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On April 10 2017 22:45 fx9 wrote:
you're clearly cherry-picking to justify your whine on toss.
1st of all, dropping 4 zealots/adepts is a lot less scarier than dropping 8 stim marines, 8 lings, 4mines, 4 banes or 4hellions at the back of your mineral lines.
A prism full of units will cost more than a 8lings or 8marines drop.
After warp-in, the toss units will 99% of the time be lost because guess what, the prism can only hold 4 units.
Meanwhile, medivacs can zip in and out with whole army intact.
And medivacs have the stupid boost.
and Overlord drop is a tier1 tech.
Hes cherry picking?
I dont drop Adepts,-at l have rarely seen it- you have them do their shenangians at the forward bases and throw either a cheaper unit like zealots at their main meaning you can put pressure on up to three bases at once with only two groups of units.
The prism holds only 4 units but it can warp in more unless you forgot somehow. At full speed IIRC, then again I only cheese when I play toss So i dont have such a good knowledge of their units.
Overlord dropping is dangerous, considering not only does it only hold 4 units but it turns your drop into a supply block waiting to happen.
Medivacs require a bit of tech and cost a fair amount of gas, whereas a Warp Prism costs 0 gas IIRC.
Problem isnt that its unbalanced the problem is that it requires so much focus to minimize the damage caused by an adept harass, The Cooldown of shade is pretty damn short, the units are fairly tanky and most of all trade INSANELY with with equivalent tech, 1 Adept with no upgrades trades with 3 marines with no upgrades more often then not surviving with 4 health. If you shade on top the Adept can like with anywhere from 15-20 health.
So if 4 adepts without upgrades can kill 8 marines WITH STIM, what is terran supposed to do? Just have more stuff? How does Terran trade with something like that?
And Protoss doesnt even need to trade, he can shade away or not the world is his oyster. He can shade in harass or walk up harass and shade out, or Shade in and just cancel. On top of that he can just throw 20 adepts at a terran army and they will absolutely get their weight.
Why can 20 adepts with upgrades shade on top of a Terran army with Maruaders Marines and Medivacs or equal value and upgrades and the terran army gets absolutely annihilated? Tanks are practically useless and even detrimental in this situation.
I am not saying they are out and out broken but the more diverse army should win right?
Why is the unit that only requires a CyberCore and a twilight council beating a massively diverse army single handedly?
Wow I guess this did kind of devolve into "Adepts are OP" but its more with how they fit into the game I feel.If terran had a unit that could trade better or they(Adepts) lost effectiveness into the mid game, I dont think they would be nearly as frustrating
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On April 10 2017 23:50 stevenhanst wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2017 22:45 fx9 wrote:
you're clearly cherry-picking to justify your whine on toss.
1st of all, dropping 4 zealots/adepts is a lot less scarier than dropping 8 stim marines, 8 lings, 4mines, 4 banes or 4hellions at the back of your mineral lines.
A prism full of units will cost more than a 8lings or 8marines drop.
After warp-in, the toss units will 99% of the time be lost because guess what, the prism can only hold 4 units.
Meanwhile, medivacs can zip in and out with whole army intact.
And medivacs have the stupid boost.
