On February 24 2017 07:54 Odowan Paleolithic wrote:
On February 24 2017 07:43 Tyrhanius wrote: I wonder if corruptors buildings harass will become a thing with the speed boost
Not harass. Basetrade. You need at least 6 corruptor to meaningfully damage, quite a lot of supply to dedicate to (and a waste if you are facing ground based composition). And the change changed the acceleration more than velocity (ie they turn sharper but still slower than pheonix/muta/boosted vacs)
Disclamer: I mostly play carriers.
That aside, if they really intend to buff hydras this way and make 1 storm not enough to kill hydras (combined with the speed boost on creep), I wonder how Protosses like me going to match up with it. I personally believe if we lower the upgrade time hydra timing will be sharper and kill most carrier builds before they happen. The economy change has already eliminated several stargate-based timings from HotS. The current "normal" builds of Protoss absolutely requires some sort of pressure to take a third. This new hydra is just roach 2.0 in many ways.
I don't believe the widow mine change is warranted or going to make much a difference.
Storm already leaves hydras alive.
I mean, sure, but a strong breeze will finish them off.
I'm in agreement with the distinction between balance and design. Balance refers strictly to winrates, what percentage of games is won or lost. How is irrelevant to balance.
What you are talking about is playstyle, how people win, which is dependent on design.
Two different issues, though they are connected to some extent.
What I am saying is that the current balance is fine, because wins/losses are roughly evenly distributed. Design is much trickier and more subjective.
On February 26 2017 19:33 Drfilip wrote: Foxxan, you are talking about balance in play styles, aren't you? Not balance in win rate. I think you are in a minority to not mean balance in win rate when talking about balance. Many people use the words 'design' or 'style' when talking about stuff that aren't win rates. You mentioned zerg having trouble vs skytoss. That is about viable strategies. You gave an example of a need to all-in a lot. That is also about viable strategies. It seems to me that you would like more play styles to be viable for the different races (which is a thing I think the design team is trying to accomplish).
I do actually mean balance of the game. Not sure i mentioned zerg having trouble vs air.
Look lets take that same example: 50/50 between tvz and terran wins all their games by playing standard. While zerg wins all its matches with all-ins and cheese.
Lets say you come to the conclusion that zerg cant win by playing standard, then this is to me a very big imbalance in the game that needs to be adressed no matter if the statistics says 50/50 for a long time. No race shouldnt have to relie on rng to win, its that simple.
looking at the Poll results we have a very divided community.
Nathanias published this little talk about the Community Update yesterday. I recommend watching it.
Lets add Nathanias's comments on the Reaper to The_Red_Vipers comments on the Reaper.
On February 24 2017 20:01 The_Red_Viper wrote: Spamable aoe on an early game unit which can jump cliffs and heals itself out of combat. Just think about that for a second
please remove the grenade and the Health Regeneration from the Reaper. Bring back the WoL Reaper. Alter its stats so its useful early game and an effective scouting unit. IF you can find a way to alter its stats to be useful in early game and occasionally has a mid-game role then even better. The unit is so gimmicky right now, so hard to control and learn. On top of that much better players like Nathanias have really well thought out criticisms of the unit. Just blow it up and start with the WoL Reaper.
My 50-100 APM Silver//Gold friends think the Reaper and many other aspects of LotV is too complicated. I played 2v2s for 1/2 the day Sunday. it was all in WoL because all my clan mates are WoL only players. They own every game in the trilogy and they stick to WoL for multiplayer.
Nathanias seems fairly unbiased, i like these videos quite a bit. I also agree that we should just be content with the reaper being a scouting unit initially. As i said before, i don't think you can change that role unless you completely change the game. (because the reaper WOULD be good in the midgame if medivacs didn't exist and the game was designed in a way the cliff jumping would be more impactful, right now it's only good early game)
I mean there is the potential to create a useful ability for the unit, but it has to be good enough so you rather build reapers which cost gas over more marines/medivacs. I don't see it.
I have hope that this game eventually at some day will turn to the better as people start discussing the right stuff.
