Its been a big week here for StarCraft! Just this past weekend we hope you had fun watching Home Story Cup and seeing all of the changes being played out at a high level. And this week itself we have gone live with our big patch with a new commander for coop and all of the multiplayer design patch changes.
Now that the patch is out, we would like to make a number of balance changes based off of observations and feedback that we received from the community. The patch is a bit larger than usual for a balance patch, but these past changes have been larger than usual as well! In addition, a number of ESports events are coming up in December so we would like to make sure that players have time to practice with new balance updates. In addition the holiday season is upon us so we would like to target a balance update for sometime during the week of November 27th.
Zerg
For design patches we like to lean on the side of making things powerful so that players can really feel the changes and then pull back from there. However, it seems the Infestor is currently further in this direction than we would like. We believe that Fungal Growth is the prime reason for its strength and we want to increase counterattack options to the currently stealthy Infestors first before heavily nerfing its direct power. So we are going to reduce the Fungal Growth area of effect slightly and remove the ability to cast Fungal Growth while burrowed. In line with this we are also planning on reducing Infested Terran cast range by 2. It can still be cast while burrowed, but now there should be more trade off in how far forward you want to move your Infestors with the initial cast and how much you want to let the Infested Terrans walk towards their targets.
Infestor - Fungal Growth Area of Effect reduced from 2.5 to 2.25. - Fungal Growth can no longer be cast while burrowed. - Infested Terran cast range reduced from 9 to 7.
Protoss Since Protoss got the biggest design changes in this patch we would like to carefully monitor certain areas before making a move. Disruptors and Stalkers could be overly powerful, but we would like to get more data first. However, the roughly 3 minute Oracle timing vs Terran seems too strong so we want to make a adjustment to that strategy. Since the Oracle itself is a strong option in several matchups and already fights well at short ranges, (Thus already providing player interaction, but perhaps too sharply) we believe that we can adjust the power of the unit.
Oracle - Pulsar Beam - Damage changed from 25 vs light to 22 vs light. - Damage type reverted back from Normal to Spell.
- Build time increased from 37 to 43 seconds.
This changes how effective they are against Marines and SCVs especially. Marines are now able to defeat an Oracle head on with a group of 5 instead of 6. This change also adjusts the relationship between Oracles and Hydralisks slightly and the Hydralisk will perform better vs Oracles. We are also increasing the build time to match Void Rays to help push back the timing of when Oracles hit slightly.
We are also planning on slightly increasing the cost of Shield Batteries. Right now the decision to make them is a bit too ubiquitous so we would like to make their cost more similar to other defensive structures. This is just an initial change, depending on how the meta game develops we might have to revisit this newly added building in future balance passes.
Shield Battery - Cost increased from 75 to 100 Minerals.
Terran For Terran we want to introduce some buffs as we think a number of their upgrades are currently more expensive than required. With the current nerfs to the Widow Mine we think the upgrade is much more costly than needed, especially since the upgrade is now more needed to keep your mines alive. In addition the Rapid Fire Launchers have a very specific use case so we want to reduce the cost here as well. Finally Smart Servos is probably slightly over costed compared to other mobility/combat upgrades like Stimpack and Combat Shields.
Factory Tech Lab - Drilling Claws cost reduced from 150 Minerals / 150 Vespene Gas to 75 / 75 - Rapid Fire Launchers cost reduced from 150 Minerals / 150 Vespene Gas to 75 / 75 - Smart Servos cost reduced from 150 Minerals / 150 Vepsene Gas to 100 / 100
Also we have been getting feedback about Ghost usage in regards to cost and how they can be a bit inconsistent. Here we wanted to buff Steady Targeting slightly and adjust the cost of Ghosts to better fit in with Bio oriented playstyles.
Ghost - Cost changed from 200 Minerals / 100 Vespene Gas to 150 / 125 - When interrupted by damage Steady Targeting returns 50 energy to the Ghost.
Returning energy on interrupted Steady Targeting should help Terran players who keep their cool under pressure and retarget the ability. Also while the cost change is an overall reduction, Vespene Gas is usually seen as more valuable, except to high level Marine oriented Bio play. This should make it a more competitive choice for players.
Future Changes This is of course not the end of balance tuning. The changes are very new and we think that even without patches the game will change quite a bit as high level players develop new strategies. Some areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg.
As always let us know what you think on the forums or other community areas!
I like most of the changes here. But are these changes coming too quickly? The patch has only been out for 2 to 3 weeks at most by the time the end of the month hits. Maybe proceed with the unit damage changes, but not the other stuff, like Protoss and reverting between Normal and Spell damage for example.
On November 18 2017 04:05 geokilla wrote: I like most of the changes here. But are these changes coming too quickly? The patch has only been out for 2 to 3 weeks at most by the time the end of the month hits. Maybe proceed with the unit damage changes, but not the other stuff, like Protoss and reverting between Normal and Spell damage for example.
What is Spell damage anyways?
Spell damage doesnt get affected by armor (storm or mine shots are spell damage for example)
If infestors get nerfed this hard and cant cast fungal while burrowed, it would be nice if their model was made smaller, or if they got a weak auto attack like high templars.
Infestors are the one zerg unit that really scales with skills. The difference between a high level player using them and a lower level player is tremendus, when you compare it to other zerg units such as hydralisks, roaches, ultralisks,etc.
If they get nerfed too hard and go back to being fat useless units, it will be a shame.
You need to try to keep ideal zerg compositions away from things like ling bane hydra. That unit comp is a-move type with very little micro potential, and makes it hard for top level zergs to shine when compared to top terran players and top protoss players.
It would be really nice to get zerg similar micro potential and skill scaling as the other races have.
Sounds good, see you next month, when more nerfs and buffes come in.
Rapid launcher and smart servos are still useless and nobody will use them, but that never stopped neal steel frame. Drilling craws should make mines invis while recharging, then make the upgrade 150/150 again.
On November 18 2017 04:08 Snakestyle1 wrote: If infestors get nerfed this hard and cant cast fungal while burrowed, it would be nice if their model was made smaller, or if they got a weak auto attack like high templars.
Infestors are the one zerg unit that really scales with skills. The difference between a high level player using them and a lower level player is tremendus, when you compare it to other zerg units such as hydralisks, roaches, ultralisks,etc.
If they get nerfed too hard and go back to being fat useless units, it will be a shame.
You need to try to keep ideal zerg compositions away from things like ling bane hydra. That unit comp is a-move type with very little micro potential, and makes it hard for top level zergs to shine when compared to top terran players and top protoss players.
It would be really nice to get zerg similar micro potential and skill scaling as the other races have.
Agreed although that they can't cast while burrowed is good imo. From the terran side it just didn't really have counterplay except trying to guess when the zerg tries to fungal because T doesn't have reliable detection. Damage, radius, range can all be adjusted but the ability to cast burrowed was dumb.
Oracle - Pulsar Beam - Damage changed from 25 vs light to 22 vs light. - Damage type reverted back from Normal to Spell.
- Build time increased from 37 to 43 seconds.
This changes how effective they are against Marines and SCVs especially. Marines are now able to defeat an Oracle head on with a group of 5 instead of 6. This change also adjusts the relationship between Oracles and Hydralisks slightly and the Hydralisk will perform better vs Oracles. We are also increasing the build time to match Void Rays to help push back the timing of when Oracles hit slightly.
Not that I'm against it. Once again they are making changes in a vacuum. This is an indirect slight buff for twilight openers in PvP.
Oracle - Pulsar Beam - Damage changed from 25 vs light to 22 vs light. - Damage type reverted back from Normal to Spell.
- Build time increased from 37 to 43 seconds.
This changes how effective they are against Marines and SCVs especially. Marines are now able to defeat an Oracle head on with a group of 5 instead of 6. This change also adjusts the relationship between Oracles and Hydralisks slightly and the Hydralisk will perform better vs Oracles. We are also increasing the build time to match Void Rays to help push back the timing of when Oracles hit slightly.
Not that I'm against it. Once again they are making changes in a vacuum. This is an indirect slight buff for twilight openers in PvP.
You need some math classes buddy.
SCVs have 45 health, 2 shot with old oracle 3 shot with new
Probes have 40 health, 2 shot with old oracle 2 shot with new
The 6 second delay transforms to roughly 3-ish with chrono (chrono shaves 10 seconds of build for a duration of 10 seconds, double chrono transformes 40 seconds of build into 20 thus the 6 seconds get kinda of halved considering it gets past 43 by 3.
I saw a lot of terrans complaining about the oracle opening, so i guess this very early patch is necessary. Idk about nerfing fungal tho, as long as mass airtoss cancer is not back i'm fine with it.
so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
on a scale of sad to emotionally devastated, how mad are u right now??
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault"
hmm
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault"
hmm
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
thanks for the reply, it was very informative
sorry mate i wanted to quote original post , not yours
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault"
hmm
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
thanks for the reply, it was very informative
sorry mate i wanted to quote original post , not yours
Good changes overall. Not sure I like drilling claws though. Sounds to me like that moves widow mines in the direction of researching drilling claws to suicide mines into mineral lines. They'll get big hits off regardless of how fast protoss/zerg react, and that's worth the investment even if you lose the mines afterwards. I'd rather see the mine nerf reverted or at least toned down honestly.
On November 18 2017 07:03 Olli wrote: Good changes overall. Not sure I like drilling claws though. Sounds to me like that moves widow mines in the direction of researching drilling claws to suicide mines into mineral lines. They'll get big hits off regardless of how fast protoss/zerg react, and that's worth the investment even if you lose the mines afterwards. I'd rather see the mine nerf reverted or at least toned down honestly.
It sounds a bit similar to the lurker upgrade tbh, and while that hasn't been broken as of yet, it seems like horrible gameplay for lurkers to run at armies and insta-burrow killing everything if the opponent is looking away.
On November 18 2017 07:08 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It sounds a bit similar to the lurker upgrade tbh, and while that hasn't been broken as of yet, it seems like horrible gameplay for lurkers to run at armies and insta-burrow killing everything if the opponent is looking away.
The lurker upgrade seems like it might be a problem in TvZ, but I suspect otherwise it just means that lurker drops / runbys will start seeing some usage.
On November 18 2017 07:08 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It sounds a bit similar to the lurker upgrade tbh, and while that hasn't been broken as of yet, it seems like horrible gameplay for lurkers to run at armies and insta-burrow killing everything if the opponent is looking away.
The lurker upgrade seems like it might be a problem in TvZ, but I suspect otherwise it just means that lurker drops / runbys will start seeing some usage.
It's still horrible gameplay regardless of whether it is balanced or not. Besides ZvZ and even PvZ are much more of a concern than TvZ where lurkers are concerned.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
I never implied I won't adapt and find a new build, or that my build is fun for only me even when I lose with it. I don't even proxy stargate anyways.
yet saying "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft" is very ignorant to say when it still in the game for every race which has been discussed a billion of times.
I hope they reverse the revelation nerf too. Or at least reduce the cost so that it requires more protoss apm -> more skill, while still becoming more useful.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
I never implied I won't adapt and find a new build, or that my build is fun for only me even when I lose with it. I don't even proxy stargate anyways.
yet saying "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft" is very ignorant to say when it still in the game for every race which has been discussed a billion of times.
I hope they reverse the revelation nerf too. Or at least reduce the cost so that it requires more protoss apm -> more skill, while still becoming more useful.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
nice, you better start counting those 4 things.
- "5 nerfs" It's two nerfs and a buff. - "nerf a strategy out of the game" Oracles will still be very viable. - "winrates were balanced" They weren't particularly in PvT.
These are really timely and well thought out changes. More options will open up for terran now with less pressure from oracle and more research accessible.
I'm glad they did'nt nerf drop Disruptor, idk if it's balanced, it's pretty strong against terran i'm playing but better terran should have more map awareness so idk if it's balanced, but i hope it's toned down and not nerfed into oblivion.
This playstyle with speedprism was a bit viable before patch too and really fun to me.
I hope if they reimplement the drop-delay that it will not be too long, old one was too long.
I'm really sad they buff Servos, mech suck. It would be bad if top-kor bioplay TvZ stop...
edit : about the mine, i'm not a bw elitist but having him cannot target drone&probe cuz "flying" unit would just be good to me & sounds like a good solution (& revert visibility of course& keeping upgrade buff) but i guess T would'nt be ok :p.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
I never implied I won't adapt and find a new build, or that my build is fun for only me even when I lose with it. I don't even proxy stargate anyways.
yet saying "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft" is very ignorant to say when it still in the game for every race which has been discussed a billion of times.
I hope they reverse the revelation nerf too. Or at least reduce the cost so that it requires more protoss apm -> more skill, while still becoming more useful.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
nice, you better start counting those 4 things.
a)implying that proxy oracle in PvT wasn't literally impossible to stop with a macro build b)implying that the nerf was caused by "whiners" c)calling people who recognized the ridiculesness of the build "whiners" d)saying the "winrates were balanced if not zerg favored" which is horrendously wrong, every Terran I know has been getting buttfucked in the matchup, dk what Zerg has to do with it e)having the guts to call anyone a whiner right after saying that a slight oracle nerf will "nerf it out of the game"
The ghost change is fantastic, I've been hoping blizzard would make this change since they changed it in wings of liberty!! This change more than any other gives me some faith in this balance team. Overall I'm very happy about these changes, I am a bit disappointed about the way they fixed oracles,they definitely needed to be fixed because 3 min oracle timing was ridiculous but I would have preferred a different solution with less impact on pvz. Im also glad they are looking at infestors, I think they will still be to strong against air though, I would be more fine with infestors if other races had some level of paradoy in g2a options right now the problem is the only answer to zerg air is for protoss or terran to make air, its unreasonable than to give zerg such a strong counter to air units when they can force other players to build these units with there tech decision, If brood lords were worse than this would be more acceptable. I really like all the terran buffs, great changes overall!
I do think the shield battery nerf is to much if they also nerf oracle, I would say change one or the other but not both at the same time, protoss is already struggling a bit to take thirds in pvz and nerfing battery will make it even harder, and further encourage the current 2 base allin meta. I also think that if terran isnt cripled in the early game drops might be a bit to strong without cheep batteries.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
I never implied I won't adapt and find a new build, or that my build is fun for only me even when I lose with it. I don't even proxy stargate anyways.
yet saying "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft" is very ignorant to say when it still in the game for every race which has been discussed a billion of times.
I hope they reverse the revelation nerf too. Or at least reduce the cost so that it requires more protoss apm -> more skill, while still becoming more useful.
On November 18 2017 06:18 Aegwynn wrote:
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
nice, you better start counting those 4 things.
- "5 nerfs" It's two nerfs and a buff. - "nerf a strategy out of the game" Oracles will still be very viable. - "winrates were balanced" They weren't particularly in PvT.
Not sure what he meant by the fourth wrong thing.
aha
5 nerfs refers to this quick balance patch plus the most recent patch making it 5 nerfs in a week or so.
and with winrates and openers I refered to zerg and oracle openers in LotV and the nerf hurting oracles vs. Hydras, so.
On November 18 2017 07:08 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It sounds a bit similar to the lurker upgrade tbh, and while that hasn't been broken as of yet, it seems like horrible gameplay for lurkers to run at armies and insta-burrow killing everything if the opponent is looking away.
The lurker upgrade seems like it might be a problem in TvZ, but I suspect otherwise it just means that lurker drops / runbys will start seeing some usage.
Lurker will only find a way into the game when this insane harassment play by Terran and Protoss slows down. There is a good reason why hydra bane is the must go. Its a massive pain in the ass to defend with lurker. Quite ironic
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
I never implied I won't adapt and find a new build, or that my build is fun for only me even when I lose with it. I don't even proxy stargate anyways.
yet saying "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft" is very ignorant to say when it still in the game for every race which has been discussed a billion of times.
I hope they reverse the revelation nerf too. Or at least reduce the cost so that it requires more protoss apm -> more skill, while still becoming more useful.
On November 18 2017 06:18 Aegwynn wrote:
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
nice, you better start counting those 4 things.
- "5 nerfs" It's two nerfs and a buff. - "nerf a strategy out of the game" Oracles will still be very viable. - "winrates were balanced" They weren't particularly in PvT.
Not sure what he meant by the fourth wrong thing.
aha
5 nerfs refers to this quick balance patch plus the most recent patch making it 5 nerfs in a week or so.
and with winrates and openers I refered to zerg and oracle openers in LotV and the nerf hurting oracles vs. Hydras, so.
They nerfed the damage, but only in the way it interacts with 3 units. They nerfed the duration of stasis.
Thats it
The build time it kind of its a nerf but considering CB got a buff it makes the build time overall the same as prepatch so it pretty much stays the same.
On November 18 2017 07:03 Olli wrote: Good changes overall. Not sure I like drilling claws though. Sounds to me like that moves widow mines in the direction of researching drilling claws to suicide mines into mineral lines. They'll get big hits off regardless of how fast protoss/zerg react, and that's worth the investment even if you lose the mines afterwards. I'd rather see the mine nerf reverted or at least toned down honestly.
