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On August 21 2013 02:20 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2013 02:06 Coffee Zombie wrote:
It's funny how they just can't seem to stop patching this damn game. The old adage is that you need time to let things shuffle out what is unfigured, what is overpowered. Time they still aren't giving to the game. It's funny, they patched the game like madmen in WoL, then when Zerg became broken they left it broken for ages, and now the same patch-happy madness continues. So...
New Zerg Unit: Imbaling
unique, can't be built, Z starts with it.
1k HP, 1k armor, move speed = molasses offcreep, 0 oncreep.
crackling attack speed, damage 5 +100 vs. Mechanical
Ability: Hop. Cooldown 2 hours. Makes the imbaling hop for a distance ~2x hatch creep radius.
Then maybe the patches can finally stop? wtf are you talking about? Since release (6months now) they had 3patches with the following change: - spore crawler buff vs bio
- warp prism speed buff
- hellbat damage upgrade requirementf & banshee cloak cost buffed
Only not patching at all is less than this. They take their damn time for everything currently. But as you are so quick to compare this to WoL, here is a link to a typical WoL patch: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Patch_1.1.06changes Or to a BW PATCH (patch 1.04 from 1998): http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Patches_1.01-1.07#Patch_1.02way over 30changes So much to "The old adage is that you need time to let things shuffle out ". BW didn't patch as regularily as SC2, but just as quick in the early days of it and when they patched they really reshuffled all cards.
Interesting. I think I remember that patch (I was lanning BW hard at Uni in those days). I don't remember the final 2001 balance patch, though. I think I had stopped playing by then. All subsequent patches seem to have been cosmetic.
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On August 21 2013 05:14 aZealot wrote:Show nested quote +On August 21 2013 02:20 Big J wrote:On August 21 2013 02:06 Coffee Zombie wrote:
It's funny how they just can't seem to stop patching this damn game. The old adage is that you need time to let things shuffle out what is unfigured, what is overpowered. Time they still aren't giving to the game. It's funny, they patched the game like madmen in WoL, then when Zerg became broken they left it broken for ages, and now the same patch-happy madness continues. So...
New Zerg Unit: Imbaling
unique, can't be built, Z starts with it.
1k HP, 1k armor, move speed = molasses offcreep, 0 oncreep.
crackling attack speed, damage 5 +100 vs. Mechanical
Ability: Hop. Cooldown 2 hours. Makes the imbaling hop for a distance ~2x hatch creep radius.
Then maybe the patches can finally stop? wtf are you talking about? Since release (6months now) they had 3patches with the following change: - spore crawler buff vs bio
- warp prism speed buff
- hellbat damage upgrade requirementf & banshee cloak cost buffed
Only not patching at all is less than this. They take their damn time for everything currently. But as you are so quick to compare this to WoL, here is a link to a typical WoL patch: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Patch_1.1.06changes Or to a BW PATCH (patch 1.04 from 1998): http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Patches_1.01-1.07#Patch_1.02way over 30changes So much to "The old adage is that you need time to let things shuffle out ". BW didn't patch as regularily as SC2, but just as quick in the early days of it and when they patched they really reshuffled all cards. Interesting. I think I remember that patch (I was lanning BW hard at Uni in those days). I don't remember the final 2001 balance patch, though. I think I had stopped playing by then. All subsequent patches seem to have been cosmetic.
You don't remember 1.04 because it shipped with BW. There was no BW before 1.04.
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Yeah, that's right. The patch was BW wasn't it? We got SC1 and then soon after, I can't remember the time frame, we got BW. I think there was another expansion at the same time, if I remember correctly? I don't think it was an official Blizzard release, though. It featured a different campaign following on from the events of SC1 and was quite difficult to play - unlike the SC1 campaign. I don't think I was able to clock it, or maybe I stopped playing it because I switched to BW.
And, yeah, I don't remember the final balance patch because I had stopped playing by then (1999/2000 maybe?). It's been a long time since I even really thought about those games. Fun fact, 3 of the 5 - 6 mates with whom I lanned SC1/BW back then, they are now my best mates; we still play SC2 team games from time to time. We are all over 30 now, a couple with kids etc, so we can't play often. But, when we do it's still fun times. It's good to roll back the years a little. 
