Call to Action: Balance Testing (2012/11/20) - Page 82

On November 25 2012 11:24 Whitewing wrote:
A lot of people are complaining that sentries will be too strong without fungal effecting them, but I've got a couple rebuttals for discussion.

Firstly, it's too binary: Yes, you can complain that FF isn't interesting (I think FF's actually are interesting, as one of the few micro-reducing spells in the game that actually can have micro responses in the form of dropships or burrow-movement, although frankly FF isn't interesting in other situations. It's a cool spell and has many applications, but suffers from a bit of binary issues itself) and that's valid, as it's your opinion, but I don't think there's anything interesting in "I got infestors out, now all sentries are instantly worthless". Sentries go from being powerful force-multiplier units to being a waste of gas and supply the moment infestors hit the field. The moment you engage, they are all going to die. That's harsh, and the worst part is that there is nothing protoss can do about it. Sentries have to be out at the start of the fight to be useful (warp prism micro on sentries to protect them isn't particularly useful given that you'd miss your window for good FF's, and warp prisms are a prime target for zerg anyway) in engagements, there's pretty much no way to protect them vs. infestors. One moment the unit goes from being scary to becoming an expensive paperweight a moment later. There's pretty much no other unit interaction like that in the game, where units you've made become almost useless the moment your opponent unlocks tech. It's not like zerg finishes a baneling nest and then terran bio becomes worthless, or terran invalidates zealots because he build a couple banshees.

Secondly, fungal isn't the only zerg response to forcefields and sentries. There was a long period of time where baneling drops specifically to kill sentries was standard. There are players in GSL (like Symbol) who have showcased roach drop builds on the army to defeat forcefields. Roach burrow has always been a valid tactic for weakening the power of forcefield. Zerg has options, yes they are harder then clicking 'f' and then clicking on the sentries a few times, but they are hardly invalid.

Thirdly, extending the usefulness lifespan of sentries will extend the mid-game in PvZ. This makes hive tech rushes less viable, which frankly is a good thing, since protoss can't really attack without going all-in due to the strength of zerg defense (either you commit everything to attack or you won't do any damage at all really). Most PvZ's are uninteresting because it's either a 2 base all-in from toss, an all-in right before broods pop, or zerg rushing to infestor/BL successfully and then pushing. Extending the mid-game will allow for more damage to be done on both sides and create different situations and positions going into the late-game. This gives players more time to use their skill to weaken the opponent and improve their position (remember when MKP was rolling protosses in GSL by mass attacking and expanding so that protoss couldn't expand or max out?). This alone might solve the problem of infestor/broodlord being unreasonably strong: it'll still be strong, but allowing for the mid-game to be extended might allow for a skilled protoss to put himself into a position to transition into a more adequate response.

EDIT: I also want to point out, that with HOTS coming soon, people complaining about Zerg being unable to force a fight or push a mid-game advantage is off, swarm hosts should allow for that, as will vipers (Vipers are vastly underestimated for sieging a position, blinding cloud is obsene).

(For the record, I'm in the camp of nerfing sentries/FF and buffing the other gateway units would be a good thing, but that seems unlikely, so this post is in that context)

On November 25 2012 15:11 m0ck wrote:
Zergs need tier 3 to fight the tier 1 and 2 of protoss and terran.

On November 25 2012 15:24 TheDwf wrote:

Absolutely untrue for ZvT, Zergs can crush Terran armies (Marines/Tanks or mech) convincingly with Lair tech, especially on creep, until the Tank count gets really high.

On November 25 2012 15:28 m0ck wrote:

Well, I wasn't talking at 80 supply, I figured that would be self-evident.

On November 25 2012 15:28 m0ck wrote:

Well, I wasn't talking at 80 supply, I figured that would be self-evident.

On November 25 2012 15:31 tuho12345 wrote:

actually Toss is the race that needs tier 3 the most. Without colossus, HTs or mothership they're just so weak. At least Zerg and Terran can outmacro or outnumber them. Abuse them with good plank and micro.

