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This kind of post is a huge issue
To Protoss in General
We agree with a lot of your feedback saying the Void Ray change could potentially be a different option for Protoss to tech to, but some people also seem to feel that the Protoss need more tools at their disposal. We would love to hear some specific suggestions on this side, so that we can explore potential new strategic routes that we can test out.
1. I could not find feedback on teamliquid concerning the void ray. Maybe i missed it ...
2. "potentially be a different option for Protoss to tech to"
Yeah i get different strategy's and ways to play a game are good.
Well the tech route is clearly there ... so the unit is not used enough i assume?
- Statistics would help to prove a point (Ladder, pro games)
We can go back in time and ask why the Void ray was designed this exact way. Why we thought it is needed. Do players use the unit the way we intended?
Did we achieve design goals? (what were our goals)
- Is the unit fun? (what makes a unit fun)
- Unit interactions ?
- "easy to learn but hard to master" true ?
- is the ability "Prismatic Alignment" a good solution ( gain +6 damage vs. armored) it was a good solution 4 years ago, maybe we learned something new?
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Now we know your actual opinion on the unit as a whole (not some vague statement), its much easier to communicate from here on out.
We know the void ray is not used.
In what way should the vr be used? (a new core unit, fast harass unit ...)
Problems this unit faces, potential issues aka to slow, build time, hit points etc.
"some people also seem to feel that the Protoss need more tools at their disposal"
I believe you can do better ...
The community will provide specific feedback after we know your opinion/standpoint/vision.
I am really missing quality in depth analysis by the developer to guide a discussion.
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Protoss in General
We agree with a lot of your feedback saying the Void Ray change could potentially be a different option for Protoss to tech to, but some people also seem to feel that the Protoss need more tools at their disposal. We would love to hear some specific suggestions on this side, so that we can explore potential new strategic routes that we can test out.
Some of the ideas here that we’re currently discussing are: Finding ways to potentially buff Disruptors vs. Terran and/or Zerg, or Stalker base damage increased vs. light while keeping the total damage vs. armored the same.
I don't think the composition problem is that other units are inherently bad, it's that adepts are just so good. Vision isn't going to change their non-harassment power either. In TvP there is no need for other units to be viable. The adept/stalker/colo/templar/archon late game is pretty diverse as is. It's not like zerg/terran have a large set of diverse choices for tech against protoss anyway.
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So for terrans if mech is not getting buff and protoss and zerg are not getting nerf, it means the game is moving in bad direction.
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I agree with the coaches about the harrassment stuff, everything else they said is laughable at best.
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So SC2 is officially a hard game. 
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SC2 metas are majorly off:
1. Because zerg, a race with mainly melee units, has and had to play the defensive part in all historical SC2 metas (non all-in) against a race like terran which almost solely consists of ranged units and is being offensive all the time. It would be correct to let the melee unit race be the offensive part in the metagame.
2. Terran has the mule mechanic. This mechanic works by default best out of all three macro mechanics for a defensive meta race as it ensures a minimum amount of income all the time no matter how hard harrass or attacks hitted. On the offensive side mules prevent counter attacks to be efficient and work defensively as well: When zerg decides to counter attack terran during an attack of terran he is always inefficient due to mules, no matter the details. It is most efficient for zerg to focus all units on defence only until he has a clear advantage and can attack and defend at the same time or can afford to lose expansions, tech or economies during his attacks. The race that is offensive all the time (which is terran) however should be very vulnerable to counters & harrass (which is zerg) to create a feeling of balance by design. As one can easily see that is as much off as it can be.
3. Terran bio is too mobile and too strong overall (omnipotent). This enforces the game designers to give other races tools that are op on themselves such as banelings, muta ball, colossi, adapts, pylon cannon, etc. This created the vicious circle of units and mechanics which are too strong and limit the viablity o each race's strategies and off-timings. It ends in e.g. units like corruptors that have in fact way more HP than they should and metagames which are highly disencouraging for players. Fights are rarely balanced but evolve around those op units (e.g. WOL 4 colossi vs zerg game win if not enough corruptors as zerg with too few corruptors cant do anything against colossi at all, game lose if corruptor count is high enough as protoss can't kill them off fast enough and protoss army without colossi is just being defeated). If those bio counters didn't need to be as strong as they are, the counters to those units would not be as strong as they are as well and the counters against the counters as well, and so on.
