Everything in this article is my opinion unless otherwise stated. As a progamer for several years now, I have a wealth of personal experience and observations to draw upon. That said, sometimes I have to speculate.
Blizzard’s statement in summary: They are mostly reverting macro mechanics to HotS. Where they eventually end up is hard to tell. The adept’s strength has dropped off a bit with the most recent patch so they want to wait and see before making any changes. They are noticing some issues with photon overcharge being too strong defensively and want to tweak it slightly. They’ll be testing overlord drop requiring an evolution chamber to research rather than lair. They’re testing a less gas intensive version of the disruptor so that it can be integrated into more compositions. Finally, they’re taking a hard stance on maintaining significant map diversity. Blizzard doesn’t like how stagnate Starcraft has been in the past when all the maps are ‘standard’ and so is going to maintain a larger variety of maps and be more experimental with features in maps.
My Thoughts in Summary:
I am a big advocate for reducing the macro mechanics in Starcraft. I’ve always felt like macro was a burden required to get to the more interesting parts of the game. I’ve been enjoying not having to drop mules. Regardless of how it ends up, the most important thing for me is that Blizzard is willing to experiment not just with balance but more fundamental design like macro mechanics. The longest standing issues in Starcraft have come from Blizzard ignoring problems until they fester. I’m confident that Blizzard will find the right balance for the various issues raised in the beta. They are listening to the community more and incorporating their feedback more heavily as well as communicating their work, plans and thoughts on a regular basis. Blizzard has taken a much more aggressive role in developing Starcraft and it’s already showing. LotV, while flawed on a number of levels, is already shining through much more fun than HotS. With each iteration, some of those flaws go away and the game gets a little bit better. Below are Blizzard’s thoughts with mine below them.
Next step for macro mechanics
Our team’s been a close to a 50-50 split on whether or not we should revert the macro mechanics to be the same as Heart of the Swarm or continue pursuing this direction. After many discussions, we realized that, at the root of it, it boils down to this: Are we chasing the best design for each of these mechanics or is taking away a skill that players have been practicing for years better for the game in the long-term? Let’s take a look at each of the macro mechanics:
Terran Mule
After testing various versions, we’ve realized that we’re not really making mule macro all that much easier, since it was already fairly easy to execute in HotS. In terms of design, however, we believe losing the energy tension with the Orbital Command spells is not a good thing. Therefore, both in terms of saving clicks and in terms of better design, we believe the HotS one is better, and we’d like to go back to it . For the late game mule spamming issue, if we were to go back to HotS, we would need to do something about it. The current thought is to not have Mules overlap with other Mules on patches so that the Mule dropping in the later stages of the game doesn’t get so out of hand.
I agree that late game mules have always been a little silly. The situation they want to address appears to be the one of dropping 10+ mules at a given time on a base. This situation rarely even occurs in LoTV as turtling strategies took a big hit due to the reduced resources at each base. The tension now is that you have a very limited number of scans so you’re not deciding between scan and something else usually but deciding when it’s appropriate to use the few scans available. The current tension doesn’t feel better or worse than before. Reverting to HoTS won’t change much from how LoTV is being played in this patch, although for the sake of micro over macro I prefer the auto-version.
Protoss Chrono Boost
With the version currently in the beta, chronoboost is cast by the Nexus closest to the target, and there are suggestions to change that to other methods. One thing we’re noticing here is there’s really no ideal way to handle how we move the Chrono Boosts around - no matter which rule set we go with, we haven’t found a way to always guarantee an optimal use case. Therefore, we believe it’s best to just increase the cooldown of the ability so that it’s easier to not make a mistake in terms of the same Nexus recasting Chronoboost on multiple things in quick succession.
One other thing to note here is that one of our core design values in StarCraft II is to only make changes that are significant improvements. The reason is that if something is only a slight improvement to an existing thing, we don’t believe it warrants players having to relearn that mechanic. Therefore, for Protoss, it’ll be a question of exactly how much of an improvement this new version would be versus the old one.
I really like the new chrono boost. It feels more intuitive and obvious in its functionality and result. It’s also easier for new players to use which is a plus. I hope that they find a way to leave it as it is as this one feels like a definite improvement over the HoTS version.
Zerg Spawn Larva
This mechanic is the most difficult because, design-wise, the current version is arguably better, however players are losing a skill they’ve been practicing for years, which isn't ideal. Internally, we’re testing a different version for Zerg. We currently have autocast removed, but it is possible to queue Spawn Larva on a Hatchery. E.g. I can cast Spawn Larva three times on the same Hatchery at the same time, and after one pops, the next one will begin. This might be closer to what we’re looking for: For a top-end pro player to gain the maximum effect of Spawn Larva, he’ll need to be as precise with the casts as he needs to be in HotS, but lower-level players who aren’t close to mastering this technique will have a much easier time with this version.
Because this is such a major change, we’ve been going through major iterations during the beta. We’d like to thank you guys once again for the continued discussions, playtesting, and feedback in this area. This really gives a good example of how we iterate and explore various things internally and it’s cool having everyone be a part of this.Please try to focus your feedback on which version is best for the game, and let us know so that we can make a good decision.
