Current Map Tweaks Thank you for your feedback on the proposed map changes. After our considerations and your feedback, we will go ahead with the rock change on Galactic Process, and the additional blocked off path to and from the center area to the outer paths on Dasan Station. We agree that the Zero ground change might not be needed yet since the area to defend early in the game would already be lessened due to the rock change. If there are further changes necessary after the these go in, we can definitely make additional passes as needed, so please let us know what you think.
Queen Scan range fix We also wanted to let you guys know that the Queen scan range fix is going in today as well. Thank you for your feedback on this.
Balance Not much has changed here since last week. The overall consensus across our teams, community, and pro players seems to be that it’s too early to make a hard call on where the current state of the game is. If ZvT is problematic, we can definitely look into removing the +light damage of Liberators, and the few things on our radar should also be no surprise: Adept Shade cooldown increase, Warp Prism health nerf, and Ultralisk upgraded armor nerf by 1.
We’ve also pinged KesPA regarding these potential changes and are waiting to hear back as well. So please continue discussions in this area as we are definitely keeping watch.
Other Community Update stuff We wanted to let you guys know that there were questions regarding what else was discussed at the summit. There were many topics such as what features to work on next, what is the next direction for the multiplayer game of Starcraft 2, esports discussions, etc. but many of our teams are still in the process of drilling down into the details of what the feedback we’ve gotten at the summit would imply going forward. We will definitely have a lot of info to share in the coming months across various fronts of Starcraft 2.
I like what I read but I think instead of looking into adept shade and warpprisms they should look into tempests. why would you nerf fun things that promote multitasking but keep boring turtly stuff in the game?
Adept cooldown starts directly and not after the ability is done (still not fixed) Adept attack animation starts instant after the shade, ignores the attack cooldown time (still not fixed) Stasis ward, an energy based spell that doesnt expire (still not fixed) Tempest still 4 supply Ultralisks with 8 armor Nydus that cant be killed Cyclone 4 supply 120 hp, adept got 150 health, oracle kills a cyclone...
On July 22 2016 02:27 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Adept cooldown starts directly and not after the ability is done (still not fixed) Adept attack animation starts instant after the shade, ignores the attack cooldown time (still not fixed) Stasis ward, an energy based spell that doesnt expire (still not fixed)
On July 22 2016 02:27 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Adept cooldown starts directly and not after the ability is done (still not fixed) Adept attack animation starts instant after the shade, ignores the attack cooldown time (still not fixed) Stasis ward, an energy based spell that doesnt expire (still not fixed) Tempest still 4 supply Ultralisks with 8 armor Nydus that cant be killed Cyclone 4 supply 120 hp, adept got 150 health, oracle kills a cyclone...
etc.
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
On July 22 2016 02:27 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Adept cooldown starts directly and not after the ability is done (still not fixed) Adept attack animation starts instant after the shade, ignores the attack cooldown time (still not fixed) Stasis ward, an energy based spell that doesnt expire (still not fixed) Tempest still 4 supply Ultralisks with 8 armor Nydus that cant be killed Cyclone 4 supply 120 hp, adept got 150 health, oracle kills a cyclone...
etc.
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
nydus can also be easily nerfed into oblivion if necessary by either lowering the unload rate, making it non-transfusable, or raising the cost. invincible tunneling isn't really the problem
the problem was in HOTS when all it took to shut down a nydus (which costs gas) was a single zealot warpin
I'd be really happy if the adept shade cooldown nerf went through. Not sure about the others, I could understand a shield nerf on the WP. Maybe both nerfs at the same time would be a bit much.
Anyway I like the idea of making very small changes to an overall very solid game.
Looking forward to seeing the conclusions of the community summit. Especially the format of the WCS circuit next year... and hopefully far more KR/foreigners events.
Warp prism health nerf should really just be a pickup-range nerf of 1 or, at most, 2.
Nerfing the health directly just makes the unit generally worse whereas nerfing the pickup-range allows them to be more vulnerable to good counter-play and allows pros to show off skill by microing more precisely around threats.
The shade should really just be replaced with a flat movement speed. Sure, they'll get slightly less annoying if they're less spammy ... but the fundamental issue of "I can threaten instant-death to workers at 3 places at once with 6 adepts" will always remain as long as the shade is in the game.
A change to snipe (steady targeting):
- 0.5 seconds to cancel the ability by hitting the ghost - ability takes 2.0 seconds to complete
would be much better than the proposed ultra armor nerf. If Terran had something interesting to transition into that actually reliably deterred or killed ultras, then there'd not be much need for a direct nerf.
The liberator change is less interesting than simply reducing the AoE of the ability. It's pretty large now, but with a smaller AoE, then Muta (or other unit) micro would be a soft counter instead of simply having it be bad versus light air units.
On July 22 2016 03:31 Edowyth wrote: Warp prism health nerf should really just be a pickup-range nerf of 1 or, at most, 2.
agree but they won't back-pedal on something they sold as "cool" and introduced as a new feature in lotv. Though maybe what I say isn't true since they're apparently considering nerfing ultra armor.
On July 22 2016 02:27 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Adept cooldown starts directly and not after the ability is done (still not fixed) Adept attack animation starts instant after the shade, ignores the attack cooldown time (still not fixed) Stasis ward, an energy based spell that doesnt expire (still not fixed) Tempest still 4 supply Ultralisks with 8 armor Nydus that cant be killed Cyclone 4 supply 120 hp, adept got 150 health, oracle kills a cyclone...
etc.
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
On July 22 2016 02:24 Charoisaur wrote: I like what I read but I think instead of looking into adept shade and warpprisms they should look into tempests. why would you nerf fun things that promote multitasking but keep boring turtly stuff in the game?
Tempests are necessary against turtly mass liberator styles, and in PvT you rarely if ever should go over 6 tempests anyways. Tempests are only a problem in ultra-lategame PvZ really.
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
On July 22 2016 02:24 Charoisaur wrote: I like what I read but I think instead of looking into adept shade and warpprisms they should look into tempests. why would you nerf fun things that promote multitasking but keep boring turtly stuff in the game?
Tempests are necessary against turtly mass liberator styles, and in PvT you rarely if ever should go over 6 tempests anyways. Tempests are only a problem in ultra-lategame PvZ really.
Lib range should be removed too. And no there's no downside in massing tempests, the more tempests you have the better.
Honestly i wish blizzard to do something about the battlecruiser for an answer to Ultralisk without nerfing them, it's the only problem in one matchup ZvT.
On July 22 2016 02:24 Charoisaur wrote: I like what I read but I think instead of looking into adept shade and warpprisms they should look into tempests. why would you nerf fun things that promote multitasking but keep boring turtly stuff in the game?
Tempests are necessary against turtly mass liberator styles, and in PvT you rarely if ever should go over 6 tempests anyways. Tempests are only a problem in ultra-lategame PvZ really.
Lib range should be removed too. And no there's no downside in massing tempests, the more tempests you have the better.
Definitely not true in normal PvT. You don't want more than enough to one-shot liberators (unless your opponent is going mech). You lose too much DPS and mobility if you build more.
On July 22 2016 02:24 Charoisaur wrote: I like what I read but I think instead of looking into adept shade and warpprisms they should look into tempests. why would you nerf fun things that promote multitasking but keep boring turtly stuff in the game?
Tempests are necessary against turtly mass liberator styles, and in PvT you rarely if ever should go over 6 tempests anyways. Tempests are only a problem in ultra-lategame PvZ really.
Anything that can counter a turtle unit by outranging them becomes the new turtle unit. It's a neverending downward spiral.
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
Great suggestion, also it's more realistic : you can't seem the exit until the worm has finished to dig.
Adept Shade cooldown increase, Warp Prism health nerf, and Ultralisk upgraded armor nerf by 1
why don't they just do it? They keep fiddling with tiny changes that do not actually fix any problems
these are all good changes and the kind of changes I want to see, there aren't major problems imo
agree the state of the game is pretty good right now and those are exactly the kind of changes we need.
Not really, see GSL ? No zerg.
All these changes come in the same direction : Shade increase : good for terran. WP nerf : good for terran. Ultra -1 armor : good for terran.
Zerg get only buff for early/mid game ZvP, while if they need buff it's rather to deal vs protoss lategame (honestly never seen pro games where a zerg beat Protoss on late game, but i would be glad if someone has some games to learn how to win vs them).
Sure ZvT is too ultra centric for Zerg but zerg have nothing else that is reliable and good vs terran army. Terran have two counters for ultras, and some may say it's hard to control it's possible. GSL results prove it.
Want less ultras based army to help the casual terran ? Then buff the other things to give zerg a way to play without ultras.
Else just -1 for ultras is just nerfing the weakest race.
This seemed like a solid update, a mix of needed fixes and things on the radar that will probably be addressed, and the prospect of bigger changes based on summit feedback.
We were given a tease of potentially large changes coming down from the summit, but I won't hold my breath. With their comments on the state of the game, they still think it looks fine. I hope I end up being wrongfully surprised.
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
Great suggestion, also it's more realistic : you can't seem the exit until the worm has finished to dig.
Adept Shade cooldown increase, Warp Prism health nerf, and Ultralisk upgraded armor nerf by 1
why don't they just do it? They keep fiddling with tiny changes that do not actually fix any problems
these are all good changes and the kind of changes I want to see, there aren't major problems imo
agree the state of the game is pretty good right now and those are exactly the kind of changes we need.
Not really, see GSL ? No zerg.
All these changes come in the same direction : Shade increase : good for terran. WP nerf : good for terran. Ultra -1 armor : good for terran.
Zerg get only buff for early/mid game ZvP, while if they need buff it's rather to deal vs protoss lategame (honestly never seen pro games where a zerg beat Protoss on late game, but i would be glad if someone has some games to learn how to win vs them).
Sure ZvT is too ultra centric for Zerg but zerg have nothing else that is reliable and good vs terran army. Terran have two counters for ultras, and some may say it's hard to control it's possible. GSL results prove it.
Want less ultras based army to help the casual terran ? Then buff the other things to give zerg a way to play without ultras.
Else just -1 for ultras is just nerfing the weakest race.
Tempests need a nerf. There's no downside to simply "just making more tempests." IT's as bad as mass ravens was in HOTS, and in HOTS mass ravens was the counter to this infinite late game massing of tempests, but with PDD/Raven nerfs now mass tempests is an autowin if the game "gets there."
It needs to be addressed, and still hasn't been.
The most obvious disappointment is how there's still not even a single word about Mech viability and fixing mech which they broke in LOTV.
What exactly happened at the community summit for there to be not a single mention of mech in their next community update? It's really disappointing. "Big Changes are coming." Where? ?????? When??????
Flash, Bisu and probably Jaedong are back to Broodwar. Since this is the final version of SC2 and it's boring af, i say give us Broodwar ladder servers so we can have fun again.
I think this is the 5th time i read the idea of "removing dmg liberator" but still not doing anything, and it's so obvious, dont be afraid blizzard, if u can nerf protoss 20 times, you can nerf 1 terran unit. I agree with other mates, dont remove abilities that show multitask like adept shadow, remove the turtle style from the game, it is boring, and you already show that longer games are killing starcraft (lotv is way faster eco/ and the swarmhosts removal). Try to change some abilities that are already in the game, like the timewarp, who uses it since the patch? I mean queens can moonwalk through the area before the slow effect.. dont kill abilities, just try to change them in a usefull way, not helping turtle like the "gg upgrade" of liberators in tvp. Keep up the good work.
"If ZvT is problematic, we can definitely look into removing the +light damage of Liberators"
Sure, so terran cant beat phoenix and carrier's interceptors anymore. So terran will be even more limited in viable units/builds. Sounds fántástic!!, the joy of seeing more bio games. [sarcasm]
Adept Shade cooldown increase, Warp Prism health nerf, and Ultralisk upgraded armor nerf by 1
why don't they just do it? They keep fiddling with tiny changes that do not actually fix any problems
these are all good changes and the kind of changes I want to see, there aren't major problems imo
agree the state of the game is pretty good right now and those are exactly the kind of changes we need.
I agree, and I think the meta still hasn't settled properly, Terrans are definitely starting to work out late gate v zerg a bit better. Almost to the point where the Ultra nerf might not even be necessary. Seeing lots of games where a proper ghost transition will absolutely obliterate Ultras, and then brood lords too. Nerfing the armor 1 point will effectively double the dps of marines against Ultras, I still think when Terran sees Ultras they need to think of tech switching to ghosts, not to just add in a few more marauders and bully their way through. It's hard to see without testing but 1 armor can be a big change.
Adept Shade cooldown increase, Warp Prism health nerf, and Ultralisk upgraded armor nerf by 1
why don't they just do it? They keep fiddling with tiny changes that do not actually fix any problems
these are all good changes and the kind of changes I want to see, there aren't major problems imo
agree the state of the game is pretty good right now and those are exactly the kind of changes we need.
I agree, and I think the meta still hasn't settled properly, Terrans are definitely starting to work out late gate v zerg a bit better. Almost to the point where the Ultra nerf might not even be necessary. Seeing lots of games where a proper ghost transition will absolutely obliterate Ultras, and then brood lords too. Nerfing the armor 1 point will effectively double the dps of marines against Ultras, I still think when Terran sees Ultras they need to think of tech switching to ghosts, not to just add in a few more marauders and bully their way through. It's hard to see without testing but 1 armor can be a big change.
Ultralisk nerf is 100% necessary. I'm surprised they're not doing -2 aka a full revert to the HOTS ultralisk.
Adept Shade cooldown increase, Warp Prism health nerf, and Ultralisk upgraded armor nerf by 1
why don't they just do it? They keep fiddling with tiny changes that do not actually fix any problems
these are all good changes and the kind of changes I want to see, there aren't major problems imo
agree the state of the game is pretty good right now and those are exactly the kind of changes we need.
I agree, and I think the meta still hasn't settled properly, Terrans are definitely starting to work out late gate v zerg a bit better. Almost to the point where the Ultra nerf might not even be necessary. Seeing lots of games where a proper ghost transition will absolutely obliterate Ultras, and then brood lords too. Nerfing the armor 1 point will effectively double the dps of marines against Ultras, I still think when Terran sees Ultras they need to think of tech switching to ghosts, not to just add in a few more marauders and bully their way through. It's hard to see without testing but 1 armor can be a big change.
Ultralisk nerf is 100% necessary. I'm surprised they're not doing -2 aka a full revert to the HOTS ultralisk.
You're surprised they're not reverting Ultras back to the point where they were essentially considered a Joke?
Lol terrans not used to ultras not being complete garbage. Lib ground dmg is still way to strong. The range is ok as long as maps are designed so that it is actually reachable. Difference vs tempests is that they are super massable and cheap.
On July 22 2016 02:24 Charoisaur wrote: I like what I read but I think instead of looking into adept shade and warpprisms they should look into tempests. why would you nerf fun things that promote multitasking but keep boring turtly stuff in the game?
Tempests are necessary against turtly mass liberator styles, and in PvT you rarely if ever should go over 6 tempests anyways. Tempests are only a problem in ultra-lategame PvZ really.
Anything that can counter a turtle unit by outranging them becomes the new turtle unit. It's a neverending downward spiral.
Yep. First we had BLs 10 range, then tempests 15 range, not libs 14 range. The same happened with Tank 13 range and SH 75e6 range.
Blizz really has a problem with all this outsieging the siege concept.
Warp prism could probably use a nerf or two to its health or pick-up range, but I feel like the big issue is that it's just so cheap. The fact that a speedy, fast-warp in/pseudo-blink unit can be built for just 200 minerals is ridiculous. I quite like that the WP is so strong, but it needs to actually be an investment. I would love to see it cost some gas.
Adept Shade cooldown increase, Warp Prism health nerf, and Ultralisk upgraded armor nerf by 1
why don't they just do it? They keep fiddling with tiny changes that do not actually fix any problems
Because they literally do not know what they are doing.
And when someone doesn't know what to do, they do nothing.
You'd think the people getting paid to design the game, would design the game, but then you'd be wrong. Instead Blizzard is polling the players, because players could never be biased... right?
But there is no vision, no direction, they just throw ideas into the game. MOBA skillshots sounded cool so they made the cut for LOTV because the polling game designers figured out that lots of people play LOL so it would work.
Blizzard should have hired pollsters to balance and design the game. But they'd probably not hire the competent pollsters because they can't find game designers who understand game design.
I really like Starcraft, but the whole "design the game by flying by the seat of your pants" crap has been old since WOL, and polling players is not the answer.
