As the title states, Dignitas Apollo recently sat down and discussed a few different things with David Kim, lead balance designer at Blizzard. Here is the video:
To summarize what the interview states:
- Blizzard is receiving overall positive feedback and are being asked to leave the game as it is by many pros (mainly Koreans) - Blizzard wants to take things slow in terms of rolling out balance patches - They felt as if the Medivac Speed Boost is the biggest complained about issue in Starcraft - They are not going to roll our nerfs but they think it could get boring to see every TvZ as a mass drop fest if it is all that ever happens - Mech is fine, it just isn't being experimented with and that is less of a balance problem than it is a player problem - Swarm Host is biggest disappointment in terms of its lack of use. Decreasing burrow time or increasing the movement speed of Swarm Hosts could be potential solution
I hope I didn't leave anything out!
My apologies to those who are saying that Apollo is no longer a part of Team Dignitas. I wasn't sure and I double checked http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Apollo. The second line states "playing for and coaching for Team Dignitas."
I also apologize some other points that were made were: - Protoss recieved three units and the other races recieved two because the Tempest is very niche oriented and the mothership core is limited as well -They are taking into account the players and tournament desire to have a better map pool (specifically Apollo mentioning everyone's weariness towards Daybreak - Blizzard has sent three new maps to tournaments to recieve their opinions on the maps and make things new and fresh
I hope they do something about skytoss, and nerf widow mines. Medivacs are annoying but adding an energy cost/some kind of negative to the boost will easily solve this.
I dont think swarm hosts need damage. This isnt BW. And people need to stop wanting it to be. Reducing their size a tiny bit, burrow time, and movement speed would all make swarm hosts better. as well as reducing the cost of the upgrade for locusts.
Glad that Blizzard is taking their time before they take balance into their own hands. Please do not listen to the instant cries of imbalance most people have.
Next interview: please ask if Blizzard has put any more thought into changing the standard for resources in their maps, as well as if they are even discussing economy changes to SC2.
My thoughts: - widow mines are fine - boost needs some kind of cost/risk associated with it - void rays are still the same boring unit. Pros are still not target firing
Swarm Hosts need to be buffed ALOT. They are really bad vs anyone with any level of multi-tasking and micro. Anytime you see a Zerg start building Hosts you know he's gonna lose. Probably why you hardly see them at high-level play.
Bio and Stalkers just go around them and there is no way the Zerg player can respond in a timely fashion with Hosts. 3+ collosi or 5+ tanks shut down any number of locusts. They are just bad, bad, bad.
I would say make them less supply, move faster, unburrow faster, and locusts have a longer life span. I don't think locusts need to do more damage, that is one thing they are good at, if they can ever manage to hit the enemy army.
When korean pros say that the game is balanced it doesnt mean the same is true for "Joe Woodleague". Professionals can handle stuff more easily than casuals ... and the game should be FUN for everyone.
On April 11 2013 11:45 ElMeanYo wrote: Swarm Hosts need to be buffed ALOT. They are really bad vs anyone with any level of multi-tasking and micro. Anytime you see a Zerg start building Hosts you know he's gonna lose. Probably why you hardly see them at high-level play.
Bio and Stalkers just go around them and there is no way the Zerg player can respond in a timely fashion with Hosts. 3+ collosi or 5+ tanks shut down any number of locusts. They are just bad, bad, bad.
I would say make them less supply, move faster, unburrow faster, and locusts have a longer life span. I don't think locusts need to do more damage, that is one thing they are good at, if they can ever manage to hit the enemy army.
lol I disagree with you so hard on swarmhosts. Their good if zergs know how to use them and right now almost NOBODY does.
On April 11 2013 10:49 Aiios wrote: - They are not going to roll our nerfs but they think it could get boring to see every TvZ as a mass drop fest if it is all that ever happens
That's... weird. I mean, there are lots of drops, but no more than there were in the MMA TvZ era of WOL, and that was far from boring. IMO it's the opposite of boring now, in fact HotS TvZ is exciting in part thanks to speedivacs.
- Mech is fine, it just isn't being experimented with and that is less of a balance problem than it is a player problem
-_- Even against Protoss? He must mean, "Compositions made of a majority of units that come from the factory and starport can sometimes win against Protoss", which is sort of true. However, "Compositions based on the siege tank are viable against Protoss" is definitely still false.
Yea Siege tanks against protoss are still a losing money pit. In regards to TVZ, I think it's the most exciting match up with the tallest skill ceiling. Match ups more similar to TVP are not what we need at all. To the cat who said people need to stop wanting this to be brood war, that confuses me because that would be the best thing to happen to starcraft 2.
On April 11 2013 11:45 ElMeanYo wrote: Swarm Hosts need to be buffed ALOT. They are really bad vs anyone with any level of multi-tasking and micro. Anytime you see a Zerg start building Hosts you know he's gonna lose. Probably why you hardly see them at high-level play.
Bio and Stalkers just go around them and there is no way the Zerg player can respond in a timely fashion with Hosts. 3+ collosi or 5+ tanks shut down any number of locusts. They are just bad, bad, bad.
I would say make them less supply, move faster, unburrow faster, and locusts have a longer life span. I don't think locusts need to do more damage, that is one thing they are good at, if they can ever manage to hit the enemy army.
lol I disagree with you so hard on swarmhosts. Their good if zergs know how to use them and right now almost NOBODY does.
if no-one knows how to use swarmhosts correctly, how do you know if they are good when used by someone correctly?
On April 11 2013 11:45 ElMeanYo wrote: Swarm Hosts need to be buffed ALOT. They are really bad vs anyone with any level of multi-tasking and micro. Anytime you see a Zerg start building Hosts you know he's gonna lose. Probably why you hardly see them at high-level play.
Bio and Stalkers just go around them and there is no way the Zerg player can respond in a timely fashion with Hosts. 3+ collosi or 5+ tanks shut down any number of locusts. They are just bad, bad, bad.
I would say make them less supply, move faster, unburrow faster, and locusts have a longer life span. I don't think locusts need to do more damage, that is one thing they are good at, if they can ever manage to hit the enemy army.
lol I disagree with you so hard on swarmhosts. Their good if zergs know how to use them and right now almost NOBODY does.
if no-one knows how to use swarmhosts correctly, how do you know if they are good when used by someone correctly?
He is implying that he uses them correctly. Blade5555 is quite good but even if he uses swarm hosts "correctly" the opponent might night know how do deal with them correctly. If swarmhosts were used a lot more then maybe the metagame will evolve to a point where we can truly see if the unit is good or not. All we need is a GSL finalist to use swarmhosts a lot... something like a SwarmhostKingPrime.
On April 11 2013 11:22 KanoCoke wrote: Increase the supply requirements for swarm host by one, increase the number of locusts it spawns by one maybe?
3 supply is already a lot doesn't need to be 4 supply.
