Call to Action: Balance Testing (2012/11/20) - Page 87

On November 26 2012 07:14 Crosswind wrote:


Do any of these changes have anything to do with countering Colossus play?

To summarize the proposed changes:
Fungal doesn't hit air.
Lair-tech hydra speed upgrade.
Maybe bonus damage for hydras vs. light or air.

I'm not seeing how that requires vipers or any other HotS stuff to work.

-Cross

On November 26 2012 07:11 Ziggitz wrote:


It wouldn't work, a single fungal against a phoenix is half of it's shield hitpoints. That means that the phoenixes would have to be under fungal for 4 seconds, get hit with it again, and then get hit with it again 4 seconds later to even start taking permanent damage, and they would be able to easily split up after the first fungal, to prevent them all from getting hit the second time. What would happen is you sit an infestor in a mineral line with a spore, the phoenixes show up, eat the fungal, pick up and kill the infestor, go to town on the drones and in the end one phoenix that got hit by the spore and the fungal takes a little bit of actual damage, i.e. pretty much what would happen with fungal couldn't hit air at all.



Bonus damage on the hydra to light wouldn't work. Phoenixes pick them up and kill them so fast that they rarely get to do any damage before dying. One of two things usually happen when hydras fight phoenixes head on.

1.) The hydras evaporate as they get picked up and picked off one by one extremely quickly.
2.) There are so many hydras that the phoenixes are dying before they can pick up and kill hydras and they evaporate.

There is no middle ground here. What adding +1 or 2 damage to light for them would do is reduce the amount of hydras need to evaporate phoenixes a little bit, but does not deter the protoss from massing phoenixes and forces the Zerg down a delaying tech path that won't actually do anything to defend against it because as soon as all those hydras are in one spot the phoenixes just go somewhere else. It's like paying 50 minerals and 25 gas for a stimless marine against mutas that are faster, do more damage and have 50% more hitpoints. But it doesn't mean that a decent group of phoenixes will ever trade badly with a number of hydras not big enough to wipe them all out. Which means if you can kill them, they can go elsewhere, and if you can't then all your hydras die. It's not like with marines where 10 stimmed marines will die to 10 mutas but the mutas will pay dearly, it's a fairly binary outcome instead, which is bad for the game.

The issue with what you're talking about has to do with talking that early game phoenix harrass and extending it into the late game with little to no additional risk or investment. We're talking about a phoenix that was designed to kill 4-5 drones and force a spore now killing 8 - 10 drones over the course of the game and forcing 2-3 spores each because the Zerg doesn't have infestors to deter it. That WILL break balance.

On November 26 2012 07:18 LuckoftheIrish wrote:


A Protoss making Collosi steamrolls a Zerg making Hydras. Unless the Viper is in there to pull them out of position.

On November 26 2012 07:26 Crosswind wrote:


Hydra Den is cheaper than stargate. I don't understand how a reactive hydra den, plus hydras (which do well against phoenixes for cheaper) puts a zerg player farther behind against a colossus follow up. He will have spent less resources, and will generally have more economy to spend at that point. What, exactly, is to stop him from building the exact same army as he would build previous, but with a few extra hydras, as 'toss has a few extra phoenixes?

-Cross

On November 26 2012 07:45 Protosnake wrote:


One of the big reason why people pick infestor as the main AA is because they are not specialized, they are useful against everything
Let's say Hydra are buffed and are picked to be the main AA in the game, they'll be good against air, then protoss will switch colossi, push and they will be dead supply
Infestor on the other hand, hold their ground against pretty much anything, spine+fungal is a deadly defense

A zerg cannot reliably go for a heavy hydra comp then drop the spire and pop 10 corruptor to be somewhat safe against Colossi, they need the viper for it to be more than just a AA bot

On November 26 2012 07:26 Crosswind wrote:


Hydra Den is cheaper than stargate. I don't understand how a reactive hydra den, plus hydras (which do well against phoenixes for cheaper) puts a zerg player farther behind against a colossus follow up. He will have spent less resources, and will generally have more economy to spend at that point. What, exactly, is to stop him from building the exact same army as he would build previous, but with a few extra hydras, as 'toss has a few extra phoenixes?

-Cross

On November 26 2012 07:50 Crosswind wrote:


Hey, it seems like you're confusing "Make enough hydras to counter his harass" with "Make a hydra-heavy comp". If I see phoenix, I make a hydra den and roughly match the phoenix resources invested. We have micro wars between hydras and phoenix, to see whether or not the harass is successful. At the end, we've both expended roughly the same amount of resources, given equal micro.

So. If we're both X resources behind, how do I die to a colossus push? I'll still have infestors and whatever else I would have gotten out if I'd gone straight for infestors and he'd gone straight for colossi.

-Cross

On November 26 2012 07:54 Acritter wrote:
As a Protoss, let me tell you this in no uncertain terms: Hydralisks are bad against Phoenix. 6 Phoenix will kill 6 Hydralisks without taking hull damage. 6 Phoenix will kill 8 Hydralisks and lose one or two Phoenix. 6 Phoenix will cripple a squad of 12 Hydralisks. This is assuming the Hydralisks are perfectly clumped. If the Protoss corners a small group of them moving across the map, they can kill them with no losses. A Zerg cannot produce much more than 12 Hydralisks without risking an autoloss to the first Colossus. Given that gas is the limiting factor at this point in the game, every Hydralisk the Zerg builds is two Roaches they do not. This means that when the attack comes, it will be a very small amount of Roaches and a few Hydralisks that can be picked off very quickly by the Phoenix. This is a serious problem with the Hydralisk, and it's why I'm never scared of them outside of some Ling/Hydra all-ins. In any other situation, seeing a Zerg build a Hydralisk Den means you've already won.

