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Damage point is a variable that affects every attacking unit in Starcraft 2. It represents the time between when an attacking unit attacks, and when it can receive new commands. It may be easier to think of it as a sort of front swing or attack delay. The Ultralisk has the highest damage point in the game at 0.3332. This is an example of damage point working with the animation of a unit, so that the damage is only dealt when the tusks of the Ultralisk actually hit the unit. This high damage point gives the Ultralisk a distinct sluggish feel that acts not only as a weakness of the unit in gameplay, but adds to its character as this massively powerful but slow unit. In contrast, the Mutalisk has a damage point of 0, this means that there is practically no delay between when the Mutalisk is told to attack, and when it can take on another action, such as a move command. Simply put, damage point is a variable that affects how agile and responsive a unit feels.
Currently Damage Point for approximately 75% of all attacking units is set to 0.167 (the default value). It can be very clearly seen on the viking as it looks at the unit it for a bit before firing. It’s like, “The colossus they are coming, fire out shit” “but I am le tired” “alright take a nap, THEN FIRE ZE MISSILES!” A high damage point for an Ultralisk may make a lot of sense, but for the majority of units, damage point could be lowered to 0 to allow for a sharper, more responsive feel across the board.
Maybe even more importantly, lowering damage point also allows for air units to better utilize “Moving Shot”. Moving Shot is a micro technique that takes advantage of an air unit’s deceleration time. By issuing a move command right after the attack command, the unit can shoot while moving. Losing only a little speed instead of coming to a complete stop each time it fires.
This image illustrates how damage point cuts into a unit’s ability to execute an attack and maintain speed. By removing damage point, (and potentially reducing rotation time for units that are intended to feel more agile), moving shot becomes more useful.
This allows players the opportunity to be rewarded for paying close attention to and controlling their units. Making each attacking air unit scale more in power with skill.
An example of a unit in Sc2 that currently scales in power with the skill of the player controlling it is the blink stalker. Some of the most exciting moments in Sc2 games have come from a player with phenomenal blink control allowing them to win fights where all seemed lost by focusing their effort into their control. Fights that any lesser player would easily lose.
Units that can properly execute a moving shot have the same effect, they scale with skill, and they create a display of skill that is easy to notice and understand, even to a spectator new to Starcraft.
When I spoke with Aaron Kirkpatrick about damage point at Blizzcon he mentioned that while some damage points were chosen for specific gameplay reasons, other damage points were chosen to match the attack animations of the units. This is why currently the hydralisk has a different damage point when using its melee attack animation than when using its ranged attack animation. Lowering the damage points of units like these would create strange, non-intuitive scenarios where the damage would be dealt before the attack animation finished. However this does not mean that the hydralisk is stuck with its high damage point. It just means that lowering its damage point would require an adjustment in the attack animation.
My Wish for LotV is:
That damage point is reconsidered from the ground up. Starting with all damage points at 0 and making adjustments in animations when the unit feels right but looks wrong, and making adjustments in damage point to intentionally make the unit feel more sluggish as either a necessary nerf to the unit or as something that adds to its character. This has probably already been done from the standard 0.167 damage point, but not from 0.
A responsive unit ought to be the rule, not the exception. But currently in Sc2 the opposite is true. Making 0 damage point the default and then making specific exceptions from that point will increase the capacity for visually apparent micro, give players more opportunities to differentiate their skill in a way that all spectators can intuitively appreciate, and make gameplay in Sc2 feel better for everyone.
The first two are:
Zero damage point and zero damage point mod - in these, all units (even the mighty Ultralisk) have 0 damage point. It is very important to keep in mind that the animations can be adjusted to match the damage point so it won’t look so strange. The important part to take note of here is the feel of the unit. Who knows, maybe you’ll really enjoy and hope for 0 damage point across the board after trying it out.
The second two are:
delayed damage point and delayed damage point mod - in these, all units have a 0.7 damage point, more than 2 times greater than the current damage point of the Ultralisk. This is helpful for people having a more difficult time noticing the difference between 0 and 0.167 damage point. Its also moderately silly.
The purpose of this discussion is to come up with more specific examples and reasons why certain units ought to have a lower damage point. To begin with, I personally think that all air units ought to have a damage point of 0 to enable moving shot. The hydralisk ought to have 0 damage point for both its melee and ranged attacks as it is a low hp light unit which in my opinion ought to feel more agile. Finally, all other units currently at or below the standard 0.167 damage point ought to have 0 damage point.
Keep in mind that a lowering damage point is a buff to a unit, while raising damage point is a nerf. Because of this it may be necessary to tweak a few stats to compensate. Overall what this does is make the unit slightly stronger for players with good control, and slightly weaker for players with poor control.
Big thanks to Lalush and decemberscalm for helping me understand this variable and its effects on the game.