The issue about SC2 is not if at some point at the end of a match the winrates are 50/50. It is about all little details that you meet on the way there. It is about if the game is fun to play and which mechanics take away the fun, not if that mechanic helps to create artificial balance in matchups and metagames with other absolute non fun game mechanics.
On February 27 2017 23:42 The_Red_Viper wrote: Nathanias seems fairly unbiased, i like these videos quite a bit. I also agree that we should just be content with the reaper being a scouting unit initially. As i said before, i don't think you can change that role unless you completely change the game. (because the reaper WOULD be good in the midgame if medivacs didn't exist and the game was designed in a way the cliff jumping would be more impactful, right now it's only good early game)
I mean there is the potential to create a useful ability for the unit, but it has to be good enough so you rather build reapers which cost gas over more marines/medivacs. I don't see it.
Re: Reaper. can't they just play with "rate of fire", "how far it shoots" , "health/light/armour/psionic", "armour level" and other basic stats to create a role for the Reaper so that it can go back to the WoL Reaper; As you've already noted the Reaper's behaviour is so convoluted.. its just so gimmicky...
the current Reaper belongs in the ultra-gimmicky super-stupid-on-purpose Red Alert Franchise. it does not belong in an SC franchise or any other serious C&C franchise.
I mean reapers would need something marines/marauders don't already provide if you want reapers to be impactful in the midgame. That's the reason they included the grenades, they thought the knockback would be useful against banelings,etc The truth is that there is no reason to stop building marines/marauders/medivacs and focus on reapers.
The way I want to go about it is to give it a use in the late game instead of the mid game. So by removing the Combat Healing, the unit obviously needs some kind of early game compensation and my choice would be to up it's health by 10 points or so. It should still help the Zerg player early game, since every point of damage you do to the Reaper is permanent until Medivacs come out. The unit loses a lot of traction by then, since Medivac Boost drops is a lot stronger than cliff jumping and also Marines are just more cost efficient. But then there should be a late game upgrade which ups the Grenades damage towards structures marginally. So you can run around finishing off Hatcheries, Pylons and Protoss Tech with a pack of Reapers.
An interesting suggestion I've seen is removing the damage from grenades so they just knock back units without damaging them. Seems like the most elegant solution to the reaper problematic (next to removing the grenade completely). It doesn't really affect standard reaper openers since the damage of a single grenade is negliglibe anyway - but it massively nerfs mass reaper builds.
On February 28 2017 18:55 ejozl wrote: The way I want to go about it is to give it a use in the late game instead of the mid game. So by removing the Combat Healing, the unit obviously needs some kind of early game compensation and my choice would be to up it's health by 10 points or so. It should still help the Zerg player early game, since every point of damage you do to the Reaper is permanent until Medivacs come out. The unit loses a lot of traction by then, since Medivac Boost drops is a lot stronger than cliff jumping and also Marines are just more cost efficient. But then there should be a late game upgrade which ups the Grenades damage towards structures marginally. So you can run around finishing off Hatcheries, Pylons and Protoss Tech with a pack of Reapers.
Although removal of combat healing might help in TvZ at the smae time it is quite needed in TvP to allow reaper to scout protoss base more than once.
Generally speaking reaper has a lot of small, strange mechanics which affects to some extent all matchups however some of them has much bigger impact in one matchup some in other which makes reaper hard to balance. Combat healing is needed to scout in TvP however it makes reaper rushes in TvZ stronger and makes this strategies much easier to snowball. Granades dealing dmg has little impact in TvP but is crucial in TvZ for reaper openers. Granades knockback effect is needed in TvP so reaper can easier manouver in Protoss base and avoid being sniped by adepts/stalkers but at the same time in TvZ allows to heavily slow down Zerg counter all-in with roaches/Ravagers vs reaper rushes to a point were people wonder if it is not too much. and there is cliff jump which is crucial for current reaper iteration so it has any use at all and at the same time makes reaper rushes really hard to hold and makes mapmaking much harder (a lot of contraints).
Reaper is really strange, gimmicky and hard to balance unit which performs small but crucial role and at the same time is a part of some really questionable early game strategies.
