The problem with banelings as I understand it is not necessarily whether they are over or underpowered. We get a patch almost every week that could tweak the numbers if they were found to be one way or another. The problem is that the unit just does not fit into the brood war "style".
It overlaps with the lurker as zergs general splash damage anti-bio unit; the main difference between the two besides debatably efficiency is that the lurker requires positioning, counter play, and has an overall higher skill cap to use while the baneling is for the vast majority of the time just 1a-ed into the bioball with your lings.
Starbow is aiming to remove these deathball clashes from sc2 and bring the game closer to BW with smaller skirmishes and smaller amounts of units spread across the map.Thus, they are considering just removing the unit from the game entirely along with the other deathball-inspiring units like the collosus and sentry.
However, the baneling has established itself in the hearts of many zerg players as one of the most morbidly satisfying units brought into the game by sc2, so it would be a shame to see it go. Instead, I propose a simple yet massive nerf that would remove the unit from any zerg players "standard" army and turn it into more of a niche speciality unit more inline with the brood war philosophy.
The baneling should be changed to do 100% friendly splash damage.
This would essentially remove it from the ling/bling 1a composition and turn the universally hated ZvZ matchup away from the sc2 style it still resembles, but keep the unit in the game as a burrowed land mine, overlord carpet bomb munition, or a hard to pull off but rewarding flank attacker. The unit will then be much more inline with the starbow philosophy in its new role as a niche skirmisher and will be justifiably able to stay and still be usable.
Banelings aren't universally hated for ZvZ in SC2. Effort vs DRG on Tal'darim was one of the best games ever. I would even be okay with Starbow outright copying early-game ZvZ, while making banelings useless in the rest of the match-ups.
Friendly fire is a good concept in general, but for units like banelings and hellions it's simply too user-unfriendly. If you have one baneling in your army and a cloaked ghost walks up and snipes the baneling, your entire army will explode.
On February 11 2014 18:34 Gnots wrote: The problem with banelings as I understand it is not necessarily whether they are over or underpowered. We get a patch almost every week that could tweak the numbers if they were found to be one way or another. The problem is that the unit just does not fit into the brood war "style".
It overlaps with the lurker as zergs general splash damage anti-bio unit; the main difference between the two besides debatably efficiency is that the lurker requires positioning, counter play, and has an overall higher skill cap to use while the baneling is for the vast majority of the time just 1a-ed into the bioball with your lings.
Starbow is aiming to remove these deathball clashes from sc2 and bring the game closer to BW with smaller skirmishes and smaller amounts of units spread across the map.Thus, they are considering just removing the unit from the game entirely along with the other deathball-inspiring units like the collosus and sentry.
However, the baneling has established itself in the hearts of many zerg players as one of the most morbidly satisfying units brought into the game by sc2, so it would be a shame to see it go. Instead, I propose a simple yet massive nerf that would remove the unit from any zerg players "standard" army and turn it into more of a niche speciality unit more inline with the brood war philosophy.
The baneling should be changed to do 100% friendly splash damage.
This would essentially remove it from the ling/bling 1a composition and turn the universally hated ZvZ matchup away from the sc2 style it still resembles, but keep the unit in the game as a burrowed land mine, overlord carpet bomb munition, or a hard to pull off but rewarding flank attacker. The unit will then be much more inline with the starbow philosophy in its new role as a niche skirmisher and will be justifiably able to stay and still be usable.
Making Banelings do 100% friendly splash damage would just remove them from the game. Banelings with any composition will do more damage to the Zerg than to the opponent because targeting Banelings with Siege Tanks also make them explode and Zerg will be damage by Siege Tanks' splash + Banelings' splash and battle would be over in a seconds, before it even started which is exactly what is happening in SC2 right now.
That also Means that Banelings would be pretty bad with Zerglings and Ultras, and they are made that way, they should have something to tank for them so they could suicide and not get wasted.
Making Banelings damage their own units would be pretty close to making a change for every ranged unit to be shooting the friendly units in front of it, in other words making unintentional friendly fire possible for most of the units and not just some. You wouldn't be able to do anything because if unit clump just a little they will start killing your own unit and you will have to spread them so much that in the end they will be surrounded and picked apart by other group of units like Zealots, Zerglings etc.
On February 11 2014 21:00 Grumbels wrote: Banelings aren't universally hated for ZvZ in SC2. Effort vs DRG on Tal'darim was one of the best games ever. I would even be okay with Starbow outright copying early-game ZvZ, while making banelings useless in the rest of the match-ups.
