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On October 25 2011 19:15 GhostFall wrote: Hmm, I guess Blizzard choice of the warhound is to introduce pure mech into TvZ, which I can completely get behind. I understand that choice as well. That doesnt really explain the Tempest tho.
The tempest is indeed an odd choice but we'll just have to see how it all pans out.
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On October 25 2011 18:22 Eviscerador wrote: I would rather prefer a single goliath like with less range and damage than thor and 10 damage to ground (none of zerg units are mech) than a thor with bigger range and insane ground DPS. For me is OK.
And i don't think mutas are overpowered. Some unit which costs 100 in gas and can die to mineral dump units like flies is not OP. One misclick and your muta flock just dissapear. I don't see how that can be OP. a unit that needs to be miss microed to die is quite op^^
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On October 25 2011 19:18 Zeon0 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 18:22 Eviscerador wrote: I would rather prefer a single goliath like with less range and damage than thor and 10 damage to ground (none of zerg units are mech) than a thor with bigger range and insane ground DPS. For me is OK.
And i don't think mutas are overpowered. Some unit which costs 100 in gas and can die to mineral dump units like flies is not OP. One misclick and your muta flock just dissapear. I don't see how that can be OP. a unit that needs to be miss microed to die is quite op^^ That's like saying Zerglings are immortal because you can just run around with them forever. Stupid argument.
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I think someone earlier brought up the big point that you guys are missing here. I really don't think that Blizzard's primary intention with the new expansion is to finely hone the thin line of balance from WoL. If Blizzard really wants lots of casual players to shell out an extra $60 for an expansion, they have to add something pretty radical.
Thus, the addition of new units that (Blizzard hopes) will completely change current strategies and ways of thinking about the game not slightly change the balance of mutalisk harass. For all we know, in a year, people might discover new strategies completely unrelated to what we can currently think of in TvZ and PvZ and we'll look back and think "how could we have ever thought that muta play would be fun compared with these new strategies."
Anyhow, I think that is the angle that Blizzard is going with, and I don't think there is any sense in expecting otherwise.
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On October 25 2011 19:18 Zeon0 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 18:22 Eviscerador wrote: I would rather prefer a single goliath like with less range and damage than thor and 10 damage to ground (none of zerg units are mech) than a thor with bigger range and insane ground DPS. For me is OK.
And i don't think mutas are overpowered. Some unit which costs 100 in gas and can die to mineral dump units like flies is not OP. One misclick and your muta flock just dissapear. I don't see how that can be OP. a unit that needs to be miss microed to die is quite op^^
Which is why you need to force an engagement. Mutalisks aren't really cost effective against anything that can shoot up.
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Zerg is getting buffs (new units and abilities) too, so it's rather that Blizzard wants to open up other solutions for late game zerg, whereas at the moment mass mutas (according to Blizz stats perhaps) are way over-used. That doesn't mean overpowered, rather means a lack of equally viable alternatives. Blizzard wants each phase of the game to have many viable alternatives. Mutas are still going to be used, but not as often as now.
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On October 25 2011 18:23 Whiplash wrote: Mmm blizzard should have just made the phoenix actually counter the muta instead of adding a whole new unit I think...
They could also decrease the build time or made the carrier faster/cheaper but they did ABSOLUTELY no change to the Carrier throughout the entire WoL life, and then they just decided to remove it. I know you guys might say but colossus and carrier can be killed by the same units? Then why didn't they remove the colossus that everyone hates and buff the carrier and add a similiar unit to the reaver instead for protoss siege? Well instead they choose to go for something else. TT
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On October 25 2011 19:20 Twinmold wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 19:18 Zeon0 wrote:On October 25 2011 18:22 Eviscerador wrote: I would rather prefer a single goliath like with less range and damage than thor and 10 damage to ground (none of zerg units are mech) than a thor with bigger range and insane ground DPS. For me is OK.
And i don't think mutas are overpowered. Some unit which costs 100 in gas and can die to mineral dump units like flies is not OP. One misclick and your muta flock just dissapear. I don't see how that can be OP. a unit that needs to be miss microed to die is quite op^^ Which is why you need to force an engagement. Mutalisks aren't really cost effective against anything that can shoot up. They are pretty cost effective against thors if anything
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On October 25 2011 19:24 figq wrote: Zerg is getting buffs (new units and abilities) too, so it's rather that Blizzard wants to open up other solutions for late game zerg, whereas at the moment mass mutas (according to Blizz stats perhaps) are way over-used. That doesn't mean overpowered, rather means a lack of equally viable alternatives. Blizzard wants each phase of the game to have many viable alternatives. Mutas are still going to be used, but not as often as now.
