Legacy of the Void Announced - Page 132

On November 15 2014 08:37 pure.Wasted wrote:


You have hope for the human race, you optimist, you.

On November 15 2014 07:21 DinoMight wrote:


Take a chill pill bro.

I agree that the direction the game is going is a bit Terran favored and I even wrote a blog about how I think Protoss is being neglected in LotV, but these kind of responses are a bit extreme and frankly no one will listen to what you have to say.

I think that Banshees outranging static D will be a bit ridiculous. The point of static D is that you simply accept the COST of it up front to prevent eventual harassment LATER. Everyone knows that minerals are worth more if they're spent now vs. later.. So for example, if I make 3 cannons at the 10 minute mark they need to prevent way more than 450 minerals at the 15 minute mark to be worth it. Because those minerals could have been an extra base that would have yielded way more in the next 3-4 minutes.

So you SHOULD be able to just throw down a whole bunch of cannons/turrets if you don't want to get harassed. A turret in each mineral line (200 mins) effectively shuts down an Oracle as it is right now. Sure you may be able to get 1 SCV building something away from the turrets but it doesn't justify the 300/300 investment.


In that sense I think 7 range Banshees are a bit broken. And I don't think it's too early to discuss that. There are no new unit interactions that will change how a 7 range Banshee kills workers.

On November 15 2014 04:54 SC2Toastie wrote:
VArsovskiSC,
you're flat out balance whining over a pre-alpha. Stop it.


I want to disagree with that. There is nothing wrong with Static D that can be destroyed in harassment. The worst thing I could think of is Static Defense that completely shuts down harassment without any attention required whatsoever (see: Photon Cannon vs Hellion, Mine; TurretS(!) vs Oracle) with a one-time investment of a couple of minerals you secure your mineral line with SD?
There's 2 better options:
a) Oracle vs one Turret: with good micro and enough attention, the Turret limits damage, but does not nullify the Oracle. Same happens with Banshee vs Turret. These are interesting interactions because SD limits the amount of damage dealt, but doesn't block it.
b) 12 Mutalisk vs one Turret: with a quick repair the Mutalisk will have to commit to the harassment. They can kill the Turret, but it'll be expensive.
Bad interactions:
c) DT vs Defense. If there is SD, DT's will not deal any reasonable damage.
d) Photon/Spine vs Hellions: if there is 2 or 3 defenses, you can throw any number of Hellions in there, it'll never be even remotely cost effective.

The last 2 situations are bad. SD should either limit damage dealt OR buy time for additional defense. Because of that, it is no problem if the Cyclone can kill a cannon - as long as the Cannon buys Protoss the time to warp in or get defenses in place.

On November 15 2014 21:29 ciox wrote:
Why do you think that a range 7 unit will outrange static defense? The only thing it outranges is bunkers with marines in them. (bunkers with ghosts are not outranged)

On November 15 2014 15:45 DoubleReed wrote:


If I'm not mistaken, that's what the Disruptor is supposed to be. It's basically a Reaver that is its own Scarab.

On November 16 2014 12:46 Lexender wrote:


Range and speed upgrades for banshees are already used in Starbow and it works quite well, they have a different kind of cloack but I think its really good like a lot of stuff in starbow they are strong if microed well without being too IMBA

On November 15 2014 22:43 BaronVonOwn wrote:
If you think about it, the banshee and the oracle fulfill the same role as a flying raider unit. Except the oracle has more dps, more hit points, a lot more speed, and is useful outside of raiding with spells like revelation. Between this and the BC warp drive, sky terran is getting buffed in LOTV. So is mech, with the changes to the immortal. It looks like LOTV is going to give terran some more diverse playstyle options and I like it.

On November 17 2014 03:00 Grumbels wrote:
Warp Prism pick-up range increase seems like an interesting idea, but I'm worried it's going to force vikings or mutalisks. Immortals will be more powerful too, you can keep flying around until the cooldown is up and then have a period of temporary immunity while they shoot down some roaches. The new zerg units don't address this, the ravager won't ever hit the warp prism and the lurker comes too late. Infestors won't be adequate either because the warp prism can always stay at a distance. The increased range makes spore crawlers less effective as well.

