On February 13 2014 14:00 Booom3 wrote: It doesn't change that banes are an extremely boring unit. Your opponent a-moves them into your army? There are 3 scenarios here: You're looking away for half a second, your army explodes, you lose, go next. You're carefully spending all your attention on your units on the field, you split the marines perfectly, you kill the enemy while taking minimal losses, your opponent has very little chance to counter micro and all in all because the terran player was good building the banes in the first place was a waste of time. Or you're a bad player who can't split marines fast enough, you lose half your army to some a-move crap and suddenly you feel excessively punished for something that was extremely easy for your opponent to accomplish.
None of these scenarios is in any way fun or exciting.
Now the lurker on the other hand requires micro to pull off attacks with and you get a much longer window of response, making losing your army to it feel like a fair punishment for not giving your army on the field any attention.
Just remove banelings please. They only serve to suck fun and enjoyment out of the game for bad players.
From all this, I only see you complaining how it is hard to split against Banelings and how they are "bad units" because of it. I also see that you have never played with Banelings against someone that actually knows how to split.
Banelings never were a-click units, the more your opponent is microing and splitting, the more you have to micro with Banelings and split, if you just a-click with them you will trade like 10 Banelings for 1 Siege Tank while Terran is backing up with Marines, or they will suicide in the Firebats and do basically nothing to the Marines.
There are plenty of things where you lose half of your army just because you didn't look for a second, Lurkers, Reavers, Storms, Spider Mines, Siege Tanks, and nothing needs changing but Banelings need to be removed? Yes, from all this I just see that you really hate Banelings because you lost a lot against them.
On February 13 2014 14:00 Booom3 wrote: It doesn't change that banes are an extremely boring unit. Your opponent a-moves them into your army? There are 3 scenarios here: You're looking away for half a second, your army explodes, you lose, go next. You're carefully spending all your attention on your units on the field, you split the marines perfectly, you kill the enemy while taking minimal losses, your opponent has very little chance to counter micro and all in all because the terran player was good building the banes in the first place was a waste of time. Or you're a bad player who can't split marines fast enough, you lose half your army to some a-move crap and suddenly you feel excessively punished for something that was extremely easy for your opponent to accomplish.
None of these scenarios is in any way fun or exciting.
Now the lurker on the other hand requires micro to pull off attacks with and you get a much longer window of response, making losing your army to it feel like a fair punishment for not giving your army on the field any attention.
Just remove banelings please. They only serve to suck fun and enjoyment out of the game for bad players.
From all this, I only see you complaining how it is hard to split against Banelings and how they are "bad units" because of it. I also see that you have never played with Banelings against someone that actually knows how to split.
Banelings never were a-click units, the more your opponent is microing and splitting, the more you have to micro with Banelings and split.
Baneling micro was imo one of the things that drg improved upon to the point of being able to beat innovation in that famous series. Saying that they aren't microable seems a little silly to me.
It's also (imo again) caused by casters who almost never highlight the micro thats being shown. If you cast your eyes back to wol, when tvz was marine tank primarily, the only things that were brought up were whether or not banelings connected with marines in sufficient numbers (almost always in context of how well the terran was splitting), or if the banelings hit tanks. A well micro'd zerg army where banelings were split to both avoid tanks and not just roll around uselessly in one big clump was never emphasised.
On February 13 2014 14:00 Booom3 wrote: It doesn't change that banes are an extremely boring unit. Your opponent a-moves them into your army? There are 3 scenarios here: You're looking away for half a second, your army explodes, you lose, go next. You're carefully spending all your attention on your units on the field, you split the marines perfectly, you kill the enemy while taking minimal losses, your opponent has very little chance to counter micro and all in all because the terran player was good building the banes in the first place was a waste of time. Or you're a bad player who can't split marines fast enough, you lose half your army to some a-move crap and suddenly you feel excessively punished for something that was extremely easy for your opponent to accomplish.
None of these scenarios is in any way fun or exciting.
Now the lurker on the other hand requires micro to pull off attacks with and you get a much longer window of response, making losing your army to it feel like a fair punishment for not giving your army on the field any attention.
Just remove banelings please. They only serve to suck fun and enjoyment out of the game for bad players.
