In recent months, we’ve been testing the biggest balance changes yet for StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm. After gathering and reviewing your feedback from the three separate Balance Test Maps that explored these changes, we are ready to move forward with a new balance update. You can expect to see the following adjustments applied to Heart of the Swarm multiplayer today.
Zerg
Swarm Host
Cost modified from 200 Minerals and 100 Vespene to 100 Minerals and 200 Vespene
Supply cost increased from 3 to 4
Movement speed increased from 2.25 to 2.95
Swarm Hosts now require the Burrow research in order to burrow
Swarm Hosts no longer collide with Locusts
Spawn Locusts – This ability has been reworked
Auto-cast removed, Spawn Locusts must now be manually cast.
Spawn Locusts cooldown increased from 25 seconds to 60 seconds
Casting Spawn Locusts no longer requires a Swarm Host to be burrowed
Locust
Weapon speed increased from .8 to .6
Locust duration increased from 15 seconds (+10 seconds with Enduring Locusts) to 25 seconds
Infestation Pit
Enduring Locusts – This upgrade has been removed
New upgrade: Flying Locusts - Allows Locusts spawned by Swarm Hosts to fly. Flying Locusts can use Swoop to land and attack
Requires Lair
Cost is 200 Minerals, 200 Vespene, 160 seconds
Allows Locusts spawned by Swarm Hosts to fly. Flying Locusts can use Swoop to land and attack
Swoop: Orders the Locust to land at the targeted location, allowing it to attack
Viper
Blinding Cloud range increased from 10 to 11
Terran
Raven
Point Defense Drone duration decreased from 180 seconds to 20 seconds
Protoss
Tempest
Bonus damage versus massive air units decreased from +50 damage to +14 damage.
On April 10 2015 04:22 OtherWorld wrote: RIP Glorious, exciting and skillful late-game ZvP, 2013-2015. I'll miss you. and there's a random center tag at the top of the OP Templar sniped
I guess they always need a "queen-patch" a year before the next expansion. Let's see if they are willing to balance this time or let the game rot like 2012.
On April 10 2015 04:26 Heyoka wrote: damn it's out, didn't realize the PDD duration change was so huge.
It was well needed though. Putting down PDDs infinitely with a 3 minute duration was way out of whack, it basically made a terran army completely invulnerable.
I can't imagine that we are going to have well-balanced months ahead of us. The game was in a nice state. But at least HotS games are going to be more exciting for a bit as everyone wants to observe the outcome of this major patch.
Probably going to be the last major balance patch for the next 6 months/until LotV release. Which is a shame, because this will absolutely destroy late-game ZvP. Zerg will have to end the game with the first push or just die to deathball.
People seem very pessimistic, I played the test map several times, imho good zergs will be more efficient with the new swarmhosts : 2.95 is fast, flying locusts open new harrass pathes, killing expansion never been so easy.
Moreover, these changes have been on test since christmas, if it ends up being terribly unbalanced, we'll have to blame ourselves, not blizzard...
On April 10 2015 04:50 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote: And here comes trying lazy kids who are lazy to practice new strategies and would rather be stuck at WoL 1.0 patch again ^^
More tears pls
I've always been an advocate of trying before complaining, but I am somewhat puzzled as to how Zergs will efficiently combat Protoss late-game after this patch. It's very possible that I'm too possible and the Zerg messiah will work something out, but it does seem like a tough hit to endure for the Zerg late-game.
On April 10 2015 04:50 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote: And here comes trying lazy kids who are lazy to practice new strategies and would rather be stuck at WoL 1.0 patch again ^^
More tears pls
I've always been an advocate of trying before complaining, but I am somewhat puzzled as to how Zergs will efficiently combat Protoss late-game after this patch. It's very possible that I'm too possible and the Zerg messiah will work something out, but it does seem like a tough hit to endure for the Zerg late-game.
On April 10 2015 04:50 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote: And here comes trying lazy kids who are lazy to practice new strategies and would rather be stuck at WoL 1.0 patch again ^^
More tears pls
I've always been an advocate of trying before complaining, but I am somewhat puzzled as to how Zergs will efficiently combat Protoss late-game after this patch. It's very possible that I'm too possible and the Zerg messiah will work something out, but it does seem like a tough hit to endure for the Zerg late-game.
On April 10 2015 04:50 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote: And here comes trying lazy kids who are lazy to practice new strategies and would rather be stuck at WoL 1.0 patch again ^^
On April 10 2015 04:29 BaneRiders wrote: Looking forward to seeing flying swarm hosts next
I want ground-based Brood Lords too d:
It is already in the patch, didn't you see it? "Broodlords can now land and when they have landed they can only attack air units. We are considering changing the name of the unit to Leveragelords"
This is so stupid, I agree with patching the SH but this is just pathetic might as well remove them. You increase the cost(gas), makes them mostly useless and increase their supply? Err, I guess we will never ever see this unit again but for trolls or extreme late game.
On April 10 2015 04:50 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote: And here comes trying lazy kids who are lazy to practice new strategies and would rather be stuck at WoL 1.0 patch again ^^
More tears pls
It's very possible that I'm too possible
You should really work on reducing your likelihood, and cut back on your probability problem.
In all seriousness, I expect further Zerg buffs to come in the next few months. This just doesn't strike me as a viable patch, based on what little we've seen of its games.
amusing that blizzard thinks this will make any matchup more entertaining.
protoss can now play a happy defensive style because they have nothing left to fear in the zerg lategame. just lots of sentries, and then whatever you want. win game
On April 10 2015 04:40 Solar424 wrote: Probably going to be the last major balance patch for the next 6 months/until LotV release. Which is a shame, because this will absolutely destroy late-game ZvP. Zerg will have to end the game with the first push or just die to deathball.
idk if you have watched a ZvP recently... A good amount of the games I have seen were actually Roach/Hydra/Viper or similar combinations that did not require a Swarmhost transition. And Zerg won pretty comfortably even when they did not manage to kill Protoss with their first push. Heck I have even seen Zerg win with Broodlords in lategame ZvP. I don't think it will have a significant negative impact on ZvP winrates, especially in combination with the Viper buff.
On April 10 2015 04:50 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote: And here comes trying lazy kids who are lazy to practice new strategies and would rather be stuck at WoL 1.0 patch again ^^
More tears pls
I've always been an advocate of trying before complaining, but I am somewhat puzzled as to how Zergs will efficiently combat Protoss late-game after this patch. It's very possible that I'm too possible and the Zerg messiah will work something out, but it does seem like a tough hit to endure for the Zerg late-game.
yeah, soO is pretty good at playing without hosts
soO, the precursor of modern "Don't let them get there or all my ultras get wiped out". Interested in the viper change mostly. TBH I'm kind of bummed about the SH because I never went for stallmate with them, but the current version going to make it harder to punish cannon rush lol
On April 10 2015 04:53 HmmmCookies wrote: April 10th : avilo announces that he is retiring.
He hasn't played hots since lotv beta came out and these are already in the beta so I assume he's OK with them
When the patch was announced he called it a buff to swarm hosts and cursed blizzard. When he first played them on his stream in LotV he thanked blizzard for essentially removing the swarm host. Who knows what's going on in his head.
Approved all changes. About the SH, I like to think that it's Protoss + Terran (66%) approve and Zerg (25%) disapprove (+ non-dirty Zerg 9% no opinion). But it's probably a little more complicated.
There won't be turtling with new Swarm Hosts anymore, but I am almost 100% sure that new timings with Swarm Hosts and Lings will arrive and I just can't wait to see them.
So if I understand this all correctly, ZvP lategame goes back to some broodlord stuff? Ultras suck, Mass muta play is not very reliable, lair tech armies with viper support only work timing-based.
Or maybe ultra/queen/viper + support army? I don't get how zerg can be cost-efficient once the toss deathball has been compiled.
On April 10 2015 05:28 virpi wrote: So if I understand this all correctly, ZvP lategame goes back to some broodlord stuff? Ultras suck, Mass muta play is not very reliable, lair tech armies with viper support only work timing-based.
Or maybe ultra/queen/viper + support army? I don't get how zerg can be cost-efficient once the toss deathball has been compiled.
yeah, I think BL/Infestor timings are the way to go. The 1stargate into colossus styles of Protoss are probably really taking a blow with that, because just making 1SG Tempest transitions won't help you at all. But noone should play those anyways with how strong blinkfield midgame is. Still even the heaviest stalker style should eventually need to transition into air against BLs, question is of course if you can make it there as Zerg.
On April 10 2015 05:09 Shuffleblade wrote: This is so stupid, I agree with patching the SH but this is just pathetic might as well remove them. You increase the cost(gas), makes them mostly useless and increase their supply? Err, I guess we will never ever see this unit again but for trolls or extreme late game.
At least you can still use mutalisks which beat stalkers easily. If you do it before protoss notices tech switch, that's almost gg.
On April 10 2015 05:28 virpi wrote: So if I understand this all correctly, ZvP lategame goes back to some broodlord stuff? Ultras suck, Mass muta play is not very reliable, lair tech armies with viper support only work timing-based.
Or maybe ultra/queen/viper + support army? I don't get how zerg can be cost-efficient once the toss deathball has been compiled.
yeah, I think BL/Infestor timings are the way to go. The 1stargate into colossus styles of Protoss are probably really taking a blow with that, because just making 1SG Tempest transitions won't help you at all. But noone should play those anyways with how strong blinkfield midgame is. Still even the heaviest stalker style should eventually need to transition into air against BLs, question is of course if you can make it there as Zerg.
The real question is how many more 9/10 pools are we gonna see.
On April 10 2015 05:28 virpi wrote: So if I understand this all correctly, ZvP lategame goes back to some broodlord stuff? Ultras suck, Mass muta play is not very reliable, lair tech armies with viper support only work timing-based.
Or maybe ultra/queen/viper + support army? I don't get how zerg can be cost-efficient once the toss deathball has been compiled.
yeah, I think BL/Infestor timings are the way to go. The 1stargate into colossus styles of Protoss are probably really taking a blow with that, because just making 1SG Tempest transitions won't help you at all. But noone should play those anyways with how strong blinkfield midgame is. Still even the heaviest stalker style should eventually need to transition into air against BLs, question is of course if you can make it there as Zerg.
The real question is how many more 9/10 pools are we gonna see.
To clarify: Whether the changes themselves are fair/balanced/good/whatever, change in general is good, and I'm excited to pick up SC2 for a few days/weeks again. Wish they would be like League and change things more often. I love Starcraft, but it gets stale sometimes.
mostly terrible changes across the board; anyone that likes them i have to wonder what they are thinking?
i don't like swarm host movement speed buff; they were plenty fast already. i don't like locust damage buff, they were strong already. i guess they are balancing them around fewer swarm hosts / decreased number of locusts? no comment on flying locusts...i wonder if you can target them while they are in the air? god i hope so... the other swarm hosts changes seem ok.
viper range buff is ok, although i didn't think it was bad before?
raven change is stupid...goodbye terran mech.
tempest...i thought the whole point was anti-massive air units...what is blizzard wanting this unit to do now, more of a harrass unit? i don't get it.
On April 10 2015 06:24 CycoDude wrote: mostly terrible changes across the board; anyone that likes them i have to wonder what they are thinking?
i don't like swarm host movement speed buff; they were plenty fast already. i don't like locust damage buff, they were strong already. i guess they are balancing them around fewer swarm hosts / decreased number of locusts? no comment on flying locusts...i wonder if you can target them while they are in the air? god i hope so... the other swarm hosts changes seem ok.
viper range buff is ok, although i didn't think it was bad before?\
raven change is stupid...goodbye terran mech.
tempest...i thought the whole point was anti-massive air units...what is blizzard wanting this unit to do now, more of a harrass unit? i don't get it.
Tempests have ton of use outside of killing massive air units. They're good at picking things off for 'free' and forcing engagements. People use Tempests vs late late game bio PvT, vs mech, and vs late game SH where Zerg ends up transitioning into mostly Corruptor Infestor.
As for the raven, can we not just scap that crappy thing and get a science vessel or real caster unit for Terran? That thing is so boring I've never been able to bring myself to use it, and that was before Avilo showed Terrans The Way.
As for the Tempest, can we not change that unit too instead of nerfing it? Give it the lotv attack. Change things up a bit. Make some maps where it can harass like bw guardians. It's just an obnoxious deathball addition now.
And finally, how about some love for gateway units so toss doesn't have to either allin or turtle?
On April 10 2015 06:43 EleanorRIgby wrote: i wish they would just remove the raven and give us back vessel .
I fail to see how vessels would be useful now there's an anti air queen and spore at every base and zerg can abduct and engagements are generally a lot faster. BW zerg comps vs t often lacked anti air outside of a wave of mutas to snipe science vessels and irradiate was actually useful. I guess defense matrix can be quite ridiculous but they already have that ability on the lotv immortal now.
On April 10 2015 06:36 Teoita wrote: Eh PvP is already colossus wars for the most part. You can kind of still hit zealot/archon/immortal timings though, that won't change.
What will change is shifting from single to double robo every game, possibly resulting in +3 timings instead of +2 timings.
"Bonus damage versus massive air units decreased from +50 damage to +14 damage."
It's only vs air. So how would it make a difference in PvP?
On April 10 2015 06:36 Teoita wrote: Eh PvP is already colossus wars for the most part. You can kind of still hit zealot/archon/immortal timings though, that won't change.
What will change is shifting from single to double robo every game, possibly resulting in +3 timings instead of +2 timings.
"Bonus damage versus massive air units decreased from +50 damage to +14 damage."
It's only vs air. So how would it make a difference in PvP?
Colossus are air units (for the tempest + bonus damage)
On April 10 2015 06:43 EleanorRIgby wrote: i wish they would just remove the raven and give us back vessel .
I fail to see how vessels would be useful now there's an anti air queen and spore at every base and zerg can abduct and engagements are generally a lot faster. BW zerg comps vs t often lacked anti air outside of a wave of mutas to snipe science vessels and irradiate was actually useful. I guess defense matrix can be quite ridiculous but they already have that ability on the lotv immortal now.
d matrix can help alot with bio survivability and irradiate can help vs mutas and vipers. it just feels like ravens are really only good for getting a decent amount of them and saving enough energy for HSM spam. make irradiate and abduct the same range so whoever is faster gets it off first.
On April 10 2015 06:36 Teoita wrote: Eh PvP is already colossus wars for the most part. You can kind of still hit zealot/archon/immortal timings though, that won't change.
What will change is shifting from single to double robo every game, possibly resulting in +3 timings instead of +2 timings.
"Bonus damage versus massive air units decreased from +50 damage to +14 damage."
It's only vs air. So how would it make a difference in PvP?
Tempests only deal bonus vs Massive Air. Colossi are so tall they count as air units
On April 10 2015 06:36 Teoita wrote: Eh PvP is already colossus wars for the most part. You can kind of still hit zealot/archon/immortal timings though, that won't change.
What will change is shifting from single to double robo every game, possibly resulting in +3 timings instead of +2 timings.
"Bonus damage versus massive air units decreased from +50 damage to +14 damage."
It's only vs air. So how would it make a difference in PvP?
Colossus are air units (for the tempest + bonus damage)
Not that I like SH, I utterly hate them, but how the fuck is Zerg supposed to fight Toss past the early mid game without them?? Roach/Hydra/Viper falls off so quickly, and I don't think 1 extra range to blinding cloud will make all that much difference there in the end..
Blizzard is doing to the SH the same they did with the infestor: nerfing it to utter uselessness. I mean, come on, Zergs have a lot of harassement (mutas, runbys, bane drops, nydus, etc). Why they are so obsessed with harassement? They try to sell us the new SH as an harassement unit, and come on, 200 vespene gas? Lair tech?
Meh, now ZvP will return to mid-game all-ins. Good work Blizzard, now Protoss will dominate the metagame once again
On April 10 2015 07:28 Apoteosis wrote: Blizzard is doing to the SH the same they did with the infestor: nerfing it to utter uselessness. I mean, come on, Zergs have a lot of harassement (mutas, runbys, bane drops, nydus, etc). Why they are so obsessed with harassement? They try to sell us the new SH as an harassement unit, and come on, 200 vespene gas? Lair tech?
Meh, now ZvP will return to mid-game all-ins. Good work Blizzard, now Protoss will dominate the metagame once again
On April 10 2015 07:45 Charoisaur wrote: bye bye mech in tvp. What the hell am i now supposed to do in that matchup? pull scvs?
make Battlecruisers. Tempest are now shit against them and they counter Carriers which are the real problem. That's what I will try at least. This could end up as a nice buff to endgame Mech TvP actually.
awesome so they added a bunch of shitty maps and removed the only remaining half decent zerg unit.. well done, what an excellent way to show your appreciation for my $100 purchase of your shit game
Not sure I approve of the Viper buff, now there isn't much counter-play to stopping a blindling cloud short of having enough tempests to blast them out of the skies as it will be much harder to get high templar close enough to feedback.
On April 10 2015 07:45 Charoisaur wrote: bye bye mech in tvp. What the hell am i now supposed to do in that matchup? pull scvs?
make Battlecruisers. Tempest are now shit against them and they counter Carriers which are the real problem. That's what I will try at least. This could end up as a nice buff to endgame Mech TvP actually.
On April 10 2015 07:45 Charoisaur wrote: bye bye mech in tvp. What the hell am i now supposed to do in that matchup? pull scvs?
make Battlecruisers. Tempest are now shit against them and they counter Carriers which are the real problem. That's what I will try at least. This could end up as a nice buff to endgame Mech TvP actually.
queing up!
What about void rays though?
yamato one shots it them from 10range. the hard part is preventing the templar fram mass feedbacking, but that's what your tanks and ghosts are for.
On April 10 2015 09:10 The_Templar wrote: Why is the map pool change suddenly surprising people? This was announced a long time ago >.>
They only announced they were rolling it out ahead of schedule yesterday, and not everyone keeps up with this stuff every day. I saw people surprised at the balance patch notes despite there being a playable version out there for literally months at this point.
On April 10 2015 07:12 blade55555 wrote: Enjoy getting rolled over late game zergies. Mwhahahahahahaha
Of course. You have ravagers and lurkers. Not your problem. Talking about swarm-solidarity...
I know but I feel bad for you guys trust me although turtle swarm host was boring as can be. Now of co u rse can't beat turtle toss which sucks trust me.
On April 10 2015 04:50 PharaphobiaSC2 wrote: And here comes trying lazy kids who are lazy to practice new strategies and would rather be stuck at WoL 1.0 patch again ^^
More tears pls
I've always been an advocate of trying before complaining, but I am somewhat puzzled as to how Zergs will efficiently combat Protoss late-game after this patch. It's very possible that I'm too possible and the Zerg messiah will work something out, but it does seem like a tough hit to endure for the Zerg late-game.
yeah, soO is pretty good at playing without hosts
zerg messiah = snute
soO is in a dark slump. He's done
BBBAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAAH.....
I love snute as much as the next guy, and as a statement I can't take this seriously at all. Snute as achieve about 1/100th of what soO has managed? maybe... ?
And again, I love Snute.
You must be fishin for some comments fired back
*Also, does anyone else think its ridiculous that you need to upgrade the flying locusts?
Aren't SH just complete trash without that upgrade? basically unusable as far as i can tell... in other words it should be free.
I guess the Raven Downgrade is against stalemate situations in lategame TvZ, if T plays mech. However, this makes mass Ravens useless I guess. Will be interesting how this will impact the game. Guess more allins by the terran or less mech
On April 10 2015 10:00 jojos11 wrote: ignoring widow mines again
What should they do in your opinion? I find them kinda annoying: too much randomness: most of the times they do little damage, sometimes they have the gamechanging killing blow. Has often nothing to do with skill, and is a Unit that can be removed and replaced by something different. But then Terran needs better tools to deal with some parts of the game.
On April 10 2015 10:14 shin_toss wrote: question: do u need to burrow the swarmhosts to spawn the locusts? .. i've seen old videos they did not burrow to spawn flying locusts
Nope you can release them without being burrowed and just keep on trucking.
Okay so the Zerg race's strength is about building a big economy and bank, maxing out and attacking with weaker units and then remaxing quickly to beat their opponents before they can do the same but I see no chance of zergs even reaching the late game with the big economy and bank to beat protoss now that swarm host changes have completely destroyed late game ZvP expect a bunch of 3 base roach, ling, bane and 2 base muta all ins in the months to come just stupid. (And before people criticize me saying i haven't played it enough or try it before you complain I logged over 25 hours on the test map the last week alone so I'm confident as a high masters player in saying I have an informed opinion)
PDD nerfed into oblivion. May as well put marine's firepower on cooldown as well. And now protoss players will finally realize that carriers are better.
On April 10 2015 11:19 gyrus wrote: PDD nerfed into oblivion. May as well put marine's firepower on cooldown as well. And now protoss players will finally realize that carriers are better.
Nope. Terrans that drop PDD's usually do it right at the engagement point and the PDD's get drained or the opponent retreats out of them. All this nerf does is not let T use them to totally lock down a location for 3 minutes
On April 10 2015 10:14 shin_toss wrote: question: do u need to burrow the swarmhosts to spawn the locusts? .. i've seen old videos they did not burrow to spawn flying locusts
Nope you can release them without being burrowed and just keep on trucking.
Oh.. I still don't get the point of the researching burrow then. Plus doesn't make sense the physical apperance of SH is like that bec its an underground unit :/
On April 10 2015 11:19 gyrus wrote: PDD nerfed into oblivion.
Yeah this is ridiculous. like 1000% change. Blizzard never tweaks. They nerf things into oblivion. And I say this as a Z main who hates mech.
The new swarm hosts are pretty cool, but can't imagine them being good vs protoss. Seems to me high level SH play required more skill than roach hydra viper every game. If that is their aim...
Irrespective of the fact which race benefits most from the most recent patch, it must be difficult for the pro-gamers (whose livelihood depends on their success) to adjust to these constant patches.