Mutas are just fun to play.
On October 25 2011 19:24 Blasterion wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 19:20 Twinmold wrote:On October 25 2011 19:18 Zeon0 wrote:On October 25 2011 18:22 Eviscerador wrote: I would rather prefer a single goliath like with less range and damage than thor and 10 damage to ground (none of zerg units are mech) than a thor with bigger range and insane ground DPS. For me is OK.
And i don't think mutas are overpowered. Some unit which costs 100 in gas and can die to mineral dump units like flies is not OP. One misclick and your muta flock just dissapear. I don't see how that can be OP. a unit that needs to be miss microed to die is quite op^^ Which is why you need to force an engagement. Mutalisks aren't really cost effective against anything that can shoot up. They are pretty cost effective against thors if anything
If there is one thor vs 20+ mutas and no support at all. Support meaning 10 marines with stim.
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On October 25 2011 18:32 LEEKsc wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 18:28 Let it Raine wrote: mutas in zvp right now
op vs terrible protoss players
good vs mediocre toss players
terrible vs good toss players
they go from good unit to: "all i can do now is base race and hope he doesnt bring probes + have money banked"
protoss can make extremely cost efficient compositions vs any zerg army comp. somewhat true in my opinion, on some maps base trades are incredibly effective, and they serve as a really nice mid-late game harassment tool if you know how to use them properly (and this is as you say, really efficient vs "terrible" (lesser skilled) protoss players)
I whould say this is true. Mutas are balanced on high skilled level, where you can scout whats up and respond properly with good control. Hard to have/balance a unit thats so much better on a certain skill level..
But a good solution to low level players is to make a unit that straight up slaughter mutas, so that lesser good players with not that top notch muta control can be balanced vs lesser good protosses.
So I beleive we are not going to see the tempest for instance at top level play, but alot more in platinum/diamond leagues and lower.
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The only reason archons get stuck is because some of you protosses have weird sim cities, I can understand making a wall at your expansion, but inside your main - you should really just pay more attention to where you place things instead of just randomly going herp derp.
Blink stalkers and archons/ht are the answer to mass mutalisks, you just have to make sure you keep taking new bases that are well defended. Because your army is way more cost efficient.
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As Protoss vs mutas they are really hard to deal with You're basically contained and you have to invest so much in cannons that ultimately don't do much. It's not worth leaving a handful of blink stalkers behind as mutas take them out pretty easy and it's too big a chunk of your army. Pretty hard to take a third and normally just leads to a base race or they tech switch and destroy your army that you committed to dealing with mutas 
I probably just made it sound like mutas are op as hell, but they're just (probably exaggerated) issues I have with the mutas..
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If you see Idras games vs bomber and other T you can see the power of Mutas, thors dont do shit against mutas, or at least as well as the should to their cost. Mutas can also shut down drops and restrict a terran to his own base as well giving the Z map ability to freely mass expand, 30 mutas can easily take out turret/ cannons as well, so i can udnerstand their want to introduce more anti muta stuff.
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United Kingdom20301 Posts
Im a diamond toss that has watched pretty much every tournament since game launch and played with a lot of people, so i hope i can give some insight here.
Mutas in ZvP are weird, basically you have to either pre-emptively know he is going mutas with a lucky scout (he can hide spire with an overlord, too, he gets creep drop on lair) and react to that with a very very early 2 base all in, ie 5gate from a 1/3 gate expo, or maybe 6gate from FFE, nothing earlier than that will hit before mutas, and you cant break him with 1 base play.
This leads to a strange situation where you need a lot of stalkers to defend against his mutalisks, and you need to tech to archons/storm, which makes it extremely hard to move around the map, as properly upgraded lings shred through blink stalkers, and your only chance of engaging them is in a good position with good micro and a lot of forcefields.
It is incredibly hard to punish zerg for going mutas, if he gets the mutas out and you are on gateway tech, stalkers are suprisingly bad against muta ling, and you generally cant do any damage. You have to either kill him before he gets mutas, or turtle hard until you have storms etc with cannons in every base (as he can fly between bases faster than bstalkers can move) and if you are turtling, might as well wait until max, right? You would already be 120-130 food by the time the first archons pop, and the zerg with his map dominance will have a massive food advantage. You have to wait for that to even out.
