Call to Action: Balance Testing (live custom map) - Page 99

On May 06 2012 13:48 RaiZ wrote:
No, protoss are placed higer in the ladder, thus you don't see a gold or lower protoss because of how easy this race is.

On May 06 2012 12:57 Jehct wrote:
See how he said something stupid to respond to your stupid analogy? Yeah, don't say stupid things.

Queen range change seems like a nice fix IMO. Should tone down build order wins (proxy 2rax vs hatch first) by making the standard a little stronger against dedicated rushes, and more solid against pressures (assuming 4queen openers become standard). It also means the things that were possibilities don't change (ie. creep spread is just as fast), it's just harder to respond to it (which forces adaption - good thing!).

The reaper should really be ignored for the purposes of balancing the game - it's already been made 99.99% irrelevant intentionally. The unit just needs a redesign at this point. They can balance around the HotS variant (with health regen and such) later.

The most interesting thing about the new fix is that it doesn't really remove real strategies. You can still micro around 5 range queens so 2rax shouldn't completely die, getting bunkers up will just be harder, as maybe it should be. Ling/baneling attacks will still be super effective, queens will just be better at focusing down banelings. Mass hellion builds will still kill players that don't scout it or sim (or make many queens). Build order wins should go down and scouting ability should go up, giving good players more room to be good.

Seems solid.

I'm so tired of people talking down to protoss, as being easy. I see better caster control out of gold protoss players than some top zerg players. MOST games I see of high level zerg play, they loose infestors (lots of them) due strictly to carelessness. They have every chance to escape after they are out of energy, or burrow move away and they JUST DON'T BOTHER TO!

On May 06 2012 14:10 IMoperator wrote:
I do not understand the queen change at all. Zergs weren't really having a problem with hellion harass, were they? Doesn't this just completely trash the reactor hellion opener? Queens were pretty good defense vs. hellions in the first place, why would blizz make them even better?

Also, they still do nothing about brood/infestor or TvP lategame. Really sad.

On May 06 2012 13:59 memcpy wrote:
Tested out the queen range. It's a more subtle buff than previous energy change, which is good. Zerg doesn't need a huge buff early game but this seems like a nice little bonus against early marine and hellion pressure/containment.

On May 06 2012 14:14 corpuscle wrote:


I honestly can't shake the feeling that the queen change is a bit of a nod to the lower leagues. I rarely do it unless their defense is really thin, but if I decide to run in and sac hellions, I can nearly always kill 10-15 drones, and I'm in Diamond league. Hellion defense is way harder than pro players make it look, I've ended games with my initial 4 hellions plenty of times, which you never see in pro play.

That said, if they are buffing queens because of lower leagues... come on, Blizzard.

On May 06 2012 14:18 imanoobcs wrote:


I disagree and feel that zerg does need an early game buff. They are very vulnerable to all in unless they spend money thats not needed to defend. A toss or terran can wall in with buildings they need anyways. Zerg has to make extra queens that arent very useful after they stop the push. Sure they can spread creep, but after they are out of energy, they just sit there until you expo again. And the fact that they cost 150 minerals, is a big hit in the early game to defend early pressure that the other race is going to build regardless. Something needs to be done, Im not an expert so I dont know what needs to be done. I would feel ok with either the queen range buff or the energy buff. I have a feeling zerg will not be getting either. The speed upgrade is a joke. Terran can build a barracks and fly it across the map before zerg initial overlord can make it across. Speed should have been upped to .75 or better. Or see how long it take for terran to get 2 marines out, and that time should be the time it takes for an overlord to get to the terran base. That way terran can still shoot it down in their base, but they wont have the power to run 1 marine out to the middle of the map and hunt overlords as they scramble to get around.

Well, I was still winning games with reactor hellion up until diamond, but around the mid/high diamond range players figure out how to stop them pretty easily. I'm a masters player and I know that many other terrans at my level struggle lategame vs. both races, but they refuse to fix that for some reason but then they turn around and help out lower level zerg/toss players? Really inconsistent by blizzard.