These vicious circles of hard counters destroy and disable balanced metagames that SC2 needed badly such as they exist in broodwar - which don't put too much emphasize on the interaction and amount at certain point of time of few key units and as a consequence create games which are not decided/predecided that easily and early on and allow more room for creative play. That is the reason koreans go back to broodwar in large numbers I am sure of.
Examples:
Hell, why do we have earlygame overlord drops now?
Because protoss got pylon cannon and zerg could barely put pressure on protoss without them. Why pylon cannon? Cause early game bio aggression at multiple locations was too strong to defend against and mutas later on as well. Why are mutas as strong as they are? Cause they got heal. Why they got heal? Cause of bio aggression being too strong and hard to defeat.
Do that with everything you feel has gone wrong with SC2 and you will always come to the point where it comes down to mainly bio and it's hard counters being the reason: Mech not viable; adapts in the game as op as they are, fenix a bit op, generations of P metagames evolving around colossi count and timings, etc. I don't even know where to start and end.
Are overlord drops that early bad? Yes, cause they contribute to the skipping of game phases & allow all-in play such as that was has been discovered with the queen drops. After all early overlord drops on high level play have turned out to be all-in and are not viable anyway. They now just offer the threat of being executed with barely beeing executed which without the pylon cannon would not be needed as natural threats of units would still exist. It is a useless mechanic that early that should come into game later on actually.
Is pylon cannon bad? Yes, cause it limits viable options extremely without the need of further explanation.
etc.
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Their main complaint was that StarCraft II is way too difficult to master even for the highest level pros. Initially, we responded that StarCraft II is meant to be the peak challenge of all games, and therefore it is supposed to be nearly impossible to master—even for the best gamers in the world.
This, imo, is a huge problem in mentality. A large part of why SC2 is suffering is because of its inability to attract new gamers when other, friendlier, options exist. And they continue to perpetuate this by only accommodating to the highest denominator; and even then, acknowledge that the game is inaccessible at it's highest potential.
Being the peak challenge means nothing when nobody wants to start playing it because they are intimidated. All of the scenes are having problems because of this. No new blood.
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I'm really glad they were really digging in and elaborating what aspects of Starcraft is "too difficult". David Kim has regurgitated that statement for quite some time, and I never knew precisely what he -or they- meant. Now maybe we can go somewhere.
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KR Pro/Coaches Meeting
Last week, we had a chance to meet up with majority of the coaches in Korea as well as some of the pro players. Their main complaint was that StarCraft II is way too difficult to master even for the highest level pros. Initially, we responded that StarCraft II is meant to be the peak challenge of all games, and therefore it is supposed to be nearly impossible to master—even for the best gamers in the world. After we dug into the specifics, however, we found two main topics that we want to bring up with the StarCraft II community.
First, the Korean coaches and players felt that zerg requires many more actions than the other two races to be able to compete. To address this, they suggested that we bring back the automated larva injects that we tested in the beta. That’s a possibility, but bear in mind the buffs to other zerg units we’re exploring in the major redesign patch and zerg’s respectable performance in recent tournaments.
Secondly, they felt that some of the harassment options in Legacy of the Void are either too mobile or too strong. We mostly discussed Adepts, Tankivacs, and Warp Prisms as the key units on this front, however, and we already intend to address all three of these in the major redesign. We don’t have any action items resulting from this feedback, but we feel more confident than ever that we’re on the right track with the changes we currently have planned for the major redesign patch.
Oh god the irony...
I've been ruthlessly downvoted on Reddit so many times for saying that LotV is far too difficult, because harassment is stupidly powerful, requires too much micro to defend, and is far too mobile to the point where 400APM+ cheese builds are god damn mandatory to play the game competitively.
Then the KeSPA pro scene goes out and criticises the game for the exact same things I've complained about. A pro scene consisting mostly of ex-Brood War players that played a game requiring 300APM or more just to macro.
When former Brood War players are complaining that your game is too difficult, you should realise that you fucked up hard, not turn around and say "Well duh, our game is meant to be difficult to master"
The good thing is that Blizzard actually looked into this and identified some of the big issues plaguing their game.
Adepts are far too powerful because they're superior to the Zealot in almost every single way. Why would you use an easily kited melee unit when Adepts are far more powerful in terms of overall mobility, range and in most cases damage.
