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On October 26 2016 10:31 mGGrinehart wrote:
1. The general idea is to make they stronger in holding locations, whether that be a choke point or your mineral line, while reducing the offensive power of the lurker. The lurker den morph time is to make them more available in all matchups.
2. The damage change is trying to make it stronger at defense. Lurkers will be stronger at defending adept/zealot/hellion/bio/etc runbys and stronger at holding the big deathball pushes. Hopefully this encourages splitting up of the army a bit more on both sides.
3. I suggest range 6 so that the damage can be really increased. With hydralisk getting a range buff they hydralisk will be able to sync with the lurkers to cover them. The hydralisk buff as well already encourages lurkers to be built, so I don't agree with a cost change on the lurker.
I agree with most of what you said, but I think Lurkers would need to do friendly fire if you really want to change how ZvP with Lurker compositions is played out. The range reduction might work too, but I don't think it will change the ZvP dynamic drastically.
Right now in ZvP, Lurkers seem to just grant zone control to the Zerg until the Protoss can steamroll the Zerg. If the Protoss can't get there, the Zerg will vice versa steamroll the Protoss. This is obviously very binary and pretty unexciting to watch.
A range reduction and damage increase will likely not change that. The Protoss might have to turtle/harass more heavily, but in the end will only win with a superior army.
Friendly fire on the other hand implies that an engagement in a zone controlled by Lurkers might reset both armies. This adds a third—potentially more exciting—outcome.
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Ok. I'm done with reading this topic just because it's a gateway to the realm of more and more stupid ideas like:
"but I think Lurkers would need to do friendly fire if you really want to change how ZvP with Lurker compositions is played out."
Yeah, lets make Zerg splash damage friendly fire Zerg units, as that doesn't matter that most of Zerg units are melee and fight within enemy lines. Time to visit a doctor.
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On October 27 2016 17:53 ROOTCatZ wrote:Show nested quote +On October 26 2016 16:39 hiroshOne wrote:
Sentry stops runby perfectly. As it was stopping this since WOL. Pylon overcharge stops almost every counter attack, and Protoss can fully commit in being agressive. I would be ok with Pylon overcharge, as i understand the need of defending things like drops or runby but not combined with such imba unit as Adept is. Adept supposed to be tanky unit, that is more mobile than Zealot. At least that's what Blizzard was saying. But they failed. Instead Adept became mineral line destroyer. I feel like u should play some Terran or Zerg and feel the pain yourself. It's not so rare to see player prepared on Adepts, with his army of roaches, lings or bio splitted between their bases, waiting for Adepts in mineral lines. But as soon as they come- that matters not. You loose 20+ workers as if your army wasn't there. Ha! and probably most of the adepts will still survive, as the cooldown on shade is so short, that they start another one just after the first finish. It's bad design. If u're in Root just ask Catz, as he states the same all the time on his stream. that was a lot of things that I doubt I've ever said, though granted I have a -personal- issue with adepts it's hardly from a design perspective, I think the unit is powerful and that's being addressed in the patch at the end of the year. I think adepts are a lot easier to do damage with or execute than they are to defend against, on a mechanical front that is challenging for a player like myself who has trouble keeping up with all of it. I think that can be mitigated in many other ways or areas, in fact I am a fan of adepts and shades, from a design perspective I think the unit is cool and unique. A small tweak like just reducing the shade's vision will increase the risk of shading adepts, that risk may be enough to even things out on other fronts such as the amount of attention required, as attention spend would in this case pay off more often for zerg and prevent P from committing as often in the first place (also forcing additional actions such as determining if to, and canceling the shade more often than now).
Maybe i overreached, but that's because i noticed that few times as u were upset about adepts. I thought i heared "I hate this unit" few times on your stream. Sorry for pulling you in this. I always cheered for idea of increasing the cooldown on shade itself. Shading left and right wouldn't be so forgiving as it is now. Ofc we can concider Adepts good design, but at the moment, especially in ZvP i feel like it went the wrong way.
