StarCraft II Multiplayer - Major Design Changes - Page 21

On August 21 2017 13:19 avilo wrote:
I think a lot of people are getting their eyes big because of the shiny-ness factor of the changes being new.

Mech is not made better by the raven changes or other changes, because ravens are being severely nerfed.

A repair drone is un-necessary for mech and massively worse than PDD.
The seeker missile is being flat out nerfed for zero reason. Why would i want -3 armor on a unit for 2-3 seconds for 30 dmg when i can just have the seeker missile we have now that will KILL EVERYTHING for 100 dmg + splash? It's pretty ludicrous people are claiming this new seeker is good when it's extremely bad.

And finally the scrambler missile...well this is massively better than auto-turrets, that's the only successful change to the raven. PDD and seeker missile should stay as they are until both carriers and swarmhosts are also nerfed more for the other two races.

The changes to mech AA are also basically non-existent. Cyclones are still meh and widow mines are being nerfed for no reason.

Why do mines need to be spotted after being used? Are DTS going to correspondingly be visible after they attack something? What about burrowed banes that can end the game in an instant? This change is really bad and unnecessary, not to mention it's actually a huge nerf to mech. A lot of mech players like me heavily use widow mines in TvZ when playing non-mass raven mech styles.

I also think carriers still are completely dominating mech and Zerg late game and interceptors should be expensive at 25 minerals as they used to be so that carriers are not massable late game or at least so they have a weakness as they used to. So if a Protoss makes carriers you can kill the interceptors to bankrupt them.

It's really depressing right now killing 100 interceptors and seeing the Protoss still clean up all your gas units, and then come back 30 seconds later with fully loaded interceptors because they cost absolutely nothing.

Swarmhosts i have another suggestion that will make them more manageable - MAKE SWARMHOSTS HAVE THE LIGHT TAG. This will allow hellions to be able to chase them down in TvZ. That change alone would have a huge impact without changing many other unit statistics or values on the unit. Despite the fact i think swarmhosts are absurd and should be nerf hammered even harder, at least a light tag can make them manageable for a meching Terran.

On August 21 2017 16:42 MockHamill wrote:
I think the main problem with Carriers is that they mess up your units targeting system so much.

If interceptors had the lowest possible target-priority I think you could leave the rest of the Carriers un-nerfed.

It is worth testing out, at least.

On August 21 2017 11:18 ihatevideogames wrote:

I think it's pretty obvious why 1-click anti-everything defense is a bad thing for the game.
It allows toss to do silly stuff such as going proxy stargate while taking a fast 3rd.
Every time I saw a pro match where the toss just took a free 3rd when all he had was an Oracle and 2 Adepts I just facepalmed.
Or when 2 Pylons defended against 2 full medivacs worth of units, while the toss player had 0 actual units in his base.
It's just bad design that creates bad gameplay and it needs to go. Doesn't matter if toss suffers for a while because of it, find another solution, but design wise, it's bad for the game.

On August 21 2017 18:39 seemsgood wrote:

//Btw new unit tester is available:https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/6v094l/unit_tester_for_balance_update/
Thor with repair drone takes about 30 sec to kill with one carrier.this one and sramble egg are my farvorite change right now.Cyclone's upgrade is shit tho.But may be because i played it wrong.

On August 21 2017 19:00 LDaVinci wrote:


I disagree. I'm Z and I like the idea of the msc. Of course, when I try to cheese and fail because of it, I rage, but still I don't see why toss could'nt have such unit. I think it fits well in the race idea.
Though it is probably too strong, and not enough of a "tech choice". You have to build one so you can probe up and expand, and you don't even have to build so many units.
I actually would like to see the same changes to early game that they are planing, but with the msc still in place with 2 buffs :
- Cost (and build time ?) increase (+50% maybe) so that it is a huge investment
- higher supply cost.

You would have to choose between units (and interacting with opponents) or msc and macroing.

On August 21 2017 20:00 MockHamill wrote:


Problem with that scenario is the gas cost is 250 (Carrier) vs 400 (Thor+Raven). Each Raven you produce is almost a Carrier more he has, at least for gas cost which is the important factor late game.