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IIRC, SC1 and SC:BW was basically never really patched, except for very small minor things and/or to fix overly abusive strats (like Spawning Pool cost nerf) up until the 2001 patch, which had like 20+ changes. The game was basically never patched balance-wise afterwards.
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Man, BW patch 1.08 was huge! On the one hand I think I agree with most of the changes, but on the other hand, why do all of them simultaneously? It seems like isolating variables is surely good practice
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the problem is that blizzard prefers to care about new spectacular units like the viper but the should improve the framework instead.
E.g. as long as metal is countered with everything and nothing counters bio/mine in TvZ I don't see any reasons for these changes. They wont fix the fundamental problem so its not gonna get better at all.
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Actually, here's a discussion that might be worth having. In WoL I got the impression a lot of changes were done with the philosophy of simultaneously address balance concerns and promote use of unused units, like the ghost cost change, fungal growth dps change, warp prism shield buff, battlecruiser speed buff, etc. The idea would be that every change could simultaneously improve balance AND make gameplay more diverse and interesting, and because they were buffing unused units instead of nerfing overused ones, they were balancing by introducing new strategies instead of by destroying current ones.
In HotS so far it feels like the philosophy has been to let the metagame evolve as much as possible, so when they do make a change, they make the smallest change possible to do the job. If mutas are too strong ZvZ, don't buff infestors or hydras in some weird way – just buff the spore crawler. If Protoss is slightly underperforming all around, do a tiny speed boost to a unit of which they'll only have one or two in most games – the smallest possible change to fix win rates. The most dramatic change has been hellbat/banshee change, and even then, moving hellbats' +light damage to be included in an existing upgrade is about the smallest change to address the issue – and they still had to offset it with a buff.
I don't know if this change in philosophy is good or bad; the ghost cost and fungal dps changes were both exciting changes that refreshed the metagame, but they also led to pretty broken balance periods later in the game (I don't know that the fungal change can be credited with broodlord/infestor, since broodlord/infestor would have been pretty broken with 8 second fungal, as well). But if they were to return to this policy, how would they go about it? For instance, the viper. Suppose they made the following changes:
Blinding cloud no longer reduces all units underneath to melee range. Instead it reduces the range of all units underneath by 7.
Blinding cloud radius increased to 2.5 (maybe even 3?) from 2.
That way the viper is significantly improved versus bio compositions, or really anything non-siege (as was originally intended for the unit), while still being a significant boon versus siege tanks and colossus. It does not, however, render any siege tanks underneath it dead supply. Since popular opinion is that bio/mine is too strong, mech is too weak, and Zerg doesn't have time to reach ultralisks, vipers could be a closer hive tech option that would help to hold off the unending push, but right now vipers tend to not do that well because with the tiny radius you just kite backwards (like you would have done anyway) until you're out of blinding cloud.
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Thank you all very much for keeping this thread quiet during WCS Season 2 finals so that we could actually enjoy the games without being reminded of this thread for once.
Now that the tournament is over, we can start our usual business down here.
Should we start with "OMG the winner's race is so OP"???
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Russian Federation40190 Posts
On August 26 2013 00:37 Orek wrote:Thank you all very much for keeping this thread quiet during WCS Season 2 finals so that we could actually enjoy the games without being reminded of this thread for once. Now that the tournament is over, we can start our usual business down here. Should we start with "OMG the winner's race is so OP"???
I will start with JD played like JoKe.
On a more serious note i start to really feel like perfect t player can't be killed in tvz in current meta and balance state. No, ideal zerg will not work against him.
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I'd say we should rejoice that during WCS finals 2, GhostOwl got permed. No more of his posts in this thread ^^ He was the worst kind of balance whiner, 1 months he would cite Aligulac over ChaosTerran when it suited him. The next month he would lambast aligulac and cite ChaosTerran because Z was weaker on ChaosTerran.
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On August 26 2013 00:42 lolfail9001 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 00:37 Orek wrote:Thank you all very much for keeping this thread quiet during WCS Season 2 finals so that we could actually enjoy the games without being reminded of this thread for once. Now that the tournament is over, we can start our usual business down here. Should we start with "OMG the winner's race is so OP"??? I will start with JD played like JoKe. On a more serious note i start to really feel like perfect t player can't be killed in tvz in current meta and balance state. No, ideal zerg will not work against him.
the second part of what you say is probably very right.
JD played like a joke, life played like a joke, etc.
Why is this?