This idea seems really interesting. One of the main complaints from top zergs is that there isn’t actually enough to do on the macro end of things with auto-injects. Spreading creep is an intensive task but because almost all the non-creep macro can be done without looking at your base some players felt like there just wasn’t enough going on. This change sounds like a nice compromise between making the mechanic a bit more accessible to new players while ensuring enough activity for top zergs.
Adept
With the stronger Terran and Zerg macro mechanics in the latest patch, we’re not really seeing the same Adept strength that we used to. Also in exploring PvP more, it’s not quite clear to us that mass Adepts are the best composition in the later stages of the game. We will be continuing to test the Adept armored flag change and potential changes to their upgrade internally, but we’d like to continue testing the current version a bit longer in the beta.
We just don’t want to be too quick to judge on the Adept strength at this point, because it’s not uncommon for players to overreact when core units are added. One good example here is when the Marauder was first introduced back in Wings of Liberty, for a very long time, even after the game launched, we were getting so much feedback, especially from Korean players, that Marauders were completely broken and needed to be nerfed. We never did nerf them, but they’ve been seen as well balanced all throughout HotS.
Warp prism + adept. Good times.
The adept is still wrong. The unit is so strong and oppressive that it overshadows many other protoss units and greatly limits what builds the opponent can do. Even if the adept isn’t ending games like it was at Red Bull, it’s still having an excessive effect on how games are played. The adept is a tanky, low cost, early access unit that is strong against every race’s initial units, great at killing workers, can scout/harass and also win head on fights. The adept’s weaknesses against armored, low range and inability to attack air don’t become relevant until later in the game. Balance aside, the biggest issue with the adept is that it’s so good that protoss players aren’t using other units at all early on. It’s not uncommon to see the first 6-15 units out of the gateway be adepts. The zealot is all but dead until charge because of the adept while stalkers see almost no use early on. As the game progresses, the adept becomes more on par with other protoss units as its disadvantages become much more relevant. Making the adept armored may be sufficient to promote greater diversity. I would also like to see how the adept plays out with bonus damage that 3 shots workers instead of 2 shots them, a slight reduction in tankiness or a duration decrease to the shade. It might be reasonable to increase its initial damage but put most of the +damage vs light on an upgrade in the twilight similar to blue flame.
Photon Overcharge
The defensive case with Photon Overcharge in the early to mid -game is too strong right now. It’s too difficult to do both harassment type and frontal type attacks against Protoss in the early game. Obviously, this is not what we want from the new ability, so we’re exploring potential nerfs. We’re thinking of either doing a duration nerf to 10-15 seconds, or a cost nerf to 50. We’re slightly leaning towards a duration nerf at the moment because it is a lot more adjustable going forward as we fine-tune the balance of this ability. Though we currently were not concerned with offensive Pylon rushes, this nerf will weaken this tactic.
HuK builds multiple pylons while he waits for the msc to arrive.
HuK uses aggressive pylons to break my front.
The current version of photon overcharge definitely needs tweaking. It’s even harder to overwhelm early game overcharged pylons than the nexus photon overcharge of the past and allows for some pretty silly rushes/timing attacks that incorporate 2-3 offensive pylons. The intent of pylons seems to be to give protoss a defensive advantage that allows for more counterplay and decision making on both sides. Pylons could have 2 ‘states’ depending on if there is a warp gate or nexus in their power ring that determines how strong the overcharge would be. That would greatly reduce the offensive case while still providing plenty of defensive utility. Regardless, right now it needs to be scaled back a little to allow for more push and pull rather than just the invincible wall of doom that it is at the moment early game.
Overlord transport upgrade
We’ve explored a few different options here, but your popular suggestion of having an Evolution Chamber requirement looks to have worked out well. It’s an additional investment in order to be able to drop early, doesn’t necessarily reduce the timing at when Zerg can drop, and it’s easier to scout and react against. We would most likely try this out in the next balance update. Thank you for your many suggestions.
As a Terran, I was very glad when overlord drop moved to lair. From a pure design standpoint I can’t comment as my bias is too obvious, even to me. I’d rather it stay on lair. Evolution chamber doesn’t seem like a substantial enough tech requirement to stop many of the more annoying plays that this enables.
Disruptor
We’re playing around with different cost versions of the Disruptor so that it’s not as heavy of a gas investment. The general idea here is to reduce the gas cost needed so that Disruptors can see more play across the board. We’ll try to finalize the numbers for the next balance update.
Protoss already has a ton of gas dumps, especially if the colossus is viable once again. Shifting the cost around for the disruptor to be more mineral heavy should help protoss utilize a larger variety of unit compositions and strategies.
Maps in Legacy of the Void
As we’ve done multiple times in the past, we definitely know that if a map isn’t completely standard, a majority of players will initially think it’s a bad map. However, this is one of the areas that we would really like to push back because the positive effects of having a more diverse map pool is just too good for the game. We see this in HotS season 3 and even more so in the various tournaments going on in LotV, in terms of how different each map plays.
