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On June 11 2014 04:57 LSN wrote:
Yeah you are getting angry cause you don't understand balance. When you want the counters to bio to be reduced (what I would like to see as well) also the strength of bio has to be reduced beforehand. And this is what I am talking about. I am not talking about current detail metagame issues, that no matter of what tweaks are being done, will have the same underlayings and just put the advantage on one or the other side.
Apart from this terran is winning alot recently. I don't see where this trouble comes from.
While I agree with the logic, the problem is related to the metagame.
Metagame causes all the difference, upgrade, amount of bio and AOE on the field.
The game is all about relative strength at each time stamp.
Mass baneling only works mid game for example, restart the army supply and using the larva to remax and kill off the terran before the bio ball is built up again.
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I think Terran's early game kinda sucks. I think Protoss has too many early to mid game all ins in TvP and Terran gets stuck guessing too often. I think TvZ seems like it's trending toward stalemates, which kind of sucks because that used to be a very dynamic MU. Apart from that, balance seems OK.
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On June 11 2014 07:41 B-rye88 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2014 07:07 Socup wrote:
If there's a race by certain races to finish the game before the other race gets into their power stage, that isn't really balanced is it? No race should have an intrinsic advantage to win simply because of what time index the game is in. Hardly. Balance refers solely to X vs. Y being ~50% for games won. Assuming all games last between 10 and 20 minutes at an even spread (for an intuitive example), if X wins 70% of games played that last 15m or less and only 30% of games lasting 15m01s and more, this is still balanced.Whether it's good game design or not is another question. Personally, it doesn't HAVE to be bad game design, so long as that 15m01s mark does not make the game a foregone conclusion; a match-up could be quite fun when characterized by a race to defeat your opponent / survive his/her attacks before a given time.
That's a fallacy because if there's 100 games lined up to play, one side is going to win 70% of them because they get the first advantage. It doesn't matter if it statistically looks like the other side should win more after a certain time elasped, because it'll only get there 30% of the time anyway.
If side A wins 70% of games before time X, then side B only has 30% of games to win 70% of the time at time Y. In fact, to look balanced, there has to be a gross distortion in side B's ability to win AFTER time Y.
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this LSN kid is full of shit, just saying
Bio is weak, and especially early game (macro games) where as a protoss can fast expand into oracle and still do a shit load of dmg and or, at least harrass with that stupid revelation spell (that probably should be nerfed to 30 seconds imo) even so we make do, but i would love to see that bunker upgrade unlock at engie bay to help us defend and get our macro going. Its not like we can make 4 barracks and warp in our units across the map of have intimidating speed to run the entire map length in 5 seconds to reinforce. IMO playing terran for a long ass time my ideas for buffs could be possibly
the bunker upgrade
make reapers an upgrade to be a viable unit besides a scouting unit in midgame
buff hunter seeker missle to ensure hits (nothing pisses me off then wasting the energy lol)
splash dmg on turrets (light splash, mutas -_-)
Tank buff to do +dmg v shields
medivac speed in general, not the booster
Widowmine buff so u cant see it before hand when microing around the map. What sense does that even make anyway its spose to be a cloaked unit. If u dont have detection u should be punished, it shouldnt show u where its at that way u can micro 1 ling in it and nullify the unit for 40 seconds
Maybe or maybe not just a slight speed buff to mech units
again not saying we should have all these buffs next patch im just saying maybe 1 or 2 could really help
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On June 11 2014 06:13 DinoMight wrote:
The one thing I would agree with LSN on is that because bio is so strong, the counters to bio need to be really strong as well. When you consider the INSANE dps of stimmed bio combined with the healing power of Medivacs... the answer from Protoss/Zerg HAS to be some sort of crazy AoE damage.
If stimmed bio wasn't as strong, then Colossus and Storm (and banelings) wouldn't need to do as much damage and armies consisting of more core units/less AoE units would be more viable.
Even in TvT, stimmed bio if it's spread out enough can just run up to and engage siege tanks if they're not properly defended by the other guy's bio or a lot of Hellbats.