Phoenix's are not an option to deal with mutas, simply put even if you scout his spire finishing, throwing up 2-3 stargates is not enough to match his raw production, you loose even with the "counter" to his mutas and the phoenix's are then worthless vs any kind of tech switch, roaches etc have been known to wreck protoss when they commit to phoenix's.
The only response to mutas right now is to go blink into templars and base trade.
It doesnt matter if you have 5-10 storms at home, 10 cannons per base, an archon or two, if he gets 50 mutas, he can split, dodge the storms, kill your shit, two shot all of your cannons, or even better, just instantly kill all of your probes the moment you leave your base.
If you leave your base right now and the zerg has "40 to 50 to 60" mutalisks, as the guy at blizzcon said (cant remember if it was david kim or dustin browder) then you are agreeing that your bases and everything useful in them is going to die, and the zerg is then going to bring his mutalisks back before he has to engage your army.
Mutas are extremely difficult to deal with, and must be handled in a very specific way, you need to know if and when it is appropriate to go for the base trade (If you ever attack a muta player, it WILL come to that)
So basically in order to stop mutas, you have to do a really powerful early timing attack, one capable of busting through 3+ spine crawlers and a large pack of zerglings+drones, and if you dont do that, your only option is to sit in your base, doing nothing until maxed, and hope to god your 200/200 army can clean up his, IF you ever manage to engage him as he flies around killing all of your buildings. A muta ball can EASILY clean up for example half of your army with very little losses, so there comes a point where leaving anything to defend at all is just wasted supply, because they scale so well.
So because of this, every game where zerg goes mutas vs protoss, the protoss player has to respond with blink into templar tech into basetrade, because there is simply no other way to beat the mutalisk style.
Once he has the mutalisks out, you are locked onto this 1 variation, and have to do the exact same thing for 15 minutes every mutalisk game.
If the protoss player in question is average skilled below masters, it is essentially impossible to deal with mutalisks (to play this style correctly after scouting) and thus mutas in ZvP have been called a free win by a lot of people at pre-masters because they are 10 times harder to effectively defend than to harass effectively with.
The Tempest will allow protoss to handle these mutalisk balls without literally having to bring a 200/200 army to meet the mutas when they fly into his main or natural, potentially allowing further expands to starve zerg out (who took the map earlier) or pressure attacks with 1-2 tempests to prevent loosing all of your probes or gateway power even with cannons scattered around.
I personally dont really like it, but it allows an alternative to the same boring blinkstalker templar basetrade that is seen every single ZvP with a semi competant zerg player.
It is impossible to defend your base without leaving the majority of your forces there, and it is thus impossible to kill him without an all in right now.
I think the issue in ZvT is partially a timing issue, and partially in the way zerg can get ahead.
When i watched TLO play pure mech a little while ago vs zerg (a month? probably a bit more) he had a lot of issues with two things.
Firstly, just massive counterattacks if he tried any kind of push, it was very hard to deal with, if he pulled back to his base zerg just ran off without any losses.
The second problem was mutalisks at maybe an earlier than normal timing, mutalisks would enter his base and he would have nothing but turrets to defend, it was very hard to get thors out to deal with mutas, and almost impossible to get them out in the numbers required to deal with large amounts of mutas.
It takes suprisingly few mutas to kill a thor if they are split properly, i think they can even do it cost effectively if it is like 7 mutas vs 1 thor, which caused him a lot of problems.
Also i noticed with IdrA's ZvT, basically, he uses mutas a massive amount, harassing constantly, putting a lot of pressure on his opponent, but also engaging with all of them during any kind of major engagement quite freely. He goes up to massive muta clouds quite often, and from what i have noticed, if his opponent gets even slightly behind in the midgame, he is able to maybe expand a bit faster, or get by with more drones or more mutas (needing less for defense) or whatever, and he is able to snowball very quickly into having enough mutas to simply kill whatever composition his opponent throws at him, and when that happens it is GG as there is no way to get back in the game in either ZvT or ZvP if you fall behind in army supply vs a muta heavy opponent.
Overall, i think at the pro level, mutas in ZvP create the exact same game over and over again, forcing the protoss to react in 1 static way and ending with a basetrade as phoenix's are inadequate for dealing with mutalisks unless you opened stargate and he dropped spire anyway, minutes afterwards (never happens). Protoss wins a lot, probably more than 50%, but this is not entertaining.
At the amatuer level, i have found most protoss, even in plat/diamond simply cannot deal with mutalisks, the situation is much harder for protoss to play perfectly than it is for zerg to do, and i beleive the win ratios are skewed massively in favor of zerg if and when they get mutas up.
