Community Feedback Update - February 12 - Page 6

On February 13 2016 23:01 PPN wrote:

Unless there is something new very special with the defensive spells of MSC that can delay an incoming attack, this suggestion looks pretty stupid to me. Faster units production time on gateway won't solve anything because you already should have warpgate by the time ravagers are there, and it never was an issue of building units on time but to be able to afford them in the first place. That's why PO came into play: add DPS for defense because Protoss just cannot afford enough army with decent DPS at that point.

On February 14 2016 05:52 Weltall wrote:


The DPS add with PO is fake. Pylons get killed really fast from corrosive biles, while enemy units just run away and avoid the PO damage. PO is really stupid mechanics imho.

Yea, when zergs timing hits you already have warpgate tech. But ask youself why Protoss prefer warpgates over standard gateways? There are 2 main reason: because they can produce units fasters and can warp them far away.
However, if you have to play defensive there is no need to warp units far away: you will warp units near you base to defend them. This means you only take advantage of faster production time.

If gateway production times are f.e. halved, you can pull out enught units to defend from timings, while sacrificing the offensive capabilities of warp ins. If you scout a roach ravager all in, you can do pretty nothing to counter it right now.
If you scout it with gateway buff, you can just add few extra gates and pump out a dozen of units instead of 3-4 units and an useless MSC.

About MSC, i think they did really good suggestions, i will paste here:
change the MSC to be unique scout/defensive unit.
-cost reduced to 50/25, production time 15 sec
-remove ground attack
-buff speed and acceleration. Speed to 6 (close to phoenix one).
-instead of PO add a passive skill: personal cloack. This skill will cloack the MSC only when it stand still, 1sec delay to visibile status to cloacked one.
-change to recall skill: it will summon units taken from the selected area to MSC current location
-instead of time warp, give MSC Statis Field like Arbiters in sc1.

The full link to topic is here: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/20419194428#1

On February 14 2016 07:51 PPN wrote:


While I agree that PO is stupid and not really added DPS in actuality, it either still buy you a bit of time if the opponent runs away or it negates one volley of shots if the opponent focus fire. This is still better than accelerating gateway units build time. Again, if you are spending all your ressource currently to defend, then halving units production time won't do anything for early aggression or ravager timing as you are limited by your ressource, not by the build time. Saving 50/50 from not doing warpgate and 50/75 from MSC suggested cost change will allow you to afford 1 extra unit. Not exactly good. If anything, this may have the side effect of encouraging Protoss proxy gateway cheese.

What you are basically asking for is a "T0" slightly shittier but cheap arbiter. Warp prism and oracle already share that job at T2. And I think that an instant stasis at T0 may have a lot of unwanted effect in SC2 (nice fungal is back).

For me, the bottleneck of Protoss early game is the unability to afford enough units in early game because they cost an arm relative to your economy. Maybe cutting their cost when produced from gateways might do the trick instead. Something along the line of: gateway production cheaper but longer, warpgate more expensive (ie. today's normal price) but shorter production time. That way protoss has a way to produce defensive units and get gateways up earlier and may start mid-game just like now but with more units. If the numbers are tweaked right, we might even be able to erase PO abomination from existence and have Protoss defend purely with units.

On February 14 2016 17:01 Weltall wrote:


Honestly I don't think it's a resource problem.
When you scout a 2 base zerg with gas and roach warren, you know what will come.
4:30 timing rR.
Before 4:30 protoss usually gets 3 gates and a tech (robo or stargate) plus it spams 2-3 pylons or more to use for PO. It usually gets 4-5 gate units (almost useless since they will be adepts and sentry, easly killed)+msc+1 or 2 tech units.

Tech+pylons are lots of resourcers. If you trade tech and not-needed pylons for units you can have a decent number of units to defend and to counter rush the zerg. This will make all-inning a lot more risky for zergs.

On the other side, you mentioned it: proxy gates will enter again in the viable builds. Is this bad? Terran can do proxy rax, it's a cheese, why protoss can't do that? It's risky as other cheesy build, but terrans and zergs have both great scouting options and all the mean to kill it. Proxy gates were not a problem even in hots, opponent needs only to know the correct reaction.

Overall, giving early units to protoss means you can defend and punish cheesy and all-in builds from terrans and zergs if you are atop of scouting. You have also a way to punish greedy openings from zergs and terrans on huge maps with scout+proxy strategies.

If you reduce gate units costs as you suggested, you will be capped anyway by production times in early game, while you have a huge units boost in mid/late. This won't fix current protoss hard times in early game. Also it seems protoss are doing fine in late game vs zergs (if they manage to get there)

On February 11 2016 01:36 Salteador Neo wrote:
When they remove the siege tank pickup (and buff their damage a bit) it will become obvious that ravager needs a change IMO. It will come in handy because it can help fix PvZ too. I'm sure it will either become armored or have the bile cooldown increased, it's just a matter of time.

PvZ Ravager Timing Strength
We’re seeing a lot of feedback about the strength of early Ravagers, and we’ve noticed the strength of Ravager pushes in PvZ. While we aren’t sure that a change is definitely needed at this time, we agree that it would be good to be ready with a change by getting a Balance Test Map going. This way, if the strategy does indeed turn out to be problematic, we can patch right away.

If we are to test a nerf to Ravagers, we believe it might be good to test nerfing their ability against immobile units and/or structures. For example, if each shot damage was reduced or if the cooldown of the ability was increased a lot, or something along those lines. This way, if we were to lean towards doing the Siege Tank Medivac pick up removal in the future, TvZ will definitely also be less affected as well, which would be a plus.

On February 14 2016 21:26 egrimm wrote:
For me it looks like that:
- Ravagers and overlord drops come too early for protoss to prepare accordingly, that's why PO exists. Nerf to PO made it even more apparent. P could defend against Zerg rushes if they can defend only one place with wall + cannons (natural entrance). However overlord drops can bypass wall and circumvent all defenses (bare PO) and Ravagers can destroy all defensive buildings with ease especially when there are no units form P because he invested in cannons.
- Ravagers counter tanks (and can deal with liberators too) that's why siege tank pick-up is needed in TvZ to allow terrans to defend Ravagers rushes.
- Siege tank pick-ups ruin TvT and actually do not help tank-based plays in TvP too much

IMHO main culprit is Ravager or to be more precise - Ravager's bile attack. Bile counters all immobile forms of defense which are main defenses early on. Both Terran and Protoss has to cut units when taking natural to build cannons, pylons (for PO), bunkers or siege tanks (which are units ofc but in siege mode function as immobile defenses). And also the main counter to Ravagers are units because they are mobile and can dodge biles, retreat to static defenses or charge forward to kill Ravagers.
If we remove or postpone bile attack so P and T can build some units after taking their expansions then Protoss gonna be able to defend properly with cannons and siege tank pick-up could be removed to fix TvT.

Ofc there are other issues:
- how to defend against lib in mineral line as Zerg with postponed/removed bile
- how to defend against overlord drop rushes as Protoss (It may be possible with nerfed Ravagers but have no idea)

TL DR:
Ravager's bile attack counters immobile defenses -> remove or postpone -> Protoss able to defend, terran able to defend without siege tank pick-ups.