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On July 17 2014 16:02 GoSuNamhciR wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2014 10:12 Salient wrote:
It's clear that you don't understand. Yes, ultra powerful widow mines are not a problem if you open Colossus Stalker every single game. The problem is that the game becomes more boring. HT openings are fun and actually require higher skill to execute than colossus builds even before the last mine buff. The last mine buff basically killed HT openings. This one would completely finish the job. So the change makes playing Protoss less fun. But that's not even the worst part. The worst part is that it won't help Terran at all. Widow Mines are already great against Twilight openings. They kind of suck against Robo openings. Ironically, by making the widow mine too powerful, you kill off Twilight openings. You force the Toss to open in a way that is strong against Widow Mines. So we are left with a game that is no more balanced and has less variety. Everyone loses.
Protoss has way too many openings in PvT while terran has too few, cutting down the number of options from toss is actually a step in the RIGHT direction for balance in PvT. The problem is not that toss late game is so broken, its that protoss early game is so ridiculously varied and a good protoss can easily deny the reaper scout making the matchup a coinflip for terran to build order lose. Having a 33% chance to instantly lose the game if you choose incorrectly and a 2/3 chance to just have a normal game if you guess correctly is not fair. These buffs/nerfs will actually allow terran to more safely reach the mid game and late game much more often resulting in a more balanced matchup. We do need more variance, but we need more late game variance, not early game. Early game builds should be standardized in terms of aggression, otherwise you will see pro players lose based on build orders (which happens way too much in this game). While being too greedy should be punished, playing standard should not be (i.e. ultra fast oracles, blink all in). Most of these things have been fixed in WOL, if you remember Stim timing in TvP or Double Chrono'd zealot in PvZ.. but a few new ones have arisen in HOTS that definitely need to be taken care of. Once the early game becomes a game about who is BETTER, not whos build order counters whos. Then you can move on to making the game more varied. You can make builds that segway into Stargates by possibly lowering the cost of protoss air upgrades, Remember Phoenix/Colossus? I would like to see this build return. Thors, BC's, Carriers, Broodlords, Tanks, Infestors (Neural sucks!) all need very minor tweaks to make them more applicable in mainstream games, but not in a way that they become the norm... just in a way that they are viable. Thors could be given +1 ground range, while tanks given a buff in damage output vs. light. Broodlords might need a slight boost in speed by .15. Extremely minor changes make the world of difference with units.
Eh, tbh it used to be pretty obvious to determine what opening Protoss was going for (back in WoL) namely through unit counting, maybe a scan, some scouting, etc. It had to do with the timing window when Terran needed to figure out what the Protoss was going for. Back in WoL, Protoss always had to make a bunch of sentries, so all of their early gas was going into units and base tech (warp gate, etc.). Now, Protoss can tech on nothing more than a couple of stalkers and a MSC, which means all of their tech timings hit much earlier. Because they hit a lot earlier, Terran doesn't have the time to do a standard build and adjust to what they scout. They need to have the perfect response immediately, which leads to those situations where guessing wrong gets you killed.
Variation isn't the problem, it's greed facilitated by abilities like Photon Overcharge. What I didn't like about the crazy WM buffs was how templar openings were eliminated (yes, I'm a Terran and on board with the folks complaining about loss of options). The pacing needs to be fixed, and that can only happen with early game changes.
Sure, late game Terran probably needs a look too, but aside from 200/200 situations, all of the key problems with the match up are more subtle and established in early game.
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On July 18 2014 02:40 KingofGods wrote:
I really don't understand the complaint that protoss can't open straight into templars. They can at least still get templars and be very successful with them later if they want. Terran can't get mech or air (ravens/bcs) at any point, early, mid, or late game. That, in my opinion, is more of a concern than whether or not protoss can tech straight to storm with no other units.
Clearly this!
And I agree.
A big problem is Protoss being to save in the early game. After having a break from starcraft 2 I returned to play some again and after my first game playing against protoss I felt really angry about photon overcharge because it just shuts down most or like almost all early game options terran could develop against protoss.
The only things you can do are mines (which hide from getting shot, if the toss does not get up early detection) or some attacks out of the range of the PO.
