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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51449 Posts
Thanks everyone for trying out the changes and providing valuable feedback. We appreciate your thoughts and input!
Protoss
We like the early game strength of Restoration Field, but think that it might be too strong in the middle and late game. We want to identify an ability that is strong in the early game but becomes less effective as the game progressed. Additionally, there were some gameplay concerns regarding Restoration Field. The range on Restoration Field required Pylons to be placed at a certain distance from the Nexus. This felt a bit restrictive and we think it limited the choices or options for defensive positioning. We want to put Restoration Field on the shelf for now, and introduce the Shield Battery structure. Shield Batteries can be built by Probes and will regenerate shields of nearby friendly units. This should allow Protoss players more options for defensive gameplay. You can find more details about this structure on our blog post linked below. Lastly, the Mothership’s Mass Recall was changed to Forward Recall. Forward Recall will not have a cooldown and can be used in combination with the Nexus Mass Recall. The Mothership is a powerful, expensive late game unit and this change should open up more opportunities for the unit.
Zerg
There are some concerns with the Entangle ability. We like the gameplay of using Entangle to allow ground forces to engage enemy air units, but Entangle may be a bit too strong versus massive air units. Even with possible cost or duration changes, we are worried that a targeted stun in this manner doesn’t provide the kind of counterplay that we are looking for. Changing Entangle to be unable to target massive air units is an option, but that may make the anti-air option not viable enough for Zerg players. For the next test, we’d like to try removing Entangle and replacing it with the previously tested Infested Terran spell. The Infested Terrans will continue to spawn faster on creep and they will have their new anti-air weapon Acid Spores. Additionally, Fungal will now affect both ground and air targets and will slow the target’s movement speed by 75% instead of immobilizing them. In order to simplify this version of Fungal Growth, the previous interaction of creep causing immobility is being removed from the spell, but its radius will still be slightly increased compared to the live version. The reduced movement speed at 75% should provide the defending players more opportunities for counter play.
Please visit our blog (Click Here) to see the newly-updated list of changes we are running on the testing matchmaker, and feel free to provide any feedback or suggestions on these changes. Thank you!
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Pretty sure Fungal growth slow isn't gonna feel as good as you think it is. A 75% slow effect feels roughly as bad as being unmoveable and instead you just have more units being heavily slowed (due to radius buff).
It's the type of change that sounds good on paper but when you actually test it (as I have) you realize this isn't a good fix.
A better fix would be to make Fungal Growth set a maximum movement speed of enemy units at 2*1.38. In that case unit movemnet still feel okay'ish, but they can no longer kite zerg units too efficiently. And the ability won't be useful against units that already are slow.
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I like it when they say that necessity of placing pylons close to nexus feels restrictive, but completely ignored that fact when they "introduced" new warp-in and PO system in lotv. These guys definetely know what they are talking about and their argumentation is always on point.
p.s. OP, pls add this as well:
Shield Battery
Warped in via Probes.
Requires Gateway.
75 mineral cost.
18 second warp in duration.
200 Shields / 200 Health / 200 Energy.
Starts with 50 energy.
Restores shields of a single friendly unit within 4 range.
Autocast will target units and Photon Cannons. Manual cast can be used on buildings.
Recharges 3 shields per 1 energy.
Rate of shield recharge is 51 shields per 1 second.
Mothership
Mothership Mass recall changed to Forward Recall.
Forward Recall does not have a cooldown and does not share a global cooldown with Nexus Mass Recall.
Forward Recall has same effects as Mass Recall.
Infestor
Remove Entangle.
Add Infested Terran.
Fungal Growth
Can now hit both air and ground units.
Radius remains changed from 2.0 to 2.5 (Fungal Growth radius is 2.0 on live).
Slows the target’s movement speed by 75%.
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Is there any way to play the test map as custom...? I can't find games lol
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On September 14 2017 17:54 Wolf wrote:
Is there any way to play the test map as custom...? I can't find games lol
Yeah, select a map and "Create with Mod", then find the Balance Test mod in the menu.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51449 Posts
Think they just focusing on those two first it seems haha!
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Russian Federation1607 Posts
Glad that Entangle is gone...
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On September 14 2017 18:38 Jenia6109 wrote:
Glad that Entangle is gone...
It was an attempt to introduce Warcraft 3 type abilities to a game so fundamentally different from Warcraft 3. Damn right it's good to have it gone.
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On September 14 2017 18:01 DieuCure wrote:
So, terran is perfect ?
Focusing on 1-2 things is much easiler to refine than make many change.That only creats more chaos.
