertaining for spectators aswell, and 1a moving accross the map isnt exactly exciting.
It isn't just doing a whole bunch of damage that makes it exciting, its how it does it. And this is where the Colossus fails.
My sentiments exactly, very little micro control needed. Occasionally move damaged ones away from the fire fight...
Would be much more exciting to see micro intense battles, like when Boxer used to dance marines around Lurker attacks in SC1. That was very exciting. I was literally on the edge of my seat.
I really like the OP's idea. Though I think anything that would make Protoss more difficult to play would make it a more enjoyable race to watch. As it is is ff is the only thing they have to do during a fight, and thats just crazy boring and stupid to watch.
Outside of high level PvP play I really don't get that excited about colossus play. I personally like Templar usage much more. I also don't really think that they should make those kind of changes to the colossus, since SC2 is a much faster paced game than Brood War was. It actually makes more sense to have them do less damage and move and shoot the speed at which they do. Colossus are actually extremely good for mineral line harass when used with a warp prism. I have only seen this done a handful of times, but I would not be surprised to see more of this type of harass in the future.
As far as PvP is concerned, colossus can create tons of hype at the higher level play. One good example of this is in the GSL Mar semi-finals with oGsMC VS sanZenith.
On March 15 2011 09:28 kerpal wrote: why does colossus need to be the unit that has 'hype'? why can't colossus be standard and storm drops be 'hype'? tanks are good, but not 'hype' why is that a problem? i don't get what everyone hates so much about colossi and i play zerg! as for amazing micro tricks, have patience, marine micro is still pretty new, who knows what else people will work out soon?
On March 15 2011 09:29 Dromar wrote: I agree with the idea of the OP. This is a very interesting topic for me. I like the ideas that Mindrush and Valthus have put forth to add excitement. I always thought it was a mistake to take out scourge. They were such a great unit for excitement. Will the drop get killed by scourge? Will the vessel pull back to the mnm before it gets killed? Can Jaedong pull off the muta vs scourge micro?
Why does everyone spell my name with an L? lol. But ya scourge was one of my favourite units i'm still sad that they took it out ):
Calm down everyone, we still have two more expansions to hope for an exciting unit...
Imagine the time before BW, no DTs, Corsairs, Lurkers, Medics. Sound a bit boring eh? Just hold your horses for a little bit and let Blizzard work their magic.
We started seeing templar use, and now it'll be nothing but colossi again. Cool harass, low unit play like Sanzenith will not be possible in a couple weeks.
Even those who try to avoid colossi won't really have a choice, are you going to beat that stimmed bio ball with blinker stalkers and chargelots? No, your not.
I agree with this entire thread until the last section. I think your idea is very correct, but your solution to it is very incorrect. I don't know what the solution is, but it certainly is not that.
So how could the Colossus be more hype? Replace it with the Reaver?
Nope, you wouldn't even have to do something that extreme. Just make the Colossus shoot half as fast at twice the damage (30x2), and make it move slow as hell. This should have little impact on how much dps the Colossus does in a giant ball. It does however, open up the possibility for mineral line harassment and require Colossi to have Warp Prisms with them if they want to get anywhere fast.
For the animation, imagine the Colossus chargin' it's lasers, then releasing a strong blast all at once. Think Yamato Cannon. The charge would build so much hype.
Thoughts? Do you guys still get excited when a player masses Colossi? I sure don't.
Y'know I usually don't pay much mind to these kind of threads, but I think you have a valid point here. Collo deathball is just plain boring, I agree. I like your suggestion, it would definitely involve more micro and open up creative play. But, as usual, I'm not sure how the balance of all this would work. As a T player for one, I can just imagine vikings being just 10x more devastating vs that suggestion and leaving a P way too vulnerable for my bio ball.
Maybe the collo is just non entertaining and there's nothing we can really do about it. I don't know
this suggestion actually makes it just about impossible for P to micro colossi, which is one of the few skills that is interesting to watch, when a z/t is trying to pick off the colossi and the p is trying to keep them safe.. that's pretty 'hype' if you ask me.
colossi beam animation should be dodgeable, like lurkers spines were in BW! Make it so that splitting armies and strong micro can over come the odds of colossi, that would make it more interesting. As it is, you can't dodge the colossi once it engages it's animation. Look at Huk vs Inca on shakuras, inca had a colossi and attacked huks stalker and blinked away yet the animation extended itself and still hit that stalker.
On March 15 2011 09:28 kerpal wrote: why does colossus need to be the unit that has 'hype'? why can't colossus be standard and storm drops be 'hype'? tanks are good, but not 'hype' why is that a problem? i don't get what everyone hates so much about colossi and i play zerg! as for amazing micro tricks, have patience, marine micro is still pretty new, who knows what else people will work out soon?
Ideally all units should cause hype.
that's absurd. units aren't what causes 'hype' (i refuse to accept that this is a legitimate term) micro is. if you can micro units then you can cause 'hype' and if people would go figure out ways to beat colossus or micro tricks to win colossus vs colossus battles the game could be more interesting, rather than the forums being so very busy.
One thing I'd like to know, though, is the balance and amount of interesting mechanics during the first few months of Starcraft 1. If it was pretty boring, maybe Starcraft 2 will end up just like how BW is now.
And Colossus is TERRIBLY boring. Even MMM ball is now MMM drops, which are actually quite interesting when they do damage (a lot like reavers, 'cause who thinks a dead reaver who did nothing is cool?).
I agree with the idea that colossus make matchups boring in SC2. But my issue with a lot of the posts in this thread are the "well brood war had this and it was awesome". THIS ISN'T BROOD WAR. Browder and the whole design team has stated multiple times that they aren't trying to make just a remake of Brood War, they're trying to make a game based off Brood War. I'm tired of hearing all the crap about how cool stuff was in Brood War. YES. It was cool, but Starcraft 2 is a different game. I'm not trying to hate on Brood War, but some people need to move on and accept that you aren't going to see Reavers, Lurkers, and Spider Mines in Starcraft 2.
Sorry for the rant. I'm in no way trying to say that SC2 is better than BW, in fact I think BW games for the most part are more entertaining than a lot of the SC2 games we have seen.
On topic: The main reason we all find colossus play boring is because robo-builds are the safest builds protoss can do (for the most part). And because that is the tech path people tend to choose at first I think they tend to get stuck in it, where they are afraid to branch away due to how strong the colossus is. I'm not sure how we (or blizzard) could fix this, maybe if carriers could be made more viable somehow (again not sure how to do this). Protoss players would feel more inclined to move away from such colossus heavy play.
yeah collosus are super boring but the sad fact is you must make them if you want to win vs players of equal skill and i really dont think blizzard will redesign the whole unit.. they might do it for the next expansion pack like they did with warcraft 3 where they pretty much changed the whole game with their new armor system
On March 15 2011 09:38 emc wrote: colossi beam animation should be dodgeable, like lurkers spines were in BW! Make it so that splitting armies and strong micro can over come the odds of colossi, that would make it more interesting. As it is, you can't dodge the colossi once it engages it's animation. Look at Huk vs Inca on shakuras, inca had a colossi and attacked huks stalker and blinked away yet the animation extended itself and still hit that stalker.
you can't dodge it, but you can micro to spread your units out. it's not the same game, stop expecting all the cool bits to be in the same places.
It's not like there isn't hype around P already? Ever heard a korean crowd when a dark shrine pops? Or a hidden proxy pylon is ABOUT to be used?... Or a player open with a forge? Just a protoss lategame going for carriers or mothership... Wanna see hype? Go watch an archon toilet before 1.3 destroys it! There's plenty hype. But yes, hype, balance and entertainment are not the same thing. And I think Blizz is more worried about balance than hype. Where's the hype in Terran then - honestly? I can think of nukes... which is used sooooo rarely it's hype just because of the rareness (<-- dunno if that's a real word) - and MAYBE blueflame drop/cloaked banshee. Where's the hype in Zerg nowadays? Banelings - obviously... God, do we love them banelings... What else? Infestors, fast pools and... Well, I guess I would even give them the swarm - or simply the 300supply push where they just overwhelm... But yeah, I've seen too many games to be excited about marines poking a Z with tanks sieged in the back ready to destroy banes...
Of all the 3 races I see protoss as the most hyped one.
SC2 just seems to be really boring games cause of things like this. There is really no crazy exciting unit other than banelings. I only really enjoy watching Zerg games mainly because of the endless excitement that comes with a unit like banelings.
Now I get why the protoss orginally sealed these weapons of mass destruction. Not only are they catastrophically powerful, they're boring as hell
In all seriousness though, I agree with the OP. For such an important and powerful unit, I don't get any excitement when I see protoss tech to it. As for your 'solution', I don't agree with the damage nerf but a speed nerf would be pretty interesting.
On March 15 2011 09:44 Mentalizor wrote: Where's the hype in Terran then - honestly? I can think of nukes... which is used sooooo rarely it's hype just because of the rareness (<-- dunno if that's a real word) - and MAYBE blueflame drop/cloaked banshee.
T is less about hype and more about gritting your teeth and hoping it doesn't all fall apart while the tank/bunker advance slowly builds up and builds up until it's unstoppable. =P Or in cloaked banshees, except that they're just a little too common to be hype like DTs are. Maybe Point Defense Drone is the future of hype for Terran?
i completly disagree, collosus give hyper because they are such important units, if some corrupters or vikings take down the collosus, that is pretty game changing. Therefore there is, or at least should be, hype around viking/corrupter micro, with viking micro being much more entertaining, especially considering how good collosus are against bio.
also when the cliff walking is abused, this creates some nice hype
I think this is one reason why ZvT and TvT are really the best matches in the game for spectators. The tension of a tank/marine push is quite nice and there's a huge release of tension if the defender can break it.
It's also fun to watch Z and T harass each other.
It's not fun watching a Protoss build up their ball and conversely the Zerg build up the counter-ball (which may or may not work). It's not fun to see VR/Col walk across the map and win very easily. It's not fun to see Protoss stuck in this one playstyle - possibly even more locked into it with the removal of KA.
I really hope the infestor buff with 1.3 will at least give Zerg the tool they finally need to deal with the Protoss ball of doom, but if that works, what will the Protoss be left with? Will they need to tech to HT just for feedback while still getting out Colossus? That sounds even more turtle-y than they tend to be now. I guess we'll have to wait and see how that works out.
On March 15 2011 09:48 L3g3nd_ wrote: i completly disagree, collosus give hyper because they are such important units, if some corrupters or vikings take down the collosus, that is pretty game changing. Therefore there is, or at least should be, hype around viking/corrupter micro, with viking micro being much more entertaining, especially considering how good collosus are against bio.
also when the cliff walking is abused, this creates some nice hype
lol you can have important units that have more "hype" than just what they generate on their own for being imporatnt. For you, the collossi generate hype simply by being important. Well then any powerful, but limited in number, important unit generates hype. Reavers could be boring as hell and still have hype because they are indeed important; they are extremely powerful. Howeer, the way in which they are powerful generates even more excitement and tension.
On March 15 2011 09:38 emc wrote: colossi beam animation should be dodgeable, like lurkers spines were in BW! Make it so that splitting armies and strong micro can over come the odds of colossi, that would make it more interesting. As it is, you can't dodge the colossi once it engages it's animation. Look at Huk vs Inca on shakuras, inca had a colossi and attacked huks stalker and blinked away yet the animation extended itself and still hit that stalker.
THIS and my original post
On March 15 2011 09:11 LesPhoques wrote: In my opinion, colossus AoE must be changed. I always wanted colossi to work like a lurker. You see first spike and you got .75 seconds to move your marines away from approaching spikes by moving them left or right. Brings excitement. Make lasers for colossi to have a small delay with indication in ground where it will hit so players can micro their army to dodge that attack. Also make colossi be able to change its lasers beam. Currently it is horizontal but having an option of making it attack vertically too (Cooldown of change will be 3-5 seconds or whatever time it will make sense). Would make colossi a lot more interesting and blink stalkers should beat colossi ball in pvp if microed correctly.
I'm sorry for sounding like this, but the protoss race is pretty "anti-hype" and makes any matchup with it incredibly boring to watch.
Colossi mass up into a ball, then attack. Storms used to require skill to clone and blanket storm, now it's just spam t and win the game, or if you get emp'd just warp more templar in and spam t. I especially hate it when casters say "nice storms", because they weren't nice. It took the player 2 index fingers to destroy an army.
Forcefields, same thing. A guy with larger army approaching you? forcefield it away or cut it in half to decimate it with a much smaller army.
Spells are so abusive in SC2, they do way too much and are way too easily used. Protoss just happens to have the most of them.
collosus used to do more damage but it was nerfed to 15 x2 (but at a faster firing rate). The reasoning for this is that at 0 upgrades you could 1 shot a line of lings and with 1 or 2 ups, you could one shot a line of rines.
On March 15 2011 09:28 kerpal wrote: why does colossus need to be the unit that has 'hype'? why can't colossus be standard and storm drops be 'hype'? tanks are good, but not 'hype' why is that a problem? i don't get what everyone hates so much about colossi and i play zerg! as for amazing micro tricks, have patience, marine micro is still pretty new, who knows what else people will work out soon?
Ideally all units should cause hype.
that's absurd. units aren't what causes 'hype' (i refuse to accept that this is a legitimate term) micro is. if you can micro units then you can cause 'hype' and if people would go figure out ways to beat colossus or micro tricks to win colossus vs colossus battles the game could be more interesting, rather than the forums being so very busy.
Ok let me rephrase. Ideally, from an esports perspective, all units should have the potential to cause hype. I was not denying that micro isnt needed for hype or that its the units themselves that cause the hype. Micro is very important but there is very little micro that goes into the colossus. Theres just not any potential. Warp prism + colossus micro would indefinitely be more exciting to watch, but I dont think its very necessary, especially for how risky it is to execute.
Your suggestion is wrong, because it would make colossi balls even stronge. Being about to do 2x the damage in the same amount of time, even if the second shot comes 2x later, is a lot more stronger. Think about it: The entire zerg army would just get blown up before the roaches, or even worst, hydras can even do some damage. After that, it doesn't matter if their second shots come later, since the ground army will be decimated by the gateway units.
Personally, I don't think it's gonna change anytime soon. HT just began to be used more and more, and blizzard decided to nerf them. It's still very strong, but people will just go "meh" and go back with the colossi. Tho, the HTs made the game really high in hype because it requires skill in storm positionning, spreading the HTs, avoiding the EMPs, etc. I would still like to see them more in PvZ in the form of HTs + immortals, but I don't think people are gonna quit a winning formula.
You guys I think I have came across a solution to this: 1) make the collo move slower (as stated in OP)...
Before the collusus does it's criss crossing lazor beams it first lights up the effected area for .5 or .75 seconds with a bright red
Once this is started it cannot be stopped and the collusus cannot move, cool down is also increased
Then after have the light up do their thing lighting up the area with their already standard damage but increase the laser brightness and intensity
To comopensate for the increased attack cool down wherever the collosus hits the ground with the lasers the ground LIGHTS ON FIRE, dealing any unit that walks over it 2-6 damage a second over 3-10 seconds. (whatever would be balanced). This fire damage would deal damage to friendlies.
You can make the collusus now attack nothing, just to light the ground on fire.
Are Colossi powerful? I think so. Are they more boring than the Reaver+Shuttle? I also think so.
IMO, if I was a fictional Protoss commander, I would prefer to use Colossi over the Reaver+Shuttle since they are just more efficient and powerful at front line combat compared to the Reaver. Colossi have the power of the Reaver with the mobility of a Shuttle, and as a fictional Protoss commander I would be hard pressed not to include them in my fictional Protoss arsenal.
However, I do agree with the OP that Colossi, despite being powerful, are perhaps too efficient at their job and just simply do not create much tension and hype in the game. They are certainly a better front-line combat unit compared to the Reaver+Shuttle, though at the huge cost of excitement, or lack thereof.
Nevertheless, though we'll most likely not see many changes with the Colossi stats, I'm sure Blizzard will address the lack of "hype" options in SC2 later in their future expansions. I'm sure it won't be difficult to include a powerful, hard-to-use unit in the Protoss arsenal that covers the hype role that the Reaver+Shuttle had. The Colossi may be a core unit, but Blizzard can still add stuff around it without stepping on its role too much.
I've been complaining about this since beta, so it's nice to see others feel the same way.
Probably the biggest issue for SC2's long-term appeal is the fact that the most important units in SC2 are also the most boring. Colossi have very little micro-potential (except moving 1-2 back to avoid harrassment, yippee...), there's almost nothing you can do with them except 1a, yet they're so powerful you basically have to make them in every single P game. A major advantage BW had was that the most important units also were very exciting to watch. Zerg games were often decided by intelligent defiler/lurker/scourge use, and those units are still to this day seen as the most entertaining units in the game. Terrans had vultures, siege tanks, and science vessels the provide excitement. Protoss had reavers and BW storms. SC2 has a couple of exciting units like the baneling, but definitely nowhere near the excitement of most BW units.
Now I'm not saying that Blizzard should just replace everything with BW units, but they should definitely add or rework units so that they have the excitement that will keep the game fun to watch.
I don't see why units need to be changed to add more excitement, you single out the collossus and make it sound like its the only unit that isnt very excited because its really strong. When i look at the game and think of exciting units in themselves, off the top of my head i think of; 1.Banelings 2.Dark templars 3.Ravens This list is very small considering all the units in the game and are usually very exciting units in themselves but i dont think the units are the problem themselves. If you look at say Marinekingprime you might say the marine is exciting and awesome to watch but, its just the micro of the player themselves and not the unit. In the hands of creative and talented players I think any unit can be exciting to watch from baneling traps to DT rushes even possibly collossus. Just give it some time and people will think of clever ways of using the collossus!
Plus for me the Collossus always was one of the, if not the ugliest unit in the game that lacks coolness compared to other Protoss units. For the Zerg a giant scary beast(Ultralisk) and for the Terran a giant Mech, Transformers kind of thing(Thor) and for the Protoss a giant egghead with spiderlegs?
I would be happy if they would replace it with the reaver or design a new unit even if this wouldnt fill the giant ground unit category for Protoss anymore. But I guess it wont happen anyway.
On March 15 2011 09:41 Wr3k wrote: I play toss and I hate the colossi as well. It's so lame. I hardly use it anymore (HT/immortal) is more fun.
I miss reavers so much.
lol reavers caused me equal rage and happiness in bw. The non-expoding scarabs, the scarabs that take retarded paths to the target, the explosions that do no damage -.- sigh.
What if instead of trying to make a unit "hype" up a game more, we expand our play and don't just make a 1a ball of death? I honestly think the only reason people see colossi as a boring unit is because they are playing the game in a very basic form and not thinking outside the box.
On March 15 2011 09:56 Blyadischa wrote: I'm sorry for sounding like this, but the protoss race is pretty "anti-hype" and makes any matchup with it incredibly boring to watch.
Colossi mass up into a ball, then attack. Storms used to require skill to clone and blanket storm, now it's just spam t and win the game, or if you get emp'd just warp more templar in and spam t. I especially hate it when casters say "nice storms", because they weren't nice. It took the player 2 index fingers to destroy an army.
Forcefields, same thing. A guy with larger army approaching you? forcefield it away or cut it in half to decimate it with a much smaller army.
Spells are so abusive in SC2, they do way too much and are way too easily used. Protoss just happens to have the most of them.
Oh man, don't even get me started on ForceField. Hey lets add a spell that removes micro ability and leads to mass rape. Same goes with Fungal growth. Lets make a freeze spell thats cool.
The only spell that really gets me going on the excite factor is HSM. And thats gone because of its crap range and Slow Raven Speed that makes every spell suicidal. I under stand the 125 requirement, but at least make an upgrade that allows spell casters save up to 250 energy instead of the OP start with 25 more energy you seem to not be able to balance.
On March 15 2011 09:41 OverZero wrote: I agree with the idea that colossus make matchups boring in SC2. But my issue with a lot of the posts in this thread are the "well brood war had this and it was awesome". THIS ISN'T BROOD WAR. Browder and the whole design team has stated multiple times that they aren't trying to make just a remake of Brood War, they're trying to make a game based off Brood War. I'm tired of hearing all the crap about how cool stuff was in Brood War. YES. It was cool, but Starcraft 2 is a different game. I'm not trying to hate on Brood War, but some people need to move on and accept that you aren't going to see Reavers, Lurkers, and Spider Mines in Starcraft 2.
Sorry for the rant. I'm in no way trying to say that SC2 is better than BW, in fact I think BW games for the most part are more entertaining than a lot of the SC2 games we have seen.
On topic: The main reason we all find colossus play boring is because robo-builds are the safest builds protoss can do (for the most part). And because that is the tech path people tend to choose at first I think they tend to get stuck in it, where they are afraid to branch away due to how strong the colossus is. I'm not sure how we (or blizzard) could fix this, maybe if carriers could be made more viable somehow (again not sure how to do this). Protoss players would feel more inclined to move away from such colossus heavy play.
This isnt Brood War is getting old... Its the concept of the units from bw that people are comparing to. We all know its not bw and we dont want it to be either. We may want it to be more like bw in some aspects but thats it. There are concepts from bw that are far superior to its successor sc2 and thats why people bring bw up, conceptual comparison.
Blizzard has nurfed the high damage slow attacks of multiple units. The 2 that come to mind are the Thor and the colossus. They intentionally made them do the same DPS, just attack faster with less damage. Because when microed, they were too strong.
I hate to think that would happen to SC1 if the current blizzard team was tasked with balancing it. :-(
I think one of the biggest problems right now is how units don't really "work together". I hate to reference BW, but defiler/lurker/scourge those are units that worked great together. Or shuttle/reaver. In SC2 I just don't see that. Sure forcefields are cool, but theres no awesome abilities that you can use in conjuction with other units. Maybe I'm wrong and we just haven't explored all the possibilities.
Colossi are boring units. They don't need to be Reavers 2.0, but they should be more interesting than a 1a unit. They were *designed* to be 1a units, sadly--they spot over cliffs, so no fliers are needed, and they can cliff walk, so they work well in no matter which control group you place them in. They encourage sloppy and, more importantly, uninteresting play.
Sadly, it would require a major reworking of the whole game, I think, if such a fundamental unit was altered meaningfully(the KA removal all but guarantees colossus builds as the staple Protoss style, at least for the time being). Chalk this up to another, 'wait until heart of the swarm' type of suggestions. The OP is right, but I don't think much will be done about it.
My first reaction to this thread is why does it even matter? I'm not trying to troll but to be honest whether or not a unit is exciting doesn't really have much to do with anything. I'm struggling to see what the point of the thread it. It's like me making a thread saying phoenixes take good micro to use effectively. Yeah? So what? Blizzard doesn't change units because they aren't exciting enough. I'd rather have them focusing on stuff that really affects the game, such as balance.
Also, if anyone has ever seen a colossus drop, those definitely take dexterity.
The cliff-walking aspect of Colossi creates no hype. For a unit that does create hype using cliff-walking, see the Reaper.
Colossi are just boring, plain and simple. I see them like workers. You need them, but you don't go OHHHH SHITTT watching Drones mine minerals. I mean, sure, maybe your Drone is mining the last 5 minerals needed to make an Extractor in a base race right before your last building is about to die to the opponent's SCVs, but.. how often does that kind of thing happen?
On March 15 2011 09:44 Mentalizor wrote: Where's the hype in Terran then - honestly? I can think of nukes... which is used sooooo rarely it's hype just because of the rareness (<-- dunno if that's a real word) - and MAYBE blueflame drop/cloaked banshee.
Tanks, Hellions and Marines with their crazy burst damage --> hype. Thors/BattleCruisers cost a lot and look badass --> hype. Banshees easily have the potential to end the game if not properly countered --> hype. Ghosts are hype incarnate, with the stealth/risk/planning involved in Nuking, the potential to deal huge damage or nullify other strategies with EMP/Snipe. Marauders are probably the most boring Terran unit, but they shoot grenades that slow, so --> hype Medivacs carry precious cargo --> hype Reapers are cliffwalking Banshees without cloak as far as worker harass is concerned --> hype Vikings are like highly mobile ATA Marauders w/o slow, so --> hype
Zealots are beefy yet light standard melee units -> no hype, at least until Charge, but even then not really Sentries have FF and GS. GS is all number-play, FF is just expected and there really isn't too much you do with them besides the obvious --> no hype Dark Templar are compared to Banshees, but since they're so less mobile, they're going to just die in a scan in PvT - all that happens is that mining is interrupted for a few seconds, so it's just numbers --> little hype High Templar can shut down spellcasters and storm --> HYPE Immortals can do pretty decent damage to Armored pretty fast and counter Tanks, which are a hype unit, so.. --> some hype Motherships are fucking motherships --> HYPE Pheonix can lift shit, fly fast, are made out of balsa wood --> hype Void Rays can mess shit up if left alone to charge --> hype Warp Prisms, see Medivac, plus Warp In --> hype Carriers are rare and are pretty when they explode, but interceptors are boring as hell --> no real hype Archons aren't Massive, get slowed, do miniscule splash damage --> no hype Colossi are important, expensive, and big, boring damage --> some hype, but only if they're in danger
I think the Collosus would be better balanced if they were harder to get. By which, I mean that perhaps their build time is increased. With the Chrono Boost ability of the protoss, the Collosus build time does not appear too daunting, so it's easy to reach that critical mass quickly.
Perhaps if they're build time was closer to a Carrier's build time (i.e. 120 seconds), then they would be harder to get out en masse, and force more variety in order to get a max army.
'Colossi only need A-move. And sometimes they get moved back, whoopdie do'.
Hypocrite much?
PS. With cliffs, good micro players can take advantage of great colossi positioning due to cliff walk. So it's not all A-move. It's just players at the moment aren't taking advantage of that.
On March 15 2011 10:21 andrewwiggin wrote: LOL at OP.
'This ISN'T ABOUT IMBALANCE'
'Colossi only need A-move. And sometimes they get moved back, whoopdie do'.
Hypocrite much?
PS. With cliffs, good micro players can take advantage of great colossi positioning due to cliff walk. So it's not all A-move. It's just players at the moment aren't taking advantage of that.
Make colossus have 1 lazer that shoots in a line like hellion and make it like Sun Ray skill on the phoenix in DotA that would be sexy and harder to control + it could potentially do very nice dmgz while being very immobile once it's activated.
awesome post and sooo true, however a more important question, are blizzard designers reading TL at all? I see so many cool ideas posted on TL forums but feel kinda in-vane if Blizzard is not seeing this.
On March 15 2011 10:15 ChaosWielder wrote: Colossi are boring units. They don't need to be Reavers 2.0, but they should be more interesting than a 1a unit. They were *designed* to be 1a units, sadly--they spot over cliffs, so no fliers are needed, and they can cliff walk, so they work well in no matter which control group you place them in. They encourage sloppy and, more importantly, uninteresting play.
Sadly, it would require a major reworking of the whole game, I think, if such a fundamental unit was altered meaningfully(the KA removal all but guarantees colossus builds as the staple Protoss style, at least for the time being). Chalk this up to another, 'wait until heart of the swarm' type of suggestions. The OP is right, but I don't think much will be done about it.
Sad but true. I'm all for the whole user friendly aspect of SC2. But the lack of a challenge or anything to strive for is enough to even turn away the causals.