But the real problem is mixed armies. Carrier/Immortals vs Tank/Hellbat/Thor means that the Thor can not engage the Carriers before the immortals are gone since they prevent the Thors from being able to focus down the Carriers. So Protoss gets damage output from both Carriers and Immortals while Terran only get damage output from tanks/hellbats for half the battle.

Which is why you are forced to go Vikings instead of Thor which means you auto-lose if Protoss has any splash at all.

Which is why you are forced to go BCs instead of Vikings since they are the only realistic counter to Carriers.

And that is the problem with the matchup. If Carriers had a working (not theoretical, working) counter besides BCs they matchup would be much healthier.

But the problem is that the 2 natural counters (Vikings and Thor) only works in theory, but not in practice.

Solution? Maybe remove 50 hitpoints from Carriers so that their counters actually work.

On August 21 2017 20:17 Kenny_mk wrote:


I'm P, and i find the MSC fit the race identity quite well too. As said earlier, i consider people who are saying it is "gimmicky" and "bad design" are only people talking about what they dislike, and is spread by a bunch of T & Z who thinks they are game designer.
A problem still present to me is that there is maybe too much reliance upon the MSC.Like the mine & the disruptor , on lower levels it's a bit too much " all or nothing".
Also i fear that the PvT become again a struggle to survive early on, like in the WoL era where T just felt overpowered because the match up was just completely struggling to see at which timing the MMM train is gonna be in your base.(A thing that just make me quit the game until mid HotS personnally)
I'm ok with the removal, but now i fail to see how Protoss won't be again only a turtling race.

The mine nerf is directed toward this match up i think, but make it more useless in TvZ which is kinda sad.
Also now medivac have the boost..

On August 21 2017 21:33 Foxxan wrote:

And iam no race and msc fits protoss. While super tanks with 16 range would fit terran. Doesnt mean it fits the multiplayer aspect - The interraction with msc is very poor. Thats the key reason its a bad unit for multiplayer. Singleplayer? Sure, its a very strong unit which was what protoss identity was in broodwar and to some extent sc2, but just because it fits the theme of the race doesnt mean its a good unit for multiplayer.

On August 21 2017 20:17 Kenny_mk wrote:
I'm P, and i find the MSC fit the race identity quite well too. As said earlier, i consider people who are saying it is "gimmicky" and "bad design" are only people talking about what they dislike, and is spread by a bunch of T & Z who thinks they are game designer.

On August 21 2017 22:26 VHbb wrote:


Yep, in fact the tank was not erased from the terran race, but it was introduced in a form that works for multiplayer game. Why not do the same for the MSC?

On August 21 2017 22:28 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
i'd rather peopel stick to the details of the game rather than relating some tiny detail in the game to the writings of Skinner, Artistotle and Ayn Rand.

On August 22 2017 00:19 BronzeKnee wrote:


That amuses me.

You, by your own words started an "abstract discussion about self esteem building" and noted that Branden > Skinner in a thread about Photon Overcharge.

If you are trolling, well done sir, the terrible spelling mistakes should have made that clear to me long ago.

Regardless, the uneducated or willfully ignorant will always struggle to ground their viewpoints in logic that has been refined over centuries because they simply don't know, and as GI Joe tells us, knowing is half the battle. There is a reason so many people in poorly educated areas cling to religion ignorantly (ignorant in that they don't actually understand their chosen religion). In fact, you advocated a learning technique in that thread that was akin to teaching people stoves were hot and not to touch them, by having them touch hot stoves... even suggested the best lessons you learned in life were learned the hard way.

Excellent. You "common folk" amuse me. As an educated educator, I can say there are far better teaching techniques that don't result in sick burns. But some people don't know any better. And everyone thinks their life lessons have made them better.

On August 22 2017 07:01 [PkF] Wire wrote:
The test map is enjoyable. I need to hit strong players to see how difficult it has really become to handle early game aggression without a msc, but so far I find getting more units in the early game works just fine.

Recall is VERY abusive imo, especially lategame, on Nexi and or Mothership alike. The new stalker feels strong, monitoring blink timings again might become a necessity. I like the new overcharge, although making it 25 energy (like it was in HotS) would maybe make it more flexible.

Overall, promising. The interesting thing is that in the end, the game doesn't change much for people like me who already played blink colossi vT. So it's a "major" patch since the msc gets removed, but the overall feel of the game is preserved, this is good imo.