I wouldn't mind a buff to my beloved swarmhosts
Wouldn't it be worth 4 supply to have 2 locusts spawn per cycle for a single swarm host be good though? 12 supply for 6 locusts compared to 12 supply for 4 locusts per cycle isn't much at first glance, but the more swarm hosts you get, the better it is (24 supply for 12 locusts sounds better than 24 supply for 8 locusts, and so on). It's like spawning zerglings with ranged attack for free. Totally zerg-like in my opinion compared to what it was previously.
On April 11 2013 12:46 grunge wrote: Yea Siege tanks against protoss are still a losing money pit. In regards to TVZ, I think it's the most exciting match up with the tallest skill ceiling. Match ups more similar to TVP are not what we need at all. To the cat who said people need to stop wanting this to be brood war, that confuses me because that would be the best thing to happen to starcraft 2.
Yeah, I agree. Some things in BW were just great and should return.
One great thing from BW that should definitely return:
The way most air units (and some ground units too) can attack and move at the same time (and dance all over the place).
In terms of "dancing" air units can turn basically instantly (if you manually command them to move a certain direction) but if you a-move somewhere (and if they're not already facing the target they want to attack), then they'll decelerate and lose speed
This wasn't a "mindless rapid clicking mechanic" either, it requires attention and thought. It's simple to learn and fun to use mechanic (that is also hard to master).
They should increase the range of the locusts back to 3 and probably increase SHs move speed a little bit.
It's very disappointing that he didnt say anything about zergs air issues: bad anti-air, and broodlords not being viable again. You just can't win ZvP or ZvT air battle.
Good interview. Nice to hear they are paying close attention.
I wouldn't say Medivacs are overpowered, but making Afterburners cost Energy would make things a lot more interesting. Feedback would be to stop Medivacs from boosting, instead of always one-shotting them because they have so much energy. It may also make Caduceus Reactor get used once in a while.
Widow Mines should just scale better with Mech upgrades. (Less splash until +1 at least) Then you could even combine Mech/Air Attack upgrades just like Mech/Air Armor.
Swarm Hosts getting faster movement speed isn't a bad idea, but should be part of Locust Life upgrade. Burrow and Overlord Speed would be used more before Lair tech if they were 75 gas instead of 100. Blinding Cloud, however, is just a bad spell. Maybe have it affect Air but cut all unit Range in half?
Void Rays could require 5 seconds to get Armored bonus damage after activating Prismatic Alignment. They would have a weakness to sneak attacks, but still be strong if activated 5 seconds before battle.
I really wish there was an easier way to tell who casts Time Warps when watching a PvP. The MsC used to spin fast during Envision in beta.. be nice if they'd bring it back for Time Warp.
Adding GSL/Proleague maps to the ladder pool is the way to go... especially the new GSL maps are great.
Honestly i think they just need to get rid of enduring locusts upgrade, and allow them to come naturally with it.
Swarm Hosts are already an expensive, unit in cost and supply, not to mention you need a few of them before they are useful. Getting rid of that upgrade would just make them more attractive, and easier to transition in too. While not really affecting their power in mass.
On April 11 2013 13:14 frostalgia wrote: Good interview. Nice to hear they are paying close attention.
I wouldn't say Medivacs are overpowered, but making Afterburners cost Energy would make things a lot more interesting. Feedback would be to stop Medivacs from boosting, instead of always one-shotting them because they have so much energy. It may also make Caduceus Reactor get used once in a while.
Widow Mines should just scale better with Mech upgrades. (Less splash until +1 at least) Then you could even combine Mech/Air Attack upgrades just like Mech/Air Armor.
Swarm Hosts getting faster movement speed isn't a bad idea, but should be part of Locust Life upgrade. Burrow and Overlord Speed would be used more before Lair tech if they were 75 gas instead of 100. Blinding Cloud, however, is just a bad spell. Maybe have it affect Air but cut all unit Range in half?
Void Rays could require 5 seconds to get Armored bonus damage after activating Prismatic Alignment. They would have a weakness to sneak attacks, but still be strong if activated 5 seconds before battle.
I really wish there was an easier way to tell who casts Time Warps when watching a PvP. The MsC used to spin fast during Envision in beta.. be nice if they'd bring it back for Time Warp.
Adding GSL/Proleague maps to the ladder pool is the way to go... especially the new GSL maps are great.
I think combining tech mech/air upgrades would be the most stupid change. TvZ mech is just fine, the top 2 barcodes terran players in EU are doing mech in TvZ, and BCs + thors + vikings + ravens are already unbeatable right now.
I think that the Locusts life upgrade wouldn't do the trick either, most of the time they die before doing any decent damage, and thats the reason zergs don't use them too much. Any decent korean protoss player (most GMs) can deal with them just fine: the low range make them clump up too much and then SHs are exposed. Not counting that SHs are extremely costy units in both supply and minerals/gas. They were supposed to be siege units but noone is scared of them haha, toss just tank them and keep macroing. Other siege units like colossi and tanks are much scarier.
You might be right, I just find it strange to have Plating combined while Weapons isn't. Maybe just increase the research time.
Swarm Hosts would be more interesting if Locusts would respawn slightly faster when the Hosts are unburrowed and moving. That would be a great way to force zergs to micro their Swarm Hosts more often.
I'm sure most Zergs will disagree with me but I'm sad that they are considering buffing the Swarm Host. It is incredibly strong in ZvP, not sure about ZvT. But locusts do incredible amounts of damage and Toss typically doesn't have a good way to deal with it. They usually pop out with 10 - 15 Swarm Hosts at once and have support to instantly snipe any detection we have to deal with it. If you try to counter they will just completely destroy your base and if you try to engage it directly, more often then not it won't be very cost efficient if you kill everything and the you die to the resupply.
However, I'm really happy with the map discussion and it only looks like it will keep improving with every season. I'm curious to what maps we will see on the ladder for the next season.
I think they are seeing the wrong issues with the Swarm host. Its movement speed and burrow time are not the reasons it's a poor unit. The amount of time it takes for the locust to spawn is. 25 seconds is simply too long for a siege unit to be effective. The campaign swarm hosts were disgustingly good. Do something similar with multiplayer swarm hosts. Lower the spawn time of locusts, make it so they "root" to attack (it's similar to burrow in that they can't move, but you don't need detection to attack them), and maybe lower attack and increase hp. Really separate them from tanks.
Disappointed with the lack of anything on ZvZ. It's absolutely terrible to play and watch. I realize bw ZvZ was 1base muta vs muta but it feels like WoL ZvZ had way more interesting play styles.
Also David Kim saying they were sending maps to tournaments strikes me as odd. Wouldn't you want the players to test these maps since they'd be, you know, playing on them? How would the tournament organizers know more than the actual people who play on these maps day in and day out?
