Hello everyone, this week we have a couple of updates.
Adept Strength We believe that Adepts might be too strong in both the PvZ and PvT matchups, and we are considering toning them down. Based on feedback we have been seeing in the community, we are considering one of two changes: Reduce Adept utility and harass by increasing the cooldown time of Psionic Transfer from 11 to 14 seconds.
Or
Reduce the Adept’s core combat stats by reducing their hit points from 80 to 70.
However, WCS Austin is coming up very soon and there is some concern that patching this close to the tournament could disrupt pro player practice. Therefore, we would like to put out a patch this Tuesday if it seems like we need to make changes right away. If not, then we will roll the changes into our test matchmaking system for more detailed testing. Let us know your thoughts and feedback about the proposed changes.
Test Matchmaking Next week we are also planning on enabling the test matchmaking system with some other proposed changes. We would like to focus on the Adept strength this week so we will have more details about the test changes next week when they are enabled. But they will consist of the areas mentioned in our previous community post, such as the Thor, Void Ray, Tempest, and Raven Auto Turret. We will also explore a bit of moving some power from the Adept to the Zealot, which has seen a bit less usage in Protoss main armies than we would like.
Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on the proposed Adept changes from the recent update. After reading over your feedback we are adjusting the Adept’s core combat stats by reducing their health from 80 to 70. Currently, we’d like to implement this soon so that players have time to prepare and adjust. As always, we welcome your thoughts.
Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
To be somewhat fair they do say both PvZ and PvT are affected by adepts. Two races complaining probably feels a lot more significant than one race
Those adept changes do nothing, the second one does not affect adept harass effectiveness and the first one is not enough.
adepts should lose their shields when using their ability, maybe half shields, maybe the entire shields. u can test that and then decide how much shields should they lose after using transfer.
we love zealots and stalkers as low tier units, not adepts.
I prefer the hitpoint nerf so they are still strong for harass but not as strong in main combat. Adepts are very fun units when used for pressure/harass but they become dull/uninteresting when you shade 40 of them on top of an army. It also differentiates more between adepts and zealots as zealots will be clearly superior in army vs army fights.
might revert the vision nerf then, I never liked that one.
On the one hand, the shade CD nerf seems like it would be a big help to players in dealing with adept harass. Those extra few seconds could get those extra two kills on low HP adepts you often miss because of shade.
On the other hand, an HP nerf could eliminate the weirdness that is shading on top of armies and the strength of big adept attacks early on. It also affects adept harass to some extent since they simply die faster.
Frankly I'd prefer option 2 overall, a flat nerf to its combat strength. That needs a lot of care though, the strength of adepts is basically what's holding Protoss together against Terran. Moving power from the Adept to the Zealot also needs to be handled with care since Chargelots are already very powerful (despite their lack of use in PvT).
What they should look at is probably some sort of pre-Charge buff (maybe lowering the movement speed bonus on charge and giving part of that to the base Zealot so it can actually contribute anything without Charge?), but maybe it's also time to look into making Charge more easily available. It costs twice as much as stimpack after all.
Change the HP, please...Reducing the CD of the shade by 3 seconds doesn't really seem like it would do anything in the grand scheme of things. The fact that the potential to be in two places at once exists will always be enough...
But as Olli said you can't just nerf the adept without looking at the tank...Bio-mech builds in TvP are insane right now...
Protoss are holding on with phoenix/adept but even with the latest set of games they are being pushed more and more to their limit. I have no great love of Protoss but there must be a give and take.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
It's not actually true, at some point after the oracle buff, terran was underpowered and not performing in tournament for a while on hots. Several month actually.
I used to hate hots tvp, but it looked much better than it is now. I hate doing 2 base tank all the time, and i hate losing to adept all the time. I'm nowhere near to be pro at this game and that's my feeling every f**** game in lotv tvp. Regardless of the pro balance which i couldn't care less.
adepts should have less hp than zealots since very beginning it's pretty logical, maybe then -1 damage wouldn't be needed, but instead of balancing they desperately wanted new units being used since first minutes in every game, same with ravagers...
I'd like for shade movement speed to be decreased slightly so slow units (roaches, queens, terran units) can have an easier time catching up, as well as an a slight increase in the shade CD. Right now, roaches require near perfect positioning and any slip-up or mis-read of the shades cancelling or not means you're almost never catching up ever again.
It doesn't have to be 11 to 14 although I think it would be very healthy for the game. 11 to 12 or 11 to 13 should already make a positive difference. But nerfing the shade movement speed is also welcome, 5-15%. Either way, nerfing shade mobility will help all defenders.
Nerfing hit points is great if adept overperforms throughout the entire game. I think it's very hard to go wrong here, it's better to nerf more of the adept's properties than fewer, and if Protoss turns out to be weak they probably should get fixes that have less to do with adept buffs and more to do with something else.
On April 14 2017 04:02 SlammerSC2 wrote: Why are they considering just 1 of those 2 nerfs. Do both. If they still just want to do 1 of them the nerf has to be significant higher.
you must have never seen blizzard's approach to patching before, that's cool. They'll do one, and then in 4 months if nothing is better they'll do something else.
In all seriousness, I'm in favor of the HP nerf or a 1 or 2 second increase on the CD.
What about making it so when the adept lets the shade complete, it loses some portion (or all) of its shields. This would keep its effectiveness as a core combat unit but make it easier to kill when shading between bases - which is the most annoying thing about dealing with this unit. It would also discourage them from shading on top of tanks to render the tanks useless.
On April 14 2017 04:10 insitelol wrote: "We believe that Adepts might be too strong in both the PvZ and PvT matchups, and we are considering toning them down".
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
To be somewhat fair they do say both PvZ and PvT are affected by adepts. Two races complaining probably feels a lot more significant than one race
Yeah, but the balance of PvZ and PvT isn't too bad, it's just that the gameplay is really aggravating.
I like the Psionic Transfer nerf much better since Protoss gateway armies are really brittle apart from the adept. Protoss might need to have other units buffed to compensate even so.
Shade cooldown is something that has been suggested since release, i'm ok with that if they don't nerf hp as well, otherwise adepts will become worthless as part of an army.
I prefer the cool-down nerf. When you shade and commit, better do some damage or you can't get out alive. Also, help with the whole shading back and forth.
On April 14 2017 03:55 Liquid`Snute wrote: I'd like for shade movement speed to be decreased slightly so slow units (roaches, queens, terran units) can have an easier time catching up, as well as an a slight increase in the shade CD. Right now, roaches require near perfect positioning and any slip-up or mis-read of the shades cancelling or not means you're almost never catching up ever again.
It doesn't have to be 11 to 14 although I think it would be very healthy for the game. 11 to 12 or 11 to 13 should already make a positive difference. But nerfing the shade movement speed is also welcome, 5-15%. Either way, nerfing shade mobility will help all defenders.
Nerfing hit points is great if adept overperforms throughout the entire game. I think it's very hard to go wrong here, it's better to nerf more of the adept's properties than fewer, and if Protoss turns out to be weak they probably should get fixes that have less to do with adept buffs and more to do with something else.
This. I think nerfing the shade speed would help so much. Also I'd like to know if they are still considering doing something with the warp prism.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
No fuck no, NO!
Don't touch the tanks, it took us 6 fucking years to get Blizzard to finally make tanks relevant, don't they dare do anything to the tanks.
If they need to buff or nerf something do something else, buff stalkers/zealots, whatever but don't they dare fucking touch the tanks.
I think both adept changes could be implemented immediately. Even after both changes Adepts would still be a powerful combat unit and a very powerful worker killer but not completely dominating every game as they do now.
And for the love of everything that is good please do not make Tempest stronger! The problem is that Carriers are too strong, improving Tempest will only make it even harder for Terran to counter Protoss capital ships. It would be better to leave Tempest untouched while slightly nerfing the Carrier.
If Protoss needs stronger anti air and a compensation for the adapt nerf I rather see Stalkers improved so that each damage upgrade adds 2 damage instead of 1. That way Protoss ground army gets stronger in the mid and late game instead of everything being about massing air units.
Massing air units should be discouraged for all races.
On April 14 2017 03:14 TardsVsZombi wrote: those adept changes does nothing, the second one does not affect adept harass effectiveness and the first one is not enough.
adepts should lose their shields when using their ability, maybe half shields, maybe the entire shields. u can test that and then decide how much shields should they lose after using transfer.
we love zealots and stalkers as low tier units, not adepts.
Ok now. Blizzard. This is getting pathetic. Just take a look at this thread. 0 protoss, few zergs and a bazillion whining terrans. I guess that's just a result of zergs being neutral about the nerfs because adept threat in pvz is non-existant (may be in gold leagues it still exists i dunno), and all protoss just gave up on game so ye.... but these terran scrubs... Everlasting whine about everything.
So, dev team, if u ever gona implement any kind of adept nerf you HAVE to keep in mind that protoss has no other option in pvt besides adept/phoenix. Both colosi AND stalker are fucking terrible in the mu. Revert that imbecil tank buff it RUINS pvt. It is the SOLE reason all protoss are playing the hated adept/phoenix. NERF tanks or/and buff stalker. Remove the armored tag with corresponding nerfs or w/e. Do something else i dont care. But the state pvt is in these days is your fault. FFS.
On April 14 2017 04:10 insitelol wrote: "We believe that Adepts might be too strong in both the PvZ and PvT matchups, and we are considering toning them down".
The thing is this: Blizzard wants all of their units to have a place in the game. Adepts have largely supplanted zealots & stalkers (though stalkers do have the bonus of being able to shoot up), simply because they're as tanky as zealots & have better DPS than both.
I think the problem is going to persist until the adept is nerfed into the ground (unfortunate, but possible), and people only build zealots and stalkers again, or everything else is buffed up.
The fact that shade can be cancelled at the 11th hour is frustrating from my point of view - and basically makes it so i either split my army (and run the risk of not being able to out DPS the adepts before losing too many workers, or commit fully to one side and end up with them running around untouched on the other side of my base.
I think a better overall change would be to make the shade uncancellable, with a slight (slight) HP nerf (maybe -10hp, +5shield).
Edit:
On April 14 2017 05:13 insitelol wrote: Ok now. Blizzard. This is getting pathetic. Just take a look at this thread. 0 protoss, few zergs and a bazillion whining terrans. I guess that's just a result of zergs being neutral about the nerfs because adept threat in pvz is non-existant (may be in gold leagues it still exists i dunno), and all protoss just gave up on game so ye.... but these terran scrubs... Everlasting whine about everything.
So, dev team, if u ever gona implement any kind of adept nerf you HAVE to keep in mind that protoss has no other option in pvt besides adept/phoenix. Both colosi AND stalker are fucking terrible in the mu. Revert that imbecil tank buff it RUINS pvt. It is the SOLE reason all protoss are playing the hated adept/phoenix. NERF tanks or/and buff stalker. Remove the armored tag with corresponding nerfs or w/e. Do something else i dont care. But the state pvt is in these days is your fault. FFS.
I do think you have a good point here. I think that there are too many "options" for protoss that are actually requirements (you HAVE to tech to disruptor or storm basically immediately, or you're screwed), and their entire army is built up around a few super important spellcasters - which if you can land their spells, is great - if not, you die.
I really don't understand blizzard tought process behind patches.
If we consider adepts: why they are "overpowered" ?
1 -> because they are overused units If so, there are lots of overused units for terrans and zergs: why no one cares about them? Also, an overused units means that there is no other efficient alternative to use, otherwise we should see more kind of plays revolving around different units.
2 -> because they do in general lots of damage If so, the winrates should be strongly in favor of protoss. If they are such a powerful units, winrates should reflect it, also race population should show an increase in protoss players since the op units will just carry th players. Instead, we have totally the opposite.
From what I read, blizzard problem is a stale meta problem, with adepts being used too much in pvz and pvt. But as other people better than me in the game stated, if you nerf adepts you should also provide a solution to stale meta.
I see just one direction about protoss since lotv come out, and it's nerfing them. I found this just unfair, not because the race is becoming more difficult or weak, but because dev team seems to not care doing things well and resolving problems as whole.
On April 14 2017 05:16 reneg wrote: I do think you have a good point here. I think that there are too many "options" for protoss that are actually requirements (you HAVE to tech to disruptor or storm basically immediately, or you're screwed), and their entire army is built up around a few super important spellcasters - which if you can land their spells, is great - if not, you die.
Both storm and disruptor EVEN if im able to tech to them are useless in mid game. I fucking hate the fact terrans just play their fucking mmm since wol beta. Literally. While i have to adjust to every freaking patch. I played through Hots with stalker/colosi and the way it was nerfed in lotv is INSANE. But i still played it with some success. But when 70 dmg tanks arrived i was like - what are they even thinking? Ok - i need to learn the whole new style from scratch. Now they just gona nerf it again. Amazing! It's simple as that: Drop play > everything. i have 2 options vs that. Stalker (lol) and phoenix. After they nerf what im supposed to play? Phoenix/zealot? Go figure.
Surprised they did not give a shoutout to David Kim with a short note on how things will change in regards to further development and tweaks.
I think that the problem with Adept is not one that can be fixed by tweaking numbers; it is wrongly designed unit at its core and should be replaced as such and compensated by another unit or buffing Zealot, to be core Protoss unit again.
However, it is worth noting that TY said that he would want to significantly increase the shade's cooldown (I think he even said twice), but would reintroduce its vision.
huh this week's CF was made under the "balance team" instead of a named designer of that leads the team Wonder when,if ever, Blizzard would find someone else to fill DK's position. Probably a uncomfortable spot the other members of the balance team not eager to take.
On April 14 2017 05:16 reneg wrote: I do think you have a good point here. I think that there are too many "options" for protoss that are actually requirements (you HAVE to tech to disruptor or storm basically immediately, or you're screwed), and their entire army is built up around a few super important spellcasters - which if you can land their spells, is great - if not, you die.
Both storm and disruptor EVEN if im able to tech to them are useless in mid game. I fucking hate the fact terrans just play their fucking mmm since wol beta. Literally. While i have to adjust to every freaking patch. I played through Hots with stalker/colosi and the way it was nerfed in lotv is INSANE. But i still played it with some success. But when 70 dmg tanks arrived i was like - what are they even thinking? Ok - i need to learn the whole new style from scratch. Now they just gona nerf it again. Amazing! It's simple as that: Drop play > everything. i have 2 options vs that. Stalker (lol) and phoenix. After they nerf what im supposed to play? Phoenix/zealot? Go figure.
On April 14 2017 05:18 Weltall wrote: I really don't understand blizzard tought process behind patches.
If we consider adepts: why they are "overpowered" ?
1 -> because they are overused units If so, there are lots of overused units for terrans and zergs: why no one cares about them? Also, an overused units means that there is no other efficient alternative to use, otherwise we should see more kind of plays revolving around different units.
2 -> because they do in general lots of damage If so, the winrates should be strongly in favor of protoss. If they are such a powerful units, winrates should reflect it, also race population should show an increase in protoss players since the op units will just carry th players. Instead, we have totally the opposite.
On April 14 2017 05:18 Weltall wrote: I really don't understand blizzard tought process behind patches.
If we consider adepts: why they are "overpowered" ?
1 -> because they are overused units If so, there are lots of overused units for terrans and zergs: why no one cares about them? Also, an overused units means that there is no other efficient alternative to use, otherwise we should see more kind of plays revolving around different units.
2 -> because they do in general lots of damage If so, the winrates should be strongly in favor of protoss. If they are such a powerful units, winrates should reflect it, also race population should show an increase in protoss players since the op units will just carry th players. Instead, we have totally the opposite.
ah like the ling or the marine you mean.
I've never seen 5 lings kill an entire mineral line and teleport out before they die.
On April 14 2017 05:18 Weltall wrote: I really don't understand blizzard tought process behind patches.
If we consider adepts: why they are "overpowered" ?
1 -> because they are overused units
2 -> because they do in general lots of damage
ah like the ling or the marine you mean.
Except that adepts are so easy to use and if zerg misses an inject cycle, gets supply blocked or lose some drones because of adept harass the game is over, because protoss is even on economy until 3 base saturation.
As long as people don't understand that what's wrong with this game are the strategies that are easy to use and hard to defend, it will always be frustrating to play.
They need to make them less tanky immediately, obviously in anything lower then GM you can always play better but they shouldn't be just as durable as the Zealot while being ranged while having bonus damage to light, there needs to be a trade off.
Honestly, I also think if they decreased the damage a little bit or removed the light bonus it would probably suffice, not sure them 2 shot killing workers is a good dynamic, but the HP nerf is definitely warranted, honestly both nerfs kind of are, but not without the desperately needed Stalker buff happening.
hard to see this working out without a decent buff to other protoss units. I mean... the adept is really stupid to watch -- when my roommates catch me watching a game, they often directly note it as something they don't understand, find irritating, etc. In terms of playing, I actually find it more tolerable, but still, I think the clear consensus is that it needs to change. But even worse than watching people get wrecked by arcane laws of how x many adepts at what point in the game can only be held by y composition, etc., is watching protoss get hopelessly slaughtered for the audacity of trying to be aggressive before three saturated bases.
I don't know. I'm sure there's a fix. But the masses of people talking about how adepts are so easy to use or how evil protoss needs to be shamed for trying to win with the units at their disposal seems kind of besides the point... What's a protoss buff that would make their units stronger without seeming too much? I think the problem is in giving protoss a unit that
1) is good in the early game, good enough to be aggressive (with positioning and aggressive builds), but not too powerful... 2) is good in the late game, and continue to be a 'core' to the army, allowing gateway armies -> gateway armies with support, not gateway armies -> as much tier 3 as you can get. This seems to me what makes both Terran and Zerg so fun -- multiple compositions, some high-tech, some supported low-tech, some totally different units ....
So how could we do that? The obvious answer, as far as I can see, is to introduce an upgrade that is kind of far off but also really useful... (the early protoss units, as the blink era suggests, can turn into early-game overpowered way to easily).
Maybe give the stalker a +5 dps researched from the robo bay? Then you have the choice of that or Colos, at least for a while... Hell, put it on another building! But now I'm just spitballing. This would probably result in imba superstalker + colo builds.
But still, I think adepts continue to be frustrating because they are only useful in certain specific, and hard to ascertain, situations. Do 20 roaches beat 25 adepts? I'm never sure until they're in my base.
Adept build is so popular because is the only viable way to deal vs any build pvz or pvt, specially vs the insane all-ins of the both races, i think that a proper nerf should be making the shade a bit slow, like snute said, 5-15% slower makes adepts more countereable when they transfer to the shade, but i think that the shade vision should be a bit higher then, or protoss will be forced to just lose their adept count for harrass. Also zealots should get some buff, maybe making charge to cost 150-150 or something, thats the reason why everyone prefer 100% adepts over zealots, 100-100 for the glave speed seems better than a 200-200 upgrade for melee units.
Btw when are you going to nerf the BC teleport? it shouldnt Teleport if they get any dmg 2-3 seconds before or something that affect their tp, because in PvT is very annoying how bcs kills everything and just tps away, making impossible to stop the count of bcs from turttle terrans, because protoss dont have infestors with fungals that can trap bcs, so please, keep that in mind too.
What if you nerf(decrease) adept`s vs light damage from +12 to +9? so adepts will 3shots drones and probes. And in pvz they will be still 5 shot hydra and 2 shots zerglings. In PvT it will helps terran players early game and will be the same mid/late game.
Why the hell aren't we talking the race matches the other night? The revert back to 1500 minerals per patch seems to make the games way more back and forth. www.youtube.com
Same worker number start. Same number of workers per patch. This allows for quick saturation of all 3 bases, and makes players more likely to trade units.
On April 14 2017 05:18 Weltall wrote: I really don't understand blizzard tought process behind patches.
If we consider adepts: why they are "overpowered" ?
1 -> because they are overused units If so, there are lots of overused units for terrans and zergs: why no one cares about them? Also, an overused units means that there is no other efficient alternative to use, otherwise we should see more kind of plays revolving around different units.
2 -> because they do in general lots of damage If so, the winrates should be strongly in favor of protoss. If they are such a powerful units, winrates should reflect it, also race population should show an increase in protoss players since the op units will just carry th players. Instead, we have totally the opposite.
From what I read, blizzard problem is a stale meta problem, with adepts being used too much in pvz and pvt. But as other people better than me in the game stated, if you nerf adepts you should also provide a solution to stale meta.
I see just one direction about protoss since lotv come out, and it's nerfing them. I found this just unfair, not because the race is becoming more difficult or weak, but because dev team seems to not care doing things well and resolving problems as whole.
I can't agree more with what you said. The essential reason why mass adepts populate PvT and PvZ is because there is barely any other via options for the Protoss. What's more, this began as a trend after widow mine was nerfed. Instead of toning down siege tank damage, Blizzard nerfed widow mine. Blizzard was literally the only ONE responsible for the current situation, yet the guy leading the balance team just left. In general, the meta of game was screwed up at the beginning of LotV. The introduction of adept and liberator wreck the game, as well as the buffed siege tank. Without fundamental changes to these units, and maybe some other units as well, the balance can never be as good as it was in HotS.
On April 14 2017 08:24 pvsnp wrote: Great to see that Blizzard is on the ball! With all the focus on Adepts, it's good to see that they aren't afraid to apply some necessary nerfs.
Health nerf would be more appropriate because it affects both PvT and PvZ. Shade CD would help Zergs, but wouldn't do anything about Adept/Phoenix.