I tried it out in the editor and I can see that in the hands of a solid player the warp prism should never die to ground units. Colossus harassment versus terran seemed quite powerful in case the terran wasn't defending with vikings and immortal harassment versus zerg seemed unstoppable again assuming there weren't any mutalisks. I know I haven't tested it very thoroughly and obviously it's difficult to say much without beta testing, but there are some indications it will be problematic. (points to watch out for once beta hits)

I read that with the new economy system tech options are a bit less powerful as they come later, so it might be the case that you can simply outlast this sort of harassment by producing additional workers and wearing the warp prism down through attrition. I think a better solution for Blizzard is to not take absurdly high values like going from 1 to 6 pick-up range and to take the warp prism shield amount to a more reasonable value. It's currently very high to strengthen warp prism harassment, but with additional survivability in LotV its other assets should be compromised.

I do like the concept though. The warp prism suffers from being essentially too easy to shut down, as you always only have one of them. Unless Blizzard finds ways to encourage use of multiple warp prisms, which will probably require removal of the phase mode and which therefore won't happen, the warp prism could benefit from an added escape mechanism. Medivacs already have ignite afterburners and overlords come in high numbers. It would balance out. But Blizzard has to be especially careful to not create a unit that's never at risk unless you utilize some hard counter like the viking.

On November 16 2014 21:54 Grumbels wrote:
So speaking of damage points, I was wondering if there was a good justification for the thor's 0.831 value and maybe I found one: if you have a medivac with 8 marines ready to unload then there's is a significant delay before you deal full dps as the marines unload one by one. A medivac with a single thor has access to its full power instantly and if you could fire with no delay perhaps this recreates the BW situation where they had to add a delay to the reaver shot because reaver-shuttle micro was too broken.

Anyway. I did a quick test in the editor with a Thor with zero damage point and it seems overly powerful. However, it's actually compensated for because the thor ground cannon is a double attack, which I initially forgot about. So if you land the thor and immediately pick it back up it will deal only half damage. In my opinion, if the delay between the two attacks was a bit higher then Blizzard could normalize the thor damage point to the default value of 0.167 and create an interesting incentive for drop micro. Actually, microing the thor with the current damage point feels overly clumsy and it makes me wonder how pro players put up with the unit.

+ Show Spoiler +

On November 17 2014 03:00 Grumbels wrote:
Warp Prism pick-up range increase seems like an interesting idea, but I'm worried it's going to force vikings or mutalisks. Immortals will be more powerful too, you can keep flying around until the cooldown is up and then have a period of temporary immunity while they shoot down some roaches. The new zerg units don't address this, the ravager won't ever hit the warp prism and the lurker comes too late. Infestors won't be adequate either because the warp prism can always stay at a distance. The increased range makes spore crawlers less effective as well.

I tried it out in the editor and I can see that in the hands of a solid player the warp prism should never die to ground units. Colossus harassment versus terran seemed quite powerful in case the terran wasn't defending with vikings and immortal harassment versus zerg seemed unstoppable again assuming there weren't any mutalisks. I know I haven't tested it very thoroughly and obviously it's difficult to say much without beta testing, but there are some indications it will be problematic. (points to watch out for once beta hits)

I read that with the new economy system tech options are a bit less powerful as they come later, so it might be the case that you can simply outlast this sort of harassment by producing additional workers and wearing the warp prism down through attrition. I think a better solution for Blizzard is to not take absurdly high values like going from 1 to 6 pick-up range and to take the warp prism shield amount to a more reasonable value. It's currently very high to strengthen warp prism harassment, but with additional survivability in LotV its other assets should be compromised.

I do like the concept though. The warp prism suffers from being essentially too easy to shut down, as you always only have one of them. Unless Blizzard finds ways to encourage use of multiple warp prisms, which will probably require removal of the phase mode and which therefore won't happen, the warp prism could benefit from an added escape mechanism. Medivacs already have ignite afterburners and overlords come in high numbers. It would balance out. But Blizzard has to be especially careful to not create a unit that's never at risk unless you utilize some hard counter like the viking.

On November 15 2014 16:22 L3monsta wrote:

I thoroughly recommend you watch depth of micro!
+ Show Spoiler +