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On September 26 2015 04:26 TheWinks wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2015 04:03 ROOTFayth wrote:
I think people would see a massive difference with just a big warp prism nerf when it comes to adept, just straight up mass adepts without a warp prism isn't particularly game breaking The stats of the unit itself are overtuned. No warp prism nerf is going to change that.
I'm really not so sure about that, given the attack is really slow and it's only 4 range, it's really just kind of a like a roach, I guess the shade ability could be an upgrade, like burrowed roaches, but if the stats were that amazing it wouldn't scale that badly in the late game
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This might be your best article yet. Everything is clearly articulated, the changes proposed are concrete, and alternative changes from your main post were discussed as well. I guess I would've liked to have seen one or more picture examples to better illustrate a couple points, a more thorough description of the mindsets of the opposing players' mindsets when facing Adepts, and at least a cursory analysis of the frequently-suggested idea of giving them a mid or late game upgrade to enable their attack to hit air.
Also, a webm of them in large engagements against a one example of each race's common mid or late game large army compositions, perhaps in the unit tester, would be good for illustrating their depreciating value past the early game.
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Fully agree with the early game reductions and the idea of giving it upgrades. The damage increase might be too much tho. They are already now ridiculously strong against e.g. hydras. Instead of giving them an upgrade for +light damage, I would give them a smaller + general dmg upgrade.
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8748 Posts
I'm not so sure that your suggestions for changes improve the PvP matchup.
My sort of out-of-the-box idea for nerfing Adepts is to give them an absurdly long build time (and cooldown time on warpgates), maybe equal to a high templar, so that the only way to mass is them is to make an absurd number of gateways. This will make their initial pressure slower and a riskier opening to do, and will also make timing attacks slower, and the extra gates will use up valuable minerals that would otherwise be going to a 3rd base or other tech, and it'll telegraph what the protoss is doing if you scout all those gates, etc. Adept harass builds can't turn into "end the game" builds unless they switch out of adepts. Warping in the initial round of adepts offensively will trigger those really long warpgate cooldowns so the defender has a much better chance to get the situation under control, even if it's zealot/sentry/stalker to follow.
Basically, instead of looking at how strong adepts are per resource like qxc does (a perfectly good thing to do), we instead look at how much army strength you can get per second when building adepts, which would become much lower unless you have a ton of gates, which might actually prove to be a big enough hindrance to make a lot of the most annoying adept situations disappear.
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I agree that adepts would be better off with less tankiness, and doing less DPS early game, with an upgrade for more DPS late game, especially since Blizzard intends for them to be core units. And there's no point in stepping on toes of zealots either because then we are just trading one core unit for another.
A couple things that need to stay the same though:
Adepts have to still be available after cyber core, otherwise they are no longer core units. Going back to only zealots and stalkers in the early game would be terribly boring for the game as a whole. Zealots unfortunately are just not good at doing anything in the early game except being on hold position in a wall against zerg.
Along the same lines, adepts need to keep their shade ability from the start. It really only impacts the first 6-7 minutes of the game as it is now, since it can't be used much for micro during larger engagements. And so far the contrast of the slow movement speed with bursts of quickness allows for more dynamic gameplay that did not exist in any early game protoss matchups.
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Seems to me like they essentially wanted a dragoon-like unit in the game, but decided to give it an ability. Why not just turn it into a dragoon then? Remove the shade ability, give it a range upgrade, done.
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On September 26 2015 06:32 NonY wrote:
I'm not so sure that your suggestions for changes improve the PvP matchup.
My sort of out-of-the-box idea for nerfing Adepts is to give them an absurdly long build time (and cooldown time on warpgates), maybe equal to a high templar, so that the only way to mass is them is to make an absurd number of gateways. This will make their initial pressure slower and a riskier opening to do, and will also make timing attacks slower, and the extra gates will use up valuable minerals that would otherwise be going to a 3rd base or other tech, and it'll telegraph what the protoss is doing if you scout all those gates, etc. Adept harass builds can't turn into "end the game" builds unless they switch out of adepts. Warping in the initial round of adepts offensively will trigger those really long warpgate cooldowns so the defender has a much better chance to get the situation under control, even if it's zealot/sentry/stalker to follow.
Basically, instead of looking at how strong adepts are per resource like qxc does (a perfectly good thing to do), we instead look at how much army strength you can get per second when building adepts, which would become much lower unless you have a ton of gates, which might actually prove to be a big enough hindrance to make a lot of the most annoying adept situations disappear.
The coolest part about this is that top players will chrono 2 of their X gates and manually select the chrono boosted ones to make Adepts out of (unless they just want to warp in a round of pure Adepts I guess, which may be unwise if they take too long to build). I think Adept drops will still be too strong vs Terran, the drop of 4 Adepts + the first warp-in seems to be to do too much damage on its own.