Therefore, we will continue pushing a unique and diverse map pool in LotV for now. We’ve clearly seen how stale the game becomes both in terms of playing and watching when we’ve had map pools that everyone agrees is ‘good.’ The matches are all very standard and similar in terms of playstyle, and we want to clearly avoid this from ever happening again. We feel strongly on this point: A truly good map pool for SC2 is one with lots of map diversity, not a map pool that has 7 of the same type of standard maps.
With that said, because we are constantly exploring new things that can potentially be cool for the game, obviously there is a higher chance of making a mistake. Maps such as Daedalus Point are examples of something that we tried that didn’t work out. However, we believe the positives that we gain from pushing map diversity outweigh the negatives. If necessary, it’s easy to remove a map that doesn’t work out mid-season, and we’ve seen from experience this doesn’t happen on a regular basis.
Thank you everyone for the continued help and support during the development of Legacy of the Void. We are looking forward to hearing your constructive thoughts.
#WorkingAsIntended
Map diversity leads to interesting gameplay. Drawing the line between a map being bad and a map being different is very tricky. Daedalus was certainly a different map. What makes it worse than Lerilak or Ruins of Seras for example? I don’t know. One of the reasons that I’ve always been a fan of standard maps is that many of the non-standard maps actually just felt poorly. This last season of HoTS is an exception for me. While some of the maps don’t seem great for Terran, overall they are interesting and unique. I don’t know what separates Dash or Bridgehead from Ruins of Seras, but I would choose the former two maps as being some of the most interesting and unique maps while the latter fall into the boring and imbalanced category.
#FairAndBalanced
Overall, this update is a step in the right direction but leaves some questions unanswered particularly in terms of balance. The liberator, for example, is a unit that will probably need some additional nerfs besides the added tech requirement of researching siege mode (as mentioned in previous community feedback). We may not see any substantial changes for another week or so as Red Bull Battlegrounds Finals are coming up which will showcase some of the highest level LoTV games. From there, Blizzard will probably have enough information to see what really needs to be changed.
Everything stated here is my opinion unless noted and/or cited otherwise. As a progamer for several years now, I have a wealth of personal experience and observations to draw upon. With that said, I sometimes have to speculate due to lack of studies/concrete facts. It’s important to note that this patch is only days old.
Formatting makes it hard to distinguish which parts are written by qXc and which parts are copied from the Blizzard community feedback update. Maybe make the parts from Blizzard in italics or in a quote box?
On September 14 2015 06:03 ThatGuy101 wrote: Formatting makes it hard to distinguish which parts are written by qXc and which parts are copied from the Blizzard community feedback update. Maybe make the parts from Blizzard in italics or in a quote box?
Hell yes.. totally required. Felt weird reading it.
Yea, I cannot even fathom how Blizzard hasn't severely nerfed the adept in like three different areas at once. It's ridiculously strong for it's cost and tech. Making them armored is a terrible solution though. It will cause other problems and it doesn't even make sense lore-wise. Banelings and hellions should remain good against them. I like melee style against zvp against protoss and this will be dead for ever if adepts counter both lings and banes.
I still wish all macro boosters including inject were purged from this game for ever. Automating them is worse than current HoTS versions though.
On September 14 2015 06:03 ThatGuy101 wrote: Formatting makes it hard to distinguish which parts are written by qXc and which parts are copied from the Blizzard community feedback update. Maybe make the parts from Blizzard in italics or in a quote box?
Agreed, either bold blizzards or quote box I think is good. Overall I like the general direction it's going. The stacked larva is nice because it's a good balance. I'm not sure how you can tell whether your timing was good or not but that's a lot simpler then trying to draw the line between helping all levels. I prefer hots MULE but this is almost there so it's okay. Protoss chrono's hard to speak for. Maps, qxc hit it. Hard to say why one is different and good while the other is different and bad. Only comment there is that race-wise I think we need to be careful in taking away standard. I think it should be half standard, half unique. Otherwise, it's a lot easier for metas to break and one race (say zerg) can more easily abuse an even more mobile army on a map like bridgehead. I like the map and the games played on it, I'm just concerned there'll be only so many veto's/bans and you're basically pigeon holed if the diversity isn't done right.
Agree that the adept is awfully wrong. All the nerfs qxc proposes are very reasonable and worth studying. The warp prism is going to get the axe at some point also. Maybe some gas cost could do the trick.
The pylon overcharge has to be nerfed in some way. Only being able to cast it on pylons linked to a Nexus or a WG would be a great solution.
Worth mentioning that with the incredibly close release date I hope everyone in the community gets involved in the testing and that the patches are far more frequent by the balance team. We need a game that's at least decent at release, and we're still so far away from it.
I do find it interesting that macro mechanics are getting such a backseat in LotV. Makes a bit of sense, as most players would actually opt to not watch the engagements as their attention was needed in other places.
gotta agree on the map part, im all for more unique maps, but im getting the impression blizzards mouth and head are not connnected, when maps such as orbital shipyard, kerilac crest and ruins of seras lack and map defining features.