On July 22 2016 02:24 Charoisaur wrote: I like what I read but I think instead of looking into adept shade and warpprisms they should look into tempests. why would you nerf fun things that promote multitasking but keep boring turtly stuff in the game?
Tempests are necessary against turtly mass liberator styles, and in PvT you rarely if ever should go over 6 tempests anyways. Tempests are only a problem in ultra-lategame PvZ really.
Anything that can counter a turtle unit by outranging them becomes the new turtle unit. It's a neverending downward spiral.
Yep. First we had BLs 10 range, then tempests 15 range, not libs 14 range. The same happened with Tank 13 range and SH 75e6 range.
Blizz really has a problem with all this outsieging the siege concept.
You can say the same thing regarding unit speeds... Blizzard's philosophy that buffing things is better than nerfing things has led to this and was a flawed philosophy from the start. The TheDwf elegantly pointed that out in his Razzia of the Blizzsters.
Zerg simply doesn't have the economic advantage anymore to properly play ling/bane styles anymore.
So either give them their economic advantage back (this will probably require an ravager/ultra nerf aswell) or make ling bane a bit more cost efficient.
for TvZ Terran unites too many superior elements: - T is the offensive race what allows them to play win/continue vs. the continue/lose of zerg, giving them the offenders advantage throughout long periods of the game. - T is the best mobile race what allows them to punish small positioning mistakes and stay on top of things and barely get punihed themselves. - T has the best defence with units like PF, mines, liberators, cheap turrets, bunkers and tanks combined with the macro ability mule, which is the best defensive ability to have after an attack as it provides free income without any downside (zerg has larva but needs to spend $ to rebuild drones, chrono the same) makes them pretty much unattackable as it is always cost inefficient.
To compensate for all that, blizzard simply gave ravagers to zerg. An op tier 1 unit that is the only way to attack terran at all and the only unit that makes sense to build until you reach T3 with capped/nearly capped upgrades. - less mobility of zerg. - disabling zergs natural strength of quickly switching units/tech. - creating instability in the matchup as ravagers can be used to overpower terran in situations where terran has lost few too many units in the process before. Also other op things to compensate for the above mentioned T op by design like 8 ar ultra.
The result is a matchup that by definition wont be possible to balance and to make fun to play. Never.
GL trying tho, as I know you neither understand nor will listen.
I have to admit, Dayvie & the crew are doing a pretty good job. Nothing will be perfect, but they are always trying to bring all parties interested/invested into the fold, they listen, and the game has reached an enjoyable equilibrium (balance wise) in many respects. I think we should all just be happy, try to get better at the game, and/or try to get more people to try playing it.
On July 22 2016 16:44 Dirk_Diggler wrote: I have to admit, Dayvie & the crew are doing a pretty good job. Nothing will be perfect, but they are always trying to bring all parties interested/invested into the fold, they listen, and the game has reached an enjoyable equilibrium (balance wise) in many respects. I think we should all just be happy, try to get better at the game, and/or try to get more people to try playing it.
There are so many possible solutions. You could change the area of the liberator into a rectangle or an ellipse to cover the same area but reducing the range. Another thing could be that just one or max 2 liberators can shoot in overlapping zones, so you can still cover large areas but not make the ultimative 12 liberator zone. But i think if the liberator is nerfed there terran even more needs an lategame buff.
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
Great suggestion, also it's more realistic : you can't seem the exit until the worm has finished to dig.
It sounds tempting at first glance, but I think it'll be a buff to the nydus timing in practice. It's close to impossible to cover all your base in detection, so the nydus will effectively be as invincible as it is now, only that there is a fair chance that you wont see the blur in the ground, which means that you wont even have your defense in place to try to burst down the nydus before the queens come out.
Only way that it'll be easier is if you scout it in time to get a raven and then spot the blur on the ground in time to get the raven and DPS there in time to take it out. Not sure that is a likely counter?
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
Great suggestion, also it's more realistic : you can't seem the exit until the worm has finished to dig.
Adept Shade cooldown increase, Warp Prism health nerf, and Ultralisk upgraded armor nerf by 1
why don't they just do it? They keep fiddling with tiny changes that do not actually fix any problems
these are all good changes and the kind of changes I want to see, there aren't major problems imo
agree the state of the game is pretty good right now and those are exactly the kind of changes we need.
Not really, see GSL ? No zerg.
All these changes come in the same direction : Shade increase : good for terran. WP nerf : good for terran. Ultra -1 armor : good for terran.
Zerg get only buff for early/mid game ZvP, while if they need buff it's rather to deal vs protoss lategame (honestly never seen pro games where a zerg beat Protoss on late game, but i would be glad if someone has some games to learn how to win vs them).
Sure ZvT is too ultra centric for Zerg but zerg have nothing else that is reliable and good vs terran army. Terran have two counters for ultras, and some may say it's hard to control it's possible. GSL results prove it.
Want less ultras based army to help the casual terran ? Then buff the other things to give zerg a way to play without ultras.
Else just -1 for ultras is just nerfing the weakest race.
shade increase would also help Z tremendously. As for ultras I would hold on that change for the time being but we all know it'll probably happen at some point. It's hard to assess Z in Korea with GSL/SSL because we shouldn't forget the matches prior to the main events (qualifiers etc) happened before the queen/spore patch that is not just a slight buff. For instance in Proleague Z looked much stronger after the patch. I would like them to keep very calm and patient about nerfs/buffs, just the way they're doing things.
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
Great suggestion, also it's more realistic : you can't seem the exit until the worm has finished to dig.
It sounds tempting at first glance, but I think it'll be a buff to the nydus timing in practice. It's close to impossible to cover all your base in detection, so the nydus will effectively be as invincible as it is now, only that there is a fair chance that you wont see the blur in the ground, which means that you wont even have your defense in place to try to burst down the nydus before the queens come out.
Only way that it'll be easier is if you scout it in time to get a raven and then spot the blur on the ground in time to get the raven and DPS there in time to take it out. Not sure that is a likely counter?
yeah sounds good but really it's harder to deal with than the current one, for which you can at least prepare well
On July 22 2016 21:09 JackONeill wrote: He also tried to cover up his matchfixing, I don't think he's very good at covering things up anymore.
Maybe the match fixing was just a diversion to cover up something much deeper?? :o Maybe he KNOWS something no mortal starcraft player was supposed to know!
I really hope that BCs would get a role in tech trees of actual pro games. Not only that usage of maximum amount of unique units is the goal across all races but also because it's a tad sad that one of the most magnificent units of the game doesn't get any proper screen time.
Dev. team introduced a new ability, teleport, for BCs at the start of Lotv but with little gain. It was a good effort but now I feel that you guys could start making baby steps towards giving BCs the same kind of vitality in games as ultras or tempests have.
Ask community again for suggestions? Maybe give teleport range and a lower cost for it to become a large scale blink.
On July 22 2016 11:31 Pugfarmer wrote: BC is not worse than swarm host
Swarmhosts have been used in competitive play. Rogue made SHs vs Dark, Byul made SHs vs Patience, snute played around a bit with swarmhosts... When have you seen BCs in competitive play?
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
Great suggestion, also it's more realistic : you can't seem the exit until the worm has finished to dig.
It sounds tempting at first glance, but I think it'll be a buff to the nydus timing in practice. It's close to impossible to cover all your base in detection, so the nydus will effectively be as invincible as it is now, only that there is a fair chance that you wont see the blur in the ground, which means that you wont even have your defense in place to try to burst down the nydus before the queens come out.
Only way that it'll be easier is if you scout it in time to get a raven and then spot the blur on the ground in time to get the raven and DPS there in time to take it out. Not sure that is a likely counter?
yeah sounds good but really it's harder to deal with than the current one, for which you can at least prepare well
Yeah i admit it seems cool and fun but must be OP ^^
I would love to see BCs become more viable. I would love to see zerg getting a buff as long as it doesn't affect terran balance too much. Ultras are already so annoying to deal with as they are... I'm also very pro to the proposed protoss changes as I feel adepts and warp prisms really do need some adjusting. But when are they going to fix the tempest? -.-
Another way to nerf ultras other than the obvious -1armor would be... to limit queen transfuse to buildings only -.-
Mass queens turtle into invincible ultras is getting boring already. And watching 60 pop of bio never killing an ultra because of armor+transfuses is just lame as an spectator.
On July 22 2016 23:53 Seeker wrote: I would love to see BCs become more viable. I would love to see zerg getting a buff as long as it doesn't affect terran balance too much. Ultras are already so annoying to deal with as they are... I'm also very pro to the proposed protoss changes as I feel adepts and warp prisms really do need some adjusting. But when are they going to fix the tempest? -.-
at least increasing tempests supply is indeed something they should really be considering and have never -correct me if I'm wrong- talked about
On July 23 2016 00:06 Salteador Neo wrote: Another way to nerf ultras other than the obvious -1armor would be... to limit queen transfuse to buildings only -.-
Mass queens turtle into invincible ultras is getting boring already. And watching 60 pop of bio never killing an ultra because of armor+transfuses is just lame as an spectator.
Upping the energy requirement for transfuse to 75 would be fair in exchange for the queen buff. This way queens don't snowball to lategame that much, because it's abusive and boring.
On July 22 2016 11:31 Pugfarmer wrote: BC is not worse than swarm host
Swarmhosts have been used in competitive play. Rogue made SHs vs Dark, Byul made SHs vs Patience, snute played around a bit with swarmhosts... When have you seen BCs in competitive play?
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
On July 22 2016 23:53 Seeker wrote: I would love to see BCs become more viable. I would love to see zerg getting a buff as long as it doesn't affect terran balance too much. Ultras are already so annoying to deal with as they are... I'm also very pro to the proposed protoss changes as I feel adepts and warp prisms really do need some adjusting. But when are they going to fix the tempest? -.-
at least increasing tempests supply is indeed something they should really be considering and have never -correct me if I'm wrong- talked about
Yeah. There are a few popular topics that they are ignoring for some reason. Tempests, mech and Nidus for example. Maybe they have no fix in mind and it's part of the "major redesign" the summit talked about.
On July 22 2016 23:53 Seeker wrote: I would love to see BCs become more viable. I would love to see zerg getting a buff as long as it doesn't affect terran balance too much. Ultras are already so annoying to deal with as they are... I'm also very pro to the proposed protoss changes as I feel adepts and warp prisms really do need some adjusting. But when are they going to fix the tempest? -.-
at least increasing tempests supply is indeed something they should really be considering and have never -correct me if I'm wrong- talked about
Yeah. The are a few popular topics that they are ignoring for some reason. Tempests, mech and Nidus for example. Maybe they have no fix in mind and it's part of the "major redesign" the summit talked about.
I actually think current Nydus is fine. I think they don't communicate too much about mech because it's really hard to make mech playable without strengthening cancerous boring styles. Tempests though, I don't understand why they don't at least acknowledge the issue. It plagues P lategame.
btw I hope the major redesign is more about WCS / game content (coop ladder, explanatory videos ingame etc) than the game itself. The game is in a pretty good state right now.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
well the same can be argued for HotS units... Strangely enough the game is currently pretty good and enjoyable. But yeah, no one will convince me that the game wouldn't be better with WoL units, current eco, projectile fungal and some of the sensible adjustments we got over the years.
On July 22 2016 23:53 Seeker wrote: I would love to see BCs become more viable. I would love to see zerg getting a buff as long as it doesn't affect terran balance too much. Ultras are already so annoying to deal with as they are... I'm also very pro to the proposed protoss changes as I feel adepts and warp prisms really do need some adjusting. But when are they going to fix the tempest? -.-
at least increasing tempests supply is indeed something they should really be considering and have never -correct me if I'm wrong- talked about
Yeah. The are a few popular topics that they are ignoring for some reason. Tempests, mech and Nidus for example. Maybe they have no fix in mind and it's part of the "major redesign" the summit talked about.
I actually think current Nydus is fine. I think they don't communicate too much about mech because it's really hard to make mech playable without strengthening cancerous boring styles. Tempests though, I don't understand why they don't at least acknowledge the issue. It plagues P lategame.
btw I hope the major redesign is more about WCS / game content (coop ladder etc) than the game itself. The game is in a pretty good state right now.
I don't know, maybe the Nidus is ok, i find it unreasonable in combination with queen heal. The mech cancer i think has always been about air units more then factory, ravens and now libs. Focus on the basics on Tank-hellion-antiair and move away from expensive energy units or flying units and try to emulate BW in this regard, or TvT WoL for that matter.
The Tempest is just pain and it ha always been IMO. I think they just have no solution.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
As far as the Lib goes, i think it's a problem in high level thinking/design here, big words i know. If you look at some of the units introduced, they have always tried to out-siege the sieger: BLs(11 range) in WOL, Tempests(15 range) introduced in hots and SH(275 range), and Libs (14 anti ground) in LOTV. So what i personally see as a problem, it seems Blizz sees as a solution: long range flying units.
IMO these units have done nothing but promote terrible gameplay for both players and spectators, but seeing how it seems to be a core design philosophy, it's probably not going to change. The late game is domed to always be terrible in SC2.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
well the same can be argued for HotS units... Strangely enough the game is currently pretty good and enjoyable. But yeah, no one will convince me that the game wouldn't be better with WoL units, current eco, projectile fungal and some of the sensible adjustments we got over the years.
Personally i think widow mines aren't that bad and vipers could be easily changed a bit to be fairly interesting units as well. I also don't like the "new economy" all that much, i really think blizzard should have tried more economy models, some which give you an actual economy advantage for taking more bases. In general i want them to try more big changes, all the time. We need a ptr or something where we can test those changes and see if it is good/bad for the game. The biggest thing i want to see actually tested by the community is another pathing. It would look better and it also would probably make deathballs way, way weaker which is a good thing. But blizzard said they tested it and it didn't change the game, i call bs on that one personally.
I want to be positive about the game, but in reality blizzard simply doesn't deliver at all. It's hard to be positive when you don't see any big changes while blizzard said they are open to it, etc. From time to time there is a balance map which nobody plays anyway and in the weekly updates we don't really talk about all of the issues the community brings up over and over again. It's mostly balance talk when the design would be a lot more interesting and meaningful for the enjoyment of the game. Balance might be interesting when there are HUGE problems, i doubt there are any atm.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
well the same can be argued for HotS units... Strangely enough the game is currently pretty good and enjoyable. But yeah, no one will convince me that the game wouldn't be better with WoL units, current eco, projectile fungal and some of the sensible adjustments we got over the years.
Personally i think widow mines aren't that bad and vipers could be easily changed a bit to be fairly interesting units as well. I also don't like the "new economy" all that much, i really think blizzard should have tried more economy models, some which give you an actual economy advantage for taking more bases. In general i want them to try more big changes, all the time. We need a ptr or something where we can test those changes and see if it is good/bad for the game. The biggest thing i want to see actually tested by the community is another pathing. It would look better and it also would probably make deathballs way, way weaker which is a good thing. But blizzard said they tested it and it didn't change the game, i call bs on that one personally.
I want to be positive about the game, but in reality blizzard simply doesn't deliver at all. It's hard to be positive when you don't see any big changes while blizzard said they are open to it, etc. From time to time there is a balance map which nobody plays anyway and in the weekly updates we don't really talk about all of the issues the community brings up over and over again. It's mostly balance talk when the design would be a lot more interesting and meaningful for the enjoyment of the game. Balance might be interesting when there are HUGE problems, i doubt there are any atm.
I am one that thinks the game need significant changes in design on units and unit interactions and synergy, but it's very possible that Blizz sees the game as exactly as what they wanted it to be. There are people that think the game is fantastic right now to. Unfortunately for those people and Blizz, the people that are loving the game right now are a lot fewer then the ones that are critical and the ones that moved away.
My point is that we should not expect big changes, as they might not be seen as needed by the devs. If this is what they wanted all along, they are happy.
IMO these units have done nothing but promote terrible gameplay for both players and spectators, but seeing how it seems to be a core design philosophy, it's probably not going to change. The late game is domed to always be terrible in SC2.
As a general rule, there should imo only be two types of units with range over 8-9
1. Immobile/positional units (Siege Tanks/Liberators/Lurkers
When core units have long range but are balanced around being slow, it creates terrible and deathbally gameplay. You would think they learned that w/ the Collosus and Broodlord in WOL.... But they didn't, and then you think they learned that with the introduction of the Tempest in HOTS....... Still nothing.
