Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 148

On October 12 2011 05:19 Lord_J wrote:


Perhaps we're talking past each other. I don't disagree that MC's recent play has been poor, and says little about any possible imbalance in ZvP. On the other hand, I don't think you can appropriately dismiss the extremely high prevalence of cheesing among top Protoss players against top Zerg players so easily.

Are you suggesting that, by some cosmic coincidence, the top Protoss players in Korea are just less skilled than the top Zerg players? If so, then you argument is nothing but improbable conjecture, so I'm afraid there's little to discuss. If not, then the top Protoss players' recurring decisions to resort to cheese suggest they know something that you or I don't: namely, what the outcome of the game would likely be if they did not cheese. Nor does your "million ZvP's" where Protoss play a macro style and win or have a close game suggest to the contrary, since very few of them indeed of them are played against the caliber of Zerg opposition that Protosses playing PvZ in the GSL are up against. It may be that an imbalance, if any, exists only at this absolute highest level of professional play and not at the level of play that those million games were played at; indeed, I would tend to agree that the evidence points away from any significant imbalance at lower levels of play.

Since there are relatively few games at that level that we have to draw on as evidence, I don't think we can yet draw any firm conclusions on balance there one way or the other. You are right to point out that the struggles of a few players or a few anomalous games could easily swing the pendulum in the direction of suggesting imbalance where none existed. It is not proper reasoning, however, to merely dismiss claims of a possible imbalance by arguing that players lost because they cheesed whilst ignoring the very substantial possibility that they chose to cheese precisely because they were trying to overcome an imbalance in the matchup--whether real or perceived. To really get to the heart of the question will require more time and more games than we have at this point, and there's a significant probability that intervening changes, be it through patches, changes to maps, or the discovery of some previously unrefined strategy will moot the issue. For now, however, it strikes me as equally disingenuous to suggest that we can know there is no imbalance as it is to say that we can be certain there is one.

On October 12 2011 04:50 xAPOCALYPSEx wrote:
Okay, I see what others are saying but I still think Protoss would be too weak without that forcefield, especially vs something like a 5RR or 7RR, unless you maybe make cybercore build time shorter and make sure that forcefield research time is shorter. This is even more true because zealots, while having 10 extra shields, would do 2 less damage per shot and stalkers, even with an extra 2 damage per shot, I feel it wouldn't change things too much from now, holding off a 7RR without forcefields.

On October 12 2011 04:50 xAPOCALYPSEx wrote:Another thing that may be kinda weird with this is it allows insane scouting so early on for P. I guess one could make an argument for it being equivalent to scan/suicide overlord, but I don't think it really is. If you didn't have to research hallucination, I feel it'd put P scouting miles ahead of Z and T, especially because T has to use their 'maphack' in lieu of a MULE which is a vital part of their economy, and their drops would come much later. Properly micro'd, I feel it would basically allow P to permanently have vision of the opponent's base, and if the opponent decided to do something about it, it would cost a ridiculous amount of money or patrolling units, etc etc. Well more so than should be required for just denying early scouting anyways.

On October 12 2011 03:39 Celadan wrote:


you get the best scouting in the game if that change was implemented.......!

On October 12 2011 07:58 Plansix wrote:


So you get to see the rush that is going to kill you coming that much earlier and not be able to stop them from coming into your main?

On October 12 2011 08:06 Shebuha wrote:


Exactly!
The whole point of early sentries (ex. 3 gate) is either to
A: be able to live through frontal attacks
B: trap your opponent and kill him (like if you did a 2 gas, 30 probe 4 gate)
Protoss openings would either almost always get killed by allins (3rax scv pull) or would get reworked to somehow defend them (10gate? cannon at front?) lol

Another terran advantage is that terran is so much more forgiving than other races. You can take biggest risks and mess up more and still come back.

