EPTLotV Design Changes announced - Page 14
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Jer99
Canada8157 Posts
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Clbull
United Kingdom1439 Posts
On August 15 2016 07:15 Metalcore1993NZ wrote: Quit SC2 a few months after lotv cos it was so bad. However with these mech changes i might play again next year. Time to wait and see if they can bring me back into the game or if they will just screw it up like i expect them to I actually started playing WoL and HotS ladder again because LotV was so goddamn bad. Far more enjoyable multiplayer experience than dying to the same cheap all-ins every game. I think the amount of people who quit playing and watching SC2 after LotV's release, plus the emergency of Ultragamer500 (a SC2 streamer and suspected viewbotter who ladders while pretending to be Stephen Hawking and crapping on the game and Blizzard constantly in his robotic voice) has forced Blizzard to act and fix their game. It also surprises me how many of these changes are the sort of thing Avilo has cried for over the last few years. | ||
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royalroadweed
United States8301 Posts
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misterxy1994
Germany53 Posts
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Fango
United Kingdom8987 Posts
On August 15 2016 07:44 Mnijykmirl wrote: Just imagine DT's blinking onto spore/missile turret detectors all game and killing it before chance to respond. Nah think about using up 20 scans to kill a DT and every time it blinks out -_- they can already load into a Prism from far enough | ||
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RedAlice
51 Posts
On August 15 2016 06:03 Clbull wrote: My thoughts on the changes. Cyclone: 3 out of 5: Repurposing the Cyclone as a speedy, fragile anti-Armored unit to make them compliment the Hellion is good and all. However, I feel like restricting Lock On to only be an anti-air ability, and to no longer be autocastable is going to permanently damage Mech anti-air, which is desperately needed. Siege Tank: 4 out of 5: Buffing the Siege Tank's damage potential overall while simultaneously removing their drop potential can only be a good thing, As somebody who plays Random on ladder and who despises playing against Terran: Fuck Siegeivacs. They are incredibly overpowered, near-impossible to stop without significant anti-air, and turn all vs Terran matchups into a frustratingly cheesy clusterfuck. However, I feel like the damage buff has been done wrong because of two critical issues: 1. 40 damage to Light will one-shot Zerglings. It's too powerful to justify. 2. The Archon still takes almost half as much damage, unlike in Brood War where it took a full 70 Explosive damage from Siege Tank fire. This is due to the Archon's unique status as a "neither Light nor Armored" unit. This change means that Archons will be able to take 9 hits before dying, as opposed to the 11 hits they could take before. Yet they still took 6 hits to kill back in BW. Instead, I think their damage needs to be changed to the following: This will allow them to do full damage to Archons. It will also allow them to do full damage to Ravagers without flagging them as Armoured, although Blizzard are doing this because ZvP... Liberators: 2 out of 5: Their anti-air potential has already been nerfed to uselessness against Armoured units and established Corruptors, Tempests, Void Rays, Battlecruisers and Vikings as their air-to-air counters. It doesn't need to be nerfed any further because they already suck against Mutalisks unless they've achieved a critical mass. Thor: 0 out of 5 As far as I'm concerned, the Thor is one of those units that should just be removed from the game outright and replaced with a functional air-counter unit like the Goliath. Its bulky size, slow speed, cumbersome splash damage, and nerfed single target anti-air damage already makes it a shitty counter to air units, and only useful as a high cost meatshield against ground armies. Buffing the splash radius by 20% will just make it capable of hurting a few more mutalisks before they're hard-countered because lolololololol magic box. This change does not fly well with me, especially when Liberator and Cyclone anti-air potential is being nerfed... TO THE GROUND, BABY! Banshee: 1 out of 5 While I'll admit that Banshees are underused in later parts of the game, and the upgrade is too far a tech diversion to justify getting, Speedshees have stupidly good mobility with this upgrade which lets them quickly and easily snipe key units and bases. Instead, I feel like Hyperflight Rotors needs to be removed and Blizzard needs to just not fix units that ain't broke. Viking: 3 out of 5 Vikings definitely need a buff to their ground form. I'm not sure about making them anti-Armoured though. It basically means that mass Vikings can wipe out Stalkers and Roaches with absolute ease, which is a REALLY bad idea when they can land in a base en masse. Battlecruiser: 3 out of 5: And down goes the High Templar's usefulness against Sky Terran. In all seriousness, this is a somewhat decent idea, but the most restrictive thing about the Battlecruiser is the fact that the Yamato Cannon needs to be unlocked with an upgrade. Instead, I think they should lock Tactical Jump behind upgrades. Raven: 3 out of 5 While any buff to the Raven is a good thing, I feel it would be a good unit if Seeker Missiles cost less energy, and didn't fizzle out like an unreliable sack of shit against anything remotely mobile. Instead, Seeker Missiles should perma-lock to their target and progressively chase them down before exploding. This could then lead to midgame Bio/Raven play as a SC2 form of SK Terran, because this