Hey guys, my id is Probe, and I am a Australian Protoss players currently on the team ROOT. Regarding my league I currently have two accounts in KR GM, although both aren't very well ranked.
I was meaning to write these articles for some time now, but I have been very busy at uni and with some other stuff. But finally I got some motivation to write my thoughts down on some of the game design aspects in Starcraft 2.
With blizzard making changes to LOTV at the end of this year, let's have a good discussion.
Even if you don't agree with them at all, I would just love to see anything tested.
My first topic is on...
The Oracle
Problem: My main issue with oracles is that they can end games so easily at casual/lower levels. At the pro level, we hardly ever see an oracle just straight up end the game, and this is because the higher level players have the multitasking and experience to deal with it. Usually they just force some extra defenses and maybe a kill a few drones. The utility later that oracles provide balances out the oracle not doing very much damage. So my claim here is not that oracles are underpowered or overpowered, I just believe that at the majority of skill levels the oracle's ability to kill worker lines in an instant is not fun to play against.
While you may not see an oracle dealing game ending damage very much at the pro level, at lower levels it still very much exists, and certainly frustrates people.
It is too punishing of a unit for the vast majority of players.
The aspect of the oracle that we should be focusing on in my opinion is not the worker harassment, but rather the utility provided through revelation and stasis wards(and envision in hots). Stasis ward in particular I believe is a really awesome spell, but it just isn't in the right spot yet. It is hardly ever used.
The few interactions from stasis wards that we have are memorable. Remember uThermal vs Showtime at Dreamhack Leipzig?
You can also engage with your army and cast the stasis wards while you are fighting. The wards don't have a very high attack priority so you can usually finish the spell before they get focused down.
(That is how I got this to work a few times)
I also think about stasis in Brood War. With mech coming back in lotv, we could possibly see tank clumps being stasis'd (Yes it does work differently in sc2).
My suggestion: Remove the oracle attack spell. Buff stasis ward build time.
Buff/nerf radius/hp/energy cost/etc to balance out the unit after this change has been made.
Possibly bring back envision.
I have a few reasons for suggesting this change.
Firstly, the removal of the attack will make it more noob friendly to play against. You aren't going to have an oracle flying into the mineral lines of casual/new players and completely ending the game. At the pro level where it doesn't do much direct damage anymore anyway, this will encourage greater use of revelation and stasis wards as there is more energy available.
Secondly, by buffing stasis ward, you will still be able to damage the economy, however it would not be as damaging because the workers don't die. I would see it working like a bit like the original entomb, but instead of having to kill the entombed mineral lines, you would just keep a couple of units in the mineral line to deny the stasis ward building. It will hopefully also become more prevelent in army fights. If this happens it will encourage interesting micro. Did you place it too close or too far from the army? Can your opponent focus it down? Do I need to split up my army more? etc etc.
Thirdly, while removing the oracle attack might have some issue on balance(eg. taking your third but getting denied by zerglings, early ravager all ins), the oracle should not be the unit that allows you to deal with these things. Buff other things (GATEWAY UNITS).
Conclusion: Ultimately what I am suggesting is to turn the oracle into a purely support air unit, by moving away from it's harassment aspect. The damage that oracles do against casual and lower level players makes this game not fun, and it should be looked at.
Let me know what you think about this below.
Do you agree? Do you disagree? How would you approach changing the oracle? Would you change it at all?
Come on. How well Protosses micro the Oracles (which easily makes the difference between 2 or 4 worker kills) while macroing is one of the most satisfying ways to watch top 5-10 Protosses differentiate themselves from lesser Protosses.. would be sad if that was removed
Imagine threatening mineral lines with stasis wards, it would prevent mining for a certain amount of time until the Stasis Ward is dealt with or it gets procced by a worker, just like widow mines are baited, could be a nice interaction that is not as harmful as an oracle or a widowmine itself, if you fail, you don't lose the workers, only the mining time. However, I feel widowmines would be too strong a harassment tool now in comparison, maybe you're starting off with the Oracle for now, I hope I get to see what's your opinion on widowmine drops, too.
I really like where you're going with your first suggestion: removing the attack spell. Also I think it's valid to keep it as a CC tool in combat, however, it would be clunky to be channeling everything mid-combat, maybe we could make it so that the oracle casts the ward on the ground and is able to move inmediately after without channeling. Hell, I'm only brainstorming here Plus the important thing is to make it more casual friendly, useful and fun for both parties.
On October 09 2016 14:35 SKN1995 wrote: Come on. How well Protosses micro the Oracles (which easily makes the difference between 2 or 4 worker kills) while macroing is one of the most satisfying ways to watch top 5-10 Protosses differentiate themselves from lesser Protosses.. would be sad if that was removed
Umm, no...It's a gimmick unit, plain and simple, all top Protoss players have crisp micro with Oracles, what's the differentiation?
Oracle
- Nerf primary attack drastically against light units but increase it's range by +1 or potentially even +2 to allow the Oracle to find sweet spots in the enemies defenses. It being so effective vs light units makes it imbalanced vs Marines early game and obviously imbalanced vs economy, pretty much 75% of the reason the unit is a gimmick unit in the first place with the other 25% being because it's abilities last far too long.
