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.
The adept is overpowered. It is too strong and has too few weaknesses in the early game. In addition, the adept fails to scale well into the mid- and lategame due to its lack of meaningful upgrades. By reducing the adept’s early game stats and putting more value on its upgrades the adept can be a more rounded unit that is useful, but not overbearing in all parts of the game.
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.
While adepts may never rival this, #NeverForget
This statement glosses over some important facts. The first is that at the release of Starcraft II Wings of Liberty, the general skill level in the game was much lower. We figured things out much slower. It takes a substantial amount of time to get even a basic mastery of a game regardless of RTS background and while similar to BW, Starcraft 2 was a significant transition for everyone. The top players of LoTV are substantially better than the best players of early Wings. As players are faster at figuring out strategies and counters balance related issues can be acted on faster. The second issue with this statement is that, while marauders never got nerfed in Wings, a large number of nerfs occurred in situations that involved marauders. See below for a list of changes that occurred around the release of Wings that affected the marauder’s strength in various situations.
Medivac: Acceleration reduced from 2.315 to 2.25. Speed reduced from 2.75 to 2.5. Huge hitpoint increase for Protoss & Zerg buildings Archon -> massive, range 2->3 Stim 140 -> 170 seconds, Zealots always hit fleeing target at least once, Immortal range 5 -> 6, Ultralisk Speed increased from 2.25 to 2.9531. Build time decreased from 70 to 55. Splash radius increased from 1.5 to 2.5. Splash radius increased from 90° to 180° in front of the ultralisk. Barracks build time 60 -> 65,
Most recently in LotV, the marauder’s attack became 2 separate attacks so now armor is applied twice. Each point of armor reduces the marauder’s damage by around 5-10%. The marauder was not fine and was not fixed by players getting better at the game alone. The marauder’s reduced strength in Wings came from a variety of indirect nerfs to supporting units as well as upgrades and buffs to its opposition. The adept is too strong in the early game and fails to scale well as the game goes longer and longer.
The adept can threaten a huge range with its shade.
This shows the distance the shade can travel which is more than a screen away.
In Starcraft, upgrades are used so that early game units scale into the mid/late game and keep up with units that are not available immediately. In virtually all cases, the cost of the upgrade is negligible compared to amount of value it delivers. Stim is 100/100 but easily is worth several times that in combat efficiency. Zergling speed is also 100/100 and increases the utility of zerglings tremendously. Upgrades are balanced in a way that the resources serve as a minimum threshold to invest in that upgrade. IE: Getting stim when you only have 3 marines doesn’t make any sense because you don’t have sufficient economy to support it or enough units to benefit from it. The upgrade time is an additional factor which creates timing windows and room for counterplay and scouting. The adept’s lack of scaling is due to the fact that its only upgrade (+50 shields) doesn’t add much in the way of utility unlike many other upgrades such as charge, blink, storm, stim, roach speed and so on.
The adept’s primary strengths are:
- Bonus damage vs Light - Good scouting unit - High hitpoints - Low gas investment - Low tech requirement - Not melee - High threat range (due to shade)
The adept’s primary weaknesses are:
- Low DPS vs armored - Can’t attack air - Low mobility besides its shade - Weak in deathball vs deathball armies (200/200)
The most important thing is that the adept’s strengths are all focused on the early game while its weaknesses don’t factor in until the mid or late game. For each thing that the adept can’t do, it can gain stats elsewhere. The stalker is a great example of a unit that cannot really do anything particularly well, but can be applied in some degree to almost any situation. It has high range, can attack air, decent mobility and relatively high hitpoints. To balance all those strengths out, the stalker has atrocious DPS. The adept, on the other hand, has only 4 range, can’t attack air and is relatively slow. To compensate those downsides, it has much higher base stats. The problem is that the adept dominates the early game where the majority of targets are light, high mobility isn’t as important, and attacking air makes little difference. While it’s true that armored units can stand toe-to-toe with the adept, the early armored units have either too low mobility or DPS to prevent the adept from killing a substantial number of workers. The roach is notable in that it has decent DPS, but it still has issues chasing the adepts around.
Adepts kill a lot of scvs while marauders try to stop them.
The adept’s initial stats are just too high, especially when combined with the shade ability. Consider a ground unit that had 20 HP, no attack, the movement speed of an adept and the shade ability. How much would that unit cost? It would serve a role similar to an early observer or a reaper in that you would probably make 1 to send to your opponent’s base and get scouting information. Later on, it could be used as a general map scout / spotter. This ability must cost something. 25/0 or 25/25 seem like a reasonable value considering it would be a pure scouting unit and not the most reliable at that.
A marauder and an adept have a slap fight.
The adept, which is 100/25, has roughly 75/0 or 75/25 worth of resources going just to its stats considering the shade ability is worth something. No other tier 1 unit has any special abilities initially. Which means that a substantial chunk (~15-30%) of the adept’s value should be in having the shade ability to start unlike any other tier1/tier1.5 unit. The adept is a mid game unit masquerading as a tier 1.5 unit (effectively tier 1 with increased worker start in LotV). In game, the adept does not feel like it’s missing a substantial chunk of stats due to having the shade ability. It outclasses every other early game unit in general utility. Although, there are units that it can’t dominate in a straight up fight like stalkers, marauders and roaches, it provides incredible value for scouting and can often get many worker kills while the defender tries to kill it.
The adept’s range allows for a lot of micro potential vs marines.
From a more design oriented standpoint, the adept is problematic because it replaces the zealot for a large part of the game, if not all together in many cases. The zealot has traditionally been protoss’ cheap, mineral heavy tank unit. The adept, with 30 more shields to start, and 80 more after the upgrade replaces the zealot as the tank unit in the protoss arsenal. The zealot, with its recent charge buff (charge now deals +8 damage on hit) fulfills a more damage oriented role. The problem is that the adept’s kit makes more sense on a damage oriented unit rather than a tanky one. The adept does bonus damage to workers and has an ability that allows it to bypass armies and maneuver inside an opponent’s base. All of these traits work better on a dps harass type unit. Regardless, the adept and zealot need to have more separate roles to maintain diversity in the protoss arsenal. One of these units needs to be the tank and the other one needs to be the damage. For this analysis, I’ll be looking solely at rebalancing the adept. I leave the redesign of both units in tandem as an exercise to the reader.
First, tone down the adept’s early game strength. Reduce the +damage vs light to +4 (was +13). Increase its base damage to 11 (was 10). The adept now 3 shots zerglings, marines and workers instead of 2-shotting them and does slightly better vs armored targets. Reduce its shields to 90/70 (was 90/90). This is a ~11% decrease in total HP. Reduce the duration of the shade to 5 (was 7) seconds. These changes should bring the adept more in line with other tier 1 units while leaving its core functionality in tact.
Next, increase the strength and utility of the adept’s upgrades to help it scale better as the game goes on.
Twilight council upgrade: Plasma shields, gives +50 shields, and an additional +12 damage vs light (Adept after upgrade is +17 vs light, was +13).
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.
These changes together make the adept less of an issue early game by reducing its tankiness, killing power and threat range while bringing its strength up as the game goes longer by giving additional damage and more versatility. By having 2 shade abilities of different duration the adept will have more options for mobility.
Combining adepts with a warp prism allows for even more survivability.
Alternatively, if adepts required a twilight council to be built their initial stats could remain unchanged. Then the adepts could gain some of the additional damage from the twilight council upgrade proposed above as well as have a second upgrade on the templar archives.
Note that these suggestions are all theoretical. I do not claim them to be correct, but they are a step in the correct direction. Right now, the adept provides too much value for too little cost to the point of pigeon holing matchups into a very narrow set of choices. Protoss players rarely build anything except for adepts early on and continue to use them to the exclusion of most other units in many games. While the adept has substantial weaknesses (no attack vs air, terrible dps vs armored and somewhat low range/mobility w/o shade), these do not manifest in meaningful ways in the early game. By shifting the adept’s stats around to weaken it early game while giving additional power to its upgrades, the adept can play an important role throughout the entire game without being oppressive.The current adept cannot stay as it is but only further testing and experimentation will reveal the correct balance.
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.
It seems weird for me that Blizzard is worry about perception issue but left adept and other op things like parasitic bomb untouched. It is painful to watch the redbull final because of the adept's worker harass.
Why can't they do the same thing to adept like they do to cyclone and lib where both units have been quickly altered to be more balanced
The problem with adepts isn't their strength. It's the fact they come waaay too early in the game. Just make the adept require twilight consil without changing their stats and they'll be fine.
One other point I was hoping qxc would mention- In addition, warp prism the harass is ridiculous. The single picture does not do justice for just how bad this is. Fast warp gate timings with instant warp in and super warp prism micro is one of the bigger problems. I literally uninstalled the beta over the fact blizzard buffed warp gate, buffed protoss aoe, made chrono leave and forget, and the msc overcharge. I even cancelled my preorder because they never fixed the clan system, chat interface, never added casual ladders, never demo'd allied commanders, and buffed everything i hate about the design of the game. I wanted certain things that were aweful to change, and instead they buffed them.
