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.
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.
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.
Yes exactly, my intention was only to get some discussion going about the adept. As i said in my original post, i didn't think my suggestion through, i was just throwing out an idea i had for the adept. A potential new role for the unit.
I'm really sorry VHbb if you misunderstood my intentions or if my post sounded too biased or something. I want to make sure that this wasn't my goal. I don't want to nerf protoss. I want to play protoss. I want the race to be more fun again and the current state of protoss is just not fun for me right now.
The adept is not the only design decision that i personally dislike in lotv, but i just thought that talking about the adept would be a good start. Talking about specific problems, step by step to help developing Star Craft into a better game for everyone.
If you dislike my post, feel free to disagree and feel free to post your own thoughts or suggestions in a constructive way, so that as many people as possible can understand what you mean. That's the point of discussions like this
I think in the original post you touched on something that would be worth looking more into... When you said you can cancel shades. If the ability to cancel was removed with the reduction to shade vision already implemented, may be all that is needed.
I think the shade interaction is great to use/watch, but only in smaller numbers similar to reapers. Shade needs to get nerfed to where you'd only want to build maybe 2-3 tops in a game, just a like a reaper back in hots. Nerf it to where it is purely an early game harass/scouting unit like the reaper. No one wants to watch mass reapers and the mass shading between your opponents bases is just stupid.
On April 10 2017 07:12 lunareaping wrote: I think in the original post you touched on something that would be worth looking more into... When you said you can cancel shades. If the ability to cancel was removed with the reduction to shade vision already implemented, may be all that is needed.
Yes i already thought about this a lot. Basically "doing the smallest change possible with the biggest impact". That used to be blizzards philosophy on balance.
The more i think about it though, the more i fear that this will not be a good solution.
Let's think about it:
If you would take away shade cancel from current adept (slow, shade has basically no vision,...)
Then shading with all of your adepts could quickly turn into a game deciding gamble. If your shades can't get canceled and you suddenly shade infront of the opponents army, there will be no way out. You will either win the engagement, which will feel unfair for the opponent or you will lose all adepts, which will feel very random and frustrating for the protoss player.
So players would obviously either shade only one adept to scout (a possible sacrifice of the unit, still gamble and very weak scout because reduced vision) or they would shade all of their adepts on top of the opponent, if they have the necessary scouting information gathered with another scout like oracle, observer or haluc.
So this means that adept's harass potential would be slightly nerfed, but the main problem of adepts being able to bypass every defense would still exist.
That's why i suggest to redesign the adept in a way that it doesn't rely on a gimmick like the shade.
Id rather see less emphasis in pro games with protoss on teching super fast. So i hope however the adept would change would be based on also making storm/collossus less crucial
People think protoss is the problem for there being so many phoenix-adept games?
Maybe toss isn't the problem and they should look into giving the match-up more variety from protoss. Why nerf a strategy that isn't necessarily broken as far as winrates goes?
Feels like this can only happen with changes to medivac speed and liberators being extremely good in the mid-game vs any other toss strategy.
I swear the community is going to make the game worse and worse for toss players because of toss hate.
On April 10 2017 07:16 ReachTheSky wrote: I think the shade interaction is great to use/watch, but only in smaller numbers similar to reapers. Shade needs to get nerfed to where you'd only want to build maybe 2-3 tops in a game, just a like a reaper back in hots. Nerf it to where it is purely an early game harass/scouting unit like the reaper. No one wants to watch mass reapers and the mass shading between your opponents bases is just stupid.
The problem is that protoss needs a gateway unit, that makes gateway tech more reliable overall, so that protoss is not forced to turtle into early tech units every game.
That was one of the bigger design problems with hots protoss. They had to either all in with gateway or turtle into tech units if they wanted to play a macro game.
Obviously no race should be forced to play the same style in every matchup. A strategy game should provide strategic freedom.
That's why gateway tech needs help and that's why they introduced adepts and nerfed or redesigned robo units like collosi and the immortal.
They shifted away the power of protoss more towards gateway tech with those changes. To make the race less onesided in terms of strength. To make protoss less reliant on high tech units.
This is clearly something good, but if you really want to make adepts "reaper-like" you have to redesign another gateway unit in order to keep gateway tech relevant and so that we don't fall back into hots protoss.
"First of all, this is not a balance whine thread or anything like this."
"Their design leads to imbalance, because they break basic rules of RTS."
It's clearly a balance whine thread. The least you can do is own it. Quite frankly I can't really stand it when people have "legitimate concerns about game design" or "how rts are supposed to work" and just wind up complaining about everything that's new about a current expansion. People seem to dislike change as a general rule.
this is so stupid. then allow only to be 1 medivac at once on the map, only then your comparison with harras will be true. you cant build 3 warpprisms and harass 3 locations, but you can do it with overlord drops and medivacs. thats the same with shades.
On April 09 2017 23:29 StraKo wrote:First of all, this is not a balance whine thread or anything like this.
Calling BS on this. As long as terran was winning roughly 89 out of 87 tournaments, somehow game design was unproblematic as well for you guys. Liberator is much, much worse design than adept. Start there...
The problem isn't Adept, It's that Protoss has literally no other options but Adept. Everything else has been either nerfed into the ground or due to changes in warp in times make it no longer viable, Protoss live and die by doing early damage and Phoenix Adept is about the only way you can still do it, take away that and what's the point in us even playing?
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'd say the basic rules of RTS is that nothing is severly broken at a fundemental level. That everything has an appropriate risk/reward/cost factor.
On April 10 2017 08:16 NutriaKaiN wrote: this is so stupid. then allow only to be 1 medivac at once on the map, only then your comparison with harras will be true. you cant build 3 warpprisms and harass 3 locations, but you can do it with overlord drops and medivacs. thats the same with shades.
there is no point in this thread sorry.
Warp prisms are much faster than medivacs or overlords. Plus the others don't have ability to transport 4 units and then create another 15 on location haha
I think the point was that Adepts being able to choose to attack two locations instantly is broken. with overlords or medivacs you need double the units to attack more than one spot at once.
On April 10 2017 07:46 krlwlzn wrote: "First of all, this is not a balance whine thread or anything like this."
"Their design leads to imbalance, because they break basic rules of RTS."
It's clearly a balance whine thread. The least you can do is own it. Quite frankly I can't really stand it when people have "legitimate concerns about game design" or "how rts are supposed to work" and just wind up complaining about everything that's new about a current expansion. People seem to dislike change as a general rule.
They were saying that it's meant to be a constructive thread instead of a whiney one. If you think something needs improvement, that isn't a whine. They weren't saying protoss is disgustingly overpowered in LoTV. Are you gonna get mad everytime someone has balance concerns? Maybe you just think Adepts are in a perfect spot idk
Agree with the OP, but i really don't think they will ever change these things, we just have to tolerate the less fun side of the game i guess. I wish they would test radical changes for the game without worrying about balance which can be done in the long run anyways.
my thoughts: remove shade, increase speed to faster than a stalker but slower than a reaper, reduce hp and sheilds, increase attack speed but maintain base DPS and then change the upgrade to be a per hit buff or maybe just attack speed again. MAYBE plus 1 range but probably not.
if protoss can defend multiple locations in the early game sans MSC then recall goes to what, the oracle? and becomes a fleet beacon upgrade? recall being a cyber upgrade would be cool too. oracle would need a nerf to pulsar beam (like 3 shot workers or somethin) and an hp buff. oracle the new arbiter but defensive? still might need a shield battery or something. pylon overcharge is just dumb.
I wonder if it would be better if they reduced the shade time to like 1 second, it would be much worse at just shading on top of an army, or running in 1 base and shading into the other at the same time
Adepts cannot attack while shaded. If that's too much. Maybe they can be invulnerable while being unable to attack.
Adepts would still be very powerful and annoying with the ability to threaten multiple locations. But they now have to make a decision between killing harvesters or using shade. They can't mow down one mineral line WHILE shading to the next one.
What if people did not whine, bitch and yell "Nerf Hammer!" whenever protoss win a final? hehehe^^ wishful thinking.
1) I think you all need to rewatch Gumiho V Stats. He shows how punishable the P+A style is.
2) Other high level protosses (Classic, Zest, Trap, sOs, Hush - he is playing well atm) are having a very hard time against T. Check their previous V T games in the recent GSL. TY, Maru, Innovation all smashed this style in the recent GSL, only Stats held strong. Alive pantsed Hush 3-0 in this comp.
3) herO plays this style the best of all Protosses, Stats is more versatile, but does not have herO's micro skills. herO played extremely well in this comp. Give the man credit.
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.
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.
On April 10 2017 12:27 octomologyst wrote: my thoughts: remove shade, increase speed to faster than a stalker but slower than a reaper, reduce hp and sheilds, increase attack speed but maintain base DPS and then change the upgrade to be a per hit buff or maybe just attack speed again. MAYBE plus 1 range but probably not.
if protoss can defend multiple locations in the early game sans MSC then recall goes to what, the oracle? and becomes a fleet beacon upgrade? recall being a cyber upgrade would be cool too. oracle would need a nerf to pulsar beam (like 3 shot workers or somethin) and an hp buff. oracle the new arbiter but defensive? still might need a shield battery or something. pylon overcharge is just dumb.
More glass cannons is exactly what we DONT need. Less dps and more health increases micro potential.
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.
On April 10 2017 08:16 NutriaKaiN wrote: this is so stupid. then allow only to be 1 medivac at once on the map, only then your comparison with harras will be true. you cant build 3 warpprisms and harass 3 locations, but you can do it with overlord drops and medivacs. thats the same with shades.
there is no point in this thread sorry.
Warp prisms are much faster than medivacs or overlords. Plus the others don't have ability to transport 4 units and then create another 15 on location haha
I think the point was that Adepts being able to choose to attack two locations instantly is broken. with overlords or medivacs you need double the units to attack more than one spot at once.
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.
Who is talking about dropping zealots? They are talking about dropping adepts, warping as many adepts as warpgates and shading them. You entire argument is spurious on account that you are completely ignoring that three points everyone else is talking about.
On April 10 2017 05:21 JackONeill wrote: 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.
The snowball could be solved with: The adept takes more damage after a shade for short period of time (just as warped in units).
This way protoss will think twice before he shades on top of an army.
Shading between mineral lines is an issue, but a very problematic one, because protoss needs 1-2 adepts being able to shade between mineral lines, but as soon as he has more adepts, they are able to avoid fights, kill workers and mass more and more adepts.
This could be solved with a higher cooldown, which gives more time to the opponent to kill the adepts. But it is a very risky one. It could make adepts useless. I would like to see a smarter solution.
On April 10 2017 05:21 JackONeill wrote: The problem with the adept is the shade, only the shade
Yes, exactly. The idea of a strong anti-light Gateway unit was good and Protoss needed it. The shade in combination with tankiness creates the abuse potential. It would be reasonable to give a high DPS but comparatively weak unit a skill based escape option. A tanky unit with a 1-button-escape however doesn't make sense.
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).
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!
I agree with this, but I think the generalist unit should be the Stalker, not the Adept.
So, I would like to see following changes:
remove the "shade" abilty to reduce abusive play
lower HP/shields to make Adepts less tanky
remove Resonating Glaives and increase DPS
give Adepts a passive ability to increase survivability
My idea for a passive survival abilty would be a movement speed stack which increases with each attack and decays after leaving combat: for example, let's say each Adept gains 10% per hit up to 5 times for a 50% movement speed bonus with a full stack.
With a full stack, Adepts would be microable similar to Marines or Hydras (stutter-step-micro, splits and all that). Because of the lowered HP and shields, they would however be a lot easier to take down than Zealots or even Stalkers.
I figure that with these attributes, there's a clear differentiation between Zealots, Stalkers and Adepts. Zealots are tanky DSP (with Charge). Stalkers are all-round and shoot air. Adepts are good in the early game—with good micro—and pair well with a Warp Prism for harassment.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not sure how good of an idea this is but since there is no clear 100% go to change for the adept (Just yet) what I propose is the adept shade is given two timers. The first timer will last 2/3's of the regular adept shade and will function exactly like shade does now where you can cancel it. However for the last 1/3 Protoss will no longer be able to cancel and their shade will be locked in. This gives players against Adepts to confirm where they will shade (The shade would be noticeably different of course) As well this incorporates a higher level of decision making and positioning as the Protoss player will have to decide faster whether or not they would like to cancel. If this idea isn't good I had a second idea. What if while the adept is shading it is burning off shields. Now before you say that would be useless and dumb to further make this point I guess stronger is the adepts shield and hp values would be more favored towards their shield health. This would allow things like Widows to do more damage and make them weaker the more they try to shade before fully recovering. This doesn't take away the freedom to shade from aggressive players but rather limits their option to the # of times they can shade. Anyways that is my community suggestion I am curious to see what others think about this suggestion.
I'm not very good at the game and I have no business commenting on balance but I gotta say it doesn't look right when a army of just adepts and some phoniex can dismantle a Terran army made up of 4/5 different types of units but I guess that's the power of phoniex/adept in mid game pvt right now
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.
What? They nerfed both of those what are you talking about.
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.
The problem with that one is that once you reach that point WG would make the protoss almighty.
Imagine a WP droping 4 stalkers and warping other 16 that can actually deal with an equal ammount of MMM.
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.
What? They nerfed both of those what are you talking about.
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.
The problem with that one is that once you reach that point WG would make the protoss almighty.
Imagine a WP droping 4 stalkers and warping other 16 that can actually deal with an equal ammount of MMM.
Protoss GW can't scale as long as WG stays as is.
Here we go it has nothing to do with the nerf, it has to do with it killing a composition, Just like tempest stoped zerg from building anything with broodlords, in each expansion they added units to adjust balance or stop an abusive comp instead of adding units to make interaction between races more fun to play and watch.
On April 11 2017 01:40 Ulargg wrote: Allow units to attack the shade.
I've had this thought for a while. What if the shade was targetable but not auto-attacked like neutral units. Damaging the shade forces the Adept to teleport.
Would being able to intercept Adepts by forcing them to TP to the shade be fun? Would Protoss players still send shades?
Zealots and stalkers need a buff if you guys actually consider nerfing the adept in some of the ways suggested in this thread such as shields and HP. And not a "zealot speed buff after charge" buff, a real buff, like charge not being 200/200 or zealots somehow being able to tank widow mines even better after the latest patch.