time, the Raven would be able to do reliable splash damage, and reliably strong damage against key units like Ultralisks. Tempest: 4 out of 5: Nerfing their ground attack range was a must, although I'm not so sure about their Disruption Sphere ability. It seems far too powerful, and has far too long a duration. Zealot: 0 out of 5: The Zealot is one of those units that is incredibly powerful and doesn't need a buff at all. Instead, the Adept needs a nerf to ensure its use is only situational rather than replacing the Zealot. Adepts are used over Zealots because they: 1. Are ranged units. Although Zealots deal more DPS per unit, they actually deal less damage overall in most situations because they need to stick to their targets. Also, armour upgrades weaken their melee strikes a lot. 2. Have the exact same effective HP (combined Life and Shields) values and armour typing as a Zealot. 3. Have stupidly powerful mobility and harassment potential off the bat. Zealots have to research theirs. Carrier: 5 out of 5: Release Interceptor made them too powerful. It's good to put them back in check, while at the same time nerfing Interceptor cost and allowing Carriers to autobuild them. Swarm Host: ? out of 5: This one I can't judge because I never see Swarm Hosts used since their redesign. I personally liked the old design of the Swarm Host better, although I feel like Locusts needed a cost to morph or needed a slightly longer CD to pop than 20 seconds to make the Swarm Hosts temporarily vulnerable, because being able to indefinitely stall entire Protoss and Terran Mech deathballs with just 18 Swarm Hosts was broken. Ravager: 1 out of 5 While I agree with this change in respect of ZvP and ZvT, I really don't like it with regards to ZvZ. 9 range Lurkers are already overpowered as fuck, and a Lurker line at present cannot be broken without a full-on tech switch to Brood Lords in ZvZ. Flagging the Ravager as an Armoured unit will make them take even more damage from Lurkers, which can already nuke them from existence. Instead, I feel like the Ravager should retain its unique status as a "neither Light nor Armored" unit, but that Corrosive Bile should be buffed against Biological units instead. Buffing Corrosive Bile damage to 80 against Biological units will basically mean that Lurkers can be 3-shotted instead of 4-shotted. This will make it easier to break Lurker contains without a Brood Lord tech switch, and improve Ravagers as a counter against Brood Lords. Hydralisk: 5 out of 5: Hydralisks need a speed buff both on and off creep, and they also need a range buff to increase their viability as core units. Personally though, I would have added a +biological damage modifier to their attack instead, to make them more useful against Terran bio, Zealots, and Mutalisks. Baneling: 1 out of 5 This is another classic example of Blizzard fixing what ain't broke. Banelings are still a very good unit, and are one that force micro. Buffing their HP will only lead to more heavily Zerg favoured midgames. Infestor: 4 out of 5 Allowing Infestors to use all their abilities whilst burrowed is a great idea, because this can once again make Neural Parasite viable, and adds a stealth element to using Fungal Growth. However, I'm not so sure if I agree with Deep Tunnel as an ability. It feels overpowered, like you can just get vision, tunnel full energy Infestor hit squads into the enemy base, and stealth Fungal entire mineral lines to death. Brood Lord: 5 out of 5: This change is very well-justified, and might actually make Brood Lords counterable by ground forces. Where were these kinds of intelligent balance changes back in the Wings of Liberty days. And some other unit issues that Blizzard should have addressed
Really hard to find such a long post with almost nothing I agree | ||
Rollora
2450 Posts
-ok cool, seems drastic but it can turn out to be good. Could make me ruturn to SC2 reading next change -ok cool, seems drastic but it can turn out to be good. Could make me ruturn to SC2 reading next change -ok cool, seems drastic but it can turn out to be good. Could make me ruturn to SC2 reading DT change: f*ck this shit, I am not coming back to get cheesed even more often and lose to one trick ponys | ||
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Foxxan
Sweden3427 Posts
I would still like further changes(Obviously). Such as more diversity in the openings. Less RNG in the openings(Much less). Havent watched or played sc2 in a long time now. For example how does a terran open with none-factory vs protoss now? Is it still the same bullshit of atleast 6marines? | ||
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seemsgood
5527 Posts
Don't understand why they keep buffing harrassment but if they think its cool then lets revert HOTS's macro mechanic back for each race and tweak it. And tweak mineral line too to make sure you won't mine out too fast with old mechanic.Increase about 150 mineral for each cluster. If harrassment is buffed,mistakes of player must be more forgivable. | ||
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Elentos
55456 Posts
On August 15 2016 08:01 Rollora wrote: Lol was reading all the changes and thought -ok cool, seems drastic but it can turn out to be good. Could make me ruturn to SC2 reading next change -ok cool, seems drastic but it can turn out to be good. Could make me ruturn to SC2 reading next change -ok cool, seems drastic but it can turn out to be good. Could make me ruturn to SC2 reading DT change: f*ck this shit, I am not coming back to get cheesed even more often and lose to one trick ponys Keep in mind the DT upgrade takes as long to finish as stim if it's not chronoed. That has to be some real slow cheese. | ||
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Penev