I'm glad they are holding back with the nerfs though. Good interview overall
I feel so bad for David Kim. One of the hardest jobs, I'm sure. And a large part of what makes it hard must be ignoring all the whiny bitches and not lose focus on the actual job : (.
great interview, Apollo is always great, good answers from David Kim.
i think in next balance patch they should rename the tempest "anti-broodlord" because it has no other uses. yes,in pvp u can see tempest vs collosi, but its so rare and voidrays usually are the preferable choice of players
Kim isn't much of a fan of mech :| Bio is great but eventually grows old after a while, I don't think I'll stand the 4M for too long. Factory play should definitely be viable in every match-up, for the sake of diversity and fun. Also, I was kind of lost when he tried to explain why koreans are much better terrans than foreigners.
Mech (with tanks) works even against protoss, just like it did in WoL. If you say otherwise, your either lazy or you're repeating things parrot-fashion, just because pros are too lazy to try that.
Swarm hosts are great against toss, and locust damage is ridiculous, 12 damage 0.86 delay before upgrades per locust? They just aren't being used properly or enough in some cases.
I would much rather see a nerf to Widow Mines and/or Hellbats, rather than Speed Medivac Boost, since it actually makes you want to drop more and multitask more, whereas hellbats are big 1a units
On April 11 2013 13:28 frostalgia wrote: You might be right, I just find it strange to have Plating combined while Weapons isn't. Maybe just increase the research time.
Initially, they combined both Weapon upgrades along with Plating upgrades during the beta. Thing is, you suddenly have this fully upgraded Mech ball with Vikings Banshees and BCs with full upgrades as well. The transition was just too powerful, so they dialed it back to just Armor.
Medivacs' Afterburners costing energy just seems like something that Blizzard would already think of. In fact, I'd be very surprised if it haven't already been tested.
On April 11 2013 11:22 KanoCoke wrote: Increase the supply requirements for swarm host by one, increase the number of locusts it spawns by one maybe?
3 supply is already a lot doesn't need to be 4 supply.
I wouldn't mind a buff to my beloved swarmhosts
Wouldn't it be worth 4 supply to have 2 locusts spawn per cycle for a single swarm host be good though? 12 supply for 6 locusts compared to 12 supply for 4 locusts per cycle isn't much at first glance, but the more swarm hosts you get, the better it is (24 supply for 12 locusts sounds better than 24 supply for 8 locusts, and so on). It's like spawning zerglings with ranged attack for free. Totally zerg-like in my opinion compared to what it was previously.
Sorry, I am not following you here? 24 supply of Swarm Hosts spawn 16 Locusts, not 8. Single Swarm Host spawn 2 Locusts at a time, not 1.
Maybe they should remove current Enduring Locusts upgrade, and give it by default, and put in upgrade that let you spawn 3 Locusts instead of 2?
But even without this, I think that Swarm Hosts aren't bad units, but just underused. I think that Mine needs a bit of its splash nerfed, Medivac should be fine, but we will see. And I would love to see Hellbats have their damage nerfed, and getting it back with Infernal Preigniter. This way it just seems... stupid. That upgrade is close to worthless and it would make sense, since Hellions and Hellbats are basically same units.
On April 11 2013 13:10 Dudasc wrote: They should increase the range of the locusts back to 3 and probably increase SHs move speed a little bit.
It's very disappointing that he didnt say anything about zergs air issues: bad anti-air, and broodlords not being viable again. You just can't win ZvP or ZvT air battle.
Also nothing about ZvZ..
That's sad
Broodlords are viable depending on how you play. If you play a heavy roach hydra viper style then going into broodlords would make sense. If you just sit back and expect to make a brood lord army and auto win like in WoL then you will lose. Zerg has to be aggressive nowadays and not many people are getting used to it.
On April 11 2013 16:03 TigerKarl wrote: Mech (with tanks) works even against protoss, just like it did in WoL. If you say otherwise, your either lazy or you're repeating things parrot-fashion, just because pros are too lazy to try that.
The should have brought the lurker back its as simple as that. As to fixing Swarmhosts how about the hosts being able to hit air too? It would make them a bit more versatile and i think would encourage them to be used in general play
DK did say that he feels that the entertainment value of Mech compositions is below bio simply due to there being less action and more an intent to 'build up the ball' (he didn't say deathball, but he certainly meant that) before attacking - creating stale games that are long and end with one big fight at the ~20 min mark.
I actually agree with this, but I have no idea how they should fix this to make it more fun to watch (and play). To make let's say a few Thor, tank and hellion drops viable, these should have some sort of healing mechanic (like the science vessel in the terran campaign). To oppose the deathball (which we all hate) there should be some sort of anti-armored explosive (like the baneling or widow mine dealing more damage to armored units so there is less intent to clump them up).
These are just thought I'm throwing out here.
As for the interview: I think it was absolutely great. You are a good interviewer (and you were lucky with the acoustics in that room, they aren't so bad) and the questions you asked were of a wide variety, on interesting topics and well-formulated.
- Mech is fine, it just isn't being experimented with and that is less of a balance problem than it is a player problem
This is because of not needing to transition out of MMM imo. Bio drop play is fun and all but Terran should be forced to transition into higher tear units more. Pure bio shouldn't be an option lategame. I would have liked it if, in stead of the boost, medivacs would have gotten a repair function for mech; When picked up by medivac, unit gets repaired in time by the medivac itself or by a scv.
On April 11 2013 12:46 grunge wrote: Yea Siege tanks against protoss are still a losing money pit. In regards to TVZ, I think it's the most exciting match up with the tallest skill ceiling. Match ups more similar to TVP are not what we need at all. To the cat who said people need to stop wanting this to be brood war, that confuses me because that would be the best thing to happen to starcraft 2.
Yeah, I agree. Some things in BW were just great and should return.
One great thing from BW that should definitely return:
The way most air units (and some ground units too) can attack and move at the same time (and dance all over the place).
In terms of "dancing" air units can turn basically instantly (if you manually command them to move a certain direction) but if you a-move somewhere (and if they're not already facing the target they want to attack), then they'll decelerate and lose speed
This wasn't a "mindless rapid clicking mechanic" either, it requires attention and thought. It's simple to learn and fun to use mechanic (that is also hard to master).
Here are the three components he credits with increasing the degree of control players have over air units in Brood War:
Attack command: Right click or a-click on a unit followed by a quick move command to avoid deceleration. If you don’t a-click on a unit or building your units will act like SC2 air units. Hold position: Move units towards enemy and press H followed by a move command to avoid deceleration. Allows spreading shots and dealing damage more efficiently as opposed to target firing one single unit and wasting damage. Patrol command: Allows you to fire from a 90° angle without losing speed. Is frequently employed against scourge.
I can't think of good reasons changes like these shouldn't be implemented in Starcraft 2, other than the argument that they would be perceived as buggy. I think a reasonable argument can be made for not implementing the patrol command, it seems somewhat random that you can patrol at a certain angle from a unit you are attacking without decelerating. However, the attack command and hold position command are both easy and intuitive to learn, while very difficult to master (Blizzard's design philosophy!).