I would love to see stalkers get some love so that we can make stalker-zealot vs Terran. Blizzard should have just buffed them, and either removed blink or nerfed it in LOTV more instead of adding the adept to fill the role of being the only decent gateway unit.
and also, stalkers just melt to every Terran unit... cyclones, tank pushes, liberators with mines, marauders... why would anyone not open phoenix and adepts in this meta? it's just the easiest way to defend against the insane speed and strength of medivac drops, liberators, mines...
On April 09 2017 23:29 StraKo wrote: 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.
this is not the case in my opinion. in the early game the adepts are there to deal lasting damage, and they need to shade to get that potential. there's no choice on that exact matter. there's an existing cooldown on it and it can be counted or felt out. it's simply 4 seconds of downtime for the cooldown alone. as everyone knows, the adept can still be attacked during this. what some people prefer is have enough damage to threaten or kill the adepts once they're in position and waiting for cd, if you're able to do this, you don't need to defend two or more locations.
I'm not a fan of drip-feeding a solution to the unit, but it is not like there is no counterplay. it's an effective unit that takes a lot out of the defender, much like the protoss oracle does in the lower leagues I imagine. sometimes you have more than one group of harassing adepts, it can be more effective than one, it depends on the defender and how they reacted.
it's all rudimentary but I agree the unit needs more polish.
Lets say Phoenix/Adepts > Terran, I'd rather they focus on something else rather than nerfing the Adept or Phoenix, which will just switch the power of the matchup back into Bio + Supplements > Protoss. How about we give a Thor buff? Thors are pretty good vs Adepts, Thors are really good vs Phoenix. That way maybe we can open up more of the matchup, since there are now Thors on the field to deal with Phoenix/Adept and that means Protoss can do something to beat the Thor. Otherwise we just keep staying in this limbo of Terran wants to drop and Protoss wants to counter drop, whichever is stronger.
On April 11 2017 17:33 ejozl wrote: Lets say Phoenix/Adepts > Terran, I'd rather they focus on something else rather than nerfing the Adept or Phoenix, which will just switch the power of the matchup back into Bio + Supplements > Protoss. How about we give a Thor buff? Thors are pretty good vs Adepts, Thors are really good vs Phoenix. That way maybe we can open up more of the matchup, since there are now Thors on the field to deal with Phoenix/Adept and that means Protoss can do something to beat the Thor. Otherwise we just keep staying in this limbo of Terran wants to drop and Protoss wants to counter drop, whichever is stronger.
The moment of strength of multiple Thors comes in after PA is already starting to struggle.
On April 10 2017 08:16 NutriaKaiN wrote: this is so stupid. then allow only to be 1 medivac at once on the map, only then your comparison with harras will be true. you cant build 3 warpprisms and harass 3 locations, but you can do it with overlord drops and medivacs. thats the same with shades.
there is no point in this thread sorry.
sure u can harras with 3 warpprisms... why you should not be able to do that?
What if instead of displacing local units when Psionic Transfer finished, if the Shade is touching any enemy units the Adept is reverse-telefragged but also deals damage equal to one third of its remaining shields and HP divided evenly between the enemy units... An Adept at full HP (80) and Shields (70) finishing a Psionic Transfer while its Shade is occupying the same space as a Drone would instantly die in a horrible explosion and deal 50 damage to the Drone.
Initially I thought this was the dumbest idea I've ever had but after a second thought it could totally... possibly... maybe sometimes make things a little worse for Protoss players and also, like, might be cool, right?
Edit: On a less wild note, perhaps the weapon damage point and attack animation could be slightly increased to nerf their fighting capabilities and their chasing capabilities while Transfer is on cooldown, but it's hard to say how they would fair against other early game units/strategies without testing it out.
Removing Shade is what makes the Adept the Adept so I don't think talking about taking that away is the right way to go.
On April 10 2017 08:16 NutriaKaiN wrote: this is so stupid. then allow only to be 1 medivac at once on the map, only then your comparison with harras will be true. you cant build 3 warpprisms and harass 3 locations, but you can do it with overlord drops and medivacs. thats the same with shades.
there is no point in this thread sorry.
sure u can harras with 3 warpprisms... why you should not be able to do that?
1. Because if you spend 600 minerals on warpprisms you will lose horribly in a direct fight. They have 0% fight scaling. Medevacs have 100% scaling (if amount of battle units => the amount of medevacs which is true in 99% of all battles).
2. Because the only power of warprism is in the warp from warpgates. You basically trade all units you warp -4 units you are able to pick up for anything you can kill with this amount of units which might result in extremely negative value if you warp 8 zealots and lose them all for exchange of 3 scvs. Even if you have 3 warprisms (which is bad because of the previous point) you can still warp only 8 units if you have 8 warpgates.
However you can always not drop from medevacs if the protoss is ready and only drop when you are able to receive a positive value with your drop (because you can kill 3 probes, pickup all units and lose nothing). So you basically never have negative value with terran drops unless you are playing against phoenixes who are able to intercept your medevacs, but it was never an imbalanced problem in TvZ agains mutas.
3. So if you just use warprisms as a shuttles without concentrating all your harass potential in 1 spot, you face the reality where you can't do any damage at all with gateway units in amount of 4 compared to what you can kill with 2 marauders + 4 marines.
we should allow the current meta to develop and change things if they are a problem for a while. i think we have a lot more to gain by just letting the game sit and trying to adapt to it than making some weird convoluted interaction with this unit that limits its usefulness. lets spend more than just a few months trying to figure out this unit.
David kim is gone and the game is in our hands now
lets set a precedent that we are willing to exhaust our options before we make big changes to the game. the adept already feels iconic, like the zealot, marine/tank and hydralisk/ling. shading in has a lot of unique aspects to it like baiting stims/wasting banes by cancelling most shades (good dynamic), dragging mines (good dynamic but should not be the only dynamic, i was not pleased watching aLive lose 40 supply of units to friendly splash in 1.5 seconds gametime, liberators, medivacs, etc: newkirk city vs herO), and can give toss some map presence while speedlings are out (good dynamic because if zerg commits to units, the adepts do not achieve this)
protoss has been competitive for what... a few months now? lets not get ahead of ourselves.
On April 11 2017 22:24 c0sm0naut wrote: we should allow the current meta to develop and change things if they are a problem for a while. i think we have a lot more to gain by just letting the game sit and trying to adapt to it than making some weird convoluted interaction with this unit that limits its usefulness. lets spend more than just a few months trying to figure out this unit.
David kim is gone and the game is in our hands now
lets set a precedent that we are willing to exhaust our options before we make big changes to the game. the adept already feels iconic, like the zealot, marine/tank and hydralisk/ling. shading in has a lot of unique aspects to it like baiting stims/wasting banes by cancelling most shades (good dynamic), dragging mines (good dynamic but should not be the only dynamic, i was not pleased watching aLive lose 40 supply of units to friendly splash in 1.5 seconds gametime, liberators, medivacs, etc: newkirk city vs herO), and can give toss some map presence while speedlings are out (good dynamic because if zerg commits to units, the adepts do not achieve this)
protoss has been competitive for what... a few months now? lets not get ahead of ourselves.
I think that's one of the key issues that all of these people who are pushing for "smaller, more frequent updates" are missing.
I don't think it's in everyone's best interest for this game to become like LoL or DOTA, where there's some flavor of the month that everyone knows will be nerfed in a few weeks. I'd rather a more stable meta, rather than watching strategies be built up around timings and pushes, that will just be ruined in two weeks time.
I hate how the adept completely removes a core protoss unit in the game which is the Zealot. Why make a melee unit to charge right in the face of your opponent's army, when you can teleport right on top of it and do even more damage? Also the best harassment unit in the game... attacking 2 places at once; early game, mid game, late game it ain't matter. RIP Zealot we miss you dearly :'(
On April 10 2017 08:16 NutriaKaiN wrote: this is so stupid. then allow only to be 1 medivac at once on the map, only then your comparison with harras will be true. you cant build 3 warpprisms and harass 3 locations, but you can do it with overlord drops and medivacs. thats the same with shades.
there is no point in this thread sorry.
sure u can harras with 3 warpprisms... why you should not be able to do that?
1. Because if you spend 600 minerals on warpprisms you will lose horribly in a direct fight. They have 0% fight scaling. Medevacs have 100% scaling (if amount of battle units => the amount of medevacs which is true in 99% of all battles).
2. Because the only power of warprism is in the warp from warpgates. You basically trade all units you warp -4 units you are able to pick up for anything you can kill with this amount of units which might result in extremely negative value if you warp 8 zealots and lose them all for exchange of 3 scvs. Even if you have 3 warprisms (which is bad because of the previous point) you can still warp only 8 units if you have 8 warpgates.
However you can always not drop from medevacs if the protoss is ready and only drop when you are able to receive a positive value with your drop (because you can kill 3 probes, pickup all units and lose nothing). So you basically never have negative value with terran drops unless you are playing against phoenixes who are able to intercept your medevacs, but it was never an imbalanced problem in TvZ agains mutas.
3. So if you just use warprisms as a shuttles without concentrating all your harass potential in 1 spot, you face the reality where you can't do any damage at all with gateway units in amount of 4 compared to what you can kill with 2 marauders + 4 marines.
still i have seen pro games were they used 2 warp prisms to drop at multiple locations and it worked. Zest herO and others have done that already. the third one is kinda silly because u harras 2 locations while attack the front with the rest of your army... pros have already done that and proved its a viable option.... its not a tactic wich works in every game but it still works... if u kill 3 scvs with 8 zealots on 2 different locations i think ur micro is messed up pretty hard...
On April 10 2017 08:16 NutriaKaiN wrote: this is so stupid. then allow only to be 1 medivac at once on the map, only then your comparison with harras will be true. you cant build 3 warpprisms and harass 3 locations, but you can do it with overlord drops and medivacs. thats the same with shades.
there is no point in this thread sorry.
sure u can harras with 3 warpprisms... why you should not be able to do that?
1. Because if you spend 600 minerals on warpprisms you will lose horribly in a direct fight. They have 0% fight scaling. Medevacs have 100% scaling (if amount of battle units => the amount of medevacs which is true in 99% of all battles).
2. Because the only power of warprism is in the warp from warpgates. You basically trade all units you warp -4 units you are able to pick up for anything you can kill with this amount of units which might result in extremely negative value if you warp 8 zealots and lose them all for exchange of 3 scvs. Even if you have 3 warprisms (which is bad because of the previous point) you can still warp only 8 units if you have 8 warpgates.
However you can always not drop from medevacs if the protoss is ready and only drop when you are able to receive a positive value with your drop (because you can kill 3 probes, pickup all units and lose nothing). So you basically never have negative value with terran drops unless you are playing against phoenixes who are able to intercept your medevacs, but it was never an imbalanced problem in TvZ agains mutas.
3. So if you just use warprisms as a shuttles without concentrating all your harass potential in 1 spot, you face the reality where you can't do any damage at all with gateway units in amount of 4 compared to what you can kill with 2 marauders + 4 marines.
still i have seen pro games were they used 2 warp prisms to drop at multiple locations and it worked. Zest herO and others have done that already. the third one is kinda silly because u harras 2 locations while attack the front with the rest of your army... pros have already done that and proved its a viable option.... its not a tactic wich works in every game but it still works... if u kill 3 scvs with 8 zealots on 2 different locations i think ur micro is messed up pretty hard...
If you let a toss to pressure your main army at the front and able to warp-in at 2 other harass locations, i think your macro & micro is messed up pretty hard....
No way toss can stand toe-to-toe with terran with that kind of split. Terran will just stim in and wipe toss main army 10 out of 10 times.
On April 11 2017 09:59 Parcelleus wrote: Im not surprised by a thread like this on TL. Protoss wins something and the usual nerf this nerf that.
There already is a dedicated balance whine thread.
Well adepts are really silly units that make even the best Protoss players look like abusers. When GSL level Protoss adepts look the same as Masters level Protoss adepts you have a game design issue.
On April 11 2017 09:59 Parcelleus wrote: Im not surprised by a thread like this on TL. Protoss wins something and the usual nerf this nerf that.
There already is a dedicated balance whine thread.
Well adepts are really silly units that make even the best Protoss players look like abusers. When GSL level Protoss adepts look the same as Masters level Protoss adepts you have a game design issue.
show me the master level adepts that look like gsl level adepts
On April 11 2017 23:12 MockHamill wrote: Every unit in the game should have 1 or 2 out of the following 3: - Hitpoints - Attack strength - Mobility
The only units that have all 3 are Adapts.
So one of these needs to go.
they don't have very high attack strength against anything that isn't light. Their hitpoints are pretty average for a 2 supply unit, stalkers have more hitpoints
On April 11 2017 22:59 Moonsalt wrote: I hate how the adept completely removes a core protoss unit in the game which is the Zealot. Why make a melee unit to charge right in the face of your opponent's army, when you can teleport right on top of it and do even more damage? Also the best harassment unit in the game... attacking 2 places at once; early game, mid game, late game it ain't matter. RIP Zealot we miss you dearly :'(
what are you talking about, zealots are still regularly used? Almost every pvz is chargelot archon immortal.
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
Yet cherry picking you are.
Ovie drop is a tier 0 tech. There's no way in hell toss can kill the ovie at that stage of the game, unless you fly it into pylon cannon range. Medivacs is not higher tech tier than warp prism, a T will tech into starport regardless as supplement for his bio. It just intergrates seamlessly into a terran tech path. Robo tech on the other hand is a totally different tech path from twilight or stargate.
I will not argue that that warp prism+adepts combo is broken. Removing one of the 2 elements, toss lost a lot of power drastically. And you cannot just emphasize on the strong points of toss while T & z have equally broken harass options with medivacs/ling/banelings drop which has zero risks and mega high rewards which very hard for toss to deal with. I understand that adepts is pretty frustrating to play against, but you cannot just ignore all other broken stuffs in LOTV.
I have seen 2-3 full medivacs killed a toss base including nexus in <20sec. But same adepts cannot kill an orbital. Perhaps terran should learn to pull aways scv to the main army like toss forced to do in widow mine drop, liberators harass etc.
A 20strong adepts will not beat an equivalent supply MMMM on the field, it will trade efficiently but not outright win, not with the dps output a 40supply terran army has. What happens directly after the trade is another story, warp-in reinforcement ahem, ahem...
Given that adepts must be nerfed, but at least give back some of the power to stalkers/zealots. Stalkers currently just melt to any units that terrans & zergs choose to build.
Like with so many other things in sc2 Adepts at first seemed overpowered but then, as we continued to play, they are now fine and people learned how to deal with it. If anything Libs and mines are the issue.
