On March 05 2012 14:07 sluggaslamoo wrote: The Carrier removal might not so bad if it wasn't for the abomination of a replacement that is the tempest.
Not only do we have no-skill siege units, we now have FLYING no-skill siege units to go with it. Fuck yes Blizzard! now I can fit my stalkers underneath my colossi and then fit that underneath my tempests and press A and left-click, fuck that was hard. I don't think I could handle any unit that can do anything more than attack in a straight line.
I'm getting max income on my 3 bases so I guess the only thing I can do at this stage is go make myself a sandwich and maybe a cup of tea while I contemplate strategy, when I come back I can just macro really hard a 200/200 army that consists of 10 units total because the only good protoss units are 20 supply each, costs over 1000 minerals, and is bigger than a Battlecruiser.
collosus have air collision so no your tempest will not fit overtop your collosus[1]
also, go see if any top tier Terran sieges all his tanks in the same spot and clumps his amrines
oh wait he doesnt good tank spread is extremely important, sieging at the right time is extremely important[2]
there is nothing at high level that doesnt need micro at high level its ALL about fighting at the right spot and using the right units at the right time in an efficient manner[3]
also, we rarely see more then 2 or 3 collosus in a standard game now we wont see massed collosus and tempest if that was at all possible people would mass carriers[4]
1. Are you sure? The Tempest should fly directly over colossus, just like these void rays do.
2. Protoss players don't have to worry about banelings or fungal, and post-patch emp is smaller than a bees dick now. You see pros clumping Colossus Stalker all the time.
3. That's not micro
4. No because Carriers are shit vs air, and AtA counters both Colossus and Carriers, so you need an AtA unit. Luckily not only can the Tempest kill everything in the air, it can kill ground units too.
You only see 2 or 3 colossus because, its a 2 base timing attack, neural used to be really strong at picking off colossus (I'm glad I don't even need to try to protect my collosi anymore), stalkers are needed to shoot down corruptors/mutalisks.
Now against Roach/Hydra/Corruptor you know what you can do. Heavy Colossus Tempest off 3 base after the 2 base stalker/colossus timing attack. Tempest kill Roaches and Corruptors, and Colossus kills Hydras, if you are left with a small amount of Hydras, even if you kill all the Colossi the Tempest can just kill the rest of your army. What a disgusting deathball combination.
Muta/Ling? No problem, move out of your base and have a base race because Tempests are too slow to go back and defend and Colossus/Tempest are so high in supply that having a couple stay at your base is practically your whole army. Or you can stay in your base and wait till the map is mined out, because Muta/Ling evaporates against mass air/ground splash, but you can't move out either because of base trade.
As InControl said, there is a place in this game for a big damn ship that shoots little invading ships.
The Carrier is not a Mothership - a one-trick, hero unit that is either OP or useless. The Carrier is not a Thor - a poorly thought out micro-less unit. It should not be lumped in with these.
The Carrier is THE cornerstone of protoss iconography. More than the zealot even. The fucking GANTHRINOR man.
On March 05 2012 11:25 Forikorder wrote: for people saying "well jsut balance it" they literally cant, the fundamental design idea of the idea is what is broken, its not that it costs too much or it takes too long to build or it cant micro (were talking about Protoss here if a carrier is sitting on top of there deathball, thats the safest place for it) its becuase the fundamental idea of the Carrier as a massive capital ship that launchs small fragile units is fundamentally broken
both Terran and Zerg have access to massible high DPS units that attack air and would jsut absolutely love to see tons of fragile units flying around for them to shoot down (Hydralisks and Marines) and Zerg also have the corrupter which loves nothing more then a massive flying unit for it to munch
the only possible way to fix the carrier is drastically reduce the number of intercepters it fires and increase the health, which would be removing the carrier and replacing it with a different unit becuase there would be jsut as much outrage, and then people ask "well if theres only a couple intercepters anyway why not jsut give it an attack" the only way to make the carrier viable is to do a complete unit rehaul on it
When people say balance it they mean unnerf it from it's BW counterpart when they removed 2 armor and made it impossible to micro. Carrier is "broken" for every reason other than what you listed.
On March 05 2012 16:06 Goldfish wrote: I don't like the (new) Tempest because it seems like a boring a move unit.
