Opinion on hellbat drop play - Page 14

Hellbat drops raise the new standard bearer for cost efficiency in harassment as a general practice in this game, for all races, to a really absurd level. Oracles kind of do, as well, but they seem to be okay and have some real backlash as far as their relevance into the late game goes. The cost efficiency of this kind of mineral dumping, derived from the scale of effects (even forcing people to pull away from their mining does, typically, an equivalent if not higher amount of economic damage through delayed mining, than the hellions themselves cost. And this is not to say that, even though the drop is 'shut down' that everything, or anything is even lost.

When you compare the effectiveness, let alone the cost effectiveness, of hellbat drops to other forms of dropping and harassment of peoples mineral lines.. these are the new kid on the block, and by all means they seem to be doing a bang-up job. Short of the constant barrage of games that we as fans of starcraft are regularly experiencing, and have been since the beta - we can think about a few other hallmarks that separate this from most comparable harasses.

1) Scouting hellbat drops and preparing for and otherwise reacting to them seems to achieve less than what takes place when people scout the other forms of mineral line harass, which can actually be shut down. The grace withi which players can scout and shut down other harassments is not merely the product of experience with those circumstances, but rather a plain and pitiful display of how extreme this harass is, and how extreme we have to be, and appear - by contrast to our handling of other harassments, to deal with these. More damage is taken by the harassed, and less is lost by the harassing player.

2) Most mineral line harassments are comprised of units that generally aren't good for later game army compositions. And these units require gas and out of the way tech. Subsequently, the Terran players are happier to throw away hellbats than most players are with any of their worker line harassing units.

3) The apm required to execute vs dealing with hellbat drops is imbalanced. While I agree that this kind of difference is not fundamentally corrosive to the game, or representative of a violation of some axiom of criteria for balance that has to exist - and indeed, there are many examples in the game already where this kind of imbalance is well accepted and not a screaming issue of balance (See: I am clearly not talking about the difference in apm required to use widow mines vs dealing with them) I still think that it is worth taking into account, especially from this lens of comparison to other worker line harassments, which tend to require less apm to deal with.

4) The resources, impact to ones own momentum, that has to be taken in stride to actually be safe against the tested threat of hellbat drops is pretty silly compared to most mineral line harassments at large, and even more so when we consider the investments of resources required (and the blow to momentum) to execute various mineral line harassments, contrasted by the resources committed to a mere hellbat drop. While I might drop spores in every mineral line to shut down, say, banshees, or phoenixes, or oracles; a spore and a spine at each mineral line is a standard and minimal response to ones inclination to actually be safe against one medivac with two hellbats in it. This includes the granted presence of a queen or two. Just look at how obtuse it is to see terrans building a bunker and a turret next to each other in or around their mineral lines, or zergs doing the same with spores and spines. Since when was this how we dealt with harass? Cannons in the mineral line has gone from being a newb cliche to a match-up standard? Having to invest in firm static defenses, rather than what we have always done? I'm fine with change, but this seems pretty obviously silly and it is currently in the air, awaiting changes.

In my opinion, there isn't much left to ask about whether hellbat drops are imbalanced. That question was already answered by Blizzard in their efforts to nerf hellbat drops to the degree that they have. The question, then, became; how should we address this issue? We're experiencing the first iteration, a fairly obvious and simple change. But it is pretty clear to the community, and seemingly, still, to David Kim? That more is to be done. Although, I'll confess - it boggles me that they reference hellbat drops as being problematic to TvT while shirking their presence in the other match-ups entirely. I'm serious, it keeps boggling me, everytime I think of it.

There is a lot of dumb balancing that went on with HotS that we are still sorting out. The new unit designs in general seemed to be geared toward helping the game to appeal as a spectator sport, with the inherent valuation of degrees of diversity in what people are watching. Unfotunately, actual game balance seems to have been overlooked in a lot of areas with HotS. Even hearing Blizzard's recent talk about why they think this or that about certain units or desired changes, they seem to speak at least as much about wanting things to be fun for spectators as they do for actually wanting t he game to be balanced. And never in the same breath. I'm sure Blizzard wants to have a balanced game, but I think they are being pretty derpy about a fair few things in HotS, so it's not quite happening.

