On June 14 2013 16:20 xokati wrote: Hellbats drops give you 100% benefit. Even when they will make 0 damage potential lose force you to pull back workers till drop is cleared. Even 10-15 sec of mining time is more than drop cost(minerals/cost, i calculate that medivac may escape, onlt 200 minerals are sacriviced) and this thing is buying terrran time, keep enemy in base, allow save expand. And potential 2-3 base drops ( just point every dropship drop location in each base and shift click escape route after drop, then at the same time use burners) give high chance that in one or more mineral lines enemy will not be able to pull back probes(3 separate locations, alot of multitasking, terran may even make little push 5 seconds before dropships will be spoted on front line and pull back). Then lost will be alot higher.
Early game the cost is much higher, since that fast armory, quick hellbats, medivac, etc, all means you have less income and/or less tech. So no if you only force some probes being pulled then it is not a win for the terran. Later in the game probe pulls generally shouldn't be required.
Also everyone who isn't a pro won't be able to micro three hellbat drops at the same time. And unmicro'd hellbat drops don't do damage past the early game. (At least not if the toss bothered to make at least one cannon).
But anyway, if as your describe hellbat drops are indeed so terribly OP, and I think it would be really dubious if you say Terran as a race is OP, then that means that to keep Terran balanced you need to boost Terran in other areas: So which boosts do you propose?
Wow, that was such bad play by alive :O It was basically alive clumping all his marines and SCVs at one spot and not attacking until the hellbats were dropped out, while he could have just targeted medivacs. And then, when innovation was amoving 4hellbats up the ramp, he could have just targetfired at least 2 of them with low hitpoints... It was like maximum fuck up by alive...
This example illustrates the difference between an attack that can outright win games and an attack where the results would vary based on actual gameplay*. The Hellbat drop without healing shows the attack can still be cost efficient and that the defense can be done without a larger investment than the opponent's.
Issues with mid and late game balance issues can be addressed after we see the meta-shift from non-bio Hellbats. This change should not completely end Hellbat drops but they would need to be more hit-and-run than stay-and-kill.
Even if additional changes to the game would be needed I think most players, including Terrans, would simply like the design and play better with the biological tag removed from Hellbats.
*There is no micro on either side to establish a baseline and no upgrades on either side to simulate early game scenarios. The attack is 300 min + 100 vespene versus a defense of 300 min + 75 vespene.
(hope no one minds me double posting this to the Hellbat thread and the Balance thread)
This example illustrates the difference between an attack that can outright win games and an attack where the results would vary based on actual gameplay*. The Hellbat drop without healing shows the attack can still be cost efficient and that the defense can be done without a larger investment than the opponent's.
Issues with mid and late game balance issues can be addressed after we see the meta-shift from non-bio Hellbats. This change should not completely end Hellbat drops but they would need to be more hit-and-run than stay-and-kill.
Even if additional changes to the game would be needed I think most players, including Terrans, would simply like the design and play better with the biological tag removed from Hellbats.
*There is no micro on either side to establish a baseline and no upgrades on either side to simulate early game scenarios. The attack is 300 min + 100 vespene versus a defense of 300 min + 75 vespene.
(hope no one minds me double posting this to the Hellbat thread and the Balance thread)
That would all be fine with me, and for those that still want Hellbats to be biological, make Transformation Servos also give that status (it would be some kind of tradeoff against Archons, damage taken vs healing taken, and it would also give ghosts something to do if snipe did 45 damage to non-massive).
P.S. Oh yeah, and it would make that research actually relevant.
Summary of the best solutions I've seen: 1) Mandatory Transformational Servos (my favorite) 2) Tie in damage with Infernal Preignitor 3) Remove Bio tag 4) Tech Lab requirement
I'm a fan of 1 and 2. Not a complete damage nerf, but maybe a -5 base +10 upgrade damage or something to that effect, making sure that they stay viable in the late game or even see more effective use as a late game harassment tool after proper defenses have been erected.
In all honesty, when they first revealed the unit pre-beta, I thought that you would have to build hellions first out of a factory and then transform them. I was actually legitimately surprised to find out that they are a completely separate unit out of the Factory.
I'm a zerg player, and quite frankly I'd love to see the bio tag removed (entirely because I'm just evil that way), but I don't see that as being a major factor in why they feel a little unbalanced. Every matchup has to deal with zoning medivacs/air/casters, and I feel that the skill of the player really determines the success in that regard. I used to struggle quite badly against it, but a few mutas or corruptors can deal with them pretty well. I saw someone neural parasite Thors and use them to snipe medivacs in one game, got a chuckle out of it. There's options.
Tech lab requirement would slow down production early game, but really wouldn't be a sensible solution since you could just get servos later on and double pump hellions instead - the mechanic behind that would be totally and completely senseless and broken.