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Thank god that pylon field is gone. I quit after 1 game, while I played more of the nexus iteration before that than ladder this season. This is such a rollercoaster ride, you really get the impression a monkey on a typewriter comes up with these changes.
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I dont really think the shield battery is that useful in holding multi prong aggression early game because of its low area coverage. That being said, I've found that a combination of stalker + photon cannon deals with a lot of early game aggression.
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i'm glad to see Blizzard is willing to experiment with the Shield Battery. There are so many ways to adjust the strength and durability of the Shield Battery i'm confident they can tweak its stats to make it a balanced part of the game.
On September 14 2017 18:45 Vindicare605 wrote:It was an attempt to introduce Warcraft 3 type abilities to a game so fundamentally different from Warcraft 3. Damn right it's good to have it gone.
yep, entangle didn't work.
it is also good to give Blizzard the creative freedom to experiment and fail on certain initiatives. you can't make an ambitious game with amazing stuff and have zero failures along the way. the only way to never fail is to take zero risks.. and that's boring.
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forward recall is the arbiter recall? as in, i recall units towards the mothership?
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Could always make the Infested Terran Acid Spores do more damage against units that have Fungal Growth on them too to add a little flavor.
(Not trying to get crazy, just creative.)
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This shield battery gimmick won't ever work, for the same reason lurkers are useless in ZvT: Terran can ferry their entire army over all terrain, playing a positional/static defense based game is suicide.
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Maybe move overcharge to nexus again?
Also i'd like to know if the new infested terrans counter mass carriers or we'll still have that point where nothing does.
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I was hoping to see them change the Shield Regen ability on the Nexus to something you cast onto a unit to buff their shields/regen for a short time at a small energy cost, or anything reactive. I don't like the idea of more static, automatic defense stuff or more small structures to place all around. It feels a bit too much of something that I don't feel the game needs, and not enough of anything I feel would be fun, interactive, and feel positive for either player.
Static automatic things aren't fun for a lot of players to use or to play against, and it's why I always imagined Shield Batteries didn't make it into SC2 from the beginning or in LotV. Very curious how Protoss players feel about it on offense (running into it while attacking) and defense, and how T and Z feel about it compared to running into Mamacores and whatnot.
Something I also wanted to see that was a more... interesting... idea: keep Infested Terran the same but add an upgrade somewhere that makes them more grotesque and fearsome (think Infested Tychus's, or them exploding into mini-ground-Fungals when they die, so on). Just changing them the way they are feels strange and unimpressive to me, but I suppose that could change a lot if I force myself to start using the new ones?
I do like that they aren't swinging their changes all over the place for this one. It isn't a very tiny update, but it looks focused on a couple of very specific parts of the game, I really like these kinds of updates.
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As a Zerg player- Everything is better than shooting pylons. And somehow shield battery suits Protoss better than some gimicky solutioms they tried. Think about it as Medivack healing Marines, or Queens transfusing. Protoss had nothing of that sort till now. I'm not a Protoss fan obiously, but i think shield battery will allow agressive play vs Protoss again, and will demand from that race decision making- leave something at my base to defend? Or put more force into attack, and so on. As i said- still better solution than free defence from supply buildings...
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On September 14 2017 16:44 Hider wrote:
Pretty sure Fungal growth slow isn't gonna feel as good as you think it is. A 75% slow effect feels roughly as bad as being unmoveable and instead you just have more units being heavily slowed (due to radius buff).
It's the type of change that sounds good on paper but when you actually test it (as I have) you realize this isn't a good fix.
A better fix would be to make Fungal Growth set a maximum movement speed of enemy units at 2*1.38. In that case unit movemnet still feel okay'ish, but they can no longer kite zerg units too efficiently. And the ability won't be useful against units that already are slow.
While i basically agree with what you said i still think the biggest mistake in sc2 is how spellcasters and their usage are handled on a fundamental level. We had so many spells nerfed because people started massing spellcasters and the usage is extremely easy to pull off. One can say that the spells itself weren't well designed (like instantly hitting fungal), but at the same time i also think that spells should be really strong because it's fun to use when it's strong.
The problem arises when everybody can just build 10 spellcasters and spam the spell whenever he likes. That has to change one way or another, not the fact that certain spells might be a bit strong on their own. That's actually something which is good i think. I would much rather have that instead of goign the ravager route where the spell itself is incredibl bad but you build lots of ravagers and the cd is really low. That interaction is imo actually one of the worst interactions in the game from a fun perspective.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