Edit: On topic, I agree with everything David Kim said in the interview and I think he's taking the right approach.
On April 11 2013 11:45 ElMeanYo wrote: Swarm Hosts need to be buffed ALOT. They are really bad vs anyone with any level of multi-tasking and micro. Anytime you see a Zerg start building Hosts you know he's gonna lose. Probably why you hardly see them at high-level play.
Bio and Stalkers just go around them and there is no way the Zerg player can respond in a timely fashion with Hosts. 3+ collosi or 5+ tanks shut down any number of locusts. They are just bad, bad, bad.
I would say make them less supply, move faster, unburrow faster, and locusts have a longer life span. I don't think locusts need to do more damage, that is one thing they are good at, if they can ever manage to hit the enemy army.
lol I disagree with you so hard on swarmhosts. Their good if zergs know how to use them and right now almost NOBODY does.
Ok so you think SH are good as is? or do you think they could use help and people aren't using them right? I'm no joe pro, but i'm not terrible, I do however find them wanting in ZvT and ZvZ. Bio with speed medivacs just simply out maneuvers you way to well and in ZvZ mutas do the same thing.
So how are they good if they are only good in one match up??? Which I would say ZvP they are good but that's the only time they are good. Anything you do with them to make them work in ZvZ or ZvT is some kind of meta gamey gimmicky garbage that's not really solid. IE: Something like using nydus with them to try to help with their immobility problem...issue is they don't shoot Air so drops / muta will still eat your face.
From a logical point of view, I would wish that the swamhost eggs would be targetable once they spawn, however that would only make them worse and I agree that the swarmhost is definitely underused in the current game (and I can see why).
On April 11 2013 11:45 ElMeanYo wrote: Swarm Hosts need to be buffed ALOT. They are really bad vs anyone with any level of multi-tasking and micro. Anytime you see a Zerg start building Hosts you know he's gonna lose. Probably why you hardly see them at high-level play.
Bio and Stalkers just go around them and there is no way the Zerg player can respond in a timely fashion with Hosts. 3+ collosi or 5+ tanks shut down any number of locusts. They are just bad, bad, bad.
I would say make them less supply, move faster, unburrow faster, and locusts have a longer life span. I don't think locusts need to do more damage, that is one thing they are good at, if they can ever manage to hit the enemy army.
lol I disagree with you so hard on swarmhosts. Their good if zergs know how to use them and right now almost NOBODY does.
Ok so you think SH are good as is? or do you think they could use help and people aren't using them right? I'm no joe pro, but i'm not terrible, I do however find them wanting in ZvT and ZvZ. Bio with speed medivacs just simply out maneuvers you way to well and in ZvZ mutas do the same thing.
So how are they good if they are only good in one match up??? Which I would say ZvP they are good but that's the only time they are good. Anything you do with them to make them work in ZvZ or ZvT is some kind of meta gamey gimmicky garbage that's not really solid. IE: Something like using nydus with them to try to help with their immobility problem...issue is they don't shoot Air so drops / muta will still eat your face.
Hmm their really good vs toss and good vs terran mech. vs terran bio their not so good and it's so easy to make a mistake with them vs bio and then they die in a heart beat.
They will never be good zvz if both players do muta that shouldn't even really be your case for why they are bad. zvt I can hear a case, but saying their bad and bringing up zvz isn't a good one. Also it's probably better that swarmhost doesn't become standard do you know how boring it would be to see zvz's where both players went sh's? Oh man that would be like bl vs bl just as boring and bad.
zvt like I said good vs mech, very hard vs bio and good zvp all around. I wouldn't mind a buff though to make them more useful vs bio though .
On April 11 2013 16:37 Topdoller wrote: The should have brought the lurker back its as simple as that. As to fixing Swarmhosts how about the hosts being able to hit air too? It would make them a bit more versatile and i think would encourage them to be used in general play
No this would make swarmhosts broken as fuck. It would make protoss engaging swarmhosts near impossible (observers) it would make it impossible for zvz to ever end (both players overseers would get sniped) and it would just be way way way to strong. Them hitting air is something that can never happen.
The lack of swarm host use is not surprising at all to me. In its current iteration, it is a unit that you have to mass in order to make it useful, but countering the unit with AoE is so easy that no one wants to make that commitment (of massing swarm hosts). You cant make 1-2 swarm hosts to complement your army, because 4 locusts wont make any difference. You will have to make 5-6 swarm hosts to have an impact, and at that point you realize that the best thing to do is to mass even more swarm hosts.
Its just a stupid unit and it should never have been spawning units. We already had the broodlord and the infestor to do that. Just think about how awesome the game would be right now if they had introduced the lurker instead of the swarm host. You can build 1-2 lurker to complement your army, and you immediately gain some map control. But they are too proud to do such a thing, thus they rather prefer to introduce flawed units like the swarm host.
edit: lol i just watched the interview and even david kim says "the biggest succes you can get out of the unit, is to make as many swarm hosts as possible". He even makes that statement himself and still does not realize how a unit that is designed that way is terrible for the game. Units that you have to mass (because they dont work well with other units) is exactly what makes the swarm host so bad and boring. Cant believe he actually admitted that himself. /facedesk
- Mech is fine, it just isn't being experimented with and that is less of a balance problem than it is a player problem - Swarm Host is biggest disappointment in terms of its lack of use. Decreasing burrow time or increasing the movement speed of Swarm Hosts could be potential solution
Swarm host is fine, it just isn't being experimented with and that is less of a balance problem than it is a player problem.
Why it can't go both ways ? Mech apart TvT (in which it is great) is pretty much shit, and most of the streaming pros already say that.
On April 11 2013 14:10 Masada714 wrote: I'm sure most Zergs will disagree with me but I'm sad that they are considering buffing the Swarm Host. It is incredibly strong in ZvP, not sure about ZvT. But locusts do incredible amounts of damage and Toss typically doesn't have a good way to deal with it. They usually pop out with 10 - 15 Swarm Hosts at once and have support to instantly snipe any detection we have to deal with it. If you try to counter they will just completely destroy your base and if you try to engage it directly, more often then not it won't be very cost efficient if you kill everything and the you die to the resupply.
However, I'm really happy with the map discussion and it only looks like it will keep improving with every season. I'm curious to what maps we will see on the ladder for the next season.
I agree, swarm hosts are incredibly frustrating to deal with as protoss where zergs can fly overseers with coruptors and spores to kill your observers so you need to be really careful. But I can understand them being too weak in tvz as they can stim and scan to clear sh easily, it's a hard thing to balance.
The reason mech is boring is because blizzard chose to make mech deathball'ish rather than multitaskbased. I wonder whether David Kim/the Blizzard team is aware of this.
Every time something is not used they talk about buffing it. Mech is not used, it's the players problem for not trying harder...At least he admitted they don't actually want mech viable in the same way bio is. Why do they hate BW so much?