On November 25 2012 15:36 m0ck wrote:

I consider colossi and HT as tier two (as do I everything until hive) and mothership and carriers tier 3. If colossi and HT are considered tier 3, then of course my statement makes no sense

Zerg needs BL to fight the the protoss pre-mothership and carrier deathball, was my meaning.

On November 25 2012 15:40 tuho12345 wrote:

How could colossus and HTs are tier 2? What do you consider carrier then?
Mothership should be tier 3.5 cause they take forever to build and only 1 unit at a time.

On November 25 2012 04:03 IdrA wrote:

you cant downplay roro and curious and in the same breath call taeja and hero top tier.
theyre all really good, hero and taeja arent exactly ripping up gsl right now. they just look better because theyre on liquid and you're dumb.

a 4 zerg group also means 2 are guaranteed to advance. and the "tournament that didnt have any terrans" still has a terran in the top 4, and he knocked out another terran. so basically; shut the fuck up.

On November 25 2012 03:37 Survivor61316 wrote:

Youre going to have a better than two to on ratio of hydras (plus roaches and lings at least) against immortals because toss simply cant produce immortals that fast. And one immortal kills one hydra around a second later that it kills one roach, so youre wrong. And I'd love to know how ff can catch the at least +1 range hydras over roaches (they can get a more spread out concave with less in a given area).

On November 25 2012 03:37 Survivor61316 wrote:
And this is what i was responding too..
immortal sentry is forced to attack before infestors can come out because infestors shut it down. without that threat it can sit in the center of the map building units/mana essentially until max and theres nothing zerg can really do about it. once theres 4-5 immortals and infinite forcefield roach ling is literally useless. on a map where you can threaten while controlling counter attacks delayed sentry immortal allins will be essentially invincible if the fungal change goes through.

So I was responding to a delayed toss push where the zerg has already had time to tech, because before that it would be a "normal" timing, and no different from now. If you give protoss the time to max, you should have gotten off "just" roach ling a long time ago. You can build infestors to root the immortals before they push out, you can build hydras to counter the immortals (better than roaches) when they get to your base, or/and you can build mutas to go in and pick off sentries while theyre sitting there doing nothing, as the push generally has little to no anti-air by design. There are so many things a zerg can do to counter this push still as long as they properly scout it, they have just grown to lazy and complacent on using one unit and one spell to do it that they havent had to practice/come up with and other ideas.

On November 25 2012 13:15 Rossie wrote:
I
And now Zergs are dominating to the same extent that Terran ever was.

On November 25 2012 19:10 Astro-Penguin wrote:
Hey guys Protoss player here and I actually have been thinking about this fungal not affecting psionic units change and have come to the conclusion that they cannot allow sentries to be immune to fungal If anyone is familiar with a particular GSL game of Seed vs Sniper on Abysall City you'll recall that Seed simply maxed out on Immortal Sentry and pressured Sniper enough to the point where he was unable to tech comfortably into Infestors at the risk of losing without having enough units due to Seed being parked right outside of his front door constantly poking. As a result Sniper ended up losing as his Roach Ling composition simply wasn't on par when the engagement was finally forced due to a lack of ways to deal with FF, this got me to thinking what the PvZ matchup will look like if the risk factor from simply massing up on 2 base Immortal Sentry is taken away. Now you may ask what is the risk, the risk is simply getting your sentry number fungal-ed and losing a huge chunk of gas and forcefields allowing a Zerg to clean a Protoss army up efficiently with Roach Ling. Do note that if Sniper judged the situation well enough he would of had an opportunity to make enough Infestors to win the game by taking Sentries out of the equation. (Still it was a tough choice to make)

On November 25 2012 18:14 ElBlanco wrote:


Go back and have a look at the numbers when terran were dominating. 20 players in code S out of 32 and something 6 of the top 8. This season where zerg are apparently just as dominant they had less players than terran in code S, 2 more in the round of 16 and equal numbers in the round of 8 and 4. They also are heavily outnumbered in code A. How is that the same level of dominance?

On November 25 2012 19:47 pmp10 wrote:
Did anyone post any impression from the test map?
The discussion seems to have drifted away from the idea of actually trying out the proposed changes.