Personally i don't think difficulty will turn off causals. The game should be easy to pick up, but difficult to master. SCBW was Difficult in both aspects and thats why it was a turn off for causals. But theirs no reason to make the game easy to master.
How many people got excited with MKP Marine Micro. In one game Marines became the counter to Blings with gosu micro and TvZ became an exciting Match up. As a result all us non Pros had something to strive for and we practiced and practiced.
Easy to Pick up- Get the noob hooked(Starter Crack-Gets them excited) Difficulty- Keeps the noob coming back for more(Cheap Crack-Makes them rage and want more)
Completely agree. Storm has a similar problem where it doesn't actually kill things omgwtf like in brood war. Yes it does change battles but it does it subtly as compared to brood war where storm would literally tear through entire clumps. Brood war storm in sc2, however, would probably be imbalanced so nothing we can do about it
On March 15 2011 10:19 .Aar wrote: The cliff-walking aspect of Colossi creates no hype. For a unit that does create hype using cliff-walking, see the Reaper.
Colossi are just boring, plain and simple. I see them like workers. You need them, but you don't go OHHHH SHITTT watching Drones mine minerals. I mean, sure, maybe your Drone is mining the last 5 minerals needed to make an Extractor in a base race right before your last building is about to die to the opponent's SCVs, but.. how often does that kind of thing happen?
On March 15 2011 09:44 Mentalizor wrote: Where's the hype in Terran then - honestly? I can think of nukes... which is used sooooo rarely it's hype just because of the rareness (<-- dunno if that's a real word) - and MAYBE blueflame drop/cloaked banshee.
Tanks, Hellions and Marines with their crazy burst damage --> hype. Thors/BattleCruisers cost a lot and look badass --> hype. Banshees easily have the potential to end the game if not properly countered --> hype. Ghosts are hype incarnate, with the stealth/risk/planning involved in Nuking, the potential to deal huge damage or nullify other strategies with EMP/Snipe. Marauders are probably the most boring Terran unit, but they shoot grenades that slow, so --> hype Medivacs carry precious cargo --> hype Reapers are cliffwalking Banshees without cloak as far as worker harass is concerned --> hype Vikings are like highly mobile ATA Marauders w/o slow, so --> hype
Zealots are beefy yet light standard melee units -> no hype, at least until Charge, but even then not really Sentries have FF and GS. GS is all number-play, FF is just expected and there really isn't too much you do with them besides the obvious --> no hype Dark Templar are compared to Banshees, but since they're so less mobile, they're going to just die in a scan in PvT - all that happens is that mining is interrupted for a few seconds, so it's just numbers --> little hype High Templar can shut down spellcasters and storm --> HYPE Immortals can do pretty decent damage to Armored pretty fast and counter Tanks, which are a hype unit, so.. --> some hype Motherships are fucking motherships --> HYPE Pheonix can lift shit, fly fast, are made out of balsa wood --> hype Void Rays can mess shit up if left alone to charge --> hype Warp Prisms, see Medivac, plus Warp In --> hype Carriers are rare and are pretty when they explode, but interceptors are boring as hell --> no real hype Archons aren't Massive, get slowed, do miniscule splash damage --> no hype Colossi are important, expensive, and big, boring damage --> some hype, but only if they're in danger
Just my two cents.
er u seem a lil biased on some points. sentries no hype, and yet marauders some hype? thors and bcs look badass and cost alot but carriers dont?
On March 15 2011 09:56 Blyadischa wrote: I'm sorry for sounding like this, but the protoss race is pretty "anti-hype" and makes any matchup with it incredibly boring to watch.
Colossi mass up into a ball, then attack. Storms used to require skill to clone and blanket storm, now it's just spam t and win the game, or if you get emp'd just warp more templar in and spam t. I especially hate it when casters say "nice storms", because they weren't nice. It took the player 2 index fingers to destroy an army.
Forcefields, same thing. A guy with larger army approaching you? forcefield it away or cut it in half to decimate it with a much smaller army.
Spells are so abusive in SC2, they do way too much and are way too easily used. Protoss just happens to have the most of them.
Yes, if only another race could press 'T' and completely destroy an army.
All jokes aside, Colossi are boring as hell. I'd prefer something that either was less vulnerable (so could be used for harass in a warp prism) or something less pivotal (so it wasn't a requirement). As it stands, Templar tech is really a poor-man's robo tech, and air tech is - finicky - to say the least. They're usable, but why not just use the easier a-move colossus?
What would happen if the Collosus attack was changed from an instant-hit laser beam to a missile attack more akin to the Raven's seeker missile (something that you have time to micro against to eliminate or reduce damage). Would that make things a little bit more interesting? And how do you feel it would change the game?
You suggest nerfing the Colossus to hell for viewer sake? What league are you in?
If you don't think you're majorly nerfing the Colossus with your suggested changes then you need to like.. put 5 more seconds of thought into it.
Yeah, Colossus are boring, but so are a lot of things. Maybe a Reaver would be more exciting, but Blizzard will never change it that much, not in this game at least.
This thread is nothing more than QQ disguised in a half-baked argument. Dragoons were boring in BW, but Stalkers are exciting in SC2 with Blink. Motherships are exciting, forcefields are exciting, etc. There is so much compensation that it's such a moot point to bring up and awful justification for such a major change or nerf.
I don't think he's talking about nerfing the Collosus so much as he's trying to make an argument to change the design of the unit itself to make the gameplay surrounding it more engaging for the players.
On March 15 2011 10:51 oldgregg wrote: what is this KA removal ppl are talking about?
o High Templar
+ Khaydarin Amulet upgrade (+25 starting energy) has been removed.
On March 15 2011 10:19 S.O.L.I.D. wrote: My first reaction to this thread is why does it even matter? I'm not trying to troll but to be honest whether or not a unit is exciting doesn't really have much to do with anything. I'm struggling to see what the point of the thread it. It's like me making a thread saying phoenixes take good micro to use effectively. Yeah? So what? Blizzard doesn't change units because they aren't exciting enough. I'd rather have them focusing on stuff that really affects the game, such as balance.
Also, if anyone has ever seen a colossus drop, those definitely take dexterity.
it has nothing to do with anything if you dont care about the whole esport part of the game and if its exciting to watch, which highly determines how successfull and durable a game will be as an esport title.
also unit excitement and micro tension can determine how much fun ppl can get out of the battles as a player.. plus can give you long time motivation because you have some more room to improve.
so aslong as you are not only interested in playing a pure macro and decision making rts games without spectators, such subjects remain worthy of discussion.
The design philosophy for SC2 was to remove as much luck as possible from the game. Whereas BW had quite a bit of uncertainty, the burst DPS units / AoE / micro vs micro (lurker vs mm; scourge use in general) comprised a higher percentage of the game:
Scourge Spider Mines Reaver Scarab High Templar (large range of efficacy that scaled with user skill) Lockdown EMP (ok, not as exciting but stopping drops with EMP is fucking sick and makes a huge difference in the game, or EMPing two clumped arbiters and all of the sudden their attack fails without stasis; oh yeah, it's somewhat hard to land depending on the circumstances) Lurker vs. MM (ok this isn't spell or ability, but this is a high tension encounter that can cause huge swings in the game, so it should be included) Tanks in TvT (flash's tank usage is :D~) Zergling Control in ZvZ (ridiculously hard and unforgiving) ZvT Mutalisk Micro
All of these situations in the game all have the potential for big damage, and can hinge on the slimmest margins of superior skill or timing. So there's this (relatively) balanced dance that each side has a chance at winning. Failure is met with decisive explosions and gore and one army disappearing.
What do we have on the SC2 side of things (full disclosure: I don't own the game, but I do watch streams)
Banelings versus Bio Burrowed Banelings versus Bio Phoenix Graviton Beam (kind of one-sided, but I think it's a cool mechanic that requires a decent amount of precision and control) Forcefields (imbalanced and fun as hell to watch good players use) Blink Stalker Micro (not necessarily dramatic, but a decent skill mechanic overall)
I might be missing or two things for SC2, but here's what I see as examples of the "luck" being taken out of the game. You took the reaver's damage and mobility (+shuttle) and made it more conservative, doing less but guaranteed damage combined with easier-to-perform unit control. High Templar are now less powerful, but are easier to use. Zerg versus Bio still retains some of its excitement, but at the cost of combining the lurker and scourge into the baneling.
On the positive side, if PTR patch becomes official, you will be able to dodge fungal growth which will hopefully produce some more dynamic micro versus micro.
I've been thinking like the exact same thing! (the conclusion)
Stronger, but slower; like a Colossus. Makes sense right? Big and strong, but not fast. Perhaps they could even edit its acceleration to be a little slower (speed too may be) so that it's not as easy to just kite over and over; you'll have to anticipiate any snipes a bit before hand to get the Colossi to start moving, or you'll have to use Warp Prisms.
This would also help fix the deathball problem; after all, a deathball shouldn't move too fast or else it's both strong and mobile.
I can imagine the animation, it would be so much cooler xD
Blizzard also adjusted the Colossi speed a few times, with the newest change i think because they wanted it to be able to do better against smaller units right? Now that the game has developed a good bit, I hope they will change it again (HotS? although that would be a really late change; you don't see these in BW).
And yeah it would be sort of like a Reaver; drops would be more effective since slow units with slow attacks synergize well with drop micro.
LOL at OP.
'This ISN'T ABOUT IMBALANCE'
'Colossi only need A-move. And sometimes they get moved back, whoopdie do'.
Hypocrite much?
Lol at yourself. I could say "a marine has really high dps, omg!" but that's not balance talk, that's just pointing a fact out.
If you're trying to make the colossi more interesting it probably also shouldn't do it's splash in a shape that the units have to be in to be able to attack effectively.
@A3iL3r0n Unfortunately they took out the projectile part of the Fungal changes so no play there either.
SC2 fights have way too much certainty and come down way too much to math . I wish they would take steps to correct it. Even FF/Gravitron as silly/stupid because there's no 2nd part to the dynamic. There's no real 'counter' micro/positional play to FFs other than baiting them which is of questionable worth given how many FFs a protoss has at their disposal.
Actually there are very few units in SC2 that can cause any kind of hype, the rest is just plain bland. In the long term a lot of people are going to get bored of it and just stop watching games.
Ahahaha wombo combo i was there when jeff and mitchell did that, best moment of my life. Without waffles, it wouldnt have been nearly as hype though.
Collosi are boring, its been discussed to death already. They dont have any flashy surprise factor, and you can micro them fancily if the opponent doesnt have viking/corruptor, but thats the extent of it. Theyre slow, bulky deathball units.
Awww but i LOVE hype.. Yeah they are boring but you can't really blame current protosses for using them; they are just so damn good.. I don't think anti-hype is Collossus specific - in terms of specific units, there is very little hype quality .. It usually comes down to inventive strategy and matchups rather than specific unit potential
They should make the Colossus fall such a heavy and gruesome death that it deals splash damage where it dies.Then the protoss will have to micro his Gateway units away from the falling Colossus. Also, Suicide Colossus!
I feel like we still need to give more time to allow the game to develop certain crowd-pleasing play. If you continue watching that Day9 daily you posted where the MM ball dies to 1 baneling, Mondragon uses some interesting mid to late game infestor play, going roach/infestor with neural parasite play against the Thors. Day9 said he believed that strategies like that will become more common as the game develops. That's not to say its the equivalent of a reaver drop, but I think it shows that there are a lot of lesser used strategies and underused abilities that might see more usage in the future as players become better or as the metagame shifts.
I'd extend the anti-hype argument to voidrays and dark templar as well. The balance with these units feel okay, but the design of the Protoss race feels overall skewed. I'd call colossi, voidrays and dark templar kill units, in the sense that if you're not prepared for that one unit then the game can instantly be over. If you don't produce enough vikings or corruptors (or on the opposite end, over commit) then the game is almost always instantly over. Protoss having at least one of these feels okay, they had dark templar in the BW days, and Terran has banshees, a very unforgiving unit. But 3 separate units that are capable of simply winning a game against an unprepared opponent feels somewhat ill-designed. The reason I bring up voidrays and dts is because to a spectator, when seeing a Protoss rush for these they can already see the outcome. There's no uncertainty on if the strategy will work, it either obviously will or obviously wont.
But the OP is right, outside of an emergency colossus spawning when being broken by some all-in to save the day, colossi are very boring because you already know what'll happen. Protoss will mass colossi, get sentries to make their colossi even more effective, get phoenix to make their colossi survive longer. Does this hurt the balance of the game? Not necessarily, but I'd say it hurts the excitement of watching.
The only counterargument I'd make is TvP in BW. It was pretty well established that Terran would sit back and make a 200/200 mech army, then go kill the Protoss. And aside from vulture harass, it was entirely up to the Protoss to make the match more exciting with recalls or a carrier switch. So eh, maybe it's okay that colossi are anti-hype.
On March 15 2011 10:19 S.O.L.I.D. wrote: My first reaction to this thread is why does it even matter? I'm not trying to troll but to be honest whether or not a unit is exciting doesn't really have much to do with anything. I'm struggling to see what the point of the thread it. It's like me making a thread saying phoenixes take good micro to use effectively. Yeah? So what? Blizzard doesn't change units because they aren't exciting enough. I'd rather have them focusing on stuff that really affects the game, such as balance.
Also, if anyone has ever seen a colossus drop, those definitely take dexterity.
it has nothing to do with anything if you dont care about the whole esport part of the game and if its exciting to watch, which highly determines how successfull and durable a game will be as an esport title.
also unit excitement and micro tension can determine how much fun ppl can get out of the battles as a player.. plus can give you long time motivation because you have some more room to improve.
so aslong as you are not only interested in playing a pure macro and decision making rts games without spectators, such subjects remain worthy of discussion.
I suppose that's true. But I feel like it's difficult to make every unit exciting, and excitement should take a back seat to balance like I said. I feel like one unit being boring or exciting isn't going to make or break SC2 as an eSport, but I see that you guys mean by saying it can help.
Funny, there's a similar thread like this on another popular rts forum about how taking out KA is overkill, and how too much colossus is boring to watch and see. Really seems like it's general opinion. Rarely do i see someone that preferres watching colossus over storms, or that would want to see more colossus play. Probably blizzard should pay attention to this, if it's so general of a feeling.
On March 15 2011 10:19 S.O.L.I.D. wrote: My first reaction to this thread is why does it even matter? I'm not trying to troll but to be honest whether or not a unit is exciting doesn't really have much to do with anything. I'm struggling to see what the point of the thread it. It's like me making a thread saying phoenixes take good micro to use effectively. Yeah? So what? Blizzard doesn't change units because they aren't exciting enough. I'd rather have them focusing on stuff that really affects the game, such as balance.
Also, if anyone has ever seen a colossus drop, those definitely take dexterity.
it has nothing to do with anything if you dont care about the whole esport part of the game and if its exciting to watch, which highly determines how successfull and durable a game will be as an esport title.
also unit excitement and micro tension can determine how much fun ppl can get out of the battles as a player.. plus can give you long time motivation because you have some more room to improve.
so aslong as you are not only interested in playing a pure macro and decision making rts games without spectators, such subjects remain worthy of discussion.
I suppose that's true. But I feel like it's difficult to make every unit exciting, and excitement should take a back seat to balance like I said. I feel like one unit being boring or exciting isn't going to make or break SC2 as an eSport, but I see that you guys mean by saying it can help.
The problem is that even though it's just one unit, every Protoss matchup is pretty much dominated by it and Blizzard is pushing balance changes that will make Protoss even more Colossus based; so it looks like more Colossus ball yawn fests are incoming after we've felt the excitement of Gateway/Templar based play.
Awesome post. I really hope Blizzard reads this and does something with it. I agree, colossus need to be more powerful with more glaring weaknesses. That, or replace them.
I remember in beta, colossi drops were used pretty often (WhiteRa vs TLO comes to mind.) Anyone know what happened to that? I assume it got nerfed or something.
Doubling the Colossi damage and halving the attack speed, whilst having no impact on their actual DPS, would be a tremendously overpowered buff when you consider that the very first attack will almost kill an entire army. It doesn't matter how slow your attack is if there's nothing left standing after the first shot.
Why not remove Thermal Lance and give additionnal range when the Colossus is on high ground? I would do this for all units, high ground = +1 or 2 range
On March 15 2011 12:00 AndAgain wrote: I remember in beta, colossi drops were used pretty often (WhiteRa vs TLO comes to mind.) Anyone know what happened to that? I assume it got nerfed or something.
They don't 1-shot workers anymore, making them pretty worthless for drop play.
I do agree with OP, scourge, defiler, reaver, lurker, mines were all exciting units which took a great amount of skill to use properly. In exchange, the only new interesting units we got are banelings and sentries. Corrupter, infestor, colossus are such boring units in comparison to their counter parts.
Good OP. I completely agree. Protoss is fun to watch if the player use Immortals and HT. If the Protoss player goes for a big ball of gateway-meat and as many collosi as possible, the game is soooo boring. Hate this.
I completely agree. Although the colossus is a cool design, in gameplay it's a very boring unit. This is due to the fact that it's good at everything -- pretty high health, high mobility, and high AOE damage. I can't think of any other unit like this (besides marauder maybe? but marauders don't do AOE and are weak vs light).
I think the best matchup in the game excitement wise is by far TvZ. The only time I've been amazed by micro feats is marine split micro against banelings. Many games are decided by who micros those battles better.
Since the theme for protoss in sc2 seems to be extremely mobile (e.g., warpgate, warp prism) but expensive units dps-wise, I think a unit like the colossus absolutely doesn't belong in the protoss arsenal. I'd love to see the colossus changed to something drastically different. Like, how about a unit that functions kind of like the nydus worm (can warp anywhere in vision given some time to do so) but emerges as a painfully slow aoe damage dealer. You'd have moments where the protoss coralls the enemy army into a corner and summons these guys to finish hem off, or used for harass where the enemy has to be vigilant similar to hunting nydus worms.
I'm not a huge colossi fan myself, but I can't understand the reaver love. It was, besides spider mines, the single most luck-based crappy AI unit in all of SCBW. Matches were won or lost not based on "excellent micro" but on the scarab AI. I still feel wowed by big colossi clumps personally, but I guess it's just different tastes. :-/
So I think your solution is to make the Collosus, arguably the only scalable massable unit in the protoss arsenal, with essentially a pretty looking reaver?
I think the way to make protoss a more "hype" race would be to make other tech paths more viable, instead of making them less so which is what Blizzard is doing now.
Though, you were right in one point: sair vs scourge was always really cool to watch.
On March 15 2011 12:54 TheTenthDoc wrote: I'm not a huge colossi fan myself, but I can't understand the reaver love. It was, besides spider mines, the single most luck-based crappy AI unit in all of SCBW. Matches were won or lost not based on "excellent micro" but on the scarab AI. I still feel wowed by big colossi clumps personally, but I guess it's just different tastes. :-/
Exactly this was what made it so awesome. Seeing the scrub moving awkwardly towards the target without knowing if it would blow off into nothing or kill like 10 probes, that was sooooo exciting.
Sure, it might have rendered some games not won by skill, but luck. But I believe it kind of worked out like the miss-hit % on low to high ground; in the end people got lucky the same % of time and thus it was balanced.
Collosi are so boring and lame. its so dumb looking at a protoss army that has like 8 collosi and knowing that its not gonna lose to anything (considering how fucking easy it is to control the big ball)
the terran 200/200 in BW was super powerful, but super hard to use. the 200/200 collosi ball is even more cost effective and you dont have to do shit but 1a.
I'd say Collosus vs Reaver for excitement is comparable to Tank/Vulture/Spider Mine/Goliath vs MMM+Vikings or weaker Ling/roach/baneling/infestor vs lurker/ling/viable hydra/defiler.
SC2 in generals lacks the exciting units that BW had to offer. I hope since they are keeping the WoL ladder operational anyways that they make some pretty drastic changes to HotS as far and intensity goes.
In my opinion, colossus AoE must be changed. I always wanted colossi to work like a lurker. You see first spike and you got .75 seconds to move your marines away from approaching spikes by moving them left or right. Brings excitement. Make lasers for colossi to have a small delay with indication in ground where it will hit so players can micro their army to dodge that attack. Also make colossi be able to change its lasers beam. Currently it is horizontal but having an option of making it attack vertically too (Cooldown of change will be 3-5 seconds or whatever time it will make sense). Would make colossi a lot more interesting and blink stalkers should beat colossi ball in pvp if microed correctly.
#1: ^this #2: problem is more the synergy between the deathball units - the "slow" movementspeed isnt that big of deal since all other units of the ball are not way faster... that makes it easy, you dont have to pay attention at all. compare that with a protoss army accompanied by a momma-ship - thats how colossi should be like in terms of speed.
everyone complains about the colossus, but they are going to be basically the only choice without the amulet. Gateway units just are not effective enough on their own without the current colossus or templar without amulet. If you change the colossus and get rid of amulet you would probably have to buff the stalker (and thus increase blink cooldown so that wouldn't be OP) and make zealot leg speed cheaper.
Edit:
I prefer not going colossus, but I feel that its is being forced upon my play style. If a different, more interesting unit could replace its AOE damage role I would be for it. Reavers, eh at least improve that terrible scarab AI. I didn't like paying for ammo either.
On March 15 2011 09:00 frozt_ wrote: I completely agree, the Colossus not only encourages boring "death ball" play from protoss users but also is extremely easy to use and execute. You really can't use colossus as a harassing unit due to its lack of mobility (Movement speed) as well as it is dead if it comes in contact with an air unit. I personally have felt that the Colossus ruins the game for spectators because if you aren't going death ball with protoss you are taking away the best chance of winning. I think most people might agree that death ball protoss is not nearly as entertaining or skillful as doing a beautiful HT build, but the fact of the matter is the HT builds have timing weaknesses that the Colossus does not. Therefore Blizzard forces Colossus. And with the new Amulet nerf coming out I imagine it will force even more Colossus play.
100% this. I play p and i hate "having" to go colo. i will either try to work wp or ht in somehow but often lose to a big mid game push. i hate watching and using colossus. same goes for maurders but since the op was about colo ill stay on topic. I really would like to see a % of how much colossus usage increases after the patch. Lastly, pvp is one of the most boring match-ups because its either 4gate of war or the worlds (often both). Consider mothership vortex in PvP, thats hype and fun to play (now thats gonna be gone too- so the only interesting part of the matchup is gone). Praying for the expansions to improve sc2 big time.
Make the colossus like the lurker/siege tank, imo.
Lots of people have made the same points. The central units in most matchups in SC2 are the 1a units. Colossus, marauder, roach and marine are what's wrong with SC2 compared to BW. Terran was the race of the most creative and dominant players in BW but all the interesting stuff got nerfed in favor of a marine buff and the addition of the a-move marauder.
On March 15 2011 12:00 AndAgain wrote: I remember in beta, colossi drops were used pretty often (WhiteRa vs TLO comes to mind.) Anyone know what happened to that? I assume it got nerfed or something.
They don't 1-shot workers anymore, making them pretty worthless for drop play.
I do agree with OP, scourge, defiler, reaver, lurker, mines were all exciting units which took a great amount of skill to use properly. In exchange, the only new interesting units we got are banelings and sentries. Corrupter, infestor, colossus are such boring units in comparison to their counter parts.
not to mention how vulnerable warp prisms are. much safer to keep your colossus with your army
On March 15 2011 12:00 AndAgain wrote: I remember in beta, colossi drops were used pretty often (WhiteRa vs TLO comes to mind.) Anyone know what happened to that? I assume it got nerfed or something.
They don't 1-shot workers anymore, making them pretty worthless for drop play.
I do agree with OP, scourge, defiler, reaver, lurker, mines were all exciting units which took a great amount of skill to use properly. In exchange, the only new interesting units we got are banelings and sentries. Corrupter, infestor, colossus are such boring units in comparison to their counter parts.
not to mention how vulnerable warp prisms are. much safer to keep your colossus with your army
Well the shitty thing is 1 viking shuts this down since it kills the wp and colossus, the colossus will obviously live longer but its still dead once any air AA shows up no matter what. if its your plan to escape your fucked, i think thats the point i'm making.
On March 15 2011 12:54 TheTenthDoc wrote: I'm not a huge colossi fan myself, but I can't understand the reaver love. It was, besides spider mines, the single most luck-based crappy AI unit in all of SCBW. Matches were won or lost not based on "excellent micro" but on the scarab AI. I still feel wowed by big colossi clumps personally, but I guess it's just different tastes. :-/
It may be a bit luck-based but it is still more skill-based than just about everything SC2 has to offer. The control of top players like Stork with reaver and Fantasy with vultures is still a cut above almost everybody else. You can't a-move these units and you can't counter them with a-move. Positioning matters a lot.
An attack delay for the colossus is something that should have made it into the game on release. There are so many cases in which that would be ridiculously exciting to watch. The most pathetic thing to note is that P already has forcefields to limit unit movement, yet the colossus gets to deal huge damage instantly.
Just imagine the following: -Lings running through colo beams (and only being stopped by good ff placement or supporting units) -PvP where colo vs colo micro is paramount to the matchup, and every shot counts -Any sort of ranged unit micro to avoid colo beams -Forcefield placement that doesn't look like completely spammy shit
I have faith in the future of SC2 (in about a decade), but the current trends in its design and patching make it bland and uninteresting to watch compared to BW.
Oh man the memories of seeing Daigo doing that parry live was so crazy. I got so hype after that and for the rest of the week.
Justin was FREEEEEE (and salty) after that.
Anyways I agree, the thing with SC2 is that there is a hell of a lot less micro and strategies involved so it is hard to get hyped over anything. Blizzard will nerf the sh*t out of everything into the ground to achieve this "balance" but also remove strategies and potential counter strategies which can be pretty hype too.
Colossus has a delay in attack: to begin attacking it has to be in range to attack for two consecutive seconds beforehand, then as long as it's in range it can remain attacking at this increased DPS.
What Does this Do? Protoss Army has to get close and stay close. Opposing teams try to force engagements where they have room to backup. They do not let the Protoss engage them. They resort to more hit and run, exploiting the colossi's poor acquiring target mechanism. The colossus has variable damage. A graph of it's dps is more unique, rather than a single linear line it starts at zero and then jumps dramatically. Similar to a baneling which is a very hype unit. The Raven (hunterseeker missile) is also very hype (imagine koreans screaming if a bunch of units were missiled from opposite directions. So is storm.
I agree. SC1 was such a good spectator eSport. The amount of damage micromanagement can do + great units that create incredibly fun games make for the most intense games ever!
SC2 is mostly about macro, and.. well.. that's boring!
On March 15 2011 12:54 TheTenthDoc wrote: I'm not a huge colossi fan myself, but I can't understand the reaver love. It was, besides spider mines, the single most luck-based crappy AI unit in all of SCBW. Matches were won or lost not based on "excellent micro" but on the scarab AI. I still feel wowed by big colossi clumps personally, but I guess it's just different tastes. :-/
Reaver damage is directly attributed to skill. If they don't do any damage you have poor reaver micro, there's a reason Sn0w consistently gets 30 kills with his reavers.
On March 15 2011 14:06 Zim23 wrote: It's not like tanks were ever a super exciting unit. There are exciting units and there are bread and butter backbone units. Always gonna be that way.