Early expanded and got all-inned? Lift of and use CC for macro.
Lost all workers? MULEs are worth 4 each.
Macro slipped? Place down mules for all energy.
Supply blocked? Just put down an extra supply.
Need emergency anti banshee/DT? Scan.
Proxy rax got detected? Fly home and save the building.
Got turned into a base race? Fly away CC and all production buildings.
Ever not sure about anything at all? Scan.

On October 12 2011 09:15 VoirDire wrote:
d) Initiative in army engagements:

Terran have the initiative in army engagements due to that terran out-ranges the other races in most aspects of the game: Air to air (vikings), ground to ground (tanks), ground to air (thor), caster vs caster (emp, snipe), AoE (tanks, emp), early game (marines/hellion vs lings, marauders with concussive vs protoss). This forces the other races to commit to attacking into terran, instead of forcing engagements on their terms.
...
The advantage of having the initiative is that the terran player only needs to focus on executing his build. The other races have to play reactionary and try to scout/predict terran and countering his strat specifically. And when it is countered, the reward is much less than if terran caught the other player off guard. The only way to force terran to play reactionary is to play overly greedy and thus forcing terran to punish that, but that's not a solid way to play. Terran can afford taking a bit later expansions, as MULEs are equivalent to about 2 extra saturated mineral patches per orbital.

On October 12 2011 09:15 VoirDire wrote:
I've been building up for this rant for a while now. Post is a little messy, sorry about that.

The game balance is past nerfing/buffing units, that's not even the problem. The fundamental problem is that Terran has the initiative in all match ups. This is due to the very design of the race, and is hard to balance by making stat changes on single units.

a) Scouting:

Terran can scout as much as he wants with 1 reaper opening or scan, but he doesn't really need to because wall of/bunker repair holds pretty much all early attacks without costing to much. And if the expand should fall to an all-in, he can just lift of and use his extra CC to mule from. Terran can always scout zerg composition with hellion opening.

b) Versatility:

Terran is very versatile and can switch between any unit composition as long as they have 4 buildings: 1 barrack, 1 factory, 1 star port, 1 tech lab. Then they can make marines, marauders, hellions, tanks, medivacs, vikings, banshees and their respective upgrades. With an additional reactor, they can choose to produce marines, hellions, medivacs or vikings at double rate. Even if you scout their exact unit composition, you can not know what they will have 2 unit cycles from now.

c) Ability to deny scouting:

TvZ:
Terran can shut down zerg creepspread/scouting once 2-4 hellions are out, which transitions well into any terran build, most of which requires a different zerg tech path to counter. The follow up could be blue flame hellions, early expand, banshee, 8 marine+4 hellion drop, 1 base m&m all-in. Speedlings dies hard to BFH/heavy hellion and roaches are weak against every other follow-up.

TvP:
Terran 1 naked rax in the wall could be anything. It could be 1-1-1, 1 rax FE or 3 rax or something in between. There is just so many different timings terran can hit and so many unit variations that terran should come out ahead if he mixes his game up.

d) Initiative in army engagements:

Terran have the initiative in army engagements due to that terran out-ranges the other races in most aspects of the game: Air to air (vikings), ground to ground (tanks), ground to air (thor), caster vs caster (emp, snipe), AoE (tanks, emp), early game (marines/hellion vs lings, marauders with concussive vs protoss). This forces the other races to commit to attacking into terran, instead of forcing engagements on their terms. E.g. if a terran could freely attack a protoss army, a few well placed range 10 EMPs take out 1/3 of total army HP while at the same time rendering sentrys, high templars and immortals next to useless. Non-terrans should try to flank attack terran and use their faster reinforcements to turn the tide of the battle.

Ghost have 2 counter-caster spells that out-ranges the other casters spells. They also can turn invisible and have the highest damage AoE in the game (EMP, not nuke).

AoE comparison:
EMP does up to 100 instant damage vs shields in 2 AoE, range 10. It also drains energy and reveals cloaked units. That's equal to 4-5 banelings vs non-light units, at range 10.
Storm does 80 damge over 4 seconds in 1.5 AoE, range 9, 2 second cool down.
Fungal does 30 (+10 vs armored) damage over 4 seconds in 2 AoE, range 9, snares and reveals cloaked.
Banelings do instant 20 (+15 vs light) damage in 2.2 AoE, range melee.

