Call to Action #2: November 30 Balance Testing - Page 36

On December 01 2012 22:44 Insoleet wrote:


You forgot something : the buff happened at the time terran discovered the triple CC build. Which zerg had to counter blindly by attacking with roaches without even knowing if the terran was doing triple CC or not.

That was not balanced at all.

Thats why blizzard said : ok now, as terran can macro up safely, zerg will macro up safely too. Its justice.

The problem is not queen patch, terran just play macro now and its ok. The problem is the fungle in TvZ which is breaking the game (too much punishment for not splitting your marines for 1 second) and IT in PvZ (were 25 infestors can spawn a 200 units army to support his broods...)

On December 01 2012 21:45 Frankenberry wrote:
The raven change doesn't really solve anything tbh. Its a small buff, that wont really change endgame significantly tbh. I might be wrong. Time will tell x)

I feel QXC, Darkforce and Todd gave some really spot on insight on the problems of PvZ and TvZ lategame (Episode 76, + Show Spoiler +)

Basically zerg's early and middle game naturally leads to a really strong endgame unit composition, while protoss and terran needs to make some huge tech switches (for instance into a lot of BC's with 3/3 upgrades, vikings and ravens) and these switches take to much time compared to the zerg tech switches. I dont see how the removal of an upgrade changes this fundamental mechanic

On December 01 2012 22:46 Teoita wrote:
It's really, really not about queens kiting.

Protoss pressure not being as effective at a high level is a combination of
1) timings being known far better by Zerg (4Gate zealot isn't nearly as good as it was one year ago for example),
2) the efficiency of Zerg units on creep against Protoss stuff without forcefields
3) the absolute need of about 6 fast sentries and one immortal on any build that plans to take a third safely (not as relevant anymore since Zergs prefer turtling to midgame pressure for obvious reasons, but still meaningful).
4) using sentries to pressure a Zerg is incredibly risky.

This means that there can not be a ZvP equivalent of the Terran's medivac timing in TvP, where if the P screws up or is being greedy he gets punished, otherwise the game can proceed evenly from there.

On December 01 2012 22:44 Insoleet wrote:


You forgot something : the buff happened at the time terran discovered the triple CC build. Which zerg had to counter blindly by attacking with roaches without even knowing if the terran was doing triple CC or not.

That was not balanced at all.

Thats why blizzard said : ok now, as terran can macro up safely, zerg will macro up safely too. Its justice.

The problem is not queen patch, terran just play macro now and its ok. The problem is the fungle in TvZ which is breaking the game (too much punishment for not splitting your marines for 1 second) and IT in PvZ (were 25 infestors can spawn a 200 units army to support his broods...)

On December 01 2012 22:58 Surriel wrote:


Are you sure you are not getting mixed up here? The 3 CCs build was only popularized after the queen patch as a way for Terran to catch up on economy with Zergs. I remember during this period a lot of experimentation also went into place mainly ultilizing the Banshees to combat creepspread. Of course there were players using the 3ccs build before the patch but it surely was not the bread and butter build.

Plus that is why in the queen patch they increase the overlord speed so that Zerg can scout these properly. You say Terran can just play macro now and I suppose that is true to a certain extent but there is no denying that patch was bad for the game seeing how it remove essentially all kinda early pressure the Terran can do. The first 10 mins of pretty much all games nowadays goes the same way and are pretty boring in general. Where is the diversity?

On December 01 2012 22:27 Wombat_NI wrote:

And hence why they're tough to balance. I believe infestors are imbalanced due to being too good, in too many roles, without corresponding weaknesses. Something like the marine, yeah it's a really really strong unit, especially in MKP's hands, but at least it's got a discernible weakness to AoE damage and AoE spells.

If we as a community can't even agree on why/to what degree they're imbalanced/flawed, why are we bitching at Blizzard's approach to them so much? That's what I don't understand. People are throwing out solutions, many of them good if they were potentially implemented, instinct tells me. However, changes that instinctively seem good, can have far-reaching effects.

I'd rather Blizzard take their sweet, sweet time if that is to get it right. If they don't change anything, or if their final changes that go into a patch (and not the test map) are terrible, then by all means bitch away folks! I'll be right there with you.