On April 11 2017 22:59 Moonsalt wrote: I hate how the adept completely removes a core protoss unit in the game which is the Zealot. Why make a melee unit to charge right in the face of your opponent's army, when you can teleport right on top of it and do even more damage? Also the best harassment unit in the game... attacking 2 places at once; early game, mid game, late game it ain't matter. RIP Zealot we miss you dearly :'(
zealot does more than triple the DPS of the adept when at +3, and its a steal at 100m once you get charge and forges have spun for a while zealot is for manfighting
on topic: i really think this discussion has already run its course and that it would be in the best interest for the community to lock it and maybe reopen the thread in a week or so when emotions arent as high from the SuperTournament.
On April 11 2017 22:59 Moonsalt wrote: I hate how the adept completely removes a core protoss unit in the game which is the Zealot. Why make a melee unit to charge right in the face of your opponent's army, when you can teleport right on top of it and do even more damage? Also the best harassment unit in the game... attacking 2 places at once; early game, mid game, late game it ain't matter. RIP Zealot we miss you dearly :'(
zealot does more than triple the DPS of the adept when at +3, and its a steal at 100m once you get charge and forges have spun for a while zealot is for manfighting
on topic: i really think this discussion has already run its course and that it would be in the best interest for the community to lock it and maybe reopen the thread in a week or so when emotions arent as high from the SuperTournament.
There are no rules to RTS games. There are basic standards, but they are broken all the time. This is how asymmetrical balance and unit design works, always.
If Adepts are problematic, this can always be adjusted. One good possibility (to give people slightly less control and make counterplay stronger) is to remove the ability to cancel a shade once it's activated. That way it's more of a commitment to decide to shade.
In general, though, I don't see a problem with the adept's design overall; and I am very much in favor of taking a more BW-esque approach to balance, letting the meta develop on it's own. We shall see.
On April 11 2017 22:59 Moonsalt wrote: I hate how the adept completely removes a core protoss unit in the game which is the Zealot. Why make a melee unit to charge right in the face of your opponent's army, when you can teleport right on top of it and do even more damage? Also the best harassment unit in the game... attacking 2 places at once; early game, mid game, late game it ain't matter. RIP Zealot we miss you dearly :'(
zealot does more than triple the DPS of the adept when at +3, and its a steal at 100m once you get charge and forges have spun for a while zealot is for manfighting
on topic: i really think this discussion has already run its course and that it would be in the best interest for the community to lock it and maybe reopen the thread in a week or so when emotions arent as high from the SuperTournament.
You still argue balance? You still fail to realize that people cry about it not because of balance but because of design, how it affects the gameplay and how it actually looks in game. That was always the problem with protoss. Nobody enjoyed watching dozens of forcefields even if it technically was balanced. Nobody enjoyed big colossi deathballs even if it was technically balanced. Nobody enjoyes adeps shading on top of your army even if it is probably balanced. It's design and aesthetics. People never seem to get that.
On April 10 2017 08:16 NutriaKaiN wrote: this is so stupid. then allow only to be 1 medivac at once on the map, only then your comparison with harras will be true. you cant build 3 warpprisms and harass 3 locations, but you can do it with overlord drops and medivacs. thats the same with shades.
there is no point in this thread sorry.
sure u can harras with 3 warpprisms... why you should not be able to do that?
1. Because if you spend 600 minerals on warpprisms you will lose horribly in a direct fight. They have 0% fight scaling. Medevacs have 100% scaling (if amount of battle units => the amount of medevacs which is true in 99% of all battles).
2. Because the only power of warprism is in the warp from warpgates. You basically trade all units you warp -4 units you are able to pick up for anything you can kill with this amount of units which might result in extremely negative value if you warp 8 zealots and lose them all for exchange of 3 scvs. Even if you have 3 warprisms (which is bad because of the previous point) you can still warp only 8 units if you have 8 warpgates.
However you can always not drop from medevacs if the protoss is ready and only drop when you are able to receive a positive value with your drop (because you can kill 3 probes, pickup all units and lose nothing). So you basically never have negative value with terran drops unless you are playing against phoenixes who are able to intercept your medevacs, but it was never an imbalanced problem in TvZ agains mutas.
3. So if you just use warprisms as a shuttles without concentrating all your harass potential in 1 spot, you face the reality where you can't do any damage at all with gateway units in amount of 4 compared to what you can kill with 2 marauders + 4 marines.
still i have seen pro games were they used 2 warp prisms to drop at multiple locations and it worked. Zest herO and others have done that already. the third one is kinda silly because u harras 2 locations while attack the front with the rest of your army... pros have already done that and proved its a viable option.... its not a tactic which works in every game but it still works... if u kill 3 scvs with 8 zealots on 2 different locations i think ur micro is messed up pretty hard...
I've never said that this is impossible. You just pay a lot of resources in exchange of forcing your opponent to waste his attention to the bases you are harassing. If he has some static defense there or some defensive chunks of army you lose all units you've warped except 8, while remaining equal or weaker in the main power army. Good luck killing well-positioned bunker with well-timed scv repair pull with 7 zealots/adepts/stalkers. If there is no defense, terran just pull away scvs, lift the CC and CRUSH your main army which is 30 supply weaker at the moment while your harass units are dying to reinforcement after killing some supply depos. Protoss has decent harass options but it is nothing compared to what terran has. Yes, protoss can warp 20 units, but he can save only 4. Terran can do the same with the ability to save everything. The biggest terran advantage in harassing is that terran army has twice as much dps compared to protoss (for both same limit or same resources). And dps is the most important part of the whole harassment aspect.
On April 12 2017 01:36 The_Red_Viper wrote: You still argue balance? You still fail to realize that people cry about it not because of balance but because of design, how it affects the gameplay and how it actually looks in game. That was always the problem with protoss. Nobody enjoyed watching dozens of forcefields even if it technically was balanced. Nobody enjoyed big colossi deathballs even if it was technically balanced. Nobody enjoyes adeps shading on top of your army even if it is probably balanced. It's design and aesthetics. People never seem to get that.
Nothing beats mine drops, mm drops, muta harassment and liberator harassment in unenjoyment and frustration. You blinked for 1 second and you now have 2/22 probes on this base. Enjoy the widow mines. Technically balanced. You missed the double drop on your 3rd? You don't have nexus there anymore. Enjoy 4 marauders and 8 marines steam dps. Technically balanced. You haven't spotted the spire and don't have 2 stargates ready? You lost already. Enjoy the mutas. Technically balanced. You decided to not to play stargate? You can't mine from all your bases. Enjoy the liberator range upgrade and perfect map design. Technically balanced.
I am not saying that there aren't other things which can be frustrating. But with protoss it's all about that pretty much. Your examples are also more about awareness, i am talking about actual typical unit interactions. It doesn't matter if you watch it or not, when lots of adepts shade on your army or threaten one mineral line just to cancel it you simply have a problem which seems unfair. Same with forcefields back in the day.
Also i have to stress this, it's a lot about aesthetics as well. A well microed mmm army simply looks good. It might be more unbalanced than anything ever but the big colossi deathball is still unpleasing to look at when it interacts with other units. It's a big part of enjoyment
The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
On April 12 2017 02:24 The_Red_Viper wrote: I am not saying that there aren't other things which can be frustrating. But with protoss it's all about that pretty much. Your examples are also more about awareness, i am talking about actual typical unit interactions. It doesn't matter if you watch it or not, when lots of adepts shade on your army or threaten one mineral line just to cancel it you simply have a problem which seems unfair. Same with forcefields back in the day.
Also i have to stress this, it's a lot about aesthetics as well. A well microed mmm army simply looks good. It might be more unbalanced than anything ever but the big colossi deathball is still unpleasing to look at when it interacts with other units. It's a big part of enjoyment
I agree that I would really love seing more blink stalkers + distruptors micro in all matchups. But this is the downside of a whole Starcraft 2 design compared to BW unit control restrictions. Goody was not enjoyable to watch with his turtle mech style. Slivko was not enjoyable to watch with his broodfestor deathball style. This whole aesthetic subject needs much deeper analysis than making only heavy micro skill demanding compositions viable. For example Hero phoenix map contol was unbelievably enjoyable to watch and it was heavy micro demanding. Not everything should be about direct fight micro interactions design in RTS.
+ outdamage an Immortal when stimmed (2 Marauders 20dps vs 13.79dps - non-armored) or (2 Marauders 40dps vs 34.48dps - armored) + can slow target's movement speed
On April 12 2017 03:06 icesergio wrote: + outdamage an Immortal when stimmed (2 Marauders 20dps vs 13.79dps - non-armored) or (2 Marauders 40dps vs 34.48dps - armored) + can slow target's movement speed
Your DPS numbers aren't from LotV. And while 2 marauders have more DPS than 1 immortal, the pure baseline DPS isn't everything. 2 marauders aren't worth as much as an immortal against ultraslisks. 2 marauders couldn't kill an immortal.
On April 12 2017 02:24 The_Red_Viper wrote: I am not saying that there aren't other things which can be frustrating. But with protoss it's all about that pretty much. Your examples are also more about awareness, i am talking about actual typical unit interactions. It doesn't matter if you watch it or not, when lots of adepts shade on your army or threaten one mineral line just to cancel it you simply have a problem which seems unfair. Same with forcefields back in the day.
Also i have to stress this, it's a lot about aesthetics as well. A well microed mmm army simply looks good. It might be more unbalanced than anything ever but the big colossi deathball is still unpleasing to look at when it interacts with other units. It's a big part of enjoyment
I agree that I would really love seing more blink stalkers + distruptors micro in all matchups. But this is the downside of a whole Starcraft 2 design compared to BW unit control restrictions. Goody was not enjoyable to watch with his turtle mech style. Slivko was not enjoyable to watch with his broodfestor deathball style. This whole aesthetic subject needs much deeper analysis than making only heavy micro skill demanding compositions viable. For example Hero phoenix map contol was unbelievably enjoyable to watch and it was heavy micro demanding. Not everything should be about direct fight micro interactions design in RTS.
Oh yeah the aesthetics part isn't talked about enough imo. It's not even about how much micro it actually takes tbh. Like protoss unit need oftentimes a fair bit of micro, adept harassment is multitasking focused at the highest lvl as well i think. But if something simply looks/feels bad then the actual balance numbers don't mean anything. How the units interact with each other and if it looks/feels pleasing is really important
I don't play the game anymore I just watch as much as I can so I cannot speak to balance in anyway. What I will say is that for me, Adepts are horrible to watch. It takes virtually no skill to threaten two places at once and it looks so painful watching people attempt to defend both.
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
I agree with a lot of your points but the level of immature, myopic, self-righteous hypocrisy in this post is sickening. Not to mention ironic since you point out the OP's hypocrisy without realizimg you are guilty of the exact same.
Yes Protoss gets a lot of unreasonable hate but if all of us acted like you then that hate would be very well-deserved.
I agree with the others who have said that this thread has degenerated into a pointless balance whine and recommend it be closed, since there is already a thread for that.
I think that Adept is simply a badly designed unit. It is not fun to play as, against or watch. When it was introduced DK said that if it will not turn out to be fun, they will not hesitate to remove/replace it, and since they are not fun, they should do just that.
It replaced Zealot, which is supposed to be Protoss' iconic unit, too much; i.e I think there was not a single one made in the Super Tournament finals.
On April 12 2017 09:51 InfCereal wrote: I really don't think it's that hard.
The adept originally couldn't cancel their shade. This was deemed too weak.
Right now, they're deemed too strong. The blindingly obvious solution would be to revert the change that made them too strong, yes?
Right now they're deemed slightly too strong, but they have gotten multiple changes since the Shade cancel was added, and other units in the game have gotten changes as well, so you cannot conclude that there is a "blindingly obvious solution". And, if a past change is deemed to have been incorrect, then it would not necessarily mean that reverting the change is the correct solution either and that there is actually a better solution.
X was weak. Y was strong. However, there aren't just two letters in the alphabet.
For me, problems with the adept come down to: - The unit is super easy to control, but offers no room for sick micro tricks - Shade breaks fundemental rules in RTS, free vision, no risk, low skill floor, insanely hard to properly defend. - The unit deals high damage, but also high on health - The unit is so cheap and effective that it is also the default army unit - Comes early in the game, and hardcounters most early units and 2 shots workers
There's tons of stuff that can be changed. The problem is that the gateway units of Protoss are so weak (thanks, Warpgate) and that Protoss needs to be compensated for Adept nerfs bigtime.
My prefered solution would be to put Warpgate at Fleet Beacon tech and rebalance the entire race, but that's probably not gonna happen.
I would probably look into making both Zealots and Stalkers become significantly stronger early on, and giving penalties to units produced with the Warpgate mechanic. For example, no shields, or 'warp sickness' which makes their attack speed 20% lower for 1 minute, or whatever.
The whole crux of why Protoss is impossibly hard to balance is that Warpgate is a non-decision, extremely powerful, rule breaking mechanic. The entire race suffers for it.
Warpgate is *not* a rule-breaking mechanic, because there are no rules set in stone about how to play a game.. warpgate is the main flavor of the protoss race in Starcraft 2. I understand you may not like it, but it's the main characteristic of an entire race out of three, so maybe it's just a feature of SC2 that you don't like, not a "fundamental flaw of RTS rules" (whatever these are).
If I would dislike the way Zerg produce units from larvae and hatcheries, I don't call it breaking the RTS rules, I simply don't play Zerg. And if this ruins my SC2 experience, I don't play SC2.
Not all races are terran, and terran are *not* what "defines" the RTS rules...
It breaks defenders advantage, just like Shade, a fundamental assumption that this entire game relies upon. The fact that you try to devalue my post by saying dumb stuff like "not all races are terran", and not understanding that 'rules of RTS' is in fact a thing, is pretty dumb and kinda funny.
You can defend warpgate all you want, but honestly, most people here will agree that most issues with Protoss stem from the Warpgate mechanic being so one-dimensional, so powerful, and available at T1.
Maybe it's dumb (not sure why funny ) but I still have not read a set of "RTS rules" to take as a reference for these discussions. Usually this argument is called when something is not liked by someone very vocal, in order to justify some changes / nerfs. I don't care at all about these "rules" (especially since nobody knows them apparently), if I like the game it can break all the invented rules you want, it will still be worth playing
Haven't played since WoL, haven't watched consistently since HotS. I watched a few games of LotV from GSL and Blizzcon, and it's just ghastly.