I also have to say theres a good reason why maps are "standard" and imo, blizz needs to expand what is standard if they want to see innovation in maps without tremendously hurting balance.
On September 14 2015 06:19 hitpoint wrote: Yea, I cannot even fathom how Blizzard hasn't severely nerfed the adept in like three different areas at once. It's ridiculously strong for it's cost and tech. Making them armored is a terrible solution though. It will cause other problems and it doesn't even make sense lore-wise. Banelings and hellions should remain good against them. I like melee style against zvp against protoss and this will be dead for ever if adepts counter both lings and banes.
I still wish all macro boosters including inject were purged from this game for ever. Automating them is worse than current HoTS versions though.
My guess is that the team simply hasn't agreed upon which methods of nerfing them would actually put them in a good place. They don't want to nerf them in every way at once and end up with a useless unit, like during the first beta patch.
I hope they continue exploring the macro mechanic changes. It would likely mean a lot of things need to be rebalanced and that would most likely mean getting manly Gateway units.
Adept is described as "harass unit", but it's not : The unit is tanky, high DPS vs light, very strong on frontal combat vs light units like Terran bioball, and has his ability to harass.
Blizzard must choose what they want : - A harass unit : make it more mobile, but more squishy. - A frontal unit : make it less mobile.
Talking about the ovie drops, I think that "being annoying" isn't reason enough to hope something stays the same, instead of trying something new that could make it better.
Maybe a fan could say this. But a writer? Too biased, as already accepted.
I really hope they kill the macro mechanics. Most people who say "they took away my mechanics, not playing anymore" were already complaining about everything else. On the other hand, there seems to be many people saying "no macro mechanics, I'm back baby!". That without even talking about the newbs.
I still dont like "auto-inject" for the reason that forgetting to build units is not punished for zerg in that regard. He just builds more units parallel, but later. If Larva/Hatch was capped, to lets say .....5 it might "feel" right. Now the zerg inject is like automated building of production and in that regard more "auto macro" then in any other race.
innnovation vs DRG is the Iconic Hots game i remember when it was constant MMMM Parade vs ling bane muta and it was about hitting all the injects and hitting all the banes. With autoinject this game is ez for Zerg, because you can focus on army and creep a lot more.
All Races produce workers and protect their mining, and for Terran its now fully automated, Protoss can get workers at a better rate, not control needed. But, if you miss making stuff, as Terran and Protoss, because of intense micro or scout, or whatever. You end up with unspent resources that you can not use. You can pump them into more buildings, wich punishes Terran even more, because the Time Workers spent at making stuff, Protoss can throw down some cannons and additional Gates. And the fact that you can not relocate a base and mule-Spam it to fuel your additional production to full efficiency. That was okay, if you spent 550 mins for another OC and get additonal Mules and Scan. So you could spend the overmins quite-okay-ish. Even spending them on Depots was okay. But in LOTV you will reach xx/200 very fast anyway. Apart from that you can not mule-Spam to make use of bases anyway. I tend to never Scan in Legacy. I look at my CCs and think oh yeah 3 scans soon to be 6, and its actually NO SCAN because all have 75-80 energy.
Oh and if your main and natural start getting mined out, it is even more stressfull to manually change muling to non-autocast and use them on the additional bases. And that hits right in a phase of the game, where you have to watch your army 99% of the time. with the idead that you should take bases quicker that feels kind of strange. Chronoboost has the same strange feel in using.
Yep the game feels about 10 Times quicker and more stressfull. But that is because of the 12 Worker start. Its basicly starting in midgame with overmins to spent. Reducing the start worker count (like 10 or even 8) would give the game a slightly less stressing feel all over (i guess)
It’s not uncommon to see the first 6-15 units out of the gateway be adepts. The zealot is all but dead until charge because of the adept while stalkers see almost no use early on.
Stalkers are kinda bad units, especially without blink and against light targets. It's unsurprising that people are not building them - we have been FORCED to build stalkers for the last 5 years of the game because all 3 races have early game units that zealots can't deal with, it was just build stalkers or die. The dominance of the adept there is due to the weakness of the stalker as well as the strength of the adept in low numbers
Surprised that you like chronoboost, it takes more actions to use effectively than the previous WOL+HOTS chrono boost especially when you have 3+ nexii. You have to move it less often but you need to do a really awkward dance of moving the camera to your fourth base, selecting that individual nexus, moving the camera to your main, hitting C and then clicking the building - then repeat that for nexus 3, 2 and 1.
The new chronoboost is really easy to use on 1 nexus and then becomes a trainwreck on 3-5 (having to individually move each chrono boost and remember which nexus is chrono boosting what unless you want to re-do every single one of them to chrono 1-2 new buildings), while the old chrono boost was moderately difficult to manage on 1 nexus and then became easy on 3-5 (as you had a ton of energy)
Oh and if your main and natural start getting mined out, it is even more stressfull to manually change muling to non-autocast and use them on the additional bases.