Because Z gameplay is punishing and discouraging. No room for dictating the story of the game in the slightest way. Z gameplay allows only some very fine variations and adjustments and the style that is chosen can be easily figured out and adapted on by the gas and expansion timings and if not all-in anyway results always into the same muta/ling/bling. Z has no chance to put their stamp on the game in any way. Early 19-21 drones all-ins can be considered as failed when the terran loses 100% of his scvs but still is ahead due to mules when he survives. Harrassment with zerglings doesnt do anything. Harrassment with banelings is always cost inefficient. Harrassment against mines pose a bigger risk in general than it offers chances/opportunities (= cost inefficient). Harrassment with mutalisks doesnt even happen anymore in a game where both T and Z are equal up (due to lacking drop defense at the same time. = cost inefficient). In contrast there are still way too strong terran early all-in styles with bunkers, marines, reapers and offraxs. Harrassment of terran wins terran the game once a couple of drones are killed or the general damage has reached a certain level at any point of the game. The active part in the matchup is on the terran side, that means T chooses when and where to fight, terran chooses when the Z must expand and when he cannot expand. Therefore terran dictates basically the whole game in TvZ matchup. This is not only no fun to play but also strongly discouraging and a mental disadvantage for zergs. In a game where aggression wins you games, a race that hardly can be aggressive is with the back to the wall all game long.
To put thit first off: Bomber clearly was the best player in the tournament after all, he did a great performance and had the overall best tournament strategy with alot of styles hidden until the finals, so JD actually could not prepare for them and obviously noone else coudl.
But what styles can zergs prepare for and keep hidden? There is nothing terran needs to fear. Really nothing! I said months ago that Zerg all-ins are going to be figured out soon in TvZ standard builds, and Bomber have proven me to be right with his tank/mine/bio openings. And it is easy to hold really anything what can come from the Zerg with few adjustments on the terran side. Bunkers, mines, siege-tanks and maurauders are the keywords. A variation of some of these units at the right point of time after figuring out the Z build holds off everything. Terrans have been losing to zerg all-ins cause they played super greedy.
Let me name some of the greed decisions that were constantly happening when zergs won with all-ins vs terrans: Dropping the Zerg while he is all-ining you instead of using all units for defense. Scouting a roach attack but keep building helions instead of mines. Scouting a roach attack but refusing to add a second/third bunker or refusing to build 1-2 maurauder or refusing to build a tank. And so on. This is going to stop, because terrans will and have learned that an all-in zerg is way behind in economy and tech and they can focus on defending this timing push (e.g. 2-2 roaches) without the need of keeping to play 100% greedy at the same time beacue 80% is enaugh and then T is 100% safe.
So lets come to TvZ macrogame. If both play perfect, terran wins. If terran makes some mistakes Z wins, if Z makes mistakes Terran wins, if both make mistakes, terran wins. Generally speaking thats it. Most things have been said already about mine micro efforts and counter efforts, about baneling mines with only 2 range and single explosion that can easily miss, about lucky mine shots, etc. So no need to repeat it. The biggest problem in TvZ metagame is that terran doesnt need anything to transition into when facing its actual counter: banelings. And at the same time terran cannot transition into mech, cause its not viable. All other problems can be derived from this issue, which brings along also the terran doesnt need to worry about gas problem as well, which is huge.
Besides this protoss MSC nerf is super urgent.
General problems of SC2 matchups are right now:
P too strong 2 base all-ins vs T and Z. T too strong macro-game vs Z. T metal too weak in both TvP and TvZ. Z new hots unit design quite stupid: hosts counter metal, vipers counter metal. Z instead needed something to counter bio/mine and force metal that counters this again.
Blizzard, gogo change it before the protoss expansion or SC2 will keep losing interest of both the audience and the playerbase.
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[sry about that post]
[God I hate this thread]
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What do you think of this buff : reducing baneling hatch time from 20sec to 15sec.
Very small buff yet very helpful for zerg's defense against non-stop MMMM's push
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That doesn't change the fact that T is still pushing non-stop with armies that are dominantly mineral-heavy, forcing Z to take/maintain bases with gas to defend with gas-heavy units (while both sides have to tech with the same gas requirements).