And for all the disingenuous people bitching about PvT going back to 40%– PvT is currently at 57%. http://aligulac.com/periods/186/
I'd like to see some win rates for non-progamer matches. Also, I'm not against toning down the power of mass adepts. However, since "Blizzard aren't afraid to apply some necessary nerfs", I expect they nerf the tank or buff up stalker / zealot as well. Otherwise, it will always be a biased patch that creates more problems.
I'd like to see some win rates for non-progamer matches. Also, I'm not against toning down the power of mass adepts. However, since "Blizzard aren't afraid to apply some necessary nerfs", I expect they nerf the tank or buff up stalker / zealot as well. Otherwise, it will always be a biased patch that creates more problems.
One problem at a time. I would like to see a Stalker buff as well, but that's not on the table right now.
Non-progamer matches should always be close to 50% winrate right? Isn't that the whole point of matchmaking?
The thing that should be changed is to make adepts in "warp in status" for 1 sec.
Adept sends a shade, during the last second of the shade it cant move (or cancel) the shade any more and adepts start warping in to the new location. They cant move or attack during this time but can take damage (their physical body is "afk" at previous or target location for u to decide).
This will actually punish mistakes of not canceling shades if u wait till the last second and give time to catch up with the shades and the "afk" time of adepts counters their imba high hp.
Besides that sc2 is killed by all these stupid units that create frustration. Adept, oracle, immortal, void ray, blink, disruptor, reaper, mine, speed medivac, cyclone, freedom unit, baneling, ravager, muta regen and speed buff, new corruptor, free moving units, free high dmg turrets. WOL was the best sc2, except for the mothership and bl infestor.
Maybe one day sc2 will be saved by fixing all these units + some total game play changes, but seeing how everything goes looks like not.
I'd like to see some win rates for non-progamer matches. Also, I'm not against toning down the power of mass adepts. However, since "Blizzard aren't afraid to apply some necessary nerfs", I expect they nerf the tank or buff up stalker / zealot as well. Otherwise, it will always be a biased patch that creates more problems.
One problem at a time. I would like to see a Stalker buff as well, but that's not on the table right now.
Non-progamer matches should always be close to 50% winrate right? Isn't that the whole point of matchmaking?
Win rates for non-progamer matches should INDEED be close to 50%. Ideally, 50% +/- 3% is acceptable. For buffing other units, if Blizzard only nerf adepts without buffing other units, then it is BIASED and definitely leading to more issues. It is not beyond their capabilities to address more than "one problem at a time".
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
4 months of wrecking protoss and nothing? We had a VERY significant lib nerf and a mine nerf... the problem was never just tanks, it was the combo of units.
I would prefer an adept redesign to make it an useful unit without relying on such a frustrating, gimmicky and honestly just stupid spell like shade.
But if we can only choose between CD nerf and HP nerf, I'd go with the HP nerf.
Adepts are too efficient in both harassment and straight up engagements. Adept play can quickly snowball out of control, if you take harassment damage, because protoss doesn't has to transition out of them, he can just keep building more adepts to overwhelm you with a follow up push.
This obviously wouldn't be a problem, if adepts couldn't shade through every defense...
Thank you, I would cry if we get a patch out next Tuesday! Either the CD or health nerf seems reasonable if done at a small amount as presented in the bluepost.
Rather than nerfing the CD or HP, I prefer the ideas on nerfing the shield. Every time you shade, you lose some shield. If you shade repeatedly, it will decrease the same amount repeatedly until it's zero, and it regains after some time just like when it's attacked. It will keep all the choices (to shade or not to shade, when to shade, where to shade) but require much more calculations and do the nerfing job as well.
There are many subtleties, for example, how much shield do you lose when you start to shade? how much shield do you lose over time when you're shading? how much shield do you lose when you finish the shading?
It should make the game more strategic and make it balanced as well, IMO.
On April 14 2017 11:35 jy_9876543210 wrote: Rather than nerfing the CD or HP, I prefer the ideas on nerfing the shield. Every time you shade, you lose some shield. If you shade repeatedly, it will decrease the same amount repeatedly until it's zero, and it regains after some time just like when it's attacked. It will keep all the choices (to shade or not to shade, when to shade, where to shade) but require much more calculations and do the nerfing job as well.
There are many subtleties, for example, how much shield do you lose when you start to shade? how much shield do you lose over time when you're shading? how much shield do you lose when you finish the shading?
Nerfing the HP will make the early defense for protoss harder, and nerfing the CD doesn't affect the fact that the shading of a lot of adepts is too powerful in the mid game. Instead, this way it should make the game more strategic and make it balanced as well, IMO.
Health nerf would keep Adepts strong in harass-role while weakening their mass shade-and-forget faceroll battles. It's preferable to shade CD nerf in that respect. Harass is more important for Protoss anyhow, especially against Zergs, since they have many other options for a straight-up fight compared to their number of options for harassing.
Also, the sheer amount of salty whiners playing every race never ceases to amaze me. The instant any nerf of any kind is proposed for their own race, they just start their bitchy chorus. Thought Protoss was slightly better in that regard, but apparently not.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
45% winrate is the norm. Everyone is used to it. When it gets to 50/50 everyone feels off. Terrans feel like they never win and Protoss players feel like the matchup is too easy.
I'm being 100% serious here, there is a real psychological phenomenon behind this.
45% winrate is the norm. Everyone is used to it. When it gets to 50/50 everyone feels off. Terrans feel like they never win and Protoss players feel like the matchup is too easy.
I'm being 100% serious here, there is a real psychological phenomenon behind this.
If what you say is true, then everyone must feel extremely strange right now. Because PvT is at 57%.
On April 14 2017 10:10 StraKo wrote: I would prefer an adept redesign to make it an useful unit without relying on such a frustrating, gimmicky and honestly just stupid spell like shade.
But if we can only choose between CD nerf and HP nerf, I'd go with the HP nerf.
Adepts are too efficient in both harassment and straight up engagements. Adept play can quickly snowball out of control, if you take harassment damage, because protoss doesn't has to transition out of them, he can just keep building more adepts to overwhelm you with a follow up push.
This obviously wouldn't be a problem, if adepts couldn't shade through every defense...
Agree. Long ago when LotV started, adept was a unit that excelled at scouting, harassing through multi-tasking, and straight-up engagement. Its first nerf addressed its harassing power and the second nerf addressed its scouting. I think it would be reasonable to reduce the overall health of adept by 10 or 15 points, meanwhile empowering zealot and / or stalker. Adept is most effective in straight-up engagement when a cluster of it surround and squeeze in the enemy line. Reducing its health should make it less powerful when used this way. There are few ways that the charge ability can be empowered: 1) adding a temporal effect that increases the shield of zealot by 20 for 5 seconds; 2) when a charging zealot hits the target, the target is "frozen" for 1.5 seconds. These aren't necessary viable options. I hope my suggestions can inspire more ideas to change the gateway units.
IMO a better direction to the adept nerf would be to eliminate the +1 base armor and increase the duration and cost of the Glaives upgrade. Adepts are supposed to be nimble enough to shade, yet they have the same base armor as a Zealot and only 10 less HP. Why go for a Zealot when you can have a more mobile ranged Zealot called the Adept?
Reducing the Adept’s base armor, would be more effective than reducing their HP because a well positioned opponent will be able to gun them down more quickly. This nerf by itself is unlikely to be enough, because often time it’s as much about the number of adepts as it is about their ability to inflict damage. That’s why both the cost and the duration of Glaives needs to be increased. Right now, Glaives is the Protoss equivalent of stim, yet not only is it the fastest upgrade you can get from a Twilight, it’s also the cheapest. Increasing the time it takes to get Glaives to 121 sec, and the cost to 150/150 or more, means that Terran/Zerg get an extra production cycle before the Protoss attack (who now has fewer Adepts because more resources have already been spent on upgrades).
That should be enough – me thinks – and it would be a step towards making the Adept a more differentiated unit from the Zealot, a unit that has already gone extinct in certain matchups.
would like to try a game where zealot legs upgrade is put back in, charge taken away. forces static defense. I think any group of zealots is needlessly hard to use in an even game.
Both 'nerfs' should be applied imho but at the same time zealot hp needs to be buffed and the cost of charge reduced to match stimpack.
Also late game T needs some love too by adressing factory units; I don't think they need straight up hp, def or atk buffs, but a reduction in supply required and training time for tanks and thors (maybe even an upgrade so they can be reactored ?) would help a lot in replenishing those armies. Depending how this all affects balance future changes to nerf liberators could take place.
On April 14 2017 14:46 nanaoei wrote: would like to try a game where zealot legs upgrade is put back in, charge taken away. forces static defense. I think any group of zealots is needlessly hard to use in an even game.
Making Zealot's speed BW like has no point in the game where warping tech exists. You can warp Zealots in every point on map with warprism. In BW Zealot legs were necessary to bring units from your production to battlefield faster. In sc2 with warpin there is no need to do that, as your gateway production can be everywhere with warprism.
From PvZ and PvT perspective- Adpet needs both- CD on shade nerf and HP nerf. All u need to do is to make Zealots a unit with buffering damage abilities and make Adept more mobile/scout/harras unit.
If u want to nerf siege tank- just bring back siege mode upgrade as it was in WOL. This will nerf tank timings which will give Toss and Zerg time to get proper counter (if scouted)
The cooldown change is a reasonable change in my opinion. It would mostly affect the harassment potential, which may really be a bit too strong.
But nerfing hitpoints and stuff would hurt too much. The problem with this is seige tanks. Adepts are the only relevant counter to siege tank pushes because you don't need to research shading like charge. Another solution is nerfing adepts to death as people want but than we need charge as a given ability for zealots.
Just to compare: Why don't we nerf Marines all the time? They are the Terran adepts, the core of the army and super strong at harrassing.
I think people complain about adepts because they are kind of new and a core unit. Nobody complains about Marines or banelings because people are used to them.
I'm talking about from September 2016 though I forgot that in November things went back to normal for a short while. Also even as far as from beta Protoss got shafted for long periods on Lotv (early Lotv good times in PvZ lol). Unlike Terrans, Protoss players are not whiny enough. Probably a habit of being badmouthed for no good reason ever since BW. Maybe Protoss players should start to be whiny too.
45% winrate is the norm. Everyone is used to it. When it gets to 50/50 everyone feels off. Terrans feel like they never win and Protoss players feel like the matchup is too easy.
I'm being 100% serious here, there is a real psychological phenomenon behind this.
If what you say is true, then everyone must feel extremely strange right now. Because PvT is at 57%.
Way to cherrypick whatever time interval suits your argument. I could easily do the same especially lately. Take a full month or bigger time intervals since February and you'll see the Lib+WM nerf brought us back closer to balance than before (periods 182+183 before WM nerfperiods 184+185 is about 49%, periods 186+187 is probably going to be closer to 52%) but somehow Terrans are not satisfied until they dominate in unreasonable proportions.
I'm talking about from September 2016 though I forgot that in November things went back to normal for a short while. Also even as far as from beta Protoss got shafted for long periods on Lotv (early Lotv good times in PvZ lol). Unlike Terrans, Protoss players are not whiny enough. Probably a habit of being badmouthed for no good reason ever since BW. Maybe Protoss players should start to be whiny too.
Protoss players whined and got rewarded with a nerf to liberators and mines.
Bias can be a funny thing. Here's how you most likely filtered the above information:
"Protoss players [gave valuable feedback] and [SC2 balance team responded with much needed changes] to liberators and mines."
As a high master/low GM Terran player I think that increasing cooldown of a shade is too little of a change, and reducing the HP's by 10 might be too drastic. So I would like to propose a middle way solution to the problem. I would increase the cooldown of a shade to 14 seconds like already proposed by the balance team and in addition to that I would make adepts a bit more vulnerable to attacks for a short period of time right after the shade is finished (like while warping in units, they take a bit more damage in the process) This would force protoss players to really think the action through, if it is really worth it to shade the adepts on top of the army and it would add a nice balanced disadvantage to the move as the shade itself ( on top of the army ) counters units that need to kited (Like bio, roaches, hydras, queens etc.) But on the otherside there would be no downside to the shade (such as reducing HP would be) if the defending players doesnt react in time for example while defending his mineral line. To compensate such a change I would boost the vision of a shade a little bit, so Protoss player and get enough information to make a final decision.
I think this change could be balanced very easily, because the team can always change the duration of such debuff and can also tweak the percentage of damage taken bonus.
I'm talking about from September 2016 though I forgot that in November things went back to normal for a short while. Also even as far as from beta Protoss got shafted for long periods on Lotv (early Lotv good times in PvZ lol). Unlike Terrans, Protoss players are not whiny enough. Probably a habit of being badmouthed for no good reason ever since BW. Maybe Protoss players should start to be whiny too.
Protoss players whined and got rewarded with a nerf to liberators and mines.
Bias can be a funny thing. Here's how you most likely filtered the above information:
"Protoss players [gave valuable feedback] and [SC2 balance team responded with much needed changes] to liberators and mines."
There are whiners everywhere. I'm talking about the fact the Protoss players are defintely not as loud and vocal as Terran players on SC2. Somehow ever since SC2 and MKP and other fabulous micro monsters, Terran players got in their head that they are the skill race and if they don't win, something is wrong. Protoss has always been the easy scapegoat of everything that is wrong. Nobody seems to ever question if it's alright marines out-DPS everything but Carriers in this game, or why Medivac healing rate is so disproportionate than we need Storm, Adept glaives and Disruptors Nova which are designed to 1- or 2-shot marines to counter the healing effect to enable the Protoss army to kill something. Maybe we should redesign Terran bio instead of always focusing on Protoss gateway.
Shade CD increase by 3 secs would be kinda negligible, I'd prefer the HP reduction instead, because it would promote using Zealots as front line/meat shield again, as it should be, right now there's no decision making involved, just produce the overall way better unit. Some trade off for that mobility would be more than welcome, it's kinda ridiculous that Adept/Phoenix even works in straight-on engagements due to Adepts' tankiness.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
4 months of wrecking protoss and nothing? We had a VERY significant lib nerf and a mine nerf... the problem was never just tanks, it was the combo of units.
Well considering they nerfed those two units and tank pushes still kill robo, tanks are probably the issue.
I'm talking about from September 2016 though I forgot that in November things went back to normal for a short while. Also even as far as from beta Protoss got shafted for long periods on Lotv (early Lotv good times in PvZ lol). Unlike Terrans, Protoss players are not whiny enough. Probably a habit of being badmouthed for no good reason ever since BW. Maybe Protoss players should start to be whiny too.
Protoss players whined and got rewarded with a nerf to liberators and mines.
Bias can be a funny thing. Here's how you most likely filtered the above information:
"Protoss players [gave valuable feedback] and [SC2 balance team responded with much needed changes] to liberators and mines."
There are whiners everywhere. I'm talking about the fact the Protoss players are defintely not as loud and vocal as Terran players on SC2.
Could you please provide me with some sources for that "fact"? And what would differentiate yourself from those whiners you pointed out? The nerf to Liberators/Mines was totally justified, Terran was definitely overperforming, but so are Adepts. There absolutely needs to be some sort of risk/reward when building Adepts, as well as giving back purpose to Zealots other than being warped-in and thrown away offensively... Oh wait, you're using Adepts for that as well, right?
In addition to that, the perception that Terran is the most difficult race doesn't come from nowhere, ever wondered why there are no foreign Terrans winning stuff (Thorzain probably the one and only at TSL3 and that was like 8 months after release of the game)?
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
4 months of wrecking protoss and nothing? We had a VERY significant lib nerf and a mine nerf... the problem was never just tanks, it was the combo of units.
Well considering they nerfed those two units and tank pushes still kill robo, tanks are probably the issue.
Maybe bring back old Immortal shields, then? Tanks should have their place in aiding with damage against a Protoss ground army, I'd really, really hate to see them nerfed into uselessness again (aside from TvT), it's one of the very few changes that were actually good in LotV. Tanks are siege units, they should pack some serious punch and as opponent you should respect a Tank line, not think "Uh, I just split my army into two packs and a-move to win!".
Imo, the cooldown nerf should be longer. HP nerf is welcome as adepts are too tanky but I think they should also consider buffing zealots and stalkers slightly tbh.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
4 months of wrecking protoss and nothing? We had a VERY significant lib nerf and a mine nerf... the problem was never just tanks, it was the combo of units.
Well considering they nerfed those two units and tank pushes still kill robo, tanks are probably the issue.
So in what way do you propose the tank is changed, that A) doesn't make roach/ravager comps in TvZ too strong, B) doesn't involve the tankivac, and C) doesn't make the tank too weak against any early Protoss all-ins you see 1 in however many games?
-20 shield damage? Can they even make a negative damage modifier? Huh.
45% winrate is the norm. Everyone is used to it. When it gets to 50/50 everyone feels off. Terrans feel like they never win and Protoss players feel like the matchup is too easy.
I'm being 100% serious here, there is a real psychological phenomenon behind this.
If what you say is true, then everyone must feel extremely strange right now. Because PvT is at 57%.
Even including the quoted 14 day period, Terran is still the leading race with 6% and Protoss still lagging at 3%. This means probably another 57% month would be needed to fucking restore balance in the first place.
Either this feedback update is Kim's farewell shit or the remaining crew - probably 1 janitor and 1/2 intern - have as much bias and as little clue about math as he had.
The adept is cheap for its utility. This remains true, even if both nerfs were applied. For the sake of diversity I would not like to see this as a general problem and keep the adept powerful.
I'd like to try limiting its utility by making the twilight council a prerequisite for the adept. It would mean P can't open with an adept as the first unit being built. This has so many implications that others _CAN_ profit from, without killing the adept option for the P. I don't know if that helps in ZvP, but in TvP I know this opens opportunities to keep the P from getting a big adept army, which appears tends to be exceptionally cost efficient. I'd like this change b/c it offers opportunities instead of taking things away.
Why are only shade cooldown and hp/shield nerf the options?
Is it not possible to weaken the adapt when shade is active? Say, reduce attack speed. I think that would not impact straight up engagements that badly, but decently reduce the harassment potential.
45% winrate is the norm. Everyone is used to it. When it gets to 50/50 everyone feels off. Terrans feel like they never win and Protoss players feel like the matchup is too easy.
I'm being 100% serious here, there is a real psychological phenomenon behind this.
If what you say is true, then everyone must feel extremely strange right now. Because PvT is at 57%.
Even including the quoted 14 day period, Terran is still the leading race with 6% and Protoss still lagging at 3%. This means probably another 57% month would be needed to fucking restore balance in the first place.
The leading/lagging race takes the mean Aligulac rating of the top 5 players of each race, so unless the 57% winrate causes the Terrans to have a massive (and I mean gigantic) rating drop, it likely won't. The top 5 Terrans all dropped in rating during the last period (INnoVation by over 80 points) and herO and Neeb had very big upswings, and all it amounted to was a 3% change on leading/lagging.
The leading/lagging statistic is realistically not very helpful either, since ratings are skewed for one or another reason.
I'm talking about from September 2016 though I forgot that in November things went back to normal for a short while. Also even as far as from beta Protoss got shafted for long periods on Lotv (early Lotv good times in PvZ lol). Unlike Terrans, Protoss players are not whiny enough. Probably a habit of being badmouthed for no good reason ever since BW. Maybe Protoss players should start to be whiny too.
Protoss players whined and got rewarded with a nerf to liberators and mines.
Bias can be a funny thing. Here's how you most likely filtered the above information:
"Protoss players [gave valuable feedback] and [SC2 balance team responded with much needed changes] to liberators and mines."
There are whiners everywhere. I'm talking about the fact the Protoss players are defintely not as loud and vocal as Terran players on SC2.
Could you please provide me with some sources for that "fact"? And what would differentiate yourself from those whiners you pointed out? The nerf to Liberators/Mines was totally justified, Terran was definitely overperforming, but so are Adepts. There absolutely needs to be some sort of risk/reward when building Adepts, as well as giving back purpose to Zealots other than being warped-in and thrown away offensively... Oh wait, you're using Adepts for that as well, right?
In addition to that, the perception that Terran is the most difficult race doesn't come from nowhere, ever wondered why there are no foreign Terrans winning stuff (Thorzain probably the one and only at TSL3 and that was like 8 months after release of the game)?
Sit down and take a sip of tea. I'm talking about my impression. In my experience Zerg players are usually strangely mute even when Zergs are garbage, Protoss kinda whiny and Terran very whiny even when they have the upper hand. That also shows in my message log whenever I get insulted on ladder. No need to feel triggered and ask for facts and cold hard numbers anytime anyone dare to speak a view different from yours.
Btw I don't whine. I'm just doing a snarky comment regarding pro games. In fact I personally am very fine with the current state of the game because that means I play a lot fewer PvP on ladder lately and Terran players play in an overconfident way that allow me to have fun and do weird stuff.
Terran is likely the most difficult race but at the level of the foreign scene, not in absolute. Current ladder and Korean scene show hints that this perception may not hold much ground, at least not anymore.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
What I and a lot of people dislike about the adept is that even if you manage the attack on your mineral lines decently you'll still lose a lot of workers because of the survivability of it. This complaint has been present basically since the introduction of the unit. I ask: Don't you agree with that complaint?
Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
I think an admin should be above a notion like this, certainly not feed it.
About the nerf: I prefer the hp nerf because it does 3 things: - Adepts die faster so less dead workers - Adepts die faster so less (no?) shading on top of opponents army - We'll hopefully see more Zealots (as meat shield)
I do share your concern about what this might do to balance of course. Hopefully Blizzard does too.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
4 months of wrecking protoss and nothing? We had a VERY significant lib nerf and a mine nerf... the problem was never just tanks, it was the combo of units.