I'm inclined to agree with the previous guys who said that Blizzard should do less buffing/nerfing and more tweaking
Swarm host has always been such a boring, poorly designed unit. I get that they are more mobile now and I guess that's cool. But seriously, just take them out and give us the lurker now then come up with a new, more interesting, unit for LOTV.
Holy shit! It's not that I enjoyed watching SH games, but swinging the nerfbat so hard at them seems like a very poor decision. At best SH's role will change completely. What's more likely though, is that SH won't be used at all anymore.
To those saying that blizzard should do less drastic changes and more minor tweaks, I feel like pointing out that the overwhelming majority of people were telling blizzard that they don't make drastic, major changes prior to the patch and how this was killing sc2 because they weren't fixing the problems of SH and mech turtling and whatever else they thought ailed the game. Now that bliizzard does I find it amusing to see people saying the exact opposite. I guess you can't make everyone happy.
On April 10 2015 04:40 Solar424 wrote: Probably going to be the last major balance patch for the next 6 months/until LotV release. Which is a shame, because this will absolutely destroy late-game ZvP. Zerg will have to end the game with the first push or just die to deathball.
wow that sounds REALLY familiar
I mean it isn't like the other two races had to play this way against Zerg before...
On April 10 2015 12:25 RevTiberius wrote: Irrespective of the fact which race benefits most from the most recent patch, it must be difficult for the pro-gamers (whose livelihood depends on their success) to adjust to these constant patches.
I'm inclined to agree with the previous guys who said that Blizzard should do less buffing/nerfing and more tweaking
You do realize that they haven't changed the game in months, right?
Also, League gets patched for the better all the time. It's the pro-gamers job to adjust to changes which are positive for the game, not bitch and moan that their strategies that resulted in 3 hour stalemate games get nerfed.
On April 10 2015 04:40 Solar424 wrote: Probably going to be the last major balance patch for the next 6 months/until LotV release. Which is a shame, because this will absolutely destroy late-game ZvP. Zerg will have to end the game with the first push or just die to deathball.
wow that sounds REALLY familiar
I mean it isn't like the other two races had to play this way against Zerg before...
On April 10 2015 12:25 RevTiberius wrote: Irrespective of the fact which race benefits most from the most recent patch, it must be difficult for the pro-gamers (whose livelihood depends on their success) to adjust to these constant patches.
I'm inclined to agree with the previous guys who said that Blizzard should do less buffing/nerfing and more tweaking
You do realize that they haven't changed the game in months, right?
Also, League gets patched for the better all the time. It's the pro-gamers job to adjust to changes which are positive for the game, not bitch and moan that their strategies that resulted in 3 hour stalemate games get nerfed.
LoL is a vastly different game with a vastly different philosophy.
On April 10 2015 12:52 ggrrg wrote: Holy shit! It's not that I enjoyed watching SH games, but swinging the nerfbat so hard at them seems like a very poor decision. At best SH's role will change completely. What's more likely though, is that SH won't be used at all anymore.
nerf bat? their dps just went from a hydra to 25% higher, how is that a nerf? lolwtf
Seriously i'm ok to play more agressive or more dynamic, but as zerg what can i do vs player who just want t turtle mech or get invincible deathball ? Just quit ? 1sh will be same prize than viper, don't take us for idiots we can't even use it for harass ! Aslo it looks to be only a commercial trick to force players to buy LOTV : For P/T :blizzard is doing things (just forget they haven't adressed this since beta for 2 years), for Z you r race can't compete anymore so you will have to buy tbe next game if you want to have a chance of winning as Z.
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
On April 10 2015 12:25 RevTiberius wrote: Irrespective of the fact which race benefits most from the most recent patch, it must be difficult for the pro-gamers (whose livelihood depends on their success) to adjust to these constant patches.
I'm inclined to agree with the previous guys who said that Blizzard should do less buffing/nerfing and more tweaking
It has been so long since the last balance patch that this post borders on trolling.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
Someone give this man a medal. 1 hour SH games are absolutely riveting and entertaining to watch for your casual fan of SC2. kek lel
I'm glad this change went through. Should spice things up (I'm a Zerg player) and be fun to adapt to. As long as it fixes ZvT mech and make ZvP games shorter and more dynamic I don't really care. Because for me, dynamic games are a lot more fun than 1 hour SH games. But then again, what do I know compared to opisska?
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
On April 10 2015 14:39 Tyrhanius wrote: Seriously i'm ok to play more agressive or more dynamic, but as zerg what can i do vs player who just want t turtle mech or get invincible deathball ? Just quit ? 1sh will be same prize than viper, don't take us for idiots we can't even use it for harass ! Aslo it looks to be only a commercial trick to force players to buy LOTV : For P/T :blizzard is doing things (just forget they haven't adressed this since beta for 2 years), for Z you r race can't compete anymore so you will have to buy tbe next game if you want to have a chance of winning as Z.
Vipers are really good vs mech and they got a buff get around 7-9ish and rest of what ever muta, corruptor, roach hydra, ultra just depends on there comp. but the main thing is VIPERS there FREAKING AMAZING and stupidly under used.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
I really hope this don´t fuck up zerg totally. It´s gonna be terrible against toss and even though terrans seem to cry about raven nerf if terran gets any early damage to z and then pushes with mech when maxed or nearly maxed we are gonna have lots of short games that end in a total stomp. Not a fan of this patch.
On April 10 2015 15:32 RaFox17 wrote: I really hope this don´t fuck up zerg totally. It´s gonna be terrible against toss and even though terrans seem to cry about raven nerf if terran gets any early damage to z and then pushes with mech when maxed or nearly maxed we are gonna have lots of short games that end in a total stomp. Not a fan of this patch.
But, but ... you need to see imagine how DYNAMIC these games will be!!
Why are people being so negative in this thread. I mean I'm used to a little balance whine in threads but this is more reminiscent of the Bnet forums. These changes are fine, their good for the game, they are especially good for the spectator value of mech tvz and tvt as well as zvp, due to ravens and swarm hosts all these match ups had rather uninteresting, and stale late games revolving around massing a single unit while turtleing. this was super boring to watch so this patch fixes it what more do you want?
also as an aside I play Terran and I am super happy to see the Raven nerf. Terran should not be about massing a single energy unit akin in power to broodlord infestor era infestors. Its realy boring play style and I have wanted it nerfed sine they released HOTS glad they finally did, although personally I would like to se a more sever nerf to Ravens, maybe reduce the splash radius of seeker missile, still lets you 2 shot a tank with them in tvt but prevents some of the late game siliness of the unit.
On April 10 2015 15:51 fealx wrote: byebye avilo, lillekanin and goody
Raven nerf basically means you have to think before spamming PDD. It will still be effective in combat and will allow you to choose when and where to engage.
On April 10 2015 15:51 fealx wrote: byebye avilo, lillekanin and goody
Raven nerf basically means you have to think before spamming PDD. It will still be effective in combat and will allow you to choose when and where to engage.
You don't really need to spam it now that SH can't drain it constantly.
On April 10 2015 15:32 RaFox17 wrote: I really hope this don´t fuck up zerg totally. It´s gonna be terrible against toss and even though terrans seem to cry about raven nerf if terran gets any early damage to z and then pushes with mech when maxed or nearly maxed we are gonna have lots of short games that end in a total stomp. Not a fan of this patch.
okay do yourself a favor, rewatch Life's games vs Protoss and the occasional mech terrans (last one was this monday in proleague iirc) : no turtlin behind spores, no mass SH, just dynamic play with abducts and fungal growth, even infested terrans, the rest being wether roach/hydra, wether ling/ultra or air. He never had more than 8-10 SH.
The new swarmhost will totally fit in this comp and will destroy turtling players. Just wait and see what he does with it.
On the other hand, if your reference is Firecake style...
Even though I kind of like the changes, I fear that blizz will now focus only on LotV and leave HotS where it is. Well, it's a good step, but it definately needs some more adjusting after a couple of months or so. We'll have to see... Let's see if Brood Lords will be played more with this change. Making them more viable is a good step I think.
On April 10 2015 15:32 RaFox17 wrote: I really hope this don´t fuck up zerg totally. It´s gonna be terrible against toss and even though terrans seem to cry about raven nerf if terran gets any early damage to z and then pushes with mech when maxed or nearly maxed we are gonna have lots of short games that end in a total stomp. Not a fan of this patch.
okay do yourself a favor, rewatch Life's games vs Protoss and the occasional mech terrans (last one was this monday in proleague iirc) : no turtlin behind spores, no mass SH, just dynamic play with abducts and fungal growth, even infested terrans, the rest being wether roach/hydra, wether ling/ultra or air. He never had more than 8-10 SH.
The new swarmhost will totally fit in this comp and will destroy turtling players. Just wait and see what he does with it.
On the other hand, if your reference is Firecake style...
The problem is that theres only one Life. Also now that the threat of a SH is gone T and P can cross one possible unit comp from zerg which makes it a lot easier for them.
On April 10 2015 15:32 RaFox17 wrote: I really hope this don´t fuck up zerg totally. It´s gonna be terrible against toss and even though terrans seem to cry about raven nerf if terran gets any early damage to z and then pushes with mech when maxed or nearly maxed we are gonna have lots of short games that end in a total stomp. Not a fan of this patch.
okay do yourself a favor, rewatch Life's games vs Protoss and the occasional mech terrans (last one was this monday in proleague iirc) : no turtlin behind spores, no mass SH, just dynamic play with abducts and fungal growth, even infested terrans, the rest being wether roach/hydra, wether ling/ultra or air. He never had more than 8-10 SH.
The new swarmhost will totally fit in this comp and will destroy turtling players. Just wait and see what he does with it.
On the other hand, if your reference is Firecake style...
The "argument by Life" should be automatically punished by a hand extending from your monitor and slapping your face.
Do you understand that even high-level pros typically fail when they foolishly try to copy Life? How is that then anyhow relevant to the general playerbase? If more people were able to just "watch Life and go", top 32 of every tournament would be Zerg only and lings would have been already nerfed.
Wow the first time i misread 180 down to 120. But 20s s short, that s a big nerf. Then again, battles tend to be quick in sc2 and 180 was too long. All the other changes look good. We ll see what happens for late game pvp
i dunno why everyones claiming terran mech is going to be dead BCs no longer get anihalted by tempests raven pdd change just stops you endlessly turtling, you still have pdd for any engagements + seeker missiles and Sh got mnerfed which was the whole reason terrans needed to go pdd in the first place XD honestly feel like every 2nd or 3rd comment in this thread either didnt read the whole patch notes or is just regurgitating what someone above them said :L
i feel broods are gona be the answer vs lategame protoss but i feel like dealing with skytoss/massvoid styles is gona become impossibly hard again. in lotv well have viper aa but till then i dont see any way to deal with it once it gets going. (since before Sh forced protoss to atleast have to make collosus and zoned ht).
On April 10 2015 15:22 starslayer wrote: Vipers are really good vs mech and they got a buff get around 7-9ish and rest of what ever muta, corruptor, roach hydra, ultra just depends on there comp. but the main thing is VIPERS there FREAKING AMAZING and stupidly under used.
9 vipers = 1800 gas, and it doesn't include heavy gas units like brood lords, ultralisks, mass hydra. Is this trolling?
On the subject: patch is mostly ok, but I'd prefer speed buff for brood lords as well, and might be slight decrease of Hive morphing time, in order to faster get to T3 tech, since T2 swarmhosts no longer an option against colossi.
On April 10 2015 16:29 helius788 wrote: Even though I kind of like the changes, I fear that blizz will now focus only on LotV and leave HotS where it is. Well, it's a good step, but it definately needs some more adjusting after a couple of months or so. We'll have to see... Let's see if Brood Lords will be played more with this change. Making them more viable is a good step I think.
Yeah, this patch reminds me of the final WoL patch in which they nerfed zerg a tiny bit, before they went on. WoL basically stayed broken forever.
so one cant use swarmhosts at all when one didnt research burrow? WTF PDD.. good change, 4 years too late 60seconds Locust cooldown? meaning 1 wave per MINUTE????????????
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
the butthurt is strong in this one. This change has been long overdue.. seriously a unit that spawns unlimited mini hydras is hard to use? lol
On April 10 2015 15:32 RaFox17 wrote: I really hope this don´t fuck up zerg totally. It´s gonna be terrible against toss and even though terrans seem to cry about raven nerf if terran gets any early damage to z and then pushes with mech when maxed or nearly maxed we are gonna have lots of short games that end in a total stomp. Not a fan of this patch.
okay do yourself a favor, rewatch Life's games vs Protoss and the occasional mech terrans (last one was this monday in proleague iirc) : no turtlin behind spores, no mass SH, just dynamic play with abducts and fungal growth, even infested terrans, the rest being wether roach/hydra, wether ling/ultra or air. He never had more than 8-10 SH.
The new swarmhost will totally fit in this comp and will destroy turtling players. Just wait and see what he does with it.
On the other hand, if your reference is Firecake style...
He never had more than 8-10 SH.
He had 8-10 SH.
8-10 SH
Some forum comments are really unreflected, but this one is a true pearl amongst them...
OK, so let's bring in the LotV marauder redesign right now, because most Terrans only play with 15-20 Marauders, which is still less money than 8-10 Swarm Hosts. Oh, and do the Colossus nerfs right now! Zergs only invested 1600/800 to 2000/1000 into Swarm Hosts. That's nothing!!!!! Those 3-5Colossi which only cost 900/600 to 1500/1000. I mean, 5 Colossi, jeez, that's not even noteworthy. Protoss can get by without them any day, right?
On April 10 2015 15:32 RaFox17 wrote: I really hope this don´t fuck up zerg totally. It´s gonna be terrible against toss and even though terrans seem to cry about raven nerf if terran gets any early damage to z and then pushes with mech when maxed or nearly maxed we are gonna have lots of short games that end in a total stomp. Not a fan of this patch.
okay do yourself a favor, rewatch Life's games vs Protoss and the occasional mech terrans (last one was this monday in proleague iirc) : no turtlin behind spores, no mass SH, just dynamic play with abducts and fungal growth, even infested terrans, the rest being wether roach/hydra, wether ling/ultra or air. He never had more than 8-10 SH.
The new swarmhost will totally fit in this comp and will destroy turtling players. Just wait and see what he does with it.
On the other hand, if your reference is Firecake style...
Life did go turtling Swarmhost against protoss and terran mech, and also some more agressive Swarmhost play, with infested terran for example. Not only both options are most likely gone, but even though if Zerg does not decides to go Swarm host but an other playstyle, protoss and terran mech build are designed to be able to deal with SH . Without the threat of SwamHost play, I am afraid that the other playstyle such as mutalisk based or roach Hydra viper will be much weaker, and they already are not really efficient if they don't caught the opponent by surprised.
On April 10 2015 15:32 RaFox17 wrote: I really hope this don´t fuck up zerg totally. It´s gonna be terrible against toss and even though terrans seem to cry about raven nerf if terran gets any early damage to z and then pushes with mech when maxed or nearly maxed we are gonna have lots of short games that end in a total stomp. Not a fan of this patch.
okay do yourself a favor, rewatch Life's games vs Protoss and the occasional mech terrans (last one was this monday in proleague iirc) : no turtlin behind spores, no mass SH, just dynamic play with abducts and fungal growth, even infested terrans, the rest being wether roach/hydra, wether ling/ultra or air. He never had more than 8-10 SH.
The new swarmhost will totally fit in this comp and will destroy turtling players. Just wait and see what he does with it.
On the other hand, if your reference is Firecake style...
Life had 16 Swarmhosts against Hack for most of the game. Really bad example, because what he used the Swarmhosts for (-> Defending in a somewhat cost efficient way. The Swarmhosts kept Hack from attacking) won't work anymore. Also you have to consider that he was insanely far ahead all game long and was able to throw away units left and right. In an even game... Life wouldn't win this game with this strategy, because neither of the compositions he used were viable in the lategame. He lost A LOT.
And Life's ZvP is basically intended to win the game before the lategame or lose it. (He even stated that in an interview).
I don't think Life is a good example FOR the point you try to make and more AGAINST your point: Life kinda approves that you can't win a ZvP lategame without Swarmhosts.
On April 10 2015 17:41 SeriousLus wrote: so one cant use swarmhosts at all when one didnt research burrow? WTF 60seconds Locust cooldown? meaning 1 wave per MINUTE????????????
i guess the usual BS by Blizzard
You should read again the patch notes mate
Casting Spawn Locusts no longer requires a Swarm Host to be burrowed Weapon speed increased from .8 to .6 Locust duration increased from 15 seconds (+10 seconds with Enduring Locusts) to 25 seconds
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
the butthurt is strong in this one. This change has been long overdue.. seriously a unit that spawns unlimited mini hydras is hard to use? lol
Before you ever post on this topic again, you need to find some high-level games where the SH player lost and try to analyze why did that happen. Hint: pro-gamers usually do not lose because they are "noob" or because they have "no skill".
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
the butthurt is strong in this one. This change has been long overdue.. seriously a unit that spawns unlimited mini hydras is hard to use? lol
Before you ever post on this topic again, you need to find some high-level games where the SH player lost and try to analyze why did that happen. Hint: pro-gamers usually do not lose because they are "noob" or because they have "no skill".
no one said its unbeatable. the point is Its UNLIMITED which favors the zerg heavily in late game .. coz u know.. protoss and terran units actually costs Minerals.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
the butthurt is strong in this one. This change has been long overdue.. seriously a unit that spawns unlimited mini hydras is hard to use? lol
Before you ever post on this topic again, you need to find some high-level games where the SH player lost and try to analyze why did that happen. Hint: pro-gamers usually do not lose because they are "noob" or because they have "no skill".
no one said its unbeatable. the point is Its UNLIMITED which favors the zerg heavily in late game .. coz u know.. protoss and terran units actually costs Minerals.
Yes and it's sad zerg actually needs to use free units to have a chance lategame
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
the butthurt is strong in this one. This change has been long overdue.. seriously a unit that spawns unlimited mini hydras is hard to use? lol
Before you ever post on this topic again, you need to find some high-level games where the SH player lost and try to analyze why did that happen. Hint: pro-gamers usually do not lose because they are "noob" or because they have "no skill".
no one said its unbeatable. the point is Its UNLIMITED which favors the zerg heavily in late game .. coz u know.. protoss and terran units actually costs Minerals.
It did not favors zerg heavily in late game, that's the point, and statistics shown that the game was at a very balanced state, even in the late game. The whole point of the stalemate was that it was that the power of both armies was pretty much equal, preventing both to commit into an attack. As for the free unit argument, I always found not really relevant: Locust are just the attack of the SwarmHost and that's all, they dissapear after a short moment so they are not really "free units", you do not pay when colossi shoot lasers, why would you when your SH attack?
If the locusts are their attack then SH have a range of 30+. Guess all those balance complains about the 22 range of the tempest were just bs then (with way lower DPS too).
SHs are not only poorly balanced but more important they are extremely boring to watch. Even if they were balanced I think it's good for the game if they are changed.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
the butthurt is strong in this one. This change has been long overdue.. seriously a unit that spawns unlimited mini hydras is hard to use? lol
Before you ever post on this topic again, you need to find some high-level games where the SH player lost and try to analyze why did that happen. Hint: pro-gamers usually do not lose because they are "noob" or because they have "no skill".
no one said its unbeatable. the point is Its UNLIMITED which favors the zerg heavily in late game .. coz u know.. protoss and terran units actually costs Minerals.
It did not favors zerg heavily in late game, that's the point, and statistics shown that the game was at a very balanced state, even in the late game. The whole point of the stalemate was that it was that the power of both armies was pretty much equal, preventing both to commit into an attack. As for the free unit argument, I always found not really relevant: Locust are just the attack of the SwarmHost and that's all, they dissapear after a short moment so they are not really "free units", you do not pay when colossi shoot lasers, why would you when your SH attack?
Because lasers from Colossi don't prevent you from going forward and actually kill the Colossus, right? Also Colossus isn't invisible why shooting, doesn't have absurd range... ooh, it looks like you used a wrong unit to compare(although it is a boring one too).
Autocast of locusts is bad because it makes the SH very easy to use, on lower levels you just watch the minimap if something "red" is coming for them. The range is absurd and with enduring locust upgrade the timing range for you to actually kill them is ridiculously small. The unit was bad and as usual Blizzard over nerfed it, but changes were needed.
Also SH is killing the viewers, it's the same as football. Some people enjoy the really awesome defending game of Chelsea(e.g. - when Chelsea wants they are really the top team in defensive style, no offense to Chelsea, they can play offensive football), but most casual viewers enjoy the style Germany used against Brazil. Offensive beast shooting one goal after another. Fast paced pretty game, not boring turtlefest. Though I may be weird and wrong and the most viewers actually attract these boring turtlefests
It did not favors zerg heavily in late game, that's the point, and statistics shown that the game was at a very balanced state, even in the late game. The whole point of the stalemate was that it was that the power of both armies was pretty much equal, preventing both to commit into an attack. As for the free unit argument, I always found not really relevant: Locust are just the attack of the SwarmHost and that's all, they dissapear after a short moment so they are not really "free units", you do not pay when colossi shoot lasers, why would you when your SH attack?
Because lasers from Colossi don't prevent you from going forward and actually kill the Colossus, right? Also Colossus isn't invisible why shooting, doesn't have absurd range... ooh, it looks like you used a wrong unit to compare(although it is a boring one too).
Autocast of locusts is bad because it makes the SH very easy to use, on lower levels you just watch the minimap if something "red" is coming for them. The range is absurd and with enduring locust upgrade the timing range for you to actually kill them is ridiculously small. The unit was bad and as usual Blizzard over nerfed it, but changes were needed.
I could have say Colossi or any other units. Locust are just the way of attacking of Swarmhost, like bullets are the munitions of marine and lasers those of Colossi. It is different way of attacking, for sure, but I don't consider them as "free units" .