TL;DR I recommend removing the hellbat from factory production, so that terran must build hellions and get servos upgrade to get hellbats, and create a balanced tie-in of damage into the infernal preignitor upgrade.
On June 14 2013 16:20 xokati wrote: Hellbats drops give you 100% benefit. Even when they will make 0 damage potential lose force you to pull back workers till drop is cleared. Even 10-15 sec of mining time is more than drop cost(minerals/cost, i calculate that medivac may escape, onlt 200 minerals are sacriviced) and this thing is buying terrran time, keep enemy in base, allow save expand. And potential 2-3 base drops ( just point every dropship drop location in each base and shift click escape route after drop, then at the same time use burners) give high chance that in one or more mineral lines enemy will not be able to pull back probes(3 separate locations, alot of multitasking, terran may even make little push 5 seconds before dropships will be spoted on front line and pull back). Then lost will be alot higher.
Early game the cost is much higher, since that fast armory, quick hellbats, medivac, etc, all means you have less income and/or less tech. So no if you only force some probes being pulled then it is not a win for the terran. Later in the game probe pulls generally shouldn't be required.
Also everyone who isn't a pro won't be able to micro three hellbat drops at the same time. And unmicro'd hellbat drops don't do damage past the early game. (At least not if the toss bothered to make at least one cannon).
But anyway, if as your describe hellbat drops are indeed so terribly OP, and I think it would be really dubious if you say Terran as a race is OP, then that means that to keep Terran balanced you need to boost Terran in other areas: So which boosts do you propose?
You make a good point in most cases, except your last sentence. Just because a portion of terran's army(Hellbats) is OP, doesn't mean some other piece of terran's army cannot be OP. An OP race can have multiple OP units instead of a single OP unit. (Disclaimer: Terran's well balanced, this is a Protoss talking here)
You don't say too easy to execute. It is this point that dear David seems to repeatedly miss. For example when we had the patch zergs. They need to understand that if something is much easier to execute for the offensive player than it is for the defending player to defend it then it is overpowered (except in mirrors ofc). It should take as much skill to do a successful attack as it does to make a successful defence. Otherwise, one player or the other is gaining an advantage based simply on the mechanics of the game i.e. imbalance. Please note, this is not the same as if you could have defended, but, you can't as you have the wrong units. That is called composition and you could have held the attack if you scouted properly and changed compositions.
You'll never have equal balance of difficulty so by default, I think attacking should actually be slightly easier than defending. If defending is easier nobody ever attacks and the game becomes boring as fuck, simple as that. See WoL Zerg, precisely.
Wow, that was such bad play by alive :O It was basically alive clumping all his marines and SCVs at one spot and not attacking until the hellbats were dropped out, while he could have just targeted medivacs. And then, when innovation was amoving 4hellbats up the ramp, he could have just targetfired at least 2 of them with low hitpoints... It was like maximum fuck up by alive...
I pretty much felt like none of these plays were that good honestly... it was more of the other guy screwing up rather than someone playing really fantastic.
On June 15 2013 07:22 liatis wrote: You don't say too easy to execute. It is this point that dear David seems to repeatedly miss. For example when we had the patch zergs. They need to understand that if something is much easier to execute for the offensive player than it is for the defending player to defend it then it is overpowered (except in mirrors ofc). It should take as much skill to do a successful attack as it does to make a successful defence. Otherwise, one player or the other is gaining an advantage based simply on the mechanics of the game i.e. imbalance. Please note, this is not the same as if you could have defended, but, you can't as you have the wrong units. That is called composition and you could have held the attack if you scouted properly and changed compositions.
It already is easy to defend against hellbat drops. 1st: hellbats are slow, medivacs mitigate that with afterburners 2nd: hellbats have 2 range, medivacs mitigate that with pick-and-drop micro 3rd: hellbats are healed by medivacs
Ergo, destroy the medivacs and you've already won half the battle. TvT has no excuse really to lose to mass hellbat drops, such as alive's game, just 3 Vikings and some marines could two shot every medivac.
On June 15 2013 07:22 liatis wrote: You don't say too easy to execute. It is this point that dear David seems to repeatedly miss. For example when we had the patch zergs. They need to understand that if something is much easier to execute for the offensive player than it is for the defending player to defend it then it is overpowered (except in mirrors ofc). It should take as much skill to do a successful attack as it does to make a successful defence. Otherwise, one player or the other is gaining an advantage based simply on the mechanics of the game i.e. imbalance. Please note, this is not the same as if you could have defended, but, you can't as you have the wrong units. That is called composition and you could have held the attack if you scouted properly and changed compositions.
It already is easy to defend against hellbat drops. 1st: hellbats are slow, medivacs mitigate that with afterburners 2nd: hellbats have 2 range, medivacs mitigate that with pick-and-drop micro 3rd: hellbats are healed by medivacs
Ergo, destroy the medivacs and you've already won half the battle. TvT has no excuse really to lose to mass hellbat drops, such as alive's game, just 3 Vikings and some marines could two shot every medivac.