Funnily enough I posted a long time ago in this thread roughly this and people absolutely threw a fit over it. Which is why I stopped posting, because I'm not here for the entertainment of people who want to scream abuse.
In effect my position on Terran is that the race's biggest issue is the Marine. The Marine is incredibly strong a unit and the problem is that Blizzard has balanced Terran around the Marine, making everything around it very weak (you only have to look at the Siege Tank to see that).
By weakening the Marine you could probably afford to buff the majority of the Terran arsenal; which would diversify the matchups, make Terran more viable later in the game and reduce the need for masses of Collossi/HTs/etc. But people can't accept that argument, because the Marine is some kind of sacred calf or something.
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On June 11 2014 19:55 -Celestial- wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2014 06:13 DinoMight wrote:
The one thing I would agree with LSN on is that because bio is so strong, the counters to bio need to be really strong as well. When you consider the INSANE dps of stimmed bio combined with the healing power of Medivacs... the answer from Protoss/Zerg HAS to be some sort of crazy AoE damage.
If stimmed bio wasn't as strong, then Colossus and Storm (and banelings) wouldn't need to do as much damage and armies consisting of more core units/less AoE units would be more viable.
Even in TvT, stimmed bio if it's spread out enough can just run up to and engage siege tanks if they're not properly defended by the other guy's bio or a lot of Hellbats. Funnily enough I posted a long time ago in this thread roughly this and people absolutely threw a fit over it. Which is why I stopped posting, because I'm not here for the entertainment of people who want to scream abuse. In effect my position on Terran is that the race's biggest issue is the Marine. The Marine is incredibly strong a unit and the problem is that Blizzard has balanced Terran around the Marine, making everything around it very weak (you only have to look at the Siege Tank to see that). By weakening the Marine you could probably afford to buff the majority of the Terran arsenal; which would diversify the matchups, make Terran more viable later in the game and reduce the need for masses of Collossi/HTs/etc. But people can't accept that argument, because the Marine is some kind of sacred calf or something.
The real core of bio play is the Medivac...
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I've seen people talk about the marine so many times in this thread and the only time I actually saw a real proposed change, not just vague "the marine is too strong" stuff, was someone saying damage should be 5 +1 to light instead of 6 "because they're too good against lings and mutas." What, remove the combat shield upgrade? Drop range by 1?
The marine is a pretty good tier 1 unit. It trades well against light targets (zealots, zerglings) in small numbers, and badly against heavy targets in small numbers (roaches, stalkers). The real strength of the marine as the game goes later is that with small collision radius and very high attack rate, they scale better than pretty much any other single-target damage. That doesn't make them OP; by the same logic, hydralisks should have been one of the best units in the WoL Zerg arsenal.
What is the fix here? How should the Terran race function without the option of marines as a basis for the army? Because you have to be more specific than 'buff somewhere else.' What, tank damage buffed to 50 flat, marine range down to 4? Battlecruiser DPS doubled, marine dps halved? Seeker missile hits twice as fast, but stim is removed? If you actually apply the "nerf marine, buff the rest of Terran" idea none of the concrete proposals sound good for the game.
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On June 11 2014 07:44 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2014 07:11 Faust852 wrote:On June 11 2014 06:13 DinoMight wrote:
The one thing I would agree with LSN on is that because bio is so strong, the counters to bio need to be really strong as well. When you consider the INSANE dps of stimmed bio combined with the healing power of Medivacs... the answer from Protoss/Zerg HAS to be some sort of crazy AoE damage.
If stimmed bio wasn't as strong, then Colossus and Storm (and banelings) wouldn't need to do as much damage and armies consisting of more core units/less AoE units would be more viable.
Even in TvT, stimmed bio if it's spread out enough can just run up to and engage siege tanks if they're not properly defended by the other guy's bio or a lot of Hellbats. Funny how you put Zerg AoE and Protoss AoE in the same bag. The only problem with Zerg AoE is that they can get too much baneling in the midgame due to huge map. But banelings never really were a problem actually. Well, Colossus are not a problem if they only have 1 Colossus. How expensive something is and how many of them you can make is obviously a very important part of whether or not it's balanced. Also, what is funny? I don't see it.