The problem isn't that Z can't kill a biomine army. It's that he can't kill wave after wave of them, with no legit counterattack option. In the Jaedong games, it's not like he wasn't defending well. It's just that he couldn't do anything else, and if one side is able to constantly attack while the other side has to constantly defend -- and at an efficiency disadvantage -- the attacker has a huge advantage.
You're right that banelings are required for defense, and their morph time eliminates defender's advantage when using them. The fundamental problem with TvZ mid- to lategame right now is that with the MMM style (marauders aren't even necesssary), T can do literally anything to mess with Z while getting up infrastructure and some defense, then push out in wave after wave until he wears Z down. Z's only option (that I've seen work) is to macro up to a huge all-in and overwhelm T before he can hold it. Once T starts moving out and pressuring Z, it's game over sooner or later. The inevitability of MMM aggression winning vs. MLB defense is getting pretty obvious.
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On August 26 2013 04:00 zeek0us wrote:
That doesn't change the fact that T is still pushing non-stop with armies that are dominantly mineral-heavy, forcing Z to take/maintain bases with gas to defend with gas-heavy units (while both sides have to tech with the same gas requirements).
The problem isn't that Z can't kill a biomine army. It's that he can't kill wave after wave of them, with no legit counterattack option. In the Jaedong games, it's not like he wasn't defending well. It's just that he couldn't do anything else, and if one side is able to constantly attack while the other side has to constantly defend -- and at an efficiency disadvantage -- the attacker has a huge advantage.
You're right that banelings are required for defense, and their morph time eliminates defender's advantage when using them. The fundamental problem with TvZ mid- to lategame right now is that with the MMM style (marauders aren't even necesssary), T can do literally anything to mess with Z while getting up infrastructure and some defense, then push out in wave after wave until he wears Z down. Z's only option (that I've seen work) is to macro up to a huge all-in and overwhelm T before he can hold it. Once T starts moving out and pressuring Z, it's game over sooner or later. The inevitability of MMM aggression winning vs. MLB defense is getting pretty obvious.
Scarlett's games were hardly so fatalistic. She smashed some really good players, and lost to the tournament's eventual champion – in close games, at that. If a foreign Zerg is able to do that well against the Korean Terran who eventually goes on to win the WCS finals, I don't think the match-up can be quite as bad as you're saying.
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On August 26 2013 04:45 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 04:00 zeek0us wrote:
That doesn't change the fact that T is still pushing non-stop with armies that are dominantly mineral-heavy, forcing Z to take/maintain bases with gas to defend with gas-heavy units (while both sides have to tech with the same gas requirements).
The problem isn't that Z can't kill a biomine army. It's that he can't kill wave after wave of them, with no legit counterattack option. In the Jaedong games, it's not like he wasn't defending well. It's just that he couldn't do anything else, and if one side is able to constantly attack while the other side has to constantly defend -- and at an efficiency disadvantage -- the attacker has a huge advantage.
You're right that banelings are required for defense, and their morph time eliminates defender's advantage when using them. The fundamental problem with TvZ mid- to lategame right now is that with the MMM style (marauders aren't even necesssary), T can do literally anything to mess with Z while getting up infrastructure and some defense, then push out in wave after wave until he wears Z down. Z's only option (that I've seen work) is to macro up to a huge all-in and overwhelm T before he can hold it. Once T starts moving out and pressuring Z, it's game over sooner or later. The inevitability of MMM aggression winning vs. MLB defense is getting pretty obvious. Scarlett's games were hardly so fatalistic. She smashed some really good players, and lost to the tournament's eventual champion – in close games, at that. If a foreign Zerg is able to do that well against the Korean Terran who eventually goes on to win the WCS finals, I don't think the match-up can be quite as bad as you're saying.
Her games where very good but as good as Bomber is, overall there are better TvZers. Bombers TvZ is his weakest matchup throughout WoL and Hots. Doubt it that Scarlett can stand a chance against Innovation. Still gotta say i was impressed by Scarlett's mechanics.
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On August 26 2013 05:22 massivez wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2013 04:45 ChristianS wrote:On August 26 2013 04:00 zeek0us wrote:
That doesn't change the fact that T is still pushing non-stop with armies that are dominantly mineral-heavy, forcing Z to take/maintain bases with gas to defend with gas-heavy units (while both sides have to tech with the same gas requirements).