Unlike the current carrier, which is intentionally designed to punish any attempt at microing it besides just a-moving and sitting there like an idiot? o__O
While I hope that the carrier stays, I was not fully against something different. I am, however, 100% against the Tempest. One thing I never really put much thought to before listening to incontrol on Sotg was micro. Obviously, the carrier is known for its micro potential in BW, but the Tempest has no such potential. In fact, there is NO TEMPEST MICRO at all. It's impossible to do anything but 1A with that unit. It's probably too late to come up with a new idea, so bringing the carrier back should happen.
Still needs to be fixed though. It's weird as shit in PvZ. If the Zerg scouts carriers, they get mass corruptor and it's one sided for the zerg. Not even close. If the zerg doesn't scout it and the protoss gets a bunch of carriers, it's almost always gg unless for some strange reason the zerg is floating a ton of money with supply room and larvae to make a ton of corruptors. Basically, the carrier needs to be better vs. corruptors but worse vs. hydras/mutas/any other zerg answer + potential to micro.
On March 05 2012 15:23 sluggaslamoo wrote: Muta/Ling? No problem, move out of your base and have a base race because Tempests are too slow to go back and defend and Colossus/Tempest are so high in supply that having a couple stay at your base is practically your whole army. Or you can stay in your base and wait till the map is mined out, because Muta/Ling evaporates against mass air/ground splash, but you can't move out either because of base trade.
i agree with most of your points, i just wanted to mention, that if protoss really gets the nexus mass recall, moving out and killing bases would be perfectly possible.
On March 05 2012 14:07 sluggaslamoo wrote: The Carrier removal might not so bad if it wasn't for the abomination of a replacement that is the tempest.
Not only do we have no-skill siege units, we now have FLYING no-skill siege units to go with it. Fuck yes Blizzard! now I can fit my stalkers underneath my colossi and then fit that underneath my tempests and press A and left-click, fuck that was hard. I don't think I could handle any unit that can do anything more than attack in a straight line.
I'm getting max income on my 3 bases so I guess the only thing I can do at this stage is go make myself a sandwich and maybe a cup of tea while I contemplate strategy, when I come back I can just macro really hard a 200/200 army that consists of 10 units total because the only good protoss units are 20 supply each, costs over 1000 minerals, and is bigger than a Battlecruiser.
collosus have air collision so no your tempest will not fit overtop your collosus[1]
also, go see if any top tier Terran sieges all his tanks in the same spot and clumps his amrines
oh wait he doesnt good tank spread is extremely important, sieging at the right time is extremely important[2]
there is nothing at high level that doesnt need micro at high level its ALL about fighting at the right spot and using the right units at the right time in an efficient manner[3]
also, we rarely see more then 2 or 3 collosus in a standard game now we wont see massed collosus and tempest if that was at all possible people would mass carriers[4]
1. Are you sure? The Tempest should fly directly over colossus, just like these void rays do.
2. Protoss players don't have to worry about banelings or fungal, and post-patch emp is smaller than a bees dick now. You see pros clumping Colossus Stalker all the time.
3. That's not micro
4. No because Carriers are shit vs air, and AtA counters both Colossus and Carriers, so you need an AtA unit. Luckily not only can the Tempest kill everything in the air, it can kill ground units too.
You only see 2 or 3 colossus because, its a 2 base timing attack, neural used to be really strong at picking off colossus (I'm glad I don't even need to try to protect my collosi anymore), stalkers are needed to shoot down corruptors/mutalisks.
Now against Roach/Hydra/Corruptor you know what you can do. Heavy Colossus Tempest off 3 base after the 2 base stalker/colossus timing attack. Tempest kill Roaches and Corruptors, and Colossus kills Hydras, if you are left with a small amount of Hydras, even if you kill all the Colossi the Tempest can just kill the rest of your army. What a disgusting deathball combination.
Muta/Ling? No problem, move out of your base and have a base race because Tempests are too slow to go back and defend and Colossus/Tempest are so high in supply that having a couple stay at your base is practically your whole army. Or you can stay in your base and wait till the map is mined out, because Muta/Ling evaporates against mass air/ground splash, but you can't move out either because of base trade.
