Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 169

On November 10 2011 02:19 Acritter wrote:


There are a few issues. Stargate doesn't actually force Hydras. Zerg can go for Queens and Spores and do just fine teching up to Infestors. I will admit it's one of the better examples, as Hydralisks that aren't defended properly are quite dangerous and their presence forces Protoss into fast Colossi.

However, TvZ is far less balanced in terms of that. There are very few things Zerg can do that really forces a specific response from Terran. Terran can get into a comfortable midgame without building a single Hellion if they choose, and Zergling speed doesn't stop them from getting Banshees. Mutalisks force a couple of Turrets, but don't alter the core army composition of Marine/Tank in the slightest. There's no timing pressure the Zerg can use to force the Terran to be honest or to make a certain choice.

TvP is even worse. Protoss literally cannot touch Terran in the early game. Your idea that Stalkers force Concussive is laughable. If that were true, we wouldn't have the 1-1-1. Terran has completely free reign to choose a variety of openings, such as gasless FE, 1rax Conc FE, 2rax pressure FE, 3rax pressure, or the 1-1-1. There's even a 1-1-1 expand build and a 2-1 Marine Tank pressure with Stim and Siege. The only "forcing" Protoss can do is to prevent fast cloaked Banshees by stealing gas. On the other hand, Terran can force tech paths out of Protoss that end up not allowing the Protoss to do anything back. So you have Immortals? Great, I already have the counter out. There's no balance in each player forcing responses. Terran dictates the whole game, with the only influence Protoss having is choosing between Templar and Robo tech, which ultimately doesn't change the Terran gameplan whatsoever. It just determines whether they'll have more Medivacs or Marauders.

In order for this balance to exist, both players need to be able to force decisions on one another. They need to be able to punish players for some decisions, and keep the game stable. Right now, there's a huge imbalance in favor of Terran, because so many Terran options are available with so little deviation from the norm. Protoss and Zerg have to deviate in order to produce counter units. The most Terran has to do is switch add-ons or build a Ghost Academy. Terran needs to be made a much more fragile race for balance to exist.

On November 17 2011 12:52 Snowen wrote:


This is an excellent post.. I totally agree.

On November 17 2011 13:47 Snowen wrote:
I don't know enough about T v Z or any matchup not involving Protoss; even though I played random for afew months at high masters, I won't comment on it.

As far as you saying Terran has to dictate the game, well I kind of disagree with that. If you go back to Puzzle vs Ganzi last night on GSL, Even though Puzzle gained a huge economy lead killing Ganzi's expo/all his scvs (think it was 7 scvs against 40??), with Mules Ganzi came back and maintained a very strong game. Of course, he was far behind, but the point is since Puzzle didn't apply any more pressure after that, Ganzi was able to get back into the game and the final battle came and they wasted eachothers armies, Puzzle only won in the end due to his expo advantage while Ganzi ran out.

My point for that game being; If the protoss doesn't make a move past the Terran taking his 4th, The Protoss will be in some severe trouble. A terran who gets enough vikings to deal with the collosus AND ghosts for emp, is a super scary army that can not be stopped by Protoss. I don't understand where you are getting your idea that Terran is the one who has to make something happen before protoss, because the way I see it (again, from playing random and watching just about every GSL since it began) - Protoss is the one who has to make something happen before ghosts and vikings are both out on the field.

What normally happens in most professional games right now; The Protoss will get Collosus and try to attack before the terran is prepared with enough vikings; but it ends up being an army trade with the vikings left on the field. At this point, while the terran has to build his marauder/marines/medivacs back, the Protoss should be well into storm tech, enough to build an army fast and attack the terran before he can get an optimal number of ghosts (3+) - If Protoss can hit at that time, he can feedback the few ghosts there are (if theres less than 3) and storm the vikings so his collosus can remain free.. If the terran has enough ghosts to EMP the templars, and his vikings are still around to take out the collosus, well I think its pretty much over at that point unless the Protoss is severly out-expanding the terran.

Anyways, my point is not that protoss is weak at all.. Obviously a good player like HuK and Puzzle and Oz are going to still win a fair share.. Its just IN A FEW YEARS, its going to be very very hard to stop Flash-style timing attacks.

