On January 21 2015 07:14 Shinespark wrote: I've always hated the swarm host and a redesign is probably a good idea. But the mere fact that this may be necessary is testament to how clueless Blizzard is when it comes to design.
Or it's a testament that people make mistakes, even Blizzard, and they are more than willing to correct theirs.
If this was true, they would have already removed SH from the game.
On January 21 2015 07:30 Big J wrote: Love the initiative, but here is one thing: It doesn't matter if PDD is 5seconds or 1000seconds for anything but current swarm hosts in ZvT.
You engage with hydralisks? PDD. 20seconds, 5seconds, 1000seconds, the limit is its energy here. You engage with mutalisks? PDD. 20seconds, 5seconds, 1000seconds, the limit is its energy here. You engage with queens? PDD. 20seconds, 5seconds, 1000seconds, the limit is its energy here. You engage with Corruptors? PDD. 20seconds, 5seconds, 1000seconds, the limit is its energy here.
It doesn't matter for all the combat units. If after 20seconds of combat the PDD runs out with energy on it, that just means the Terran has had a quadrillion of Ravens and too much energy to begin with. The only thing that is effected is the "old" implementation of the swarm host, which will fight multiple times under the same PDD. For all other units it is running in, taking tank shots, PDDs get placed and then you have to commit or you have taken a thousand damage from tank shots.
That being said with the Swarm Host redesign noone can say how ZvMech will look like to begin with. And for ZvP, this could completely break the matchup in one way or another. It's great, and interesting. Finally, blizzard is taking a risk for the sake of improving the game!
So what you're saying is that an energy nerf would be far more useful?
I had the interesting idea of dropping Raven max energy to 100 and decreasing the cost of all their spells by half, both to make them effectively gain energy faster, and to make it so that they don't die to a feedback, making them usable against Protoss. It makes the Raven a "faster", more dynamic unit, and increases its non-turtle utility.
Energy nerf is an example. In general I don't think anyone enjoys any game situation in which a lot of PDDs can be dropped at once, it just renders certain units completely useless the moment this game situation arises. Personally, I'd like to have it get overkill in a way that if multiple PDDs overlap in radius, they all lose energy for each projectile one takes down*. Therefore, the good early-midgame relations with e.g. marauders or vikings would change at all, but the mass PDD bullshit would turn inefficient.
*I do understand that this is hard to realize, since the way that multiple radii work, a projectile only ever touches the radius of a single PDD. But maybe there is a way, like the PDDs just connect if one is within the radius of another.
You could go even more extreme in this, if you wanted. The absolutely balls-deep version of this idea would be for them to shoot down each other's shots, so that having PDDs within range of other PDDs instantly makes them useless, and thus forces sparing usage (as per early game pushes) or intelligent positioning, thus stopping the SUPER turtly sky terran ball strategies.
On January 21 2015 07:40 Big J wrote: *I do understand that this is hard to realize, since the way that multiple radii work, a projectile only ever touches the radius of a single PDD. But maybe there is a way, like the PDDs just connect if one is within the radius of another.
You could increase PDD range and add delay between registering a projectile and disarming it. Once registered PDD would always fire and lose energy. That way projectiles would likely get intercepted by more PDDs.
edit: Pontius Pirate's idea would be the best skillwise
On January 21 2015 07:15 TAMinator wrote: Didnt think they'd even consider putting out some LotV stuff early thats interesting. But from that TB video showing the new locusts, shit might get crazy
The idea is to balance around the new Swarm Hosts. We expect that other changes will need to be considered as we go through testing. This is the first step. We'll first need to see how these play out to know what potential changes will follow.
I think these changes look great, any buff to swarmhosts with this design can be done/undone without triggering long stalemates and certainly this has to be implemented. I certainly hope these changes as they are some of the most great balance changes in history of sc2 for a "patch" will be tested on broadcasted stream.
On January 21 2015 07:15 TAMinator wrote: Didnt think they'd even consider putting out some LotV stuff early thats interesting. But from that TB video showing the new locusts, shit might get crazy
The idea is to balance around the new Swarm Hosts. We expect that other changes will need to be considered as we go through testing. This is the first step. We'll first need to see how these play out to know what potential changes will follow.