You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
On September 25 2015 19:48 parkufarku wrote: You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
#1 Introduce a new core unit: marauder/adept whichever #2 Make it op so that it is used (overboard use) #3 Wait and detour public dissension #4 Nerf/buff it and every other core unit to balance #5 Enjoy
On September 25 2015 19:48 parkufarku wrote: You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
Wow, pathetic. Qxc presents numerous reasons as to the Adept's excessive strength, as well as numerous ways to resolve the issue, and your only response is that he is biased? Can you possibly, just possibly, pull your head out of your loose asshole so that you can see that the only way an article that effectively calls for a nerf to a certain race makes it to the front page of Team Liquid is through the fact that it is well-researched first, and in agreement with the majority of players' views second? It's people like you who would stand up on your piss-soaked hind legs and howl 'balance whine', when in reality the article's author is clearly trying to improve the game, as seen in how he has written numerous articles on LotV.
Thanks for the input, I definitely agree with most of it!
But I think we have to talk about the Warpris as well. I also feel like the shade should not be invulnerable. Maybe we can keep it's early game strength if the Warpprism was weaker and the shade could be killed.
This is more from a zvp perspective I guess, Stephano also said he thinks the Warpprism is the problem, not the Adept, after playing tons of games vs the number 1 GM toss.
On September 25 2015 19:48 parkufarku wrote: You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
High level players like avilo, giggle.
For real though, I'm like 80% certain that adepts/prism in their current state basically force Terran into 3 rax bio openers as a just in case. Any other build, even if it scouts the robo with a scan or something, is just immediately fucked as it simply won't have enough units to stop the in your face warp in craziness and there's simply no way you can prevent the warp prism making it's incision. Last time Terran were that pressured early on was during the heydey of blink stalker craziness and I think we can all agree that was some stupid shit.
Adepts can probably well do with some toning down, though I also suspect the Protoss midgame will suffer a lot as a result. Ever since they nerfed colossus their midgame's been pretty miserable, and I suspect that will continue to be the case. Currently they get by just with silly adept stalker warp prism timings but more often then not if they're just playing standard amass the deathball style Protoss play they struggle tremendously against ghosts and drops and Terran macro.
On September 25 2015 19:48 parkufarku wrote: You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
High level players like avilo, giggle.
For real though, I'm like 80% certain that adepts/prism in their current state basically force Terran into 3 rax bio openers as a just in case. Any other build, even if it scouts the robo with a scan or something, is just immediately fucked as it simply won't have enough units to stop the in your face warp in craziness and there's simply no way you can prevent the warp prism making it's incision. Last time Terran were that pressured early on was during the heydey of blink stalker craziness and I think we can all agree that was some stupid shit.
Adepts can probably well do with some toning down, though I also suspect the Protoss midgame will suffer a lot as a result. Ever since they nerfed colossus their midgame's been pretty miserable, and I suspect that will continue to be the case. Currently they get by just with silly adept stalker warp prism timings but more often then not if they're just playing standard amass the deathball style Protoss play they struggle tremendously against ghosts and drops and Terran macro.
Exactly why you nerf the adept and then fix everything else as it comes, you can't leave a matchup unplayable for one side. It isn't fun or fair to those players... I have stopped playing terran in LOTV due to it being unbearable to play to a largely inferior protoss with little chance of winning.
On September 25 2015 19:48 parkufarku wrote: You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
Sorry for picture hypertexted, that was a "I don't know kevin" moment to me, but I must of been mistaken (https://twitter.com/coL_qxc "How I feel after finishing a lengthy article")
Ehm, this is not a backseat moderation, but why are these threads released in SC2 general and not in LotV section? I am curious for the reason, thanks!
On September 25 2015 19:48 parkufarku wrote: You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
if this is "polished balance whine" then there's no point ever talking about balance because anyone thinking anything should be adjusted is "balance whine". let's just give everything random stats and leave it, lest we fall into the trap of "balance whining"
balance whine is when someone angrily blames the result of a game or set of games on balance, either their own games or a favored pro player's games, when better strategies and execution could have reasonably changed the result. analytic articles from respected minds in the community are the opposite, they're useful and necessary and mentally stimulating to read
furthermore, your logic about the liberator is appealing to an implicit strawman that if qxc writes an article about adepts being broken he can't possibly think anything else is broken, which is absurd on its face. it's like being pulled over for speeding and criticizing the officer for not catching a murderer instead
Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
On September 25 2015 21:06 Whitewing wrote: Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
So another band aid for Protoss! Excellent! I am really excited for their balancing of adept, it sounds promising.
On September 25 2015 21:06 Whitewing wrote: Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
You can always invent some pretext for a unit to be very strong, economy or whatever else, but the fact remains, if this unit is objectively too strong for its cost and its required tech, you nerf it, and buff something else instead. I can't believe that Protoss would be totally fucked beyond redemption if the Adept was slightly weaker. The adept doesn't have to be the only solution to Protoss woes. And we're lucky this time, I think adepts are pretty well designed, it's just that they're too strong, they don't need to get out of the game altogether, and they can even remain a core unit.
The combat stats are too high, plain as that. Blizzard still hasn't understood the importance of movement-speed mobility to secure bases and defend and are trying to make protoss take bases with raw power. Which is plainly not possible without overpowering protoss attacks. The result is a unit that is too strong early but doesn't make protoss more interesting because they still lose out on the economy front.
I don't think the adept would scale well into the lategame with just +1 base damage to everything and some upgrades that give an even bigger bonus against light and 2 Shade abilites. That second shade proposal seems extremely weird to me too.
I'd just rather see the templar archive upgrade be very expensive and give something big like +2 base damage to both adepts and stalkers (the units that scale horribly into the lategame), or +1 range, or +3 damage to bio...
Other than those, great writeup and agreed on everything.
The idea to give it +17dmg vs light with an upgrade is terrible. That still makes this unit useless in 200/200 fights. I'd prefer a attack speed upgrade, so they have more lategame utility and scale better with basic attack upgrades.
On September 25 2015 21:06 Whitewing wrote: Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
You can always invent some pretext for a unit to be very strong, economy or whatever else, but the fact remains, if this unit is objectively too strong for its cost and its required tech, you nerf it, and buff something else instead. I can't believe that Protoss would be totally fucked beyond redemption if the Adept was slightly weaker. The adept doesn't have to be the only solution to Protoss woes. And we're lucky this time, I think adepts are pretty well designed, it's just that they're too strong, they don't need to get out of the game altogether, and they can even remain a core unit.
I'm not defending it, I'm explaining it. There are solutions, but they might be unpalatable as well. Nerfing the adept will nuke the all-ins which would be a good thing, absolutely, but you might find that Protoss can't defend expansions anymore, which was the main problem with the economy changes in the first place.
An obvious solution would be an adept nerf combined with a buff to other gateway units. A less obvious solution is an adept nerf combined with general scaling improvements to Protoss as a whole, meaning that you've decided Protoss will have a weak early game but will scale well enough that it's fine for that to be true. There are other options.
The basic gist though is that Protoss needs some kind of low tech early game option that is strong in order to be able to spend time teching. You can shift power away from the adept to other units, but remember that at any given point in time, you only have so many units out total, so splitting the adept's strength around is a net nerf (which is fine, a nerf is needed, but gotta do so carefully).
The combat stats are too high, plain as that. Blizzard still hasn't understood the importance of movement-speed mobility to secure bases and defend and are trying to make protoss take bases with raw power. Which is plainly not possible without overpowering protoss attacks. The result is a unit that is too strong early but doesn't make protoss more interesting because they still lose out on the economy front.
This about sums it up BigJ. Protoss isn't mobile enough to defend bases, and therefore needs to compensate by having raw power in their units. Typically that is provided by tech, but it can't be here because of the economy changes: Protoss doesn't have time to tech in addition to the other stuff they have to do.
Unfortunately, that means Protoss can just all-in you with those units instead of expanding.
i think protoss will struggle really hard against zerg if you weaken their adepts. i dont see how toss can deal with early expansions if they open with ravager.
if you wanna weaken adept you need to change how protoss works
The adept needs changes, but the ones suggested in the article don't actually help it to scale late game so much as they do force it to have more weaknesses in the early game.
I would submit that it'd be easier to turn the unit into a squishy DPS unit than to attempt to keep its tanking power in the mid-game while adding (insignificant) +light damage and a second mobility ability to ... trick ... your opponent.
Here's a tentative list of changes that would take that direction:
Regardless of which changes Blizzard makes, the worst possible thing they could do for the overall design of protoss would be to move to adept to a later tier unit. Protoss' early game needs stabilization (and the removal of gimmicks like the current adept and PO) more than the mid-game. If the adept isn't a tool in the early arsenal, then Protoss' design will continue to rely upon things like PO.
QXC, I love ya, and I hate to be that guy but this is just a beta and it's to test things out. Blizzard can be deaf about really bad things, and they've proven ignorance and carelessness time and time again, but right now the Adept is almost match breaking, in PvT especially since the Terran is required to essentially stay on one base unless the natural is a pocket, and I can assure you and anybody else reading this that Blizzard would not let something this ridiculous ruin the game.
I believe that a simple change to make the adept three shot workers and marines would completely change our assessment of the unit. Perhaps we are overthinking the situation?
Blizzard should do this change and then work from there in my opinion. The unit should not be overnerfed and the patching proccess could work in steps. You dont need to fix it with one patch. The disruptor took several patches to be fixed.
And that original TC upgrade that got removed was not good enough to scale the unit into the later stages of the game?
The whole concept of the Adept is rather stupid IMHO, given that it's OP right now makes it even worse. Seeing how easily they can kill eco lines they don't even have a glass cannon attribute (like the oracle). It's really dumb.
On September 25 2015 22:08 fx9 wrote: To be fair, we never see qxc touch anything on liberators opness or anything related to Terran. So the Terran bias is there.