I'm thinking the same thing, buffing drilling claws just makes gigantic unseen shots be the norm and thats what the change was supposed to evade, I seriously think they have it backwards with the WM changes.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
I never implied I won't adapt and find a new build, or that my build is fun for only me even when I lose with it. I don't even proxy stargate anyways.
yet saying "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft" is very ignorant to say when it still in the game for every race which has been discussed a billion of times.
I hope they reverse the revelation nerf too. Or at least reduce the cost so that it requires more protoss apm -> more skill, while still becoming more useful.
On November 18 2017 06:18 Aegwynn wrote:
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
nice, you better start counting those 4 things.
a)implying that proxy oracle in PvT wasn't literally impossible to stop with a macro build b)implying that the nerf was caused by "whiners" c)calling people who recognized the ridiculesness of the build "whiners" d)saying the "winrates were balanced if not zerg favored" which is horrendously wrong, every Terran I know has been getting buttfucked in the matchup, dk what Zerg has to do with it e)having the guts to call anyone a whiner right after saying that a slight oracle nerf will "nerf it out of the game"
That's 5.
a) didn't even mention PvT, I said the oracle time nerf was needed because of chrono. b) you'd be blind to not notice people whining about mass oracles. c) what's wrong with that? if people whine about my cannon rush because they think it is "ridiculesness" I am calling them whiners. d) didn't even mention PvT when talking about winrates, and If you want to tell me one whole week is proof of insane toss winrates with nothing to back it up e) it's 5 nerfs not one slight nerf.
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
I never implied I won't adapt and find a new build, or that my build is fun for only me even when I lose with it. I don't even proxy stargate anyways.
yet saying "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft" is very ignorant to say when it still in the game for every race which has been discussed a billion of times.
I hope they reverse the revelation nerf too. Or at least reduce the cost so that it requires more protoss apm -> more skill, while still becoming more useful.
On November 18 2017 06:18 Aegwynn wrote:
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
nice, you better start counting those 4 things.
- "5 nerfs" It's two nerfs and a buff. - "nerf a strategy out of the game" Oracles will still be very viable. - "winrates were balanced" They weren't particularly in PvT.
Not sure what he meant by the fourth wrong thing.
aha
5 nerfs refers to this quick balance patch plus the most recent patch making it 5 nerfs in a week or so.
and with winrates and openers I refered to zerg and oracle openers in LotV and the nerf hurting oracles vs. Hydras, so.
They nerfed the damage, but only in the way it interacts with 3 units. They nerfed the duration of stasis.
Thats it
The build time it kind of its a nerf but considering CB got a buff it makes the build time overall the same as prepatch so it pretty much stays the same.
Revelation duration reduced from 43 to 30 seconds. Stasis Ward will no longewr affect eggs or larva. Stasis Ward has a 170 second timed life duration Pulsar Beam weapon changed from Spell to Normal damage (Pulsar Beam damage will now be affected by Armor values). and the two new ones damage and
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
"if i'm not having fun it's the devs' fault for nerfing my build, but if other players weren't having fun against my build then that's their fault" hmm ok
i play proxy oracle and mass oracle too, i don't care that it's being fixed because i'll find another build to do. it's starcraft, not "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft"
although if oracles are becoming weaker they should probably raise revelation time back to what it was before and it can just be a utility unit that doesn't need to get kills and is more about controlling the map
I never implied I won't adapt and find a new build, or that my build is fun for only me even when I lose with it. I don't even proxy stargate anyways.
yet saying "you're morally entitled to surprise your opponent with 10 worker kills craft" is very ignorant to say when it still in the game for every race which has been discussed a billion of times.
I hope they reverse the revelation nerf too. Or at least reduce the cost so that it requires more protoss apm -> more skill, while still becoming more useful.
On November 18 2017 06:18 Aegwynn wrote:
On November 18 2017 05:50 youngjiddle wrote: so what, that's five nerfs to the oracle in this patch?
god damn. I had tons of fun with oracle openings but if they want to nerf a strategy out of the game because of whiners, whatever. Winrates were balanced if not zerg favored.
There are like at least 4 things straight wrong in this post
nice, you better start counting those 4 things.
- "5 nerfs" It's two nerfs and a buff. - "nerf a strategy out of the game" Oracles will still be very viable. - "winrates were balanced" They weren't particularly in PvT.
Not sure what he meant by the fourth wrong thing.
aha
5 nerfs refers to this quick balance patch plus the most recent patch making it 5 nerfs in a week or so.
and with winrates and openers I refered to zerg and oracle openers in LotV and the nerf hurting oracles vs. Hydras, so.
They nerfed the damage, but only in the way it interacts with 3 units. They nerfed the duration of stasis.
Thats it
The build time it kind of its a nerf but considering CB got a buff it makes the build time overall the same as prepatch so it pretty much stays the same.
Revelation duration reduced from 43 to 30 seconds. Stasis Ward will no longewr affect eggs or larva. Stasis Ward has a 170 second timed life duration Pulsar Beam weapon changed from Spell to Normal damage (Pulsar Beam damage will now be affected by Armor values). and the two new ones damage and
build time.
Build time as I said its not really nerf with in the CB change. Spell damage got reverted with damage nerf.
So 3 nerfs, and it in no way stops oracles from being viable vs zerg, you still 2 shot drones and still can cast stasis in mineral lines.
On November 18 2017 07:19 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It's still horrible gameplay regardless of whether it is balanced or not. Besides ZvZ and even PvZ are much more of a concern than TvZ where lurkers are concerned.
Shit ... I typoed the hell out of that. I meant ZvZ. PvZ I don't see it being as large an issue because immortals will wreck any such attempts (just like tanks stopping it in TvZ). In ZvZ there's nothing that really kills lurkers fast enough to prevent that kind of a play from happening.
On November 18 2017 07:19 ZigguratOfUr wrote: It's still horrible gameplay regardless of whether it is balanced or not. Besides ZvZ and even PvZ are much more of a concern than TvZ where lurkers are concerned.
Shit ... I typoed the hell out of that. I meant ZvZ. PvZ I don't see it being as large an issue because immortals will wreck any such attempts (just like tanks stopping it in TvZ). In ZvZ there's nothing that really kills lurkers fast enough to prevent that kind of a play from happening.
At least before the upgrade was a thing you could try to pick a few lurkers off and retreat, and lurkers weren't nearly as good at offense than defense. Now with this upgrade it's no longer the case in ZvZ. I'm not sure what positive gameplay this upgrade is supposed to engender.
On November 18 2017 08:12 Lexender wrote: Build time as I said its not really nerf with in the CB change.
Not to get in on the rest of this, but that's bullshit. Oracles' build time was straight up nerfed. The short-duration effects of chronoboost have exactly the same effect as old chrono over time so if you ever build more than one oracle this is a straight up nerf to their production speed. And if you ever considered building oracles without chronoboosting them (as is frequently the case in the mid- or late- game when chrono is desperately needed on upgrades like ETL, blink, glaives, or storm), it's even more clearly a straight nerf.
The nerf to their damage is also effectively a 50% DPS nerf in PvT in the early game.
Certainly something was needed (longer build time on stargates?) but this is a massive over-nerf. Oracles will certainly see far, far less play than even before the design patch once this goes through. Sure, you'll see one or two for scouting purposes throughout the game, but that's it.
On November 18 2017 08:12 Lexender wrote: Build time as I said its not really nerf with in the CB change.
Not to get in on the rest of this, but that's bullshit. Oracles' build time was straight up nerfed. The short-duration effects of chronoboost have exactly the same effect as old chrono over time so if you ever build more than one oracle this is a straight up nerf to their production speed. And if you ever considered building oracles without chronoboosting them (as is frequently the case in the mid- or late- game when chrono is desperately needed on upgrades like ETL, blink, glaives, or storm), it's even more clearly a straight nerf.
The nerf to their damage is also effectively a 50% DPS nerf in PvT in the early game.
Certainly something was needed (longer build time on stargates?) but this is a massive over-nerf. Oracles will certainly see far, far less play than even before the design patch once this goes through. Sure, you'll see one or two for scouting purposes throughout the game, but that's it.
With constant old chrono oracles got build in 31.5 seconds, with current chrono they got out in in 27 seconds with 1 chrono and 18.5 seconds with 2 chronos, with this change they get build in 33 seconds with 1 chrono and 23 seconds with 2 chronos.
At the end your point is wheter or not new chrono is an overall nerf to new chrono because you are considering using chrono in everything else, but thats a different matter altogether.
On November 18 2017 08:38 Lexender wrote: With constant old chrono oracles got build in 31.5 seconds, with current chrono they got out in in 27 seconds with 1 chrono and 18.5 seconds with 2 chronos, with this change they get build in 33 seconds with 1 chrono and 23 seconds with 2 chronos.
And, as stated, those chronos still have the same long term effect as the old chrono ... so you can rush out that 1 oracle, but everything else is going to be slower.
As I said before, it's a flat-out nerf to oracles' build time. Just because the fastest possible oracle is roughly the same speed does not negate the fact that it's a nerf.
This update looks to be on a positive note. Some may say it's a bit rushed, but from the few high level games we have had the chance to witness, this is an obvious step in the right direction.
I'm glad the folks over at Blizzard have been paying attention!
On November 18 2017 08:54 Togekiss wrote: This update looks to be on a positive note. Some may say it's a bit rushed, but from the few high level games we have had the chance to witness, this is an obvious step in the right direction.
I'm glad the folks over at Blizzard have been paying attention!
My hope is that the quick patches don't result in long-term balance problems. i think some oracle nerf was needed, but this change is a rather large nerf to the oracle overall.
But now that the initial changes are out of the way, hopefully we can let the meta stabilize.
The oracle change basically kills Stargate openers in PvT, right? If you're not going Phoenix/X, you're unlikely to get enough damage done to justify the expense into the tech path.
The issue with oracle rush might lie with chrono, chrono stack rushes got buffed super hard and it shows in builds like dt rush also, or chrono adept rush. targeting the oracle might be a slippery slope when chrono stack rush might turn out to be the real issue. very important to focus on the right properties here
On November 18 2017 09:23 Liquid`Snute wrote: The issue with oracle rush might lie with chrono, chrono stack rushes got buffed super hard and it shows in builds like dt rush also, or chrono adept rush. https://twitter.com/HarstemSc2/status/931595039255552001 targeting the oracle might be a slippery slope when chrono stack rush might turn out to be the real issue. very important to focus on the right properties here
Yeah definitely. Oracles are just the most obvious way to abuse the new chrono, wouldn't be surprised to see something else replace it. That being said I don't think nerfing oracles is too bad either, since oracles being a core army unit against zerg was a bit weird to begin with, and widow mines the PvT counterpart of oracles got nerfed. I'm more worried that if the oracle nerf proves ineffective Blizzard will start nerfing other things that are enabled by the new chrono, before eventually nerfing chrono messing up Protoss in the process.
On November 18 2017 04:41 Odowan Paleolithic wrote:
On November 18 2017 03:55 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
Oracle - Pulsar Beam - Damage changed from 25 vs light to 22 vs light. - Damage type reverted back from Normal to Spell.
- Build time increased from 37 to 43 seconds.
This changes how effective they are against Marines and SCVs especially. Marines are now able to defeat an Oracle head on with a group of 5 instead of 6. This change also adjusts the relationship between Oracles and Hydralisks slightly and the Hydralisk will perform better vs Oracles. We are also increasing the build time to match Void Rays to help push back the timing of when Oracles hit slightly.
Not that I'm against it. Once again they are making changes in a vacuum. This is an indirect slight buff for twilight openers in PvP.
You need some math classes buddy.
SCVs have 45 health, 2 shot with old oracle 3 shot with new
Probes have 40 health, 2 shot with old oracle 2 shot with new
The 6 second delay transforms to roughly 3-ish with chrono (chrono shaves 10 seconds of build for a duration of 10 seconds, double chrono transformes 40 seconds of build into 20 thus the 6 seconds get kinda of halved considering it gets past 43 by 3.
So no its not a big change in PvP
Try calculate when the 2nd oracle pop out in time for DT if the first has not been killed and still have energy for revelation.
On November 18 2017 08:12 Lexender wrote: Build time as I said its not really nerf with in the CB change.
Not to get in on the rest of this, but that's bullshit. Oracles' build time was straight up nerfed. The short-duration effects of chronoboost have exactly the same effect as old chrono over time so if you ever build more than one oracle this is a straight up nerf to their production speed. And if you ever considered building oracles without chronoboosting them (as is frequently the case in the mid- or late- game when chrono is desperately needed on upgrades like ETL, blink, glaives, or storm), it's even more clearly a straight nerf.
The nerf to their damage is also effectively a 50% DPS nerf in PvT in the early game.
Certainly something was needed (longer build time on stargates?) but this is a massive over-nerf. Oracles will certainly see far, far less play than even before the design patch once this goes through. Sure, you'll see one or two for scouting purposes throughout the game, but that's it.
I agree something had to be done to ballance TvP but this is a bit to far, I think it would be more reasonable to nerf the stargate build time as overall it has less impact than nerfing oracle production speed. Oracles are critical for protoss scouting so making them take longer to build hurts protoss the whole game rather than just at the start which is where they really needed to be adjusted.
On November 18 2017 09:23 Liquid`Snute wrote: The issue with oracle rush might lie with chrono, chrono stack rushes got buffed super hard and it shows in builds like dt rush also, or chrono adept rush. https://twitter.com/HarstemSc2/status/931595039255552001 targeting the oracle might be a slippery slope when chrono stack rush might turn out to be the real issue. very important to focus on the right properties here
Yeah definitely. Oracles are just the most obvious way to abuse the new chrono, wouldn't be surprised to see something else replace it. That being said I don't think nerfing oracles is too bad either, since oracles being a core army unit against zerg was a bit weird to begin with, and widow mines the PvT counterpart of oracles got nerfed. I'm more worried that if the oracle nerf proves ineffective Blizzard will start nerfing other things that are enabled by the new chrono, before eventually nerfing chrono messing up Protoss in the process.
this makes sense might also be a better alternative than this rather drastic nerf.
Overall, good changes, I agree with the direction the team is heading. Oracle nerf's may be a tad overkill, but that remains to be seen. It will probably be better design wise that this unit has a niche spell caster roll, as opposed to being able to be massed effectively.
In terms of Protosses matchup's, I do anticipate the pendulum to swing in the other direction, either slightly or quite apparently, particularly in PvT. I believe the effectiveness of the oracles has hidden other areas where Protoss may be lacking.
If I recall, the main reason the MsC was introduced was to help tosses deal with Medivac (Ferrari vac) aggression in the mid to late game. It remains to be seen if the stalker buff, shield batteries and observer vision range buff will be enough to let tosses hang on vs multi-prong drops now with the removal of the mama core. I anticipate well be seeing lots of tosses dying to 2-4 medivac drops in the mid to late game. That being said, the overall design of Protoss seems to be in a much better state than before.
I rarely used Oracle for its damage, I find the unit more interresting for its utility. I don't know how frustrating it is to play against as T or Z, but since Widowmines got changed I enjoy Sc2 again, if the oracle nerfs can do the same for T and Z have at it.
Also pls fix connectivity issues... Bnet is super Laggy. I played one rank game and had to wait five min before the main screen loads for another game.
I assume Blizzard is holding off on implementing these changes till the 27th in case the update screws something up so they don't have to pull people into work and away from their families, but that begs the question of why they released the patch when they did since there was a 100% chance that at least one change was going to be game breaking or why they didn't fix things before the update went live since we had ample evidence of issues after Homestory cup.
How about reducing oracle's starting energy from 50 to 25 (or even 0), but gives an upgrade to add it back to 50 in fleet beacon? It can still 2-shot your SCV and marine and arrive at your base around 3:00, but does not have the energy to do too many damage at this timing.
Still think that nerfing oracle will have more impact on pvz (especially vs early game ling flood) than pvt (which honeslty I think it's just a meta problem). Proxy oracle was abused also in HOTS initially, then terrans just learn to deal with them. Nerfing CB is not an option because without MSC it will reduce greatly defense vs zergs.
All changes proposed will impact more on early pvz than in any other matchup.
Am I the only one thinking that is really too early to talk about changes? HSC is the only tournament played and most of people partecipating there did not prepared on new changes (WCS was ended few days before)
I mean, neeb being best protoss was eliminated at group stage...doesn't it sound strange? To me it's more like a rush to bandaid fixes which david kim was used to do and killed protoss in lotv...
On November 18 2017 04:14 Aegwynn wrote: I liked the changes overall, but why would they triple nerf the infestors? They will go back to garbage unit that no one makes with these changes.
It really doesn't make sense to nerf it into the ground. Understandably, it will still have a role when carriers come out or the viking count gets too high, but it feels like the unit, which was just starting to get some traction in the meta, is now going to be unused.
The problem is that Infestor nerf is an overkill. I don't mind tweaking units stas, but now Infestor is worse than before design changes and in the same time, ghost is buffed as hell. Basically with these changes TvZ lategame will be hell for Zerg players. Infestors won't be able to protect Broodlords or even help Ultras to catch enemy's army...We used to abuse Infestors as we had no other option for lategame. Now we have none. If they want nerf fungal radius-ok- but leave burrow cast. If they want delete burrow cast- leave the radius and revert projectile to instant. If they want nerf Infestor to the ground- nerf Ghosts and High Templars too, not buff them! Zerg always had problem with valid casters. Now it's back.