Tankivacs were the dumbest idea ever, because it was actually safer in almost all cases to drop micro your tanks than to siege and unsiege them, because it takes 5 seconds to siege up when it takes about a one second delay to fire when dropped.
Plus, the sheer damage and mobility potential of the Tankivac combination meant that surprise doom drops were broken as shit, and capable of levelling entire bases.
The thing is, air harassment in general is too powerful in LotV. Medivac Boost makes Terran drops incredibly difficult to intercept without predicting your opponent's drop pattern and having loads of units literally parked in the drop path. Warp Prism ranged pickups on the other hand turn great feats of drop micro into something any schmuck with a keyboard and mouse can do. And the worst part is that the Warp Prism itself is now in the backlines and is often borderline impossible to snipe.
As for Overlords, the decision to remove Ventral Sacs and make it possible to perform Baneling and Roach drop harassment in Hatchery tech is really bad.
Oh, and did I forget the Oracle - a unit that destroys your mineral line to the point where it becomes a build order loss if you don't have Missile Turrets defending them.
Cyclone
There’s been an issue with the Cyclone’s weapon where its actual damage output was lower than its tooltip indicated. However, this lower damage output has been the value we have been intending to test against. We are adjusting the Cyclone weapon’s attack period and attack delays so that its damage output and tooltip line up with its intended values.
So... they're fixing the tooltip and calling it a day? Wrong answer, Blizzard!
The new Cyclone is a strong representative of Blizzard's crap game design policies.
Rather than redesign the Cyclone to fill a much needed anti-air role that the Thor failed utterly in, the Cyclone is instead focused on being an incredibly expensive yet stupidly powerful anti-armoured unit that borderline outclasses the buffed Siege Tank. Cyclones are basically just as overpowered as the Warhound was in the Heart of the Swarm beta. In fact, the the only ground unit that counters it is the Ultralisk, because it got overbuffed and now has 8 maximum Armour.
This means that without +3 Weapon upgrades, the Cyclone does 0 damage to a maxed out Ultralisk, and 1 damage per shot when the upgrades are in place, or about 14 DPS
Baneling
We’re seeing feedback regarding Baneling health being too high (especially in the early game in ZvZ). If this is the case, we could simply move the health boost to come with Centrifugal Hooks instead of at tier 1. Please let us know if you agree with this direction.
This is the only change I agree with on the list. I'm fine with buffing Banelings, but not to the point where your only hope of holding a Ling/Bane all in is to open Factory first and build Siege Tanks before taking your natural expansion.
Raven Auto Turret
We agree with your feedback that the Auto Turret’s damage after the upgrade appears to be too high right now, so we’d like to leave their damage as is, and change the upgrade so that it only further increases the effectiveness of Seeker Missiles. Therefore, the change we’re thinking of here is to remove the damage bonus to Auto Turrets from this upgrade, keep the damage bonus to Seeker Missiles, and also add a longer tracking time to Seeker Missiles through this upgrade. This way, Seeker Missiles will follow their target further before expiring.
Blizzard need to scrap Seeker Missiles. They're 50 Energy more expensive than Fungal Growth and Psionic Storm, and unlike the two other splash damage spells, can be nullified with ease. Seeker Missiles fizzle out too easy to the point where you can only reliably hit slow moving targets like Battlecruisers and Brood Lords with them.
Scrap the spell and replace it with Irradiate, please!
Fast Teching to Tempest
We’re seeing a lot of feedback on the Tempest ability being too strong when players rush their tech directly to Tempests. To combat this, we could potentially add a research for this ability to help slow down the timing in which Disruption Sphere comes into play.
Again, Blizzard are outright ignoring the problem. Nobody's complaining about Disruption Spheres coming out too fast.
Everyone's complaining about the fact that Tempests now have a splash damage zone ability that outperforms Psionic Storm in almost every regard. Disruption Sphere does far too much damage, has no Energy cost, has something silly like an 80% uptime, and has a cast range of 14 which is pretty much an oxymoron when you consider the fact that Blizzard nerfed the attack range of the Tempest because its range was too powerful and was allowing Protoss to win easy late games with Tempest spamming alone.
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Some suggestions for Protoss.
Colossus Redesign
- Moves 80% more slowly, basically as slow as a Reaver.
- Much slower attack speed.
- Higher damage per shot.
- 12 attack range baseline.
- Extended Thermal Lance removed.
- Is no longer considered an air unit.