Zero Damage Point Unit Tester:
AM - battlenet://starcraft/map/1/253921
EU - battlenet://starcraft/map/2/177771
Delayed Damage Point Unit Tester:
AM - battlenet://starcraft/map/1/254140
EU - battlenet://starcraft/map/2/177944
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Overall what this does is make the unit slightly stronger for players with good control, and slightly weaker for players with poor control.
I think it's important to point out that the side-effect of units becoming weaker in the hands of someone with poor control isn't necessarily just a straight nerf to all bronze-league armies, it's more like it will be easier to get an advantage with even slightly better control. If that makes sense.
I'm worried that Blizzard's excuse for not doing this would most likely be "we don't want to make casual, lower league players feel like we're giving them a harder time in the game in order to facilitate hardcore, high league players' skill ceiling." IMO this won't happen with the damage point changes. Most players wouldn't really notice a difference in lower leagues, in particular when both sides of an engagement have similarly mediocre unit control there won't be an inherent advantage to either side that there wouldn't have been otherwise.
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A responsive unit ought to be the rule, not the exception. But currently in Sc2 the opposite is true. Making 0 damage point the default and then making specific exceptions from that point will increase the capacity for visually apparent micro, give players more opportunities to differentiate their skill in a way that all spectators can intuitively appreciate, and make gameplay in Sc2 feel better for everyone.
Yes!
Not much else to say. JaKaTaK as always on point.
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Awesome that you made a video for one of the simplest change possible about the game that can make it feel more fun.
I certainly missed a visible example though of a clip from 2 units to make it clear how it would affect this and how the units feel/interact.
Hydra was okay-ish, but it didnt show that you can actually FREAKING stutterstep/split with hydras at 0 Damage points like you can with the Marine its feels so amazing to suddenly be able to do that.(compared to now, its a world of a difference)
Or showing the Marine and mentioning its low dmg point as an example for a unit that feels fun to play and the reason why that is.
Stalker(non blink) also has this weird dmg point delay where it always felt sluggish to me and in the unit test map it feels so much better.
All in all, thanks for your effort man, lets hope Blizzard listens :D
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These are the sorts of changes LOTV needs to make me want to buy it. These types of threads/videos are exactly what the community needs right now, while lotv is still early in the beta.
The only lotv changes so far to excite me have been the economy, which doesn't go far enough, and the testing with slower attack rates, which they seem to have abandoned.
#PleaseBlizzard!
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On March 29 2015 02:05 HewTheTitan wrote:
These are the sorts of changes LOTV needs to make me want to buy it. These types of threads/videos are exactly what the community needs right now, while lotv is still early in the beta.
The only lotv changes so far to excite me have been the economy, which doesn't go far enough, and the testing with slower attack rates, which they seem to have abandoned.
#PleaseBlizzard!
And it's by far the easiest to change (no programmers or model designers are needed). Honestly, out of all the things Blizzard have done with Sc2, I have not understood their reluctance to balancing the game around a damage point of 0.
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Well we we already talked about this with the depth of micro video, but Blizzard did not listen. Maybe we can push this hard enough now, with the LotV Beta to get this. I of course am 100% for this suggestions, adjust damage point to 0 for every air unit and only increase it over 0 for certain ground units.
So thanks for the video, I hope it gets lots of attention!
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we need to clone jak's brain and make a team of him that just makes sc2 better. Tweet this to @starcraft on twitter lets get this proposed change some traction!
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I agree with this 100% great idea!
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On March 29 2015 02:55 Musicus wrote:
Well we we already talked about this with the depth of micro video, but Blizzard did not listen. Maybe we can push this hard enough now, with the LotV Beta to get this. I of course am 100% for this suggestions, adjust damage point to 0 for every air unit and only increase it over 0 for certain ground units.
So thanks for the video, I hope it gets lots of attention!
I have a feeling they're going to take this more seriously. I did my best to present it in a way that makes them look good for trying it out, whereas the depth of micro video had a lot of "make Sc2 more like bw" feel to it. Keeping my fingers in the crossed position.
edit: damn, no new icon for 2500. I suppose I must wait until 3000. I really like the mutalisk in any case 
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I agree with everything you have written JakataK.
One thing I want to point out though is the following:
No damage point doesnt necessarily mean more micro. Warcraft 3, most units had damage point and it is considered a very micro intensive game, as did alot of Brood War units. The trick was to know as an experienced player how your unit behaves, so when it is ready to recieve a new command. It gave every unit a unique feeling. 0 damage point should be the standard, but a high damage point can give a unique feel to certain units.
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No damage point doesnt necessarily mean more micro. Warcraft 3, most units had damage point and it is considered a very micro intensive game, as did alot of Brood War units. The trick was to know as an experienced player how your unit behaves, so when it is ready to recieve a new command. It gave every unit a unique feeling. 0 damage point should be the standard, but a high damage point can give a unique feel to certain units.
Damage values in Wc3 were a ton lower which meant that you had time to pull back injured units - even if they were really unresposnsive. That's not the case in Sc2 on the other hand. In Sc2 units really need maximum level of responsisveness as a general rule. Otherwise your simply gonna stand still during engagements while spamming abilities.
