[HOTS] Breaking up the Death Ball - Page 18

On July 04 2012 16:29 Reithan wrote:
IMO, the reason why deathballs are bad and happen in SC2 while they don't in SCBW is the ease in which you can cover and take ground in SC2.

In SCBW, if you won a major battle, you still couldn't just push through the map and win, because, and I don't know about actual in-game numbers, but the maps FELT bigger, and each race had better entrenchment options.

If you won a major battle you couldn't "Just walk into Mordor", because lurkers, tanks, stronger static defenses (maybe?), and the time it would take your army to arrive at their base, vs the time it would take them to reinforce and WORSE the time it would take YOU to reinforce across the map.

Further, due to poorer pathing, your reinforcements might get lost, stuck on terrain, strung out all over, etc. Reinforcing was dangerous and time-consuming to do on the move.

Also, a lot of time huge battles made less sense in SCBW because micro was more important. There were more units that could do more with more skill in SCBW. If you took all those units and just threw them in a big ball, that would basically just be you admitting: "I can't micro all this effectively, so I'm just going to group it together and throw it at you and hope you die."

When your small groups of units could wage huge upset battles against larger forces, and 'minor' micro wins or losses could affect big swings in battle results, smaller groups of units engaging smaller groups of units was 'safer' for the worse player and more cost efficient and 'better' for the better player.

Now, you have units that work better in balls, have no micro to speak of, or very easy micro, and many units that either have NO micro to speak of, or micro that can easily be handled as a group rather than as individuals...so controlling the deathball is simple, and there's no micro advantage to using smaller groups.

This is because of microless units like the colossus and the thor, smart-casting on units like templars, ghosts and infestors, and simple-to-use micro on many units like stim and burrow, as well as 'one-use' micro like blink, where you can use it 1 or two times at the start of the battle and then either not much, or not at all after that.

Additionally the addition of units that nearly REQUIRE a ball to use does nothing to help this. Like the colossus and many others, some units are just crap by themselves. 1 colossus by itself, or even in a small group is nearly worthless. It's a waste of resources. Put that same colossus + 2-3 more into a huge ball of death though, and it completely powers up your whole army. That's not to say that units shouldn't have synergy...but to have units that are ONLY about synergy and shine most only in deathball situations means that's all you will see.

And the sad part is that nothing about this is something you can 'easily' fix. Sure you can bandaid this with pathing changes, or revisions to control group limits and such...but it's design flaws inherent in the game and unit design and balancing. I have to say the 'deathball situation' in sc2 is BY DESIGN. At some point in development, SOMEONE saw the deathball and they thought it was awesome. And so now that's what you have. That's how the game works.

On July 04 2012 08:04 kineSiS- wrote:
SC2 as spectator sport pales in comparison to SC1. There are many reasons for this, more than I care posting.

On July 05 2012 02:44 0neder wrote:
Good point Sabu, but pathing/spacing WILL fix things. It's not that all deathballs are inherently bad, it's that they are so concentrated and homogenous that rarely is anything else viable.

On July 05 2012 05:45 Rabiator wrote:

The problem is that there is no downside to the deathball ... because AoE isnt that strong ... well for most races. Banelings can easily do rather concentrated damage on deathballs (when dropped or undiscovered as mines), Colossi can do rather concentrated fire if there are several of them clumped up. In addition to this Forcefields, Fungal Growth and the "unlimited and free" Broodlings from Broodlords have the capability to "shape the opposing deathball".

On the other hand concentrating Siege Tanks is simply stupid and Psi Storms are pretty close range and more or less defensively useful only. Terrans are also unable to "shape an opponents deathball", thus they are disadvantaged from both sides.

"Viable" is not an excuse for keeping the deathball. They kill any strategy element (SC2 is supposed to be an RTS) and "forces players" to go for a concentrated attack with all their forces. Only Terrans go for multi-pronged attacks with drops on several bases ... due to their disadvantages I mentioned above. If the other races were "discouraged" from using the deathball we would have more interesting games with action all over the place. So lets ask Blizzard to give Terrans the ability to discourage the deathball by increasing AoE effects by a lot (primarily Siege Tanks) and all those "anti-Siege Tank units" in HotS are fair game. Maybe we would see more air battles in the process as well ...

On July 05 2012 12:29 ysnake wrote:


That is definitely the wrong way to "fix" death balls. Terrans also have a death ball, it's called mech or sky-terran.