From all this, I only see you complaining how it is hard to split against Banelings and how they are "bad units" because of it. I also see that you have never played with Banelings against someone that actually knows how to split.
Banelings never were a-click units, the more your opponent is microing and splitting, the more you have to micro with Banelings and split.
Baneling micro was imo one of the things that drg improved upon to the point of being able to beat innovation in that famous series. Saying that they aren't microable seems a little silly to me.
It's also (imo again) caused by casters who almost never highlight the micro thats being shown. If you cast your eyes back to wol, when tvz was marine tank primarily, the only things that were brought up were whether or not banelings connected with marines in sufficient numbers (almost always in context of how well the terran was splitting), or if the banelings hit tanks. A well micro'd zerg army where banelings were split to both avoid tanks and not just roll around uselessly in one big clump was never emphasised.
Yes, DRG is really solid with splitting Banelings.
I watched his stream yesterday, and he was playing Maru on Daedalus point 2 games in a row, first was Mech against Swarm Hosts, Roaches and Mutas and DRG won, but second game Maru went for Hellbat + Bio. DRG went for Muta + Ling + Bane and both have microed insanely well, Maru had perfect splits and DRG had good Baneling splits but didn't have enough Banelings, it was really close but he lost.
Point is if he didn't have those great splits at all, it would be damn one-sided, Banelings would just suicide into Marauders and Hellbats and that would be the game.
I think that Banelings are perfectly fine in Starbow, I especially like the fact that they do weaker damage against Buildings so they aren't that good for Busting anymore(you need like 10 Banelings to destroy a Bunker or something like that).
When i say there is no micro to baneling its not litteral. Degree wise, its lower. In general you move command them so they do dont go into marauders or firebats.
You split them against widowmines or tanks in starbow, even against bioballs you split them, but what i found is a big inconsistent when you do that. You never know which banelings will die.
What is missing from the discussion on banes and what i personally feel makes them a bad unit is the fact that it is, most of the time, a binary unit. It kills or is killed. Very rarely do they engage in combat and then disengages. Once the decision is made to engage you're mostly committed to it. One of the major differences between bw and sc2 is how combat works. Sc2 has very binary combat in many cases, there is very little trading going on (most of the time one side gets his entire army wiped) and battles are usually highly committed, very little retreating going on. Now i didn't play bw, but i can see that starbow is trying to create the sort of combat where engagements last longer, are less committal and emphasize that both sides have units left after a battle. The baneling just doesn't fit into this paradigm. It's not the splash, it's not the a-moving, it's the suicide aspect that is bad. Battles are over in seconds (whether it detonates succesfully or not). Scourges are slightly better because they are intended as snipers of specific support units instead of snipers of the backbone of an army.
On February 13 2014 21:23 bananafone wrote: What is missing from the discussion on banes and what i personally feel makes them a bad unit is the fact that it is, most of the time, a binary unit. It kills or is killed. Very rarely do they engage in combat and then disengages. Once the decision is made to engage you're mostly committed to it. One of the major differences between bw and sc2 is how combat works. Sc2 has very binary combat in many cases, there is very little trading going on (most of the time one side gets his entire army wiped) and battles are usually highly committed, very little retreating going on. Now i didn't play bw, but i can see that starbow is trying to create the sort of combat where engagements last longer, are less committal and emphasize that both sides have units left after a battle. The baneling just doesn't fit into this paradigm. It's not the splash, it's not the a-moving, it's the suicide aspect that is bad. Battles are over in seconds (whether it detonates succesfully or not). Scourges are slightly better because they are intended as snipers of specific support units instead of snipers of the backbone of an army.
Banelings don't support binary trading at all. Banelings will always die and therefore provide at least some respite to the opponent. And you can never take your baneling army and kill a base.