Totally unrelated but I'm still so mad at that result
There is something I always wondered why it was never imported into the Terran arsenal: Smoke grenade/Fumigen. I mean, we already have it via some maps (we all remember the in-base morphing banes in Metropolis...). So it could be implemented.
I wonder what the SB dev can do out of this idea, it could be a reaper or ghost weapon imo, and add interesting thing, at least midgame.
The new Spider mine is a buff for Terran, and will enable Vultures to be more offensive when they plant mines vs Dragoons and other slow-shooting units. The cooldown is kept to represent the time Vultures "fizzled out" while planting a mine in BW. Maybe will a better solution come in the future. As we have mentioned earlier, Vultures are one of the units who benefit most from the SC2 engine, compared to BW. The range reduction intends to balance out the strength of the new mines.
A larger patch will come soon, which will contain some additional balance and design adjustements.
This video displays the new Spider mine built by Decemberscalm:
if ur gonna give bw mines to vultures you should slightly nerf their movement speed, or do something else at the very least 200 200 mech lategame >>>>>>>> any protoss army. couple that with bw mines and terran chronoboost.. that becomes quite scary
The new Spider mine is a buff for Terran, and will enable Vultures to be more offensive when they plant mines vs Dragoons and other slow-shooting units. The cooldown is kept to represent the time Vultures "fizzled out" while planting a mine in BW. Maybe will a better solution come in the future. As we have mentioned earlier, Vultures are one of the units who benefit most from the SC2 engine, compared to BW. The range reduction intends to balance out the strength of the new mines.
if ur gonna give bw mines to vultures you should slightly nerf their movement speed, or do something else at the very least 200 200 mech lategame >>>>>>>> any protoss army. couple that with bw mines and terran chronoboost.. that becomes quite scary
I'd say psi storm with smartcasting makes up for quite a bit.
The new Spider mine is a buff for Terran, and will enable Vultures to be more offensive when they plant mines vs Dragoons and other slow-shooting units. The cooldown is kept to represent the time Vultures "fizzled out" while planting a mine in BW. Maybe will a better solution come in the future. As we have mentioned earlier, Vultures are one of the units who benefit most from the SC2 engine, compared to BW. The range reduction intends to balance out the strength of the new mines.
if ur gonna give bw mines to vultures you should slightly nerf their movement speed, or do something else at the very least 200 200 mech lategame >>>>>>>> any protoss army. couple that with bw mines and terran chronoboost.. that becomes quite scary
I'd say psi storm with smartcasting makes up for quite a bit.
id say vessels with smartcasting makes up for it ^^, especially with sc2 ai and storm was nerfed
The new Spider mine is a buff for Terran, and will enable Vultures to be more offensive when they plant mines vs Dragoons and other slow-shooting units. The cooldown is kept to represent the time Vultures "fizzled out" while planting a mine in BW. Maybe will a better solution come in the future. As we have mentioned earlier, Vultures are one of the units who benefit most from the SC2 engine, compared to BW. The range reduction intends to balance out the strength of the new mines.
if ur gonna give bw mines to vultures you should slightly nerf their movement speed, or do something else at the very least 200 200 mech lategame >>>>>>>> any protoss army. couple that with bw mines and terran chronoboost.. that becomes quite scary
I'd say psi storm with smartcasting makes up for quite a bit.
id say vessels with smartcasting makes up for it ^^, especially with sc2 ai and storm was nerfed
This would be the perfect opportunity to do something about Stalkers and make them somehow viable versus mech, don't you think?
They still need a useful role, even if it's a radical re-design of the unit.
Some kind of blink with temporary cloak ability to break seige tank lines? Maybe stronger armor vs tanks, etc. Just anything that would make them more useful in the late game than they currently appear to be.
New mines seem pretty strong. Trying to find someone good enough to test them out in a proper game -.-
Think the scurry might need to be slower, but not sure.
Also, are arbiters going to be looked at? Recall doesn't work like bw (there's a delay so rather than the recall casting instantly and then the units being transported later independent of the arbiter, the arbiter itself charges the recall and if it dies during the charge the recall doesn't go off) It means Terran can easily defend recall with just turrets now, and it's very difficult for Protoss to pressure T late game.
Also, stasis is pretty weak right now. The casting again has a timer, and the effective range seems lower. EMP is also very accurate and cancels the stasis charge. Arbiters have a tendency to die rather than casting spells. What with EMP getting buffed from BW, I don't see the logic behind arbiter spells getting nerfed like this.
