[Poll] What do you want changed in SC2 the MOST? - Page 18

SC2 suffers from a few problems right now, and I will propose a solution to address two of them.

Some abilities are stronger in the lower league than they are in the higher leagues, this means that certain phases of the game are disproportionately difficult. As a result of this, low league games are often frustrating, and the learning curve is sometimes unreasonably steep.
Terran has a higher skill cap than protoss and zerg. This means that whenever terran players like Taeja get really good, the entire race gets nerfed to balance it out. If a protoss or zerg player gets equally good, there's no where to put the skill, so they're still about as good as they would if they were worse players.


I want you to consider AOE spells. The micro required to trade well against AOE casters is not in proportion to the micro required to use AOE casters. There is also very little in terms of mistakes you can make while casting AOE spells. Consequences:

* AOE spells are disproportionately good in the low leagues where unit control is dodgy.
* Late game composition tends to feature large numbers of casters in a big blob. Zerg mass infestors, terran mass ghosts against P, protoss mass HTs
* AOE spells need to be weak to account for their spammability.


This was not a problem in Brood War. The difference is that SC2 has something called smart casting, means when you cast a spell, the AI selects the closest unit and has it cast it once. In Brood War, all units casted the spell on the same spot. It's a lot like cloak or burrow works on multiple unit selections now.

My solution to the problems above is to revert to the Brood War behavior for AOE spells (fungal, EMP, storm) but not summoning or single target spells.

Wait! Hear me out! Now, most simplification is good. It makes the game easier. I don't want to remove multiple unit selection or command center rallying. Smart casting for AOE spells is a false simplification that actually makes things more difficult, especially for low league players.

So, a consequence analysis

Players of all skill levels can still use the spells.
* It is possible to mismicro casters. (Important for the spectator experience)
* Micro mistakes are less devstating. (Important for the spectator experience)
* It becomes harder to spam AOE spells, and this scales well with skill level: As you learn to spam the spells with the added micro required, the opponent learns to dodge them. In the really high skill levels, the spells work largely as they have always worked.
* Storm still works against bio, mutas, lings, what have you, but you can't carpet half the screen in it.
* Fungal still works as it used to, but it becomes slightly harder to chain and apply to an entire army (although infestors are so big it's a small change).
* EMP still works against casters, but it's harder to EMP an entire protoss army.
* The skill cap is raised for all races


To compensate for the increased difficulty of casting the spells, they may require some rebalancing. Probably an increase in radius and a decrease in DPS.

Removing smart-casting for AOE spells would increase the skill cap for all races (spectators go yay!), make mass caster armies less viable (spectators go yay!), make blob armies with a bunch of casters less viable (spectators go yay!) all while reducing the disproportionate amount of micro required to deal with casters in the lower leagues (casuals go yay!)