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On October 27 2016 19:35 hiroshOne wrote:
Ok. I'm done with reading this topic just because it's a gateway to the realm of more and more stupid ideas like:
"but I think Lurkers would need to do friendly fire if you really want to change how ZvP with Lurker compositions is played out."
Yeah, lets make Zerg splash damage friendly fire Zerg units, as that doesn't matter that most of Zerg units are melee and fight within enemy lines. Time to visit a doctor.
You're absolutely right! How stupid stupid of me to expect Zerg players to build a ranged composition when going for Lurkers. It cannot be done. Obviously Zergs can only build Lings and Ultras. Also very dumb of me to expect Zerg players to have unit control (like idk maybe hold position or sth). My bad! Very Sorry!
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I personally think that Lurkers are useless as soon as liberator range finishes (and personally in TvZ I think that is an important upgrade to get as the ultralisk den is building) and just vs liberators and tanks in general. The Lurker I think right now wouldn't need a damage boost but maybe something else? Idk if it would be over powered but what if it slowed the area it attacked? kind of like marauder concussive shell but it wouldn't attack as fast? or instead of that give it like a Damage over time or ability to do more. What that ability would be I'm not really sure sorry if this post is unnecessary and doesn't help haha but um yeah thats my suggestion! 
PS: Overlords picking up lurkers 8) IN SIEGE MODE! :D
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After thinking it over, I feel that ZvP is one of the best match ups and easily the best matchup for Z in SC2. That is in terms of enjoyment from playing and watching for me personally. I could care less what the win rate is. It's fun to play. There's lots of thinking, lots of timings, reactions, builds, strategies, all sorts of shit that makes it a really unpredictable match that lets whoever had the better idea express themselves.
Compare that to ZvT. If you could place liquibets on what a player will do in a TvZ we'd all be rolling in the points. It isn't so much that the lurker has a problem. It's certainly fine in ZvZ, and it's very good in ZvP, but it's absolutely shit in ZvT.
And ZvT has had problems since beta in 2010. People say the best time of ZvT was in HotS. Not currently and that's an important distinction since a lot of people say SC2 is at its best today. Unless it's on this topic. So instead of looking at the lurker like it needs to change, the road I see is the match up needs to change. So much damage has been done to this game because a specific thing was too strong or too weak, and instead of addressing the underlying problem we focus on dicking around with % buffs/nerfs. Which have undesirable effects on the other matchups. The queen buff is no better candidate to say how badly a buff to fix a problem created by a buff will have unintended and undesirable consequences across all matchups and strategies.
Rather than change the lurker, I'd like to change TvZ. Evaluate what made it so enjoyable previously and what makes it less enjoyable now. Find the underlying problems that make the hydra (and by extension the lurker) a dogshit unit against bio, and improve it from there.
That last bit is the most important part to me. I'd gladly experiment with lurkers if it didn't mean going down a suicidal path of fast lair into hydra den into lurker den against bio which shreds hydras.
On October 27 2016 21:29 Ryu3600 wrote:I personally think that Lurkers are useless as soon as liberator range finishes (and personally in TvZ I think that is an important upgrade to get as the ultralisk den is building) and just vs liberators and tanks in general. The Lurker I think right now wouldn't need a damage boost but maybe something else? Idk if it would be over powered but what if it slowed the area it attacked? kind of like marauder concussive shell but it wouldn't attack as fast? or instead of that give it like a Damage over time or ability to do more. What that ability would be I'm not really sure sorry if this post is unnecessary and doesn't help haha but um yeah thats my suggestion! PS: Overlords picking up lurkers 8) IN SIEGE MODE! :D
Oh but that'd never work since T is the end all be all ranged attack with bio. So obviously now we're gonna have to add fart boosters and and immortalesque shielding on overlords!
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6 range on lurker is bad, protoss will be allowed to move foward with HT and storm your army, making you retreat and leave the lurkers without support.