Except for the fact that they DID fix the liberator with upgrade and different tech and did not do sh*t on the adept
On September 25 2015 21:06 Whitewing wrote: Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
You took the words out of my mouth (err, keyboard?).
Basically the economy system fucks Protoss over because they don't rely on massing cheap units like Terran and Zerg but rather on tech which still takes the same amount of time to get out despite accelerated economy.
On September 25 2015 21:06 Whitewing wrote: Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
You took the words out of my mouth (err, keyboard?).
Basically the economy system fucks Protoss over because they don't rely on massing cheap units like Terran and Zerg but rather on tech which still takes the same amount of time to get out despite accelerated economy.
This was repetitively brought up by Teoita and others in the beginning of the beta, but somehow it didn't get traction in the community. Its a very good point.
On September 25 2015 21:06 Whitewing wrote: Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
You took the words out of my mouth (err, keyboard?).
Basically the economy system fucks Protoss over because they don't rely on massing cheap units like Terran and Zerg but rather on tech which still takes the same amount of time to get out despite accelerated economy.
This was repetitively brought up by Teoita and others in the beginning of the beta, but somehow it didn't get traction in the community. Its a very good point.
Lol. I know.. I was one of the ones saying this and people just said "NAAAH, YOU GOT PHOTON OVERCHARGE BRO."
I think for Adepts to scale well in the late game they need to increase their rate of fire.
The problem when your attack is so slow is that your units die before they can dish out any damage. Look at Marines. You're getting value out of every single Marine before they die. With adepts against Stim Bio? They may get to shoot once before they die?
It's just terribly inneficient. It's the same reason Stalkers are bad... super slow rate of fire leads to very high overkill and units dying before they can deal any damage.
its been apparent since day 1 of beta... Thanks for the reminder?
Blizzard does NOT like to change actual unit numbers.. so good luck. Knowing them they will try to fix it through nerfing the warp prism. The only other thing I could see them doing is making the shade ability available later.
On September 25 2015 22:14 Dickbutt wrote: QXC, I love ya, and I hate to be that guy but this is just a beta and it's to test things out.
Which is exactly why he's playing beta, and giving feedback.
Good post overall by QXC. I don't agree with the proposed upgrades, but like he said the direction is correct. The Adept is absolutely game breaking right now.
While I think its ok to make adepts scale better to lategame and be weaker, protoss will have trouble in the earlygame if some changes goes through to the extend that the current investmentratio for protoss builds has to change negatively when focusing on macro.
Compensate that with better photon overcharged, buffed zealots? Dont know. I kinda like the strong earlygame adept and weak lategame adept EXCEPT for the offensive stuff (nerf prisms.)
I don't like second shade ability. I think much more interesting will be controlling teleport. Not waiting while adept teleport to shade position, but control it.
On September 25 2015 21:06 Whitewing wrote: Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
You took the words out of my mouth (err, keyboard?).
Basically the economy system fucks Protoss over because they don't rely on massing cheap units like Terran and Zerg but rather on tech which still takes the same amount of time to get out despite accelerated economy.
This was repetitively brought up by Teoita and others in the beginning of the beta, but somehow it didn't get traction in the community. Its a very good point.
Yeah, we in TL Strat still aren't generally too fond of the econ changes, but it is what it is, and better to work with it and see what you can get than complain about something that isn't going to change.
Ok, explain to me why this idea is wrong (I'm assuming it must be):
QXC makes a very good point about marauders, in that their effectiveness was moderated indirectly rather than through nerfs.
Applying that same thinking to Adepts, I got this:
Remove Photon Overcharge.
The biggest issue I saw in the Red Bull games was that the protoss's aggression had zero downside. Make a quick robo, which means you're already insured against anything sneaky. Load up with a couple of adepts and go poke around. Warp in more if it looks promising, or don't. And if they do leave their base and you don't see it coming - no worries. Throw down two or three POs while you empty their mineral lines.
Maybe, with the Adept, Protoss no longer needs PO?
On September 25 2015 23:33 Ouija wrote: its been apparent since day 1 of beta... Thanks for the reminder?
Blizzard does NOT like to change actual unit numbers.. so good luck. Knowing them they will try to fix it through nerfing the warp prism. The only other thing I could see them doing is making the shade ability available later.
Wow... Day 1 beta the Adept was terrible and pretty much a joke unit. It was only strong when they buffed its stats considerably. In fact Protoss in general was awful in LotV until recently, a couple of months ago Lycan was offering extra money if anyone won a Lycan Cup (or whatever they are called) playing Protoss, and I don't think anyone got that extra money. Day 1 beta Protoss was arguably worse than HotS Protoss.
On September 26 2015 00:33 Umpteen wrote: Ok, explain to me why this idea is wrong (I'm assuming it must be):
QXC makes a very good point about marauders, in that their effectiveness was moderated indirectly rather than through nerfs.
Applying that same thinking to Adepts, I got this:
Remove Photon Overcharge.
The biggest issue I saw in the Red Bull games was that the protoss's aggression had zero downside. Make a quick robo, which means you're already insured against anything sneaky. Load up with a couple of adepts and go poke around. Warp in more if it looks promising, or don't. And if they do leave their base and you don't see it coming - no worries. Throw down two or three POs while you empty their mineral lines.
Maybe, with the Adept, Protoss no longer needs PO?
I think that is alway a valid strategy. I question whether it is the best one. The thing with these sorts of compensation-nerfs is that they hit every Protoss strategy, not just the ones in this discussion which are mainly the offensive early game adept plays as far as I would say. Though I like the suggestions because I don't like PO.
I think they could leave the adept the way it is if they remove the mothership core completely and nerf the build time of warp prism as well as some of the other buffs to warp prism they added in the past.
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
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 agree with the fact that Adepts are OP now, I was thinking the same they told about that we must adapt the game to them, and then we will see is a normal unit. On the other hand, after seeing the Archon tournament of the last week, I realized that for pros, Adepts are a very OP unit, the things they were doing with only adepts were ridiculous, and we are speaking about a tier 1 unit. I agree with the changes qxc says, but for me would be more simple to decrease light damage and time of shade, and with upgrade in twilight, the actual Adept. Because now it's a completely OP unit, as a terran seems quite quite difficult to hold.
On September 25 2015 19:48 parkufarku wrote: You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
You disregarded every point made and attacked qxc simply for playing terran. You also somehow expected an article titled "Adepts are too strong" to focus on Liberators (which were even nerfed recently). I'm not surprised though. Shitposter gonna shitpost.
The problem I see with the initial nerfs you are suggesting is that it's attack rate is way too slow to be dealing that little damage. Shade or no, the unit can't become outright weak before the upgrade.
If you nerf it's damage, it's attack rate needs to be increased to compensate for the mid-late game.
Something like 10(+8) vs light with a ~1.8 attack timer (On normal speed; the current attack timer is 2.25). Benefits of this change: It now 3 shots workers/Marines, increasing the time to kill them from 2.25 seconds (With 1 of them), to ~3.6. It retains it's strength vs Lings, which is something Protoss has sorely lacked since BW; early lings dominate Protoss gateway units until they are in large numbers, and make it overly difficult to punish Zerg for being greedy. If in doubt, go watch Pro PvZgames on Vaani Research station, where Zerg took their first expansion at the mid-map gold and Protoss were entirely unable to punish it; This is also, largely, the reason the MSC was a necessary addition to the game, and why FFE was considered the only viable opener vs Zerg throughout both BW and WoL. In addition, this reduces the Adept's power when harassing workers by increasing the number of hits needed to kill them to 3, and with reduced HP, they would be easier to kill before dealing major damage.
Combined with this DPS change, a reduction in HP would be necessary; reducing the total HP from 180 to ~140-150 would make the unit fill a bit less of a tanking role.
IMO, the shield upgrade should be removed from the unit entirely, in favor of a more DPS oriented upgrade, involving a faster attack rate or a bounce attack; this would give Protoss a bit more reliable DPS in the mid-late game from a low tech unit, which is another thing the race is sorely lacking compared to Terran and Zerg.
That said, I think the general design of Protoss gateway units is a bit off; they are all high HP, but low or unreliable/melee, dps. With no significant differentiation as to their roles, you generally don't want to mix units more than you have to; generally a high stalker count, with a few Zealots/Adepts to tank anti-armored damage in the early-mid game, or a high Zealot/Adept count with a few Stalkers for AA. This leads to a serious lack of diversity within Protoss compositions based on their core units compared to Terran/Zerg, who generally want to mix their core units to complement each-other until they have utility units that can protect the more DPS oriented units (Marauders tank damage for marines, as well as dealing high anti-armored damage; Roaches/Lings tank for Hydras and add more mobility or burst damage to the army)
In WoL and HoTS, the reason Colossus were necessary wasn't because they were overpowered, it was because they were the only source of consistent, reliable damage output for the Protoss army; that damage being AOE made them a bit too strong in some situations (Like against marine-heavy bio armies, Hydras, and Marines), but nonetheless, the unit was necessary in the Protoss army because it fulfilled the role that basic units fill for Terran and Zerg: DPS. Essentially, the tech-tree for Protoss is the reverse of the Terran/Zerg tech trees; Bio Terran get high DPS, but low HP units as the initial tech (Marines, Marauders), with more durability being added to the army are mid-tier tech (Medivacs, Thors), and utility units are high tech (Ghosts, Ravens). Zerg get their tanking units initially (Roaches, Lings), their DPS in the mid-tier (Hydras), and their utility at high tech (Vipers). Protoss get their utility and army durability initially, specialized units in the mid game, and DPS from their higher tech units.