Well considering they nerfed those two units and tank pushes still kill robo, tanks are probably the issue.
So in what way do you propose the tank is changed, that A) doesn't make roach/ravager comps in TvZ too strong, B) doesn't involve the tankivac, and C) doesn't make the tank too weak against any early Protoss all-ins you see 1 in however many games?
-20 shield damage? Can they even make a negative damage modifier? Huh.
Buff units that protoss needs to deal with them, namely colossi or stalkers. Chargelots used to be a counter to exactly this, but I still can't see them as a reliable opening in a game where mines and liberators exist and are part of the attack. You could also look into bringing back siege mode. It's not about tanks in general, it's all about that one specific timing. Making it hit later, or have protoss have better defense at that point shouldn't be hard to do.
I think Protoss players whine less than zerg/terran historically. Now if we add up the fact that they are like 20% of the playerbase, then it's pretty obvious what races will complain more about stuff tbh.
On April 14 2017 05:56 seopthi wrote: Surprised they did not give a shoutout to David Kim with a short note on how things will change in regards to further development and tweaks.
I think that the problem with Adept is not one that can be fixed by tweaking numbers; it is wrongly designed unit at its core and should be replaced as such and compensated by another unit or buffing Zealot, to be core Protoss unit again.
However, it is worth noting that TY said that he would want to significantly increase the shade's cooldown (I think he even said twice), but would reintroduce its vision.
And you will never hear TY says anything about merging his beloved liberators tanks mines cyclone that he loves to abuse so much!
On April 14 2017 05:56 seopthi wrote: Surprised they did not give a shoutout to David Kim with a short note on how things will change in regards to further development and tweaks.
I think that the problem with Adept is not one that can be fixed by tweaking numbers; it is wrongly designed unit at its core and should be replaced as such and compensated by another unit or buffing Zealot, to be core Protoss unit again.
However, it is worth noting that TY said that he would want to significantly increase the shade's cooldown (I think he even said twice), but would reintroduce its vision.
And you will never hear TY says anything about merging his beloved liberators tanks mines cyclone that he loves to abuse so much!
TY said more than once last year that he figured the liberator was too strong and would get nerfed eventually.
45% winrate is the norm. Everyone is used to it. When it gets to 50/50 everyone feels off. Terrans feel like they never win and Protoss players feel like the matchup is too easy.
I'm being 100% serious here, there is a real psychological phenomenon behind this.
If what you say is true, then everyone must feel extremely strange right now. Because PvT is at 57%.
Even including the quoted 14 day period, Terran is still the leading race with 6% and Protoss still lagging at 3%. This means probably another 57% month would be needed to fucking restore balance in the first place.
The leading/lagging race takes the mean Aligulac rating of the top 5 players of each race, so unless the 57% winrate causes the Terrans to have a massive (and I mean gigantic) rating drop, it likely won't. The top 5 Terrans all dropped in rating during the last period (INnoVation by over 80 points) and herO and Neeb had very big upswings, and all it amounted to was a 3% change on leading/lagging.
The leading/lagging statistic is realistically not very helpful either, since ratings are skewed for one or another reason.
Still, we have ~ four indicators as to overall balance: win rates, tournament wins, ladder/race/league distribution and the mentioned leading/lagging race in Aligulac. When tvp was 60:40, all four indicated t>p, and they did so for a long time. Now the situation is completely different.
People need to stop citing Aligulac! They focus on a few individual players and even then only look at an elect number of games, they seem fit. This methodology is not suited to derive meaningful information on the game as a whole. Not the least bit. The source data is too biased. When the PvT win rate changes from 40% to 57% it could just mean e.g. they chose to only look at Showtime for a month.
Allways protoss takes hard nerfs...im soo happy i left this game, cos it allways drove me crazy how they nerf toss just cos of terran crybabys. Anyways daed gaem.
On April 14 2017 20:31 QuinnTheEskimo wrote: People need to stop citing Aligulac! They focus on a few individual players and even then only look at an elect number of games, they seem fit. This methodology is not suited to derive meaningful information on the game as a whole. Not the least bit. The source data is too biased. When the PvT win rate changes from 40% to 57% it could just mean e.g. they chose to only look at Showtime for a month.
The winrates are based on every game recorded on Aligulac (ranging from top pros to to amateurs), they are not limited to individual players like you suggest.
45% winrate is the norm. Everyone is used to it. When it gets to 50/50 everyone feels off. Terrans feel like they never win and Protoss players feel like the matchup is too easy.
I'm being 100% serious here, there is a real psychological phenomenon behind this.
If what you say is true, then everyone must feel extremely strange right now. Because PvT is at 57%.
Even including the quoted 14 day period, Terran is still the leading race with 6% and Protoss still lagging at 3%. This means probably another 57% month would be needed to fucking restore balance in the first place.
The leading/lagging race takes the mean Aligulac rating of the top 5 players of each race, so unless the 57% winrate causes the Terrans to have a massive (and I mean gigantic) rating drop, it likely won't. The top 5 Terrans all dropped in rating during the last period (INnoVation by over 80 points) and herO and Neeb had very big upswings, and all it amounted to was a 3% change on leading/lagging.
The leading/lagging statistic is realistically not very helpful either, since ratings are skewed for one or another reason.
Still, we have ~ four indicators as to overall balance: win rates, tournament wins, ladder/race/league distribution and the mentioned leading/lagging race in Aligulac. When tvp was 60:40, all four indicated t>p, and they did so for a long time. Now the situation is completely different.
I wonder how much the race distribution on ladder actually tells us. Percentage wise there are more Protoss players now than a year ago. Was Protoss off worse back then? I wouldn't say so.
On April 14 2017 20:35 Elentos wrote: I wonder how much the race distribution on ladder actually tells us. Percentage wise there are more Protoss players now than a year ago. Was Protoss off worse back then? I wouldn't say so.
Race distribution is pretty much the only thing that tells anything about the ladder and whole (ladder) playerbase. Back in early years of SC2 Blizzard released winrates for ladder, which is interesting since system basically forces every player to 50% winrate, so If one advances from bronze to GM, only thing that changes during this in the big picture is his/her league. Therefore, it is league distribution that tells the tale of what really happens in ladder.
The winrates are based on every game recorded on Aligulac (ranging from top pros to to amateurs), they are not limited to individual players like you sugges
The games recorded at Aligulac are the problem. The method of how games end up being recorded on Aligulac is the problem. That is why their statistics are not suited to represent the game or its races in general.
And the section right after tells you they handle players individually. I am not suggesting.
On April 14 2017 17:27 R4iNy wrote: Hello everybody
As a high master/low GM Terran player I think that increasing cooldown of a shade is too little of a change, and reducing the HP's by 10 might be too drastic. So I would like to propose a middle way solution to the problem. I would increase the cooldown of a shade to 14 seconds like already proposed by the balance team and in addition to that I would make adepts a bit more vulnerable to attacks for a short period of time right after the shade is finished (like while warping in units, they take a bit more damage in the process) This would force protoss players to really think the action through, if it is really worth it to shade the adepts on top of the army and it would add a nice balanced disadvantage to the move as the shade itself ( on top of the army ) counters units that need to kited (Like bio, roaches, hydras, queens etc.) But on the otherside there would be no downside to the shade (such as reducing HP would be) if the defending players doesnt react in time for example while defending his mineral line. To compensate such a change I would boost the vision of a shade a little bit, so Protoss player and get enough information to make a final decision.
I think this change could be balanced very easily, because the team can always change the duration of such debuff and can also tweak the percentage of damage taken bonus.
A quite reasonable suggestion. The balance team should consider something like this.
On April 14 2017 20:35 Elentos wrote: I wonder how much the race distribution on ladder actually tells us. Percentage wise there are more Protoss players now than a year ago. Was Protoss off worse back then? I wouldn't say so.
Race distribution is pretty much the only thing that tells anything about the ladder and whole playerbase. Back in early years of SC2 Blizzard released winrates for ladder, which is interesting since system basically forces every player to 50% winrate, so If one advances from bronze to GM, only thing that changes during this in the big picture is his/her league. Therefore, it is league distribution that tells the tale of what really happens in ladder.
Race distribution doesn't tell anything about balance. Players most likely choose whatever they find more fun. People rarely choose races based on strenght, even choosing the underdog race is more common behaviour than choosing the op one. This race distribution only shows that in lotv, playing protoss is less fun than playing terran & zerg. This is what should be adressed in the first place. P.s: It may sound funny but i think the biggest reason for that is the new shitty chronoboost.
On April 14 2017 20:35 Elentos wrote: I wonder how much the race distribution on ladder actually tells us. Percentage wise there are more Protoss players now than a year ago. Was Protoss off worse back then? I wouldn't say so.
Race distribution is pretty much the only thing that tells anything about the ladder and whole playerbase. Back in early years of SC2 Blizzard released winrates for ladder, which is interesting since system basically forces every player to 50% winrate, so If one advances from bronze to GM, only thing that changes during this in the big picture is his/her league. Therefore, it is league distribution that tells the tale of what really happens in ladder.
Race distribution doesn't tell anything about balance. Players most likely choose whatever they find more fun. People rarely choose races based on strenght, even choosing the underdog race is more common behaviour than choosing the op one. This race distribution only shows that in lotv, playing protoss is less fun than playing terran & zerg. This is what should be adressed in the first place. P.s: It may sound funny but i think the biggest reason for that is the new shitty chronoboost.
Race distribution may not tell much about balance, since it can be affected by personal preference, and I did put that there by mistake. However, there is no concluse evindence that protoss is less played because it is less fun; the reason that protoss is less played because it is more difficult to play is just as, if not more, plausible as a reason.
What can and probably should be derived from the chart, however, is league distribution, which means how players of a race are distributed among leagues. As you can see, Protoss has almost third of the bronze playerbase, and this percentage is significantly smaller in higher leagues. Simply put, protoss players tend to end up in lower leagues and zerg players end up in higher leagues, while terran is the middle ground. If we use Occam's razor and assume the most obvious answer is the correct one, this tells us that protoss is dirstributed that way because it is either more difficult to play and/or underpowered compared to terran and especially zerg.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
Weird, I thought that for most of WoL the consensus was Zergs were the most prolific whiners. Even during BL/infestor I heard a lot of complaints about late-game air terran, carriers, etc. Maybe when idra left that changed?
On April 14 2017 17:27 R4iNy wrote: Hello everybody
As a high master/low GM Terran player I think that increasing cooldown of a shade is too little of a change, and reducing the HP's by 10 might be too drastic. So I would like to propose a middle way solution to the problem. I would increase the cooldown of a shade to 14 seconds like already proposed by the balance team and in addition to that I would make adepts a bit more vulnerable to attacks for a short period of time right after the shade is finished (like while warping in units, they take a bit more damage in the process) This would force protoss players to really think the action through, if it is really worth it to shade the adepts on top of the army and it would add a nice balanced disadvantage to the move as the shade itself ( on top of the army ) counters units that need to kited (Like bio, roaches, hydras, queens etc.) But on the otherside there would be no downside to the shade (such as reducing HP would be) if the defending players doesnt react in time for example while defending his mineral line. To compensate such a change I would boost the vision of a shade a little bit, so Protoss player and get enough information to make a final decision.
I think this change could be balanced very easily, because the team can always change the duration of such debuff and can also tweak the percentage of damage taken bonus.
I like that idea a lot. That way toss has to consider where and when to shade and the defender doesn't need to have doulbe the army to be able to defend both fronts.
On April 14 2017 20:35 Elentos wrote: I wonder how much the race distribution on ladder actually tells us. Percentage wise there are more Protoss players now than a year ago. Was Protoss off worse back then? I wouldn't say so.
Race distribution is pretty much the only thing that tells anything about the ladder and whole playerbase. Back in early years of SC2 Blizzard released winrates for ladder, which is interesting since system basically forces every player to 50% winrate, so If one advances from bronze to GM, only thing that changes during this in the big picture is his/her league. Therefore, it is league distribution that tells the tale of what really happens in ladder.
Race distribution doesn't tell anything about balance. Players most likely choose whatever they find more fun. People rarely choose races based on strength, even choosing the underdog race is more common behaviour than choosing the op one. This race distribution only shows that in lotv, playing protoss is less fun than playing terran & zerg. This is what should be adressed in the first place. P.s: It may sound funny but i think the biggest reason for that is the new shitty chronoboost.
Race distribution may not tell much about balance, since it can be affected by personal preference, and I did put that there by mistake. However, there is no concluse evidence that protoss is less played because it is less fun; the reason that protoss is less played because it is more difficult to play is just as, if not more, plausible as a reason.
What can and probably should be derived from the chart, however, is league distribution, which means how players of a race are distributed among leagues. As you can see, Protoss has almost third of the bronze playerbase, and this percentage is significantly smaller in higher leagues. Simply put, protoss players tend to end up in lower leagues and zerg players end up in higher leagues, while terran is the middle ground. If we use Occam's razor and assume the most obvious answer is the correct one, this tells us that protoss is dirstributed that way because it is either more difficult to play and/or underpowered compared to terran and especially zerg.
"Race distribution is pretty much the only thing that tells us anything about ladder and the whole playerbase."
No, in a game where the campaign has 30 Terran missions for the first expansion, you're going to end up with a lot of Terran players. My friend played Protoss in SC1. He has played exclusively Terran in SC2, and that's entirely because he familiarized himself with the race through the campaign. In addition, Terran has changed the least from SC1, so it's the easiest to use if you're an SC2 player from way back.
It seems to me that there is a definite style to each race. Zerg is still the most reactive because they generally have the most map control. Protoss is still very tech-based and defensive, trying to build to a massive endgame army. Terran is passive-aggressive, always picking fights but rarely taking a full-on engagement.
Zerg engage by surrounding, Terran by kiting, Protoss by simple attacks. I don't think it's a simple question of "fun", as fun means different things to different people. Protoss is not "more difficult", it is defensive and tech-oriented until you get to 3 bases.
Occam's razor is a lazy man's tool to avoid having to examine multiple causation.
Here's my central assertion: Zerg is the best designed race as a whole in SC2. The units are cohesive and work well together through the early, mid, and late game, with options for aggression, macro, and tech builds throughout. The other two races are less-well designed. I think the design team happened into this situation, and that the two units they've added that seem almost impossible to adjust and handle from a design standpoint are the Adept and Liberator.
Even these units are too powerful for different reasons. The adept has everything: tankiness, maneuverability, and dps being the 3 most important factors. The liberator has two unbelievably powerful things: massive single-unit damage and selective defensive positioning. I don't know how they're going to make these 2 units viable because their design needs to be rethought from the ground up.
Adepts have needed a hit point nerf since LoTV launched. If Protoss ends up in a bad spot because of it then so be it they can compensate them somewhere else, but the unit itself has been in a broken state and a crutch for pro Protoss play for WAY WAY WAY too long.
They're a gimmicky unit whose gimmick is far easier to abuse than it is to play around, for crying out loud we have whole strategies based around just using an invulnerabiliy mechanic to teleport onto an army and hit 1A.
They need to be toned down, they are not fun, they are completely overpowered in both match ups in the current meta and they have dominated Protoss play in all match ups for the entirety of LotV. Nerf their hitpoints. Get it over with, get back to balancing Protoss around something else.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
On April 14 2017 06:48 Ishmael wrote: I mean... the adept is really stupid to watch
This cannot be stated enough. Blizzard cannot think only of balance but also of spectator enjoyment as well if they truly want SC2 to be a long standing esport like BW
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). Tournament threads had 10-20 pages worth of comments less, since the constant whine drove people away. We never really action balance whine in LR threads, but back then we had to.
And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
On April 14 2017 06:48 Ishmael wrote: I mean... the adept is really stupid to watch
This cannot be stated enough. Blizzard cannot think only of balance but also of spectator enjoyment as well if they truly want SC2 to be a long standing esport like BW
To be fair, spectator enjoyment is how we also ended up with things like the Widow Mine, which might be fun to watch but definitely isn't fun to play with or against.
The Adept isn't fun to watch or play with. It just exists there disliked by everyone except people who want Protoss to have a crutch to win matches with.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the reason TL lost writers was because of commuinity reactions to balance in the LR threads. That shit has been around since the beginning.
Likely writers got bored for many of the same reasons I did and am here not as often as I used to be. WCS got watered down over the years, the Korean scene suffered, ProLeague died, the most exciting Zerg the game has ever seen got banned and LoTV has produced thus far very uncompelling Starcraft compared to what we've seen in the previous expansions.
With everything else that has happened in the scene since then you're really expecting me to believe that a disproportionate amount of balance complaining drove everyone away? Good luck selling that narrative Olli.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). Tournament threads had 10-20 pages worth of comments less, since the constant whine drove people away. We never really action balance whine in LR threads, but back then we had to.
And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
I'd argue losing every game to a blink all-in is understandably much more frustrating than losing half your games to BL/infestor and winning the other half with 2-base all-ins. I wasn't an admin then and can't say for certain who whines the most now, but shitting on ~1/3 of the community on page 1 of a community feedback thread just because you think they whined too much in the ZParcraft days seems... a bit much.
Edit: I reread your post on page 1 and "shitting on" is probably too strong a descriptor, although on first read I definitely got a "fucking terrans, always fucking up my game" vibe.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
If we're going by Code S representation (which is the most important metric imo) then no, no race ever performed that badly with just 3 terrans in Code S (2 of them being seeded from the previous season, the 3rd qualifying by avoiding tvp). I think Protoss had 5 during the 1/1/1 era which is the only period even comparable to the blink era. I wasn't around back then so I don't know how heavily protoss players complained.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). Tournament threads had 10-20 pages worth of comments less, since the constant whine drove people away. We never really action balance whine in LR threads, but back then we had to.
And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the reason TL lost writers was because of commuinity reactions to balance in the LR threads. That shit has been around since the beginning.
Likely writers got bored for many of the same reasons I did and am here not as often as I used to be. WCS got watered down over the years, the Korean scene suffered, ProLeague died, the most exciting Zerg the game has ever seen got banned and LoTV has produced thus far very uncompelling Starcraft compared to what we've seen in the previous expansions.
With everything else that has happened in the scene since then you're really expecting me to believe that a disproportionate amount of balance complaining drove everyone away? Good luck selling that narrative Olli.
Ok then. Not that this is the point anyway, but I know it happened. I was there when it happened, I talked to them then. You didn't.
The point is that whine has always been worst when Protoss was doing well and when Terran wasn't. And if you take a close look at balance changes Blizzard has made historically, the most important ones were always moved by huge complaints. Remember what happened that ended the "blink era"? They nerfed MSC vision, timewarp, gave mines +shield damage and changed maps to be anti-blink. The map change alone and one of the MSC changes would have done it. But they pushed out a patch that eliminated not only the common blink playstyles, but also every Templar playstyle in PvT to this day. Protoss were completely screwed over by that, but because the loud part of the community was satisfied that Protoss was easy to play against now, nothing ever happened to address that.
Remember early WoL? Terran had a 67% winrate vs Zergs at one point in 2010. 67%. The matchup stayed heavily in T's favor until October 2011.
Remember what happened recently? Winrates for PvT were far worse than during the blink era for 4 months. The lowest winrate Terran ever had during that time was around 45%, and that happened once . That's bad. Protoss was between 41-45% for 4 months after November 2016. The 41% included 400 more games than Terran's 45% too, making it that much more significant.
In March Protoss had a 49% winrate and already Terrans were back to whining, and already there's an adept nerf in the works. The point is that the community has a real impact on Blizzard's balance patching, and the community has largely been anti-Protoss for a long time now.
That is my opinion anyway, and it's based on 6 years of observing the game and its community closely - it's my job now, in fact. Do with it what you want.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the reason TL lost writers was because of commuinity reactions to balance in the LR threads. That shit has been around since the beginning.
Likely writers got bored for many of the same reasons I did and am here not as often as I used to be. WCS got watered down over the years, the Korean scene suffered, ProLeague died, the most exciting Zerg the game has ever seen got banned and LoTV has produced thus far very uncompelling Starcraft compared to what we've seen in the previous expansions.
With everything else that has happened in the scene since then you're really expecting me to believe that a disproportionate amount of balance complaining drove everyone away? Good luck selling that narrative Olli.
To be fair Zealously specifically cites a lot of these other factors (ded gaem, Blizzard<Valve, etc.) in that post. To me the obvious difference between ZParcraft era and, say, Zergs at the start of WoL would be that while there was prolonged and obvious imbalance in both cases, in ZParcraft era it was compounded by a lot of genuine fears about the future of SC2, with a lot of people worried that something like the GSL might not be able to keep the doors open until LotV.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
To be somewhat fair they do say both PvZ and PvT are affected by adepts. Two races complaining probably feels a lot more significant than one race
Doesn't mean he/she is wrong though. Number of race complains means nothing if it is true or not and I totally agree Terran do whine the most all the time. Avilo is like thee stereotype Terran player in a nutshell, constantly bitching even when things are balanced etc not all terran players are like this though but mostly e.g. code s two runs in a row only one terran makes it into the competition, totally agreed that they needed a buff, they get a thor buff (RIP Scarlett) Hellbat buff (RIP lower skill community) and the widow mine reverted back (well done) and the terran community still bitched *face palm*
On a side note. I hope the new lead balance director or whatever it's called has an actual spine and doesn't listen to the bitching and looks at things from a more logical than emotional approach.
On April 14 2017 20:35 Elentos wrote: I wonder how much the race distribution on ladder actually tells us. Percentage wise there are more Protoss players now than a year ago. Was Protoss off worse back then? I wouldn't say so.
