On January 26 2012 14:53 Arisen wrote: Have you ever seen Brown vs. LosirA? Carriers are pretty strong already, and just another component in that 1 dimensional "protoss deathball". Sure, we don't see them a lot in games, but we don't see a lot of stuff in games that we KNOW is good (burrowed banelings, ravens, etc). I don't have strong feelings about the carrier making it in one way or the other in HotS, but it certainly doesn't need a buff.
I don't think Carriers were the reason he won that. Archon toilet basically killed all the broods.
SC without Carriers wouldn't be the same. I hope they don't remove it. T_T
Carriers were absolutely the reason he lost that game. LosirA spread his broods to minimize the toilet and you need to focus down carriers with corrupters, and with vorte,that's not possible, because they're just going to get toilet'd. Carriers are really strong; I'm not saying they need a nerf, but they do not need a buff.
What? No. Take out the Vortex in that game, and the game would've still went on. Take out the Carrier and nothing would've changed.
Carriers are really strong when you have a good number of them. Otherwise they don't do too well in my opinion.
I'm sorry, this is wrong. Carriers were essential in that game. Yes, the vorte was also a major component; both together are what is so strong. THe vorte alone would not have killed him, and without the vorte of course he (lorsira) wins; carrier/mothership is a scary strong combo because you can not bunch up corrupter versus mothership but you need to focus down the carriers (and thus; bunch up).
What? A whole discussion on the Carrier not overlapping with the Colossus? I don't mean to sound rude, but you do know that they're planning to replace it with something called the Tempest, right?
Look, I completely agree that they shouldn't remove the Carrier. But a bigger issue is whether the Tempest will provide a covering role for countering Mutalisks, amongst other pesky Protoss threats, and overall become a stronger, more viable unit than the Carrier currently is for SC2. I like how some progamers (lookin' at you WhiteRa) have tried using the Carrier in their gameplay and sometimes to great effect. However, I feel that the Carrier is doomed nonetheless, not only to its lackluster performance in SC2 but also again because of the stronger role the Tempest can play. And two capital ships for one race is one too many.
(Also, I think you should be developing arguments against the Tempest as much as arguments in support of the Carrier.)
I loved the carrier in BW (i was not even maining protoss but still), i wish it was still like it used to be back then, but ... the interceptor attack patern is not even similar, back then, once the interceptors where out and you targeted something with your carrier they all collapsed to one point together with their shots straight forward like ww2 bombers and then opened up like a blooming flower after the attack, now they just swarm arround and shoot lasers in any angle ( relative to themself ) - imo, it sucks.
Not even to talk about the fact that thors hard counter carriers because they instakill all the interceptors, early beta this was not the case, as thors had no spash damage but higher single target aa attack.
Sure, maybe it's 100% nostalgia. But I would hate to see the Carrier go in HotS, and like the OP mentioned it's such an archetypical unit for Starcraft, along with zerglings and siege tanks.
However, I wouldn't mind if they made massive changes to Carriers, or made a different version of the same unit: say, instead of interceptors, Carriers now carry some sort of other ships that will have a completely different effect on gameplay. Or maybe we could have a massive, only-one-unit-at-a-time Carrier, in the same vein as the mothership (because I do not want to see the Thor become that unit. I'd rather see Thors just removed entirely, instead of Terran receiving a one-unit-at-a-time version... it just doesn't feel Terranlike to me). Maybe they could even add a spell to the new version of the Carrier, I don't know, anything to differentiate it further from collosi. Make Carriers good against mutalisks, so they'll function like Tempest. Just let us have this unit so ingrained in our culture!
the worst part is they NEVER tried to make the carrier viable, it has never been changed since the beggining of beta yet they remove it before trying to tweak it
I think that in order for sc2 to be successful, one does not have to cling upon nostalgia. Even if the carrier was one of the iconic units, in current state it doesnt add on to protoss strenghts in any way. I dont think D. Kim is an amateur and wouldnt understand or test carrier before cutting it out. Blizz was always good at expansions, be it BW or Throzen Throne, the gameplay always have been improved and became more complex, We should give SC2 designers the benefit of the doubt.
Whenever I play toss I always go for carriers because fuck yes carriers. That being said I don't really know where they fit in the current metagame given their current state. I support a carrier buff 100%, not only because they are an iconic unit but also an exciting one.
I agree that the carrier needs buffs to be competitive, and that protoss should have more options for their endgame army (which could even open up mech in tvp for artosis' sake). I am not a game designer, and have no idea where to start, but i think scrapping it for the tempest is a terrible idea. A slow capital ship doesnt counter mutas anyway...
On January 26 2012 14:53 Arisen wrote: Have you ever seen Brown vs. LosirA? Carriers are pretty strong already, and just another component in that 1 dimensional "protoss deathball". Sure, we don't see them a lot in games, but we don't see a lot of stuff in games that we KNOW is good (burrowed banelings, ravens, etc). I don't have strong feelings about the carrier making it in one way or the other in HotS, but it certainly doesn't need a buff.
I don't think Carriers were the reason he won that. Archon toilet basically killed all the broods.
SC without Carriers wouldn't be the same. I hope they don't remove it. T_T
Carriers were absolutely the reason he lost that game. LosirA spread his broods to minimize the toilet and you need to focus down carriers with corrupters, and with vorte,that's not possible, because they're just going to get toilet'd. Carriers are really strong; I'm not saying they need a nerf, but they do not need a buff.
What? No. Take out the Vortex in that game, and the game would've still went on. Take out the Carrier and nothing would've changed.
Carriers are really strong when you have a good number of them. Otherwise they don't do too well in my opinion.