On December 01 2012 23:22 aksfjh wrote:

It's interesting, because you commented on infestor control earlier, which I think is a clear way in which infestors have become so good. So many times, 9+ months ago, we would watch infestors fungal, then herp-derp right into a tank/colossus line. If Zerg wanted 30 infestors, they would directly make 30 of them and not "collect" 30 from mid to late game.

I bring your attention to that specifically because you talk about marines and their weakness, AOE. The old counter to infestors, back in the early days of their usage, was the Zerg suiciding all of them into your army. There was nothing P or T particularly did to counter their usage. Now that Zerg isn't suiciding them into armies (and it's not a hard skill like marine splitting), there isn't a clear way to handle them. Fungal at range 9 stops the more mobile units from getting closer, and IT spam, and later BLs, prevent all units from getting closer.

So, the natural response is to draw upon counters of TvP, ghosts and HTs due to their ability to focus down casters with spells. But the dynamic is MUCH different against Z. Relying on HTs and ghosts doesn't have the same powerful upsides as infestors. Storms are much less effective against a highly mobile army that regenerates and has a ton of units with 120+ health. At least against Terran, stim does half the work of a storm anyways if they plan to dodge it. Ghosts against Zerg are just bad, no explanation is really needed. They're marginally good against infestors, and once those are gone, they should be dead to free up supply. Creating a similar supply of ghosts and HTs to take out infestors weaken your army too much, while infestors supplement their own army fantastically.

Really, the solution would be to allow "core" units to counter infestors better, improve other caster viability against Zerg as a whole (I don't like this solution), or nerf infestors so much that their role is to improve the strength of other Zerg units instead of do their job for them. The first option would likely require a straight up nerf to infestors, such as supply costs or range of their abilities. Harder to fungal bio, tanks, and stalkers or deploy IT unscathed if the range is 6 or 7. The second option would be hard to implement, since TvP would likely be affected by any change, and the changes can EASILY have a runaway effect on XvZ. The third option involves making infestor spells a lot worse, like nerfing IT and/or fungal. Nerfing eggs does this, as did the psionic change they dropped. However, something like removing (or severely nerfing) fungal damage and allowing it to only root and/or disable ability casting would greatly change their role as well.

On November 30 2012 11:12 Cyro wrote:
You cant kill eggs when they have 0 attack priority. Period. If there is a single zergling within attack range, every single unit you have, ranged, melee, trapped or otherwise will shoot at it and overkill it by thousands of damage before turning to shoot at eggs.

IT problem cant be solved by reducing the hp on eggs that dont have attack priority by 20%, im pretty embarassed for blizzard for even thinking that could have a notable effect.

On December 01 2012 23:52 ilbh wrote:
it's sad to see Blizzard balancing the game due to people's whine...

On December 01 2012 23:52 ilbh wrote:
it's sad to see Blizzard balancing the game due to people's whine...

On December 01 2012 23:41 cari-kira wrote:


this.
and more: 1 infestor can easily take out a complete base including workers in seconds while borrowed, this is not related to the HP of some eggs.
watching LoL getting balance patched nearly every week and being the most successful game at present, you can just wonder whats wrong with bliz approaching the balancing like walking on raw eggs.
JUST DO IT omg...

On December 01 2012 23:41 cari-kira wrote:


this.
and more: 1 infestor can easily take out a complete base including workers in seconds while borrowed, this is not related to the HP of some eggs.
watching LoL getting balance patched nearly every week and being the most successful game at present, you can just wonder whats wrong with bliz approaching the balancing like walking on raw eggs.
JUST DO IT omg...

On December 01 2012 22:58 Surriel wrote:


Are you sure you are not getting mixed up here? The 3 CCs build was only popularized after the queen patch as a way for Terran to catch up on economy with Zergs. I remember during this period a lot of experimentation also went into place mainly ultilizing the Banshees to combat creepspread. Of course there were players using the 3ccs build before the patch but it surely was not the bread and butter build.

On December 01 2012 23:52 ilbh wrote:
it's sad to see Blizzard balancing the game due to people's whine...