and Overlord drop is a tier1 tech. Hes cherry picking? I dont drop Adepts,-at l have rarely seen it- you have them do their shenangians at the forward bases and throw either a cheaper unit like zealots at their main meaning you can put pressure on up to three bases at once with only two groups of units. The prism holds only 4 units but it can warp in more unless you forgot somehow. At full speed IIRC, then again I only cheese when I play toss So i dont have such a good knowledge of their units. Overlord dropping is dangerous, considering not only does it only hold 4 units but it turns your drop into a supply block waiting to happen. Medivacs require a bit of tech and cost a fair amount of gas, whereas a Warp Prism costs 0 gas IIRC. Problem isnt that its unbalanced the problem is that it requires so much focus to minimize the damage caused by an adept harass, The Cooldown of shade is pretty damn short, the units are fairly tanky and most of all trade INSANELY with with equivalent tech, 1 Adept with no upgrades trades with 3 marines with no upgrades more often then not surviving with 4 health. If you shade on top the Adept can like with anywhere from 15-20 health. So if 4 adepts without upgrades can kill 8 marines WITH STIM, what is terran supposed to do? Just have more stuff? How does Terran trade with something like that? And Protoss doesnt even need to trade, he can shade away or not the world is his oyster. He can shade in harass or walk up harass and shade out, or Shade in and just cancel. On top of that he can just throw 20 adepts at a terran army and they will absolutely get their weight. Why can 20 adepts with upgrades shade on top of a Terran army with Maruaders Marines and Medivacs or equal value and upgrades and the terran army gets absolutely annihilated? Tanks are practically useless and even detrimental in this situation. I am not saying they are out and out broken but the more diverse army should win right? Why is the unit that only requires a CyberCore and a twilight council beating a massively diverse army single handedly? Wow I guess this did kind of devolve into "Adepts are OP" but its more with how they fit into the game I feel.If terran had a unit that could trade better or they(Adepts) lost effectiveness into the mid game, I dont think they would be nearly as frustrating
Yep I totally agree. For a few months I am not able to play due to being really sick. But I am still watching quite a lot of games. And adepts in PvT and PvZ are just ridiciolous. Sometimes it is just so obvious how broken the game gets with those units in play. In PvZ less than in PvT. There is definitely some fixing necessary, its just so stupid to watch.
On April 10 2017 22:34 avilo wrote:
If i was lead balance design:
Adept HP reduced substantially - adept shields increased slightly less than the HP was reduced.
Using adept shade now removes all of the shielding from the unit. This now creates a decision - does the Protoss want to use the adept as a part of his army, or commit the adepts to harrassment?
If the adept shade is not used, it is basically just a ranged army unit with slightly less total health than the current iteration.
If the adept shade is used, it is now more easily counterable because of having a lot less HP.
Also, collision should be added to the adept shade. This unit should not be able to shade "on top" of armies. That is absolutely terrible and has zero counter play. Adept shade also should not be cancellable.
No unit should be able to be in two places at once like this unit. It essentially replaced the zealot completely because it's a ranged hyper-mobile overpowered zealot.
As for Protoss balance in general with weakened adepts, this can be solved by adding back 1500 mineral patches to each base. Part of the reason Protoss sucks in LOTV when you're not massing overpowered adepts is because minerals were removed from each base.
Once adepts are fixed, blizzard can also go on to address other ridiculous things like warp prism pick-up range and carriers.
Also, in relation to this thread - no one here can make the argument that adepts are healthy for gameplay or balanced. How many Zealots were built during this GSL finals? Zero.
That fact alone should make you realize the adept is so good it ENTIRE REPLACED A CORE PROTOSS UNIT in the game. That is not a sign of good balance or design.
This is a really smart idea!
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damn I just want to be ADEPT at this game :D
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Nerf shade, or make them squishier. Its that simple folks.
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Russian Federation195 Posts
Apparently would be right adepts to weaken while they are sending shades. For example, move slower or attack slower. As an instance, glavies might only work while shades are not sent.
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On April 11 2017 00:32 Finch518 wrote:
Nerf shade, or make them squishier. Its that simple folks.
This will do nothing to make the Zealot or the Stalker any more worth building, which is half the problem, both of which need addressing by the new lead for balance (assuming we even get one or if SC2 is just going into straight up maintenance mode which if it does I am even more gone for good then I've already been for the past year) very desperately because the design is bad from the ground up with Adepts.
Problem #1. The Adept is OP especially compared to the Zealot/Stalker
1. It's ranged, something that inherently makes it better then Zealots
2. Extra effective vs. Light units, something the Adept doesn't need and that Zealots and Stalkers lack
3. Shade allows "fake" but real pressure to be put on (shading in with more and more adepts and canceling out still either forces you to make units or if the shades see you being greedy it's an auto loss)
4. It's pretty much just as beefy as the Zealot and the Stalker but has none of their draw backs (besides no anti-air but Stalkers anti-air is hilariously bad, just like kind of everything about the Stalker in LOTV
So in my opinion, it's not just about nerfing Adepts (which is completely necessary) it's about giving real and meaningful quality of life buffs to the other Gateway units, right now Adepts are pretty much the OP lynch pin holding Protoss Gateway armies together while it grossly overlaps the other GW units both in roles and in effectiveness. Simply put, why the hell would you ever build anything else then Adepts?