Also SH is killing the viewers, it's the same as football. Some people enjoy the really awesome defending game of Chelsea(e.g. - when Chelsea wants they are really the top team in defensive style, no offense to Chelsea, they can play offensive football), but most casual viewers enjoy the style Germany used against Brazil. Offensive beast shooting one goal after another. Fast paced pretty game, not boring turtlefest. Though I may be weird and wrong and the most viewers actually attract these boring turtlefests
You are not going to convince me of this, I already am. I hate passive and turtle play so much that I leave every game when I scout mech, or protoss going full air/canon, which are, in my opinion, playstyle as bad as SwarmHost. What I fear, that the result of this change of the Swarmhost will:
1/ make other playstyle less effective because build order will not have to prepare against SH. 2/ encourage protoss and terran player to play turtle, as there will be no more counter to it.
Maybe the buff (flying locust,speed ) will be enough to prevent those playstyle, I really hope so, but for now I am not convinced. This SwarmHost might be very good in LoTV because there will be Ravager and the AOE spell of the viper, but it seems that this change of the SH has left an empty spot in the zerg arsenal for lategame HoTS.
When your SH "bullets" have bodies that can be targeted, HP, ranged attack that benefit from upgrades, can be blocked (by terrain, units, buildings and FFs) and you can tell them to go to a certain point in the map... Then those bullets are units.
On April 10 2015 20:22 Salteador Neo wrote: When your SH "bullets" have bodies that can be targeted, HP, ranged attack that benefit from upgrades, can be blocked (by terrain, units, buildings and FFs) and you can tell them to go to a certain point in the map... Then those bullets are units.
No they are not, because they are for a limited amount of time in the battlefield.
Are auto-turrets, launch by the Raven, units? They have bodies that can be targeted, HP, ranged attack that can be upgraded.
The problem with SH was that it was boring, not that it was imbalanced. This patch aims to fix that, and I'd like to think that Blizzard wouldn't hesitate to patch again to balance things out if it gets tough for zerg. Everyone should rejoice at less boring shit in the game.
On April 10 2015 20:27 ZenithM wrote: The problem with SH was that it was boring, not that it was imbalanced. This patch aims to fix that, and I'd like to think that Blizzard wouldn't hesitate to patch again to balance things out if it gets tough for zerg. Everyone should rejoice at less boring shit in the game.
TBH I prefer Swarmhost games over All-innish strategies every game. And I expect a lot of the latter in ZvP until LotV is released.
On April 10 2015 20:22 Salteador Neo wrote: When your SH "bullets" have bodies that can be targeted, HP, ranged attack that benefit from upgrades, can be blocked (by terrain, units, buildings and FFs) and you can tell them to go to a certain point in the map... Then those bullets are units.
No they are not, because they are for a limited amount of time in the battlefield.
Are auto-turrets, launch by the Raven, units? They have bodies that can be targeted, HP, ranged attack that can be upgraded.
Yes they are. Static units with a limited life (based on time).
They are much more similar to all the general units than the bullets from marines or marauders (gameplay wise).
You actually picked a great example to prove my point lol, since the turret shoots its own bullets. A harder pick would be the reaver scarab, which is still a unit IMO because it has a "phisical" body in the game, but its clearly the closest thing to a "bullet". Other more obvious units are the interceptors (it's hard to pick one but possible, it shows that it even has stats), the units that spawn from dead zerg buildings and those broodlord things.
comparing SH to attacks, facepalm! First of all, the locusts are very tanky. So they not only dish out dps as high as hydra, but also absorb damage and prevent opponent's army from advancing.
can a marine stay at the same place infinitely and dish out unlimited damage? I don't think so. You need to kite, medivac to heal, micro and split to avoid baneling hits. and yes, that marine will die at some point and needs to be replenish with resources, unlike locusts.
I think all protosses would love to have collosus that shoots out free stalkers, and terrans would love tanks that shoots out free marauders. because according to your logic, free-units = attacks right?
Oh wow, they should really change the swarmhost walking animation. Swarmhosts on creep look really stupid now. Flying locust look pretty cool though
MY LOCUST WILL BLOT OUT THE SUN
In reality though, with 4 supply and 200 gas they are really expensive. With the very long cooldown I'm not convinced we'll see these in larger groups than 6-8 for harassment. And even then 1600 gas buys you a lot of other good stuff.
Also the 'flying swoop' has to be used on a point a bit away from the current locust position to give them slightly more range as they travel forward/downward very fast
It's so funny to see some people argue that having free units is OP and instant shot not. Free units are just weaker ! Having a unit as attack means you can kill it before it hits you, imagine if you can kill collossus lazer ? Do you consider that as a buff ?! Lol. You can run away from unit, forcefield them etc... It's indeed not surprising the SH game are this long as you need a lot of wave to do dmg, and people complains : OMG SH OP SO BORING ! Just compare 30SH who win in 45min-2Hours and the same cost of protoss 10 collossus +30 zealots that win on 2seconds!!! OMG REMOVE SH SO OP, DEATHBALL FINE.
It's just silly that they even nerf SH to make it even more cost uneffective and expensive while dealing dmg even slower (less waves per minuted) ! Sry to then consider people who think it's a good change, as or not enough skilled to talk about balance or else incredibly biased P or T mecher !
I find it funny how people vote approve on the tempest change. As if it does something other than killing PvP lategame. Oh well, gonna enjoy my free wins against zerg and mech once I get past the 20th minute mark I suppose.
On April 10 2015 21:28 KingAlphard wrote: I find it funny how people vote approve on the tempest change. As if it does something other than killing PvP lategame. Oh well, gonna enjoy my free wins against zerg and mech once I get past the 20th minute mark I suppose.
It's also stupid that actually you can make a balance change for ZvP without affecting PvP with some +dmg vs mecanical massif or +shield dmg but they don't.
On April 10 2015 21:28 KingAlphard wrote: I find it funny how people vote approve on the tempest change. As if it does something other than killing PvP lategame. Oh well, gonna enjoy my free wins against zerg and mech once I get past the 20th minute mark I suppose.
It gives you huge timing windows with Broodlords if the Protoss didn't go for a Voidray style initially. And those styles aren't that strong these days, they often get destroyed in the midgame.
On April 10 2015 21:28 KingAlphard wrote: I find it funny how people vote approve on the tempest change. As if it does something other than killing PvP lategame. Oh well, gonna enjoy my free wins against zerg and mech once I get past the 20th minute mark I suppose.
It gives you huge timing windows with Broodlords if the Protoss didn't go for a Voidray style initially. And those styles aren't that strong these days, they often get destroyed in the midgame.
You don't need tempest to deal with broodlord, they're slow and you can avoid fighting them and trade/base multitask them easier than vs SH (cf showtime vs Kane). Also void style is still pretty viable, MC did it on oligoleague vs a kespa zerg and crush his hydra timing easily with some sentry and photon overcharge, then win easily in late game vs SH.
On April 10 2015 21:21 Tyrhanius wrote: It's so funny to see some people argue that having free units is OP and instant shot not. Free units are just weaker ! Having a unit as attack means you can kill it before it hits you, imagine if you can kill collossus lazer ? Do you consider that as a buff ?! Lol. You can run away from unit, forcefield them etc... It's indeed not surprising the SH game are this long as you need a lot of wave to do dmg, and people complains : OMG SH OP SO BORING ! Just compare 30SH who win in 45min-2Hours and the same cost of protoss 10 collossus +30 zealots that win on 2seconds!!! OMG REMOVE SH SO OP, DEATHBALL FINE.
It's just silly that they even nerf SH to make it even more cost uneffective and expensive while dealing dmg even slower (less waves per minuted) ! Sry to then consider people who think it's a good change, as or not enough skilled to talk about balance or else incredibly biased P or T mecher !
On April 10 2015 21:28 KingAlphard wrote: I find it funny how people vote approve on the tempest change. As if it does something other than killing PvP lategame. Oh well, gonna enjoy my free wins against zerg and mech once I get past the 20th minute mark I suppose.
It gives you huge timing windows with Broodlords if the Protoss didn't go for a Voidray style initially. And those styles aren't that strong these days, they often get destroyed in the midgame.
What killed them in the midgame was hydra pushes that crippled the protoss players economy, if it did not work the zerg would transition into swarm hosts to play a macro game from there. That hydra push designed to punish a protoss that would go for air is now more all in than ever. The zerg will no longer be able to go into SH + static to defend vs the follow up push.
I think once players get used to this turtle air styles are going to be quite strong for protoss.
As for broodlords. Broodlords are still going to be there for an all in push, as soon as the protoss gets aoe and tempest they are still going to be cost in-effective vs most late game protoss compositions. I should also mention that broodlords are slower and more vulnerable than SHs used to be.
This patch will either make protoss air styles really strong or give zerg a super strong all in with broodlords.
I wish seeker missiles would have energy and damage reduced to make them more usable and micro intensive. I might just start blindly making them in every matchup in defiance.
What made mass void ray/templar openers weak wasn't midgame timings (which you can defend with good play and some help from the map), but the fact that you had a late robo and almost no ability to move on the map (short of trying a snipe+recall on a hatch) for a very long time. This gives a SH player really easy access to 4-5 bases, hive tech and a huge bank; it's basically the complete opposite of 3base blink which shuts down the extra bases so well. Void ray/templar might come back, but the tradeoff of doing that vs actually being able to be on the map and pressuring is pretty steep, so i'm not 100% convinced. It's possible it will be a pretty map-dependant strategy.
The major change in PvZ i think will be the fact that while Swarm Hosts made a Zerg extremely hard if not impossible to break, Broodlords (which are likely to replace SH in the late game) do the opposite and open a major timing for the Protoss. The end result is (likely) going to be either more 3base timings from either the Protoss, trying to hit before Broodlords ala 2012, or even the Zerg himself, trying to be as ahead as possible before switching to Hive to close the timing window.
It's been known for months that the patch would be released after WCS finals and at the start of the new ladder season, so i don't think it's a big deal.
On April 10 2015 21:21 Tyrhanius wrote: It's so funny to see some people argue that having free units is OP and instant shot not. Free units are just weaker ! Having a unit as attack means you can kill it before it hits you, imagine if you can kill collossus lazer ? Do you consider that as a buff ?! Lol. You can run away from unit, forcefield them etc... It's indeed not surprising the SH game are this long as you need a lot of wave to do dmg, and people complains : OMG SH OP SO BORING ! Just compare 30SH who win in 45min-2Hours and the same cost of protoss 10 collossus +30 zealots that win on 2seconds!!! OMG REMOVE SH SO OP, DEATHBALL FINE.
It's just silly that they even nerf SH to make it even more cost uneffective and expensive while dealing dmg even slower (less waves per minuted) ! Sry to then consider people who think it's a good change, as or not enough skilled to talk about balance or else incredibly biased P or T mecher !
Colossus beams don't have range 30 though.
They don't fly neither, so medivac better than colossus right ?
On April 10 2015 21:28 KingAlphard wrote: I find it funny how people vote approve on the tempest change. As if it does something other than killing PvP lategame. Oh well, gonna enjoy my free wins against zerg and mech once I get past the 20th minute mark I suppose.
It gives you huge timing windows with Broodlords if the Protoss didn't go for a Voidray style initially. And those styles aren't that strong these days, they often get destroyed in the midgame.
Hence why I said past the 20th minute mark. Colossi void ray still works fine, just mass blink stalkers is better so everyone plays that.
On April 10 2015 21:28 KingAlphard wrote: I find it funny how people vote approve on the tempest change. As if it does something other than killing PvP lategame. Oh well, gonna enjoy my free wins against zerg and mech once I get past the 20th minute mark I suppose.
It gives you huge timing windows with Broodlords if the Protoss didn't go for a Voidray style initially. And those styles aren't that strong these days, they often get destroyed in the midgame.
Hence why I said past the 20th minute mark. Colossi void ray still works fine, just mass blink stalkers is better so everyone plays that.
well, you're comments were contradicting each other to begin with. My comment was a reply to your first part, where you say that it doesn't matter. I say it does matter. The second part of your comment then actually indicates that it does matter, unless you think that so far lategame PvZ has already been a freewin.
On April 10 2015 21:28 KingAlphard wrote: I find it funny how people vote approve on the tempest change. As if it does something other than killing PvP lategame. Oh well, gonna enjoy my free wins against zerg and mech once I get past the 20th minute mark I suppose.
It gives you huge timing windows with Broodlords if the Protoss didn't go for a Voidray style initially. And those styles aren't that strong these days, they often get destroyed in the midgame.
Hence why I said past the 20th minute mark. Colossi void ray still works fine, just mass blink stalkers is better so everyone plays that.
well, you're comments were contradicting each other to begin with. My comment was a reply to your first part, where you say that it doesn't matter. I say it does matter. The second part of your comment then actually indicates that it does matter, unless you think that so far lategame PvZ has already been a freewin.
Ok. It does matter in the specific situation of a "broodlord timing attack". In the other situations it doesn't matter. But do you think that you can execute a broordlord timing in every single game? Not really, especially if the protoss player is always playing aggressive. Even then, I'm not sure if it will be that popular. Before the patch broodlord timings were a joke (although they could work if not scouted until basically the moment they arrive), now I suppose they will be "average", or at least definitely not as strong as scv pulls for example. Past some point, every protoss will build tempests anyway because they are powerful in general, and broodlords will still suck against them.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
the butthurt is strong in this one. This change has been long overdue.. seriously a unit that spawns unlimited mini hydras is hard to use? lol
Before you ever post on this topic again, you need to find some high-level games where the SH player lost and try to analyze why did that happen. Hint: pro-gamers usually do not lose because they are "noob" or because they have "no skill".
no one said its unbeatable. the point is Its UNLIMITED which favors the zerg heavily in late game .. coz u know.. protoss and terran units actually costs Minerals.
It did not favors zerg heavily in late game, that's the point, and statistics shown that the game was at a very balanced state, even in the late game. The whole point of the stalemate was that it was that the power of both armies was pretty much equal, preventing both to commit into an attack. As for the free unit argument, I always found not really relevant: Locust are just the attack of the SwarmHost and that's all, they dissapear after a short moment so they are not really "free units", you do not pay when colossi shoot lasers, why would you when your SH attack?
They aren't just attacks because 1. They can be controlled 2. They attackable and absorbs damage
the old swarmhost was the way to not die with deathball protoss and terran mech, not even win the game, just hold position looking for chance to win, if bilzzard not want 1 hour games, the problem is not zerg, the problem is the protoss and terran turtling the game to get the point that zerg is forced to use SH to not lose, in LOTV where the games are more fast this change could work, but in HOTS is awful. And doesnt change so much the zvt, if before was tanks against SH, now gona be thors against SH, and with the buff of thors against air the flying locust gona die more fast than before. Some said that is easy to destroy comand center or nexus, but is not valuable invest a lot of min and gas to just kill a nexus, and counting that after the locust die, u have a suply dead for a long time for the long respawn locust time. At least the duration of locust should be more or the life/def should be better to not invest all that min/gas and supply dead to just kill a nexus, and die so easily to the enemy units.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
You are really over reacting its not that bad im sorry you feel this way but it was a bad unit and should have never been in the game. Also sorry but the unit was easy to use burrow set it and forget it no real micro beside burrow if you found this difficult then I dont know what to tell you man (and i play all three races so please dont say i dont know what im talking about) but again you seem to be very upset and overreacting to this change, like your life just got turned upside down.
Im sorry you feel this way and yea sure there were some complex sh game but if you look at it one play (not the zerg) had to work alot harder ( i know i going to get shit for this) because he's combating wave after wave of free units from basically cross map. If you dont find something wrong with this then again idk what to say. I do agree with the whole super late game split decision is fun to watch but you rarely get there and only because of units like the swarmhost and raven. I think it will be even better now because we wont have mass pdds vs locust waves or locust vs locust or tempest shots vs locust. It will at least IMO will be more dynamic because everyones units will cost something and if they lose even one that could be game ending. But this is all moot because your hell bent on cursing everyone who think this was a great over due change (which is just about everyone).
also going to say it again THE VIPER IS THE ANSWER TO MECH TERRAN not swarmhost the swamhost was just a way to delay enough to take the map and make what ever units needed to kill the terran but again the VIPER IS the Answer, not as good in ZVP,PVZ but I believe its the answer in there aswell pulling units and blinding cloud are stupidly under used.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
You are really over reacting its not that bad im sorry you feel this way but it was a bad unit and should have never been in the game. Also sorry but the unit was easy to use burrow set it and forget it no real micro beside burrow if you found this difficult then I dont know what to tell you man (and i play all three races so please dont say i dont know what im talking about) but again you seem to be very upset and overreacting to this change, like your life just got turned upside down.
Im sorry you feel this way and yea sure there were some complex sh game but if you look at it one play (not the zerg) had to work alot harder ( i know i going to get shit for this) because he's combating wave after wave of free units from basically cross map. If you dont find something wrong with this then again idk what to say. I do agree with the whole super late game split decision is fun to watch but you rarely get there and only because of units like the swarmhost and raven. I think it will be even better now because we wont have mass pdds vs locust waves or locust vs locust or tempest shots vs locust. It will at least IMO will be more dynamic because everyones units will cost something and if they lose even one that could be game ending. But this is all moot because your hell bent on cursing everyone who think this was a great over due change (which is just about everyone).
The thing is it's not like SH vs mech or SH vs Tempests games happened every single time like BL-Infestor in WoL. Maybe 1 time out of 20 games or something like that, and often people enjoyed watching them, because they were particular, even if not exciting in themselves. They didn't even produce one sided games most of the times.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
You are really over reacting its not that bad im sorry you feel this way but it was a bad unit and should have never been in the game. Also sorry but the unit was easy to use burrow set it and forget it no real micro beside burrow if you found this difficult then I dont know what to tell you man (and i play all three races so please dont say i dont know what im talking about) but again you seem to be very upset and overreacting to this change, like your life just got turned upside down.
Im sorry you feel this way and yea sure there were some complex sh game but if you look at it one play (not the zerg) had to work alot harder ( i know i going to get shit for this) because he's combating wave after wave of free units from basically cross map. If you dont find something wrong with this then again idk what to say. I do agree with the whole super late game split decision is fun to watch but you rarely get there and only because of units like the swarmhost and raven. I think it will be even better now because we wont have mass pdds vs locust waves or locust vs locust or tempest shots vs locust. It will at least IMO will be more dynamic because everyones units will cost something and if they lose even one that could be game ending. But this is all moot because your hell bent on cursing everyone who think this was a great over due change (which is just about everyone).
also going to say it again THE VIPER IS THE ANSWER TO MECH TERRAN not swarmhost the swamhost was just a way to delay enough to take the map and make what ever units needed to kill the terran but again the VIPER IS the Answer, not as good in ZVP,PVZ but I believe its the answer in there aswell pulling units and blinding cloud are stupidly under used.
The unit exists for 2 years and suddendly it become ANSWER TO MECH TERRAN, why ? vikings are not nerfed ? still hard counter vipers easily and takes the upgrades of the ground. It's underused cause the counter of a Hive 100/200 gaz unit is a 150/75 unit that need less tech, and have free upgrades (and aslo counter broodlords).
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
You are really over reacting its not that bad im sorry you feel this way but it was a bad unit and should have never been in the game. Also sorry but the unit was easy to use burrow set it and forget it no real micro beside burrow if you found this difficult then I dont know what to tell you man (and i play all three races so please dont say i dont know what im talking about) but again you seem to be very upset and overreacting to this change, like your life just got turned upside down.
Im sorry you feel this way and yea sure there were some complex sh game but if you look at it one play (not the zerg) had to work alot harder ( i know i going to get shit for this) because he's combating wave after wave of free units from basically cross map. If you dont find something wrong with this then again idk what to say. I do agree with the whole super late game split decision is fun to watch but you rarely get there and only because of units like the swarmhost and raven. I think it will be even better now because we wont have mass pdds vs locust waves or locust vs locust or tempest shots vs locust. It will at least IMO will be more dynamic because everyones units will cost something and if they lose even one that could be game ending. But this is all moot because your hell bent on cursing everyone who think this was a great over due change (which is just about everyone).
The thing is it's not like SH vs mech or SH vs Tempests games happened every single time like BL-Infestor in WoL. Maybe 1 time out of 20 games or something like that, and often people enjoyed watching them, because they were particular, even if not exciting in themselves. They didn't even produce one sided games most of the times.
no one ever said they produced one sided game they were boing turtle fest games. and that what everyones getting at. also 1 out of 20 isnt true any time terran went mech there were SH most if not every time and since were throwing random numbers of 5-10 pvz turned into SH snooze fest. I also even said there were some complexed SH games but after the first 5-10-15-20 games there all the same locust moving cross map and the opponent sitting there waiting till they had the best army and moved out trying to kill the zerg and that's the problem its boring to the majority dont want to watch locust crush into the protoss or mech terran for 45 mins and then the p or t moves cross map with ppds or toss deathball hoping to kill the zerg.
The problem is that if terran wants to go mech we see mass sh which turns into a turtle fest now that the SH is changed the hope is that the mech player can try and attack cross map without fight free unit all the way there. ITs a chicken and the egg thing what came first. zergs say they need SH to play the game and mech terran say they needed ravens to not die to mass locust waves.and same with toss if they see sh it turns into a turtle fest. you see the connection here right the swarmhost it made both players sit there and turtle for 45 mins.
like i said we will have to see if these changes prove this to be true, sure mech terrans and toss can turtle but thats up to them with the pdd and tempest change and up the the zerg to figure something out to break them, but right now all signs point to SH being the problem.
Again I'm going to say it if you want to break a mech or toss or a turtling player get VIPERS they were already good and they got a buff.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
You are really over reacting its not that bad im sorry you feel this way but it was a bad unit and should have never been in the game. Also sorry but the unit was easy to use burrow set it and forget it no real micro beside burrow if you found this difficult then I dont know what to tell you man (and i play all three races so please dont say i dont know what im talking about) but again you seem to be very upset and overreacting to this change, like your life just got turned upside down.
