On March 14 2016 22:44 weikor wrote: This feels like an overall nerf to protoss vs other races.
corruptors, vikings and other AA units deal extra damage vs armored. Youre proposing a change to affect early game PvP timings and builds in a very minor way.
The second major use of the oracle is in lategame situations to cast Revelation. This change will cause your oracle to die more easily in those situations - and personally I feel Protoss needs lategame love anyway.
they actually only deal + damage to massive, not armored.
besides that, you think zerg wants to make corruptors to deal with oracles? lol. we only make corruptors if there is an insane phoenix count otherwise we have the LotV hydra which is improved from previous versions. Oracles are made to spot lurkers primarily which means there are hydras. Corruptors are too damn slow to even catch an oracle anyway, the toss would have to be sleeping to get caught by 2-3 corruptors. If zerg has any more corruptors than that just to deal with oracles then you have a bigger problem, they are massing brood lords or the zerg is literally that dumb to tie up 6+ supply in a unit to counter units that toss doesn't need to make anymore (colossus, void rays).
I really don't see this as a nerf at all, this is good for the game.
On March 15 2016 01:43 JimmyJRaynor wrote: i hate to sound like a totally insensitve, dick-faced asshole but here goes... will any one at platinum or lower even notice this change?
if so many high level players like it.. and platinum and below can't tell the difference... i say "stick it in a PTR and test it out Mr. Kim."
this change is designed to barely effect balance at all except in one specific match up and at the highest leagues possible. I would expect nothing less than a balance map, that's blizzards MO
Wish Oracle could get a mid-lategame buff for how shitty they are post early game. Oracles do have a temporary moment where en mass they are good too, but quickly deteriorates, like reapers.
Revelation used to make the oracle into a mobile detector for a period of time which was better early in the game (for using 1 oracle to hunt down and kill 3 dt's, for example.. it was added to give an alternative to an observer so that you didn't have to have a robo early in every pvp)
the redesign now encourages mid-lategame use of repeatedly tagging 50 supply worth of stuff with the huge range, AOE and duration; especially as it provides much more reliable detection than observers in some situations (hydra/lurker moving forward with overseers or sitting behind spore crawlers)
they're pretty decent in combat but mostly work against light stuff. They're low range, high DPS and rely on using mobility to avoid damage rather than standing up to it so the scaling is naturally going to be bad unless you change the unit design i think - solid buffs to make them decent later in the game would make them OP early with the current design
On March 15 2016 13:03 Cyro wrote: Reaper is a good comparison. Oracle is good mid & late because of the design of revelation, but not because of its combat ability.
Revelation used to make the oracle into a mobile detector for a period of time which was better early in the game (for using 1 oracle to hunt down and kill 3 dt's, for example.. it was added to give an alternative to an observer so that you didn't have to have a robo early in every pvp)
the redesign now encourages mid-lategame use of repeatedly tagging 50 supply worth of stuff with the huge range, AOE and duration; especially as it provides much more reliable detection than observers in some situations (hydra/lurker moving forward with overseers or sitting behind spore crawlers)
they're pretty decent in combat but mostly work against light stuff. They're low range, high DPS and rely on using mobility to avoid damage rather than standing up to it so the scaling is naturally going to be bad unless you change the unit design i think - solid buffs to make them decent later in the game would make them OP early with the current design
You could always have upgrades via the fleet beacon or even just the cyber core, so when they come out vanilla they aren't overly strong. Revelation is a good skill, but generally speaking you don't need to build more than a single oracle. Given them a little bit of hardiness in battle could go a long way.
On March 15 2016 13:03 Cyro wrote: Reaper is a good comparison. Oracle is good mid & late because of the design of revelation, but not because of its combat ability.
Revelation used to make the oracle into a mobile detector for a period of time which was better early in the game (for using 1 oracle to hunt down and kill 3 dt's, for example.. it was added to give an alternative to an observer so that you didn't have to have a robo early in every pvp)
the redesign now encourages mid-lategame use of repeatedly tagging 50 supply worth of stuff with the huge range, AOE and duration; especially as it provides much more reliable detection than observers in some situations (hydra/lurker moving forward with overseers or sitting behind spore crawlers)
they're pretty decent in combat but mostly work against light stuff. They're low range, high DPS and rely on using mobility to avoid damage rather than standing up to it so the scaling is naturally going to be bad unless you change the unit design i think - solid buffs to make them decent later in the game would make them OP early with the current design
You could always have upgrades via the fleet beacon or even just the cyber core, so when they come out vanilla they aren't overly strong. Revelation is a good skill, but generally speaking you don't need to build more than a single oracle. Given them a little bit of hardiness in battle could go a long way.