Your main and nat will be mining out anyway so if you're gonna drop mules at third you should be manually casting it there as soon as you have a CC at the third
With the version currently in the beta, chronoboost is cast by the Nexus closest to the target, and there are suggestions to change that to other methods. One thing we’re noticing here is there’s really no ideal way to handle how we move the Chrono Boosts around - no matter which rule set we go with, we haven’t found a way to always guarantee an optimal use case. Therefore, we believe it’s best to just increase the cooldown of the ability so that it’s easier to not make a mistake in terms of the same Nexus recasting Chronoboost on multiple things in quick succession.
One other thing to note here is that one of our core design values in StarCraft II is to only make changes that are significant improvements. The reason is that if something is only a slight improvement to an existing thing, we don’t believe it warrants players having to relearn that mechanic. Therefore, for Protoss, it’ll be a question of exactly how much of an improvement this new version would be versus the old one.
I really like the new chrono boost. It feels more intuitive and obvious in its functionality and result. It’s also easier for new players to use which is a plus. I hope that they find a way to leave it as it is as this one feels like a definite improvement over the HoTS version.
I've made a video proposing and analysing blizzards current idea for a soultion (longer cooldown on chrono) with 3 others brought up by the community. Would love to know what you all think:
I wonder if anyone from blizzard lurks the TL forums just for posts like this . I do feel like it'd be awesome. Not surprised that I agree iwth most of qxc's comments...but the mule was/is so much fun!
On September 14 2015 07:31 [PkF] Wire wrote: Thanks, was waiting your next write-up.
Agree that the adept is awfully wrong. All the nerfs qxc proposes are very reasonable and worth studying. The warp prism is going to get the axe at some point also. Maybe some gas cost could do the trick.
The pylon overcharge has to be nerfed in some way. Only being able to cast it on pylons linked to a Nexus or a WG would be a great solution.
The liberator still comes far too early.
I still liked the warpgate change where pylons linked to gateway allowed fast warp and the other slow warp, then the fast warp pylone get a strong overcharge, and the slow warp pylone get a weaker version. It would nerf the warp prism, but it needs to be nerfed. ^^
On September 15 2015 02:55 fireforce7 wrote: I wonder if anyone from blizzard lurks the TL forums just for posts like this . I do feel like it'd be awesome. Not surprised that I agree iwth most of qxc's comments...but the mule was/is so much fun!
they have to be in touch with qxc, he's one of the guys that's truly committed to the beta and in an awesome and thoughtful way
On September 14 2015 22:49 DinoMight wrote: This new chrono boost is a disaster.
Honestly HotS was fine.
agree, it was a mechanic with depth, just like MULE (injects have no depth though). Just tone the interesting mechanics down, don't remove them altogether.
Disagree with basically everything QXC says about reducing macro, i do not think making SC2 more like WC3/WC4 is a good idea at all. Auto-inject/auto-mule/auto-chrono all are terrible in comparison to the original set of macro mechanics.
Also, like most "progamers" and players i do not think people are understanding the economical impact of Terran not being able to mule further away bases later on in the game. It may seem fine as it is now while people are still learning the beta, but once the game has been out a while you'll all realize Terran orbitals become useless late game with the new bandaid mules, and that Terran needs those mules on far bases late game to keep up with the other two races.
Terran in every single iteration of SC2 - WOL, HOTS, and now LOTV has always been fine early and mid-game. Late game Terran has always been the weakest of all 3 races and with now with having no economy and no scans late game, once the game is played more by more "pros" the game will never be balanced around the terrible automated and diminished macro.
I honestly hope more people encourage blizzard to remove their artificial automation from the game and simply revert macro mechanics back to HOTS so we can all enjoy SC2 again and then they can truely start working on the gameplay balance and unit designs. There's too much math behind why mules/larva inject/chrono all balanced each other out with WOL/HOTS that people don't understand. You cannot just remove thousands of resources from some of the races and ever expect SC2 to be playable again.
Aside from all of this, only thing i agree with that he said are that adepts are absolutely broken. This unit is warhound 2.0, every single game in beta is just Protoss massing this one unit. Why you may ask?
It is overloaded with stats in every category that make no sense, it's basically a fucking super unit at tier 1.
List of adept stats:
-More health than a blink stalker -More shields -More mobility than a blink stalker without an upgrade, on tier 1 tech -Cheaper than a blink stalker -Available earlier than a blink stalker -Has an upgrade to become even tankier than a blink stalker -2 shots marines...even a blink stalker cannot do this.
The unit is absolutely broken and i've said it since the beta started. This unit is so broken to the point out of the entirety of myself playing the beta i have never even seen a Protoss ever make a disruptor more than 3 of my ladder games. (I AM NOT EXAGGERATING). Because there's no need to build any other unit than the one super unit you have + then transitioning into your second super OP unit, the carrier.