... what did i just read. and then i just read a comment that late game Terran doesn't have reliable detection. WHAT did i just read. This is terrrible.
Zerg needs to have strong AOE AA to avoid letting Protoss get into air death balls. Infestor are already extremely hard to use. They should be stronger and slightly easier.
The big problem with oracles is also their effective firepower in mass, not their survivability. Instead of making them more glass cannony, lower their speed of damage, increase their HP just slightly. The previous patch reducing the duration time of statis wards and revelation is a step in the right direction.
Zerg also needs ways of dealing with Terran air. Medivacs and Liberators are far too effective without ways to counter them.
On November 18 2017 17:26 hiroshOne wrote: The problem is that Infestor nerf is an overkill. I don't mind tweaking units stas, but now Infestor is worse than before design changes and in the same time, ghost is buffed as hell. Basically with these changes TvZ lategame will be hell for Zerg players. Infestors won't be able to protect Broodlords or even help Ultras to catch enemy's army...We used to abuse Infestors as we had no other option for lategame. Now we have none. If they want nerf fungal radius-ok- but leave burrow cast. If they want delete burrow cast- leave the radius and revert projectile to instant. If they want nerf Infestor to the ground- nerf Ghosts and High Templars too, not buff them! Zerg always had problem with valid casters. Now it's back.
On November 18 2017 17:26 hiroshOne wrote: The problem is that Infestor nerf is an overkill. I don't mind tweaking units stas, but now Infestor is worse than before design changes and in the same time, ghost is buffed as hell. Basically with these changes TvZ lategame will be hell for Zerg players. Infestors won't be able to protect Broodlords or even help Ultras to catch enemy's army...We used to abuse Infestors as we had no other option for lategame. Now we have none. If they want nerf fungal radius-ok- but leave burrow cast. If they want delete burrow cast- leave the radius and revert projectile to instant. If they want nerf Infestor to the ground- nerf Ghosts and High Templars too, not buff them! Zerg always had problem with valid casters. Now it's back.
"TvZ lategame will be hell for Zerg players"
Yeah... no
Oh yeah? We'll see after these changes hit the ladder. Ultras were nerfed, broodlords were nerfed, nowninfestors nerfed, swarmhosts nerfed and in the same time we got Thor buff, ghost buff. We'll see
On November 18 2017 17:26 hiroshOne wrote: The problem is that Infestor nerf is an overkill. I don't mind tweaking units stas, but now Infestor is worse than before design changes and in the same time, ghost is buffed as hell. Basically with these changes TvZ lategame will be hell for Zerg players. Infestors won't be able to protect Broodlords or even help Ultras to catch enemy's army...We used to abuse Infestors as we had no other option for lategame. Now we have none. If they want nerf fungal radius-ok- but leave burrow cast. If they want delete burrow cast- leave the radius and revert projectile to instant. If they want nerf Infestor to the ground- nerf Ghosts and High Templars too, not buff them! Zerg always had problem with valid casters. Now it's back.
"TvZ lategame will be hell for Zerg players"
Yeah... no
Oh yeah? We'll see after these changes hit the ladder. Ultras were nerfed, broodlords were nerfed, nowninfestors nerfed, swarmhosts nerfed and in the same time we got Thor buff, ghost buff. We'll see
Good changes but more is needed. My suggestions for next patch:
-Make blink stalkers unable to move or attack for 2 seconds after blink -Remove energy from medivac, just make it heal -Reduce nuke calldown to 14 seconds, increase damage to around 800 -Reduce widow mine supply to 1, decrease cost to 50/25, reduce cooldown to 25 seconds -Increase EMP radius to 2
On November 18 2017 20:30 Loccstana wrote: My suggestions for next patch:
-Make blink stalkers unable to move or attack for 2 seconds after blink -Remove energy from medivac, just make it heal -Reduce nuke calldown to 14 seconds, increase damage to around 800 -Reduce widow mine supply to 1, decrease cost to 50/25, reduce cooldown to 25 seconds -Increase EMP radius to 2
spotted the terran player
I would redress your suggestions slightly:
- no - keep medivac energy, but give us some cute trick to drain it empty (e.g. manual cast on a full hp unit still drains energy). kinda like banshees can spam cloak / uncloak to keep them safe from feedbacks. - 500 damage to units, 800 to buildings. the red dot probably needs to be bigger - sounds fair enough - 1.75 radius, but reduce the infestor model size
really good changes overall, especially the Ghost buff. the Ghost is such a iconic unit, i love to see him back in TvZ.
The two things i didn't like at all are the Drilling Claws and Oracle buildtime changes.
Drilling Claws: this upgrade makes widow mines a lot better at worker harassment because it gives toss and zerg nearly no time to react to mine drops and wasn't the reason for the widow mine nerf to prevent such things in the first place?
Oracle buildtime: i think this is a really bad band aid solution. the problem rigth now is not the oracle, it's the Chrono boost. the new Chrono boost makes every proxy or timing attack insanely strong, not only the proxy oracle. The much more elegant solution would be to change to Chrono boost from 100% for 10s to 50% for 20s. the double chrono oracle would be build in 24s (with the blizzard change it would be 23s) and also every other proxy like double robo would be less lethal.
Oracle buildtime: i think this is a really bad band aid solution. the problem rigth now is not the oracle, it's the Chrono boost. the new Chrono boost makes every proxy or timing attack insanely strong, not only the proxy oracle. The much more elegant solution would be to change to Chrono boost from 100% for 10s to 50% for 20s. the double chrono oracle would be build in 24s (with the blizzard change it would be 23s) and also every other proxy like double robo would be less lethal.
On November 18 2017 20:30 Loccstana wrote: Good changes but more is needed. My suggestions for next patch:
-Make blink stalkers unable to move or attack for 2 seconds after blink -Remove energy from medivac, just make it heal -Reduce nuke calldown to 14 seconds, increase damage to around 800 -Reduce widow mine supply to 1, decrease cost to 50/25, reduce cooldown to 25 seconds -Increase EMP radius to 2
chronoboost is the bigger problem than oracle build time even changing it to 25 energy 50% increase would be great while still maintaining overall increase/energy
On November 18 2017 20:30 Loccstana wrote: Good changes but more is needed. My suggestions for next patch:
-Make blink stalkers unable to move or attack for 2 seconds after blink -Remove energy from medivac, just make it heal -Reduce nuke calldown to 14 seconds, increase damage to around 800 -Reduce widow mine supply to 1, decrease cost to 50/25, reduce cooldown to 25 seconds -Increase EMP radius to 2
On November 18 2017 23:19 SetGuitarsToKill wrote: I almost wonder if they're being too conservative with the oracle nerf. Proxy stargate is still unreal vs Zerg
Proxy stargate vs zerg should just be scouted with lings. No chronoboost nerf is going to fix that.
On November 18 2017 21:22 Musicus wrote: Good change, but I agree with the others that said the chrono boost itself needs a change instead of Oracle build time.
50% boost over 20 seconds sounds perfect!
This change instead of the oracle build time nerf makes a lot of sense.
LOL. I wrote a post last night I ended up not submiting. It was about how I felt about the new changes and the devs now address everything I didn't like about them. :-)
However, there is two things I really care about that are not talked about:
1. SWARM HOSTS are more cancerous than they have ever been. Without reusable mines and PDDs there is no such thing as an efficient defense, let alone have an army left over to go after the, still beefy as fuck, units. The speed nerf is no help because mech T cannot afford to capitalise on it.
2. HYDRAS are too cost efficient in TvZ. No matter what T does, mech, bio, 2 base AI, 2/2 timing, tanks, BCs, whatever, Hydras are always a quite solid choice. This is bad. TvZ is about scouting and reacting. Having an always solid and cost efficient choice, no matter what, completely breaks this dynamic.
That's funny. I literally got trashed last night by burrowed Infestors and Fungal.
On November 19 2017 03:23 QuinnTheEskimo wrote: 2. HYDRAS are too cost efficient in TvZ. No matter what T does, mech, bio, 2 base AI, 2/2 timing, tanks, BCs, whatever, Hydras are always a quite solid choice. This is bad. TvZ is about scouting and reacting. Having an always solid and cost efficient choice, no matter what, completely breaks this dynamic.
I am just getting back into the game so I have no idea what I am talking about, but I feel the same way about Hydras in PvZ. And if I go to punish them with Colossus, Lurkers buy them time and then Abduct just destroys me.
in all these community updates, I never hear anyone mention the cyclone. is everyone just cool with this 1-dimension 1-A mech marine?
the old cyclone was so much fun to micro. they were fast, fragile, and extremely dangerous. there was a real tactile satisfaction using them. hellions and cyclones had great synergy. we were just beginning to see this fast and furious speedy mech style played by Innovation and TY. Innovation would open double factory and from there on, it was non-stop action.
you can't micro the new cyclones at all. it's pathetic. scoot, shoot and kite is infinitely better than what we have presently. why on earth was lock-on removed from the ground weapon? it killed everything that was fun about cyclones.
1. SWARM HOSTS are more cancerous than they have ever been. Without reusable mines and PDDs there is no such thing as an efficient defense, let alone have an army left over to go after the, still beefy as fuck, units. The speed nerf is no help because mech T cannot afford to capitalise on it.
Nobody makes mines with Mech vs Zerg and Raven were built only in super lategame
2. HYDRAS are too cost efficient in TvZ. No matter what T does, mech, bio, 2 base AI, 2/2 timing, tanks, BCs, whatever, Hydras are always a quite solid choice. This is bad. TvZ is about scouting and reacting. Having an always solid and cost efficient choice, no matter what, completely breaks this dynamic.
1. SWARM HOSTS are more cancerous than they have ever been. Without reusable mines and PDDs there is no such thing as an efficient defense, let alone have an army left over to go after the, still beefy as fuck, units. The speed nerf is no help because mech T cannot afford to capitalise on it.
the counter to swarm hosts is thor / hellbat / medivac. thors splash the locusts in the air, hellbats splash the locusts on the ground. you bait the locusts into landing prematurely with thor drops / hot pick-ups. if nothing else, it forces zerg to micro his locusts.
literally no pro uses the widow mine / raven method you are talking about
On November 18 2017 21:22 Musicus wrote: Good change, but I agree with the others that said the chrono boost itself needs a change instead of Oracle build time.
50% boost over 20 seconds sounds perfect!
I'd much prefer this to the version that changes the energy cost. This keeps the macro-cycle similar to mules and queens.
1. SWARM HOSTS are more cancerous than they have ever been. Without reusable mines and PDDs there is no such thing as an efficient defense, let alone have an army left over to go after the, still beefy as fuck, units. The speed nerf is no help because mech T cannot afford to capitalise on it.
the counter to swarm hosts is thor / hellbat / medivac. thors splash the locusts in the air, hellbats splash the locusts on the ground. you bait the locusts into landing prematurely with thor drops / hot pick-ups. if nothing else, it forces zerg to micro his locusts.
literally no pro uses the widow mine / raven method you are talking about
Literally no pro has a solid win rate with mech vs swarm hosts either, so maybe looking at the pros does not yield a viable answer here.
The Thor drop is everything but a solid counter. It worked once during a tournament, but not at a second tournament. We even saw a few Swarm Host games during Blizzcon 2017 and they were neigh unstoppable. The one time they were defeated was was with hellion tank out on the map. So much for what the pros do.
It is virtually impossible to defend against Swarm Hosts and losing mines and PDDs certainly didn't improve that situation. But welcome back to SC2. Seems like you have been away for quite some time.
1. SWARM HOSTS are more cancerous than they have ever been. Without reusable mines and PDDs there is no such thing as an efficient defense, let alone have an army left over to go after the, still beefy as fuck, units. The speed nerf is no help because mech T cannot afford to capitalise on it.
the counter to swarm hosts is thor / hellbat / medivac. thors splash the locusts in the air, hellbats splash the locusts on the ground. you bait the locusts into landing prematurely with thor drops / hot pick-ups. if nothing else, it forces zerg to micro his locusts.
literally no pro uses the widow mine / raven method you are talking about
Literally no pro has a solid win rate with mech vs swarm hosts either, so maybe looking at the pros does not yield a viable answer here.
The Thor drop is everything but a solid counter. It worked once during a tournament, but not at a second tournament. We even saw a few Swarm Host games during Blizzcon 2017 and they were neigh unstoppable. The one time they were defeated was was with hellion tank out on the map. So much for what the pros do.
It is virtually impossible to defend against Swarm Hosts and losing mines and PDDs certainly didn't improve that situation. But welcome back to SC2. Seems like you have been away for quite some time.
Do you have any examples of pros playing mech vs. swarm hosts post patch?
Here we go again. Lets quote the site that specifically states that they only look at the games they want to look at and openly state that this is far from every game. Aligulac is meant to enable better predictions on how matches of two recoreded players will turn out. Quoting aligulac for anything else is just bad and arbitrary. And then, of course, implying that Gumiho's overall win loss rate is the same as his win loss rate in mech vs swarm host is probably among the most far fetched things ever stated on TL.
However, it seems the Infestor is currently further in this direction than we would like. We believe that Fungal Growth is the prime reason for its strength and we want to increase counterattack options to the currently stealthy Infestors first before heavily nerfing its direct power. So we are going to reduce the Fungal Growth area of effect slightly and remove the ability to cast Fungal Growth while burrowed.
Uhh.. are they not "heavily nerfing it's direct power" already?
Well, I wasn't going to say anything here about the update, but holy cow after watching and playing a bunch yesterday and today I have so much to say that I won't even write half of it here.
I'm very worried about PvZ lategame for anyone outside of the very top of the ladder, especially if Infestors are being nerfed, and even then I bet they'll struggle. I have a hard time seeing a future where, at 15 Minerals and 6 seconds each, Interceptors are not an incredibly "feel bad" part of late game Protoss. They just don't get burned out fast enough when you're ahead on bases. And needing Vipers and Infestors and often Queens and Spores positioned well versus Carriers, Void Rays, Motherships that can recall constantly... It's stressful as a Zerg player, to say the least. I wonder how Protoss players feel about getting into that type of late game.
I still think Shield Batteries need to be changed so they aren't quite as strong against burst damage. I'm doubtful the +25 Mineral cost will change their use much since, to me, it only changes how much I think about putting down an extra two or three at my natural, not how many I'm going to put in front of my opponent's ramp with Stalkers, Void Rays, etc.
I kind of want Cyclones to get changed again, or reverted, or even replaced with a tweaked Warhound (crazy idea: + Show Spoiler +
let them produce from Orbital Commands and replace Mules or call down to upgrade an SCV for a limited time, keep Cyclone lock-on/haywire missiles, change standard attack to stronger melee and act as a defensive, anti-mechanical/ armored unit
) to make them more interesting, fun, interactive in some way. They've been in an odd spot for a while now and I want to see something else out of them.
Swarm Hosts, Ghosts, Collossi, Vikings and Ravens seem okay, but I've hardly seen any myself on this patch. It would be nice if someone had good videos or replays where they're used a lot in each matchup or in various stages of the game.
I like parts of the update, which is great, and I very much dislike other parts, and I feel the same about this patch. As much as I'm torn about about a few (mostly minor...ish) things, I think the team is keeping a good eye on things right now and I'm looking forward to the next patch.
On November 19 2017 08:04 StarscreamG1 wrote: I'm not even a zerg player, but isn't this fungal nerf too much? o_O
What's your reasoning? I'm a zerg player, but my only reason is "fungal burrow is so cool!"
I for one am glad its gone, to many high level games of tvz were being decided by the surprise fungal corrosive bile combo, since Terran usually cant afford mobile detection when going bio and has to rely on scans it just created this very random element to the game, even the change that made it not root did little to alleviate the issue.
Someone posted that the problem for removing borrow fungal is that infestors will be targeted before they even engage in battle (tanks and templar's feedback).
"For design patches we like to lean on the side of making things powerful so that players can really feel the changes and then pull back from there."
So lets make the other terran units stronger then. MECH attack dps buffs, it seems toss got nerf via orcale but stalkers are strong. Zerg got a buff. we should remove and revamp the swarm host!
The terran ghost could really use a buff to make it more viable late game. the SC:RM ghost were great and not too costly. lockdown helped vs protoss and its dmg output was good verses zerg. The cost is what really kills ghosts so im glad its worked on. how about reducing the cost of armory gas amount
On November 19 2017 11:33 Loccstana wrote: I cant wait to see the near unstoppable proxy shield battery blink stalker all ins
tbh I'm not sure, tanks still do a ton of dmg to blink stalkers and the range helps with shield batteries. if terran can get 3+ tanks with a bit of support I don't think blink stalkers will crush through unless the map is really favorable for them.
On November 19 2017 11:33 Loccstana wrote: I cant wait to see the near unstoppable proxy shield battery blink stalker all ins
tbh I'm not sure, tanks still do a ton of dmg to blink stalkers and the range helps with shield batteries. if terran can get 3+ tanks with a bit of support I don't think blink stalkers will crush through unless the map is really favorable for them.