On November 26 2012 07:58 Protosnake wrote:


I just said why, because Hydra get murdered by colossi
Protoss can just stream phoenix and since Hydra arent very good the zerg will have to respond with a pretty heavy Hydra comp, 10 wont do the job against 10 phoenix, especially considering the phoenix are 10 time more mobile

When the big push arive, Phoenix arent useless, they can harass, force the zerg out of position or even kill the Hydras
Hydra are slow, costly and will get destroyed by the colossus without being able to retaliate, they are cost inefficient, dead supply

This is obviously considering WoL state, where viper doesnt exist

On November 26 2012 07:50 Crosswind wrote:


Hey, it seems like you're confusing "Make enough hydras to counter his harass" with "Make a hydra-heavy comp". If I see phoenix, I make a hydra den and roughly match the phoenix resources invested. We have micro wars between hydras and phoenix, to see whether or not the harass is successful. At the end, we've both expended roughly the same amount of resources, given equal micro.

So. If we're both X resources behind, how do I die to a colossus push? I'll still have infestors and whatever else I would have gotten out if I'd gone straight for infestors and he'd gone straight for colossi.

-Cross

On November 26 2012 08:08 Crosswind wrote:
So instead, I say, as both a Zerg and Protoss player, that I agree with you! Hydras need a buff vs. air in general. But they're not super-far away. As Idra observed, a speed upgrade and maybe some damage would do fine.

-Cross

On November 26 2012 08:12 kiklion wrote:
If hydra's had that much speed off creep, they may upset balance in ZvT where half the map is covered in creep.

On November 26 2012 08:17 Crosswind wrote:


So, there seems to be a common thread in non-pro comments here:

HEY, this thing that nobody uses ever might become overpowered.

Look, I'm all for theorycrafting. But generally, something is not used because it is underpowered. Powering it up is never, necessarily, a bad thing. I'm super-excited for the day that ZvT starts to involve Hydras.

To the bevy of phoenix v. hydra complainers - Yeah. We need to make hydras better. They are used in no professional non-ZvZ games now. If we make them better, they will do better versus phoenixes. This seems sorta straightforward?

-Cross

On November 26 2012 08:08 Crosswind wrote:


Okay. So I wrote a post detailing the exaggeration going on here. Because you are exaggerating. A lot. But then I thought "Hey, Cross, you and this guy don't really disagree so much. You think that Hydras need a buff, and so does the rest of starcraft. Your last 5 posts say as much."

So instead, I say, as both a Zerg and Protoss player, that I agree with you! Hydras need a buff vs. air in general. But they're not super-far away. As Idra observed, a speed upgrade and maybe some damage would do fine.

-Cross

On November 26 2012 08:12 kiklion wrote:
If hydra's had that much speed off creep, they may upset balance in ZvT where half the map is covered in creep.

On November 26 2012 07:26 Crosswind wrote:


Hydra Den is cheaper than stargate. I don't understand how a reactive hydra den, plus hydras (which do well against phoenixes for cheaper) puts a zerg player farther behind against a colossus follow up. He will have spent less resources, and will generally have more economy to spend at that point. What, exactly, is to stop him from building the exact same army as he would build previous, but with a few extra hydras, as 'toss has a few extra phoenixes?

-Cross

On November 26 2012 08:29 Acritter wrote:

Last I checked, the HotS upgrade gave Hydralisks equal speed on and off Creep. I still don't think it will help, but it's good to have the facts straight.

On November 26 2012 08:11 DusTerr wrote:

Hydras also cost half the gas of Phoenix...

A Terran that make too many Vikings vs colossi will get rolled by the quick archon/ht army... Why should Zerg get the only multi purpose AA with no downside?

On November 26 2012 08:36 kiklion wrote:


It brings them up to 2.75 off creep. It keeps their on creep speed the same at 3.375 (actually slightly less if liquipedia is to be trusted, but It's negligible). I also didn't realize that they were talking about the HotS speed upgrade just at the lair level, my apologies.

On November 26 2012 08:26 kiklion wrote:


The issue also lies with the binary nature of grav beam. With smaller numbers where the hydra's can't kill the phoenix's before the spell goes off, the phoenix's can kill the hydras without taking damage (shield regens) since unit's can't attack while beamed.

I did not mean for the possible OP nature of speedy hydras in ZvT to be a negative, just wanted to see if anyone had a thought as to if it would affect the match up greatly, or if speed isn't the reason why zerg don't currentlly use hydra;s in ZvT.

I think that if the hydra speed buff makes it fast enough that they aren't a complete waste against collosus death balls, then using hydra's as a main ground to air unit for zerg can be done. Right now, you can go hydra to hold of phoenix's, but you are just delaying your death when the deathball comes as you cannot control the position when half of your army is fast and the squishy ones are slow.

So I do see speed making hydras useful in the mid-game, but I don't see how it will help fight off phoenix's when the issue is the binary nature of grav beam making it either one sided for phoenixs or one sided for hydralisks. If we consider Hydralisks to be the counter to phoenix's for zerg, like marines are to muta's, then phoenix's should not want to fight Hydra's unless they vastly out number the hydra's.