More AoE for Siege Tanks? That is DEFINITELY not the way to go, I do not know if you ever encountered Marine/Tank/Medivac with 10+ Siege Tanks guarding their 3rd/4th, Zerg armies evaporate on that.

Terran use their multi-pronged attacks for several reasons:
- they use Tier 1 units
- Stimpack and Marines are very cost efficient when not fighting a huge blob
- mobility
- the only race with the option to deal damage with ground units and get the hell out of there

Why do you think Protoss get a rather strange harassment unit? Because Protoss have no way of harassing cost-efficiently at the moment. Drops are rather pathetic if they can be countered with an army and they have no healing, plus Zealots are melee units. Stalkers cannot be used for harassing.

It needs to be unit pathing as a somewhat viable solution. Two days ago, a Terran friend of mine wanted to try a way to counter Brood Lords in the late game by engaging them with Sky Terran. He failed with BCs then he went mass Raven (I mean 15+ Ravens), and my Corruptors evaporated, he told me later "why didn't you split them?" I said "but I did", the problem is, as soon as I gave the orders to attack or cast Corrupt, they go in a huge blob again instead of staying where I wasted so much time and APM to spread them, just a simply move command makes them go in the "deathball" mode.

You cannot fix the current deathball style by giving everyone more AoE (or even just Siege Tanks) as even if the players knew what is going to happen if they stack their units, their units will AUTOMATICALLY stack, and there is no APM or gosu control that can prevent that.

On July 05 2012 16:28 Rabiator wrote:
To make a long story short: The siege tank damage must be increased ... by A LOT (50+%) just so you arent totally screwed

On July 05 2012 16:52 StriderDoom wrote:



0_o ... i dont even... you cant be serious?

On July 05 2012 17:15 iky43210 wrote:
siege tank is in a not so great spot right now. TvT are going toward full bio builds again and same for TvZ. tank are still nowhere to be spotted in TvP

On July 05 2012 16:28 Rabiator wrote:

Mech is a "deathball" ... thats the best joke I heard in a while. One part of the definition of "ball" requires it to be MOBILE and terran mech is as far from that as possible. Oh and since when has air been viable en masse to form a deathball?

I have to agree - on a smaller level - that the pathing needs to be fixed, but your example of an air battle will ALWAYS result in clumped up units. Attack commands always follow a direct route to the target, even with "dynamic unit movement". The only part which that would fix is non-targeted movement, but even that would be an immense help.

I would disagree with you on that Terran is the only race with the potential to deal significant damage with a small strike force (drop play). Baneling drops are VERY efficient, but no one does them anymore; Storm drops can also annihilate a worker line, but no one does them anymore; double Immortal drop can surely kill a building or two before a Terran opponent can be back to defend against that, but no one does them anymore. "Getting the hell out of there" isnt an intrinsic part of a multi-pronged attack; its a bonus but only really necessary if you are NOT assaulting your opponent with a much larger force elsewhere. If you are barreling down the front door it is perfectly acceptable to have a suicide platoon in the back.

Why dont the other races do those multi-pronged attacks? Because they have methods to "shape their opponents army" with either Force Field or Fungal Growth, they simply DONT NEED TO. Terrans HAVE TO do those multi-pronged attacks to stand a chance of winning and if you go mech you cant really do that well (with unupgraded Marines and without Marauders). Strengthening the Terran capability to kill a deathball would help immensely to balance the "required strategies" for the races.

To make a long story short: The siege tank damage must be increased ... by A LOT (50+%) just so you arent totally screwed as mech player when your whole army gets easily overrun by a bunch of rather cheap Zerglings or whatnot. Increased damage also means more friendly fire. As an alternative Blizzard could - finally - remove friendly fire from the Siege Tank instead ... Friendly fire is one reason why mech is NOT VIABLE IMO. This increased damage potential would allow a Terran to spread his tanks much more and thus make the new "anti-expensive-unit" units from HotS more balanced. If the tank remains unchanged they are totally breaking mech with tanks ...

On July 05 2012 17:52 submarine wrote:
I would like to see a hold-fire command for tanks. You would be able to still use tanks as zone control in late game TvZ against broodlord infestor armys. It would also make them a bit more useful in TvP because you could use them to snipe key targets like HTs on demand. You could time the first shot. Right now tanks waste their first shots on the first target in sight, and you can't prevent that.

On July 05 2012 21:02 honed wrote:

worst idea ever. the siege tank ai is already really good. no overkill and you can target fire if you have sight anyways