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On February 10 2017 00:18 BisuDagger wrote:
Honestly, I think this was a bigger issue in LOTV. With the new fast paced economy and quick extra bases this feels less of an issue. But still in SC2 workers can be obliterated at such a faster level and it is a combination of harrasment units doing damage very fast and the defensive structure of sc2 vs sc1.
Vultures for instance are great harassment units but are not strong enough to win a game outright even with good attacks.
Vultures:
TvZ
Not as common early game vs zerg. By the time mech switch comes out zerg should have two things
1. Good sim cities to help prevent runbys
2. The remacro from multiple hatcheries across many base location + nydus canals to quickly defend each base make the zerg fierce defenders. Plus at this point defensive lurkers and sunkens will make it hard for 4 vultures to kill many workers before the vultures are killed.
TvP
1. Vultures don't get inside the base easily because a pylons plus rallied dragoons are usually blocking the natural
2. Vulture drops are deflected by good scouting pylon placements and macro dragoons pop out to kill of 4 vultures.
3. Protoss should always be out expanding Terran. So even if an exposed third nexus takes tons of probe kills, the protoss should be able to play defense and remacro workers.
So let's assume that vultures do harass at a level of significant damage in a TvP. Now protoss can expect a tank+vulture follow up and they do not have the economy to face Terran head on. Well Brood War has HUGE defensive advantages. High ground areas and cliffs can be used to cause missed tank shots or lower dmg attack. The bridges and choke points are major too because BW units are larger. You cannot stack them up in bundles as effectively as SC2. So you have dragoons hitting tanks from a high ground, zealots dropping on tanks, and all the while your Protoss army has it's back against 8-12 gateways bringing more units into the battle.
Another way too look at it though:
On a broader scope every harrasment investment has it's drawbacks. Going for reavers and killing lots of SCVs doesn't mean that Terran loses outright. Terran off two bases can still defend Protoss armies for a very very very long time with a much smaller army of tanks and turrets.And teching to reavers may mean protoss took obs later, so then Terran responds with spider mine harassment. Reavers also mean less gas for goons, so now the protoss player cannot defend and two base timing push from Terran as easily. Especially if Terran can pull their 4 marines out of their bunker and pick of the shuttle containing the reaver. Then protoss is suddenly behind even after killing 10 workers.
The TLDR, is that all 3 races have ways to defend or comeback from heavy damage. It's tough, but smart players take risks and change tech paths that allow them to overcome the harassment.
I think you are seeing this from the wrong angle regarding the defensiveness of BW Bisu, yes, cliffs and such help, but on direct harassment drops or wherever they matter very little, instead I would look at the economy.
On my eyes, it is very simple what is happening on the case of SC2 Harassment being considerably stronger than in BW on its potential to cripple a player, and that is caused by Worker Pairing.
On BW, where worker pairing does not exist, and instead the efficiency threshold for saturated Mineral lines is 8, as long as a player's mineral line does not go below those 8 workers, the overall income of the mineral line is rather stable. What I mean is that, because in BW when you go beyond 8 workers per mineral line, the efficiency of these new workers is less than the efficiency of the first 8. This creates kinda of a cushion effect on the mineral line. As long as you have 8 workers mining on it, you will still be receiving a "considerable" part of the total income a mineral line gives.
On SC2 meanwhile, because a mineral line requires 16 workers to be efficiently mined, when you are losing any of said 16 workers, you are losing workers mining at 100% efficiency, meaning that your income is being severely affected, which in BW is not the case as the efficiency threshold there is 8 instead of 16. So in BW you need to basically lose all workers in a mineral line for your income to become obliterated, meanwhile on SC2, because of the linear relation on the first 16 workers, if you lose say, half of those your income will become halved, on BW, if you lose half of your first 16 workers, your income will decrease by ~40%.
Here's a pic to illustrate the issue.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iH4KYu9.jpg)
As such, on SC2, when you lose workers from your vital 16, you are losing your important 100% efficiency workers, meanwhile in BW, the golden number of 100% efficient mining workers is 8 not 16.