Make option for Swarm Host to send ground-only and air-only attack locusts. You can manually choose which locust comes out every cycly and default is last pick. To balance this out you can only attack visible unit (not even revealed units like observers etc)
Swarmhost issue is really obvious. I remember watching leenock stream and he was at like 5 bases vs 3 bases toss but lost because the locust didn't find the enemy army and he didn't notice until the army came from the side and just lost all the swarm host for almost nothing on the toss side. he even said swarmhost is trash
the issue is that swarmhost just makes the game volatiles too quickly and easily.
On April 11 2013 11:45 ElMeanYo wrote: Swarm Hosts need to be buffed ALOT. They are really bad vs anyone with any level of multi-tasking and micro. Anytime you see a Zerg start building Hosts you know he's gonna lose. Probably why you hardly see them at high-level play.
Bio and Stalkers just go around them and there is no way the Zerg player can respond in a timely fashion with Hosts. 3+ collosi or 5+ tanks shut down any number of locusts. They are just bad, bad, bad.
I would say make them less supply, move faster, unburrow faster, and locusts have a longer life span. I don't think locusts need to do more damage, that is one thing they are good at, if they can ever manage to hit the enemy army.
Not sure what league you are but I'm a high-mid masters and a 2-base nydus+SH+queen+Spore build versus protoss works really well. After that you can expand to a 3rd and add hydralisks.
I've successfully used them versus terran as well, A LOT.
On April 11 2013 20:21 ETisME wrote: Swarmhost issue is really obvious. I remember watching leenock stream and he was at like 5 bases vs 3 bases toss but lost because the locust didn't find the enemy army and he didn't notice until the army came from the side and just lost all the swarm host for almost nothing on the toss side. he even said swarmhost is trash
the issue is that swarmhost just makes the game volatiles too quickly and easily.
ALternate your positioning and make sure you have proper map control before using SH's, if the enemy managed to completely flank him and catch him by surprise, he obviously did not have map control.
On April 11 2013 19:38 gh0un wrote: The lack of swarm host use is not surprising at all to me. In its current iteration, it is a unit that you have to mass in order to make it useful, but countering the unit with AoE is so easy that no one wants to make that commitment (of massing swarm hosts). You cant make 1-2 swarm hosts to complement your army, because 4 locusts wont make any difference. You will have to make 5-6 swarm hosts to have an impact, and at that point you realize that the best thing to do is to mass even more swarm hosts.
It depends which phase of the game you're in. If you get swarmhosts early enough, you do fine with like 2-3, at which you can start adding on more. It's all about the timing windows to (ab)use. That most of the professionals refuse to let go of their beloved WoL compositions doesn;'t mean SH's are useless.
How many years did it take again for zergs to start using infestors? and for the metagame to actually stabilize? And how long has HotS been out thus far?
On April 11 2013 20:19 Sapphire.lux wrote: Every time something is not used they talk about buffing it. Mech is not used, it's the players problem for not trying harder...At least he admitted they don't actually want mech viable in the same way bio is. Why do they hate BW so much?
Because they won't replicate BW by buffing mech. In order to replicate the BW mech metgame they will have to redesign so many parts of the game. Either that is too complicated/time consuming for the Blizzard team or they are not competent enough to understand how to do it.
the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
On April 11 2013 10:49 Aiios wrote: As the title states, Dignitas Apollo recently sat down and discussed a few different things with David Kim, lead balance designer at Blizzard. Here is the video:
- Blizzard is receiving overall positive feedback and are being asked to leave the game as it is by many pros (mainly Koreans) - Blizzard wants to take things slow in terms of rolling out balance patches - They felt as if the Medivac Speed Boost is the biggest complained about issue in Starcraft - They are not going to roll our nerfs but they think it could get boring to see every TvZ as a mass drop fest if it is all that ever happens - Mech is fine, it just isn't being experimented with and that is less of a balance problem than it is a player problem - Swarm Host is biggest disappointment in terms of its lack of use. Decreasing burrow time or increasing the movement speed of Swarm Hosts could be potential solution
I hope I didn't leave anything out!
gah, please dont buff swarmhosts.
I feel like zerg players have not totally figured out how to safely incorporate swarm hosts into their play without dying, but when they do theyll become way more common.
On April 11 2013 19:38 gh0un wrote: The lack of swarm host use is not surprising at all to me. In its current iteration, it is a unit that you have to mass in order to make it useful, but countering the unit with AoE is so easy that no one wants to make that commitment (of massing swarm hosts). You cant make 1-2 swarm hosts to complement your army, because 4 locusts wont make any difference. You will have to make 5-6 swarm hosts to have an impact, and at that point you realize that the best thing to do is to mass even more swarm hosts.
It depends which phase of the game you're in. If you get swarmhosts early enough, you do fine with like 2-3, at which you can start adding on more. It's all about the timing windows to (ab)use. That most of the professionals refuse to let go of their beloved WoL compositions doesn;'t mean SH's are useless.
How many years did it take again for zergs to start using infestors? and for the metagame to actually stabilize? And how long has HotS been out thus far?
Problem with just splashing a few swarmhosts is that they don't synergize at all with the rest of the zerg army in that way. Mixing in a few slow siege units in an otherwise very fast army is troublesome, you kinda lose the speed advantage of zerg then. SH are good for relentlessly sieging something letting the locusts get in on themselves, for which you just need some sort of critical mass. Getting a few and then pushing with your traditional army plus the locusts works quite poorly, the locusts tend to block your army immensely or vice versa and your troops just get demolished in the downtime between waves. With roach/hydra this get's a bit better but this comes into play a bit later and AoE starts becoming a real problem then.
The entire design of the swarm host is flawed a bit, they don't well as an early siege unit. They are just a mass or not use at all unit too much. Later on their role is kind of overshadowed by broodlords as well.
I think the game is great so far. There are probably some units or abilities that need to be tweaked but I would rather see the players come up with counters to "OP" stuff instead.
On April 11 2013 11:22 KanoCoke wrote: Increase the supply requirements for swarm host by one, increase the number of locusts it spawns by one maybe?
3 supply is already a lot doesn't need to be 4 supply.
I wouldn't mind a buff to my beloved swarmhosts
Wouldn't it be worth 4 supply to have 2 locusts spawn per cycle for a single swarm host be good though? 12 supply for 6 locusts compared to 12 supply for 4 locusts per cycle isn't much at first glance, but the more swarm hosts you get, the better it is (24 supply for 12 locusts sounds better than 24 supply for 8 locusts, and so on). It's like spawning zerglings with ranged attack for free. Totally zerg-like in my opinion compared to what it was previously.
Sorry, I am not following you here? 24 supply of Swarm Hosts spawn 16 Locusts, not 8. Single Swarm Host spawn 2 Locusts at a time, not 1.
Maybe they should remove current Enduring Locusts upgrade, and give it by default, and put in upgrade that let you spawn 3 Locusts instead of 2?