There is also the issue of the Liberator in late game TvP making it near impossible for the Protoss player to win though. Right now, Protoss are winning a lot because their early all in plays and warp prism harass with adepts are too strong, but if the game goes late, they are pretty much guaranteed to lose.
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.
Actually, for the most part, the Warp Prism harass with Adepts is what is actually winning games. Adept plays without a Warp prism don't seem to be all that strong unless the Terran player just doesn't wall. I'm not saying the adept isn't too strong right now, but the Adept itself isn't nearly as big of a problem as people are making it out to be. It's the fact that it just has too much HP for a 2 supply unit, making it too good at tanking things like Marauders (so blink stalkers/Immortals can deal the damage), and that it has overly specialized DPS that is particularly strong for harassment.
On September 26 2015 05:11 Asamu1 wrote: There is also the issue of the Liberator in late game TvP making it near impossible for the Protoss player to win though. Right now, Protoss are winning a lot because their early all in plays and warp prism harass with adepts are too strong, but if the game goes late, they are pretty much guaranteed to lose.
This is no reason not to nerf the adept. This is in fact a reason to nerf both the adept and the liberator.
On September 26 2015 05:11 Asamu1 wrote: There is also the issue of the Liberator in late game TvP making it near impossible for the Protoss player to win though. Right now, Protoss are winning a lot because their early all in plays and warp prism harass with adepts are too strong, but if the game goes late, they are pretty much guaranteed to lose.
This is no reason not to nerf the adept. This is in fact a reason to nerf both the adept and the liberator.
I didn't say it was a reason not to nerf the adept, I just figured it should be mentioned that the Liberator is also an issue, because if the Adept is nerfed without nerfs to the Liberator, TvP will likely swing entirely in the other direction, and become overly Terran favored, since the Liberator doesn't seem to be making it into balance discussions lately with the focus on adepts.
On September 26 2015 05:11 Asamu1 wrote: There is also the issue of the Liberator in late game TvP making it near impossible for the Protoss player to win though. Right now, Protoss are winning a lot because their early all in plays and warp prism harass with adepts are too strong, but if the game goes late, they are pretty much guaranteed to lose.
This is no reason not to nerf the adept. This is in fact a reason to nerf both the adept and the liberator.
I didn't say it was a reason not to nerf the adept, I just figured it should be mentioned that the Liberator is also an issue, because if the Adept is nerfed without nerfs to the Liberator, TvP will likely swing entirely in the other direction, and become overly Terran favored, since the Liberator doesn't seem to be making it into balance discussions lately with the focus on adepts.
What makes you think Liberators are too good? On The Patch (talk show with CatZ and various other pros) the consensus seemed to be that the Liberator is fine, CatZ even thinks the latest tech lab upgrade was an over-nerf.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On September 26 2015 17:12 Iznogood wrote: 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.....
He doesn't need to acknowledge this. Terrible design is still terrible design, just because Protoss can't easily expand doesn't mean it should get a OP unit in the early game to compensate for it, or the ridiculous pylon overcharge. What Protoss needed was a redesign of the other core GW units, Zealots and Stalkers, so they'd be better at fighting and holding a expansion early, or so they'd be good in tandem with Adepts at holding a expansion early..
I really dont understand why blizzard keeps making up stupid units that just totaly skrew up the beautiful balance and playstyle made out from years of SCBW evolution.
Also the Adept model is ugly as hell, and totaly stolen from DOTA or WC3 Hero unit (which I proudly don't remember the name of, but im sure you all know what I am talking about)
I really dont understand why blizzard keeps making up stupid units that just totaly skrew up the beautiful balance and playstyle made out from years of SCBW evolution.
Also the Adept model is ugly as hell, and totaly stolen from DOTA or WC3 Hero unit (which I proudly don't remember the name of, but im sure you all know what I am talking about)
A 1to1 port of dragoon would be nothing but a nerfed stalker...
On September 26 2015 17:12 Iznogood wrote: 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.....
He doesn't need to acknowledge this. Terrible design is still terrible design, just because Protoss can't easily expand doesn't mean it should get a OP unit in the early game to compensate for it, or the ridiculous pylon overcharge. What Protoss needed was a redesign of the other core GW units, Zealots and Stalkers, so they'd be better at fighting and holding a expansion early, or so they'd be good in tandem with Adepts at holding a expansion early..
Well, since the design phase is now over, it doesn´t matter what disign flaws may or may not excist. The fact is, that Protoss doesn´t have anything else from GW that allows for the fast expos needed in LotV with the new econ system.
And since , as stated earlier, that tech for Toss takes the same time it always did, Adepts needs to be strong. Maybe they can be balanced more some way or another, we´ll have to see what Blizz comes up with. IMHO, Blizz has painted themselves into a corner as usual, regarding Adepts. It´s like the WM and the Hellbat. Nerf them a tad and they are too weak and useless, let them be or buff them, and they are OP as hell in some situations.
On September 26 2015 17:12 Iznogood wrote: 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.....
He doesn't need to acknowledge this. Terrible design is still terrible design, just because Protoss can't easily expand doesn't mean it should get a OP unit in the early game to compensate for it, or the ridiculous pylon overcharge. What Protoss needed was a redesign of the other core GW units, Zealots and Stalkers, so they'd be better at fighting and holding a expansion early, or so they'd be good in tandem with Adepts at holding a expansion early..
Well, since the design phase is now over, it doesn´t matter what disign flaws may or may not excist. The fact is, that Protoss doesn´t have anything else from GW that allows for the fast expos needed in LotV with the new econ system.
And since , as stated earlier, that tech for Toss takes the same time it always did, Adepts needs to be strong. Maybe they can be balanced more some way or another, we´ll have to see what Blizz comes up with. IMHO, Blizz has painted themselves into a corner as usual, regarding Adepts. It´s like the WM and the Hellbat. Nerf them a tad and they are too weak and useless, let them be or buff them, and they are OP as hell in some situations.
Are PvZ expansion builds really hard to hold without adepts or something? Because holy shit, do I not remember the last time I saw a Protoss struggle to fast expand in PvT. Terran, on the other hand, is kind of shit right now TvP. Adepts do not need to be that strong if Protoss just wants to be able to defend an expo.
Surely you'll acknowledge that in the present build, Protoss is absurdly powerful early game, and gets pretty weak after that. Is that really what you want?
On September 25 2015 19:48 parkufarku wrote: You're a respected player and a good writer, but you are also a Terran player and tend to write things from the T perspective. Even if this article is well-written, I have a hard time not believing QXC's views are distorted and biased from the race he plays. High level players can't be biased? Look at Avilo.
Look, Liberators are WAY more of a balance problem than anything, and the article complains about Adept. That alone make me disregard this post as a 'polished balance whine' on SC2 general page.
Why? Of course QXC is biased (and he does not deny it) but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read the article. Can't you think for yourself? I do agree about the Liberator though, Blizzard should NOT add another air unit OBVIOUSLY (I was facepalming so hard when the unit was introduced).
Anyway QXC: Why do you opt for a second shade ability instead of just having an upgrade to increase the duration of the first one?
On September 26 2015 17:12 Iznogood wrote: 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.....
He doesn't need to acknowledge this. Terrible design is still terrible design, just because Protoss can't easily expand doesn't mean it should get a OP unit in the early game to compensate for it, or the ridiculous pylon overcharge. What Protoss needed was a redesign of the other core GW units, Zealots and Stalkers, so they'd be better at fighting and holding a expansion early, or so they'd be good in tandem with Adepts at holding a expansion early..
Well, since the design phase is now over, it doesn´t matter what disign flaws may or may not excist. The fact is, that Protoss doesn´t have anything else from GW that allows for the fast expos needed in LotV with the new econ system.
And since , as stated earlier, that tech for Toss takes the same time it always did, Adepts needs to be strong. Maybe they can be balanced more some way or another, we´ll have to see what Blizz comes up with. IMHO, Blizz has painted themselves into a corner as usual, regarding Adepts. It´s like the WM and the Hellbat. Nerf them a tad and they are too weak and useless, let them be or buff them, and they are OP as hell in some situations.
Are PvZ expansion builds really hard to hold without adepts or something? Because holy shit, do I not remember the last time I saw a Protoss struggle to fast expand in PvT. Terran, on the other hand, is kind of shit right now TvP. Adepts do not need to be that strong if Protoss just wants to be able to defend an expo.
Surely you'll acknowledge that in the present build, Protoss is absurdly powerful early game, and gets pretty weak after that. Is that really what you want?
Nobody said, that balancing wasn´t needed. I just said it is a difficult one TO balance. Just like the WM and the Hellbat. Add Tempests for measure. Adepts are kinda specialized units, like the above.
What about moving the Adept to other branch of the tech tree? what if the adept was redesigned to be a midgame harassing unit? Or at least put the transfer ability as a research on the twilight council
In this case, Stalker would be the bad substitute, poor modeldesigned, nerfed unit. Which actually has alot shorter range and less damange than the original and already fully functional Dragoon from SCBW, (which they really had no point in totaly removing in the first place)
I would suggest keep the stalker if you really have too, now make the stalker with blink the midd-game harrasment unit. and reinstate the Dragoon to its rightful place and glory with its longer range and perhaps some other stat adjustment to its advantage.
Also why not give back the Reavers, and their harrasment factor to Protoss. (but thats another forum)
On September 26 2015 17:12 Iznogood wrote: 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.....