1. how about actually posting a time? im not sitting here watching a 20 minute video just to point out how your wrong 2.i dont see how AoE had anything to dow ith what i said 3. yes it is not every battle is marine VS banelings micro isnt always in your face is mostly about getting a good concave, a good split immortals hitting roachs and collosi hitting hydras e.t.c 4.carriers arent terrible VS air, its jsut that corrupters are good agaisnt carriers 5. i rarely see more then 3 collosi.... ever no mattwe how long the game is, unless its mech or its zerg late game i dont see many high tech units a few archons a couple collosi a thor or two e.t.c you cannot go heavy collosi tempest off 3 base the amount of teching and gas needed to upll it off means your opponent will drastically outexpand you then kill you with his supremem eco... or jsut kill you before your investments pay off 6. if your going mass collosi tempest then i jsut go mass raoch, kill all your collosi, proceed to wreck your base and then remax with corrupters and finish off your tempests
On March 05 2012 06:14 DreamChaser wrote: Will i now need new outrageous builds for when i team? No more carrier rushes?
Personally blizzard should keep the carrier in imo, its a unit that is rarely seen. If anybody ever tries to go carriers you know everybody in the crowd is getting excited. Even if they lose it was like when people thought the mothership sucked. HuK tried to mothership rush and it worked once in an MLG game. Never had i seen Day9 and the crowd so excited, thats what the carrier brings. Its not a "winning" strategy but its something that is just exciting and fun to watch no matter how bad the unit is.
People get excited because carrier usage is so much risk, that it isn't funny.
People don't think " o shit BW unit... carrier so good so rarely seen", people think... " he can't be serious, if that works I will eat my shirt", they are hoping carrier to work for the same reasons that many people want to have it in Hots... it's just a symbol.
There have been other units that fit such a description. Then Blizzard patched them to make them useful. This isn't a new practice by any means, but the carrier has yet to be patched.
I'm sure they tried. I can't find solution to improve it and still have balance.
In BW, carriers were able to shoot while moving if you micro'd them right. It allowed you to actually utilize the range of the carrier without putting it in harms way. I believe it also had more armor. Do you really feel like that would make the carrier imbalanced?
do you really believe that it would help, if you could micro your carriers while all the interceptors get shot down by marines? People argue not without reasoning, that you need splash against Terran as Protoss. The carrier does not offer that.
Carriers will probably never be effective against stimmed upgraded marines, unless Interceptors are made much more durable against small ground-to-air attacks. But they don't necessarily have to be; they can be viable in other matchups, or in PvT when Terran doesn't focus on infantry, or to harass a Terran and pin him in his base, or perhaps in PvT when the Protoss already has Templars or Colossi that can solve marines. (Especially Templar, since those also mess up Vikings.)
Trouble is, they simply appear to have weak numbers as a unit. Kick the damage up from 5x2 per shot to 6x2 per shot and that alone might give you a competitive unit.
Carriers are good against Mech Terran, as far as I know. And about other matchups: which one? PvP? There are airbuilds, yet they are very gimmicky and people haven't even used a lot of void rays yet, which are a smaller investment and a direct hardcounter to colossi, unlike the carrier. PvZ: I don't think any unit can be viable against larvamechanism, if it is not either supported or straight up better than what zerg can produce. So your carrier is only viable if it counters corruptors (which is pretty OP... once you have enough carriers it's game over for zerg), or it can be supported with anti-corruptor: Protoss has 2 units that do somewhat fine against corruptors, which are void rays and stalkers. Void rays are pretty much on even footing and therefore get destroyed when carriers take away from your void ray investment. Stalker/carrier... Nope, that's the role of the Colossus and it will/should always do it better, due to being vs ground only and due to sharing upgrades.
A unit that builds and launches other units to attack for it? Endless potential from design standpoint.
Instead, it's unfortunately a poor a-move unit with little applicable micro. And they wanted to replace it with another a-move unit with little applicable micro? =/
Please Blizzard, use the power of the Carrier's design concept and do some freaking game design. Please oh please. I might have an aneurysm if they flat out replace with the Tempest or leave Carrier as is.
On March 05 2012 19:25 bittman wrote: A unit that builds and launches other units to attack for it? Endless potential from design standpoint.