Either you make units immobile and very cost-effective or you make them fast and responsive. You don't go for the middle of the road approach as Blizzard too often does in their unit design.
The Warp Prism is 50% of the problem while the Adept Shade is the other 50% of the problem, and honesty nerfing the shade is the way to go.
Warp Prisms do heavily negate defenders advantage but that's what drop ships do, they drop troops behind enemy lines, so that pretty much means that the Prism is just doing it's job. Granted, unlimited warp ins might need a tone down, pretty hilarious to watch PL matches where Hero is just pumping 9 fucking Adepts into a Zergs main every production cycle, pretty OP from a viewer perspective.
The Adept is the worse half of the problem, the Shade ability being easy to spam with no risk (allowing Protoss to forward scout without placing the unit itself at any risk let's the player perfectly choose their engagement) is a huge issue for a fresh out of the Gateway unit. It also allows the unit to be essentially in 2 places at the same time. The Adept could use a nerf at this point, watching pro league, the unit is overpowered and this game is balanced from the top down.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
DK explained exactly why they're thinking of decreasing its health and how it impacts highly skilled players versus the rest of the player base. generalizing your issue into "blizz does not know how to their game" is a big overstretch.
i'm unwilling to put in the time or energy to get my real APM substantially over 120. I've accepted that this means certain aspects of the game won't be accessible to me. Furthermore, I've accepted that DK and his team will spend a good portion of their time on the player base not at my level. you should accept the same thing.. you'll enjoy the game a lot more.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Agree 100%. Liberators, lurkers, and disruptors are bonkers strong because that's how strong they need to be to actually deter YOLO attacks in a game with good pathing and no real high ground advantage. Positional play was almost non-existent in WoL and HotS because large battles just devolved into deathballs crashing into each other ad-nauseum. LotV has gone a long way towards fixing that.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Positionnal units are very important I feel in every matchup. Wether both opponent have some, or one of the opponent has some and you have to screw him with a mobile comp. TvT mech vs bio gave us the most glorious pieces of starcraft i've ever seen. Beautiful mechanic play and brilliant strategy from both sides.
However, blizzard took away the main drawbacks of positionnal units in LOTV, and that's why they're not really positionnal units. I liked the liberator concept : an insanely strong AG on a very tiny zone. However, it flies. It kinda defeats the "positionning" aspect of the unit because it doesn't really accounts for terrain, and it's so so so easy to place into abusive positions, effectively killing the beauty of the play. Who ever said "wow, these liberator positionnements are so skillfull?" Another illustration of this problem lies with the tankivac. Tanks used to be very carefully set up in a position to exploit their range and slash at best. Now it's just "boost in and throw them wherever, it's more important to be poorly positionned fast than to be well positionned slowly". Where the tankivac gained in how microable it is, it lost in how strategic it was.
With their main weakness being their cooldown, disruptors are also not really about positioning, they're about micro. Even though we've seen some pretty awesome moves from PvP in Korea, with blink baits followed by well placed disruptors, in the EU pro scene we see them more used as a micro skillshot.
The main exception would be the lurkers, which are mobile and cloacked, but are still very position-dependant because of their "short" range and their linear AoE
Finally, the colossi, while naysayers said it's a terrible unit that promotes deathballs (which is true sometimes, and no one like that), promoted interesting positionnal play in TvP. Vikings/bio vs stalker/colossi was a constant dance between armies where the bio had to be concaving on stalkers while vikings shot colossi. And increasing how the colossus needs to be positionned well to dish out as much damage as possible for the longest time during the fight should have been the goal of its buff, not a stupid "MOAR ATTAK SPEED LOL".
I think that having a clear weakness for a positionnal unit isn't enough for it to be fun. Colossi being targetable by AA isn't enough if in most cases you can Amove it like an idiot. Tankivacs aren't about position, they're about micro and speed. Disruptors aren't about the positionning of the unit, they're a 14 range skillshot. Liberators aren't that much about positioning since the fact they fly make them more usefull to abuse shift-clic-siege-onto-mineral-lines than to occupy strategic chokes or pathways.
In LOTV, most of the "positionnal units" are simply micro intensive units that don't really require strategy, but speed of execution.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
I agree about the lurker but that's about it. (and even there you could argue that the actual unit interactions aren't close perfect yet)
Liberators can fly which removes the positional aspect almost completely. Liberators do what tanks should do, instead of adding a new unit which is a strong siege unit it would have been better to make the tank work. Liberators are mobile, extremely good vs air and also good vs ground. "It's absurd" tbh. I can see why terrans are fine with that though, because they need some help for lategame and simply massing liberators does exactly that (and you can use it in midgame as well) That's still bad design though.
The disruptor is an all or nothing unit. You either hit with your attack or you aren't able to do anything with it for the next while. Which means that you basically need at least as many disruptors to always have one without cd ready. I don't need units which function this way in the game.
Adapts surely can be used in a multitasking way, the problem here is that as a defender you basically need 2 times the army to defend it because of the shades. It also kinda overlaps with the zealot.
So yeah i disagree with your reasoning and still think these units are badly designed overall. It kinda works out but i would say that's more due to players adapting and the general band aid fixes blizzard is known for and not really because it's solid unit design.
On July 23 2016 00:06 Salteador Neo wrote: Another way to nerf ultras other than the obvious -1armor would be... to limit queen transfuse to buildings only -.-
Mass queens turtle into invincible ultras is getting boring already. And watching 60 pop of bio never killing an ultra because of armor+transfuses is just lame as an spectator.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Positionnal units are very important I feel in every matchup. Wether both opponent have some, or one of the opponent has some and you have to screw him with a mobile comp. TvT mech vs bio gave us the most glorious pieces of starcraft i've ever seen. Beautiful mechanic play and brilliant strategy from both sides.
However, blizzard took away the main drawbacks of positionnal units in LOTV, and that's why they're not really positionnal units. I liked the liberator concept : an insanely strong AG on a very tiny zone. However, it flies. It kinda defeats the "positionning" aspect of the unit because it doesn't really accounts for terrain, and it's so so so easy to place into abusive positions, effectively killing the beauty of the play. Who ever said "wow, these liberator positionnements are so skillfull?" Another illustration of this problem lies with the tankivac. Tanks used to be very carefully set up in a position to exploit their range and slash at best. Now it's just "boost in and throw them wherever, it's more important to be poorly positionned fast than to be well positionned slowly". Where the tankivac gained in how microable it is, it lost in how strategic it was.
With their main weakness being their cooldown, disruptors are also not really about positioning, they're about micro. Even though we've seen some pretty awesome moves from PvP in Korea, with blink baits followed by well placed disruptors, in the EU pro scene we see them more used as a micro skillshot.
The main exception would be the lurkers, which are mobile and cloacked, but are still very position-dependant because of their "short" range and their linear AoE
Finally, the colossi, while naysayers said it's a terrible unit that promotes deathballs (which is true sometimes, and no one like that), promoted interesting positionnal play in TvP. Vikings/bio vs stalker/colossi was a constant dance between armies where the bio had to be concaving on stalkers while vikings shot colossi. And increasing how the colossus needs to be positionned well to dish out as much damage as possible for the longest time during the fight should have been the goal of its buff, not a stupid "MOAR ATTAK SPEED LOL".
I think that having a clear weakness for a positionnal unit isn't enough for it to be fun. Colossi being targetable by AA isn't enough if in most cases you can Amove it like an idiot. Tankivacs aren't about position, they're about micro and speed. Disruptors aren't about the positionning of the unit, they're a 14 range skillshot. Liberators aren't that much about positioning since the fact they fly make them more usefull to abuse shift-clic-siege-onto-mineral-lines than to occupy strategic chokes or pathways.
In LOTV, most of the "positionnal units" are simply micro intensive units that don't really require strategy, but speed of execution.
I agree 100%. Tankivac is the main reason why I didn't buy LotV.
to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call to early to make the call
Battle Cruisers have been terrible for 6 years. It is in fact far too late.
I remember during the early parts of HOTS Beta, people were claiming that it was too early for big changes, but early in the Beta was precisely when big changes should have been made. The later stages are for polishing the big changes.
But there is no point in polishing something when you know it will look terrible once polished. And so here we are, big changes need to happen to SC2 if we want to bring it to the next level. It is shameful that BC's are so bad, that Ultralisks have so much armor, ect... Most of the educated community agrees on basic small changes that would improve the game, but Blizzard can't do them, because they don't have the ability to recognize good ideas and weed out bad ideas from the game. Nevermind the real sweeping changes that only a part of the community, people knowledgeable in game design recognize that could greatly improve the game that Blizzard is totally oblivious to.
We see it in this very thread with positional play, Blizzard just doesn't seem to understand the strategy of it and what it adds to the game. It reminds me of the people I used to play the original DOTA against when it was first released, a lot of them said my preferred hero Zeus took no skill because you just casted single abilities that couldn't miss. But the skill wasn't being able to cast the abilities, it was when you casted said abilities. And we all know those people were wrong and what happened with MOBAs.
The skill in positional play is being able to force the more mobile but less powerful army into a direct fight, while not being outflanked and outmaneuvered. That can require extreme skill and strategy that taxes your brain, but Blizzard just wants to tax our hands with Tankivacs.
SC2 had so much potential. But it seems destined to be be remembered as a good game, with quality somewhere inbetween BW (and no, I didn't play BW and am not some fanboy wanting SC2 to be BW, but as I write this about there is more than twice as many people watching BW streams than SC2 streams. Great games last forever and the proof is always in the pudding, or in this case, the stream numbers) and Diablo III.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Positionnal units are very important I feel in every matchup. Wether both opponent have some, or one of the opponent has some and you have to screw him with a mobile comp. TvT mech vs bio gave us the most glorious pieces of starcraft i've ever seen. Beautiful mechanic play and brilliant strategy from both sides.
However, blizzard took away the main drawbacks of positionnal units in LOTV, and that's why they're not really positionnal units. I liked the liberator concept : an insanely strong AG on a very tiny zone. However, it flies. It kinda defeats the "positionning" aspect of the unit because it doesn't really accounts for terrain, and it's so so so easy to place into abusive positions, effectively killing the beauty of the play. Who ever said "wow, these liberator positionnements are so skillfull?" Another illustration of this problem lies with the tankivac. Tanks used to be very carefully set up in a position to exploit their range and slash at best. Now it's just "boost in and throw them wherever, it's more important to be poorly positionned fast than to be well positionned slowly". Where the tankivac gained in how microable it is, it lost in how strategic it was.
With their main weakness being their cooldown, disruptors are also not really about positioning, they're about micro. Even though we've seen some pretty awesome moves from PvP in Korea, with blink baits followed by well placed disruptors, in the EU pro scene we see them more used as a micro skillshot.
The main exception would be the lurkers, which are mobile and cloacked, but are still very position-dependant because of their "short" range and their linear AoE
Finally, the colossi, while naysayers said it's a terrible unit that promotes deathballs (which is true sometimes, and no one like that), promoted interesting positionnal play in TvP. Vikings/bio vs stalker/colossi was a constant dance between armies where the bio had to be concaving on stalkers while vikings shot colossi. And increasing how the colossus needs to be positionned well to dish out as much damage as possible for the longest time during the fight should have been the goal of its buff, not a stupid "MOAR ATTAK SPEED LOL".
I think that having a clear weakness for a positionnal unit isn't enough for it to be fun. Colossi being targetable by AA isn't enough if in most cases you can Amove it like an idiot. Tankivacs aren't about position, they're about micro and speed. Disruptors aren't about the positionning of the unit, they're a 14 range skillshot. Liberators aren't that much about positioning since the fact they fly make them more usefull to abuse shift-clic-siege-onto-mineral-lines than to occupy strategic chokes or pathways.
In LOTV, most of the "positionnal units" are simply micro intensive units that don't really require strategy, but speed of execution.
Yup, couldn't agree more. All to make the game more "exciting" for viewers, no one gave two shits about the players. RTS imo is about building stuff and securing/expanding your territory, lots of people complained about games being too long and boring to watch (ok, 2h turtle mech vs SH was hard to endure, but it didn't happen THAT often), when in fact those games had strategical beauty from a player perspective.
LotV economy changes killed that methodical approach, it's all about mobility and while that may be exciting for the average viewer, I'd really like some diversity here as a player.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Positionnal units are very important I feel in every matchup. Wether both opponent have some, or one of the opponent has some and you have to screw him with a mobile comp. TvT mech vs bio gave us the most glorious pieces of starcraft i've ever seen. Beautiful mechanic play and brilliant strategy from both sides.
However, blizzard took away the main drawbacks of positionnal units in LOTV, and that's why they're not really positionnal units. I liked the liberator concept : an insanely strong AG on a very tiny zone. However, it flies. It kinda defeats the "positionning" aspect of the unit because it doesn't really accounts for terrain, and it's so so so easy to place into abusive positions, effectively killing the beauty of the play. Who ever said "wow, these liberator positionnements are so skillfull?" Another illustration of this problem lies with the tankivac. Tanks used to be very carefully set up in a position to exploit their range and slash at best. Now it's just "boost in and throw them wherever, it's more important to be poorly positionned fast than to be well positionned slowly". Where the tankivac gained in how microable it is, it lost in how strategic it was.
With their main weakness being their cooldown, disruptors are also not really about positioning, they're about micro. Even though we've seen some pretty awesome moves from PvP in Korea, with blink baits followed by well placed disruptors, in the EU pro scene we see them more used as a micro skillshot.
The main exception would be the lurkers, which are mobile and cloacked, but are still very position-dependant because of their "short" range and their linear AoE
Finally, the colossi, while naysayers said it's a terrible unit that promotes deathballs (which is true sometimes, and no one like that), promoted interesting positionnal play in TvP. Vikings/bio vs stalker/colossi was a constant dance between armies where the bio had to be concaving on stalkers while vikings shot colossi. And increasing how the colossus needs to be positionned well to dish out as much damage as possible for the longest time during the fight should have been the goal of its buff, not a stupid "MOAR ATTAK SPEED LOL".
I think that having a clear weakness for a positionnal unit isn't enough for it to be fun. Colossi being targetable by AA isn't enough if in most cases you can Amove it like an idiot. Tankivacs aren't about position, they're about micro and speed. Disruptors aren't about the positionning of the unit, they're a 14 range skillshot. Liberators aren't that much about positioning since the fact they fly make them more usefull to abuse shift-clic-siege-onto-mineral-lines than to occupy strategic chokes or pathways.
In LOTV, most of the "positionnal units" are simply micro intensive units that don't really require strategy, but speed of execution.
Yup, couldn't agree more. All to make the game more "exciting" for viewers, no one gave two shits about the players. RTS imo is about building stuff and securing/expanding your territory, lots of people complained about games being too long and boring to watch (ok, 2h turtle mech vs SH was hard to endure, but it didn't happen THAT often), when in fact those games had strategical beauty from a player perspective.
LotV economy changes killed that methodical approach, it's all about mobility and while that may be exciting for the average viewer, I'd really like some diversity here as a player.
I'm a very fervant supporter of bringing back strategy in LOTV, and mainly through positional units, but SH were just cancer. Just like late HOTS mech play was cancer too. Why ? Because it was never worth it to attack. Which is something that happen whenever one race has a garanteed win late game. Innovation mech style, which was the best mech style was about never attacking and splitting the map in two, because the mech army was always more cost effective than the zerg army.
Turtly comps are okay if they : 1) are able to perform strong timing pushes 2) are eventually weaker than a late game air comp 3) aren't able to transition to an air comp too easily
For instance : right now mech play in TvZ is kinda weak but very fun. You are : 1) able to do very strong timing pushes : tanks/hellbats/liberators go through roach/hydra like butter, and hellbats/mines/thors/liberators go through LBM 2) your mech army will be eventually terrible against BL/corru/viper, so while you're not playing under a timer you can't split the map like an idiot 3) because bases are depleated very quickly, you don't have the money to transition into mass libs/vikings/raven/ghosts (for instance) quickly, and you can't go straight to this composition because it's too expansive and you're gonna die for sure on the way there.
I play mech at high masters/low GM level, and it's tons of fun. Because you're able to have a mid game comp that moves on the map while you're building your "frontal push" army. With hellion/cyclones you can go out on the map and snipe workers, or even bases with the lock, while getting some liberators, tanks and thors at home.