Im sorry you feel this way and yea sure there were some complex sh game but if you look at it one play (not the zerg) had to work alot harder ( i know i going to get shit for this) because he's combating wave after wave of free units from basically cross map. If you dont find something wrong with this then again idk what to say. I do agree with the whole super late game split decision is fun to watch but you rarely get there and only because of units like the swarmhost and raven. I think it will be even better now because we wont have mass pdds vs locust waves or locust vs locust or tempest shots vs locust. It will at least IMO will be more dynamic because everyones units will cost something and if they lose even one that could be game ending. But this is all moot because your hell bent on cursing everyone who think this was a great over due change (which is just about everyone).
also going to say it again THE VIPER IS THE ANSWER TO MECH TERRAN not swarmhost the swamhost was just a way to delay enough to take the map and make what ever units needed to kill the terran but again the VIPER IS the Answer, not as good in ZVP,PVZ but I believe its the answer in there aswell pulling units and blinding cloud are stupidly under used.
The unit exists for 2 years and suddendly it become ANSWER TO MECH TERRAN, why ? vikings are not nerfed ? still hard counter vipers easily and takes the upgrades of the ground. It's underused cause the counter of a Hive 100/200 gaz unit is a 150/75 unit that need less tech, and have free upgrades (and aslo counter broodlords).
suddendly LOL not even going to waste my time with that. smh get corrupotrs ppd got nerfed also 10 range blinding cloud out ranges 9 range viking. Im done here all zergs are going to just keep crying ive given you the answer and its the viper get more then 2-3 get 7-9 rest corruptors or whatever you need. Its an RTS figure it out or quit playing
you know what i will say is that the infestor was in the game for a while before anyone knew it was OP but ppl only want to be robots and do what everyone else is doing and saying.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
You are really over reacting its not that bad im sorry you feel this way but it was a bad unit and should have never been in the game. Also sorry but the unit was easy to use burrow set it and forget it no real micro beside burrow if you found this difficult then I dont know what to tell you man (and i play all three races so please dont say i dont know what im talking about) but again you seem to be very upset and overreacting to this change, like your life just got turned upside down.
Im sorry you feel this way and yea sure there were some complex sh game but if you look at it one play (not the zerg) had to work alot harder ( i know i going to get shit for this) because he's combating wave after wave of free units from basically cross map. If you dont find something wrong with this then again idk what to say. I do agree with the whole super late game split decision is fun to watch but you rarely get there and only because of units like the swarmhost and raven. I think it will be even better now because we wont have mass pdds vs locust waves or locust vs locust or tempest shots vs locust. It will at least IMO will be more dynamic because everyones units will cost something and if they lose even one that could be game ending. But this is all moot because your hell bent on cursing everyone who think this was a great over due change (which is just about everyone).
The thing is it's not like SH vs mech or SH vs Tempests games happened every single time like BL-Infestor in WoL. Maybe 1 time out of 20 games or something like that, and often people enjoyed watching them, because they were particular, even if not exciting in themselves. They didn't even produce one sided games most of the times.
no one ever said they produced one sided game they were boing turtle fest games. and that what everyones getting at. also 1 out of 20 isnt true any time terran went mech there were SH most if not every time and since were throwing random numbers of 5-10 pvz turned into SH snooze fest. I also even said there were some complexed SH games but after the first 5-10-15-20 games there all the same locust moving cross map and the opponent sitting there waiting till they had the best army and moved out trying to kill the zerg and that's the problem its boring to the majority dont want to watch locust crush into the protoss or mech terran for 45 mins and then the p or t moves cross map with ppds or toss deathball hoping to kill the zerg.
The problem is that if terran wants to go mech we see mass sh which turns into a turtle fest now that the SH is changed the hope is that the mech player can try and attack cross map without fight free unit all the way there. ITs a chicken and the egg thing what came first. zergs say they need SH to play the game and mech terran say they needed ravens to not die to mass locust waves.and same with toss if they see sh it turns into a turtle fest. you see the connection here right the swarmhost it made both players sit there and turtle for 45 mins.
like i said we will have to see if these changes prove this to be true, sure mech terrans and toss can turtle but thats up to them with the pdd and tempest change and up the the zerg to figure something out to break them, but right now all signs point to SH being the problem.
Again I'm going to say it if you want to break a mech or toss or a turtling player get VIPERS they were already good and they got a buff.
Agree with are two parts with this problem of SH vs Terran mech/Protoss deathball, but disagree with voluntarily zergs choose to play SH, big part of zergs dont like SH bcoz they are slow and doesnt have the units when they need, that become at inmobilty to defend drops/multidrops that is the biggest weakness of SH play, and considering that zerg is the race that have to defend more expansions, SH is not something that zergs like, and casually is something that was changed in this patch, and also contribute the fact of the power of cost-effience of mech terran / protoss units, SH shouldnt exist in the game, but it means that mech terran/ protoss units should be nerfed to or zergs units buffed . And about viper is the same saying terran can use nuclear launches to break SH, the problem is the accesibility and the viable to use both bcoz both players play to , one burrow/unburrow and the other snipe the vipers with vikings, and was not cost-effective lose a expensive viper to abduct a tank or clouding 1-2 tanks, if the viper even get close enough to clouding something losing many vipers in the process, with the vikings and the torrets there ,doesnt matter if zerg have corruptors or mutas bcoz vikings snipe the vipers. Anyway i doubt tanks gona appear much in the new mech terran vs zerg, now gona be many thors and vikings in the mix that become more difficult the appeareance of vipers even with the range buff, the problem now is if before SH help zergs to deal with mech terran/protoss deathball, now wining a late game against that gona be something close to heroic XD.
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
You are really over reacting its not that bad im sorry you feel this way but it was a bad unit and should have never been in the game. Also sorry but the unit was easy to use burrow set it and forget it no real micro beside burrow if you found this difficult then I dont know what to tell you man (and i play all three races so please dont say i dont know what im talking about) but again you seem to be very upset and overreacting to this change, like your life just got turned upside down.
Im sorry you feel this way and yea sure there were some complex sh game but if you look at it one play (not the zerg) had to work alot harder ( i know i going to get shit for this) because he's combating wave after wave of free units from basically cross map. If you dont find something wrong with this then again idk what to say. I do agree with the whole super late game split decision is fun to watch but you rarely get there and only because of units like the swarmhost and raven. I think it will be even better now because we wont have mass pdds vs locust waves or locust vs locust or tempest shots vs locust. It will at least IMO will be more dynamic because everyones units will cost something and if they lose even one that could be game ending. But this is all moot because your hell bent on cursing everyone who think this was a great over due change (which is just about everyone).
also going to say it again THE VIPER IS THE ANSWER TO MECH TERRAN not swarmhost the swamhost was just a way to delay enough to take the map and make what ever units needed to kill the terran but again the VIPER IS the Answer, not as good in ZVP,PVZ but I believe its the answer in there aswell pulling units and blinding cloud are stupidly under used.
The unit exists for 2 years and suddendly it become ANSWER TO MECH TERRAN, why ? vikings are not nerfed ? still hard counter vipers easily and takes the upgrades of the ground. It's underused cause the counter of a Hive 100/200 gaz unit is a 150/75 unit that need less tech, and have free upgrades (and aslo counter broodlords).
suddendly LOL not even going to waste my time with that. smh get corrupotrs ppd got nerfed also 10 range blinding cloud out ranges 9 range viking. Im done here all zergs are going to just keep crying ive given you the answer and its the viper get more then 2-3 get 7-9 rest corruptors or whatever you need. Its an RTS figure it out or quit playing
you know what i will say is that the infestor was in the game for a while before anyone knew it was OP but ppl only want to be robots and do what everyone else is doing and saying.
Can we have replay of you doing that ? I mean as Zerg vs a diamand/master or even gm Terran. Cause i haven't a lot of Kor replay doing that, and as you seem better than anyone, just show it. Cause the blind cloud is on tank, not on vikings, you just put vikings at +3 in front of tank and they can shoot vipers before they can cast blinding cloud on tanks.
And personnally i have a mouse 1 and mouse 2 just for vipers, and infestors, and it's not units i never use, but you must have much more experience with some units in a race you don't play...
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
You are really over reacting its not that bad im sorry you feel this way but it was a bad unit and should have never been in the game. Also sorry but the unit was easy to use burrow set it and forget it no real micro beside burrow if you found this difficult then I dont know what to tell you man (and i play all three races so please dont say i dont know what im talking about) but again you seem to be very upset and overreacting to this change, like your life just got turned upside down.
Im sorry you feel this way and yea sure there were some complex sh game but if you look at it one play (not the zerg) had to work alot harder ( i know i going to get shit for this) because he's combating wave after wave of free units from basically cross map. If you dont find something wrong with this then again idk what to say. I do agree with the whole super late game split decision is fun to watch but you rarely get there and only because of units like the swarmhost and raven. I think it will be even better now because we wont have mass pdds vs locust waves or locust vs locust or tempest shots vs locust. It will at least IMO will be more dynamic because everyones units will cost something and if they lose even one that could be game ending. But this is all moot because your hell bent on cursing everyone who think this was a great over due change (which is just about everyone).
also going to say it again THE VIPER IS THE ANSWER TO MECH TERRAN not swarmhost the swamhost was just a way to delay enough to take the map and make what ever units needed to kill the terran but again the VIPER IS the Answer, not as good in ZVP,PVZ but I believe its the answer in there aswell pulling units and blinding cloud are stupidly under used.
I was honestly collecting arguments why everyone in this thread is a complete moron, but then I run into your posts, where you demonstrate that you actually read what I wrote and that you actually think about it and form an opinion instead of just quoting a verse form the Book of Infalible Truths on Shy SHs sucks in reply. Thank you, you made my day a little better.
I am still sad that the SHs are gone, it was a thing I really followed and I made sure to watch (where available, not gonna give my eastern european money to evil GSL overlords, sorry) every SH game I heard that was good in VODs. It was kinda like a series that got cancelled after in the middle of a big plot - while SHs are in some sense "figured out" (in the way that people know pretty well how to beat them), the ultra-late-game mech vs. SHs was remained completely unexplored. In every game you just saw the people desperately come up with solutions and you could physically observe how clueless they are about many aspects. If you watched more games, you suddenly started to understand what works and what doesn't a see an evolution. But the end to this story will forever remain open ... So if someone was mad when they cancelled Firefly (which was actually probably the best thing that could have happened for the series), they should understand why I am mad when they cancelled my SHs.
Now I am gonna say something that will make some people hate me even more, but I liked the same on BL/infestor. Towards the end, some answers started to emerge. Some were pretty weird (nukes from T, good HT usage from P and whatnot, it's such a long time I don't even remember lol - and the "neural on mothership" thing was pure gold, wasn't it?), some were just great plays (mainly mobility abuse) but it seemed people are figuring it out. Yes it was a little bit stupid when almost every Z game led to BL/festor and even I started to question it, but still it was an interesting narrative to follow.
At the end of the day it's cool that there are still so many people passionate enough to argue endlessly about some units in some game on the computer. It really shows a lot. (However it must be noted that the #passion of the day goes to TB and we are all noobs in this regard.)
On April 10 2015 12:52 ggrrg wrote: Holy shit! It's not that I enjoyed watching SH games, but swinging the nerfbat so hard at them seems like a very poor decision. At best SH's role will change completely. What's more likely though, is that SH won't be used at all anymore.
nerf bat? their dps just went from a hydra to 25% higher, how is that a nerf? lolwtf
Actually, if you do the math correctly, the weapon speed increase results in 33% dps increase. This however is completely negated by their supply cost increase of 33%, which in maxed out armies equals to a 33% dps decrease AND a 33% locusts' hp decrease. Furthermore, the increased gas cost is arguably a nerf to SH. But what really makes SH pointless now is the ridiculous cooldown increase of "spawn locusts". Even if the locusts survive their whole duration, there is still a 35 sec window in which SH cannot defend themselves at all. That's 35 seconds with X dead supply for zerg! Not to mention that the decrease in locust wave frequency alone theoretically translates in over 60% decrease in both dps and locusts' hp.
As a zerg, Im actually pretty happy with the changes overall. I was never super into swarmhosts so the gigantic nerf doesn't affect me too much, but that viper range increase is dope, makes yoinking colossi without getting yoinked a lot easier
Also the raven change is totally justified, PDD is just battle tactic, as opposed to free static defense that can last up to to 4 in game minutes. I've always thought mass air TVZ gets OP as hell once enough ravens are amassed, so its nice to see that they can't just conserve their energy forever now
Edit: tempest nerf + viper range means broodlord resurgence in zvp , which is cool because they feel like they only work when zerg is super ahead these days
On April 10 2015 05:46 DeadByDawn wrote: They could have at least buffed the Raven in some area in compensation for nerfing it into the ground. A speed buff would have been welcome.
That's a bit extreme. I don't think they really "nerfed it into the ground." Look what they did to the SH. That could have been the Raven. At least Auto-turret still lasts for goddamn ever.
On April 10 2015 05:46 DeadByDawn wrote: They could have at least buffed the Raven in some area in compensation for nerfing it into the ground. A speed buff would have been welcome.
That's a bit extreme. I don't think they really "nerfed it into the ground." Look what they did to the SH. That could have been the Raven. At least Auto-turret still lasts for goddamn ever.
I don't know what's up with all the whining about the Raven nerf. I've been playing like 5-10 TvZ turtlemech games today and it hasn't changed how you use ravens at all. What has changed is that you don't encounter the old swarm hosts, so you don't even need the long PDDs to fortify your positions. In engagments with hydras or corruptors or mutas you just throw down the PDDs at the beginning of the combat and it is the exact same thing, and it is not like you would have thrown them down long before that with the old PDDs.
On April 10 2015 21:21 Tyrhanius wrote: It's so funny to see some people argue that having free units is OP and instant shot not. Free units are just weaker ! Having a unit as attack means you can kill it before it hits you, imagine if you can kill collossus lazer ? Do you consider that as a buff ?! Lol. You can run away from unit, forcefield them etc... It's indeed not surprising the SH game are this long as you need a lot of wave to do dmg, and people complains : OMG SH OP SO BORING ! Just compare 30SH who win in 45min-2Hours and the same cost of protoss 10 collossus +30 zealots that win on 2seconds!!! OMG REMOVE SH SO OP, DEATHBALL FINE.
It's just silly that they even nerf SH to make it even more cost uneffective and expensive while dealing dmg even slower (less waves per minuted) ! Sry to then consider people who think it's a good change, as or not enough skilled to talk about balance or else incredibly biased P or T mecher !
Colossus beams don't have range 30 though.
They don't fly neither, so medivac better than colossus right ?
Your comparison of colossus and swarm host as siege units is valid (quite unlike your trolling about medivac), and I just added that the swarm host's big advantage over the colossus, which you completely forgot, is the huge range. If locusts had just enough life to reach range 10 or so, it would have to be rebalanced, obviously. But reading your initial post, I realize now that I may have missed the troll.
from a Terran perspective , i feel that the consequence of this patch is that protoss will literally win any game as they approach a maxed army as long as they are not exponentially behind in economy. Knowing that zerg is "all in" every game since without SH there is no "lets bring it to the late option" for zerg, is extremely powerful. It is the reverse of the infestor broodlord problem in wol, where there was a unbeatable late game army that is readily achievable in a standard game
On April 11 2015 14:19 vayuu wrote: from a Terran perspective , i feel that the consequence of this patch is that protoss will literally win any game as they approach a maxed army as long as they are not exponentially behind in economy. Knowing that zerg is "all in" every game since without SH there is no "lets bring it to the late option" for zerg, is extremely powerful. It is the reverse of the infestor broodlord problem in wol, where there was a unbeatable late game army that is readily achievable in a standard game
On April 11 2015 14:19 vayuu wrote: from a Terran perspective , i feel that the consequence of this patch is that protoss will literally win any game as they approach a maxed army as long as they are not exponentially behind in economy. Knowing that zerg is "all in" every game since without SH there is no "lets bring it to the late option" for zerg, is extremely powerful. It is the reverse of the infestor broodlord problem in wol, where there was a unbeatable late game army that is readily achievable in a standard game
One of the worst patches ever. Blizzard literally copied a LotV unit and did paste it on HotS after two (2) years of no major balance changes.
Swarm Host wasn't just nerfed, it was butchered. All those changes in cost, in spawning cooldown and in autocast is like Blizzard saying "Please don't use SH anymore"! Problem is, there's no alternative. LotV SH can be an acceptable harass unit simply because there are two (2) new units that will counter death-of-ball armies. Blizzard nerfed SH on HotS without adding something else. Viper is not an option because it means you have to go Hive tech and invest tons of gas. And even if you build several vipers, ZvTmech is a nightmare since Terran can mass produce 150/75 Vikings (the cheaper flier there is) and wipe your Vipers with their 9 range.
SH was only a problem on PvZ because Zerg player had a zero APM unit pushing Protoss. But if that's the case why allowing other autocast units like Widow Mines exist? On INnoVation vs Life (IEM Katowice), INnoVation won the series by mass producing WMs and getting lucky detonations, it was a zero apm unit vs skill race, same thing on a smaller scale happened at some point at Polt vs Hydra. I haven't seen Blizzard nerfing WMs!
And ofc, the question that everybody is thinking: Why Blizzard waited 2 whole years in order to make such a drastic gameplay change? As I have said before, Blizzard doesn't care for gameplay or gaming experience of the average player. It only cares about profit and their precious PRO scene. If they cared, they would had created a RTS gameplay like Starbow's, not a RTS gameplay like R-Type. They care for fast-paced games and exciting battles for stream audience. They care about their 400 APM Koreans. SH wars weren't quite "exciting". And since HotS is a "end of life" product, Blizzard is moving on to LotV by burning the land behind.
Swarmhost was the one unit that literally made me quit SC2. Glad to see its finally being retooled this is good, but it still needs work in the sense that their about to grab a giant buff from Legacy. I'd like to see a better way of dealing with them, and, giving them more movespeed seems to compound this problem. I think at a high level this being more of a buff than a nerf, and you can just hold the key down to get just as fast if not faster flying locust. Glad to see Enduring is gone as well.
On April 10 2015 21:21 Tyrhanius wrote: It's so funny to see some people argue that having free units is OP and instant shot not. Free units are just weakert ! Having a unit as attack means you can kill it before it hits you, imagine if you can kill collossus lazer ? Do you consider that as a buff ?! Lol. You can run away from unit, forcefield them etc... It's indeed not surprising the SH game are this long as you need a lot of wave to do dmg, and people complains : OMG SH OP SO BORING ! Just compare 30SH who win in 45min-2Hours and the same cost of protoss 10 collossus +30 zealots that win on 2seconds!!! OMG REMOVE SH SO OP, DEATHBALL FINE.
It's just silly that they even nerf SH to make it even more cost uneffective and expensive while dealing dmg even slower (less waves per minuted) ! Sry to then consider people who think it's a good change, as or not enough skilled to talk about balance or else incredibly biased P or T mecher !
Colossus beams don't have range 30 though.
They don't fly neither, so medivac better than colossus right ?
Your comparison of colossus and swarm host as siege units is valid (quite unlike your trolling about medivac), and I just added that the swarm host's big advantage over the colossus, which you completely forgot, is the huge range. If locusts had just enough life to reach range 10 or so, it would have to be rebalanced, obviously. But reading your initial post, I realize now that I may have missed the troll.
you just miss the point. Sure they have more range, but your : "they have more range, so they're better" is just a sophism, following this you can say : " medivacs fly, collosus don't, so medivac are better than collossus" it's just as false as your argumentation.
Collossus are far superior than SH at killing grounds units even " their range" are not the same. Aslo speaking about 30 range is aslo a biased argument as locust range is 3 they don't shoot at 30, but they can travel around sh with a limited speed and you can kite them contrary with collossus which do instant dmg at a real 6-9 range.
Infact, playing SH vs protoss in my opinion was way harder than any other style, and put way more strain on the zerg player than anything. You basically got fucked in every which way for 50 minutes and then MAYBE you had a chance to win.
Void ray charge lot a move style, mech, and skytoss is broken right now without sh, zerg has nothing, just allins/timings.
On April 11 2015 21:06 Liquid`Ret wrote: Infact, playing SH vs protoss in my opinion was way harder than any other style, and put way more strain on the zerg player than anything. You basically got fucked in every which way for 50 minutes and then MAYBE you had a chance to win.
Void ray charge lot a move style, mech, and skytoss is broken right now without sh, zerg has nothing, just allins/timings.
Maybe you and other PROS should read this thread as many think Z will have no problem without SH. Just spamm vipers etc.
On April 11 2015 21:06 Liquid`Ret wrote: Infact, playing SH vs protoss in my opinion was way harder than any other style, and put way more strain on the zerg player than anything. You basically got fucked in every which way for 50 minutes and then MAYBE you had a chance to win.
Void ray charge lot a move style, mech, and skytoss is broken right now without sh, zerg has nothing, just allins/timings.
Maybe you and other PROS should read this thread as many think Z will have no problem without SH. Just spamm vipers etc.
Not sure about ZvT but in ZvP, the swarm hosts had a key role in dealing with the protoss army. Say you have hydras, vipers, and broodlords. If you try to snipe the hts with hydras, they will die to colossi. If you try to snipe them with broodlords, they will have to get within tempest range and die. Etc.etc. Obviously you can't engage without zoning out hts because otherwise they can just feedback all your vipers and storm everything else. Only locusts worked because you went forward with the overseer/viper cloud while the locust wave was getting closer to the protoss army, so that when the protoss player tried to feedback, he had to expose his hts to the locust wave. The big difference is that even if you lost all your locusts it didn't matter because they are free. You can't afford to trade real units in the same way.
On April 11 2015 21:06 Liquid`Ret wrote: Infact, playing SH vs protoss in my opinion was way harder than any other style, and put way more strain on the zerg player than anything. You basically got fucked in every which way for 50 minutes and then MAYBE you had a chance to win.
Void ray charge lot a move style, mech, and skytoss is broken right now without sh, zerg has nothing, just allins/timings.
Maybe you and other PROS should read this thread as many think Z will have no problem without SH. Just spamm vipers etc.
Not sure about ZvT but in ZvP, the swarm hosts had a key role in dealing with the protoss army. Say you have hydras, vipers, and broodlords. If you try to snipe the hts with hydras, they will die to colossi. If you try to snipe them with broodlords, they will have to get within tempest range and die. Etc.etc. Obviously you can't engage without zoning out hts because otherwise they can just feedback all your vipers and storm everything else. Only locusts worked because you went forward with the overseer/viper cloud while the locust wave was getting closer to the protoss army, so that when the protoss player tried to feedback, he had to expose his hts to the locust wave. The big difference is that even if you lost all your locusts it didn't matter because they are free. You can't afford to trade real units in the same way.