Obviously its really stupid and forces the terran to go lategame. Currently I face a lot of early collossus openings which need time to react to, which automatically pushes you in the lategame.
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We, as the players of Starcraft, demand that Blizzard bring back the warhound in its original form.
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juicyjames
United States3815 Posts
Another update is live, not sure if it's worth a new thread.
http://us.battle.net//sc2/en/blog/14834357
Terran- Widow Mine
- Splash radius is now 1.75. There are no longer 50% or 25% damage zones.
- Splash damage is now 40 (+40 Shields) for the full 1.75 splash radius.
- Thor
- Changed to prioritize their AA weapon over the AG weapon
Protoss- Mothership Core
- Time Warp duration decreased from 30 to 10 seconds
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On July 18 2014 09:56 Loccstana wrote:
We, as the players of Starcraft, demand that Blizzard bring back the warhound in its original form.
Except that unit was an imbalanced, A-move abomination so no, "we" don't want it back.
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On July 17 2014 19:20 SC2Toastie wrote:Show nested quote +On July 17 2014 19:06 Hider wrote:What people are asking for is other buff to terran which helps against colo openings whereas WM buffs don't address it at all and even further force P's to play either really passively/greedy with colo or go for one of build form "Great Protoss Book of Bullshit"
To me it seems that Blizzard simply thinks That if they make Widow Mines extremely "OP" vs protoss, then they will be used vs lategame protoss Collosus compositions as well. I think we have to wait a bit to see how that plays out, but I would definitely have liked if Templar openings were buffed simultaenously. Like what if 1 Psy storm could kill 1 Mine? Upgraded banes could 2shot...
Blizzard power: damage upgrades do not apply vs. the widow mine!
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Guess it's gonna be back to all maps 4m tvz again...
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On July 18 2014 12:29 Sajaki wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2014 09:56 Loccstana wrote:
We, as the players of Starcraft, demand that Blizzard bring back the warhound in its original form.
Except that unit was an imbalanced, A-move abomination so no, "we" don't want it back.
so in otherwords its a protoss unit?
Lol
But seriously, at this point im just waiting for LotV. And honestly, if swarm hosts or at the very least mothership core are not removed and the game redesigned around actual gameplay then ill even wait for it to go on sale. I have zero interest in playing anything that feels like HotS.
Will just play WoL and league in the meantime to scratch my competative itch...
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40 (+40) needs to be adjusted in terms of shields damage.
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What's in the battle.net description is actually a good summary ; for the time being, no more decreasing damage zones, the classical 125 + 35 damage on its primary target and 40+40 in 1.75 radius. I tend to think the 40+40 splash is a tad too much and will have to be adjusted, but let's wait and see for the changes to be tested by skillful hands.
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ZvT will be stupid to play and watch again while the lategame weaknesses of terran wont be at all addressed with this (if zergs anyhow survive the 20-25 minute survival game).
I wonder why blizzard does not realize that balancing TvZ on a single stale style of play that allows/forces one race to constantly attack and the other race to only defend for half an hour is nothing but bad. Even hellbats wont have a role in this anymore as they require some commitment from the terran (which includes risks) while going straight into 4m macro rally has it all and can't be countered in early-mid.
Instead of developing the game further into a direction of different openings for both races that kind of counter each other and allow players to dynamically adapt to each other and create interesting variable games, they choose the solution that really makes one thing obvious: They don't at all know how to do it better.
But there are alot of possible approaches. The fact that T is weak in the lategame against both P and Z and is more or less stuck on bio in both mups makes it quite easy to do this better: The Raven missile could be changed so that it always hits in combination with a fix of PDD. The mine should never be the core unit of terran gameplay but the tank! Therefore tank mechanics and counter mechanics could be tweaked as mentioned hundred times in these threads (e.g. immortal shield mechanics, +dmg vs light/massive for tanks, etc.). Thors could be changed to complement this.
I can't imagine a single zerg out there that enjoys this always repeating kind of ZvT meta which does not allow any creativity but is in fact a devensive do or die situation for about 20-25 minutes in every game without anything to fall back on like MSC, mines, wall-ins with bunkers, with banelings taking that long to replenish, and then ends up in the exact same bemoaned situation that we have now. T and Z have reversed roles in TvZ when looking at the race mechanics and available units and this should be some long term goal to fix for blizzard.
