Hi guys, sorry for the long read, but i think we really have to talk about this topic. First of all, this is not a balance whine thread or anything like this. I would like to talk with you guys about the adept's design and why it is problematic for SC2. I hope we can share some thoughts down below
The problem with adepts is their core design. Their design leads to imbalance, because they break basic rules of RTS.
There is no counterplay, interaction or decision making involved for the opponent. The protoss player can always decide if he wants to shade or not. If he wants to let the shade finish or not, etc... This creates a random factor for the opponent, because he's unable to tell if shades will go through or not, which means that you basically need atleast double the amount of defending units, because you're forced to defend more than one location at once for just one group of harassing adepts.
If a group of hellions moves into mineral line X, you just need defense in mineral line X.
If adepts move in mineral line X, you need defense for mineral line Y and Z too.
Protoss can decide when to pick fights and the opponent better be prepared, because there is no escape when adepts shade on top of you.
The adept needs a complete redesign. If you just nerf the unit, it will just become weaker or maybe even underpowered, but the core problem of shades will still exist and will always cause trouble (the same thing is basically happening with liberators, they are just weaker now, but their design is still bad for the game).
If you just nerf adept's stats, the unit may disappear out of standard protoss unit composition, but the harass potential will always be broken because of the shade ability or it will become uselss. I'm convinced that we can't get the unit in a good spot, because the core design itself is problematic. So it will either be too good or too weak.
As many other community members already pointed out, there is no real downside for going adepts. The reason is that the unit's stat's are not justified and don't match the unit's ability.
The adept is a very tanky unit, but at the same time it doesn't actually has to close distance with anything, because of the shade ability.
The hellbat for example is a tanky unit, because it's job is to defend tanks from getting overrun. The hellbat is tanky to allow a mech player to get his tanks in position to siege up during an engagement. If hellbat's don't do their job good enough, the mech player risks to lose his army. That's their justification for being a tanky unit. To allow the mech terran to do something with his army.
So the hellbat has a very clear role, but as you can see it also has very obvious weakness.
Hellbats are very slow, have very little range, can literally get countered by walking away from them.
Hellbats have very clear role and very clear counterplay.
Now imagine if hellions would be as tanky as hellbats.
First of all, you wouldn't see hellbats anymore (Adept/zealot relationship). Also this would lead to hellions being OP for their role.
Hellions role is basically harass, but the opponent has clear counter opportunities like walling off mineral lines, having units in position, building static defense or simply splitting the workers to buy time and minimize damage.
This relationship between harasser and defender only works, because the hellion is not tanky. If you catch the hellion, it dies. There is no justification for the unit to be as tanky as a hellbat, because it has other strengths (in this case being able to easily escape from danger due to high mobility) and a different role.
So as you can see, there is also no justification for the adept to be as tanky as a zealot.
The adept does everything a zealot does, but only much better. Adepts don't actually have to walk through mine fields or walk into tanklines or lurkers etc....
Adepts can just shade on top of their target, so there's no justification to make it actually that tanky.
This obivously creates additional problems if you combine it with the shade ability, because adepts are tanky enough to commit to worker harass, but usually survive long enough to be able to shade out again and then be a core unit for a follow up push for example.
The fact that adept shades still can get canceled, can't get body blocked or forcefield blocked is just not understandable for me.
etc....
What could be a possible change?
I honestly don't know what could be a good design direction for the adept. The shade ability is just very poor design wise and the game would be better without them in my opinion. But if you make adepts more tanky as a tradeoff, they kinda overlap with zealots again, even if they're ranged.
And if you turn them into glascannons, you might as well just give stalkers some kind of dmg buff vs light !?
What do you guys think ? What are your thoughts on the adept's design and what are your suggestions ?
I'm really interested to hear them. I think if we can work together as a community, we can help blizzard to move the game into a direction that we all enjoy more, on every skill level and every race.
We already got rid off tankivacs, reaper's being too strong, Tempests being too supply efficient etc... We already achieved a lot of good changes during lotv's lifetime and we can change more questionable gameplay elements, if we keep discussing them in a constructive way.
Thanks for reading and i apologize for my english ;P
There needs to be much fewer activated abilities in the game, especially when it comes to core combat units. The game needs less ability micro and more positional and combat micro.
Regarding the Adept, I think the Shade ability needs to be removed or turned into a late game upgrade. It breaks the rules of RTS and it's frustrating to fight against. It's okay for rules-breaking abilities late in the game, when you're trying to break stalemates, but early on, it just turns the game into Benny Hill RTS.