Disagree. Tanks are exciting units. BW tanks are more cost effective than SC2 tanks. It's always exciting to see players trying to break tank lines.
There's also a moment of vulnerability when tanks unsiege and move, especially since BW tanks are weaker in tank mode than SC2 tanks. It's exciting to see whether the other player can break the tank line or catch tanks unsieged.
Agree with the OP. Also blizzards treatment of these units is very disappointing. The Raven's HSM was a nice spell till it was nerfed into ground. I fear after another year we'll have a perfectly balanced but boring game.
On March 15 2011 14:06 Zim23 wrote: It's not like tanks were ever a super exciting unit. There are exciting units and there are bread and butter backbone units. Always gonna be that way.
I disagree. Tanks are super exciting. The reason is that tanks need to unseige to move and they deal their ridiculous damage (70 in BW) only when seiged. Hence there is this tension when tanks are unseiged.Again when seiged they can be countered by dropping on them etc.
Edit: I like OPs suggestion on collosus damage. The reason why blizzard's experiment wasn't successful is that collosi are too mobile with cliff walking and stuff. They are basically mobile seige tanks. Maybe something should be done to reduce mobility and give it more damage while preserving dps. This will allow Zerg to counter collosi and warp prism harass will work.
Why is it that every unit other than the Baneling or a large group of Reapers is conveniently left out of this thread, despite every single one of them being prone to the exact same characteristics that defines Colossi as this magical adjective known as "anti-hype"? >____________<
Honestly, Reavers were exciting because you had no idea what could happen. Not because there was excellent micro involved, but simply because it was retarded. I'm sure people would love spectating Colossi if every single hit caused a nuclear explosion animation.
Okay so here are my full thoughts on SC2 as a spectator sport compared to BW.
BW is obviously the superior game, the units required skill to use which made it exciting. In BW, at any point in the game you can pull something awesome off. You can hit timings at all stages with any race if you use your units correctly and doing so is a direct correlation to your skill.
In SC2 the game is broken down to which race has the advantage at which stage in the game which is boring. The units aren't even, in BW all the T1 units were evenly matched which is why there was excitement early in the game. You could be aggressive with good micro in any matchup with any race. In SC2, the only way to be aggressive is going all in and it's stupid. To have the highest chance with each race you basically have to win the game, or gain huge advantage, at the set stage in the game for your race.
i really like the idea of putting a delay bfr he shot with a glow or something on the ground like 2 to 2,5sec delay.
But they will probably need to make the attack hit harder, and maybe not the same attack animation as it is right now but more like it was during the alpha phase where the line was full right when he attack
like that:
so this will make enought time to micro your unit and make more "hype" to the unit
On March 15 2011 13:40 parn wrote: "The game is still young", "give it some time", "new strategies are coming", blablabla ...
What a useless post. They do what they do with no possible micro save moving them back and forth a little. It's boring as hell. In fact I'd go so far as to say sc2 is boring as hell. I never used to be into BW at all but now I'd much rather watch BW than any sc2. I'm even starting to toy with the idea of playing BW as I can't bring myself to play sc2 (zerg player). unbalanced and dull to watch. They took the skill out of this game with smartcasting etc. In broodwar watching good storms is awesome because it actually took more effort than selecting a control group, pressing T and shift then spamming a lot. It's the same with forcefields. "AMAZING FORCEFIELDS!!" i hear often from commentators. seriously? shift + f and any monkey can do amazing forcefields.
I can't see what blizzard can do to salvage the game to be honest. Roaches, marauders, sentries, colossi, these are all ridiculously strong units which take little to no skill to use at all. YAWN, I'm off to learn some BW protoss build orders.
I think you'd have a much better effect by making collossi do splash damage to Protoss units, and forcing Toss players to actually have to get good at using their units.
Another problem is that all T1 units should be virtually equal. As it is, Terran T1 units give them complete map control and there is nothing that can be done about it. Mix that in with their ability to access drops so fast makes it stupid.
Imagine BW PvT, the P would try for the entire game to contain the T but at the same time the T would be running vultures everywhere harassing and tryin to deny expos. It was like an ongoing battle within the game that made it amazing. What made it so good was that it wasn't like goons were OP or vultures were OP it was that it was a clash of skill that would determine who took the advantage of map control.
This is a major flaw of SC2, the units are so OP at stages of the game that it forces players to play a confined style that isn't a result of their skill. It shouldn't be set to where each race has obvious advantages at every stage of the game and at every tier level, it should be all tiers are equal in strength but have different advantages at all stages of the game.
Solution? Heavily nerf Terrans early game and Protoss late game, nerf Zerg mid game and buff Zerg late game. Seriously just remove Roaches and put back Hydras to T1 and then buff the hell out of Ultras and give back Swarm. For P give back DA's and make storms as effective as in BW but without amulet upgrade. I think doing this would then make Terran mech stronger and would still make bio viable TvZ.
I've been talking about this phenomenon in SC2 since the beginning. Banelings are a good hype unit... but pretty much everything else in the entire game became less hype than in SC1.
I agree 100% with your notion... but I think it would take more than just a simple Colossus re-design to solve all of SC2's spectator-sport woes. Bring back the Scourge and make Hunter-Seeker Missile stronger or more available too.
We need things that make korean girls scream like in your Reach psi-storm or reaver drop videos. We need them NOW
Bah... I miss BW. There just seems to be a lack of excitement. Watching games is still enjoyable, but there is nothing that makes me jump up and down. I agree whole heartedly
maybe colossus could do 2x30dmg but would be dodgeable like you could see it charging up and predict where its gonna lazer and move ur units away that would make for some amazing micro battles pre-emptively charging 4-5 colossi at a spot on the ground where their army is walking towards, then having all the lazers be unleashed and pwn the army? that sounds fucking awesome, blizzard really needs to add more hype units that require skill, i completely agree.
The colossus, like the warp gate, was a fascinating idea at launch, but resulted in the most boring gameplay we've ever seen from a race. Even the lamented ZvZ is at least knife-edge enough to be cool.
While I still think the warp gate has uses that make it fascinating, the colossus, in its design, just DEMANDS that it be protected at all times. I like that as a terran (lets me drop the crap out of a protoss) but it does make games boring as heck.
I think, however, that map design is most of the problem. The "death ball" is only so scary because the second you lose an engagement, the colossus army is at your base. Larger maps (like the GSL ones) result in games that don't revolve around one gigantic engagement.
vikings engaging colossi is nice and hype. I love watching carefully microed vikings (sky reavers, if you will) snipe colossi.
I completely agree. That is the kind of thing that makes me seriously consider going back to BW, and starting to play it on iccup.
Colossi are just such a boring unit. There's absolutely no excitement while they're doing their thing, unlike BW where every reaver shot was an edge-of-your-seat moment. Seeing colossi get sniped by vikings/corruptors is the most exciting thing about them.
I am reaaaaally hoping in a few months or a year or so, we'll all look back and say: "Hey, remember the time when Protoss were boring?"
Besides banelings and reapers, marines, hellions, stalkers, phoenixes, siege tanks, ghosts, and to a lesser extent roaches, marauders, banshees, and high templar can be microed in at least one exciting way.
Everything else is as dull as dirt. The colossus just happens to be the most powerful of those.
I think one reason the reaver was so exciting was because every shot was russian roulette. Remember how 1/5th of its shots just exploded and did no damage? It was like dragoons. Cool to watch, but part of that was because they were so awful, lololol.
While micro is exciting (I remember freaking out at marineking's split and CRUSHING baneling armies) there is something to be said for not having to babysit every movement a unit makes, and protoss already have a lot to micro (force field placement, guardian shield, storms, phoenix lifts, blink, etc.)
I've seen colossus drops kill whole probe lines in a swipe. They do have that reaver pwn capability. no one uses them that way though. I think part of it is that the balsam wood drop ship is so slow and weak that people would rather just walk their colossus around the map then ever actually put them in a drop ship.
On March 15 2011 16:03 SwiftSpear wrote: I've seen colossus drops kill whole probe lines in a swipe. They do have that reaver pwn capability. no one uses them that way though. I think part of it is that the balsam wood drop ship is so slow and weak that people would rather just walk their colossus around the map then ever actually put them in a drop ship.
This is another problem. The dropship was robust. The warp prism is a paper tiger. why put a colossus in something that a single stimmed marine can kill in seconds?
I agree that there should be design-changes and shifting powers within races, although it's a really tricky thing to do. I'm hoping they can shift power from early T to late T while the opposite for P, but it seems hard to at this stage of the game.
Specifically with the colossus, I don't like how there's no real risk when attacking with colossi. Tanks are only strong when in correct positions and sieged, reavers need an obscene amount of care, etc.The number of colossi just tells you how bad you're losing/winning really.
I definitely know what you mean- it reminds of a thread that came out towards the end of Beta. Something about the lack of 'wow' factor or something. Tried searching for it, but couldn't find it.
One thing that may help the death ball syndrome, but will probably effect balance is simply make collossi unable to walk over their own army. Keep the cliff-walking ability, but make it so they can't walk over friendlies.
It's a 'cool' ability on paper and to look at. However, it doesn't promote cool play. Why worry about positioning your army when collosi can simply stand over top? In fact this is the best place for them. Hence death ball. As soon as they can no longer walk over troops, you promote more positional play. Collossi should be in the back, but if your stalker line is too deep, the collossi can't fire. So you need a greater arc for maximum stalker damage (like dragoon arcs in BW) so that collossi and can move up to do their damage and not be stuck doing no damage in the back. (Combine that with the need to spread out templar and sentries to avoid emps, and you'll get much more microed armies to be effective.)
In might need rebalancing, but the reason you don't see anything other than the deathball with collossii is I think simply because it is the most efficient use of toss firepower.
It might not create the 'wow' factor of reaver micro, but at least it's at step in the right direction.
On March 15 2011 16:03 SwiftSpear wrote: I've seen colossus drops kill whole probe lines in a swipe. They do have that reaver pwn capability. no one uses them that way though. I think part of it is that the balsam wood drop ship is so slow and weak that people would rather just walk their colossus around the map then ever actually put them in a drop ship.
This is another problem. The dropship was robust. The warp prism is a paper tiger. why put a colossus in something that a single stimmed marine can kill in seconds?
I want real dropships back.
The warp prism has the same effective hps as a shuttle. Only difference is that instead of 60 shields the warp prism has 40. The rest is hps adding up to 140.. And this 140 is only 10 less than a medivac. I wish people would stop fucking crying about how 'weak' warp prisms are. protip: keep transport units away from things which can shoot them.
On March 15 2011 16:03 SwiftSpear wrote: I've seen colossus drops kill whole probe lines in a swipe. They do have that reaver pwn capability. no one uses them that way though. I think part of it is that the balsam wood drop ship is so slow and weak that people would rather just walk their colossus around the map then ever actually put them in a drop ship.
This is another problem. The dropship was robust. The warp prism is a paper tiger. why put a colossus in something that a single stimmed marine can kill in seconds?
I want real dropships back.
The warp prism has the same effective hps as a shuttle. Only difference is that instead of 60 shields the warp prism has 40. The rest is hps adding up to 140.. And this 140 is only 10 less than a medivac. I wish people would stop fucking crying about how 'weak' warp prisms are. protip: keep transport units away from things which can shoot them.
First- yeah BW it was a shuttle or speed shuttle. Not a dropship- that was Terran.
Second- I don't know about this. Stats-wise, yeah they're equivalent in hitpoints. But in the BW case, marines weren't near as good and in pvt, it was generally turrets that shut down shuttle play (or the occasional wraith or goliath build ala Stork.) Speed shuttles could move around a lot easier without dodging hundreds of stimming marines like in SC2.
So in SC2- while the hitpoints on the medivac and the warp prism are generally the same, the ability to catch drops aren't quite the same: Sensor tower/ viking or stim marines vs phoenix or blink stalker. There are more factors than simply the hitpoints of one drop tech vs another (including how easy one one is to get and how one interrupts collosi production.)
I definitely agree with the OP; collosi are easy mode units. Of course, not talking about being OP'd or unskilled per say, but just not exciting in anyway! Its like people complaining about infantry heavy terran; its not that it's bad or abusive play, but it just isn't entertaining watching one fat group whack itself against another fat group with at most minor micro. I hope and pray the two expansions introduce some new cool units.
On March 15 2011 16:03 SwiftSpear wrote: I've seen colossus drops kill whole probe lines in a swipe. They do have that reaver pwn capability. no one uses them that way though. I think part of it is that the balsam wood drop ship is so slow and weak that people would rather just walk their colossus around the map then ever actually put them in a drop ship.
This is another problem. The dropship was robust. The warp prism is a paper tiger. why put a colossus in something that a single stimmed marine can kill in seconds?
I want real dropships back.
The warp prism has the same effective hps as a shuttle. Only difference is that instead of 60 shields the warp prism has 40. The rest is hps adding up to 140.. And this 140 is only 10 less than a medivac. I wish people would stop fucking crying about how 'weak' warp prisms are. protip: keep transport units away from things which can shoot them.
Yeah, but Warp Prisms have no armour. I don't know how much (if any) shuttles have, but medivacs have 1 armour.
On March 15 2011 16:03 SwiftSpear wrote: I've seen colossus drops kill whole probe lines in a swipe. They do have that reaver pwn capability. no one uses them that way though. I think part of it is that the balsam wood drop ship is so slow and weak that people would rather just walk their colossus around the map then ever actually put them in a drop ship.
This is another problem. The dropship was robust. The warp prism is a paper tiger. why put a colossus in something that a single stimmed marine can kill in seconds?
I want real dropships back.
The main problem with the warp prism transition is when you build the thing to counter colossi (vikings/corruptors), you also build the thing to kill warp prisms easily.
On March 15 2011 13:45 andrewwiggin wrote: Not every unit needs to or SHOULD for that matter have 'GOSU MICRO' buffer applied to it to be an sc2 unit.
And saying this isn't about imbalance is bull. You hide behind that statement.. but this is exactly about balance.
Because whatever you change about the colossi CHANGES balance. noob.
LOL . The only "GOSU MICRO" unit that Protoss has which can even be considered that is the blink stalker. There is pretty much nothing else that makes Protoss have that WOW factor. Also, what the fuck is wrong with every unit having "GOSU MICRO" buffer on it? What negative impacts does it have? It only give more positive aspects to the skill and makes it more fun to spectate. This has nothing to do with fucking balance. Learn to read.
On March 15 2011 16:03 SwiftSpear wrote: I've seen colossus drops kill whole probe lines in a swipe. They do have that reaver pwn capability. no one uses them that way though. I think part of it is that the balsam wood drop ship is so slow and weak that people would rather just walk their colossus around the map then ever actually put them in a drop ship.
This is another problem. The dropship was robust. The warp prism is a paper tiger. why put a colossus in something that a single stimmed marine can kill in seconds?
I want real dropships back.
The warp prism has the same effective hps as a shuttle. Only difference is that instead of 60 shields the warp prism has 40. The rest is hps adding up to 140.. And this 140 is only 10 less than a medivac. I wish people would stop fucking crying about how 'weak' warp prisms are. protip: keep transport units away from things which can shoot them.
Yeah, but Warp Prisms have no armour. I don't know how much (if any) shuttles have, but medivacs have 1 armour.
26 marine hits to kill a shuttle and 24 to kill a warp prism. Speed upgrade is also worse, but what makes the biggest difference is that marines are common and 9 range vikings are built to counter colossus anyway.
On March 15 2011 16:33 Falling wrote:First- yeah BW it was a shuttle or speed shuttle. Not a dropship- that was Terran.
Second- I don't know about this. Stats-wise, yeah they're equivalent in hitpoints. But in the BW case, marines weren't near as good and in pvt, it was generally turrets that shut down shuttle play (or the occasional wraith or goliath build ala Stork.) Speed shuttles could move around a lot easier without dodging hundreds of stimming marines like in SC2.
So in SC2- while the hitpoints on the medivac and the warp prism are generally the same, the ability to catch drops aren't quite the same: Sensor tower/ viking or stim marines vs phoenix or blink stalker. There are more factors than simply the hitpoints of one drop tech vs another (including how easy one one is to get and how one interrupts collosi production.)
Still don't see sensor towers much, but yeah, they'd shut down the drops hard. And vikings do too. I can see how they'd be weak in PvT. The thing is though, with the ability to use warp prisms to warp in units they are potentially a hell of a lot stronger than shuttles ever were. I'd argue that protoss has plenty of options to spot drops though, observers and proxy pylons are pretty good. But we are digressing a bit here.
On March 15 2011 16:51 Moonloop wrote:Yeah, but Warp Prisms have no armour. I don't know how much (if any) shuttles have, but medivacs have 1 armour.
Shuttles have 1 armour. Interesting that they'd get rid of this. Hadn't realised. Makes them a little weaker, but possibly in the face of warping units in with them they justified it. (can't claim to understand blizzard's logic on balance :p).
I wonder why the Colossus is being singled out, just about every unit in SC2 can be a candidate for being boring.
Banelings are the only units that come close to being as entertain as the stuff in BW. Hell even blink stalkers are boring for being just so obvious, that's what blink does, the micro isn't impressive at all coming from a BW background.
They took away the archon toilet..BTW. Blizzard thinks exciting stuff are imbalanced.
I've been wondering ever since I saw that Wombo Combo video.
If you look at Daigo's video, you can clearly see just why people were so excited, with the lifebar, the quick succession of no-damage blocks, and the tournament.
But for the second Wombo Combo video, you don't see a fast reaction, you don't see incredible dexterity, and you don't really see an impressive comeback except for the guy screaming "WOOO" at maybe 3 or 4 moves by the 3 characters.
Just what exactly is so impressive for that Wombo Combo? What point am I missing?
On March 15 2011 17:53 orgolove wrote: I've been wondering ever since I saw that Wombo Combo video.
If you look at Daigo's video, you can clearly see just why people were so excited, with the lifebar, the quick succession of no-damage blocks, and the tournament.
But for the second Wombo Combo video, you don't see a fast reaction, you don't see incredible dexterity, and you don't really see an impressive comeback except for the guy screaming "WOOO" at maybe 3 or 4 moves by the 3 characters.
Just what exactly is so impressive for that Wombo Combo? What point am I missing?
Just make the Colossus shoot half as fast at twice the damage (30x2), and make it move slow as hell.
Um, would it be "exciting" to see new and unique ways for Protoss to lose? Because it sounds like you're proposing a significant damage nerf (since a slower rate of attack means fewer attacks overall before being sniped) and huge speed nerf.
How would this be balanced out?
This on top of the KA nerf would completely break Protoss.
colossi were like this in Beta, then they nerfed them to 15x2.
The problem is with the unit that is too boring, it's not a starcraft unit... it's a war of the world unit.
Developers really screwed up with this... and now they are nerfing the templar because they want more colossi usage. This is so sad... Dustin Browder probably wants that new sc2 units are more used than OLD "templar" SC1 units.
The last Zenith game was so fun without colossi and with only templars.
I saw a (1) - (2) Colosus once. Problem is I don't even remember who did it or where I saw it. It was quite a while ago already... I'm sure it wasn't in a GSL tournament. It was a Colosus drop/harass on the natural on Scrap Station. Toss was on the right side. Does anyone remember that game?
I am inclined to agree with most of your points, but I think it's too early to write it off right now. After seeing that game I thought: hmmm, that has potential.
Agree with OP completely, Colossus are just a plain boring replacement unit for reavers... requires little if none micro at all - just move back a bit and the rest is amove.
On March 15 2011 18:10 Valckrie wrote: Agree with OP completely, Colossus are just a plain boring replacement unit for reavers... requires little if none micro at all - just move back a bit and the rest is amove.
This is why I'm so upset over the KA nerf. I really can't think of a good reason to prefer the more expensive, way slower HT tech now. I can't even imagine the timing working on a 2 base HT build with enough usable HTs.
On March 15 2011 13:43 Frobert wrote: I have faith in the future of SC2 (in about a decade), but the current trends in its design and patching make it bland and uninteresting to watch compared to BW.
It didn't take 10 years for BW to become amazing, BW was amazing for 10 years.
I also agree with OP. With templar getting nerfed again it's going to put protoss further into colossus tech, as now they really dont have as good of a templar transition.
oh bad memory alert. Colossi did fire slower and did more damage, and completly destroyed worker lines and everything with hit and run, thus a damage nerf to prevent this hit and run, which was to strong and to easy to execute.
And swt archon toilet was boring, waiting for the army to pop back out and completly get destroyed by a barrage of shots thats way more fun, then just seing a stacked death animation of multiple units.
and yes it was so easy to use a shuttle in bw, where the single wraith you got could even hunt down the speed shuttle, while a speed prism can just dance around a viking. And it doesn't need to be loaded so it can always fake a here i come in a sensor field making the opponent nervous and give him the creeps. And also wow 1 armor traded of for shield regen so it can even take a few shots on the reatreat and be at full energie the next run it.
Also mmm i think blink and observer stop drops way harder then sensor tower and vikings do, you see a sensor tower and you can outrun vikings (I agree that you don't see them before they will fire). You don't see the observer or you would probably not drop and you don't see the blink stalker before its to late.
Well don't really care, for me the prism is way easier to use then the shuttle, since there isn't this one wraith flying arround with only one thing in mind and even if there is a single viking with the same thing as the wraith in mind i can simply outrun him and have no damage since shield regen.
About the colossi to many threads about it where everyone already stated their opinion. But its quiet simply, gateway units = the stuff you micro. Colossi = the artillery thing doing its terrible damage if the opponent isn't microing. There are a few things that make it hard to reduce the colossi damage, like the autotargeting of units that are nearer, so at the end they will still fire at the concave and not fire on this 2 marauders in the frond with no neightbouring units. Anyway sc2 seems like since they made macro easier they didn't wanted to go with the a person can micro one unit good and win(everyone can do this, the challenge in bw was that you had to run a base while doing this), but more with the a person can micro most parts of his army and win. So maybe sc2 is to hard to play right as you mostly see people only using one group selected and use their apm to select different unit groups. (well it seems better to play without group selection keys so did say nothing)
So i totally love to see games where it goes to, bring down the artillery with good micro + attack position, while the other side micros the rest of their army to defend it. Congratulation tosses you stole your army composition from the bw terrans *G*. (and most people loved to see mech well this is the toss mech )
a neat way to balance the evil colossi would be a inverted non implented carrier shield. So shields are only effectiv against air units. Would make them more vulnerable to ground, while air still works as good as it does now. Might make siege tanks a bit to strong, but there are still immortals so don't think its a problem. This change would atleast encourage people to try awesome moves to snipe em, and this would encourage a toss to micro is army more. (instead of now use the colossi to force air units and then start to micro their gateway units while the opponent has some useless air units in the sky)
The Collossus is a horrible unit for us spectators, but most of the P units are this bad. The immortal, Stalker, Pheonix, Void Ray. I can not watch matches involving P anymore, and this is sad. What makes P so horrible to watch in SC2 is that I never once sit in awe watching pro's pulling of stuff I would never be able to do.
May I add some videos of P "hype" as the OP would have put it? Here we have Corsair control, Dragoon micro and drop play.
I do not know if there is any easy fix for Protoss, and I believe the only way is to totally redesign P in HotS. The thing is that Blizzard had a chance when they altered the Pheonix, but instead they dumbed it down and let it autoshoot, when it could have changed the attack/animation to have real skill required to shoot-move, but somehow they completely missed the mark, and I do not really believe that Blizzard today is able to do something better. It is just not the same company today.
Scrap the Colossus already. It is the single biggest gameplay-killer in the game and kills all viewing pleasure for me easily. Think about the most epic PvZs and PvTs you know (Huk vs I think Nestea for example, where Huk doesn't build a single colossus and wins.), do they involve any colossi? Probably not. And from a players perspective, the epic games I have do not involve colossi. As soon as colossi are out, the game loses all it's epicness (granted, I'm zerg and I'm bad, but still).
Yeah I agree, colossi are fucking dull. They're vulnerable and you're forced to build them alot of times. If you loose them you're dead, and you can't do much do make extra good use out of them.
Pretty dull. T_T.
Make the archon massive, redesign the colossi completely.
On March 15 2011 16:21 PITN wrote: The warp prism has the same effective hps as a shuttle. Only difference is that instead of 60 shields the warp prism has 40. The rest is hps adding up to 140.. And this 140 is only 10 less than a medivac. I wish people would stop fucking crying about how 'weak' warp prisms are. protip: keep transport units away from things which can shoot them.
This is news to me. Why do they seem to die so much faster then?
(I was zerg in BW and noncompetitive, and am terran now)
Pretty much every Protoss unit SC2 added is either a game-killer (in terms of slowing down or dumbing down the game, not in terms of balance) or completely useless unit, except the Phoenix which is awesome.
Colossi and Sentries make Protoss boring to play and especially boring to watch. It's the worst combination of units/abilities imaginable, it's just so anti-Starcraft it's painful.
Yeah it's so boring that blizzard should just nerf them to make things interesting.
Do you note my epic levels of sarcasm? This is just a new way to cry over imbalance, disguised as 'entertainment value'.
If it wasn't entertaining enough to watch, sc2 would be getting smaller in viewership; and not bigger. And FYI colossi were what made me BUY sc2. And they're the first unit my non-sc2 friends go gaga over when we watch matches now and then.
On March 15 2011 16:21 PITN wrote: The warp prism has the same effective hps as a shuttle. Only difference is that instead of 60 shields the warp prism has 40. The rest is hps adding up to 140.. And this 140 is only 10 less than a medivac. I wish people would stop fucking crying about how 'weak' warp prisms are. protip: keep transport units away from things which can shoot them.
This is news to me. Why do they seem to die so much faster then?
(I was zerg in BW and noncompetitive, and am terran now)
Had it pointed out that shuttles have 1 armour whereas warp prisms don't apparently. Prob doesn't help that marines got a dps buff too heh
On March 15 2011 18:57 Talin wrote: Colossi and Sentries make Protoss boring to play and especially boring to watch. It's the worst combination of units/abilities imaginable, it's just so anti-Starcraft it's painful.
Personally, i find sentries super cool and exciting to play with, and watch. There are so many different uses of force fields, and it's not as easy as many people make it to be. And the more skilled you are, the more efficient your force field usage gets. Compare MC force field usage to your average protoss. Also hallucination has so much potential.
Yeah, I love the Zerg and Terran players in the thread who say "remove the colossus - um, because it's boring, that's the only reason" and then conveniently neglect to acknowledge the entire Protoss race would collapse like a deck of cards in a wind tunnel. Even a significant nerf would collapse Protoss because the colossus is basically the roach/bane or MM of the other races - the giant band-aid unit that makes up for other deficiencies.
So how could the Colossus be more hype? Replace it with the Reaver?
Nope, you wouldn't even have to do something that extreme. Just make the Colossus shoot half as fast at twice the damage (30x2), and make it move slow as hell. This should have little impact on how much dps the Colossus does in a giant ball. It does however, open up the possibility for mineral line harassment and require Colossi to have Warp Prisms with them if they want to get anywhere fast.
For the animation, imagine the Colossus chargin' it's lasers, then releasing a strong blast all at once. Think Yamato Cannon. The charge would build so much hype.
