[D] KA in PvT then and now- NSHoSeo_san vs MVP_sC - Page 22

On November 06 2011 04:28 Eternalmisfit wrote:


Depending on what you exactly meant in your post, my post below may agree/disagree with that.

I believe the balance of an individual unit does not necessarily correlate with the win-rate percent of a match. The W-L % of the match at any given point in time depends on the map pool, evolution of strategies and counter strategies combined with maturation of the potential of a unit. Until the game is mature enough and devoid of balance changes for a while, it is hard to make an argument whether a unit/ability in balanced or not.

The best example of this, in context of SC2, being the hellion. BFH have been pretty much untouched in the game since its inception. However, during the entirety of the 1st year of the game, the blue flame upgrade was rarely used and BFH strategies were non-existent. It was only in mid-2011 when Slayers hellion strategies were developed when we came to know how strong that ability was.

If you go back to late 2010 or early 2011, I do not think you would find anyone arguing the BFH were imbalanced. However, in view of current information, it can argued that BFH strategies were equally or even more 'imba' due to the fact that medivcas moved faster, Terran timings could come earlier due no bunker before rax requirements and so on.

The key point I am trying to make that even though there might have been a time period when ZvT was 50-50 split pre-BFH era, BFH were still 'imbalanced' (in quotes as imo we still just don't have enough knowledge to claim confidently) independent of the win-rate. Extending this logic to KA, it is not possible to prove that KA is imbalanced at PvT 50% or even at 40%. Until the game becomes mature enough that a lot of the unit potentials/strategies are realized, determining the balance of an individual unit/ability in terms of a matchup win-loss % is not possible as there are too many variables that come into play.

Note that by similar logic, removing KA was an equally bad idea since a local event of PvT matchup increase did not necessarily mean that KA was imbalanced at that point of time. Though I applaud Blizzard for being active with the amount of balance changes going on, I do think that they are making too many drastic changes too quick and not letting strategies evolve sufficiently. If Blizzard had strong reason/evidence to believe that KA was imba, it should have been nerfed to a point where you needed 4-5 sec after warp-in to storm and then studied how much of a difference this made instead of outright removing it.