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On September 26 2015 06:14 ROOTFayth wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2015 04:26 TheWinks wrote:On September 26 2015 04:03 ROOTFayth wrote:
I think people would see a massive difference with just a big warp prism nerf when it comes to adept, just straight up mass adepts without a warp prism isn't particularly game breaking The stats of the unit itself are overtuned. No warp prism nerf is going to change that. I'm really not so sure about that, given the attack is really slow and it's only 4 range, it's really just kind of a like a roach, I guess the shade ability could be an upgrade, like burrowed roaches, but if the stats were that amazing it wouldn't scale that badly in the late game
It kills light units too quickly while taking too long to be killed with the mobility and scouting info granted by shades. It's not like a roach against light units, it's like a single target, pre-nerf blue flame hellion.
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United States7483 Posts
On September 26 2015 07:51 TheWinks wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2015 06:14 ROOTFayth wrote:On September 26 2015 04:26 TheWinks wrote:On September 26 2015 04:03 ROOTFayth wrote:
I think people would see a massive difference with just a big warp prism nerf when it comes to adept, just straight up mass adepts without a warp prism isn't particularly game breaking The stats of the unit itself are overtuned. No warp prism nerf is going to change that. I'm really not so sure about that, given the attack is really slow and it's only 4 range, it's really just kind of a like a roach, I guess the shade ability could be an upgrade, like burrowed roaches, but if the stats were that amazing it wouldn't scale that badly in the late game It kills light units too quickly while taking too long to be killed with the mobility and scouting info granted by shades. It's not like a roach against light units, it's like a single target, pre-nerf blue flame hellion.
Way too slow to be considered that. It really is like a roach with bonus damage vs. light that costs 50 extra minerals and has the shade ability.
It's not that the adept is too strong, persay, it's that it is too strong for the timing at which it is available. The issue is that if you take such a powerful advantage away from protoss early, I'm not sure they can reliably defend and meet the expansion requirements thrust upon them. It's just a pity that it is trivial to turn anything protoss gets for defense into a powerful all-in unless it's in the form of a gimmick (like the mothership core).
If you delay the tech for the adept for example to say, requiring twilight council, Protoss would be in for a world of hurt, even if you didn't change the stats on the unit at all.
The fact that the unit doesn't scale well indicates that the stats on the unit aren't the problem, but the timing at which it is available is.
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Insane enough that they only way they managed to "buff gate units", as it was the underlying demand in most of the community, is to add such an absurd unit.
I also wish, so much , SO MUCH, that WARPING, which is still a cool idea in itself, was much weaker and just a choice. You don't see any Protoss sticking to regular gates do you?
How can you, as a game designer, believe, when you release an RTS, that an ability that requires no skill whatsoever and negates ALL positional aspects of the game (no run-bys, reinforce your army IN the oppo's base quicker than the opponent can, etc.) won't cause all sorts of design-related trouble. They tried tweaking it lately, all they did was make Warp Prism mandatory.
What astonishes me most is how some people keep believing LotV will be a good release, let alone an enjoyable game to play. I do not know how to explain Blizzard's choices other than by sheer incompetence. SC2 was done in by Protoss.
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On September 26 2015 08:04 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2015 07:51 TheWinks wrote:On September 26 2015 06:14 ROOTFayth wrote:On September 26 2015 04:26 TheWinks wrote:On September 26 2015 04:03 ROOTFayth wrote:
I think people would see a massive difference with just a big warp prism nerf when it comes to adept, just straight up mass adepts without a warp prism isn't particularly game breaking The stats of the unit itself are overtuned. No warp prism nerf is going to change that. I'm really not so sure about that, given the attack is really slow and it's only 4 range, it's really just kind of a like a roach, I guess the shade ability could be an upgrade, like burrowed roaches, but if the stats were that amazing it wouldn't scale that badly in the late game It kills light units too quickly while taking too long to be killed with the mobility and scouting info granted by shades. It's not like a roach against light units, it's like a single target, pre-nerf blue flame hellion. Way too slow to be considered that. It really is like a roach with bonus damage vs. light that costs 50 extra minerals and has the shade ability. It's not that the adept is too strong, persay, it's that it is too strong for the timing at which it is available. The issue is that if you take such a powerful advantage away from protoss early, I'm not sure they can reliably defend and meet the expansion requirements thrust upon them. It's just a pity that it is trivial to turn anything protoss gets for defense into a powerful all-in unless it's in the form of a gimmick (like the mothership core). If you delay the tech for the adept for example to say, requiring twilight council, Protoss would be in for a world of hurt, even if you didn't change the stats on the unit at all.
The cancelable shade makes it far more mobile and threatening than at first glance, especially when combined with a prism. Terran especially has the problem countering their mobility and then even when caught killing them because they're so tanky.
