Designated Balance Discussion Thread - Page 244

On July 02 2012 07:30 larse wrote:
People are now familiar with the common argument that the queen range buff made Zerg OP because Terran can't no longer do damage to Zerg economy early-game and Zerg can just be greedy and drone up to more than 70 and it's very difficult to beat Zerg after that. Before the 1.4.3.2 patch, Terran can do early and serious economic damage to Zerg, so Terran can beat Zerg in the mid-to-late game.

But why is that Terran has to do early economic damage to Zerg to win?
Because zerg can have 70 drones before terran has 40 scvs
In fact, this is implicitly saying that there are some inherent problems in TvZ late-game. This is saying that if both sides are peaceful before mid-game, and then both sides start battling, Terran will have difficulty beating Zerg.
Terran has an awful remaxing mechanic, so if both sides have a bank the zerg can be remaxed on any unit composition they want to, while the terran needs 5-6 reactor ports, 5-6 tech lab ports, 3-4 factories and 20+ rax to cope, and even then, if they guess wrong terran loses.
Is there truly some inherent problems in TvZ late-game? Let's do some analyses.
There is because there is no good answer to broodlord ultra switches
There are two main late-game Zerg composition these days:
1, ultra + zergling + bane + roach + infestor;
2, broodlord + corruptor + infestor + zergling + bane + roach.
The ratio of different units is different in different situations but the essence is in the above composition.

There are also two main late-game Terran composition in response to the above Zerg composition:
1, marine + marauder + tank + medivac + ghost + thor
2, marine + marauder + tank + medivac + ghost + thor + viking + raven
Ravens are awful units unless you get lucky and the zerg clumps up his whole army into 1 or 2 balls. Ghosts can EMP infestors only if zerg runs them ahead of his broodlords, which good ones will not. If vikings manage to take out the corruptor broodlord army, you have 30+ supply that is completely useless when he overruns you with ling ultra
You may already see the problems in the above compositions. That is you can hardly see the full composition of "marine + marauder + tank + medivac + ghost + thor + viking + raven", though there have been some rare situation that such composition is developed in TvZ.
Its not hard to get to, its just not very good

But it’s much easier to see the full composition of “ultra + zergling + bane + roach + infestor” and “broodlord + corruptor + infestor + zergling + bane + roach”.

Terran mostly is using their tier 1 and tier 2 units to fight the “full-tiers” composition of Zerg. So why doesn’t Terran build higher-tier units?

Many people have said things like “marine counters everything” or “Terran should explore more compositions behind MMM balls” or “Many Terrans overlook that ghost is so good” or “Terran should use raven late-game; they are powerful than most people think”.

But the truth is not that Terran doesn’t want to build higher-tier units or Terran players are too stupid to come up with new late-game compositions but that their higher-tier units are either not worth building or too expensive for the crippled late-game economy.
Because they're really bad compared to zerg and protoss equivalent
Let’s do some comparison.
1. Viking vs Corruptor
Viking is widely used in TvZ but it’s not so good compare to corruptor which is considered the most powerful air-to-air unit in the game.

Corruptor:
Cost: 150 / 100
Build time: 40
Life: 200

Viking:
Cost: 150 / 75
Build time: 42
Life: 125

Viking can’t win corruptor with the same supply. Some one may said you can kite Corruptor because Viking’s range is 9. But no you can’t, because corruptor is much faster than Viking. It’s like saying you can use tank to kite roach.

So, you have to use PDD to win an air battle against Corruptor. But your Viking will face the danger of fungal growth.

2. Ultra vs Thor
Normally Terran doesn’t use Thor to fight ultra, but actually Thor wins in one on one against ultra by one shot. But still people normally use marauder to counter ultra. Why? One important reason is that ultra has a build time buff in 1.4.0 where its build time decreased from 75 to 55.

Ultra:
Cost: 300 / 200
Build time: 55
Speed: 2.9531. Speed Multiplier on Creep: 1.3

Thor:
Cost: 300/ 200
Build time: 60
Speed: 1,875

You would just wonder with larvae Zerg can build multiple units much faster than other races, why their late-game units have shorter build time than other races? They just do. When Zerg normally build 3-5 ultra at a time, you never saw a Terran build more than 2 thors at one time. And did you see the mobility of ultra?