I mean, you could could stalkers if you' want to give terran a chance. or you could have 6 carriers by the time terran hits +2 vehicle weapons.
On November 19 2017 11:33 Loccstana wrote: I cant wait to see the near unstoppable proxy shield battery blink stalker all ins
tbh I'm not sure, tanks still do a ton of dmg to blink stalkers and the range helps with shield batteries. if terran can get 3+ tanks with a bit of support I don't think blink stalkers will crush through unless the map is really favorable for them.
I mean, you could could stalkers if you' want to give terran a chance. or you could have 6 carriers by the time terran hits +2 vehicle weapons.
so there will be 6 carriers by the time the terran builds 3 siege tanks? .....sure
On November 19 2017 11:33 Loccstana wrote: I cant wait to see the near unstoppable proxy shield battery blink stalker all ins
tbh I'm not sure, tanks still do a ton of dmg to blink stalkers and the range helps with shield batteries. if terran can get 3+ tanks with a bit of support I don't think blink stalkers will crush through unless the map is really favorable for them.
I mean, you could could stalkers if you' want to give terran a chance. or you could have 6 carriers by the time terran hits +2 vehicle weapons.
so there will be 6 carriers by the time the terran builds 3 siege tanks? .....sure
The thing is that you need lots of tanks to win cost efficiently against hydras when you are using mech. But you cannot use lots of tanks if he is going swarm hosts since the splash will kill your own units.
Swarm Hosts / Hydra has no working counter if you use mech.
Thor drops gets shut down by Hydras, hellion or hellbats beaten by hydras+locusts. You can not kill enough of the Swarm Hosts without losing more resources yourself in the attempt.
What is the cause of all this? Blizzard made Swarm Hosts extremely cheap in order to make them popular so that they could figure out their role. The price decrease was supposed to be temporary.
For some reason (probably because most pros used bio so Swarm Host were seen used much in pro play) the price stuck.
And the current situation is this. We are stuck with an absurdly cheap Swarm Host that counters an entire play style and that has no reliable counter play. The speed decrease had almost no impact since you can not get to the Swarm Hosts when they are protected by Hydras.
Solution? Make Swarm Hosts reasonable priced so that they are not always the perfect answer if you see your opponent building more than one factory.
Apart from balance I can not think of any unit that sucks they joy out of playing as much as seeing your opponent going Swarm Hosts and knowing that no matter what you do you will lose. I never met a single Terran that thought it was fun or interesting to play against Swarm Hosts. It is just infuriating and encourages people to stay away from the ladder.
On November 19 2017 17:52 MockHamill wrote: The thing is that you need lots of tanks to win cost efficiently against hydras when you are using mech. But you cannot use lots of tanks if he is going swarm hosts since the splash will kill your own units.
Swarm Hosts / Hydra has no working counter if you use mech.
Thor drops gets shut down by Hydras, hellion or hellbats beaten by hydras+locusts. You can not kill enough of the Swarm Hosts without losing more resources yourself in the attempt.
What is the cause of all this? Blizzard made Swarm Hosts extremely cheap in order to make them popular so that they could figure out their role. The price decrease was supposed to be temporary.
For some reason (probably because most pros used bio so Swarm Host were seen used much in pro play) the price stuck.
And the current situation is this. We are stuck with an absurdly cheap Swarm Host that counters an entire play style and that has no reliable counter play. The speed decrease had almost no impact since you can not get to the Swarm Hosts when they are protected by Hydras.
Solution? Make Swarm Hosts reasonable priced so that they are not always the perfect answer if you see your opponent building more than one factory.
Apart from balance I can not think of any unit that sucks they joy out of playing as much as seeing your opponent going Swarm Hosts and knowing that no matter what you do you will lose. I never met a single Terran that thought it was fun or interesting to play against Swarm Hosts. It is just infuriating and encourages people to stay away from the ladder.
Gumiho beat Serral at Blizzcon with Mech. Serral used Swarmhosts.
On November 19 2017 18:03 FanaticCZ wrote: Swarm Host has been a shitty unit ever since its introduction and IMHO the worst unit idea blizzard ever came up with.
Free units suck.
I never quite followed this line of thinking, so let's talk about this for a sec.
Swarm hosts are a siege unit, capable of doing asymmetric damage, same as the Tank, the Colossus, the Tempest. The Locusts are no more free units then the tank attack is 'free ammo'. In a quite accurate sense the two locusts are the Swarm host. They aren't 'free'. Imagine a zerg is turtling up against a terran. the terran parks outside his base with tanks and begins shelling the zergs base. The tanks aren't taking any damage, and the zerg army is getting crushed. Are the tank shots 'free ammo'? No, they are the damage from the tanks. The zerg should either withdraw or attack. The same with swarmhosts, the locusts aren't free units, they are the SH attack. You are standing in siege range, either move forward and engage the siege units or withdraw ( I agree that SH were too fast for siege units, which is exactly the nerf they got BTW )
Swarm hosts have the longest range of the siege units and the best control of their damage due to managing the locusts and for that they give up attack speed ( 43 seconds per shot vs. tanks 2.14 ) and usability ( attack has to be cast ). The locusts cast is free, it doesn't cost money like a carriers interceptor for example, but then again the carrier can attack constantly and withdraws its interpectors if nothing is attacked, if the carriers interceptors could attack for only 18 seconds and then couldn't attack again for 43 and could not be retracted I don't think they should cost minerals either.
The locusts damage, speed, the swarmhosts speed, cooldown and cost. These are all things that can be balanced and have been balanced before. Marking the unit as a 'free unit' and painting it with a 'unbalanceable' brush is just foolish. You can't keep the locusts, you can't build up an army of locusts uncontrolled by the supply mechanic. Which would be a problem.
It's a siege unit with shots you can manage, that's it.
On November 19 2017 18:03 FanaticCZ wrote: Swarm Host has been a shitty unit ever since its introduction and IMHO the worst unit idea blizzard ever came up with.
Free units suck.
I never quite followed this line of thinking, so let's talk about this for a sec.
Swarm hosts are a siege unit, capable of doing asymmetric damage, same as the Tank, the Colossus, the Tempest. The Locusts are no more free units then the tank attack is 'free ammo'. In a quite accurate sense the two locusts are the Swarm host. They aren't 'free'. Imagine a zerg is turtling up against a terran. the terran parks outside his base with tanks and begins shelling the zergs base. The tanks aren't taking any damage, and the zerg army is getting crushed. Are the tank shots 'free ammo'? No, they are the damage from the tanks. The zerg should either withdraw or attack. The same with swarmhosts, the locusts aren't free units, they are the SH attack. You are standing in siege range, either move forward and engage the siege units or withdraw ( I agree that SH were too fast for siege units, which is exactly the nerf they got BTW )
Swarm hosts have the longest range of the siege units and the best control of their damage due to managing the locusts and for that they give up attack speed ( 43 seconds per shot vs. tanks 2.14 ) and usability ( attack has to be cast ). The locusts cast is free, it doesn't cost money like a carriers interceptor for example, but then again the carrier can attack constantly and withdraws its interpectors if nothing is attacked, if the carriers interceptors could attack for only 18 seconds and then couldn't attack again for 43 and could not be retracted I don't think they should cost minerals either.
The locusts damage, speed, the swarmhosts speed, cooldown and cost. These are all things that can be balanced and have been balanced before. Marking the unit as a 'free unit' and painting it with a 'unbalanceable' brush is just foolish. You can't keep the locusts, you can't build up an army of locusts uncontrolled by the supply mechanic. Which would be a problem.
It's a siege unit with shots you can manage, that's it.
hmm, the difference is that locusts and broodlings are separate units that have to be killed and thus provide a meatshield. Still, if the other stats are fine I don't think free units are a problem.
On November 19 2017 18:03 FanaticCZ wrote: Swarm Host has been a shitty unit ever since its introduction and IMHO the worst unit idea blizzard ever came up with.
Free units suck.
I never quite followed this line of thinking, so let's talk about this for a sec.
Swarm hosts are a siege unit, capable of doing asymmetric damage, same as the Tank, the Colossus, the Tempest. The Locusts are no more free units then the tank attack is 'free ammo'. In a quite accurate sense the two locusts are the Swarm host. They aren't 'free'. Imagine a zerg is turtling up against a terran. the terran parks outside his base with tanks and begins shelling the zergs base. The tanks aren't taking any damage, and the zerg army is getting crushed. Are the tank shots 'free ammo'? No, they are the damage from the tanks. The zerg should either withdraw or attack. The same with swarmhosts, the locusts aren't free units, they are the SH attack. You are standing in siege range, either move forward and engage the siege units or withdraw ( I agree that SH were too fast for siege units, which is exactly the nerf they got BTW )
Swarm hosts have the longest range of the siege units and the best control of their damage due to managing the locusts and for that they give up attack speed ( 43 seconds per shot vs. tanks 2.14 ) and usability ( attack has to be cast ). The locusts cast is free, it doesn't cost money like a carriers interceptor for example, but then again the carrier can attack constantly and withdraws its interpectors if nothing is attacked, if the carriers interceptors could attack for only 18 seconds and then couldn't attack again for 43 and could not be retracted I don't think they should cost minerals either.
The locusts damage, speed, the swarmhosts speed, cooldown and cost. These are all things that can be balanced and have been balanced before. Marking the unit as a 'free unit' and painting it with a 'unbalanceable' brush is just foolish. You can't keep the locusts, you can't build up an army of locusts uncontrolled by the supply mechanic. Which would be a problem.
It's a siege unit with shots you can manage, that's it.
Yeah i dont agree with this comparison. Siege tanks, lurkers or tempests are siege units. They provide normal damage + they are immobile when doing so (with the exception of tempest, but tempests are expensive and have very specific use and a lot of counters). They do not spawn additional units with fairly high HP and insane DPS that you have to kill first to even be able to reach the swarmhosts. So you are fighting units that do not cost anything after the initial purchase and that scales insanely the longer the swarm hosts survive. Not at all similar to tanks. U can simply run through the siege tank fire and get to them because they cant retreat from a sieged position. Cant run through locusts trying to catch the hosts that are running away.
Dont even get me started on the ability to spawn them from somewhere to fly over a ledge and snipe buildings in seconds. Where u have to go kill the locusts but cant reach the swarm hosts at all.
The only units with a similar concept are brood lords and carriers. But interceptors arent free and broodlings have low HP and damage, they mostly work as a meatshield, the damage dealers are brood lords with the initial attack so thats a lot better.
And im not saying that the unit is broken or unbeatable...imho its just a stupid design and Ive had that opinion ever since hots beta. And i dont agree with your point of view, sorry. Theyre not shots, theyre units.
The thing is that you need lots of tanks to win cost efficiently against hydras when you are using mech. But you cannot use lots of tanks if he is going swarm hosts since the splash will kill your own units.
Swarm Hosts / Hydra has no working counter if you use mech.
Thor drops gets shut down by Hydras, hellion or hellbats beaten by hydras+locusts. You can not kill enough of the Swarm Hosts without losing more resources yourself in the attempt.
What is the cause of all this? Blizzard made Swarm Hosts extremely cheap in order to make them popular so that they could figure out their role. The price decrease was supposed to be temporary.
For some reason (probably because most pros used bio so Swarm Host were seen used much in pro play) the price stuck.
And the current situation is this. We are stuck with an absurdly cheap Swarm Host that counters an entire play style and that has no reliable counter play. The speed decrease had almost no impact since you can not get to the Swarm Hosts when they are protected by Hydras. Solution? Make Swarm Hosts reasonable priced so that they are not always the perfect answer if you see your opponent building more than one factory.
Apart from balance I can not think of any unit that sucks they joy out of playing as much as seeing your opponent going Swarm Hosts and knowing that no matter what you do you will lose. I never met a single Terran that thought it was fun or interesting to play against Swarm Hosts. It is just infuriating and encourages people to stay away from the ladder.
That last line is what a huge chunk of the player base has felt about mech and turtle playstyles since WoL, but if you are active on the map with Thors, Hellions, or even Vikings with the new Servos, it is very possible to catch them and take them out. If you struggle against SH with Hydras, then Ravens, Banshees, upgraded Hellions/Hellbats, Marines and plenty of other units can help.
Is there a direct counter? Not exactly, but just because there isn't that doesn't mean they are unstoppable. Everything that has applied to playing against SH for months still applies, just slightly differently and sometimes in Terran's favor now imo. And before someone tries to, you can't use the argument "X unit counters A playstyle, therefore Y unit should counter B playstyle" arguing in favor of a direct counter to (or removal of) SH, because that is an oversimplification ignoring context.
On November 19 2017 18:03 FanaticCZ wrote: Swarm Host has been a shitty unit ever since its introduction and IMHO the worst unit idea blizzard ever came up with.
On November 19 2017 18:03 FanaticCZ wrote: Swarm Host has been a shitty unit ever since its introduction and IMHO the worst unit idea blizzard ever came up with.
Free units suck.
I never quite followed this line of thinking, so let's talk about this for a sec.
Swarm hosts are a siege unit, capable of doing asymmetric damage, same as the Tank, the Colossus, the Tempest. The Locusts are no more free units then the tank attack is 'free ammo'. In a quite accurate sense the two locusts are the Swarm host. They aren't 'free'. Imagine a zerg is turtling up against a terran. the terran parks outside his base with tanks and begins shelling the zergs base. The tanks aren't taking any damage, and the zerg army is getting crushed. Are the tank shots 'free ammo'? No, they are the damage from the tanks. The zerg should either withdraw or attack. The same with swarmhosts, the locusts aren't free units, they are the SH attack. You are standing in siege range, either move forward and engage the siege units or withdraw ( I agree that SH were too fast for siege units, which is exactly the nerf they got BTW )
Swarm hosts have the longest range of the siege units and the best control of their damage due to managing the locusts and for that they give up attack speed ( 43 seconds per shot vs. tanks 2.14 ) and usability ( attack has to be cast ). The locusts cast is free, it doesn't cost money like a carriers interceptor for example, but then again the carrier can attack constantly and withdraws its interpectors if nothing is attacked, if the carriers interceptors could attack for only 18 seconds and then couldn't attack again for 43 and could not be retracted I don't think they should cost minerals either.
The locusts damage, speed, the swarmhosts speed, cooldown and cost. These are all things that can be balanced and have been balanced before. Marking the unit as a 'free unit' and painting it with a 'unbalanceable' brush is just foolish. You can't keep the locusts, you can't build up an army of locusts uncontrolled by the supply mechanic. Which would be a problem.
It's a siege unit with shots you can manage, that's it.
Yeah i dont agree with this comparison. Siege tanks, lurkers or tempests are siege units. They provide normal damage + they are immobile when doing so (with the exception of tempest, but tempests are expensive and have very specific use and a lot of counters). They do not spawn additional units with fairly high HP and insane DPS that you have to kill first to even be able to reach the swarmhosts. So you are fighting units that do not cost anything after the initial purchase and that scales insanely the longer the swarm hosts survive. Not at all similar to tanks. U can simply run through the siege tank fire and get to them because they cant retreat from a sieged position. Cant run through locusts trying to catch the hosts that are running away.
Dont even get me started on the ability to spawn them from somewhere to fly over a ledge and snipe buildings in seconds. Where u have to go kill the locusts but cant reach the swarm hosts at all.
The only units with a similar concept are brood lords and carriers. But interceptors arent free and broodlings have low HP and damage, they mostly work as a meatshield, the damage dealers are brood lords with the initial attack so thats a lot better.
And im not saying that the unit is broken or unbeatable...imho its just a stupid design and Ive had that opinion ever since hots beta. And i dont agree with your point of view, sorry. Theyre not shots, theyre units.
"That thing is stupid, I've had this opinion for years, I'm never changing, and I disagree with everything you say." Maybe it's time to be a little more open-minded?
The "free unit" label is only ever used as a simple and often incorrect way to point at SH and for people to act like they are justified in their feelings towards the unit. In reality, there's more going on that people using the label never look at and more often than not make a point to dismiss. Sure, you can't move your structures that get attacked by Locusts which can feel bad actually no, you can move many of your structures because you're Terran, and you can move your own units into or away from the Locusts, Hydras, or SH and that's part of the game that you should be interacting with, just like how Zerg and Protoss have to interact with difficult compositions and strategies.
SH are designed to disrupt turtling and sieging, typically with Terran mech or well shielded Protoss, by using an indirect, long distance form of attack like Brood Lords but unlike BL are acquired sooner and can sometimes survive by running away after being aggressive. Without SH, Zergs have no way to interact with the opponent in these situations outside of Nydus Worms or capturing an enemy worker and making non-Z units. While they do spawn something that also acts as a meat shield during combat, they don't get to do any other actions for a period of time afterward other than move, burrow, and die in that time, and they aren't a strong combat unit because they quickly die no matter what and are incredibly slow like the other non-Broodling spawns.
One might think that since T players (according T players) aren't turtling or sieging too often, or as powerfully, or Z players aren't vocally and loudly feeling bad about it then SH should be nerfed. However, if SH cost gets increased too much, their speed is too low, or their ally units (Hydras, what-have-you) get nerfed, then they can no longer do what they are designed to do, ZvT opens up to being a bad experience more often for Z, and an imbalance will happen again unless units that make turtle and siege strategies strong (plentiful minerals, sturdy structures and mech units) are also changed.