That's why i'd very much like for the cyclone to be brought down to 3 pop and have a little HP increase. If they had 150 hps, they'd still be very fragile and 3 pop would still make them unmassable and cost inefficient. And because they allow a mech style that can move around the map, that's tons of fun.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Positionnal units are very important I feel in every matchup. Wether both opponent have some, or one of the opponent has some and you have to screw him with a mobile comp. TvT mech vs bio gave us the most glorious pieces of starcraft i've ever seen. Beautiful mechanic play and brilliant strategy from both sides.
However, blizzard took away the main drawbacks of positionnal units in LOTV, and that's why they're not really positionnal units. I liked the liberator concept : an insanely strong AG on a very tiny zone. However, it flies. It kinda defeats the "positionning" aspect of the unit because it doesn't really accounts for terrain, and it's so so so easy to place into abusive positions, effectively killing the beauty of the play. Who ever said "wow, these liberator positionnements are so skillfull?" Another illustration of this problem lies with the tankivac. Tanks used to be very carefully set up in a position to exploit their range and slash at best. Now it's just "boost in and throw them wherever, it's more important to be poorly positionned fast than to be well positionned slowly". Where the tankivac gained in how microable it is, it lost in how strategic it was.
With their main weakness being their cooldown, disruptors are also not really about positioning, they're about micro. Even though we've seen some pretty awesome moves from PvP in Korea, with blink baits followed by well placed disruptors, in the EU pro scene we see them more used as a micro skillshot.
The main exception would be the lurkers, which are mobile and cloacked, but are still very position-dependant because of their "short" range and their linear AoE
Finally, the colossi, while naysayers said it's a terrible unit that promotes deathballs (which is true sometimes, and no one like that), promoted interesting positionnal play in TvP. Vikings/bio vs stalker/colossi was a constant dance between armies where the bio had to be concaving on stalkers while vikings shot colossi. And increasing how the colossus needs to be positionned well to dish out as much damage as possible for the longest time during the fight should have been the goal of its buff, not a stupid "MOAR ATTAK SPEED LOL".
I think that having a clear weakness for a positionnal unit isn't enough for it to be fun. Colossi being targetable by AA isn't enough if in most cases you can Amove it like an idiot. Tankivacs aren't about position, they're about micro and speed. Disruptors aren't about the positionning of the unit, they're a 14 range skillshot. Liberators aren't that much about positioning since the fact they fly make them more usefull to abuse shift-clic-siege-onto-mineral-lines than to occupy strategic chokes or pathways.
In LOTV, most of the "positionnal units" are simply micro intensive units that don't really require strategy, but speed of execution.
Yup, couldn't agree more. All to make the game more "exciting" for viewers, no one gave two shits about the players. RTS imo is about building stuff and securing/expanding your territory, lots of people complained about games being too long and boring to watch (ok, 2h turtle mech vs SH was hard to endure, but it didn't happen THAT often), when in fact those games had strategical beauty from a player perspective.
LotV economy changes killed that methodical approach, it's all about mobility and while that may be exciting for the average viewer, I'd really like some diversity here as a player.
I'm a very fervant supporter of bringing back strategy in LOTV, and mainly through positional units, but SH were just cancer. Just like late HOTS mech play was cancer too. Why ? Because it was never worth it to attack. Which is something that happen whenever one race has a garanteed win late game. Innovation mech style, which was the best mech style was about never attacking and splitting the map in two, because the mech army was always more cost effective than the zerg army.
Turtly comps are okay if they : 1) are able to perform strong timing pushes 2) are eventually weaker than a late game air comp 3) aren't able to transition to an air comp too easily
For instance : right now mech play in TvZ is kinda weak but very fun. You are : 1) able to do very strong timing pushes : tanks/hellbats/liberators go through roach/hydra like butter, and hellbats/mines/thors/liberators go through LBM 2) your mech army will be eventually terrible against BL/corru/viper, so while you're not playing under a timer you can't split the map like an idiot 3) because bases are depleated very quickly, you don't have the money to transition into mass libs/vikings/raven/ghosts (for instance) quickly, and you can't go straight to this composition because it's too expansive and you're gonna die for sure on the way there.
I play mech at high masters/low GM level, and it's tons of fun. Because you're able to have a mid game comp that moves on the map while you're building your "frontal push" army. With hellion/cyclones you can go out on the map and snipe workers, or even bases with the lock, while getting some liberators, tanks and thors at home.
That's why i'd very much like for the cyclone to be brought down to 3 pop and have a little HP increase. If they had 150 hps, they'd still be very fragile and 3 pop would still make them unmassable and cost inefficient. And because they allow a mech style that can move around the map, that's tons of fun.
I didn't want to advocate for HotS Swarm Hosts in any way
But I don't see that much of a problem with not having to attack, if it gives me the highest win chance, why not go for it. It's actually VERY hard to do correctly as a single mistake could easily cost you the game, so there's room to exploit for the opponent. I agree that transitioning into air shouldn't be THAT easy, but current comps kinda always have to include a fair amount of Liberators so your argument seems kinda contradicting (at least when looking at current balance).
Apparently we have slightly different views of what defines "mech" play, as I don't want it do be just "another mobile composition" coming out of the factory, but actually being able to put pressure on your opponent by entrechning certain positions on the map (siege tank lines around watch towers), thus having a different strategical approach from the get-go as opposed to MMM.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Positionnal units are very important I feel in every matchup. Wether both opponent have some, or one of the opponent has some and you have to screw him with a mobile comp. TvT mech vs bio gave us the most glorious pieces of starcraft i've ever seen. Beautiful mechanic play and brilliant strategy from both sides.
However, blizzard took away the main drawbacks of positionnal units in LOTV, and that's why they're not really positionnal units. I liked the liberator concept : an insanely strong AG on a very tiny zone. However, it flies. It kinda defeats the "positionning" aspect of the unit because it doesn't really accounts for terrain, and it's so so so easy to place into abusive positions, effectively killing the beauty of the play. Who ever said "wow, these liberator positionnements are so skillfull?" Another illustration of this problem lies with the tankivac. Tanks used to be very carefully set up in a position to exploit their range and slash at best. Now it's just "boost in and throw them wherever, it's more important to be poorly positionned fast than to be well positionned slowly". Where the tankivac gained in how microable it is, it lost in how strategic it was.
With their main weakness being their cooldown, disruptors are also not really about positioning, they're about micro. Even though we've seen some pretty awesome moves from PvP in Korea, with blink baits followed by well placed disruptors, in the EU pro scene we see them more used as a micro skillshot.
The main exception would be the lurkers, which are mobile and cloacked, but are still very position-dependant because of their "short" range and their linear AoE
Finally, the colossi, while naysayers said it's a terrible unit that promotes deathballs (which is true sometimes, and no one like that), promoted interesting positionnal play in TvP. Vikings/bio vs stalker/colossi was a constant dance between armies where the bio had to be concaving on stalkers while vikings shot colossi. And increasing how the colossus needs to be positionned well to dish out as much damage as possible for the longest time during the fight should have been the goal of its buff, not a stupid "MOAR ATTAK SPEED LOL".
I think that having a clear weakness for a positionnal unit isn't enough for it to be fun. Colossi being targetable by AA isn't enough if in most cases you can Amove it like an idiot. Tankivacs aren't about position, they're about micro and speed. Disruptors aren't about the positionning of the unit, they're a 14 range skillshot. Liberators aren't that much about positioning since the fact they fly make them more usefull to abuse shift-clic-siege-onto-mineral-lines than to occupy strategic chokes or pathways.
In LOTV, most of the "positionnal units" are simply micro intensive units that don't really require strategy, but speed of execution.
Yup, couldn't agree more. All to make the game more "exciting" for viewers, no one gave two shits about the players. RTS imo is about building stuff and securing/expanding your territory, lots of people complained about games being too long and boring to watch (ok, 2h turtle mech vs SH was hard to endure, but it didn't happen THAT often), when in fact those games had strategical beauty from a player perspective.
LotV economy changes killed that methodical approach, it's all about mobility and while that may be exciting for the average viewer, I'd really like some diversity here as a player.
I'm a very fervant supporter of bringing back strategy in LOTV, and mainly through positional units, but SH were just cancer. Just like late HOTS mech play was cancer too. Why ? Because it was never worth it to attack. Which is something that happen whenever one race has a garanteed win late game. Innovation mech style, which was the best mech style was about never attacking and splitting the map in two, because the mech army was always more cost effective than the zerg army.
Turtly comps are okay if they : 1) are able to perform strong timing pushes 2) are eventually weaker than a late game air comp 3) aren't able to transition to an air comp too easily
For instance : right now mech play in TvZ is kinda weak but very fun. You are : 1) able to do very strong timing pushes : tanks/hellbats/liberators go through roach/hydra like butter, and hellbats/mines/thors/liberators go through LBM 2) your mech army will be eventually terrible against BL/corru/viper, so while you're not playing under a timer you can't split the map like an idiot 3) because bases are depleated very quickly, you don't have the money to transition into mass libs/vikings/raven/ghosts (for instance) quickly, and you can't go straight to this composition because it's too expansive and you're gonna die for sure on the way there.
I play mech at high masters/low GM level, and it's tons of fun. Because you're able to have a mid game comp that moves on the map while you're building your "frontal push" army. With hellion/cyclones you can go out on the map and snipe workers, or even bases with the lock, while getting some liberators, tanks and thors at home.
That's why i'd very much like for the cyclone to be brought down to 3 pop and have a little HP increase. If they had 150 hps, they'd still be very fragile and 3 pop would still make them unmassable and cost inefficient. And because they allow a mech style that can move around the map, that's tons of fun.
I didn't want to advocate for HotS Swarm Hosts in any way
But I don't see that much of a problem with not having to attack, if it gives me the highest win chance, why not go for it. It's actually VERY hard to do correctly as a single mistake could easily cost you the game, so there's room to exploit for the opponent. I agree that transitioning into air shouldn't be THAT easy, but current comps kinda always have to include a fair amount of Liberators so your argument seems kinda contradicting (at least when looking at current balance).
Apparently we have slightly different views of what defines "mech" play, as I don't want it do be just "another mobile composition" coming out of the factory, but actually being able to put pressure on your opponent by entrechning certain positions on the map (siege tank lines around watch towers), thus having a different strategical approach from the get-go as opposed to MMM.
- Not attacking being the most efficient way to play will always cause boring and very long games. The SH era saw the biggest drop in viewership ever seen in SC2. It's okay to make the choice not to attack at some points in the game, and that what strategy is. But if your whole plan revolves around never attacking at any point, that's just boring for the opponent, and for viewers.
- Having some amount of air with mech comps isn't "an air comp", it's air support, and wether it's liberators or viking, mech play always had to rely on starport tech. Also, you don't "have" to build liberators with your mech army, I won games against GM zergs playing mech without liberators.
- And about "what is mech play", what you describe is a fantasy, it never happened over the whole course of SC2, except for TvT where mech is already good on certain maps. TvZ mech play never really was able to hold strategic locations without spamming turrets and PFs. However, having the possibility to move out on the map early game-mid game with mobile units doesn't, in any way, prevents strong positional play in the other phases of the game.
- Also, being able to move out on the map with mobile units isn't directly the same as playing bio. Bio play relies on heavy multi proned attacks, and even the non bio support units are very mobile and move around the map with the bio. Mech can absolutely be about having a few mobile units on the map that can counterattack and harass while massing a much more static but powerfull and cost efficient army to defend agressions and eventually push.
Anyway, while mech should be, and is a different playstyle from bio, it's not healthy for the game for it to be absolutely passive and fully defensive. Mech play should have options to be agressive in some form throughout the game, while retaining its ability to lock down positions with immobile units, and the combinaison of the two would give a fun playstyle to play and watch.
For instance, Lillkanin vs Sortoff in DH valencia, game on apotheosis. While lillkanin transitioned to slowly to a more powerful/static comp, and because the cyclones are too weak at the moment, he eventually lost, but the game was fun and intense.
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in LotV diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
protoss is only good in lotv if u are high level.
While I agree with this, my question still remains who are they aiming these proposed nerfs against? If Zest, Dear, Stats, Neeb and Showtime weren't playing for some reason, protoss would be underrepresented in pretty much every league and noteworthy tournament there is in the game.
So, are they nerfing against these handful of players that still can make it with protoss? Is Blizzard listening to Zest's competetitors whine against his play for example, and nerfing whole race based on that?
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
protoss is only good in lotv if u are high level.
While I agree with this, my question still remains who are they aiming these proposed nerfs against? If Zest, Dear, Stats, Neeb and Showtime weren't playing for some reason, protoss would be underrepresented in pretty much every league and noteworthy tournament there is in the game.
So, are they nerfing against these handful of players that still can make it with protoss? Is Blizzard listening to Zest's competetitors whine against his play for example, and nerfing whole race based on that?
where would terran be if Maru, TY, Cure, Marinelord and Masa weren't playing for some reason? where would zerg be if L̶i̶̶f̶̶e̶ Dark, Rogue, Solar, Nerchio and Snute weren't playing for some reason?
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
protoss is only good in lotv if u are high level.
While I agree with this, my question still remains who are they aiming these proposed nerfs against? If Zest, Dear, Stats, Neeb and Showtime weren't playing for some reason, protoss would be underrepresented in pretty much every league and noteworthy tournament there is in the game.
So, are they nerfing against these handful of players that still can make it with protoss? Is Blizzard listening to Zest's competetitors whine against his play for example, and nerfing whole race based on that?
I find this really strange tbh. I don't find P significantly harder to play than it was in HotS. Does anyone have an idea about why P are virtually extinct below masters ?
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
protoss is only good in lotv if u are high level.
While I agree with this, my question still remains who are they aiming these proposed nerfs against? If Zest, Dear, Stats, Neeb and Showtime weren't playing for some reason, protoss would be underrepresented in pretty much every league and noteworthy tournament there is in the game.
So, are they nerfing against these handful of players that still can make it with protoss? Is Blizzard listening to Zest's competetitors whine against his play for example, and nerfing whole race based on that?
I find this really strange tbh. I don't find P significantly harder to play than it was in HotS. Does anyone have an idea about why P are virtually extinct below masters ?
I'm pretty sure Protoss has always been the least common race in the middle tier of players (IIRC in bronze and silver they're always decently common).
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
protoss is only good in lotv if u are high level.
While I agree with this, my question still remains who are they aiming these proposed nerfs against? If Zest, Dear, Stats, Neeb and Showtime weren't playing for some reason, protoss would be underrepresented in pretty much every league and noteworthy tournament there is in the game.
So, are they nerfing against these handful of players that still can make it with protoss? Is Blizzard listening to Zest's competetitors whine against his play for example, and nerfing whole race based on that?
I find this really strange tbh. I don't find P significantly harder to play than it was in HotS. Does anyone have an idea about why P are virtually extinct below masters ?
I'm pretty sure Protoss has always been the least common race in the middle tier of players (IIRC in bronze and silver they're always decently common).
I think you're right (not too sure though) but the proportions had never been this low. I think last season I played 20 P and 50 T / 50 Z on ladder for instance, while in HotS I would get P more often than the other races. Do you think all P players got a liberator no overcharge could reach in their mineral lines and said "screw it" ?
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
protoss is only good in lotv if u are high level.
While I agree with this, my question still remains who are they aiming these proposed nerfs against? If Zest, Dear, Stats, Neeb and Showtime weren't playing for some reason, protoss would be underrepresented in pretty much every league and noteworthy tournament there is in the game.
So, are they nerfing against these handful of players that still can make it with protoss? Is Blizzard listening to Zest's competetitors whine against his play for example, and nerfing whole race based on that?
where would terran be if Maru, TY, Cure, Marinelord and Masa weren't playing for some reason? where would zerg be if L̶i̶̶f̶̶e̶ Dark, Rogue, Solar, Nerchio and Snute weren't playing for some reason?
1. In terran's case there are similarities, at least that was the case when Maru was keeping terran in GSL almost by himself. In Zerg's case, players on top level seem to change more often, and like in GGlord/infestors case, I think we have seen a pretty big surge of zerg players coming back from nowhere after lotv started. Snute has been quite consistently on top level, but likes of Nerchio, Bly, Sorfof and so on have taken a huge step forwards after hots, and they are not only ones.
2. Zerg would still have huge overrepresentation in ladder.
And the question was, why protoss is getting nerfed. Zerg was just buffed.
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
protoss is only good in lotv if u are high level.
While I agree with this, my question still remains who are they aiming these proposed nerfs against? If Zest, Dear, Stats, Neeb and Showtime weren't playing for some reason, protoss would be underrepresented in pretty much every league and noteworthy tournament there is in the game.