On November 18 2011 06:41 ParkwayDrive wrote:
hi, ive done a search on my question but was unable to find anything. if this has already been answered i apologize but i ask you point me in the direction of the answer.


what is the logic behind feedback and emp having different ranges? it seems to me that assuming both players have perfect reaction time, emp gets off b4 every feedback because of the range advantage. hts either have to be microed inside a warp prism or the terren has to be not paying attention in order for a feedback to get off first. if the ranges were equal, the only things that would come into play would be the skill and reaction time of each player. as it stands right now, late game tvps with both ghosts and hts involved are just awful to watch in my opinion. a truly great terren should never lose tvp at 200 vs 200 if they have sufficient ghosts (and i think the evidence proves this). if im wrong, i am wrong i just want to know why

On November 19 2011 09:50 WickedSkies wrote:



Feedback is instant, while emp is a projectile, so even if you emp the ht, he should feedback your ghost. Also, watching late game TvP is indeed painful. I see zealots owning everything, toss storming everywhere despite emps and marines and marauders just melting. Then toss switches to 6 collosi and then back to ht. Terran can't do anything. Imo a toss has to be a really bad player to lose even a single game vs terran, because toss has superior economy, superior units and gets ugprades faster. Only thing terran can do is try to drop but a good toss will have obs all over the map and even if he doesn't spot the drop in time, hey what are the instant 12 zealots for? Of course, in big engagementts, terran has to sttutter step, emp, split, move medivac on separate control, fight in chokes and etc etc. Toss has to a-move, watch not to get e-mpd and storm. The level of skill required for toss and terran with maxed armies is just ridiculously high for terran and ridiculously low for toss and nobody can say otherwise. Imo the only reason toss has been in the shadows so far is bad players. I can just imagine what MVP could do with toss. Oh, then the earth would tremble.

On November 17 2011 12:40 Snowen wrote:
I 100% agree, and feel thats been the missing link for Protoss since WOL started, and was PRAYING it would be fixed in HOTS but it wasnt unfortunated.

Splash damage is required early for Protoss to remain competitive throughout the years IMO

Think about it; Zerg has banelings, and Terran has hellion/tank. Now you can say thay aren't "needed" or "used often", but in reality, just them being there is enough.

Protoss's major problem right now is with the massing of the other races tier 1 units; If you've watched the GSL games yesterday, you saw sC make about 30 marines and walk right into MC's base earlygame, and although MC had tons of stalkers and slowly microed them thru the map, it wasnt enough to really take them out before the marines got in there and killed some probes and buildings. This was on Tal'darim, MC had the whole map to "micro" vs these marines, yet a lot still got in.. imagine on Xelnaga caverns, how much damage that would of been.

Sure, theres forcefields.. And they work alright but their main goal is so you deal with a portion of their army at a time, rather than the whole army.. It works kinda, but obviously one missed forcefield and you lose. Its just a bad solution for this problem In my opinion, although I guess thats why players with INSANELY good forcefields are the ones at the top of Code S, (HuK comes to mind) - and bad forcefielders usually can't do much.

How many times do you see a 3rax 3reactor pure marine vs zerg or terran? You don't, because they fear the POSSIBILITY of baneling or hellion/tank. Protoss do not have this luxury until collosus or storm, which is so high in the tech tree that if the Terran hits his timing JUST right, he can hit before either come out. Hence the power of the 1-1-1 (adding in tank/banshee requires protoss to react with at least observer for banshee, and you can't just forcefield chop because the tank range)

The 1-1-1's main problem isnt the fact that he has tanks or banshees; its that the Marines do insane DPS and you can't finish them off quickly. Its either you target the banshee/tank down, and the Marines kill you, or you kill the marines with zealot/forcefields, and the tank splash and banshee cloak will eventually deal their massive damage. If protoss had a unit that did splash that they could get out around the 6-7 minute mark, like a hellion (a quick producing Robo unit for example), They could use those to target the marine ball of DPS, and the rest of the units focusing on Tank/Banshee. 1-1-1 would still be super deadly, but you'd have to micro your marines to avoid the splash, it would be who can micro the best, not just who can A-move the best.