I'm sorry, this is wrong. Carriers were essential in that game. Yes, the vorte was also a major component; both together are what is so strong. THe vorte alone would not have killed him, and without the vorte of course he (lorsira) wins; carrier/mothership is a scary strong combo because you can not bunch up corrupter versus mothership but you need to focus down the carriers (and thus; bunch up).
No, I suggest you rewatch the game. The game was over with a single Archon toilet. The Carriers weren't even in the game yet. Yes, Carriers are strong endgame, but no, that wasn't the reason why Losira lost.
The balance problem is the easies to fix since it relates to the cost and building time of the unit. I won't talk about this one cause it's kinda irrelevant for this situation.
The design is a more important problem and this is how i see it.
The carrier without interceptors is just a flying egg. It become useless without any control from the player. He can't actually prevent the killing of the interceptors that render the carrier useless. I would like to propose to the community the following design changes to the carrier:
1) Interceptors are always cloaked. 2) Add "Retreat" ability that calls all the interceptors into the carrier very fast 3) Add an ability "Pulse wave" with cool down that adds an AOL damage to the carrier that consists in a circular blast wave with a decent radius and affects only Air Units.
Why all of these changes?
1) and 2) have the purpose of giving the player a semi control over his interceptors. Making them cloaked means that they are no longer the main target all the time. The "Retreat" ability will give the player control of what battles he actually wants to fight. For instance a group of marines comes and attack 3 carriers. They start fighting but once the terran drops a Scan and Stims the protoss player will call "Retreat" to all the interceptors and will avoid the interceptor loss and can actually fight another day. This mechanic has decision making and micro in it so it's great. And making the interceptors cloaked they are no longer a small threat to ground units. They have high DPS but they dies so fast and become useless. Cloaked have a better chance.
3) Is to give the carrier a chance vs Air and clumped units. Also to make the Tempest useless because that's a one hell of a boring unit and we don't want it. Also after all the interceptors are killed at least the carrier is not completely useless since it can still kill air with the AOL wave that has cool down. So you spread your carriers and make the AOL waves with each carrier, and maybe broodlords can be countered with something else than a mothership and it's actually more skill dependent.
This is just a suggestion. There are many ways to make this unit work. They just don't want to. The tempest is one boring unit that will bring more AOL and less micro. Buuuuu!
The carrier is actually really good vs Protoss and Zerg if used correctly in masses, I love the Carrier and I hope it stays in StarCraft ! I support the Carrier Cause :D
im a terran player and i have lost to carriers (mostly because my friend is obsessed with them and i scouted to late)
i dont know if they are that bad (i think they are as good/bad as the battlecruiser) and i strongly believe they have to stay in the game...not only for nostalgia but also because carriers represent toss since vanilla starcraft.
It's funny how they have been addressing the carrier to be the same as the collosus in function, but rather than promoting an iconic unit they have only been tweaking the collosus to be more balanced -.- . The collosus basically has never been an icon of micro and pretty much everyone hates it's boring design.
I'm not neccesarily pro-carrier, but if it means that if I'm not pro-carrier I must be pro-collosus then I will gladly choose to be pro-carrier.
Nothing we shared at BlizzCon is final, and the carrier itself is coming and going in our internal builds. With that said, we are definitely looking into the concerns the community has expressed regarding the potential carrier removal in Heart of the Swarm. In the meantime, we’ll follow your discussions on the topic and we encourage you to continue providing feedback about the carrier’s place in the protoss lineup.
Nothing we shared at BlizzCon is final, and the carrier itself is coming and going in our internal builds. With that said, we are definitely looking into the concerns the community has expressed regarding the potential carrier removal in Heart of the Swarm. In the meantime, we’ll follow your discussions on the topic and we encourage you to continue providing feedback about the carrier’s place in the protoss lineup.
There is hope !
But playing with the units numbers is not the way to fix the carrier. It does have some design flaws that make it unfit for SC II. They need to address those flaws.
And I don't like the argumentation they provide : we wish not to do major changes to units until HotS". You don't say? We bought a game and I want it to work. I don't care what new units you want to try and add. Make the existing ones work and then add.
As they say it now it looks like WoL has some problems and the Expansion will fix them. That's wrong, the expansion is not a patch. If a there's a problem in WoL you fix it in WoL.
as long as colossi are way better than carriers the carrier has no chance. also since colossi are a core unit for toss there are basically always vikings/corruptors out which absolutely make any protoss air play useless because their only counter is stalkers
I don't want the carrier as it is now. It's useless, and void rays are almost always a better choice. At least the tempest will be able to deal with muta-balls, which is one more thing than carriers could do.
Buy I do agree with many of the negatives here saying the carrier is flawed in design. There are a lot of potential changes that could be made to it for it to work, but the tempest in my eyes feels entirely wrong since it's just another micro-less unit for the deathball by design. The carrier has so much potential, but it appears so neglected in balance let alone evolution.
In my eyes, I would like to see things like micro-able interceptors, other buildable mini ships and maybe even some control abilities fitting of a capital ship. Perhaps even an attack. Like how bad would it be if the carrier had the tempest ground attack? What if it could build kamikaze splash damage air units? God there's so much you can do with a unit that holds other units and is meant to be the most powerful and iconic Protoss unit. I can only hope blizzard try!
It's a sure loss when it's built so what's the use? I've seen top lvl pros try and build them and fail, MC, Oz and HuK... seriously it only has utility when U are so far ahead U can win w/ zealots anyways. I welcome a better air unit for one.
Mothership is what I take issue with being game changer like FF in some cases. Actually vortex is late game FF and hits air...HUGE loss.
EPT