This also means that in BW it is easier to bounce back into a decent economy after heavy harassment rather easily, for you "only" need to transfer around 8 to 10 workers from your other bases into the harassed base and you will more or less have a similar economy you had previously (still damaged, only not bleeding to death). In the case of SC2, because you need 16 workers per mineral line, if your main has 22 workers and the workers in your nat are all dead, if you decide to transfer 8 from your main to you natural, your overall income will still be screwed, because your natural will still need 8 extra workers for it to be working at 100% efficiency once again, while now your main will also be in need of refilling those 2 missing mining workers until it reaches 16 again.
There are a lot of other things that I didn't bothered to mention like how worker bouncing creates sweet spots on the mining curves, or went in detail about the nitty gritty mining rates for workers on BW vs SC2
So if anyone got interested on this, I highly suggest to go read other articles on Worker Pairing, and how it affects the game.
https://ktvmaps.wordpress.com/portfolio/lotv-economy-worker-pairing/
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/471776-mod-double-harvesting-better-saturation-curve
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/482775-a-treatise-on-the-economy-of-scii
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Y'all forgot the BC. Best harass unit in the game.
Actually the issue with LOTV is that it relies on worker harass and on free damage as design choices.
Basically, worker harass and unit mobility got extremely buffed since WOL. Wether it relies on APM (impossible to loose a medivac in most cases if you don't screw up, impossible to shoot down a speedprism), or on design and balance (muta speed and regen buff, liberator sieging mineral lines, mines being able to target workers, etc.).
And simultaneously, a lot of units rely on "free, unavoidable damage" not only to perform worker harass, but also in army interactions. Like the BC with jump, speed mutas with regen, pylon overcharge, SHs, raven unavoidable seekers and 24 damage turrets, viper abducts and parasitic bomb, tempest with 15 range with revelation, low cost interceptors, liberator with range, disruptors in some regards, etc. Blizzard chose to screw up the risk/reward ratio of a lot of units in the game to reward execution instead of strategy.
A good exemple would be WOL muta vs HOTS/LOTV muta. In WOL TvZ, going muta against marine tanks meant that the terran, at some point, would build thors. Which meant that without regen, each thor volley you managed to land on a muta pack was a "cooldown" on the mutas. Damaging mutalisks meant something because they'd be weaker in the next fight, or that they wouldn't be able to fight 2 turrets for a while.
With muta regen, this is completely gone. Dealing damage to a ground of mutas if you don't kill any is utterly worthless. So not only can zerg players be way more agressive with their mutas (worker harass increase), but the damage mutas can deal becomes free (because of regen), and unavoidable (because of their speed).
On the one hand, execution, APM and multitask are way more rewarding than before, but the strategical aspect of the game took a big hit. Therefore that's why LOTV feels so frustrating. You often end up in situations where you can't avoid taking damage and loosing stuff, and because harass is much harder to defend than to perform, it quickly gets very annoying.
A zerg player won't think anymore when flying his first 10 mutas in the terran base. There's no risk (if he has an overseer). You don't say to yourself "hm he could have a thor, if he's preparing a push behind this and that i eat 2 volleys while harassing his production i may be in a rough spot", you just fly in because it'll always be worth it and you don't risk anything to deal damage. I'm taking the mutas as an exemple, every race suffers from such dynamics : prism with 6 pickup range making drops completely safe all the time or raven autoturrets in mineral lines for instance.
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Bisutopia19141 Posts
All I have to say is great post Uvantak ! ^^ You put into words what I would not have been able to do so gracefully.
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Also in BW you make more workers in general and you can super saturate bases. There is no point having more than 16 workers in sc2 mineral line, but in BW you can have many many more. So when I lose 10 out of 30 probes at one base to a reaver I still have some economy, but if you lose 10 workers out of 16 to an oracle you are kinda screwed.
One more thing to mention about how you can "still recover" in BW is partly due to the difficulty of the game design. The longer the gane goes on the person with the advantage becomes disadvantaged because the game gets harder for them to control. More units, bases, etc. It all creates more oppurtunity for mistakes to be made.
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On February 10 2017 03:12 B-royal wrote:
"big fights in LOTV take much more multitasking than they did in BW"
Thanks for the laugh. Hahaha
No smart cast, 12 units per hotkey, insane DPS on units (hydras, marines, lurkers, zerglings, archons, reavers, siege tanks, spider mines,...), insane spells, pathing making all your units run in a straight line,... the list goes on.
I think there is a lot to do in SC2 fights, but the fights themselves happen so fast that there is not a lot of that that can realistically be done before it's all over.
