Heart of the Swarm TvP Battle Report! - Page 63

On August 15 2012 08:30 Uvantak wrote:

The thing about this BR is that they WANT us to bitch and say what WE don't thing it's right and should be changed, that's why they are making these BR, as other guys are saying, a roach is a roach no matter the stats it has, a warhound will keep being a warhound even if his attack is reduced to half, and excellent example of this is the corruptor, do you really think that any spell in the corrutor will make it more dinamic or a different stats that the ones already has? well the answer probably is no, and the good spell will only happen if blizzard get's the feedback it needs, and not by keeping our mouths shut if what we are seeing is not a good thing

On August 15 2012 10:02 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:


No, it's not ridiculous, you need to read the article on the defenders advantage. I'm talking about all 3 races, not just Protoss, needing slightly better base defence, which makes for longer games and just that tiny chance more that we'll have comebacks - which seem unfortunately extremely rare - even 2 years into WoL.

On August 15 2012 10:52 iky43210 wrote:


mech needs a warhound like unit, there isn't much way to get around it. I agree the art is ugly and could use some changing.

Also warhound can have alot more depths than people give credit for, at least wait till the beta. I imagine having Haywire and speed will make it more apm intensive than people imagine. Having warhound isn't going to replace siege tanks, because relatively they do shit dps compare to tanks once you reach critical mass

p.s if you have 6 warhound, to micro them perfectly (excluding position and kiting, just haywire alone) will require you to spend a minimum of 60 APM. food for thoughts

On August 15 2012 10:02 Cabinet Sanchez wrote:


No, it's not ridiculous, you need to read the article on the defenders advantage. I'm talking about all 3 races, not just Protoss, needing slightly better base defence, which makes for longer games and just that tiny chance more that we'll have comebacks - which seem unfortunately extremely rare - even 2 years into WoL.

On August 15 2012 10:58 Shiori wrote:


Considering that the Warhound is basically a better version of the Marauder, I don't think you're going to see much magical micro go into it. Besides, what's 60APM when the rest of mech is virtually immobile most of the time?

On August 15 2012 11:04 iky43210 wrote:

so marines are somehow more micro intensive than marauders? I find that kind of weird why people would shit on it so much. the marine / marauder relationship with zealots / colossus / HT are quite complex that the entire Bio force is extremely apm intensive. Marauders actually is also responsible for this because their rather shit dps to zealots but marines melt too quickly created this dynamics

60 apm is quite alot consider that is haywire only, for 6 warhounds. Units need to be reposition, tanks need focus fire, window mine, ghosts still need to fight against HT, and then there is also macro back at home.

On August 15 2012 11:03 yeastiality wrote:
I dunno if I can spare 60 apm to run my whole army. I might have to not individually target every single unit.
Do you guys think I'll still be okay..?

On August 15 2012 11:10 iky43210 wrote:


you're not going to have 6 warhounds or only warhound as your entire army. Unless you're in the woods league

and the apm example I gave was for haywire ONLY. unless you want to auto those so they can do wonder damage to battle hellions or stalkers instead of immortals/tanks/sentries/colossus

On August 15 2012 11:12 yeastiality wrote:


you're right, I should turn off autocast and manually target haywire missiles on hardened shields

good call

On August 15 2012 11:04 iky43210 wrote:

so marines are somehow more micro intensive than marauders? I find that kind of weird why people would shit on it so much. the marine / marauder relationship with zealots / colossus / HT made the entire Bio force is extremely apm intensive. Marauders actually is also responsible for this because their rather shit dps to zealots but marines melt too quickly created this dynamics

60 apm is quite alot consider that is haywire only, for 6 warhounds. Units need to be reposition, tanks need focus fire, window mine, ghosts still need to fight against HT, and then there is also macro back at home.