Terran also have 5 additional AoEs (siege tank, hellion, HSM, nuke, thor vs air). Protoss have colossus.

Anti-caster abilities:
Snipe kills High templar in 2 shots, infestor in 3 shots, range 10, cost 25.
Feedback does 0-200 damage depending on target energy, range 9, cost 50.
Neural parasite, takes control over unit for 15 seconds, channeled spell, range 7, cost 100.

The advantage of having the initiative is that the terran player only needs to focus on executing his build. The other races have to play reactionary and try to scout/predict terran and countering his strat specifically. And when it is countered, the reward is much less than if terran caught the other player off guard. The only way to force terran to play reactionary is to play overly greedy and thus forcing terran to punish that, but that's not a solid way to play. Terran can afford taking a bit later expansions, as MULEs are equivalent to about 2 extra saturated mineral patches per orbital. The way other races can compete somewhat with terran atm is that they know the meta-game and other player pretty well, and most terrans just stick to 2-3 common builds instead of exploiting the initiative to the fullest. That's why Code S have been mostly terrans imho, they can practice a different timing for each match and the other player is unable to prepare. Another good example is thorzains TSL run.

Other races need to have a way to limit terran early game initiative.
* Ability to scout terran past wall of.
* Limiting terran early game with the tech lab/reactor mechanic.
* Having a way of putting on early pressure safely vs terran, forcing him to reveal his unit composition.
* Making 2 base less susceptible to terran 1 base all-ins.
* Giving other races a counter to ghost (Like spell caster with equal range, or a nerf to ghost range).

Extra:

Other races need to have a way to limit terran early game initiative.
* Ability to scout terran past wall of.
* Limiting terran early game with the tech lab/reactor mechanic.
* Having a way of putting on early pressure safely vs terran, forcing him to reveal his unit composition.
* Making 2 base less susceptible to terran 1 base all-ins.
* Giving other races a counter to ghost (Like spell caster with equal range, or a nerf to ghost range).

On October 12 2011 09:15 VoirDire wrote:
The advantage of having the initiative is that the terran player only needs to focus on executing his build. The other races have to play reactionary and try to scout/predict terran and countering his strat specifically. And when it is countered, the reward is much less than if terran caught the other player off guard. The only way to force terran to play reactionary is to play overly greedy and thus forcing terran to punish that, but that's not a solid way to play. Terran can afford taking a bit later expansions, as MULEs are equivalent to about 2 extra saturated mineral patches per orbital. The way other races can compete somewhat with terran atm is that they know the meta-game and other player pretty well, and most terrans just stick to 2-3 common builds instead of exploiting the initiative to the fullest. That's why Code S have been mostly terrans imho, they can practice a different timing for each match and the other player is unable to prepare. Another good example is thorzains TSL run.

MVP proxy raxed today vs Nestea

If you FFE vs zerg they can nydus before you even have warp and about 3 out total units. On some maps with large mains, you just can't stop multiple nydus and defend your front.

Realistically, if I could patch the game right now the first thing I'd do is give stalkers +2 per attack upgrade. The reason is because stim bio shoots 3x more often than a stalker, roaches get +2 per upgrade, and hydras shoot much more often as well. So all of these units benefit more from attack upgrades over stalkers. The longer the game goes on with equal upgrades the weaker the stalker is vs all of these units. Or perhaps shift a little more of stalkers health away from shields, meaning they can benefit from the 1 armor they start with more, armor upgrades, and won't evaporate to emp.

Another thing to look at is taking a little bit of the gas cost out of some protoss tech, everything is really expensive which very often leaves protoss in a situation where they can't even produce the gas heavy units they need to deal with zerg or terran tech in the mid/late game. You spend so much gas just so you can stay alive vs bio and roaches (which are very gas light). It also make protoss very committed to tech paths and predictable. Obviously, Templar or Colossus should stay expensive because making them cheaper would make toss op. But I'd like to see things like fleet beacon and carriers faster to produce, tech too, and cheaper on gas.