Thoughts? Do you guys still get excited when a player masses Colossi? I sure don't.
Y'know I usually don't pay much mind to these kind of threads, but I think you have a valid point here. Collo deathball is just plain boring, I agree. I like your suggestion, it would definitely involve more micro and open up creative play. But, as usual, I'm not sure how the balance of all this would work. As a T player for one, I can just imagine vikings being just 10x more devastating vs that suggestion and leaving a P way too vulnerable for my bio ball.
Maybe the collo is just non entertaining and there's nothing we can really do about it. I don't know
Yeah, if P was forced to cart them around in shuttles, vikings would be FAR too strong.
Speed prisms with a colossus are pretty good for harass now since they cant be caught, but it would be just way too much risk if they had to be present everytime you moved since a single miss-step would be so insanely costly.
On March 15 2011 18:57 andrewwiggin wrote: You know what's super boring to watch? Roaches.
Yeah it's so boring that blizzard should just nerf them to make things interesting.
Do you note my epic levels of sarcasm? This is just a new way to cry over imbalance, disguised as 'entertainment value'.
If it wasn't entertaining enough to watch, sc2 would be getting smaller in viewership; and not bigger. And FYI colossi were what made me BUY sc2. And they're the first unit my non-sc2 friends go gaga over when we watch matches now and then.
So think about that.
Did you buy SC2 because of how they work in game or because of how they look/their concept?
Because I agree, they are cool in theory, look awesome... they just scale terribly and become a piece of shit unit that leads to battles being massive landslides.
Oh not enough vikings/corrupters, P wins easily Oh enough vikings/corrupters, P dies without a chance (Theres also the Oh too many vikings/corrupters, P wins easily, but whatever)
Lots of P units are like this - perfectly awesome when in small numbers, stupid as hell when massed.
On March 15 2011 19:11 jgelling wrote: Yeah, I love the Zerg and Terran players in the thread who say "remove the colossus - um, because it's boring, that's the only reason" and then conveniently neglect to acknowledge the entire Protoss race would collapse like a deck of cards in a wind tunnel. Even a significant nerf would collapse Protoss because the colossus is basically the roach/bane or MM of the other races - the giant band-aid unit that makes up for other deficiencies.
Of course you cant remove it or even nerf it without some serious additions to protoss. I dont know if its possible to do anything about it until an expansion anyway.
On March 15 2011 19:22 weiliem wrote: Cool suggestion.... but wouldnt it look too wierd having colosus in warp prism for mineral line harassment?? oO, it looks awkward to me....
It's been done to me a few times, but i didnt view it as "oh no, drop harass!" more like "free colossus? Thanks!". It's difficult to do and unless the terran/zerg army is on the other side of the map it wont do too much
hmm I'm way in the minority here, but I don't find them to be too boring. I think they are definitely too "swingy" of a unit in that they force certain units to be built, and they force the game down a road that feels too narrow. I've never once been bored watching stalkers/colossus micro vs bio/vikings. I'm also inclined to say that anybody who thinks that battle is too easy to micro might be a little full of shit.
But the OP makes some great points and I understand where people are coming from. If the majority of the community wanted the Colossus radically redesigned or replaced I'd support them.
A year or two from now, will we be saying the same thing? Can the game change enough?
On March 15 2011 09:00 Reason.SC2 wrote: Oooh I really like the idea of making colossi attack and move much slower but hit harder.
Imagine warp prism micro, with colossi 1-shotting probes. Om-nomnom
Actually, during beta.. Colossi fired slower but did double the damage. Therefore they did oneshot workers. But they nerfed that, and do the same fire faster but less hard to the Thor too.
I love the way you put this and I feel that a solution such as the one you suggested would both reward the better player more, but also make the matchups more exciting.
Would love to see something like this implemented.
To be honest the colossus is the only new unit I actually like is SC2. The problem with the colossus isn't really a problem with the actual unit, it's the entire game. It's very very powerfull when you factor in all the other protoss units. But that's the issue, removing it or nerfing it, completely kills the protoss race. Any adjustments to that unit should mean the rest of the race is getting a massive over haul, because right now the race is designed around the colossus.
I think people hate it because of how often they see the unit, factoring in how dominating it leads the protoss army. MMM has been boring as hell since beta, the colossus has just gotten less cool over time.
The problem here is simple, protoss needs better options. In BW you could get far with your gateway units since they weren't horrible, tech to templars, reavers, arbiters, corsairs or carriers. Each of these builds were different, you didn't see pros build all these units in a match, because each build was in a word ''different." Going carriers wasn't the same as going arbiters, and arbiters tech was different from templar tech. In that once you were invested in it you were stuck with it until you got the economy to tech further.
In SC2 if you go HT before colossus you're not being more efficient, you're trying to be cute or something, because going colossus is always better and safer. Storms miss, HT's can get EMP, and then you don't have enough dps for your gateway units to survive or do enough damage.Carriers lose to simple mass marines. DTs are hit or miss mostly miss. Relying solely on immortals is unpredicable. The mothership continues to be a joke, certainly not a replacement to arbiters. Phoenix are great. But voidrays again have to be a part of the colossus ball or something similar, otherwise just cheese units.
If this game stayed as is, 10 years from now you would still see the same colossus builds you see now. That's how standard the colossus is.
I agree that they are boring and also unsatisfying to use, it's the reason I didn't choose toss even though I played P in BW. Unfair really to compare it to the reaver though, I don't see why everyone does. They're in the same tech tree but otherwise they fill entirely different roles, plus most of the 'hype' generated by reaver drops comes from the randomness of the scarab pathing.
Collosus is the most boring unit in the game - absolutely agree with the OP. There is nothing unexpected from collosus ever. If I see collosus from protoss I can already imgagine everything what will happen in the game after collosus comes. Toss gonna mass his collosus army and then go A-move, or maybe do some timing but that does not matter.
If reavers would be in game instead of collosus the game would be much much more interesting. But I doubt even in expansions blizzard will remove collosus from the game
ersonally i think immortal + archon + storm is where its at. I dont like using colossus :/
The reaver was amazing because by itself it was decent, but when you combined it with another unit and you had skill behind it, it became an epic weapon. With the colossus you cannot use it with a shuttle like you could the reaver, It is to much of a risk because of its super huge price.Reavers were good in low numbers, colossus are good in bigger numbers :/
If something is hype, it makes the crowd get excited. Simple as that.
Grammar note: things are not "hype". Something can be hyped, or cause hype, or have hype, but "hype" is not a property that something can simply be.
I don't like this notion of appropriating words for a different purpose. "Hype" has a perfectly functional definition already. If it's "Simple as that", why not just say:
If something is exciting, it makes the crowed get excited.
It says exactly what you want without torturing the English language (more than it gets tortured on a daily basis on the Internet, at least). Just say that Colossi are boring; that's a word that already exists and describes exactly what you're talking about.
require Colossi to have Warp Prisms with them if they want to get anywhere fast.
For the animation, imagine the Colossus chargin' it's lasers, then releasing a strong blast all at once. Think Yamato Cannon.
Look, if you want Shuttle/Reaver back, just say so. Don't try to hide what you want by pretending to be compromising. You want the Shuttle/Reaver dynamic back.
Colossi are the main reason why I sometimes really, really hate playing protoss. I could never betray Aiur but damn those big bastards are boring as hell to use.
The further SC2 progresses, the more I'm feeling like I'm playing a pure macro race...and coming from wc3 I fricking HATE it. I started with toss because all the fancy stuff (forcefields to begin with) you can do in battles interest me. But nowadays it's just about massing a big ball of everything + colossus without dying to anything like drops, nydus or whatever, then a-moving around the map. The thing is, every funny cute thing you can do is LESS effective. Is blink good? Sure it is, but not as good as 4 colossi. Are phoenixes good? Sure they are, but man do they suck at actually killing stuff that runs around on the ground.
I think the OP has captured a core problem of current SC2 - that the most efficient strategies/compositions are the ones that require little skill to execute in battles. Because you could say the same thing about zerg, where, for example, fungal is highly underused because - despite being cool - it's just less effective than massing stuff. But then again, isn't zerg supposed to be the macro race? I 100% agree on "bring back stuff that requires skill to use and is cool to watch".
We will not have the Colossi removed now, that's for sure. But we can push forward the idea of having more (USABLE) exciting microable units to influence the content of the future patchs and expansions. To take an illustrative example, what if in SC:BW defilers weren't used in 3/4 of the TvZ game, science lab vessel never used, ultralisks pretty rare, and mutalisks not microable as before... Well that's SC2 for you, muta/bling (banelings replacing lurkers) against tanks/marines/medics.
I think Blizzard assumed from day1 that SC2 was so awesome that no matter what the strategies/maps would be used, people would still get overly-excited about it, no matter what... Now after the ZvZ metagame ended up being a roach war a-move in 1/2 of the high level game, that TvT is a camping fest except with fewer drops since they are now vikings and that medivac is much slower than in BW for some reasons, etc... They will have to realize how wrong they were.
We go to the GSL site and on various streams like we go to the movies No matter what kind of special effects are used and how much acting potential the actors have and/or what a genius the realisator is, if the movie ends up being boring, it sucks, period.
I don't think the suggestion at the end is all too bad. I think it would work. But I think there's a much better way to do it (or possible the two could be combined):
- Make it so the colossus has an "active" ability. That is, an ability that actually requires something from the user. And make this really good. So yeah, increasing the damage like that and making it slower may be one idea.
But basically, the things that are cool are those that require action from users. Vultures in sc1 required you to place the mines and do so perfectly if you wanted to engage a goon group. Reavers required shuttle control and dropping the reaver and picking it up just after the shot and so on. As well as building new scarabs. Templars of course cast storms.
I basically want more and more active abilities in sc2. I think that would make all the difference. For example, what if you had to manually make banelings explode? That's almost the same as when you use burrowed banelings.
In sc2 we have a lot of passive units and passive abilities. Concussive shells is the absolute worst in my opinion. It adds no excitement value and it makes the game boring. You've already dealt with colossus. Reapers also have nothing special. Hellions are a bit better but again requires no real control. You can't do anything with them. There's no difference between me and Boxer using hellions. Immortals have the same problem. They're supposed to be a special unit but you don't have to do anything with them. They just shoot. And even though they deal 50 damage you wouldn't guess it from how you have to use them nor the shot animation...
I'm thinking about doing a write-up around this general theme of lack of active abilities and the over-abundance of passive abilities. I think it's really, really hurting sc2.
I want shuttle-reaver back. Reaver's had a lot of things I love about starcraft; they've got a high skillcap being dumb- and slow as hell, they can potentially do a shitton of damage and importantly, give Protoss a scary mineral harassing move early on besides DT, they are in a way easily countered; they just embody starcraft to me =)
On March 15 2011 18:57 Talin wrote: Colossi and Sentries make Protoss boring to play and especially boring to watch. It's the worst combination of units/abilities imaginable, it's just so anti-Starcraft it's painful.
Personally, i find sentries super cool and exciting to play with, and watch. There are so many different uses of force fields, and it's not as easy as many people make it to be. And the more skilled you are, the more efficient your force field usage gets. Compare MC force field usage to your average protoss. Also hallucination has so much potential.
Yepp. I don't think people are bored with sentries at all. I know they're a pain to face if you're zerg (terrans shouldn't complain because of how ridiculously easy MM just rolls protoss without forcefields) but properly placed force fields are really cool.
Keeping in line with my previous post: it's an active ability.
OP claims that "cool" units are micro intensive and allow for creative/unsusual play and then proposes changes to colossi that extremely counters these attributes. The huge problem with colossi right now is how untweakable it is right now. I dont this there is anything that could be changed without swaying the balance hugely in either way. The way it was designed, powerful unit with powerful upgrade (say hello high templar) makes it even harder to mess around with subltle tweaks. I'm really really convinced the only possible way to handle this problem is to introduce new unit, and then make drastic changes, possibly make toss less dependent on this unit.
Blizzard did say they will be adding new units to make the game more dynamic. Which can possibly make collosus not the only choice. Or perhaps an upgrade to allow the colossus kick a zealot into a bio ball and see how many rines get knocked out. Would be cool.
Be ready to see more cool stuff in the up coming expansions. Just like Brood war really made SC the coolest RTS ever... HOTS and LoTV may possibly do the same.
Keep up the suggestions, although it may help to post them in the blizzard forums as well The kick a zealot ability upgrade may be a good one. Intense timing and micro having to line up the colossus and zealot with the stimmed bio ball or Roach army and taking a whole lane of units out... CAN"T WAIT
well, Im a zerg actually, can't wait to burrow away from any oncoming zealots bowling balls.... that'd be fun to watch.
I agree that Colossus are pretty much not fun to watch, just group them all up and put some Stalkers under them, and then move out. That Daigo video made my jaw drop, and Reavers frequently make MCB/OGN commentators explode with excitement. At least Storm is still exciting.
I think I have an idea that may have huge potential:
change it so that enemy massive ground units (thor, ultralisk, colossus) draw the fire of the colossus, so its splash attack is nullified. This will make it so that its late game will not be ridiculous, mid game remains the same, increase the importance of immortals, viability of storm, prevents colossus vs colossus PvP, and increase the complexity of every matchup. Major tweaks would have to be done for the balance of each unit, some of my suggestions are: -Increase effectiveness of immortals - range or special ability possibly. Or maybe also make immortal units massive, with a special ability to take down other massive units. -Allow colossus to attack air - (a buff to counter their nerf. enemy massive air units would still draw their fire) -decrease ultralisk/ultralisk cavern build time (so zerg can attain a massive unit in relatively comparable time to thor/colossus)
On March 15 2011 21:59 Poststrata wrote: Blizzard did say they will be adding new units to make the game more dynamic. Which can possibly make collosus not the only choice. Or perhaps an upgrade to allow the colossus kick a zealot into a bio ball and see how many rines get knocked out. Would be cool.
Be ready to see more cool stuff in the up coming expansions. Just like Brood war really made SC the coolest RTS ever... HOTS and LoTV may possibly do the same.
Keep up the suggestions, although it may help to post them in the blizzard forums as well The kick a zealot ability upgrade may be a good one. Intense timing and micro having to line up the colossus and zealot with the stimmed bio ball or Roach army and taking a whole lane of units out... CAN"T WAIT
This is the main issue though. They are already plenty of unused units which could help creating a more dynamic game.
Warp-prism is theoretically like a SC1 shuttle except better, why is it not used ? Because it's slower than the shuttle in SC1 and gets destroid by muta/queen/marines/vikings which all the race natually get in their MU against P etc...
Same thing for Terran dropship, they're not used for dropping that much (considering that Terran gets plenty of them in every single game they should be used more) ? Why ? Simply because they're too damn slow ...
Buff the speed of these 2 units and you will realize how quick the metagame will change and how much more dynamic the SC2 game will be... You don't need any new units for that, just match the speed of these 2 units with the speed they had in BW...
What are you telling me ? Zerg will get wrecked ? Then let's buff nydus worm as well... Huh ? Could make nydus worm too good against FEing Protoss ? What about nydus worm requiring hive tech so, would force the Zerg to use it a bit more...
See, it's very easy to increase the mobility of this game, the reason why it has not been done is either because Blizzard don't know how to do it or don't believe it is necessary.
On March 15 2011 21:59 Poststrata wrote: Blizzard did say they will be adding new units to make the game more dynamic. Which can possibly make collosus not the only choice. Or perhaps an upgrade to allow the colossus kick a zealot into a bio ball and see how many rines get knocked out. Would be cool.
Be ready to see more cool stuff in the up coming expansions. Just like Brood war really made SC the coolest RTS ever... HOTS and LoTV may possibly do the same.
Keep up the suggestions, although it may help to post them in the blizzard forums as well The kick a zealot ability upgrade may be a good one. Intense timing and micro having to line up the colossus and zealot with the stimmed bio ball or Roach army and taking a whole lane of units out... CAN"T WAIT
This is the main issue though. They are already plenty of unused units which could help creating a more dynamic game.
Warp-prism is theoretically like a SC1 shuttle except better, why is it not used ? Because it's slower than the shuttle in SC1 and gets destroid by muta/queen/marines/vikings which all the race natually get in their MU against P etc...
Same thing for Terran dropship, they're not used for dropping that much (considering that Terran gets plenty of them in every single game they should be used more) ? Why ? Simply because they're too damn slow ...
Buff the speed of these 2 units and you will realize how quick the metagame will change and how much more dynamic the SC2 game will be... You don't need any new units for that, just match the speed of these 2 units with the speed they had in BW...
What are you telling me ? Zerg will get wrecked ? Then let's buff nydus worm as well... Huh ? Could make nydus worm too good against FEing Protoss ? What about nydus worm requiring hive tech so, would force the Zerg to use it a bit more...
See, it's very easy to increase the mobility of this game, the reason why it has not been done is either because Blizzard don't know how to do it or don't believe it is necessary.
If something is hype, it makes the crowd get excited. Simple as that.
Grammar note: things are not "hype". Something can be hyped, or cause hype, or have hype, but "hype" is not a property that something can simply be.
I don't like this notion of appropriating words for a different purpose. "Hype" has a perfectly functional definition already. If it's "Simple as that", why not just say:
If something is exciting, it makes the crowed get excited.
It says exactly what you want without torturing the English language (more than it gets tortured on a daily basis on the Internet, at least). Just say that Colossi are boring; that's a word that already exists and describes exactly what you're talking about..
Even though i don't like the word "hype" very much, and prefer "exciting" as well, i have to disagree about that grammar point.
When something is "x", x is gramatically an adjective. And there are many adjectives that are nouns as well. A lot of adjectives' definition in the dictionary say "property of that which has [n]" where n is the correspondent noun. So something "hype" is something that causes hype, or excitment. Even though i'm not sure it's added in the english dictionary, this is how a language increases, and one of the reasons why there needs to be new editions of english dictionary once in a while.
That being said, i still think exciting is a more appropriate adjective anyway. And one of the main reasons i find the colossus not that exciting is the fact that we have to see and use it almost everygame with toss, and not as an optional strategy. Pretty boring things can become more exciting if they are seen less often, which isn't the case with colossi at all.
I've been browsing this thread, as I just out right hate the collusus.(Masters P >_< if it matters)
But OP, I assume you've seen what happens to a collusus when like 8 or so vikings or 6 corruptors get onto it?
It dies. No chance.
And you can argue that it "Keep your army in position!", unfortunately flying units are way more mobile and the collusus dies so quick they will get that collusus kill one way or another. So making this useless beast move slower is not a viable solution.
Everyone has seen what happens to a protoss army when it tries to fight stim-bioball(or hydra army) without colusus support yea? Spoilers: It's really sad.
I'm liking this Immortal/Sentry/Zealot combination though OP, you HAVE to micro your immortals to shoot marauders and your forcefields need to be clutch, but it eliminates the dependence on Colussus balls and hoping they don't get sniped, and is pretty satisfying to pull off.
God, I've been playing Protoss mainly since launch, and have recently come to the same conclusion- Collosi are a necessary part of the Brotoss force that is just flat out boring to use. I'd been trying to implement more HT into my forces, but after the next patch, how often will one opt to go for HT as opposed to collosus. It's at the point that TvP, ZvP, and PvP are all so stale and collosi-centered that I'm beginning to try T out for the first time seriously. Let me tell you, doing this at a 3,000 diamond level is not the easiest thing ><
Give us something more exciting. I don't care that the collosus is disgustingly good, I want to have fun, please.
I think blizzard went overboard with the passive effects. You don't get excited about an immortal only taking 10 damage, or a roach regenerating slowly, or a collosus climbing up and down cliffs.
I do feel from a spectators POV, that protoss got the bad end of all the races. On top of that, most of the units that do splash damage have pretty serious drawbacks. -Hellions have to hit in a line, so in order to hit the most, you have to position the hellion nicely rather than just move it in. -Siege tanks have to be immobile to do splash damage, and even some vision support to boot. -Banelings have to get up to point blank range. -EMP, Storm and Fungal are all energy based. -Ultra's make the dragoon AI live on, just getting this thing up front of the army is something that makes me think back to those days on Destination. WHY WOULDNT YOU CROSS THE BRIDGE DRAGOON.
Collosi on the other hand don't need support units to use their full potential. They come out of the box ready to do the max damage, with a reasonable speed and the ability to look over cliffs. The only things the support units do is prevent the collosus from dying so it can keep on rocking the battlefield.
<useless suggestion that everyone skips> I would be in favour of having a mode-style unit made out of the collosi. Much like the viking or the siege tank. One mode that does less damage and has the advantages of looking over cliffs and cliff climbing, and one that allows the collosi to 'duck' lower to the ground. This mode allows for more DPS and not being able to hit by air, but the tradeoff is that it gets a severe range reduction ( to like 6 or 7 ) and no cliff climbing. Perhaps playing with the movement speeds on these modes are options too. </useless suggestion that everyone skips>
I think the protoss units LOOK cool and flashy. They certainly seem impressive from a novice point of view. But the lack of WOW CONTROLL like blink stalkers across the race makes it less fun to watch than a matchup like TvP or TvZ.
The answer has already been suggested tbh; the collosus needs to do it's damage in real-time. The first time i played vs collosus i tried to be uber1337 and micro out of the beam - but it isn't possible as the animation isn't actually representative of how the damage is calculated.
Just make it so the damage is in sync with the animation, and calculates the damage dealt as the beam moves along. I.e. the beam has a certain dps and units take dmg proportional to how long they stayed in the beam.
On March 15 2011 23:13 Chaosvuistje wrote: -Ultra's make the dragoon AI live on, just getting this thing up front of the army is something that makes me think back to those days on Destination. WHY WOULDNT YOU CROSS THE BRIDGE DRAGOON.
Quoting for the biblical lulz.
Collosi on the other hand don't need support units to use their full potential. They come out of the box ready to do the max damage, with a reasonable speed and the ability to look over cliffs. The only things the support units do is prevent the collosus from dying so it can keep on rocking the battlefield.
Imagine if they required air upgrades for armor and attack *gasp* we might see carriers as a viable transition. I'd like colossi a lot more if you could do something other than... making more.
<useless suggestion that everyone skips> I would be in favour of having a mode-style unit made out of the collosi. Much like the viking or the siege tank. One mode that does less damage and has the advantages of looking over cliffs and cliff climbing, and one that allows the collosi to 'duck' lower to the ground. This mode allows for more DPS and not being able to hit by air, but the tradeoff is that it gets a severe range reduction ( to like 6 or 7 ) and no cliff climbing. Perhaps playing with the movement speeds on these modes are options too. </useless suggestion that everyone skips>
I think this is cool, but it'd need to be FAST. there's a reason landing vikings is a bad idea, lol.
Everybody hates Collosi. Does blizzard know that? I'll stop playing SC2 as soon as 1.3 comes out, because I do not AT ALL want to be forced to mass pump these stupid fat units every single game...
<useless suggestion that everyone skips> I would be in favour of having a mode-style unit made out of the collosi. Much like the viking or the siege tank. One mode that does less damage and has the advantages of looking over cliffs and cliff climbing, and one that allows the collosi to 'duck' lower to the ground. This mode allows for more DPS and not being able to hit by air, but the tradeoff is that it gets a severe range reduction ( to like 6 or 7 ) and no cliff climbing. Perhaps playing with the movement speeds on these modes are options too. </useless suggestion that everyone skips>
I think this is cool, but it'd need to be FAST. there's a reason landing vikings is a bad idea, lol.
The reason being that in situations where you need them (vs colossus, vs blords, vs other vikings), the ground army usually has anti-armor capabilities greater than the vikings damage contribution vs. ground (stalker/immo, marauders/tanks, ultra transition).
Though, if vikings would lift off/land quicker, we'd see alot more viking harassment.
On March 15 2011 23:25 goiflin wrote: The reason being that in situations where you need them (vs colossus, vs blords, vs other vikings), the ground army usually has anti-armor capabilities greater than the vikings damage contribution vs. ground (stalker/immo, marauders/tanks, ultra transition).
Though, if vikings would lift off/land quicker, we'd see alot more viking harassment.
God, if they could lift/land more quickly, I'd be building them in every single matchup.
I've been arguing this case in the irc channel before so yeah i agree. My solution has been to replace the colossus with reaver though, as it is already a tried and tested interesting unit. Maybe changing the colossus is more likely to happen although i doubt it, i think blizzard removed a lot of the micro intensive units to make the game easier.
Colossi are boring. I know what you guys mean. I make Ultra+ bannelings and just attack move to my opponent base and win. Protoss has early midgame deathball but hey zerg has early late game deathball.
Blizz removed the 3 most exciting/crowd pleasing units in the game:
Reaver - the crowd would always be on edge to see if the scarab would go off on a group of SCVs or if it would be a dud.
Vulture - spider mines were very good to see mine drags to the worker line or whatever. made crowds go nuts when they saw huge explosions.
Lurker - there was nothing better than seeing a lurker take out an entire group of MM and see blood and gore everywhere. OR hold pos lurkers were good too, the crowd would hold their breath until a group of units walked over.
I like collosi, but they are hard to use. If they are scouted, then you are finished, because zerg can pop corruptors instantly and null and void all the money you just invested into them, and Terran can pop out vikings 2 at a time and shoot them from miles back with huge damage, and again null and void. Collusses get too much credit. Marines are not a good unit to build versus protoss because protoss are basically the master of long distance AOE, so why even try? You have scans on your orbital right? Scout and react. I don't think they are anti-climactic, they are a symbol of dominance in a lot of cases. If you can't react, then you get dominated. Thor's are the same way. So are Ultralisks, and Brood lords.
in all honesty tho i've given the same arguement. people are asking why specifically targetting the colossus? it's simply the best example. certainly other units have this same issue.
if they did however replace the colossus or change it's dynamic i wouldn't want it to be the same as shuttle/reaver. they'd need to think of something new. colo drops in beta when they 1 hit workers looked super dumb. the colossus was what. 3 times the size of the warp prism. this HUGE thing just appearing and disappearing. not to mention the obvious balance flaws with a unit that one shots workers. with AoE and an instant attack animation with barely any delay.
i. like most people i guess. just want to see players rewarded for their abilities. that doesn't mean make the game harder by removing MBS or anything. the units just need to be dynamic and interesting.
agreed w/ op. I am impressed with dextrously taxing units. The colossi, and many other units in sc2 are less impressive to watch because of the lack of interesting maneuvers.
Again, Zerg and Terran players proposing to remove the unit entirely or nerf it significantly without any bright ideas to replace it shouldn't even be posting in this thread. That'd be like removing roaches or MM from the game entirely, i.e. the giant band-aid DPS dealer of the Protoss army.
The colossus is a crutch that can't be removed without the entire SC2 balance imploding. Horribly.
Ive been collossi dropping since beta, its highly effective expecially when they run there workers away. (tho the collossi nerf made is a bit harder to kill probes fast) not always successful tho
People werent reaver dropping within the first 6 months of SC1 been release were they?
It is indeed a boring unit, but mostly all units are boring (after awhile) the only non-boring units are the ones you never seen before (BC,carriers)
I do agree giving them a movement nerf for a damage buff, would indeed make it less boring. Tho if the KA goes through, doing something extreme to the robo would definitely hurt toss majorly.