I think there is alot of options for exploring Adept nerfs, in my opinion, Shade should just be removed from the game, it's the entire reason the Adept is so hard to balance and feels so punishing to play against. Give it some type of clearly defined role other then "kills workers fast" because almost everything Protoss has kills workers fast but these two are the most simple.
Potential Adept Solutions
1. Remove Shade and buff attack speed innately by 25%, keep Resonating Glaves as an upgrade but keep it 25% increase as well, this will make them stronger early game and will net them an extra 5% attack speed once upgraded. This will still keep it as a powerful front line offensive unit while taking away the gimmick, with increased attack speed they will be able to deal with Bio more effectively past the mid game where Medivacs start stacking.
2. Flat out make it squishier and easier to kill, if it's going to have such a powerful gimmick ability like Transfer, the unit needs to be risky to use, currently it's a no brainer, even if you transfer badly you can just suicide it to kill workers because it lasts so damn long in combat. I dislike this idea, as even though it would work imo it doesn't remove the gimmick from the Adept and just makes it worse, something David had a long track record of doing.
Tldr for Gateway units because I don't think it needs any in depth exploring that the other Gateway units are undertuned and reliant on nerfs of the enemy races to be viable (widow mines?) and hardly follow the Protoss archetype of expensive but strong basic units.
1. Remove Charge from the game and replace with Zealot legs, I think once people can actually micro them on their own without the AI doing it for them it would just be a good quality of life improvement on the Zealot who actually isn't a bad unit he's just completely and utterly overshadowed by the OP Adept (it happens)
2. Give Stalkers a bonus damage to light so they can face off against bio and properly defend themselves from Mutalisks (looooong overdue change imo)
3. Redesign the Sentry as a mobile medic unit to allow Gateway armies to have more independence and durability.
Sentry Redesign
- Remove Force Field and replace with Field Enhancement, allowing it to use charged energy to restore shields to any targeted unit excluding Immortals (Hardened Shield would have to negate this so Soul Train pushes don't become unstoppable again)
- Buff Guardian Shield so that not only does it reduce ranged attacks, but it also gives an increase to natural shield regeneration, this would heavily incentivize proper positioning and using your units to defend Sentries.
- Buff their attack with raw stats that doesn't let them engage as solo fighters but can actually provide some limited fire support from behind their armies
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It is not only the Adept that shall be looked at. In the current state of the game, the three races are more similar than ever before.
The Adept is like a Marine, a ranged earlygame unit with much utility in the late game. Same as Ravengers for Zerg.
Dropships that were once upon a time almost an exclusive feature of Terran are now, available and easy acessible for Zerg and Protoss to. Think of the WarpPrism in WoL and Hots compared to today and the Droplords compared to the two previous expansions.
Terran got the Cyclone an a-moveish unit like Roaches and Zealots.
There is the Tempests a ranged siege unit that was introduced in Hots already sharing similarities with the Broodlord and today with the Liberator.
This is not an exclusive list but examples of units that made the races more similar than ever before.
Back to the adept.
I think that the shade shall be an escape mechanism rather than a harrass ability.
I would consider three things to achieve that.
A: to make the adepts stationary while they are shading, and compensate this by a longer shade duration.
or
B: make the adept much more vulnerable, to a certain kind of damage while shading
or
C: reset the shade upon damage to the adept.
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As a zerg player, I don't think shades are too strong at the highest skill levels, however I think that there is a fairly simple solution to make adepts more fair at all skill levels
Allow units to attack the shade.
If this change would be done then the sight nerf should be reverted.
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On April 10 2017 22:34 avilo wrote:
Adept HP reduced substantially - adept shields increased slightly less than the HP was reduced..
See, in the first sentence, I could almost see a point.
Then you go on a typical Avilo balance tangent.
Remove health, give shields (EMP), remove shields for shade, add collision to shade, remove cancel from shade,... Complete overkill.
What I'd like to see is change health/shield/armor from the current 80/70/1 to 100/40/0.
This reduces their general bulk, and also makes the damage they take meaningful because their shields deplete faster.
Protoss has this unique dynamic between health and shields that can really be tinkered with a lot more (Warp Prism, for example).
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Lots of things being suggested I think are overkill.
Personally I think alot of problems would be solved if:
Shade may only be cancelled in the first half of its duration
I think thats all we need. with that change the harass potential is still there, the unit is unchanged but they are certainly more predictable. It raises the skill required to be abusive with adepts without gutting their effectiveness completely.