But even without this, I think that Swarm Hosts aren't bad units, but just underused. I think that Mine needs a bit of its splash nerfed, Medivac should be fine, but we will see. And I would love to see Hellbats have their damage nerfed, and getting it back with Infernal Preigniter. This way it just seems... stupid. That upgrade is close to worthless and it would make sense, since Hellions and Hellbats are basically same units.
I'm primarily a muta player as a zerg admittedly, so I always thought swarm hosts just spawned a single locust like they did some time ago.
Great interview! Apollo asks the good questions (as expected) and it's nice to have David Kim speaking because everytime Dustin Browder talks about the game it seems like very corporate answers that don't necesseraly answer the questions, but rather are him telling us what the company wants to say about the game.
And the wait & see approach seems just fine to me at this point. more than 50% of the new units / spells / mechanics aren't exploited correctly by players anyway.
Give swarm host a passive spawn boost that only start working at a group of 5 hosts. Something like a passive bonus like china troops had back in C&C Generals trololo.
After watching TaeJa’s game today, I do have to agree that TvZ could turn into a drop fest and that could be really dull/annoying. But beyond that I think people are figuring out the game at a reasonable pace. PvT is still pretty awesome and protoss seem to be using the mother ship core and new all-ins to keep the terran honest, while the medivac boost keeps that from snowballing into stupid. Endgame protoss seems silly against zerg, but only on maps where protoss gets a free 4 bases.
Love the interview and I am pumped to see where they go from there.
I would have liked to hear his thoughts on changing target priority for widow mines. I think it's kind of broken that they can't be autotargeted by the AI if there are other units nearly, making them so good to just run up front of the army with no real risk of losing them.
I also liked his point about maybe increasing the mobility of swarm host a little bit. Then we would probably see a little bit more of this unit.
On April 11 2013 20:49 Markwerf wrote: the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
I know of at least a few GM players who go exclusively mech in TvP and do extremely well. Thor/Hellbat is an extremely strong core army to hit timings with. The problem with mech is that you have to know what you're doing to get the army you need and make use of it, it's not spammable the same way bio is.
Bio is versatile enough that you can make it work without your build being precise. If you try to play mech without having everything clear in your head, Protoss will roll you with a superior army and Zerg will roll you with a superior economy.
On April 11 2013 20:49 Markwerf wrote: the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
Bio is versatile enough that you can make it work without your build being precise. If you try to play mech without having everything clear in your head, Protoss will roll you with a superior army and Zerg will roll you with a superior economy.
Maybe you want to rephrase that because it sounds barking mad. Pro Terrans are just building random stuff when playing bio right? Christ...
Hm, well I think vipers are too strong vs tanks. And Swarm Hosts just suffer from them being countered in direct combat by nearly every Terran unit AND by drops. Though I still believe in them for PvZ.
On April 11 2013 20:49 Markwerf wrote: the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
Bio is versatile enough that you can make it work without your build being precise. If you try to play mech without having everything clear in your head, Protoss will roll you with a superior army and Zerg will roll you with a superior economy.
Maybe you want to rephrase that because it sounds barking mad. Pro Terrans are just building random stuff when playing bio right? Christ...
Stop barking dude. He's actually right though he didn't phrase it well.
Bio armies are much easier to reproduce, much more mobile and scale best with great micro skills. Mech armies require more carefull play, better positionning and take better advantage of timing attacks.
On April 11 2013 22:22 Plansix wrote: After watching TaeJa’s game today, I do have to agree that TvZ could turn into a drop fest and that could be really dull/annoying.
You select a random single game in which Zerg goes an awful 3-bases infests into ultras build with zero anti-air on a giant map; Zerg gets partially dismantled by multi-pronged drops just like it could have been the case in WoL (Bogus vs Stephano, Whirlwind, first game from the last season comes to mind) → "TvZ could turn into a drop fest and that could be really dull/annoying"?
On April 11 2013 20:49 Markwerf wrote: the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
Bio is versatile enough that you can make it work without your build being precise. If you try to play mech without having everything clear in your head, Protoss will roll you with a superior army and Zerg will roll you with a superior economy.
Maybe you want to rephrase that because it sounds barking mad. Pro Terrans are just building random stuff when playing bio right? Christ...
Stop barking dude. He's actually right though he didn't phrase it well.
Bio armies are much easier to reproduce, much more mobile and scale best with great micro skills. Mech armies require more carefull play, better positionning and take better advantage of timing attacks.
That's all
He was talking about the build and how precise it has to be, not army management and game plans. "barking mad" is an expression, telling someone he is barking is an insult.
On April 11 2013 20:49 Markwerf wrote: the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
Bio is versatile enough that you can make it work without your build being precise. If you try to play mech without having everything clear in your head, Protoss will roll you with a superior army and Zerg will roll you with a superior economy.
Maybe you want to rephrase that because it sounds barking mad. Pro Terrans are just building random stuff when playing bio right? Christ...
That isn't what he said at all. You are taking what he said to the complete extreme.
I have to agree with him. Compared to Bio, Mech is far weaker to tech switches because of the nature of it's units. It also doesn't have as much information normally because it is so much more defensive. Because Mech is so defensive, the opponent has much more room to do different types of strategies, but with Bio, the standard Bio pressure in the mid-game prevents the opponent from doing too many different things and it allows the Bio player to see what they are doing very easily.
So Mech builds generally have to be extremely tight in order to deal with all the possibilities, because the style itself doesn't have many ways to limit the opponents possibilities or scout them far in advance.
There's no reason to take it as insulting to people playing Bio... different styles favor different skillsets. Most people would agree Bio is more mechanically demanding.
I don't understand why people say tanks are bad and don't work and all that. LiquidSea made them work plenty of times in all match ups because he didn't give up on them after 2 games. It was amazing to see and refreshing.
On April 11 2013 22:10 Nachtwind wrote: Give swarm host a passive spawn boost that only start working at a group of 5 hosts. Something like a passive bonus like china troops had back in C&C Generals trololo.
On April 11 2013 23:49 baba1 wrote: I don't understand why people say tanks are bad and don't work and all that. LiquidSea made them work plenty of times in all match ups because he didn't give up on them after 2 games. It was amazing to see and refreshing.
Anything is viable when you kill dozens of Probes and your opponent is incompetent when it comes to playing against mech.
There is some stuff I agree on, then other stuff I don't.
One of my main concerns is, in fact, the Tempest. I just dislike this unit, due to it negatating a lot of Capital Ship play. We can all look at that game between MVP and Squirtle, with the Battlecruisers, Voidrays etc, and know that was an awesome watch. I got the idea that the Tempest will negate this, much like it may have to Broodlords in ZvP, however this might also be due to the Voidray in its current state.
A question that gets to me, and makes me wonder, if anyone can answer this?
Is Tempest needed to counter BL/INF, now that it has been nerfed? The updated carrier, and evasion of Fungal may solve this, leaving the Tempest obsolete, though might be wrong.