A Shuttle that fires Scarabs… This illusion would describe just how fast Zileas was able to move a Reaver in and out of a Shuttle, firing the massive war machine's payload almost without the Reaver being seen.
A Shuttle that fires Scarabs… This illusion would describe just how fast Zileas was able to move a Reaver in and out of a Shuttle, firing the massive war machine's payload almost without the Reaver being seen.
I think vikings and how they basically rule the air vs anything protoss, including warp prisms and except phoenixes (and they are still pretty good against phoenixes, if not in a straight up engagement where colossi are roasting your bio), shut down protoss options just as much as the strength of the colossus deathball is seen as a powerful option in itself.
Add the fact that protoss upgrades all ground units' attacks with one upgrade, and it makes switching to air just a little more clumsy. Carriers could also really use an armor buff. If sentry with Gshield and carrier beats mass marine, who cares?
until protoss aren't forced going into robo every game, we'll see the colossus being used. I find the unit to still be fun and exciting, because I know once I have it out on the field I feel much safer and allows me to go into other tech paths after the fact of its creation.
If we're talking about a nerf, then we must talk about buffs; gateway units.
My answer to "fixing" brotoss is to make warpgate research go to the twilight council. That way stalkers can get the buff they need and 4 gate wont be an issue for the early game. It also makes the protoss have to decide on 2 different tech paths, instead of gradually always going into one. If we see gate way unit buffs across the board, then and only then can we see a colossus nerf, because simply put, we need colossus to survive and win if the game lasts longer than 8 minutes.
On March 16 2011 00:09 jgelling wrote: Again, Zerg and Terran players proposing to remove the unit entirely or nerf it significantly without any bright ideas to replace it shouldn't even be posting in this thread. That'd be like removing roaches or MM from the game entirely, i.e. the giant band-aid DPS dealer of the Protoss army.
The colossus is a crutch that can't be removed without the entire SC2 balance imploding. Horribly.
Your second sentence sums up the problem with SC2. MM, roaches and colossus are a-move units but SC2 currently revolves around these units. In BW, barracks play can't function late-game without a science vessel cloud. Against terran and protoss, mech is preferred.
Blizzard shifted the power of terran from the more skill-based and exciting mech units to the a-move barracks units. They removed lurkers in favor of roaches and reavers in favor of colossi.
Blizzard needs to rebalance the game so that each race revolves around units that require positioning, active use of abilities and risk vs reward decision making. Right now, the most crucial units for each race are a-move units with no decision making involved in microing them.
Completely agrees with you guys who prefered reaver > collosi, I remember seeing my first reaver drop on youtube and hearing the korean commentators go crazy <3 Collosi alongs with marauders are imo the most boring units to watch.
behold the birth of the collosi :p Warpin --> Weak Gateway Units Weak Gateway Units --> Collosi
On March 16 2011 01:09 goldfishs wrote: Completely agrees with you guys who prefered reaver > collosi, I remember seeing my first reaver drop on youtube and hearing the korean commentators go crazy <3 Collosi alongs with marauders are imo the most boring units to watch.
behold the birth of the collosi :p Warpin --> Weak Gateway Units Weak Gateway Units --> Collosi
I'd like to add roach to your list of most boring units to watch.
Bleh colossi are indeed not as flashy as reavers but reavers sucked as well because their damage was too random. Having a scarab bug out in a topmatch sucks as well.
There are still plenty of flashy things left in sc2 many of which sc1 didnt have. For example sentry ff's are flashy, put them 1 tile wrong and they don't work often. Ht are still in the game. Tons of other stuff.
The problem is more that colossi are too good compared to the other strats. The counters to colossi could be a bit stronger and HT could be relatively better, 1.3 unfortunately is only making this worse..
I just can't stand the endless disquised BW was better topics. BW had a crapload of errors in it. Many bugs, way to macro focussed and very little strategic variety. I do agree sc2 misses some of the 'wow' moments but there are still 2 expansions coming.
There are still plenty of flashy things left in sc2 many of which sc1 didnt have. For example sentry ff's are flashy, put them 1 tile wrong and they don't work often. Ht are still in the game. Tons of other stuff.
Sentries aren't hype at all imo, FFs are pretty boring and not hard to use. The only time they can be entertaining is when people use weird hallucination pushes.
the damage increase and the speed nerf would have to go hand in hand. blizzard specifically made the colossus shoot faster but weaker to weaken kiting by colossus.
On March 15 2011 18:57 andrewwiggin wrote: You know what's super boring to watch? Roaches.
Yeah it's so boring that blizzard should just nerf them to make things interesting.
Do you note my epic levels of sarcasm? This is just a new way to cry over imbalance, disguised as 'entertainment value'.
If it wasn't entertaining enough to watch, sc2 would be getting smaller in viewership; and not bigger. And FYI colossi were what made me BUY sc2. And they're the first unit my non-sc2 friends go gaga over when we watch matches now and then.
So think about that.
Why do you keep posting bullshit, all 3 of your posts in this thread have been the total worst. YOU are the one bringing balance up. Colossus are boring as shit to watch, they are in most P games and take no skill. Almost everyone agrees.
On March 16 2011 01:27 Markwerf wrote: I just can't stand the endless disquised BW was better topics. BW had a crapload of errors in it. Many bugs, way to macro focussed and very little strategic variety. I do agree sc2 misses some of the 'wow' moments but there are still 2 expansions coming.
You're a guy who joined in March 2010 claiming BW has little strategic variety. Wtf? If anything it's certainly got more choices than SC2. Just look at the liquipedia. Take a matchup like TvZ for example, the amount of variations is insane in depth. Every unit is viable in some way, almost every ability.
yeah, you could have the collosus charging on one unit then BOOM, giving a nice micro incentive for the other player to move that unit so it doesnt splash horribley to his own
If they returned the reaver to the Protoss, they would need to get rid of the Immortal (or get rid of its shield ability). Terran would be at a severe disadvantage when Protoss have the two best hard counters to Terran's units. (Storm, Reavers, and Immortals...., that's just not right)
I agree that colossus aren't "hype" units, but keep in mind that players will get units that allow them to win- not just units that please the crowd.
I assume hype units are units like motherships, dark templar, a ghost going off to nuke, etc.
So I agree with the OP completely, but I also think that hype is created from the rarity of the use of a unit, so most units that are key in a unit composition (colossi, marauders, roaches, etc.), will simply not be that exciting to watch in a game. Backbone units don't really serve as thriller/ hype units, and I don't think they ever will.
...Unless perhaps unorthodox play starts to occur? I bet a warp prism drop with colossus that takes out a bunch of workers (like old school reaver harrass that has a golden scarab that takes out ten workers) would cause some hype. However, at this point in time, I don't see that happening very often, and that's more of a strategy-hype, not the very existence of colossus that causes the hype.
On March 16 2011 01:09 goldfishs wrote: Completely agrees with you guys who prefered reaver > collosi, I remember seeing my first reaver drop on youtube and hearing the korean commentators go crazy <3 Collosi alongs with marauders are imo the most boring units to watch.
behold the birth of the collosi :p Warpin --> Weak Gateway Units Weak Gateway Units --> Collosi
I'd like to add roach to your list of most boring units to watch.
Add the marauder as well. Basically, the most powerful, most important unit of all 3 races in SC2 is also the most boring. Each one of them is a new unit as well.
I agree that the Colossus is boring, it's why I don't like watching the Protoss matchups.
It doesn't encourage fun or creative play. It can just stand on top of its support army because it doesn't have any collision with it. It doesn't require any finesse like the reaver or siege tank, or any positioning, flanking, just force fields. Balling up is boring.
For me it's not balance, it's just not entertaining.
On March 16 2011 01:51 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I'm sure about 90% of SC2 units are anti-hype units, which is probably about the same percentage as in BW.
I disagree, the main units of BW were themselves hype/exciting or at least took part in hype/exciting engagements. See: The Flash vs Bisu vod posted earlier in this thread for PvT zealot/dragoon vs tank/vulture. Or TvZ, MnM vs Lurker/Ling/Defiler. Or PvZ, sauron zerg vs a mixed protoss ball. I found all of those exciting to watch, it was never the same twice. Hell even a unit like goliath which had not much micro to it at all wasn't that bad and goliath vs carriers was somewhat fun to spectate imo. That infact is probably the best example of using cliffs in combat.
i wont go into balance here so ill stick to pvp. i think pvp would be alot better matchup if colosuss was replaced with a reaver. the micro potential is huge :D
On March 16 2011 01:51 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I'm sure about 90% of SC2 units are anti-hype units, which is probably about the same percentage as in BW.
Speedlings in the early game, dragoon micro, vulture micro, lurkers, muta micro, HT/reaver drops, DT's, scourge vs. corsairs, early zealot pressure, drone drills, probe harassment, carrier vs. goliaths, and arbiter/vessel/defiler are 10% of the units in BW to you?
Dunno what games your watching, but it sounds like M&M TvT's.
I don't understand how the SFIII one is anything but 4. How is holding the block button an amazing feat of dexterity, creative, OR massive damage?
Edit: Hey I'm a dragoon now, and my post here is probably ignorant and stupid, but I really don't understand how just blocking something in a fighter game is impressive, though I've never played SFIII.
On March 16 2011 02:13 Buddhist wrote: I don't understand how the SFIII one is anything but 4. How is holding the block button an amazing feat of dexterity, creative, OR massive damage?
You should definately read more about the subject before saying that. He's not holding down the block button. He's parrying.
Oh, I'll explain it real quick. Parrying is something that requires a specific timing. You are left without "block stun" and it deflects damage completely. When you block any sort of special move, you take "chip damage" which would have killed Daigo if he had did that. The feat of parrying every single hit of that move was 1, 2, and 4. 3 was the relative few moves that he did to come back from that large of a deficite.
I will agree that watching collossi tends to not be that exciting. Though I disagree that it doesn't require micro/skill to use.
I'm a middling master Toss, and I pretty much suck with collossi, I nearly always go for templar/stargate tech over Collossi, because I'm not very good with the unit.
I imagine we will start seeing more collossi drops return as the warp prism with speed is becoming more popular, collossi drop kill workers, then outrun vikings?
On March 16 2011 02:13 Buddhist wrote: I don't understand how the SFIII one is anything but 4. How is holding the block button an amazing feat of dexterity, creative, OR massive damage?
You should definately read more about the subject before saying that. He's not holding down the block button. He's parrying.
Oh, I'll explain it real quick. Parrying is something that requires a specific timing. You are left without "block stun" and it deflects damage completely. When you block any sort of special move, you take "chip damage" which would have killed Daigo if he had did that. The feat of parrying every single hit of that move was 1, 2, and 4. 3 was the relative few moves that he did to come back from that large of a deficite.
Ah, thanks.
Reminds me of snap-dodging in RO ;3
ie: not that hard to time when you know what he's going to do, but 99.9% of people can't do it, and everyone thinks it's amazing
They've pretty much toned down everything from BW that was super powerful or had high damage potential. Dark swarm replaced by a weaker dark swarm with limited charges. It's like the developers looked at everything in SC1 and shouted HOLY CRAP THAT'S IMBA! But there is some argument that BW psi-storm and reavers would be hilariously broken in the SC2 engine (clumping). That not everything would translate well to SC2.
I mean look at what they did to the archon toilet... they could've just gave the vortex a small cast time instead of removing it entirely so units can run for it and that running your entire army into it wouldn't always be a good idea. But that's Blizzard balancing present day, remove stuff completely. RIP reaper, RIP archon toilet, RIP flux vanes, RIP KA.
On March 16 2011 02:56 Ownos wrote: They've pretty much toned down everything from BW that was super powerful or had high damage potential. Dark swarm replaced by a weaker dark swarm with limited charges. It's like the developers looked at everything in SC1 and shouted HOLY CRAP THAT'S IMBA! But there is some argument that BW psi-storm and reavers would be hilariously broken in the SC2 engine (clumping). That not everything would translate well to SC2.
I mean look at what they did to the archon toilet... they could've just gave the vortex a small cast time instead of removing it entirely so units can run for it and that running your entire army into it wouldn't always be a good idea. But that's Blizzard balancing present day, remove stuff completely. RIP reaper, RIP archon toilet, RIP flux vanes, RIP KA.
In a game where players are actively looking for ways to abuse the system in ways you cannot forsee, the best option is capital punishment for IMBA transgression. It'll get changed up in an expac, I'm sure.
On March 16 2011 03:10 ZeGzoR wrote: Blizzard needs to add some fun units in HoS. Reaver and lurker comeback?
The lurker would see no use in ZvT assuming that it stays in lair tech. In ZvZ, it would probably see as little usage as it did in SC1 in that matchup, although it could force zerg from being a roach-fest to being a hydra-fest, and in ZvP, I don't see alot of places for it with easily accessible detection and immortals.
But I would love to see it added anyway, same with the reaver. You never know what someone might figure out with those units.
i think the changes suggested by the OP are good and really would make the collosi more interesting. there is a lot less mineral line harassment and harassment in general from protoss than the other two races and it would be nice to see more harassing from protoss in general aside from dts and occasionally pheonixes.
On March 16 2011 03:10 ZeGzoR wrote: Blizzard needs to add some fun units in HoS. Reaver and lurker comeback?
The lurker would see no use in ZvT assuming that it stays in lair tech. In ZvZ, it would probably see as little usage as it did in SC1 in that matchup, although it could force zerg from being a roach-fest to being a hydra-fest, and in ZvP, I don't see alot of places for it with easily accessible detection and immortals.
But I would love to see it added anyway, same with the reaver. You never know what someone might figure out with those units.
I don't think you have ever seen how badly lurkers destroy groups of MnM in BW, besides with the addition of clumping they would be very powerfull if not borderline overpowerd vs MnM. However that all depends on what damage they do, if they do no +armored then Marauders in great numbers and sufficient shoot and scoot micro should be able to take them out.
As for ZvZ, lurkers did not see much use in BW due to everyone going muta's, however as we see currently in SC2 not many people are going muta's, so you will most likely see alot of lurkers.
The main problem however is that if you add the reaver in the game with flawless AI, combine this with the unit ball clumping and it would be massivly overpowerd.
That being said, there is an interesting point in this thread about the mass usage of the 1-A units(Roaches, Marauders, Collosi). But you can't easily change this without changing the units drastically(or atleast that is what I believe.)
On March 16 2011 02:13 Buddhist wrote: I don't understand how the SFIII one is anything but 4. How is holding the block button an amazing feat of dexterity, creative, OR massive damage?
Edit: Hey I'm a dragoon now, and my post here is probably ignorant and stupid, but I really don't understand how just blocking something in a fighter game is impressive, though I've never played SFIII.
On March 16 2011 03:10 ZeGzoR wrote: Blizzard needs to add some fun units in HoS. Reaver and lurker comeback?
The lurker would see no use in ZvT assuming that it stays in lair tech. In ZvZ, it would probably see as little usage as it did in SC1 in that matchup, although it could force zerg from being a roach-fest to being a hydra-fest, and in ZvP, I don't see alot of places for it with easily accessible detection and immortals.
But I would love to see it added anyway, same with the reaver. You never know what someone might figure out with those units.
I don't think you have ever seen how badly lurkers destroy groups of MnM in BW, besides with the addition of clumping they would be very powerfull if not borderline overpowerd vs MnM. However that all depends on what damage they do, if they do no +armored then Marauders in great numbers and sufficient shoot and scoot micro should be able to take them out.
As for ZvZ, lurkers did not see much use in BW due to everyone going muta's, however as we see currently in SC2 not many people are going muta's, so you will most likely see alot of lurkers.
The main problem however is that if you add the reaver in the game with flawless AI, combine this with the unit ball clumping and it would be massivly overpowerd.
That being said, there is an interesting point in this thread about the mass usage of the 1-A units(Roaches, Marauders, Collosi). But you can't easily change this without changing the units drastically(or atleast that is what I believe.)
MM pushes come before lair tech in sc2, which is why I said that it wouldn't be a viable unit, especially without dark swarm. Tanks outrange and splatter lurks without defiler support.
I'm sure we would see more muta useage to abuse the immobility of a lurker. Although, I may have misanalyzed that situation, since hydras did like 5 damage to mutas in BW, and weren't sufficient to guard lurks from getting sniped.
But they definately wouldn't change the landscape of ZvT whatsoever. Tank/marine all the way, baby.
If Protoss get an exciting, dynamic unit in an expansion that fills the roll of the reaver, I'd be fine. Otherwise...
The colossus can be made more interesting with a big overhaul in an expansion. I say allow them to change modes.
Mode A, is like it is now. Walker mode.
Mode B, is more like a reaver. Reaver mode. Maybe it squats down to avoid air attacks, but it's slower, and has to used a charged up version of its lasers in a small blast of some sort that'd be more deadly to workers, but shoots way slower, etc.
I really like the idea of the slow attacks speed coloss, but not with the damage front-loaded, make it take 1-1.5 seconds to charge up. But not only that, make the charge animation show the beams going where they will attack, starting small, and then getting bigger until they get to the size they are now and do their sweep. This would make for incredible micro oppertunities as you could effectively dodge the colossus shots if you microed well enough. This would then make for protoss needing to flank and/or drop enough forcefields that the other army can't dance around dodging the shots easily. The charge time would need to be closely monitored and balanced, so that it doesn't make the colossus useless, but still makes it worth it to try and dodge units out of the sweeps.
On March 16 2011 01:41 Arcanne wrote: check ur definition of hype
seems fine to me
Last time I checked, "hype" is either a verb or a noun, akin to "to anticipate" or "anticipation". "I am anticipate" doesn't make sense, and "I am hype" doesn't, either. It should be "I induce anticipation/hype".
Creating false uses of the word "hype" (including "anti-hype") is most likely, judging by the post, a failed rhetorical strategy to portray the post as "more correct" or "more supportable". The use of exorbitant, uncommon, or "special" language beyond the ordinary (or the use of created phrases) to foment one's message is a commonly utilized tactic in many posts, but it's seen as rather redundant and unnecessary in most cases, appearing blatant in some cases.
...That was my attempt at satire / ironic mockery, but it didn't work as well as I had hoped >.>
Agreeably colossi are a bit drab, but I wouldnt change a thing about them stats-wise. Maybe just make their animation or design a bit cooler to look at.
It's funny how people resent colossi so badly lately. With upcoming amulet patch, frankly they are the only thing that makes protoss playable.
On March 16 2011 01:51 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I'm sure about 90% of SC2 units are anti-hype units, which is probably about the same percentage as in BW.
This is so wrong its not even funny. C'mon man you watch bw so you should know. Zerglings in SC2: fun for the first 3 minutes and then just go splat. Zerglings in BW: Fun for the first 3 minutes and then cracklings go RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE to expos. Mutas in sc2 vs bw: obvious. EMP vs stasis >>>> EMP vs storm. Mines, reaver, stop lurker, scourge. Heck, mines themselves make every TvX potentially hilarious for both the T or the X. I really don't see how you can say that as someone who follows BW.
I don't like colosi either. T.T Reaver would be more fun but right now sc2 is all about death balls which is causing units to clump together. Reaver would be ridiculous.
I do believe a game like Starcraft need more flashy moments to do as you said, create more hype. If blizzard wants to take SC2 to the next level, I hope they do something about it in upcoming expansions. More explosions, be more open for creative play, more micro-intensivity possibilities etc.
On March 15 2011 09:12 Tsagacity wrote: This was my initial reaction to SC2 during beta and my biggest complaint about it since.
The most entertaining aspect of SC:BW (as both a player and a spectator) was the seemingly in-human feats that good players could pull off. It's also why I love SSBM and UT-style FPS games.
I find very little excitement in SC2 outside of marine splits against banelings
beta? we've been saying this since those battle reports came out lol
On March 16 2011 03:46 Blacklizard wrote: If Protoss get an exciting, dynamic unit in an expansion that fills the roll of the reaver, I'd be fine. Otherwise...
The colossus can be made more interesting with a big overhaul in an expansion. I say allow them to change modes.
Mode A, is like it is now. Walker mode.
Mode B, is more like a reaver. Reaver mode. Maybe it squats down to avoid air attacks, but it's slower, and has to used a charged up version of its lasers in a small blast of some sort that'd be more deadly to workers, but shoots way slower, etc.
Change it so that the Colossus has to siege in order to gain its 9 range, and without it, only 5 range it should fire from. Remove the range upgrade.
Limit the Colossus number that can be commanded at a time to 4, and perhaps buff the damage slightly to compensate. These are my opinion regarding the unit.
I don't know if you can quantify an entire unit as "anti-hype". Perhaps a safer assumption is that the current state of the game involves strategies and tactics utilizing the Colossus as less interesting then "X" unit.
The colossus has potential but its a high value, high risk, high reward type unit. But for example, what about hiding your colossus behind two opposing sides of high ground and using some weaker units or sentries to bait an army into a narrow pass, then using the colossus range and cliff walking to create a powerful trap blocked in with force fields. Like a baneling bomb trap except rain down the destruction from on high. I think whether a unit is anti-hype has as much to do with the current state of the game as its fundamental design.
pwahahah id love the reaver back any day MMM would become competely obsolete 1 reaver shot = 125 dmg and with sc2's new pathing, a reaver would 1 shot an entire ball :D
this discussion has been had to death already in beta and when the game was released. I don't see anything in the year or so the games been out that blizzard has any inclination of changing how the units currently work in the game. This seems like a futile thread.
Imo, the main culprit in the anti-hype is SC2's new pathfinding in combination with splash damage. The splash damage mechanic is mostly unchanged since Brood War. In Brood War, armies were so spread out that we would see waves and waves of units streaming into defensive lines; whereas in Starcraft 2, we usually see huge clumps of armies charging into defensive lines, which leads to a lot more AOE overlap than in Brood War, which means armies in SC2 usually die a lot quicker than they did in Brood War. Brood War battles were very exciting for the spectators because they took up whole screens and you'd still see units coming in to reinforce from off-screen.
On March 16 2011 03:10 ZeGzoR wrote: Blizzard needs to add some fun units in HoS. Reaver and lurker comeback?
The lurker would see no use in ZvT assuming that it stays in lair tech. In ZvZ, it would probably see as little usage as it did in SC1 in that matchup, although it could force zerg from being a roach-fest to being a hydra-fest, and in ZvP, I don't see alot of places for it with easily accessible detection and immortals.
But I would love to see it added anyway, same with the reaver. You never know what someone might figure out with those units.
I don't think you have ever seen how badly lurkers destroy groups of MnM in BW, besides with the addition of clumping they would be very powerfull if not borderline overpowerd vs MnM. However that all depends on what damage they do, if they do no +armored then Marauders in great numbers and sufficient shoot and scoot micro should be able to take them out.
As for ZvZ, lurkers did not see much use in BW due to everyone going muta's, however as we see currently in SC2 not many people are going muta's, so you will most likely see alot of lurkers.
The main problem however is that if you add the reaver in the game with flawless AI, combine this with the unit ball clumping and it would be massivly overpowerd.
That being said, there is an interesting point in this thread about the mass usage of the 1-A units(Roaches, Marauders, Collosi). But you can't easily change this without changing the units drastically(or atleast that is what I believe.)
MM pushes come before lair tech in sc2, which is why I said that it wouldn't be a viable unit, especially without dark swarm. Tanks outrange and splatter lurks without defiler support.
I'm sure we would see more muta useage to abuse the immobility of a lurker. Although, I may have misanalyzed that situation, since hydras did like 5 damage to mutas in BW, and weren't sufficient to guard lurks from getting sniped.
But they definately wouldn't change the landscape of ZvT whatsoever. Tank/marine all the way, baby.
MM pushes came before lair in BW as well. However lings did more damage (relatively), and marines had less health and you couldn't stutter step them.
If lurkers were in SC2, you would more likely see people doing 2 hatch fast gas no queen fast lair builds.
In regards to Marine + Tank. You never sat there with lurkers and let them die to tank fire. You would run in with a bunch of lings and lurkers and let the lurkers soak the damage, then you would burrow the lurkers close in and let the splash damage kill everything, and then the lings would catch any units running away.
Lurkers would also do a lot to balance mules in the early game. As terran would always need to save scans before doing a push.
On March 16 2011 10:36 LoLAdriankat wrote: Excellent OP.
Imo, the main culprit in the anti-hype is SC2's new pathfinding in combination with splash damage. The splash damage mechanic is mostly unchanged since Brood War. In Brood War, armies were so spread out that we would see waves and waves of units streaming into defensive lines; whereas in Starcraft 2, we usually see huge clumps of armies charging into defensive lines, which leads to a lot more AOE overlap than in Brood War, which means armies in SC2 usually die a lot quicker than they did in Brood War. Brood War battles were very exciting for the spectators because they took up whole screens and you'd still see units coming in to reinforce from off-screen.
Not only that, but in BW we actually could tell what was going on during the battle, whereas in SC2 all we see are shiny explosions and a huge graphic overlapping effects mess.
would it not be a reasonable micro mechanic to bring back scourge?, they would be able to insta-kill the collosus and the protoss would be seen using their stalkers to target them before they get too many attacks on them
vs terran i don't see a problem since you could make so that thors 1 shot them hence being safe vs terran air, and it would be a reasonable response to banshee harass as long as they don't do too much damage for it to be like 'banshee harass! oh noes scourge gg'
vs zerg it would become a very powerful map control tool since it would prevent the overlords from being everywhere.
this is of course, provided it gets very little health to be easily killed by spore crawlers/thors.
it might not work balance wise though, since after scourge did the damage vs the collo they are even more useless than corruptors
On March 16 2011 10:36 LoLAdriankat wrote: Excellent OP.
Imo, the main culprit in the anti-hype is SC2's new pathfinding in combination with splash damage. The splash damage mechanic is mostly unchanged since Brood War. In Brood War, armies were so spread out that we would see waves and waves of units streaming into defensive lines; whereas in Starcraft 2, we usually see huge clumps of armies charging into defensive lines, which leads to a lot more AOE overlap than in Brood War, which means armies in SC2 usually die a lot quicker than they did in Brood War. Brood War battles were very exciting for the spectators because they took up whole screens and you'd still see units coming in to reinforce from off-screen.
Not only that, but in BW we actually could tell what was going on during the battle, whereas in SC2 all we see are shiny explosions and a huge graphic overlapping effects mess.
Weren't units more spread out in Brood War because players had to literally fight the game AI and reign it lest a zealot take a 7 day tour around the edge of a map where as he could have walked a straight line from A to B?
The main problem with the Collosus is basically that it's Batman. They're super-special awesome deathmachines that annihilate everything and know no fear, until someone pulls out a chunk of kryptonite/air units. It just makes for such a bland scissors-paper-rock dynamic where you know exactly how the fight will end as soon as you see the two armies.
On March 16 2011 13:49 Ezekyle wrote: The main problem with the Collosus is basically that it's Batman. They're super-special awesome deathmachines that annihilate everything and know no fear, until someone pulls out a chunk of kryptonite/air units. It just makes for such a bland scissors-paper-rock dynamic where you know exactly how the fight will end as soon as you see the two armies.
Batman is cool with kryponite, its superman your thinking of.
On March 16 2011 12:41 Barca wrote: Well okay, if Collosus are dull, what units aren't?
Roaches and hydras are both pretty dull too. Same with Vikings. If unit control makes a unit not dull then keep in mind this is Starcraft 2
True, difference is that roaches, hydras, and vikings don't melt everything into oblivion. I'm also not fond of the argument that the other units are bland as well. Thats just saturating the issue.