It is a matter of timing, but only in the sense that it's just plain too strong in the early game. If it's in fact too weak as it scales through the game, you can change unit scaling through unit specific upgrades or forge weapon upgrades. Whatever the case, it is not acceptable in its current form and does not lend itself to good games as a player or a spectator.
If protoss needs other changes in face of a weakened adept, so be it, but the shade is not really a defensive ability, nor do I think the ability for protoss to expand hinges on this unit alone.
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Interesting article, thanks!
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I'd say the shade ability of the adept has single-handedly improved the previously boring early game of protoss. I'd also say that the high hp/shields of the unit makes it less interesting as it powers through damage instead of focusing on finding the weak areas of defense with the shade. I would say lower the hp but keep the shields high to emphasize shade utilization to dip in and out.
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On September 26 2015 07:51 TheWinks wrote:Show nested quote +On September 26 2015 06:14 ROOTFayth wrote:On September 26 2015 04:26 TheWinks wrote:On September 26 2015 04:03 ROOTFayth wrote:
I think people would see a massive difference with just a big warp prism nerf when it comes to adept, just straight up mass adepts without a warp prism isn't particularly game breaking The stats of the unit itself are overtuned. No warp prism nerf is going to change that. I'm really not so sure about that, given the attack is really slow and it's only 4 range, it's really just kind of a like a roach, I guess the shade ability could be an upgrade, like burrowed roaches, but if the stats were that amazing it wouldn't scale that badly in the late game It kills light units too quickly while taking too long to be killed with the mobility and scouting info granted by shades. It's not like a roach against light units, it's like a single target, pre-nerf blue flame hellion.
I dunno I can't even kill stephano with agressive adept warpins and he goes lings only lol, and it's not cuz my macro is slipping
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The shade ability is like blink except even more magnified. And stalkers are very precariously balanced around blink. Balancing the shade is going to be a nightmare.
My suggestion is just get rid of shade, make the adept's model bigger and treat it as a core unit like a dragoon. Without blink or shade, its stats can be reasonably stronger than the stalker's. It can fill the niche of a heavy ranged ground pounder tank.
Unlike the flimsy but dangerously snowball prone blink reliant stalker.
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On September 26 2015 07:21 Xyik wrote:
Seems to me like they essentially wanted a dragoon-like unit in the game, but decided to give it an ability. Why not just turn it into a dragoon then? Remove the shade ability, give it a range upgrade, done.
Exactly. Is it really that difficult to swallow the pride and reintroduce the dragoon? Maybe make it short ranged but tanky and heavy hitting, but for the love of god no more movement based active abilities. They're impossible to balance and unintuitive.
And the disruptor is obviously a bastardized reaver. Down to the pseudo shuttle micro.
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Rather than changing the tech level, wouldn't it make sense to increase the supply cost of the Adept up to 3? This would effectively force more pylons and mineral spending on non-adept things and slow down the accumulation of Adepts before they can gather enough in numbers to be super effective.
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On September 26 2015 04:03 ROOTFayth wrote:
I think people would see a massive difference with just a big warp prism nerf when it comes to adept, just straight up mass adepts without a warp prism isn't particularly game breaking
This is what I see as well.
I think having the Adept being strong in the earlygame is more important than the lategame IMO.
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Templar Archives upgrade: Enlightenment, 150/150: The adept gains a second ‘shade’ ability which has duration 10 seconds. Only one shade may be active at a time.
I'm not exactly certain what qxc means by this, and it sounds like he just means an upgrade that lets the shade last longer. So you can use your 5 second shade, or you can use your 10 second shade. That might feel a little clunky, so how about this:
Adept starts with the ability to send out a shade it can warp to. This ability is uncancellable. A different hotkey lets it send out a shade which it won't warp to. So if you wanna send out a shade to scout, you use the latter. If you want to warp somewhere, you use the former. You have to decide whether to warp when you send out the shade – you don't get to decide on the fly.
Here's where things could get cool – what if you can send both out at once? Then you can use the adept to have three points of vision on the map at the same time. You can also get situations where the Protoss is using the ability to run away, and his opponent doesn't know which shade to follow.
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First off, Blizzard usually lets new units be OP to make sure, that people use them.
Second, IMHO QXC fails to acknowledge , that Adepts are what allows Protoss to tage reasonable fast expos. No other unit from GW allows that. He says so himself. Stalkers DPS is atrocious. Zealots awfully slow and Sentries .... well.....
Third off, Protoss is the race that benefits the least from the new econ. Toss is still reliant on tech for the mid- lategame and that tech still takes the same time it always has. So for Toss to be able to move out and secure expos, Adepts needs to be strong. Are they too strong now ? Maybe.... but overnerfing them won´t do anything good for the game.
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