Race distribution is pretty much the only thing that tells anything about the ladder and whole playerbase. Back in early years of SC2 Blizzard released winrates for ladder, which is interesting since system basically forces every player to 50% winrate, so If one advances from bronze to GM, only thing that changes during this in the big picture is his/her league. Therefore, it is league distribution that tells the tale of what really happens in ladder.
Race distribution doesn't tell anything about balance. Players most likely choose whatever they find more fun. People rarely choose races based on strength, even choosing the underdog race is more common behaviour than choosing the op one. This race distribution only shows that in lotv, playing protoss is less fun than playing terran & zerg. This is what should be adressed in the first place. P.s: It may sound funny but i think the biggest reason for that is the new shitty chronoboost.
Race distribution may not tell much about balance, since it can be affected by personal preference, and I did put that there by mistake. However, there is no concluse evidence that protoss is less played because it is less fun; the reason that protoss is less played because it is more difficult to play is just as, if not more, plausible as a reason.
What can and probably should be derived from the chart, however, is league distribution, which means how players of a race are distributed among leagues. As you can see, Protoss has almost third of the bronze playerbase, and this percentage is significantly smaller in higher leagues. Simply put, protoss players tend to end up in lower leagues and zerg players end up in higher leagues, while terran is the middle ground. If we use Occam's razor and assume the most obvious answer is the correct one, this tells us that protoss is dirstributed that way because it is either more difficult to play and/or underpowered compared to terran and especially zerg.
No, in a game where the campaign has 30 Terran missions for the first expansion, you're going to end up with a lot of Terran players. My friend played Protoss in SC1. He has played exclusively Terran in SC2, and that's entirely because he familiarized himself with the race through the campaign. In addition, Terran has changed the least from SC1, so it's the easiest to use if you're an SC2 player from way back.
The thing is, though, that neither race nor league distribution inside protoss was this skewed in WoL, and even in HotS things were relatively even across the board (according to my recollection). The fading off of protoss is mostly LotV-related.
Other things you mentioned didn't have much connection to what I wrote about, so I don't address that.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the reason TL lost writers was because of commuinity reactions to balance in the LR threads. That shit has been around since the beginning.
Likely writers got bored for many of the same reasons I did and am here not as often as I used to be. WCS got watered down over the years, the Korean scene suffered, ProLeague died, the most exciting Zerg the game has ever seen got banned and LoTV has produced thus far very uncompelling Starcraft compared to what we've seen in the previous expansions.
With everything else that has happened in the scene since then you're really expecting me to believe that a disproportionate amount of balance complaining drove everyone away? Good luck selling that narrative Olli.
Ok then. Not that this is the point anyway, but I know it happened. I was there when it happened, I talked to them then. You didn't.
The point is that whine has always been worst when Protoss was doing well and when Terran wasn't. And if you take a close look at balance changes Blizzard has made historically, the most important ones were always moved by huge complaints. Remember what happened that ended the "blink era"? They nerfed MSC vision, timewarp, gave mines +shield damage and changed maps to be anti-blink. The map change alone and one of the MSC changes would have done it. But they pushed out a patch that eliminated not only the common blink playstyles, but also every Templar playstyle in PvT to this day. Protoss were completely screwed over by that, but because the loud part of the community was satisfied that Protoss was easy to play against now, nothing ever happened to address that.
Remember early WoL? Terran had a 67% winrate vs Zergs at one point in 2010. 67%. The matchup stayed heavily in T's favor until October 2011.
Remember what happened recently? Winrates for PvT were far worse than during the blink era for 4 months. The lowest winrate Terran ever had during that time was around 45%, and that happened once . That's bad. Protoss was between 41-45% for 4 months after November 2016. The 41% included 400 more games than Terran's 45% too, making it that much more significant.
In March Protoss had a 49% winrate and already Terrans were back to whining, and already there's an adept nerf in the works. The point is that the community has a real impact on Blizzard's balance patching, and the community has largely been anti-Protoss for a long time now.
That is my opinion anyway, and it's based on 6 years of observing the game and its community closely - it's my job now, in fact. Do with it what you want.
I think you're focusing to much on winrates here. Winrates are certainly a factor for judging balance but not the only one and there are situations where winrates can be very misleading. For example during the blink era we saw most terran players getting eliminated very early or not even qualifying and then we were left with just the very top terrans getting a 50-50 winrate against mostly mediocre protoss. Or when certain players are just farming online tournaments left and right it also screws the validity of winrates. Sometimes there are also just extreme mismatches like at WESG where TY and Maru just destroyed everyone.
Yes protoss had a 41% winrate in pvt but they had still 3 players in the ro8 of gsl (who all played multiple PvTs to get there) so things clearly weren't as bad.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the reason TL lost writers was because of commuinity reactions to balance in the LR threads. That shit has been around since the beginning.
Likely writers got bored for many of the same reasons I did and am here not as often as I used to be. WCS got watered down over the years, the Korean scene suffered, ProLeague died, the most exciting Zerg the game has ever seen got banned and LoTV has produced thus far very uncompelling Starcraft compared to what we've seen in the previous expansions.
With everything else that has happened in the scene since then you're really expecting me to believe that a disproportionate amount of balance complaining drove everyone away? Good luck selling that narrative Olli.
Ok then. Not that this is the point anyway, but I know it happened. I was there when it happened, I talked to them then. You didn't.
The point is that whine has always been worst when Protoss was doing well and when Terran wasn't. And if you take a close look at balance changes Blizzard has made historically, the most important ones were always moved by huge complaints. Remember what happened that ended the "blink era"? They nerfed MSC vision, timewarp, gave mines +shield damage and changed maps to be anti-blink. The map change alone and one of the MSC changes would have done it. But they pushed out a patch that eliminated not only the common blink playstyles, but also every Templar playstyle in PvT to this day. Protoss were completely screwed over by that, but because the loud part of the community was satisfied that Protoss was easy to play against now, nothing ever happened to address that.
Remember early WoL? Terran had a 67% winrate vs Zergs at one point in 2010. 67%. The matchup stayed heavily in T's favor until October 2011.
Remember what happened recently? Winrates for PvT were far worse than during the blink era for 4 months. The lowest winrate Terran ever had during that time was around 45%, and that happened once . That's bad. Protoss was between 41-45% for 4 months after November 2016. The 41% included 400 more games than Terran's 45% too, making it that much more significant.
In March Protoss had a 49% winrate and already Terrans were back to whining, and already there's an adept nerf in the works. The point is that the community has a real impact on Blizzard's balance patching, and the community has largely been anti-Protoss for a long time now.
That is my opinion anyway, and it's based on 6 years of observing the game and its community closely - it's my job now, in fact. Do with it what you want.
I agree that the community is largely anti protoss. I wouldn't say it's necessarily the fault of the community though. I think it is the fault of the game. When losing to protoss most people simply feel like it was unfair, like it was some "protoss bs" which won. I said it somewhere else but the aesthetics are incredibly important as well. Watching adepts shade on top of units is simply ugly. Watching a bio terran split his stuff against banelings is not. Both interactions might be 100% balanced, but that doesn't matter because each time the adepts win it feels unfair simply by how the unit interactions work there. Same thing with forcefields back in the day. So yeah i agree that the general opinion of protoss is negative and it's not even about balance at that point, it's about unit interactions, general protoss playstyle and the aesthetics of it.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the reason TL lost writers was because of commuinity reactions to balance in the LR threads. That shit has been around since the beginning.
Likely writers got bored for many of the same reasons I did and am here not as often as I used to be. WCS got watered down over the years, the Korean scene suffered, ProLeague died, the most exciting Zerg the game has ever seen got banned and LoTV has produced thus far very uncompelling Starcraft compared to what we've seen in the previous expansions.
With everything else that has happened in the scene since then you're really expecting me to believe that a disproportionate amount of balance complaining drove everyone away? Good luck selling that narrative Olli.
Ok then. Not that this is the point anyway, but I know it happened. I was there when it happened, I talked to them then. You didn't.
The point is that whine has always been worst when Protoss was doing well and when Terran wasn't. And if you take a close look at balance changes Blizzard has made historically, the most important ones were always moved by huge complaints. Remember what happened that ended the "blink era"? They nerfed MSC vision, timewarp, gave mines +shield damage and changed maps to be anti-blink. The map change alone and one of the MSC changes would have done it. But they pushed out a patch that eliminated not only the common blink playstyles, but also every Templar playstyle in PvT to this day. Protoss were completely screwed over by that, but because the loud part of the community was satisfied that Protoss was easy to play against now, nothing ever happened to address that.
Remember early WoL? Terran had a 67% winrate vs Zergs at one point in 2010. 67%. The matchup stayed heavily in T's favor until October 2011.
Remember what happened recently? Winrates for PvT were far worse than during the blink era for 4 months. The lowest winrate Terran ever had during that time was around 45%, and that happened once . That's bad. Protoss was between 41-45% for 4 months after November 2016. The 41% included 400 more games than Terran's 45% too, making it that much more significant.
In March Protoss had a 49% winrate and already Terrans were back to whining, and already there's an adept nerf in the works. The point is that the community has a real impact on Blizzard's balance patching, and the community has largely been anti-Protoss for a long time now.
That is my opinion anyway, and it's based on 6 years of observing the game and its community closely - it's my job now, in fact. Do with it what you want.
As others said you focus too much on winrates.
Theres unfair stuff in all MUs for all said but the fact that protoss is the most complained about in all levels and all eras does goes to say the design it has and the game play it leads to.
People just don't enjoy playing against protoss regardless of everything else.
Also don't go around saying "terrans players are the whinest" or "anti protoss sentiment" because they make no sense, unless you are making a study that can clearly show a link between personality and the race you play in a video game saying that "terrans players are all X" and "the community thinks Y" is just personal bias derived from experience and means nothing but looking to start a fight for totally unnecesary reasons.
balancing this unit from the gateway has led to all sorts of problems and meta shifts, I'd almost like to see these units come from robotics or maybe only available from the warp-gateways
What about just transferring more of it's HP to shields? So it has 80hp & 70 shields so 150 total "health", why not just shift it to something like 25hp 125 shields or even 50hp 100 shields?
A)It would then possibly make the shield upgrade more valuable and maybe we'd see it get researched earlier, especially since shield upgrade not only helps all your units but now could help out your main core "tanky" unit. Now a day we almost always see Weapon & Armor getting 3/3 and then finally after that possibly getting a shield upgrade or two.
B)It "could" make ghosts more viable in TvP since now EMP will be even more valuable besides just using on the Templar/Archon army.
Doing something like that might be a big enough nerf. I do also think messing with the speed of the shade would be a smart idea. Simple enough nerf but doesn't really tweak the adept numbers itself.
On April 15 2017 04:03 SidianTheBard wrote: What about just transferring more of it's HP to shields? So it has 80hp & 70 shields so 150 total "health", why not just shift it to something like 25hp 125 shields or even 50hp 100 shields?
A)It would then possibly make the shield upgrade more valuable and maybe we'd see it get researched earlier, especially since shield upgrade not only helps all your units but now could help out your main core "tanky" unit. Now a day we almost always see Weapon & Armor getting 3/3 and then finally after that possibly getting a shield upgrade or two.
B)It "could" make ghosts more viable in TvP since now EMP will be even more valuable besides just using on the Templar/Archon army.
Doing something like that might be a big enough nerf. I do also think messing with the speed of the shade would be a smart idea. Simple enough nerf but doesn't really tweak the adept numbers itself.
Transferring more health to shields would actually buff the Adept in the early game, which is the main problem with the unit right now. Shields regenerate, but Protoss have no way of regenerating HP. If an Adept takes enough damage, it will take permanent HP damage, but if it only takes damage to the shields it can regenerate that and come back for another round.
I'd say that I'm impressed by the first decisions after DK's departure. The approach appears more logical and decisions are more urgent and sound. The first few patches will not resolve all problems but at least appear to be going in the right direction. Overall I think the game is in more competent hands.
On April 15 2017 07:00 Kafka777 wrote: I'd say that I'm impressed by the first decisions after DK's departure. The approach appears more logical and decisions are more urgent and sound. The first few patches will not resolve all problems but at least appear to be going in the right direction. Overall I think the game is in more competent hands.
It's literally the same suggestion they had for hydras.
If they're deciding between nerfing harass and nerfing straight-up fight capability, I think they should nerf harass. To stabilize protoss as a race, having a good cheap fighting unit is very helpful. It's nice for protoss to have a decent fighting army early and mid game without having to rely on some tech timing or going all-in.
The ridiculous adept games are the ones where the adepts get dealt with over and over and over again until 3 shade in to a huge worker line one time and slaughter it. Protoss should lose that game, but they win them.
It's literally the same suggestion they had for hydras.
Which david kim was a part of.
Get off your bias.
I don't get the bias, the Adept problem is going on since the beginning of LOTV. They are willing to patch it 2 weeks before a major tournament. They also see other balance issues. I think there is a lot of progress here. I have always stipulated that Blizz should be more courageous with patches.
On April 15 2017 07:00 Kafka777 wrote: I'd say that I'm impressed by the first decisions after DK's departure. The approach appears more logical and decisions are more urgent and sound. The first few patches will not resolve all problems but at least appear to be going in the right direction. Overall I think the game is in more competent hands.
I truly don't understand you. New persons in charge appear to be doing their job properly. I would at least hope the game will get better under their guidance and in principle they are doing the most obvious move possible, in a very delicate way.
I honestly think the problem with adepts isn't their harassment ability or their straight-up fighting strength per se. While it does feel dumb for a mono-comp to be good against nearly everything I have except widow mines, I think the part that feels broken is that they don't obey normal scaling rules. Most of the time melee units hit hard in small numbers, but don't scale well because their damage is limited by surface area. Ranged units do better in mid-sized engagements, but as their numbers increase not all of them are shooting at the same time because they're stuck behind other units at the start of the engagement. Then AoE is the best in big engagements because it hits very hard when the enemy is clumped up, and if the ranged units spread out to avoid the AoE then even more of them aren't fighting.
But adepts sidestep all that by shading on top of your army. No matter how many you have you can get them all firing at once, and if you do it right your opponent doesn't even want to AoE you because they'll hit their own stuff. It's not even nevessarily broken in that it's overpowered (although it might be that too), it's broken in that it disobeys conventional combat rules that nearly every other unit follows. I don't know if Protosses find it fun to do, but it's not particularly fun to play against and it's confusing as hell to watch. For TvP engagements like that, you get a million shades all coming in, the Terran wriggles back and forth to get away from the shades so his own mines won't destroy him, and then all of a sudden everything's on top of everything and mine explosions are blowing up everywhere and after five or ten seconds one army is still there and the other isn't. Very hard to tell what happened or follow who's ahead mid-fight.
I don't know what could be done to fix it. I'd be tempted to have the shade given collision, but my understanding is that gets pretty broken because a bunch of shades can act like a totally impenetrable forcefield. Maybe something weird like if the shades can't walk through enemy units, but enemy units aren't impeded by shades and just push them back?
I truly don't understand you. New persons in charge appear to be doing their job properly. I would at least hope the game will get better under their guidance and in principle they are doing the most obvious move possible, in a very delicate way.
I get the frustration about Adepts in TvP, though I've personally never felt it in ZvP.
It feels like Protoss is already under-represented as it is. Whilst I don't really want to go back to players just massing stalkers, I'd like to see some compensation given to Protoss because my games just feel like I'm playing way more Terrans/Zergs lately and it's kinda boring.
On April 15 2017 08:10 ChristianS wrote: I honestly think the problem with adepts isn't their harassment ability or their straight-up fighting strength per se. While it does feel dumb for a mono-comp to be good against nearly everything I have except widow mines, I think the part that feels broken is that they don't obey normal scaling rules. Most of the time melee units hit hard in small numbers, but don't scale well because their damage is limited by surface area. Ranged units do better in mid-sized engagements, but as their numbers increase not all of them are shooting at the same time because they're stuck behind other units at the start of the engagement. Then AoE is the best in big engagements because it hits very hard when the enemy is clumped up, and if the ranged units spread out to avoid the AoE then even more of them aren't fighting.
But adepts sidestep all that by shading on top of your army. No matter how many you have you can get them all firing at once, and if you do it right your opponent doesn't even want to AoE you because they'll hit their own stuff. It's not even nevessarily broken in that it's overpowered (although it might be that too), it's broken in that it disobeys conventional combat rules that nearly every other unit follows. I don't know if Protosses find it fun to do, but it's not particularly fun to play against and it's confusing as hell to watch. For TvP engagements like that, you get a million shades all coming in, the Terran wriggles back and forth to get away from the shades so his own mines won't destroy him, and then all of a sudden everything's on top of everything and mine explosions are blowing up everywhere and after five or ten seconds one army is still there and the other isn't. Very hard to tell what happened or follow who's ahead mid-fight.
I don't know what could be done to fix it. I'd be tempted to have the shade given collision, but my understanding is that gets pretty broken because a bunch of shades can act like a totally impenetrable forcefield. Maybe something weird like if the shades can't walk through enemy units, but enemy units aren't impeded by shades and just push them back?
I think that sums it up pretty well. Plus that the harass against zerg looks sometimes very cruel when shading from one base to another.
I also want to quote my suggestion in the other thread which might work quite well in addition to blocking shades of some sort. + Show Spoiler +
On April 15 2017 08:05 DSh1 wrote: 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.
He was in charge. Now someone else is making the calls, so it does not matter if the same persons work on this. I would say the new person is clearly wiser, but even though decisions appear better no revolution has happened just yet.
He was in charge. Now someone else is making the calls, so it does not matter if the same persons work on this. I would say the new person is clearly wiser, but even though decisions appear better no revolution has happened just yet.
It's the exact same change as the hydralisk.
"We want to buff hydra health by 10" = "David Kim is worthless"
"We want to nerf adept health by 10" = "WOW THIS NEW BALANCE TEAM IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN DAVID KIM".
"We want to buff hydra health by 10" = "David Kim is worthless"
"We want to nerf adept health by 10" = "WOW THIS NEW BALANCE TEAM IS SO MUCH BETTER THAN DAVID KIM".
Do you even read what you post?
You are manipulating posts by quoting different persons. Nevertheless, Blizzard does not even need this thread. They just need to do their job properly and I hope they started to realize this.
Finally ! Thank you blizzard ! I love ya'll ! I've been commenting on so many Youtube Vidoes about this and they finally are doing something about it! I hate Adepts! They are too much atm. Please nerf them and find true balance in these match ups. protoss are not supposed to be too strong on all stages of the game. Thank you again Blizz! <3
There are a few ways to fix this. One way could be that there's a delay for Adept to shoot after shaded in. This won't affect harassment too much but it negates them from being so powerful in a straight up fight or shade right on top of an army.
On April 15 2017 08:10 ChristianS wrote:
I don't know what could be done to fix it. I'd be tempted to have the shade given collision, but my understanding is that gets pretty broken because a bunch of shades can act like a totally impenetrable forcefield. Maybe something weird like if the shades can't walk through enemy units, but enemy units aren't impeded by shades and just push them back?
I would personally like to see a short attack delay when the shades finish. The first invulnerable volley out of shades can decimate the high dps units in opposing armies before they even attack and it feels a bit silly because suddenly the fights aren´t trades but lopsided affairs from the beginning.
On April 15 2017 07:29 NonY wrote: If they're deciding between nerfing harass and nerfing straight-up fight capability, I think they should nerf harass. To stabilize protoss as a race, having a good cheap fighting unit is very helpful. It's nice for protoss to have a decent fighting army early and mid game without having to rely on some tech timing or going all-in.
The ridiculous adept games are the ones where the adepts get dealt with over and over and over again until 3 shade in to a huge worker line one time and slaughter it. Protoss should lose that game, but they win them.
I proposed a solution that does exactly that.
Adepts currently have 80 health and 70 shields aka 150 health total.
Instead adepts should be changed to have 110 shields and 40 health (same 150 effective health).
When adepts now use the psionic transfer ability they lose all of their shielding.
What does this mean? It means adepts can still be built and function in the main army identically to how they do on the current live version of the game.
But it also means, if you want to use adepts to shade around and harrass a mineral line, there will be a drawback to that now. It will be easier for the opponent to handle, but adepts still will shred stuff the same way.
What do people think of this? Fair? Balanced? Does it leave adepts as strong as they currently are in the army, and weaken them in harrassment?
Blizzard can hire me for balance any day if they want to. To be completely honest though, the adept is just a broken unit fundamentally. It's design makes it a better version of the zealot that is ranged and attacks faster, with hyper mobility, requiring not even research. The unit has been busted since launch. I don't understand how this unit can exist considering it makes zealots almost irrelevant.
LoL so you want them to have 40 hp if they use their ability? That's such a big nerf to both harassment AND actual army (because you want to shade onto the enemy army) So no it's not balanced, it makes the adepts basically worthless.
I would personally like to see a short attack delay when the shades finish. The first invulnerable volley out of shades can decimate the high dps units in opposing armies before they even attack and it feels a bit silly because suddenly the fights aren´t trades but lopsided affairs from the beginning.
Actually this is a good point. As it stands currently, Adepts always get the first volley off, and like Tasteless says all the time about mech, (paraphrasing) battles are about who shoots first. Putting in a delay to let the other side shoot first would be a great change and is a viable alternative to what Blizzard is suggesting.
A -10 health nerf would be just as good though.
Lmao @40 health Adepts. As much as I hate Adepts, that's completely ridiculous and would basically remove them from the game. Even 110 health Adepts would still be too weak. 10 less hp is a perfectly reasonable nerf.