It seems common among my protoss friends sub-masters to just auto loose every game if he got mutas up without being scouted early and punished with a 5/6gate, as going into the mid/late game is extremely difficult for protoss, and the ball is in your park to fuck up and loose the game (it is suprisingly easy to do so) so blizzard probably wants the tempest so that sub-masters protoss can pull a decent winrate vs mutas, and not auto loose if they get even slightly behind.
For ZvT, i cant really comment on mutas aside from this change making pure mech much more viable (no antiair aside from the thor which can be magic boxed as they produce or move to the army to stop the terran getting a lot of them)
I know for a fact that most low level terrans have nightmares about muta/ling/bling, terran can defend mutalisks and play normally a lot easier than protoss i feel because of being able to repair turrets (and turrets being better than cannons for AA, especially with the +2 building armor) but the game isnt about defending, if the terran player fails to put on adequate pressure, he just looses in the lategame by far, and it is extremely discouraging to terran players.
I havnt met a player lower than masters who can split marines effectively (98% of the game) so i see an awful lot of very ugly engagements with banelings on the metalopolis KOTH custom game etc, and my friend who plays terran @ gold says that games vs muta ling bling feel unwinnable to him, blizzard might be trying to eliminate situations on lower ladder tiers where one race simply has an advantage over the other, for example in this case where decent marine control and harass is MANDATORY to win.
All thoughts and opinions, pm me if you have questions i guess
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i think they also made these changes with the new viper cloud ability (reverse darkswarm, whatever the actual name is) in mind because it could become quite difficult for terrans if all their thors are stuck inside that cloud.
besides does anyone know how much energy this ability will cost and how long its gonna stay and if it will affect turrets aswell? i really like the idea (especially because it gives you the option to actually engage a turtling terran) but although i play zerg i feel that the ability might easily become op in the hands of a player with very good micro (e.g. mutas outranging marines due to the spell etc.)
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United Kingdom20301 Posts
On October 25 2011 19:29 hjop wrote: The only reason archons get stuck is because some of you protosses have weird sim cities, I can understand making a wall at your expansion, but inside your main - you should really just pay more attention to where you place things instead of just randomly going herp derp.
Blink stalkers and archons/ht are the answer to mass mutalisks, you just have to make sure you keep taking new bases that are well defended. Because your army is way more cost efficient.
EVERY SINGLE PROTOSS UNIT can fit through standard walls, for example the gateway wall at the ramp with the zealot blocking, EVERYTHING CAN FIT THROUGH THERE, I think even ultralisks can, but ARCHONS cannot.
They are 1 exception to the pathing rule and if you did any kind of standard wall you have to destroy multiple buildings so you can actuly move the things around.
Its not really fun
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As a Diamond toss you have like no say in "balance" talk... NONE.
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Blizzard have already stated that they are balancing the game for all leagues or more to the point skill level. as ridiculous as that is. Mutalisk can be troublesome and tricky for a good protoss to deal with, now imagine 40 apm and both players banking tons resources. Zerg can throw up swarms of mutas in a heartbeat. Atleast this would be my guess on why they are introducing the tempest.
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On October 25 2011 18:29 Toadvine wrote: ... None of the Protoss anti-Muta measures are especially good against like 30+ Mutas... I have to disagree. when the Zerg build up that many mutalisks Toss can counter it very well with archon/storm and if some mutas survive, finish them with stalkers/phoenix. And dont forget that it takes some time to reach such a huge muta flock. Whenever toss scouts this strategy he can cannon up/mass up his army and just push the zerg base.
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On October 25 2011 19:36 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +On October 25 2011 19:29 hjop wrote: The only reason archons get stuck is because some of you protosses have weird sim cities, I can understand making a wall at your expansion, but inside your main - you should really just pay more attention to where you place things instead of just randomly going herp derp.
Blink stalkers and archons/ht are the answer to mass mutalisks, you just have to make sure you keep taking new bases that are well defended. Because your army is way more cost efficient. EVERY SINGLE PROTOSS UNIT can fit through standard walls, for example the gateway wall at the ramp with the zealot blocking, EVERYTHING CAN FIT THROUGH THERE, I think even ultralisks can, but ARCHONS cannot. They are 1 exception to the pathing rule and if you did any kind of standard wall you have to destroy multiple buildings so you can actuly move the things around. Its not really fun Ultras are more retarded than archons. And fatter. So no, they can't. (Although they'll be able to after HotS)
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