So, are they nerfing against these handful of players that still can make it with protoss? Is Blizzard listening to Zest's competetitors whine against his play for example, and nerfing whole race based on that?
I find this really strange tbh. I don't find P significantly harder to play than it was in HotS. Does anyone have an idea about why P are virtually extinct below masters ?
I'm pretty sure Protoss has always been the least common race in the middle tier of players (IIRC in bronze and silver they're always decently common).
I think you're right (not too sure though) but the proportions had never been this low. I think last season I played 20 P and 50 T / 50 Z on ladder for instance, while in HotS I would get P more often than the other races. Do you think all P players got a liberator no overcharge could reach in their mineral lines and said "screw it" ?
I don't feel I'm facing less Protoss players than in HotS. Protoss has always been the race I've played the least against by far.
On July 24 2016 02:26 temporary1 wrote: Um, why are they considering nerfing protoss?
Protoss is already way down in ladder, to a point that there is not a single league in WoL, HotS or LotV that has 33% protoss in it (Stats are bit old, but last buff was to zerg) and there are almost twice as many zergs globally in diamond and plat than protosses.
I dont remember seeing overrepresentation of protoss in premium leagues either.
There are some very good P players, like Zest who is a contender for a title of best player SC2 has seen, and players like Neeb and Showtime in europe who have made deep runs. Is the nerf aimed towards them? Or has the game gone to a point where protoss is too difficult for casuals to play, so there are no masses to defend it in public forums, and therefore every way protoss wins is represented as a balance problem?
protoss is only good in lotv if u are high level.
While I agree with this, my question still remains who are they aiming these proposed nerfs against? If Zest, Dear, Stats, Neeb and Showtime weren't playing for some reason, protoss would be underrepresented in pretty much every league and noteworthy tournament there is in the game.
So, are they nerfing against these handful of players that still can make it with protoss? Is Blizzard listening to Zest's competetitors whine against his play for example, and nerfing whole race based on that?
I find this really strange tbh. I don't find P significantly harder to play than it was in HotS. Does anyone have an idea about why P are virtually extinct below masters ?
I'm pretty sure Protoss has always been the least common race in the middle tier of players (IIRC in bronze and silver they're always decently common).
I think you're right (not too sure though) but the proportions had never been this low. I think last season I played 20 P and 50 T / 50 Z on ladder for instance, while in HotS I would get P more often than the other races. Do you think all P players got a liberator no overcharge could reach in their mineral lines and said "screw it" ?
Possibly. Maybe some others were given the final blow by the 20th ravager bust they couldn't defend properly at their level. And some probably saw their units die in liberation zones and decided "Fuck this liberators OP"
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Positionnal units are very important I feel in every matchup. Wether both opponent have some, or one of the opponent has some and you have to screw him with a mobile comp. TvT mech vs bio gave us the most glorious pieces of starcraft i've ever seen. Beautiful mechanic play and brilliant strategy from both sides.
However, blizzard took away the main drawbacks of positionnal units in LOTV, and that's why they're not really positionnal units. I liked the liberator concept : an insanely strong AG on a very tiny zone. However, it flies. It kinda defeats the "positionning" aspect of the unit because it doesn't really accounts for terrain, and it's so so so easy to place into abusive positions, effectively killing the beauty of the play. Who ever said "wow, these liberator positionnements are so skillfull?" Another illustration of this problem lies with the tankivac. Tanks used to be very carefully set up in a position to exploit their range and slash at best. Now it's just "boost in and throw them wherever, it's more important to be poorly positionned fast than to be well positionned slowly". Where the tankivac gained in how microable it is, it lost in how strategic it was.
With their main weakness being their cooldown, disruptors are also not really about positioning, they're about micro. Even though we've seen some pretty awesome moves from PvP in Korea, with blink baits followed by well placed disruptors, in the EU pro scene we see them more used as a micro skillshot.
The main exception would be the lurkers, which are mobile and cloacked, but are still very position-dependant because of their "short" range and their linear AoE
Finally, the colossi, while naysayers said it's a terrible unit that promotes deathballs (which is true sometimes, and no one like that), promoted interesting positionnal play in TvP. Vikings/bio vs stalker/colossi was a constant dance between armies where the bio had to be concaving on stalkers while vikings shot colossi. And increasing how the colossus needs to be positionned well to dish out as much damage as possible for the longest time during the fight should have been the goal of its buff, not a stupid "MOAR ATTAK SPEED LOL".
I think that having a clear weakness for a positionnal unit isn't enough for it to be fun. Colossi being targetable by AA isn't enough if in most cases you can Amove it like an idiot. Tankivacs aren't about position, they're about micro and speed. Disruptors aren't about the positionning of the unit, they're a 14 range skillshot. Liberators aren't that much about positioning since the fact they fly make them more usefull to abuse shift-clic-siege-onto-mineral-lines than to occupy strategic chokes or pathways.
In LOTV, most of the "positionnal units" are simply micro intensive units that don't really require strategy, but speed of execution.
Yup, couldn't agree more. All to make the game more "exciting" for viewers, no one gave two shits about the players. RTS imo is about building stuff and securing/expanding your territory, lots of people complained about games being too long and boring to watch (ok, 2h turtle mech vs SH was hard to endure, but it didn't happen THAT often), when in fact those games had strategical beauty from a player perspective.
LotV economy changes killed that methodical approach, it's all about mobility and while that may be exciting for the average viewer, I'd really like some diversity here as a player.
I'm a very fervant supporter of bringing back strategy in LOTV, and mainly through positional units, but SH were just cancer. Just like late HOTS mech play was cancer too. Why ? Because it was never worth it to attack. Which is something that happen whenever one race has a garanteed win late game. Innovation mech style, which was the best mech style was about never attacking and splitting the map in two, because the mech army was always more cost effective than the zerg army.
Turtly comps are okay if they : 1) are able to perform strong timing pushes 2) are eventually weaker than a late game air comp 3) aren't able to transition to an air comp too easily
For instance : right now mech play in TvZ is kinda weak but very fun. You are : 1) able to do very strong timing pushes : tanks/hellbats/liberators go through roach/hydra like butter, and hellbats/mines/thors/liberators go through LBM 2) your mech army will be eventually terrible against BL/corru/viper, so while you're not playing under a timer you can't split the map like an idiot 3) because bases are depleated very quickly, you don't have the money to transition into mass libs/vikings/raven/ghosts (for instance) quickly, and you can't go straight to this composition because it's too expansive and you're gonna die for sure on the way there.
I play mech at high masters/low GM level, and it's tons of fun. Because you're able to have a mid game comp that moves on the map while you're building your "frontal push" army. With hellion/cyclones you can go out on the map and snipe workers, or even bases with the lock, while getting some liberators, tanks and thors at home.
That's why i'd very much like for the cyclone to be brought down to 3 pop and have a little HP increase. If they had 150 hps, they'd still be very fragile and 3 pop would still make them unmassable and cost inefficient. And because they allow a mech style that can move around the map, that's tons of fun.
I didn't want to advocate for HotS Swarm Hosts in any way
But I don't see that much of a problem with not having to attack, if it gives me the highest win chance, why not go for it. It's actually VERY hard to do correctly as a single mistake could easily cost you the game, so there's room to exploit for the opponent. I agree that transitioning into air shouldn't be THAT easy, but current comps kinda always have to include a fair amount of Liberators so your argument seems kinda contradicting (at least when looking at current balance).
Apparently we have slightly different views of what defines "mech" play, as I don't want it do be just "another mobile composition" coming out of the factory, but actually being able to put pressure on your opponent by entrechning certain positions on the map (siege tank lines around watch towers), thus having a different strategical approach from the get-go as opposed to MMM.
- Not attacking being the most efficient way to play will always cause boring and very long games. The SH era saw the biggest drop in viewership ever seen in SC2. It's okay to make the choice not to attack at some points in the game, and that what strategy is. But if your whole plan revolves around never attacking at any point, that's just boring for the opponent, and for viewers.
- Having some amount of air with mech comps isn't "an air comp", it's air support, and wether it's liberators or viking, mech play always had to rely on starport tech. Also, you don't "have" to build liberators with your mech army, I won games against GM zergs playing mech without liberators.
- And about "what is mech play", what you describe is a fantasy, it never happened over the whole course of SC2, except for TvT where mech is already good on certain maps. TvZ mech play never really was able to hold strategic locations without spamming turrets and PFs. However, having the possibility to move out on the map early game-mid game with mobile units doesn't, in any way, prevents strong positional play in the other phases of the game.
- Also, being able to move out on the map with mobile units isn't directly the same as playing bio. Bio play relies on heavy multi proned attacks, and even the non bio support units are very mobile and move around the map with the bio. Mech can absolutely be about having a few mobile units on the map that can counterattack and harass while massing a much more static but powerfull and cost efficient army to defend agressions and eventually push.
Anyway, while mech should be, and is a different playstyle from bio, it's not healthy for the game for it to be absolutely passive and fully defensive. Mech play should have options to be agressive in some form throughout the game, while retaining its ability to lock down positions with immobile units, and the combinaison of the two would give a fun playstyle to play and watch.
For instance, Lillkanin vs Sortoff in DH valencia, game on apotheosis. While lillkanin transitioned to slowly to a more powerful/static comp, and because the cyclones are too weak at the moment, he eventually lost, but the game was fun and intense.
It's not about never attacking, but only harrassing with fast units like hellions and some flyers maybe while using your main army to secure space and expanding behind it. There will be holes and weaknesses the opponent can exploit (with the right map design, that is). WoL and HotS TvT are a splendid example of how differently the match-up could be played, you simply don't see it in LotV due to Tankivacs and the economy model.
And the most important thing is, it should be completely irrelevant how boring it is to watch, if it's fun to play. Different people prefer different things, so if someone likes to play longer and more methodical games, why is that a bad thing per se?
On July 24 2016 04:15 [PkF] Wire wrote: I think you're right (not too sure though) but the proportions had never been this low. I think last season I played 20 P and 50 T / 50 Z on ladder for instance, while in HotS I would get P more often than the other races. Do you think all P players got a liberator no overcharge could reach in their mineral lines and said "screw it" ?
The proportions have never been this low, but it's easy to see why Protoss players at lower levels are dropping out.
LotV begins and Protoss' macro mechanic is the most changed, their proxy-warp-ins practically removed, base-building (already the hardest of the three races) further complicated by the need to perfectly PO to defend ... well, basically anything, colossus nerfed (mainstay of entire race for all of SC2), and Disruptors are hard-to-control units with a much larger chance of the opponent learning to avoid them than the low-level protoss learning to use warp-prisms + excellent and extremely risky flanks to get a better chance at a hit.
LotV Protoss focuses upon getting massive early-game damage on the opponent so the Protoss has a chance at success.
For months (the longest period that any race has been this low in a single match-up for all of SC2 excluding the very first period where Zergs learned to inject perfectly versus Terran in WoL), PvZ was an absolute train-wreck -- even professional players had ~40% win-rates in the match-up.
While top Protoss are being carried into the mid- and late- game by the threat (and often the actuality) of adept + prism harassment, the race as a whole is in dire straights.
If the shade nerf goes through ... or both the shade and prism nerfs ... Protoss is going to be struggling everywhere for a long, long time.
Even the narrative that "Protoss is wrecking Terran" is so one-sided it's kind of funny. Zest and Stats, alone, account for the SSL win-rate and the GSL win-rate is due to massive Terran over-representation in the lower levels of that league (Terran will account for 7 or 8 out of 16 slots in the next round ... 50% representation isn't being "wrecked").
To be honest, I'm still surprised that people are surprised to see Protoss so screwed on ladder.
Lest you read too far into the endless diatribe that had preceeded this. Time and time again, I spend copious amounts of time trying to express my personal idiocy with the rest of the club. I realize much too late how pointless it is for me but, I need that pissing match fix too. ~ Just about when im done with my thoughts, I close the webpage. I see i'm just giving myself another dope kick for the brain, and I try to nip it before my words go beyond my comprehension. It's my angst with dumbassery met with blind rationality (do you lead a horse to water? Well is it sick or healthy? dead animals next to a watering hole scares others away.). Do I benefit from telling a narcissistic person they're bullying people with their candor, and from time to time the 'facts' are fallacies? They're here to indulge people of their own afflictions.
... However, there was a part of my heart yearning to let innocent children know of the greater machine this game gears the brain towards, and the detrimental roll it can play left unchecked. Furthermore, in community forums: submitting words to public forums you don't firmly believe in, rewires your brain too (Neuroplasticity)
Peoplies'- engage your self and brainies for moments, please guys's's. Mehk it happen.s~.
Be mindful with your time as these grey days can potentially turn into discontent years. 10years down this road, of what value is any of this? 20years down this road, what are you expecting to utilize along the way, does physical/mental health play a roll in maintaining these? Are those worthy values worth more than the otherwise grande potential worldly skills? (marksman, carpenter, chef, chemical engineer, clinical psychologist, physio-therapist, aeronautical engineer/mechanic )
Youth/young adults/ anything younger and a geriatric: sponge up essential skills now. Prepare for your own trials and tribulations- Not Blizzard's...
PS. google BMI calculator. Taeja clap^^
PPS This can be a fun game experience through and through. It needs to be regulated with moderation per person. Keep your personal life goals in the forefront. If they are stale and you play this because it's fun, you need to updated goals, We're not all meant to be in the majors, be very clear about it.
This pays homage to KadaverBB & The_Templar for telling me to put more content in my posts. Thanks for the ego checks. some times im a total dumbass Thank you, Sirs.
On July 22 2016 22:42 geokilla wrote: Again Blizzard doesn't know how to fix their game. The problem is the pickup range for Warp Prism, not their health!
Well, the high health makes it very forgiving to do WP shit. With lower HP, lower level Ps should loose them more often.
Removing the +light damage of Liberators would take away the only interesting aspect of the unit for me: an alternative to the Thor as anti Muta. The main problem i think is the huge anti ground dmg, and that it's in direct conflict with the siege tank as a role; true that the tank is crap right now. So buff the Tank and nerf the anti ground of the Lib.
There should never have been an anti ground attack for the liberator to begin with. I would go as far as to say that every single new unit they added in lotv was a design failure.
Couldn't disagree more. I think the new positional units (liberators, lurkers and disruptors) are the best things that happened to the game in a long time because they added a ton of depth to the game. Also adepts are very cool imo and have made toss very multitasking-depending. Ravagers suck though.
Positionnal units are very important I feel in every matchup. Wether both opponent have some, or one of the opponent has some and you have to screw him with a mobile comp. TvT mech vs bio gave us the most glorious pieces of starcraft i've ever seen. Beautiful mechanic play and brilliant strategy from both sides.
However, blizzard took away the main drawbacks of positionnal units in LOTV, and that's why they're not really positionnal units. I liked the liberator concept : an insanely strong AG on a very tiny zone. However, it flies. It kinda defeats the "positionning" aspect of the unit because it doesn't really accounts for terrain, and it's so so so easy to place into abusive positions, effectively killing the beauty of the play. Who ever said "wow, these liberator positionnements are so skillfull?" Another illustration of this problem lies with the tankivac. Tanks used to be very carefully set up in a position to exploit their range and slash at best. Now it's just "boost in and throw them wherever, it's more important to be poorly positionned fast than to be well positionned slowly". Where the tankivac gained in how microable it is, it lost in how strategic it was.
With their main weakness being their cooldown, disruptors are also not really about positioning, they're about micro. Even though we've seen some pretty awesome moves from PvP in Korea, with blink baits followed by well placed disruptors, in the EU pro scene we see them more used as a micro skillshot.
The main exception would be the lurkers, which are mobile and cloacked, but are still very position-dependant because of their "short" range and their linear AoE
Finally, the colossi, while naysayers said it's a terrible unit that promotes deathballs (which is true sometimes, and no one like that), promoted interesting positionnal play in TvP. Vikings/bio vs stalker/colossi was a constant dance between armies where the bio had to be concaving on stalkers while vikings shot colossi. And increasing how the colossus needs to be positionned well to dish out as much damage as possible for the longest time during the fight should have been the goal of its buff, not a stupid "MOAR ATTAK SPEED LOL".
I think that having a clear weakness for a positionnal unit isn't enough for it to be fun. Colossi being targetable by AA isn't enough if in most cases you can Amove it like an idiot. Tankivacs aren't about position, they're about micro and speed. Disruptors aren't about the positionning of the unit, they're a 14 range skillshot. Liberators aren't that much about positioning since the fact they fly make them more usefull to abuse shift-clic-siege-onto-mineral-lines than to occupy strategic chokes or pathways.