I hope they honestly nerf hammer the adept because this unit is ruining the beta hardcore.
edit: Last thought for those of you that think auto-injects are OK to be in SC2 (and i do not say this lightly):
There are hacks that existed in WOL/HOTS that were programmed to auto-inject Zerg players' hatcheries automatically. For blizzard to basically program this "cheat" into their game is just that - when you play Zerg with this mechanic you basically feel like you're cheating because that's exactly what it used to be - a cheat. I find it ludicrous that people are OK with this being in SC2 at all. I hope more people get up in arms over it, instead of lying down and not saying a goddamn word about something so important. Also in my opinion, any "progamer" or personality that honestly is advocating for this type of automation that used to be considered a hack/cheat to be put into SC2 should reconsider their stance on this being in SC2, because they are doing a disservice to the community and to the game they love to play.
you'll all realize Terran orbitals become useless late game with the new bandaid mules, and that Terran needs those mules on far bases late game to keep up with the other two races
That is a balance issue, not a design issue
-2 shots marines...even a blink stalker cannot do this.
Of course not, stalkers have some of the worst DPS against light units in the game. Stalker DPS is lower than sentries. You list a ton of upsides against stalkers, some of which are subjective and some not and then leave out all of the downsides.
Why don't you watch huk stream for a bit? He's barely using adepts and getting crushed often by terran god comp (marine marauder medivac ghost liberator midgame). If you didn't notice, liberators are extremely good and EMP takes ~74% of an adepts health so you autolose if playing adept in that situation.
you'll all realize Terran orbitals become useless late game with the new bandaid mules, and that Terran needs those mules on far bases late game to keep up with the other two races
-2 shots marines...even a blink stalker cannot do this.
Of course not, stalkers have some of the worst DPS against light units in the game. Stalker DPS is lower than sentries. You list a ton of upsides against stalkers, some of which are subjective and some not and then leave out all of the downsides
Why don't you watch huk stream for a bit? He's barely using adepts and getting crushed often by terran god comp (marine marauder medivac ghost liberator midgame). If you didn't notice, liberators are extremely good and EMP takes ~74% of an adepts health so you autolose if playing adept in that situation
No, that's a design issue that happens to affect balance. They said they don't want mules to be able to be dropped to far away bases for the "late game mule case" the issue is that late game Terran actually needs that economy from far away bases and it has always been a part of the balance for Terran to get those thousands of resources from mules versus the other two races.
Even now, in early-mid game you cannot mule your third base which is a big deal and people will see i'm absolutely correct. Maybe not right now, months from now people will agree with me as always happens. I'm not some goddamn sage or savant - i just look at the numbers and compare income between the patches and see it is completely screwed up.
People will refuse to look at objective data and claim someone is being biased, instead of realizing Terran is once again still missing thousands of resources worth of minerals once the game reaches mid-late game.
On September 15 2015 09:46 Cyro wrote: so no comment on the terran god comp?
This thread not really about some Terran comp i dun wanna derail it, if you think there's some Terran god comp you should make a TL strategy post about it :D
On September 15 2015 09:46 Cyro wrote: so no comment on the terran god comp?
This thread not really about some Terran comp i dun wanna derail it, if you think there's some Terran god comp you should make a TL strategy post about it :D
The thread's not really about adept balance either, In general i think it should be design discussion, not balance.
Balance aside, the biggest issue with the adept is that it’s so good that protoss players aren’t using other units at all early on. It’s not uncommon to see the first 6-15 units out of the gateway be adepts
I think from a design standpoint, part of the issue here is that stalkers are weak. They require you to take gasses at different timings, they cost more and take longer to build. They're worse at dealing with literally every kind of early attack that you could face in a meta that's all about expanding immediately.
The main reason that protoss built stalkers in HOTS was not because stalkers were good (they're awful against light units of any kind), it was because there was literally no other option and you would die unless you built stalkers against early options from all 3 races. Not having "build a stalker now or die" is a breath of fresh air but people are also seeing that few people actually want to build stalkers.
Even if adept was weaker, people would build them to face zealots, adepts, lings, marines, scv's, hydralisks; to counter cannon rushes and to scout and apply pressure. Why? Because the stalker sucks at those things.
Zealots got a significant buff and adepts are better at those things so stalkers are overshadowed. Charge for zealots is now like adding +2 attack; it's a huge buff.
I think adept being reduced in power a bit in the early game is fair game, though it falls off past the early game and terran midgame compositions can destroy adept-based compositions at the moment due to the strengh of bio support and almost 3/4 of adept HP being shields which is awkward to upgrade and highly vulnerable to EMP.
I don't think that should come with huge design changes to the adept and i think that the strength and use cases for other gateway units should be looked at in-depth before any changes are made.
I think the adept ability is also much worse in some ways than blink for harassment and combat; it can't easily be used to save individual adepts and it cannot bypass walls/cliffs which is where a lot of the blink-abuse comes from. As unit counts rise on both sides the ability becomes worse although it is very strong when there are few units and the high mobility when used to blob and crush small retreating armies is very strong too.
With the version currently in the beta, chronoboost is cast by the Nexus closest to the target, and there are suggestions to change that to other methods. One thing we’re noticing here is there’s really no ideal way to handle how we move the Chrono Boosts around - no matter which rule set we go with, we haven’t found a way to always guarantee an optimal use case. Therefore, we believe it’s best to just increase the cooldown of the ability so that it’s easier to not make a mistake in terms of the same Nexus recasting Chronoboost on multiple things in quick succession.