You have to be very careful about nerfing the adept because tosses are very reliant on adepts to beat terrans, and the race has partially been balanced around adepts (for example, colossi were OK to nerf upon LotV release partially because adepts destroy marines so badly). Obviously adepts definitely need a reworking but you will need to consider the sweeping effects that would happen if adepts get nerfed.
There are many ways you can alter the adept, but I believe that removing the shade ability entirely is required in some way. Shade just breaks too many rules of RTS's. What other changes would need to be made to compensate for this, I'm not sure, but shade has to go.
Adepts need to be nerfed somehow, whether that's to shades, shields/health, Glaives, warpins, whatever. Not a huge nerf that makes them useless, just some slight reduction to one of their strengths so that they can't excel the multiple roles of slaughtering workers and flooding bases and winning fights. Holy triangle of balance is Health/Attack/Speed, pick two. Adepts have all three.
Protoss has always had a strong lategame. Adepts give them a strong early game as well. Strong early+strong late = imba race. Not by much, mind you, just a little.
We can't nerf the adept because that'd mean that P loses early game. We could buff the other gateway units but then warp gate rushes would be too OP. I think the problem lies in the warp gate and the shade abilities, both of which break fundamental RTS gameplay rules.
So here's my suggestion:
1. Make warp gate a late game tech. 2. Make shade a late game tech or remove it entirely. 3. Buff core gateway units.
Another thing I'd like to see, if warp gate were moved to late game is to add endgame reinforcement features to T and Z:
1. Protoss - Warp Gate. Already exists ingame. 2. Terran - Drop Pods. Newly trained units can be rallied to a command center/planetary fortress, bypassing terrain. 3. Zerg - Nydus Network. Already exists ingame, but is underused. Maybe turn existing hatcheries into exits?
Protoss would still have the best endgame reinforcements since they can freely warp in entire armies anywhere. Terran would not have to deal with long walk times to the front lines, while Zerg's nydus network sees more use.
Basically, I want the game to play out like this:
Tier 1: Simple units and abilities: armies are F2+A capable, but micro will give you small gains here and there. Tier 2: More advanced units and abilities come into play: stim packs, blink, cloaking, flying combat units. Standard RTS abilities. Tier 3: Gamebreakers designed for breaking sieges: Units and abilities that break RTS rules like the shade ability, mass recall, battlecruiser teleport, warp gate, mutalisk fast healing, liberator siege mode, etc.
We could even have a tier 4 which gives you access to the stuff that has been removed from the game for being too OP: Khaydarin amulet, tankivacs, release interceptors ability, void ray speed upgrade, etc.
The problem with the adept is the shade, only the shade, and for 2 very particular reason : - harass : shading left and right between mineral lines : minimal amount of skill required, but terran pros can't even defend it efficiently - snowball : the reason why adepts snowball so hard is because no matter how many adept you have or the nature of your opponent's army, with the shade ALL your adepts will be able to fight. If you compare 30 adepts and 30 roaches, roaches can't dive into an ennemy army (for all the roaches to shoot without needing a 360° concave) without suffering losse. On the other hand, shades assure that each and every adept you have will be able to shoot all the time, not matter where the fight is located.
I don't mind protoss needing "assault/shock" troops since with the siege tank and the ravager buffs, stalkers not fit a smaller role in the game (which is good, they were omnipresent in HOTS). But some design changes to the adept shade NEED to happen for this unit to be less abusive.
Tanky, damage, or mobility, pick two - is the general rule of thumb that RTS should be following in all unit design.
The adept picks all three. Blizzard tried to justify this by giving it a short ranged attack, but that attack range doesn't matter at all due to shade.
The unit needs to be scrapped and replaced with a mobile/damage unit so the zealot can have a clear role again. Fast moving adepts with good damage and at least half their hp/shields removed would be great, as long as gateway units are addressed to compensate. Make guardian shield better, or sentries cost less, or make zealots a little more tanky, or modify DPS of stalkers, literally anything, adepts are so boring and we have to try something.. Playing protoss is so boring these days. It's not the race i fell in love with anymore
On April 10 2017 04:34 IMPrime wrote: You have to be very careful about nerfing the adept because tosses are very reliant on adepts to beat terrans, and the race has partially been balanced around adepts (for example, colossi were OK to nerf upon LotV release partially because adepts destroy marines so badly). Obviously adepts definitely need a reworking but you will need to consider the sweeping effects that would happen if adepts get nerfed.