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The general problem of the adept is that it's a slow firing unit, fairly tanky without much direct micro potential (as in micro DURING fights)
It's basically a roach which can shade on top of the enemy army (or threaten to teleport into the other mineral line)
So yeah in the case of harass you need defense on both sides, enough defense which can deal with all the adepts fairly fast because otherwise you lose lots of workers. In the direct army engagements you need enough splash/dps to make the shade on top not worthwhile.
It's not interesting, it's not super fun. It adds a bit of multitasking for the toss when he shades between bases, but the interaction itself is a bad one so that's not a good reason to keep it either. What can be done to "balance" it? I don't think this is a good question, the real question should be: What can be done to make it a fun unit. (aka fun to use, fun to play against => unit interactions have to be on point)
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Zealots 2 shot lings after getting +1 attack (if the lings have no armor). Adepts 2 shot lings as soon as you build them.
Adepts have almost the same range as marines, and also 2 shot marines before combat shields.
Adepts also 2 shot workers (except scvs). Adepts and Zealots both have 150 total health (the health to shield values differ).
The issue is in the design of this unit. It completely destroys the zealot in every regard. Shade is a better movement tool than charge, and also doesn't need to be researched. Versus light units adept is always better no matter what, and versus armoured units the adept is typically better because it has range as well as a medium range teleport.
You don't run zealots into widow mines, but you do shade on top of widow mines with adepts.
I can't offer a solution because this unit is fundamentally broken. It does not belong in the game. I could make similar arguments about widow mines, oracles, swarm hosts, tempests, battlecruiser teleport, liberators, but this thread is about the adept.
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In the end it all comes down to warpgate making it impossible to properly balance gateway units ... 
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I really don't think fixing gateway units would be that difficult. Just change the scaling of the protoss upgrades while reducing the effectiveness of protoss' tier 3 units. Upgrades won't affect the early game and it's simple and elegant.
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On April 11 2017 02:32 stevenhanst wrote:
Lots of things being suggested I think are overkill.
Personally I think alot of problems would be solved if:
Shade may only be cancelled in the first half of its duration
I think thats all we need. with that change the harass potential is still there, the unit is unchanged but they are certainly more predictable. It raises the skill required to be abusive with adepts without gutting their effectiveness completely.
But i think the main problem with adept shades is not only the harass potential, but also how they can engage armies. If they can't scout anymore with shades, protoss will simply use one of the other scouting tools and as soon as they see an advantage, they can shade on top of the opponents army, ignoring/bypassing static defense or defensive units.
There is no retreat, no interaction for the opponent. The opponent either has enough or not.
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Adepts and Zealots simply have different uses. While it's true that it's generally better to build Adepts before Charge there are many situations where you'd rather want a Zealot-army or at least a warp-in rather than building Adepts.
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No problems with liberator specially with range and widow mines I see, this units alone took out most of the other builds Protoss had like templar, archon with zelot charge wich in my opinion was the best interaction between Protoss and Terrans.
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On April 11 2017 05:11 nichan wrote:
No problems with liberator specially with range and widow mines I see, this units alone took out most of the other builds Protoss had like templar, archon with zelot charge wich in my opinion was the best interaction between Protoss and Terrans.
Problem with that comparison is there is a certain level of commitment with the Liberator or Mine. The Adept allows you to control the situation so well, Adepts with an Observer can be so cost efficient it is really crazy.
Whats more is Adepts can move, whereas Liberator and Widow Mine cannot move while engaged in their respective modes.
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On April 10 2017 18:14 RaFox17 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 10 2017 13:30 ninazerg wrote:On April 09 2017 23:29 StraKo wrote: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. Something is fishy here... Great way to discredit any meaningful discussion by trying to make the OP look like a balance whiner.
Well he does have a point.
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On April 11 2017 03:58 -HuShang- wrote:
I really don't think fixing gateway units would be that difficult. Just change the scaling of the protoss upgrades while reducing the effectiveness of protoss' tier 3 units. Upgrades won't affect the early game and it's simple and elegant.
No, we need to drastically change units in unintuitive and confusing ways.
Jesus, it's like you don't know how to make a community suggestion.
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EPT