Instead, it's unfortunately a poor a-move unit with little applicable micro. And they wanted to replace it with another a-move unit with little applicable micro? =/
Please Blizzard, use the power of the Carrier's design concept and do some freaking game design. Please oh please. I might have an aneurysm if they flat out replace with the Tempest or leave Carrier as is.
yeah, and there are plenty of them in the game. They are called buildings.
i think corruptors / vikings are too strong in the air battles, mainly because of their speed and high range, well they need high range against collossi ..... but i dont think they need the speed / acceleration at that high level, then you could give the same speed to the carrier, but a little less acceleration.
Or give them a chance in PvP, somehow more range and interecptors get health back when they come back into the carrier and when you are behind in collossi count you can counter them with carriers xD
On March 05 2012 21:07 djukger wrote: i think corruptors / vikings are too strong in the air battles, mainly because of their speed and high range, well they need high range against collossi ..... but i dont think they need the speed / acceleration at that high level, then you could give the same speed to the carrier, but a little less acceleration.
Or give them a chance in PvP, somehow more range and interecptors get health back when they come back into the carrier and when you are behind in collossi count you can counter them with carriers xD
Hm, one can also think of buffing the Phoenix against non-light units (i.e. mutalisks will stay unaffected).
carriers were actually really bad in bw vs mass marines, just like they are in sc2. But the difference is, in bw going mech was not really viable at the top level, as reavers hard countered bio (and medics, who were ground units, so they took up space in the marine clumb -> less dps/area), also storm did a pretty decent job against bio. But since ghosts hard counter templar and vikings counter colossi and air units way too good (and to top it off terran now has marauder with insane dps vs armored units and a fair amount of hp, so anti-marine weapons usually just tickle them) terran bio is the way to go in TvP. As long as this is the case, carriers will be useless. So it now depends on if Blizzard wants to change the way TvP is played: Either nerf terran bio hard while buffing mech play (so bio play would be the inferior strategy vs Protoss) and stick to the carrier or don't change the balance of the universe and the carrier remains rather useless in this matchup.
As for other matchups, i think in PvP it can be a gimmicky strategy and might work, but i don't think i will ever see pro reach that point when thanks to warpgate PvP is all about one base (or two base at max) and there is no late game to speak of. In PvZ carriers are okayish, if you have enough stalkers/archons to deal with mass corruptor you can win games with carrier (+ colossi). But going carrier usually means you have to stay somewhat passive until you get them, and zerg can expand a lot. And when zerg has enough money to throw 8 corruptors in for every carrier you have and they have enough to kill your ground forces, it is basically lost. Still, i think the carrier has the most potential in late game PvZ (since corruptors have a somewhat low range for their dps which is not that high eighter, and they cost a ton. Plus archons (or archon toilet) and upgraded blink stalker can deal with them fairly well. Yes, i play zerg). But to try carriers late game in PvZ is a task for the professional players (who often times seem to be incapable of dealing with mass brood lord + infestor + support when all they do is building ground units. I wonder why?)
On March 05 2012 19:25 bittman wrote: A unit that builds and launches other units to attack for it? Endless potential from design standpoint.
Instead, it's unfortunately a poor a-move unit with little applicable micro. And they wanted to replace it with another a-move unit with little applicable micro? =/
Please Blizzard, use the power of the Carrier's design concept and do some freaking game design. Please oh please. I might have an aneurysm if they flat out replace with the Tempest or leave Carrier as is.
yeah, and there are plenty of them in the game. They are called buildings.
Durrr hurrr hurrr no. You can't micro buildings, and you certainly don't micro buildings to control the units that come out of it.
On March 05 2012 19:25 bittman wrote: A unit that builds and launches other units to attack for it? Endless potential from design standpoint.
Instead, it's unfortunately a poor a-move unit with little applicable micro. And they wanted to replace it with another a-move unit with little applicable micro? =/
Please Blizzard, use the power of the Carrier's design concept and do some freaking game design. Please oh please. I might have an aneurysm if they flat out replace with the Tempest or leave Carrier as is.
yeah, and there are plenty of them in the game. They are called buildings.
I can't myself think of a building that attacks using another unit that it produces and keeps with it as part of itself, its a completely different thing.
The only thing that got me playing Starcraft:Broodwar back then was the Carrier. Nothing fascinated me more than that unit still, and I hope they won't remove it from the game.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.jjtoy.com/wallpaper/original/protoss-carrier-800x600.jpg)