There are many ways you can alter the adept, but I believe that removing the shade ability entirely is required in some way. Shade just breaks too many rules of RTS's. What other changes would need to be made to compensate for this, I'm not sure, but shade has to go.
Yes i agree.
My post is just about getting the adept in a good spot design wise. If this results in protoss being too weak balance wise, you can obviously just increase stats of unit XY accordingly.
But the goal is to get the design in a good, healthy spot in the first place.
On April 10 2017 05:37 LHK wrote: adepts are so boring and we have to try something.. Playing protoss is so boring these days. It's not the race i fell in love with anymore
Yes i really agree with you :/ I used to play a lot of protoss, but the race just doesn't feel good anymore. I never get the feeling of simply outplaying my opponent. It always feels cheesy, because blizzard turned everything into a gimmick. Even defending my base is based around a huge gimmick.
It just doesn't feel right and it doesn't feel rewarding.
Shading 10 adepts from mineral line to mineral line doesn't feel as good as controlling 3 drops at a time etc...
I wish the race would be more "straight up". Even pro players like MaNa complain about the design of the race.
On April 09 2017 23:29 StraKo wrote: The problem with adepts is their core design. Their design leads to imbalance, because they break basic rules of RTS.
There is no counterplay for the opponent. The protoss player can always decide if he wants to shade or not. If he wants to let the shade finish or not, etc...
Protoss can decide when to pick fights and the opponent better be prepared, because there is no escape when adepts shade on top of you.
The adept needs a complete redesign. If you just nerf the unit, it will just become weaker or maybe even underpowered, but the core problem of shades will still exist and will always cause trouble (the same thing is basically happening with liberators, they are just weaker now, but their design is still bad for the game).
I agree. The adept is currently filling three roles for Protoss armies:
- gateway harassment unit - core (burst) damage dealing army unit - anti-immobility unit
I think that all three of these are somewhat lacking in other early gateway units, but this is the kind of sets of roles you see filled by marines and lings. It's trying to be a generalist, scaling unit to base armies around, but it currently only works as nearly the entire army by itself because its design is focused in the wrong areas.
Adepts don't need to be able to always out-position the opponent to fill a generalist damage role. They don't need to be able to always pick the best fight. They don't need the shade, design wise.
On April 09 2017 23:29 StraKo wrote: What could be a possible change?
Get rid of the shade ability and adjust the unit's stats accordingly.
Define a clear role for the unit.
My suggestion would be to turn adepts into a glascannon.
-powerful in the early game -useful for early game defense (maybe a good way to finally get rid of MSC and overcharge?)
-relatively high movement speed -twilight upgrade to add some bonus dmg vs armored units in order to gain more versatility in the later stages of the game.
I think this kind of unit would be a much more interesting and fair addition to the protoss arsenal.
I mostly agree. The only quibble (it's a big one) is this: the redesigned adept must not have +armored, nor +light, nor +anything damage.
Protoss' units are all specialists. It's the biggest problem with the race. You either have absolutely the correct unit or you don't and you die. There's no mass-able unit in Protoss for which you say: "build these to have a pretty good mid-game. You'll need appropriate support." This makes tech-rushing the life or death of the Protoss race.
This isn't how Protoss should survive. Their fighting units all cost at least 2 supply already. They're already the few-but-**** race! The problem is that all the strength has previously been focused in high-tech units.
Protoss needs a unit to compete with lings / marines! Adepts are currently this unit, but barely anyone likes how they change the game.
For such a unit to realistically compete, it must be:
- fast (base movement speed) - damaging (high fire rate, decent DPS) - of a very carefully considered attack range (if the unit is slower than stimmed bio, it needs longer range than 6) - flat damage (so that the addition of a very small number of massive / light / armored units doesn't invalidate all your investment into stability for the mid-game)
It has to have reasonable upgrades in the mid-game to reduce its early power, but let it scale upwards all game long. Not surprisingly, these kinds of upgrades are common on these types of units:
These kinds of upgrades (spread out) allow great interactions between different types of units (marines vs lings: pre-slings marines win, post slings ligns win, post stim marines win in a choke / with kiting / with medivacs, post adrenal slings destroy buildings [allowing even stronger counter-attacks]). That's the kind of stuff we want in PvX, not shades flying everywhere.
On April 09 2017 23:29 StraKo wrote: -It could help to get rid of MSC/overcharge -It would provide protoss with early game mapcontrol unit -Protoss would have an effective harass unit on gateway tech, without making it broken with shades.
-Protoss could upgrade the unit in the midgame to give it a bit more versatility in the army composition.