The problem is that you can prevent the zerg from getting this many banelings (maybe less with big map but the patch looks like it helps quite a bit), but you can't really prevent the protoss to reach his ultimate compo of collossi+HTs. In TvZ the terran can trade efficiently all the game long, but he can't really trade in TvP at all.
What's funny is that you are mixing oranges and apples, that's all.
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On June 11 2014 20:47 ChristianS wrote:
I've seen people talk about the marine so many times in this thread and the only time I actually saw a real proposed change, not just vague "the marine is too strong" stuff, was someone saying damage should be 5 +1 to light instead of 6 "because they're too good against lings and mutas." What, remove the combat shield upgrade? Drop range by 1?
The marine is a pretty good tier 1 unit. It trades well against light targets (zealots, zerglings) in small numbers, and badly against heavy targets in small numbers (roaches, stalkers). The real strength of the marine as the game goes later is that with small collision radius and very high attack rate, they scale better than pretty much any other single-target damage. That doesn't make them OP; by the same logic, hydralisks should have been one of the best units in the WoL Zerg arsenal.
What is the fix here? How should the Terran race function without the option of marines as a basis for the army? Because you have to be more specific than 'buff somewhere else.' What, tank damage buffed to 50 flat, marine range down to 4? Battlecruiser DPS doubled, marine dps halved? Seeker missile hits twice as fast, but stim is removed? If you actually apply the "nerf marine, buff the rest of Terran" idea none of the concrete proposals sound good for the game.
This 5+1 was something I proposed, but not as an actual "nerf the marine like this", but rather as a "they should have looked at the stats when they created the game and seen that the marine was too good all around. And since there are marauders vs armored anyways, why not make marine's dps vs armored lower than marauder's dps vs armored." Something that you might apply in a new expansion, when things get shaken up anyways.
Of course not to make them worse vs mutas and lings, since they wouldn't change against those units at all. Rather the opposite, keep them as good against those units, make them weaker against armored things.
And yeah, I pretty much stand by that opinion.
2 stimmed marines have 21dps vs everything, ground and air
1 stimmed marauder has 20dps vs armored ground, 10 vs other ground, can't shoot air at all
1 roach has 8 dps vs everything ground, can't shoot air at all
...
(of course there are other advantages of those units; please refrain from "but roaches have 145HP"; "but marauders have +1range and concussive shells", that is of course true, but at the end of the day, the overall picture and the actual gameplay will prove that you'd rather have marines then roaches, in many, many more scenarios then you want it vis-verca)
I believe there is something seriously off with how the marine is balanced against other units. Like, if I had to draw a graphic in which I rate the unit strength (so combat strength, versatility, overall usefullness) for all Terran units, it would spike very hard at the marine, and other rather strong Terran units like the marauder would only be at half its level. When, in a perfect RTS world that allows for a lot of variety, you want all of the units to be on somewhat the same level in this chart. (which doesn't mean they should all be equally good in combat; one may be better early, one better late, one more mobile, one more versatile etc...)
And I believe that this inequality stems a lot from nerfs in WoL to Terran, as well as the overall design process going around these very strong marines. Because, since they come so early and only cost minerals, anything gasheavy a Terran can play in theory, he can play with the marine as mineraldump, early safety, super-anti-air unit. Which makes it necessary that all gasheavy Terran units have to be treated as "how does this combine with the marine", and none of those units can be overly strong in scenarios when you want to fight marinecounters.
To give an example: you cannot buff the siege tank in a way that reactively mixing them in upon seeing banelings, makes you wellprepared against banelings. Because it's the only tool around for zerg to really combat marines (before ultralisks). Of course you may be able to tweak the numbers upon what we have now, but at the end of the day, you are not going to be able to implement a siege tank that can deal very well with either, 300+HP Archons/Ultralisks/Colossi and 30-80HP Banelings/HTs. Because Marine/Medivac counters other singlefire compositions so hard (at least in the longrun), that the Terran counters to marinecounters must be very, very soft.