28440 Posts
And the early harass option for the liberator they want to keep overlaps with the banshee, still. I just don't think that unit is any good for the game. I think the adept for instance is ok but certainly needs adjustments but no word about that which is weird to me. An HP nerf would do the trick probably and would also make the zealot the preferred meat shield again in bigger engagements, a role the adept stole. | ||
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seemsgood
5527 Posts
On August 15 2016 08:09 Elentos wrote: Keep in mind the DT upgrade takes as long to finish as stim if it's not chronoed. That has to be some real slow cheese. And you may want to produce raven before stim is done.Need blind counter for new DTs. | ||
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Hall0wed
United States8486 Posts
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Ace Frehley
2030 Posts
Like, how do you even mine for 32 seconds? And the cooldown is only 43 seconds | ||
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IMPrime
United States715 Posts
Cyclone The reason why it was made in the current meta was to help stop harass flying units like oracle, warp prism (if you could catch it early), banshee, etc, since it did so much damage to them quickly (compared to a viking). Changing lockon so it takes forever to do any damage to air units is a big change. Though mech at least has a bulky unit against armored ground units. At the very least it got a design overhaul which is nice (the cyclone was such a stupid gimmick). 6/10 Tank This is a very good change. This will turn tvt into the best mirror matchup. This will also help turn the tank back into what made it a great unit in BW and WoL; difficult to use but very rewarding. My only issue is that it might make the 1/1/1 build in tvp too good. 9/10 Liberator This might let mutas back into tvz which would be awesome. Might. I'm not sure if a few liberators can still destroy mutas or if the mutas can just magic box and be okay. Basically, if mutas can now be made in tvz without being laughed at I will take it. 10/10 if mutas can be made again in tvz Thor This change helps a little but I they still won't be made except if the opponent is going mass muta. They're still too damn slow and expensive and shitty. 4/10 Banshee Ok change but it probably won't change much. They're simply too frail for their cost. Getting cloak AND speed upgrade are huge (but balanced) commitments. If you're getting both upgrades you're committed to making a lot of banshees, but they're not really good at doing anything except killing workers and the last thing we need is killing more workers. 4/10 BC Decent change. They still won't be made in tvp because of tempests but at the very least HTs don't laugh at them anymore. The other change that BC needed was either changing their attack to BW, where it's 1 attack on a longer cooldown (armor upgrades won't laugh at them as air terran is usually behind on upgrades compared to everyone else) or make yamato upgrade automatic so BCs pop out with an actual ability up. 5/10 Viking The only thing this really helps is TvP where you land the vikings after all the colossi are dead. But TvP doesn't really see colossi anymore because adepts are so fucking broken. They're still not very good against tempests (theoretically they're fine but any sort of ground support makes it very difficult to actually close in on them) and they still evaporate against vipers (the viking buff doesn't affect tvz but that's beside the point). Personally I would have liked to seen an upgrade on the starport tech lab that gave vikings more HP or more range over this change. Or, if you nerf adepts and buff colossi (I wouldn't buff colossi because colossi is a boring unit but it would be important for pure balance), this will be a good change. 4/10 Raven Auto turret damage buff is okay but the major issue with auto turrets is that it's often too hard to actually plant those fuckers. Being 4 squares when shit is everywhere is really hard to plant. I think changing auto turrets to be 1 square would mean that it's not so hard to plant turrets down in a big fight. I would have also liked seeker missile to change so that the missile will lock on and always hit its target, but it takes several seconds to land (and give a visual cue) so the opponent can split his units, IIRC that's how it worked in WoL. This way seeker missile at least does damage. Spending 125 energy for it to do absolutely nothing is so bad. 2/10 Tempest FINALLY TEMPESTS ARE 6 SUPPLY I can get behind this change. One of air toss' issues was having no splash damage in stargate. 13 range on the spell is too much though. I would rather change it to 8-9, same as colossi range and HT storm range. 7/10 Zealot Zealot change isn't gonna do anything because of adepts. In fact zealots are actually fine but they are made obsolete because of adepts. This change shows that blizzard doesn't understand that. 0/10 Carrier Good changes in theory but nobody really makes carriers anyway. 7/10 DT The issue with DTs is that they're borderline useless when detection is around. I guess that's a good way to make them balanced, but blink doesn't really help. It makes you either run away from detection, or circumvent the detection. Plus the cost and research time makes this pretty unviable anyway. 3/10 Swarm Host My issue with the swarm host is that it's a huge design overlap with the brood lord. Thus I would've liked a change where swarm host locusts instead only attack air units (and tweak numbers like cost, damage, range, etc). 