That should be ridiculously easy for Protoss ... you just need maybe 2 Phoenix for the job to either kill the Medivac directly or lift the Hellbats until your workers are safe and some Stalkers arrive. Spore Crawlers are pretty cheap too and yet no one builds them ... at least they didnt build them until now, but since Banshee-cloak got cheaper people will need that detection and anti-air anyways.
I have seen some people's suggestion to modify the transformation upgrade. I personally think it is really weird to have current transformantion research done because it has little impact on the games (4 seconds to transform also makes it harder to be use)
I meant, "why would you research if you can build them?" Don't you guys think they really should look into this upgrade? Thoughts?
On June 15 2013 14:52 SsDrKosS wrote: I have seen some people's suggestion to modify the transformation upgrade. I personally think it is really weird to have current transformantion research done because it has little impact on the games (4 seconds to transform also makes it harder to be use)
I meant, "why would you research if you can build them?" Don't you guys think they really should look into this upgrade? Thoughts?
this is actually a good question. how many games we have seen pro transforming hellions into hellbats after doing harassment (in mid game)? I almost can't remember any.
Why would you spent so much gas for something that cost pure minerals? You can just run those hellions in to kill whatever and if lucky, pull back and repair just like how it was in WoL, replace those with hellbats when you are thinking to start a push or something.
Not to mention this transformation is only really useful for mech players. That being said, maybe it can be used in some kinda hellions pressure with transformation into hellbat all in kinda push.
On June 15 2013 14:52 SsDrKosS wrote: I have seen some people's suggestion to modify the transformation upgrade. I personally think it is really weird to have current transformantion research done because it has little impact on the games (4 seconds to transform also makes it harder to be use)
I meant, "why would you research if you can build them?" Don't you guys think they really should look into this upgrade? Thoughts?
this is actually a good question. how many games we have seen pro transforming hellions into hellbats after doing harassment (in mid game)? I almost can't remember any.
Why would you spent so much gas for something that cost pure minerals? You can just run those hellions in to kill whatever and if lucky, pull back and repair just like how it was in WoL, replace those with hellbats when you are thinking to start a push or something.
Not to mention this transformation is only really useful for mech players. That being said, maybe it can be used in some kinda hellions pressure with transformation into hellbat all in kinda push.
Blizzard "allows" for Hellbats to be produced directly, because they are on their "more aggression" trip. Nerfing the Hellbat and buffing the Banshee in return clearly shows that.
They should remove the build option for Hellbats but change the transformation time to half a second instead. That would make people want to get that upgrade and requiring some later tech building would slow down Hellbat drops enough.
On June 15 2013 14:52 SsDrKosS wrote: I have seen some people's suggestion to modify the transformation upgrade. I personally think it is really weird to have current transformantion research done because it has little impact on the games (4 seconds to transform also makes it harder to be use)
I meant, "why would you research if you can build them?" Don't you guys think they really should look into this upgrade? Thoughts?
this is actually a good question. how many games we have seen pro transforming hellions into hellbats after doing harassment (in mid game)? I almost can't remember any.
Why would you spent so much gas for something that cost pure minerals? You can just run those hellions in to kill whatever and if lucky, pull back and repair just like how it was in WoL, replace those with hellbats when you are thinking to start a push or something.
Not to mention this transformation is only really useful for mech players. That being said, maybe it can be used in some kinda hellions pressure with transformation into hellbat all in kinda push.
Blizzard "allows" for Hellbats to be produced directly, because they are on their "more aggression" trip. Nerfing the Hellbat and buffing the Banshee in return clearly shows that.
They should remove the build option for Hellbats but change the transformation time to half a second instead. That would make people want to get that upgrade and requiring some later tech building would slow down Hellbat drops enough.
I think this will be good because the terran players will think twice before early hellbat harass because they have to invest more time&money. Definitely agreeing with removing the build from factory. I still want to have hellbats purely mechanical but after a research, they will be bio/mech again, which is far more logical then the current hellbat! (and also good vs Archon!)
as a low level player i think its good to nerf hellbats, but for professional play i am not sure if the game gets stale too fast if there is not this threat any more
On June 15 2013 20:36 bypLy wrote: as a low level player i think its good to nerf hellbats, but for professional play i am not sure if the game gets stale too fast if there is not this threat any more
It is unavoidable that the game is "getting stale", because Blizzard can not keep adding new units over and over again. The "refresshment" has to come from new maps.
It already IS rather stale (boring) to watch pros drop Hellbats over and over again until they finally deal enough damage to destroy half the economy of their opponent. It is bad that a Zerg can defend 4 drops and then lose a significant amount on the 5th drop, because building Medivacs and Hellbats does not seem to cost the Terran a significant amount; he is still able to defend his base.
EPT