On March 16 2011 12:41 Barca wrote: Well okay, if Collosus are dull, what units aren't?
Roaches and hydras are both pretty dull too. Same with Vikings. If unit control makes a unit not dull then keep in mind this is Starcraft 2
True, difference is that roaches, hydras, and vikings don't melt everything into oblivion. I'm also not fond of the argument that the other units are bland as well. Thats just saturating the issue.
Zerg as a race is full of "dull" units, but as a whole, the race is exciting because of the way it fights. It wants to produce, engulf and surround enemies, thus making it exciting... Or at least thats what i think the race should be about.
With that in mind, i kind of hate the hydralisk because of how slow, expensive, and costly they are. Doesn't really fit the zerg image.
The reaver is simply the most ingenious unit Blizzard has ever thought of. It could potentially be a ridiculously powerful unit that annihilates things with style, or it can do squat because it's so slow and fragile. The thing is, Blizzard made a lot of "most ingenious" units. Look at the Lurker. Area damage? Cloaked?? Sounds insane right? But in fact, it's only powerful in the right hands.
The poblem with the Colossus is that it's pretty powerful in anyone's hands. That's why its bland.
On March 16 2011 12:41 Barca wrote: Well okay, if Collosus are dull, what units aren't?
Roaches and hydras are both pretty dull too. Same with Vikings. If unit control makes a unit not dull then keep in mind this is Starcraft 2
True, difference is that roaches, hydras, and vikings don't melt everything into oblivion. I'm also not fond of the argument that the other units are bland as well. Thats just saturating the issue.
Zerg as a race is full of "dull" units, but as a whole, the race is exciting because of the way it fights. It wants to produce, engulf and surround enemies, thus making it exciting... Or at least thats what i think the race should be about.
With that in mind, i kind of hate the hydralisk because of how slow, expensive, and costly they are. Doesn't really fit the zerg image.
The reaver is simply the most ingenious unit Blizzard has ever thought of. It could potentially be a ridiculously powerful unit that annihilates things with style, or it can do squat because it's so slow and fragile. The thing is, Blizzard made a lot of "most ingenious" units. Look at the Lurker. Area damage? Cloaked?? Sounds insane right? But in fact, it's only powerful in the right hands.
The poblem with the Colossus is that it's pretty powerful in anyone's hands. That's why its bland.
Yeah I said the exact same thing on page 2.
But i agree with how the Zerg race is awesome conceptually. Its just that the majority of units in sc2 are very one-dimensional. The thing about units that are one-dimensional is that as a spectator you tend to be able to predict the outcome of whats to happen before it happens so its no surprise when it actually does happen, and that to me is the biggest fault with sc2 right now as a spectator sport.
On March 16 2011 12:41 Barca wrote: Well okay, if Collosus are dull, what units aren't?
Roaches and hydras are both pretty dull too. Same with Vikings. If unit control makes a unit not dull then keep in mind this is Starcraft 2
True, difference is that roaches, hydras, and vikings don't melt everything into oblivion. I'm also not fond of the argument that the other units are bland as well. Thats just saturating the issue.
Look at the Lurker. Area damage? Cloaked?? Sounds insane right? But in fact, it's only powerful in the right hands.
Just want to point out that's not true, lurkers are incredible in every hand, at D, lurker literally obliterates every mm force just by borrowing, because micro with 12 unit groups is so incredible hard.
On March 16 2011 12:41 Barca wrote: Well okay, if Collosus are dull, what units aren't?
Roaches and hydras are both pretty dull too. Same with Vikings. If unit control makes a unit not dull then keep in mind this is Starcraft 2
True, difference is that roaches, hydras, and vikings don't melt everything into oblivion. I'm also not fond of the argument that the other units are bland as well. Thats just saturating the issue.
Look at the Lurker. Area damage? Cloaked?? Sounds insane right? But in fact, it's only powerful in the right hands.
Just want to point out that's not true, lurkers are incredible in every hand, at D, lurker literally obliterates every mm force just by borrowing, because micro with 12 unit groups is so incredible hard.
Completely disagree, lurkers are retard awful unless you can use them right. Can't spread them out vs Protoss? Stormed. Spread out too much and goons will pwn you if you don't use them right.
Vs terran, sure, you can burrow them beforehand and hold a spot, and anyone can do that. Try to use them in a battle when flanking and it was hard as balls to control them.
On March 16 2011 12:41 Barca wrote: Well okay, if Collosus are dull, what units aren't?
Roaches and hydras are both pretty dull too. Same with Vikings. If unit control makes a unit not dull then keep in mind this is Starcraft 2
True, difference is that roaches, hydras, and vikings don't melt everything into oblivion. I'm also not fond of the argument that the other units are bland as well. Thats just saturating the issue.
Look at the Lurker. Area damage? Cloaked?? Sounds insane right? But in fact, it's only powerful in the right hands.
Just want to point out that's not true, lurkers are incredible in every hand, at D, lurker literally obliterates every mm force just by borrowing, because micro with 12 unit groups is so incredible hard.
Completely disagree, lurkers are retard awful unless you can use them right. Can't spread them out vs Protoss? Stormed. Spread out too much and goons will pwn you if you don't use them right.
Vs terran, sure, you can burrow them beforehand and hold a spot, and anyone can do that. Try to use them in a battle when flanking and it was hard as balls to control them.
Not to mention one irradiate kills them and tanks in pom-pom mode outrange them x.x Ohh the painstakingly wonderful times of bw
On March 16 2011 10:36 LoLAdriankat wrote: Excellent OP.
Imo, the main culprit in the anti-hype is SC2's new pathfinding in combination with splash damage. The splash damage mechanic is mostly unchanged since Brood War. In Brood War, armies were so spread out that we would see waves and waves of units streaming into defensive lines; whereas in Starcraft 2, we usually see huge clumps of armies charging into defensive lines, which leads to a lot more AOE overlap than in Brood War, which means armies in SC2 usually die a lot quicker than they did in Brood War. Brood War battles were very exciting for the spectators because they took up whole screens and you'd still see units coming in to reinforce from off-screen.
Not only that, but in BW we actually could tell what was going on during the battle, whereas in SC2 all we see are shiny explosions and a huge graphic overlapping effects mess.
Weren't units more spread out in Brood War because players had to literally fight the game AI and reign it lest a zealot take a 7 day tour around the edge of a map where as he could have walked a straight line from A to B?
You make it sound harder than it actually is. I would much rather the BW AI, muta stacking, stronger lings because they can cut through marine lines, etc. The only thing that was annoying was trying to control dragoons/goliaths on destination, but it wasn't THAT bad. Moving units was mostly a piece of cake.
Having a colossi with double damage and a reduced attack speed is dumb like hell. What makes the colossi such an aweful unit is the attack range. It's a unit that you can't just kill with ground unit because you first have to kill the entire damn death ball / pass through the Force Field and such.
Having a colossi that deal 30x2 damage is having a colossi that ONE SHOT marine and SCV. How is that balance ?
What you need is a colossi at 6-7 range, remove extended thermal lance, with 30x2 damage and a sucky attack speed, with a big nerf to colossi's HP (reaver was 100/80 no ?), slightly lower cost, and maybe some kind of upgrade that gives him more HP / range when he bury his legs on the ground like a spine crawler. That would be sick.
On March 16 2011 19:26 WhiteDog wrote: Having a colossi with double damage and a reduced attack speed is dumb like hell. What makes the colossi such an aweful unit is the attack range. It's a unit that you can't just kill with ground unit because you first have to kill the entire damn death ball / pass through the Force Field and such.
Having a colossi that deal 30x2 damage is having a colossi that ONE SHOT marine and SCV. How is that balance ?
What you need is a colossi at 6-7 range, remove extended thermal lance, with 30x2 damage and a sucky attack speed, with a big nerf to colossi's HP (reaver was 100/80 no ?), slightly lower cost, and maybe some kind of upgrade that gives him more HP / range when he bury his legs on the ground like a spine crawler. That would be sick.
yeah, and then we have a new worthless unit, like the reaper / mothership........
Units spread out more in BW than in SC2 because the units in BW had a larger collision size, and because the units in BW tried to operate and path individually rather than as a group.
It's actually harder to spread units in SC2 than in BW, which is all the proof you need that the AI/UI is not inherently superior... merely different.
Anyway... Colossi are visually impressive, but rather boring in practice. It's essentially a Shuttle/Reaver combo, adjusted so as not to require or reward tight control. As a consequence, there's no diminishing returns for extra Colossi... so instead of an exciting unit capable of creating tension and comebacks, it's just Stackable Ranged DPS, not unlike the new Hydralisk that's too damn slow to perform any interesting control (beyond burrow ambushes). But at least the hydra can dance on creep >_>
spells are rather weak compared to the extra damage this sequel has brought us. we cast them for secondary effects (feedback, fungal - although this might change) rather than damage. and/or we prefer spells without any damage at all (force fields). it's been a while since i've witnessed a yamato being flung around. i've only seen gretorp (iirc) use the thor's barrage thingy against immortals in a very specific build [does it still result in practically the same dps as if the thor attacked conventionally (and only if the entire spell can be cast)?]
the dps increase led directly to "MOAR UNITS!" being superior. critical mass is achieved much sooner. be that the bioball that can squeeze more power into a square inch now that medics no longer consume space on the ground (sc1 worked similarly prior to bw), new units that got blessed with a few extras on top of their impressive damage (marauders, roaches, immortals, colossi and allow me to throw in the planetary fortress) or a simple power-up (although only hydras come to mind immediately and possibly interceptors and archons ...unless you consider the wraith having been split into banshee+viking and the thor being the successor to the goliath). anyways, the very nature of critical mass is that it can only be 'countered' properly by a larger critical mass. to achieve it, you're forced to macro and with everything dieing this quickly and demanding a replacement, the 'bordeom' is squared.
alas, even if they reduced all attack rates, some issues remain; aforementioned squeezed bioball and the units equipped with high-volley-damage will still slap large chunks of an opponent's army around.
so i don't have a one-size-fits-all solution either... i guess i, too, am inclined to wish bw 'back': with medics technically sabotaging their own army, splash damage being limited to archons (short range) and reavers (somewhat unpredictable) so that psi storm 'had to' be strong to close the gap (deliberately leaving corsairs out of this -.-)
the only thing i can come up with to ease the situation is a scarcer distribution of attributes (or bonus damages, but preferably the former); e.g. with everyone and his dog dealing extra damage against armored units, it is no surprise infestors practically die in a fire everytime their simple move command gets them shoved right in front of the enemys' nozzles by a-moving comrades. an HP buff as was done to buildings for this very same reason cannot be done to units. imagine the ultralisk not being armored; suddenly stimmed marauders wouldn't be all that scary anymore. skirmishes between ultras and immortals could go on for a while. we could do similar to thors. and if we still want a harder counter to both of those, we can always give '+1 vs massive' to zerglings/marines/zealots.
(on the other hand... could archons plz get their massive attributes so marauders won't slow them... pwetty pweeze...?)
ahwell... just a brainfart ^^ vOv
---
Oh no no no I’m a bracket man Bracket man... burning out his fuse up here alone
On March 16 2011 10:53 kunstderfugue wrote: would it not be a reasonable micro mechanic to bring back scourge?, they would be able to insta-kill the collosus and the protoss would be seen using their stalkers to target them before they get too many attacks on them
vs terran i don't see a problem since you could make so that thors 1 shot them hence being safe vs terran air, and it would be a reasonable response to banshee harass as long as they don't do too much damage for it to be like 'banshee harass! oh noes scourge gg'
vs zerg it would become a very powerful map control tool since it would prevent the overlords from being everywhere.
this is of course, provided it gets very little health to be easily killed by spore crawlers/thors.
it might not work balance wise though, since after scourge did the damage vs the collo they are even more useless than corruptors
Yeah that makes sense you'd have to fiddle around with it but it makes sense however the corrupter would be a void unit except as a step towards broodlords, and this is SC2 they already made brood war, maybe they could add something in the expansion I think corrupter range needs to be increased.
Post this on Blizzard forums because i would love it personally if colossi would be removed.
1. So many people complain (not saying i agree at all) 2. Reavers were so much fun. No lie they took some skill to use and micro properly and made for some great games 3. Colossi are ZzzZzzzZzzzZ
we had the reaver... that was unique and coherent to the starcraft universe... because protoss were pacific people and readapted a civil technology to war.
Now we have colossi, that are from another universe and another science fiction novel... war of the worlds... and is a boring unit to use and to see... blizzard has become the shadow of itself in last year.
Since i predicted more Immortal + Warpprism in PvP [Like WhiteRa uses them now] , I'll make one more prediction that'll blow your mind:
"Dual Warpprism + Colossi" (2 Warpprism & 2 Colossus) in the future. It'll be very technical, since one mistake will punish you a lot. But if you can pull it off, it'll be very powerful.
Or course, You'll need "Warpprism Speed" to make it do-able.
On March 17 2011 01:54 Iatrik wrote: Since i predicted more Immortal + Warpprism in PvP [Like WhiteRa uses them now] , I'll make one more prediction that'll blow your mind:
"Dual Warpprism + Colossi" (2 Warpprism & 2 Colossus) in the future. It'll be very technical, since one mistake will punish you a lot. But if you can pull it off, it'll be very powerful.
Or course, You'll need "Warpprism Speed" to make it do-able.
What makes colossi stronger when used with warprisms?
I as I said before, I think people are extrapolating the current state of the game with regards to strategy and tactics and placing the blame solely on a single unit. I agree minor tweaking needs to be done to SC2, but more then that I think the pros and metagame needs more time to be fully fleshed out. Tactics and Strategy are still be redone on a monthly basis. Its entirely possible that the future pros could see colossus in ways differently then we can appreciate now because the state of the game would allow it.
Sounds crazy now, but what about using a colossus with maybe a Mothership or something to engage in quick late game economy harass. Use the Colossus's speed and cliff walking to attacking mineral lines and back away once a defense shows up, then cliff walk to a new base rinse wash and repeat. If they have air units to defend, throw down a mass recall. The high risk / high reward aspect of it would definitely be "hype" IMO.
Its needs time in a stable environment. How to you expect any kind of metagame to develop when you rush the "patching" to fix everything.
On March 17 2011 09:30 Torpedo.Vegas wrote: I as I said before, I think people are extrapolating the current state of the game with regards to strategy and tactics and placing the blame solely on a single unit. I agree minor tweaking needs to be done to SC2, but more then that I think the pros and metagame needs more time to be fully fleshed out. Tactics and Strategy are still be redone on a monthly basis. Its entirely possible that the future pros could see colossus in ways differently then we can appreciate now because the state of the game would allow it.
Sounds crazy now, but what about using a colossus with maybe a Mothership or something to engage in quick late game economy harass. Use the Colossus's speed and cliff walking to attacking mineral lines and back away once a defense shows up, then cliff walk to a new base rinse wash and repeat. If they have air units to defend, throw down a mass recall. The high risk / high reward aspect of it would definitely be "hype" IMO.
Its needs time in a stable environment. How to you expect any kind of metagame to develop when you rush the "patching" to fix everything.
The problem with this line of thinking is, the longer you leave it, the harder it will be to change.
That and the ideas people have come up with to hype current SC2 units are pretty bad imo. It didn't require great thinking to make BW units interesting, the only person who really did that was boxer and boxer isn't interesting at all in comparison to his style in BW. That type of thinking is considered gimmicky in both games.
On March 17 2011 01:54 Iatrik wrote: Since i predicted more Immortal + Warpprism in PvP [Like WhiteRa uses them now] , I'll make one more prediction that'll blow your mind:
"Dual Warpprism + Colossi" (2 Warpprism & 2 Colossus) in the future. It'll be very technical, since one mistake will punish you a lot. But if you can pull it off, it'll be very powerful.
Or course, You'll need "Warpprism Speed" to make it do-able.
That is a very interesting prediction. I'm assuming you are talking about using Colossi + Warpprism as a way to harass eco lines. I think this would be fun to just try out, but it seems incredibly risky due to high cost of the units, to the point that it has no real value unless you are ahead in the game or are clearly playing a player of lower skill level.
Definitely going to try it out some day when I'm bored lol.
Overall there's too much rock paper scissors in this game.
MMM>gateway units
Get collossi, counter
Get vikings, counter that
There's too much of that in this game. There's nothing cool you can do with your roach/hydra army to fight a collossi/gateway army; you need those corruptors. In BW, you could overcome a lot of things with good control and skill. Like vultures vs. dragoons, mutas vs rines, etc. Theres just too much hardcountering in sc2 that it makes it more boring in that sense.
On March 17 2011 01:54 Iatrik wrote: Since i predicted more Immortal + Warpprism in PvP [Like WhiteRa uses them now] , I'll make one more prediction that'll blow your mind:
"Dual Warpprism + Colossi" (2 Warpprism & 2 Colossus) in the future. It'll be very technical, since one mistake will punish you a lot. But if you can pull it off, it'll be very powerful.
Or course, You'll need "Warpprism Speed" to make it do-able.
That is a very interesting prediction. I'm assuming you are talking about using Colossi + Warpprism as a way to harass eco lines. I think this would be fun to just try out, but it seems incredibly risky due to high cost of the units, to the point that it has no real value unless you are ahead in the game or are clearly playing a player of lower skill level.
Definitely going to try it out some day when I'm bored lol.
But how is this effective? Storm drops are way more effective because they deal a lot of damage in a very short amount of time. Colossi will need to be dropped twice to kill any workers at all, but for the same cost you can drop 2 high templars and kill 5x as many workers.
Harass was only half of the point of shuttle reaver. The other was in defense and timing attacks, have a look at Snow vs Jaedong, or any goon reaver builds by stork/bisu/snow.
I agree Collosi are boring to watch. After the initial "zomg it's walking up the cliff" reaction, it has not provided any excitement. Too easy to get and too easy to mass and A-move with gateway units.
Compared to other siege units it is by far the dullest to watch.
Colossi are badly designed from a spectator / commentator point of view because there is no negative side to them, no little "risky part" to get excited about.
For Siege tanks there is always the "ohhhhh ... he sieged at a very bad spot / too late" part for commentators for example. Reavers always have the "lottery shots" which could either do no damage at all or hit the Jackpot.
To be interesting a unit needs to have a drawback and the Colossus is basically "no risk, no fun", it can even walk up and down cliffs.
One way to make a Colossus a bit more interesting would be to give it "injuries" according to the damage to its HEALTH, i.e. a damaged Colossus starts "limping" and is slower than the uninjured ones.
On March 17 2011 14:54 Rabiator wrote: Colossi are badly designed from a spectator / commentator point of view because there is no negative side to them, no little "risky part" to get excited about.
For Siege tanks there is always the "ohhhhh ... he sieged at a very bad spot / too late" part for commentators for example. Reavers always have the "lottery shots" which could either do no damage at all or hit the Jackpot.
To be interesting a unit needs to have a drawback and the Colossus is basically "no risk, no fun", it can even walk up and down cliffs.
Agreed.
Also there is really only 1 way to play collosi well. Atleast tanks can be used to harass. I would love to see collosi drops while warping in some units but I don't think thats viable
Things are only hype when it is hard to do, i also like stop lurker oh yeah, and darkswarm, any abilities are hype for me pretty much in SC1 because they actually have to hotkey each individual unit unlike sc2. I feel that storm and FF are way too easy, ummm hold T or F and then click...where as in SC1 they had to do 1+T, 2+T 3+T.....etc, while doing all that also need to aim.....it is like many times more difficult.
So far for me in SC2 hypes are: - burrow banes (hard to predict where terrans will be - kinda like stop lurker) - Marine split vs banelings, good stutter step - Good mutalisk micro (magic box, snipe) of course this is much easier than BW since they only use one group....this is more amazing in BW, i have no idea how they move so many groups together. TBH i dunno why ppl stiill put things on same group in SC2, zealots would be way better on different ones, i saw MarineKing with banshee, helion and marines on same group trying to chase away a medivac ?! - Archon toilet....i know its not that hard to do...but its kool...
I guess SC2 is more of the multitasking as opposed to group management. Although SC1 is more difficult in every sense, you actually need to move the workers to the mineral patchs. I do not understand what it means to be macro player in SC2....its not that hard they made blocking up, worker management easier along with mules, larvae and chrono. Hate it when ppl say "I will be unstoppable if they let macro up", cause ppl wont just let u macro up like that, and the skill is about defending while doing it.
How would it be to change the colossus from a horizontal beam sweep to a breifly charged circular area of attack, where a laser breifly shows the attack point and the attack happens instantly about 3/4 of a second later. That way all the colossus firing into a small AoE would be a massive overkill that could be avoided, but manually trageting several could really blanket an area well and be far more effective, while also allowing an opponent to dodge poorly placed attacks? i think the colossi is fine as a unit, per se, its attack just needs to be changed to something dodgeable to some extent with great micro.
I really like the old way the Colossus worked in that video. I have no idea why they changed it to AoE - after all, they would still be good against smaller, weaker units so the Immortal would still have a role.
On March 17 2011 14:54 Rabiator wrote: Colossi are badly designed from a spectator / commentator point of view because there is no negative side to them, no little "risky part" to get excited about.
For Siege tanks there is always the "ohhhhh ... he sieged at a very bad spot / too late" part for commentators for example. Reavers always have the "lottery shots" which could either do no damage at all or hit the Jackpot.
To be interesting a unit needs to have a drawback and the Colossus is basically "no risk, no fun", it can even walk up and down cliffs.
Agreed.
Also there is really only 1 way to play collosi well. Atleast tanks can be used to harass. I would love to see collosi drops while warping in some units but I don't think thats viable
Its pretty good on bigger maps, speed is less of a risk to get (attack doesnt come as fast) and is more useful (bigger distance to cover).
On March 17 2011 09:30 Torpedo.Vegas wrote: I as I said before, I think people are extrapolating the current state of the game with regards to strategy and tactics and placing the blame solely on a single unit. I agree minor tweaking needs to be done to SC2, but more then that I think the pros and metagame needs more time to be fully fleshed out. Tactics and Strategy are still be redone on a monthly basis. Its entirely possible that the future pros could see colossus in ways differently then we can appreciate now because the state of the game would allow it.
Sounds crazy now, but what about using a colossus with maybe a Mothership or something to engage in quick late game economy harass. Use the Colossus's speed and cliff walking to attacking mineral lines and back away once a defense shows up, then cliff walk to a new base rinse wash and repeat. If they have air units to defend, throw down a mass recall. The high risk / high reward aspect of it would definitely be "hype" IMO.
Its needs time in a stable environment. How to you expect any kind of metagame to develop when you rush the "patching" to fix everything.
You can give the pros 100 years and they won't be able to come up with any use for non-existent abilities. That's the problem with too many units in SC2 and the colossus highlights it because it's the most powerful. They don't have any active abilities. It's just A-move.
The reaver worked because it had the drawback of being too slow. It's shot also needed a path to whatever it was shooting. That had to be overcome by using a shuttle and using good micro.
Absolutely agree. Honestly I don't think Colossus is so much "OP" as jokingly easy to use, which means it has absolutely no skill-cap. This results in silver players using it practically at the same level as GSL players. Reavers are the PERFECT example of the type of tech unit that every race needs, the kind that can end the game in the hands of a pro (like in those videos), and has a large disadvantage.
Yes, the Colossus can be attacked by air, but that doesn't change anything in how you use it. At least give it a real downside, like being incredibly slow like the Reaver, or having to "charge" shots, or work like a siege tank, and then you'd have a great unit.
It's really too bad that Blizzard won't do anything about it though :/, they cater to the masses (no matter how many times they say that they balance for the highest level etc) and the masses like an easy to use, powerful unit.
Well i hope blizzard will do a good job in the next expansions ... it's hard when you create a entire world to change it all of the sudden. SC:BW is a world ...you can't make stuff weaker
I'm protoss and im sick of collossi. They are so boring to use, and I hate it. I can only wish that it get removed and we somehow get the reaver back but yeah... :/
And not only is it boring, but it hides the battle underneath it too, making it even worse for spectators.
Not to mention the counters to Colossi are just as boring. Just 2 pretty much basic ranged shooters. Perhaps if we had other alternatives to countering Colossi, having Colossi on the field wouldn't make for boring games. Changing Neural Parasite comes to mind. NP has potential for major Hype moments, but not in it's current state.
I agree with pretty much every argument saying Collosus are a horrible unit, I would really love it if Blizzard do something about them in HotS, i.e take them out of the game completely.
It's really obnoxious to see those "use Neural Parasite to deal with Tanks, Colossus, and other powerful units" when those units make it basically impossible to get off NP.
On March 18 2011 05:16 Smurfz wrote: Not to mention the counters to Colossi are just as boring. Just 2 pretty much basic ranged shooters. Perhaps if we had other alternatives to countering Colossi, having Colossi on the field wouldn't make for boring games. Changing Neural Parasite comes to mind. NP has potential for major Hype moments, but not in it's current state.
During the early alpha, Blizzard showed us somes Battle report. I don't know if ppl remember, but back then, Infestor could use NP while burrow, and it was more like Mind Control, no tentacle but a low duration.
During a match on Scrap station, the zerg sneak behind with his infestors and neural parasite two Colossi of a stalker colossi army.
Exactly. Why Collosus are hated so much when Joe Terran spams MMM all game with extensive T button micro is.. interesting, to say the least.
Because at pro level, to play with MMM all game long and be successful (vs P, anyway) you have to have absurd multi-tasking abilities, dropping into Protoss base continually and keeping him on his toes long enough that he won't have enough Colossi/HTs to beat you. Sure, early-mid game and in lower leagues, MM is just a-click and can be pretty dull, to be successful past the 10 minute mark you have to do use the Medivacs' advantages extensively, so although MM are dull, Medivacs aren't.
Another way to be successful with MMM is by incorporating Ghosts into the mix, but Ghosts are just bad-ass and can get Nukes, Cloak and stuff which is all pretty 'hype' (to use the terrible expression in the first post).
On March 15 2011 09:56 Blyadischa wrote: I'm sorry for sounding like this, but the protoss race is pretty "anti-hype" and makes any matchup with it incredibly boring to watch.
Colossi mass up into a ball, then attack. Storms used to require skill to clone and blanket storm, now it's just spam t and win the game, or if you get emp'd just warp more templar in and spam t. I especially hate it when casters say "nice storms", because they weren't nice. It took the player 2 index fingers to destroy an army.
Forcefields, same thing. A guy with larger army approaching you? forcefield it away or cut it in half to decimate it with a much smaller army.
Spells are so abusive in SC2, they do way too much and are way too easily used. Protoss just happens to have the most of them.
Oh man, don't even get me started on ForceField. Hey lets add a spell that removes micro ability and leads to mass rape. Same goes with Fungal growth. Lets make a freeze spell thats cool.
The only spell that really gets me going on the excite factor is HSM. And thats gone because of its crap range and Slow Raven Speed that makes every spell suicidal. I under stand the 125 requirement, but at least make an upgrade that allows spell casters save up to 250 energy instead of the OP start with 25 more energy you seem to not be able to balance.
FF are much more exciting and require far more micro than stim + a move.