On February 13 2014 21:23 bananafone wrote: What is missing from the discussion on banes and what i personally feel makes them a bad unit is the fact that it is, most of the time, a binary unit. It kills or is killed. Very rarely do they engage in combat and then disengages. Once the decision is made to engage you're mostly committed to it. One of the major differences between bw and sc2 is how combat works. Sc2 has very binary combat in many cases, there is very little trading going on (most of the time one side gets his entire army wiped) and battles are usually highly committed, very little retreating going on. Now i didn't play bw, but i can see that starbow is trying to create the sort of combat where engagements last longer, are less committal and emphasize that both sides have units left after a battle. The baneling just doesn't fit into this paradigm. It's not the splash, it's not the a-moving, it's the suicide aspect that is bad. Battles are over in seconds (whether it detonates succesfully or not). Scourges are slightly better because they are intended as snipers of specific support units instead of snipers of the backbone of an army.
Banelings don't support binary trading at all. Banelings will always die and therefore provide at least some respite to the opponent. And you can never take your baneling army and kill a base.
Banelings have a much lower skill floor for micro than the skill floor for counter micro.
Banelings are NOT uninteresting. Banelings are NOT imbalanced (inherently). Banelings do NOT go against the design philosophy of StarBow. By introducing some kind of extra skill element to using Banelings (possibly rebalance afterwards) we would solve this problem.
On February 13 2014 22:02 Grumbels wrote: About dts vs mines, isn't it really ridiculous to have cloaked armies with arbiters just walk over entire minefields?
Irradiate is not good vs banelings. And against lurkers irradiate is great. So SV play lose value here(Alot imo).
Thoughts on buffing Irradiate splash to make it a lot better vs banelings? That will create some type of "widow mine"-effect where the zerg is forced to micro his banelings.
As I remember it, Irradiate splash radius was nerfed some months ago. At least, I think it used to be quite good vs Banelings. Maybe its time to "revert" that change.
Irradiate is not good vs banelings. And against lurkers irradiate is great. So SV play lose value here(Alot imo).
Thoughts on buffing Irradiate splash to make it a lot better vs banelings? That will create some type of "widow mine"-effect where the zerg is forced to micro his banelings.
Irradiate is not good vs banelings. And against lurkers irradiate is great. So SV play lose value here(Alot imo).
Thoughts on buffing Irradiate splash to make it a lot better vs banelings? That will create some type of "widow mine"-effect where the zerg is forced to micro his banelings.
I don't really like it - not for balance reasons. I just prefer it to force some other reaction out of terran then the unit designed to counter its colleague.
Giving players options to limit what the other player can use adds something of strategical value imo.
Irradiate is not good vs banelings. And against lurkers irradiate is great. So SV play lose value here(Alot imo).
Thoughts on buffing Irradiate splash to make it a lot better vs banelings? That will create some type of "widow mine"-effect where the zerg is forced to micro his banelings.
I don't really like it - not for balance reasons. I just prefer it to force some other reaction out of terran then the unit designed to counter its colleague.
Giving players options to limit what the other player can use adds something of strategical value imo.
What unit should "counter" it then, and how? Siege Tanks, can never really be "good" vs banelings due to how open maps are, overkill and 4.5 second cooldown. Right now your kinda forced into lowtech, high production w/ super high focus on splitting. It would be nice if terran bio players had a tech-pattern they could opt for if they weren't super confidient in their splitting abilities.
Irradiate seems to me to be by far the simplest solution (especially since splash AOE might currently be lower than in BW anyway).
Irradiate is not good vs banelings. And against lurkers irradiate is great. So SV play lose value here(Alot imo).
Thoughts on buffing Irradiate splash to make it a lot better vs banelings? That will create some type of "widow mine"-effect where the zerg is forced to micro his banelings.
I don't really like it - not for balance reasons. I just prefer it to force some other reaction out of terran then the unit designed to counter its colleague.
Giving players options to limit what the other player can use adds something of strategical value imo.
What units should "counter" it then, and how? Siege Tanks, can never really be "good" vs banelings due to how open maps are, overkill and 4.5 second cooldown.
Irradiate seems to me to be by far the simplest solution (especially since splash AOE might currently be lower than in BW anyway).
You're probably right, I'm just hoping for some sort of magical solution where banelings aren't countered by the thing which counters its counterpart. It just feels slightly inelegant.
In any event, how would you buff irradiate to be good vs banelings and not skew the balance of what else they're good against?
Irradiate is not good vs banelings. And against lurkers irradiate is great. So SV play lose value here(Alot imo).