I believe this was one argument against LotV Protoss having so many activated abilities. They're all interesting in a vacuum, but when the big fight happens between large armies, it's just not practical to use them all fast enough. When the power of a unit is tied to how well a player uses its active ability, there can be balance problems when its difficult to utilize enough of these abilities in a fight.
In Brood War, the UI limitations, bad pathing, and terrain advantages at least slow down fights enough that there is more room to do micro and multitasking.
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Vulture mines doesn't work vs workers.
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I think you guys are really overanalyzing this.
I read the OP and the list of harassment units seems way more potent in sc2.
Yes in bw you could also drop marines and stuff but without medivac boost it's not anywhere as strong as in sc2.
For protoss adept/wp/oracle harass is way stronger than the harassment options in bw. Reavers are a huge investment and recall is only available in lategame.
Only for zerg the harassment options seem similarly strong but speedlings are way faster in sc2 and banelings exist.
But when people complain about harassment units I think they are mostly complaining about those units that can instantly kill 10+ workers because you were looking away for a few seconds, I don't think many people have a problem with marine drops/ling runbys/warpprism harass.
In that aspect the problematic units are widow mines, banelings and oracles (also disruptors and hts but those aren't used as often for harassment)
The only bw units that work similar are reavers and hts but those are a huge investment so even if you lose 10 or so workers you aren't instantly dead.
Oracles, widow mines and banelings are all available super early, aren't a big investment and if you lose 10+ workers to them because you weren't paying attention you are almost 100% dead.
I believe that's the reason why so many people complain about harassment units in sc2.
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On February 10 2017 04:30 Charoisaur wrote:
I think you guys are really overanalyzing this.
I read the OP and the list of harassment units seems way more potent in sc2.
Yes in bw you could also drop marines and stuff but without medivac boost it's not anywhere as strong as in sc2.
For protoss adept/wp/oracle harass is way stronger than the harassment options in bw. Reavers are a huge investment and recall is only available in lategame.
Only for zerg the harassment options seem similarly strong but speedlings are way faster in sc2 and banelings exist.
But when people complain about harassment units I think they are mostly complaining about those units that can instantly kill 10+ workers because you were looking away for a few seconds, I don't think many people have a problem with marine drops/ling runbys/warpprism harass.
In that aspect the problematic units are widow mines, banelings and oracles (also disruptors and hts but those aren't used as often for harassment)
The only bw units that work similar are reavers and hts but those are a huge investment so even if you lose 10 or so workers you aren't instantly dead.
Oracles, widow mines and banelings are all available super early, aren't a big investment and if you lose 10+ workers to them because you weren't paying attention you are almost 100% dead.
I believe that's the reason why so many people complain about harassment units in sc2.
Lurkers are very potent worker harassment in BW. Reavers not so much because they are unreliable.Yes, when a Reaver hit it *could* kill up to 10 workers at once, but its more likely it will kill nothing at all or maybe 1 or 2 workers. And a reaver is a huge investment.
Lurkers drops on the other hand are absolutely deadly.
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On February 10 2017 03:53 BisuDagger wrote:
All I have to say is great post Uvantak ! ^^ You put into words what I would not have been able to do so gracefully.
Thanks.
The thing that bothers me is that, when these "Harassment too stronk" threads pop up, everyone is quick to talk about the flashy things like Reaver drops, or Widow Mine drops, but not about the underlying mechanics like the economy, or Worker Pairing creating "income cushions", which allowed players to survive the strong harassment options BW had.
Flashy things are an easy way to become blinded to the real mechanics at work in the game.
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On February 10 2017 04:37 RoomOfMush wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2017 04:30 Charoisaur wrote:
I think you guys are really overanalyzing this.
I read the OP and the list of harassment units seems way more potent in sc2.
Yes in bw you could also drop marines and stuff but without medivac boost it's not anywhere as strong as in sc2.
For protoss adept/wp/oracle harass is way stronger than the harassment options in bw. Reavers are a huge investment and recall is only available in lategame.
Only for zerg the harassment options seem similarly strong but speedlings are way faster in sc2 and banelings exist.
But when people complain about harassment units I think they are mostly complaining about those units that can instantly kill 10+ workers because you were looking away for a few seconds, I don't think many people have a problem with marine drops/ling runbys/warpprism harass.