I will concede that the SH stats could be tweaked in ZvT, but only in a small way as long as it doesn't negatively change them in ZvP. Slightly increasing its mineral cost or build time might be fine, but reducing its speed, health, gas cost, or supply seems unreasonable atm. Too many changes all at once isn't good imo unless it's a dire situation, which I don't believe it is + Show Spoiler +
(except for the types of Terran players who want their opponents to never interact with them and to completely dominate the ladder which would be a very bad situation regardless of how much those players want that to be true)
. Unless something crazy happens in the next couple of weeks I just don't see a great reason to put SH above the other units and interactions the team is already looking at.
To me, the current task, if you must find a solution to Swarm Hosts, is to play and evaluate more games involving them, find out how each player feels about the games in which they were used in, then come back to the supposed problem.
On November 19 2017 18:03 FanaticCZ wrote: Swarm Host has been a shitty unit ever since its introduction and IMHO the worst unit idea blizzard ever came up with.
Free units suck.
I never quite followed this line of thinking, so let's talk about this for a sec.
Swarm hosts are a siege unit, capable of doing asymmetric damage, same as the Tank, the Colossus, the Tempest. The Locusts are no more free units then the tank attack is 'free ammo'. In a quite accurate sense the two locusts are the Swarm host. They aren't 'free'. Imagine a zerg is turtling up against a terran. the terran parks outside his base with tanks and begins shelling the zergs base. The tanks aren't taking any damage, and the zerg army is getting crushed. Are the tank shots 'free ammo'? No, they are the damage from the tanks. The zerg should either withdraw or attack. The same with swarmhosts, the locusts aren't free units, they are the SH attack. You are standing in siege range, either move forward and engage the siege units or withdraw ( I agree that SH were too fast for siege units, which is exactly the nerf they got BTW )
Swarm hosts have the longest range of the siege units and the best control of their damage due to managing the locusts and for that they give up attack speed ( 43 seconds per shot vs. tanks 2.14 ) and usability ( attack has to be cast ). The locusts cast is free, it doesn't cost money like a carriers interceptor for example, but then again the carrier can attack constantly and withdraws its interpectors if nothing is attacked, if the carriers interceptors could attack for only 18 seconds and then couldn't attack again for 43 and could not be retracted I don't think they should cost minerals either.
The locusts damage, speed, the swarmhosts speed, cooldown and cost. These are all things that can be balanced and have been balanced before. Marking the unit as a 'free unit' and painting it with a 'unbalanceable' brush is just foolish. You can't keep the locusts, you can't build up an army of locusts uncontrolled by the supply mechanic. Which would be a problem.
It's a siege unit with shots you can manage, that's it.
hmm, the difference is that locusts and broodlings are separate units that have to be killed and thus provide a meatshield. Still, if the other stats are fine I don't think free units are a problem.
They don't have to be killed thou, they die out by themselves. I imagine an interesting nerf could be reducing the locust walk speed, enabling the Terran to more easily pull away from the locusts, not that they are fast now, they are in fact tied with the slowest units in the game. An interesting point is that they also act as a form of crowd control, preventing forward motion, and damage absorption ( thou at 50 life per locust that seems minimal ). I still don't think that the direct correlation to 'free units' is correct, the locusts are the SH, they aren't free. They absorb 100 damage, but so does an Immortal Barrier or protoss shields in general, not to mention Terran healing.
I dont see why I should be open minded about something that I dislike since theres never been any significant change about that specific aspect of the swarm host. I didnt whine about them being unbeatable or anything like that. Im just saying that the design is stupid and why I have that opinion.
Lifting buildings to save them from Locust ledge-jumps is so much more effort than just spawning them and rallying them in. Not to mention it disrupts your macro and the addons will get sniped while the zerg loses nothing even if you kill the locusts. You can obviously run away from them until they time out but only to a certain extent. You cant exactly run away from them if they are attacking your bases for free.
And they also synergize very well with zerg turtling using mass spores, vipers etc where u cant exactly just push the zerg while wave after wave snipes your costly units while zerg is not losing any resources. I agree that zerg needs a form of response to turtle mech etc but Im sure they couldve come up with something more interesting than a mushroom that spawns shit for free.
But whatever...swarm hosts will be part of this game no matter what I think. I just wanted to say that i hate the design and why. End of story.
On November 19 2017 18:03 FanaticCZ wrote: Swarm Host has been a shitty unit ever since its introduction and IMHO the worst unit idea blizzard ever came up with.
Free units suck.
I never quite followed this line of thinking, so let's talk about this for a sec.
Swarm hosts are a siege unit, capable of doing asymmetric damage, same as the Tank, the Colossus, the Tempest. The Locusts are no more free units then the tank attack is 'free ammo'. In a quite accurate sense the two locusts are the Swarm host. They aren't 'free'. Imagine a zerg is turtling up against a terran. the terran parks outside his base with tanks and begins shelling the zergs base. The tanks aren't taking any damage, and the zerg army is getting crushed. Are the tank shots 'free ammo'? No, they are the damage from the tanks. The zerg should either withdraw or attack. The same with swarmhosts, the locusts aren't free units, they are the SH attack. You are standing in siege range, either move forward and engage the siege units or withdraw ( I agree that SH were too fast for siege units, which is exactly the nerf they got BTW )
Swarm hosts have the longest range of the siege units and the best control of their damage due to managing the locusts and for that they give up attack speed ( 43 seconds per shot vs. tanks 2.14 ) and usability ( attack has to be cast ). The locusts cast is free, it doesn't cost money like a carriers interceptor for example, but then again the carrier can attack constantly and withdraws its interpectors if nothing is attacked, if the carriers interceptors could attack for only 18 seconds and then couldn't attack again for 43 and could not be retracted I don't think they should cost minerals either.
The locusts damage, speed, the swarmhosts speed, cooldown and cost. These are all things that can be balanced and have been balanced before. Marking the unit as a 'free unit' and painting it with a 'unbalanceable' brush is just foolish. You can't keep the locusts, you can't build up an army of locusts uncontrolled by the supply mechanic. Which would be a problem.
It's a siege unit with shots you can manage, that's it.
thank you, these are exactly my thoughts about the Swarm host!
I honestly don't know why people saying things like "Swarm host/Hydra have not counter play", have these people seen a high level MechvZ in the last 6 months?(and no, avilo's stream is not high level MechvZ)
Swarm hosts are a extremly situational unit. They are really good when Z cornered the mechplayer in his base, they can attack bases where T don't have units and the simcity will work against him, T also can't run away because he need to defend his production. on the flip side, Swarm hosts are garbage in defensiv situations. I saw so many locust waves getting evaporated befor killing a single unit. A 2/2 mech army sieging your bases, while having 40 useless army supply is most of the time GG for the zerg.
I think most of the mech players(my self included :D) playing mech because they didn't like the nonstop agressive, micromanagement demanding bio play. they want to lean back a bit and play a more passive/defensive style and Swarm hosts are simply really good vs such a style.
Swarmhost has to be burrowed (or simply immobile for example) during the whole duration of the locust spawn. The player controlling the SH can manually disable the spell to move again but it instantly destroys the locusts.
This would give another form of counterplay, as the zerg player would concede its SH mobility if he want to attack, or would have cancel the locusts / to escort them with other units to be sure that the opponent doesn't kill them during the locust wave.
Quite a nerf but if the opponent does not react correctly or is out of position, the SH will still do a lot of damage. The interaction between the zerg and its opponent could be more interesting.
SH is bad design? Tell me about sitting in your base with siege tanks and turrets, being unattackable while trading mineral only units for workers the whole game.
And what's good design? Zerg having to bet everything on vipers to counter siege tanks? Or maybe some late game units that are all hard countered by ghosts? Please.
On November 19 2017 17:52 MockHamill wrote: The thing is that you need lots of tanks to win cost efficiently against hydras when you are using mech. But you cannot use lots of tanks if he is going swarm hosts since the splash will kill your own units.
Swarm Hosts / Hydra has no working counter if you use mech.
Thor drops gets shut down by Hydras, hellion or hellbats beaten by hydras+locusts. You can not kill enough of the Swarm Hosts without losing more resources yourself in the attempt.
What is the cause of all this? Blizzard made Swarm Hosts extremely cheap in order to make them popular so that they could figure out their role. The price decrease was supposed to be temporary.
For some reason (probably because most pros used bio so Swarm Host were seen used much in pro play) the price stuck.
And the current situation is this. We are stuck with an absurdly cheap Swarm Host that counters an entire play style and that has no reliable counter play. The speed decrease had almost no impact since you can not get to the Swarm Hosts when they are protected by Hydras.
Solution? Make Swarm Hosts reasonable priced so that they are not always the perfect answer if you see your opponent building more than one factory.
Apart from balance I can not think of any unit that sucks they joy out of playing as much as seeing your opponent going Swarm Hosts and knowing that no matter what you do you will lose. I never met a single Terran that thought it was fun or interesting to play against Swarm Hosts. It is just infuriating and encourages people to stay away from the ladder.
Gumiho beat Serral at Blizzcon with Mech. Serral used Swarmhosts.
Yes, that was the one MECHvSH where MECH won. There were 3-4 other mech vs swarmhost and mech always lost. Gumiho won, because he was out on the map, not at home defending. The most important thing is, he won with hellion/tank, NOT with Thors, let alone speed boosting them down the Z's throat
On November 20 2017 01:35 Fbaby wrote: Then what about changing swarmhost this way :
Swarmhost has to be burrowed (or simply immobile for example) during the whole duration of the locust spawn. The player controlling the SH can manually disable the spell to move again but it instantly destroys the locusts.
This would give another form of counterplay, as the zerg player would concede its SH mobility if he want to attack, or would have cancel the locusts / to escort them with other units to be sure that the opponent doesn't kill them during the locust wave.
Quite a nerf but if the opponent does not react correctly or is out of position, the SH will still do a lot of damage. The interaction between the zerg and its opponent could be more interesting.
Why should T even bother to fight the Locusts with this change? Locusts are really slow, if terran spots a Locust wave, he simply moves out and kill all the Swarm hosts and with them the Locusts or Zerg cancel the Locusts, deals no damage and probably lose some Swarm hosts while he's retreating. And no, guarding the Swarm hosts with the rest of his army isn't an option for Z because he will fight with an heavy army supply disadvantage against the T. (Swarm hosts would be dead supply in this fight)
I think the Swarm host is in a fine spot right now. He's still really powerfull vs turtel play but thanks to the movementspeed nerf the Z needs to be a little bit more carefull with them. There were some pretty ridiculous situations before 4.00 where Z run all his Swarm hosts into the enemy base or double Archon prism try to catch some Swarm hosts but got outrun by them.
On November 20 2017 01:55 xTJx wrote: SH is bad design? Tell me about sitting in your base with siege tanks and turrets, being unattackable while trading mineral only units for workers the whole game.
And what's good design? Zerg having to bet everything on vipers to counter siege tanks? Or maybe some late game units that are all hard countered by ghosts? Please.
Way to make it a balance shitstorm. Siege tanks and turrets have been in the game since brood war and are the same design principle as any other unit. You spend resources to make it and it does damage.
Swarm host on the other is bought for some initial cost and then keeps making new units that do damage for free for the whole game whereas if you lose a siege tank, you have to make a new one.
The fact that there would have to be a different unit to make up for the hole after swarm hosts to counter turtle styles has been stated already.
It is a bad design. You lose resources if you lose any other unit. Not with locusts.
On November 20 2017 03:36 eviltomahawk wrote: Why do players tend to not use a few speed Banshees against isolated, unsupported SHs?
Hydras murder banshees and can easily be used to escort the swarmhosts. (They already often are. When they aren't, it is usually the Zerg player being lazy)
On November 20 2017 03:36 eviltomahawk wrote: Why do players tend to not use a few speed Banshees against isolated, unsupported SHs?
Hydras murder banshees and can easily be used to escort the swarmhosts. (They already often are. When they aren't, it is usually the Zerg player being lazy)
Speed banshee are faster and have the same range than hydras, so well control banshee can't be catched by hydralisk even on creep, but mech player prefer to tell that it's a "balance issue" rather than admitting it was a bad control.
On November 20 2017 01:35 Fbaby wrote: Then what about changing swarmhost this way :
Swarmhost has to be burrowed (or simply immobile for example) during the whole duration of the locust spawn. The player controlling the SH can manually disable the spell to move again but it instantly destroys the locusts.
This would give another form of counterplay, as the zerg player would concede its SH mobility if he want to attack, or would have cancel the locusts / to escort them with other units to be sure that the opponent doesn't kill them during the locust wave.
Quite a nerf but if the opponent does not react correctly or is out of position, the SH will still do a lot of damage. The interaction between the zerg and its opponent could be more interesting.
Why should T even bother to fight the Locusts with this change? Locusts are really slow, if terran spots a Locust wave, he simply moves out and kill all the Swarm hosts and with them the Locusts or Zerg cancel the Locusts, deals no damage and probably lose some Swarm hosts while he's retreating. And no, guarding the Swarm hosts with the rest of his army isn't an option for Z because he will fight with an heavy army supply disadvantage against the T. (Swarm hosts would be dead supply in this fight)
I think the Swarm host is in a fine spot right now. He's still really powerfull vs turtel play but thanks to the movementspeed nerf the Z needs to be a little bit more carefull with them. There were some pretty ridiculous situations before 4.00 where Z run all his Swarm hosts into the enemy base or double Archon prism try to catch some Swarm hosts but got outrun by them.
I disagree. Swarmhost generally don't stand right in front of your army before sending their locusts. They always like to take advantage of terrain, think about abyssal reef B2 / B4, or Aiur B1 among many examples.
Swarmhost have insane range, their locusts can ignore terrain, and they would still be able to take advantage of this to not be caught by an army chasing after them if this army does not react early enough.
Again, the whole point is, if T reacts well, has counter army in position to chase after swarmhost as soon as they see locust, the terran should at least deserve the cancellation of the locusts, and even to kill some SH if the zergs reacts slowly. And now there is interaction, and now there is counterplay.
If the terran wants to send only 1-2 medivac + thor drop or something, some hydra escorting should take care of that, forcing the terran to bring more army, forcing outpositioning etc.
Would be way more interesting that this one dimensional "T is ahead of the zerg because he did damage with early harass and will cross the map and win, or terran is behind and will have to suffer from SH damage all game long, until he can be 150-200 pop, while zerg has 6k bank and has switched composition and T is dead".
By the way this could be compensated by lowering the cooldown of the SH by 5-10 seconds, I don't know. It's just that there is room for improvement and saying that SH is fine against mech right now is not correct.
On November 20 2017 03:36 eviltomahawk wrote: Why do players tend to not use a few speed Banshees against isolated, unsupported SHs?
Hydras murder banshees and can easily be used to escort the swarmhosts. (They already often are. When they aren't, it is usually the Zerg player being lazy)
Speed banshee are faster and have the same range than hydras, so well control banshee can't be catched by hydralisk even on creep, but mech player prefer to tell that it's a "balance issue" rather than admitting it was a bad control.
What's your point? The hydras never have to actually kill the banshees to get their value. If they limit the banshees to killing 1 or 2 swarmhosts per engagement, the Zerg player still likely comes out ahead. Considering it takes 8 banshees to 1-shot a Swarmhost if neither side has upgrades, that's not super hard from the Zerg player.
I don't know if Swarmhosts are still problematic since I haven't seen any mech vs. Swarmhost series since the patch, but I know why people say that speed banshees aren't really the solution.
On November 20 2017 03:36 eviltomahawk wrote: Why do players tend to not use a few speed Banshees against isolated, unsupported SHs?
Hydras murder banshees and can easily be used to escort the swarmhosts. (They already often are. When they aren't, it is usually the Zerg player being lazy)
Speed banshee are faster and have the same range than hydras, so well control banshee can't be catched by hydralisk even on creep, but mech player prefer to tell that it's a "balance issue" rather than admitting it was a bad control.
Good joke! Thanks!
Suggesting a Terran has to make banshees + SPEED UPGRADE and pray he has better micro than the Zerg to stand a chance vs swarm-host armies. The hydralisks will be 2/2 at that point or close to 2/2 by the way.
Plus, making banshees is an enormous investment with very little payoff at that stage of the game. Not to mention the extra starports. Oh and the banshees will most likely be 0/0 or 0/1 at best at that point.
I don't even know how to begin to tell you how flawed this logic is.
Increase the locust HP by like 50% Slightly decrease the locust DPS (like 20%) Increase their supply to 4 Maybe give back autofire or reduce cooldown by like 5 seconds Possibly increase their size.
Make them a into more of a support role for the zerg. Where it will be actually be using the locusts as a meatshield to break defences rather than zerglings with lightsabers that obliterate nexuses and mech in seconds.
Or just remove the flying locusts and make them ground units!
On November 20 2017 03:36 eviltomahawk wrote: Why do players tend to not use a few speed Banshees against isolated, unsupported SHs?