As far as infestors go, what I think would be a good change is to give them back the neural parasite range, and make fungal not affect blink anymore. Blink just got a nerf anyway, but at least in battles protoss would still have a micro option and be able to blink and try to snipe infestors. Which would lead to zergs being much less careless with them and they would have to micro more as well. Because when you have a lot of stalkers vs a lot of roaches and you get hit with fungal you pretty much feel screwed, when you consider a stalker costs almost 2x more than a roach and roaches smash them in a straight fight, if they can't blink and are taking damage from fungal, stalkers and blink becomes useless. At least protoss could blink micro to save some and not just watch their whole army die. After all, it takes more gas and time to tech to blink than fungal.

On the other hand, I don't think you can appropriately dismiss the extremely high prevalence of cheesing among top Protoss players against top Zerg players so easily.

Are you suggesting that, by some cosmic coincidence, the top Protoss players in Korea are just less skilled than the top Zerg players?

Nor does your "million ZvP's" where Protoss play a macro style and win or have a close game suggest to the contrary, since very few of them indeed of them are played against the caliber of Zerg opposition that Protosses playing PvZ in the GSL are up against.

It is not proper reasoning, however, to merely dismiss claims of a possible imbalance by arguing that players lost because they cheesed whilst ignoring the very substantial possibility that they chose to cheese precisely because they were trying to overcome an imbalance in the matchup--whether real or perceived. To really get to the heart of the question will require more time and more games than we have at this point, and there's a significant probability that intervening changes, be it through patches, changes to maps, or the discovery of some previously unrefined strategy will moot the issue. For now, however, it strikes me as equally disingenuous to suggest that we can know there is no imbalance as it is to say that we can be certain there is one.

Except for game 2, that is. What, in your opinion, should he have done in that game to win? Sit on 2 base and wait for death? His hidden third actually almost worked out, I think it was a good calculated risk to take on Bel'shir. I mean, I guess you can file it under "map imbalance" again. But really, he played very, very well that game.

For the record, good Terran and Zerg players do cheesy openings all the time. MVP proxy 2 raxes Nestea at least once every time they play. Bomber won like 3 games at an MLG with 2port banshee. Curious 10pooled Oz on TDA. Coca 2 base all-ins vs Protoss in like half of his games. The only real difference is that Protoss "cheese" has been repeatedly nerfed, and is now kind of bad.

For the record, an unscouted 8/8 proxy does kill a 14/14 hatch/pool if the rush distance isn't excessively big. For example, on Shakuras it's undefendable, you have a Zealot in your mineral line before your Pool finishes, and there's no way to establish Spines in your mineral line without losing a zillion drones. Or at least it's not possible with my Drone micro.

Scouting:
- Whether Zerg is about to 2 base baneling bust you or not is not as simple as a scan.

- There can be imbalance in scouting without there being imbalance in the entire game.

- As the game evolves, scouting will too. IMO scouting Terran as Zerg is not a problem right now.

Versatility:
- I think you should have left this out, 1 baracks equals a small amount of marines, but you imply that 1 barracks equals enough marines for any imaginable situation, which is wrong.

Denying Scouting:
- Again, scouting need not be symmetrical
- If Terran does not go reactor hellion, Zerg has map control. If Zerg goes roaches vs hellion, Zerg has map control, scanning only tells you so much, and Zerg is way more predictable anyways

TvP Scouting Denial
- I know, going robo sucks, if it was changed I wouldnt care

"The advantage of having the initiative is that the terran player only needs to focus on executing his build."
2 points on this:
- Your not 100% right
- Your presenting this idea as an innate trait of Terran, why? Why not present it as a trait of certain unit compositions? eg) Protoss performing Histers Immortal All In have the initiative vs Terran, Zergs who make 4 roaches vs reactor hellion have the initiative to chase the hellions back to base and try to kill SCVs
- Zerg with Broodlords usually go for the throat

"And when [Terran] is countered, the reward is much less than if terran caught the other player off guard"
- My point about unit compositions applies
- I cant help but say "Prove it", Im sick of this being the consensus

"The only way to force terran to play reactionary is to play overly greedy and thus forcing terran to punish that, but that's not a solid way to play"
- Why not?