(that is not to say that the marine is the only such unit in the game, that is outside of a healthy "balance corridor"; current mutalisks, or WoL Infestors to name two others; but the marine has always been like that; with the other units, there is usually immidiate imbalance towards that race involved, since the rest of the race hasn't been as nerfed down as the Terran race has been)
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You just can't nerf the marine now anyway.
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On June 11 2014 19:55 -Celestial- wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2014 06:13 DinoMight wrote:
The one thing I would agree with LSN on is that because bio is so strong, the counters to bio need to be really strong as well. When you consider the INSANE dps of stimmed bio combined with the healing power of Medivacs... the answer from Protoss/Zerg HAS to be some sort of crazy AoE damage.
If stimmed bio wasn't as strong, then Colossus and Storm (and banelings) wouldn't need to do as much damage and armies consisting of more core units/less AoE units would be more viable.
Even in TvT, stimmed bio if it's spread out enough can just run up to and engage siege tanks if they're not properly defended by the other guy's bio or a lot of Hellbats. Funnily enough I posted a long time ago in this thread roughly this and people absolutely threw a fit over it. Which is why I stopped posting, because I'm not here for the entertainment of people who want to scream abuse. In effect my position on Terran is that the race's biggest issue is the Marine. The Marine is incredibly strong a unit and the problem is that Blizzard has balanced Terran around the Marine, making everything around it very weak (you only have to look at the Siege Tank to see that). By weakening the Marine you could probably afford to buff the majority of the Terran arsenal; which would diversify the matchups, make Terran more viable later in the game and reduce the need for masses of Collossi/HTs/etc. But people can't accept that argument, because the Marine is some kind of sacred calf or something.
Exactly this, just most people are not bright enough to see this.
But when looking closely at it the marine cant be blamed alone. It is the composition of marines and early access maurauders. This composition can and must deal with anything in the game. And anyone must deal with this composition when playing terran the whole game (of course medivacs included). Thats the problem.
This composition is too strong and too versatile. Its lacking a refined rock scissor paper mechanics. The only mechanic of this kind it has is the one with the splash and even this can be nullified so that we have stimmed bio dpsing down anything within seconds and counter splash that does the same with bio. The result is that in alot of the games the fights are one sided, boring to watch, predecided and there is not even enough time for players to show a real differnce in micro but positioning before the 2-5 seconds fight is everything.
Furthermore we must cope with abnormalities like nexus cannon (which denies zvp earlygame and makes it usually an either protoss all-ins or boring 2 vs 3 // 3 vs 4 base opening before z can do any actions), muta regen (which is just too forgiving for zerg players and destroys zvp/zvz balance), spore crawler buff (just stupid), probably forcefields in the first place (stopped bothering with it already long time ago, still it is a questionable mechanic that can instantly decide games: good ff = instant win, bad ff = instant lose) and alot more.
p.s: as ppl ask for solutions:
The solution can only be an overall overhaul of most units with the next add-on.
This should probably include reduced stim effect and maybe a bit increased marine base attack speed, removed maurauders (give terran other decent stuff that cant be healed but used as a transition into mech/air play). And so on.
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On June 11 2014 19:55 -Celestial- wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2014 06:13 DinoMight wrote:
The one thing I would agree with LSN on is that because bio is so strong, the counters to bio need to be really strong as well. When you consider the INSANE dps of stimmed bio combined with the healing power of Medivacs... the answer from Protoss/Zerg HAS to be some sort of crazy AoE damage.
If stimmed bio wasn't as strong, then Colossus and Storm (and banelings) wouldn't need to do as much damage and armies consisting of more core units/less AoE units would be more viable.