In LOTV, most of the "positionnal units" are simply micro intensive units that don't really require strategy, but speed of execution.
Yup, couldn't agree more. All to make the game more "exciting" for viewers, no one gave two shits about the players. RTS imo is about building stuff and securing/expanding your territory, lots of people complained about games being too long and boring to watch (ok, 2h turtle mech vs SH was hard to endure, but it didn't happen THAT often), when in fact those games had strategical beauty from a player perspective.
LotV economy changes killed that methodical approach, it's all about mobility and while that may be exciting for the average viewer, I'd really like some diversity here as a player.
I'm a very fervant supporter of bringing back strategy in LOTV, and mainly through positional units, but SH were just cancer. Just like late HOTS mech play was cancer too. Why ? Because it was never worth it to attack. Which is something that happen whenever one race has a garanteed win late game. Innovation mech style, which was the best mech style was about never attacking and splitting the map in two, because the mech army was always more cost effective than the zerg army.
Turtly comps are okay if they : 1) are able to perform strong timing pushes 2) are eventually weaker than a late game air comp 3) aren't able to transition to an air comp too easily
For instance : right now mech play in TvZ is kinda weak but very fun. You are : 1) able to do very strong timing pushes : tanks/hellbats/liberators go through roach/hydra like butter, and hellbats/mines/thors/liberators go through LBM 2) your mech army will be eventually terrible against BL/corru/viper, so while you're not playing under a timer you can't split the map like an idiot 3) because bases are depleated very quickly, you don't have the money to transition into mass libs/vikings/raven/ghosts (for instance) quickly, and you can't go straight to this composition because it's too expansive and you're gonna die for sure on the way there.
I play mech at high masters/low GM level, and it's tons of fun. Because you're able to have a mid game comp that moves on the map while you're building your "frontal push" army. With hellion/cyclones you can go out on the map and snipe workers, or even bases with the lock, while getting some liberators, tanks and thors at home.
That's why i'd very much like for the cyclone to be brought down to 3 pop and have a little HP increase. If they had 150 hps, they'd still be very fragile and 3 pop would still make them unmassable and cost inefficient. And because they allow a mech style that can move around the map, that's tons of fun.
I didn't want to advocate for HotS Swarm Hosts in any way
But I don't see that much of a problem with not having to attack, if it gives me the highest win chance, why not go for it. It's actually VERY hard to do correctly as a single mistake could easily cost you the game, so there's room to exploit for the opponent. I agree that transitioning into air shouldn't be THAT easy, but current comps kinda always have to include a fair amount of Liberators so your argument seems kinda contradicting (at least when looking at current balance).
Apparently we have slightly different views of what defines "mech" play, as I don't want it do be just "another mobile composition" coming out of the factory, but actually being able to put pressure on your opponent by entrechning certain positions on the map (siege tank lines around watch towers), thus having a different strategical approach from the get-go as opposed to MMM.
- Not attacking being the most efficient way to play will always cause boring and very long games. The SH era saw the biggest drop in viewership ever seen in SC2. It's okay to make the choice not to attack at some points in the game, and that what strategy is. But if your whole plan revolves around never attacking at any point, that's just boring for the opponent, and for viewers.
- Having some amount of air with mech comps isn't "an air comp", it's air support, and wether it's liberators or viking, mech play always had to rely on starport tech. Also, you don't "have" to build liberators with your mech army, I won games against GM zergs playing mech without liberators.
- And about "what is mech play", what you describe is a fantasy, it never happened over the whole course of SC2, except for TvT where mech is already good on certain maps. TvZ mech play never really was able to hold strategic locations without spamming turrets and PFs. However, having the possibility to move out on the map early game-mid game with mobile units doesn't, in any way, prevents strong positional play in the other phases of the game.
- Also, being able to move out on the map with mobile units isn't directly the same as playing bio. Bio play relies on heavy multi proned attacks, and even the non bio support units are very mobile and move around the map with the bio. Mech can absolutely be about having a few mobile units on the map that can counterattack and harass while massing a much more static but powerfull and cost efficient army to defend agressions and eventually push.
Anyway, while mech should be, and is a different playstyle from bio, it's not healthy for the game for it to be absolutely passive and fully defensive. Mech play should have options to be agressive in some form throughout the game, while retaining its ability to lock down positions with immobile units, and the combinaison of the two would give a fun playstyle to play and watch.
For instance, Lillkanin vs Sortoff in DH valencia, game on apotheosis. While lillkanin transitioned to slowly to a more powerful/static comp, and because the cyclones are too weak at the moment, he eventually lost, but the game was fun and intense.
It's not about never attacking, but only harrassing with fast units like hellions and some flyers maybe while using your main army to secure space and expanding behind it. There will be holes and weaknesses the opponent can exploit (with the right map design, that is). WoL and HotS TvT are a splendid example of how differently the match-up could be played, you simply don't see it in LotV due to Tankivacs and the economy model.
And the most important thing is, it should be completely irrelevant how boring it is to watch, if it's fun to play. Different people prefer different things, so if someone likes to play longer and more methodical games, why is that a bad thing per se?
Actually KR terrans are starting to play mech in TvT again, and it's pretty much just like in WOL/HOTS. Tankivac is cancer for marine tanks vs marine tanks, but in mech vs bio case it's pretty irrelevant. And player's fun should always be prioritised over viewer's fun. However, when you play against someone that doesn't need to attack to win, that's never fun. If you play a zerg that doesn't ever attack, only right clics packs of lings in your mineral lines while rushing BL/viper/corru and spamming spines and spores all over the map, that's not remotely fun to play against. Good thing, it doesn't work. Late HOTS mech was the terran version of that, and I'm glad it's gone. Fun is defined by a majority. And most people feel like playing against someone that never has to attack to win is complete cancer. Sure, a wide range of styles and strategies should be allowed into the game, but massing tanks while right clicking hellions into mineral lines is kind of an extreme on a "should it be viable" vs "considered fun" ratio. By the way, about this : when mech players turtle it's considered cancer, but when zerg does it, it's every ZvT ever since 8 months that LOTV's been released. Double standards for the win.
Bottom line, giving mech the ability to push onto the map, while still retaining its positional aspect should be possible if done intelligently. Buffing the tank, nerfing the tankivac, buffing the cyclone's pop efficiency would definetly help.
On July 24 2016 04:15 [PkF] Wire wrote: I think you're right (not too sure though) but the proportions had never been this low. I think last season I played 20 P and 50 T / 50 Z on ladder for instance, while in HotS I would get P more often than the other races. Do you think all P players got a liberator no overcharge could reach in their mineral lines and said "screw it" ?
To be honest, I'm still surprised that people are surprised to see Protoss so screwed on ladder.
Really? Doesn't protoss have a reputation for being the race with the most horrendously sneaky and "underhanded" tactics to kill opponents, such as DTs and Oracles? When did protoss suddenly become the race that gets f---ed the most?
I mean I'm protoss, but terrans and zergs have had to deal with shit like psi storm and force fields forever yet you don't see them fleeing the ladder.
I generally enjoy the balance in LotV and it feels much more fun and intellectual to play than WoL or HotS, which were basically games where the player that macro-ed better always won. In LotV positional play has been much more important which I happen to find very enjoyable.
I don't feel I'm facing less Protoss players than in HotS.
1v1 masters worldwide is 38% terran, 34% zerg and 24% protoss right now
at the start of HOTS protoss was the most popular race (34-37%) and towards the end it was 33/32/32.
Protoss representation has declined by more than 1.3x since the most balanced period and about 1.5x since the start of HOTS
---
There is some shift between regions. Terran is dominating korea numbers with numbers never seen before at 42/30/25% (T/Z/P) representation. EU is the most zerg heavy region with a few percent more zerg than terran; NA has slightly more terran than zerg.
All three have the same protoss representation within a few percentage
I don't feel I'm facing less Protoss players than in HotS.
1v1 masters worldwide is 38% terran, 34% zerg and 24% protoss right now
at the start of HOTS protoss was the most popular race (34-37%) and towards the end it was 33/32/32.
Protoss representation has declined by more than 1.3x since the most balanced period and about 1.5x since the start of HOTS
---
There is some shift between regions. Terran is dominating korea numbers with numbers never seen before at 42/30/25% (T/Z/P) representation. EU is the most zerg heavy region with a few percent more zerg than terran; NA has slightly more terran than zerg.
All three have the same protoss representation within a few percentage
Worldwide, Protoss is 29% of the non-random playerbase, 25% of masters and 32% of GM (again, excluding random). Relative to their population, they're under-represented in masters and over-represented in GM.
P is inflated at bottom leagues, deflated at top (exception of top 0.5% of playerbase); zerg is the opposite. The average zerg player is ranked substantially higher than the average protoss player.
are early overlord drops really not an issue in pvz (fast ling drops and early ling bane styles)? i always thought it was broken but it never gets brought up in balance talks..
On July 24 2016 21:53 TT1 wrote: are early overlord drops really not an issue in pvz (fast ling drops and early ling bane styles)? i always thought it was broken but it never gets brought up in balance talks..
Another casualty of the "talk about 5 weeks in a row and then act like it never happened" issue
On July 24 2016 21:53 TT1 wrote: are early overlord drops really not an issue in pvz (fast ling drops and early ling bane styles)? i always thought it was broken but it never gets brought up in balance talks..
One of the few ways for a zerg to harras P early in the game. Mothership is too strong to nerf drops in my opinion.
On July 24 2016 21:53 TT1 wrote: are early overlord drops really not an issue in pvz (fast ling drops and early ling bane styles)? i always thought it was broken but it never gets brought up in balance talks..
One of the few ways for a zerg to harras P early in the game. Mothership is too strong to nerf drops in my opinion.
It's more aptly described as an all-in than a harass - the usual outcomes are effectively/absolutely killing your opponent or losing the game minutes later
On July 24 2016 21:53 TT1 wrote: are early overlord drops really not an issue in pvz (fast ling drops and early ling bane styles)? i always thought it was broken but it never gets brought up in balance talks..
One of the few ways for a zerg to harras P early in the game. Mothership is too strong to nerf drops in my opinion.
It's more aptly described as an all-in than a harass - the usual outcomes are effectively/absolutely killing your opponent or losing the game minutes later
So almost the same as adept harras without the part of the attacker dying if it fails
On July 24 2016 21:53 TT1 wrote: are early overlord drops really not an issue in pvz (fast ling drops and early ling bane styles)? i always thought it was broken but it never gets brought up in balance talks..
One of the few ways for a zerg to harras P early in the game. Mothership is too strong to nerf drops in my opinion.
It's more aptly described as an all-in than a harass - the usual outcomes are effectively/absolutely killing your opponent or losing the game minutes later
So almost the same as adept harras without the part of the attacker dying if it fails
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
That's stupid because T will just scan & kill it immediately. The way this would work is if Nydus being cloaked does not alert the enemy player that Nydus is coming. Then it would make sense. Seeing as how stuff happening underground is not detectable to our everyday senses.
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
That's stupid because T will just scan & kill it immediately. The way this would work is if Nydus being cloaked does not alert the enemy player that Nydus is coming. Then it would make sense. Seeing as how stuff happening underground is not detectable to our everyday senses.
Which would actually just make it stronger than the current nydus because then you couldn't set up the defense you need until the units pop out.
The nydus simply shouldn't be designed as an allin mechanic. It always was in sc2 though which makes it so troublesome. Get zerg drops in a good place and the nydus is redundant anyway
On July 25 2016 06:55 The_Red_Viper wrote: The nydus simply shouldn't be designed as an allin mechanic. It always was in sc2 though which makes it so troublesome. Get zerg drops in a good place and the nydus is redundant anyway
I agree, the problem is if you pay 200/300 for a canal, it has to be an all-in. The price should be heavily reduced and should be vulnerable again
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
That's stupid because T will just scan & kill it immediately. The way this would work is if Nydus being cloaked does not alert the enemy player that Nydus is coming. Then it would make sense. Seeing as how stuff happening underground is not detectable to our everyday senses.
Which would actually just make it stronger than the current nydus because then you couldn't set up the defense you need until the units pop out.
Seeing as how weak Z air is right now especially vs. Libs, this Nydus buff would be needed AND then some more nerfs to Terran air dominance.
On July 25 2016 06:55 The_Red_Viper wrote: The nydus simply shouldn't be designed as an allin mechanic. It always was in sc2 though which makes it so troublesome. Get zerg drops in a good place and the nydus is redundant anyway
I agree, the problem is if you pay 200/300 for a canal, it has to be an all-in. The price should be heavily reduced and should be vulnerable again
Price should be free or 50 minerals, and invulnerable. There's no point in having a vulnerable Nydus when top players have top senses and can kill it immediately, especially with sensor tower detecting any stray overlords and such.
On July 22 2016 02:49 RaFox17 wrote: Show nested quote +
Nydus being invincible before it´s done makes sense. It tunnels underground so being able to kill it by shooting ground makes zero sense. Seeing that zerg does not have much air presence at the moment i think that having stronger nydus is good for the game.
If we're talking about realistic things, there are quite a few unrealistic things in sc2 anyway. How do use stim then get healed by medivac in real life? I think nydus worm shouldn't be invincible because defender should be awarded for quick reaction. You shouldn't punish defender in all cases. You shouldn't fail (being detected in this case) and still do your thing. It's especially annoying when your army is attacking enemy and you're low on resources, then nydus worm is successful because you don't have money for more than 1-2 zealot/stalker/etc.
How about nydus exit being "cloak" but attackable until it is finished?
That's stupid because T will just scan & kill it immediately. The way this would work is if Nydus being cloaked does not alert the enemy player that Nydus is coming. Then it would make sense. Seeing as how stuff happening underground is not detectable to our everyday senses.
Which would actually just make it stronger than the current nydus because then you couldn't set up the defense you need until the units pop out.
Seeing as how weak Z air is right now especially vs. Libs, this Nydus buff would be needed AND then some more nerfs to Terran air dominance.
If you buff the nydus like this you mainly buff nydus all-ins which isn't what the game needs. It's not just a late game harassment option and so it shouldn't be approached like it.
The problem with the nydus is that it overlaps with drops so much. I don't see a reason to have it in the game at all tbh. As i said multiple times already, the nydus is an allin mechanic and i don't see why we need such a mechanic.
So either we redesign it completely (in a way it doesn't overlap with drops anymore) or simply remove it altogether. Drops should be changed a bit so it's more viable though (like faster overlords)
What could the nydus do? One idea i have right now would be simply changing it to bw status. I don't know if it is needed in sc2 though. Another one would be to make it more of a retreat mechanism for slower units like lurkers, hydras, roaches, ultras, queens, etc (simple change would be to make the worm cost a lot less and nothing can escape the worm, just enter) Not 100% sure if that is needed either though.
Still i don't see why we need the allin nydus, remove it from the game if you don't have a better purpose for it.
I agree the current state of the game is good (not perfect, but guess what it probably will never be and more importantly there will always be people happy and unhappy about any decision) and that what the scene needs is more an overhaul of the WCS/tournaments system than balance patches. You can reignite SC2, you just need to do the right things.
lol, why not just remove protoss overall since every patch is huge on protoss, i vote remove protoss so you minors stop ccrying every time and also i feel sorry for zerg since they also get lot nerfed. T>P>Z , thats how it looks atm but i still think its fairly balanced. check GSL if u havent.
so far advanced: 7 T, 4P and 1Z. still 2 groups left.
Noob questions (I ask honestly since I'm not able to judge given I haven't played in months): I see many complaints about the tempests and their supply costs, so I have 2 questions:
- why do you propose to move from 4 to 6 supplies, rather than 4 to 5 to begin with? - why I don't see tempests massed or anyway abused in progames? (I'm talking mainly about DH Valencia, the latest shoutcraft and PL/GSL) maybe I just missed these games (it's very well possible ), in which case if you could point me to these games I would be grateful !
A part form this, I think a small nerf to the warp prism life wouldn't be too bad and may go in the right direction to limit adept allins (I'm not commenting on the balancing of the game wrt these allins - I don't have the competence - but I see how they can be not so fun to play against / watch from a spectator point of view)
On July 24 2016 15:42 xAdra wrote: Really? Doesn't protoss have a reputation for being the race with the most horrendously sneaky and "underhanded" tactics to kill opponents, such as DTs and Oracles? When did protoss suddenly become the race that gets f---ed the most?