On August 15 2012 11:04 iky43210 wrote:

so marines are somehow more micro intensive than marauders? I find that kind of weird why people would shit on it so much. the marine / marauder relationship with zealots / colossus / HT made the entire Bio force is extremely apm intensive. Marauders actually is also responsible for this because their rather shit dps to zealots but marines melt too quickly created this dynamics

60 apm is quite alot consider that is haywire only, for 6 warhounds. Units need to be reposition, tanks need focus fire, window mine, ghosts still need to fight against HT, and then there is also macro back at home.

On August 15 2012 11:40 Fig wrote:

ok, I'm pretty sure no one would use marauders if they had "rather shit dps" vs zealots.
When stimmed (which they should always be when engaging) they actually have 10 DPS vs zealots.

That's more DPS than stalkers have against vikings! And only slightly less than zealot DPS. And marauders are ranged units! The reason people use bio, and the reason toss needs some kind of splash to trade with it, is because of the high DPS of MMM.

Getting back on track, I feel for terrans that don't have the APM to split their bio units, and that is why they are making all these beefy factory units that require little micro. What Blizzard should be doing at the same time though, is giving protoss more opportunities for micro.

I loved how no matter how good at BW I got with Terran (Not very good), there was still so much more that was possible to squeeze out of my units. I'm sad that since I started playing Protoss during the beta, Blizzard has stripped all of the interesting micro away from the race. They left in the gimmicky tactics, but the voidray and zealot micro tricks have been patched out. If they don't give toss some more microable units, I'm switching races.

On August 15 2012 11:52 iky43210 wrote:


you shouldn't compare units to units cross race, it doesn't have much significant behind it. terran does not have the massive aoe potential like protoss does with colossus, HT, and archons, so they make up for it by having powerful single target dps units.

Lets put it into perspective. marauders costs about 2-3x marines but do less dps to zealots (10 vs 11). For a decent costly unit, it will take them 13-15 shots just to kill a 100 mineral unit.That's pretty bad in my book.

But people still have to make marauders for concussion and tank buffer against chargelots and colossus. Doesn't mean that they aren't terrible against zealots.

On August 15 2012 11:49 Wombat_NI wrote:

(Big post btw, sorry I got into rant mode!)
That's a cool dynamic though, those units mentioned have strengths AND weaknesses. Marines have high DPS, are cheap and scale really well with micro. They're weak to AoE, but this can be mitigated with the aformentioned micro. Marauders likewise, they're tanky and great vs armoured units and buildings. However they don't have the massive DPS of a marine, and can thus be swarmed by zealots/zerglings and the likes that do have this high DPS and don't suffer bonus damage from the marauder.

Collosi to take one example, have no real weaknesses. High damage that scales well in numbers, pretty fast, cliffwalking, not difficult to use close to optimally. Having a counter-unit (viking/corruptor) doesn't mitigate that this is poor DESIGN. Blizzard have created a unit that is not necessarily imbalanced, but it's poor to play with and to watch. I'm not a BW fanboy, but Protoss' AoE unit, the Reaver was interesting in that, it was slow (although had synergy with the shuttle, which was also cool). It did a ton of AoE in bursts, it needed babysitting in that it was extremely weak, fired slowly and needed good target firing to really get the most of it. Blizzard also didn't design the Reaver with that shuttle synergy in mind. It developed naturally, and unlike in SC2 when interesting things like that are discovered they didn't re-design it to fit into what THEY considered its role..

This post is not me harking back to a golden age of BW, as I was too young to really appreciate it, I'm looking at a game that showcased a basic understanding that when you design units, you balance out corresponding strengths with weaknesses, either statistically, or in the difficulty of using the unit to make the most of those abilities. While some of these balances were actually a result of the UI and the mechanical difficulty of play, they still created a much more dynamic, back-and-forth style of gameplay.

