Community Feedback Update - January 15 - Page 6

On January 17 2016 04:02 mCon.Hephaistas wrote:


Well ravagers are needed vs liberators, so if you move ravagers to Lair their anti ground mode needs to be moved to fleet beacon.

On January 17 2016 02:16 TheWinks wrote:
I have a lot of problems with the use of 'the most upvoted post' of a reddit thread to push the tankivac change. Lillekanin's post had more than twice as many upvotes as the comment itself and received no consideration for changes. Zerg and Protoss players don't want mech to be viable against them, so they're going to downvote things that support mech in those matchups. They also don't mind and support things that are going to be terran nerfs in TvP/TvZ. There are plenty of mech units that didn't see changes in lotv that could be touched to improve mech. It just makes sense from a design perspective to buff mech in non-mirror matchups first and let the changes filter back to TvT rather than nerfing things to make mech more viable in TvT.

I fear we're looking at another widow mine nerf with this change because it's not really considering balance, it's purely to 'shake up the meta.' If and only if terran isn't using tankivacs in TvZ/TvP or is completely dominant in TvZ/TvP should tankivac changes be on the table. It's also one of the only useful things terran got in this expansion. Removing it without giving terran something cool in exchange is just depressing.

On January 17 2016 04:58 pure.Wasted wrote:


The reality is, as obviously problematic as listening to Reddit is, for the reasons you describe, it's still going to help the game right now to do so because that's how fucked certain things are. More than 2 months after release, we still have no idea how the game will look once Adepts, Nydus, PB, Ravagers, and Ultralisks are brought down to reality. In fact only one of those things has a real nerf on the horizon. Even Reddit knows how fucked that is.

And thats not even getting into obviously problematic stuff like Reapers, Steady Targeting, Lurkers, Disruptors, Liberators that will all need tweaks to some degree. And we haven't begun to understand the extent to which LBM doesn't work in LotV. Why? Because it's supplanted by roach ravager into Hive, and when both those options are tuned down, 6 months from now, "oops where LBM?"

On January 17 2016 03:18 fickazzz wrote:

But wouldn't that make them way worse in ZvP? immos would deal easily with both, roaches and ravagers.

On January 17 2016 05:32 pure.Wasted wrote:


Not the same as Ultra, which can be controlled to perfection by someone with two fingers and 10 APM between them.

Not the same as Viper, which single handedly counters two playstyles (mech, sky) between its three abilities.

Not the same as Nydus, which still gets free wins against the best players in the world.

I could go on and on. Steady Targeting has the potential to turn into Seeker Missile 2.0 (according to unnamed Korean Zergs, it already is). Ravagers have become ubiquitous in every single Z MU, and why not? Amazing pressure, decent AOE, hard counters nearly all the units T gets to support MMM.

The only MU where Mutas are anywhere near as problematic as anything I listed is PvZ, and the biggest problem there isn't the muta, it's PB killing the Phoenix.

On January 17 2016 06:42 jinjin5000 wrote:
Imo adepts should just get small innate speed buff and get rid of shade. Thats the real kicker in warp prism harass because it could be 2 place at once and shade on top of army with 0 risk.

On January 17 2016 04:17 pure.Wasted wrote:


What is your solution to Adepts shading on top of tanks? Stalkers blinking on top of tanks? Ravagers shelling tanks that have already fired on Roaches? Blinding Cloud going down and an instant zergling flank followup? Ultralisks having 2000 hp? How do we make these units fear the tankline, when they're capable of closing the distance at a whim?

I've said this before and I'll say it again, with the Meditank, Blizzard inadvertently stumbled into the BEST solution to mech's problems in SC2.

Siege Tanks will never ever function exactly as they did in Brood War. Unless we're prepared to give them 10 extra range, it's impossible. All units in SC2 get into position faster, because movement is so fluid. The Tank's 14 is nowhere near as impressive as it was in BW. And some others - Adepts, Stalkers, Zealots, etc - have movement abilities on top of that.

On January 17 2016 04:17 pure.Wasted wrote:


What is your solution to Adepts shading on top of tanks? Stalkers blinking on top of tanks? Ravagers shelling tanks that have already fired on Roaches? Blinding Cloud going down and an instant zergling flank followup? Ultralisks having 2000 hp? How do we make these units fear the tankline, when they're capable of closing the distance at a whim?