In that aspect the problematic units are widow mines, banelings and oracles (also disruptors and hts but those aren't used as often for harassment)
The only bw units that work similar are reavers and hts but those are a huge investment so even if you lose 10 or so workers you aren't instantly dead.
Oracles, widow mines and banelings are all available super early, aren't a big investment and if you lose 10+ workers to them because you weren't paying attention you are almost 100% dead.
I believe that's the reason why so many people complain about harassment units in sc2.
Lurkers are very potent worker harassment in BW. Reavers not so much because they are unreliable.Yes, when a Reaver hit it *could* kill up to 10 workers at once, but its more likely it will kill nothing at all or maybe 1 or 2 workers. And a reaver is a huge investment. Lurkers drops on the other hand are absolutely deadly.
I would argue that Lurker drops are also fairly costly to tech to, mainly due to needing to research the Overlord drop upgrade and probably the speed upgrade too.
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On February 10 2017 04:59 eviltomahawk wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2017 04:37 RoomOfMush wrote:On February 10 2017 04:30 Charoisaur wrote:
I think you guys are really overanalyzing this.
I read the OP and the list of harassment units seems way more potent in sc2.
Yes in bw you could also drop marines and stuff but without medivac boost it's not anywhere as strong as in sc2.
For protoss adept/wp/oracle harass is way stronger than the harassment options in bw. Reavers are a huge investment and recall is only available in lategame.
Only for zerg the harassment options seem similarly strong but speedlings are way faster in sc2 and banelings exist.
But when people complain about harassment units I think they are mostly complaining about those units that can instantly kill 10+ workers because you were looking away for a few seconds, I don't think many people have a problem with marine drops/ling runbys/warpprism harass.
In that aspect the problematic units are widow mines, banelings and oracles (also disruptors and hts but those aren't used as often for harassment)
The only bw units that work similar are reavers and hts but those are a huge investment so even if you lose 10 or so workers you aren't instantly dead.
Oracles, widow mines and banelings are all available super early, aren't a big investment and if you lose 10+ workers to them because you weren't paying attention you are almost 100% dead.
I believe that's the reason why so many people complain about harassment units in sc2.
Lurkers are very potent worker harassment in BW. Reavers not so much because they are unreliable.Yes, when a Reaver hit it *could* kill up to 10 workers at once, but its more likely it will kill nothing at all or maybe 1 or 2 workers. And a reaver is a huge investment. Lurkers drops on the other hand are absolutely deadly. I would argue that Lurker drops are also fairly costly to tech to, mainly due to needing to research the Overlord drop upgrade and probably the speed upgrade too.
What are you guys talking about?
Any decent player knows how the scarab dud works, as long as your placing them in between the main and nat your fine.
AFAIK nobody opens with lurker drops besides that rare time when they get them before mutas in ZvT. (Excluding late game scenarios).
Also thanks for uvantak for bringing up the econemy behind it all.
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I think the main difference is the comeback mechanic in sc2 vs brood war. I remember Artosis saying during ASL that it is actually very hard to kill your opponent in brood war and the more units the harder it is to micro them without them dying. So even though your behind in workers in sc2 the snowball effect is more significant than in brood war.
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Bisutopia19141 Posts
On February 10 2017 05:07 sabas123 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2017 04:59 eviltomahawk wrote:On February 10 2017 04:37 RoomOfMush wrote:On February 10 2017 04:30 Charoisaur wrote:
I think you guys are really overanalyzing this.
I read the OP and the list of harassment units seems way more potent in sc2.
Yes in bw you could also drop marines and stuff but without medivac boost it's not anywhere as strong as in sc2.
For protoss adept/wp/oracle harass is way stronger than the harassment options in bw. Reavers are a huge investment and recall is only available in lategame.
Only for zerg the harassment options seem similarly strong but speedlings are way faster in sc2 and banelings exist.
But when people complain about harassment units I think they are mostly complaining about those units that can instantly kill 10+ workers because you were looking away for a few seconds, I don't think many people have a problem with marine drops/ling runbys/warpprism harass.
In that aspect the problematic units are widow mines, banelings and oracles (also disruptors and hts but those aren't used as often for harassment)
The only bw units that work similar are reavers and hts but those are a huge investment so even if you lose 10 or so workers you aren't instantly dead.