On May 06 2012 14:20 IMoperator wrote:

Well, I was still winning games with reactor hellion up until diamond, but around the mid/high diamond range players figure out how to stop them pretty easily. I'm a masters player and I know that many other terrans at my level struggle lategame vs. both races, but they refuse to fix that for some reason but then they turn around and help out lower level zerg/toss players? Really inconsistent by blizzard.

On May 06 2012 14:39 Ziggitz wrote:


Have you considered the incredibly obvious proposition that if you are having trouble in both non mirror match ups you might be hitting your skill ceiling and be well matched against your opponents?

They've essentially acknowledged that they intended for Terran to be worse late-game if they don't exit the midgame with an advantage. It's shitty design, not imbalance.

On May 06 2012 15:12 Charon1979 wrote:


There is a huge difference between "exit the midgame with an advantage" and "win in the earlygame using 4 units"

No one is saying you should win against all-ins and cheese every time. Its "ok" to lose against an all-in. But zergies lose to the first units of a "pressure build".

Its ok to be forced to build units. Its not ok to be "overprepared" (3 queens, 2 spines, 2 evo and roachwarren against 4 hellions) and nonetheless lose 20+ drones because your queen blocking the ramp was a little bit to far left.

Its not ok that Zerg has to oracle what terra is gonna do after his hellions.

Thats like "Hey I got 4 banelings in front of your base! You are not allowed to scan and expand until you build at least 3 marauders"

On May 06 2012 14:02 corpuscle wrote:

First off, proxy 2rax vs hatch first is not a "build order win." The only time it's a "build order win" is when Zerg is greedy and delays their pool until 17 or 18. You can hold 11/11 proxy just fine with hatch first. Is it hard? Yes. Is it something that Zergs lose to? Yes. Is it something that Zergs lose to most of the time Terran does it (which is what would make it imbalanced)? Absolutely not, it's barely even used anymore because Zergs are so good at holding it.

Second, creep spread will arguably be faster ZvT now. It will no longer be possible to kill creep tumors without taking damage (a queen can just sit on top of the tumor), which makes it a really hard decision whether you dart in and try to pick it off or not. Especially if there's 2-3 queens at the edge of the ramp (which a lot of Zergs do), it may become downright impossible to deny creep tumors consistently, since Terrans rely on being able to micro against the queen to kill tumors. It's a pretty big change in the matchup dynamic if Zergs can spread creep better, or Terrans are forced to sac hellions to deny.

I agree that reapers weren't great to begin with, but it just sucks to see them get nerfed more, that's all. I think the only viable reaper build is going to be bunker cheese now, though.

I just think Zerg doesn't particularly need help with queens, they're already a great defensive unit. The early aggression that they've supposedly been struggling with will be a lot easier to deal with because of the new overlord speed. I just don't think Zerg needs two buffs to their early defense abilities at the same time, it'd be better to just be more patient and see how the overlord change affects things.
....

On May 06 2012 12:33 InoyouS2 wrote:
It'd be nice to see Terran get a few small buffs to fix the imbalance (however big or small) in TvP atm. It's sad to see even the most macro-oriented player in the game (IMMvp) have to resort to cheesing a foreign Protoss player in the GSL quarter finals, those are not games I want to watch as a spectator.

Nerf bio, buff another couple of units (maybe add +damage to mechanical to thor or tank?) so that we don't see just pure bio versus a much wider range of units for the Protoss.

The zerg changes are good, zergs are struggling recently.

On May 06 2012 12:33 InoyouS2 wrote:
It'd be nice to see Terran get a few small buffs to fix the imbalance (however big or small) in TvP atm. It's sad to see even the most macro-oriented player in the game (IMMvp) have to resort to cheesing a foreign Protoss player in the GSL quarter finals, those are not games I want to watch as a spectator.

Nerf bio, buff another couple of units (maybe add +damage to mechanical to thor or tank?) so that we don't see just pure bio versus a much wider range of units for the Protoss.

The zerg changes are good, zergs are struggling recently.