That reminds me of a chat on Naniwa's stream about void ray acceleration and difficulty moving to avoid various forms of damage without losing too much DPS. There could be an upgrade for that too with a cool name like "Flux Vanes"!
For specifics, more VR speed would be nice but isn't as big of a deal as the acceleration buff IMO if speed creates balance issues. Accel just means easier dodging & splitting against the stuff that's dangerous - corrosive bile spam, fungals, parasitic bomb etc; it also contributes to a bigger gap in effectiveness between weak and strong micro players.
Back in BroodWar ZvZ was incredibly exciting mathcup bcuz it was all about smartness of ling harras, incredible muta micro and smart overlord positioning to counter this harrases while not losing them. So, people played ling muta vs ling muta for years and had fun and excitiment from it. Why would you want to change same situation in SC2 PvP? Why it is always foreign players want to change smth instead of adapting to it and actually win smth like korean players do? In like 90% situations when you want to change smth the real answer is "keep everything as it is and get good to deal with it".
On March 15 2016 19:50 LuckyGnomTV wrote: Back in BroodWar ZvZ was incredibly exciting mathcup bcuz it was all about smartness of ling harras, incredible muta micro and smart overlord positioning to counter this harrases while not losing them. So, people played ling muta vs ling muta for years and had fun and excitiment from it. Why would you want to change same situation in SC2 PvP? Why it is always foreign players want to change smth instead of adapting to it and actually win smth like korean players do? In like 90% situations when you want to change smth the real answer is "keep everything as it is and get good to deal with it".
This might be true in many cases and can be applied to many aspects in life, but keep the following in mind:
"Because it is possible that you are able to do very well with a certain play style but still hate some aspects of it. Something being fun and enjoyable can at times be very different from being fair/balanced and having the right skillset."
For instance it is not enjoyable at all when you open stargate in pvp and choose to go oracle instead of directly into phoenix, just to face someone going directly for phoenix and since you are now behind by about 1.5 phoenix he can move around wherever he likes while you need to camp your base because you would not be able to disengage and risk losing all of your units. This decision was something that you could not base on game information unless you expected/saw his stargate and therefore would not go for a stupid oracle first. I had people gging out after their oracle died and they saw that they are behind in the phoenix count in masters league ... I don't think they enjoyed the result of their small blind decision at all. Muta-ling is very different from phoenix wars in pvp (I play also zerg on ladder), you can disengage with mutas because they do not have MOVE-WHILE-SHOOTING and you can transition much faster/easier into unit compositions which wreck mutas.
One idea behind the change is that it would be easier to fend of an oracle in the early game of PvP where you can not know for sure what tech he is choosing (because scouting it can be denied and can simply not always be accomplished) but needing 3 stalkers in each mineral line is quite a lot (especially if they do make a 4 stalker + core poke in the front at the same time ...), which might be a good or bad thing (like Nony stated maybe this would make things such as fast expanding too easy in pvp and it is good the way it is). But this was the main intention of the thread creator.
The second idea is that since stargate openings are quite good in pvp in general and therefore many people opt for it, you definitely always want to directly go into phoenix without cutting any phoenix for any reason (like supply block etc), because whoever has the lead gains full map control and if at any point you can see the chance to engage (his core has no energy, there is only one canon next to his phoenix etc) you simply fly in an rape his whole air. The player who goes oracle first is mostly kinda screwed unless you get enough kills with your first oracle to compensate for this huge disadvantage. This mostly just happens if you kinda circumvent his first phoenix "blindly" because he feels like playing less of a gamble and wants to know if he needs for example fast detection. Since I open with phoenix a lot I personally do not mind at all that phoenix rape oracles that hard, but it kinda limits the options of how you can open in the matchup and I am not sure if this restriction is good or a change might be beneficial. Overally a matchup benefits a lot from variety and not having the feeling that there are very few good ways to open (where you do not have sufficient information about your opponent yet because it is impossible to get in before you need to choose ... wall-in at the front in pvp and core scout does not always work out). The concept is similar to PvZ right now, where you kinda feel that if you play zerg that you have many options regarding timings/allins and midgame unit composition choices/transitions while as a protoss you feel like you kinda have to open phoenix or quickly transition into them blindly midgame because otherwise in most cases a lot of mutas show up which even if they do not manage to do sufficient damage, they usually do a good job of preventing you from taking a 4th until you get a decent phoenix count up, which takes long enough from having no stargates out blindly to a point where the zerg simply has way too much stuff (the main mines out so fast in lotv, in hots you could literally sit on 3 bases with a high probe count, i.e. 20-24 probes on minerals instead of 16) for a while to build up your count or get enough templar out to leave them behind. So the matchup restricts the way you play a lot, hence (balance aside) more options mostly result in more enjoyment of the whole matchup.