- Thorzain vs Fruitdealer was definetly not timing based, nor was Thorzain vs Naniwa, Id say he never played timing based but he did vs MC at least
- Practise your 2 base baneling busts, or your 3 gate Stargate, or your Histers Immortal All in.
- With denied scouting the Immortal bust should always win, the other two regularly beat Code S Terrans and consistently beat North American Terrans

I dont think we need to nerf techlabs/reactors, in what imbalanced situation would this apply? I would like you to elaborate on these thoughts, the only one on this list that you could say is imba without explaining is Ghosts vs Protoss. Nerf them. (templar based armies are bad vs korean terrans, why must you keep using them high level protosses).

What Terran 1 base is too strong?

How do we fix that?

You havent explained in what exact situations these thoughts apply.

Will it ruin standard Terran?

Why does fast overseer/checking the ramp with lings/1 gate Robo -> observer not scout Terran fast enough?

Coudnt you just send your drone out earlier to get into the Terran base? If he has gas its reactor hellion, if he doesnt its gasless expand or 2 rax.

How could we improve this scouting? Will Zerg knowing exactly what Terran is doing make Zerg too good? Eg) Oh hes expanding -> 30 more drones, Oh hes gearing up for a push -> 30 more banelings.

I know alot of you guys dont like how I seem to be the Terran Defense Force, but I think its wrong that people imply there is a problem with Terran in general without explaining it. I think theres some problems with protoss that could be overcome (but wont be in time), and I think Zerg is just great.

On October 12 2011 10:19 Tektos wrote:


Replying most predominantly about the bolded part. I tend to disagree.

Starcraft early game is all about reactionary play for all three races, not just Terran. Other player is going heavy roach/ling early pressure -> Terran must react. Protoss 6 gate incoming? -> Terran must react. Early 3rd from Zerg? Terran must react. There is usually a "leader" and a "follower" in each game, i.e. one person will choose a build to go with and the other person will choose to react to it. If both players choose the leader role you end up with early game "trade" scenarios that usually end the game (such as cloaked banshee versus a roach ling all in). This means the player that favors a long macro game will generally try and react and hold off pressure to get to the late game as quickly as possible.

As for late game I feel that Terran is probably the most "reactionary" race.
Collossi -> Vikings
Templar/Archon -> Ghosts
Carriers -> lol gg
Broodlords -> Vikings (or possibly ghosts)
Infestors -> Ghosts

To label one race as being able to do whatever they want while the others react I feel is just a current metagame trend. Zerg tend to aim for the late game as the race relies on "overwhelming" the enemy in general. Protoss tend to aim for the late game as the deathball is so strong. Because of this Terran follows this metagame and attempts to end the game before the late-game hence using all-in or sneaky tactics to force the opponent to react, because if they don't react it is a free win, if they do react then you still might do some damage and get an advantage going into the macro game.

On October 12 2011 13:09 usethis2 wrote:
I largely agree with VoirDire. He has explained in such a detail so I'm voicing my support of his analysis.

Roaches aren't even good against hellions actually. If Terran only went reactor hellion, going roaches will put you behind. If Terran goes reactor hellion expand and focuses on macro, just making 2-4 hellions and then setting up for a fast tank/rine timing push, and you reacted with 5+ roaches, you lose, no way around it.

On October 12 2011 13:22 FinestHour wrote:


Probably one of (if not one of the best) worded posts so far. I'm also glad that we can begin to slowly move away from imbalance and more towards design flaws, which cannot be so easily fixed. We can only wait and see what Blizzard has planned for the expansion.