After 6 years it's not likely they'll work on the protoss deathball, hell, took them 5 to give zerg some antiair. Still, it's less painful to die to archon immortal amove than forcefields, at least if feels like you had a chance to do better.
In a macro game, Zerg goes for a timing and if it fails they lose, that's the match up.
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Protoss is too well rounded race compared to others. They got perfect defence, and perfect offence with denying defender's advantage technique which is warpin. They got great economy, because of auto chronoboost, that with shooting pylons and warpins are free to abuse without problems. Also they got the strongest units and the best splash damage in the game...Actually they don't have weak points, well, maybe in early game- that's why u see so many Zergs trying allin protoss in that stage.
In ZvT the problem is with design. Zerg was dynamic, makro oriented race with weaker units but the possibilty of making lots of them (swarmlike). In LOTV Zerg macro was nerfed hardest of all races. Since the only advantage over Terran is Zerg's late game, it was unavoidable they they develop super turtle defending style to rush to Hive. It's basically the only chance of winning vs Terran. I found very strange, that Blizzard nerfed Zerg's macro so hard and in the same time made harras so much stronger.
Lots of Terrans whine and cry over Zerg's late game- especially about Ultra armour. Now they are nerfin ultra effective armour in late game -1. I'm ok with that as i always stated that there is a room for that change which is nerfing Zerg's late game. But only if Blizzard buff midgame for Zerg in the same time. I wish that Blizzard revised their idea of bringing back 4 larva, at it would make Zerg swarmlike as it should be and give back this race it's only advantage over others- macro.
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I think it's okay that the Lurker isn't used in ZvT very often. BIO with Medivacs are too mobile, micro-able, and cost effective for Lurkers to be the answer. If you try to fix that, you'll end up making Lurkers OP in the other MU's (ZvP especially). Plus, I don't really see how Lurkers become a viable option ZvT. With Mass select, no high-ground advantage, etc. it's far to easy to combat them compared to what it was in Broodwar (which is okay).
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On October 27 2016 21:56 Probe1 wrote:
Rather than change the lurker, I'd like to change TvZ. Evaluate what made it so enjoyable previously and what makes it less enjoyable now. Find the underlying problems that make the hydra (and by extension the lurker) a dogshit unit against bio, and improve it from there.
I know this is going to go really off topic, but Terran Starport units are the problem with the TvX, and the entire game, in general.
Terran is far too reliant on Medivacs in the early game to be able to be aggressive before they're out. In all 3 matchups, Medivac's combined healing power and harassment potential is paramount to the race functioning, to the point that Terran generally doesn't even leave the safety of their base because unstimmed bio has no way to defend itself against basic Gateway units or mass Ling/Baneling. The multi-task and dropping aspects of it are fun to watch, but it's created an arms race that makes dictates the entirety of SC2 because the other races are then forced to only play styles that can defend drops (Ling/Muta for the first two expansions) or we get band-aids for Protoss like Photon Overcharge where the developers really couldn't think of anything better.
I want Medivacs to lose their ability to heal and Medics to be re-added to the game, which will have two significant outcomes: Terran will be able to move out of their base earlier in the game, because Medics will provide just enough sustainability to small bio forces where you can reasonably trade units; and the last outcome will be that we can stop the "drop harassment" arms race because by definition, Terran will have either less DPS or less sustainability in dropship harassment and we can remove the bandaids like Photon Overcharge.
You might ask yourself how Terran will be viable at the pro level with their harassment options so limited, and I would answer that the incoming Siege Tank buff is so game-changing that Terran map control will be our new focus, and not just our APM. We joke about Terran player's wrists' ending their careers, and the general community consensus is that at the highest level Terran is harder to play than Zerg or Protoss because it requires such a large amount of APM that it's just unsustainable for everyone but the absolute best Korean Terrans. If Terran became less harassment focused and more map control focused, would we see more Terran players having success at the amateur, semi-pro and foreign pro scenes? I think so.
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Do I really have to go into why Liberators are a problem?