On February 24 2017 20:01 The_Red_Viper wrote: Spamable aoe on an early game unit which can jump cliffs and heals itself out of combat. Just think about that for a second
please remove the grenade and the Health Regeneration from the Reaper. Bring back the WoL Reaper. Alter its stats so its useful early game and an effective scouting unit. IF you can find a way to alter its stats to be useful in early game and occasionally has a mid-game role then even better. The unit is so gimmicky right now, so hard to control and learn. On top of that much better players like Nathanias have really well thought out criticisms of the unit. Just blow it up and start with the WoL Reaper.
My 50-100 APM Silver//Gold friends think the Reaper and many other aspects of LotV is too complicated. I played 2v2s for 1/2 the day Sunday. it was all in WoL because all my clan mates are WoL only players. They own every game in the trilogy and they stick to WoL for multiplayer.
Really good video - I especially agree with Nathanis about everything he said concerning Reapers and WMs. Well presented thought process.
On February 27 2017 13:33 JimmyJRaynor wrote: looking at the Poll results we have a very divided community.
I think it mostly means the proposed changes are unconvincing at best. When a change that was really called for and sensible gets made it usually gets much higher "good" percentages.
the current Reaper belongs in the ultra-gimmicky super-stupid-on-purpose Red Alert Franchise. it does not belong in an SC franchise or any other serious C&C franchise.
This, I don't know how many times the community can clamor for real and elegant Reaper changes at this point without getting results. Why not..
1. Above poster already said remove damage entirely so it provides the knock back but nerfs mass reaper 2. Nerf regen at the very least, mass Reaper wouldn't be nearly as bad if you could actually kill them. 3. Go back to WOL Reapers entirely
They made corruptors great again! I like this buff, helping zerg to fight the opponent's air superiority.
Theres no question that Corruptors sucked and needed buffs, but Starcraft at this point is turning into an air superiority battle and it's not good for the game. Air armies are already so powerful and pretty much necessitate nerfs. Skyzerg was broken in WoL and it necessitated huge nerfs and the literal castration of the Infestor. Skyterran became popular but it was cancer and now Liberators are nerfed for it. Skytoss is popular but it's cancer and now Blizzard is buffing things around it so they can fix it without nerfs.
See what I'm saying? Having super strong air units just isn't good for SC2, the battles aren't interesting because of the way collision works, micro means little, it's more about who has the upfront better firepower.
Yeah the mass air battle are stupid and the ground counters to it are very limited per race. Also making everything faster isnt always the solution it disconnects the player from the battles since everything is over in a blink. As a terran player i like it that they are looking at the reaper. But when they will nerf the reaper, what kind of openers does terran have left? a lot of builds got a lot weaker/almost not worth to do anymore.
With any luck IEM will be an opportunity for Blizzard to take a hard look at the current state of balance. How the tournament progresses is anybody's guess of course, but in terms of representation (at the moment) it seems that Protoss is doing just fine and in no need of any help. Same for Terran. It's Zerg that's suffering, and pretty exclusively in ZvP.
Though top Korean Zergs like ByuL and soO aren't there, and of course Terran winrates are always misleadingly high at global events because the best Korean Terrans are peerless among foreigners.
While i do agree that mass reaper is dumb. Im worried about reaper nerfs, Reapers are a critical component of TvZ. they allow terran to delay zergs third, and poke for scouting nerfing grenade hurts this important non cheesy reaper scouting in adition to the cheesy alling plays you can make with the unit.
On February 28 2017 19:05 Charoisaur wrote: An interesting suggestion I've seen is removing the damage from grenades so they just knock back units without damaging them. Seems like the most elegant solution to the reaper problematic (next to removing the grenade completely). It doesn't really affect standard reaper openers since the damage of a single grenade is negliglibe anyway - but it massively nerfs mass reaper builds.
I think this would be a much better place to start than removing grenade completely, allows reaper to keep the positional utility of grenade which is crucial for their early game scouting role while realy nerfing allin reaper play.
EPT