Look, I really couldn't care less about win rates. If Protoss had a 90% win rate, but the games were super exciting, then by all means, I would still watch. But there's no point in watching because gimmicky crap like adepts and liberators is just lifeless.
There's some gimmicky crap in BW like nukes, infested terrans, and dark archons, but they're used so infrequently that it's actually remarkable whenever they are used. The same was basically true of WoL, I mean yeah there was nukes, motherships and neural parasite but just like BW, they were so infrequently used that it was actually remarkable. But adepts are used in almost every PvX game, it's really not interesting anymore.
adept made me sick ( im not even joking) i went to the doctor and i have hepatic damage because im so angry and mad every single day because of bullshit dealing with adepts and carriers. So yeah protoss literally make me sick. now im taking a treatment. Thanks.
The reason warpgate is disliked is because it essentially gives protoss gateway units a 1-time "teleport to a powered location" ability. RTS games I've played are essentially balanced around when things can show up (at a battle or at your doorstep to disrupt your base). Warpgate drastically affects that tension.
On April 12 2017 20:29 VHbb wrote: Maybe it's dumb (not sure why funny ) but I still have not read a set of "RTS rules" to take as a reference for these discussions. Usually this argument is called when something is not liked by someone very vocal, in order to justify some changes / nerfs. I don't care at all about these "rules" (especially since nobody knows them apparently), if I like the game it can break all the invented rules you want, it will still be worth playing
The basic thing imo is that a strategy game should value decisions. You only have to decide if there are options. You evaluate options by weighing advantages and disadvantages.
If you put it like that, one thing which certainly breaks a strategy game is if there is no place for decision making. For me, all the fun in this game comes from making decisions which pay off by giving an advantage. Everything else is just mechanical once the meta has settled.
In the case of Adepts, they are so badly balanced vis a vis the rest of the Protoss Gateway units that there is nearly no decision making. If you want to scout early, you want Adepts. If you want to hold aggression early, you want Adepts. If you want to harass, you want Adepts. If you want to engage a sieged position, you want Adepts.
I really hope everybody will agree that this pattern is just bad for the game. If SCII is to be an RTS game then units need to have clearly defined strengths and weaknesses which force decision making.
Adepts barely have any weaknesses. So you basically always build them. No wonder that the meta is getting stale and we only see Adepts + X.
Are adepts really another "let's wait and see" balance issue?
It seems that adepts have been a problem since the very launch of the game. I remember LOTV had thousands of viewers upon launch, but then after 1-2 months of every single game being mass adepts a lot of people became disinterested.
Adepts have sprung back up because every Protoss realizes you can take 3 nexus vs Terran and do a huge gateway explosion and use this unit that is overtuned in every way.
The other thing is, it's not really even Protoss "figuring it out" so much as widow mines being nerfed literally opened the doorway for the mass adept non-sense to come back.
On April 12 2017 20:29 VHbb wrote: Maybe it's dumb (not sure why funny ) but I still have not read a set of "RTS rules" to take as a reference for these discussions. Usually this argument is called when something is not liked by someone very vocal, in order to justify some changes / nerfs. I don't care at all about these "rules" (especially since nobody knows them apparently), if I like the game it can break all the invented rules you want, it will still be worth playing
He gave you "one rule" : defenders advantage
Units appear where the production is built and thus (usually) have to move to the battle on the other side of the map which gives the opponent 1. defenders advantage since his production is closer to the battle than yours 2. defenders advantage because he can scout for reinforcements and maybe interfere
Warpgate is a problem in that regard, as is the current nydus worm as well
Also warpgates themselves allow for such strong timings because as soon as the production facility is built you can instantly get value out of it without waiting for one cycle.
I mean this was said over and over again in the past years but warpgates are a bad game mechanic, at least as a core production mechanic. It might work as a lategame upgrade of some sorts.
I will not pretend I'm any sort of expert on anything, just share my experience playing...
I play all three races (depending on how I feel at any given day) and when I play as P, I literally only make adepts + something for AA, most people at my level just kinda die to it anyway because neither of us can micro properly or defend multiple locations correctly... Adepts got me into Plat when I can't even reach Silver with Z and am struggling to climb out of Gold with T...
Shades make the other player think about the game in a very different way, which is a really good, cool thing in RTS, and Warp Prisms are part of their Race Identity which, while powerful, but can be picked off fairly easily for most players at any rank if they position their units properly or are positioned flat out poorly by the player controlling them. Adepts and Warp Prisms might be even stronger together, but I really don't think it's enough to call it an issue or that it's "***ing game breaking this game sucks now Shades are horrible and shouldn't exist", etc.
Adepts haven't been in the game very long and the game has changed since LotV's launch, obviously, players are still learning how to use them, abuse them, and how to play against them. A lot of people back in WoL felt the same way towards Roaches, Hydras, Bunkers, Sentries, and even Lings, Zealots, and Marines as people do towards Adepts now, but we've had since 2010 to learn how to deal with those, they still aren't entirely figured out, so it makes sense that a unit like the Adept would be so debated/hated. I say give it some time, maybe just sit back and cheese out the dirty Protos a little more often if you really can't handle them, but keep thinking about it and how to play against them and hope for some sweet TvP (and to a lesser extent ZvP) games in the next week or so that vividly showcase how to destroy them. I think that's going to happen soon, and then a little bit of that will eventually trickle down into lower leagues as well.
If Adepts are still seen incredibly often in two weeks I would really like to test out how big of a difference a slight weapon damage point or attack animation time increase would make for Bronze-Diamond players compared to Masters-GM players controlling them. Again, idk that an update/nerf needs to happen for high-level or lower-level Protoss yet, nobody really seems to be trying anything against it and just jumping aboard the hate train. But if it does, I'd like it to be something very small that might make using them a little more difficult or less effective for lower/average-skill players but not change much for pros and certainly something that doesn't make the Adept into a different unit (by removing Psionic Transfer or drastically changing Shade behavior).
If people are still talking/complaining about it in the same way in a week (outside of the people who complain about everything every week) I'd be honestly surprised.
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
herO won ST because his adepts/phoenixes style is second to none. He always drags his phoenixes to draw the WMs friend-fire shots to Medivacs and Marines. That is how he won AKA his control! Without that control, he would be run over by MMM combo. No one seems to notice that.
I do agree we should nerf the cool-down of Adepts a bit to make the shading part is a bit more tricky but that should be all. I'm playing Zerg and get bullied with adepts pressure all the time but I still think nerfing adepts too much is simply a WRONG move. Maybe, reducing the pick-up range of Warm Prism is a welcome change for Zerg .
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
herO won ST because his adepts/phoenixes style is second to none. He always drags his phoenixes to draw the WMs friend-fire shots to Medivacs and Marines. That is how he won AKA his control! Without that control, he would be run over by MMM combo. No one seems to notice that.
I do agree we should nerf the cool-down of Adepts a bit to make the shading part is a bit more tricky but that should be all. I'm playing Zerg and get bullied with adepts pressure all the time but I still think nerfing adepts too much is simply a WRONG move. Maybe, reducing the pick-up range of Warm Prism is a welcome change for Zerg .
ByuN 3raxed his way to victory? Yeah sure he didn't at all play all 3 matchups and he was just a 3rax cheeser, what did I just read. Meanwhile herO beat Gumiho TY and aLive and a lone zerg, ByuL, on his way to victory. herO won because he had the right bracket at the right time (mine nerf), with good preparation for ByuL.
On April 13 2017 00:23 Sakat wrote: I will not pretend I'm any sort of expert on anything, just share my experience playing...
I play all three races (depending on how I feel at any given day) and when I play as P, I literally only make adepts + something for AA, most people at my level just kinda die to it anyway because neither of us can micro properly or defend multiple locations correctly... Adepts got me into Plat when I can't even reach Silver with Z and am struggling to climb out of Gold with T...
Protoss was my weakest race in HotS...
Just because Protoss was your least-winning race in HotS and your most-winning race in LotV doesn't mean that Protoss is stronger than Terran or Zerg. It could be that you're just better at playing P altogether, or have learned and gotten better as a P player since HotS more than you have with Z or T, and it's very possible that your T and Z builds or playstyles are bad and have nothing to do with balance whatsoever. You really have to look at your playstyle, how well you understand and play each race, and examine the games themselves, and then you have to compare that to information from several other people from various ranks and compare that to information from other people in various ranks who play differently from the first group of people...
That'd be the analytical thing to do if you really want to draw the conclusions you seem to want to draw. On their own it doesn't really mean a whole lot. However, if you're using strong/meta builds all around and you feel that you have the same skill level with all of the races then I'd love to see some games and look at them myself out of curiosity.
On April 12 2017 20:29 VHbb wrote: Maybe it's dumb (not sure why funny ) but I still have not read a set of "RTS rules" to take as a reference for these discussions. Usually this argument is called when something is not liked by someone very vocal, in order to justify some changes / nerfs. I don't care at all about these "rules" (especially since nobody knows them apparently), if I like the game it can break all the invented rules you want, it will still be worth playing
He gave you "one rule" : defenders advantage
Units appear where the production is built and thus (usually) have to move to the battle on the other side of the map which gives the opponent 1. defenders advantage since his production is closer to the battle than yours 2. defenders advantage because he can scout for reinforcements and maybe interfere
Warpgate is a problem in that regard, as is the current nydus worm as well
Also warpgates themselves allow for such strong timings because as soon as the production facility is built you can instantly get value out of it without waiting for one cycle.
I mean this was said over and over again in the past years but warpgates are a bad game mechanic, at least as a core production mechanic. It might work as a lategame upgrade of some sorts.
Firstly, people always talk about this as if Warp Prisms give all of that for free with a 100% guarantee, but they cost resources (minerals, gas, and time) in addition to Gateways and Pylons to function, just like how a Nydus costs resources in addition to Larvae and Overlords, and you are never guaranteed to get value from either of these. On the contrary, these are usually used on the fly or in timing attacks which are made to happen by cutting corners and taking risks.
Secondly, if the Protoss player loses their Warp Gate then the strategy of warping in units on your opponent's side of the battlefield is impossible, just like how destroying a Nydus makes it impossible for Zerg to endlessly swarm into your base, which makes people think about whether or not using them would be worthwhile. Warp Prisms are more central to the Protoss playstyle than Nydus, sure, but Protoss also doesn't have Creep or Medivacs that allow their units to zip around the map willy nilly so it balances them out against Z and T.
Thirdly, on your side of the map it's much easier to shut down both of these because of the defender's advantage which, despite what people say, still exists when Warp Prisms and Nydus are used. The majority of the time they are active they are on the opponents side of the map, not your own, which weakens your own base defenses as well. The defender's advantage is actually made more interesting and complex when these exist, which is a good thing for an RTS, not a bad thing.
--
Now, some thoughts I have on the idea that units you don't like should be removed from the game in some capacity. This goes for Warp Gate/Prisms, Adepts/Shades, and any unit, mechanic, or playstyle in a strategy game, but for the purposes of this discussion I won't talk about strategies that are removed because they actually break the game or ruin other players gaming experiences entirely (such as Turtling, increasing RNG, or Blue Control in Magic: the Gathering).
Eliminating interactions without providing new ones is bad game design, especially when you eliminate something without providing a solid reason for it. If you take something away with a solid reason, you also better provide something new to replace it with. Look at Magic: the Gathering for example (or Hearthstone, YuGiOh, Pokémon). They take away cards and strategies from Standard play (you can think of it like Ladder Seasons) very often. However, every time they remove cards they give players new ones with similar or entirely new potential strategies. When they take away things and don't give players new things it ruins the game, people don't buy cards, and WOTC (MtG overlords) loses money and stop paying people to make MtG, which is why they very very rarely take away anyone's cards outright (and when they do they provide a lengthy explanation about why), and is the same reason why you can't just demand that Blizz "Gets rid of X unit now!" in StarCraft/StarCraft 2. That would actually kill the game. So please stop with adding to the nonsensical attitude of "delete this from the game it's horrible" without thinking about the bigger picture. On top of that, I don't think it's healthy for someone personally, on a mental or physical level, to think/act like this either.
Maybe I'm literally the only one who sees things like this idk. If someone has a better argument in favor deleting units outright then I'd love to hear it. Otherwise it looks like the thread is starting to devolve so I'm out before I devolve along with it. xD
On April 13 2017 00:23 Sakat wrote: I will not pretend I'm any sort of expert on anything, just share my experience playing...
I play all three races (depending on how I feel at any given day) and when I play as P, I literally only make adepts + something for AA, most people at my level just kinda die to it anyway because neither of us can micro properly or defend multiple locations correctly... Adepts got me into Plat when I can't even reach Silver with Z and am struggling to climb out of Gold with T...
Protoss was my weakest race in HotS...
Can confirm.A fter LoTV out I switched from T to P because I saw Adepts winning every pro game. I didn't lose any games upto plat dispite not playing toss before. And yes all I did was mass adepts with +1/glaves and warp prism. Could have probably gone into dia with it but I stopped playing for a while.
edit: then again you could copy any allin from a GSL/proleague game and win against plat players regardless of balance
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
herO won ST because his adepts/phoenixes style is second to none. He always drags his phoenixes to draw the WMs friend-fire shots to Medivacs and Marines. That is how he won AKA his control! Without that control, he would be run over by MMM combo. No one seems to notice that.
I do agree we should nerf the cool-down of Adepts a bit to make the shading part is a bit more tricky but that should be all. I'm playing Zerg and get bullied with adepts pressure all the time but I still think nerfing adepts too much is simply a WRONG move. Maybe, reducing the pick-up range of Warm Prism is a welcome change for Zerg .
ByuN 3raxed his way to victory? Yeah sure he didn't at all play all 3 matchups and he was just a 3rax cheeser, what did I just read. Meanwhile herO beat Gumiho TY and aLive and a lone zerg, ByuL, on his way to victory. herO won because he had the right bracket at the right time (mine nerf), with good preparation for ByuL.
My point was his 3-rax-reapers cheese build was unbeatable at the time. He basically won every match with that build and no one seems to complain about that part. In fact, he was winning with that build because of his control, not necessarily that reapers with KD8 was OP. So adepts + phoenixes combo is not always winning without a superior control. I hate when people use one single unit to delegitimize someone's win. Will see if next time Terran win a tournament and people start to whine about WM and Liberators again. God forbids Zerg may win something and someone may want to make a case of Ultra OP or Ravenger OP.