One other thing to note here is that one of our core design values in StarCraft II is to only make changes that are significant improvements. The reason is that if something is only a slight improvement to an existing thing, we don’t believe it warrants players having to relearn that mechanic. Therefore, for Protoss, it’ll be a question of exactly how much of an improvement this new version would be versus the old one.
I really like the new chrono boost. It feels more intuitive and obvious in its functionality and result. It’s also easier for new players to use which is a plus. I hope that they find a way to leave it as it is as this one feels like a definite improvement over the HoTS version.
I've made a video proposing and analysing blizzards current idea for a soultion (longer cooldown on chrono) with 3 others brought up by the community. Would love to know what you all think:
Very nice video - i feel personally that all solutions are more complicated/annoying than the previous chrono boost implementation.
The core of the issue is that the previous chrono boost became easier to use as you had more nexii - you were just getting more and more energy generation but still just hitting 5-c-click to drop a chrono or 5-c-shift-clickclickclickclickclickclickclick - the management difficulty did not go up when you went to extra nexii. You never had to put the camera anywhere aside from over the building/s that you wanted to chrono.
With all of these implementations, they're very easy to use with little thought on 1 nexus but they're (in my opinion) very clunky and annoying when you have 4 nexii, maybe more expansions coming up or you lose a nexus or two. It's a big pain to manage properly which seemed like the opposite of the design intent.
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The new design also gives quite a lot of passive power without giving the same control over what you want to augment any more; for example keeping a forge chrono'd 100% of the time would research +1 and +2 at a rate of 1.5x of normal. Now the maximum that you can do is 1.2x. The uptime is higher but you can only help 1 building with 1 nexus at a time now and that assistance has to be given over the full duration of the production time - it cannot be saved up and it cannot be dropped in a burst.
Because of that it feels a little bit inconsequential - a full chrono now will cut the build time of your first adept by 4 seconds, while two HOTS-chrono's (which you saved and put on the adept instead of on probes) would allow you to get it out 9 seconds earlier (i converted the times back and forth, hopefully correctly). This contributes to the feeling of fighting with the UI to get relatively minor returns
On September 15 2015 02:32 DooMDash wrote: Can't agree with QXC on mules. They weren't even demanding before.
Yea pretty much. I don't know how anyone can compare mules to inject in terms of skill or attention required.
On that same note I didn't think inject was hard either. I'm all for a queue for them though, if people think that missing them is a little too unforgiving.
I cannot believe how strong the Protoss 1 base crap is right now... Adepts and Photon Pylons can they even be stopped if you just turtle on 1 base as Terran? I've never seen anything so silly in my life
Am i the only one who actually likes the macro mechanics as they are in HOTS ? I am far from the best at those but still it gives me reasons to go back at my base and take care of it.
As for Zerg (not my main) i have no problems with injects, specially when i have macro hatch, maybe a fair buff could be if queens get to spawn free hatch for some energy cost.
After all the game is called StarCraft, it will feel strange if all we do is press 1 to select all buildings and que stuff with tap, without even looking at base....
I think one of the underlying issues in this macro/micro debate is that while macro is disproportionately more important than micro, casters tend to focus on the crazy micro tricks and only barely mention macro. Basically, you hear Tastosis talk about a sick micro move in detail, but only really comment on how good the players' macro is. As in, they only really say how good the players' macro is without going into a lot of detail.
Maybe if the casters focused on what's really important in the game right now, i.e. macro, people would learn to look for those things instead of watching the game solely for the flashy but ineffective micro plays. Maybe point out how spot on a person's expansion timing is, or how efficient he is at saturating mineral lines, or how low his resource floating is.
Mind you, I come from a micro background, and support nerfed or even automated macro in Starcraft, but if you guys want to keep macro as the dominant factor in gameplay, our community needs to focus on it and emphasize it a lot more than it does now.
I agree with most of what qxc said, except the chrono, it feels really weird at the moment. That being said I hope they will just pick one and stick with it, I reckon other races macro mechanics are fine enough.
One of my biggest concern is that they are not picking their choices yet, it is taking too long and therefore none of the other elements can be settled and looked at properly
On September 14 2015 16:15 Tyrhanius wrote: Adept is described as "harass unit", but it's not : The unit is tanky, high DPS vs light, very strong on frontal combat vs light units like Terran bioball, and has his ability to harass.
Blizzard must choose what they want : - A harass unit : make it more mobile, but more squishy. - A frontal unit : make it less mobile.
Think of the Adept as the replacement for BW's early game Dragoon and later the Reaver. It serves the purpose of giving Protoss a unit that can hold off early marines or zerglings, and put pressure on Terran's wall, like the BW Dragoon. Well it doesn't do great against a wall, but forces a bunker is more like it.
Later, with the Warp Prism, Adepts serve as weaker versions of reavers on harass.
Also consider if 1-2 medivacs with marines or marauders do about the same damage as adepts against workers. I would say yes. The big difference is Adepts cannot take out a Command Center/ Nexus/ Hatchery for a very very long time.