That was not at all the point of the post. The below is not intended as a balance complaint -- it is solely intended as a look into the mindset of lower-level players which is, yes, largely based off their perception of the game.
Regardless of how "bullshit" you think certain strategies are, here's what LotV has looked like from a lower-level Protoss standpoint (as is pointed out in the above post):
- Colossus replaced with a unit which is hard-to-control and easy-to-avoid - Warp-in heavily nerfed - Base design heavily modified
- PvZ complete shit-fest for months with no mention anywhere
- PO nerfed - Adept nerfed - Immortal (which was finally found as the answer to PvZ) nerfed - Colossus minutely buffed
So, again, from a low-level Protoss standpoint, why would you continue playing that game? Protoss was never doing well at the low-level in HotS yet they've continuously gotten nerfs and are continuously complained about. At the highest levels, adept attacks are keeping Protoss afloat, but lower-level Protoss can't micro-manage well enough to be capable of pulling of an adept attack while still macroing appropriately at home to make it into the mid-game ahead.
Again, it should be obvious why most of these lower-level players have quit playing the game: It started out the most-changed race from LotV (with three of their most-used mechanics: colossus, warp-gate, PO completely changed), it got continuous nerfs (and was ignored while doing poorly in one match-up), and the skill required to get to the mid-game ahead of the opponent is extremely high ... beyond the capabilities of most of these players.
And there's much more ... a lot of Protoss players just used sentry all-ins versus zerg: completely nerfed by the addition of the ravager as well as the buffed adrenal making lings so much stronger in the late-game (so that zergs started building them more in the early-game and getting upgrades to continue making them); Liberators were added as the first-ever (in SC2) mid-game positional unit which forces Protoss players to counter-attack, delay by forcing sieges, and generally out-play their opponent by a huge margin simply to survive a push; etc etc etc.
There's so much more difficulty and danger in LotV if the Protoss doesn't get a solid head-start on the game. Many of the things which are fought in the lower-leagues never show up in the higher-leagues because pro-players preempt their appearance by playing adept-heavy early games backed by heavy macro at home. The lower leagues, thus, perceive heavy imbalance against Protoss simply because they literally can not control things well enough to win ... and they know that they simply won't be able to because this is every pros' initial strategy: get tons of economic damage early and hope to win later on your roaring macro.
I think these 2 changes would make sense on the liberator: 1.remove liberator extra damage on light unit. 2.increase base damage and decrease splash damage.
On July 25 2016 21:09 VHbb wrote: Noob questions (I ask honestly since I'm not able to judge given I haven't played in months): I see many complaints about the tempests and their supply costs, so I have 2 questions:
- why do you propose to move from 4 to 6 supplies, rather than 4 to 5 to begin with? - why I don't see tempests massed or anyway abused in progames? (I'm talking mainly about DH Valencia, the latest shoutcraft and PL/GSL) maybe I just missed these games (it's very well possible ), in which case if you could point me to these games I would be grateful !
A part form this, I think a small nerf to the warp prism life wouldn't be too bad and may go in the right direction to limit adept allins (I'm not commenting on the balancing of the game wrt these allins - I don't have the competence - but I see how they can be not so fun to play against / watch from a spectator point of view)
Thanks all !
1. Because I don't think moving to 5 supply would be enough to discourage mass tempest spam. 2. Because the other races know mass tempest is broken and try to win before that. But the few times it has happened in pro games there was absolutely nothing the other player could do e.g. neeb vs snute.
On July 25 2016 21:09 VHbb wrote: Noob questions (I ask honestly since I'm not able to judge given I haven't played in months): I see many complaints about the tempests and their supply costs, so I have 2 questions:
- why do you propose to move from 4 to 6 supplies, rather than 4 to 5 to begin with? - why I don't see tempests massed or anyway abused in progames? (I'm talking mainly about DH Valencia, the latest shoutcraft and PL/GSL) maybe I just missed these games (it's very well possible ), in which case if you could point me to these games I would be grateful !
A part form this, I think a small nerf to the warp prism life wouldn't be too bad and may go in the right direction to limit adept allins (I'm not commenting on the balancing of the game wrt these allins - I don't have the competence - but I see how they can be not so fun to play against / watch from a spectator point of view)
Thanks all !
1. Because I don't think moving to 5 supply would be enough to discourage mass tempest spam. 2. Because the other races know mass tempest is broken and try to win before that. But the few times it has happened in pro games there was absolutely nothing the other player could do e.g. neeb vs snute.
Basically this. Even in PvP mass tempests with the immortals from the early game to protect the ground has no answer if you don't go air yourself, so that the guy who is late on the air transition usually has to bite the bullet and go for a massive all-in.
On July 26 2016 04:58 Tyrhanius wrote: Never seen a zerg winning vs Toss late game, like ever, but does someone have some vod/replay of Zerg winning late game ?
They should add more caster units/interesting spells in the game and make them have bigger impact.
1. It would make game more balanced in the long term since most games (on pro level) would be decided by amazing spellcasts or spectacular fails rather than just one unit compostition dominance over another one).
Once you make game harder to control in this manner, pros couldnt say something like "I did everything right yet I lost in lategame since my race have no counter against enemy end game comp and I cannot do anything about it" because you could say "if you managed your casters better, you would have won" provided it would be impossible even for pros to reach skillcap for ideal control.
2. It would make game more appealing to watch, especially for spectators new into starcraft.
3. It would make the game more fun to low skill players as those always prefer to try some interesting micro/trick stuff than just boring practice of macro.
On July 26 2016 10:38 Zedd wrote: They should add more caster units/interesting spells in the game and make them have bigger impact.
1. It would make game more balanced in the long term since most games (on pro level) would be decided by amazing spellcasts or spectacular fails rather than just one unit compostition dominance over another one).
Once you make game harder to control in this manner, pros couldnt say something like "I did everything right yet I lost in lategame since my race have no counter against enemy end game comp and I cannot do anything about it" because you could say "if you managed your casters better, you would have won" provided it would be impossible even for pros to reach skillcap for ideal control.
2. It would make game more appealing to watch, especially for spectators new into starcraft.
3. It would make the game more fun to low skill players as those always prefer to try some interesting micro/trick stuff than just boring practice of macro.
That's either an excellent piece of trolling or the post insanely idiotic post i've ever read on TL.
On July 26 2016 10:38 Zedd wrote: They should add more caster units/interesting spells in the game and make them have bigger impact.
1. It would make game more balanced in the long term since most games (on pro level) would be decided by amazing spellcasts or spectacular fails rather than just one unit compostition dominance over another one).
Once you make game harder to control in this manner, pros couldnt say something like "I did everything right yet I lost in lategame since my race have no counter against enemy end game comp and I cannot do anything about it" because you could say "if you managed your casters better, you would have won" provided it would be impossible even for pros to reach skillcap for ideal control.
2. It would make game more appealing to watch, especially for spectators new into starcraft.
3. It would make the game more fun to low skill players as those always prefer to try some interesting micro/trick stuff than just boring practice of macro.
On July 26 2016 10:38 Zedd wrote: They should add more caster units/interesting spells in the game and make them have bigger impact.
1. It would make game more balanced in the long term since most games (on pro level) would be decided by amazing spellcasts or spectacular fails rather than just one unit compostition dominance over another one).
Once you make game harder to control in this manner, pros couldnt say something like "I did everything right yet I lost in lategame since my race have no counter against enemy end game comp and I cannot do anything about it" because you could say "if you managed your casters better, you would have won" provided it would be impossible even for pros to reach skillcap for ideal control.
2. It would make game more appealing to watch, especially for spectators new into starcraft.
3. It would make the game more fun to low skill players as those always prefer to try some interesting micro/trick stuff than just boring practice of macro.
that will never happen, and you know it.
if you want no macro mechanics, more units, more spells, more of everything, and an economy system that actually allows comebacks and more than 3 bases at once, go play heptacraft
the majority of games between players of roughly equal skill level in hepta play out like these ones - long, action filled games that use the whole map:
i could post tons more, but you can just see them on my stream or watch reniehour - he has been streaming tons of hepta lately at http://twitch.tv/reniehour - watch and see what a 300 apm user can do with a game with more positioning and more casters
this is a game thats not only way more interesting to watch, but more fun to play for both high-end and low players alike. it has its own ladder system and an active community - the only thing holding it back right now is the complete unwillingness for the majority of the foreigner sc2 scene to stop bitching and actually try something else. im hoping for koreans now...
just because everyone got used to the game being fundamentally broken over the last 6 years doesnt mean it cant be improved, just means that blizz will never do it...
On July 26 2016 10:38 Zedd wrote: They should add more caster units/interesting spells in the game and make them have bigger impact.
1. It would make game more balanced in the long term since most games (on pro level) would be decided by amazing spellcasts or spectacular fails rather than just one unit compostition dominance over another one).
Once you make game harder to control in this manner, pros couldnt say something like "I did everything right yet I lost in lategame since my race have no counter against enemy end game comp and I cannot do anything about it" because you could say "if you managed your casters better, you would have won" provided it would be impossible even for pros to reach skillcap for ideal control.
2. It would make game more appealing to watch, especially for spectators new into starcraft.
3. It would make the game more fun to low skill players as those always prefer to try some interesting micro/trick stuff than just boring practice of macro.
that will never happen, and you know it.
if you want no macro mechanics, more units, more spells, more of everything, and an economy system that actually allows comebacks and more than 3 bases at once, go play heptacraft
the majority of games between players of roughly equal skill level in hepta play out like these ones - long, action filled games that use the whole map:
korean ex-pro reniehour has been streaming tons of hepta lately at http://twitch.tv/reniehour - watch and see what a 300 apm user can do with a game with more positioning and more casters
just because everyone got used to the game being fundamentally broken over the last 6 years doesnt mean it cant be improved, just means that blizz will never do it...
watch out it's starbow 2.0, ready to salvage the RTS genre
On July 26 2016 10:38 Zedd wrote: They should add more caster units/interesting spells in the game and make them have bigger impact.
1. It would make game more balanced in the long term since most games (on pro level) would be decided by amazing spellcasts or spectacular fails rather than just one unit compostition dominance over another one).
Once you make game harder to control in this manner, pros couldnt say something like "I did everything right yet I lost in lategame since my race have no counter against enemy end game comp and I cannot do anything about it" because you could say "if you managed your casters better, you would have won" provided it would be impossible even for pros to reach skillcap for ideal control.
2. It would make game more appealing to watch, especially for spectators new into starcraft.
3. It would make the game more fun to low skill players as those always prefer to try some interesting micro/trick stuff than just boring practice of macro.
That's either an excellent piece of trolling or the post insanely idiotic post i've ever read on TL.
On July 26 2016 10:38 Zedd wrote: They should add more caster units/interesting spells in the game and make them have bigger impact.
1. It would make game more balanced in the long term since most games (on pro level) would be decided by amazing spellcasts or spectacular fails rather than just one unit compostition dominance over another one).
Once you make game harder to control in this manner, pros couldnt say something like "I did everything right yet I lost in lategame since my race have no counter against enemy end game comp and I cannot do anything about it" because you could say "if you managed your casters better, you would have won" provided it would be impossible even for pros to reach skillcap for ideal control.
2. It would make game more appealing to watch, especially for spectators new into starcraft.
3. It would make the game more fun to low skill players as those always prefer to try some interesting micro/trick stuff than just boring practice of macro.
That's either an excellent piece of trolling or the post insanely idiotic post i've ever read on TL.
On July 26 2016 10:38 Zedd wrote: They should add more caster units/interesting spells in the game and make them have bigger impact.
1. It would make game more balanced in the long term since most games (on pro level) would be decided by amazing spellcasts or spectacular fails rather than just one unit compostition dominance over another one).
Once you make game harder to control in this manner, pros couldnt say something like "I did everything right yet I lost in lategame since my race have no counter against enemy end game comp and I cannot do anything about it" because you could say "if you managed your casters better, you would have won" provided it would be impossible even for pros to reach skillcap for ideal control.
2. It would make game more appealing to watch, especially for spectators new into starcraft.
3. It would make the game more fun to low skill players as those always prefer to try some interesting micro/trick stuff than just boring practice of macro.
That's either an excellent piece of trolling or the post insanely idiotic post i've ever read on TL.
Fairly sure it's a troll
what the OP is suggesting is what made BW great.
instead of caster units that have big impact, we have deathballs consisting mainly of bland high-hp amove units like marauders or roaches. this is horrible design, as intelligent people have been pointing out ever since WoL alpha
I think the main reason for not having deathball in BW was the selection group limit (and partially the pathing)
Playing protoss I feel most of my units have ability to micro manage or are spellcasters, so definitely during a battle I never micro perfectly (on the contrary, I always miss most of the micro I should do).. a perfect engagement where you micro ideally all you units seems reeeeeeally difficult even when looking at pros
stronger spells would do absolutely nothing in sc2. All the basic design decisions/ui limitations which made it work in bw are not in place in sc2.
I still hope that one day we will see a different pathing. Even if it doesn't change much gameplay wise (blizzard stated this, i personally doubt it's true) it would change the aesthetical part which is also really important for enjoyment.
David has no vision for this game anymore, he's just doing anything to maintain 50% win rates across the board and let the meta evolve how it does. It's not the worst approach to this game because ultimately balance is paramount, but it does feel limiting, like SC2 could be so much more.
The game still has tons of dumb issues as well that seem to be getting swept under the rug instead of brought to the forefront.
1. Tankivacs being in the game but the tank itself not being all that great 2. Aerial armies continue to force defensive play 3. All spell casters besides the High Templar suck (Vipers don't suck but they aren't great except vs mech) 4. Nydus is still a, "Lol I'm in your base" instead of a unit movement aid and do we really need more of those? Super medivacs, super Warp prisms, drop Overlords, SC2 is just becoming a drop fest. 5. Mech remains terrible and turtle mode 5 long years later, in fact with the stunted economy and addition of the Viper mech has pretty much never been worse, stifling composition changes for Terran. 6. Theres pretty much 20 + ways to kill 20 + workers in 20 seconds, David refers to this as "excitement" and "small skirmish" but I think we all know better then that. It's just frustrating to lower level players and anti climactic for the pro players.
On July 27 2016 00:54 The_Red_Viper wrote: stronger spells would do absolutely nothing in sc2. All the basic design decisions/ui limitations which made it work in bw are not in place in sc2.
Why do you think so? For example, the disruptor can be viewed as high impact spellcaster unit since you need to micro it in order to do the damage and opponent can micro to avoid the damage. And I would argue that it brought some really cool and tense moments into SC2, at least from spectators point of view. Or you dont agree?
I do not say that the disruptor design is ideal or that every spell should do big explosions of damage. But if you take it as an example of high impact spellcaster unit, you can certainly see how stronger spells affect the game.
High impact spellcasters don't work with smartcasting in an rts like starcraft. High impact means you need to react asap to the spell cast or your army is gone. Imagine more bw-like storm - 2.25 radius instead of 1.5 or 1.75 (don't remember now) and 112 damage all over the screen even in bronze league. Terrible, terrible damage. All your army dead because you left to make a supply depot or place a hatchery. Frustrating gameplay, but most unforgiving at lower levels (let's say below masters). Play 10-25 minute game and lose because you didn't pay attention for 2 seconds. I can't see people dying to play such a game on a regular basis.
Or, you could go Warcraft 3/MOBA way and introduce bazillion of passives, auras, spell galore but each without much impact in vacuum. But then why won't you go play wc3 or wait for wc4?
On July 27 2016 01:01 Beelzebub1 wrote: David has no vision for this game anymore, he's just doing anything to maintain 50% win rates across the board and let the meta evolve how it does. It's not the worst approach to this game because ultimately balance is paramount, but it does feel limiting, like SC2 could be so much more.
The game still has tons of dumb issues as well that seem to be getting swept under the rug instead of brought to the forefront.
1. Tankivacs being in the game but the tank itself not being all that great 2. Aerial armies continue to force defensive play 3. All spell casters besides the High Templar suck (Vipers don't suck but they aren't great except vs mech) 4. Nydus is still a, "Lol I'm in your base" instead of a unit movement aid and do we really need more of those? Super medivacs, super Warp prisms, drop Overlords, SC2 is just becoming a drop fest. 5. Mech remains terrible and turtle mode 5 long years later, in fact with the stunted economy and addition of the Viper mech has pretty much never been worse, stifling composition changes for Terran. 6. Theres pretty much 20 + ways to kill 20 + workers in 20 seconds, David refers to this as "excitement" and "small skirmish" but I think we all know better then that. It's just frustrating to lower level players and anti climactic for the pro players.