Thoughts on buffing Irradiate splash to make it a lot better vs banelings? That will create some type of "widow mine"-effect where the zerg is forced to micro his banelings.
I don't really like it - not for balance reasons. I just prefer it to force some other reaction out of terran then the unit designed to counter its colleague.
Giving players options to limit what the other player can use adds something of strategical value imo.
What unit should "counter" it then, and how? Siege Tanks, can never really be "good" vs banelings due to how open maps are, overkill and 4.5 second cooldown. Right now your kinda forced into lowtech, high production w/ super high focus on splitting. It would be nice if terran bio players had a tech-pattern they could opt for if they weren't super confidient in their splitting abilities.
Irradiate seems to me to be by far the simplest solution (especially since splash AOE might currently be lower than in BW anyway).
I agree, its by far the easiest solution. And probably good in practice to for balance.
But, the style bane/ling vs bioplay should be more about combat unit vs combat unit imo, thats the fun part about it.
Where is the testmap is my first question? Second question, what will be tried with the baneling.
Will the speedboost thing be tried? Removing his speedupgrade but give him a speedboost ability. 10~sec cooldown, charges for 6seconds at movement 3(marines move at 3.14~ with stim), cant change direction. When he has been charged to the destination. He cant move for a few seconds would be nice.
Anyway, what i wanna try more is a thing on the ghost. A spell that doesnt do any dmg but have zone control. This way you can zone out banelings and they will have to react towards it.
Ghost casts his spell. It gives detection instantly for 4seconds, and then after 3sec any unit in that area gets slowed*. Its like the old scienve vessel spell. Even your own units. It doesnt affect burrowed units or hover. Would this work? lets just say for now 10sec cooldown. Oh no cooldown, manacost. Maybe cooldown.... w.e
How does this sound?
EDIT: I didnt mean to Root the units, just slow them.
In any event, how would you buff irradiate to be good vs banelings and not skew the balance of what else they're good against?
Well, I acutally think right now that using Irradiate for its splash-effect (like targetting an Ultralisk in a middle of the group of zerg units) isn't particularly strong. Like, I would argue that we have room to buff it there without breaking the balance of the game. For splash-purposes, Irradiate is mostly useful against Mutalisks, and was actually indirectly nerfed in a recent patch where we made Mutalisks slightly less clumped up.
Regarding Mutalisks, we are actually considering to increase its efficiency against bio units. In BW, Mutalisks could engage with its moving shot into bio units that were 1a'ing while moving. This isn't really possible in Sbow (without a critical mass) for two reasons;
1) The moving shot here isn't as effective as in BW as it deadstops for a while (this is unfixable in editor unfortunately) 2) With the current pathing units clump up while moving forward, which means that Mutalisks can't pick up single Marines without taking heavy fire in the proces.
In my opinion, this makes Mutalisk openings quite inferior vs bio compared to just mass baneling (with a few scourges vs drop-threat) or ling/Lurker. While everyone indeed has seen and experienced some games where Mutalisks work well vs bio, I think that is mostly the case of the terran not really knowing what he was doing. Aka, perhaps he weren't aware how fast Mutas could come in Sbow and perhaps he felt like he needed to rush for SV's against Mutalisks (which reduces his unit count), while in reality he can just go 3 rax before teching and outproduce the zerg player (since Mutalisks doesn't do anything against a critical mass of bio units). Or maybe he was just an inferior player in general.
Thus, the point here is that I believe we have room to buff Mutalisks vs bio, which also gives us room to increase Irradiate splash AOE in order to maintain balance.
But, the style bane/ling vs bioplay should be more about combat unit vs combat unit imo, thats the fun part about it.
Well combat vs combat is still a possibliity for the terrans who are confident in their micro right? But for those who aren't we give them a less "stressful" option in making Irradiate better. In that regard, we are not taking anything away from the terran player.
Can't ghosts get an additional ability? Cloak isn't really a spell, neither is nuke. And shock is an army support ability, not an assassination ability. (reading the starbow wiki and they don't have a fourth ability there)
Also, please don't make mutalisks too strong in a game with unlimited unit selection.
EPT