I agree that this is gonna be a problem. It´s gonna be storming without the SH. I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch". We will know in the coming weeks when pros figure out what this patch really means.
On April 11 2015 22:36 Elentos wrote: Just played my first game after the balance patch and... wtf? They changed the map pool before the ladder season is over? <.<
I was reallly confused, suddenly playing on Cactus Valley <.<
I think that they have changed that so pros could practice on ladder for WCS qualifiers. I remember that Beastyqt complained about map pool not being updated and it had old maps while WCS was supposed to be played on new ones. And day after that they have updated the map pool.
On April 11 2015 22:36 Elentos wrote: Just played my first game after the balance patch and... wtf? They changed the map pool before the ladder season is over? <.<
I was reallly confused, suddenly playing on Cactus Valley <.<
I think that they have changed that so pros could practice on ladder for WCS qualifiers. I remember that Beastyqt complained about map pool not being updated and it had old maps while WCS was supposed to be played on new ones. And day after that they have updated the map pool.
So then why'd they prolong the ladder season by a week? Originally it was supposed to end on April 6th. That means there was literally no point in making it go another week. Not like their distribution update caused a huge influx of changes that warranted 7 more days. <.<
On April 11 2015 16:36 teodoreh wrote: One of the worst patches ever. Blizzard literally copied a LotV unit and did paste it on HotS after two (2) years of no major balance changes.
Swarm Host wasn't just nerfed, it was butchered. All those changes in cost, in spawning cooldown and in autocast is like Blizzard saying "Please don't use SH anymore"! Problem is, there's no alternative. LotV SH can be an acceptable harass unit simply because there are two (2) new units that will counter death-of-ball armies. Blizzard nerfed SH on HotS without adding something else. Viper is not an option because it means you have to go Hive tech and invest tons of gas. And even if you build several vipers, ZvTmech is a nightmare since Terran can mass produce 150/75 Vikings (the cheaper flier there is) and wipe your Vipers with their 9 range.
SH was only a problem on PvZ because Zerg player had a zero APM unit pushing Protoss. But if that's the case why allowing other autocast units like Widow Mines exist? On INnoVation vs Life (IEM Katowice), INnoVation won the series by mass producing WMs and getting lucky detonations, it was a zero apm unit vs skill race, same thing on a smaller scale happened at some point at Polt vs Hydra. I haven't seen Blizzard nerfing WMs!
And ofc, the question that everybody is thinking: Why Blizzard waited 2 whole years in order to make such a drastic gameplay change? As I have said before, Blizzard doesn't care for gameplay or gaming experience of the average player. It only cares about profit and their precious PRO scene. If they cared, they would had created a RTS gameplay like Starbow's, not a RTS gameplay like R-Type. They care for fast-paced games and exciting battles for stream audience. They care about their 400 APM Koreans. SH wars weren't quite "exciting". And since HotS is a "end of life" product, Blizzard is moving on to LotV by burning the land behind.
It's so sad that I have to totally agree with this. If it was questionable whether SH will be used at all in LotV, it is clear that it will not be used in HotS, because of said reasons. And while in LotV it would be acceptable, because there are other units that can take its role, it hardly is as of now. It's like suddenly Blizzard introduced the LotV version of the Colossus, only even more nerfed than it will be in LotV. They have basically removed the SH from the game (just as they are removing the Colossus in LotV, as it stands, btw). Also, it's just personal opinion, but I actually quite liked SH-games in ZvP, and as said before, it wasn't like super imbalanced for either race.
On April 11 2015 23:05 Sholip wrote: it wasn't like super imbalanced for either race.
Locusts are free units that spawn every 30? seconds and are affected by upgrades.
To deal with these free waves of units that can actually do a lot of DPS in large numbers, Protoss needs AoE which comes in either Collossi or HT form which are both very gas intensive, or go air, which again is gas intensive and can then be countered by the Zerg massing up Corruptors
At least Terrans had tank walls to deal with locusts.
On April 11 2015 23:05 Sholip wrote: it wasn't like super imbalanced for either race.
Locusts are free units that spawn every 30? seconds and are affected by upgrades.
To deal with these free waves of units that can actually do a lot of DPS in large numbers, Protoss needs AoE which comes in either Collossi or HT form which are both very gas intensive, or go air, which again is gas intensive and can then be countered by the Zerg massing up Corruptors
At least Terrans had tank walls to deal with locusts.
Both Protoss and Terran had their "free" ways of dealing with these free units. Terran had PDD, which is basically free (once you have a lot of ravens). Protoss had mothership cloak. With that, you could prevent almost all damages from locust, unless the zerg player decided to commit on engaging or at least abducting a few units, with overseers mixed in with corruptors/vipers to provide detection. However once you reached a good amount of tempests (30?) it became hard for the zerg player to trade efficiently, even with abducts.
On April 11 2015 21:06 Liquid`Ret wrote: Infact, playing SH vs protoss in my opinion was way harder than any other style, and put way more strain on the zerg player than anything. You basically got fucked in every which way for 50 minutes and then MAYBE you had a chance to win.
Void ray charge lot a move style, mech, and skytoss is broken right now without sh, zerg has nothing, just allins/timings.
I am so fucking happy to hear this from a pro of your caliber.
The cost is just way too much, zerg doesnt have anything vs storms anymore, We are basicly a Terran with no ghosts, so fucking stupid, only thing viable for us to do is just muta switches, and that will become so predictable after like a week, or just a "Brood lord all in" as avilo says, it's basicly an all in cause they get 6 tempest out, the game is over, no other way, so dumb....
On April 12 2015 00:18 Sioras wrote: The cost is just way too much, zerg doesnt have anything vs storms anymore, We are basicly a Terran with no ghosts, so fucking stupid, only thing viable for us to do is just muta switches, and that will become so predictable after like a week, or just a "Brood lord all in" as avilo says, it's basicly an all in cause they get 6 tempest out, the game is over, no other way, so dumb....
zerg never had anything against storm... look at BW lol
With this changes sadly many zergs gona quit, what is sad for the ladder, this changes to SH maybe is a good thing to the healthy of the game, but is a big detriment to the late game zerg, what could say is the strong fase of the zerg for the remax, inclusive zerg has the most weakest late game in terms of power of units. If before average players had hard , now gona be the extintion of zergs, =(.
Did blizzard fail really hard with the tempest damage change? They said they wanted to affect PvP as little as possible, but because colossus has 1 base armor, 8 tempests let a colossus without defensive upgrades live with 3 hps.
All that Z needs to fight off Protoss DeathBalls or TerranMech in the endgame is Defilers. True Story since 1998. But well, why relying on a unit that has proven to be effective in a decade of BroodWar, when we can have FLYING LOCUSTS instead?
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
Ask any terran and they will tell you how it brought about the bl/infestor time. I agree that it was needed against the hellions. I don't think this patch was a good idea.
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
That style was figured out months before the queen patch. The queen patch was great because it removed the coinflip nature from TvZ, where Terran could just throw out random two base builds while you were still guessing wether he was going 3CC, Mech or Bio or whatever he wanted. Remember that the queen patch also introduced the faster overlords that were needed so that a good Terran couldn't snipe your first overlord or at least force you to drive it to a useless space and that you could at least get a somewhat decent scout off. But similar to this patch, it should have been done right after release or even in the beta of the game. Zergs were complaining from 2010-2012 that they didn't have the same good early game defensive tools as the other races and that was exactly what the queen patch provided - after the game had already been balanced around coinflip strategies in the early game. This also goes for the swarm host patch now. They should have scrapped the swarm host long ago and then balanced the game around its nonexistance/mediocrity. They still have the chance to repair the situation now, but I'm very doubtful that they are going to patch as heavily as needed with LotV on the doorsteps. At best they are going to repair the swarm host until it is a shitty but useful tool again and then the whole patching process will be moot.
On April 12 2015 13:55 gDPhantom wrote: What was the reasoning behind the tempest nerf? it has mucked up PvP. I guess it was intended to make brood more viable after the SH change
The reason why broodlords suck against tempest is not because of the tempest's bonus against massive. It's because tempests have a much higher range and broordlords are really slow, expensive and targetable.
On April 12 2015 13:55 gDPhantom wrote: What was the reasoning behind the tempest nerf? it has mucked up PvP. I guess it was intended to make brood more viable after the SH change
The reason why broodlords suck against tempest is not because of the tempest's bonus against massive. It's because tempests have a much higher range and broordlords are really slow, expensive and targetable.
You need a ton of Tempests to stop broodlords without bonus damage or your ground army will be wiped out in seconds. You can't do the blind Colossus/Stalker/Templar "woooooops, I didn't scout at all and now he has a greater spire, quick chronoboost 3 Tempests to hardcounter his 10 much more expensive Broodlords." You're gonna get destroyed cutting stalkers and trying or you are going to get destroyed by 20 Broodlords if you are trying to get by without air. At least that's my theorycraft on it, by far not enough experience with it up to now.
it's not like zerg will have that much time to get well upgraded army and rush to broodlords, even then it isn't going to be anywhere close to its former glory which largely depended on fungal.
I think broodlords will still be ineffective, protoss has so much time to prepare and have lots of ways to buy time.
The new swarm host is ah, um... underwhelming? Fills you with regret for making them now? Makes you question the meaning of life? I thought their new functionality seemed pretty cool on paper, but it's really, really hard to justify their cost vs what they are capable of, especially when an attack is inbound and your locusts are on cooldown. Worst feeling ever.
This is a ladder team game with my friends where I personally witness their new "prowess". Granted, in hindsight there actually are better ways to control them as I learn toward the end... I'm still full of regrets. But I hope this entertains you!
All of this makes sense for LOTV with LOTV economy, changes to other units as well like Vipers, introducing Lurkers, Ravagers, better Ultralisks and Lings...
On April 10 2015 15:10 opisska wrote: "Listening to the community" - hooray!!
Do you idiots understand that this is all YOUR FUCKING FAULT? That Blizzard did this only because you stupid whiny bitches who kept spouting nonsense about SH games being "not entertaining" enough for your useless little brains? Great, so now the game gets adapted to your majestic ADHD 5-minute attention span, because the average "fan" can't handle anything that goes on for more than that.
God, this is so stupid. Anything, really ANYTHING interesting Blizzard comes up with is crushed into the ground by this " "community" of "experts" with "opinions". Everything that is not exactly the same boring shit again and again is either "inbalanced", "bad design" (lol at "design" in general anyway, it's just a buzzword every idiot nowadays uses to sound smart) or "boring" or "bad for the game".
I can't really imagine Blizzard coming up with anything interesting for LoTV. They have been forced to give up on the only really radical change in HoTS, why would they even try anymore? They will probably just make BW in 3D to make the five people who still care about BW (but produce thousands of posts each) happy and everyone will go play a stupid MOBA or an even more stupid card game anyway.
Everything nice gets destroyed by idiots. Real life has broken into SC2. Fuck you all.
LOL someones upset they cant go mass swarmhost anymore. LOL it was boring and bad design and needs to just be removed from the game. Also vipers are really really really good in zvt and zvp try getting more then 2-3 more like 7-9 and figure it out then crying all day i bet you said the same when the infestor got changed come on if you really think that swarmhost was good for the game then theres no hope for you.
Oh God, sorry, I dare to have an opinion that is not approved by the Council of Great Minds of TL, so there is no hope for me!
Yes, I "play" Zerg, but I am a lousy player, I play mostly 2v2 for fun here and there and I very rarely ever built SHs, because they are so fucking difficult to use correctly! (Surprising, heh? You probably heard a tousand times how they are noob simple easytowin unit and thus think it's true because that's what you sheeps do.) But you apparently know me better then I do, so this is all just made up!
You know what I do a lot? I watch the fucking game! And I happened to love watching long complex SH games in particular. Yes, they are not "dynamic" enough, because they take more time than taking a shit and that's about how long the average "sc2 fan" is able to keep his eyes open between his weed and his booze apparently. But they are awesome, it's like a TV series when people gradually come up with ways to combat the SH and have to actually make difficult decisions. The super-late-game with bases mined out, where there are no build orders, no thousand-times-practices situations and just split decisions and difficult questions, that's the most intruiging part of the whole thing. Not clicking fanatically to do the same rush for the milionth time - THAT's boring.
And now we have the most interesitng part of the game taken away and every idiot celebrates. What a day to be alive!
Honestly, I agree with everything you've said in your posts. I don't know why I quoted this one, but I just wanted to tell you that I back what you've been saying. I really do hate the community that this game has developed. Also, you'll notice that the SC2 castors LOVE the long as shit games. Just thought I'd throw that out there.
On April 12 2015 23:23 Lunchador wrote: The new swarm host is ah, um... underwhelming? Fills you with regret for making them now? Makes you question the meaning of life? I thought their new functionality seemed pretty cool on paper, but it's really, really hard to justify their cost vs what they are capable of, especially when an attack is inbound and your locusts are on cooldown. Worst feeling ever.
This is a ladder team game with my friends where I personally witness their new "prowess". Granted, in hindsight there actually are better ways to control them as I learn toward the end... I'm still full of regrets. But I hope this entertains you!
there not as bad as you might think. You just need to baby sit them more. Of course they are going to get crushed if you send 10 swarm host worth of locust at an entire army. I dont understand what you expect them to do. Near the end you did use them correctly and broke the mini siege tank line. They are just tactical now instead of "lemme build swarm host then I can macro for 5 minutes until the enemy can mount some sort of counter
On April 12 2015 23:23 Lunchador wrote: The new swarm host is ah, um... underwhelming? Fills you with regret for making them now? Makes you question the meaning of life? I thought their new functionality seemed pretty cool on paper, but it's really, really hard to justify their cost vs what they are capable of, especially when an attack is inbound and your locusts are on cooldown. Worst feeling ever.
This is a ladder team game with my friends where I personally witness their new "prowess". Granted, in hindsight there actually are better ways to control them as I learn toward the end... I'm still full of regrets. But I hope this entertains you!
there not as bad as you might think. You just need to baby sit them more. Of course they are going to get crushed if you send 10 swarm host worth of locust at an entire army. I dont understand what you expect them to do. Near the end you did use them correctly and broke the mini siege tank line. They are just tactical now instead of "lemme build swarm host then I can macro for 5 minutes until the enemy can mount some sort of counter
And how do you expect zergs to justify using 2000 gas for harass units? You should replace the word tactical with horrible vs everything that does not contain anti air or aoe damage. In the current state of the game where zerg needed to use swarm hosts as a tool which allowed them to actually play longer games without going into 4 base broodlord all ins or 3 base roach hydra all ins. The 100/200 and 4 supply for the new swarm hosts is not going to help much versus a turtling mech army or skytoss with templars. Maybe if they decrease cost to 100/175-150 and supply to 3 it might be a viable unit to use for harassment but as it stands should zerg really dedicate that much gas and supply for harassment ONCE EVERY MINUTE?
I think a good compromise would be to give Neural Parasite a buff back to it's former effectiveness. Make the range longer again and make it either cheaper or cast-able from burrow. I always had fun using it back when it was actually worthwhile...
edit: for the record I welcome the change, I'm over swarm hosts and not fussed on the change or not. Just sick of using mutas in everything
the new Swarm Host changes are scary as fuck to say the least, for Zerg-players that is of course. How Zerg will be able to compete in the lategame (or even get to the lategame) vs any protoss capable of scouting beats me.
Its funny(read disheartening) though how everyone was so invested into hating on the bandaid-solution (Swarmhosts) Instead of the cause (Insane, unbreakable deathballs. Zergs horrible anti-air and late-midgame cost efficiency vs P and mech. the failure that is the design of Protoss with the forcefields, hardcounters and deathballs as well as basically useless gateway units and last but not least, warpgate tech)... But hey at least some of these things will be adressed in LotV.
Now that Swarm hosts are gone, I dont see any reason as to why every single T shouldnt play TvZ like Happy does it (only better and less throwing) since its almost a "free win" once you establish your mech army on 4 bases. Nor do I see any reason for Protoss not to play every game out like CJ herO would.
I understand how incredibly salty I come off as, but its hard to be sunshine and lollipops when your race just took a giant dump to the face.
Disclaimer: I dislike stale lategames as much as the next guy but removing the only way zerg can deal with a proper turtle mech or proper turtleprotoss is not the right way to deal with this issue.
On April 13 2015 17:16 eCakes wrote: I think a good compromise would be to give Neural Parasite a buff back to it's former effectiveness. Make the range longer again and make it either cheaper or cast-able from burrow. I always had fun using it back when it was actually worthwhile...
edit: for the record I welcome the change, I'm over swarm hosts and not fussed on the change or not. Just sick of using mutas in everything
I believe they are changing neural parasite in LOTV, but I know that's not what you're looking for...:-(
On April 12 2015 00:18 Sioras wrote: The cost is just way too much, zerg doesnt have anything vs storms anymore, We are basicly a Terran with no ghosts, so fucking stupid, only thing viable for us to do is just muta switches, and that will become so predictable after like a week, or just a "Brood lord all in" as avilo says, it's basicly an all in cause they get 6 tempest out, the game is over, no other way, so dumb....
zerg never had anything against storm... look at BW lol
zerg had imba defilers. cannot compare (don't think you can say vipers count as was awkward to build protoss units with feedback into standard army comp back then (dark archon only?))
although this change may suck for zergs right now, i think it's important for the future of sc2 to patch the mass-swarmhost styles out of existence then re-balance other zerg units around what is left. (although I am biased as it was the mass-swarmhost styles that caused me to take a several month break from this game)
On April 12 2015 00:18 Sioras wrote: The cost is just way too much, zerg doesnt have anything vs storms anymore, We are basicly a Terran with no ghosts, so fucking stupid, only thing viable for us to do is just muta switches, and that will become so predictable after like a week, or just a "Brood lord all in" as avilo says, it's basicly an all in cause they get 6 tempest out, the game is over, no other way, so dumb....
zerg never had anything against storm... look at BW lol
zerg had imba defilers. cannot compare (don't think you can say vipers count as was awkward to build protoss units with feedback into standard army comp back then (dark archon only?))
although this change may suck for zergs right now, i think it's important for the future of sc2 to patch the mass-swarmhost styles out of existence then re-balance other zerg units around what is left. (although I am biased as it was the mass-swarmhost styles that caused me to take a several month break from this game)
Removing the mass SwarmHost style is only half the answer, you have to also find a way to remove the skytoss/turtleMech styles, or make them way harder to get.
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
Aka the "patch which almost killed the game, and would have surely done so if HotS didn't arrive just in the nick of time". Nah, who am I kidding, Roro vs Symbol was just the best GSL finals ever.
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
Aka the "patch which almost killed the game, and would have surely done so if HotS didn't arrive just in the nick of time". Nah, who am I kidding, Roro vs Symbol was just the best GSL finals ever.
Some people are happy only when they see TvT everyday.
I'm curious if we'll see a huge uptick in mech vs. Zerg. It's already pretty common, but presumably it's gonna be much moreso after this patch. I'm pessimistic, but I'm curious to see what the Koreans will do with this change.
On April 14 2015 00:25 sparklyresidue wrote: I'm curious if we'll see a huge uptick in mech vs. Zerg. It's already pretty common, but presumably it's gonna be much moreso after this patch. I'm pessimistic, but I'm curious to see what the Koreans will do with this change.
It depends on the maps. Some of them are just so bad for mech there's no point in trying because you'll die before you create an army Zerg will struggle with. On Vaani I can totally see mech becoming even more prevalent, for example.
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
Aka the "patch which almost killed the game, and would have surely done so if HotS didn't arrive just in the nick of time". Nah, who am I kidding, Roro vs Symbol was just the best GSL finals ever.
Some people are happy only when they see TvT everyday.
I can tolerate a 2-race game (even when Terran is not in the mix), but end of 2012 was just way too one-sided. If Zerg is now as weak as people believe, we might have at least 2-race balance, which is not good, but better than locusts vs locusts fests.
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
Aka the "patch which almost killed the game, and would have surely done so if HotS didn't arrive just in the nick of time". Nah, who am I kidding, Roro vs Symbol was just the best GSL finals ever.
Some people are happy only when they see TvT everyday.
I can tolerate a 2-race game (even when Terran is not in the mix), but end of 2012 was just way too one-sided. If Zerg is now as weak as people believe, we might have at least 2-race balance, which is not good, but better than locusts vs locusts fests.
Protoss won 13 Premier tournaments after the queen patch, Zerg 14. (12 to 14 runner ups). Maybe with some advantages for Zerg at the GSL level. It was a two race game which was (and would be if it happened again) really bad.
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
Aka the "patch which almost killed the game, and would have surely done so if HotS didn't arrive just in the nick of time". Nah, who am I kidding, Roro vs Symbol was just the best GSL finals ever.
Some people are happy only when they see TvT everyday.
I can tolerate a 2-race game (even when Terran is not in the mix), but end of 2012 was just way too one-sided. If Zerg is now as weak as people believe, we might have at least 2-race balance, which is not good, but better than locusts vs locusts fests.
Protoss won 13 Premier tournaments after the queen patch, Zerg 14. (12 to 14 runner ups). Maybe with some advantages for Zerg at the GSL level. It was a two race game which was (and would be if it happened again) really bad.
You can always find some kind of metric to disprove my 1-race claim, and I can always find a metric that supports it, so I won't play that game I'd like to add that I would indeed be fine with only TvT though. :D
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
Aka the "patch which almost killed the game, and would have surely done so if HotS didn't arrive just in the nick of time". Nah, who am I kidding, Roro vs Symbol was just the best GSL finals ever.
Some people are happy only when they see TvT everyday.
I can tolerate a 2-race game (even when Terran is not in the mix), but end of 2012 was just way too one-sided. If Zerg is now as weak as people believe, we might have at least 2-race balance, which is not good, but better than locusts vs locusts fests.