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
I would trade shade ability for a bounce attack instead, like in lotv alpha. There could be even a shield nerf; this way their role as anti-light low hp unit become more defined, while zealot keep the tanky role.
Still, with so many high dps aoe units from zergs and terran, Zealot become just a mineral waste in line fight since they get melted. They are extremly usefull in harassing, especially when charge is researched.
I think they should be more tanky in late game: by adding a reserchable passive upgrade or just making their armor and shield scale better in late game.
Without adept mobility protoss would then need something else to harass, maybe a revert to prism nerf could be useful
On April 13 2017 02:20 Weltall wrote: I would trade shade ability for a bounce attack instead, like in lotv alpha. There could be even a shield nerf; this way their role as anti-light low hp unit become more defined, while zealot keep the tanky role.
Still, with so many high dps aoe units from zergs and terran, Zealot become just a mineral waste in line fight since they get melted. They are extremly usefull in harassing, especially when charge is researched.
I think they should be more tanky in late game: by adding a reserchable passive upgrade or just making their armor and shield scale better in late game.
Without adept mobility protoss would then need something else to harass, maybe a revert to prism nerf could be useful
I was under the belief that adepts were tanky as hell. I guess they just give that "GODDAMMIT HOW CAN FOUR ADEPTS FINISH A WHOLE MINERAL IN THE TIME IT TAKES MY WHOLE ARMY TO KILL THEM".
I think someone mentioned earlier that they have the combo of being tanky, high dps (vs light), and insane mobility. Every other unit only has 2 of those max, which makes them insane harassers. Although the harassment can be dealt with as terran even if it's difficult. It's more the adept-pheonix armies which are impossible to beat straight up. Maybe Terran can win if they just bunker up for 15 mins or so (blink stalker allins all over again lol)
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
herO won ST because his adepts/phoenixes style is second to none. He always drags his phoenixes to draw the WMs friend-fire shots to Medivacs and Marines. That is how he won AKA his control! Without that control, he would be run over by MMM combo. No one seems to notice that.
I do agree we should nerf the cool-down of Adepts a bit to make the shading part is a bit more tricky but that should be all. I'm playing Zerg and get bullied with adepts pressure all the time but I still think nerfing adepts too much is simply a WRONG move. Maybe, reducing the pick-up range of Warm Prism is a welcome change for Zerg .
People did complain alot about reapers and they did get nerfed. Also I dont understand how some people pretend protoss never wins anything...
On April 12 2017 20:29 VHbb wrote: Maybe it's dumb (not sure why funny ) but I still have not read a set of "RTS rules" to take as a reference for these discussions. Usually this argument is called when something is not liked by someone very vocal, in order to justify some changes / nerfs. I don't care at all about these "rules" (especially since nobody knows them apparently), if I like the game it can break all the invented rules you want, it will still be worth playing
He gave you "one rule" : defenders advantage
Units appear where the production is built and thus (usually) have to move to the battle on the other side of the map which gives the opponent 1. defenders advantage since his production is closer to the battle than yours 2. defenders advantage because he can scout for reinforcements and maybe interfere
Warpgate is a problem in that regard, as is the current nydus worm as well
Also warpgates themselves allow for such strong timings because as soon as the production facility is built you can instantly get value out of it without waiting for one cycle.
I mean this was said over and over again in the past years but warpgates are a bad game mechanic, at least as a core production mechanic. It might work as a lategame upgrade of some sorts.
Firstly, people always talk about this as if Warp Prisms give all of that for free with a 100% guarantee, but they cost resources (minerals, gas, and time) in addition to Gateways and Pylons to function, just like how a Nydus costs resources in addition to Larvae and Overlords, and you are never guaranteed to get value from either of these. On the contrary, these are usually used on the fly or in timing attacks which are made to happen by cutting corners and taking risks.
Secondly, if the Protoss player loses their Warp Gate then the strategy of warping in units on your opponent's side of the battlefield is impossible, just like how destroying a Nydus makes it impossible for Zerg to endlessly swarm into your base, which makes people think about whether or not using them would be worthwhile. Warp Prisms are more central to the Protoss playstyle than Nydus, sure, but Protoss also doesn't have Creep or Medivacs that allow their units to zip around the map willy nilly so it balances them out against Z and T.
Thirdly, on your side of the map it's much easier to shut down both of these because of the defender's advantage which, despite what people say, still exists when Warp Prisms and Nydus are used. The majority of the time they are active they are on the opponents side of the map, not your own, which weakens your own base defenses as well. The defender's advantage is actually made more interesting and complex when these exist, which is a good thing for an RTS, not a bad thing.
--
Now, some thoughts I have on the idea that units you don't like should be removed from the game in some capacity. This goes for Warp Gate/Prisms, Adepts/Shades, and any unit, mechanic, or playstyle in a strategy game, but for the purposes of this discussion I won't talk about strategies that are removed because they actually break the game or ruin other players gaming experiences entirely (such as Turtling, increasing RNG, or Blue Control in Magic: the Gathering).
Eliminating interactions without providing new ones is bad game design, especially when you eliminate something without providing a solid reason for it. If you take something away with a solid reason, you also better provide something new to replace it with. Look at Magic: the Gathering for example (or Hearthstone, YuGiOh, Pokémon). They take away cards and strategies from Standard play (you can think of it like Ladder Seasons) very often. However, every time they remove cards they give players new ones with similar or entirely new potential strategies. When they take away things and don't give players new things it ruins the game, people don't buy cards, and WOTC (MtG overlords) loses money and stop paying people to make MtG, which is why they very very rarely take away anyone's cards outright (and when they do they provide a lengthy explanation about why), and is the same reason why you can't just demand that Blizz "Gets rid of X unit now!" in StarCraft/StarCraft 2. That would actually kill the game. So please stop with adding to the nonsensical attitude of "delete this from the game it's horrible" without thinking about the bigger picture. On top of that, I don't think it's healthy for someone personally, on a mental or physical level, to think/act like this either.
Maybe I'm literally the only one who sees things like this idk. If someone has a better argument in favor deleting units outright then I'd love to hear it. Otherwise it looks like the thread is starting to devolve so I'm out before I devolve along with it. xD
Well first i talked about the idea of producing units anywhere on the map as long as there is a pylon or warp prism as the core production method. That you won't be able guaranteed to warp into the enemy base with a warp prism all the time, sure. That it costs ressources, well yeah. But a pylon which can be anywhere really? You might say you should know exactly what is going on in the near proximation of your base and while there is truth to it at the end of the day you a) cannot have full information and b) the protoss can protect said pylon/warpprism, etc. They tried to change it over time to make it harder, like with the added warpin time, etc. But at the end of the day these are bandaid fixes which don't adres the fundamental flaw of the warpgate design. You are right in saying that protoss as it is needs it, but that's the thing isn't it? Protoss was built around that idea. I really don't get your point about it being a more interesting form of defenders advantage when warpins/nydus are used. Makes no sense to me tbh. It simply weakens the defenders advantage of the opponent, there really isn't more to it than that. You can argue that the nydus comes at least somewhat late, but the strength of it is still quite broken as a concept. Literally as much units as you want can move through it, it cannot be destroyed while building, etc. It's actually bonkers. (it is still kinda underused outside of simple "nydus in your base" cases i think, though that could be because of the cost for sure) Warp prisms aren't quite on the lvl of strength, but it also doesn't cost as much which is why you see multiple prisms flying around now.
About your second paragraph. I mean nobody wants to remove things without changing others, at least noone reasonable. Like i for example don't wanna remove warpgates and leave protoss as it is. That would be incredibly bad. Same for any other complaint you will see from me. I won't add it every time ("hey you need to rework other aspects then!") because it's kinda common sense i think. With that being said. I think if the units are well designed you really don't need a lot per race. I would argue that sc2 already has cases where units overlap to some extent and there simply will be a "better" one for a specific meta (usually leaning towards mobility) Like you probably don't want to add a new piece to chess (i usually hate these analogies but hey that one kinda works) Also again, removing something surely would come with reworks somewhere else. Nobody here wants to play marines vs zerglings vs zealots
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
herO won ST because his adepts/phoenixes style is second to none. He always drags his phoenixes to draw the WMs friend-fire shots to Medivacs and Marines. That is how he won AKA his control! Without that control, he would be run over by MMM combo. No one seems to notice that.
I do agree we should nerf the cool-down of Adepts a bit to make the shading part is a bit more tricky but that should be all. I'm playing Zerg and get bullied with adepts pressure all the time but I still think nerfing adepts too much is simply a WRONG move. Maybe, reducing the pick-up range of Warm Prism is a welcome change for Zerg .
People did complain alot about reapers and they did get nerfed. Also I dont understand how some people pretend protoss never wins anything...
Yah, I agree with cool-down nerf which I think should be the case for Adepts as well. But people here clearly Terran-biased as they want to remove the shade and then reduce health. Basically, want to make Adepts completely useless so Terran can win tournament again after we already have Inno and TY won IEMs.
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
It's amazingly funny how everyone is like "you can only phoenix/adept else you die to tanks!!" but it's really not that easy to die to tanks when you do something else. Anyways the game was better before the 3.8 tankivac nerf and all other units changes :/, they should have just changed the ultras and the things that were wrong in ZvP and call it a day.
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
It's amazingly funny how everyone is like "you can only phoenix/adept else you die to tanks!!" but it's really not that easy to die to tanks when you do something else. Anyways the game was better before the 3.8 tankivac nerf and all other units changes :/, they should have just changed the ultras and the things that were wrong in ZvP and call it a day.
Of course, it was better for you as Terran because nothing was more ridiculous than a Medivac picking up a sieged tank and dropping it everywhere to harass your opponent to death with one sieged tank alone.
I can say the same about A/P as it is not really that easy to die to A/P when you do something else like mass WMs in early game!
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
It's amazingly funny how everyone is like "you can only phoenix/adept else you die to tanks!!" but it's really not that easy to die to tanks when you do something else. Anyways the game was better before the 3.8 tankivac nerf and all other units changes :/, they should have just changed the ultras and the things that were wrong in ZvP and call it a day.
Tankivac singlehandedly made me leave the game. It was so so so fucking stupid.
On April 10 2017 09:44 showstealer1829 wrote: TL:DR
Says this isn't a Balance Whine thread
Proceeds to Balance Whine for 15 paragraphs.
The problem isn't Adept, It's that Protoss has literally no other options but Adept. Everything else has been either nerfed into the ground or due to changes in warp in times make it no longer viable, Protoss live and die by doing early damage and Phoenix Adept is about the only way you can still do it, take away that and what's the point in us even playing?
This is the problem if the complaint is really about the adept not being a fun unit to play with. Don't nerf adept, make it less crucial to gameplay - when it isn't required to compete on equal footing then you have the option to use it or not depending on if you enjoy using it.
On April 13 2017 00:23 Sakat wrote: I will not pretend I'm any sort of expert on anything, just share my experience playing...
I play all three races (depending on how I feel at any given day) and when I play as P, I literally only make adepts + something for AA, most people at my level just kinda die to it anyway because neither of us can micro properly or defend multiple locations correctly... Adepts got me into Plat when I can't even reach Silver with Z and am struggling to climb out of Gold with T...
Protoss was my weakest race in HotS...
I felt the same way last year with 16 marine medivac timing. I didn't know how to do SHIT as Terran except that and holy hell every Zerg crumbled to it. Because I knew exactly how it beat me every time I faced it.
Even without thinking you have great micro, knowing how to execute something challenging is a big pain in the butt for your opponent.
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
It's amazingly funny how everyone is like "you can only phoenix/adept else you die to tanks!!" but it's really not that easy to die to tanks when you do something else. Anyways the game was better before the 3.8 tankivac nerf and all other units changes :/, they should have just changed the ultras and the things that were wrong in ZvP and call it a day.
Tankivac singlehandedly made me leave the game. It was so so so fucking stupid.
I dunno it is far less stupid than raven harass, doom drops being even stronger in TvT because you can't use tankivacs with more tanks to deal with it, etc... Against roach/ravager it added micro possibilities etc... Was cooler than what we have now. TY vs ByuN or ByuN vs Ryung were superb TvT back then!
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
It's amazingly funny how everyone is like "you can only phoenix/adept else you die to tanks!!" but it's really not that easy to die to tanks when you do something else. Anyways the game was better before the 3.8 tankivac nerf and all other units changes :/, they should have just changed the ultras and the things that were wrong in ZvP and call it a day.
Tankivac singlehandedly made me leave the game. It was so so so fucking stupid.
I dunno it is far less stupid than raven harass, doom drops being even stronger in TvT because you can't use tankivacs with more tanks to deal with it, etc... Against roach/ravager it added micro possibilities etc... Was cooler than what we have now. TY vs ByuN or ByuN vs Ryung were superb TvT back then!
Doom drops are becoming less and less of an issue in TvT as Terrans get better at preventing/identifying them.
So far reading through the comments. I really like the idea of making warpgate tech a late game upgrade, either at robotics facility/twilight council, or at robotics bay/templar archives, or available to be built at both techways as to not force a protoss towards a specific tech path. Phasing mode for a warp prism could also be made into an upgrade. For example a robotics bay upgrade. The pickup area of the warp prism is also a bit silly...
To match this change, ignite afterburners should be made into an upgrade instead of coming standard with the medivac, either a starport or fusion core upgrade.
Zerg is quite balanced right now in terms of harrassment options
With these changes, I reckon harassment options will be slowed down in early game by a little bit. These are just my thoughts.
After these changes are made, then you can balance the Adept accordingly. Or, some of the other suggested can be implemented, such as shades having hp/ shades not having the ability to go over units, etc.
BUT I JUST WANT TO SAY, YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE COOL :D Merging the zealot and the adept into a unit, to shoot at long range and draw their blades at melee range ;D
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
It's amazingly funny how everyone is like "you can only phoenix/adept else you die to tanks!!" but it's really not that easy to die to tanks when you do something else. Anyways the game was better before the 3.8 tankivac nerf and all other units changes :/, they should have just changed the ultras and the things that were wrong in ZvP and call it a day.
Tankivac singlehandedly made me leave the game. It was so so so fucking stupid.
Oh you have no idea. As a Zerg, you had to get a freaking drop overlord with speed and load a queen or two and chasing the Tankivac around. That scene alone should be a meme and that is how ridiculous it is.
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
It's amazingly funny how everyone is like "you can only phoenix/adept else you die to tanks!!" but it's really not that easy to die to tanks when you do something else. Anyways the game was better before the 3.8 tankivac nerf and all other units changes :/, they should have just changed the ultras and the things that were wrong in ZvP and call it a day.