Flying units which do not have to obey map terrain which are far more effective than Siege Tanks at creating map control. They siege up quicker, they do more damage, are harder to kill because they fly, more massable and require less infrastructure. Like Medivacs, their effectiveness is so extreme that once again both other races are getting ridiculous buffs to counter them (queen range) or are forced to play with units that can specifically counter them (mostly Stalkers, which isn't bad considering how prevalent Adepts are, or Tempests)
Liberators need their roles changed from an air-to-ground killing machine to a supplement to an actual Siege Tank army. This can partly be addressed already with the incoming Siege Tank buff since Terran does need a way to retain map control, so we are free to give Liberators a different function or just remove it, since it's already redundant with the Banshee and Viking at the exact same time.
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Lunareste this is such a stupid idea you gave me that I have to share it and edit my post after I read and fully digest what you wrote right now.
You know how hellions were kinda meh at dealing with mass light units and easily surrounded? So we got hellbats? Give lurkers an upgrade that allows them to switch to a conical attack like hellbats.
Why is this helpful against bio? Bio largely negates lurkers because of its mobility, lack of high ground advantage, and speed in which it can spread from a ball to a concave. That last aspect comes into play here. Instead of the lurkers now unhelpful straight attack, it can hit bio simultaneously in a cone directly combatting the concave. Obviously at full damage this would be ridiculous and it'd have to have a significant penalty to damage done in exchange, as well as having the arc only face the lurkers front for the same reasons as a hellbat. Unlike a hellbat, it can't turn without unburrowing so positioning would be integral.
This will obviously never happen since it's too close to another unit but it made me smile when I thought of it. It combines Probes idea of reducing its range for higher damage while maintaining what makes the lurker good in other matchups.
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On removing medivacs and replacing them with medics. I'd love it, I'd play Terran more often, and most importantly - Blizzard will never do it. It's just not the game they've spent all this time making. Maybe (cough probably) it'd make it a better game. We wouldn't have this silly harass arms race where everything that doesn't need buffs ends up getting them because of the strength of harass. But will Blizzard realistically change something so fundamental to the core of the game? I seriously doubt it. No matter how much I want it. They just won't. And I hate to say this but these are the people that can't even figure out how to release a portrait pack BEFORE the WCS championship so we can show our support. These aren't the best and brightest minds in esports here. I don't see them taking such a brave risk even if they wanted to.
Liberators are just an all around mess of a unit. When I got back to the game last August they, along with widow mines, were two of the three things that made me constantly mutter (also swarm hosts just what the fuck). I think the upcoming balance patch that will curtail their dominant anti air power will do some good and it's worth re-evaluating their role afterwards. I probably won't love them but as long as they aren't a Mary Sue "My everything hurts" unit then okay, I can accept them.
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I think the luker is fine atm. Its fine if not all units should be used in every single situation, there are already too many "too versatile" units. At this moment we have the situation: Made too many roaches? make some ravagers. Too many hydra's? turn them into lurkers. Adding an extra morph mode to the lurker and the question is: why make a different unit instead of mass hydra lurker. Which is already the case in pvz (at least in a lot of the games i saw), yes thats why you suggest 6 range, but that would make the protoss "amove" more effective instead of positioning.
Lurkers already have an extra feature, you dont see them at all. Unlike a mine, stasis ward etc. no burrow mark.
Instead of adding/changing units they should be more consistent on unit design, that will help/improve the game a lot more.
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On October 26 2016 14:57 hiroshOne wrote:
Must i remind u that they already nerfed Ultralisk lately?
r u referring to the PTR nerf where they increased the base armor by +1 and decreased the amount of the Chitinous Plating by 2?
that's not much of a nerf.
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You can now play the extension mod to test these changes.
Just search Probe and you will find the 2 test mods so far.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/s6m9SbS.jpg)
I am a real noob with the editor and actually couldn't figure out as few things. So at the moment lurker range is now 6 and damage is 40+10(armoured). Lurker den build time is the same. Hopefully I can figure these things out but this gives a good idea imo.
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EPT