There has been no locust vs locust fest going on in SC2. Zerg was not nerfed based on zerg being too strong. That is why many zerg´s are mad about this patch. Edit: Numbers Big J gave seem pretty clear to me. Zerg was dominant but not alone.
Since the last patch, Zerg hasn't won much, certainly less than Terran, Zerg also hasn't been overrepresented at top leagues, it's mostly Life doing anything , the patch was meant to address foreign SH style that was seen as "boring" .
Korean pro balance got messed up, because foreign zergs like to turtle, and only terran/protoss players should be able to turtle!
Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
On April 12 2015 23:23 Lunchador wrote: The new swarm host is ah, um... underwhelming? Fills you with regret for making them now? Makes you question the meaning of life? I thought their new functionality seemed pretty cool on paper, but it's really, really hard to justify their cost vs what they are capable of, especially when an attack is inbound and your locusts are on cooldown. Worst feeling ever.
This is a ladder team game with my friends where I personally witness their new "prowess". Granted, in hindsight there actually are better ways to control them as I learn toward the end... I'm still full of regrets. But I hope this entertains you!
there not as bad as you might think. You just need to baby sit them more. Of course they are going to get crushed if you send 10 swarm host worth of locust at an entire army. I dont understand what you expect them to do. Near the end you did use them correctly and broke the mini siege tank line. They are just tactical now instead of "lemme build swarm host then I can macro for 5 minutes until the enemy can mount some sort of counter
And how do you expect zergs to justify using 2000 gas for harass units? You should replace the word tactical with horrible vs everything that does not contain anti air or aoe damage. In the current state of the game where zerg needed to use swarm hosts as a tool which allowed them to actually play longer games without going into 4 base broodlord all ins or 3 base roach hydra all ins. The 100/200 and 4 supply for the new swarm hosts is not going to help much versus a turtling mech army or skytoss with templars. Maybe if they decrease cost to 100/175-150 and supply to 3 it might be a viable unit to use for harassment but as it stands should zerg really dedicate that much gas and supply for harassment ONCE EVERY MINUTE?
I'd say there's no justification for that much gas, but also that making 10 swarm hosts for 2000 gas is probably a lot of overkill now. The locusts themselves do a lot more damage than they used to against non-armored targets since they lowered the cooldown to a puny 0.6 seconds. Each locust now hits about as hard as a banshee at 20 DPS (in fact, they're almost exactly the same in terms of damage stats). You only need 5 swarm hosts to take down an undefended hatchery in roughly 8 seconds: 5 swarm hosts * 2 locusts each * (12 attack - 1 armor) / 0.6s cooldown * 8.2 seconds = 1500+ damage. Which is about what you'd expect to happen if you sent 10 banshees to kill a hatchery. 3 swarm hosts will take down the hatchery undisturbed in 14 seconds, though at lower numbers you have to start accounting for travel time since the locusts will time out.
On April 12 2015 23:23 Lunchador wrote: The new swarm host is ah, um... underwhelming? Fills you with regret for making them now? Makes you question the meaning of life? I thought their new functionality seemed pretty cool on paper, but it's really, really hard to justify their cost vs what they are capable of, especially when an attack is inbound and your locusts are on cooldown. Worst feeling ever.
This is a ladder team game with my friends where I personally witness their new "prowess". Granted, in hindsight there actually are better ways to control them as I learn toward the end... I'm still full of regrets. But I hope this entertains you!
there not as bad as you might think. You just need to baby sit them more. Of course they are going to get crushed if you send 10 swarm host worth of locust at an entire army. I dont understand what you expect them to do. Near the end you did use them correctly and broke the mini siege tank line. They are just tactical now instead of "lemme build swarm host then I can macro for 5 minutes until the enemy can mount some sort of counter
And how do you expect zergs to justify using 2000 gas for harass units? You should replace the word tactical with horrible vs everything that does not contain anti air or aoe damage. In the current state of the game where zerg needed to use swarm hosts as a tool which allowed them to actually play longer games without going into 4 base broodlord all ins or 3 base roach hydra all ins. The 100/200 and 4 supply for the new swarm hosts is not going to help much versus a turtling mech army or skytoss with templars. Maybe if they decrease cost to 100/175-150 and supply to 3 it might be a viable unit to use for harassment but as it stands should zerg really dedicate that much gas and supply for harassment ONCE EVERY MINUTE?
I'd say there's no justification for that much gas, but that making 10 swarm hosts for 2000 gas is probably a lot of overkill now. The locusts themselves do a lot more damage than they used to against non-armored targets since they lowered the cooldown to a puny 0.6 seconds. Each locust now hits about as hard as a banshee at 20 DPS (in fact, they're almost exactly the same in terms of damage stats). You only need 5 swarm hosts to take down an undefended hatchery in roughly 8 seconds: 5 swarm hosts * 2 locusts each * (12 attack - 1 armor) / 0.6s cooldown * 8.2 seconds = 1500+ damage. Which is about what you'd expect to happen if you sent 10 banshees to kill a hatchery. 3 swarm hosts will take down the hatchery undisturbed in 14 seconds, though at lower numbers you have to start accounting for travel time since the locusts will time out.
The thing is they can't even be a harassment unit without the upgrade. Imagine if reapers had to get an upgrade to jump up cliffs or banshees can't fly without an upgrade. What makes Blizzard think that Zerg can afford to spend this much time, money, and supply in the midgame on a pure harassment unit?
so what they did: - redesigned unit, that played major role in the game - did not change almost anything else for same race/other races - redesigned the unit by copying what was proposed for the next expansion (so, not a lot of thinking behind, but also, just taking the unit from completely different expansion makes it ridiculous)
they could have done anything - nerfing the abilities, changing costs, heck, even redesigning the unit, but in a completely different from LotV way. What they actually did is very weak and sad.
I´m afraid that this is gonna be even worse than the dreaded "queen patch"..
I'm afraid that you really are just unsure of what you are talking about... The "Queen Patch" was much needed, remember SlayerS killing everyone with hellions? ...
Aka the "patch which almost killed the game, and would have surely done so if HotS didn't arrive just in the nick of time". Nah, who am I kidding, Roro vs Symbol was just the best GSL finals ever.
Some people are happy only when they see TvT everyday.
I can tolerate a 2-race game (even when Terran is not in the mix), but end of 2012 was just way too one-sided. If Zerg is now as weak as people believe, we might have at least 2-race balance, which is not good, but better than locusts vs locusts fests.
That was a result of the power of infestors only. Queen buff has stopped the "hellion pressure" suddenly becoming a game ending move just because of a queen out of position.
If infestors were nerfed into the current hots infestors, the whole mid game would had been completely different and also far easier to deal with.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
It's obvious that every nerf brings up frustration and whine. Can we simply wait a bit more? In the start of HotS hardly anyone wanted use SH and even half a year ago even Zergs hated them, but used them because they needed to. If the changes aren't enough, we will most likely see another adjustment. I'm glad blizzard doesn't focus only on LotV. I only hope they don't forget about HotS now and react in 1-2 months in a good direction (if necessary). Well, if they don't do anything after such a big change and leave the game by itself like in the end of WoL, all the hate is justified. But not atm
On April 14 2015 20:38 helius788 wrote: It's obvious that every nerf brings up frustration and whine. Can we simply wait a bit more? In the start of HotS hardly anyone wanted use SH and even half a year ago even Zergs hated them, but used them because they needed to. If the changes aren't enough, we will most likely see another adjustment. I'm glad blizzard doesn't focus only on LotV. I only hope they don't forget about HotS now and react in 1-2 months in a good direction (if necessary). Well, if they don't do anything after such a big change and leave the game by itself like in the end of WoL, all the hate is justified. But not atm
Problem is that ladder win/rates will continue to be close to 50/50, which confuses David Kim, and therefore he opts to delay the balance patch for several months (if history is any indicator).
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
Since I know exactly that this is targeting my comment further above I will respond, even though I know I shouldn't and we should stop beating dead horses and stirring up Starcraft racism through historical discussions. But I really want to defend myself when someone calls me "too biased to make an opinion".
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
You know, that crap is why people are "defending" BL/Infestor in the sense of saying it wasn't as bad as doomsayers are claiming. Let me dissect your comment:
Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored
Yes, but midgame was hugely protoss favored. For Zerg there were only like 1-2 good ways to win the game through aggression in the midgame (most famously the roach max build), while Protoss had a platilion of aggressive strategies of 2-3bases between 8 and 15mins to take the game, many of them working very well despite being scouted (most famously the Sentry/Immortal allin). The ZvP matchup in WoL was extreme bullshit. Zergs died left and right to allins that they knew were coming and Protoss died left and right to the same imbalanced lategame composition that they knew it was coming. A quantitative evalution shows that Zerg had only a small if not even neglectible advantage in most statistics like Premier wins and winrates over Protoss overall.
With the same foundation that people like you bitch about broken BL/Infestor lategame in ZvP of that era, Zergs would have every right to bitch about broken Protoss allins of that time, often even additionally fueled by broken maps like Ohana. (and god we did bitch about it and often still do)
and zvt was unwinnable for a year
This is the same crap as when Zergs say that TvZ is unwinable right now. No, it wasn't "unwinable". But you basically had a timeline that you expected a well playing opponent going for a certain style to reach and then win. But interaction in the early game and midgame have always made a huge part of the game and good players will always just take wins by outplaying their opponent in the one or other aspect. That was true back then and will be true regardless of how this SH patch turns out. TvZ was obviously the biggest balance problem back then. 43% winrate is really bad. But it also means that out of 10games, Terrans won 4 to 5 on average. That's really low and imbalanced in Starcraft, but it is still far away from anything where you can say it is unwinable for equally skilled players.
The balance was shittier than the blink era
That is an assumption without evidence. During the blink era from Dear winning WCS Korea in October 2013 to Pigbaby winning WCS America (July 2014) - so in 8-9months, Protoss won 16 of 24 Premier Tournaments, including 3 WCS KR/GSL titles. From the queen patch in May 2012 to Jan 2013 - so in 8-9months, Zerg won 14 of 32 Premier Tournaments including 3GSL titles.
I'm not sure what causes this distortion of time that makes people believe that the Zerg dominance was so much longer and stronger, but my guess is that it has a lot to do with how the eras started. With Zerg, it was first the ghost patch after which many Terrans already called TvZ broken and then the Queen patch. Zerg was considered broken from that moment on. On the other hand, with Protoss it was more gradually. When Dear took his two titles the discussions about Protoss balance didn't immidiately start. Only when in early 2014 Protoss started winning everything the calls for patches started, but we were already midway in the blink era then. Ergo, the Zerg dominance is felt as at least 8-9months, but since BL/Infestor was around for months before that with calls to nerfs, often is even extended in people's minds. The Protoss dominance on the other hand is rather only felt as 5-6months and everything happening before 2014 is felt like it wasn't part of it, because it wasn't being discussed too much.
In particular, Zergs did quite well against Protoss at that time, even if they didn't have the same success. (an interesting anitthesis to BL/Infestor days, where Protoss had quite some success, but many people considered them to not do well against zerg)
games took 30 minutes at least
That's just not true. Back in the days there were some stats floating around with the average winrate per gamelength of the matchups, and the average game length was like 12mins. Which only makes sense if we assume that many Ts and Ps tried to win before 15mins or die trying, and many players died relatively quickly after BL/Infestor was out. Even more it showcases how you didn't even understand the strategy behind BL/Infestor. BL/Infestor against Terran was a timingbased strategy, designed to hit a Terran when he either couldn't have 2-3starports to pump enough vikings from 3-4bases. Or to hit after Ultralisks, when a Terran had been forced to make marauders and then the techswitch killed him. Actual camping on BL/Infestor was a much weaker option that was only taken when a Terran opponent tried to aggressively take down the Zerg instead of teching to starports. Especially on bigger maps BL/Infestor wasn't even that strong, but, before widow mines and the medivac boost bigger maps like Whirlwind favored Zerg a lot in the midgame, making mutalisk and ultralisk based plays that much better. In fact, the whole fuss about the queen patch in ZvT was that Zergs could hit you so early with Hive tech. Ultra tech was often out around 13mins (Stephano/DIMAGA style double upgrade, no baneling, no spire, fast Ultralisk) and Broodlord timings of an undisturbed zerg could hit around 15mins (talking about the prolevel of course).
Also in general, if you get bored by 30minutes blizzard time, which is like 20 minutes, then I'm not sure if the Strategy Game genre is the right place for you. Even in a very fast paced RTS like Starcraft, just two well playing players will always make it so that games can potentially get that long or even much longer. Even without Swarm Hosts or Broodlords or anything.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
You think blizzard would actually make big changes like this? SC2 has been blob of death vs blob of death since the beginning, it's honestly not going to change at this point.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
And how'd you buff Terran to compensate for the Protoss changes? Stalkers are really strong vs bio until enough marauders and medivacs are out, but the medivacs often get delayed so you don't just die to blink all-ins. If stalkers get better, how does Terran cope with that? If you just buff 'em, what does Zerg do?
Doing this now just doesn't work, but the removal of deathballs seems to be what's happening for LotV considering the colossus nerf and disruptors punishing Protoss deathballs and mech turning into a more mobile comp via cyclones.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
And how'd you buff Terran to compensate for the Protoss changes? Stalkers are really strong vs bio until enough marauders and medivacs are out, but the medivacs often get delayed so you don't just die to blink all-ins. If stalkers get better, how does Terran cope with that? If you just buff 'em, what does Zerg do?
Doing this now just doesn't work, but the removal of deathballs seems to be what's happening for LotV considering the colossus nerf and disruptors punishing Protoss deathballs and mech turning into a more mobile comp via cyclones.
as I said, buff gateway units, not warpgate units which means that a) blink stalker allins wont be as strong if the reinforcement is to be warped in and b) theres no longer a need for MSC, which means that early aggression is an option against P and it also means that blink allins would have to come with a robo for highground vision. Im sure someone whos more into TvP could help me out with a decent change/rebalance as Im not familiar with the timings of the matchup, especially not with the LotV economy.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
You think blizzard would actually make big changes like this? SC2 has been blob of death vs blob of death since the beginning, it's honestly not going to change at this point.
considering the fact that blizzard is doing radical changes to sc2 as we know it in LotV, yeah I think blizzard would/could do it.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
I think you are diverging a bit too much now, and pointing towards a BW-part 2 of SC2.
Now focusing on the SwarmHost topic, the cost of them now makes them really unviable and uncomfortable to go as fighters to keep up with mech. MarineLord vs Stephano (a very experienced SwarmHost player) yesterday at qualifier showed it quite well. The new SH is a god-like DPS harass, but simply inefficent as a core unit. Any Zerg player with half a brain would go with a flock of mutas over 6-8 SH to harass, considering their cost. Mutas and Locusts have the same counters.
Also new locust fucntionality is nothign but Broodlord imitation. They move at 1.88 speed (slightly faster than BL, ideal BroodLord speed, BL campaign speed), and drop units with decent DPS against lines of static units, since mobile units can just ran away. Flying locusts weren't a bad idea. We simply need the Campaign SwarmHost unit approach (less DPS, more spammeable locusts, more mobile). Flying locusts with an air-to-ground attack and bonus speed would be better since they are quite harder to counter than ground ones (Colossus out, Hellbats out, Tanks out), but at the same time less hardcountering since they don't cause friendly fire on tanks and also would deal far less damage.
Support DPS (Not capital), mobility, safety of use, antiturtle mechanic, reasonable cost... that things would make a "core" unit for Zerg. We need to remove "terrible terrible damage" and very high risk/potential efficiency from the design of most units, at least the ones we want to be quite standard.
Regarding your BW-part 2 suggestions:
Turtle mech happens because econ wise, there is no problem with it (not like in BW, where you could just get a big advantage over turtles by expanding since workers don't pair). The goliath you are talking about is the Viking (almost same stats in everything) and the Valkyrie is the Thor, which is also very useful at soaking damage and countering Ultralisks. So old units are 80% present. And Valkyries weren't very common in BW.
Econ is the change we need for LotV and BW one is a natural antiturtle plus having very interesting perks (easier comebacks, expander advantage).
Protoss Deathball happens because no-deathballing is shit or suicide, considering the DPS/efficiency of the gateway army. The design of some units (Colossus, Void Rays) and the dependence on AoE and Forcefields also helps the deathball even more. Also because units tend to move quite slowly, resulting in a handicapped clumped army . VoidRays were transformed into deathball units with their speed upgrade removal and the DPS increase in HotS. However, I wouldn't call a Phoenix/Gateway army a Deathball, for example. But Phoenix/Colossus is. Protoss was not given very flexible units, they left inneficient ones to compensate with the need of extreme hardcountering units. We need some rework in that aspect. BTW, if you look at LotV streams, Protoss is nothing deathball now.
Dragoons are pointless in SC2, we have stalkers that can use blink (having a very skill-demanding mechanic that allows them to survive and keep the global DPS up since they don't die) and Immortals. In any case, buff Stalker's DPS (which is quite shitty) and rework the immortal to be flexible and not so hardcountering. Stalker stats are not very different from Dragoon's ones except on vs armored, were Stalkers are weaker, and a bit less of HP. The problem of the Gateway army is vs light masseable units (lings, marines). That's why we are going to have Adepts in.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
I think you are diverging a bit too much now, and pointing towards a BW-part 2 of SC2.
Now focusing on the SwarmHost topic, the cost of them now makes them really unviable and uncomfortable to go as fighters to keep up with mech. MarineLord vs Stephano (a very experienced SwarmHost player) yesterday at qualifier showed it quite well. The new SH is a god-like DPS harass, but simply inefficent as a core unit. Any Zerg player with half a brain would go with a flock of mutas over 6-8 SH to harass, considering their cost. Mutas and Locusts have the same counters.
Also new locust fucntionality is nothign but Broodlord imitation. They move at 1.88 speed (slightly faster than BL, ideal BroodLord speed, BL campaign speed), and drop units with decent DPS against lines of static units, since mobile units can just ran away. Flying locusts weren't a bad idea. We simply need the Campaign SwarmHost unit approach (less DPS, more spammeable locusts, more mobile). Flying locusts with an air-to-ground attack and bonus speed would be better since they are quite harder to counter than ground ones (Colossus out, Hellbats out, Tanks out), but at the same time less hardcountering since they don't cause friendly fire on tanks and also would deal far less damage.
Support DPS (Not capital), mobility, safety of use, antiturtle mechanic, reasonable cost... that things would make a "core" unit for Zerg. We need to remove "terrible terrible damage" and very high risk/potential efficiency from the design of most units, at least the ones we want to be quite standard.
Regarding your BW-part 2 suggestions:
Turtle mech happens because econ wise, there is no problem with it (not like in BW, where you could just get a big advantage over turtles by expanding since workers don't pair). The goliath you are talking about is the Viking (almost same stats in everything) and the Valkyrie is the Thor, which is also very useful at soaking damage and countering Ultralisks. So old units are 80% present. And Valkyries weren't very common in BW.
Econ is the change we need for LotV and BW one is a natural antiturtle plus having very interesting perks (easier comebacks, expander advantage).
Protoss Deathball happens because no-deathballing is shit or suicide, considering the DPS/efficiency of the gateway army. The design of some units (Colossus, Void Rays) and the dependence on AoE and Forcefields also helps the deathball even more. Also because units tend to move quite slowly, resulting in a handicapped clumped army . VoidRays were transformed into deathball units with their speed upgrade removal and the DPS increase in HotS. However, I wouldn't call a Phoenix/Gateway army a Deathball, for example. But Phoenix/Colossus is. Protoss was not given very flexible units, they left inneficient ones to compensate with the need of extreme hardcountering units. We need some rework in that aspect. BTW, if you look at LotV streams, Protoss is nothing deathball now.
Dragoons are pointless in SC2, we have stalkers that can use blink (having a very skill-demanding mechanic that allows them to survive and keep the global DPS up since they don't die) and Immortals. In any case, buff Stalker's DPS (which is quite shitty) and rework the immortal to be flexible and not so hardcountering. Stalker stats are not very different from Dragoon's ones except on vs armored, were Stalkers are weaker, and a bit less of HP. The problem of the Gateway army is vs light masseable units (lings, marines). That's why we are going to have Adepts in.
One of the big problems is that leaving units outside your base in SC2 amounts to throwing them away. Every race has very fast and murderous units that do terrible terrible damage, so if your army isn't bigger, you lose it. It's as simple as that. And if you lose a big chunk of your army, the enemy is at your doorstep in seconds, leaving you very dead.
You can't move out of your base (except for the fastest units, which is usually a small portion of your army, a harass force), because there is always a risk your opponent has the bigger and better army. So the natural course of action is just to wait until you're maxed and then move out because at least then your opponents army can't be bigger. That coupled with the fact that having more than 3 bases does almost nothing extra for your economy leads to the deathballing 3base play.
On April 14 2015 22:24 NEEDZMOAR wrote: Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
You can't take out an spellcaster and give a non-spellcaster unit for terran, the race that uses spellcasters the least of all 3 races.
A good useful spellcaster for aggressive strategies should do, something with more speed and without PDD, maybe with another type of spell.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
You think blizzard would actually make big changes like this? SC2 has been blob of death vs blob of death since the beginning, it's honestly not going to change at this point.
considering the fact that blizzard is doing radical changes to sc2 as we know it in LotV, yeah I think blizzard would/could do it.
LotV theory crafting doesn't really have a place in this thread. We have to deal with the game as it is now and not as we want it to be. So all your suggestions are just distracting from discussion on the recent patch. They may have merit, but it's not the right place to discuss them here.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
I think you are diverging a bit too much now, and pointing towards a BW-part 2 of SC2.
Now focusing on the SwarmHost topic, the cost of them now makes them really unviable and uncomfortable to go as fighters to keep up with mech. MarineLord vs Stephano (a very experienced SwarmHost player) yesterday at qualifier showed it quite well. The new SH is a god-like DPS harass, but simply inefficent as a core unit. Any Zerg player with half a brain would go with a flock of mutas over 6-8 SH to harass, considering their cost. Mutas and Locusts have the same counters.