3. Ghost / Raven vs Infestor

Infestor
Cost: 100 / 150
Build time: 50

Ghost
Cost: 200 / 100
Build time: 40

Raven
Cost: 100 / 200
Build time: 60

First fungal growth outranges EMP and sniper. The range of fungal is 9 + 2 = 11. EMP is 10 + 1.5 = 11.5 But EMP requires an animation while fungal is instant cast, so fungal can always hit ghost before ghost can shoot EMP. Snipe’s range is 10 and it requires an animation too, so fungal easily outranges snipe too.

Also, the ghost cost change from 150 / 150 to 200 / 100 is definitely a nerf, according to QXC and Bomber. Late-game Terran has excessive gas but lacks mineral, the cost change increased the mineral cost but reduced the gas cost.

This is not my point. It's the words from QXC and Bomber. In SOTG EP72, QXC talks about why ghost's cost will damage the production of other Terran units in the mid-to-late game. Bomber in the GSL interview this season laid out the reason that he built raven late-game is that Terran has excessive gas the late-game but enough mineral. (Raven cost is 100 / 200).

But when do you see auto-turret? Infested terran is now used in almost every TvZ matchup to shot down dropships, to attract enemy fire, and even to mass infested terrans like in Freaky’s play. Infested terran is 25 energy cost but has a range fo 9. Auto-turret is 50 energy cost but has a range of 3. And the DPS of one auto-turret is much lower than two infested terrans.

The infestors pit costs 100 / 100 and a build time of 50. The starport and tech lab combine cost 200 / 125 and a build time of 75. And three raven researches cost 600 / 600 and research time of 330. But the infestor researches cost 300 / 300 and research time of 190.

Several raven is easily shut down by chain fungal + infested terran. But you can’t even use seeker missile to kill infestors before they use fungal and infested terran, because the range of seeker missile is 6 but the fungal growth’s range is 11 and the infested Terran’s range is 9 + 5 = 14.

Creep and Burrowed Unit

Beside all the above comparisons of late-game units, Zerg has several advantages late-game. First, one hatchery’s max larvae number is 19. When Zerg has more than 5 bases, they may have more than 100 larvae at maximum.

Also, Terran’s expansion to the fourth base is easily blocked by creep. Killing the creep and wait for the creep to go away will cost another 2 minutes. In addition, a single burrowed Zergling can deny your further expansion and force you to bring several marines back and use a scan to clean up the burrowed Zerglings.

The suggestion for further patches:
1. Don’t revert the queen buff, but change the range to 4 should be the best solution. Anyone remember of the pre-patch days when BFH just kill all the drones right away will not support reverting the queen buff.

2. Zerg’s burrowed Light units can no longer prevent Terran flying build from landing. The burrowed Light unit will instantly die when building lands. (Terran flying building still cannot land with unburrowed Light units or other non-Light burrowed units underneath.)

3. Revert ghost cost to 150 / 150 or 125 / 150. Snipe changed to 45 (30 vs Massive)

4. Some minor Raven buff:
----Auto-turret's hit point increased to 200, up from 150 and damage increased to 12, up from 10.
----Seeker Missile's casting range increased to 7, up from 6.
----Durable Materials research removed. Auto-Turrets and Point Defense Drones's duration are now 240 seconds. Seeker Missile's duration is now 20 seconds.
I like your changes a lot, except maybe #2, as nice as it would be. Good post

On July 02 2012 09:17 Assirra wrote:
A lot of those comparisons focus more on the zerg advantages rather then both of it.

corrupter vs viking: range doesn't matter? park those vikings above your marines, use the range to your advantage.

ultra vs thor: 1 is range and the other is meelee. if you have a small space like lets say a ramp you have 1 ultra fighting but if you do the same as thors suddenly every thor with the range is shooting at the enemy.
Or how about the fact that a thor can actually shoot up? 1 banshee can destroy your whole ultra party if you aren't prepared for it.