Currently an Oracle is countered by 1 Spore Crawler and rendered almost useless but if the Spore isn't there it's gg, change the relationship so that it can still be useful if prepared for, but not made useless, this is called "good unit design" compared to it's current incarnation, which is called "David Kim really likes things that go fast and kill workers".
- Reduce the cost of Stasis Ward to 50% it's current mana cost but reduce it's cool down and radius proportionally so it will be used as a constant ward dropper by the best multi task players but the ability itself won't be broken. Would be a fantastic ling run by defense.
- Change revelation so it lets you look through the eyes of one unit entirely (think Parasite from BW) permanently.
Not saying my ideas are the epitome of said "good unit design" but the Oracle needs to be changed most definitely.
On October 09 2016 14:35 SKN1995 wrote: Come on. How well Protosses micro the Oracles (which easily makes the difference between 2 or 4 worker kills) while macroing is one of the most satisfying ways to watch top 5-10 Protosses differentiate themselves from lesser Protosses.. would be sad if that was removed
Umm, no...It's a gimmick unit, plain and simple, all top Protoss players have crisp micro with Oracles, what's the differentiation?
Not while not fucking up macro, they don't. There's a clear significant difference between the best Protosses and lesser ones when it comes to this. Sure, some may control their Oracles flawlessly but fuck up macroing meanwhile whereas other Protosses are on point with their macro but kill only 2-3 workers in scenarios where they could have gotten 1-2 or even 3 more.
On October 09 2016 14:35 SKN1995 wrote: Come on. How well Protosses micro the Oracles (which easily makes the difference between 2 or 4 worker kills) while macroing is one of the most satisfying ways to watch top 5-10 Protosses differentiate themselves from lesser Protosses.. would be sad if that was removed
Umm, no...It's a gimmick unit, plain and simple, all top Protoss players have crisp micro with Oracles, what's the differentiation?
Oracle
- Nerf primary attack drastically against light units but increase it's range by +1 or potentially even +2 to allow the Oracle to find sweet spots in the enemies defenses. It being so effective vs light units makes it imbalanced vs Marines early game and obviously imbalanced vs economy, pretty much 75% of the reason the unit is a gimmick unit in the first place with the other 25% being because it's abilities last far too long.
Currently an Oracle is countered by 1 Spore Crawler and rendered almost useless but if the Spore isn't there it's gg, change the relationship so that it can still be useful if prepared for, but not made useless, this is called "good unit design" compared to it's current incarnation, which is called "David Kim really likes things that go fast and kill workers".
- Reduce the cost of Stasis Ward to 50% it's current mana cost but reduce it's cool down and radius proportionally so it will be used as a constant ward dropper by the best multi task players but the ability itself won't be broken. Would be a fantastic ling run by defense.
- Change revelation so it lets you look through the eyes of one unit entirely (think Parasite from BW) permanently.
Not saying my ideas are the epitome of said "good unit design" but the Oracle needs to be changed most definitely.
the attack change is an interesting idea, but the revelation change removes its ability to act as a detector, which is a bad idea imo
Blizzard said that their idea was to add variety in to protoss. I feel like removing oracle harass ability would discourage stargate openers and thus do the opposite what Blizzard is wanting to do.
I do agree that oracles can be game ending at lower levels though and changing that would definitely be a nice thing but I don't think this is the way to go about it,
On October 09 2016 14:35 SKN1995 wrote: Come on. How well Protosses micro the Oracles (which easily makes the difference between 2 or 4 worker kills) while macroing is one of the most satisfying ways to watch top 5-10 Protosses differentiate themselves from lesser Protosses.. would be sad if that was removed
Umm, no...It's a gimmick unit, plain and simple, all top Protoss players have crisp micro with Oracles, what's the differentiation?
Oracle
- Nerf primary attack drastically against light units but increase it's range by +1 or potentially even +2 to allow the Oracle to find sweet spots in the enemies defenses. It being so effective vs light units makes it imbalanced vs Marines early game and obviously imbalanced vs economy, pretty much 75% of the reason the unit is a gimmick unit in the first place with the other 25% being because it's abilities last far too long.
Currently an Oracle is countered by 1 Spore Crawler and rendered almost useless but if the Spore isn't there it's gg, change the relationship so that it can still be useful if prepared for, but not made useless, this is called "good unit design" compared to it's current incarnation, which is called "David Kim really likes things that go fast and kill workers".
- Reduce the cost of Stasis Ward to 50% it's current mana cost but reduce it's cool down and radius proportionally so it will be used as a constant ward dropper by the best multi task players but the ability itself won't be broken. Would be a fantastic ling run by defense.
- Change revelation so it lets you look through the eyes of one unit entirely (think Parasite from BW) permanently.
Not saying my ideas are the epitome of said "good unit design" but the Oracle needs to be changed most definitely.
the attack change is an interesting idea, but the revelation change removes its ability to act as a detector, which is a bad idea imo
I think allowing the Oracle to be a detector itself wouldn't be too bad, with the increased range it should slightly lessen the danger it would have to put itself in to detect things. Having to build a robo for Observers would definitely be a massive hindrance to SG play in general so I agree that the Oracle needs to detect.