Time to put SC2 aside until expansion2 release I guess. These changes wont improve SC2 a bit but only the winrates of terran.
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@LSN I'm not so sure we'll be back to the parade pushes days. I'm actually quite convinced the test phase will end up in a mine doing 40+40 splash in 1.5 radius, so that the mine will be better on the whole but not as good as before in TvZ.
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This sounds like a reasonable expectation. But why cant they try to improve or change the roles of units that desperately need it such as ravens, tanks, thors? The mine got its place in game and is about right for its cost as it is now but alot of other units don't.
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agree with the remark on underused units, there is so much potential in units that see almost no use in certain matchups nowadays
blizzards last try to promote an underused unit was the hydra, they specifically wanted to make it more usable in zvt, yet the buff was so tiny and just underwhelming from a design point of view so that they didnt reach their aim, at all
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On July 18 2014 18:21 SatedSC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2014 11:27 juicyjames wrote:Another update is live, not sure if it's worth a new thread. http://us.battle.net//sc2/en/blog/14834357Terran- Widow Mine
- Splash radius is now 1.75. There are no longer 50% or 25% damage zones.
- Splash damage is now 40 (+40 Shields) for the full 1.75 splash radius.
- Thor
- Changed to prioritize their AA weapon over the AG weapon
Protoss- Mothership Core
- Time Warp duration decreased from 30 to 10 seconds
I've gotten lost in what's happened to the Widow Mine. Can someone summarise..?
At the start of HotS it was 125 damage to the main target and 40 damage splash in 1.75 radius.
Then they added +35 shields damage to the main target (could have been still in beta, I'm not sure when exactly that was)
The next thing was the big nerf in patch 2.0.12 to 40 splash damage in 1.25 radius, 20 in 1.5 and 10 in 1.75.
After that there was the buff with the +shields damage, making it 40 (+40vsshields) in 1.25, 20 (+20) in 1.5 and 10 (+10) in 1.75
The most recent things have been only proposed balance changes for the test map. The first one from July 11th was a buff to the radius, making it: 40 (+40) in 1.5, 20 (+20) in 2 and 10 (+10) in 2.5
With the most recent edition they changed the radius back to 1.75 and made it 40 (+40 vs shields) in the full 1.75 radius.
So they are still playing around with it. I think that means we will definitely get a widow mine buff, the question is just how big will this buff be. If they make the changes like this I think we will see widow mines even against colossus builds because getting in even 2-3 hits into the charging zealots will be worth it. Also chargelot-templar openings will be dead.
For TvZ this means we get back to the old widow mines how they were at HotS release.
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On July 18 2014 18:52 Yello wrote:
So they are still playing around with it. I think that means we will definitely get a widow mine buff, the question is just how big will this buff be. If they make the changes like this I think we will see widow mines even against colossus builds because getting in even 2-3 hits into the charging zealots will be worth it. Also chargelot-templar openings will be dead.
For TvZ this means we get back to the old widow mines how they were at HotS release.
Quite this, and I think this would be a bit too much. I definitely expect a buff for the mine both in TvZ and TvP, but a little weaker one.
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On July 18 2014 18:30 [PkF] Wire wrote:
@LSN I'm not so sure we'll be back to the parade pushes days. I'm actually quite convinced the test phase will end up in a mine doing 40+40 splash in 1.5 radius, so that the mine will be better on the whole but not as good as before in TvZ.
If you reduce the radius from 1,75 to 1,5, the WM will be utter shit in both TvP and TvZ. WM already look very few probes per hit, imagine with a shorter radius.
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On July 18 2014 18:24 LSN wrote:
ZvT will be stupid to play and watch again while the lategame weaknesses of terran wont be at all addressed with this (if zergs anyhow survive the 20-25 minute survival game).
I wonder why blizzard does not realize that balancing TvZ on a single stale style of play that allows/forces one race to constantly attack and the other race to only defend for half an hour is nothing but bad. Even hellbats wont have a role in this anymore as they require some commitment from the terran (which includes risks) while going straight into 4m macro rally has it all and can't be countered in early-mid.