Even in TvT, stimmed bio if it's spread out enough can just run up to and engage siege tanks if they're not properly defended by the other guy's bio or a lot of Hellbats. Funnily enough I posted a long time ago in this thread roughly this and people absolutely threw a fit over it. Which is why I stopped posting, because I'm not here for the entertainment of people who want to scream abuse. In effect my position on Terran is that the race's biggest issue is the Marine. The Marine is incredibly strong a unit and the problem is that Blizzard has balanced Terran around the Marine, making everything around it very weak (you only have to look at the Siege Tank to see that). By weakening the Marine you could probably afford to buff the majority of the Terran arsenal; which would diversify the matchups, make Terran more viable later in the game and reduce the need for masses of Collossi/HTs/etc. But people can't accept that argument, because the Marine is some kind of sacred calf or something.
Funnuliy enough this is an very old preconceived opinion on Marine dating from WoL Beta, and it has been proved plain false multiple time, in fact bio without medivacs loose at same army value to nearly everything AOE-less :
-roach/hydra smash it hard (roach/hydra even smash bio/medivacs until like 10+ full mana medivacs)
-gateway composition with proper FF or charge
-gateway/immortal. ( with sentry)
-even ling/roach trade very well with good engagements
As it has been noted here, the real strength of bio play is the Medivac, and somehow how large number of bio scales well (so a relatively small portion of melee units can attack ). Really nothing to do with the Marines's stats...
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^What would you propose to counterbalance the bio nerf? t3 buff ? lol.
I just think you have trouble in PvT and blame it on bio instead of your own skills.
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gateway composition with proper FF or charge
False.
Chargelots+Forcefields die hardcore to pure marines.
I wonder if that bubble shield makes them win tho.
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On June 11 2014 21:37 Faust852 wrote:
^What would you propose to counterbalance the bio nerf? t3 buff ? lol.
I just think you have trouble in PvT and blame it on bio instead of your own skills.
rines + medivacs would be fine alone, without the maurauders. Cause mauraders are too tanky in the mix (with heal) and disable the opponent to exit from a fight at all with concussive shells.
I would simply remove the maurader or make it a lategame unit. Probably factories should not cost any gas in return. Thors should be removed and replaced with something that can compete with marines. Just roughly what I would start with.
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On June 11 2014 21:36 xongnox wrote:Show nested quote +On June 11 2014 19:55 -Celestial- wrote:On June 11 2014 06:13 DinoMight wrote:
The one thing I would agree with LSN on is that because bio is so strong, the counters to bio need to be really strong as well. When you consider the INSANE dps of stimmed bio combined with the healing power of Medivacs... the answer from Protoss/Zerg HAS to be some sort of crazy AoE damage.
If stimmed bio wasn't as strong, then Colossus and Storm (and banelings) wouldn't need to do as much damage and armies consisting of more core units/less AoE units would be more viable.
Even in TvT, stimmed bio if it's spread out enough can just run up to and engage siege tanks if they're not properly defended by the other guy's bio or a lot of Hellbats. Funnily enough I posted a long time ago in this thread roughly this and people absolutely threw a fit over it. Which is why I stopped posting, because I'm not here for the entertainment of people who want to scream abuse. In effect my position on Terran is that the race's biggest issue is the Marine. The Marine is incredibly strong a unit and the problem is that Blizzard has balanced Terran around the Marine, making everything around it very weak (you only have to look at the Siege Tank to see that). By weakening the Marine you could probably afford to buff the majority of the Terran arsenal; which would diversify the matchups, make Terran more viable later in the game and reduce the need for masses of Collossi/HTs/etc. But people can't accept that argument, because the Marine is some kind of sacred calf or something. Funnuliy enough this is an very old preconceived opinion on Marine dating from WoL Beta, and it has been proved plain false multiple time, in fact bio without medivacs loose at same army value to nearly everything AOE-less : -roach/hydra smash it hard (roach/hydra even smash bio/medivacs until like 10+ full mana medivacs)
-gateway composition with proper FF or charge
-gateway/immortal. ( with sentry)
-even ling/roach trade very well with good engagementsAs it has been noted here, the real strength of bio play is the Medivac, and somehow how large number of bio scales well (so a relatively small portion of melee units can attack ). Really nothing to do with the Marines's stats...