The problem isn't that Z can't kill a biomine army. It's that he can't kill wave after wave of them, with no legit counterattack option. In the Jaedong games, it's not like he wasn't defending well. It's just that he couldn't do anything else, and if one side is able to constantly attack while the other side has to constantly defend -- and at an efficiency disadvantage -- the attacker has a huge advantage.
You're right that banelings are required for defense, and their morph time eliminates defender's advantage when using them. The fundamental problem with TvZ mid- to lategame right now is that with the MMM style (marauders aren't even necesssary), T can do literally anything to mess with Z while getting up infrastructure and some defense, then push out in wave after wave until he wears Z down. Z's only option (that I've seen work) is to macro up to a huge all-in and overwhelm T before he can hold it. Once T starts moving out and pressuring Z, it's game over sooner or later. The inevitability of MMM aggression winning vs. MLB defense is getting pretty obvious. Scarlett's games were hardly so fatalistic. She smashed some really good players, and lost to the tournament's eventual champion – in close games, at that. If a foreign Zerg is able to do that well against the Korean Terran who eventually goes on to win the WCS finals, I don't think the match-up can be quite as bad as you're saying. Her games where very good but as good as Bomber is, overall there are better TvZers. Bombers TvZ is his weakest matchup throughout WoL and Hots. Doubt it that Scarlett can stand a chance against Innovation. Still gotta say i was impressed by Scarlett's mechanics.
the matchup looks far from unwinnable for a top-zerg. point is maybe that the topzergs in korea are lacking in TvZ currently. Watching JD or Soulkey or Life these days is pretty painful, because they have shitty macro-gameplans and try to attack before ultralisks or after ultralisks are already getting countered.
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Bomber's not THAT incredible in TvZ, but he's nothing to scoff at. After all he won in a TvZ finals, and Jaedong's no slouch either. Particularly given that Scarlett's a foreigner and she was able to go toe to toe with Bomber, I have trouble believing the matchup is too one-sided. Particularly when people like zeek0us phrase it in such strong terms as "the inevitability of MMM aggression winning vs. MLB defense is getting pretty obvious." MMM winning hardly looks inevitable right now; in fact, I'd even go as far as to say it's particularly contingent, unlike a lot of strategies in the past that have appeared OP. For instance, the 4gate or 1/1/1 or infestor turtle -> broodlord all followed pretty predictable game arcs and, in their heyday, would tend to win unless something really remarkable happened (tanks caught unsieged, proxy pylon sniped, broodlords caught in a vortex, etc.). Current bio+mine goes into really chaotic, fast-paced, all-over-the-map games in which the Terran tries to put pressure on 2 or 3 or 4 fronts at a time, and the Zerg scrambles to defend. If the Terran does it well, he snipes hatcheries or drones or tech. If the Zerg plays better, the Terran loses a lot of marines and medivacs for no damage and finds himself economically behind with ultralisk tech almost out.
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On August 22 2013 02:57 ChristianS wrote:
Actually, here's a discussion that might be worth having. In WoL I got the impression a lot of changes were done with the philosophy of simultaneously address balance concerns and promote use of unused units, like the ghost cost change, fungal growth dps change, warp prism shield buff, battlecruiser speed buff, etc. The idea would be that every change could simultaneously improve balance AND make gameplay more diverse and interesting, and because they were buffing unused units instead of nerfing overused ones, they were balancing by introducing new strategies instead of by destroying current ones.
In HotS so far it feels like the philosophy has been to let the metagame evolve as much as possible, so when they do make a change, they make the smallest change possible to do the job. If mutas are too strong ZvZ, don't buff infestors or hydras in some weird way – just buff the spore crawler. If Protoss is slightly underperforming all around, do a tiny speed boost to a unit of which they'll only have one or two in most games – the smallest possible change to fix win rates. The most dramatic change has been hellbat/banshee change, and even then, moving hellbats' +light damage to be included in an existing upgrade is about the smallest change to address the issue – and they still had to offset it with a buff.
I don't know if this change in philosophy is good or bad; the ghost cost and fungal dps changes were both exciting changes that refreshed the metagame, but they also led to pretty broken balance periods later in the game (I don't know that the fungal change can be credited with broodlord/infestor, since broodlord/infestor would have been pretty broken with 8 second fungal, as well). But if they were to return to this policy, how would they go about it?
I don't know if the concept of underused units is easily applicable to balancing. There is a general interest in strategic diversity, which might be served by a wider selection of viable units, but it's tricker than simply buffing units that don't see that much play.