Also new locust fucntionality is nothign but Broodlord imitation. They move at 1.88 speed (slightly faster than BL, ideal BroodLord speed, BL campaign speed), and drop units with decent DPS against lines of static units, since mobile units can just ran away. Flying locusts weren't a bad idea. We simply need the Campaign SwarmHost unit approach (less DPS, more spammeable locusts, more mobile). Flying locusts with an air-to-ground attack and bonus speed would be better since they are quite harder to counter than ground ones (Colossus out, Hellbats out, Tanks out), but at the same time less hardcountering since they don't cause friendly fire on tanks and also would deal far less damage.
Support DPS (Not capital), mobility, safety of use, antiturtle mechanic, reasonable cost... that things would make a "core" unit for Zerg. We need to remove "terrible terrible damage" and very high risk/potential efficiency from the design of most units, at least the ones we want to be quite standard.
Regarding your BW-part 2 suggestions:
Turtle mech happens because econ wise, there is no problem with it (not like in BW, where you could just get a big advantage over turtles by expanding since workers don't pair). The goliath you are talking about is the Viking (almost same stats in everything) and the Valkyrie is the Thor, which is also very useful at soaking damage and countering Ultralisks. So old units are 80% present. And Valkyries weren't very common in BW.
Econ is the change we need for LotV and BW one is a natural antiturtle plus having very interesting perks (easier comebacks, expander advantage).
Protoss Deathball happens because no-deathballing is shit or suicide, considering the DPS/efficiency of the gateway army. The design of some units (Colossus, Void Rays) and the dependence on AoE and Forcefields also helps the deathball even more. Also because units tend to move quite slowly, resulting in a handicapped clumped army . VoidRays were transformed into deathball units with their speed upgrade removal and the DPS increase in HotS. However, I wouldn't call a Phoenix/Gateway army a Deathball, for example. But Phoenix/Colossus is. Protoss was not given very flexible units, they left inneficient ones to compensate with the need of extreme hardcountering units. We need some rework in that aspect. BTW, if you look at LotV streams, Protoss is nothing deathball now.
Dragoons are pointless in SC2, we have stalkers that can use blink (having a very skill-demanding mechanic that allows them to survive and keep the global DPS up since they don't die) and Immortals. In any case, buff Stalker's DPS (which is quite shitty) and rework the immortal to be flexible and not so hardcountering. Stalker stats are not very different from Dragoon's ones except on vs armored, were Stalkers are weaker, and a bit less of HP. The problem of the Gateway army is vs light masseable units (lings, marines). That's why we are going to have Adepts in.
One of the big problems is that leaving units outside your base in SC2 amounts to throwing them away. Every race has very fast and murderous units that do terrible terrible damage, so if your army isn't bigger, you lose it. It's as simple as that. And if you lose a big chunk of your army, the enemy is at your doorstep in seconds, leaving you very dead.
You can't move out of your base (except for the fastest units, which is usually a small portion of your army, a harass force), because there is always a risk your opponent has the bigger and better army. So the natural course of action is just to wait until you're maxed and then move out because at least then your opponents army can't be bigger. That coupled with the fact that having more than 3 bases does almost nothing extra for your economy leads to the deathballing 3base play.
"If your army isn't bigger, you lose it". What's wrong with that? Makes sense to me. And with defenders advantage, equal sized armies clashing at your base should hardly result in the loss of your entire army. "...because there is always a risk your opponent has a bigger and better army." I really don't understand your argument. You act like it's a sin for an opponent to have a bigger army than you. And what the dickfuckers is wrong with 3 base play? That's basically the highest amount of bases a Protoss or a Terran ever gets in a game. And you're just straight wrong about a 4th base not having an impact on your economy. I'm trying to decide if this is a joke post or not...
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
I think you are diverging a bit too much now, and pointing towards a BW-part 2 of SC2.
Now focusing on the SwarmHost topic, the cost of them now makes them really unviable and uncomfortable to go as fighters to keep up with mech. MarineLord vs Stephano (a very experienced SwarmHost player) yesterday at qualifier showed it quite well. The new SH is a god-like DPS harass, but simply inefficent as a core unit. Any Zerg player with half a brain would go with a flock of mutas over 6-8 SH to harass, considering their cost. Mutas and Locusts have the same counters.
Also new locust fucntionality is nothign but Broodlord imitation. They move at 1.88 speed (slightly faster than BL, ideal BroodLord speed, BL campaign speed), and drop units with decent DPS against lines of static units, since mobile units can just ran away. Flying locusts weren't a bad idea. We simply need the Campaign SwarmHost unit approach (less DPS, more spammeable locusts, more mobile). Flying locusts with an air-to-ground attack and bonus speed would be better since they are quite harder to counter than ground ones (Colossus out, Hellbats out, Tanks out), but at the same time less hardcountering since they don't cause friendly fire on tanks and also would deal far less damage.
Support DPS (Not capital), mobility, safety of use, antiturtle mechanic, reasonable cost... that things would make a "core" unit for Zerg. We need to remove "terrible terrible damage" and very high risk/potential efficiency from the design of most units, at least the ones we want to be quite standard.
Regarding your BW-part 2 suggestions:
Turtle mech happens because econ wise, there is no problem with it (not like in BW, where you could just get a big advantage over turtles by expanding since workers don't pair). The goliath you are talking about is the Viking (almost same stats in everything) and the Valkyrie is the Thor, which is also very useful at soaking damage and countering Ultralisks. So old units are 80% present. And Valkyries weren't very common in BW.
Econ is the change we need for LotV and BW one is a natural antiturtle plus having very interesting perks (easier comebacks, expander advantage).
Protoss Deathball happens because no-deathballing is shit or suicide, considering the DPS/efficiency of the gateway army. The design of some units (Colossus, Void Rays) and the dependence on AoE and Forcefields also helps the deathball even more. Also because units tend to move quite slowly, resulting in a handicapped clumped army . VoidRays were transformed into deathball units with their speed upgrade removal and the DPS increase in HotS. However, I wouldn't call a Phoenix/Gateway army a Deathball, for example. But Phoenix/Colossus is. Protoss was not given very flexible units, they left inneficient ones to compensate with the need of extreme hardcountering units. We need some rework in that aspect. BTW, if you look at LotV streams, Protoss is nothing deathball now.
Dragoons are pointless in SC2, we have stalkers that can use blink (having a very skill-demanding mechanic that allows them to survive and keep the global DPS up since they don't die) and Immortals. In any case, buff Stalker's DPS (which is quite shitty) and rework the immortal to be flexible and not so hardcountering. Stalker stats are not very different from Dragoon's ones except on vs armored, were Stalkers are weaker, and a bit less of HP. The problem of the Gateway army is vs light masseable units (lings, marines). That's why we are going to have Adepts in.
One of the big problems is that leaving units outside your base in SC2 amounts to throwing them away. Every race has very fast and murderous units that do terrible terrible damage, so if your army isn't bigger, you lose it. It's as simple as that. And if you lose a big chunk of your army, the enemy is at your doorstep in seconds, leaving you very dead.
You can't move out of your base (except for the fastest units, which is usually a small portion of your army, a harass force), because there is always a risk your opponent has the bigger and better army. So the natural course of action is just to wait until you're maxed and then move out because at least then your opponents army can't be bigger. That coupled with the fact that having more than 3 bases does almost nothing extra for your economy leads to the deathballing 3base play.
"If your army isn't bigger, you lose it". What's wrong with that? Makes sense to me. And with defenders advantage, equal sized armies clashing at your base should hardly result in the loss of your entire army. "...because there is always a risk your opponent has a bigger and better army." I really don't understand your argument. You act like it's a sin for an opponent to have a bigger army than you. And what the dickfuckers is wrong with 3 base play? That's basically the highest amount of bases a Protoss or a Terran ever gets in a game. And you're just straight wrong about a 4th base not having an impact on your economy. I'm trying to decide if this is a joke post or not...
My point is not that you will lose an engagement when your army is smaller, but that it gets absolutely obliterated in a matter of seconds.
Im not saying a defender doesnt have an advantage when fighting near his base. My point is that if you lose an engagement, you are left with no army and your opponent just barrels down your front door in 5 seconds.
My point being in this is that a single lost engagement means a lost game in a lot of cases, which makes players not want to take those risks and leads to boring 200/200 deathball fights. (which means the game it STILL over in 1 fight, it just took 30 minutes to get there)
There is a lot wrong with 3 base play. It's unexciting, leads to turtling and deathballs, and as we've seen, creates a stagnant meta that is near impossible to break out of.
"That's basically the highest amount of bases a Protoss or a Terran ever gets in a game." It boggles me that you see this as a good thing.
"And you're just straight wrong about a 4th base not having an impact on your economy" if you believe this I recommend you take your time and read this excellent post by ZeromuS:
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
I think you are diverging a bit too much now, and pointing towards a BW-part 2 of SC2.
Now focusing on the SwarmHost topic, the cost of them now makes them really unviable and uncomfortable to go as fighters to keep up with mech. MarineLord vs Stephano (a very experienced SwarmHost player) yesterday at qualifier showed it quite well. The new SH is a god-like DPS harass, but simply inefficent as a core unit. Any Zerg player with half a brain would go with a flock of mutas over 6-8 SH to harass, considering their cost. Mutas and Locusts have the same counters.
Also new locust fucntionality is nothign but Broodlord imitation. They move at 1.88 speed (slightly faster than BL, ideal BroodLord speed, BL campaign speed), and drop units with decent DPS against lines of static units, since mobile units can just ran away. Flying locusts weren't a bad idea. We simply need the Campaign SwarmHost unit approach (less DPS, more spammeable locusts, more mobile). Flying locusts with an air-to-ground attack and bonus speed would be better since they are quite harder to counter than ground ones (Colossus out, Hellbats out, Tanks out), but at the same time less hardcountering since they don't cause friendly fire on tanks and also would deal far less damage.
Support DPS (Not capital), mobility, safety of use, antiturtle mechanic, reasonable cost... that things would make a "core" unit for Zerg. We need to remove "terrible terrible damage" and very high risk/potential efficiency from the design of most units, at least the ones we want to be quite standard.
Regarding your BW-part 2 suggestions:
Turtle mech happens because econ wise, there is no problem with it (not like in BW, where you could just get a big advantage over turtles by expanding since workers don't pair). The goliath you are talking about is the Viking (almost same stats in everything) and the Valkyrie is the Thor, which is also very useful at soaking damage and countering Ultralisks. So old units are 80% present. And Valkyries weren't very common in BW.
Econ is the change we need for LotV and BW one is a natural antiturtle plus having very interesting perks (easier comebacks, expander advantage).
Protoss Deathball happens because no-deathballing is shit or suicide, considering the DPS/efficiency of the gateway army. The design of some units (Colossus, Void Rays) and the dependence on AoE and Forcefields also helps the deathball even more. Also because units tend to move quite slowly, resulting in a handicapped clumped army . VoidRays were transformed into deathball units with their speed upgrade removal and the DPS increase in HotS. However, I wouldn't call a Phoenix/Gateway army a Deathball, for example. But Phoenix/Colossus is. Protoss was not given very flexible units, they left inneficient ones to compensate with the need of extreme hardcountering units. We need some rework in that aspect. BTW, if you look at LotV streams, Protoss is nothing deathball now.
Dragoons are pointless in SC2, we have stalkers that can use blink (having a very skill-demanding mechanic that allows them to survive and keep the global DPS up since they don't die) and Immortals. In any case, buff Stalker's DPS (which is quite shitty) and rework the immortal to be flexible and not so hardcountering. Stalker stats are not very different from Dragoon's ones except on vs armored, were Stalkers are weaker, and a bit less of HP. The problem of the Gateway army is vs light masseable units (lings, marines). That's why we are going to have Adepts in.
One of the big problems is that leaving units outside your base in SC2 amounts to throwing them away. Every race has very fast and murderous units that do terrible terrible damage, so if your army isn't bigger, you lose it. It's as simple as that. And if you lose a big chunk of your army, the enemy is at your doorstep in seconds, leaving you very dead.
You can't move out of your base (except for the fastest units, which is usually a small portion of your army, a harass force), because there is always a risk your opponent has the bigger and better army. So the natural course of action is just to wait until you're maxed and then move out because at least then your opponents army can't be bigger. That coupled with the fact that having more than 3 bases does almost nothing extra for your economy leads to the deathballing 3base play.
"If your army isn't bigger, you lose it". What's wrong with that? Makes sense to me. And with defenders advantage, equal sized armies clashing at your base should hardly result in the loss of your entire army. "...because there is always a risk your opponent has a bigger and better army." I really don't understand your argument. You act like it's a sin for an opponent to have a bigger army than you. And what the dickfuckers is wrong with 3 base play? That's basically the highest amount of bases a Protoss or a Terran ever gets in a game. And you're just straight wrong about a 4th base not having an impact on your economy. I'm trying to decide if this is a joke post or not...
My point is not that you will lose an engagement when your army is smaller, but that it gets absolutely obliterated in a matter of seconds.
Im not saying a defender doesnt have an advantage when fighting near his base. My point is that if you lose an engagement, you are left with no army and your opponent just barrels down your front door in 5 seconds.
My point being in this is that a single lost engagement means a lost game in a lot of cases, which makes players not want to take those risks and leads to boring 200/200 deathball fights. (which means the game it STILL over in 1 fight, it just took 30 minutes to get there)
There is a lot wrong with 3 base play. It's unexciting, leads to turtling and deathballs, and as we've seen, creates a stagnant meta that is near impossible to break out of.
"That's basically the highest amount of bases a Protoss or a Terran ever gets in a game." It boggles me that you see this as a good thing.
"And you're just straight wrong about a 4th base not having an impact on your economy" if you believe this I recommend you take your time and read this excellent post by ZeromuS:
I'll read it when I get the chance. Thank you. Anyway, I'm not saying that I like deathballs. I'm not saying I like turtling (I Zerg, yo). I do, however, think that the economy change in LOTV is going to change lot of the things that you don't like about Starcraft 2, which is good! Sorry to come off as a dick. Cause I was. I just really don't like the amount of complaining about this game. It makes me so sad to see such an upset and angered community surrounding my favorite game.
I reckon , we remove SwarmH completely , and then replace it with a new Reliable Unit for Zerg to play with ..Just Remove the SwarmH already ..its so broken , its a pain to see the unit anymore..make infestors reliable again..help the Zerg players to deal with Heavily Upgraded late game T and P ..not everyone is a good micro God in this game .
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
I think you are diverging a bit too much now, and pointing towards a BW-part 2 of SC2.
Now focusing on the SwarmHost topic, the cost of them now makes them really unviable and uncomfortable to go as fighters to keep up with mech. MarineLord vs Stephano (a very experienced SwarmHost player) yesterday at qualifier showed it quite well. The new SH is a god-like DPS harass, but simply inefficent as a core unit. Any Zerg player with half a brain would go with a flock of mutas over 6-8 SH to harass, considering their cost. Mutas and Locusts have the same counters.
Also new locust fucntionality is nothign but Broodlord imitation. They move at 1.88 speed (slightly faster than BL, ideal BroodLord speed, BL campaign speed), and drop units with decent DPS against lines of static units, since mobile units can just ran away. Flying locusts weren't a bad idea. We simply need the Campaign SwarmHost unit approach (less DPS, more spammeable locusts, more mobile). Flying locusts with an air-to-ground attack and bonus speed would be better since they are quite harder to counter than ground ones (Colossus out, Hellbats out, Tanks out), but at the same time less hardcountering since they don't cause friendly fire on tanks and also would deal far less damage.
Support DPS (Not capital), mobility, safety of use, antiturtle mechanic, reasonable cost... that things would make a "core" unit for Zerg. We need to remove "terrible terrible damage" and very high risk/potential efficiency from the design of most units, at least the ones we want to be quite standard.
Regarding your BW-part 2 suggestions:
Turtle mech happens because econ wise, there is no problem with it (not like in BW, where you could just get a big advantage over turtles by expanding since workers don't pair). The goliath you are talking about is the Viking (almost same stats in everything) and the Valkyrie is the Thor, which is also very useful at soaking damage and countering Ultralisks. So old units are 80% present. And Valkyries weren't very common in BW.
Econ is the change we need for LotV and BW one is a natural antiturtle plus having very interesting perks (easier comebacks, expander advantage).
Protoss Deathball happens because no-deathballing is shit or suicide, considering the DPS/efficiency of the gateway army. The design of some units (Colossus, Void Rays) and the dependence on AoE and Forcefields also helps the deathball even more. Also because units tend to move quite slowly, resulting in a handicapped clumped army . VoidRays were transformed into deathball units with their speed upgrade removal and the DPS increase in HotS. However, I wouldn't call a Phoenix/Gateway army a Deathball, for example. But Phoenix/Colossus is. Protoss was not given very flexible units, they left inneficient ones to compensate with the need of extreme hardcountering units. We need some rework in that aspect. BTW, if you look at LotV streams, Protoss is nothing deathball now.
Dragoons are pointless in SC2, we have stalkers that can use blink (having a very skill-demanding mechanic that allows them to survive and keep the global DPS up since they don't die) and Immortals. In any case, buff Stalker's DPS (which is quite shitty) and rework the immortal to be flexible and not so hardcountering. Stalker stats are not very different from Dragoon's ones except on vs armored, were Stalkers are weaker, and a bit less of HP. The problem of the Gateway army is vs light masseable units (lings, marines). That's why we are going to have Adepts in.
One of the big problems is that leaving units outside your base in SC2 amounts to throwing them away. Every race has very fast and murderous units that do terrible terrible damage, so if your army isn't bigger, you lose it. It's as simple as that. And if you lose a big chunk of your army, the enemy is at your doorstep in seconds, leaving you very dead.
You can't move out of your base (except for the fastest units, which is usually a small portion of your army, a harass force), because there is always a risk your opponent has the bigger and better army. So the natural course of action is just to wait until you're maxed and then move out because at least then your opponents army can't be bigger. That coupled with the fact that having more than 3 bases does almost nothing extra for your economy leads to the deathballing 3base play.
"If your army isn't bigger, you lose it". What's wrong with that? Makes sense to me. And with defenders advantage, equal sized armies clashing at your base should hardly result in the loss of your entire army. "...because there is always a risk your opponent has a bigger and better army." I really don't understand your argument. You act like it's a sin for an opponent to have a bigger army than you. And what the dickfuckers is wrong with 3 base play? That's basically the highest amount of bases a Protoss or a Terran ever gets in a game. And you're just straight wrong about a 4th base not having an impact on your economy. I'm trying to decide if this is a joke post or not...
My point is not that you will lose an engagement when your army is smaller, but that it gets absolutely obliterated in a matter of seconds.
Im not saying a defender doesnt have an advantage when fighting near his base. My point is that if you lose an engagement, you are left with no army and your opponent just barrels down your front door in 5 seconds.
My point being in this is that a single lost engagement means a lost game in a lot of cases, which makes players not want to take those risks and leads to boring 200/200 deathball fights. (which means the game it STILL over in 1 fight, it just took 30 minutes to get there)
There is a lot wrong with 3 base play. It's unexciting, leads to turtling and deathballs, and as we've seen, creates a stagnant meta that is near impossible to break out of.
"That's basically the highest amount of bases a Protoss or a Terran ever gets in a game." It boggles me that you see this as a good thing.
"And you're just straight wrong about a 4th base not having an impact on your economy" if you believe this I recommend you take your time and read this excellent post by ZeromuS:
I'll read it when I get the chance. Thank you. Anyway, I'm not saying that I like deathballs. I'm not saying I like turtling (I Zerg, yo). I do, however, think that the economy change in LOTV is going to change lot of the things that you don't like about Starcraft 2, which is good! Sorry to come off as a dick. Cause I was. I just really don't like the amount of complaining about this game. It makes me so sad to see such an upset and angered community surrounding my favorite game.
To me, starcraft 2 is a little bit like seeing your brother do heroin. You love them and want nothing more than them to be healthy, and you can't help but feel angered at their self destructive behaviour. I think most people who complain about starcraft 2's state do it out of a deep love for the game, I do at least.
I have little trust in LotV at this point. Simply because I don't believe Blizzard is capable of 'fixing' sc2. To me it seems like Blizzard lacks any sense of direction in their design and decision making. They want sc2 to be the same eSport succes that BW was, but at the same time they are deeply afraid of doing anything like brood war. I think they want sc2 to have a very separate identity, a successor to BW, but very different nonetheless. I don't necessarily disagree with this. It's just that they have no idea how to do it. Over the years we have seen them reluctantly put in some units and mechanics which are akin to BW, like the viper for example. And now we have a bunch of units which are weird semi copies of brood war units.
They should just choose a clear path to go down. Either look to BW for design, or go down a different road and make sc2 a completely different game, which I think they don't have the ability to pull off.
On April 15 2015 02:02 Frost bitE wrote: I reckon , we remove SwarmH completely , and then replace it with a new Reliable Unit for Zerg to play with ..Just Remove the SwarmH already ..its so broken , its a pain to see the unit anymore..make infestors reliable again..help the Zerg players to deal with Heavily Upgraded late game T and P ..not everyone is a good micro God in this game .
No hate , just saying ^__^ . gl hf
Guess I agree with most of what u say. Make Infestors more reliable I'd also say give Vipers a bigger buff and y not decrease the time it takes to build a greater spire and/or give them more hp and speed buff...sth...
It's actually quite ugly to realize how much Zergs relied on this stupid unit.
Harrasing late game seems pretty weak in general. Early game harras is far more impactful, if for example the point of harras is to prevent or delay a terran getting his mech deathball, I don't see SHs being useful. Especially because the new SH seems very 1-dimensional, unlike for example mutas.
On April 15 2015 10:29 Dwayn wrote: Harrasing late game seems pretty weak in general. Early game harras is far more impactful, if for example the point of harras is to prevent or delay a terran getting his mech deathball, I don't see SHs being useful. Especially because the new SH seems very 1-dimensional, unlike for example mutas.