He doesn't need to acknowledge this. Terrible design is still terrible design, just because Protoss can't easily expand doesn't mean it should get a OP unit in the early game to compensate for it, or the ridiculous pylon overcharge. What Protoss needed was a redesign of the other core GW units, Zealots and Stalkers, so they'd be better at fighting and holding a expansion early, or so they'd be good in tandem with Adepts at holding a expansion early..
Well, since the design phase is now over, it doesn´t matter what disign flaws may or may not excist. The fact is, that Protoss doesn´t have anything else from GW that allows for the fast expos needed in LotV with the new econ system.
And since , as stated earlier, that tech for Toss takes the same time it always did, Adepts needs to be strong. Maybe they can be balanced more some way or another, we´ll have to see what Blizz comes up with. IMHO, Blizz has painted themselves into a corner as usual, regarding Adepts. It´s like the WM and the Hellbat. Nerf them a tad and they are too weak and useless, let them be or buff them, and they are OP as hell in some situations.
Are PvZ expansion builds really hard to hold without adepts or something? Because holy shit, do I not remember the last time I saw a Protoss struggle to fast expand in PvT. Terran, on the other hand, is kind of shit right now TvP. Adepts do not need to be that strong if Protoss just wants to be able to defend an expo.
Surely you'll acknowledge that in the present build, Protoss is absurdly powerful early game, and gets pretty weak after that. Is that really what you want?
Nobody said, that balancing wasn´t needed. I just said it is a difficult one TO balance. Just like the WM and the Hellbat. Add Tempests for measure. Adepts are kinda specialized units, like the above.
I mean yeah, they are kinda specialized – and interestingly enough, not particularly defensively focused, contrary to your points. I haven't seen Protoss struggle to expand in my games, but when they do expand early it doesn't usually seem to be on the back of adepts. Maybe in PvZ that's more necessary? Is it not fast enough to expand with forge and cannons now? Or do ling drops kill you or something?
Because it sure sounded like your argument here was that qxc and others calling for adept nerfs are misunderstanding or willfully ignoring that the adept has to be so strong in order to allow Protoss to expand relatively quickly – otherwise, the new economy is just too punishing because they can't take a safe expo. I'd be a little surprised if that's true, and given how hard they make it for Terran to take an expo anyway I don't think the argument can hold much weight.
On September 27 2015 00:10 ToqZICTTD wrote: In this case, Stalker would be the bad substitute, poor modeldesigned, nerfed unit. Which actually has alot shorter range and less damange than the original and already fully functional Dragoon from SCBW, (which they really had no point in totaly removing in the first place)
I would suggest keep the stalker if you really have too, now make the stalker with blink the midd-game harrasment unit. and reinstate the Dragoon to its rightful place and glory with its longer range and perhaps some other stat adjustment to its advantage.
Also why not give back the Reavers, and their harrasment factor to Protoss. (but thats another forum)
Dude, the dragoon literally needs and upgrade to have the same range that the stalkerpacks by default. It has literally the same damage vs light/small and I think even a higher firerate (did the math a few years back). The speed is also comparable. the only upsides are 20extra health and a bit extra dps vs large/massive targets, for the cost of blink whichis a ridiculously powerful ability inand out of combat.
Is the adept really op? I think we can't say this for sure. There was a time when everyone said "omg nerf blink", "omg nerf oracle", then people just figured out a way to counter them.
Lotv meta changes very quickly and until all the sc2 pros leave hots for lotv and figure out new strategies, I think no units can be said to be op. People can write posts like these on 3-4 units for every race
I wont comment on balance, but every tvp was mass adapts + dropplay. Every single tvp the same shit over and over and over and over again. Im looking forward to the first tournaments to see how the results will be.
On September 27 2015 01:29 Icekin wrote: Is the adept really op? I think we can't say this for sure. There was a time when everyone said "omg nerf blink", "omg nerf oracle", then people just figured out a way to counter them.
Lotv meta changes very quickly and until all the sc2 pros leave hots for lotv and figure out new strategies, I think no units can be said to be op. People can write posts like these on 3-4 units for every race
Uh, the blink/oracle era was largely solved by map changes – in other words, an indirect nerf to blink and oracle. I'm not saying there's no examples of something being called OP and then people figuring it out, but I don't think that blink (which did get a big nerf in HotS) and the oracle are good examples.
If you say "we can't say anything about balance until all the pros have switched over" then we just can't make balance changes until release. Is that really what you want?
On September 27 2015 01:29 Icekin wrote: Is the adept really op? I think we can't say this for sure. There was a time when everyone said "omg nerf blink", "omg nerf oracle", then people just figured out a way to counter them.
Lotv meta changes very quickly and until all the sc2 pros leave hots for lotv and figure out new strategies, I think no units can be said to be op. People can write posts like these on 3-4 units for every race
Uh, the blink/oracle era was largely solved by map changes – in other words, an indirect nerf to blink and oracle. I'm not saying there's no examples of something being called OP and then people figuring it out, but I don't think that blink (which did get a big nerf in HotS) and the oracle are good examples.
If you say "we can't say anything about balance until all the pros have switched over" then we just can't make balance changes until release. Is that really what you want?
Blink era was ended by the widow mine revert. It was introduced by the widow mine nerf. Yeonsu, Polar Night, and Frost were in S3 2013 and while blink was strong on those maps, it was not completely broken until the nerf.
On September 27 2015 01:29 Icekin wrote: Is the adept really op? I think we can't say this for sure. There was a time when everyone said "omg nerf blink", "omg nerf oracle", then people just figured out a way to counter them.
Lotv meta changes very quickly and until all the sc2 pros leave hots for lotv and figure out new strategies, I think no units can be said to be op. People can write posts like these on 3-4 units for every race
Uh, the blink/oracle era was largely solved by map changes – in other words, an indirect nerf to blink and oracle. I'm not saying there's no examples of something being called OP and then people figuring it out, but I don't think that blink (which did get a big nerf in HotS) and the oracle are good examples.
If you say "we can't say anything about balance until all the pros have switched over" then we just can't make balance changes until release. Is that really what you want?
Blink era was ended by the widow mine revert. It was introduced by the widow mine nerf. Yeonsu, Polar Night, and Frost were in S3 2013 and while blink was strong on those maps, it was not completely broken until the nerf.
exactly, even IEM and other tournaments were a toss fest.
On September 27 2015 01:29 Icekin wrote: Is the adept really op? I think we can't say this for sure. There was a time when everyone said "omg nerf blink", "omg nerf oracle", then people just figured out a way to counter them.
Lotv meta changes very quickly and until all the sc2 pros leave hots for lotv and figure out new strategies, I think no units can be said to be op. People can write posts like these on 3-4 units for every race
Uh, the blink/oracle era was largely solved by map changes – in other words, an indirect nerf to blink and oracle. I'm not saying there's no examples of something being called OP and then people figuring it out, but I don't think that blink (which did get a big nerf in HotS) and the oracle are good examples.
If you say "we can't say anything about balance until all the pros have switched over" then we just can't make balance changes until release. Is that really what you want?
Blink era was ended by the widow mine revert. It was introduced by the widow mine nerf. Yeonsu, Polar Night, and Frost were in S3 2013 and while blink was strong on those maps, it was not completely broken until the nerf.
Well, fair enough. For my point, it's inconsequential, since I'm merely refuting that the blink/oracle issues were solved without the game needing any adjustment.
Zergs are defending really well adept harass this week. I'm starting to think that any change to this unit should not impact PvZ otherwise adepts will be weak.
On September 27 2015 07:36 Tiaraju9 wrote: Zergs are defending really well adept harass this week. I'm starting to think that any change to this unit should not impact PvZ otherwise adepts will be weak.
Assuming that's true, is there a reason that fast adept pressure needs to be viable PvZ? It seems like queens are pretty good non-light defense, so it might be difficult to put adepts in a spot where they are strong against queen defenses without being broken against marine defenses.
On September 27 2015 07:36 Tiaraju9 wrote: Zergs are defending really well adept harass this week. I'm starting to think that any change to this unit should not impact PvZ otherwise adepts will be weak.
Assuming that's true, is there a reason that fast adept pressure needs to be viable PvZ? It seems like queens are pretty good non-light defense, so it might be difficult to put adepts in a spot where they are strong against queen defenses without being broken against marine defenses.
no, protoss doesn't need adept harass in pvz at all. nothing changed about zerg in lotv to make it necessary for protoss to use adepts to slow down zerg's economy, it's just a new option. the game will be completely fine if protoss can't get a bunch of free worker kills with adept openers.
On September 27 2015 09:18 shid0x wrote: Well that's a nice article but i though anyone who plays the game would notice this without reading all that.
You might be surprised at the variety of opinions that exist. Not everyone comes to the same conclusions after looking at the same data, and not everyone has the same perspective or experience.
Maybe they're too good vs Terran, I duno, I don't play Terran. Yet. But, they're not too good early game vs Zerg. They may come fast, but not fast enough. Zerg is just fine against adepts, imo.
no, protoss doesn't need adept harass in pvz at all. nothing changed about zerg in lotv to make it necessary for protoss to use adepts to slow down zerg's economy, it's just a new option. the game will be completely fine if protoss can't get a bunch of free worker kills with adept openers.
Zerg armies are stronger and zergs are doing some pretty crazy greedy openings that are way harder to punish without adepts
On September 27 2015 07:36 Tiaraju9 wrote: Zergs are defending really well adept harass this week. I'm starting to think that any change to this unit should not impact PvZ otherwise adepts will be weak.