Scst, thats what the goon is for. Goon is your anti armor and stalkers are your anti light. Ive started to work out a goon/stalker/high templar push in pvz that i think works really well. Goons apply pain to hydras/roaches, stalkers destroy mutas/lings, and high templars for storming clumped units. So far the only problem ive run into is figuring out when to add obs for lurkers.
Btw to people saying lategame mech vs protoss is unwinnable, oure incredibly wrong. Just get caeriers, arbiters, high temps, shuttle, speedlots, and goons. The idea is to run NOT A MOVE but run through the mine field to drag them into t while stasising the back lines with arbiters or even just recalling right on top of them to start storming the goliaths/tanks so the carriers can go to work destroying tanks. Carriers got buffed tvp since the wraith got removed . No more days of having carriers get sniped by 10-12 cloaked wraiths.
I think that one of the problems with banelings, as Gnots says, is that they don't really fit into the BW style and they're just simple attack move units that are just included into your zergling mass.
A change that would make them more microable and interesting is to make their detonation an activated ability with a cast time. A zerg player would have to tell the baneling to detonate and after a second(?) of charging up, then it explodes.
This adds more micro and dynamics to both the zerg player and their opponent. Instead of attack moving, zerg would have to intelligently position them to deny space. The opponent needs to then be careful about movement and needs to focus banelings that can cause significant damage.
This change should make banelings much more interesting to play with while still keeping their ability to bust down fortifications.
Dont get those baneling discussions. I haven't once seen a game in which they proved to be too strong. I've rather made the other experience, on their own they are pretty unreliable against an opponent that is simply running back and having anything with splash - tanks, mines, irradiate - that attacks them meanwhile.
It overlaps with the lurker as zergs general splash damage anti-bio unit; the main difference between the two besides debatably efficiency is that the lurker requires positioning, counter play, and has an overall higher skill cap to use while the baneling is for the vast majority of the time just 1a-ed into the bioball with your lings.
How can you say this with a straight face? Banelings scale extremely well with good micro. 1a banelings are borderline useless at anything above Gold league play. Have you even played Zerg? I can't imagine so, if that's your opinion. No way you could think that Banelings are an attack move unit.
Banelings have so much use and are *still* underutilized IMO in SC2. Burrowed banelings are something that not many players can pull off well, but I think in a year or two as things keep getting progressively tighter and it's harder to eek out an edge, we will see them used more.
Also, I don't think ZvZ is "universally" hated. I'd argue that it's probably the most interesting mirror matchup. Some players prefer TvT, but I find that a bit slow for my tastes. Some players find ZvZ to be a stressful matchup to play because it's fast paced, and they also see it was "coinflippy", which is really just them not understanding that the matchup is unforgiving. Making a mistake and losing because of it is not a coinflip.
Also, on a final note- I am not going to bash the Lurker, because it's an interesting unit in its own right, but If given the choice, I'd much rather see Banelings. I guess I just don't like the slow, more positional units as much from a specator point of view.
On February 12 2014 03:54 Whanhee wrote: I think that one of the problems with banelings, as Gnots says, is that they don't really fit into the BW style and they're just simple attack move units that are just included into your zergling mass.
A change that would make them more microable and interesting is to make their detonation an activated ability with a cast time. A zerg player would have to tell the baneling to detonate and after a second(?) of charging up, then it explodes.
This adds more micro and dynamics to both the zerg player and their opponent. Instead of attack moving, zerg would have to intelligently position them to deny space. The opponent needs to then be careful about movement and needs to focus banelings that can cause significant damage.
This change should make banelings much more interesting to play with while still keeping their ability to bust down fortifications.
I feel like Banelings have a ton of versatility beyond just an a-move unit, they can be dropped into mineral lines / onto armies and burrowed to be used as land mines, and they force really interesting / unique counter micro out of their opponent (splitting zerglings / marine / zealots ect vs banelings is very different from how you split vs other forms of AoE). Not to mention they are extremely vulnerable to AoE (tanks / vulture mines / storms / reavers / lurkers / other banelings ect), so you want to keep them well spread in most situations, not a-move them.
I feel like the Baneling is one of if not the best designed unit unique to SC2, and that the design has a lot to add to Starbow / RTS games in general.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/MrHoon/GaemmoLol.gif)
. No more days of having carriers get sniped by 10-12 cloaked wraiths. 