Tankivac singlehandedly made me leave the game. It was so so so fucking stupid.
I dunno it is far less stupid than raven harass, doom drops being even stronger in TvT because you can't use tankivacs with more tanks to deal with it, etc... Against roach/ravager it added micro possibilities etc... Was cooler than what we have now. TY vs ByuN or ByuN vs Ryung were superb TvT back then!
Doom drops are becoming less and less of an issue in TvT as Terrans get better at preventing/identifying them.
Maybe but we could have said the same thing about tankivac...
On April 12 2017 02:48 icesergio wrote: The hypocrisy of the people contributing to this thread, in primis the OP himself is absolutely mind baffling. I'm going to quote The Joker and say "Terran wins a major and nobody bats an eye, Protoss wins a major tournament and everybody loses their minds" Trying to win an arguement as a Protoss player, like MCanning said, is near impossible, trying to talk sense to you is also impossibile, because understanding that every race has their gimmicks and accepting that is just too much for your ant dimensioned brains, so here I propose another arguement: Win rates are MOSTLY balanced, and when I say MOSTLY I don't mean Protoss favoured, I mean Terran or Zerg favoured.
I love how you try to mask your whining with phrases like "It's boring to watch" or "It is a bad design gameplay wise"
It's a good thing we have all you Real Time Strategy gurus, seriously, I wouldn't know what to do without you! /s
Every race has a frustrating gimmicky unit that serves no purpose other than to keep win rates in the 50-50 zone, Terran has Stimmed Marauders that FYI deal more DPS than Immortals when stimmed vs Armored targets (which makes complete sense doesn't it?) Widow mine drops are probably the most frustrating thing to deal with as Protoss, the fact that Immortals completely melt against the new siege tank...
Ravagers that can kite almost every Protoss ground unit even off creep and have no PROPER counter due to the lack of either a light or armored tag. (Archons, thanks to the +bio damage) are the ONLY unit that Protoss has that deals additional damage directly, but thanks to their 3 range they can be kited by Ravagers all day. Forget catching Ravagers without Disruptors and/or Chargelots.
So just SUCK it up, accept that Protoss is part of the game and as such can also WIN tournaments and, just like any of you would say to one of us the moment we even tried to propose a nerf to one of your much loved units "Git Gud"
Dude, I applaud you so much right now. ByuN 3-rax-reaper his way to victories (BlizzCon and GSL) and no one said a damn thing. Protoss won GSL and Super Tournament and giant explosion of "Adept is OP" following. People think adepts and phoenixes are like piece of cake. Spamming them and win. Yah right. If Terran turtle up and bunkers, WMs and tanks, they should be fine. By the time, they get enough Marauders and WMs, they will bully the Protoss big time. No one seems to whine about that. Many Terrans like to push prematurely vs Adepts/Phoenixes (like 2 Medivacs + 16 marines with no stim), lose and then whine adepts are OP.
ByuN 3-raxed in like 3 maps in all of blizzcon and barely ever in GSL. Most his games were won through marine pushes and harass. And btw EVERYONE agreed 3rax was broken at the time. I can't remember people saying it was balanced (they probably did idk, some people defend anything) although byuN did have the best control, there's no way to stop it being efficient
TY did a tank push twice in IEM, while winning many long macro games. And everyone still agreed it's OP vs robo
herO massed 2 units every game of the tournament near enough and none of the terrans could do anything. Until terran players can actually win against it, there's no way to call it balanced.
Remember when people said PvT was balanced in 2014? when every game was either blink allin or 3 base deathball being unstoppable? Yeah, that
herO didn't mass Adepts/Phoenixes every game. He did in fact lose one game (Game 4) which was really the case of "massing". Also, Terran is not always losing to mass adepts/phoenixes. herO wins some and lose some. Also, what else can Protoss do to win vs T? Robo play and then as you said it, they do Tanks push and you die. Adepts/Phoenixes play is at least viable. Until you somehow allow Protoss to win vs T in another way then by all mean, nerfing A/P.
It's amazingly funny how everyone is like "you can only phoenix/adept else you die to tanks!!" but it's really not that easy to die to tanks when you do something else. Anyways the game was better before the 3.8 tankivac nerf and all other units changes :/, they should have just changed the ultras and the things that were wrong in ZvP and call it a day.
Tankivac singlehandedly made me leave the game. It was so so so fucking stupid.
Oh you have no idea. As a Zerg, you had to get a freaking drop overlord with speed and load a queen or two and chasing the Tankivac around. That scene alone should be a meme and that is how ridiculous it is.
You didn't have to do that. It was one solution, but you'll damage the medivac enough to push it away eventually with just your normal amount of queens without drops or anything.
Lets not blow this out of proportion - I didn't like tankivacs either, but you didn't have to chase it around with queens in an overlord lol.
community update discussed nerfing shade cooldown by 3s, or a 10hp nerf, then changing some things with the other core unit(s) like the zealot to make them more appealing to play with.
over in the thread they're talking about doing both.
personally i wouldn't mind if adept shades could not be selected or redirected. it would be one move and you would have to plan ahead. on top of this I would like it if shade has a specific cast range, making the unit overall much more hectic and unforgiving to use.
A cooldown nerf won't change why this unit is overperforming right now. A cooldown nerf will only nerf the harassment potential >>sometimes<<. It would be a very situational.
If we keep shades in the game the way they are, then i'd suggest to reduce adepts HP or DPS.
On April 10 2017 05:11 Eternal Dalek wrote: 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.
I don't like this turtle fest style you like. I prefer a game where you have many options, players with better control can do more with it, and its not about breaking sieges its more about deciding on what to make and where to send and position it. I think the game is actually in a pretty great state all 3 races feel like they have a chance and good balance. And the game remains so that all 3 of these happen where a player with more skill is more likely to win. I feel that the adepts causes this more than the mass aoe alternatives.
Right now the adept is the protoss marine and the protoss reaper. For it to find a comfortable place in the game it needs to only fill one of those roles, or at least only one at a time.
On April 10 2017 05:21 JackONeill wrote: 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.
The first element I think is part of the design (for better or for worse) as these are supposed to be nimble assassin style units, kind of like the Reaper.
The second element is something I hadn't really thought too much about, but it's extremely important. It's perhaps the most critical part of why Adepts are the backbone of every Protoss army. Nice job articulating it.
In Beta, Adepts could not cancel their shade ability, and they were very weak. There was a definite "commitment cost" to using it. If you used your shade then saw a horde of units waiting for you, you often couldn't pull back in time and would end up feeding away your Adepts. So we don't want that, because these are supposed to be useful for scouting. But now that the shade is cancelable at any time, the pendulum has swung too far the other way.
My recommendation would be for the shade cancel window to be 3 seconds. If you don't cancel in 3 seconds, your opponent will know that you are committed to teleporting your Adepts. This still gives you some wiggle room to scout for free, but not as far. And, if you intended to cancel but missed the window, you can still manually move your shades back without losing ground (say, 3 seconds to run them forward and 3 seconds to run back to your origin).
I just don't like how Adepts are tanky and literally can't take any damage during shades, meaning they can literally surround armies especially early-mid game without any punishment or defense. Basically any other unit in the game is never "invincible": cloaked banshees can be detected, DTs as well, etc. With adepts, there's nothing to do until they are on top of your army or in three mineral lines.
I understand P needs harassment options, but I like some of the suggestions reducing HP or shade time, etc.
I do not like to use the adept, I'd rather would like the zealot as the core unit for P. However, I do not know how to accomplish this. My best guess would be to remove the +light from adept and add it to zealot? But then the zealot would be too strong with charge upgrade (?). Sadly I do not have the expertise to make the zealot more and the adept less relevant because this concerns balance.
So here is my suggestion to at least make the adept more fun for all parties:
The shade should be activated by clicking on a target location and the shade cannot be controlled anymore. Cancel should still be allowed though. No timer on the shade. It finishes immediately when the location is reached. Of course there must be a maximum (casting (?)) distance for the ability.
Why do I think this is a good solution: This significantly reduces the complexity needed for the execution of the ability, but retains a high skill ceiling. + Show Spoiler +
Example: Chess is a successful game because it is easy to play, but it is difficult to master. Though you could argue the castling in chess is quite weird, but I guess it was introduced because it provided significant benefit to the game.
The ability is easy to use, because you only have to click a target location and then you can forget about it. + Show Spoiler +
The current implementation is not intuitive: As a beginner it is not clear how the shade works. Is the adept itself selected after the ability or the shade selected as default? How do hotgroups with shades works? Do I cancel the shading with the shade or the real unit? Also that the shade looks different and moves different from normal units does not help. - At least for me it is really confusing. (Of course these questions are easy to answer if you try them out, but keep in mind you have to muscle-memorize those)
The skill ceiling is high because it introduces a real strategy/mind game component for both players. + Show Spoiler +
You have to think beforehand where the units of your opponents will probably be. Your opponent has to find out where your units are headed. The sooner the better. It might be even possible for the defender to set traps beforehand since the adept user has to set the location beforehand. I believe this interaction makes positional play more interesting for both sides. Also I love watching/playing mind games. Well, is there someone who doesn't?
Shading on tanks is more "interactive". You can teleport faster because the ability finishes as soon as the units reach their positions. But during the transfer the terran might guess your destination and outplay you.
Also you could "blink micro" your adepts in combat which should compensate the slight nerf overall. (Probably a nerf overall? I am not sure.). + Show Spoiler +
FYI I love blink stalkers. I love them. I really do.
A fudge factor for balancing would be the ability cool down.
Alternatively: Queue up movement with adept and activate ability. The shade then completes the previously queued up movements (of course within the maximum shade distance). Again: The move commands cannot be changed after the ability is activated. This alternative allows for more complex movements.
I also like the suggestion that units should block adept shade, but then I think adepts shading on top of terran bio might be necessary (for balance or because its an interesting interaction).
INnoVation vs. sOs on Abyssal Reef basically perfectly showed why i don't enjoy LotV since launch and why i made this thread. Over 50 worker kills on 2base. That's just not the star craft anymore that i used to love.
*Edit: It's really not about balance. Protoss is clearly beatable. It's not about stats, it's about how units interact with each other. How matchups play out. My point is that adepts (and a lot more lotv units/mechanics) simply don't create good RTS gameplay.
INnoVation vs. sOs on Abyssal Reef basically perfectly showed why i don't enjoy LotV since launch and why i made this thread. Over 50 worker kills on 2base. That's just not the star craft anymore that i used to love.
INnoVation vs. sOs on Abyssal Reef basically perfectly showed why i don't enjoy LotV since launch and why i made this thread. Over 50 worker kills on 2base. That's just not the star craft anymore that i used to love.
On April 13 2017 08:28 AssyrianKing wrote: So far reading through the comments. I really like the idea of making warpgate tech a late game upgrade, either at robotics facility/twilight council, or at robotics bay/templar archives, or available to be built at both techways as to not force a protoss towards a specific tech path. Phasing mode for a warp prism could also be made into an upgrade. For example a robotics bay upgrade. The pickup area of the warp prism is also a bit silly...
You can't cater to the anti Protoss circle jerk. You can remove the Adept, then it's remove the Warp Gate, then when you remove the Warp Gate, it's remove the Mothership Core, then it's the Sentry and then the Dark Templar. It just goes on and on constantly and you better just try and shut it out.
Addition, of the Adept really hasn't improved the game. If it were replaced with another unit (or Zealot buffed instead), then not only the game would be more fun to watch and play, but I think that Warp Prism would be fine, and even the slow warpin on Pylons without gateway would be unnecessary (which I think was a somewhat awkward ad hoc fix that still doesn't feel right).
The problem is not fixable by tweaking numbers, the unit has a wrong design from its core and is kept on life support like Swarm Host..at least SH did go through a radical change which did help the situation somewhat. The problem with radical change of Adept is that it likely won't fix the overlap with Zealot and Stalker. Zealot/Stalker/Sentry is a perfect gateway trio design wise.
Others have made this point that i agree with... 2 expansions forced Blizzard to create too many units per race. This gives units such a narrow role that there is constant angst about how the unit should fit into the rest of a race's army. In turn, every tweak sparks an endless debate over whether or not a unit is stepping on the toes of another unit's defined role.
That said, the game is still fun. its not a game breaking issue, but it is noticeable relative to other RTS games with fewer units per faction/race.
The opponent can't counter micro or make decisions vs adepts? This couldn't be further away from the truth!
If adepts follow you, you can move to a disadvantages position for adepts: Tank range + kite back, move over wm and kite back, use medivacs to lift up and boost into the base, ...
Also how do you split your units, how do you position your buildings and and and... There is a lot of decision making!
If you look adepts vs other units, adepts are not cost efficient. They depend on shading to work.
The only thing that bothers me is that adepts snowball very fast if you are a bad player. Lower league player are bad at splitting units. Adepts shade where the opponent has less units, kill them and shade away. After a few cycles protoss has enough adepts to overrun the opponent.
INnoVation vs. sOs on Abyssal Reef basically perfectly showed why i don't enjoy LotV since launch and why i made this thread. Over 50 worker kills on 2base. That's just not the star craft anymore that i used to love.
*Edit: It's really not about balance. Protoss is clearly beatable. It's not about stats, it's about how units interact with each other. How matchups play out. My point is that adepts (and a lot more lotv units/mechanics) simply don't create good RTS gameplay.
Sooo you weren't there for HotS or what? Remember Hellion TvT? Oracles? Blue flame Hellions? Adepts are a joke in comparison.
LotV is fine, stop with the ridiculous hyperbole. Yes Adepts needed a nerf but its probably fine now.
And you can 100% micro against Adepts. Yeah you gotta keep up with the shades, but that is 100% possible.
On April 10 2017 04:12 Eternal Dalek wrote: 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.
Excellently put. Day[9] loves StarCraft, but in his video about Starbow he subtly shows his disdain for SC2, and it is for that very reason. In SC2 you need certain units and abilities to counter other units, positioning and micro be damned. Against someone with equal skill you can't micro and position Mutalisks to a victory versus Phoenixes.
I queue up this video to one of the times talks about it.
what if shade was an upgrade? but not on a structure, but you upgrade the units individually kinda like zerg. It doesn't cost resources, it just costs time. Maybe once you get warp gate available, any warped in adepts automatically get shade.