Absolutely. Having a low health, mobile, damage unit is exactly what's needed to get the push-and-pull of map-control into PvX for the first time since WoL. Having something mobile that's worth building to scale into the mid-game is exactly what's needed to reduce the power of PO, then remove it.
On April 09 2017 23:29 StraKo wrote: Clear role, clear counterplay.
This is the only way we can achieve interesting unit compositions.
What do you guys think ? What are your thoughts on the adept's design and what are your suggestions ?
I'm really interested to hear them. I think if we can work together as a community, we can help blizzard to move the game into a direction that we all enjoy more, on every skill level and every race.
Thanks for reading and i apologize for my english.
I think you're largely correct in what the Adept needs to be moved into being. A generalist unit to fight for map-control with no activated ability or spell to hamper its role is exactly where it needs to move.
Protoss doesn't need flashy units like the current Adept. It needs a generalist to begin to scale-back the too-specialized nature of its army!
"The problem with adepts is their core design. Their design leads to imbalance, because they break basic rules of RTS."
one can already imagine the trend of the thread.. let's nerf something but let's call it "game design".... -___-
what the hell are "basic rules of RTS"? who made judge of what these "rules" are? is there imbalance in win-ratios? why can't an RTS being an RTS while not respecting these "theoretical rules"? Is the epitome of a good RTS the Terran race? (feels like it from these posts..)
You can write several walls of text, the bottom line is: you are not good at dealing with adepts, so you would like Blizz to nerf them. Many terrans are good at dealing with them, so maybe before opening threads with sweeping statements on game design (whatever that means to you) you could spend a good amount of time trying to adapt and learn how to play vs adepts..
p.s. if you can link me to a compendium of accepted "RTS Rules" I would be glad to read it, though I'm not sure Blizzard is so interested in sticking to it (and I'm happy that it is this way..)
edit: And I Strongly disagree with the previous post. Protoss doesn't need a unit like marines or lings, because protoss is not terran or zerg! it's a very different race, and if I'd like to play with something like marines or lings I would play T or Z
On April 10 2017 06:28 VHbb wrote: one can already imagine the trend of the thread.. let's nerf something but let's call it "game design".... -___-
You might read the thread, instead of simply insulting the author from a place of ignorance.
The thread is absolutely about design. If he's "right" or "wrong" isn't the point of his OP either, but to generate discussion about the adept's current design.
Further, the OP suggests an actual overhaul of the unit (mixed buffs and nerfs) to convert it to a mobile DPS unit from the gateway with no shade.
Given that adepts have been either the first or second most complained-about unit from the beginning of LotV, and that the vast majority of these complaints are "it's not fun" (in other words the design is poor) rather than "I can't win" (in other words the balance is poor), and recent tournament results have Protoss players almost exclusively using adepts early-game, the thread is both timely and obviously well-intended.
EDIT:
On April 10 2017 06:28 VHbb wrote: And I Strongly disagree with the previous post. Protoss doesn't need a unit like marines or lings, because protoss is not terran or zerg!
Your argument is literally nothing. One could just as easily claim "Protoss doesn't need air units because Protoss isn't Terran." Put some real thought into it and discover why you believe that generalist, mobile DPS units aren't needed for Toss, then make an actual argument.
The author complains about balance literally in the second paragraph of the thread you are suggesting me to read.....
My argument is: I enjoy sc2, I enjoy playing protoss, I wouldn't like changes that take away from the flavor of the race to make it more similar to some abstract standard . Maybe it's a weak argument to you, but it's super annoying to see this continuous whines masked as game design discussion. I know NOTHING about game design, so I won't make an argument about it, but I also won't take the "word" of a poster on TL over blizzard design, especially if I enjoy the latter..
I also would be very interested in the statistics of how many people complain about adepts over the total player base. Polls on tl with O(100) votes don't mean much..
I always ask myself this lmao. Is there a rulebook? Must everyone past T3 masters or C on iccup memorize all these rules?
what if we made it so that you had to complete a shade once you started it, and slowed down the shade's movement speed? This would eventually fix the harassment potential i think
I still think zealots should do less damage but be tankier while adepts do more damage (maybe the same they have now) but are fairly weak hp wise, especially since their shades can't take damage so they can usually always get into place.
Maybe if Zealots just got a slight hp or armor buff and a nerf to their damage and Adepts just got a slight hp/armor nerf. I'd also wonder if you made it so a +1 adept would 2shot workers, otherwise it takes 3 shots would help a bunch.
EPT