On April 14 2017 17:27 R4iNy wrote: Hello everybody
As a high master/low GM Terran player I think that increasing cooldown of a shade is too little of a change, and reducing the HP's by 10 might be too drastic. So I would like to propose a middle way solution to the problem. I would increase the cooldown of a shade to 14 seconds like already proposed by the balance team and in addition to that I would make adepts a bit more vulnerable to attacks for a short period of time right after the shade is finished (like while warping in units, they take a bit more damage in the process) This would force protoss players to really think the action through, if it is really worth it to shade the adepts on top of the army and it would add a nice balanced disadvantage to the move as the shade itself ( on top of the army ) counters units that need to kited (Like bio, roaches, hydras, queens etc.) But on the otherside there would be no downside to the shade (such as reducing HP would be) if the defending players doesnt react in time for example while defending his mineral line. To compensate such a change I would boost the vision of a shade a little bit, so Protoss player and get enough information to make a final decision.
I think this change could be balanced very easily, because the team can always change the duration of such debuff and can also tweak the percentage of damage taken bonus.
I have been talking with some of the other players about this idea (e.g. beastyqt and some of the NA zerg players) and we made a nice additional point to the change.
Right now, protoss doesnt really need to initiate a fight before he shades which might be main mistake there is with the unit. We agreed that the purpose of this unit IS to get on top of the army, but we also realized .. that it disagrees with the idea of the units that requires kiting to be efficient at all. We were talking about if the suggested change is too big of a nerf or not and we agreed it might be a bit too much if the debuff would be longer than 4 seconds. So if protoss players would still use adepts as a core unit of their army after this change would be applied .. it might not be a good idea to initiate the fight with shades .. instead it would be a nice way to finish the fight or to harras .. since for protoss player it might be a better idea to initiate a fight with an attack and after the fight starts they would shade on top of the army if they think it is a good idea. This way the fight would start with adepts being tanky as normal and the shade would be a nice tool to finish the fight or zone the opponets army into a bad position, but it would make adepts more vulnerable for like 2-4 seconds and the "tanky" role of the unit would be switched to an offensive dps unit for that period of time, after that adepts would be tanky as usual.
To finish it all again, I think this is the great change if we are looking for the nerf of an adepts mainly in the fight scenarios and not too much in harras scenarios, since when Protoss harrases, they dont really need adepts to tank damage, they just need to damage as much as possible.
Talking about balance btw when is the balance developer gonna look at the GSL final results and give Zerg a helping hand instead of bowing down to bitching. There was like almost a 2 year gap before zerg won two GSL Code S finals from Soulkey to I believe Life. Does that not say anything or soO getting to 5 finals and can't take the wins from protoss or Terran :/
I think it's safe to say, that there are many good ways to nerf Adepts in an appropriate fashion..
1. Make them vulnerable like the Warp Gate thing as the GM Terran player said making Shade inherently more risky (pretty good)
2. Adding an attack delay after they get out of Shade so they can't get that initial volley off (didn't even realize this it's good but probably won't make them too much worse)
3. Straight nerfing the HP (Probably the easiest and most feel good but I don't think it makes them any less gimmicky)
My other issue with the Adept is that it pretty much does the Stalkers and Zealots job early game and mid game, late game Zealot drops are a bit less of a resource investment to bring down Hatcheries but the point remains, why ever really build Zealots and Stalkers when you could just mass more Adepts? Which at their very core are tanky front line fighters who also excel at pulling armies out of position and also excel at attacking enemy economy.
The Zealot's identity was a tanky front line fighter, the Stalkers identity was lost somewhere back in HOTS and definitely in LOTV with the rise of the Hydralisks and Siege Tanks but at one point it was a high micro high skill cap unit that needed to be blinked and well controlled to stay alive and get it's maximum value, the Adepts identity pretty much completely replaces the Stalker who's only saving grace is that it can shoot air but Protoss players widely know that if you're building Stalkers vs. Mutalisks, it's pretty much already GG, and in the majority of situations replaces the Zealot because it's just as tanky but can Shade and it's ranged. The only reason Zealot/Immortal/Archon is the composition is because every drop of gas is needed for the Immortals and the Archons and Protoss can't really afford too much spare gas on Adepts. If the Protoss player is ahead or has any type of economic leeway, you can bet your ass that they will be sprinkling in as many Adepts as they can afford, and why wouldnt they?
Wish List for Adept
- Remove Shade entirely but buff Adepts movement speed to be more on par with the Stalker - Change Resonating Glaives to still give the attack speed increase while giving it a bounce (attacks one other unit at half damage) but change the cost to 200/200 with a hefty research time - Nerf their HP by 10 so you are building a unit that isn't inherently superior to the Zealot in pretty much every way and the Zealot remains the front line tank
Reasoning is that with Stalker level movement speed, the Adept would benefit from real applied micro and not merely Shade micro which comes across as more of a gimmick/not well designed from a player or spectator stand point. The early game mobility buff alone would more then allow it to still function as an early game raider and would make Shade a moot point, while the HP nerf would ensure that they would not be as overwhelming and suffocating as they are currently.
Buffing their upgrade but making it more time consuming but more expensive is to give the Adept (in it's new micro friendly form) will give it a more powerful midgame power spike and allow it to fight Terran bio head to head once the Medivac count starts to rise.
Community update doesn't discuss swarm hosts. I was watching a game a few days ago, and I can say that swarm hosts are almost stupid as they were in HotS. You just have to use nydus worms well.
Poor Protoss, getting bullied out of the game. Leave the Adept alone, let players sim city better or develop strategies to deal with it. Let mapmakers try. This is gritting ridiculous with the community feedback only coming from Terran and Zerg players.
On April 15 2017 18:02 t0ssboy wrote: Blizzard still haven't realized that if they nerf adepts they need to buff some other protoss unit, otherwise we will be back at 40% in BOTH matchups.
Considering the last sentence of the update is them saying they'll explore moving some of the strength of the adept to the zealot, I don't think it's a lost cause.
On April 15 2017 18:02 t0ssboy wrote: Blizzard still haven't realized that if they nerf adepts they need to buff some other protoss unit, otherwise we will be back at 40% in BOTH matchups.
Considering the last sentence of the update is them saying they'll explore moving some of the strength of the adept to the zealot, I don't think it's a lost cause.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play much LotV nowadays), but zealots aren't that good vs terran. They have widow mines. It's the same reason why zealots weren't that effective in HotS.
On April 15 2017 18:02 t0ssboy wrote: Blizzard still haven't realized that if they nerf adepts they need to buff some other protoss unit, otherwise we will be back at 40% in BOTH matchups.
Considering the last sentence of the update is them saying they'll explore moving some of the strength of the adept to the zealot, I don't think it's a lost cause.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play much LotV nowadays), but zealots aren't that good vs terran. They have widow mines. It's the same reason why zealots weren't that effective in HotS.
Widow mines got nerfed, so they are not as a big of a deal to protoss as they had been before
On April 15 2017 18:02 t0ssboy wrote: Blizzard still haven't realized that if they nerf adepts they need to buff some other protoss unit, otherwise we will be back at 40% in BOTH matchups.
Considering the last sentence of the update is them saying they'll explore moving some of the strength of the adept to the zealot, I don't think it's a lost cause.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play much LotV nowadays), but zealots aren't that good vs terran. They have widow mines. It's the same reason why zealots weren't that effective in HotS.
They were still used though, unlike now where zealots are a dead unit in the match-up - even after the widow mine nerf (and the buffs to Charge in LotV). And I mean why wouldn't you make adepts instead, they can get on top of the army without taking damage before the fight really starts, zealots don't have that luxury.
Buffing the zealot might not be the right idea, but hey, at least they realize they might need to do more than just nerf adepts. Although I wouldn't be surprised if they just overbuffed the zealot and it broke PvZ on their first try.
In a (somewhat) perfect world something like this might happen:
* Adepts will trade shade and tankiness for base DPS and some kind of microable passive ability (not active, because we've got enough of those).
* Zealots get two Twilight Council upgrades. One for movement speed and one which gives a short stun on attack as a replacement of Charge (should be on a cooldown of a few seconds ofc).
* Stalkers get 14 flat damage, increased cost and potentially increased HP/shields
If this happens all the Gateway units have a specific role: Adepts supply DPS and are excellent for harass (but aren't good on their own in straight up fights); Zealots are tanky frontline fighters with a bit of crowd control (you will always want to have Zealot + X in straight up fights); and Stalkers are generalists with medium DPS which benefit heavily from Blink micro and shoot air.
They would also combine well: Zealot + Adept for straight up engagements against heavy light compositions (like Bio or Zergling based compositions); Zealots + Stalkers for straight up engagements against heavy armored compositions (like Mech or Roach + Ravager); Adept + Stalker would probably be more of a fringe composition but could be best against something like Bling + Roach + Ravager.
In any case, clear role differentiation needs to happen. A tanky, high DPS unit with a 1-button-escape like the current Adept makes no sense.
I had an idea the most time adept discussion is live. What about this: Let the shade being attacked, but only the shields. This would decrease its herass potential, starts new interaction for players in defending and makes it much more interesting to watch. The shading player also has to think twice when to shade. Scouting with them would possible costs the shields. Shading on armies would have less power. But doesn´t effect them to much?
It'll be bad for terrans. Protoss can just use adepts' shades for tanks to cause friendly fire. Then, they cancel shades and regenerate shield. Also, it'll be complicated for viewers.
On April 15 2017 19:41 Tyrhanius wrote: What about : Shade can't be cancelled after 5s ?
Then the other knows where the adepts will pop if the Protoss hasn't cancelled, and can't be baited by the cancel at the last second.
Regardless of exact number (it has to be tested instead of a random number), I think it'll be nice to have a timer on top of unit to say 1s, 2s, 3s, etc. It should be visible at least to adepts' owner and observers. I don't know about enemy. The idea is to reduce luck.
What's good about the Adept is the non-deathballeyness of the unit. There's a good chance if Protoss commits to sending a big group of adepts to harass, he can deal heavy eco damage. He's also going to be making them anyway, as they are so good in the army. So it's usually worth doing sending them out if he has them, even if the Adepts die and and weaken his army as whole compared to if he just turtled up.I think (probably) everybody who plays the game and most the people who watch it can agree that the direction we want SC2 to go in is towards more small skirmishes more often (in a standard macro game where both players go for a safe, eco style) rather than a single big game-ending battle.
Looking at the Marine/Medivac drop instead, this is a composition like the Adept. It's mostly minerals, with some gas. They are both core parts of the army. You have mobility and potential for lots of damage. You expect sometimes to lose the marines, sometimes the medivac as well, but there is strong potential for escaping.
With the marine/medivac comp, balancing has always been done on the medivac (the mobility) rather than the marines, which have remained almost completely unchanged. It would be wisest to nerf the shade rather than anything related to their combat strength, because less combat strength means less incentive to build them at all, which means much less harass happens, which means deathball again.
If you look at the stalker, which was designed for WoL, before the hyper-harass of LotV, it's not really worth harassing with it as the resource commitment to potential eco damage ratio is just bad. Its semi-ok in the main army, but you just don't see it that much early on because it does not deal damage quick enough, and really it's just a boring component of the deathball, necessary for shooting up at air units that storm/archons bruise. We don't want a similar thing to happen to the adept as well.
My suggestion would be to increase the cooldown quite drastically, so that if you don't use it for escape you are usually committing those units to die. Then, i'd increase the carrying capacity of the warp prism for gateway units and nerf it's HP and warp in times. The effect would be that the warp prism becomes a better delivery tool for all gateway units without negating defender's advantage for big fights, and you'll need to babysit the WP and adepts more. For larger fights the shading on top of your enemy potential is still there basically how it was, except with higher cooldown you need to be more careful in downtime.
On April 15 2017 18:02 t0ssboy wrote: Blizzard still haven't realized that if they nerf adepts they need to buff some other protoss unit, otherwise we will be back at 40% in BOTH matchups.
Considering the last sentence of the update is them saying they'll explore moving some of the strength of the adept to the zealot, I don't think it's a lost cause.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play much LotV nowadays), but zealots aren't that good vs terran. They have widow mines. It's the same reason why zealots weren't that effective in HotS.
They were still used though, unlike now where zealots are a dead unit in the match-up - even after the widow mine nerf (and the buffs to Charge in LotV). And I mean why wouldn't you make adepts instead, they can get on top of the army without taking damage before the fight really starts, zealots don't have that luxury.
Buffing the zealot might not be the right idea, but hey, at least they realize they might need to do more than just nerf adepts. Although I wouldn't be surprised if they just overbuffed the zealot and it broke PvZ on their first try.
What if they actually removed the adept as a separate unit?
Hear me out:
If you maintain zealots as they are, but provide adepts as upgraded zealots. So resonating glaves, instead of just increasing attack speed actually transforms zealots into adepts.
Each zealot could then merge his consciousness with the psionic matrix for a short period of time, ( day 15 sec and for a cost of 50/50) and emerge as a stronger fighting unit, similar to lurkers.
That way, you maintain zealots early game, you create a need for them to be built, you allow adepts to come into the game a little bit later (and can tweak them a little more easily in terms of availability and cost: make the research take longer/shorter, make the individual warp transformation take longer/shorter or be more expensive) without destroying the flexibility that adepts provide.
I'd argue at this point, those charges are so drastic that you leave the rest of them alone /buff something else so Ps don't just get rolled over by big pushes and just get sieged to death.
Ok, have to post again here let's all be honest. The unit is a travesty to even be in the game. But now Blizzard is doing a bandaid fix to the fact that they arbitrarily nerfed widow mines versus Protoss.
The main reason the mass adept non-sense is back in full force is because widow mines were the main counter to adepts. Adding mines into your army made it a lot harder for someone to spam pure adepts. But with aoe nerfed...we have what we have now.
Though, it's kinda nice in a way that mines were nerfed so finally that spotlight could be on how ridiculous adepts have been the entire time.
There are quite a few good ideas here, and it seems like a decent consensus that the greatest Protoss need from the Adept is a harassment sort of unit. Simple HP nerfs may get us there, but I would prefer that the unit have a weakness or a counter rather than it continue to be so all around. Something like moving a lot of its hp to shields makes a lot of sense, as then ghosts would scare off protoss players massing adepts.
In any case, the adept should have some definite strengths and weaknesses. The zealot is tanky but slow. The stalker is maneuverable but with low dps. The adept would fit very well being maneuverable with high dps.
On April 15 2017 18:02 t0ssboy wrote: Blizzard still haven't realized that if they nerf adepts they need to buff some other protoss unit, otherwise we will be back at 40% in BOTH matchups.
Considering the last sentence of the update is them saying they'll explore moving some of the strength of the adept to the zealot, I don't think it's a lost cause.
Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play much LotV nowadays), but zealots aren't that good vs terran. They have widow mines. It's the same reason why zealots weren't that effective in HotS.
They were still used though, unlike now where zealots are a dead unit in the match-up - even after the widow mine nerf (and the buffs to Charge in LotV). And I mean why wouldn't you make adepts instead, they can get on top of the army without taking damage before the fight really starts, zealots don't have that luxury.
Buffing the zealot might not be the right idea, but hey, at least they realize they might need to do more than just nerf adepts. Although I wouldn't be surprised if they just overbuffed the zealot and it broke PvZ on their first try.
What if they actually removed the adept as a separate unit?
Hear me out:
If you maintain zealots as they are, but provide adepts as upgraded zealots. So resonating glaves, instead of just increasing attack speed actually transforms zealots into adepts.
Each zealot could then merge his consciousness with the psionic matrix for a short period of time, ( day 15 sec and for a cost of 50/50) and emerge as a stronger fighting unit, similar to lurkers.
That way, you maintain zealots early game, you create a need for them to be built, you allow adepts to come into the game a little bit later (and can tweak them a little more easily in terms of availability and cost: make the research take longer/shorter, make the individual warp transformation take longer/shorter or be more expensive) without destroying the flexibility that adepts provide.
I'd argue at this point, those charges are so drastic that you leave the rest of them alone /buff something else so Ps don't just get rolled over by big pushes and just get sieged to death.
What do people think about this?
I think the only problem with this is that it nerfs them to hard in the early/midgame where Protoss needs them the most. Lategame with lots of liberators and high tech Terran they lose a lot of effectiveness because of low dps vs non-light units. However, Protoss needs a unit that can go against bio in small numbers otherwise we end up in a situation like in HotS or WoL where Protoss needs to turtle to get the high tech units to engage effectively against Terran. I'm not saying they don't need toning down just that they need to retain early/midgame strength.
Lol at the 40hp suggestion, so adepts are to have less health than marines while costing 3x as much. Brilliant! While at it, give them ability to mine too, because they are basically drones/probes.
The main problem with the Adept is not the design of the unit per se, but how easy it is to SPAM Adepts for the win.
Increasing the cost of Glaives to 150/150 or 200/200 would ensure that P has fewer Adepts early on, while increasing upgrade duration to 121 sec would give T/Z an extra production cycle and put more pressure on P to transition away from Adepts since they do loose equity as the game goes on.
Eliminating the Adept's +1 base armor is also an option to consider, as it would differentiate it from the more heavily armored but less mobile Zealot and would make Marines/Zerglings more effective in dealing with early/midgame harass.
i think Blizzard has a Siege Tank skin they've been hiding since they introduced skins. they'll introduce it with the WarChest and charge like $30 for it.
i think Blizzard has a Siege Tank skin they've been hiding since they introduced skins. they'll introduce it with the WarChest and charge like $30 for it.
While a tank skin would be super cool, are you sure you're in the right thread?
I would rather fix adept considering different aspects. Protoss struggle a lot versus zerg because they need to control the tempo of the game, slowing and harassing zerg from the start (mainly with adepts) while teching and expanding. This is also why lots of fresh players and not-so-fresh players complain about this matchup (just admit that pvz requires lots of effort from protoss in early game).
So, adept is annoyng because of his harass potential? What about decrease harass potential but letting her become a more solid unit without so much control required?
I really like the beta version of adept because it gave and early tool to deal with mass low tier units strategy that zerg and terran have thanks to eco boost.
My suggestion would be to remove totally shade, instead give a toggle skill wich switch adept damage from single target one to bouncing one. Also, reduce their hp/shield.
In single attack mode, adept will do 15+7 vs light (keeping total damage vs light the same but increase their efficiency versus non-light), while in boucing mode (2 jumps), it will do 2+15 vs light ( requires 3 shot for lings up from 2). This change will greatly improve the efficiency of adept versus mass ling strategies (most against cheese/drop plays where protoss struggle most), will grant a more performant unit versus armored (so it's not a waste versus tank/roach all ins), will decrease harass potential in early stage (no shade), will decrease the tanking while configuring the adept as a dps glass unit (so zealot would come into play as tanking role) I would also like to increase a bit the unit movement speed, since loosing shade adept will loose lot of mobility.
How about giving adepts back their sight range while shading but make it so you can't cancel shades. There would be a risk involved while the opponent still has a chance to get defenses ready without having an army at every base at all times. I dont think their hp or cooldown are the problem but having to be at multiple places at once without Toss having to commit to an attack is what lets the game snowball out of control.
On April 16 2017 22:00 GreenMash wrote: Please dont hesitate to nerf adepts. PvT right now is not only unbalanced but also very dull. A change is needed imo
Why would you nerf the side that isn't doing as well without some compensatory buff?
Why aren't we talking about the Faction Wars games and their success? They made the change back to 1500 minerals per patch for this tournament, and in my humble opinion produced some of the best games I've see to date in SC2.
I don't think trying to fiddle with the units individual stats is the problem in this game. This 1500 mineral change though seemed to make all the difference in the world though.
And you can point to the fact that the newest stats are only 4 days old, and I will point to the fact that the period immediately before 186 had PvT at 49%. The point is, we'd have to see a consistent stretch of time where Protoss is higher than 50% to judge whether statswise Protoss is too strong. Besides, if we take the past couple of periods, Protoss is consistently below average in PvZ. Most changes to the adept will affect both matchups, and so if you nerf adepts in the PvT matchup, you either have to buff them for the PvZ matchup or make sure that the nerf doesn't adversely affect the PvZ matchup.
Or, one could acknowledge the lack of alternative options for Protoss in PvT and nerf adepts while buffing Protoss in another way so that they have more options in PvT.
On April 16 2017 22:00 GreenMash wrote: Please dont hesitate to nerf adepts. PvT right now is not only unbalanced but also very dull. A change is needed imo
good point. i think they should nerf adepts and buff Zealots to the extent that we see roughly equal usage of both units while at the same time making PvT as close to 50/50 as possible.
And you can point to the fact that the newest stats are only 4 days old, and I will point to the fact that the period immediately before 186 had PvT at 49%. The point is, we'd have to see a consistent stretch of time where Protoss is higher than 50% to judge whether statswise Protoss is too strong. Besides, if we take the past couple of periods, Protoss is consistently below average in PvZ. Most changes to the adept will affect both matchups, and so if you nerf adepts in the PvT matchup, you either have to buff them for the PvZ matchup or make sure that the nerf doesn't adversely affect the PvZ matchup.
Or, one could acknowledge the lack of alternative options for Protoss in PvT and nerf adepts while buffing Protoss in another way so that they have more options in PvT.
You could indeed say that my stats are outdated, if you wished to be disingenuous. As you said, 4 days is not comparable to 2 weeks.
It's true that Period 185 had a PvT winrate at 49%. It's also true that Protoss has been on the rise ever since. If consistency is your concern, I suggest you look at more than just winrates.
