Call to Action: Balance Testing (2012/11/20) - Page 63

On November 23 2012 02:01 Cybren wrote:

There's a certain point where the games mechanics and lore become so disconnected we may as well remove all the graphics and names and just have polygons of different shapes and colors. When things stop making internal,resonant sense
1) newer players are annoyed and confused
2) casual players get less "into it"
3) the game becomes more and more abstract and arbitrary

On November 23 2012 02:11 goiflin wrote:


Lore wise, why would the zerg phase out the defiler and scourge? You should still be able to build those.

The campaign is where the game makes sense lore-wise. Multiplayer should be more about balance.

On November 23 2012 01:46 Assirra wrote:

I think this is what a lot of people don't seem to understand.
Take away dropp harass defense and what do you think the zerg will do?
Turtle even more then now to get that deathball of infestor/broodlord.

On November 23 2012 02:00 ShamW0W wrote:
Full Disclosure:
+ Show Spoiler +

Looking at the proposed changes I can appreciate that Blizzard is listening to the community and attempting to address some of the larger issues, mainly the Infestor and late-game Zerg. However, looking at the proposed changes I think the negative consequences of the changes as a whole will outweigh the positives (for instance, it will strongly encourage Zergs to play more of a turtle style with static defense which is not an exciting style to watch or play). I'm sure Blizzard knows this and intends to iterate on the changes, so with that I'd like to propose changes that I think fix the core of the issues at hand while removing a lot of the risks presented in the current patch. Balance is an iterative process but I believe this is a better starting point than the current proposal:

Top Issues

Infestor is too good as a general purpose unit, it should be more of a support caster similar to the High Templar and Ghost.
• Infestors are good in ANY composition. They should have a role in the Zerg arsenal rather than the tech that Zergs rush to and mass every game

Zerg late game composition is better than Protoss and Terran (Infestor/Broodlord/Corruptor)
• The Terran answer toCorruptor/Broodlord should be mass Vikings but Infestors are simply too good against them
Protoss cannot engage the army directly without landing a Vortex which creates uninteresting, very one-sided battles



Zerg

Infestor:

Fungal Growth no longer does damage
• A 4-second area of effect stun is powerful enough in its own right, no need for this spell to do the damage that it does. Chain fungals are also not interesting from a player or user perspective.
• If this becomes too large of a nerf then Fungal Growth could have an effect similar to Corruption that amplifies damage. This at least maintains the role of the Infestor being a support unit and requires the Zerg to have other units to make the Infestor viable.

Infested Terrans take any damage that was received while an egg
• Infested Terrans have become useful as tanks (damage soakers, not siege tanks) in high-level games which makes no sense and is fairly imbalanced.
• If ITs are somehow considered too good still consider increasing the energy cost to 40 from 25. (lowers the number of ITs a full-energy Infestor can spawn to 5 from 8)

Fungal Growth no longer affects air units
• Dangerous change for sure and changes ZvX matchups significantly.
• Stargate, Spire, and Starport play are all buffed in ZvX.
• All types of drop play are buffed in ZvX
• Helps weaken the late game Zerg composition at the cost of making Zerg extremely vulnerable to mass air. To make a change like this the Zerg must receive a buff against massed air in some other area.


Hydralisk:

New togglable Split-Shot mode added (similar to Medusa from DOTA)
•When toggled the Hydralisk goes into Split-Shot mode immediately
•Toggling of Split-Shot mode has a 5-second cooldown
on Split-Shot mode the Hydralisk launches 3 Projectiles that each do 50% of their base damage
• Improves Zerg Hydra compositions vs. mass air and improves the Hydralisk vs. the powerful Sentry/Immortal all-in
• Hydras may be viable vs. massed Bio

As with any subjective proposal I'm sure there are holes in my logic but I'm always happy to have constructive discussion that hopefully leads to a more compelling and well-balanced game.

On November 23 2012 02:28 Big J wrote:


The zerglings took their revenge and killed all the defilers for being treated like snacks. Kerrigan tried to solve this problem by making zerglings weaker, but they still managed to kill all the defilers she let the swarm produce. At some point she just gave up upon the idea of building defilers.
Makes sense to me

On November 23 2012 02:55 Arco wrote:

By StarCraft 3, Swarm Hosts will have killed off all the Zerg Buildings with Consume, eliminating them from the conflict.

StarCraft 3 is Terran vs Protoss only.

On November 23 2012 02:47 CYFAWS wrote:



applying both of your fungal nerfs at the same time will make fungal absolutely horrible, no?

otherwise nice nerfs and thinking

and the medusa hydra, at first i WTF'ed and then i started thinking this is absolutely awesome! I'd say it would need a +2 upgrade scaling even more with splitshot but otherwise, really smart idea imo. Would also be a good opportunity to give the hydra a less bonerkilling attack animation

On November 23 2012 03:15 ShamW0W wrote:


The nerfs to Fungal would definitely be significant, and possibly too much, but I feel like it's a good starting point for balance iteration. The ability to completely restrict the movement of enemy units is still a very strong ability imo, especially when Zerg can take advantage of the ability with units like Banelings, Ultras, and HOPEFULLY the improved Hydralisk.

If the changes were too extreme I think there are alternate buffs that could be made to Fungal Growth which would leave the ability as a support ability rather than it's current "one-size fits all" implementation. Examples: Increase stun duration, Fungal amplifies damage to stunned units, Units that are Fungaled have reduced LOS while Fungaled.

On November 23 2012 03:18 Henk wrote:


Last sentence: Viper.

On November 23 2012 02:37 convention wrote:

So the patch makes infestor/BL bad at stopping drops. So that implies that zerg will now turtle to infestor/BL more often because of how strong drops are now? How does that make sense. In my opinion, because of how difficult WP will be to stop with infestor/BL, zerg will now have a group a lings, maybe a few mutas as well, as a mobile defense. That takes supply away from the mass infestor/BL army, which is a good thing! It lets the other races go from having a 10% chance of killing the zerg deathball, to maybe a 20% chance if they can do enough damage with drops. It also gives protoss a chance to take out the infestors in the zerg army with HT in WP drops with feedback. With the infestors dead, then it might be possible to chip away at the BLs. That would be awesome to see. This is definitely, without a doubt, a step in the right direction.

On November 23 2012 03:08 aZealot wrote:
So much Zerg qq...

Any more feedback from people who have actually played the map? Specifically Protoss?

Most of the feedback thus far, and it's a little thin on the ground, appears to be Terran.

On November 23 2012 03:45 Big J wrote:
Well, I'm not good with Protoss, but I'm experimenting with DT Prism in ZvP. Basically they all die to losing a crucial base at some point, but it's nonsense, they all have no clue how to deal with it or don't even know that fungal doesn't work against DT/Prism any longer... I guess this will need a few months of Pro-Testing until we know what is possible and what isn't.
Still gonna post the replays, to show you what I mean...

On November 23 2012 03:51 Crawdad wrote:


They have no idea what to do because the Infestor filled a crucial hole.

Hydras and Ultras need buffs, if not in WoL, in HotS.