The point of the thread was not if the oracle can not be sufficiently handled in the pvp matchup (it can) or if it is balanced (it is a mirror matchup ...), but rather if it was beneficial from a game design point of view in terms of enabling more variety in options due to having to not commit so much to one of the many options at a stage of the game where you simply can not know for sure what your opponent decides to go for, because this could allow for more variety. If you do not prepare for an oracle, it mostly does game ending damage that early on (talking about fast stargate directly into oracle). If however a potential change would create the opposite effect in that opening oracle would feel generally weaker/not sufficient any more, the whole change would miss its point. One thing to keep in mind is that the longer the game goes on, a good player can (if the opponent does not have phoenix), go in and out several times always picking of 1-2 probes at a time and reuse it later for revelation (stasis ward can be good ... but it's more of a hit or miss :-)), but canons+core can be circumvented a lot easier than stalkers which could easily make these moves too risky/kinda impossible if stalkers did 14 instead of 10 damage a hit on an oracle which does not have full hp any more. Is getting a fast stargate including an oracle (300/300) that early on still good enough/beneficial then?
A change like this could easily be tested soon at least in balance test maps or even patched and reverted if it potentially proved to not be beneficial at all, since it only really affects one aspect of a mirror matchup without risking destroying the game balance dramatically for tournaments.
How is this a good thing. Oracle is such a ridiculous unit I wouldn't mind it being completely changed... Not only its a super fast air caster with almost infinite spells but it 2 shots workers and is incredibly annoying to deal with.
Let's just give all 3 races pillows to fight with instead of weapons, weapons are too dangerous.
Random here. I like this change because I like seeing variety in builds. I prefer SG openers to begin with but right now I really hate gateway vs. oracle, and I think this would make builds less predictable. I'm not good enough to say if it's solvable w/o a tweak.
I don't agree at all with the pros saying that phoenix vs. phoenix is based in luck (and that it's not fun to play or watch -- I really enjoy opening phoenix and I have fun when my opponents do too). My favorite units are the fastest (ling, muta, phoenix) so I've basically been all about the phoenix since WoL, and I definitely don't feel like engagements are random. That said, I'm not a pro, and in masters you can definitely be active on the map and force mistakes with phoenixes so the "turtle in fear" style never really happens and "die in a misclick" is awesome, life on the edge, lets your explore your skill with the unit.
I kind of view it like how muta vs. muta was at the start of HoTS... I really enjoy playing it when it happens, but there was a period when you felt like you had to go muta or you were dead, and it got really stale. And muta vs. muta isn't about luck, it's about forcing mistakes out of your opponent, taking small advantages. Muta/ling micro has more depth than phoenix wars IMO, but it's not that different conceptually.
A straight buff to Stalker AA is also a possibility. It would help vs Oracle but also vs muta and liberator, which feel slightly overpowered in PvZ / PvT right now.
as for me and protoss it is so strong, even if you do not need to boost Oracle's if you look at the Zerg swarm a host is already completely not usable therefore proposes Blizzard over boost the unit which like for me at the moment could not exist
How is this a good thing. Oracle is such a ridiculous unit I wouldn't mind it being completely changed... Not only its a super fast air caster with almost infinite spells but it 2 shots workers and is incredibly annoying to deal with.
Let's just give all 3 races pillows to fight with instead of weapons, weapons are too dangerous.
^_^ that ridiculous statement of his reminds me of all the kids who were crying about how broken Oracles would turn out to be when Blizzard buffed its speed and acceleration.
just replace pulsar beam with something else. a fast flying unit with high burst damage was a horrible idea from the start (like so many others), props to the geniuses in charge who think that exploding workers equal fun
How is this a good thing. Oracle is such a ridiculous unit I wouldn't mind it being completely changed... Not only its a super fast air caster with almost infinite spells but it 2 shots workers and is incredibly annoying to deal with.
Let's just give all 3 races pillows to fight with instead of weapons, weapons are too dangerous.
I kinde agree with MaNa. The proposed balance change may improve things, but it is not really a solution the phoenix vs phoenix battles overall. I kinda feel like phoenixes could use some changes in general as they seem dominant in every match up. I dont mean that they should be nerved, but rather that the way they are used could be changed slightly, so they become part of a unit composition, instead of being a massable unit.
EPT