Assuming that's true, is there a reason that fast adept pressure needs to be viable PvZ? It seems like queens are pretty good non-light defense, so it might be difficult to put adepts in a spot where they are strong against queen defenses without being broken against marine defenses.
no, protoss doesn't need adept harass in pvz at all. nothing changed about zerg in lotv to make it necessary for protoss to use adepts to slow down zerg's economy, it's just a new option. the game will be completely fine if protoss can't get a bunch of free worker kills with adept openers.
Zerg is the race that benefits the most from the new econ. Being able to quickly mass speedlings for pressure while Protoss would be in the gutter , no matter which opening they chose, without Adepts. Terran also benefits from the econ while Protoss still relies on tech for the mid- lategame. And that tech takes the same amount of time it always did. Think about it. Without Adepts and the possibilities they give, Protoss wouldn´t be able to put any pressure at all, nor defend. Not even with MsC. Zerg and Terran could just keep massing their cheap as chips Lings and Marines and exhaust a Protoss. Adepts needs to be strong vs Light, the question is HOW strong. And that is what we all wait for Blizz to find out and test.
On September 27 2015 07:36 Tiaraju9 wrote: Zergs are defending really well adept harass this week. I'm starting to think that any change to this unit should not impact PvZ otherwise adepts will be weak.
Assuming that's true, is there a reason that fast adept pressure needs to be viable PvZ? It seems like queens are pretty good non-light defense, so it might be difficult to put adepts in a spot where they are strong against queen defenses without being broken against marine defenses.
no, protoss doesn't need adept harass in pvz at all. nothing changed about zerg in lotv to make it necessary for protoss to use adepts to slow down zerg's economy, it's just a new option. the game will be completely fine if protoss can't get a bunch of free worker kills with adept openers.
Zerg is the race that benefits the most from the new econ. Being able to quickly mass speedlings for pressure while Protoss would be in the gutter , no matter which opening they chose, without Adepts. Terran also benefits from the econ while Protoss still relies on tech for the mid- lategame. And that tech takes the same amount of time it always did. Think about it. Without Adepts and the possibilities they give, Protoss wouldn´t be able to put any pressure at all, nor defend. Not even with MsC. Zerg and Terran could just keep massing their cheap as chips Lings and Marines and exhaust a Protoss. Adepts needs to be strong vs Light, the question is HOW strong. And that is what we all wait for Blizz to find out and test.
Something to consider is that Zerg expansions need to come sooner, often before creep is typically spread, making it harder to defend bases than HOTS. In many situation in HOTS where you would have creep halfway across the map, you're now needing to expand to a fourth with creep barely there, allowing Terran to push that area (or Protoss) and take much more favorable engagements. Something I feel many people are not considering, but I've noticed myself as playing Zerg.
given how fast creep spread I'm unsure how that's possible, if anything it always feels like creeps is coming to my base was faster than in HOTS
Yup crazy fast. It recedes faster but it's in your face a lot more now
In many situation in HOTS where you would have creep halfway across the map, you're now needing to expand to a fourth with creep barely there
Zerg at this point has creep over their 4'th, 5'th, 6'th, 7'th and all over my 4'th before i can even take it sometimes. It's rather easy to build extra queens, they're very good against toss air and it spreads twice as fast as before, nothing surprising here
On September 28 2015 10:56 ROOTFayth wrote: given how fast creep spread I'm unsure how that's possible, if anything it always feels like creeps is coming to my base was faster than in HOTS
Get used to it I guess, gonna have to be really on top of clearing it. Zerg gets so much vision from it.
On September 28 2015 11:53 FabledIntegral wrote: Is creep spreading faster a new thing in a more recent patch?
Yes, they doubled the creep spread rate very recently, 2 patches ago. Zergs are also just building 10+ queens when you go carrier without a gateway count to back it up so there is purple crap everywhere no matter what you do to clear it
On September 28 2015 11:53 FabledIntegral wrote: Is creep spreading faster a new thing in a more recent patch?
Yes, they doubled the creep spread rate very recently, 2 patches ago. Zergs are also just building 10+ queens when you go carrier without a gateway count to back it up so there is purple crap everywhere no matter what you do to clear it
Then I retract my statement.
I need to get used to carrier WITH gateway because I'm used to going mass hydra, but the adept WRECK me when I do that
In my humble opinion Adepts are simply poorly designed on many levels. I've wrote this in Blizz forums several times. Overall I feel that LotV started out very well with nice design ideas that have fallen into old, rooted design vices. Just look at macro and econ.
Adepts are a recipe for the fail, because they are a bunch of ideas just thrown into a bucket without being refined at all, mostly caused by the dumb ability and the dumb weapon design, which was unchanged from the original design of the unit, that has completely different uses from the original one. Did they ever test their old Adept version? It was so clunky that barely no one built them and they were very horrible, BUT they had decent firepower while attacking light units after upgrade. By toying around with the damage period/bounce attack, they almost had a good unit, quite efficient vs bio, specially marines (which is almost the core design perk of the adept).
Unit testers showed that there was some potential on it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXALm9Om1Wo) but when I tried them the unit felt too clunky, too much harass-oriented, and a bit underpowered and unrefined in most combat situations. (DPS vs armor too low, Bounce damage too unreliable/inneficient because of weapon period, and damage values needed a re-test). Let's take a look now to design perks on paper:
Original Adept conception (acceptable) - Infantry unit strong vs low HP infantry units. (marines/zerglings).
- Infantry-like unit, more similar to Bio, total HP lower than a Zealot. (60/80, 0 armor), low cost(100/25) low tech. - High damage weapon with Bounce damage upgrade (decent DPS increase vs low HP light units since they trigger the bounce more), compensated by the slow fire rate and overkill. - Intended to work as a harass unit early game like Reapers with the shade ability. - Intended to work as a core unit like marauders but vs light. - Decently vulnerable to AoE (mech/banelings) - Complements the Protoss army mainly in terms of DPS.
Actual iteration of the Adept - Protoss Roach with Antilight dmg.
- Uberincarnation of Protoss unit, mass HP tank unit (90/90 1 armor +50shield upgrade). - High damage weapon with low DPS and very low fire rate, no weapon/aggro upgrade). - Still intended to be a harass unit despite the fact that HP was increased a 30% (60% with upgrade) with no cost at all. - Actually usable vs everything because of the massive HP increase. - Massive HP pool just shits over everything, but also tanks, mines, and banelings (units that should be good vs adepts). - 4 range, being too short to really combat bio, meaning that there is low dps density and high exposition. (like roaches) - Replaces Zealots in almost all instances.
I think they might just have to revert the design of the Adept to a previous stage. Ideally, an infantry unit able to deal well with bio but killable by other things, and it's not very hard to do. It's all about going over the old concept and stats, BUT with well designed weapon values and some design decisions. On short, Adepts should be some kind of Marauder for Protoss, specially because they could help rebalancing some aspects of the race that have always demanded some revision/improvement (early game vulnerability, dependency on Forcefields specially vs Zerg, Gateway inneficiency vs MMM, more tradeable armies). If the core units are acceptably strong but not broken and decently versatile, some other aspects could be balanced better.
Ideas to make fun and decent Adepts that ideally perform their best vs Marines/Bio
- Stats in line of an infantry unit. Similar HP to old concept (around the HP of a Zealot or lower). - Increased DPS density, with higher range (5-5.5) and lower collision size (0.5 like a Zealot). - Increased DPS efficiency, with shorter weapon periods, damage decreased (less overkill). Worth considering removal of projectile, which could be a very big buff (0 overkill, like immortals). - Hard-countering toned down noticeably. - Reexploration of possible bounce damage/ weapon upgrades that work well specifically vs small collision units that usually are very clumped (marines, maybe zerglings, maybe Hydras too). Zerglings naturally space out for the attack, so Zealots are still worth against them. Bio will have the option to pre-split to avoid damage, but at the same time reducing DPS density and opening gaps for Zealots = Longer, more balanced and micro heavy fights for both. - Reexplore mobility/ability mechanics/possible mobility-related upgrade. Shade mechanic is decent, but its balance is very dependant on how good Adepts can perform vs workers.
If Adepts were to be transformed into a tank unit, then it's another question. Do we want Adepts to be Protoss Roaches or Protoss Mauraders??
so what if there was an upgrade for shade in cybernetics core for, let's say, 25/25 or 50/50 and timed at aprox. 80 sec. the point is not to make protoss spend resources but to prevent him from having shade AND warpgate research at the same early time.
QXC won this argument. The community feedback confirmed that Blizz is going to nerf the stats on the Adept. Blizz likes the shade way to much to mess around with it now. I expect one of the following nerfs:
On September 29 2015 11:12 CannonsNCarriers wrote: QXC won this argument. The community feedback confirmed that Blizz is going to nerf the stats on the Adept. Blizz likes the shade way to much to mess around with it now. I expect one of the following nerfs:
On September 27 2015 09:42 FabledIntegral wrote: -1 dmg to light, make shade vision like 25% of what it is now, nerf warp prism
I doubt the damage change can happen, since Drones and Probes both have 40 HP, and SCVs 45. Or maybe that's the direction of balancing PvT?
That's the point. Greatly reduces adept strength PvT only in battles, while also reducing scouting potential. Let's be real even with reduced vision they'd be good for scouting.
They did nerf Marauders though. Originally, they were born with concussive shells. The research time and cost are low, okay, but now you have to research concussive shells.
Took a little while to get that nerf, so it should probably be on your list of points to make, since you're focusing on the 'rauder anyway.