You can get much more info by saccing your OL now, and if you do a scout at around ~6 minutes, you're going to see whether they're going banshees, expand into bio followup, marauder/hellion allin, etc. without marines being able to deny the scout as easily. 90% of maps have places you can safely hide an overlord to suicide later, and if the map doesn't allow that, I'd say that's an issue with map design, not game design.

If you lose 20 drones to 4 hellions when you have 3 queens, 2 spines, and 2 evo chambers, you fucked up. If you also have a roach warren and you still lost, you're outright bad. It's not the Terran player's fault that 95% of Zergs try to run away with their drones and line them all up, you need to split your drones and let a couple die while your roaches/queens clean up, you'll never outrun them. Blizzard shouldn't balance the game around people who can't split their drones and be in proper position with their queens.

2-rax or even 1-rax bunker rush costs 150-250 minerals, meaning that if you delay your cc a slight bid, you can possibly win the game instantaneously. the use/cost is way to high and it's been around for ages, it's not like 4-gate, which is nowadays really weak and completely all-in, it's still pretty dangerous and was constantly part of the mu since gsl2, while at the same time being way less damaging for t's economy. on some maps we still see top zerg loosing to it. roach-bane is a complete all-in, if t scouts it and defends it properly z is essentially dead. yes, it's as dangerous, but it's way newer and really hurts the economy.

i agree with the reaper problem though. however, the main problem of the reaper imo is that it's outclassed by the marine. in theory reaper-drops could be incredibly damaging, sadly marine-drops are almost as strong while being more versatile and part of the army anyways.

to be honest zergs currently arent doing well in big tournaments, and the fact that t has a stronger mid-game-eco might be a part of that problem. i doubt that blizz originally intended that z and t play from the same number of bases, but currently in the early-mid t has even more.

i doubt that ovi-speed will change the dynamic of early tvz. overlords arent used as scouts for two-rax, they are just to slow for that and i doubt that the change will be enough to change that. the first thing that comes to mind that might be decided with that is dual-reactor-hellions, meaning that it actually weakens early mech a lot. the ovi-speed will also counter 5-6-gate blinkstalker to some extend, which is what they made it for.

to be honest, i cant see marines anymore, it's the sole reason why i dont enjoy t's mus. i like t's makro-mechanics, i like their aggressive, micro oriented game, i like their soundtrack, i love mech, but marine medivac builds like 70-90% of terrans army in all three mu throughout the game and wins like 90% of their games and it goes more or less that way since starcraft 2 was released. t has a special counter to every type of unit, but they dont build it because the marine pretty much gets the job done and every other job too. please blizz buff the tank's range or the hellion's hp or speed, but nerf the marine medivac combo, it's getting boring.

apart from that i think mvp cheesed because naniwa plays so greedy. mvp is not coinflipping, but reacting to his opponent's playstyle, which imo is a sign of good play and is supposed to be that way.

Interesting. So my opponent is a complete retard who doesnt know about the highground? In nearly every game I play there is one single marine next to the highground waiting for my overlord to leave for scouting. On most maps there is ONE way to send an overlord in. And guess what, a marine is already there waiting while the tech is in the opposite corner of the base.

So, you think spending 100 gas and losing tons of mining time is a good trade of to 400 minerals? Not even considering that your assumtion "hellions cant outrun queens" is horribly wrong. There is no way a range 3 unit with 2,53 speed on creep will ever catch up to range 5 ,speed 4,25 unit. Even the roach on creep is just at 2,93.
Thats like saying "You can easily kite a stalker using a marine"

They shouldn't lose outright to reactor hellion. It can happen, but it shouldn't. I can lose the game if I fuck up and don't see a roach/ling allin coming because I only saw one roach before pulling back with my hellions

If you lose 20 drones to 4 hellions when you have 3 queens, 2 spines, and 2 evo chambers, you fucked up. If you also have a roach warren and you still lost, you're outright bad. It's not the Terran player's fault that 95% of Zergs try to run away with their drones and line them all up, you need to split your drones and let a couple die while your roaches/queens clean up, you'll never outrun them. Blizzard shouldn't balance the game around people who can't split their drones and be in proper position with their queens.