Appreciate the +1 on the other idea though, I've thought that about the Oracle for a long time, the extra range and less burst would make it much easier to micro and keep it alive while simultaneously ending the "terrible terrible dmg" effect it has.
On October 09 2016 16:34 Parcelleus wrote: There are many things 'not fun to play against', picking on the 'Oracle' just shows your bias. Yawn thread.
I intend to write many threads over the next couple of weeks. This includes widow mine, lurker, mcore, adepts etc. I hope my bias(and we are all biased) as a protoss player isn't overwhelming and that we can at least have a good discussion.
On October 09 2016 13:59 mGGrinehart wrote: Conclusion: Ultimately what I am suggesting is to turn the oracle into a purely support air unit, by moving away from it's harassment aspect. The damage that oracles do against casual and lower level players makes this game not fun, and it should be looked at.
Let me know what you think about this below.
Great idea!
I think the most reasonable change to Stasis Ward would be to make it a spell on a low cooldown, with low duration (say 5-10 seconds), low mana cost and a unit limit or smaller radius. This way it actually would require some skill to chain it on workers in a mineral line or on parts of the enemy's army.
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On a sidenote, if this is going to be a series think about changing the titles to a common format (like "Probe's thoughts: ...").
On October 09 2016 14:35 SKN1995 wrote: Come on. How well Protosses micro the Oracles (which easily makes the difference between 2 or 4 worker kills) while macroing is one of the most satisfying ways to watch top 5-10 Protosses differentiate themselves from lesser Protosses.. would be sad if that was removed
Yeah I can understand this. But how about giving the pro players the ability to distinguish themselves through the use of stasis, which won't have such a crushing impact on the casual/new players, and is also relevant for the entire game, not just the early game.
On October 09 2016 14:35 SKN1995 wrote: Come on. How well Protosses micro the Oracles (which easily makes the difference between 2 or 4 worker kills) while macroing is one of the most satisfying ways to watch top 5-10 Protosses differentiate themselves from lesser Protosses.. would be sad if that was removed
[snip]
Currently an Oracle is countered by 1 Spore Crawler and rendered almost useless but if the Spore isn't there it's gg, change the relationship so that it can still be useful if prepared for, but not made useless, this is called "good unit design" compared to it's current incarnation, which is called "David Kim really likes things that go fast and kill workers".
[snip]
Fun fact, if they make more than one oracle, suddenly spores don't matter anymore.
Played a game recently where the toss made 1 oracle, then pooled 3 more. So 4 showed up. Killed all my spores, all my queens, and all by 16 of my drones.
Obviously there was an investment there - but same idea. Even if you're prepared, they can still find ways to fuck your shit up.
I don't know if oracles are fair, fun to play or whatever but all I know is that they are extremely limiting to the variety of buildorders (especially against terran) so a change to them would be welcome.
The only change Oracle needs is a gigantic nerf on relevations durations. It is by far the most broken ability in the game at the moment. It has a huge area, it reveals invisible units as well and it stays for 1 MINUTE, 1 fucking MINUTE! 1 minute is almost a swarm hosts attack frequency, thats how you know that a unit will remain always useless because one minute is just way too long time for a lotv game. And there is no counter-play to revelation, you just have to accept the fact that protoss will see your all army for the rest of the game. Its duration should be like 15 seconds in a fair game to be honest.
The oracle is a gimmicky and stupid unit. It kills workers and marines so insanely fast, while the revelation is probably the most broken spell in the game (considering range and duration, and the fact it allows no counterplay whatsoever).
The unit would be much more interesting if it was able to build forcefields on minerals the way it was supposed to in the hots beta. Give the forcefield 50 hps, make the oracle have to channel for 2 seconds on top of said minerals to cast the spell so static D can prevent it, and remove the idiotic attack spell. And make revelation only detect unit instead of giving vision too. Or make them only a dot on the minimap like sensor towers so protoss can't know if it's a marine or a medivac.
man i agree about oracles being too devastating but i don't agree with the stasis ward buff as a solution... if it were suddenly easy and viable to drop mass stasis and nullify half your opponents army then how is that fun to play against either? low level players won't have the micro to focus oracles or dodge stasis wards. a stronger stasis ward woud basically be another widow mine or disruptor mechanic except your units die a few seconds later instead of instantly
also disagree with the people saying revelation has no counterplay... if all you do is sit at your third and fourth base with your whole army and then do a big push then yeah revelation screws you, but if you're active on the map you can definitely use revelation to fake aggression by making it look like youre attacking, which taxes your opponents APM and affects his decision making. it could probably be slightly nerfed in fairness, but non protoss underestimate the amount of attention and micro it takes just to fly your oracle around and land revelations constantly. its not automatic, it takes control
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/40BLUVe.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cd5EcfqUAAAtmbX.jpg:large)
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/nbaker/BisuFlash/BF7.jpg)
Plus the important thing is to make it more casual friendly, useful and fun for both parties.