For instance, the winners of big tournaments. Stats and herO are our most recent champions, and the tournaments they won had PvT winrates of 55.6% and 52.4%. Not satisfied? Try GSL Ro32 representation. One too many Protoss players. Still not satisfied? Look at the state of Terran three months ago, when it was quite obvious that the balance was tilted in their favor.
Back then: Aligulac PvT: 42% (+8 Terran) Terrans in the Ro32: 12 Recent Champions: INnoVation (IEM) and TY (WESG)
Compare that snapshot to one of the current state: Aligulac PvT: 57% (+7 Protoss) Protoss in the Ro32: 12 Recent Champions: Stats (GSL) and herO (Super)
By this point all of us remember the painful month of imbalance until Liberators were nerfed, and another month until mines too were nerfed. It was not a pleasant two months, to say the least. I'd rather avoid going through another two just like them and I'm sure every fair-minded player concerned with overall balance instead of their own race would too.
PvZ is well-balanced at this point in time. Winrates have fluctuated around 50% +/- 3% for awhile now. Saying that they are "below average" because the winrate is at 48% is disingenuous because of statistical noise and imperfect methodology. If you want to claim that Protoss are "consistently below average" you will have to do the same for Terrans because TvZ winrates is almost exactly equal to PvZ. That said, an Adept nerf will obviously affect Protoss in that matchup, and the PvZ winrate should be watched carefully going forward. A PvZ compensatory buff is appropriate with the Adept nerf, and I'd support one if the balance team announced one.
PvT on the other hand is not balanced by any means, which should be obvious from what I've already said. Nerfing Adepts is a clear solution to reduce the monotonic and imbalanced Adept/Phoenix. As far as PvT diversity goes, I favor a Stalker buff. I've made this view clear on multiple occasions, in multiple threads, on multiple forums. But in order for Stalkers (or anything else) to be buffed, Adepts have to be nerfed first. If and only if winrates swing in favor of Terran, then a Stalker buff (or any other Protoss buff) can be applied.
Protoss been getting smashed in win rates since December 2016 in PvT, but we need an immediate nerf to Adepts because Protoss has a 2 week win rate of 57%?
How bout we get 4 months of Protoss smashing Terran with a 55-60% winrate before we make a change?
The hypocrisy is insane.
4 months of beatings is too long, but 2 weeks isn't enough time to determine if there is actually a problem. I am not a fan of the Adept, and I want it nerfed again too. But let's not do it without a compensatory buff unless we have at least a couple of months of data saying we should.
Terran players can stomach a couple of months. Protoss players have been getting smashed for the majority of LOTV versus Terran, January 2017 has the worst win rate the matchup has ever seen except for the month HOTS was released, with Protoss winning 41.22%. And just like when the previous Adept nerf tanked the Protoss win rate as it was starting to rise, another one could too.
And if we balanced the game based on which race won a tournament, Zerg would have been nerfed after Fruitdealer pulled off the miracle win in the first GSL. And that would have made exactly zero sense. So don't pretend that herO's win over Alive means something, it is false analysis.
The Blizzard balance team would be showing an incredible bias against Protoss in PvT to nerf Adepts now without a compensatory buff. Protoss has had a losing win rate versus Terran every month except one since August 2016 until now. More than half a year of Terran dominance.
So I don't think we need to be nerfing Protoss based on two weeks.
On April 14 2017 03:08 Olli wrote: Nothing about tanks, great stuff. One month of Protoss doing well vs Terran and they're patching, 4 months of tanks wrecking Protoss and still nothing. Classic Blizzard, only listening to the loudest balance whine which always, always, always comes from the Terran part of the community.
You have to nerf tanks if you're nerfing adepts, or we'll be right back at 40% winrate for PvT.
And you can point to the fact that the newest stats are only 4 days old, and I will point to the fact that the period immediately before 186 had PvT at 49%. The point is, we'd have to see a consistent stretch of time where Protoss is higher than 50% to judge whether statswise Protoss is too strong. Besides, if we take the past couple of periods, Protoss is consistently below average in PvZ. Most changes to the adept will affect both matchups, and so if you nerf adepts in the PvT matchup, you either have to buff them for the PvZ matchup or make sure that the nerf doesn't adversely affect the PvZ matchup.
Or, one could acknowledge the lack of alternative options for Protoss in PvT and nerf adepts while buffing Protoss in another way so that they have more options in PvT.
You could indeed say that my stats are outdated, if you wished to be disingenuous. As you said, 4 days is not comparable to 2 weeks.
It's true that Period 185 had a PvT winrate at 49%. It's also true that Protoss has been on the rise ever since. If consistency is your concern, I suggest you look at more than just winrates.
For instance, the winners of big tournaments. Stats and herO are our most recent champions, and the tournaments they won had PvT winrates of 55.6% and 52.4%. Not satisfied? Try GSL Ro32 representation. One too many Protoss players. Still not satisfied? Look at the state of Terran three months ago, when it was quite obvious that the balance was tilted in their favor.
Back then: Aligulac PvT: 42% (+8 Terran) Terrans in the Ro32: 12 Recent Champions: INnoVation (IEM) and TY (WESG)
Compare that snapshot to one of the current state: Aligulac PvT: 57% (+7 Protoss) Protoss in the Ro32: 12 Recent Champions: Stats (GSL) and herO (Super)
By this point all of us remember the painful month of imbalance until Liberators were nerfed, and another month until mines too were nerfed. It was not a pleasant two months, to say the least. I'd rather avoid going through another two just like them and I'm sure every fair-minded player concerned with overall balance instead of their own race would too.
PvZ is well-balanced at this point in time. Winrates have fluctuated around 50% +/- 3% for awhile now. Saying that they are "below average" because the winrate is at 48% is disingenuous because of statistical noise and imperfect methodology. If you want to claim that Protoss are "consistently below average" you will have to do the same for Terrans because TvZ winrates is almost exactly equal to PvZ. That said, an Adept nerf will obviously affect Protoss in that matchup, and the PvZ winrate should be watched carefully going forward. A PvZ compensatory buff is appropriate with the Adept nerf, and I'd support one if the balance team announced one.
PvT on the other hand is not balanced by any means, which should be obvious from what I've already said. Nerfing Adepts is a clear solution to reduce the monotonic and imbalanced Adept/Phoenix. As far as PvT diversity goes, I favor a Stalker buff. I've made this view clear on multiple occasions, in multiple threads, on multiple forums. But in order for Stalkers (or anything else) to be buffed, Adepts have to be nerfed first. If and only if winrates swing in favor of Terran, then a Stalker buff (or any other Protoss buff) can be applied.
Ok, granted, tournaments do add another way to evaluate balance, but I think with tournaments, you really have to be careful because of players playing people not their own skill level inflating the win rates. Also, conventional wisdom suggests that you can't really take a single tournament's winrate as evidence of balance.
So for the two tournaments you cited, the Afreeca GSL Super Tournament and the GSL Season 1, let's look at how many games were played in PvT.
Let's throw in the mid tournament that happened between the end of February and the beginning of March. Since this tournament is between the patch of Terran dominance and now Protoss dominance, the winrates should be about equal.
For the super tournament, really? 11/10 games is the closest you can get to an even amount of games won or loss. This is so insignificant especially considering the amount of Terran in the super tournament (that is, winning the tournament would involve facing more Terrans and thus inflating that race vs Terran winrate) that it shouldn't even be brought up as winrate balance. Sure, outside of winrates, then it is more likely that herO won in part a little due to adepts, but you can't really bring up winrates as proof in this case.
GSL season 1, this has a lot more games, and considering that it was a Protoss who won, you look at his games, and his win to the finals result in three wins for PvT. So if you take out Stats's win, then you only two wins for Protoss over Terran. And regardless, 30 wins to 26 wins is really close with regards to winrates. This means that you reverse three Protoss wins and suddenly you have a balanced number of games won and lost. So even though there a lot of games, the winrates are close, and again, using one tournament as evidence of balance is generally not a good idea.
For the two tournaments you cite for Terran imbalance, both of those have so few games that I don't really consider them to be important. However, one thing of note is that even in those few amount of wins, Terran has a much, much greater winrate over Protoss. For WESG, Terran has a 61.9% winrate over Protoss which is a lot more than 52.4% winrate in the super tournament, and IEM has a Terran winrate of 71.4% over Protoss.
But again, reverse a few of those wins, and the winrate is even. Also, WESG had Maru and TY against only foreigners, so of course they'll skew the winrates.
And since we're so focused on tournament wins, let's look at IEM Katowice. Terran is post-nerf by a month, and so winrates should be more even. But are they? Not at all. Terran has a winrate of 68.6% with more games played than the GSL. But again, the mitigating factor is that it is only one tournament, and a number of wins were against foreigners (though a decent chunk were also against Koreans).
So you look at Protoss against Terran in their respective times of imbalance, and Terran had a 61.9% and a 71.4% winrate over Protoss with 1 extra Terran in Code S.
Protoss had a 52.4% and 55.6% winrate over Terran with 1 extra player in Code S.
It really doesn't look like balance has had that much of an effect on the number of players in Code S. Besides, a tournament with relatively close proximity, IEM Katowice, had a much worse PvT winrate than all except one of these tournaments despite being in a more balanced time.
Besides, the time where Terran had 1 more person in Code S was after around 4 weeks of worse balance than right now.
So is the Adept too strong right now?
Yes
But is there enough empirical evidence to suggest that the PvT matchup is that imbalanced? I would say no. Your evidence are the winrates from two weeks, when the prior two weeks were a T advantage, and the winrates of two tournaments, one of which was literally one game away from perfect balance with an even winrate being impossible and the other post nerf being 17-12 wins in Protoss favour but having to take 5 Protoss wins and two Terran losses off if Stats does not win. Also, you said that Protoss has been on the rise since the nerf, but with IEM Katowice, that's clearly not the case. Not only are there more games played than in the GSL, but the winrates are even worse.
So if we're to take a snapshot, I would say that Terran now is in a significantly better situation than Protoss was in time of Terran imbalance. Winrates from tournaments and general balance from around that time are significantly worse for Protoss than they are for Terran.
lmao @ people who think balancing should be done by 'taking turns' at which race is OP. That's not how you balance a game, you just want your free wins for a few months.
On April 17 2017 17:05 ihatevideogames wrote: lmao @ people who think balancing should be done by 'taking turns' at which race is OP. That's not how you balance a game, you just want your free wins for a few months.
Balancing in turns is however exactly how SC2 was always approaching it. People learned to adapt and now have their claims of being next in turn.
At this point it would be easier to just switch back and forth between two balance patches in order to achieve that rotation of balance charackter that was maintained artificially yet. The patch balance policy is going to continue to not achieve anything else than that when not looking into fundamental mechanics but scratching at surfaces.
In order to achieve different results, fundamental changes are necessary. The role of bio must be revamped and with that the roles of splash damage units/spells, economy pace, advantage scaling, fight pace, mobility (creep, stimpack, air unit speed).
Anything that blizzard has done so far is just switching balance back and force and it is going to stay like that as by default the approach isn't capable of achieving anything else. It is not addressing the issues behind the issues, which remain to exist no matter if adapt has 40 or 80 hp.
On April 17 2017 17:05 ihatevideogames wrote: lmao @ people who think balancing should be done by 'taking turns' at which race is OP. That's not how you balance a game, you just want your free wins for a few months.
Balancing in turns is however exactly how SC2 was always approaching it. People learned to adapt and now have their claims of being next in turn.
At this point it would be easier to just switch back and forth between two balance patches in order to achieve that rotation of balance charackter that was maintained artificially yet. The patch balance policy is going to continue to not achieve anything else than that when not looking into fundamental mechanics but scratching at surfaces.
In order to achieve different results, fundamental changes are necessary. The role of bio must be revamped and with that the roles of splash damage units/spells, economy pace, advantage scaling, fight pace, mobility (creep, stimpack, air unit speed).
Anything that blizzard has done so far is just switching balance back and force and it is going to stay like that as by default the approach isn't capable of achieving anything else. It is not addressing the issues behind the issues, which remain to exist no matter if adapt has 40 or 80 hp.
On April 17 2017 17:05 ihatevideogames wrote: lmao @ people who think balancing should be done by 'taking turns' at which race is OP. That's not how you balance a game, you just want your free wins for a few months.
Balancing in turns is however exactly how SC2 was always approaching it. People learned to adapt and now have their claims of being next in turn.
At this point it would be easier to just switch back and forth between two balance patches in order to achieve that rotation of balance charackter that was maintained artificially yet. The patch balance policy is going to continue to not achieve anything else than that when not looking into fundamental mechanics but scratching at surfaces.
In order to achieve different results, fundamental changes are necessary. The role of bio must be revamped and with that the roles of splash damage units/spells, economy pace, advantage scaling, fight pace, mobility (creep, stimpack, air unit speed).
Anything that blizzard has done so far is just switching balance back and force and it is going to stay like that as by default the approach isn't capable of achieving anything else. It is not addressing the issues behind the issues, which remain to exist no matter if adapt has 40 or 80 hp.
Why "must" anything be changed?
obviously nothing "must" be changed. Nothing had to be changed when the game was released, or when HotS was released, or when LotV was released.
But if you think about it, 100% bunker salvage, no requirement for hellion -> hellbat transform, tankivacs, having all those still in the game would probably suck. Those are just changes I remember off the top of my head.
"Anything" must be changed in order to keep the myth alive to ever reach that sweet spot with those simple tricks.
More honest it would be to just give 1/3 of the year the edge to one of the races in a rotating manner.
As the truth is, that either carriers stay appealing and transitioning to them stays possible, then players are gonna keep doing it and they gonna frequently reach levels that feel too strong, or not, and that option will fall apart altogether just like pre carrier.
There is hardly any inbetween. My approach would at the first place contain to increase those inbetweens that allow less sharp balancing later on to be more successful. I am not having the perfect answers right in this moment for that, but thats what I would be working on instead of discussing adapt HP or cooldown.
The original problem of SC2 is that bio is perfect for either of the following situations in battles:
1. You win the battle: nothing can escape and you can most likely kill all of opponents army and chase it down with stimpack + medivac boost. 2. You lose the battle and you are likely to escape with a good chunk of the main army thanks to defensive stimpack + boost medivac as soon as it gets inefficient to fight.
Compare that with compositions like roach/hydra vs. bio or protoss ground units (e.g. in WOL) vs bio. You will happen to notice that it is the opposite of what it is with bio: If you win battles most of bio is gonna escape, if you lose battles nothing of your army is gonna escape. Hence these races need other imabalanced mechanics to achieve 50/50 rates and all the gimmicky stuff that was added, which are now subject of the balance debate. I, instead, would have taken away from bio earlier, to not get into that trouble.
The gameplay, metagames and balance patches/unit implementations are result of exactly that: - Zerg only builds units that escape these mechanics (1. + 2.). - Protoss doesn't attack at all and camps at 3-4 base for that one final attack or lategame superiority (depending on the current balance state), which forces terran into that final attack (SCV pull LoTV).# - Implementation of units that even out a bit what 1. + 2. does: Adepts, Oracles, MSC + spells, large pickup radius for mobile pylons as 1. + 2. applies even to bio drops, ravager and lurker to strengthen the missile zerg side. But does this change the core mechanic of 1. + 2.?
It does not. And so it will unveil again and again in situations no matter how much you try to overshadow it. If it is only at the end of larger battles when 10 bio vs. 7/8 protoss or zerg missile units survive, terran got either the chance to chase them down or escape and protoss and zerg got neither and 1. + 2. applies again.
Some armies are fast. Other armies are slow. When slow armies fight fast armies, they have a hard time retreating. Why this is a problem, or why it's a problem specific to bio, is beyond me. It's a fairly basic mechanic of an RTS.
On April 15 2017 22:29 avilo wrote: Ok, have to post again here let's all be honest. The unit is a travesty to even be in the game. But now Blizzard is doing a bandaid fix to the fact that they arbitrarily nerfed widow mines versus Protoss.
The Adept isn't a great unit design, and it overlaps with the Zealot too much (replaces it) much like the Tempest did to the Carrier in HOTS.
But the Widow Mine is even worse. It's doesn't allow for the skillful usage that the Adept does, and overlaps with the Siege Tank too much.
The problem is multilayered. To put it in one sentence, the problem is the reduction of choice and variety and a shift in focus from anything else on that.
Unit compositions: We see terran mostly to opt for bio to enable 1. + 2. and zerg prefably play that part of it's untis that can escape 1. + 2, which is ling/bling/muta.
Metagames: Protoss mainly relying on gimmicky units to harrass with the fewest amount of risk and other than that stay on pure def until lategame/tech advantage.
Implementation of units: Circle around that issue, trying to circumvent the 1. + 2.
Balance design: We get mass armour ultalisks, and whatever else to balance that mechanic, trying to circumvent 1. + 2.
Overall: The whole game circles around that issue, which is about fulfilling low end needs only (if you look at it in a pyramid). As these solutions however are by default not capable of fixing the core issue, the game is doomed to continue to stay in this vicious circle and cannot step ahead in order to refine other things higher up in that pyramid. Even if stuff up in this pyramid is perfectly designed and balanced, this fragile foundation of unit interactions with bio nullify that.
The right thing to do is not to adapt the whole game on bio vs. x interactions but to alter bio.
From a very subjective point of view, I can tell you, that it is neither fun for me to play e.g. with non ling/bling/muta against t and feel like running behind something all day long and at the same time it is as well minor fun to play bio terran, having to abuse these mechanics all the time in order to win and to face all that op shit that was put in place to counter that. It is a lose/lose situation.
Following from that, the problem is that the funfactor decreases, the frustration, hate and bad feelings increase.
Now you may say BW bio was able to chase stuff down as well and so do e.g. zerglings and helions. The difference is the stability. Running into 2-3 lurkers with chasing BW bio can be a game changer, lings are very fragile, helions as well and only damage to light units. Bio hover is very stable in doing that. Most damage, most anti air damage, least gas costs, heal up during fight, max mobility, highest efficiency in drops (of all terran units), decent tankyness with marauders and hellbats, etc.
The stability of bio is a poblem. No matter how much difference you put in the design of different races, they all apply to to the same game rules and winning conditions.
To compare things: Terran drops units into Z base, does damage, escapes with 0 losses or 1 marine loss. Zerg runby into terran base. It is always a trade off as most likely none of the lings survive. You exchange lings vs a few SCV and it is almost never worth it. Protoss: Was given the higher load in range of mobile pylon in order to take it closer to the terran range of things. Zerg: Look what they have done to nydus and drops of zerg. And still it is hardly worth it and considered cheese to do so. You actually see how much off the foundation of SC2 is from only looking at this very issue.
The "not worth" it over time extends to the game as a whole. Maybe we should try to put zerg nydus cost to -50 // -50 and see if it is worth then, of course with keeping invincible nydus. lol
On April 18 2017 03:48 LSN wrote: The problem is multilayered. To put it in one sentence, the problem is the reduction of choice and variety and a shift in focus from anything else on that.
Unit compositions: We see terran mostly to opt for bio to enable 1. + 2. and zerg prefably play that part of it's untis can escape 1. + 2, which is ling/bling/muta.
Metagames: Protoss mainly relying on gimmicky units to harrass with the fewest amount of risk and other than that stay on pure def until lategame/tech advantage.
Implementation of units: Circle around that issue, trying to circumvent the 1. + 2.
Balance design: We get mass armour ultalisks, and whatever else to balance that mechanic, trying to circumvent 1. + 2.
Overall: The whole game circles around that issue, which is about fulfilling low end needs only (if you look at it in a pyramid). As these solutions however are by default not capable of fixing the core issue, the game is doomed to continue to stay in this vicious circle and cannot step ahead in order to refine other things higher up in that pyramid. Even if stuff up in this pyramid is perfectly designed and balanced, this fragile foundation of unit interactions with bio nullify a good amount of that and cause player drop.
The right thing to do is not to adapt the whole game on bio vs. x interactions but to alter bio.
I do agree in part, but I think the problem is that bio is and has been so central to these matchups that changing bio, which is like changing warpgate for Protoss is extremely hard to do. I agree that much of the game is balanced around bio, and so changing bio would be an extremely difficult task to do, as you would have to change pretty much anything that interacts with bio.
Came here to write my reply to your post, but seeing as Blizzard has gone ahead with the Adept nerf already, it seems a moot point. Regardless, you made good points and presented them well.
Came here to write my reply to your post, but seeing as Blizzard has gone ahead with the Adept nerf already, it seems a moot point. Regardless, you made good points and made them well.
I guess we'll see how the matchup goes from here in the GSL, SSL, VSL and to a lesser extent, WCS Austin. I don't think it will make as much of a difference foreigner matchups because they're not as good as their Korean counterparts, and the 10 point health nerf changes them more in the Terran matchup than the Zerg matchup.
That quality of an army being able to retreat or give chase easily? There's a term for it: map control. And it's a well-established dynamic that faster, weaker armies can seize map control because the opposing army won't be able to chase or retreat freely.
What's weird is that bio isn't even that good an example. It moves at a pretty normal speed most of the time; even stimmed it's not that fast, and boosted medivacs are fast but only temporarily and with a load/unload time to worry about. A muta flock is a much better example of a mobile, powerful army that can easily retreat from a bad engagement or chase down a retreating army. Mutas even seem more broken, since they can all stack on top of each other to become crazy insanely effective against anything without AoE.
But mutas aren't broken, even if the game has had to balance around them quite a lot in the past (I'd argue mutas are directly responsible for the existence of both phoenixes and widow mines). By the same token, bio is not broken just because it's mobile.