Oracles, widow mines and banelings are all available super early, aren't a big investment and if you lose 10+ workers to them because you weren't paying attention you are almost 100% dead.
I believe that's the reason why so many people complain about harassment units in sc2.
Lurkers are very potent worker harassment in BW. Reavers not so much because they are unreliable.Yes, when a Reaver hit it *could* kill up to 10 workers at once, but its more likely it will kill nothing at all or maybe 1 or 2 workers. And a reaver is a huge investment. Lurkers drops on the other hand are absolutely deadly. I would argue that Lurker drops are also fairly costly to tech to, mainly due to needing to research the Overlord drop upgrade and probably the speed upgrade too. What are you guys talking about? Any decent player knows how the scarab dud works, as long as your placing them in between the main and nat your fine. AFAIK nobody opens with lurker drops besides that rare time when they get them before mutas in ZvT. (Excluding late game scenarios). Also thanks for uvantak for bringing up the econemy behind it all.
Thanks to JD in the ASL, lurker openings are become much more common. And JD showed vs Flash in the ASL that drop tech early can be strong on large 4-player macro maps like eye of the storm.
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ASL was only one fight at the same time.
When nerchio quand frontal + nydus + drop in the same time, or major harass 3 bases in same time/maru/byun.
Sc2 is naturally a difficult game
BW was full of artificial difficulty in useless busywork that detracts from the real focus of Starcraft, which is army and economy management. That you can only have 12 units in a group, that you manually have to place workers on minerals, that you cannot have multiple buildings on a hotkey simply detracts from the overall experience the game should be focused on delivering.
So, in real multitask and harass btw, sc2 > bw
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these threads always derail. Its not about bw vs sc2.
uvantak had a great post, and the only one that was backed up with legitimate data. most of this thread is people talking about things without really knowing both sides.
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OP is saying harass on bw = on sc2
But on bw ( asl ) they are not a lot of harass, when sc2 = harass everytime
So, count of harass units is irrelevant
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There was harassment in WOL, but it wasn't as game-ending as it is in LOTV.
LOTV seems to put such a big focus on harassment. DK himself said that he creams his pants over workers dying, but is that really good design? That does really make the game fun? Has anyone wondered that maybe this is one of the primary reasons the game is seeing the playerbase and viewerbase shrink?
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On February 10 2017 06:06 ihatevideogames wrote:
There was harassment in WOL, but it wasn't as game-ending as it is in LOTV.
LOTV seems to put such a big focus on harassment. DK himself said that he creams his pants over workers dying, but is that really good design? That does really make the game fun? Has anyone wondered that maybe this is one of the primary reasons the game is seeing the playerbase and viewerbase shrink?
Trust me thats not a new idea. people have been saying that since at least 2013.
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Thx for the great responses and that you explain your thoughts about harrasment in BW and SC 2.
But i think you missunderstand some of my arguments. Let me give you one more example. Dt´s in TvP are stronger in broodwar because they come earlier and are harder to defend (scanstation can be destroyed). Its really long ago but i saw games from boxer and he lost because there were Dt´s and he was not prepared. Nobody was complaining about it. Because this things happen. And i heavily disagree that 95% of pro games are over before the big fights begin (allins like 3 eax reaper are a problem but this is an allin and not harrasment)
I know that worker harrasment is in nearly everey SC II game but i think its not bad.
I saw it in Broodwar in nearly everey game in TvZ. You cant let a zerg drone up in both games. Its a problem so you have to harras them.
Against protoss in Lotv you have only 2 real options as terran. Widowminedrop or liberator. The other options are too expensive in early game (cloaked banshee). Or die against pylon cannon. Harrasment in midgame is good in both games (drops, warpprism, arbiter......).Yes there are speed medivacs which lead to problems. But pls keep in mind that they create many skirmishes on the map which is really fun to see for me as a viewer.
I agree that earlygame harrasment can be really fustrating and that this is a problem in SC II but in general its a good thing for the game.
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I think SC2 its just much easier to harass workers.
Further in Bdub, the ability for fewer units to hold choke points, made for situations where the harasser couldn't destroy your front line defenses at the same time as they were harassing (well, they could, but it was much harder). This means that in SC2 you have to defend more places equally or you will lose while in Bdub being out of position didn't mean you lose instantly.
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EPT