There have been many units that were underused for ages, with the community crying out for buffs, only for them to be incredibly broken once they finally started to feature in strategies. Ghosts and infestors being the two most obvious examples. They weren't used because you could win games without building them, because they were high tech and there were no viable transitions discovered so far, because players needed to learn how to use them and so on.
This seems like it contradicts the autonomy and imagination of players though. If someone enjoys the ghost as a unit there is nothing stopping them from developing their own strategies utilizing the unit. And they might not be directly able to challenge top players using suboptimal strategies, but since the matchmaking pairs you with players you have a good chance of beating there should be no problem.
I think the reason this scenario doesn't happen is not just because people are lazy and mindlessly copy pro players, it's rather that anyone who has even a passing familiarity with pro level play has their mind 'poisoned' by concepts that you can readily find in pro level play. You don't just see someone using marines, you see them using them for early attacks, for drops, for anti-air defense etc. It gives you a set of powerful concepts that you can use to formulate a gameplan, all tried and tested by a large community of professional players. It's almost impossible to come up with something equally 'complete' for a new unit as only an individual. If you play to win, even with unusual strategies and compositions, you will most likely not get very far without making yourself indebted to pro level games.
I think the protoss death ball is a good example. Every mediocre protoss hinges their play on their death ball potential because it's such a powerful and effective concept. If colossi are out of vogue they switch to high templar, but they still use the same concept. It's the old idea of having a hammer versus everything looking like a nail, players are very limited in their toolsets because most people just aren't that brilliant, so they start to apply it for every possible situation.
And of course pro players are lazy, because they will only do what works since they get points for results, not for style.
Keeping all of this in mind, is it really a surprise that it becomes difficult to gauge the potential of a unit? Maybe, say, the ghost has a number of really clever uses in TvZ, but why should people seek to discover those uses? It's more difficult to find something if you don't know where to look and as such spending time on innovative strategies might be wasteful since you don't know about the pay off.
Blizzard seems committed to having a stable, slowly developing metagame, that forces pro players to come up with new solutions on their own. If a unit is truly viable then it will show eventually, it just might take more than a few months. Not everyone is comfortable with that timespan of course. In terms of pro level play, new units will see use once dominant strategies are figured out or forcefully patched, it's not possible to get the balance so precisely right that all units will be equally viable on a surface level, buffs might be useful but could force the issue too much creating future imbalances and they also might not even be necessary. And for everyone else, they can always experiment with the units they like to see.
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On August 26 2013 06:00 Grumbels wrote:
Ghosts and infestors being the two most obvious examples. They weren't used because you could win games without building them, because they were high tech and there were no viable transitions discovered so far, because players needed to learn how to use them and so on. Generally speaking, if the
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Edit: I think the last half of your second paragraph got deleted, or else you meant to type it and never did. I quoted it here to draw attention to it
Yeah, a lot of units got buffed because nobody used them and then they turned out to be really strong even without the buff. At the beginning of SC beta, EMP had a radius of 3 (crazy, right?). But at the same time, a lot of people are wanting Blizzard to play a slightly more interventionist role in the metagame, as opposed to the lassez-faire approach in BW. For instance, TvZ in BW went through massive swings in balance from one side to the other, and nobody asked Blizzard to fix it; now if TvZ is a 56/44 win rate, people start demanding a fix. If left indefinitely, the matchup's current problems would eventually be solved, like in BW, but a lot of people think if the game is imbalanced now, and doesn't seem to be changing very quickly, that's reason enough for Blizzard to intervene. You can disagree with this new approach (I certainly do), but it's a popular opinion and we should at least figure out its implications.
So if they were going to make changes, it's a question of what changes to make. And so far in HotS Blizzard has followed the philosophy of making the smallest changes possible, with the idea being that changes tend to break the metagame by making a bunch of builds a race has worked on suddenly not work. So by making the smallest change possible, you can kick the metagame back on track without destabilizing things too much. But another philosophy (and one that seemed to be the premise of WoL balancing) was to try to accelerate the development of the metagame by buffing an underused unit. Here the idea is that the race is going to discover this unit eventually, and that will rebalance the game; so to accelerate things, rework the unit to make it more suited to solving the current difficult problem, and then the game isn't just balanced, but there's a new unit that's been integrated into the metagame. I think there's strengths to both approaches.
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