Hydras murder banshees and can easily be used to escort the swarmhosts. (They already often are. When they aren't, it is usually the Zerg player being lazy)
Speed banshee are faster and have the same range than hydras, so well control banshee can't be catched by hydralisk even on creep, but mech player prefer to tell that it's a "balance issue" rather than admitting it was a bad control.
true but when you escort the hosts, the hydras are not there to chase down the banshees they are there to deter the banshees from messing with your hosts. hydras in decent numbers wreck banshess since they have the same range.sure you wont kill the banshees unless terran charges them in but thats not the point, the point is that he cant engage the swarmhosts with the banshees.
at least in my experience the best answer to swarm hosts as Terran is to not play mech or to switch to protoss, both of which I have done.
On November 20 2017 03:36 eviltomahawk wrote: Why do players tend to not use a few speed Banshees against isolated, unsupported SHs?
Hydras murder banshees and can easily be used to escort the swarmhosts. (They already often are. When they aren't, it is usually the Zerg player being lazy)
Speed banshee are faster and have the same range than hydras, so well control banshee can't be catched by hydralisk even on creep, but mech player prefer to tell that it's a "balance issue" rather than admitting it was a bad control.
true but when you escort the hosts, the hydras are not there to chase down the banshees they are there to deter the banshees from messing with your hosts. hydras in decent numbers wreck banshess since they have the same range.sure you wont kill the banshees unless terran charges them in but thats not the point, the point is that he cant engage the swarmhosts with the banshees.
at least in my experience the best answer to swarm hosts as Terran is to not play mech or to switch to protoss, both of which I have done.
The point isn't to suicide banshee to kill the SH, the point is avoid SH to be active on the map.
But as you're last sentence said you're not here to discuss, you are just here to whine.
I disagree. Swarmhost generally don't stand right in front of your army before sending their locusts. They always like to take advantage of terrain, think about abyssal reef B2 / B4, or Aiur B1 among many examples.
Swarmhost have insane range, their locusts can ignore terrain, and they would still be able to take advantage of this to not be caught by an army chasing after them if this army does not react early enough.
Again, the whole point is, if T reacts well, has counter army in position to chase after swarmhost as soon as they see locust, the terran should at least deserve the cancellation of the locusts, and even to kill some SH if the zergs reacts slowly. And now there is interaction, and now there is counterplay.
there is already counterplay: be agressive, force defensive Locust waves, make shure you have always enougth blueflame hellions/hellbats with your army and at home to roast Locusts.
If the terran wants to send only 1-2 medivac + thor drop or something, some hydra escorting should take care of that, forcing the terran to bring more army, forcing outpositioning etc.
Would be way more interesting that this one dimensional "T is ahead of the zerg because he did damage with early harass and will cross the map and win, or terran is behind and will have to suffer from SH damage all game long, until he can be 150-200 pop, while zerg has 6k bank and has switched composition and T is dead".
you're right, if you site in your base all game long, zerg will crush you. You need to keep the Swarm host weaknesses in mind to win the game.
By the way this could be compensated by lowering the cooldown of the SH by 5-10 seconds, I don't know. It's just that there is room for improvement and saying that SH is fine against mech right now is not correct.
Why is the SH not fine against mech? nearly every pro played mech before 4.0 and the TvZ win rate wasn't abysmal.
On November 20 2017 08:07 MrWayne wrote: why are we discussing about Swarm Hosts btw? They wasn't even mentioned in the community update.
Some people don't like it and wanted to chime in. I do think Swarm host balancing issues are done.
Too early to call whether any balance issues are done, SH included. We saw from 3.8 that balance issues can and will continue to appear after big design changes. The proposed fixes are a a start but they only address the obvious issues with 4.0 that appeared immediately (mostly Terran being underpowered). It's entirely possible that imbalance swings the other way, that blink allins reappear, etc etc. Or maybe another completely different issue that nobody yet realizes.
Big design changes by their very nature introduce a lot of volatility and the effect on balance will continue to ripple out for quite some time. Some problems (like proxy Oracles) are obvious from the start. Others take a while to materialize. Only time will tell.
At a guess, the meta will have more or less stabilized by Chrismastime.
I feel like PvZ is getting pretty messed up from all these changes.
First, shield battery is argueably stronger than msc and has much more utility throughout the game.
You can spam them in case of being allined, and later on they'll still be usefull when fighting off mutas or drops, we've seen games where protoss only had 1 or 2 phoenix but able to completly negate muta switches because of shield battery.
Then, Stalker and collosus both got buffed, so zerg will have a harder time surviving against 3 base timings, either pure stalker blink Hots style or stalker collosus.
And since you can no longer fungal while burrowed, this sucks hard for late game when fungaling interceptors was actually really usefull. Combined with only 7 range on ITS it's going to be pretty messed up for Zerg once again to fight vs protoss sky army which has been unbeatable since 2013. Parasitic bomb + Fungal combo is less effective vs void rays. Recall once every 2 minutes means that protoss can fake engage 3 or 4 times and just recall, to ensure that infestors are low energy and then just destroy the fight.
What about giving Swarm Hosts energy and moving the Infested Terrans to the Swarm Host? So then Zerg is forced to choose, use energy on Locusts that shred ground units/buildings or use it on ITs. It would give the unit a general theme and identity as well. It would also make the Infestor less of a 'I make 40 of them and auto-win' unit and the cool stuff that Blizzard wanted to experiment with on the Infestor can be brought back as well.
I think removing the Swarm Hosts would improve both the viewing experience and the playing experience.
Now when Ravens are nerfed into the ground the old turtle mech into mass Ravens do not work anymore. Basically Zerg late game is stronger than Terran mech late game since Zerg have really strong tech switches and still have Vipers which hard counters mech. Mech does not have anything to turtle to in the late game which forces mech to attack earlier since it best to damage the Zerg before he can bank up too many resources for a tech switch or get too many vipers.
This is good for the game since the old turle mech was boring.
The problem is that Swarm Hosts prevents the mech player from moving out and attacking. With the Swarm Hosts gone aggressive mech becomes possible without strengthening turtle mech since there is nothing to turtle to any more.
Basically Swarm Hosts are not needed. Zerg are perfectly fine without them. And in their current state Swarm Hosts just damages the gameplay and viewing experience.
On November 20 2017 22:09 ihatevideogames wrote: What about giving Swarm Hosts energy and moving the Infested Terrans to the Swarm Host? So then Zerg is forced to choose, use energy on Locusts that shred ground units/buildings or use it on ITs. It would give the unit a general theme and identity as well. It would also make the Infestor less of a 'I make 40 of them and auto-win' unit and the cool stuff that Blizzard wanted to experiment with on the Infestor can be brought back as well.
plz, no 3rd unit that protoss can F click to death
I think removing the siege tank would improve TvZ both the viewing experience and the playing experience.
Now when swarm hosts are nerfed into the ground the old turtle zerg with mass SH does not work anymore. Basically Terran late game is stronger than Zerg late game since Terran have the best static defence, 5 armor thors, stronger cyclones and teleporting BCs that hard counter everything but corruptors. Zerg does not have anything to turtle to in the late game besides mass infestors (which are getting nerfed) which forces Zerg to attack earlier since it best to damage the mech before they can bank up too many resources for a mass air/mass planetary or get too many battlecruisers and tanks.
This is good for the game since the old turle zerg was boring.
The problem is that siege tanks prevent the zerg from moving out and attacking. With the siege tanks gone aggressive ZvMech becomes possible without strengthening turtle zerg since there is nothing to turtle to after the infestor and viper nerf
Basically siege tanks are not needed. Terran are perfectly fine without them. And in their current state siege tanks just damage the gameplay and viewing experience.
I don't know about other skill levels, but Diamond protosses were having a hard time. I was master before lotv, but last year all I've been doing was getting destroyed by zergs that the only skill was macro. Small adjusts are welcomed, like these ones. But we really needed better stalkers, shield battery and this chrono boost. Blizz can even buff other races if they want.
can we just let this patch breathe for a few months? brood war hasnt been patched in 15 years and stuff is still evolving out of necessity. I wish blizzard would just release the game from beta
On November 21 2017 03:35 Ansibled wrote: I can't believe someone would actually suggest removing the siege tank, it's like the most iconic Terran unit
i think its a joke/troll. of course you could be trolling me by pretending you didn't know it was a joke.
On November 20 2017 19:17 Comedy wrote: I feel like PvZ is getting pretty messed up from all these changes.
First, shield battery is argueably stronger than msc and has much more utility throughout the game.
You can spam them in case of being allined, and later on they'll still be usefull when fighting off mutas or drops, we've seen games where protoss only had 1 or 2 phoenix but able to completly negate muta switches because of shield battery.
Then, Stalker and collosus both got buffed, so zerg will have a harder time surviving against 3 base timings, either pure stalker blink Hots style or stalker collosus.
And since you can no longer fungal while burrowed, this sucks hard for late game when fungaling interceptors was actually really usefull. Combined with only 7 range on ITS it's going to be pretty messed up for Zerg once again to fight vs protoss sky army which has been unbeatable since 2013. Parasitic bomb + Fungal combo is less effective vs void rays. Recall once every 2 minutes means that protoss can fake engage 3 or 4 times and just recall, to ensure that infestors are low energy and then just destroy the fight.
I'm really worried for PvZ in the new patch.
how can anyone think that a stationary building which needs units under it to anything offers more utility throughout the game than the mobile pylon shooting mothership core which had two other uses too. And the cost of them is increasing in the next patch.
lol.
you also forgot to mention that recall is delayed, leaves units vulnerable, and gives plenty of time for corrupters to snipe units. What a poor analysis. Also don't forget that double the parastic bomb damage is better vs massive high HP units making them easier to pop, whereas the old parasitic bomb might have only tickled them unless if you had a ton of vipers with energy which is much harder to get. New viper is more efficient in the poking war imo.
It honestly seems good now, in the past patch zergs had to either trade and remake large armies or turtle behind static defense (both great options for beating mass air). But I haven't seen many progames yet.
On November 21 2017 03:40 StarscreamG1 wrote: The siege mode gives on of the last "positional play" we have at SC2. It must be a troll.
Liberators are true positional play. Siege tanks with their nonsensical ability to fire in every direction without needing to readjust isn't really positional play. They should make it so siege tanks have the same sort of siege zone as liberators and instill true positional play and reward counter positioning.
Shield batteries are gonna be great lategame. Neeb is playing PvP lategame with 50 batteries... Edit: There could be situations where protoss can not be attacked and the will be in a stalemate.
On November 20 2017 01:55 xTJx wrote: SH is bad design? Tell me about sitting in your base with siege tanks and turrets, being unattackable while trading mineral only units for workers the whole game.
And what's good design? Zerg having to bet everything on vipers to counter siege tanks? Or maybe some late game units that are all hard countered by ghosts? Please.
Way to make it a balance shitstorm. Siege tanks and turrets have been in the game since brood war and are the same design principle as any other unit. You spend resources to make it and it does damage.
Swarm host on the other is bought for some initial cost and then keeps making new units that do damage for free for the whole game whereas if you lose a siege tank, you have to make a new one.
The fact that there would have to be a different unit to make up for the hole after swarm hosts to counter turtle styles has been stated already.
It is a bad design. You lose resources if you lose any other unit. Not with locusts.
I totally agree with that. When zerg makes infestors with infested terran and swarm hosts he can kill A LOT of units basically for free. So why swarm hosts would not pay minerals for locusts as carriers for interceptors ?
On November 20 2017 01:55 xTJx wrote: SH is bad design? Tell me about sitting in your base with siege tanks and turrets, being unattackable while trading mineral only units for workers the whole game.
And what's good design? Zerg having to bet everything on vipers to counter siege tanks? Or maybe some late game units that are all hard countered by ghosts? Please.
Way to make it a balance shitstorm. Siege tanks and turrets have been in the game since brood war and are the same design principle as any other unit. You spend resources to make it and it does damage.
Swarm host on the other is bought for some initial cost and then keeps making new units that do damage for free for the whole game whereas if you lose a siege tank, you have to make a new one.
The fact that there would have to be a different unit to make up for the hole after swarm hosts to counter turtle styles has been stated already.
It is a bad design. You lose resources if you lose any other unit. Not with locusts.
I totally agree with that. When zerg makes infestors with infested terran and swarm hosts he can kill A LOT of units basically for free. So why swarm hosts would not pay minerals for locusts as carriers for interceptors ?
Locusts are on timer, interceptors are permanent. Can't even believe i am actually reminding this... Also, when marines bullets gonna cost minerals? They basically shoot for free all game long and it is really annoying.
Sure it units but they designed to autodie quite fast because it really just a shot/attack. It has some nice benifits but it also comes with the downside that they can be killed.
Also it all they got, they don't have a normal attack and the attack don't reach the target instantly.
Sure, you could make locust cost minerals and just increase the speed of making them, make it into a groundwalking zerg-carrier
On November 20 2017 01:55 xTJx wrote: SH is bad design? Tell me about sitting in your base with siege tanks and turrets, being unattackable while trading mineral only units for workers the whole game.
And what's good design? Zerg having to bet everything on vipers to counter siege tanks? Or maybe some late game units that are all hard countered by ghosts? Please.
Way to make it a balance shitstorm. Siege tanks and turrets have been in the game since brood war and are the same design principle as any other unit. You spend resources to make it and it does damage.
Swarm host on the other is bought for some initial cost and then keeps making new units that do damage for free for the whole game whereas if you lose a siege tank, you have to make a new one.
The fact that there would have to be a different unit to make up for the hole after swarm hosts to counter turtle styles has been stated already.
It is a bad design. You lose resources if you lose any other unit. Not with locusts.
I totally agree with that. When zerg makes infestors with infested terran and swarm hosts he can kill A LOT of units basically for free. So why swarm hosts would not pay minerals for locusts as carriers for interceptors ?
Locusts are on timer, interceptors are permanent. Can't even believe i am actually reminding this... Also, when marines bullets gonna cost minerals? They basically shoot for free all game long and it is really annoying.
Scarabs are on a timer yet require minerals tbf, so while it's a pretty awful idea when it comes to swarm hosts it isn't generally unthinkable.
On November 19 2017 11:03 BigRedDog wrote: Someone posted that the problem for removing borrow fungal is that infestors will be targeted before they even engage in battle (tanks and templar's feedback).
This did not stop zerg from using them in the past before they got burrow cast.
First off I'm just gonna come out and say it, the mineral changes alone have made the game feel like it goes at a much better pace. Being able to actually breathe a bit on 3 bases for a second feels good, like really good.
Second, all of these changes are in the right direction although I do feel the Infestor is getting hit surprisingly hard with the nerf bat. Removing the burrow fungal is fine because even as a Zerg player I consider it pretty dumb, but they were given that ability for a reason, and that's because they get wrecked by pretty much anything, are armored so they take bonus damage from alot of stuff, and the unit model is huge and easy to target.
Adding that Fungal was already nerfed when they changed it from a root to a slow (justifiably but it's still a nerf) So I feel like removal of burrowed Fungal is more then sufficient, the other nerfs are just really heavy handed, especially the range, so now, to sum it all up for the good old Infestor..
Fungal no longer roots, has an even smaller radius, cannot be cast while burrowed, and is having it's range drastically reduced from 9 to 7? Call me crazy but thoat just seems like nerf after nerf after nerf, god forbid the unit actually be useful or anything like High Templars which are a staple caster in pretty much every match up for Protoss. They actually got buffed to be easier to handle while the Infestor get's shafted because why exactly? Were they like breaking the meta or something?
On November 21 2017 08:06 GothGirlGames wrote: Sure it units but they designed to autodie quite fast because it really just a shot/attack. It has some nice benifits but it also comes with the downside that they can be killed.
Also it all they got, they don't have a normal attack and the attack don't reach the target instantly.
Sure, you could make locust cost minerals and just increase the speed of making them, make it into a groundwalking zerg-carrier
That what I meat. Because timer and free seems to be unbalanced, maybe they could try no timer and mineral cost and see what happen. But they still have to autodie or that will be way more imba lol
On November 21 2017 17:18 Charoisaur wrote: I wouldn't mind making fungal root again. Without burrow it's not nearly as punishing.
The reason they changed it from 'root' to 'very slow' is to mitigate chain fungal-ing though, and this doesn't change design-wise even if the infestor can't burrow cast anymore. If they have to buff the infestor I'd rather have a different buff than returning to root.
The simple problem of SH is that those free units have huge DPS and can fly. In a straight up fight they will lose but they are not exactly slow, they can use the tunnel and they have flying units. This gives players frustration more than "SH is OP" - especially if the terrain favors this usage.
There's not a good way to balance SH IMO. The best way would be to remove them and replace them. While Oracle can be tuned around its attack(and in the end they can put the attack on some upgrade meaning an Oracle comes from SG without attack ability) as at this time this is the big problem.
But I am no designer of SC2 units so what do I know. All I know is that "free units" are getting me pissed from WoL and "can't attack me through the waves of broodlings"
It's crazy to me how blizzard seems to want to have mech work in TvP (buffing the upgrade costs of tech lab upgrades) when it's so blatantly obvious that the mine nerf, the raven nerf and the stalker buff make it pretty much terrible.
Also increase shield battery cost won't change the fact that shield battery + photon canon combo get extremely cancerous late game. I'd suggest to have the shield battery auto casting on units only to have protoss manually micro-manage the batteries on canons to avoid spamming 10 batteries behind 10 canons.