Thank you so much for this guys! I hope we see it in the game as soon as possible. It's gonna completely shake up the meta.
On January 21 2015 07:14 Shinespark wrote: I've always hated the swarm host and a redesign is probably a good idea. But the mere fact that this may be necessary is testament to how clueless Blizzard is when it comes to design.
Or it's a testament that people make mistakes, even Blizzard, and they are more than willing to correct theirs.
If this was true, they would have already removed SH from the game.
Your opinion is such an undenieable fact... oh wait it's still going to be in lotv. What was the relevance of butting in only too say what isn't true ? So what makes your point true other than you personal perspective of the matter? Nothing but okey. I like the SH redesign but i'm hoping protoss air late game doesn't just shit all over zerg now. Void collosus + 6 sentries can already shit over SH compositions by the 14 minute mark. I like the way protoss has a way to deal with it, my concern is rather will protoss be able to do it too often now ? More of a question i suppose lol.
As for the pdd, good change been waiting for that all sc 2 long. It's been this way for so long because the raven was underutilised for a very long time. But since all the hots patches to raven, it became a godly unit. Even to this day people still haven't harnessed the full potential of the unit ( medivac boost + seeker missileing it ) I know this trick isn't easy to perform.. but neither was ling micro vs widow mines in the first 2 months of hots.
I like how both the SH and raven can be used as harass+ late game options. Too many people seem to consider them as mid game + late late late game necessities but i beg to differ. You can do raven mineral line harass quite easily. People are just extremely stubborn, why play different when other styles work 30-70% of the time ( depends on your skill/opponents, a bit of rng) The entire point to a strategy game is to reformat your choices to have a higher winrate. Not for every game... not all builds have to work on every map.
I swear the desire/expectation of people to make every build work on said map compared to other better maps is just highly ignorant. It has plagued balance and the relative reality of the condition per game. Which is why balance whine can be predominantly negative or entirely counterproductive.
On January 21 2015 07:15 TAMinator wrote: Didnt think they'd even consider putting out some LotV stuff early thats interesting. But from that TB video showing the new locusts, shit might get crazy
The idea is to balance around the new Swarm Hosts. We expect that other changes will need to be considered as we go through testing. This is the first step. We'll first need to see how these play out to know what potential changes will follow.
Thanks Psione, good to know everyone is back in the office now
These changes look great im happy that they are finally adresing how stupid and boring swarmhost and raven turtle styles are. As a terran player however I;m not surre the raven nerf is enough If the duration on pdds was shorter i don't think id care tbh. I have always wanted ravens to be nerfed since they overbuffed them but im nut sure if the pdd nerf is big enough to realy kill the 80% raven late game compositions dead. And yes they should make this a dead style. these kind of stratagies are boring to play and boring to play against and way to rewarding with out taking alot of effort to pull off (well at least the raven style i cant speack for swarmhosting zergs).
On January 21 2015 07:14 vhapter wrote: Like locusts actually need a buff... they've always been beefy as fuck. Much more than they ever needed. And we've already seen how a single swarm of flying locusts alone is capable of taking down a nexus, so what's the purpose of further "testing" this lame change when it's clearly not balanced?
To... balance it?
Does this look balanced to you? I think it goes without saying that losing your nexus to single wave of flying locusts is retarded. This video alone is enough to show how imbalanced flying locusts are currently. This is not harassment, this is bullshit.
On January 21 2015 07:14 vhapter wrote: Like locusts actually need a buff... they've always been beefy as fuck. Much more than they ever needed. And we've already seen how a single swarm of flying locusts alone is capable of taking down a nexus, so what's the purpose of further "testing" this lame change when it's clearly not balanced?
To... balance it?
Does this look balanced to you? I think it goes without saying that losing your nexus to single wave of flying locusts is retarded. This video alone is enough to show how imbalanced flying locusts are currently. This is not harassment, this is bullshit.