On April 18 2017 06:10 ChristianS wrote: That quality of an army being able to retreat or give chase easily? There's a term for it: map control. And it's a well-established dynamic that faster, weaker armies can seize map control because the opposing army won't be able to chase or retreat freely.
What's weird is that bio isn't even that good an example. It moves at a pretty normal speed most of the time; even stimmed it's not that fast, and boosted medivacs are fast but only temporarily and with a load/unload time to worry about. A muta flock is a much better example of a mobile, powerful army that can easily retreat from a bad engagement or chase down a retreating army. Mutas even seem more broken, since they can all stack on top of each other to become crazy insanely effective against anything without AoE.
But mutas aren't broken, even if the game has had to balance around them quite a lot in the past (I'd argue mutas are directly responsible for the existence of both phoenixes and widow mines). By the same token, bio is not broken just because it's mobile.
I feel like that's because mutas are (relatively) frail and easy to knock them out of a fight (by bruising a bunch) and cause them to retreat or you'll end up throwing away 1k/1k.
That's part of the reason the fast muta regen was introduced, because otherwise you'd get a bunch of mutas bruised, and then they'd have to sit off in a corner for 2 minutes while they regained their HP back.
I also 100% agree that phoenix exist because of mutas (just like corsairs exist because of mutas) - and mines in general were designed to be a relatively good counter to massable units (lings, zealots, mutas).
Mutas are imo broken in a way that they regenerate too fast and require protoss to counter them with phoenix. Anything else will give you a hard time.
That regeneration speed is a direct consequence not to mines, but to the frequency of attacks coming in by terran, which pace is defined by bio. Mutas had to regen up inbetween these attack waves in order to keep the zerg in game with this playstyle. It is not the mines that define the interval of terran attacks majorly. Of course mines added to that.
On April 18 2017 06:35 LSN wrote: Mutas are imo broken in a way that they regenerate too fast and require protoss to counter them with phoenix. Anything else will give you a hard time.
That regeneration speed is a direct consequence not to mines, but to the frequency of attacks coming in by terran, which pace is defined by bio. Mutas had to regen up inbetween these attack waves in order to keep the zerg in game with this playstyle. It is not the mines that define the interval of terran attacks majorly. Of course mines added to that.
True. And I didn't mean to imply that fast regeneration was only because of mines. Just meant that it was because they are so frail and can't take direct engagements very well.
Though we'll see about the adept after the hp change. Hopefully they can make it through. Though I still think my idea of making them an upgrade to zealots would deal with a lot of these issues.
I.e. must be in psi matrix, has warp in time (on a zealot) of an additional 15 or so second, costs 50/25 or 50/50, so you have to build zealots (forcing them to be a part of your army) and reduces the number you have, because you have to upgrade them at a pylon.
On April 18 2017 06:35 LSN wrote: Mutas are imo broken in a way that they regenerate too fast and require protoss to counter them with phoenix. Anything else will give you a hard time.
That regeneration speed is a direct consequence not to mines, but to the frequency of attacks coming in by terran, which pace is defined by bio. Mutas had to regen up inbetween these attack waves in order to keep the zerg in game with this playstyle. It is not the mines that define the interval of terran attacks majorly. Of course mines added to that.
True. And I didn't mean to imply that fast regeneration was only because of mines. Just meant that it was because they are so frail and can't take direct engagements very well.
Though we'll see about the adept after the hp change. Hopefully they can make it through. Though I still think my idea of making them an upgrade to zealots would deal with a lot of these issues.
I.e. must be in psi matrix, has warp in time (on a zealot) of an additional 15 or so second, costs 50/25 or 50/50, so you have to build zealots (forcing them to be a part of your army) and reduces the number you have, because you have to upgrade them at a pylon.
Kind of like how a lurker or ravager works
It takes 1min25s to heal a mutas from 1 hp to full HP for a 100/100 units that have less DPS than a single marine 0/0 with stim pack.
In this 85s, a medivac could heal 1,071 HP ! And Shield could regenerate 217 and it affects all protoss units and buldings...
But let's whine about mutas without any real arguments but anti-zerg bias...
On April 18 2017 06:35 LSN wrote: Mutas are imo broken in a way that they regenerate too fast and require protoss to counter them with phoenix. Anything else will give you a hard time.
That regeneration speed is a direct consequence not to mines, but to the frequency of attacks coming in by terran, which pace is defined by bio. Mutas had to regen up inbetween these attack waves in order to keep the zerg in game with this playstyle. It is not the mines that define the interval of terran attacks majorly. Of course mines added to that.
True. And I didn't mean to imply that fast regeneration was only because of mines. Just meant that it was because they are so frail and can't take direct engagements very well.
Though we'll see about the adept after the hp change. Hopefully they can make it through. Though I still think my idea of making them an upgrade to zealots would deal with a lot of these issues.
I.e. must be in psi matrix, has warp in time (on a zealot) of an additional 15 or so second, costs 50/25 or 50/50, so you have to build zealots (forcing them to be a part of your army) and reduces the number you have, because you have to upgrade them at a pylon.
Kind of like how a lurker or ravager works
It takes 1min25s to heal a mutas from 1 hp to full HP for a 100/100 units that have less DPS than a single marine 0/0 with stim pack.
In this 85s, a medivac could heal 1,071 HP ! And Shield could regenerate 217 and it affects all protoss units and buldings...
But let's whine about mutas without any real arguments but anti-zerg bias...
I don't understand. I wasn't whining about mutas, I was just saying why I felt they had quick regeneration, nor was I saying it was a bad thing?
I think that it's fine, and has a purpose, reason, and is good overall.
Medivacs are strong, shields are strong, every race has stuff that is strong, otherwise this game would suck.
Came here to write my reply to your post, but seeing as Blizzard has gone ahead with the Adept nerf already, it seems a moot point. Regardless, you made good points and made them well.
I guess we'll see how the matchup goes from here in the GSL, SSL, VSL and to a lesser extent, WCS Austin. I don't think it will make as much of a difference foreigner matchups because they're not as good as their Korean counterparts, and the 10 point health nerf changes them more in the Terran matchup than the Zerg matchup.
Did protoss need a nerf in pvz? I saw many complaints about pvt, but not pvz. Blizzard made the right decision unless there's something I'm missing.
Came here to write my reply to your post, but seeing as Blizzard has gone ahead with the Adept nerf already, it seems a moot point. Regardless, you made good points and made them well.
I guess we'll see how the matchup goes from here in the GSL, SSL, VSL and to a lesser extent, WCS Austin. I don't think it will make as much of a difference foreigner matchups because they're not as good as their Korean counterparts, and the 10 point health nerf changes them more in the Terran matchup than the Zerg matchup.
Did protoss need a nerf in pvz? I saw many complaints about pvt, but not pvz. Blizzard made the right decision unless there's something I'm missing.
It was the mass shading that caused a lot of havoc in PvZ. To a certain extent that was true in PvT, but if your warped into the main base, you could just close the supply depots. But for Zerg, the mass shading caused a lot of problems because adepts counter one of their basic units, and roaches and hydras are slower than shading adepts.
Also, a number of people on here and on reddit suggested changes be made to the unit such as the shade cooldown or some other change rather than a straight health nerf. I think it was agreed by a lot of people (though not everyone) that Protoss does need the adept to combat Terran but also that Protoss needs other options if they intended to straight nerf the adept.
Did protoss need a nerf in pvz? I saw many complaints about pvt, but not pvz. Blizzard made the right decision unless there's something I'm missing.
Strictly balance-wise, no, Zergs didn't. PvZ winrates are balanced (and with the nerf it would be a good idea to watch PvZ carefully to see if Protoss needs a buff there). But Adepts shading between mineral lines is extremely frustrating to play against, even if Zergs did win about half the games in the end.
On April 18 2017 06:35 LSN wrote: Mutas are imo broken in a way that they regenerate too fast and require protoss to counter them with phoenix. Anything else will give you a hard time.
That regeneration speed is a direct consequence not to mines, but to the frequency of attacks coming in by terran, which pace is defined by bio. Mutas had to regen up inbetween these attack waves in order to keep the zerg in game with this playstyle. It is not the mines that define the interval of terran attacks majorly. Of course mines added to that.
True. And I didn't mean to imply that fast regeneration was only because of mines. Just meant that it was because they are so frail and can't take direct engagements very well.
Though we'll see about the adept after the hp change. Hopefully they can make it through. Though I still think my idea of making them an upgrade to zealots would deal with a lot of these issues.
I.e. must be in psi matrix, has warp in time (on a zealot) of an additional 15 or so second, costs 50/25 or 50/50, so you have to build zealots (forcing them to be a part of your army) and reduces the number you have, because you have to upgrade them at a pylon.
Kind of like how a lurker or ravager works
It takes 1min25s to heal a mutas from 1 hp to full HP for a 100/100 units that have less DPS than a single marine 0/0 with stim pack.
In this 85s, a medivac could heal 1,071 HP ! And Shield could regenerate 217 and it affects all protoss units and buldings...
But let's whine about mutas without any real arguments but anti-zerg bias...
Ok, so here is the real argument.
Before Phoenixes were buffed to hard counter Mass Mutalisks (because they didn't initially), Protoss players were losing hard to Mass Mutalisks. But then HerO came along and showed us how to counter Mass Mutalisks with Stalkers/Archons/High Templar, you slowly whittle down the flock, as Day[9] explains...
It took a lot of skill for the Protoss player to do this, and consequently it took a lot of skill for the Zerg player to avoid damage. The result was a skillful game because the counter to Mutalisks didn't share the Mutalisks main strength, the ability to ignore terrain (fly).
Sadly, Mutalisk regeneration meant that Protoss couldn't whittle down the flock anymore because the Mutalisks regenerated so fast. So we were left with a big buff to Phoenixes. And since HOTS, plenty of Protoss players tried hard and failed at making Stalker/Archon/High Templar work versus Mass Mutalisk. But it just doesn't. "What makes Mutalisks tricky is that it is not just get this unit and you are done!" - Day[9] - 9:37 from the above video
If only that were still true Day[9]... it's like Blizzard watched the daily and did exactly the opposite when it came to HOTS because they don't like strategic play where you have to think and position units properly (this was during the time they waged an all out war against the Siege Tank and Mech play in general with garbage like the Warhound). We had such a great and dynamic relationship between Mutalisks and Protoss that led to skillful plays and counter plays, and it is all gone.
Blizzard gave the Phoenix huge buffs that simply them an extreme hard counter, that could outfight and outfly Mutalisks all while being easy to micro. It is like rock-paper-scissors and so the amount of skill necessary for both the Zerg and Protoss player is greatly reduced because Phoenixes fly and hard counter Mutalisks.
It was one of the worst game design decisions made during HOTS, because it significantly watered down the game... if only we had a different design team.
On April 18 2017 09:06 AdrianHealeyy wrote: And, well, muta regen was necessary because of mines, if I remember correctly?
Actually no... Infestors were incredibly strong in WOL so Blizzard nerfed them but buffed other Lair units like the Hydra and Mutalisk to compensate and give Zerg more viable Lair tech options. Zerg wasn't using Mutalisks or Hydras at all in any matchup at the end of WOL because Infestors were so strong.
Mutalisk regeneration was the buff they decided to go with for Mutalisks. It sounds good for about 5 seconds because it doesn't improve their power in combat. But then you realize that Mutalisks can just run away and heal and you've got the relationship between Marauders without Concussive Shells versus Stalkers in the early game all over again. That led directly the Phoenix buffs and the state we are in (where Stalker/Archon/High Templar can't counter Mass Mutalisks), and sadly, now you do just build one unit to counter Mutalisks and you are done.
Oh how far we've come... if you ever need to study how not to design a game, study SC2.
I mean, they didn't say it was because of mines, but it was probably to a significant extent related to mines. Without regen the occasional mine hit would just fucking ruin a muta flock, and it wouldn't have seemed remotely reasonable to expect a zerg to never let his mutas get hit by any mines or else lose the game. I'm not saying that was the whole reason, and I don't even remember where the mine was in its development when they added that (did it still latch on and then have a goofy timer on the unit it hit before blowing up?), but in a broader sense, they were planning to make AoE against mutas more of a thing (remember the original Tempest design), and that meant the muta flock needed to be able to take a hit and still be relevant.
This isn't the first time I've read BronzeKnee's explanation of how muta regen made P v mutas much less interesting (I think he used to give that explanation in the DBDT?), and I think he's right for the most part. But I think it was necessary for the direction they were taking the game, and he'd probably disagree, but on balance I think it was worth it.
BronzeKnee is sort of right with, but the problem isn't that HT/Archon/Stalkers can't counter mutas. That comp can't stop the muta harassment. Mutas would lose to an HT/Archon/Stalker in a straight up fight, so the zergs just fly around looking for weak points in the protoss base.
Yes the only P unit that can counter a muta flock is pheonix, which is really dumb. But Zerg needs that muta regen or else a few stray mine hits will completely rip up the mutas.
So if a zerg goes mutas, they usually go only about 8ish to harass and distract. A good protoss would see a muta build and counter it with phoenix. Sometimes the bigger problem is when a zerg goes for a hard muta switch in the late game. That can end a protoss that doesn't diligently scout.
I don't like the interaction, but at least it creates some exciting games. Nix vs Mutas dance is very fun to watch.
The issue with phoenix is, apart from the mutalisk vs. phoenix issue, which BronzeKnee described perfectly, that they allow too easy and too fast transition into carriers. The vicious circle. And that is why DK is bad btw. He didn't see stuff like that coming and the game is messed. You now can't play a single 3on3 anymore without one of the players heading for carriers after like 5 minutes and phoenix shutting down any other air play before.
What would be the fix to this? Nerf carriers? Yes, if you wanna take them out of the game.
The best practise however would be to nerf phoenix, nerf muta regen and then adapt bio composition (bio + mine) to that (nerf).
I would not put too much emphasize on "a few stray mine hits" though. in ZvT the zerg was on pure defense anyway during the relevant game phases at that time. It was about defending wave after wave of terran bio, which was complemented by mines at this time. But no matter what source of damage they became subject to, mutas had to regen up faster in order to be able to deal with the interval of attacks. Mines have added to the pace of attacks a bit, but they are not the originator of that high mobility permanent attack gameplay. They can be replaced by other units and mutas would have still needed regen to stay in that race.
In a very basic and unrelated manner I wanna add, that in general the decisionmaking with mutas that have no/few regen is better and requires more skill. It would involve risk/gain calculations and require the player to caclulate if he can afford his mutalisks to get damaged or not in situations.
So the final question must be, no matter what you sense as your personal reason for why the regen had been buffed, in which environment mutalisks without regen would be viable. This, btw., could be one of the initial steps towards curing SC2 from its many sicknesses.
They buffed Medivac Boost, because harassment is so much fun in their eyes. Then as a result Protoss needed the Mothership Core, Mutas needed + speed and regeneration, then Phoenix needed + range because of the new Muta. Not sure if the Mine anti air attack was then a response to Mutalisk flocks?
On April 15 2017 08:10 ChristianS wrote: I honestly think the problem with adepts isn't their harassment ability or their straight-up fighting strength per se. While it does feel dumb for a mono-comp to be good against nearly everything I have except widow mines, I think the part that feels broken is that they don't obey normal scaling rules. Most of the time melee units hit hard in small numbers, but don't scale well because their damage is limited by surface area. Ranged units do better in mid-sized engagements, but as their numbers increase not all of them are shooting at the same time because they're stuck behind other units at the start of the engagement. Then AoE is the best in big engagements because it hits very hard when the enemy is clumped up, and if the ranged units spread out to avoid the AoE then even more of them aren't fighting.
But adepts sidestep all that by shading on top of your army. No matter how many you have you can get them all firing at once, and if you do it right your opponent doesn't even want to AoE you because they'll hit their own stuff. It's not even nevessarily broken in that it's overpowered (although it might be that too), it's broken in that it disobeys conventional combat rules that nearly every other unit follows. I don't know if Protosses find it fun to do, but it's not particularly fun to play against and it's confusing as hell to watch. For TvP engagements like that, you get a million shades all coming in, the Terran wriggles back and forth to get away from the shades so his own mines won't destroy him, and then all of a sudden everything's on top of everything and mine explosions are blowing up everywhere and after five or ten seconds one army is still there and the other isn't. Very hard to tell what happened or follow who's ahead mid-fight.
I don't know what could be done to fix it. I'd be tempted to have the shade given collision, but my understanding is that gets pretty broken because a bunch of shades can act like a totally impenetrable forcefield. Maybe something weird like if the shades can't walk through enemy units, but enemy units aren't impeded by shades and just push them back?
Exactly. My solution would be to remove the Adepts weapon for 1.5 second upon transfering to it's new position. Either this or change the Shades cooldown and duration numbers to make it so that there's only a minor period of say 3 seconds, where the Ability is on cooldown and the Adept has already transfered to the new location. Then add a rule that says: 'have 50% reduced attack speed while this ability is on Cooldown.' This should severely hamper the mass, mass , MASS Adepts that we currently see, while still keeping them strong as harassing units. Basically they should be sneaky annoying little shits that you always make a few of to keep the Terran on it's feet.
THEN with this giant nerf, we nerf the Widow Mine so it does no additional Shields damage in AoE, for the uninitiated this is a 25 vs Shields damage nerf on ONLY the AoE, not the Single target. You can possibly make the single target Shields damage into +vs Mech if you want to remove annoying TvT doomdrops, but SC2 balance team possibly might think this is the most awesome shit ever.
Then you buff the Zealot by 10 Shields, give it back what it lost during the WoL beta. Proxy Zealots is not really a thing right now and I don't mind if it is used once in a while by sOs.
Basically bring back the sad little Zealot and make Adepts worse in numbers where you use them to fight.
Well to be precise: Mines add to the total amount of anti air damage within a fight on mutalisks. But regeneration is an over time thing.
So what is major about muta regeneration is the frequency of how often you need to use them.
Mines add two things to that: a) increased total amount of damage requires more regeneration during the same period of time on average. b) mines helped to stabilize and increase the pace of terran bio attacks on zerg.
Hence you could argue the mine did the difference between muta require regen or not. But it is not precise once again: 1. Mines adapt to the pace of the playstyle you choose. Mines complementing slower paced playstyles than bio is would have caused less of a problem for mutalisks as there would be enough time for mutalisks to regen regularily inbetween attacks without increased regen. 2. Mines are replaceable in their role. Lets take the thor as an example, If it was as accessible as the mine (lets assume 3:1 mins/gas, no techlab and no armmory required, but as well other examples are possible), it would have caused the same thing as the mine in relation to muta regen and with bio attacks dictating the pace.
Hence: Of course mines added to the issue. But the issue only exists due to what bio represents.
i hope the Adept nerf works! i'd like to see more Zealots and a bigger over all role for Zealots. Nerfing the Adept's health further defines the Zealot's niche/role as a "durable gateway unit".
On April 18 2017 08:51 BronzeKnee wrote: if only we had a different design team.
several Overwatch , Diablo, WoW, Hearthstone and Heroes "experts" all say the same thing about the design teams in their area of "expertise". with heavily detailed "rationale" explaining why each design team sucks balls.
oh the burden these expert visionaries must carry... having to inform dumb guys like me about what "fun game play" truly is....and all i have is money.
Yea the WOL ZvP metagame of mutalisks vs Hightemplar defense was fucking cool, it's a shame we lost it even tho they wouldn't have been able to add a bunch of stuff without the mutas regen.
Adepts are indeed a bit too strong at everything, but I would have liked to see Mine nerf reverted and possibly altering the shade duration or speed to make it a lot easier for the defender to defends vs the shades. 10 hp nerf also works but is a much less elegant solution, oh well let's hope it's gonna equalize everything nicely.
On April 18 2017 22:20 PtitDrogo wrote: Yea the WOL ZvP metagame of mutalisks vs Hightemplar defense was fucking cool, it's a shame we lost it even tho they wouldn't have been able to add a bunch of stuff without the mutas regen.
Adepts are indeed a bit too strong at everything, but I would have liked to see Mine nerf reverted and possibly altering the shade duration or speed to make it a lot easier for the defender to defends vs the shades. 10 hp nerf also works but is a much less elegant solution, oh well let's hope it's gonna equalize everything nicely.
I feel like not reverting the mine nerf would continue to make zealots worthless. It essentially evaporated entire zealot lines before the fight even started.
Whereas now, if the hit lands on the adepts, it'll bruise a lot of them pretty severely, without erasing zealots from the game.
This is nowhere near enough... Adepts have a completely broken concept as a Unit. Yes, cooldown increase and HP reduction are both a necessity (dont understand why they want to implement only 1 that is utter bullshit), but we need something to make to protoss decide if they want to use the shade or not. Something like Adept shields will go to 0 when shade is used, so protoss cant just shade on top of army and between bases without any consequences.
I still don't understand the mine nerf right after the liberator nerf. They went too far on that one and I'm pretty sure they acknowledge that reverting would be a better solution than these band-aid fixes, but they can't possibly admit that they were wrong and too quick to act.
I read a lot of posts from the recent pages and indeed they seem to balance by switching who is OP and who isn't instead of addressing core issues. The problem of balance isn't really a problem tho, the main focus should be: is the game fun overall, for each and every race? It is ok if it's fun in an asymmetric way, such as: protoss players will have a bit more fun in late game, not that much in mid, decently in early, and switch that up for other races, as long as there is no stage that feels totally stupid for a race (like we had in late WoL with the queen buff into broodlords / infestors, or HotS with swarm hosts vs Protoss deathball, or blink allins).