The ghost vs infestor i sorta have to give you that except that some of your costs are silly.
Really adding the costs for a startport? why not the lair for zerg while you are at it?

and when will people learn to split their stuff against fungal? a fungal on a couple units is a waste of energy.

Btw zergs advantage is also their disadvantage larva wise. If you take out bases you not only take out mining but also production.
To do the same with a terran you have to be in their base to get to the production.

Like i said before, you focus to much on zerg advantage rather then Terrans.

On July 02 2012 10:04 plogamer wrote:


Yes, park vikings above marines so they all get fungaled together.

1 banshee destroy ultras? Are you kidding me? Do you know how long that would take?

Adding cost of lair is like adding the cost of factory that has to be built before starports can be made.

Macro hatches solve a lot of production problems for the zerg.

On July 02 2012 10:13 Assirra wrote:

spread your stuff? Nobody said you need to make a nice clump of all your units.

Yea it will take ages but that is not the point, the point is that ultra's can't shoot up. How bout using a couple banshees? spread out so you can only have 1 fungal/banshee.

Adding starport to the cost is silly as well. Unless you go pure mech without ever going marines you will have a starport for just medivacs.

Unless i am missing something zerg doesn't have more then 1 macro hatch usually so the moment you kill 2bases with drops you hurt their production, a lot.

On July 02 2012 13:59 snowfox330 wrote:
I don't get the big problem with TVZ late game. When T is set up defensively with marine medivac viking marauder and maybe a few ghost, its very very tough for the zerg broodlord infestor army to attack into. If zerg does not attack, then terran can drop all over the place and zerg can't stop it because the broodlord army is incredibly slow. This will usually cause the map the be split, and on even bases, terran is always more cost efficient than zerg, thus zerg will get starved out.

On July 02 2012 08:41 larse wrote:
@Prplppleatr:

The Blizzard website only has "acceleration rate" (2.625) which is different from "movement speed".

Viking:
Speed: 2.75 (Air)
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Viking

Corruptor
Speed: 2.9531
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Corruptor

On July 02 2012 15:42 Naphal wrote:


terran can only split the map on shakuras and metropolis, everywhere else turtling usually means 3 bases, zerg can occupy the rest and play defensively until all expos have been fortified with spines and connected with creep, and it just so happens that broodlord infestor is the most cost efficient combo in the game, so unless terran really splits the map the zerg has all advantages and just beats the terran down...

also the unit comparisons are silly, sure thor is ranged, ultra has splash etc... you will not find answers by comparing single units.

On July 02 2012 08:09 sibs wrote:
These direct unit comparisons are silly, you conveniently left out the Thor has a pretty large range and shoots up and down, this generally translates into a unit that is a lot more cost efficient and supply efficient than the ultra, if zergs could make Thors instead of ultras this game would indeed be very imbalanced.

Yes corruptors are slightly more supply efficient than vikings, but vikings are more cost efficient, there is also some intangible benefit to the 9 range, you can take potshots and back off.

On July 02 2012 01:11 h0oTiS wrote:

Cannon rushes are only a problem in pvz, if your cannon rushing in pvp or pvt your going to lose 99 times out of a 100 if your diamond or above. Even cannon rushing in pvz isn't that much of a big deal, with proper defence it can put the hurt on protoss big time. I don't see any problem with this. Side effects, protoss will most definently lose against zerg completely because the FFE is basically their only opener for pvz and would have far reaching impacts that would be very sever to fix.

On July 04 2012 03:11 Rassy wrote:



Just now i saw feast getting cannonrushed as toss.
The first cannon started far away from the mineral line, and he just slowly moved forward his cannons.
A desperate attempt to kill the 1 pylon powering all, just before the nexus was about to die, failed.
It was realy sad to see, and for me confirmation that the cannonrush is overpowerd.
I honestly think quiet a few higher level players agree with this.

On July 04 2012 03:42 hzflank wrote:
I do not think Zerg is too strong, but I do not think people who think as I do should tell Terran to spread their vikings vs Infestors. Vikings naturally clump and you need to basically make a full 360 spread to stop it. For protoss it is the same with Void Rays.

You can spread ground units vs fungal, but spreading vikings is not always possible.