On March 15 2011 09:56 Blyadischa wrote: I'm sorry for sounding like this, but the protoss race is pretty "anti-hype" and makes any matchup with it incredibly boring to watch.
Colossi mass up into a ball, then attack. Storms used to require skill to clone and blanket storm, now it's just spam t and win the game, or if you get emp'd just warp more templar in and spam t. I especially hate it when casters say "nice storms", because they weren't nice. It took the player 2 index fingers to destroy an army.
Forcefields, same thing. A guy with larger army approaching you? forcefield it away or cut it in half to decimate it with a much smaller army.
Spells are so abusive in SC2, they do way too much and are way too easily used. Protoss just happens to have the most of them.
Oh man, don't even get me started on ForceField. Hey lets add a spell that removes micro ability and leads to mass rape. Same goes with Fungal growth. Lets make a freeze spell thats cool.
The only spell that really gets me going on the excite factor is HSM. And thats gone because of its crap range and Slow Raven Speed that makes every spell suicidal. I under stand the 125 requirement, but at least make an upgrade that allows spell casters save up to 250 energy instead of the OP start with 25 more energy you seem to not be able to balance.
FF are much more exciting and require far more micro than stim + a move.
He meant that FF disables micro from the other player. Good FF's require good placement and that is a good skill to have but its one sided on the micro part. But hes right about the anti-micro abilities in sc2 :\ FF isnt as bad as FG which takes no skill to use and freezes units in place and dmgs them. It would be better if it just slowed the units instead of snaring them in place. I dont like abilities that inhibit micro period.
Exactly. Why Collosus are hated so much when Joe Terran spams MMM all game with extensive T button micro is.. interesting, to say the least.
Because at pro level, to play with MMM all game long and be successful (vs P, anyway) you have to have absurd multi-tasking abilities, dropping into Protoss base continually and keeping him on his toes long enough that he won't have enough Colossi/HTs to beat you. Sure, early-mid game and in lower leagues, MM is just a-click and can be pretty dull, to be successful past the 10 minute mark you have to do use the Medivacs' advantages extensively, so although MM are dull, Medivacs aren't.
Another way to be successful with MMM is by incorporating Ghosts into the mix, but Ghosts are just bad-ass and can get Nukes, Cloak and stuff which is all pretty 'hype' (to use the terrible expression in the first post).
Not it doesn't require absurd multi-tasking. It's simple and easy. You can even shift-queue drops. You start them from your base while you're doing other stuff and when you see the point arriving there, you go watch after it. The same is in the fight, you hit stim, a-click, target the colossus with your vikings, and hope you have more strength than your opponent.
On March 15 2011 10:27 GhostKorean wrote: Completely agree. Storm has a similar problem where it doesn't actually kill things omgwtf like in brood war. Yes it does change battles but it does it subtly as compared to brood war where storm would literally tear through entire clumps. Brood war storm in sc2, however, would probably be imbalanced so nothing we can do about it
Actually, there is one thing, that can be done. What if the radius of storm was reduced, but the damage up'd by a lot? The user would have to place the storm just right (=harder to do), and the other guy would have to react very quickly or lose his units.
On March 15 2011 09:56 Blyadischa wrote: I'm sorry for sounding like this, but the protoss race is pretty "anti-hype" and makes any matchup with it incredibly boring to watch.
Colossi mass up into a ball, then attack. Storms used to require skill to clone and blanket storm, now it's just spam t and win the game, or if you get emp'd just warp more templar in and spam t. I especially hate it when casters say "nice storms", because they weren't nice. It took the player 2 index fingers to destroy an army.
Forcefields, same thing. A guy with larger army approaching you? forcefield it away or cut it in half to decimate it with a much smaller army.
Spells are so abusive in SC2, they do way too much and are way too easily used. Protoss just happens to have the most of them.
Oh man, don't even get me started on ForceField. Hey lets add a spell that removes micro ability and leads to mass rape. Same goes with Fungal growth. Lets make a freeze spell thats cool.
The only spell that really gets me going on the excite factor is HSM. And thats gone because of its crap range and Slow Raven Speed that makes every spell suicidal. I under stand the 125 requirement, but at least make an upgrade that allows spell casters save up to 250 energy instead of the OP start with 25 more energy you seem to not be able to balance.
FF are much more exciting and require far more micro than stim + a move.
Lol. If your still losing to Stim A move then you need help. Any how Stim actually can be exciting especially combined with micro. The issue is that Concussive shell gives Stim a bad name. If Conc didn't exist then the micro Terran does against Blings would also be needed to stim dodge Zeals.
On March 15 2011 10:27 GhostKorean wrote: Completely agree. Storm has a similar problem where it doesn't actually kill things omgwtf like in brood war. Yes it does change battles but it does it subtly as compared to brood war where storm would literally tear through entire clumps. Brood war storm in sc2, however, would probably be imbalanced so nothing we can do about it
Actually, there is one thing, that can be done. What if the radius of storm was reduced, but the damage up'd by a lot? The user would have to place the storm just right (=harder to do), and the other guy would have to react very quickly or lose his units.
Still will be pretty OP considering the Amulet of Storm Spam, InstaStorm, and AutoCast. Unless Blizzard ups difficulty of casting spells don't expect to many Buffs
On March 18 2011 06:33 Elefanto wrote: Not it doesn't require absurd multi-tasking. It's simple and easy. You can even shift-queue drops. You start them from your base while you're doing other stuff and when you see the point arriving there, you go watch after it. The same is in the fight, you hit stim, a-click, target the colossus with your vikings, and hope you have more strength than your opponent.
If it was that easy then White-rA's ultra-safe PvT would get beaten a hell of a lot more often than it does, since the key to beating that is constant pressure with drops (if going bio). Trust me, it was on Day[9] ;-)
But anyway, it is pretty undeniable that drops and several pronged attacks are more exciting than just massing Colossi and supporting units and attacking.
On March 15 2011 09:56 Blyadischa wrote: I'm sorry for sounding like this, but the protoss race is pretty "anti-hype" and makes any matchup with it incredibly boring to watch.
Colossi mass up into a ball, then attack. Storms used to require skill to clone and blanket storm, now it's just spam t and win the game, or if you get emp'd just warp more templar in and spam t. I especially hate it when casters say "nice storms", because they weren't nice. It took the player 2 index fingers to destroy an army.
Forcefields, same thing. A guy with larger army approaching you? forcefield it away or cut it in half to decimate it with a much smaller army.
Spells are so abusive in SC2, they do way too much and are way too easily used. Protoss just happens to have the most of them.
Oh man, don't even get me started on ForceField. Hey lets add a spell that removes micro ability and leads to mass rape. Same goes with Fungal growth. Lets make a freeze spell thats cool.
The only spell that really gets me going on the excite factor is HSM. And thats gone because of its crap range and Slow Raven Speed that makes every spell suicidal. I under stand the 125 requirement, but at least make an upgrade that allows spell casters save up to 250 energy instead of the OP start with 25 more energy you seem to not be able to balance.
FF are much more exciting and require far more micro than stim + a move.
He meant that FF disables micro from the other player. Good FF's require good placement and that is a good skill to have but its one sided on the micro part. But hes right about the anti-micro abilities in sc2 :\ FF isnt as bad as FG which takes no skill to use and freezes units in place and dmgs them. It would be better if it just slowed the units instead of snaring them in place. I dont like abilities that inhibit micro period.
LoL? Are you truly making a comparaison between a T1 50 mana spell cast by a unit that can fight and deal damage and cost 50/100 and another spell that cost 75 mana to cast, is T2 and casted by another units that cost 100/150, have the same HP and can't deal any damage ? Ho you....
I know I'm posting a little late in this thread but I want to say that I agree with this OP entirely.
Back in the beta they reduced the damage and buffed the attack speed of the colossus... any idea WHY this did this? I think it was to make hydras 3 shots instead of 2... not like it matters.
On March 18 2011 07:03 WhiteDog wrote: LoL? Are you truly making a comparaison between a T1 50 mana spell cast by a unit that can fight and deal damage and cost 50/100 and another spell that cost 75 mana to cast, is T2 and casted by another units that cost 100/150, have the same HP and can't deal any damage ? Ho you....
What does cost and time taken to reach it etc have to do with how exciting something is to play with or play against? This thread isn't a carbon copy of the thousands of other balance threads out there.
On March 15 2011 09:56 Blyadischa wrote: I'm sorry for sounding like this, but the protoss race is pretty "anti-hype" and makes any matchup with it incredibly boring to watch.
Colossi mass up into a ball, then attack. Storms used to require skill to clone and blanket storm, now it's just spam t and win the game, or if you get emp'd just warp more templar in and spam t. I especially hate it when casters say "nice storms", because they weren't nice. It took the player 2 index fingers to destroy an army.
Forcefields, same thing. A guy with larger army approaching you? forcefield it away or cut it in half to decimate it with a much smaller army.
Spells are so abusive in SC2, they do way too much and are way too easily used. Protoss just happens to have the most of them.
Oh man, don't even get me started on ForceField. Hey lets add a spell that removes micro ability and leads to mass rape. Same goes with Fungal growth. Lets make a freeze spell thats cool.
The only spell that really gets me going on the excite factor is HSM. And thats gone because of its crap range and Slow Raven Speed that makes every spell suicidal. I under stand the 125 requirement, but at least make an upgrade that allows spell casters save up to 250 energy instead of the OP start with 25 more energy you seem to not be able to balance.
FF are much more exciting and require far more micro than stim + a move.
He meant that FF disables micro from the other player. Good FF's require good placement and that is a good skill to have but its one sided on the micro part. But hes right about the anti-micro abilities in sc2 :\ FF isnt as bad as FG which takes no skill to use and freezes units in place and dmgs them. It would be better if it just slowed the units instead of snaring them in place. I dont like abilities that inhibit micro period.
LoL? Are you truly making a comparaison between a T1 50 mana spell cast by a unit that can fight and deal damage and cost 50/100 and another spell that cost 75 mana to cast, is T2 and casted by another units that cost 100/150, have the same HP and can't deal any damage ? Ho you....
You just said words and made no point whatsoever..
I find roaches just as boring. The are literally an 'attack move' unit. How many ZvP do you watch where all the zerg builds is roaches and attack moves into the Protoss army?
Zerg in SC1 required good micro because of the lurker, you need to time your lurkers perfect with your zerglings. This was very hard to do, because if your lurkers are too late then all your lings die before lurkers are burrowed. If the lurkers are too early they can be easily picked off.
I'm not saying we need the lurker back (would be great though), but zerg needs a fun skillful unit. Currently zerg is pretty much attack move, which is easy and boring to watch.
They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
I'm not saying we need the lurker back (would be great though), but zerg needs a fun skillful unit. Currently zerg is pretty much attack move, which is easy and boring to watch..
For a start, I wouldn't pin the blame on Zerg for this any more than Protoss or Terran, all of which have a lot of a-move units.
I do think that Burrow, OL drops and OL speed should be easier to get for Zerg (perhaps on Hatch tech?), as this would promote a lot of ways for micro to be used, with things like early Baneling burrows and drops and scouting etc being available.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
I agree almost entirely with this. Personally, I think that standard Colossus damage should be reduced dramatically, but damage vs light should be INSANE. Like, far into the 20s at least. I'm thinking 24-25, myself. Perhaps this falls into the 'hard counter' syndrome of SC2, but it would promote drops and stuff.
On March 15 2011 16:03 SwiftSpear wrote: I've seen colossus drops kill whole probe lines in a swipe. They do have that reaver pwn capability. no one uses them that way though. I think part of it is that the balsam wood drop ship is so slow and weak that people would rather just walk their colossus around the map then ever actually put them in a drop ship.
This is another problem. The dropship was robust. The warp prism is a paper tiger. why put a colossus in something that a single stimmed marine can kill in seconds?
I want real dropships back.
The warp prism has the same effective hps as a shuttle. Only difference is that instead of 60 shields the warp prism has 40. The rest is hps adding up to 140.. And this 140 is only 10 less than a medivac. I wish people would stop fucking crying about how 'weak' warp prisms are. protip: keep transport units away from things which can shoot them.
How about we tell the whole truth?
Prisms have 0 (!!!) armor, Medivacs have 1, over their entire 150 hp. Movement speed is same for both, but Medivacs have much higher acceleration and turn speed. The 1 armor reduces dps considerably, the higher the firing rate, but lower the Dmg per shot. Ergo, Medivecs are much more durable against marine and hydra fire. And yes, speed 4 prisms can be researched, but its sooooo far down the tech path, and in almost all circumstances a player would want to research range for Colossi first.
# of marine shots needed to kill a Medivac = 30 # .................................. to kill a Prism = 23
On March 18 2011 07:54 IVN wrote: Prisms have 0 (!!!) armor, Medivacs have 1, over their entire 150 hp. Movement speed is same for both, but Medivacs have much higher acceleration and turn speed. The 1 armor reduces dps considerably, the higher the firing rate, but lower the Dmg per shot. Ergo, Medivecs are much more durable against marine and hydra fire. And yes, speed 4 prisms can be researched, but its sooooo far down the tech path, and in almost all circumstances a player would want to research range for Colossi first.
# of marine shots needed to kill a Medivac = 30 # .................................. to kill a Prism = 23
TBH, I wouldn't mind giving shuttles speed naturally if they did something about the horribleness of the colossi
On March 18 2011 06:17 SeaSwift wrote: Because at pro level, to play with MMM all game long and be successful (vs P, anyway) you have to have absurd multi-tasking abilities, dropping into Protoss base continually and keeping him on his toes long enough that he won't have enough Colossi/HTs to beat you. Sure, early-mid game and in lower leagues, MM is just a-click and can be pretty dull, to be successful past the 10 minute mark you have to do use the Medivacs' advantages extensively, so although MM are dull, Medivacs aren't
Good multitasking sure, but that goes with every race. Dropping in SC2 is easy and extremely accessible. You're already going to get Medievacs to heal your army so it takes little forward thinking or strategical ability to think to yourself 'Hmm, I think I'll do a drop'. You just load up troops from your ball, shift click and your off.
Defending against that probably requires the same if not more APM as the guy doing it. Especially given the strength of Terran T1 compared to Gateway units (and the need for them to stay together).
On March 17 2011 09:30 Torpedo.Vegas wrote: I as I said before, I think people are extrapolating the current state of the game with regards to strategy and tactics and placing the blame solely on a single unit. I agree minor tweaking needs to be done to SC2, but more then that I think the pros and metagame needs more time to be fully fleshed out. Tactics and Strategy are still be redone on a monthly basis. Its entirely possible that the future pros could see colossus in ways differently then we can appreciate now because the state of the game would allow it.
Sounds crazy now, but what about using a colossus with maybe a Mothership or something to engage in quick late game economy harass. Use the Colossus's speed and cliff walking to attacking mineral lines and back away once a defense shows up, then cliff walk to a new base rinse wash and repeat. If they have air units to defend, throw down a mass recall. The high risk / high reward aspect of it would definitely be "hype" IMO.
Its needs time in a stable environment. How to you expect any kind of metagame to develop when you rush the "patching" to fix everything.
The problem with this line of thinking is, the longer you leave it, the harder it will be to change.
That and the ideas people have come up with to hype current SC2 units are pretty bad imo. It didn't require great thinking to make BW units interesting, the only person who really did that was boxer and boxer isn't interesting at all in comparison to his style in BW. That type of thinking is considered gimmicky in both games.
It took years to develop what is considered interesting applications of BW units. Expectations climbed in parallel with skill since there was no precedent by which to measure "proper" interest. With the success of competitive Brood War and the basic similarities between SC1 and SC2, expectations for competitive play out weigh the current realities of what players can do, or even need to do in order to secure a win.
Observe the higher level games between SC2 pros. We are beginning to see a necessity for players to innovate and adapt in new ways or stack multiple strategies normally used individually in order to secure a win. I think this is what leads to more interesting gameplay overall.
I also disagree with the idea that the "longer you leave it, the harder it will be to change." Unless I am misunderstanding you, I think a stable platform from which the meta-game can evolve is crucial to developing an RTS. Having a base level of game sense that all pros must develop instead of playing on an ever changing landscape via patches would lead to players having to develop unique methods of playing. For example, if a pro is aware of all the timings for unit output/upgrades/damage dealing potential/etc. that goes into a protoss deathball, they could incorporate effective timings to take them apart piece by piece. Now if the Protoss is aware of the timings associated with the enemies timings designed to counter your expected timings (@_@) then they could adapt and use what they do have in unique ways and alter the timings associated with the traditional deathball, or maybe even transition out of the deathball mentality and use a strategy designed to hardcounter the anti-deathball strategy of their opponent.
disclaimer: i read half the op and barely any posts
warp prisms w/ spd upg = 3.3ish~ spd the only thing that is annoying about warp prisms is their build time (60sec~ish), however, they only cost minerals and have lightning fast speed. lets assume you're a 2-3base turtling/macro toss, and you have air control or you're opponent doesn't have AA, then 2-3warp prism colli drops become extremely effective; the main problem is that protoss players as a whole aren't creative (yes there are exceptions like kiwikaki who is just a boss). back to colli drops, pulling workers is actually bad, they clump up and say "hey colli come rape me".
I'm not saying we need the lurker back (would be great though), but zerg needs a fun skillful unit. Currently zerg is pretty much attack move, which is easy and boring to watch..
For a start, I wouldn't pin the blame on Zerg for this any more than Protoss or Terran, all of which have a lot of a-move units.
I do think that Burrow, OL drops and OL speed should be easier to get for Zerg (perhaps on Hatch tech?), as this would promote a lot of ways for micro to be used, with things like early Baneling burrows and drops and scouting etc being available.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
I agree almost entirely with this. Personally, I think that standard Colossus damage should be reduced dramatically, but damage vs light should be INSANE. Like, far into the 20s at least. I'm thinking 24-25, myself. Perhaps this falls into the 'hard counter' syndrome of SC2, but it would promote drops and stuff.
colossus are already used vs mostly light units though,(marines/hydralisks) the only thing i think would be effected is PvP, which is mostly stalker/colossus?
On March 18 2011 05:22 oOOoOphidian wrote: It's really obnoxious to see those "use Neural Parasite to deal with Tanks, Colossus, and other powerful units" when those units make it basically impossible to get off NP.
NP actually used to be the counter to colossus in beta, back before the nerfs
On March 17 2011 14:48 hidiliho wrote: I agree Collosi are boring to watch. After the initial "zomg it's walking up the cliff" reaction, it has not provided any excitement. Too easy to get and too easy to mass and A-move with gateway units.
Compared to other siege units it is by far the dullest to watch.
In my mind tanks are the dullest unit to watch.
But not the ones from BW, that could be zealot bombed, or that dealt insane friendly fire damage, no. The superior tank AI from SC2 makes SC2 tanks soooooooooooooooooo dull.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
i really love this idea. would add more diversity and tech switching in PvT probably. or at least more incentive to do so.
On March 18 2011 08:32 majestouch wrote: disclaimer: i read half the op and barely any posts
warp prisms w/ spd upg = 3.3ish~ spd the only thing that is annoying about warp prisms is their build time (60sec~ish), however, they only cost minerals and have lightning fast speed. lets assume you're a 2-3base turtling/macro toss, and you have air control or you're opponent doesn't have AA, then 2-3warp prism colli drops become extremely effective; the main problem is that protoss players as a whole aren't creative (yes there are exceptions like kiwikaki who is just a boss). back to colli drops, pulling workers is actually bad, they clump up and say "hey colli come rape me".
tldr; ppl need to experiment more.
Yes of course. I'm still waiting for terrans to stop making MMM all game long and bitch about Colossi, and start countering them with mech...
On March 18 2011 08:32 majestouch wrote: disclaimer: i read half the op and barely any posts
warp prisms w/ spd upg = 3.3ish~ spd the only thing that is annoying about warp prisms is their build time (60sec~ish), however, they only cost minerals and have lightning fast speed. lets assume you're a 2-3base turtling/macro toss, and you have air control or you're opponent doesn't have AA, then 2-3warp prism colli drops become extremely effective; the main problem is that protoss players as a whole aren't creative (yes there are exceptions like kiwikaki who is just a boss). back to colli drops, pulling workers is actually bad, they clump up and say "hey colli come rape me".
tldr; ppl need to experiment more.
Yes of course. I'm still waiting for terrans to stop making MMM all game long and bitch about Colossi, and start countering them with mech...
If terran players counter collosi with mech, Immortals with counter the mech.
On March 18 2011 08:32 majestouch wrote: disclaimer: i read half the op and barely any posts
warp prisms w/ spd upg = 3.3ish~ spd the only thing that is annoying about warp prisms is their build time (60sec~ish), however, they only cost minerals and have lightning fast speed. lets assume you're a 2-3base turtling/macro toss, and you have air control or you're opponent doesn't have AA, then 2-3warp prism colli drops become extremely effective; the main problem is that protoss players as a whole aren't creative (yes there are exceptions like kiwikaki who is just a boss). back to colli drops, pulling workers is actually bad, they clump up and say "hey colli come rape me".
tldr; ppl need to experiment more.
Yes of course. I'm still waiting for terrans to stop making MMM all game long and bitch about Colossi, and start countering them with mech...
If terran players counter collosi with mech, Immortals with counter the mech.
Damn, you should have told that to MC when he was playing against Jinro.
On March 18 2011 08:32 majestouch wrote: disclaimer: i read half the op and barely any posts
warp prisms w/ spd upg = 3.3ish~ spd the only thing that is annoying about warp prisms is their build time (60sec~ish), however, they only cost minerals and have lightning fast speed. lets assume you're a 2-3base turtling/macro toss, and you have air control or you're opponent doesn't have AA, then 2-3warp prism colli drops become extremely effective; the main problem is that protoss players as a whole aren't creative (yes there are exceptions like kiwikaki who is just a boss). back to colli drops, pulling workers is actually bad, they clump up and say "hey colli come rape me".
tldr; ppl need to experiment more.
Yes of course. I'm still waiting for terrans to stop making MMM all game long and bitch about Colossi, and start countering them with mech...
After playing toss since beta and recently started to play terran I seriously ask myself if that's the kind of game I actually want. Because the game mechanics are so different to BW, I must say I'm very disappointed with how mech plays. Both the colossus and the thor are so miserably big and slow that they clump up the battlefield like crazy, making it almost impossible to get some decent micro done on the other units around them. And microing a colossus or a thor really shows disappointing unit design. Let's not even talk about the immortal...
In all honesty I would rather play both races with these two units gone, they both add nothing funky to the game and are a hindrance to cool battles and future balance.
I would rather like to have more of a needed synergy with MMM & Tanks and gateway units being more robust. I don't know, in comparison with BW TvP this is all a bit disappointing to me. I mean when I have colossus and templars out with the income to switch into whatever I need after the big battle, then I feel practically invincible.
On March 18 2011 08:32 majestouch wrote: disclaimer: i read half the op and barely any posts
warp prisms w/ spd upg = 3.3ish~ spd the only thing that is annoying about warp prisms is their build time (60sec~ish), however, they only cost minerals and have lightning fast speed. lets assume you're a 2-3base turtling/macro toss, and you have air control or you're opponent doesn't have AA, then 2-3warp prism colli drops become extremely effective; the main problem is that protoss players as a whole aren't creative (yes there are exceptions like kiwikaki who is just a boss). back to colli drops, pulling workers is actually bad, they clump up and say "hey colli come rape me".
tldr; ppl need to experiment more.
Yes of course. I'm still waiting for terrans to stop making MMM all game long and bitch about Colossi, and start countering them with mech...
After playing toss since beta and recently started to play terran I seriously ask myself if that's the kind of game I actually want. Because the game mechanics are so different to BW, I must say I'm very disappointed with how mech plays. Both the colossus and the thor are so miserably big and slow that they clump up the battlefield like crazy, making it almost impossible to get some decent micro done on the other units around them. And microing a colossus or a thor really shows disappointing unit design. Let's not even talk about the immortal...
In all honesty I would rather play both races with these two units gone, they both add nothing funky to the game and are a hindrance to cool battles and future balance.
I would rather like to have more of a needed synergy with MMM & Tanks and gateway units being more robust. I don't know, in comparison with BW TvP this is all a bit disappointing to me. I mean when I have colossus and templars out with the income to switch into whatever I need after the big battle, then I feel practically invincible.
I too am sick of Colossi, Marauders and Roaches. However, Im also sick of the T/Z players who give no fuck about the balance, but just want to see the Colossus gone, so they can win more easily. Fact is, gate units are really bad in SC2. They cost more than Roaches/Hydras or MM, but get rolled over by those units, with their respective upgrades (speed for Roaches, stim, CS etc). W/o a "superunit" to dish out massive splash damage, gateway units just roll over and die.
So the question is, do people want the Colossus or massively buffed gateway units, which will own them just as hard?
On March 18 2011 08:32 majestouch wrote: disclaimer: i read half the op and barely any posts
warp prisms w/ spd upg = 3.3ish~ spd the only thing that is annoying about warp prisms is their build time (60sec~ish), however, they only cost minerals and have lightning fast speed. lets assume you're a 2-3base turtling/macro toss, and you have air control or you're opponent doesn't have AA, then 2-3warp prism colli drops become extremely effective; the main problem is that protoss players as a whole aren't creative (yes there are exceptions like kiwikaki who is just a boss). back to colli drops, pulling workers is actually bad, they clump up and say "hey colli come rape me".
tldr; ppl need to experiment more.
Yes of course. I'm still waiting for terrans to stop making MMM all game long and bitch about Colossi, and start countering them with mech...
If terran players counter collosi with mech, Immortals with counter the mech.
If only Terran had a means to instantly remove the Hardened shields of Immortals prior to an engagement, oh well.
On a more serious note, SC2 is still very young and alot of people are still looking at the game 1 dimensionally and calling it dull "I can't go mech because toss can make Immortals". What if, after going Heavy MMM you start your transition into late game mech forcing Immortals out of the toss to counter, if he went the heavy colossus route it's unlikely he has his Templar tech so maybe bringing in some ghosts to deal with the inevatible counter can prove really strong.
"But Phoobie, do you have ANY idea how much gas I need to fund tanks, thors, ghosts AND upgrades!?!"
you're transitioning into late game having had a very mobile army (MMM) vs a toss who is opting for an immobile army so that means you can take an extra expo, also MMM is VERY cheap on gas unless your pumping alot of medivacs so you can maybe cut a medivac or 2 to stockpile more gas for the transition.
Now, I'm a Zergy and not up to date to how PvT is to be played, the point is:
The game is young with lots of room to expiriment, don't say "I can't go mech because he'll just make Immortals" rather, try saying "Hmm, if i'm going mech, then the toss will then make Immortals in response to my mech, because i'm the one dictating the direction of the game at this moment how can I follow that up to stay ahead? marines? EMP? Air?"
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
Uhm, great. But aren't Thors and Siege Tanks the same ? Slow, "putting the foot down"units with high fire power, preferably couples with range.
Zerg really lacks those units. Even though you might argue that those units are not zergish, but I disagree when it comes to zerg late game. BW zerg had plenty of muscle with ultras and dark swarm.