The idea of the new Colossus is that it's a very slow siege unit that needs to be drop microed by the Warp Prism to use effectively (a bit like the Brood War Reaver.) Otherwise, it risks being flanked and surrounded by enemy forces and sniped.
On the other hand, anti-air units will still be effective against them, as you'd be sniping the Warp Prism microing it.
Remove Disruptors from the game
This is because the Disruptor performs a redundant role that the Colossus should have performed in the first place had it not been nerfed to crap by Blizzard. Protoss simply doesn't need two splash damage units in Robotics tech.
Adept Nerf:
- Has 50 Life, down from 80.
- Mineral cost reduced to 75, down from 100.
This nerf now brings the Adept to a more acceptable level, where it has 120 effective HP from its combined Life and Shields, instead of the same 150 value that Zealots had.
This means that Adepts should be more of a low cost harassment unit that you build in lieu of Zealots and Stalkers, rather than a core ground unit that outright replaces the Zealot out of how overpowered it is.
Dark Templar Redesign:
- Costs 150 Minerals and 100 Gas to produce, changed from 125 Minerals and 125 Gas.
- Deals 22 damage per hit, down from 45.
- Temporarily de-cloaks for 3 seconds after attacking.
- Is now a Detector
- Can use Blink (researched from the Twilight Council.)
This overhaul fixes three overall problems with the Dark Templar: its ability to outright end games when the opponent lacks detection, its lack of mobility, and the lack of Detectors in Twilight Council tech.
The new DT has the same Blink ability as the Stalker (and not the separate ability that works like a crappier version of Blink), meaning that it can be used to bypass cliffs or escape enemies. Which it now needs because attacking will temporarily de-cloak you, meaning that you can now actually defend yourself against DTs when you don't have detection.
Immortal Redesign:
- Costs 150 Minerals and 75 Gas.
- Has 120 Life and 40 Shields.
- Retains the Hardened Shields ability, which reduces all damage inflicted on the shields that is greater than 10 to 10.
- Now deals 25 damage per shot. No longer does additional damage to Armored units.
The new Immortal is a return to the old style of Immortal. The difference is that it's less tanky overall (only taking 6 shots for a Siege Tank to kill), loses its additional damage against Armoured units, and performs slightly better against Light units.
Basically, its edge is now in its tankiness, as opposed to its ability to outright hard-counter anything with the Armoured affix.
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On October 02 2016 22:32 Clbull wrote:
Some suggestions for Protoss.
Colossus Redesign
The idea of the new Colossus is that it's a very slow siege unit that needs to be drop microed by the Warp Prism to use effectively (a bit like the Brood War Reaver.) Otherwise, it risks being flanked and surrounded by enemy forces and sniped.
On the other hand, anti-air units will still be effective against them, as you'd be sniping the Warp Prism microing it.
Remove Disruptors from the game
This is because the Disruptor performs a redundant role that the Colossus should have performed in the first place had it not been nerfed to crap by Blizzard. Protoss simply doesn't need two splash damage units in Robotics tech.
Adept Nerf:
This means that Adepts should be more of a low cost harassment unit that you build in lieu of Zealots and Stalkers, rather than a core ground unit that outright replaces the Zealot out of how overpowered it is.
Disruptors are one of the best designed units in LOTV IMO, dunno why you'd want to get rid of them. They're splendid.
I don't know if nerfing Adept health is a good way to go, the big problem with them is how noncommittal they are and how they can just declare where they want to be pretty unilaterally. Redesigning Shade or just scrapping that abortion of an ability would be the way to go IMO.
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Conceptually Disruptors are fine, but could use a slight tweak balance-wise, perhaps add unit tracking ala Seeker Missile.
Would love to see Colossus redesigned into a defensive, zone-control type unit, a role which Protoss currently lacks.
I also hope DK uses this opportunity to do a pass-over of the core gateway units and redesign them so they are more balanced vs. each other (i.e. each have more defined roles). I think too much attention is paid to the balance of the match-ups themselves and not b/w units, and parity b/w units will open up unit composition diversity. Things such as increasing Zealot and/or reducing Adept/Stalker HP/Shields to promote Zealots as the "meat shields", increasing Stalker damage to make them fragile ranged sniper units, etc.
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An autoinjecting toggle feature feels fair to pair with continuous chrono and mule hammering.
I enjoy reading design thoughts from Kim, the end-of-year patch should be wild as a viewer.