1/10 Ravager Passable change, I'm not sure why they didn't have a light or heavy armor to begin with. Immortals now own them pretty hard and maybe tosses won't roll over and die to early ravagers. I would have liked to seen a different change (say that you had to upgrade the roach warren into a new building before you could make ravagers) but this is passable. 6/10 Hydralisk This will likely break zvp. Hydras were already tough to deal with as a toss unless you had splash. 2/10 Baneling I'm ok with this change, it makes it a little harder for terran to focus down the banelings with marines, but you can still split your marines to minimize the damage. 6/10 Infestor You cannot let infestors use fungal while burrowed. This is gonna get scrapped very quickly. TvZ will be unwinnable if this goes through. You will never be able to move out ever, even if you make ravens. Allowing Neural while burrowed is pretty dumb but at least it's not going to instantly wipe out your army. Infestors don't need a buff. The reason why zergs stopped making infestors is that rushing to ultras was often just better if you could hold out (remember you need the energy upgrade on the infestor). 0/10 Brood Lord Okay change in theory but thors will still be shit against brood lords. BLs clump up while thors are stupidly bulky so while all the BLs fire, only a couple thors will attack. If you want thors to actually be good against BLs (or against the long range air units in general) you have to make the thor's attack range larger. 1/10 No changes to medivac afterburners, adept, MSC photon overcharge, ultralisk, or vipers saddens me though. At least they addressed tankivac, liberator, and tempest though, but evne then the tempest change overall might be a buff. Afterburners is a very powerful ability especially when it's available that early. It really forces zergs and tosses to have ridiculous defenses to counteract them. If you remove afterburners then you can nerf queen/spore and photon overcharge and make the game better. adepts give toss in pvt the better army for the entire game. They are also now ruining pvp as well. They are simply poorly designed; a unit that is just 25 gas and 150 health (same total health as a fucking zealot) and ridiculous damage to light armor and comes from the warpgate should not be able to pseudo-teleport. Photon overcharge give tosses an ability to defend harass without needing to make static defenses. Saving 200-300 minerals early in the game is extremely huge and allows tosses to either get an early 3rd or be able to aggressively tech (sometimes both in a map like dusk towers). Ultralisk give zergs in zvt way too strong a lategame. Vipers are way too good for the fact that they're fast, flying spellcasters with consume. Blinding cloud destroys mech, abduct destroys capital ships, and parasitic bomb destroys clumps of air units. People don't see these problems because zergs either die before they reach hive or they win with ultras (in zvt) or with a lair tech push (in zvp). Some of these changes also cannot go through as they'll break matchups in half. Hydra buff will likely break pvz. Infestor buff (allowing them to cast fungal while burrowed) will definitely break tvz. Some of these changes also shows that blizzard doesn't understand what's causing problems. You don't need to buff zealots if you want tosses to start making them again, you need to nerf adepts. The raven change is not the reason why terrans can't make ravens, it's because it's too hard to plant turrets in a big fight and seeker missile is a worthless ability. At least blizzard is trying though and showing that they care, which is a start. But they still have a lot of work to do. | ||
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VHbb
689 Posts
 I honestly don't understand how one could already whine about this: it's impossible to say how they are going to play out and what is going to happen. It's not like they are changing *one* unit, they are reworking many (core) units - several dynamics and interactions are going to change, and in my opinion the only way to judge the validity of this update will be to test them in the beta-map they will put out. I really hope that someone in the community (basetrade TV or many TB) will organize some showmatches or even a small tournament with this test-map(s): it would be amazing to see pro players not involved in Blizzcon test these in a competitive environment (I doubt I could really gauge the impact of the changes from my own noobish level of play honestly) An other point: no matter what the outcome will be, and what changes will go through, it's very refreshing to get these major modifications to units and gameplay. It almost feel like a different iteration of the game or a new expansion, and it's very nice to look forward to something like this. At least from my point of view it looks like they definitely care about SC2, and are willing to work on it (even drastically) to improve it. If we get big changes like this once every year - year and a half - I would be very happy ! | ||
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a_flayer
Netherlands2826 Posts
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xTJx
Brazil419 Posts
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petro1987
Brazil374 Posts
On August 15 2016 08:33 a_flayer wrote: Call me pessimistic, but this kinda sounds like that time they changed the artificial macro mechanics and then reverted the changes shortly thereafter. I'll wait and see if any of this stuff gets implemented before jumping on board and reinstalling SC2. I'm also skeptical, I really really hope they don't backpedal on all these changes this time. It's funny how it took them 6 years to realize that tanks actually suck and revert it to WoL Beta status. | ||
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Phredxor
New Zealand15076 Posts
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