I've said this before and I'll say it again, with the Meditank, Blizzard inadvertently stumbled into the BEST solution to mech's problems in SC2.

Siege Tanks will never ever function exactly as they did in Brood War. Unless we're prepared to give them 10 extra range, it's impossible. All units in SC2 get into position faster, because movement is so fluid. The Tank's 14 is nowhere near as impressive as it was in BW. And some others - Adepts, Stalkers, Zealots, etc - have movement abilities on top of that.

Not only does this Meditank nerf cripple any followup attempts to keep mech relevant, and buff Ravagers in TvZ, I haven't seen anyone mention how much harder tanks will be to control. In terms of multitasking required, every tank will require an extra two clicks to achieve the exact same result as now.

A much better solution than forcing a re-siege would be to just prolong the delay before a dropped tank can fire. Try adding a whole second. It'll make dropping tanks into Tanks way more dangerous in TvT (what we want), provide a slighter nerf in TvZ, and keep their strength:multitasking ratio from plunging off a cliff.

On January 17 2016 06:58 Big J wrote:


You see, that's exactly why I say that you have already accepted other "broken" tools in the game. You accuse the Nydus, but the reality is that if you didn't open in exactly the right way in HotS you would have lost to baneling busts 24/7. It's a new dynamic, if you don't do X Zerg might win with a Nydus. Same as in HotS if you didn't open with some form of expansion/factory against Zerg. You say the Ultralisk can be controlled with two fingers and 10APM between them? Ever heard of a hellbat push? Until zergs understood exactly what units they needed when it was also just Terran transforming hellbats and a-moving. You acuse the viper of countering two playstyles at once (which isn't true because vipers don't attack mech at all, I can have all the vipers in the world, against ground units it will always only be the support unit), but have you ever heard of a marine? In HotS zerg had a grand total of 2 costefficient units (baneling and ultralisk) against it.

That's the problem with all these discussions. People have accepted old dynamics, because the game was balanced around them. Then blizzard releases new content that in combination with the old content may break the game and then draw the conclusion the new stuff is too strong. No, that's not the right conclusion. The right conclusion is that the combination of old and new stuff is breaking the game.
If I go back to my mutalisk example, I don't think you understood quite what I said. I said that without the mutalisk the gameplay would have been extremely different in HotS and also the balance. If you then throw in the mutalisk everyone obviously accepts that this unit is the reason the game breaks. But since the mutalisk isn't "new" people have already accepted that Protoss simply can't play heavy ground focused multi-robo builds against zerg. Then they complain that they have trouble with ravagers/lurkers/buffed ultras, though the solution to those is rather simple, i.e. to invest into more units that are really good vs ground. But as I said, that door is closed due to mutas and people have accepted that, which is just arbitrary that you accept that and not the other way around.

I'm not saying all of that stuff you said is fine, but you are just blaming everything that is new like the adept while warpgates exist.

On January 17 2016 07:27 Grumbels wrote:

Personally I still blame warpgates and medivacs. :p

That's why I always say: people can get used to everything. The audience could not stop laughing at how fast the medivac was in one of the first Heart of the Swarm tournaments (an IEM iirc) and there was constant discussion on talk shows about how there should be some drawback to it like an energy cost, because it was so ridiculous. But as life went on, players learned to defend better and nowadays it scarcely registers. And I'm sure that if you ask Avilo he will tell you that ignite afterburners is a necessary tool without which terran would be gimped.

That's what happens per definition to everything in the game which is 'broken': it becomes normalized because Blizzard balances the games and maps around it. It literally can not be problematic because the metagame, the maps and the balance will all adjust based on the most potent units which then take a central role in the main set of viable strategies.

But there are insidious after effects: some units can not keep up and are forgotten, game play dynamics suffer, overall the game loses some of its luster and becomes a little less interesting, diverse, strategic, sensible and whatnot. But they are difficult to notice, sometimes the game merely becomes gradually worse until one day you find yourself no longer enjoying the game for no particular reason whatsoever.

So personally I think it's good to still state that adepts, ultralisks etc. are problematic, that Blizzard should address those units and should not wait for those units to be fully integrated into the game because then it might be too late. I'll gladly still campaign for a medivac nerf, but I don't think my political movement is catching on, but there might be still hope for anti-adept calls to action. :p