The given examples are just not true. They are timing attacks that can work under the following conditions:
a) massively more expensive army for the P/Z player, who cuts some things to get this.
b) smaller numbers, in which the melee/lower range penalty is hardly existant
c) better engagement angle
If you sit through those timing attacks - or the attacks don't happen and the opponent tries to play a macro game off those compositions -, you are always in a great spot because a) & b) massively favor you in the longrun. Because of the marine's stats.
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The problem isn't that the marine is a solid unit, the problem (if you even can call it that) is that alone by making the heal unit an air one, you have much more dps per area. (and you get the mobility "for free")
This with the "gimmicky" of the counters (lets face it, banelings rely on the terran "being bad" and collossi are "easily" countered)
Storm is probably the best counter for it, but even then you have to rely on energy and have no auto attack unit.
Obviously this is all part of the clumping in sc2, but this will never change so it is a waste of time to argue about it.
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Surely this can change.
Without the maurauder bio would simply die to splash and this is how it should be.
Banelings right now can at best trade evenly against bio (the counter) due to their costs and self destruction and the tankyness of maurauders. Marines should just die in open fights when the counters are there and not trade evenly due to support of maurauders and other units. The metagame then would switch away from marines quickly. Due to their strength it would be still worthwhile to mix some in your army for stim drops, bunkers and just some additional dps.
Suddenly we can remove or weaken muta regen, nexus cannon, oracle, banelings, colossi and introduce new cool units to the battlefield for all races.
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I don't believe there are people who are actually complaining about the marine. There is a reason that the marine is a good multi-purpose unit and that is because the way terran's macro works. With terran macro, in order to produce a lot of units at once you need to invest into multiple barracks (unlike zerg who just need to build one building to unlock the ability to produce units) and you need to produce the units ahead of time (unlike protoss who can instantly warp in counter units at the location of their choice for defence or offence). Because of these limiting factors, if marine's and marauders had more limited roles then the terran player would die to a mass of units from zerg (a type of which they can't be certain is coming) or against protoss they would die because protoss would just be able to instantly counter the units they see terran have with warp ins (stalkers for marines and zealots for marauders).
What people also forget is that terran has to invest heavily into infrastructure and upgrades to make bio work. They have to invest in stim, combat shield, concussive shells, a factory and a starport along with add-ons for their production. This is a lot of gas (100, 100, 50, 100, 100 + addons 25, 25, 50, 50 for a 2 lab 1 reactor rax and 1 reactor starport). This is 600 gas that terran need to invest before even considering the cost of marauders (25 gas) or medivacs (100 gas) or infantry upgrades (a further 200 gas). This is why terran is so weak in the early game and another reason they need to have marines and marauders be able to be reasonably strong because otherwise they flat out die to any early pressure from zerg or protoss.
The argument that you should nerf marine and make other units stronger is a bad one because units other than marine/marauder require even more expensive infrastructure to produce in large numbers and would make the early game for terran even more volatile.
Furthermore, bio is actually the most exciting playstyle there is. It requires the most micro and the most multitasking meaning that you see little skirmishes happening all over the map (drops) and you see impressive control in battles (splits, snipes, flanks, pick-ups, baits etc). A nerf to the marine would mean that from a playing and spectating perspective the game would be much less fun and lead to more turtling in order to get the right composition instead of constantly trading with good micro/multitasking in order to get good engagements for the advantage.
So yeah, if you make the marine and marauder weaker so that stuff like collosus, ht's and banelings don't have to be so strong then you have to mess around with the whole production mechanics of all 3 races so that the early game is balanced, which will have huge implications in the late game.
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On June 11 2014 22:06 LSN wrote:
Due to their strength it would be still worthwhile to mix some in your army for stim drops, bunkers and just some additional dps.
I don't think this would happen, if marines were that bad I would avoid researching expensive tech for them/make them, and just make mech based units instead.
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EPT