I somewhat agree with what he said about mech, spreading tanks could help a lot, but would require insane APM/Multi-tasking.
On a whole though, I'm glad they are taking it slow, and I'm looking forward to where the game is going to go.
On April 11 2013 20:49 Markwerf wrote: the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
Bio is versatile enough that you can make it work without your build being precise. If you try to play mech without having everything clear in your head, Protoss will roll you with a superior army and Zerg will roll you with a superior economy.
Maybe you want to rephrase that because it sounds barking mad. Pro Terrans are just building random stuff when playing bio right? Christ...
Stop barking dude. He's actually right though he didn't phrase it well.
Bio armies are much easier to reproduce, much more mobile and scale best with great micro skills. Mech armies require more carefull play, better positionning and take better advantage of timing attacks.
That's all
He was talking about the build and how precise it has to be, not army management and game plans. "barking mad" is an expression, telling someone he is barking is an insult.
A build means nothing if it isn't taken into the full picture of what skills are most important during each MU. I know what barking mad means. And I know "barking" alone is insulting, just like ending a post with "Christ ..." like one's talking to the dumbest person ever.
you can pull out a solid mine rush before forced detection. and even when building to fast spore/detection, it won't help the build that i've been seeing. between this shit and protoss air, i'm not sure what to think... mass fungle was a bandaid for a problem. it seems like hots is just a chance for terran and toss to jerk off in retaliation while not even really attempting to overcome anything. and before i hear the bullshit... i never laddered mass infestor/bl... i fucking hate that build. it is, and always was uninteresting. not that it currently isn't a waste of time...
On April 11 2013 20:49 Markwerf wrote: the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
Bio is versatile enough that you can make it work without your build being precise. If you try to play mech without having everything clear in your head, Protoss will roll you with a superior army and Zerg will roll you with a superior economy.
Maybe you want to rephrase that because it sounds barking mad. Pro Terrans are just building random stuff when playing bio right? Christ...
Stop barking dude. He's actually right though he didn't phrase it well.
Bio armies are much easier to reproduce, much more mobile and scale best with great micro skills. Mech armies require more carefull play, better positionning and take better advantage of timing attacks.
That's all
He was talking about the build and how precise it has to be, not army management and game plans. "barking mad" is an expression, telling someone he is barking is an insult.
A build means nothing if it isn't taken into the full picture of what skills are most important during each MU. I know what barking mad means. And I know "barking" alone is insulting, just like ending a post with "Christ ..." like one's talking to the dumbest person ever.
Thx for trying to go vigilante on this
You enter the discussion to "put me right" and explain, starting of with an insult no less. And i am playing vigilante? Can you get over yourself?
ZjiublingZ i see what you mean, i overreacted maybe. Just implying that bio builds are not "precise" sounded a bit offensive to..well..all the Terran pros, since bio looks like the only way at this time.
On April 11 2013 23:49 baba1 wrote: I don't understand why people say tanks are bad and don't work and all that. LiquidSea made them work plenty of times in all match ups because he didn't give up on them after 2 games. It was amazing to see and refreshing.
Anything is viable when you kill dozens of Probes and your opponent is incompetent when it comes to playing against mech.
Some strategies are better at killing probes than others :D.
On April 11 2013 22:10 Nachtwind wrote: Give swarm host a passive spawn boost that only start working at a group of 5 hosts. Something like a passive bonus like china troops had back in C&C Generals trololo.
Give locust nuclear reactors too.
No! They need Napalm Firestorms! How can you overlooked this?! :D
On April 11 2013 13:10 Dudasc wrote: They should increase the range of the locusts back to 3 and probably increase SHs move speed a little bit.
It's very disappointing that he didnt say anything about zergs air issues: bad anti-air, and broodlords not being viable again. You just can't win ZvP or ZvT air battle.
Also nothing about ZvZ..
That's sad
Are you kidding me? Bad Anti-air??? I dont think that you know corruptor, infestor and hydralisk.
On April 12 2013 00:41 lorestarcraft wrote: Give swarm hosts time. They are really strong.
This is definitely true. Most Zergs either don't use them because of the stigma around them (Early on they got a stigma of not being good when no one had actually used them yet. The same thing happened with infestors in early WoL and look how that turned out), or they don't know how to incorporate them in builds. Against Protoss especially, swarmhosts are very good because they force a response. You can't just ignore locusts, they do too much damage. You ignore them for a minute and your entire wall-off will be gone and your base will be flooded with units. You can't just run past them and try and snipe the swarmhosts like a couple zergs in this thread have said or you will lose a huge chunk of your army.
They're really strong, people just have to try using them rather than going full Idra and claiming they suck without even trying them for more than 5 minutes. The fact that blade55555 says they're good is telling enough. He is a very good Zerg and has contributed a ton to Zerg strategy. He knows what he is talking about. He has talked about beating Protoss air with an army incorporating swarmhosts. Catz has also stated as much (On SOTG). It is just most people won't try them because they require practice to use since they are new and people would rather do something familiar like roach/hydra.
I really hope that Blizzard does not buff them simply so people use them. They've done that in the past and it never ends well.
On April 11 2013 20:49 Markwerf wrote: the guy is totally ignorant sometimes. Mech is a total failure, even less used than in WoL perhaps. Completely unviable in TvP and not used in TvZ. Tanks see only TvT play basically despite having a free upgrade now. Admittedly TvZ and PvZ are a bit better now with some more action going on. TvP however is hardly improved, it's even more an all-in or defend game for P now with the occasional guessing game of oracles vs widow mines.
TvP in general, ZvZs mutafest and skytoss in ZvP could use some tweaking. Inevitable the medivac will gain a small nerf too, I guess the speedboost will just get a longer cooldown or something.
Bio is versatile enough that you can make it work without your build being precise. If you try to play mech without having everything clear in your head, Protoss will roll you with a superior army and Zerg will roll you with a superior economy.
Maybe you want to rephrase that because it sounds barking mad. Pro Terrans are just building random stuff when playing bio right? Christ...
Stop barking dude. He's actually right though he didn't phrase it well.
Bio armies are much easier to reproduce, much more mobile and scale best with great micro skills. Mech armies require more carefull play, better positionning and take better advantage of timing attacks.
That's all
He was talking about the build and how precise it has to be, not army management and game plans. "barking mad" is an expression, telling someone he is barking is an insult.
A build means nothing if it isn't taken into the full picture of what skills are most important during each MU. I know what barking mad means. And I know "barking" alone is insulting, just like ending a post with "Christ ..." like one's talking to the dumbest person ever.
Thx for trying to go vigilante on this
All I was saying was that mech builds rely on being able to successfully follow through on a plan from beginning to end. Obviously a pro player knows how his bio build transitions at each phase of the game and knows what timings he wants to hit, but bio doesn't rely on everything going according to plan the way mech does.
Bio is a 6-shot revolver, mech is a cannon with a 6-step arming process.