On November 21 2017 20:59 engesser1 wrote: watch this shit, Inno vs alpha full protoss.
Next time he will be sure to see his whole base I guess
C'mon, it's a learning phase of the game. In HotS such players lost to 2gate zealot rush in PvZ.
On November 21 2017 21:57 JackONeill wrote: It's crazy to me how blizzard seems to want to have mech work in TvP (buffing the upgrade costs of tech lab upgrades) when it's so blatantly obvious that the mine nerf, the raven nerf and the stalker buff make it pretty much terrible.
Also increase shield battery cost won't change the fact that shield battery + photon canon combo get extremely cancerous late game. I'd suggest to have the shield battery auto casting on units only to have protoss manually micro-manage the batteries on canons to avoid spamming 10 batteries behind 10 canons.
The biggest problem of mech in TvP is the vP. Protoss as a race is a hardcounter to mech. Whenever I meet a mech player on ladder I just scream of pure joy. The only time I lose is when I scout horribly and fail
On November 21 2017 21:57 JackONeill wrote: It's crazy to me how blizzard seems to want to have mech work in TvP (buffing the upgrade costs of tech lab upgrades) when it's so blatantly obvious that the mine nerf, the raven nerf and the stalker buff make it pretty much terrible.
Also increase shield battery cost won't change the fact that shield battery + photon canon combo get extremely cancerous late game. I'd suggest to have the shield battery auto casting on units only to have protoss manually micro-manage the batteries on canons to avoid spamming 10 batteries behind 10 canons.
The biggest problem of mech in TvP is the vP. Protoss as a race is a hardcounter to mech. Whenever I meet a mech player on ladder I just scream of pure joy. The only time I lose is when I scout horribly and fail
I fail to see how that would help him in that game :D
On November 21 2017 20:59 engesser1 wrote: watch this shit, Inno vs alpha full protoss.
Next time he will be sure to see his whole base I guess
C'mon, it's a learning phase of the game. In HotS such players lost to 2gate zealot rush in PvZ.
On November 21 2017 21:57 JackONeill wrote: It's crazy to me how blizzard seems to want to have mech work in TvP (buffing the upgrade costs of tech lab upgrades) when it's so blatantly obvious that the mine nerf, the raven nerf and the stalker buff make it pretty much terrible.
Also increase shield battery cost won't change the fact that shield battery + photon canon combo get extremely cancerous late game. I'd suggest to have the shield battery auto casting on units only to have protoss manually micro-manage the batteries on canons to avoid spamming 10 batteries behind 10 canons.
The biggest problem of mech in TvP is the vP. Protoss as a race is a hardcounter to mech. Whenever I meet a mech player on ladder I just scream of pure joy. The only time I lose is when I scout horribly and fail
I fail to see how that would help him in that game :D
Maybe, JUST MAYBE, if he would be able to stop building that army of batteries on the high ground, then MAYBE he would have won Or be better prepared, I don't know.
I lost to a BC rush because I didn't know it was a possibility. The player outsmarted me, I was thinking he's going mech and BAM, cattlebruiser. I'm nowhere near the level of Innovation but these things happen. It's a rare build that works when you don't know about it. Next time Inno will scout for it and defend it. Next time I will consider the option of BCs before I have an army of immortals :D
On November 21 2017 16:21 jpg06051992 wrote: Fungal no longer roots, has an even smaller radius, cannot be cast while burrowed, and is having it's range drastically reduced from 9 to 7?
It is not the fungal range that is getting reduced, it is the infested terran egg that is being thrown a shorter distance.
On November 21 2017 20:59 engesser1 wrote: watch this shit, Inno vs alpha full protoss.
Next time he will be sure to see his whole base I guess
C'mon, it's a learning phase of the game. In HotS such players lost to 2gate zealot rush in PvZ.
On November 21 2017 21:57 JackONeill wrote: It's crazy to me how blizzard seems to want to have mech work in TvP (buffing the upgrade costs of tech lab upgrades) when it's so blatantly obvious that the mine nerf, the raven nerf and the stalker buff make it pretty much terrible.
Also increase shield battery cost won't change the fact that shield battery + photon canon combo get extremely cancerous late game. I'd suggest to have the shield battery auto casting on units only to have protoss manually micro-manage the batteries on canons to avoid spamming 10 batteries behind 10 canons.
The biggest problem of mech in TvP is the vP. Protoss as a race is a hardcounter to mech. Whenever I meet a mech player on ladder I just scream of pure joy. The only time I lose is when I scout horribly and fail
I fail to see how that would help him in that game :D
Maybe, JUST MAYBE, if he would be able to stop building that army of batteries on the high ground, then MAYBE he would have won Or be better prepared, I don't know.
Proxy robo immortal was one of the hardest strategies to stop pre patch, even without the batteries the new CB makes proxy robo strike insanely early
On November 21 2017 16:21 jpg06051992 wrote: Fungal no longer roots, has an even smaller radius, cannot be cast while burrowed, and is having it's range drastically reduced from 9 to 7?
It is not the fungal range that is getting reduced, it is the infested terran egg that is being thrown a shorter distance.
Still it makes them almost useless. They still need time to hatch, and are slow as hell. Plenty of time to run from them especially when they are thrown further away. Few seconds later u can come back and Zerg has burned all energy...Seems fair concidering how well rounded and powerful casters High Templars are.
On November 21 2017 20:59 engesser1 wrote: watch this shit, Inno vs alpha full protoss.
Next time he will be sure to see his whole base I guess
C'mon, it's a learning phase of the game. In HotS such players lost to 2gate zealot rush in PvZ.
On November 21 2017 21:57 JackONeill wrote: It's crazy to me how blizzard seems to want to have mech work in TvP (buffing the upgrade costs of tech lab upgrades) when it's so blatantly obvious that the mine nerf, the raven nerf and the stalker buff make it pretty much terrible.
Also increase shield battery cost won't change the fact that shield battery + photon canon combo get extremely cancerous late game. I'd suggest to have the shield battery auto casting on units only to have protoss manually micro-manage the batteries on canons to avoid spamming 10 batteries behind 10 canons.
The biggest problem of mech in TvP is the vP. Protoss as a race is a hardcounter to mech. Whenever I meet a mech player on ladder I just scream of pure joy. The only time I lose is when I scout horribly and fail
I fail to see how that would help him in that game :D
Maybe, JUST MAYBE, if he would be able to stop building that army of batteries on the high ground, then MAYBE he would have won Or be better prepared, I don't know.
Proxy robo immortal was one of the hardest strategies to stop pre patch, even without the batteries the new CB makes proxy robo strike insanely early
It's a strong build indeed, it may be that new chrono is just to good vs Terran, on the other hand with the oracle nerf you will at least be able to go 1-1-1+ expand without fear of an instant loss to 3:00 oracle builds. This means that if you stall the immortals long enough you can squeeze out a liberator or banshee to help you stabilize, at least immortals can't shoot up.
I think the biggest problem right now is that the fear of 3:00 oracle forces Terran to open so suboptimaly that they are to behind if there opponent does literally anything else. But if Terran does not blind counter 3:00 oracles than they ato lose to that build, you can't even make a reaper to scout because you have to build as many marines as you can to help hold off air units. Scv scout does not tell you enough to know it's oracles in time, to have enough to stop it you have to blindly commit to a counter build. Further blind countering oracles when they do go three minute oracle does not even give you an advantage, it just means your not dead Protoss will be even or ahead of you and can just proceed to play a normal game since they sacrifice very little to get a 3:00 oracle and the unit still has decent utility even if it can't kill you outright. The only situation were it actually leaves you ahead is if some how Protoss screw up and losses the oracle or they comited fully to the proxy sheild battery multiple gateway Allin followup and some how failed to end the game with it. Aditonally right now blind countering oracles makes proxy robo a build order win for Protoss since there's no way to know what Protoss plans to proxy before you have to comit yourself to a build order they can tell from scouting if you've hard countered oracles and just decide to proxy 2 robots instead and automatically win the game. Even if you scout the robots if you've comited to an anti oracle build it's already to late to stop it.
You can do funky allins with ghosts or proxy raxes and play for the base trade if Protoss proxies, but this is initself a form of blind countering since if your opponent went for a standard opening and did not skip detection these kind of proxies are easy to hold with a few stalkers and sheild batteries. They are also much easier to scout and counter than Protoss allins.
The chronoboost is the issue. Even if you bring the shield battery cost up, and that you nerf the oracle build time a little (6 second helps, but 3:06 instead of 3:00 doesn't prevent the 225 you need to invest into a turret that will only make sure the oracle makes less than 5 kills... it's still 1 to 4 scvs kills), the thing is that protoss has way too much stuff they can throw at you early on.
To be honnest if the cyclone didn't suck that hard, terran would actually be able to open safely in TvP. But since the oracle, the immortal and the stalker (the three big allin units) completely shit on cyclones, you're forced into premptive submission every game.
The cyclone really needs to get its role straight. It's way too expansive to be a general purpose unit, its AG damage is way too unreliable and suceptible to kiting to be a anti ground damage dealer, and its AA damage is way too low to be a good anti air option. For instance the cyclone would need to get its old lock on back (but only as an AA weapon) to be worth it as an AA option.
On November 22 2017 05:35 JackONeill wrote: The chronoboost is the issue. Even if you bring the shield battery cost up, and that you nerf the oracle build time a little (6 second helps, but 3:06 instead of 3:00 doesn't prevent the 225 you need to invest into a turret that will only make sure the oracle makes less than 5 kills... it's still 1 to 4 scvs kills), the thing is that protoss has way too much stuff they can throw at you early on.
To be honnest if the cyclone didn't suck that hard, terran would actually be able to open safely in TvP. But since the oracle, the immortal and the stalker (the three big allin units) completely shit on cyclones, you're forced into premptive submission every game.
The cyclone really needs to get its role straight. It's way too expansive to be a general purpose unit, its AG damage is way too unreliable and suceptible to kiting to be a anti ground damage dealer, and its AA damage is way too low to be a good anti air option. For instance the cyclone would need to get its old lock on back (but only as an AA weapon) to be worth it as an AA option.
Chrono boost is not the issue, this is the classic chrono, LOTV was the game that disabled tech switches with that awful new chrono. I hope bllizz fix time productions without touching Chrono again.
terran would actually be able to open safely in TvP.
I think terran player expect too much a no brainer safe fast expand build that could be safe against anything ( proxies)
For example protoss has to cancel fast expand when they get 1-1-1 proxy by T ( at least korean pro are canceling it maybe there is another way i don't know)
Assuming you cancel or don't make your cc at all after scouting double gaz you could afford 2 barracks + factory and deflect both immortals and oracles proxies
terran would actually be able to open safely in TvP.
I think terran player expect too much a no brainer safe fast expand build that could be safe against anything ( proxies)
For example protoss has to cancel fast expand when they get 1-1-1 proxy by T ( at least korean pro are canceling it maybe there is another way i don't know)
Assuming you cancel or don't make your cc at all after scouting double gaz you could afford 2 barracks + factory and deflect both immortals and oracles proxies
Who cancels their natural for that? As far as I've seen you chrono a immortal out in time for proxy cyclone, also new stalkers are great vs that.
terran would actually be able to open safely in TvP.
I think terran player expect too much a no brainer safe fast expand build that could be safe against anything ( proxies)
For example protoss has to cancel fast expand when they get 1-1-1 proxy by T ( at least korean pro are canceling it maybe there is another way i don't know)
Assuming you cancel or don't make your cc at all after scouting double gaz you could afford 2 barracks + factory and deflect both immortals and oracles proxies
Who cancels their natural for that? As far as I've seen you chrono a immortal out in time for proxy cyclone, also new stalkers are great vs that.
defending 3:00 oracle is not a matter of canceling your natural it require you to do one of a very limited set of build orders blindly that all put you behind if your opponent did not open 3:00 oracle or even with the protoss if he does open 3:00 oracle. I'm fine with Terran to be expected to have to defend carefully against allins and to scout, not play to greedy ect this should be expected of every race. Whats not ok is having an opening that is so powerful and dominant that the shear threat of it either completely gimps one race right out the gate or automatically wins the game reliably if they did not gimp themselves. Even when terran opens in a very modest safe way with no potential for early aggression and and an economic deficit with their opponent protoss will still be ahead if they proxied an oracle. This is what 3:00 oracle does, since its very expensive to hard counter it, requires you to build very sub-optimal buildings, like a super early ebay and even when it is countered protoss is fine as long as they don't lose the oracle they can just play a game from ahead since terran put themselves so behind to stop it.
terran would actually be able to open safely in TvP.
I think terran player expect too much a no brainer safe fast expand build that could be safe against anything ( proxies)
For example protoss has to cancel fast expand when they get 1-1-1 proxy by T ( at least korean pro are canceling it maybe there is another way i don't know)
Assuming you cancel or don't make your cc at all after scouting double gaz you could afford 2 barracks + factory and deflect both immortals and oracles proxies
If you think that you can, in TvP, afford to cancel your CC when you're getting cheesed, you're dearly mistaken.
The entire art of defending protoss cheeses as terran is to be able to hold while still being able to afford a CC if you don't want to end up extremely far behind even if you defended the cheese.
If you cancel your CC, and go for something like 1/1/1 marine tanks medivacs (pretty much the safest thing you can do), if the protoss player doesn't mindlessly suicides his entire force into your defenses, he'll be able to land a nexus and just macro out of it, and you'll be behind. And you won't be able to cross the map to punish.
Watch any terran pro player holding off a protoss allin they'll ALWAYS try to keep/land their second CC because they know this. I think you lack knowledge about how this matchup works to state stuff like that.
i've played a few games tonight with the patch and i like the changes so far. people have brought up a change to how Chronoboost works. i think some kind of modification to Protoss Chronoboost is worth experimenting with.
Remember when builds that could outright kill you required proper commitment instead of being something that hits at 3 minutes and doesn't deviate from a normal macro build almost at all?
Oh noez, Inno attacked into a trap and it didn't work out for him.
OMFG, at least defend something where the player doesn't do an error.
Inno scouts 1 base Protoss, fails to defend a cheese. It's a ladder, you can't expect everyone will go 3 base macro game. While trying to defend this Protoss builds half of his buildings in the base of Innovation. Inno runs into a stasis ward while hunting down a colossi.
Do you actually want a "I win" button for Terrans or what? 1 base aggressive opening should win against 1rax CC opening every time. This is not about Protoss BS this is about 12 worker start where the standard scout arrives too late to change the tactics. Many players spoke against this. Even P players! I know, it's a shock.
Oh noez, Inno attacked into a trap and it didn't work out for him.
OMFG, at least defend something where the player doesn't do an error.
Inno scouts 1 base Protoss, fails to defend a cheese. It's a ladder, you can't expect everyone will go 3 base macro game. While trying to defend this Protoss builds half of his buildings in the base of Innovation. Inno runs into a stasis ward while hunting down a colossi.
Do you actually want a "I win" button for Terrans or what? 1 base aggressive opening should win against 1rax CC opening every time. This is not about Protoss BS this is about 12 worker start where the standard scout arrives too late to change the tactics. Many players spoke against this. Even P players! I know, it's a shock.
That last game he linked is a stupid post. INno actually won that game. :D
But the one with the shield battery robo all-in is a legit concern I think. Its not true that you should die to a 1 base all in with 1 rax CC. The whole point has always been that you need to survive with your eco advantage against the all in. Not to go 1 base vs 1 base to actually have a chance at surviving.
That thing in the first game he posted just screams bullshit. :D unkillable immortal so early in the game... I did not see the game from Ps pov but i suppose he built those batteries under a warp prism so he didnt even need to wait for a pylon, while he had the immortal t o defend with other shield batteries in range down on the low ground.