(To make it more understandable, imagine if Protoss had Hellions for one second. Then look at an incoming 1-1-1. The Hellions would obviously target the marines, which can go either way depending on the micro. It would be like TvT Bio allin vs Mech (with the Protoss being in the role of defending Mech user with hellions/immortals), which is much fairer than PvT gateway vs 1-1-1)

Furthermore in PvZ, an early splash unit would really help with the problem of leaving your base after you get your first expansion.. Currently, when you forge first or sentry FE, the zerg macros up because they know they can't be attacked since speedlings counter almost all earlygame P pressure except 4gate, So Protoss has to come up with ways of "tricking" the zerg by hiding proxy pylons, using voidrays or phoenix to distract while they move out, or build an incredible 7gate blink stalker timing.. As a protoss player, you basically have to do something tricky/cheesy/unexpected, or the zerg just overruns you since his economy is being powered with no fear of dying. If Protoss had Hellions, you could still get a reasonably fast expansion (3gate FE timing for instance) but still have afew units that could apply pressure on the zerg from over-powering.


(keep in mind when I say "If Protoss had Hellions" - im not actually MEANING hellions as they are.. I just mean an early tier 2 unit that has AOE damage and is fast enough to at least outrun slow lings. Hellions are just my "example" to get you to visualize how it would change the gameplay. Obviously the unit would come from the Robo, cause if you could warp them in that'd be too strong.)

I also think Gateway units just fire so slow when compared to other race units (Marines, zerglings, hydras, marauders w/ stim) - Thats a problem.. Unfortunately, I do realize if you made Stalkers fire faster, blink would be too strong.. so its hard to balance that without making it too good. I just wish they designed a unit that had a faster rate of fire that could deal damage like Marines do.. Marines are the best DPS in the game, to the point where even Carriers lose vs Marines unfortunately (as shown in the GSL game afew weeks ago)

Anyways, Thats my feeling on it. Sure, Protoss can "remain competitive" for now, so im not saying protoss is UP or too weak (clearly theres still at least 2 in GSL!).. But I just think 2 or 3 years down the road, especially with the expansions coming if this doesn't get resolved, It will become a major problem when timings are perfected. I know the hots unit that copies Tanks will solve 1-1-1 pretty much, but its such a cop-out solution IMO.. As others have said, its like blizzard realizes protoss units are bad, to make it fair they give them Terran units? And its not a solution to the zerg problems, no zerg unit until Infestor is worth 200/200, and zergs will stop going infestors earlygame because of it, so what can you make, a 200/200 roach?

On November 27 2011 11:49 Termit wrote:
I didn't wanna make a new thread about this so I guess I could ask it here.

I just watched a game and I started thinking about larva injects and how important it is to spend that energy on your queens to get your macro going. And then I saw this Terran with awful multitasking not mule'ing for some minutes because he wasn't good enough, and then just dropping mule bombs on one of his expansions. Now there is so much hate about mules but Terran still need them for not getting behind macro wise.

What I am wondering is, how much damage would Terran macro take if you can't save up orbital energy and just spam mules? What I was thinking about is something like this: You upgrade to OC, get mule access but in some way you have to keep your energy low to get new mules, so it would punish a bad player for not spending that energy right away just like it punish bad players not keeping up with his injects. If this would punish Terran to much, would this work if there was some changes to the mule?

And then just add Comsat for scans or make scan an upgrade in the Orbital and let scan have it's own energy so it doesn't screw up the mule energy. It would be fun because it would actually become a bit of skill to keeping up with your mule'ing just like it is to spend your chrono and queen energy.

On November 27 2011 12:31 K3Nyy wrote:


I think it would just be better to add a 5 second delay on Mule. Then you can't spam it and you can save energy for scans. :D

On November 17 2011 13:08 ZorBa.G wrote:


You do realise Terran HAS TO dictate the game. Otherwise if the Toss is left in his base to max out, it is VERY difficult for a Terran to deal with this. If I were a toss player, I wouldn't be complaining the fact all I need to do is stay in my base all game and max out. Terran is the one who has to take initiative and make something happen. Because if he doesn't, hes pretty much screwed.

On November 27 2011 13:25 happyness wrote:


I think it's a pretty big myth that the maxed out army of protoss is greater than the maxed out army of terran. If anything the terran army is stronger, if the terran knows how to control ghosts.

On November 27 2011 13:33 SolidMoose wrote:


PvT is right now favoring protoss, and if that doesn't change I'd like to either see a compromised EMP nerf (1.7-1.8 radius) or removing one of the two archon buffs (massive or 3 range). But all this may become obsolete once HOTS hits

On November 27 2011 13:04 kappadevin wrote:
Missing an Inject is more punishing than missing a MULE, but that isn't really a balance related issue. At the highest level neither player should be missing either. In a similar way, missing an SCV cycle is more punishing than letting an extra larva spawn before making two drones at once.