I dare to disagree, most of late game situations are about denying opponent's new bases while getting new bases yourself. Harassing and putting pressure on several places on the map is then extremely important. That's why you see warp prisms, medivacs, hellions unbyes, ling runbyes a lot. Arguably, medivacs and warp prisms do a better job at this than speed ling, that's why another late game harassing option whould benefit a lot to the zergs.
Anyway that's not my point, at all.
My point is how something that has been on test for 4 month, on which pros have given their opinion, which blizzard has advertised and called to action to test several times, can, in the end, be so negatively welcomed.
It's like before patch 80% people think say it's good (you still have 62% of people having a positive opinion on the pool in the OP of this thread) and suddenly, when patch is live 100% say it's crap and zerg can't deal with late game mech and protoss deathball.
Wether there is something beyond my understanding or at one point people lacked smartness...
It's scarry because everybody is about "blizzard should listen the community" but when they do, nobody is happy (dreampool, this patch, ...)
On April 15 2015 10:29 Dwayn wrote: Harrasing late game seems pretty weak in general. Early game harras is far more impactful, if for example the point of harras is to prevent or delay a terran getting his mech deathball, I don't see SHs being useful. Especially because the new SH seems very 1-dimensional, unlike for example mutas.
I dare to disagree, most of late game situations are about denying opponent's new bases while getting new bases yourself. Harassing and putting pressure on several places on the map is then extremely important. That's why you see warp prisms, medivacs, hellions unbyes, ling runbyes a lot. Arguably, medivacs and warp prisms do a better job at this than speed ling, that's why another late game harassing option whould benefit a lot to the zergs.
Anyway that's not my point, at all.
My point is how something that has been on test for 4 month, on which pros have given their opinion, which blizzard has advertised and called to action to test several times, can, in the end, be so negatively welcomed.
It's like before patch 80% people think say it's good (you still have 62% of people having a positive opinion on the pool in the OP of this thread) and suddenly, when patch is live 100% say it's crap and zerg can't deal with late game mech and protoss deathball.
Wether there is something beyond my understanding or at one point people lacked smartness...
It's scarry because everybody is about "blizzard should listen the community" but when they do, nobody is happy (dreampool, this patch, ...)
Most people who dislike SH are/were happy about this patch. Most zerg´s i would say were scared of this patch and how badly it could fuck zerg over. People also overestimated the effects of the PDD nerf. It simply changed it from utterly broken into effective and strong weapon for terran.
i was thinking or at least hoping zerg would try out more drop play but the investment is so much with OL speed and drop upgrade. So do any of you think it would be worth trying to combined OL speed and drops into one upgrade and have it at lair tech. Obviously it doesnt do that much for late game but the idea it to maybe have a better mid game which always you to over run the terran or toss. just theorycrafting here but I think it would be cool and might add some more dynamic play for zerg also maybe making nydus like 100/50 or something and 8-10 armor once popped. Idk i think it would be cool but would love to hear from so good zerg on these ideas.
also i find it kinda sad that so many zerg just gave up when the patch went through, i think the Sh can still be effective just not massed anymore. Im thinking 8 max which is around 16 free units that can crash into CCs and such and then have units ready for the push to come within that min. I have faith someone will figure it out we just need some positivity rather then the sky is falling every time a buff or nerf happens and this goes for each race.
what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
On April 15 2015 16:51 sharkie wrote: what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
agreed also think its time to maybe bring back infested terran upgrades every race has so many tools to deal with them i think it might be ok maybe scaled back a bit but no upgrades and harder fungle has made the infestor almost pointless. Also i suggested way back at the beginning of hots cause i hated the SH that they should just remove upgrades to locust cause i knew they would become a problem really wish they tried that before the change but whatever, its done
On April 15 2015 16:51 sharkie wrote: what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
I think we saw a lot of fungals in WOL The downside with infestors are that fungal does no damage to mech unless you can chain fungal fleet of ravens. Infestors are useful but against defensive mech i don´t think they are the answer. Having some infestors in your army is never a bad though.
The new defiler is the viper, not the infestor. It even has consume (dealing damage to buildings) to get max energy for free, both blinding cloud and abduct are solid good abilities. Extremely underused units because zergs could just mass SH all day and force engagements with free units for most of the game.
On April 15 2015 16:51 sharkie wrote: what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
I think we saw a lot of fungals in WOL The downside with infestors are that fungal does no damage to mech unless you can chain fungal fleet of ravens. Infestors are useful but against defensive mech i don´t think they are the answer. Having some infestors in your army is never a bad though.
Yes we saw fungal back then when it was overpowered and now we see it almost never even though zergs would profit so much with it. Blink stalkers wouldnt be able to blink, marines wouldnt be able to split. I can see so many uses for infestors - I am just no progamer who has the mechanics to use them efficiently. I dont know why no coach encourages his players to use them more in their games Plague didn't do critical damage in its first spell either, you had to cast plague over and over again for mech to really weaken.
On April 15 2015 16:59 Salteador Neo wrote: The new defiler is the viper, not the infestor. It even has consume (dealing damage to buildings) to get max energy for free, both blinding cloud and abduct are solid good abilities. Extremely underused units because zergs could just mass SH all day and force engagements with free units for most of the game.
Yeah viper is definitely the pendant for defilers in SC2 but you need Hive for it, you can get infestors much quicker and easier.
On April 15 2015 16:51 sharkie wrote: what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
I think we saw a lot of fungals in WOL The downside with infestors are that fungal does no damage to mech unless you can chain fungal fleet of ravens. Infestors are useful but against defensive mech i don´t think they are the answer. Having some infestors in your army is never a bad though.
Yes we saw fungal back then when it was overpowered and now we see it almost never even though zergs would profit so much with it. Blink stalkers wouldnt be able to blink, marines wouldnt be able to split. I can see so many uses for infestors - I am just no progamer who has the mechanics to use them efficiently. I dont know why no coach encourages his players to use them more in their games Plague didn't do critical damage in its first spell either, you had to cast plague over and over again for mech to really weaken.
On April 15 2015 16:59 Salteador Neo wrote: The new defiler is the viper, not the infestor. It even has consume (dealing damage to buildings) to get max energy for free, both blinding cloud and abduct are solid good abilities. Extremely underused units because zergs could just mass SH all day and force engagements with free units for most of the game.
Yeah viper is definitely the pendant for defilers in SC2 but you need Hive for it, you can get infestors much quicker and easier.
I think that the problem of using the against blink stalkers is that stalkers snowball really quickly and if you invest in infestors you run a risk of dying before they are out or having them out and everything else is dead. Same against bio terran. Zerg is often always close to defeat when defending his fourth and needs every baneling and muta he can get. Same with getting to 3-3, you must make sure you won´t die before that. When the game gets longer i do agree that against bio infestor ling/bling would be better or even infestor/ultra/bling would be good.
On April 15 2015 16:51 sharkie wrote: what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
I think we saw a lot of fungals in WOL The downside with infestors are that fungal does no damage to mech unless you can chain fungal fleet of ravens. Infestors are useful but against defensive mech i don´t think they are the answer. Having some infestors in your army is never a bad though.
Yes we saw fungal back then when it was overpowered and now we see it almost never even though zergs would profit so much with it. Blink stalkers wouldnt be able to blink, marines wouldnt be able to split. I can see so many uses for infestors - I am just no progamer who has the mechanics to use them efficiently. I dont know why no coach encourages his players to use them more in their games Plague didn't do critical damage in its first spell either, you had to cast plague over and over again for mech to really weaken.
On April 15 2015 16:59 Salteador Neo wrote: The new defiler is the viper, not the infestor. It even has consume (dealing damage to buildings) to get max energy for free, both blinding cloud and abduct are solid good abilities. Extremely underused units because zergs could just mass SH all day and force engagements with free units for most of the game.
Yeah viper is definitely the pendant for defilers in SC2 but you need Hive for it, you can get infestors much quicker and easier.
I think that the problem of using the against blink stalkers is that stalkers snowball really quickly and if you invest in infestors you run a risk of dying before they are out or having them out and everything else is dead. Same against bio terran. Zerg is often always close to defeat when defending his fourth and needs every baneling and muta he can get. Same with getting to 3-3, you must make sure you won´t die before that. When the game gets longer i do agree that against bio infestor ling/bling would be better or even infestor/ultra/bling would be good.
I cant rmb who I watched, I think it was snute or tlo who said infestors are just not useful. In wol they were strong is because the time they came out, the terran wouldnt have that many medivacs. In hots, they are out too late when there are so many medivacs out and the fungal is so dodgable.
On April 15 2015 16:59 Salteador Neo wrote: The new defiler is the viper, not the infestor. It even has consume (dealing damage to buildings) to get max energy for free, both blinding cloud and abduct are solid good abilities. Extremely underused units because zergs could just mass SH all day and force engagements with free units for most of the game.
Well yes, you see but no. When terran has couple of thors and some vikings then you what? cloak it?
On April 15 2015 16:43 starslayer wrote: i was thinking or at least hoping zerg would try out more drop play but the investment is so much with OL speed and drop upgrade. So do any of you think it would be worth trying to combined OL speed and drops into one upgrade and have it at lair tech. Obviously it doesnt do that much for late game but the idea it to maybe have a better mid game which always you to over run the terran or toss. just theorycrafting here but I think it would be cool and might add some more dynamic play for zerg also maybe making nydus like 100/50 or something and 8-10 armor once popped. Idk i think it would be cool but would love to hear from so good zerg on these ideas.
also i find it kinda sad that so many zerg just gave up when the patch went through, i think the Sh can still be effective just not massed anymore. Im thinking 8 max which is around 16 free units that can crash into CCs and such and then have units ready for the push to come within that min. I have faith someone will figure it out we just need some positivity rather then the sky is falling every time a buff or nerf happens and this goes for each race.
I think they gave up bcoz more than the patch by itself was for a group of things like zergs having better army in numbers and upgrades lossing to a forcefields or lossing to a 0 apm unit widow mine, even the zerg player played better for example the final wcs of hydra vs polt, many just accepted the units and trying to deal them, but now the icing on the cake was this patch where more than the change of SH,that everyone is agree that they should changed or deleted, this change make them useless , but doesnt receive nothing to replace the role of SH in the late game zerg, the buff of vipers is pfffffffff, is like making zerlings useless but buffing hydras, and is not that now a late game is unwinable, is that before was hard , and now is even more harder, to be fair the patch was discouraging and disheartening for many zergs, it would been prefer that in the infestation pit make an upgrade to make the hydras and roaches more stronger to replace the role of SH, =P.
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
i don think blizzard want to make HOTS unplayable, or unplayable for zerg players specifically, bcoz terran and protoss are happy, the only unhappy now are the zergs, i think blizzard a long time ago wanted make these changes but they was afraid to affect a lot their precious pro scene, but now with LOTV close to come out is like they doesnt care what happen with HOTS, if the patch affect positive or negative,
On April 15 2015 16:51 sharkie wrote: what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
agreed also think its time to maybe bring back infested terran upgrades every race has so many tools to deal with them i think it might be ok maybe scaled back a bit but no upgrades and harder fungle has made the infestor almost pointless. Also i suggested way back at the beginning of hots cause i hated the SH that they should just remove upgrades to locust cause i knew they would become a problem really wish they tried that before the change but whatever, its done
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
On April 15 2015 16:51 sharkie wrote: what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
agreed also think its time to maybe bring back infested terran upgrades every race has so many tools to deal with them i think it might be ok maybe scaled back a bit but no upgrades and harder fungle has made the infestor almost pointless. Also i suggested way back at the beginning of hots cause i hated the SH that they should just remove upgrades to locust cause i knew they would become a problem really wish they tried that before the change but whatever, its done
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
free units should not be cost effective EVER
That means free units should never do any damage. Free or not, give zerg tools in the late game.
On April 15 2015 16:51 sharkie wrote: what I would wish from zergs is more infestor usage in general... In huge battles it is impossible to dodge from fungal anyway so why haven't they started using them more?
I guess its like BW where we had to wait for savior who really showed us defiler usage
agreed also think its time to maybe bring back infested terran upgrades every race has so many tools to deal with them i think it might be ok maybe scaled back a bit but no upgrades and harder fungle has made the infestor almost pointless. Also i suggested way back at the beginning of hots cause i hated the SH that they should just remove upgrades to locust cause i knew they would become a problem really wish they tried that before the change but whatever, its done
no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
free units should not be cost effective EVER
ranged units trade freely. 4 marines produce a completely free trade vs a single zergling even if the zerg paid 25 minerals for it.
infestors and broodlords spawning timed zombies and so-called 'free units' shouldn't be considered problematic in itself - they're just projectiles. it would be funny if the tempest shot was made into a clickable unit, maybe everyone would freak out then? :p
the issues will always lie with range, damage over time and the survival ability of the caster unit.
if the most expensive units in the game, including energy-based spellcasters, don't take better trades than the most primitive of units, what's the point of having army diversity and a tech tree?
energy units are fantastic for the game, they create opportunities, weaknesses and timing windows. storm is great, fungal is great, infested terrans are great, raven waves are great. of course you can put the individual units and abilities up for debate.
each race also has an endgame damage dealer which is capable of taking completely free trades: Z (swarm host), P (tempest), T (yamato cannon) and of course it's debatable if these units and the potential unit combinations should be in.
but i don't think it's sensible to talk about 'free units' - it's about range, dot and unit retention. and imo, high technology units do have a place in the game and deserve at least some respect. technology play should be fun to watch in rts if the units are well designed.
so if you think of all the situations that people are upset about: the times when neither player can interact with the other. units that cause bleeding over time aren't bad for spectators by design imo, units that cause infinite invulnerability are. the ultimate example of this terrible design would be the orbital liftoff in combination with raven, viking and pdd. (lillekanin vs zhugeliang game - although that game too did have a solution with its vipers).
that's also one part that i don't like about the new host - they're really easy to maneuver around and almost indestructible, if not for their downtime weakness. but now they at least suffer a bit from the muta cloud problem in zvt - hosts and mutas, as amazing as they are over time at taking free trades and staying alive, are not omnipresent and can be bypassed/brute-forced by big frontal attacks.
i think the idea of nerfing pdd was good. the swarm host change is good too - because it increased the bleeding effect and lessened its survival at least a little bit.
some units should take better trades by design and it would be completely backwards if units would perform worse for the minerals/gas you put into it as the game progressed but it's also problematic if energy or burst damage is so abundant that neither player can interact with the other in a sensible way. the worst thing that can happen to endgames in rts - besides raw imbalance - is when two players use accumulated energy abilities with close to zero effect and when their primary damage over time armies (or, burst damage armies for that matter,) can't interact with each other. slowly charged energy units and their ability to bleed the opponent down or produce meaningful fights are extremely important to rts with free-trading ranged units. this patch was an okay step for sc2's maxed-out department. if problems are at max or below it, time will tell.
maxed out compositions as part of starcraft2 are a real thing in the game and it should not be neglected for legacy as much as everybody loves the idea of sub-200, creating a meaningful game at max is just as important. 200/200 has been part of sc2 forever and still will be for the remainder of heart of the swarm.
one could argue that all siege and energy units above a certain threshold should consume resources (pay to shoot), but i'm not sure if people would like that. bleed can be taken too far, something something carrier/tempest identity crisis something ...
So after a little while of trying out the new SH's. I'm actually surprised Blizzard tested this "thoroughly" and decided this was a viable change.
Even as a harass unit lets take a look: 5 SHs harras a base Cost: 500 minerals, 1000 gas, 20 SUPPLY, can only harass every 60 seconds and Locusts have a timed life as well (which is enough time to reposition army and screw over any more harass)
Compared to Medivac full of marines: Cost: 500 minerals, 100 gas, 10 SUPPLY, can fly around and harass adequately until you have muta's, which you wont have because all your gas is spent on SHs.
It costs a 10th of the gas and HALF the supply to even harass "equally".
A great example is a game I tried where I had ~8 SHs. That's 40 supply + 80 drones = 120 supply. That gives me 80 supply of actual army. Sure, I successfully took down a Protoss expansion... while they waltzed their death ball through all 4 of my bases and an 80 supply roach/hydra army before my second wave of Locusts were ready.
I have no answer to mech anymore except muta timings which involve hiding my muta's praying for no scout and trading inefficiently with a mech death ball.
Again, I'm more surprised at the lack of foresight of Blizzard in making these changes than anything else...
I'm starting to think they just moved their Diablo III team over to screw over HotS so people will be forced to buy LotV when it comes out.... Agree? Haha (It clearly worked in favor for Diablo RoS)
On April 14 2015 04:21 darkness wrote: Ok, I'll have the decency to say that zerg needs some kind of buff to compensate for their swarm host. Other than mass mutalisks, zerg indeed seems to be weak. Or is that what Blizzard intends? To make HotS unplayable so people can play LotV?
I think everyone sort of agrees that zerg is weaker now.
The people here that imply the wol queen patch "fixed" zvt and broodlord infestor was fine blow my mind though. Those guys haven't been around at those times or are too biased to make an opinion about such complex things. Late game zvp was hugely zerg favored, and zvt was unwinnable for a year. The balance was shittier than the blink era and games took 30 minutes at least. That all started with the queen patch.
BL infestor was absolutely ridicilous, the queen patch on the other hand was very much needed to lower the coinflip factor of starcraft. Lets face it, ZvT today (bio vs ling bling muta) is the best matchup we have ever had in starcraft2 (for spectating that is).
I agree with you. However, the actual SH change is going to lead to high rate of mech vs Z, because it's obvoiusly abusable with the SH change.
The Swarmhost needed a redesign, but this one is just ridicoulous. New SwarmHost are expensive harass Broolord wannabes. The extra mobiilty approach is good as a concept. Maybe they have to keep moving around that idea.
Funny to say that the Mech solution is not SH, IMAO it should have been a BroodLord speed/range buff. Lategame vs Lategame.
SH definitely needed a redesign and I agree that this will most likely lead to a high rate of Mech TvZ, because on paper it should be so dominating.
But instead of rebalance by buffing zerg-lategame, why not take this as an opportunity to completely wreck protoss deathballs and turtle mech? If there ever was a time to radically redesign sc2 its now with the new economy coming up.
For instance:
Remove PDDS/ravens from the game, give T a goliath-like antiair or a valkyrie so mutas wont completely crush mech,
Remove forcefields from the game, remove Warpgate tech (or nerf it to the ground like in lotv but even more, so staying on gateway tech is a viable decision to make) and buff the shit out of gateway(not warpgate) units that require cybercore.
Or perhaps reintroduce the Dragoon but only from gateways (not from warpgates) and design it with enough hp and dmg output so it doesnt have to hardcounter things (unlike 90% of the protoss arsenal) to be viable, nor does it have to move in a deathball.
Remove the insane need for AoE from protoss, so that deathballing is not the way to go.
These changes would make it possible for protoss to trade units in multiple small skirmishes on multiple fronts (mineral line harass from Warp prisms isnt enough to count imo) rather than having the game decided in one big blob of death vs another big blob of death.
I think you are diverging a bit too much now, and pointing towards a BW-part 2 of SC2.
Now focusing on the SwarmHost topic, the cost of them now makes them really unviable and uncomfortable to go as fighters to keep up with mech. MarineLord vs Stephano (a very experienced SwarmHost player) yesterday at qualifier showed it quite well. The new SH is a god-like DPS harass, but simply inefficent as a core unit. Any Zerg player with half a brain would go with a flock of mutas over 6-8 SH to harass, considering their cost. Mutas and Locusts have the same counters.
Also new locust fucntionality is nothign but Broodlord imitation. They move at 1.88 speed (slightly faster than BL, ideal BroodLord speed, BL campaign speed), and drop units with decent DPS against lines of static units, since mobile units can just ran away. Flying locusts weren't a bad idea. We simply need the Campaign SwarmHost unit approach (less DPS, more spammeable locusts, more mobile). Flying locusts with an air-to-ground attack and bonus speed would be better since they are quite harder to counter than ground ones (Colossus out, Hellbats out, Tanks out), but at the same time less hardcountering since they don't cause friendly fire on tanks and also would deal far less damage.
Support DPS (Not capital), mobility, safety of use, antiturtle mechanic, reasonable cost... that things would make a "core" unit for Zerg. We need to remove "terrible terrible damage" and very high risk/potential efficiency from the design of most units, at least the ones we want to be quite standard.
Regarding your BW-part 2 suggestions:
Turtle mech happens because econ wise, there is no problem with it (not like in BW, where you could just get a big advantage over turtles by expanding since workers don't pair). The goliath you are talking about is the Viking (almost same stats in everything) and the Valkyrie is the Thor, which is also very useful at soaking damage and countering Ultralisks. So old units are 80% present. And Valkyries weren't very common in BW.
Econ is the change we need for LotV and BW one is a natural antiturtle plus having very interesting perks (easier comebacks, expander advantage).
Protoss Deathball happens because no-deathballing is shit or suicide, considering the DPS/efficiency of the gateway army. The design of some units (Colossus, Void Rays) and the dependence on AoE and Forcefields also helps the deathball even more. Also because units tend to move quite slowly, resulting in a handicapped clumped army . VoidRays were transformed into deathball units with their speed upgrade removal and the DPS increase in HotS. However, I wouldn't call a Phoenix/Gateway army a Deathball, for example. But Phoenix/Colossus is. Protoss was not given very flexible units, they left inneficient ones to compensate with the need of extreme hardcountering units. We need some rework in that aspect. BTW, if you look at LotV streams, Protoss is nothing deathball now.
Dragoons are pointless in SC2, we have stalkers that can use blink (having a very skill-demanding mechanic that allows them to survive and keep the global DPS up since they don't die) and Immortals. In any case, buff Stalker's DPS (which is quite shitty) and rework the immortal to be flexible and not so hardcountering. Stalker stats are not very different from Dragoon's ones except on vs armored, were Stalkers are weaker, and a bit less of HP. The problem of the Gateway army is vs light masseable units (lings, marines). That's why we are going to have Adepts in.
I agree with alot of what you are saying, imo the key to fixing deathballing and turtling is implementing Zeromus economy changes. And yeah if adepts could get a buff to work as a core army unit, that would be way better than implementing dragoons and basically what im asking for.
EPT
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