Ultimately there should be a big poll on bnet forums and/or Reddit and/or TL, for each race, where people can express what they feel fun in the game, what they feel frustrating to play against but ok, and what they feel is killing the fun/seems totally stupid, so that we can see if we can reach a point where everyone gets to have fun, and that it doesn't completely negates the fun of others.
Did protoss need a nerf in pvz? I saw many complaints about pvt, but not pvz. Blizzard made the right decision unless there's something I'm missing.
Strictly balance-wise, no, Zergs didn't. PvZ winrates are balanced (and with the nerf it would be a good idea to watch PvZ carefully to see if Protoss needs a buff there). But Adepts shading between mineral lines is extremely frustrating to play against, even if Zergs did win about half the games in the end.
I agree that Blizzard made the right call here.
playing against ling bane drops and allins is not frustrating to play against ah i see the logic. playing against window mine drops and drops is not frustrating.
then lets remove all harass options for each race not only protoss.
I'd like to ask any of you who have these foundational ideas to remake the game from the ground up to take the time to make your own mod and then get people to try it rather than trying to take over conversations on these forums. These forums have the potential to reintroduce ideas for units that have a poor place in the game as a whole. I don't know that anyone's happy with the current situation on units like the Thor, Swarm Host, or Tempest, not to mention current issues with the adept, mine, and liberator, and then we are asked opinions on this by the design team (may their names be obscured forever) and after the conversation begins to develop people ring in with things like "I'd like to start my own conversation about how Bio and Medivacs need to not exist".
Maybe in some alternate Starcraft 3 universe this will happen. But this is at the hypothesis/theory level and you need some more evidence that this would work than "trust me guys, the game sucks right now but the game I would make... out of the game they made... would be awesome!"
Hating on the balance team is ridiculous. I've played around 1200 different games in my life, and Starcraft is the best game i've ever played. I have 1100 games in my console library for everything from NES to PS3 and there are some incredible games in there, but Starcraft 2 is still my favorite game. This is not by accident folks! I really think some of you should ask yourselves if you're just anti-authority in general, and mad at the balance team because they have the power to change things and aren't changing them in your favor. Share recommendations, share opinions, don't share this "my competence to judge this game dwarfs theirs" nonsense.
Now, on to the current situation. I don't think -10 to adepts health will help much. I understand a need for Protoss to have an all-around, bread and butter type of unit, but the problem with that is Protoss is still the race with the most powerful high tech units (Immortal, Void Ray, archon, etc.) and so balancing those compositions is a nightmare since massing adepts works so well. The answer is a redesign to make the unit a more pure harassment unit comparable to the reaper or zergling rather than these minor tweaks. In the meantime, the stalker has served well for Protoss as the unit you know will get you some map control and strength early on but that you do not want to end up with 40 of by the end game.
Make the stalker great again, let the adept become who it was born to be.
On April 19 2017 00:43 Ransomstarcraft wrote: I'd like to ask any of you who have these foundational ideas to remake the game from the ground up to take the time to make your own mod and then get people to try it rather than trying to take over conversations on these forums. These forums have the potential to reintroduce ideas for units that have a poor place in the game as a whole. I don't know that anyone's happy with the current situation on units like the Thor, Swarm Host, or Tempest, not to mention current issues with the adept, mine, and liberator, and then we are asked opinions on this by the design team (may their names be obscured forever) and after the conversation begins to develop people ring in with things like "I'd like to start my own conversation about how Bio and Medivacs need to not exist".
Maybe in some alternate Starcraft 3 universe this will happen. But this is at the hypothesis/theory level and you need some more evidence that this would work than "trust me guys, the game sucks right now but the game I would make... out of the game they made... would be awesome!"
Hating on the balance team is ridiculous. I've played around 1200 different games in my life, and Starcraft is the best game i've ever played. I have 1100 games in my console library for everything from NES to PS3 and there are some incredible games in there, but Starcraft 2 is still my favorite game. This is not by accident folks! I really think some of you should ask yourselves if you're just anti-authority in general, and mad at the balance team because they have the power to change things and aren't changing them in your favor. Share recommendations, share opinions, don't share this "my competence to judge this game dwarfs theirs" nonsense.
Now, on to the current situation. I don't think -10 to adepts health will help much. I understand a need for Protoss to have an all-around, bread and butter type of unit, but the problem with that is Protoss is still the race with the most powerful high tech units (Immortal, Void Ray, archon, etc.) and so balancing those compositions is a nightmare since massing adepts works so well. The answer is a redesign to make the unit a more pure harassment unit comparable to the reaper or zergling rather than these minor tweaks. In the meantime, the stalker has served well for Protoss as the unit you know will get you some map control and strength early on but that you do not want to end up with 40 of by the end game.
Make the stalker great again, let the adept become who it was born to be.
I made a mod to try LOTV with the HOTS economy ( 6 harvesters start, 10 supply) nobody try it. Cause you need a friend to play it, you cannot just click on "Play" and try it.
At the same times, i think the TeamLiquid guys are pretty elitist. I was totally agree with "The Eulogy for a 6 pool", i try to continue on this idea with my mod and nobody answer on the thread.. I mean nobody from TL, from "The Eulogy for a 6 pool" writers. It's like you need to be "somebody" to say something relevant, even if you give some tools to prove or not an idea, nobody use it... it's weird...
So yes, people don't make mod, cause nobody put forward this kind of work... so you stop. Personally i will not stop but you understand the general idea
I think people like to speak, not to prove... so we lost a lot of time on discussion for nothing... Maybe TL can change something, for sur Blizzard can change something, for the rest... we speak speak speak.. and game is still unplayed...
Ps: i don't speak about adept cause i have a complicated review, than i can't expose with my poor english. ++
On April 19 2017 00:43 Ransomstarcraft wrote: I'd like to ask any of you who have these foundational ideas to remake the game from the ground up to take the time to make your own mod and then get people to try it rather than trying to take over conversations on these forums. These forums have the potential to reintroduce ideas for units that have a poor place in the game as a whole. I don't know that anyone's happy with the current situation on units like the Thor, Swarm Host, or Tempest, not to mention current issues with the adept, mine, and liberator, and then we are asked opinions on this by the design team (may their names be obscured forever) and after the conversation begins to develop people ring in with things like "I'd like to start my own conversation about how Bio and Medivacs need to not exist".
Maybe in some alternate Starcraft 3 universe this will happen. But this is at the hypothesis/theory level and you need some more evidence that this would work than "trust me guys, the game sucks right now but the game I would make... out of the game they made... would be awesome!"
Hating on the balance team is ridiculous. I've played around 1200 different games in my life, and Starcraft is the best game i've ever played. I have 1100 games in my console library for everything from NES to PS3 and there are some incredible games in there, but Starcraft 2 is still my favorite game. This is not by accident folks! I really think some of you should ask yourselves if you're just anti-authority in general, and mad at the balance team because they have the power to change things and aren't changing them in your favor. Share recommendations, share opinions, don't share this "my competence to judge this game dwarfs theirs" nonsense.
Now, on to the current situation. I don't think -10 to adepts health will help much. I understand a need for Protoss to have an all-around, bread and butter type of unit, but the problem with that is Protoss is still the race with the most powerful high tech units (Immortal, Void Ray, archon, etc.) and so balancing those compositions is a nightmare since massing adepts works so well. The answer is a redesign to make the unit a more pure harassment unit comparable to the reaper or zergling rather than these minor tweaks. In the meantime, the stalker has served well for Protoss as the unit you know will get you some map control and strength early on but that you do not want to end up with 40 of by the end game.
Make the stalker great again, let the adept become who it was born to be.
I made a mod to try LOTV with the HOTS economy ( 6 harvesters start, 10 supply) nobody try it. Cause you need a friend to play it, you cannot just click on "Play" and try it.
At the same times, i think the TeamLiquid guys are pretty elitist. I was totally agree with "The Eulogy for a 6 pool", i try to continue on this idea with my mod and nobody answer on the thread.. I mean nobody from TL, from "The Eulogy for a 6 pool" writers. It's like you need to be "somebody" to say something relevant, even if you give some tools to prove or not an idea, nobody use it... it's weird...
So yes, people don't make mod, cause nobody put forward this kind of work... so you stop. Personally i will not stop but you understand the general idea
I think people like to speak, not to prove... so we lost a lot of time on discussion for nothing... Maybe TL can change something, for sur Blizzard can change something, for the rest... we speak speak speak.. and game is still unplayed...
Ps: i don't speak about adept cause i have a complicated review, than i can't expose with my poor english. ++
I don't think the writers play Starcraft 2 anyways so there is that.
On April 14 2017 23:07 DeadByDawn wrote: Also, sad to see such groundless bias from an admin, guess we are all human though.
I've seen the community react to the state of balance for 6 years. I know what I'm talking about. We specifically had to change posting rules for tournament threads when Terran was doing poorly because it was unbearable and drove parts of our community and some of our own staff away. It was never nearly as bad with the other two races. But sure, "groundless bias".
If you're talking about the blink era - at no other point a race performed that poorly so it's not entirely fair to say that terrans just happen to be immature whiners. In my experience terrans and zergs both whine equally much with protoss whining the least.
I can almost be certain he's talking about the Blink Era. I remember Olli borderline gloating in those threads. Granted he wasn't an admin then.
At least I stuck around. Zealously and a few other writers simply quit (some came back later). And the idea that no race ever performed as badly as the blink era is laughable. You must have forgotten the 1-1-1, or how Protoss struggled against BL/infestor. Or even how Zerg did early on.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the reason TL lost writers was because of commuinity reactions to balance in the LR threads. That shit has been around since the beginning.
Likely writers got bored for many of the same reasons I did and am here not as often as I used to be. WCS got watered down over the years, the Korean scene suffered, ProLeague died, the most exciting Zerg the game has ever seen got banned and LoTV has produced thus far very uncompelling Starcraft compared to what we've seen in the previous expansions.
With everything else that has happened in the scene since then you're really expecting me to believe that a disproportionate amount of balance complaining drove everyone away? Good luck selling that narrative Olli.
Ok then. Not that this is the point anyway, but I know it happened. I was there when it happened, I talked to them then. You didn't.
The point is that whine has always been worst when Protoss was doing well and when Terran wasn't. And if you take a close look at balance changes Blizzard has made historically, the most important ones were always moved by huge complaints. Remember what happened that ended the "blink era"? They nerfed MSC vision, timewarp, gave mines +shield damage and changed maps to be anti-blink. The map change alone and one of the MSC changes would have done it. But they pushed out a patch that eliminated not only the common blink playstyles, but also every Templar playstyle in PvT to this day. Protoss were completely screwed over by that, but because the loud part of the community was satisfied that Protoss was easy to play against now, nothing ever happened to address that.
Remember early WoL? Terran had a 67% winrate vs Zergs at one point in 2010. 67%. The matchup stayed heavily in T's favor until October 2011.
Remember what happened recently? Winrates for PvT were far worse than during the blink era for 4 months. The lowest winrate Terran ever had during that time was around 45%, and that happened once . That's bad. Protoss was between 41-45% for 4 months after November 2016. The 41% included 400 more games than Terran's 45% too, making it that much more significant.
In March Protoss had a 49% winrate and already Terrans were back to whining, and already there's an adept nerf in the works. The point is that the community has a real impact on Blizzard's balance patching, and the community has largely been anti-Protoss for a long time now.
That is my opinion anyway, and it's based on 6 years of observing the game and its community closely - it's my job now, in fact. Do with it what you want.
I agree that the community is largely anti protoss. I wouldn't say it's necessarily the fault of the community though. I think it is the fault of the game. When losing to protoss most people simply feel like it was unfair, like it was some "protoss bs" which won. I said it somewhere else but the aesthetics are incredibly important as well. Watching adepts shade on top of units is simply ugly. Watching a bio terran split his stuff against banelings is not. Both interactions might be 100% balanced, but that doesn't matter because each time the adepts win it feels unfair simply by how the unit interactions work there. Same thing with forcefields back in the day. So yeah i agree that the general opinion of protoss is negative and it's not even about balance at that point, it's about unit interactions, general protoss playstyle and the aesthetics of it.
Completely agreed, this is the main reason that's for sure.
On April 18 2017 23:15 MarianoSC2 wrote: This is nowhere near enough... Adepts have a completely broken concept as a Unit. Yes, cooldown increase and HP reduction are both a necessity (dont understand why they want to implement only 1 that is utter bullshit), but we need something to make to protoss decide if they want to use the shade or not. Something like Adept shields will go to 0 when shade is used, so protoss cant just shade on top of army and between bases without any consequences.
if a major event were not right around the corner i bet you Blizz would've given a more substantial nerf to the Adept and then pulled back if it were too much.
On April 19 2017 00:43 Ransomstarcraft wrote: I'd like to ask any of you who have these foundational ideas to remake the game from the ground up to take the time to make your own mod and then get people to try it rather than trying to take over conversations on these forums.
...
The answer is a redesign to make the unit a more pure harassment unit comparable to the reaper or zergling rather than these minor tweaks. ...
The hypocrisy is strong within you.
Anyway, I agree with what you're saying. The thing is, the map editor is very buggy (at least on a Mac) and you won't very likely gather enough of a following to properly test it as AnossSc2 has said. I would love a community mod where a couple of people work together making the changes and where each change follows a community decision (for example by first making a request for change suggestions, then letting the community decide on what changes seem most promising). But I'm not sure if this is feasible, mostly because it would take a very long time.
On April 19 2017 00:43 Ransomstarcraft wrote: I'd like to ask any of you who have these foundational ideas to remake the game from the ground up to take the time to make your own mod and then get people to try it rather than trying to take over conversations on these forums. These forums have the potential to reintroduce ideas for units that have a poor place in the game as a whole. I don't know that anyone's happy with the current situation on units like the Thor, Swarm Host, or Tempest, not to mention current issues with the adept, mine, and liberator, and then we are asked opinions on this by the design team (may their names be obscured forever) and after the conversation begins to develop people ring in with things like "I'd like to start my own conversation about how Bio and Medivacs need to not exist".
Maybe in some alternate Starcraft 3 universe this will happen. But this is at the hypothesis/theory level and you need some more evidence that this would work than "trust me guys, the game sucks right now but the game I would make... out of the game they made... would be awesome!"
Hating on the balance team is ridiculous. I've played around 1200 different games in my life, and Starcraft is the best game i've ever played. I have 1100 games in my console library for everything from NES to PS3 and there are some incredible games in there, but Starcraft 2 is still my favorite game. This is not by accident folks! I really think some of you should ask yourselves if you're just anti-authority in general, and mad at the balance team because they have the power to change things and aren't changing them in your favor. Share recommendations, share opinions, don't share this "my competence to judge this game dwarfs theirs" nonsense.
Now, on to the current situation. I don't think -10 to adepts health will help much. I understand a need for Protoss to have an all-around, bread and butter type of unit, but the problem with that is Protoss is still the race with the most powerful high tech units (Immortal, Void Ray, archon, etc.) and so balancing those compositions is a nightmare since massing adepts works so well. The answer is a redesign to make the unit a more pure harassment unit comparable to the reaper or zergling rather than these minor tweaks. In the meantime, the stalker has served well for Protoss as the unit you know will get you some map control and strength early on but that you do not want to end up with 40 of by the end game.
Make the stalker great again, let the adept become who it was born to be.
I made a mod to try LOTV with the HOTS economy ( 6 harvesters start, 10 supply) nobody try it. Cause you need a friend to play it, you cannot just click on "Play" and try it.
At the same times, i think the TeamLiquid guys are pretty elitist. I was totally agree with "The Eulogy for a 6 pool", i try to continue on this idea with my mod and nobody answer on the thread.. I mean nobody from TL, from "The Eulogy for a 6 pool" writers. It's like you need to be "somebody" to say something relevant, even if you give some tools to prove or not an idea, nobody use it... it's weird...
So yes, people don't make mod, cause nobody put forward this kind of work... so you stop. Personally i will not stop but you understand the general idea
I think people like to speak, not to prove... so we lost a lot of time on discussion for nothing... Maybe TL can change something, for sur Blizzard can change something, for the rest... we speak speak speak.. and game is still unplayed...
Ps: i don't speak about adept cause i have a complicated review, than i can't expose with my poor english. ++
I don't think the writers play Starcraft 2 anyways so there is that.
I do! Played Ret on ladder recently and got destroyed so there's proof.
On April 19 2017 00:43 Ransomstarcraft wrote: I'd like to ask any of you who have these foundational ideas to remake the game from the ground up to take the time to make your own mod and then get people to try it rather than trying to take over conversations on these forums. These forums have the potential to reintroduce ideas for units that have a poor place in the game as a whole. I don't know that anyone's happy with the current situation on units like the Thor, Swarm Host, or Tempest, not to mention current issues with the adept, mine, and liberator, and then we are asked opinions on this by the design team (may their names be obscured forever) and after the conversation begins to develop people ring in with things like "I'd like to start my own conversation about how Bio and Medivacs need to not exist".
Maybe in some alternate Starcraft 3 universe this will happen. But this is at the hypothesis/theory level and you need some more evidence that this would work than "trust me guys, the game sucks right now but the game I would make... out of the game they made... would be awesome!"
Hating on the balance team is ridiculous. I've played around 1200 different games in my life, and Starcraft is the best game i've ever played. I have 1100 games in my console library for everything from NES to PS3 and there are some incredible games in there, but Starcraft 2 is still my favorite game. This is not by accident folks! I really think some of you should ask yourselves if you're just anti-authority in general, and mad at the balance team because they have the power to change things and aren't changing them in your favor. Share recommendations, share opinions, don't share this "my competence to judge this game dwarfs theirs" nonsense.
Now, on to the current situation. I don't think -10 to adepts health will help much. I understand a need for Protoss to have an all-around, bread and butter type of unit, but the problem with that is Protoss is still the race with the most powerful high tech units (Immortal, Void Ray, archon, etc.) and so balancing those compositions is a nightmare since massing adepts works so well. The answer is a redesign to make the unit a more pure harassment unit comparable to the reaper or zergling rather than these minor tweaks. In the meantime, the stalker has served well for Protoss as the unit you know will get you some map control and strength early on but that you do not want to end up with 40 of by the end game.
Make the stalker great again, let the adept become who it was born to be.
I made a mod to try LOTV with the HOTS economy ( 6 harvesters start, 10 supply) nobody try it. Cause you need a friend to play it, you cannot just click on "Play" and try it.
At the same times, i think the TeamLiquid guys are pretty elitist. I was totally agree with "The Eulogy for a 6 pool", i try to continue on this idea with my mod and nobody answer on the thread.. I mean nobody from TL, from "The Eulogy for a 6 pool" writers. It's like you need to be "somebody" to say something relevant, even if you give some tools to prove or not an idea, nobody use it... it's weird...
So yes, people don't make mod, cause nobody put forward this kind of work... so you stop. Personally i will not stop but you understand the general idea
I think people like to speak, not to prove... so we lost a lot of time on discussion for nothing... Maybe TL can change something, for sur Blizzard can change something, for the rest... we speak speak speak.. and game is still unplayed...
Ps: i don't speak about adept cause i have a complicated review, than i can't expose with my poor english. ++
I don't think the writers play Starcraft 2 anyways so there is that.
I do! Played Ret on ladder recently and got destroyed so there's proof.
Yes I know that you do because you actively whine and stuff :D, which is caring. But I think most other writers watch sc2 more / far more than play it (which is expected in such an anxiety inducing game), which is sufficient to write stuff about the game, and helps not to be too biased. Testing mods is painful on sc2 however, you need 2 players to actively want it...
On April 19 2017 00:43 Ransomstarcraft wrote: I'd like to ask any of you who have these foundational ideas to remake the game from the ground up to take the time to make your own mod and then get people to try it rather than trying to take over conversations on these forums.
...
The answer is a redesign to make the unit a more pure harassment unit comparable to the reaper or zergling rather than these minor tweaks. ...
The hypocrisy is strong within you.
Anyway, I agree with what you're saying. The thing is, the map editor is very buggy (at least on a Mac) and you won't very likely gather enough of a following to properly test it as AnossSc2 has said. I would love a community mod where a couple of people work together making the changes and where each change follows a community decision (for example by first making a request for change suggestions, then letting the community decide on what changes seem most promising). But I'm not sure if this is feasible, mostly because it would take a very long time.
Anoss, I just sent you a PM.
I love the idea of a community mod. I would enjoy it if the "testing" section were always live with an alternate community mod of the game. Maybe after 3-7 games they ask a few questions about what you liked and didn't like about it. I think that could be automated pretty easily.
On April 19 2017 00:43 Ransomstarcraft wrote: I'd like to ask any of you who have these foundational ideas to remake the game from the ground up to take the time to make your own mod and then get people to try it rather than trying to take over conversations on these forums.
...
The answer is a redesign to make the unit a more pure harassment unit comparable to the reaper or zergling rather than these minor tweaks. ...
The hypocrisy is strong within you.
Anyway, I agree with what you're saying. The thing is, the map editor is very buggy (at least on a Mac) and you won't very likely gather enough of a following to properly test it as AnossSc2 has said. I would love a community mod where a couple of people work together making the changes and where each change follows a community decision (for example by first making a request for change suggestions, then letting the community decide on what changes seem most promising). But I'm not sure if this is feasible, mostly because it would take a very long time.
Anoss, I just sent you a PM.
I love the idea of a community mod. I would enjoy it if the "testing" section were always live with an alternate community mod of the game. Maybe after 3-7 games they ask a few questions about what you liked and didn't like about it. I think that could be automated pretty easily.
EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