By not conforming to this rather simple idea, Blizzard have created a situation that they look to balance the power of these ridiculous units by forcing players into building clearly marked counter-units. Instead of players positioning well, engaging and outplaying their opponent mechanically, with balanced compositions, it can often be about making the exact amount of counter-units to ridiculously versatile death-bringers (see the Viking/Collosi dynamic). Essentially Blizz are going 'OK Collosi are ridiculously strong against everything on the ground, but it's ok we gave you counter units that you have to build or you'll die.' This also explains why mid-late PvP is always, always Collosus wars because Protoss lack the kind of specific counter-unit to Collosi that is reachable in a standard game.

Look at some of the patches in the past that have dealt with 'balance issues' instead of letting the game develop organically, with cool solutions being found. It is either dealing with an issue by making a specific counter-unit stronger, or removing utility and cool functionality that the community has found.

1.'Ghost snipe is too powerful against Zerg lategame. Nerfed.' - Now it's (for the most part) ONLY used to directly counter templar. This cool use of ghosts, while perhaps overly potent in lategame TvZ is now gone, the playerbase figured a way to use the ghost in a way not prescribed by Blizzard, and it's removed.
2. '1/1/1 too strong, buff Immortal range' - 1/1/1 wasn't a fun period for anyone, but this just makes tank play in TvP even worse, plus makes Immortals, the hard counter to marauders and stalkers even more potent in that role. Players were figuring out the solution anyway, and the map-pool having the likes of XNC were why that build was so horrible to play against on ladder.

The other side of this particular grievance is mine is that the stuff that is broken from a design perspective, clearly and fundamentally isn't fixed. For example, Warpgate has been nerfed over and over again to try and fix PvP, but the elephant in the room is that Warpgates themselves are a ridiculous mechanic as they stand currently. They aren't a strategic decision, there is no tradeoff. Warpgates are better than standard Gateways in every conceivable way, they produce faster than gateways, and can bypass huge distances on the map. Additionally, their potency when used in timing attacks has nerfed unsupported gateway armies to the extent that Protoss generally has to either all-in or turtle into deathballs 9/10 games.

Browder has stated that he wants to breakup deathballs. Warpgate and the path that that design decision has railroaded Protoss down is a direct contributory factor as to why Protoss Deathballs exist as the primary playstyle of the race.

Now with HoTS
1. 'We don't like Tank/positional play in TvT, we'll give you a unit that lets you A-move tanks and hard counter them'

Warhounds, and the preview vid pissed me off personally because they are clear indicators that Blizzard have really learned nothing. Its a clear continuation of this ridiculous design philosophy that is pursued by the Devs either through wilful ignorance, or a desire to cater to the casual gamers that plague many a franchise. The stats may change of course, and it can't shoot up, but that really seems to be the only weakness of the unit when coupled with battlehellions. It's a boring, vanilla, unit specifically design to kill another type of unit with no real difficulties in how its used.

TLDR Bitching on these issues are legitimate because the HoTS previews and interviews that I have seen thus far indicate that Blizzard do not understand their own game, and do not understand the desires of the majority of the relatively serious playerbase. Dustin Browder does not like the positional nuance of tank-based TvT, so he's pretty much gutting it due to his own personal preferences and is showing a disregard for the playerbase. The Dev team aren't tackling the big issues that many people have with the game and their root contributory causes.

WC3 is a good example, Reign of Chaos and The Frozen Throne are two nearly unrecognisible games. The devs had the balls to really redesign a lot of the game, and similar balls were expected/hoped for with HoTS but there is NO evidence of this occurring. THIS is why people are pissed off, if there was evidence they'd been experimenting with the fundamentals of the game and fucked up, people would at least give them credit for trying.

Unit interaction, and what counters what are only band-aid fixes on a game with fundamental problems.

On August 15 2012 12:41 Frenzia wrote:


Too long, didn't read. Did you actually listen to the commentary in the Battle Reports? Alpha build, not final. Derp

On August 15 2012 11:49 Wombat_NI wrote:

(Big post btw, sorry I got into rant mode!)
+ Show Spoiler +

On August 15 2012 12:51 Wombat_NI wrote:

Oh I wasn't aware it was Alpha build, thanks for your astoundingly informative post.....