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On October 03 2016 00:32 Coffeeling wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2016 22:32 Clbull wrote:
Some suggestions for Protoss.
Colossus Redesign
The idea of the new Colossus is that it's a very slow siege unit that needs to be drop microed by the Warp Prism to use effectively (a bit like the Brood War Reaver.) Otherwise, it risks being flanked and surrounded by enemy forces and sniped.
On the other hand, anti-air units will still be effective against them, as you'd be sniping the Warp Prism microing it.
Remove Disruptors from the game
This is because the Disruptor performs a redundant role that the Colossus should have performed in the first place had it not been nerfed to crap by Blizzard. Protoss simply doesn't need two splash damage units in Robotics tech.
Adept Nerf:
This means that Adepts should be more of a low cost harassment unit that you build in lieu of Zealots and Stalkers, rather than a core ground unit that outright replaces the Zealot out of how overpowered it is.
Disruptors are one of the best designed units in LOTV IMO, dunno why you'd want to get rid of them. They're splendid. I don't know if nerfing Adept health is a good way to go, the big problem with them is how noncommittal they are and how they can just declare where they want to be pretty unilaterally. Redesigning Shade or just scrapping that abortion of an ability would be the way to go IMO.
because most of his points are clearly nerfs but he tried to hide it.
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"KR Pro/Coaches Meeting
Last week, we had a chance to meet up with majority of the coaches in Korea as well as some of the pro players. Their main complaint was that StarCraft II is way too difficult to master even for the highest level pros. Initially, we responded that StarCraft II is meant to be the peak challenge of all games, and therefore it is supposed to be nearly impossible to master—even for the best gamers in the world. After we dug into the specifics, however, we found two main topics that we want to bring up with the StarCraft II community.
First, the Korean coaches and players felt that zerg requires many more actions than the other two races to be able to compete. To address this, they suggested that we bring back the automated larva injects that we tested in the beta. That’s a possibility, but bear in mind the buffs to other zerg units we’re exploring in the major redesign patch and zerg’s respectable performance in recent tournaments.
Secondly, they felt that some of the harassment options in Legacy of the Void are either too mobile or too strong. We mostly discussed Adepts, Tankivacs, and Warp Prisms as the key units on this front, however, and we already intend to address all three of these in the major redesign. We don’t have any action items resulting from this feedback, but we feel more confident than ever that we’re on the right track with the changes we currently have planned for the major redesign patch. "
DUH. Blizzard, Literally, completely, unequivocally, DUH. Are you (Blizzard) literally, by your own public omission, so completely out of it that it takes a big meeting with a bunch of top korean coaches and players to point out to you what has been brutally obvious to everyone from the very moment you released this expansion??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? how many question marks to put there... maybe one for every time Blizzard says anything about this game that doesn't involve admitting obvious things.
Zerg depends on making workers more than the other races. you buffed Terran and Protoss worker harass. any doofus can figure out that this biases the game against zerg (how many zergs made it to top 8 last Code S?) except the creators of the game?? Terran and Protoss have capability of winning early game against zerg far more than zerg does. Zergs at top levels NEVER try to end the game early because it's basically impossible to do that against terran or protoss, their defense is too strong. Blizzard nerfed Swarmhosts out of the game because they thought players were massing them which was not the intended usage. Well, terrans can mass reaper and win. terrans can mass liberator and win. mass cyclone and win. mass widow mine and win. protoss mass adept and win. mass disruptor and win. etc. etc. zerg has to be able to mass their units, the whole race is built on that because their units are less efficient. so blizzard where's your plan to nerf liberators, so that they get used as often as zerg swarmhosts? how about nerf a protoss air unit so that they get used as often as swarmhosts? NO, why would you do that? liberators make stuff go boom. big explosions, real exciting. imbalanced unit, sure, but TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE, so it's GOOD! swarmhosts, BORING. so must nerf them out of the game. but imba units that do EXCITING things, keep them IN. great logic. Make your game exciting to watch, but terrible to actually play. that will make it successful. Still playing WoL, the version that existed before the Terrible Terrible Damage make stuff go boom get more viewers widow mines and all that followed dominated over game balance. Never admit the truth, Blizzard. everyone knows it, but don't admit it because then, who knows what could happen. maybe players respecting what you say after that, but ... nah who wants that.
Hopefully, Major Redesign will actually mean that. but I'm not going to hold my breath.
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EPT