On September 29 2015 12:57 BoX wrote: They did nerf Marauders though. Originally, they were born with concussive shells. The research time and cost are low, okay, but now you have to research concussive shells.
Took a little while to get that nerf, so it should probably be on your list of points to make, since you're focusing on the 'rauder anyway.
That was a change made in early WoL beta though, and things changed a lot every week back then.
On September 29 2015 12:57 BoX wrote: They did nerf Marauders though. Originally, they were born with concussive shells. The research time and cost are low, okay, but now you have to research concussive shells.
Took a little while to get that nerf, so it should probably be on your list of points to make, since you're focusing on the 'rauder anyway.
That was a change made in early WoL beta though, and things changed a lot every week back then.
Yeah I thought they came with conc too but didn't comment. Good to know it was actually removed during the beta. Marauder rushes were insanely strong back then!
On September 29 2015 11:55 Pin wrote: You could make this thread title with any protoss unit and it would accurately reflect QXC's thoughts.
I lol'd. But seriously, even if he's 100% skewed one way or the other, the discussion is still good for the game and it's development.... Even if David doesn't listen to us, which he probably shouldn't because we're all a bunch of bigots, trolls and butt-hurt terran players...
Honestly tho I've been very disappointed with the beta so far. The coolest change for me was the removal of macro mechanics, which is by no means balanced or ok, but they should have toyed with the idea more instead of just arbitrarily throwing them back in. They need to overhaul the economy in my opinion and they have still yet to do that. I don't care so much about the units because you can always tweak and change units, but the core of this game is it's economy and I am still waiting and hoping for some sweet distant muse to take us all to that awesome RTS game we deserve.
That's the point. Greatly reduces adept strength PvT only in battles
Adepts are weak (zealots take over) as soon as ghosts and medivacs are with the terran main army, they're just overly strong against light units early game (and non-light anti-light options are a niche that's pretty empty at the moment)
That's the point. Greatly reduces adept strength PvT only in battles
Adepts are weak (zealots take over) as soon as ghosts and medivacs are with the terran main army, they're just overly strong against light units early game (and non-light anti-light options are a niche that's pretty empty at the moment)
It was meant super early game, but adepts are also extremely good for making a shade onto the enemy army of MMM, and then charging in with your other units. Allows for good positioning advantage, prevents retreating, and soaks up damage while other units deal the dmg, something zealots cannot do the same.
That's the point. Greatly reduces adept strength PvT only in battles
Adepts are weak (zealots take over) as soon as ghosts and medivacs are with the terran main army, they're just overly strong against light units early game (and non-light anti-light options are a niche that's pretty empty at the moment)
It was meant super early game, but adepts are also extremely good for making a shade onto the enemy army of MMM, and then charging in with your other units. Allows for good positioning advantage, prevents retreating, and soaks up damage while other units deal the dmg, something zealots cannot do the same.
If you do that, terran can hit literally all of them with 1-2 emp's and kill them almost instantly with a stim - it's staring a fight by donating half of your army. If he doesn't have medivac, ghost or liberator support then it's much more dangerous.. but every terran has medivac, ghost and/or liberator support in the midgame. It's what makes their armies truly tick
I've always felt that adepts are really awesome (perhaps too much so) when you have 4 or 6 or even 10 of them but they do fall off quite extremely
On September 25 2015 21:06 Whitewing wrote: Adepts were made overly strong because the Protoss early game is atrocious otherwise.
The problem is that they have no time to tech anymore, and they are a race design based on teching. To compensate, they were given a unit that can hold them over to allow them time to actually tech, but that unit has to be very strong on almost no tech in order for that to function.
In short, the Adept is a product of the Protoss race design with the economy changes. If you want to nerf the adept in the early game, some consideration needs to go towards solving this problem.
You can always invent some pretext for a unit to be very strong, economy or whatever else, but the fact remains, if this unit is objectively too strong for its cost and its required tech, you nerf it, and buff something else instead. I can't believe that Protoss would be totally fucked beyond redemption if the Adept was slightly weaker. The adept doesn't have to be the only solution to Protoss woes. And we're lucky this time, I think adepts are pretty well designed, it's just that they're too strong, they don't need to get out of the game altogether, and they can even remain a core unit.
I'm not defending it, I'm explaining it. There are solutions, but they might be unpalatable as well. Nerfing the adept will nuke the all-ins which would be a good thing, absolutely, but you might find that Protoss can't defend expansions anymore, which was the main problem with the economy changes in the first place.
An obvious solution would be an adept nerf combined with a buff to other gateway units. A less obvious solution is an adept nerf combined with general scaling improvements to Protoss as a whole, meaning that you've decided Protoss will have a weak early game but will scale well enough that it's fine for that to be true. There are other options.
The basic gist though is that Protoss needs some kind of low tech early game option that is strong in order to be able to spend time teching. You can shift power away from the adept to other units, but remember that at any given point in time, you only have so many units out total, so splitting the adept's strength around is a net nerf (which is fine, a nerf is needed, but gotta do so carefully).
The combat stats are too high, plain as that. Blizzard still hasn't understood the importance of movement-speed mobility to secure bases and defend and are trying to make protoss take bases with raw power. Which is plainly not possible without overpowering protoss attacks. The result is a unit that is too strong early but doesn't make protoss more interesting because they still lose out on the economy front.
This about sums it up BigJ. Protoss isn't mobile enough to defend bases, and therefore needs to compensate by having raw power in their units. Typically that is provided by tech, but it can't be here because of the economy changes: Protoss doesn't have time to tech in addition to the other stuff they have to do.
Unfortunately, that means Protoss can just all-in you with those units instead of expanding.
I find it hilarious people are actually trying to justify the state of the Adept. The "we need it to defend multiple expansions" is, verbatim, the exact argument used to justify Photon Overcharge, which has had a similarly deplorable effect on gameplay.
If you do that, terran can hit literally all of them with 1-2 emp's and kill them almost instantly with a stim - it's staring a fight by donating half of your army. If he doesn't have medivac, ghost or liberator support then it's much more dangerous.. but every terran has medivac, ghost and/or liberator support in the midgame. It's what makes their armies truly tick
I've always felt that adepts are really awesome (perhaps too much so) when you have 4 or 6 or even 10 of them but they do fall off quite extremely.
It's quite obvious you've never seen this exact scenario occur, which is prevalent throughout high-level TvP. Perhaps witnessing the event is a proper antecedent to offering theorized conclusions and proposing solutions.
This reminds me of the roach and marauder threads from back in the day. One was changed - the other wasn't till just recently. Be interesting to see how this goes.
It's quite obvious you've never seen this exact scenario occur, which is prevalent throughout high-level TvP
So what level are you at that's so much better? I don't think you'd even want to build adepts (at least not as an army core) once they have their midgame army going. Have you even tried building heavy adept comps against standard mid-lategame terran armies? The support units (medivac, ghost, lib) make it impossible to blob him like that without guaranteeing losing all of your units to kill only a fraction of his.
On September 30 2015 01:05 Lavie wrote: You can watch Polt streaming to see many TvP... To resume Polt thinking about Adepts : "This is ridiculous"... :-)
You can watch HuK and MC too. It's pretty much universally agreed that adepts are a little wonky super early in the game and when there are few units on both sides, but they don't scale well - to the point of not being built even though their stats are unfavorably balanced at the start of the game. Having 140 shield (zealot has 50) is also a huge weakness against standard terran armies as terrans can happily build ghosts earlier and in greater numbers with no threat of colossus
IMAO they are taking adepts with the wrong focus. Protoss needs a damn Marauder-like unit, with decent DPS, bonus vs light to some extent, microable, dispensable and damaging. The old Adept route.
That's the point. Greatly reduces adept strength PvT only in battles
Adepts are weak (zealots take over) as soon as ghosts and medivacs are with the terran main army, they're just overly strong against light units early game (and non-light anti-light options are a niche that's pretty empty at the moment)
It was meant super early game, but adepts are also extremely good for making a shade onto the enemy army of MMM, and then charging in with your other units. Allows for good positioning advantage, prevents retreating, and soaks up damage while other units deal the dmg, something zealots cannot do the same.
If you do that, terran can hit literally all of them with 1-2 emp's and kill them almost instantly with a stim - it's staring a fight by donating half of your army. If he doesn't have medivac, ghost or liberator support then it's much more dangerous.. but every terran has medivac, ghost and/or liberator support in the midgame. It's what makes their armies truly tick
I've always felt that adepts are really awesome (perhaps too much so) when you have 4 or 6 or even 10 of them but they do fall off quite extremely
What? This is literally like the main way tosses are taking engagements right now. Watch any GM stream. Polt was repeatedly crushed by it, Morrow was regularly using it, pretty much every player is.
I'm high master's myself in the beta (low GM hots for a few seasons) and I can definitely tell you it is absolutely one of the best ways to engage. Not sure how you can try to comment on it if you aren't doing it.
Adept slight +light nerf and base damage buff but overall less damage
slight shield nerf
weapon upgrade scaling buff +/- attack passive
explanations: damage changes because they're too good early game/harassment (the lights) and too limited in their scope with other things (base damage)
slight survivability nerf, HP vs shield? Probably too shield dependent so we can make Ghosts less of a hard counter to Protoss
midgame DPS or range buff so they have late game staying power
it's true that it's the best way to engage with adepts given that they have a relatively short range so you manage to do a full surround by shading in when you engage, also you prevent part of the MMM army to kite ur units, on the other hand if there are some ghosts it's true that EMP does wreck adepts pretty hard
On September 30 2015 04:36 ROOTFayth wrote: it's true that it's the best way to engage with adepts given that they have a relatively short range so you manage to do a full surround by shading in when you engage, also you prevent part of the MMM army to kite ur units, on the other hand if there are some ghosts it's true that EMP does wreck adepts pretty hard
I believe that the shadow should not be able to pass through units because its a free, unavoidable surround. Some people are comparing the adept to the roach. To see how bad this free surround is, consider how bad would be if if the zerg could have a way to get a free surround with roaches.