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I approve! I really hope this gets Blizzard's attention! Making the game feel more responsive is always good in my opinion. Sometimes units feel really sluggish while it doesn't at all contribute to the feeling the unit should have, imo. As a zerg, I actually kind of dig the 0 damage point on the hellions. We could compensate for balance by decreasing the firing rate of a unit, while increasing response with this change.
Again, totally approved!
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This is amazing, I've always had an issue with non bio armies being less responsive I guess to control. This seems to be a great solution!
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Bravo, bravo.
I'm not sure all units should have 0 damage point, but I certainly agree that they should be lowered across the board to a large degree.
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Some of the points I agree with, some I disagree strongly.
- There is a reason why the standard damage point is not 0 : lag over the internet (especially since there is no LAN in SC2). Because you can expect people having a ping of 50 to 150 ms most of the time, it makes total sense to have a damage point of 0.167. This way, for the overwhelming majority of players, the game always feels the same and they don't feel that their opponent is better because he has a better internet connection. Only when you ping is higher than 167 ms will you feel the game react differently, which is nearly never if you have a decent internet connection. In other words, a DP of 0.167 allows to level the playing field where no one has an advantage for having a better internet connection
- Damage point of 0 on long range unit is dumb, as it would allow infinite kiting. There is a reason why there is actually only one unit with built-in DP of 0, the phoenix. The phoenix's moving shot is actually like a perfectly microed unit with DP of 0. And it only works because it's a short range unit. The higher the unit's range, the higher the DP needs to be
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On March 29 2015 13:04 fezvez wrote:
Some of the points I agree with, some I disagree strongly.
- There is a reason why the standard damage point is not 0 : lag over the internet (especially since there is no LAN in SC2). Because you can expect people having a ping of 50 to 150 ms most of the time, it makes total sense to have a damage point of 0.167. This way, for the overwhelming majority of players, the game always feels the same and they don't feel that their opponent is better because he has a better internet connection. Only when you ping is higher than 167 ms will you feel the game react differently, which is nearly never if you have a decent internet connection. In other words, a DP of 0.167 allows to level the playing field where no one has an advantage for having a better internet connection
- Damage point of 0 on long range unit is dumb, as it would allow infinite kiting. There is a reason why there is actually only one unit with built-in DP of 0, the phoenix. The phoenix's moving shot is actually like a perfectly microed unit with DP of 0. And it only works because it's a short range unit. The higher the unit's range, the higher the DP needs to be
Even without a '0ms' connection you can take advanage of 0 damage point and micro your units more effectively when they have 0 damage point as opposed to .167, it just takes a little more timing.
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There is a reason why there is actually only one unit with built-in DP of 0, the phoenix.
Incorrect. The phoenix has a damage point of 0.167. What your thinking off here is a programmed moving shat that isn't actually the damage point variable.
The only ground unit with a 0 damage point in the game is the Maurauder (as I remember it).
The higher the unit's range, the higher the DP needs to be
No, you can have 0 DP and adjust the movement speed instead.
There is a reason why the standard damage point is not 0 : lag over the internet (especially since there is no LAN in SC2). Because you can expect people having a ping of 50 to 150 ms most of the time, it makes total sense to have a damage point of 0.167
It doesn't work like that either. If you have a general delay all your commands needs to be executed before, which hurts you regardless of damage point. If the damage point is 0.167 and you want to kite then you need to press "right click --> A move ---> right click" every X + 0.167 second. If there is no damage point it's equal to X instead.
The only impact of delay here is that you need to do start the kiting at an earlier point in time, but the frequency at which you wanna do it isn't impacted by the ms.
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Thx a lot Jakatak for tanking the time to explain your point.
I'm not sure I do agree though, basically when your say This allows players the opportunity to be rewarded for paying close attention to and controlling their units. Making each attacking air unit scale more in power with skill.
I'll take the hellion vs zergs example cause it's very common.
Currently the micro fro hellions is something like :
- move away, attack move back (or stop), PAUSE, move away, attack move back (or stop), PAUSE, ...
with 0 DP it would be just :
- move away, attack move back (or stop), move away, attack move back (or stop), ...
So not only 0DP will make hellions powerfull, but also much easier to micro. Same thing applies with the stimed bio, you need to move then attack (or stop) very fast but you need to pause a bit, this pause forces you to be more focused on your units and to have more skills.
IMHO, 0DP would just make the game easier and lower the "skill ceiling", so I'm ok to change the DP of some units here and there, but making 0 as the default value is not the best idea for me.
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I think the example in the video of zerglings chasing hellions shows that you have to be really careful here. At the moment I thing both have an equal chance of coming out on top, so it depends on who has better control. Alter the DP and one side has a clear advantage. So in the end it would reduce micro since you wont see these hellion zergling battles anymore.
Overall I agree with making 0 DP the rule. But its not just an easy set-everything-to-zero case.
Edit: too slow-.-
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0oVEWTN.jpg)