On April 19 2017 23:30 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Others have made this point that i agree with... 2 expansions forced Blizzard to create too many units per race. This gives units such a narrow role that there is constant angst about how the unit should fit into the rest of a race's army. In turn, every tweak sparks an endless debate over whether or not a unit is stepping on the toes of another unit's defined role.
That said, the game is still fun. its not a game breaking issue, but it is noticeable relative to other RTS games with fewer units per faction/race.
i absolutely agree with you. I think the addition of even more units was one of the biggest mistakes blizzard did. I feel like the balance team never wanted to go this way, but the PR team basically told them to add more units.
A prime example is the liberator. It's AA did what thors are supposed to do and now they simply nerfed the AA into something that can't even hunt down overlords. They didn't change the design of the liberator, they just nerfed it. Also the AtG mode is basically doing the siegetanks job.
Protoss got adepts in order to buff gateway tech and robo tech got nerfed. In theory this is something good, but i think some kind of stalker buff would've been a lot more interesting. Instead they decided to add this terrible unit.
The biggest mistake of SC2 multi design was the expansions. I'm saying that from the beginning. They should have added all the units they planned to be in this game from the first moment instead of cutting some out for future expansions. HotS and LotV should have been only an expansion to the single and coop. Imagine if Jaedong had Lurkers in HotS or stronger Hydras. Imagine we had 7 years of balancing by now... In what shape this game could have been. Instead in every few years the balancing had to be restarted again and again, and we can all see the result. After all those years this game still has many flaws and loopholes.
On April 19 2017 23:30 JimmyJRaynor wrote: Others have made this point that i agree with... 2 expansions forced Blizzard to create too many units per race. This gives units such a narrow role that there is constant angst about how the unit should fit into the rest of a race's army. In turn, every tweak sparks an endless debate over whether or not a unit is stepping on the toes of another unit's defined role.
That said, the game is still fun. its not a game breaking issue, but it is noticeable relative to other RTS games with fewer units per faction/race.
Which is why they should have either 1. cut a Lot more units for WoL (say down to 6-7 combat units per race) OR 2. cut units for each expansion as well
I don't really agree that there are too many units in the game. I think most of the new units added something new and interesting to the game. The only redundant units we have right now are swarmhost (no role at all), tempest (extremely niche role and overlaps with carriers) and arguably the liberator (overlaps somewhat with siege tanks), other then that all the new units are clearly differenciated from the old units.
On April 19 2017 21:53 ejozl wrote: You can't cater to the anti Protoss circle jerk. You can remove the Adept, then it's remove the Warp Gate, then when you remove the Warp Gate, it's remove the Mothership Core, then it's the Sentry and then the Dark Templar. It just goes on and on constantly and you better just try and shut it out.
And this is mainly why I quit SC2.. The "foundation" of protoss hate was laid in 2010 to the "masses" from the two most mainstream players, and since then its just impossible to get respect as a protoss, even if you are Neeb level. It even happened in BW a bit with the whole stupid 1a2a3a junk, despite protoss having the lowest wins in OSL/MSL's. It's pretty frustrating.
On April 19 2017 23:26 seopthi wrote: Addition, of the Adept really hasn't improved the game. If it were replaced with another unit (or Zealot buffed instead), then not only the game would be more fun to watch and play, but I think that Warp Prism would be fine, and even the slow warpin on Pylons without gateway would be unnecessary (which I think was a somewhat awkward ad hoc fix that still doesn't feel right).
The problem is not fixable by tweaking numbers, the unit has a wrong design from its core and is kept on life support like Swarm Host..at least SH did go through a radical change which did help the situation somewhat. The problem with radical change of Adept is that it likely won't fix the overlap with Zealot and Stalker. Zealot/Stalker/Sentry is a perfect gateway trio design wise.
It's funny you say that last sentence, cause all everyone heard at the end of WOL/all of HotS was "Sentry is the wrong unit design from its core, and it should be removed instantly - until that point the game will always be imbalanced".
On April 19 2017 21:53 ejozl wrote: You can't cater to the anti Protoss circle jerk. You can remove the Adept, then it's remove the Warp Gate, then when you remove the Warp Gate, it's remove the Mothership Core, then it's the Sentry and then the Dark Templar. It just goes on and on constantly and you better just try and shut it out.
And this is mainly why I quit SC2.. The "foundation" of protoss hate was laid in 2010 to the "masses" from the two most mainstream players, and since then its just impossible to get respect as a protoss, even if you are Neeb level. It even happened in BW a bit with the whole stupid 1a2a3a junk, despite protoss having the lowest wins in OSL/MSL's. It's pretty frustrating.
One way to balance adept mobillty is to make the shade unable to pass through enemy units, it would allow for some counter play therefore making the interactions more fun/balanced.
Trying to wrap my head around the current state of the Adept is difficult, I feel like the new balance team needs to just do a redesign on the Adept and Sentry immediately...my two cents..
Adept Problem
1) Shade is a gimmick ability (not low skill) but is not a popular ability for a reason that prevents the Adept from just being an all around good unit. It completely negates building Zealots early to mid game as the Adept is just as tanky, possesses an ability like Psi Transfer, and is ranged. Currently it is a bulky (less now with HP nerf thank God) super Zealot until Twilight where Zealots get legs but if already heavily invested into Adepts, why not just more Adepts? Shade needs to go, plain and simple. Adept Solution(to both increase skill cap and make less of an early game powerhouse unit but scale well into the mid and late game, decreasing Protoss reliance on rushing Robo units or Skytoss)
2) Buff the Adept movement speed to be more agile and easier to micro like the Stalker is, this will raise the skill cap of Adepts in a very easy to way see, much like there is a huge difference between a random GM splitting his marines and watching Maru or Innovation split.
3) Change Glavie upgrade to a 200/200 upgrade, but also make it ignore armor on biological units, this will enable the Adept to truly be a front line fighter in the actual mid game (not EARLY mid game) especially against M/M/M/M and Roach/Hydralisk armies, both of which annihilate full Gateway compositions.
Why is shade a gimmicky ability? Could you expand on how raising adept movespeed would increase micro potential? At 4 range it has less than a bio ball. The only other interaction that ms buff would change is adepts getting to your base quicker which messes with PvZ and PvP a lot.
Don't wanna be that guy, but i still think adepts need to be redesigned.
It doesn't matter how you nerf the units' stats. The core issue is the shade ability. I wish protoss could have a unit that doesn't need shades to be useful.
The adept shade alone is obviously not the only problem. How is protoss supposed to engage into liberator/tank without shades ?
LotV brought too many new things that created too many bad gameplay elements and required a lot of band-aids in order to work out balance wise.
I honestly feel like LotV can't get into a really good spot, without reworking or removing multiple units.
The fact that every single protoss matchup revolves around dropping adept into mineral lines at some point is ridiculous. Even if you don't consider the frustration this induces, we've seen since november 2015 that even the best pros can't deal with it. It's stupid to have a unit that can be at two places at once.
On May 01 2017 19:12 StraKo wrote: Don't wanna be that guy, but i still think adepts need to be redesigned.
It doesn't matter how you nerf the units' stats. The core issue is the shade ability. I wish protoss could have a unit that doesn't need shades to be useful.
The adept shade alone is obviously not the only problem. How is protoss supposed to engage into liberator/tank without shades ?
LotV brought too many new things that created too many bad gameplay elements and required a lot of band-aids in order to work out balance wise.
I honestly feel like LotV can't get into a really good spot, without reworking or removing multiple units.
wholeheartedly agree ; unfortunately this is never going to happen.
On May 01 2017 19:12 StraKo wrote: Don't wanna be that guy, but i still think adepts need to be redesigned.
It doesn't matter how you nerf the units' stats. The core issue is the shade ability. I wish protoss could have a unit that doesn't need shades to be useful.
The adept shade alone is obviously not the only problem. How is protoss supposed to engage into liberator/tank without shades ?
LotV brought too many new things that created too many bad gameplay elements and required a lot of band-aids in order to work out balance wise.
I honestly feel like LotV can't get into a really good spot, without reworking or removing multiple units.
wholeheartedly agree ; unfortunately this is never going to happen.
Yea probably... It's really not understandable for me why blizzard is reacting so slow to obvious gameplay issues.
I know that some things need some time to get figured out, so that the best possible solutions can be found, but in lotv there is just so much overkill.
There is so much stuff in lotv that doesn't feel like "okay let it settle a few months and then we can see what's going on,..." They feel more like "how the hell did this even get out of beta ?"
LotV multiplayer development got rushed in my opinion. They screwed over so many basic designs and unit interactions. Instead of keeping the good and getting rid of the bad stuff, they just screwed everything over.
It's also interesting how they even tested things like automatic macro to make the game more accessible, while adding mechanics like adept shades, reaper grenades, 1base overlord drops, reduced ressources per base, pylon rushes, 8armor ultras/liberator,... etc. Just so many things that make the game almost impossible to enjoy for new players.
It feels like they had no real direction at this point. They were willing to change even the most fundamental RTS mechanics.
I dont know man.
As a veteran SC2 player, who invested a lot of time and passion into the game, it just feels kinda pointless to keep on playing at this point. SC2 is basically a hobby for me and unfortunately people changed it into a direction that i really don't like and that i can't understand and i just can't do anything about it. It's not in my hands, it's not in anybodys hands.
All i can do is hope that some day something will happen.
Until then i'll play a few ladder games a week and then quit again, because the game pisses me off so much.
It's sad.
I mean just look at the game, it could be so amazing. It has so much potential. SC2 could be so much better with so little effort, but just nothing happens.
Now they finally nerfed adepts, but instead of actually fixing the problem that adept shades create, they just nerf the HP a little bit.
BL/infestor, swarmhost/raven, 8armor ultra/liberator/skytoss/adepts,... All those "era's" hurt the game and the scene so much, but they just don't seem to learn from the past for some reason.
On May 01 2017 20:18 JackONeill wrote: The fact that every single protoss matchup revolves around dropping adept into mineral lines at some point is ridiculous. Even if you don't consider the frustration this induces, we've seen since november 2015 that even the best pros can't deal with it. It's stupid to have a unit that can be at two places at once.
How is this different from widow mine drops which destroy probes in seconds if you don't react?
On May 01 2017 20:18 JackONeill wrote: The fact that every single protoss matchup revolves around dropping adept into mineral lines at some point is ridiculous. Even if you don't consider the frustration this induces, we've seen since november 2015 that even the best pros can't deal with it. It's stupid to have a unit that can be at two places at once.
How is this really *that* different than Terrans dropping marines in every matchup.
Edit: I find Adepts really become problematic as they eclipse Zealots in terms of accessibility/function, I'd like to see changes to make zealots more viable in situations rather than adepts
The difference is that widowmines and marines don't have the ability to instantaneously teleport between mineral fields, nor do medivacs have the ability to warp down more marines and widowmines.
Whether or not you think the argument is valid, doesn't have any bearing on the fact that there are differences.
On May 01 2017 22:11 Dangermousecatdog wrote: The difference is that widowmines and marines don't have the ability to instantaneously teleport between mineral fields, nor do medivacs have the ability to warp down more marines and widowmines.
Whether or not you think the argument is valid, doesn't have any bearing on the fact that there are differences.
Everyone understands that there are differences in the units, but what's being argued is that "This shouldn't be happening every matchup" which is a weak argument at best because every race has a standard playstyle involving some sort of unit spam and (in this case) drop play.
So the question I posed was "Is it really *THAT* different?"
On May 01 2017 20:18 JackONeill wrote: The fact that every single protoss matchup revolves around dropping adept into mineral lines at some point is ridiculous. Even if you don't consider the frustration this induces, we've seen since november 2015 that even the best pros can't deal with it. It's stupid to have a unit that can be at two places at once.
How is this different from widow mine drops which destroy probes in seconds if you don't react?
How many pro games end because the player physically can't deal with nothing but widow mines being dropped? Not many. That's rare.
How many games end because adepts got warped in the main base and started shading everywhere? Even the best players in the world can't stop it half the time.
Its not even comparable. Widow mines and marines can't teleport between bases, and they're also not tanky as fuck. A couple overcharges and maybe a probe pull is usually enough to null small drops. Plus you cant warp in 8 at a time inside they're base.
Widow mines vs oracles? That's comparable I guess. But adepts are just broken
On May 01 2017 22:11 Dangermousecatdog wrote: The difference is that widowmines and marines don't have the ability to instantaneously teleport between mineral fields, nor do medivacs have the ability to warp down more marines and widowmines.
Whether or not you think the argument is valid, doesn't have any bearing on the fact that there are differences.
Everyone understands that there are differences in the units, but what's being argued is that "This shouldn't be happening every matchup" which is a weak argument at best because every race has a standard playstyle involving some sort of unit spam and (in this case) drop play.
So the question I posed was "Is it really *THAT* different?"
If pro players were constantly losing games to single medivac marine/mine drops at the start, then it would be a problem. But that rarely happens.
How often do you see pros lose once the first round of adepts is warped it? Every tournament
On May 01 2017 22:11 Dangermousecatdog wrote: The difference is that widowmines and marines don't have the ability to instantaneously teleport between mineral fields, nor do medivacs have the ability to warp down more marines and widowmines.
Whether or not you think the argument is valid, doesn't have any bearing on the fact that there are differences.
Everyone understands that there are differences in the units, but what's being argued is that "This shouldn't be happening every matchup" which is a weak argument at best because every race has a standard playstyle involving some sort of unit spam and (in this case) drop play.
So the question I posed was "Is it really *THAT* different?"
If pro players were constantly losing games to single medivac marine/mine drops at the start, then it would be a problem. But that rarely happens.
How often do you see pros lose once the first round of adepts is warped it? Every tournament
Well, maybe it's time for terrans to think how starport should be used rather than brainless medivac/liberator spam. It helps to have a viking or two on patrol to defend against warp prism.
I honestly don't know if my questions belongs to "ask and answer stupid questions" thread or here. Anyway, my 5 cents:
What if ghost's EMP could (1) cancel the shade or, in the opposite, (2) force it? I understand, ghost tech is a late game tool and EMP has many applications that are more useful.
(2) is quite nice in theory. Protoss usually shades in 10-15 adepts, sees 5 liberation zones, 3 widow mines, cancels the shades and seeks another angle of approach. With EMP risk Protoss has to be much more careful.
"Fixing" adepts is stupid easy. *When they are warped in from a prism/warpgate, Adepts start with shade on cool down. That severally diminishes the power of the warp prism + adept harassment without altering army strength, scouting, and traditional harassment from the unit. Defenders get roughly twice as long to deal with newly warped in adepts before any shade completes.
