Call to Action: Balance Testing (2012/11/20) - Page 26

On November 21 2012 20:54 Clbull wrote:
Here's the way I see it

Fungal change. Partially a thumbs-down.

Reasoning:

It's great that fungal growth may no longer affect archons, a unit that already has damage bonuses against every single unit in the Zerg arsenal out of the ideological lack of mechanical units for the Zerg.

However, this is going to greatly imbalance PvZ in favour of Protoss. As STParting already showed, the immortal/sentry all in is already the go-to tactic for Protoss, having achieved something stupid like a 60-0 win rate in PvZ because of it and having very few professionals capable of even countering the push even when they *know* it's coming. Unless they change the Sentry to a non-Psionic unit, this means that the one unit that could unanimously close the timing for the Sentry Immortal all in would suddenly be useless. How are you going to fungal all those sentries and shut them down quick when Sentries are immune to Fungal?

The only other solution would be Mutalisks but a lot of Protosses are quickly discovering that warping in Stalkers is a very powerful option against virtually anything. And with 7 gateways, you can warp in ALL THE STALKERS.

In all seriousness, I think the Fungal change would be good if Medivacs were considered Psionic and Sentries weren't. Because this is going to empower mid and late game Protoss so hard. When a 4-sentry drop cannot be shut down at all because of good forcefields and the inability to fungal the sentries, or when a few key fungals cannot shut down that group of fucking pain-in-the-dick sentries that are forcefielding your ramp whilst the entire protoss army is raping your natural AND main with no resistance whatsoever... it's going to be a bigger fuck-you to the Zerg.

On the plus side, at least it affects DTs and Ghosts, meaning that more mobile detection will actually be mandatory instead of two potentially late game cloaked units being ROFLstomped. One theoretical tactic would be to snipe all the Overseers, cloak ghosts and then let it rip upon the Zerg army.

Plus in terms of TvZ, imagine a macrohard Terran with about 30 marauders and 30+ Ghosts against a ling bane infestor brood lord army?

How would I change it:

I'd change what units are considered Psionic and not Psionic. I'd make Medivacs and Ravens Psionic and remove the Psionic tag from Sentries to balance this out.

Seeker Missile change: HEAVY thumbs down

Reasoning:

It's simply not a good enough change. Seeker Missile is such a useless, underpowered ability that it's shocking that Blizzard hasn't either just scrapped it or actually done something with it. First of all, let's relay some basic facts about splash damage.

Fungal Growth, deals 30 damage (7.5 dps) or 40 to Armored (10 dps) over 4 seconds and ROOTS the enemy. Costs 75 Energy. A single Fungal does 0.46666666667 points of damage per energy consumed per unit. This value doesn't change because you cannot "partially dodge" a fungal. Any unit hit by it is fucked either way.

Psionic Storm, deals 80 damage (20 dps) over 4 seconds. Costs 75 Energy. A single psistorm does 1.0666666667 points of damage per energy consumed per unit. This value does fluctuate depending on how well your opponent micros and partially dodges storm. This still makes Psionic Storm the most efficient damage dealing spell by far. Even if you dodge over 50% of it, it will deal about the same damage as a Fungal Growth.

And now to the piece of shit known as Seeker Missile. Based on this chart ripped straight from Liquipedia., it does 100 damage right in its epicentre, 50 damage near the epicentre and 25 damage about 1.5 Range away from the epicentre. To call Seeker Missile a shitty ability is an understatement.

Seeker Missile costs 125 Energy. This means that right in its epicentre it only deals 0.8 damage per energy consumed. Plus it will only hit a large amount of units due to retarded micro, let's say if you clump up mutalisks. it won't even one-shot them! Even from a range that is literally dry-humping the exact pinpoint of the explosion, Seeker Missile will still only deal 0.4 damage per energy point. And when you go further from that? It's like comparing somebody with a nine-inch schlong to somebody with a two-inch micropenis his penis amputated.

And what if I were to tell you that some fast units can outright dodge it and make your 125 Energy fucking useless? Or that the ability has a minuscule 5 Range compared to Fungal Growth's 9, Feedback's 9, and Psionic Storm's 9? Meaning that you can actually get hard-countered by fungal spam and not land a SINGLE Seeker Missile upon Infestors? Or that one feedback can INSTAGIB a Raven?

How would I change it:

I would consider two options, either

1. A gigantic buff to Seeker Missile, including the following patch changes:

- Cost decreased to 75 Energy, from 125 Energy.
- No upgrade required to use.
- The damage of the ability being changed to deal 100 damage to its target and 40 damage as splash damage in a similar radius to Fungal Growth/Psionic Storm. Of course it would be lower because Terran have higher
- The speed of the projectile has been increased so it can no longer be dodged but rather gives the opponent time to react so that they can spread units out.
- The range increased to 9, from 5.

or 2. Remove Seeker Missile and give Ravens a Brood War ability.... Irradiate

On November 21 2012 21:43 DarkLordOlli wrote:


Just lost all credibility.

Immortal/Sentry is not affected by this change as it hits before infestors. If it hits any later, you can just overrun it with roach/ling anyway. You make more static defense vs warp prisms. DTs not being affected is simply COOL and might just make them a useful unit. The big thing is archons/HTs and the possibility to do feedback drops on an infestor army. At least those are my impressions so far.

On November 21 2012 21:54 DarkLordOlli wrote:


And why exactly would I ever immortal all in against 2 base infestor? The immortal all in is supposed to work because of the greedy gasless third zerg takes in ZvP. Anyone who immortal all ins against a 2 base zerg does deserve to lose. Pretty much any 2 base zerg build beats immortal/sentry.