Sigh :/
well, i dont wna be annoying, but all of those points have been fixed in heptacraft
no tankivacs (worst idea ever) much better air-to-ground units making air units weaker very strong spellcasters real mech play thats engaging and interesting and an eco system that allows you to come back from worker losses
the key to fixing the siege tank is making its attack a projectile - therefore it will not smart fire, but overkill on units, enabling all the cool counterplay we saw in BW (zlot drops etc), and making it possible for a few tanks to be powerful without mass tank being unstoppable
extreme mech in hepta - keep in mind this is the most static of all 28 matchups, being dominion vs dominion, and cerberus drops have been nerfed since:
raiders vs raiders:
raiders vs covenant:
this is exactly what ppl have been asking for from sc2 mech for 6 years. maybe its time to realize it will never happen outside of mods.
On July 27 2016 01:35 Nazara wrote: High impact spellcasters don't work with smartcasting in an rts like starcraft. High impact means you need to react asap to the spell cast or your army is gone. Imagine more bw-like storm - 2.25 radius instead of 1.5 or 1.75 (don't remember now) and 112 damage all over the screen even in bronze league. Terrible, terrible damage. All your army dead because you left to make a supply depot or place a hatchery. Frustrating gameplay, but most unforgiving at lower levels (let's say below masters). Play 10-25 minute game and lose because you didn't pay attention for 2 seconds. I can't see people dying to play such a game on a regular basis.
Or, you could go Warcraft 3/MOBA way and introduce bazillion of passives, auras, spell galore but each without much impact in vacuum. But then why won't you go play wc3 or wait for wc4?
i have to disagree with you nazara - high impact spellcasters DO work with smartcasting - the key to making them work is make low hp infantry units scale up well in late game. this is why heptacraft has highly expensive late game upgrades like cloning vats (reduces cost of infantry by 50%) or drug resistance (permastim without any life cost)
this leads to constant engagements, as masses of cheap low-life units try to use mobility against massive dmg from aoe. of course this works in hepta because players have 5-6 bases in late game, so mobility actually matters, since you cannot just park your deathball at the entrance of your 3base corner... also, the upgradable supply limit does the rest, since it makes the amount of small units you can have just so much greater
The heptacraft seems fun, but I cant imagine what should be done so that Koreans and foreigner top players would switch to that. Its like completely new game.
On July 27 2016 01:56 Zedd wrote: The heptacraft seems fun, but I cant imagine what should be done so that Koreans and foreigner top players would switch to that. Its like completely new game.
does it matter if everyone switches or not?
its more fun to play its more fun to watch you can be part of the process to mold the gameplay - this is not my vision, this is ours its got its own ladder and tourneys what else would you want?
I would say it can be made work. Warcraft 3 is almost all about spell micro. Some spells are pretty gamebreaking if converted to starcraft. C&C series is all about powerful gimmicky units and goofy stuff. Dune 2 (or 1?) started it all with the Deviator tank, which projectiles were converting enemy units to your side. Empire Earth had strong heroes and hilarious nuke bombers. Warlords Battle cry series has strong heroes, advisors and also massable units with passive and active abilities.
So can this work in an rts game? Absolutely! It also work for Heptacraft, and I like it's done mostly through upgrades.
But. This is not what makes Starcraft, Starcraft. There is nothing wrong with trying a different formula for a sequel, as there are different rts tastes. Just lock up a passionate SupCom and a passionate Starcraft player in a room for 2 days and you will see how how different they are, judging by the amount of blood shed. If you change the game to go more into the direction of spells, you won't be able to call it Starcraft with a straight face.
I'm not trying to dissrespect your opinion. I like Heptacraft and if it was a seperate ip, I would pay for it and buy it. But I wouldn't change Starcraft 2 to go this way, because I don't think this is right for the ip. In fact I would remove half the spells if I could and make it more like BW.
On July 27 2016 02:05 Nazara wrote: I would say it can be made work. Warcraft 3 is almost all about spell micro. Some spells are pretty gamebreaking if converted to starcraft. C&C series is all about powerful gimmicky units and goofy stuff. Dune 2 (or 1?) started it all with the Deviator tank, which projectiles were converting enemy units to your side. Empire Earth had strong heroes and hilarious nuke bombers. Warlords Battle cry series has strong heroes, advisors and also massable units with passive and active abilities.
So can this work in an rts game? Absolutely! It also work for Heptacraft, and I like it's done mostly through upgrades.
But. This is not what makes Starcraft, Starcraft. There is nothing wrong with trying a different formula for a sequel, as there are different rts tastes. Just lock up a passionate SupCom and a passionate Starcraft player in a room for 2 days and you will see how how different they are, judging by the amount of blood shed. If you change the game to go more into the direction of spells, you won't be able to call it Starcraft with a straight face.
I'm not trying to dissrespect your opinion. I like Heptacraft and if it was a seperate ip, I would pay for it and buy it. But I wouldn't change Starcraft 2 to go this way, because I don't think this is right for the ip. In fact I would remove half the spells if I could and make it more like BW.
i know we have different design ideas of where to take the game
the sad thing is im fairly sure both of our directions are better than lotv TT
On July 22 2016 02:24 Charoisaur wrote: I like what I read but I think instead of looking into adept shade and warpprisms they should look into tempests. why would you nerf fun things that promote multitasking but keep boring turtly stuff in the game?
Tempests are necessary against turtly mass liberator styles, and in PvT you rarely if ever should go over 6 tempests anyways. Tempests are only a problem in ultra-lategame PvZ really.
Definitely, but 4 supply is silly and makes them massable. You only need a few to shutdown mass libs, not 20.
On July 27 2016 01:35 Nazara wrote: High impact spellcasters don't work with smartcasting in an rts like starcraft. High impact means you need to react asap to the spell cast or your army is gone. Imagine more bw-like storm - 2.25 radius instead of 1.5 or 1.75 (don't remember now) and 112 damage all over the screen even in bronze league. Terrible, terrible damage. All your army dead because you left to make a supply depot or place a hatchery. Frustrating gameplay, but most unforgiving at lower levels (let's say below masters). Play 10-25 minute game and lose because you didn't pay attention for 2 seconds. I can't see people dying to play such a game on a regular basis.
Or, you could go Warcraft 3/MOBA way and introduce bazillion of passives, auras, spell galore but each without much impact in vacuum. But then why won't you go play wc3 or wait for wc4?
I don't think what your describing is that much worse than losing your entire Mineral Line or getting doom dropped on your production. You will quickly learn to simply not move your army around in 1 hotkey, without solid reasoning and always scout ahead.
On July 27 2016 01:35 Nazara wrote: High impact spellcasters don't work with smartcasting in an rts like starcraft. High impact means you need to react asap to the spell cast or your army is gone. Imagine more bw-like storm - 2.25 radius instead of 1.5 or 1.75 (don't remember now) and 112 damage all over the screen even in bronze league. Terrible, terrible damage. All your army dead because you left to make a supply depot or place a hatchery. Frustrating gameplay, but most unforgiving at lower levels (let's say below masters). Play 10-25 minute game and lose because you didn't pay attention for 2 seconds. I can't see people dying to play such a game on a regular basis.
Or, you could go Warcraft 3/MOBA way and introduce bazillion of passives, auras, spell galore but each without much impact in vacuum. But then why won't you go play wc3 or wait for wc4?
And why exactly does high impact mean terrible terrible damage? Because it doesnt have to be as you describe it. React instantly? Why? A spell have to trigger instantly always? It doesnt.
Why not play wc3? Because its outdated with time. Was a great game before. Just like movies, some age well some age terrible.
I also believe smartcasting can have some devastating spells to work super well. Even in a game like sc2. One example: Storm. They dont stack. Could also make them work so if they are casted to close to each other, their effect gets diminished.
On July 27 2016 01:35 Nazara wrote: High impact spellcasters don't work with smartcasting in an rts like starcraft. High impact means you need to react asap to the spell cast or your army is gone. Imagine more bw-like storm - 2.25 radius instead of 1.5 or 1.75 (don't remember now) and 112 damage all over the screen even in bronze league. Terrible, terrible damage. All your army dead because you left to make a supply depot or place a hatchery. Frustrating gameplay, but most unforgiving at lower levels (let's say below masters). Play 10-25 minute game and lose because you didn't pay attention for 2 seconds. I can't see people dying to play such a game on a regular basis.
Or, you could go Warcraft 3/MOBA way and introduce bazillion of passives, auras, spell galore but each without much impact in vacuum. But then why won't you go play wc3 or wait for wc4?
And why exactly does high impact mean terrible terrible damage? Because it doesnt have to be as you describe it. React instantly? Why? A spell have to trigger instantly always? It doesnt.
Why not play wc3? Because its outdated with time. Was a great game before. Just like movies, some age well some age terrible.
I also believe smartcasting can have some devastating spells to work super well. Even in a game like sc2. One example: Storm. They dont stack. Could also make them work so if they are casted to close to each other, their effect gets diminished.
Your suggestion for spells are unique, but Blizzard likes to design spells that straight forward and uncomplicated. It makes the game easier to manage when spells are simple but devastating.
Don't get me wrong, I would love an rts game with spells that have such unique variables, diminishing returns, or other unique abilities.
Imagine if zerg units could merge together to make niche units? Like if a dozen lings survived you can merge them into a super ling. That ling has the ability to jump over obstacles, but can't jump to higher ground like blink or reapers. Or a hydralisk and roach could....
Or protoss spells can stack with diminishing return yet still net an advantage if stacked a little bit. Like a destructible FF that can stack the health but time only adds 2 seconds per extra FF. So one FF lasts 10 sec and has 200hp, two FF lasts 12 sec and has 400 hp.
I think an RTS can have spells/abilities that varying returns, but that RTS isn't SC2.
On July 27 2016 01:35 Nazara wrote: High impact spellcasters don't work with smartcasting in an rts like starcraft. High impact means you need to react asap to the spell cast or your army is gone. Imagine more bw-like storm - 2.25 radius instead of 1.5 or 1.75 (don't remember now) and 112 damage all over the screen even in bronze league. Terrible, terrible damage. All your army dead because you left to make a supply depot or place a hatchery. Frustrating gameplay, but most unforgiving at lower levels (let's say below masters). Play 10-25 minute game and lose because you didn't pay attention for 2 seconds. I can't see people dying to play such a game on a regular basis.
Or, you could go Warcraft 3/MOBA way and introduce bazillion of passives, auras, spell galore but each without much impact in vacuum. But then why won't you go play wc3 or wait for wc4?
And why exactly does high impact mean terrible terrible damage? Because it doesnt have to be as you describe it. React instantly? Why? A spell have to trigger instantly always? It doesnt.
Why not play wc3? Because its outdated with time. Was a great game before. Just like movies, some age well some age terrible.
I also believe smartcasting can have some devastating spells to work super well. Even in a game like sc2. One example: Storm. They dont stack. Could also make them work so if they are casted to close to each other, their effect gets diminished.
High impact means you need to respond to the spell and do something as soon as, because it has big effect - by definition. It doesn't have to be a damage spell. Imagine stasis, dark swarm, or spawn broodling with smart casting. If you don't react within seconds to the spell or the spellcaster approaching, your army is gone. If the spell doesn't force you to do anything as soon as it's casted then it has low impact. If both players have those devastating spells, then all micro will revolve around them.
If you water the spells down to accommodate for the smart cast, then the spell in and out of itself is no longer high impact. Storm is a joke. when was the last time you saw protoss skipping robo or stargate to chrono storm out? Exactly. Storm works only after you've build up your deathball to the point were core units can't all participate in the first second of the fight and you need that extra burst damage.
With the way units clump and units die thanks to how the dps in a small blob is concentrated, spells like disruption web or others would only cause the "look away for 2 seconds and you lost the war" syndrome. Without smart cast, the time depends on your opponent and it all scales better. Low lvl player will react slow to his army being attacked, but his opponent won't cast many spells in a short time frame. High lvl player will react fast when attacked or is more likely to spot enemy army on the minimal, but his opponent will also cast more spells. With smart cast and more of the bigger, badder spells, the games in diamond/masters will be more likely dependant on who made the mistake to look away at the wrong time, not who played better.
Having diminish returns on more of the same spell cast doesn't leave you with high impact spells but with spell juggling.
People, look what this game has become. So many spells, passive abilities, active abilities, immune to x tags (frenzy)... "x unit is up/ x unit is not microable enough" - bam, add ability to fix this. Adept - shade Immortal - barrier Disruptor - nova Reaper - grenade Cyclone - lock on Bc - teleport Liberators - transform Ravaged - bile Corruptor - piss All this just in lotv. Game is not dead. But it's a joke as a sequel to the game which had its own tv channel in a country. Game which was more then "esport". A sport.
On July 27 2016 01:35 Nazara wrote: High impact spellcasters don't work with smartcasting in an rts like starcraft. High impact means you need to react asap to the spell cast or your army is gone. Imagine more bw-like storm - 2.25 radius instead of 1.5 or 1.75 (don't remember now) and 112 damage all over the screen even in bronze league. Terrible, terrible damage. All your army dead because you left to make a supply depot or place a hatchery. Frustrating gameplay, but most unforgiving at lower levels (let's say below masters). Play 10-25 minute game and lose because you didn't pay attention for 2 seconds. I can't see people dying to play such a game on a regular basis.
Or, you could go Warcraft 3/MOBA way and introduce bazillion of passives, auras, spell galore but each without much impact in vacuum. But then why won't you go play wc3 or wait for wc4?
And why exactly does high impact mean terrible terrible damage? Because it doesnt have to be as you describe it. React instantly? Why? A spell have to trigger instantly always? It doesnt.
Why not play wc3? Because its outdated with time. Was a great game before. Just like movies, some age well some age terrible.
I also believe smartcasting can have some devastating spells to work super well. Even in a game like sc2. One example: Storm. They dont stack. Could also make them work so if they are casted to close to each other, their effect gets diminished.
High impact means you need to respond to the spell and do something as soon as, because it has big effect - by definition. It doesn't have to be a damage spell. Imagine stasis, dark swarm, or spawn broodling with smart casting. If you don't react within seconds to the spell or the spellcaster approaching, your army is gone. If the spell doesn't force you to do anything as soon as it's casted then it has low impact. If both players have those devastating spells, then all micro will revolve around them.
If you water the spells down to accommodate for the smart cast, then the spell in and out of itself is no longer high impact. Storm is a joke. when was the last time you saw protoss skipping robo or stargate to chrono storm out? Exactly. Storm works only after you've build up your deathball to the point were core units can't all participate in the first second of the fight and you need that extra burst damage.
With the way units clump and units die thanks to how the dps in a small blob is concentrated, spells like disruption web or others would only cause the "look away for 2 seconds and you lost the war" syndrome. Without smart cast, the time depends on your opponent and it all scales better. Low lvl player will react slow to his army being attacked, but his opponent won't cast many spells in a short time frame. High lvl player will react fast when attacked or is more likely to spot enemy army on the minimal, but his opponent will also cast more spells. With smart cast and more of the bigger, badder spells, the games in diamond/masters will be more likely dependant on who made the mistake to look away at the wrong time, not who played better.
Having diminish returns on more of the same spell cast doesn't leave you with high impact spells but with spell juggling.
People, look what this game has become. So many spells, passive abilities, active abilities, immune to x tags (frenzy)... "x unit is up/ x unit is not microable enough" - bam, add ability to fix this. Adept - shade Immortal - barrier Disruptor - nova Reaper - grenade Cyclone - lock on Bc - teleport Liberators - transform Ravaged - bile Corruptor - piss All this just in lotv. Game is not dead. But it's a joke as a sequel to the game which had its own tv channel in a country. Game which was more then "esport". A sport.
I always assumed high impact=big effect, meaning, you want to react to this as much as possible. And low impact=Low effect, meaning, not necessary to react towards this one as much~.
Just rougly explanations. So this explanation of yours=the litteral explanation? Or it comes from you? Or you just assume it?
Also, the example i did with storm wasnt the one from sc2. I just wanted to give a picture that SMARTCAST=CANT WORK WELL because i think it can if IMPLMENTED CORRECTLY.
YES i do know the spells in SC2 is boring and bad. I found the game itself REALLY BAD. But thats not the discussion and just because you show us that this is "true" or that you believe this is the case doesnt proof that SMARTCAST=CANT WORK WELL.
EPT
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