Early game adepts from a gateway will still be able to defend Reapers. Adepts will still be able to trade with light units, which is desperately needed from a gateway unit. Protoss will still have a traditional style harassment use for adepts - dropping four previously warped in units or running groups into bases - but those options carry more risk. In return for this shade nerf and the previous 10 HP nerf, you could reduce the cost of Charge and slightly buff Stalker DPS, mainly for AA.
On May 01 2017 22:11 Dangermousecatdog wrote: The difference is that widowmines and marines don't have the ability to instantaneously teleport between mineral fields, nor do medivacs have the ability to warp down more marines and widowmines.
Whether or not you think the argument is valid, doesn't have any bearing on the fact that there are differences.
Everyone understands that there are differences in the units, but what's being argued is that "This shouldn't be happening every matchup" which is a weak argument at best because every race has a standard playstyle involving some sort of unit spam and (in this case) drop play.
So the question I posed was "Is it really *THAT* different?"
I think the difference is that if you scout and prepare for terran marines/mine drops you can prepare and shut them down with relative ease. Thats just not the case with adepts.
On May 01 2017 22:11 Dangermousecatdog wrote: The difference is that widowmines and marines don't have the ability to instantaneously teleport between mineral fields, nor do medivacs have the ability to warp down more marines and widowmines.
Whether or not you think the argument is valid, doesn't have any bearing on the fact that there are differences.
Everyone understands that there are differences in the units, but what's being argued is that "This shouldn't be happening every matchup" which is a weak argument at best because every race has a standard playstyle involving some sort of unit spam and (in this case) drop play.
So the question I posed was "Is it really *THAT* different?"
If pro players were constantly losing games to single medivac marine/mine drops at the start, then it would be a problem. But that rarely happens.
How often do you see pros lose once the first round of adepts is warped it? Every tournament
Well, maybe it's time for terrans to think how starport should be used rather than brainless medivac/liberator spam. It helps to have a viking or two on patrol to defend against warp prism.
Not only are WP much faster than vikings, but also you would need too many vikings to patrol every zone and actually stopping all WP from entering. Plus the fact that terran can't really affor not making medivacs at the start of the game without dying.
On May 01 2017 21:48 nonoes wrote: there is no difference : you could use the same sentence and just replace terran, marines and 2010 from 2015. terran bias
There was a huge effort in making MMM not so prevalent, including nerfing the marauder, adding adepts and buffing banelings. Plus giving more tools to bio play in the form of WM and liberators.
The design flaw that gives rise to these pointless balance discussions is unlimited unit selection. The Adept is doing nothing that the Marine hasn't done for the past 6 years. The difference is that Stim has to be researched where psionic transfer does not. Being able to select 30 adepts or 30 marines all at once then Stim or Psionic Transfer creates this problem.
The unit balance will always be impossible in Starcraft 2 because death-balls of units are too easy to move and cast spells with. High mobility units in Starcraft 2 are already amazing just due to the smoothness of pathing. This smoothness and high mobility coupled with the ability to move and cast spells has created an impossible situation for Blizzard.
TLDR; Stop complaining about the Adept because the Marine has been doing the same thing for years. Instead, look at the design flaw that gives masses of units the ability to move and cast spells all at once.
On May 02 2017 04:07 FarmI3oy wrote: The design flaw that gives rise to these pointless balance discussions is unlimited unit selection. The Adept is doing nothing that the Marine hasn't done for the past 6 years. The difference is that Stim has to be researched where psionic transfer does not. Being able to select 30 adepts or 30 marines all at once then Stim or Psionic Transfer creates this problem.
The unit balance will always be impossible in Starcraft 2 because death-balls of units are too easy to move and cast spells with. High mobility units in Starcraft 2 are already amazing just due to the smoothness of pathing. This smoothness and high mobility coupled with the ability to move and cast spells has created an impossible situation for Blizzard.
TLDR; Stop complaining about the Adept because the Marine has been doing the same thing for years. Instead, look at the design flaw that gives masses of units the ability to move and cast spells all at once.
yeah that never going to change
and on what level can you call it a design flaw? its just the way the game was made, not some flaw
While there are valid points raised about adepts general tankiness and overlap with zealot, fixing the shade itself should be extremely easy.... All that is needed is to make it a chanelling ability i.e. you cannot move adepts while shading. They can probably still continue to fire while shading so that they don't become too weak.
On May 02 2017 04:07 FarmI3oy wrote: The design flaw that gives rise to these pointless balance discussions is unlimited unit selection. The Adept is doing nothing that the Marine hasn't done for the past 6 years. The difference is that Stim has to be researched where psionic transfer does not. Being able to select 30 adepts or 30 marines all at once then Stim or Psionic Transfer creates this problem.
The unit balance will always be impossible in Starcraft 2 because death-balls of units are too easy to move and cast spells with. High mobility units in Starcraft 2 are already amazing just due to the smoothness of pathing. This smoothness and high mobility coupled with the ability to move and cast spells has created an impossible situation for Blizzard.
TLDR; Stop complaining about the Adept because the Marine has been doing the same thing for years. Instead, look at the design flaw that gives masses of units the ability to move and cast spells all at once.
yeah that never going to change
and on what level can you call it a design flaw? its just the way the game was made, not some flaw
I call it a design flaw because Blizzard did not weigh the compounding effects of other design decisions along with unlimited unit selection.
Need I remind you that they thought a real-money auction house in Diablo 3 was a good idea? Diablo 3's loot system was designed with the auction house in mind. So yes, it is just the way the game was made but that does not mean it is not a flaw.
On May 02 2017 04:07 FarmI3oy wrote: The design flaw that gives rise to these pointless balance discussions is unlimited unit selection. The Adept is doing nothing that the Marine hasn't done for the past 6 years. The difference is that Stim has to be researched where psionic transfer does not. Being able to select 30 adepts or 30 marines all at once then Stim or Psionic Transfer creates this problem.
The unit balance will always be impossible in Starcraft 2 because death-balls of units are too easy to move and cast spells with. High mobility units in Starcraft 2 are already amazing just due to the smoothness of pathing. This smoothness and high mobility coupled with the ability to move and cast spells has created an impossible situation for Blizzard.
TLDR; Stop complaining about the Adept because the Marine has been doing the same thing for years. Instead, look at the design flaw that gives masses of units the ability to move and cast spells all at once.
yeah that never going to change
and on what level can you call it a design flaw? its just the way the game was made, not some flaw
I call it a design flaw because Blizzard did not weigh the compounding effects of other design decisions along with unlimited unit selection.
Need I remind you that they thought a real-money auction house in Diablo 3 was a good idea? Diablo 3's loot system was designed with the auction house in mind. So yes, it is just the way the game was made but that does not mean it is not a flaw.
While RMH wasn't a good idea, i think unlimited selection is fine. Think of all the games that already have it - the way that engagements happen in SC2 (specifically the SPEED with which they happen) would make a limited selection worthless (or at least wildly frustrating).
I think one of the big issues is how tightly all units pack together - a lot of things could be mitigated by having the units have larger collision boxes (forcing units to spread out a little more, reducing the affect of AOE, and forcing units to have to path a short distance longer to set up a proper concave, etc).
It would slow down engagements from an attacking perspective (units jostling around longer to get into position), it would slow down engagements from a defending perspective (aoe isn't as powerful) and I think it would make the game a little bit better.
On May 02 2017 04:07 FarmI3oy wrote: The design flaw that gives rise to these pointless balance discussions is unlimited unit selection. The Adept is doing nothing that the Marine hasn't done for the past 6 years. The difference is that Stim has to be researched where psionic transfer does not. Being able to select 30 adepts or 30 marines all at once then Stim or Psionic Transfer creates this problem.
The unit balance will always be impossible in Starcraft 2 because death-balls of units are too easy to move and cast spells with. High mobility units in Starcraft 2 are already amazing just due to the smoothness of pathing. This smoothness and high mobility coupled with the ability to move and cast spells has created an impossible situation for Blizzard.
TLDR; Stop complaining about the Adept because the Marine has been doing the same thing for years. Instead, look at the design flaw that gives masses of units the ability to move and cast spells all at once.
yeah that never going to change
and on what level can you call it a design flaw? its just the way the game was made, not some flaw
I call it a design flaw because Blizzard did not weigh the compounding effects of other design decisions along with unlimited unit selection.
Need I remind you that they thought a real-money auction house in Diablo 3 was a good idea? Diablo 3's loot system was designed with the auction house in mind. So yes, it is just the way the game was made but that does not mean it is not a flaw.
While RMH wasn't a good idea, i think unlimited selection is fine. Think of all the games that already have it - the way that engagements happen in SC2 (specifically the SPEED with which they happen) would make a limited selection worthless (or at least wildly frustrating).
I think one of the big issues is how tightly all units pack together - a lot of things could be mitigated by having the units have larger collision boxes (forcing units to spread out a little more, reducing the affect of AOE, and forcing units to have to path a short distance longer to set up a proper concave, etc).
It would slow down engagements from an attacking perspective (units jostling around longer to get into position), it would slow down engagements from a defending perspective (aoe isn't as powerful) and I think it would make the game a little bit better.
Yes other games have it. None of which that are as successful as Starcraft 2 or Brood War for that matter.
I have had this argument many times with people. Sadly, none of them can back up their argument with objective facts about the nature of the game. They say that taking unlimited unit selection is "frustrating," "annoying" or some other subjective feeling they have.
For those who were around in the Warcraft 3 Beta days. The game was terrible in beta because there was no upkeep. Weeks before launch they added that simple restriction in and the game became 100x better and actually playable in multiplayer. However, till this day, upkeep is reviled and hated by some because it is "frustrating" or "annoying." When in reality it is the only thing that saved that game.
I apologize for hijacking the thread, but I thought I would at least point out a structural problem about the game. Because mass Psionic Transfer is the new mass Stimpack. The Adept problem is nothing new. Just a new unit that suffers the same problem as the Marine.
Because mass Psionic Transfer is the new mass Stimpack. The Adept problem is nothing new. Just a new unit that suffers the same problem as the Marine.
How is stimpack compareable to adept shades ?
Stimpack is a risk/reward mechanic. When you activate stimpack, your bio forces will lose health permanently for a temporarily movement speed and attack speed boost.
To regain health, you need a good amount of medivacs to support your bio force. Without the support of medivacs, bio will lose more and more health and value.
Adept shades can get canceled at any time, don't affect the unit stats in any negative or positive way, increase unit value because adepts can shade through defense without taking damage like every other unit in the game, allows adepts to effectively be in 2 spots at once and therefore force more defense than usually necessary,...
I don't think you can compare shades and stimpack.
To me the Adept should fit into the Protoss Gateway arsenal as a unit dedicated to harass. No other (early game) Gateway unit has this bent, and so making the unit perhaps a bit faster but with dramatically less hp would force engagements to cost something for the Protoss player.
This way a decision to simply land on top of units would be generally a bad one, as the Adept would then be considered a sort of "stick and move" sort of unit comparable to the reaper or hellion. It would even be possible in this design to shorten the cooldown on the shade so that they end up functioning like ping pong balls, rewarding the player who catches them but also rewarding the player who is great with adept micro. Right now adepts are too much of a blunt force weapon.
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.
Agree a lot with this, you can nerf it but then you need to tweak the match-up to compensate somehow. I wonder how PvP changes if you nerf adepts much
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.
Agree a lot with this, you can nerf it but then you need to tweak the match-up to compensate somehow. I wonder how PvP changes if you nerf adepts much
The problem is that I have yet to see Protoss come up with a suitable response to liberator/siege/mine and bio that doesn't rely on either miraculous disruptor shots, a horrible positioning error, or adepts.
So we can nerf the adept harassment capability, but I think Protoss needs a standup unit that can actually fight on a semi-even footing with Terran bio whether that be the adept or some buff to a gateway unit.
Stimpack is a risk/reward mechanic. When you activate stimpack, your bio forces will lose health permanently for a temporarily movement speed and attack speed boost.
Very good point, and although I am not sure the Adept is imbalanced at all right now. I am generally quite hesitant to ever draw that conclusion. I think from a game design point of view it could be made more interesting for the game, if a better risk/reward dynamic was introduced for adepts.
Like I would be interested in actually both making them MORE versitile while adding a serious downside to the shade. For example, maybe shade depletes shields, reduce the range they can shade but cut the cooldown so they can shade more often. Essentially making it possible for good players to do more with them, but reduce the fire and forget while also adding somer serious consequences to doing really dumb shade ins on a lot of them.
So let's say the shade was completely removed, like tankivac was last year. Tankivac was replaced by additional +armored damage, what should the adept, or protoss in general, get?
Edit: in my opinion, adding a downside to shading like a few others have suggested is better than removing it.
On May 04 2017 05:09 jalstar wrote: So let's say the shade was completely removed, like tankivac was last year. Tankivac was replaced by additional +armored damage, what should the adept, or protoss in general, get?
Edit: in my opinion, adding a downside to shading like a few others have suggested is better than removing it.
Unpopular opinion, but how about we remove adepts, but buff stalkers to compensate.
It's just a thought^^
You would obviously make it an upgrade or something like this to make it not overpowered in the early game or in all ins.
As someone who used to offrace protoss and prefers the BW toss design over SC2 protoss, i really like the idea of a better stalker. More dragoon like.
Edit:
I know how drastic a change like this would be, but honestly i feel like that's exactly what lotv needs. We won't get far, with the way how lotv plays out currently :/
The Adept fix has to coincide with the lore somehow. Psionic Transfer isn't going anywhere because it is "their ability."
If anything they should just make it so you cannot cancel the Transfer/Shade. Once you decide to hit the button to Transfer that should be it. You should have already weighed the "risk versus reward"
Then we can talk about actually making the spell useful. Such as the Shade increasing damage taken by all sources or something (like in the campaign). Make it so adepts do +9 versus light and units take +4 damage if they get hit by the shade. Something along those lines I think would be best.
I am completely unable to foresee fixing this unit without removing the ability to cancel the Shade. Can sit here and tweak numbers without taking it away all day but the problem remains the same.
EPT
) but I still have not read a set of "RTS rules" to take as a reference for these discussions. Usually this argument is called when something is not liked by someone very vocal, in order to justify some changes / nerfs. I don't care at all about these "rules" (especially since nobody knows them apparently), if I like the game it can break all the invented rules you want, it will still be worth playing 