Granted, warp in from the prism comes early than a recall from an arbiter. But medivacs are also much more important in the general bio army composition for Terran so seeing 1,2, or 5 medivac drops is nothing new. Speed boost keeps them alive as well so... basically yeah, Protoss is getting actual harass options that Terran have been enjoying for a good while. Zerg has very different options, but it is clear with the new nydas and similar that Blizzard want everybody to have harass abilities.
On September 16 2015 03:25 NKexquisite wrote: I cannot believe how strong the Protoss 1 base crap is right now... Adepts and Photon Pylons can they even be stopped if you just turtle on 1 base as Terran? I've never seen anything so silly in my life
Yes I think. If you build your second CC in your main behind your wall, you can survive by building bunkers behind your depots, spaced apart, so that a new pylon must be made to creep closer and closer. And then you get to the point where a probe has to come up the ramp, which it should never be able to do. All the while you are double muling and getting stim and medivacs. As soon as you have medivacs, Protoss must retreat. After retreating, you kill all the pylons. He'll be behind, you can expand freely and go for potentially game ending medivac drops since he spent a ton of resources attacking.
Don't forget that if he is creeping in with pylons, your workers are typically at a safe distance when repairing bunkers on the far side. Your first bunker should die, others not so much.
At least that is what I do. YMMV.
I suppose a Protoss could just force you to lose say 300 minerals worth of depots/bunkers and he'd lose 300 minerals worth of pylons to delay your expansion, and not invest anymore. At most it seems like you'd break even, recycling bunkers and floating your expansion CC.
Maybe the scariest thing is after they break the Terran's front, Terran has to contend with potential adepts shading up to the mineral line. Not sure how scary that is, considering 300 minerals on pylons is probably 1-2 less gateways for a while.
I want to emphasize how much I think the shift to more micro is important for LotV. Micro was de-emphasized in WoL so much. Such a contrast from BW that it hurt.
The more micro plays matter, the less emphasis on build order wins, and the more open the game becomes. You can squeeze strategies and builds through a little easier. You can either cut corners more for greedy, or cut corners for tech plays.
While no macro mechanics is by far my first choice, I would be fine if the current auto-MULE stayed, along with a refined version of the current Chrono. Zerg and larva inject is tricky. You'd have to free up base management more for the other races to leave it as it is now. If they aren't willing to do that, then maybe the queuing change is the closest thing they can do.
On September 15 2015 09:36 avilo wrote: List of adept stats:
-More health than a blink stalker -More shields -More mobility than a blink stalker without an upgrade, on tier 1 tech -Cheaper than a blink stalker -Available earlier than a blink stalker -Has an upgrade to become even tankier than a blink stalker -2 shots marines...even a blink stalker cannot do this.
Ground units that aren't stronger than stalkers (for cost):
"Ground units that are stronger than Stalkers" is identical to the set "Ground units except Stalkers". Stalkers are f***ing worthless, Adepts are the first Protoss gateway unit that's actually *good*.
Now, that's not to say that the Adept isn't too strong - but comparing it to the stalker is absolutely the wrong way to go about things. Instead, you are better off comparing it to the marauder.
The Adept has: - Less DPS than the marauder - Has no debuff ability - Has less range than the marauder - Loses in 1-on-1 to the marauder + Has more total health than the marauder (90 + 90 vs 125) + Is faster than the marauder
Might be slightly too strong - making it armoured might be a change worth testing. Adept Zealot would then lost handily to Marine Marauder, but only if Terran Microes well.
With the version currently in the beta, chronoboost is cast by the Nexus closest to the target, and there are suggestions to change that to other methods. One thing we’re noticing here is there’s really no ideal way to handle how we move the Chrono Boosts around - no matter which rule set we go with, we haven’t found a way to always guarantee an optimal use case. Therefore, we believe it’s best to just increase the cooldown of the ability so that it’s easier to not make a mistake in terms of the same Nexus recasting Chronoboost on multiple things in quick succession.
One other thing to note here is that one of our core design values in StarCraft II is to only make changes that are significant improvements. The reason is that if something is only a slight improvement to an existing thing, we don’t believe it warrants players having to relearn that mechanic. Therefore, for Protoss, it’ll be a question of exactly how much of an improvement this new version would be versus the old one.
I really like the new chrono boost. It feels more intuitive and obvious in its functionality and result. It’s also easier for new players to use which is a plus. I hope that they find a way to leave it as it is as this one feels like a definite improvement over the HoTS version.
I've made a video proposing and analysing blizzards current idea for a soultion (longer cooldown on chrono) with 3 others brought up by the community. Would love to know what you all think:
Jaka Great video with great solutions, already pitched this to blizzard on the forum?
Something very different, Do you also have the Behringer: C-1U USB mic? Your sound quality is excellent! I have this type also but my input volume is way worse.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/t3FtWYj.gif)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/J59KUxh.gif)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TzgKyrN.gif)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RS9NZ0o.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/qwhsWjA.jpg)
. I do feel like it'd be awesome. Not surprised that I agree iwth most of qxc's comments...but the mule was/is so much fun! 
