Avilo SC2 Mech Feedback/Analysis for Blizz+SC2 - Page 9

On January 20 2016 11:53 Garnet wrote:

I wonder how old is Avilo.

On January 20 2016 10:02 alexanderzero wrote:
Ugh, hating on David Kim is so small minded and idiotic. You guys realize that there is an entire team of people working on balance, right? Also, crucially, the balance team does not get everything they want. They don't get to decide how big a unit is, that's why we have that abomination the Thor.

Also I havent read most of this thread but I do want to address one point of view that people seem to express when people complain about mech's lack of anti air.



The factory produces 4 core combat units, but no spellcasters/utility units. Factory units do not benefit from upgrades to the units purchased from other production facilities. Terran is the only race with this weakness. It's just sad that not even one of these units is a decent counter to air. Nobody is suggesting that pure factory compositions should be able to fulfill all roles.

Also protoss can mass only gateway units in TvP and do basically fine all the way through the mid-game, so your complaint is dumb anyways.

On January 20 2016 15:45 WrathSCII wrote:


About 28-29

Anyway,

Mech internal issues are known and has been discussed over and over. But still we are not talking about the external issues. In TvZ, there are no such issues other than Viper being a complete shut down to mech. This can be solved by making Cyclone into Goliath 2.0. As for TvP, it won't be solved until Tempests gets a HUGE range nerf.

I still don't understand why an air unit that is considered the most tanky unit in the entire Protoss army has the highest range in the game and can shoot without being in siege mode and shoot both ground and air. It has no terrain limitation or anything, yet gets to be the highest range in the game with unjustified supply cost of 4.

Mech has no answer to Tempests and even a Goliath 2.0 won't be an answer. Mech depends on siegeing and forcing a fight with Tanks high range but Tempests completely shut that down with its range and mobility as an air unit. If you try to siege a location and take a position and slowly pushing, the Tempests will slowly chip away from your army thus you are being forced to unsiege and go away or Yolo into the Protoss army and siege during the battle, 4 seconds wasted while your tanks are being sieged and your entire mech army gets obliterated.

Until Tempests gets a huge range nerf, Mech won't work in TvP, unless you mean both transition into sky-terran vs sky-protoss, that is not mech anymore. That is air glop vs air glop

On January 21 2016 21:18 FoxDog wrote:


So increasing the supply of the tempest to 6, and buffing the thor while also removing parasitic bomb would solve most of mechs issues by themselves

On January 21 2016 21:21 WrathSCII wrote:


The range is still a very big concern. You can consider this bias from me, but logically a unit sacrificing mobility and is a ground unit limited by the terrain should have higher range than an air unit.

But the Tempest is really awkward. It serves both as siege unit and as a tank unit...

On January 21 2016 21:18 FoxDog wrote:


So increasing the supply of the tempest to 6, and buffing the thor while also removing parasitic bomb would solve most of mechs issues by themselves

On January 21 2016 23:24 FoxDog wrote:


maybe add some kind of siege mode to the tempest so its stationary while firing like the liberator

On January 22 2016 00:03 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
david kim is just a face, he says what he is told to say so go easy on him

On January 22 2016 00:03 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
david kim is just a face, he says what he is told to say so go easy on him

On January 22 2016 00:03 The_Masked_Shrimp wrote:
david kim is just a face, he says what he is told to say so go easy on him

On January 27 2016 03:49 JimmyJRaynor wrote:


its clear the way he answers questions at BlizzCon and other public events that he is more than just "a face". he is a really good game designer and has done a great job. Any RTS game with more than 2 races and racial diversity requires a year or two of balance patches after release to become well balanced and fun. And, many RTS games never become fully balanced.

David Kim and his team have some very tough problems to solve because.. again.. they're dealing with more than 2 races ; a high degree of racial diversity ; an APM ceiling and an improving skill level that is not well defined.

if Blizzard management thought Kim was doing a bad job on their RTS team he would've been long gone years ago. Not only is he still @ Blizz ... he has been promoted.

On January 27 2016 04:24 WrathSCII wrote:


Regarding Balance, I give him that, he did a wonderful job. Regarding designing the game to be fun for players, I'd say he failed. His focus was entirely on how the crowd watching the games would feel, would they love this stuff? Would making this work in that way could make more excitement moments for viewers? I don't feel he cared for what the players who play the game would feel about stuff. The only times he changed stuff is because of how critical issues they were. Like Swarm Hosts games, Ravens and stuff. Things that did massive critical damage on the VIEWERS before players. That is why they were changed in the first place.

In the past, he used to keep like "we will look into SH, we are working on it" and so on. Then Stephano came on Red Bull vs Jaedong that led to an immediate update that we will work on SH that we will tweak now and redesign it for LOTV, later how critical shit went, they had to copy the LOTV design into HOTS because it was just impossible to watch it. Literally.

If this is fun for viewers, it will have a GO by him even if it was a retarded shit that frustrate the players. If not, we will look into it later even if it was asked by like 80% of the community.

I played SC since around 1998/1999. I played all three races in Brood War at a decent level, getting to around B- or so on iccup at one point as random (in SC1 playing random was about 10x more difficult than SC2).

Just a bit of meta game background that i can fondly remember from when i was a noobie first starting to play SC1 online in BGH pub games:

I remember a game of BGH i was top left playing Terran and it was a 4v4. Back then, RTS was so new and concepts of playing optimally were non-existent. People didn't even understand basic concepts as walling off our bases with buildings lol.

Vultures in those n00b games were considered a trash tier unit (i know this sounds fucking hilarious). Eventually...like most players that wanted to get good i moved onto "low money maps" with a USEast clan.

As it turned out, vultures were one of the most necessary units in the game to play versus Protoss, and by our communities standards today, if we could go back in time, all of us would be yelling and screaming "OP OP NERF VULTURES MINES IMBA" instead of just "getting better."

Vulture/tank/goliath was the go-to strategy versus Protoss, and in fact bio was literally not viable ever besides a 6 rax marine medic build that would be considered quite all-in. Reavers and psi storm, which were very strong in SC1, completely shredded bio.

On January 30 2016 05:16 terrantosaur wrote:
Ironic given the above discussion how Avilo lost a game in the WCS qualifier last night. (See this link starting 2hrs 24mins in):

http://www.twitch.tv/avilo/v/38258989

I know it's hard to tell exactly how well someone is playing but, to me, Avilo does a pretty incredible job of stopping the Protoss early cheese here. And despite this he can't exploit any advantage that, as a viewer, it feels he should have. In the end the game ascends/descends into an air war - and the game takes about an hour. Given that few people would argue about Avilo's ability with late game Raven/Viking - it's interesting that he just can't do anything vs mass tempest here. He tries nukes, emps, liberators. Even at the end he looks like he's engineered an outstanding engagement with mass marine and hunter/seeker (having emp'ed) but he still gets owned. Be interested in others' views but, to me, this game illustrates perfectly the point above ie there is something wrong with the Tempest in TvP.

(I'd actually go further and say the game illustrates a problem with balance in the early game also but hopefully the upcoming patch will address this.)