Obviously the edges at the Code S level are extremely small, so the differences are most evident for the average GM. If an attack fails or you take some damage or you get thrown off of your build, bio is more capable of counterplay. If things stray too much in a mech build, you're never going to have the army you need at the time you need it.
The same dynamic exists in ZvP. In WoL, Protoss had benchmarks to hit to try and kill zerg. If he failed, zerg gets brood lord infestor. In HotS, if Protoss intends on getting an air army, Zerg has benchmarks and timings to hit if he wants to kill toss.
This is a similar dynamic as terran mech, with the difference that in the above examples, the opponent (going for the endgame army) has inevitability. The opponent puts on a clock for you to try and race. In mech play, the Terran player puts the burden of success on himself.
Don't they dare buff swarm hosts, if anything they need nerfs. So hard to deal with as a protoss, it's like getting hit in the face with broodlords at 10ish min.
On April 16 2013 01:45 unkkz wrote: Don't they dare buff swarm hosts, if anything they need nerfs. So hard to deal with as a protoss, it's like getting hit in the face with broodlords at 10ish min.
With a massive timing before that where the zerg has nothing but lings because swarm host cost crazy amounts of gas. Ten minute swarm hosts are like fast mutas, easy to scout and deal with if you do any form of early aggression that matters.
On April 12 2013 00:41 lorestarcraft wrote: Give swarm hosts time. They are really strong.
This is definitely true. Most Zergs either don't use them because of the stigma around them (Early on they got a stigma of not being good when no one had actually used them yet. The same thing happened with infestors in early WoL and look how that turned out
Wow Ben, it's not the first time I read this and I really hate your argument, and I'll tell you why :
This (huge) buff caused some players like Destiny and CatZ to abuse it for months, then the whole metagame shifted toward this unit, in addition to Broodlords. Then came players like Stephano executing the build perfectly to the point that it was considered imbalanced.
Before the buff, the Infestor was a trash unit. Zerg players didn't "figured it out", their race was buffed.
On April 16 2013 01:45 unkkz wrote: Don't they dare buff swarm hosts, if anything they need nerfs. So hard to deal with as a protoss, it's like getting hit in the face with broodlords at 10ish min.
With a massive timing before that where the zerg has nothing but lings because swarm host cost crazy amounts of gas. Ten minute swarm hosts are like fast mutas, easy to scout and deal with if you do any form of early aggression that matters.
Yeah no, i´m not gonna go into a theorycraft debate because that´s pointless. But even if you look away from 10min swamhosts they are still insanely strong in the lategame. Catz is abusing them like hell to great effect.
In my opinion, the more time that passes before the first post-release balance patch, the less likely it is that Speedivacs and Widow Mines will get nerfed. The reason being that they're both things which players can learn to defend against, and have already done so to a large degree, even if most players aren't there yet so those units still seem very strong.
On the other hand, there's no adaptation possible for Zergs against Protoss air + high templars except to kill the Protoss before he gets to that composition, so that will probably be nerfed no matter how long Blizzard waits to see how the game evolves.
Swarm host are REALLY good right now in ZvP. An for P's, new mutas make new PvZ totally unidimensional (not going phoenix is imposible for any mid game strategy).
On April 11 2013 12:03 Rabiator wrote: When korean pros say that the game is balanced it doesnt mean the same is true for "Joe Woodleague". Professionals can handle stuff more easily than casuals ... and the game should be FUN for everyone.
No, that is really dumb, they must balance for the very best players, not because "joe terrible" finds banelings imbalanced because he cant split for shit. Also FUN is way to subjective, what is fun for you might not be fun for me.
If you want to play a game with no barrier to entry and little diffrence between pro players and casual players, look into Console FPS
On April 11 2013 12:03 Rabiator wrote: When korean pros say that the game is balanced it doesnt mean the same is true for "Joe Woodleague". Professionals can handle stuff more easily than casuals ... and the game should be FUN for everyone.
No, that is really dumb, they must balance for the very best players, not because "joe terrible" finds banelings imbalanced because he cant split for shit. Also FUN is way to subjective, what is fun for you might not be fun for me.
If you want to play a game with no barrier to entry and little diffrence between pro players and casual players, look into Console FPS
Exactly. The game is fun for people of the same skill level. SC2 is both a game of planning and execution. There is no other game like SC2 out the on the market right. Just because people can't log into the game and be amazing right off the bat does not mean it should be changed. You will likely lose your first bunch of games of chess, Settlers of Catan, Magic and League of Legends too.
This (huge) buff caused some players like Destiny and CatZ to abuse it for months, then the whole metagame shifted toward this unit, in addition to Broodlords. Then came players like Stephano executing the build perfectly to the point that it was considered imbalanced.
Before the buff, the Infestor was a trash unit. Zerg players didn't "figured it out", their race was buffed.
Trash unit? Hardly. It was already a powerful unit, but people just didn't know how to use them properly. History proves that.
Remember --- infestors received a big buff, then an even bigger nerf. As I remember it, it got buffed by (1) increasing the vs armor damage, (2) Fungal damages faster, and (3) fungal became an instant-hit.
But the infestor also got nerfed in that same patch and in subsequent patches when the (1) fungal immobilize duration was halved, (2) fungal reverted from instant-hit to VERY slow projectile, (3) fungal range reduced (4) armor bonus damage was removed, (5) infested terrans eggs lost 30 hp, (6) infested terrans no longer receive upgrades, (7) neural parasite was severely nerfed and became useless, and (8) infestor movement speed was reduced.
Infestors before the unnecessary v1.3 buffs would arguably be more deadly than today's infestors. Fungal hold duration for 8 seconds? Both Fungal -and- Neural have longer ranges? Infestor eggs that are 30% stronger? Infested Terrans with +3 damage and +3 armor? Are you kidding me?!
It goes to show the unit never needed the v1.3 buffs to begin with. People just needed more time to figure the unit out, but Blizzard jumped the gun by buffing the unit prematurely. They ended up back-tracking by nerfing the unit again, which included directly undoing many of the buffs from the v1.3 patch. If anything, Blizzard's experience with the unit only strengthens their argument for patience.
Swarmhosts are terrific units ZvP at any stage of the game given the right build and circumstance. If they get buffed much to make them easier to use ZvT or ZvZ, it will be hard to keep them balanced vs P. But burrow speed seems a good place to start... certainly not range or damage.
On April 11 2013 12:03 Rabiator wrote: When korean pros say that the game is balanced it doesnt mean the same is true for "Joe Woodleague". Professionals can handle stuff more easily than casuals ... and the game should be FUN for everyone.
No, that is really dumb, they must balance for the very best players, not because "joe terrible" finds banelings imbalanced because he cant split for shit. Also FUN is way to subjective, what is fun for you might not be fun for me.
If you want to play a game with no barrier to entry and little diffrence between pro players and casual players, look into Console FPS
EPT
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Apollo. The second line states "playing for and coaching for Team Dignitas."