Instead of developing the game further into a direction of different openings for both races that kind of counter each other and allow players to dynamically adapt to each other and create interesting variable games, they choose the solution that really makes one thing obvious: They don't at all know how to do it better.
But there are alot of possible approaches. The fact that T is weak in the lategame against both P and Z and is more or less stuck on bio in both mups makes it quite easy to do this better: The Raven missile could be changed so that it always hits in combination with a fix of PDD. The mine should never be the core unit of terran gameplay but the tank! Therefore tank mechanics and counter mechanics could be tweaked as mentioned hundred times in these threads (e.g. immortal shield mechanics, +dmg vs light/massive for tanks, etc.). Thors could be changed to complement this.
I can't imagine a single zerg out there that enjoys this always repeating kind of ZvT meta which does not allow any creativity but is in fact a devensive do or die situation for about 20-25 minutes in every game without anything to fall back on like MSC, mines, wall-ins with bunkers, with banelings taking that long to replenish, and then ends up in the exact same bemoaned situation that we have now. T and Z have reversed roles in TvZ when looking at the race mechanics and available units and this should be some long term goal to fix for blizzard.
Time to put SC2 aside until expansion2 release I guess. These changes wont improve SC2 a bit but only the winrates of terran.
I've said it a bunch of times, the real problem is the marine. Marines are so stupidly good and cost-effective that everything else about Terran has to be crippled to avoid breaking the game. Marines ensure that Terran late game will always suck. It's impossible to make it not suck without overpowering Terran in the early/mid game. The short Terran tech tree means that good late game units become overpowered cheese units when combined with the marine in the early/midgame.
Lategame Terran often has like 4000+ gas banked. They can't spend it because they don't have a gas dump, and they can't have a gas dump because if they did the short tech tree would let them cheese the fuck out of their opponents. Why do you think the banshee takes 60 seconds to build? That's a horrible cost:build time ratio, the void ray costs a lot more and also builds in 60 seconds, AND Protoss has chrono boost. It takes 60 seconds because if it built in, say, 30 seconds and thus was massable early, Terran could easily cheese Zerg out of the game with 1 base marine/banshee. How are you going to beat that? Are you going to expand, and then make banelings AND hydralisks? It's impossible, and that's why the banshee has to take eons to build, so Zerg can fight 1 base banshee production with just queens and focus all the rest of their units on countering the marines.
Now, look at the siege tank. Same problem. It's another potential gas dump, and is naturally strong against what marines are weak against, and vice versa. Say you give it a substantial buff. Now it's that much better at protecting marines from banelings, and Zerg is just going to get routed by early/midgame marine/tank timings.
Why did the warhound get taken out? Same reason. 1-base warhound/marine cheese beats everything, because the warhound protects the marine from its early/midgame counters far too well. They made a great barrier to absorb baneling hits and 7 range prevented Protoss from kiting with stalkers.
This is why the widow mine got nerfed. Yeah, there's a whole list of drawbacks. It's mineral heavy, fires randomly, deals friendly fire and costs a lot of supply. Wasn't enough. It effectively protected marines from their early/midgame counter (banelings) and without that counter, the marines just hose everything else the fuck down. This forced Zerg to stay at midgame/Lair tech just to survive, and eventually 3/3 would kick in and the parade push would crush them. Then the mine got nerfed. All of a sudden, it's no longer effective marine protection and now Terran has jack and shit. All their other stuff has been neutered to balance the marine. Terran is SOL. Now it's getting unnerfed, and we're going back to square one. It's honestly the best Blizzard can do, because the host of drawbacks this unit has means it's really a terrible counter to AoE damage. But again, because the marine is just so amazingly and stupidly good, a terrible counter is all you need. Seriously, 50 minerals for the same DPS as a pre-patch 100/50 hydralisk!
TL;DR: You can't buff Terran lategame because the short Terran tech tree means any "lategame" buff will just be abused as an early game cheese featuring marines + the buffed unit + pulled SCVs.
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EPT
