It's about the same speed as a medivac until the medivac gets going, even then it's only 10% slower. While that's nice I still don't think this is going to make Ravens any more practical unless for certain situations.
It mostly makes the unit a tad bit more forgiving in the micro department. It's already very hard to split marines, tanks, and medivacs but when you add slow ass ravens to the composition it becomes infinitely harder. Just one good fungal on a clump of ravens and it's over, you just lost an insane amount of gas, time and tech. The speed boost will definitely help imo.
My only real concern is that spreading creep up and down hills can be really annoying when the cursor for the tumour would be able to be placed anywhere on a hill (i.e. can't actually be placed) but was just one range short of the first tile of flat land above the hill, so you'd have to place it at the bottom of the hill, not using much range of the previous tumour, just to be able to get up the hill, having three in relatively close distance just to climb the hill. Now the first of those will have to be even closer to the hill for the third to get up the hill. :S It's just going to make climbing cliffs very tedious and will feel energy inefficient.
What i would love as a raven change is that seeker missile would be 100 energy with appropriate cooldown (about 10s?) because you can then use other spells more or just wait for the cooldown and cast new missile. I think it would give raven much more versitile role in battle. Also the ability to cast PDD and missile at the same time.
HSM upgrade should also include more starting energy for raven, so it can throw the missile right as it pops. There might actually be some sick new timings with that kind of buff, tough it might be a bit tad too op .
Now Ravens can actually outrun unstimmed marines. I really wanted Raven to get a slight hp or armor bonus, but this change seems good too.
And the creep change might make TvZ more watchable at pro levels. I felt that uncontrolled creep spread on map like ohana in little as 17 in-game minutes was a bit too strong.
I remember for a really long time Jinro was saying that they needed to fix the acceleration and speed of the Raven to make it a bit more useful. Looks like Blizzard liked his tips?
The Raven buff I can agree with, but that's it. I feel any kind of fundamental change to TvZ concerning creep/queens is still too soon after the previous buffs. Korean Terrans are paving the way in figuring out TvZ and we can already see the results of that in recent matches.
creep change is just a reaction to the recent queen buff. queens are much more useful now, people make a lot more of them, suddenly zergs are covering maps in creep. it really doesn't change much
On August 09 2012 14:31 stfouri wrote: HSM upgrade should also include more starting energy for raven, so it can throw the missile right as it pops. There might actually be some sick new timings with that kind of buff, tough it might be a bit tad too op .
I would rather have HSM not needing an upgrade and the HSM upgrade making HSM cost 100 energy instead of 125.
On August 09 2012 14:40 densha wrote: The Raven buff I can agree with, but that's it. I feel any kind of fundamental change to TvZ concerning creep/queens is still too soon after the previous buffs. Korean Terrans are paving the way in figuring out TvZ and we can already see the results of that in recent matches.
One Terran is doing very well yes, but thats because he is an amazing multi tasker.
Would love to see a Range Buff to Seeker Missile like it was back in Beta. Blizzard doesn't need to touch Zerg's creep tumors, especially if Terran is getting Raven buffs. Ravens can help counter creep spreading, I see balance in that. Blizzard just needs to buff Ravens slightly.
Reduction to 8 feels like its to far, it feels much more underwhelming now. Trying to connect your nat to 3rd is a lot more difficult now, and going down ramps and ledges takes 1-2 more creep spawns to get the same tumor were you used to be able to go. It basically slows down creep growth at the start of the game by 50% for the initial two then four tumors if you make 4 queens.
If anyone has any additional pictures or videos specifically on the creep changes I can add to the OP that'd be great. Already have a couple videos on the Raven speed change.
Just quoting Blizzard, a few games showing certain strategies in a certain area (Korea) doesn't depict whether there is balance or imbalance. Also, what did you want to accomplish by showing people these games? Do you think Seeker Missile and Ravens are fine and don't need tweaking. A little substance to your post would be nice, rather than just links I could have googled.
So where are the nerfs to Protoss 2 base all ins in PvZ? Pretty much everyone agrees they are a little too powerful, too easy to execute, and too difficult to defend.
im surprised their going for the creep change rather than only implementing the raven change, since zerg has still been losing to protoss despite winning out against terran, this makes them even with terran and lose out more to protoss. dont see much change in tvp since nobody uses ravens there anyway.
On August 09 2012 14:58 X3GoldDot wrote: im surprised their going for the creep change rather than only implementing the raven change, since zerg has still been losing to protoss despite winning out against terran, this makes them even with terran and lose out more to protoss. dont see much change in tvp since nobody uses ravens there anyway.
to be honest the last patch didn't effect zvp that much in terms of queen/creep. Overlord change is nice obviously but that is really the only thing that effects zvp the most. queen makes it so probes can't scout but that's not a big deal as they will scout the third finishing almost no matter what.
Now remove the building placement requirement for Auto-Turrets so it has a usable energy dump spell and the Raven will actually be extremely good and fun to use.
Im happy to see the changes (doesnt take a genius to figure that i play terran) but I could see the creep tumor thing having some unexpected problem attached to it.. maybe it makes it harder for zergs to connect bases and early protoss timing attacks become harder to deal with... idk.