I'd give Ultra's charge ability, that'll make'em more dangerous....though probably...still useless vs protoss..... And, though Broodlords are excellent,you have to hatch a mostly useless unit in an army that is a bit on the small size anyways. It's a useless tech tier you have to go through before getting to the good stuff. Make them evolve from Mutas so Zerg players have a unit that they can put to good use with a little creativity and opportunism. Then they have the added danger to go BL later on. But with the two tech/build stages between Muta and BL (Hive ->greater spire) and the big gas usage, the opponent still has time to react.
Oh and give Zerg some swarm type abilities. Something that'll temporarily boost their armor in late game. No idea if that'll be imba. but Zerg lategame just feels very weak.
And I say no thanks to reavers. The excitement about reavers was largely because half of those lethal balls of death would hit absolutely nothing. Talk about a coin toss.
What am I doing?.....I'm posting Zerg imba stuff in a Colossus thread........and at the end of a 22 age thread....and I play Protoss in SC2...
Anyways what I want to say is....don't change my Colossus! It makes me sad.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
Ah so now I see why everybody thinks the only thing Terran can do is MMM. See I haven't made marauders ever in my life (because they are lame a-move units) except for maybe 3 games.
TvP may pan out more like TvZ, where territory is defined by tanks and MMM would move within range of them with a slow push.
You use tanks to kill reavers, even banshees would suffice, or splitting your MMM. Or even just sniping the shuttle and using a few marauders to stim snipe the reaver.
On March 18 2011 13:22 Eeevil wrote:And I say no thanks to reavers. The excitement about reavers was largely because half of those lethal balls of death would hit absolutely nothing. Talk about a coin toss.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
You forget that if you have the warp prism then it is susceptible to air. If you dont have a warp prism then you cant attack. Collision size hardly makes any difference whatsoever.. "if you get vikings[...]" yeah since vikings are the only thing that can attack air, and even then you wouldnt need hardly any vikings to take out a warp prism.. You fail horribly at backing up your claims.
On March 18 2011 08:32 majestouch wrote: disclaimer: i read half the op and barely any posts
warp prisms w/ spd upg = 3.3ish~ spd the only thing that is annoying about warp prisms is their build time (60sec~ish), however, they only cost minerals and have lightning fast speed. lets assume you're a 2-3base turtling/macro toss, and you have air control or you're opponent doesn't have AA, then 2-3warp prism colli drops become extremely effective; the main problem is that protoss players as a whole aren't creative (yes there are exceptions like kiwikaki who is just a boss). back to colli drops, pulling workers is actually bad, they clump up and say "hey colli come rape me".
tldr; ppl need to experiment more.
Yes of course. I'm still waiting for terrans to stop making MMM all game long and bitch about Colossi, and start countering them with mech...
After playing toss since beta and recently started to play terran I seriously ask myself if that's the kind of game I actually want. Because the game mechanics are so different to BW, I must say I'm very disappointed with how mech plays. Both the colossus and the thor are so miserably big and slow that they clump up the battlefield like crazy, making it almost impossible to get some decent micro done on the other units around them. And microing a colossus or a thor really shows disappointing unit design. Let's not even talk about the immortal...
In all honesty I would rather play both races with these two units gone, they both add nothing funky to the game and are a hindrance to cool battles and future balance.
I would rather like to have more of a needed synergy with MMM & Tanks and gateway units being more robust. I don't know, in comparison with BW TvP this is all a bit disappointing to me. I mean when I have colossus and templars out with the income to switch into whatever I need after the big battle, then I feel practically invincible.
Kind of agree with this. WHen i play as toss, winning with 1a units collosus just feels so.... unsatisfying. What I like is long macro games with lots of multitasking and micro involved. Tvz is really interesting on huge maps, because drops can be really strong and marine/tank micro is pretty funny to do. When going mech or playing collosus you just turtle up for some time. Move out, 1a or whatever. And one of the players wins.
I completely agree with this. Colossus is not a fun unit to watch at all. All colossus fights wound up very similar. Either they get overwhelmed by anti-air, or they destroy the opponent. There's very little grey area uncertainty that made watching those insane battles back in BW so awesome to watch. Reavers were the king of this. I miss them
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
You forget that if you have the warp prism then it is susceptible to air. If you dont have a warp prism then you cant attack. Collision size hardly makes any difference whatsoever.. "if you get vikings[...]" yeah since vikings are the only thing that can attack air.. You fail horribly at backing up your claims.
If I have a unit with 9 range, I can safely assume that my warp prism needs to be no closer than 9 from the opponents deathball. That gives you exactly 2 things that can shoot it - the thor and the viking. If you bring marines to try and snipe it, it'll work about as well as trying to snipe a Colossus with marines - I'll back up and you'll lose marines to my surrounding army. I was also assuming that you possessed the minimum skill required to unload it before it got blown into giant pieces.
The argument isn't about collision size - it's about the ability to pick it out of a group. A ghost is harder to feedback than an infester, and a reaver is slightly harder to take out than a Colossus. A reaver also has a nice solid meatshield of gateway around it that protects it from one of the two ways it can be attacked. Your options to shoot through the gateway deathball are either:
1) Outrange it with a siege tank or 2) Shoot it down with an air-to-ground unit.
With a Colossus, you can use: 3) Shoot it down with an air-to-air unit.
Protected and well microed reavers can kill 40 hydras each, especially when in a blocked spot or defending a nat etc. (see snow vs jaedong), I think thats what makes us go 'Oh man wtf you serious?' and then 'OH' again and again. The colo is straight up fighting and maybe kiting a bit while the front army takes it in the face. That's the main difference imo, and it's affected by the unit's entire basic structure, so the colo probably can't actually be changed uncompletely and equal the hype.
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
You forget that if you have the warp prism then it is susceptible to air. If you dont have a warp prism then you cant attack. Collision size hardly makes any difference whatsoever.. "if you get vikings[...]" yeah since vikings are the only thing that can attack air.. You fail horribly at backing up your claims.
If I have a unit with 9 range, I can safely assume that my warp prism needs to be no closer than 9 from the opponents deathball. That gives you exactly 2 things that can shoot it - the thor and the viking. If you bring marines to try and snipe it, it'll work about as well as trying to snipe a Colossus with marines - I'll back up and you'll lose marines to my surrounding army. I was also assuming that you possessed the minimum skill required to unload it before it got blown into giant pieces.
The argument isn't about collision size - it's about the ability to pick it out of a group. A ghost is harder to feedback than an infester, and a reaver is slightly harder to take out than a Colossus. A reaver also has a nice solid meatshield of gateway around it that protects it from one of the two ways it can be attacked. Your options to shoot through the gateway deathball are either:
1) Outrange it with a siege tank or 2) Shoot it down with an air-to-ground unit.
With a Colossus, you can use: 3) Shoot it down with an air-to-air unit.
If your not horrible then you will know to engage the army in the middle of the map. Picking off the warp prism would be the #1 priority. Once thats done then the push cannot continue. Not true for the colossus. Its stupid mobile for how strong it is. Also you know a reaver is about the size of a siege tank right? The comparison of a ghost to infestor is no where near the comparison of a reaver to colossus. Not to mention the terrans ground army would be significantly bigger with the lack of the huge investment in vikings.
I can't help but agree. It is disappointing that the way I micro my Collosi in Plat and the way the pros do isn't that different, skill wise. I don't think that the Reaver should be brought back though. Blizzard probably doesn't want that, either. I think a new, but equally exciting unit that scales well with skill,as well as other units, should be ushered in to keep the game fresh, and the meta game evolving.
On March 15 2011 09:00 Myia wrote: So, instead of 4-5 colossus, toss will get 10, and 1 shot the entire zerg army? Tsss... At the moment, if toss go fast colossus vs zerg, lings can take them down even, however, if you upgrade to 2 x 30, then all lings get 1 shotted...? And roaches get 2 shotted? How would zerg counter this at all?
Even tho they attack slower, one volly destroys the entire zerg army in one shot. Now think about terran, same thing happens, the entire terran force gets 1 shotted, even marauders get 2 shotted, and they are supposed to be half decent counters...
At the moment, although they shoot faster than you are suggesting, they hit for less, so getting your army into the position it needs to be into to kill them is easier...
I actually like this idea because it would require warp prisims for colossi to move around. Therefore it ups their cost from 300/200 to 500/200. To compensate they'd have to be better, but it makes it a lot easier to counter colossi due to the fact that toss has to micro them better. Just imagine it though. Colossi pops out of a warp prism. PEW PEW PEW half the army dead. Little effect on game play if you lower their attack speed. Just more hype like he said
On March 18 2011 07:22 puissance wrote: They are indeed boring, because they are so easy to use. Lowering the attack speed, but increasing the dmg is a good idea in general. But it is also risky, because of the "one-shot" potencial. My idea is this: - Decrease attack speed, but keep dps (against everything) the same. < Maybe even lower it slightly. - Add a +light modifier, which gives Colossus the ability to one-shot workers.
Result: - Colossus becomes more like an anti-light specialist, while Immortals is the anti armored specialist. - Most importantly: Warp Prism + Colossus becomes a good harassment combo, much like Reaver + Shuttle. In the same vein I propose to add 1 base armor to Warp Prisms. They are too flimsy currently.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
You forget that if you have the warp prism then it is susceptible to air. If you dont have a warp prism then you cant attack. Collision size hardly makes any difference whatsoever.. "if you get vikings[...]" yeah since vikings are the only thing that can attack air.. You fail horribly at backing up your claims.
If I have a unit with 9 range, I can safely assume that my warp prism needs to be no closer than 9 from the opponents deathball. That gives you exactly 2 things that can shoot it - the thor and the viking. If you bring marines to try and snipe it, it'll work about as well as trying to snipe a Colossus with marines - I'll back up and you'll lose marines to my surrounding army. I was also assuming that you possessed the minimum skill required to unload it before it got blown into giant pieces.
The argument isn't about collision size - it's about the ability to pick it out of a group. A ghost is harder to feedback than an infester, and a reaver is slightly harder to take out than a Colossus. A reaver also has a nice solid meatshield of gateway around it that protects it from one of the two ways it can be attacked. Your options to shoot through the gateway deathball are either:
1) Outrange it with a siege tank or 2) Shoot it down with an air-to-ground unit.
With a Colossus, you can use: 3) Shoot it down with an air-to-air unit.
If your not horrible then you will know to engage the army in the middle of the map. Picking off the warp prism would be the #1 priority. Once thats done then the push cannot continue. Not true for the colossus. Its stupid mobile for how strong it is. Also you know a reaver is about the size of a siege tank right? The comparison of a ghost to infestor is no where near the comparison of a reaver to colossus. Not to mention the terrans ground army would be significantly bigger with the lack of the huge investment in vikings.
In an ideal world, yes, you would engage at the center of the map. However, Protoss has an aversion to being out in the open being surrounded. Protoss was even given a spell to help them control the battlefield - Forcefield. I can't imagine it'd be too hard to adapt my play to avoiding large open spaces where I can be instantly destroyed when that is essentially what I already do, and most Protoss already do.
Adding more marines/marauders won't really help when the Protoss has the hard counter to it that can kill it efficiently. Either you'll be able to snipe it instantly (and win) or you won't (and it will kill your MMM ball with stupid-strong efficiency). Imagine an unkillable faster-than-stim baneling thats guarenteed to hit your army, and deals enough damage to 1-shot a marine - thats what a Reaver would be shooting at you.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
You forget that if you have the warp prism then it is susceptible to air. If you dont have a warp prism then you cant attack. Collision size hardly makes any difference whatsoever.. "if you get vikings[...]" yeah since vikings are the only thing that can attack air.. You fail horribly at backing up your claims.
If I have a unit with 9 range, I can safely assume that my warp prism needs to be no closer than 9 from the opponents deathball. That gives you exactly 2 things that can shoot it - the thor and the viking. If you bring marines to try and snipe it, it'll work about as well as trying to snipe a Colossus with marines - I'll back up and you'll lose marines to my surrounding army. I was also assuming that you possessed the minimum skill required to unload it before it got blown into giant pieces.
The argument isn't about collision size - it's about the ability to pick it out of a group. A ghost is harder to feedback than an infester, and a reaver is slightly harder to take out than a Colossus. A reaver also has a nice solid meatshield of gateway around it that protects it from one of the two ways it can be attacked. Your options to shoot through the gateway deathball are either:
1) Outrange it with a siege tank or 2) Shoot it down with an air-to-ground unit.
With a Colossus, you can use: 3) Shoot it down with an air-to-air unit.
If your not horrible then you will know to engage the army in the middle of the map. Picking off the warp prism would be the #1 priority. Once thats done then the push cannot continue. Not true for the colossus. Its stupid mobile for how strong it is. Also you know a reaver is about the size of a siege tank right? The comparison of a ghost to infestor is no where near the comparison of a reaver to colossus. Not to mention the terrans ground army would be significantly bigger with the lack of the huge investment in vikings.
In an ideal world, yes, you would engage at the center of the map. However, Protoss has an aversion to being out in the open being surrounded. Protoss was even given a spell to help them control the battlefield - Forcefield. I can't imagine it'd be too hard to adapt my play to avoiding large open spaces where I can be instantly destroyed when that is essentially what I already do, and most Protoss already do.
Adding more marines/marauders won't really help when the Protoss has the hard counter to it that can kill it efficiently. Either you'll be able to snipe it instantly (and win) or you won't (and it will kill your MMM ball with stupid-strong efficiency). Imagine an unkillable faster-than-stim baneling thats guarenteed to hit your army, and deals enough damage to 1-shot a marine - thats what a Reaver would be shooting at you.
If you mass bio vs reaver then you deserve to die. But i guess we can agree to disagree.
they tried it. Colosus were super imba, melted marines even faster, completely raped hydras, killed drones in a blink of an eye, and made them more imba.
Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
You forget that if you have the warp prism then it is susceptible to air. If you dont have a warp prism then you cant attack. Collision size hardly makes any difference whatsoever.. "if you get vikings[...]" yeah since vikings are the only thing that can attack air.. You fail horribly at backing up your claims.
If I have a unit with 9 range, I can safely assume that my warp prism needs to be no closer than 9 from the opponents deathball. That gives you exactly 2 things that can shoot it - the thor and the viking. If you bring marines to try and snipe it, it'll work about as well as trying to snipe a Colossus with marines - I'll back up and you'll lose marines to my surrounding army. I was also assuming that you possessed the minimum skill required to unload it before it got blown into giant pieces.
The argument isn't about collision size - it's about the ability to pick it out of a group. A ghost is harder to feedback than an infester, and a reaver is slightly harder to take out than a Colossus. A reaver also has a nice solid meatshield of gateway around it that protects it from one of the two ways it can be attacked. Your options to shoot through the gateway deathball are either:
1) Outrange it with a siege tank or 2) Shoot it down with an air-to-ground unit.
With a Colossus, you can use: 3) Shoot it down with an air-to-air unit.
If your not horrible then you will know to engage the army in the middle of the map. Picking off the warp prism would be the #1 priority. Once thats done then the push cannot continue. Not true for the colossus. Its stupid mobile for how strong it is. Also you know a reaver is about the size of a siege tank right? The comparison of a ghost to infestor is no where near the comparison of a reaver to colossus. Not to mention the terrans ground army would be significantly bigger with the lack of the huge investment in vikings.
In an ideal world, yes, you would engage at the center of the map. However, Protoss has an aversion to being out in the open being surrounded. Protoss was even given a spell to help them control the battlefield - Forcefield. I can't imagine it'd be too hard to adapt my play to avoiding large open spaces where I can be instantly destroyed when that is essentially what I already do, and most Protoss already do.
Adding more marines/marauders won't really help when the Protoss has the hard counter to it that can kill it efficiently. Either you'll be able to snipe it instantly (and win) or you won't (and it will kill your MMM ball with stupid-strong efficiency). Imagine an unkillable faster-than-stim baneling thats guarenteed to hit your army, and deals enough damage to 1-shot a marine - thats what a Reaver would be shooting at you.
Yeah I still don't get this turn the colossus into a reaver debate. Just implement the reaver, you've seen what QQ has done with maps, first they ignored, then they changed the map pool with equally shit maps, and then finally they came to their own senses and have decided to implement GSL maps.
Just QQ more about no reaver, instead of coming up with dumb colossus changes, hopefully blizz will implement it.
And yeah mm+tanks vs reaver is the shit, it produces totally epic games. There have been quite a few deep-six builds against reaver before, and they have been amazing.
On March 18 2011 12:47 oOOoOphidian wrote: [quote] Maybe significantly lower the base damage against non-light, but make the vs light much higher. They'd still be really good against light, but would no longer be the basis of an entire army for dealing with everything else.
Sounds like you want a reaver type unit, why not just implement the reaver. There is no reason for blizzard not to.
There is - a Reaver would decimate MMM to the point it would be unplayable. Those attractive little balls the units form themselves into would be giant bullseyes for scarabs, each of which would instantly kill most of what it hit. I'd rather have the reaver than the Colossus, solely because it'd be better at its job with less vulnerabilities.
Less vulnerabilities? Is that a joke? Please explain to me how the reaver is less vulnerable than colossus.
For one, it can't be shot by aircraft, which is pretty huge. For another, it's simply a smaller unit (in the same way a ghost is less vulnerable than a infester). Finally, its slow movement speed is counteracted by a shuttle - if you get vikings to kill the warp prism/shuttle, you don't have a unit that can directly hurt it.
You forget that if you have the warp prism then it is susceptible to air. If you dont have a warp prism then you cant attack. Collision size hardly makes any difference whatsoever.. "if you get vikings[...]" yeah since vikings are the only thing that can attack air.. You fail horribly at backing up your claims.
If I have a unit with 9 range, I can safely assume that my warp prism needs to be no closer than 9 from the opponents deathball. That gives you exactly 2 things that can shoot it - the thor and the viking. If you bring marines to try and snipe it, it'll work about as well as trying to snipe a Colossus with marines - I'll back up and you'll lose marines to my surrounding army. I was also assuming that you possessed the minimum skill required to unload it before it got blown into giant pieces.
The argument isn't about collision size - it's about the ability to pick it out of a group. A ghost is harder to feedback than an infester, and a reaver is slightly harder to take out than a Colossus. A reaver also has a nice solid meatshield of gateway around it that protects it from one of the two ways it can be attacked. Your options to shoot through the gateway deathball are either:
1) Outrange it with a siege tank or 2) Shoot it down with an air-to-ground unit.
With a Colossus, you can use: 3) Shoot it down with an air-to-air unit.
If your not horrible then you will know to engage the army in the middle of the map. Picking off the warp prism would be the #1 priority. Once thats done then the push cannot continue. Not true for the colossus. Its stupid mobile for how strong it is. Also you know a reaver is about the size of a siege tank right? The comparison of a ghost to infestor is no where near the comparison of a reaver to colossus. Not to mention the terrans ground army would be significantly bigger with the lack of the huge investment in vikings.
In an ideal world, yes, you would engage at the center of the map. However, Protoss has an aversion to being out in the open being surrounded. Protoss was even given a spell to help them control the battlefield - Forcefield. I can't imagine it'd be too hard to adapt my play to avoiding large open spaces where I can be instantly destroyed when that is essentially what I already do, and most Protoss already do.
Adding more marines/marauders won't really help when the Protoss has the hard counter to it that can kill it efficiently. Either you'll be able to snipe it instantly (and win) or you won't (and it will kill your MMM ball with stupid-strong efficiency). Imagine an unkillable faster-than-stim baneling thats guarenteed to hit your army, and deals enough damage to 1-shot a marine - thats what a Reaver would be shooting at you.
If you mass bio vs reaver then you deserve to die. But i guess we can agree to disagree.
Fair enough, I bear no animosity towards you. I think the Reaver would be more fun, but would probably be a bit less of a solution than the majority of posters seem to think.
Either way, it couldn't be much worse in terms of entertainment value than the colossus.
On March 18 2011 06:34 IVN wrote: Actually, there is one thing, that can be done. What if the radius of storm was reduced, but the damage up'd by a lot? The user would have to place the storm just right (=harder to do), and the other guy would have to react very quickly or lose his units.
I don't intend for this thread to to turn into a "suggest hype balance changes!" thread, but I have to say that I REALLY like this idea. It would make blanket storms require SO many more templar and rapid-fire clicks. I'd especially like it if Storms were small and rose up in a column of electricity so they actually look like they're hitting air units.
On March 18 2011 08:22 Torpedo.Vegas wrote: For example, if a pro is aware of all the timings for unit output/upgrades/damage dealing potential/etc. that goes into a protoss deathball, they could incorporate effective timings to take them apart piece by piece. Now if the Protoss is aware of the timings associated with the enemies timings designed to counter your expected timings (@_@) then they could adapt and use what they do have in unique ways and alter the timings associated with the traditional deathball, or maybe even transition out of the deathball mentality and use a strategy designed to hardcounter the anti-deathball strategy of their opponent.
This kind of thing is exciting for people who know the intricacies of a game. Most of it happens behind the scenes. It does not generate hype. Hype is more simple.
This kind of thing will make the chess-players watching a chess match say "Aha. What an excellent move..." as they quietly ponder about how the rest of the game will go.
You will hardly ever see the crowd stand up and cheer (as I have seen countless times at fighting game tournaments) during a chess game, and that is NOT a fault of the game. Chess is amazing. It's just because there are no explosions and no dexterity involved. That's it, really.
On March 18 2011 08:22 Some Grammar-sensitive Guys wrote: You're not using the word 'hype' correctly.
You're right. I am not. I am using a slang term as it is commonly used within fighting-game communities. I chose it because I am familiar with it and I felt like it was the best way to get my point across. I will not apologize. That would be mad un-hype, yo.
On March 18 2011 08:22 Some Balance-concerned Guys wrote: The Reaver would destroy MM too hard.
Maybe so. Probably not. I don't care. It's up to Blizzard to make sure changes don't completely break the game. We should be less concerned about this than about whether or not something is incredibly yawn-inducing.
I mean, can you really not think of any way to balance it? I can think of 3 ways off the top of my head to nerf it while still keeping the hype, but it's just not my job to make that call.
On March 18 2011 08:22 Almost Everyone wrote: You're right. Something needs to be done.
Thanks, I know. Keep complaining about it. That's how things get fixed in this game.
On March 18 2011 14:28 sluggaslamoo wrote: Yeah I still don't get this turn the colossus into a reaver debate. Just implement the reaver, you've seen what QQ has done with maps, first they ignored, then they changed the map pool with equally shit maps, and then finally they came to their own senses and have decided to implement GSL maps.
I'm in total support of this thread and bringing back the reaver, but do we just trash the Colossus? I have the feeling Blizz won't want to part with their War of the Worlds Walker.
If we can't get the Colossus removed, how do we leverage the addition of the reaver without large changes to the Colossus? Is there a niche for both, or are they completely mutually exclusive?
On March 18 2011 06:34 IVN wrote: Actually, there is one thing, that can be done. What if the radius of storm was reduced, but the damage up'd by a lot? The user would have to place the storm just right (=harder to do), and the other guy would have to react very quickly or lose his units.
I don't intend for this thread to to turn into a "suggest hype balance changes!" thread, but I have to say that I REALLY like this idea. It would make blanket storms require SO many more templar and rapid-fire clicks. I'd especially like it if Storms were small and rose up in a column of electricity so they actually look like they're hitting air units.
That'd actually be the final nail in the coffin for any non-bio play in the TvP matchup.
I think even most Protoss players are in agreement that something needs to change about the Colossus.
I main Terran, and off-race as Zerg or Protoss. We've all been in scenarios where we 'gg' out of the game and sit there looking at the screen full of 4+ colossus, just dumbfounded, tempted to rage on your opponent and then deciding not to ...
There is just nothing interesting about the Colossus. - It ignores terrain, mostly. - It ignores units, entirely (has no unit-collision!?) - The splash damage shape is perfect. All attacking units naturally form a line/arc perpendicular to their target. What formation is good versus this? - Both abilities, cliff walking and thermal lance, are passive. - It is super obviously a blatant rip-off of the War of the Worlds robots.
Personally, I think they are too good. They are the best "goal unit" in the game - far and away! But aside from being too good you don't really have to 'do anything' for them to be ridiculously awesome. Obviously any change would be considered a "nerf", but what if ...
Ridiculous and unqualified suggestions to follow ... + Show Spoiler +
- Thermal Lance was an activated ability? Maybe it's on cool down, maybe the Thermal Lance is turned off every time it moves, and takes a second to activate (similar to other abilities, like Strike Cannon, or Yamato)? This way if you want to be mobile, you have a little less range, but if you want to hold a position you sacrifice some of that mobility.
Too much like the siege tank?
I don't know ... How do you make this an interesting unit where attacking or defending with Colossus becomes a little bit more involved, and thought provoking, without altering one of Protoss's best AoE DPS units' efficacy in mid and end game?
Defending against that probably requires the same if not more APM as the guy doing it. Especially given the strength of Terran T1 compared to Gateway units (and the need for them to stay together).
You've clearly never had to deal with multi-front micro. Dropping in two places to draw away the army and pushing into the main with a harass force, and escaping without suffering crippling losses, is very micro intensive (requires me spamming around 300APM)
That's not "easy" by any stretch. sure, defending it is hard too, but eventually, drops won't be so hard when protoss break the "ball" mindset and start splitting their armies smartly, and placing cannons in smart places. I build turrets vs all the races if I see the cues. Why can't you build cannons?
what if they just nerfed the range upgrade. this is what makes the colossus so over powered. the fact that your units CANT attack them, maybe if you could focus down the colossus first thing then it would be a little better, but as it is, as soon as i start seeing a colossus get hurt, i move behind my army and if they decide to follow it they get chewed up by gateway comps. also, i think all massive units should have no unit collision like the colossus. how is it that a zergling pushes an ultralisk out of the way and the opposite? ultras are massive units like colossus and so are thors, so why do tiny little units like marines and zerglings get in their way and the opposite? colossus is strong there is no doubt about that, but making them have unit collision would be so much easier for people to kill they as they would get stuck in the middle of their ball and have no where to run to while you focused them down.
alot of the power of the colossus has to do with maps as well, if there was no terrain on a map and you could surround the deathball completely it would be so easy to roll it with pure roaches and we all know thats true, even like a 3/4 surround would be death for any deathball, but as it is they can back up next to a cliff, run their colossus ontop of the cliff, 9 RANGE away and basically keep spamming stop on their gateway units while colossus kill you're whole army talking little to no damage.
btw i dont have a race preference but i do like to see things that are out of the box, but protoss play right now is so far in the box it'll never come out.
On March 19 2011 08:36 mvpAKAenvyME wrote: btw i dont have a race preference but i do like to see things that are out of the box, but protoss play right now is so far in the box it'll never come out.
What? No, it isn't.
Protoss Colossus play is however very boring. It's forced to be, because Colossi have one thing they're very good at (fighting in a death ball) and they're terrible for anything else.
On March 20 2011 00:06 DaemonX wrote: Right, and instead of changing collosi, they are NERFING THE MOTHERSHIP, the only Hype thing that protoss even has in the entire damn race.
Well usually the excitement from the colossus actually comes from the micro to deal with the colossus. The fact that it can be hit with air units actually does give it excitement, from the opponent sniping it and such.
So it actually does, just from the other side's perspective.
I don't think anything's wrong with the excitement of the colossus especially when comparing it to the Ultralisk or the Thor.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/S6YYy.jpg)