It's disappointing when you see them trying out random buffs just for the sake of excitement for spectators (warp prism buff, that's the only reasoning I saw.) It's a marked departure from the reserved, hyper- concerned with only balance approach that we could rely on and appreciate out of Blizzard during WoL. Even if things were turbulent, you didn't have shenannigans like this going on, and they made an effort to help people to feel that they were genuinely concerned about balance, and just wanted to be patient - careful. I really don't experience that attitude with Blizzard anymore. I hear loose imitations of those old doctrines, hushed by the astonishing expressions of making changes to the games balance soley out of concerns that have nothing to do with balance. It's bewildering, really.

What's further disappointing about this is that I don't really believe that anything speedvac related makes the game more interesting. Rather, this has promoted a really boring hyperfocus to defending 1-3 bases. People move out on the map less, it seems. There is a very valid paranoia about drop play, from all races, against Terran. Styles like roach hydra in tvz are largely crippled, short of the highest level of play, by the relative ease of executing speedvac drops (note: much swifter and thus better able to exploit boundaries in terrain than drop play ever was) verse the inherent clunkiness of a ground based army which has no real hope of actually shutting down the drops with a note of permanence. This ruins a sense of gameflow where map control can be vied for, and, subsequently, muta ling baane has become the standard in ZvT, leaving our hopes for roach hydra play as.. well, certainly not the most preferred playstyle, according to all the pro starcraft I've been watching - and I do watch a lot.

There are entirely new standards for the meaning and value of drop play for Terran, in all matches. The impromptu doom drop into the main is always a nice way to change up and exploit the false sense of security that any player has over holding off more routine, smaller scale harassment. As much attention as everyone is paying to handling that, you see it laughed at by these random, oh so swift doom drops that, really, there is no reason for Terran not to be doing. Being able to shut down small scale harass effectively, over a variety of circumstances a nd distractions w ithin the game is one thing. Having random doom drops appear as quickly as this - which is quite easy to pull off, given the advantages that Terrans have in map control, through well-executed harassment w/ speedvacs. It just seems like a really ill-considered change to make, so drastically effecting every match-up, and with noone receiving anything as any kind of counterbalance to it.

But, knowing that Blizzard would like for things to be balanced, this is all, ultimately, just a bunch of contextual contemplation that precedes future moments of enhanced balance, which, all the same, we have to be patient in waiting for. Or, at least, I would advise patience ^^


P.S. - The real problem with is the speed boost on medivacs, and the only thing that really shuts the drops down (See: you still lose more mining than in other worker harasses)is the inability for the medivac to be there anymore, or from your killing it. This is one of many reasons why the idea of "roaches" is a really uninformed guess at a solution. Speedvacs, like many changes to the games balance in HotS, were introduced out of concerns for spectator appeal, at least as much as for balance. By my estimate, which is partially informed by Blizzard's own expressions on their intentions for this general array of hots-specific balance changes since conception to present. For some quick examples of the rush work, the non-sensical details which have been especially overlooked in HotS at large, consider this:

A) Hellbats simply are a mechanical unit. They benefit from mechanical upgrades. The damage they take is decreased based on upgrades to their plating. But their damage can be healed by medivacs, which only heal biological units. This is actually a really embarassing detail, if you're willing to take the game seriously enough and to criticize Blizzard for blatantly shoddy, balance-negligent game design.

B) Widow mines splash damage hits everything, above and below ground, except for other widow mines - whether above or below ground. Nowhere in Starcraft 1 or 2 has a unit had some weird and self-convenient dynamic like this, which defies the consistency of the games physics so sharply. It seems like another glossed over, even unconsidered matter. And the almost complete overshadowing of a staple unit like the Siege Tank by the widow mine, unforeseen, but now as an expressed 'concern'. Siege tanks obsolete? Yeah, that's the degree of silliness Blizzard got involved in with HotS.

P.S. 2 - Making changes to the fundamental, consistent dynamics of the game in ways that Blizzard has will necessarily complicate the task of making maps that are considerate of these unique details, some of which.. shall we say, "fly" at odds with the ways in which things typically work - ways which also need to be addressed in map design? And I love me some mapmakers, but realistically, this doesn't merely replace dynamics but complicates them, and I have never met a map maker that was also a pro-gamer. Truly well-designed maps are hard to come by, and I'm sure that is in part due to the high expertise necessary to do this. Not that Blizzard understands this aspect of their game very well at all, from all the maps we've seen come out of them.