Since day one I don't understand why the shadow has to ignore collision and be able to pass through forcefields. It's just unnecessary.
Its pretty funny how many people here are claiming that adepts dont scale well into the late game. Like, what is that even based on? All I see is them being used as a complete and even tankier replacment of the zealot that instead of charge can simply transport into the middle of an entire army and is capable of way more damaging harrasment all game long. The reaper is a good example of a unit that doesnt scale well into the lategame. The adept is basically a reaper and a zealot and a marauder in 1 unit. Not to mention they 2 shot workers!!!! Like seriously. What other gateway or rax unit 2 shots workers?
On September 30 2015 07:28 rhythmrenegade wrote: I think JCoto has an interesting idea that would shake things up in the meta.
Thanks, but I think some Blizz designers got the idea first. Adept 1.0 was really good, BUT didn't work out well out of the box. Stats were also very reasonable.
In my opinion that was caused because the Adept was clunky, the damage upgrade was expensive, and a bit UP. The whole weapon kit was well thought, mechanically balanced (short range, exposition, high overkill for high damage, optimized against light)
And as we know, it followed the David Kim's route of "balance".
The actual design of the Adept is inconsistent. In first place, by removing the bounce-on-kill damage upgrade, the first thing they should have tried is an overhaul of the weapon. Because the weapon was optimized to balance the upgrade potential.
Also, there is a ton of inconsistencies regarding the Adept design. 230 HP with free pseudoblink for low cost (100/25) at basic tech seems plainly broken for a "harass" unit. The Adept is in fact a Protoss equivalent to a Roach with blink. Stats are in fact very similar. What we need is an equivalent of a Marauder.
I think that it is not that difficult to pull off. 80/60, 1 base armor, 5-6 range, medium-fast attack. Damage something like 8+6 or a bit higher. Bounce damage upgrade at twilight: base shot splits for 2 50% shots on EACH shot (not on kill). Search range (bounce range activation value) inferior to 0.75 (size of an immortal/tank). Enjoy your marine-pack killer unit. Mechanical limitations of bounce search values would prevent too much bouncing over meele range (if Adepts get caught) and mech units. Damage would not be a problem to mech or higher tech Protoss, but useful against Zealot packs (PvP flexibility). Damage still usable vs hydras and minor swarms of lings, but not that efficient against banes. Counter play: Presplit packs of units (reduced DPS density) = longer, better fights, better engage on for Zealtos.
On September 30 2015 08:01 johnbongham wrote: Its pretty funny how many people here are claiming that adepts dont scale well into the late game. Like, what is that even based on? All I see is them being used as a complete and even tankier replacment of the zealot that instead of charge can simply transport into the middle of an entire army and is capable of way more damaging harrasment all game long. The reaper is a good example of a unit that doesnt scale well into the lategame. The adept is basically a reaper and a zealot and a marauder in 1 unit. Not to mention they 2 shot workers!!!! Like seriously. What other gateway or rax unit 2 shots workers?
Consider that, in first place, Adepts are imba right now. 2, that EMP spam turns a big pack of Adepts into a mass of 90HP units that are baad in the damage department.
DPS of Adepts is not very high, utter shit vs non light, range is short (DPS density is horrible in consequence) and 2.5 weapon period is just shit. Baiting adepts into a big pack of Bio is just perfect for landing 4 EMPS and depleting the shields of a very big part of the pack and that's 60% the HP of the units. Also consider that Shield HP scale very badly vs burst damage because it's expensive to upgrade them (not ussually upgraded), and have 0 base armor.
Adept lategame is not uttergarbage, but has relatively limited usability, just compensated by stupid amount of HP per cost and huge harass potential, and that's also quite inconsistent. A full medivac has way more DPS and damage potential and mobility than a pack of Adepts in equivalent supply, but is also easier to counter. Adepts have too much HP to be a balanced harass unit.
In the end, the actual iteration of the Adept simply has a good early game strenght that gets shit into the lategame, where it replaces the Zealot as the tank unit. The Terran response is to just max out in higher numbers of Marauders, which take very little damage from Adepts and strongly mitigated by heal from Medivacs.
Basically, we got a Ranged Zealot, having higher HP with lower damage, imba as fuck as a harass unit and very snowbally earlygame.
I think that the point of having a new core unit was to create a DPS-heavy unit oriented at taking out that masses of smaller units, specially Tbio, creating a "Protoss bio", that it's what Protoss really lacks.. Instead, we just have an imba unit which is very similar to the other two core units, but with absurd impact over the early-midgame and stupid harass potential. Even if it works, it's very unpolished design-wise and not really balanced.
The strength is that by using adept shade, you effectively create your own flank. Not an ideal flank, but one nonetheless. Not to mention that you don't need to keep it in a single blob, and attempting to EMP them can hit your own ghosts, medivacs, trigger mines, prevent kiting, etc. You need two EMPs to get rid of all the shields, which itself takes a lot of apm in this scenario given the battle has already started.
They are an amazing meat shield as while they don't deal great damage themselves, they heavily divert enemy firepower to them. An extreme analogy would be an enemy attacking a planetary in a big battle. It doesn't have a huge dmg output but will soak up insane dps while you kill their army.
I'm high master's myself in the beta (low GM hots for a few seasons) and I can definitely tell you it is absolutely one of the best ways to engage
Can you post a vid shading into a not-small army of MMM/ghost?
Watch oGsTOP. It will happen next time he plays a high level P.
Record it, post vid and watch some mc/huk too. I'l check out some terran streams. Perspectives are obviously very different based on players watched since there are no real examples of these situations in actual tournament games
On October 02 2015 04:34 ROOTFayth wrote: I'm still confused why people call the adept a harass unit, I guess zergling is a harass unit too then?
IMO because the adept appears to be designed to maul the mineral line, but doesnt work right anywhere else. Zerglings can be incorporated into a core army, not just isolated harass
I'm high master's myself in the beta (low GM hots for a few seasons) and I can definitely tell you it is absolutely one of the best ways to engage
Can you post a vid shading into a not-small army of MMM/ghost?
Watch oGsTOP. It will happen next time he plays a high level P.
Record it, post vid and watch some mc/huk too. I'l check out some terran streams. Perspectives are obviously very different based on players watched since there are no real examples of these situations in actual tournament games
Not going to go out of my way to record it, but its quite prevalent. Don't really feel the need to make a video when I feel it's fairly commonly accepted this works (as evidenced by witnessing it many times, coupled with you apparently never seeing it).
I recall distinctly a situation where someone did it to Polt for the first time and his literal words is "is this smart for him to do? I don't think so." followed shortly by "does this make sense I am going to lose this??" Since it's happened a few times, he's repeatedly avoided it from happening.
Morrow also did it against Empire.Happy and wrecked his MMM Ghost with pure adept/chargelot, then specifically outlined to the stream why you want to do this.
People seem to overemphasize the amount of adepts used. Sure i do that shit, with an army of 40% adepts, 40% chargelots and 20% disruptors. I don't play with 40 adepts and ghost into a 70-100 supply army of MMM-ghost, though, because you just lose all of your adepts for free if you do that.
coupled with you apparently never seeing it
I have not seen it to the extent described and my experiences point to it being awful in high supply armies, particularly when the bio has support from medivac, ghost and/or liberator. I've had some hilariously bad engagements trying to do exactly those types of trades (like 5:1 cost efficiency for the terran) only to have to retreat to phoenix or disruptors and hope not to lose the game before being able to get a decent army up again (at this stage of the game you have like 12 gateways)
People seem to overemphasize the amount of adepts used. Sure i do that shit, with an army of 40% adepts, 40% chargelots and 20% disruptors. I don't play with 40 adepts and ghost into a 70-100 supply army of MMM-ghost, though, because you just lose all of your adepts for free if you do that.
I have not seen it to the extent described and my experiences point to it being awful in high supply armies, particularly when the bio has support from medivac, ghost and/or liberator. I've had some hilariously bad engagements trying to do exactly those types of trades (like 5:1 cost efficiency for the terran) only to have to retreat to phoenix or disruptors and hope not to lose the game before being able to get a decent army up again (at this stage of the game you have like 12 gateways)
I hope it's clear that the adepts hardly do any damage to the army. They trap the Terran army (similar to roaches unburrowing in the middle of your army), are an insane meat shield. If you have pure adept, you'll absolutely lose. The point is that it creates a flank, messes up the Terran kiting ability, and gets the adepts out of the way so your chargelots and other units can get in.
The point is if the MMM are shooting the adepts, they aren't killing your higher DPS units. Terran can no longer easily focus fire, kite, etc. If your adepts are being your chargelots, the chargelots get hit first and get shredded, then the adepts don't do shit and you lose. It's all about unit pathing and soaking up damage, not at all about dealing damage.
EDIT: From the community feedback thread... doesn't specifically mention Terran, but given it's so prevalent they state "great reduction"
We would see a great reduction in Adepts just teleporting on top of enemy armies, and so good positioning of the Shade ability will be more critical in engagements.
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