I'm not opposed to the idea of cancelling a command center in order to hold a push cleanly.
eco advantage is already the most significant variable in every other phase of the game. it is not fun to make eco advantage the deciding variable all the time. what about micro? tech? defender's advantage? terrain?
here's a rough idea of how I would like games to be decided
in other words: whoever has the biggest economy and best multi-tasking in the late-game usually wins. whoever has the best micro in the early game usually wins.
in sc2, it is much too difficult to win a game from an economic disadvantage. I can only think of a few sc2 games where this actually happened... Mvp vs Innovation comes to mind, where Mvp lost all his workers early. I wish this was possible more often in sc2. the problem is the micro skill ceiling on many units is too low!
part of the reason why this isn't possible vP is because of marines, cyclones and ghosts.
marines are slow, too low range and need to be grouped in certain numbers to defeat certain units "cleanly". I don't see any reason why the game designers should make it possible to hold an all-in with marines as the core defense. they are clearly not suited for the task... all-ins should be held with stand-alone, highly microable high-tech units, not sheer numbers of inferior units.
there was a great degree of skill difference between a pro KR terran holding an all-in with lock-on cyclones vs a master league terran holding an all-in with lock-on cyclones.
there is a lesser degree of skill difference between a pro KR terran holding an all-in with typhoon blaster cyclones vs a master league terran holding an all-in with typhoon blaster cyclones.
lock-on cyclones were superior design because they were highly microable. kiting takes great care and attention... positional planning, tactile movements, re-positioning on-the-fly, blah blah blah. with typhoon blaster cyclones, half the battle is having the unit ready in the first place, having enough resources to repair it. micro is hardly a factor at all.
holding an all-in with lock-on cyclones required more skill, but the rewards for a perfect defense were greater.
first, you would keep auto-cast enabled for the first oracle swoop. then, you would disable auto-cast and make some important decisions about which target needs to go down first. I guess in most situations you would want the void ray to go down first.
typhoon blaster cyclones are unmicroable, 1-A, zero skill units. you just click attack, repair with SCVs, and let the numbers game play out. just imagine an upgraded mechanical marine which can't even be stuttered stepped. that's essentially what typhoon blaster is. it's fucking insulting that this junk unit is in the terran arsenal. hurr durr, terran needs an ez mode unit cuz the rest are so high skill. hmm, what unit can we fuck with this time? well nobody is using cyclones in patch 3.3 except early-game defense, so I guess let's ruin this unit! nobody's gonna miss it anyway! thanks david kim
I will never shut up about the old cyclone. it was one of the coolest units in the game. the only problem with the old lock-on cyclones was the cost / damage stats / tech-lab limitation. it could have easily been fixed without removing its micro potential!
as for ghosts... ghosts could aid in a perfect 1-base defense, but they cost too many minerals at present. glad that this is being fixed. ghosts would make for a great 1-base defense vs stargate / shield battery, thanks to EMP and P's limited detection. toss is fucked if they lose the oracle, no robo, no forge... cloak could do serious work.
superior micro toss 1-base all-in vs inferior micro 1-base terran defense = toss wins average micro toss 1-base all-in vs average micro 1-base terran defense = terran advantage, but toss could still recover with good micro inferior micro toss 1-base all-in vs superior micro 1-base terran defense = terran wins every time
that's how it should be in my mind. less about killing workers / denying mining for long enough, more about micro.
terran would actually be able to open safely in TvP.
I think terran player expect too much a no brainer safe fast expand build that could be safe against anything ( proxies)
For example protoss has to cancel fast expand when they get 1-1-1 proxy by T ( at least korean pro are canceling it maybe there is another way i don't know)
Assuming you cancel or don't make your cc at all after scouting double gaz you could afford 2 barracks + factory and deflect both immortals and oracles proxies
it's always been like this, even in blink all-in era it was possible to hold with cc 1st build, byun hold 2 proxy robo immortal all-in with cc 1st against Has himself lol.
Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who thinks early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
Apart from balance I can not think of any unit that sucks they joy out of playing as much as seeing your opponent going Swarm Hosts and knowing that no matter what you do you will lose.
He said you can't win vs SHs. That's why I pointed out that Serral beat Gumiho.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another. Balance should be working like this : 2 player of equal game knownledge and mechanic should have the same chance to win. But since it's very hard to define ( or to me it's not that hard, but some may say i'm biased so w/e ) if a player is better mechanicly, then results should be a reliable tell of whether or not a race is balanced.
Also you may not be agree with this, but protoss has fairly easy game mechanics, which to me means it feels overly difficult to play against protoss, when you're anything under GM because, the smallest mistake will always result in a lose while the execution of what is killing you seems way more easy to do.
I'm not saying the game should be balanced for lower league, but don't throw thing like aligulac to tell the game is balanced ( or not ).
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
zest and stats both admitted that pvt is P favoured right now, what else do you need.
Are people really complaining about win rates this soon after such a massive patch?
Come on people, the metagame is more then shaken up it's drastically changed, we probably have 6 months easily before win rates stabilize in any coherent fashion. The balance team seems on board with making good changes in a timely manner as well.
Oh and to the guy who informed me about the Infestor range nerf being for Infested Terrans, thank you! I still feel however that the Infestor was unjustifiably over nerfed in comparison to the High Templar which is well rounded and strong in all match ups.
- No burrow Fungal = good design change but it existed for a reason, and that's because Infestors are slow and vulnerable while the rest of the army is fast. High Templar are slow and vulnerable as well but the entire Protoss army is slow.
- No root = Also a good design change that probably should have been done years ago but it's still a nerf, I was expecting some type of damage increase to compensate.
- less radius = Just another nerf on the pile, why would the radius of Fungal need to be reduced if they already can't be burrowed and it doesn't root? This seems like a pointless nerf, Infestors are just as vulnerable as they have always been and now Fungal is randomly worse?
jpg, the pre-patch fungal radius was 2.0, so the current 2.25 is still a buff. maybe it would be a good idea to reduce the infestor model size slightly.
On November 24 2017 03:29 bela.mervado wrote: jpg, the pre-patch fungal radius was 2.0, so the current 2.25 is still a buff. maybe it would be a good idea to reduce the infestor model size slightly.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
Only 58%? The oracle change will drop that at least 3% then it will fall within the Blizzard acceptable imbalance margin. Well, the acceptable margin when Protoss is on the other side of the imbalance.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
PvT was at 42% for something like a month and a half at the beginning of the year.
To state that the game was imbalanced in favor of one race and now it is fair that it is imbalanced in favor of the other race is just not valid and should not be discussed here imho !
The game has to reach an almost balanced state fast to enable each player of the same level to get the prize money they need as a progamer.
On November 24 2017 05:52 SpecKROELLchen wrote: To state that the game was imbalanced in favor of one race and now it is fair that it is imbalanced in favor of the other race is just not valid and should not be discussed here imho !
The game has to reach an almost balanced state fast to enable each player of the same level to get the prize money they need as a progamer.
That is true, but only insofar as the opposite is also true. That is, when another race is facing imbalance, changes should be made equally as fast. And with Protoss and Terran....sometimes changes have been quick, and sometimes they're slow.
Also, it is noteworthy that sometimes metas shift and balances change without any Blizzard patching needed. For instance, take mine drops in mid-2014 against Protoss. They were overpowered, but by 2015, early widow mine builds were easily countered.
For design patches we like to lean on the side of making things powerful so that players can really feel the changes and then pull back from there. However, it seems the Infestor is currently further in this direction than we would like. We believe that Fungal Growth is the prime reason for its strength and we want to increase counterattack options to the currently stealthy Infestors first before heavily nerfing its direct power. So we are going to reduce the Fungal Growth area of effect slightly and remove the ability to cast Fungal Growth while burrowed. In line with this we are also planning on reducing Infested Terran cast range by 2. It can still be cast while burrowed, but now there should be more trade off in how far forward you want to move your Infestors with the initial cast and how much you want to let the Infested Terrans walk towards their targets.
Infestor - Fungal Growth Area of Effect reduced from 2.5 to 2.25. - Fungal Growth can no longer be cast while burrowed. - Infested Terran cast range reduced from 9 to 7.
This seems rather dubious to me. My reaction to the initial proposal was that casting fungal growth while burrowed would be obviously stupid and broken, because you would have invisible units that without warning can trap (or kill) an entire army. It is not like dark templar which you can easily run away from. It might be possible to balance it by adjusting the cost of the infestor and the power of fungal growth, but that would take away from the unit and lock them into a one-dimensional role. Alternatively, it could force tedious gameplay where players are forced to invest in detection.
So the correct decision here was not to experiment with a change that fundamentally threatens the role of a unit, but to not make that change to begin with. If you're balancing a game you should concern yourself not just with relative power of units, but also with the structure of the game that allows you to make adjustments without destabilization. Invisible units that can instantly destroy your army are not needed in the game as an experiment, anymore than siege tanks being able to fly are needed in the game as an experiment. And then you could actually have had a better understanding of whether these other two changes were even needed.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
PvT was at 42% for something like a month and a half at the beginning of the year.
Didn't they nerf liberators and WM because of that?
Also they pretty much said the current WM nerf is mostly because of WM drops in PvT.
People talk like Blizzard has never patched something in favor of protoss.
On November 24 2017 08:15 Grumbels wrote: This seems rather dubious to me. My reaction to the initial proposal was that casting fungal growth while burrowed would be obviously stupid and broken, because you would have invisible units that without warning can trap (or kill) an entire army. It is not like dark templar which you can easily run away from. It might be possible to balance it by adjusting the cost of the infestor and the power of fungal growth, but that would take away from the unit and lock them into a one-dimensional role. Alternatively, it could force tedious gameplay where players are forced to invest in detection.
They already nerf infestors fungal growth by making it slow units instead of holding the units in place. The idea that this leads to tedious gameplay can be apply to dts as well.
The problem with making infestors to fungal when unborrow is that they are easy target and died by tank fires or templar's feedback before they can do anything in the battle.
I personally like it how they make the game very interesting because it can set up traps and surprises if the opponent have no detections.
On November 24 2017 08:15 Grumbels wrote: So the correct decision here was not to experiment with a change that fundamentally threatens the role of a unit, but to not make that change to begin with.
you're getting really nit-picky when you disagree about what warrants experimentation. part of experimentation includes the possibility it can go horribly wrong and get scrapped.
orginally, the experiment of creating asymmetric RTS factions was rejected because it is impossible to balance. that experiment could've easily went up in flames with forum know-it-alls screaming "told ya so". this ambitious experiment turned out to be very difficult, but worth the effort.
i like that Blizzard is willing to take chances... part of that includes colossal screw-ups. you can't have 1 without the other.
On November 24 2017 02:21 LDLCmiyako wrote: to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
From the aligulac FAQ:
How do you decide which games to add?
This question doesn't have an easy answer. We mostly decide this on a case-by-case basis. Generally we will add a round from a tournament if that round contains a significant number of already rated players. [...] If a tournament isn't in the database, it could either be because we felt it didn't cut it, or it could just be we have missed it or forgotten.
Their basis is everything but an objective view on SC2, not even the pro gaming scene as such. The entire goal of the site is to make predictions on how individual matches between two recorded players will turn out. Overall win/loss-rates between races is so far out of their scope it is already ludicrous to even assume their data is suited for that kind of analysis.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
imo lategame ZvP does suck, but thats part of the balance since zerg has a really good early mid game where they have strong timings to hit against Protoss. Unfortunately, Zerg loses their advantage in a lategame deathball fight because they aren't designed to fight upfront, they use circulation to replace units lost in trades faster and snowball it out of control. While it is possible to take good trades against deathball Toss, it is definitely harder than midgame Toss. I like that different races have different timing windows for different matchups as well- keeps things very interesting.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
On November 24 2017 02:21 LDLCmiyako wrote: to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
This question doesn't have an easy answer. We mostly decide this on a case-by-case basis. Generally we will add a round from a tournament if that round contains a significant number of already rated players. [...] If a tournament isn't in the database, it could either be because we felt it didn't cut it, or it could just be we have missed it or forgotten.
Their basis is everything but an objective view on SC2, not even the pro gaming scene as such. The entire goal of the site is to make predictions on how individual matches between two recorded players will turn out. Overall win/loss-rates between races is so far out of their scope it is already ludicrous to even assume their data is suited for that kind of analysis.
That's what i though, also that means it leans toward prediction, so if for exemple i won as a terran 10x against a protoss opponent because i'm better, but suddently after a patch he starts to win, the graph will show a spike of imbalance favoring protoss right? But the more he wins the more the graph will balance toward the middle, so correct me if i'm wrong, but if he wins 10x right after the patch, the first few win will show a huge imbalance, but after 10 games it will show a balanced matchup right? Which in itself won't tell if the match up is balanced, but will tell that with an equal w/l record we should have equal chance to win ( = it's balanced ). Unless it takes in consideration that one player is better than the other, but then i dont get how they define that one is better than the other especially when the 2 players aren't that far in ranking.
To me it's not reliable at all, and i get a bit tired of protoss claiming that their race has been weak for months now... There's no reliable data of it, and there's no terran or zerg domination in tournament. Only thing is there was way less protoss in ladder, which was to me mostly due to the changes in term of gameplay and the nerf of gimmicky stuff.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
On November 23 2017 18:08 pvsnp wrote: Anyone who says early PvT is balanced at the moment is either too blind to read the patch notes or too stupid to understand them. Or Protoss. Not that those are mutually exclusive.
Also, aligulac has the last two weeks of PvT at 58%.
PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
sure, this is the point I was trying to make when I said I can't stand someone saying
The thing is i'm not saying it prove any balance or imbalance, but it look way more reliable than aligulac. The exemple of one or two player winning most of tournament works for every races.
Although i disagree about what the other guy said, i mean, it's your fault, if you lose, but that doesn't mean it's balanced. Balance isn't 1 guy is able to play 10x better than the other, to do even results and that work for any race. It's impossible to accuratly quantify how better a player is playing from another, but when there's a huge gap in mecanics and game knownledge, you can notice it.
I really dont get how protoss was "weak" before the patch, espacially in pvt, and now it feels actually insane.
About the patch coming, i dont get the mech buff, it seems already very strong vs zerg and terran. I appreciate the ghost buff, but i think it wont fix the issue of early and mid game bio play. I think it will help a lot in tvz late game, but it will unfortunatly not help in tvp.
In general I feel that the sc2 dev team is forgetting too much about some very basics of the game. I think macro should have a bigger impact on the game and be less affected by game changer unit and in my opinion the game should have better defined strong and weak timing for each race like it used to.
I dont feel any of the change are going toward this, and to me fixing the gameplay should be more important than fixing the balance
On November 24 2017 01:14 OsaX Nymloth wrote: [quote] PvT is p favoured for two weeks. IMBALANCE PvT is terran favoured for MONTHS. Let protoss figure it out.
One of the reason I absolutely hate terrans. We win? Good. We don't win 70% of the games? OP NERF PLS. What do you mean, we have to ADAPT? IMBA!
~~
Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
They're experts at playing the game, not experts at evaluating balance objectively.
On November 24 2017 01:19 Aegwynn wrote: [quote] Well to be fair, pvt was never this much imbalanced.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
They're experts at playing the game, not experts at evaluating balance objectively.
I fail to see how any expert at playing the game could succeed without an excellent understanding of the specific strengths and weaknesses of their own race in relation to the other races. Which is to say, balance.
On November 25 2017 17:25 Ej_ wrote: Thankfuly, online forums are full of expert game designers with years of hypothetical experience.
This. Nobody is perfect, but some are most definitely better than others. Twitch chat GMs and forum warriors claiming to know better than professional players and designers.....
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
They're experts at playing the game, not experts at evaluating balance objectively.
I fail to see how any expert at playing the game could succeed without an excellent understanding of the specific strengths and weaknesses of their own race in relation to the other races. Which is to say, balance.
They have to understand the relative strength and weakness of their own race. You still make all the right decisions in a decision tree if all your utility functions are off by a factor of two (i.e you make the same decision if you think A gives you a 25% chance of winning and B gives you a 30% chance of winning, or if you think A gives you a 50% chance of winning and B gives you a 60% chance of winning) . Whereas balance would (in this imperfect analogy) be absolute utility.
In practice pros will generally have a pretty good idea of balance, but it isn't a corollary to being a pro, and when a pro gives an erroneous evaluation of balance it isn't necessarily because they're whining or being dishonest to get a buff from Blizzard.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
They're experts at playing the game, not experts at evaluating balance objectively.
I fail to see how any expert at playing the game could succeed without an excellent understanding of the specific strengths and weaknesses of their own race in relation to the other races. Which is to say, balance.
On November 25 2017 17:25 Ej_ wrote: Thankfuly, online forums are full of expert game designers with years of hypothetical experience.
This. Nobody is perfect, but some are most definitely better than others. Twitch chat GMs and forum warriors claiming to know better than professional players and designers.....
It's all different from person to person. Just because someone is a high level player doesn't mean their points automatically hold more value than those from someone of lower skill. avilo is GM but I don't think he's more qualified to talk about balance than let's say a Gold league player.
Well i will listen to a GM more than a gold player bc the GM understands the game better. Not to say that the GM will not be biased (we all do to a certain degree).
with the ghost changes (and incoming cost adjustment), you won't be able to depot-raxx-depot wall-in in TvT anymore
gas raxx gas orbital fact 2 in each gas reaper ghost academy 3 in each gas cyclone ghost nuke
scouting scv tells me if you walled with depots/raxx.
scouting scv tells me if you went fast expand.
if you didn't wall, x2 gas is a perfectly fine opening already used at the highest level.
if you didn't expand, x2 gas is "..."
easy to hide the ghost academy, so you would have to blindly save a scan (even earlier than you would for the banshee timing).
reaper FE + depot/raxx wall = not enough stuff to kill a reaper + ghost + cyclone + 2nd cyclone on the way
save scan + kill ghost = you lose too many units to my cyclone save scan + pull scvs + kill ghost = you lose too much mining time
otherwise, you lose 2 depots and a reactor.
haha, look at this nub saying ghosts are gonna change the meta. you may laugh at me now, but remember this post when you see zero terrans walling-in in gsl
On November 25 2017 15:30 LDLCmiyako wrote: The thing is i'm not saying it prove any balance or imbalance, but it look way more reliable than aligulac. The exemple of one or two player winning most of tournament works for every races.
Although i disagree about what the other guy said, i mean, it's your fault, if you lose, but that doesn't mean it's balanced. Balance isn't 1 guy is able to play 10x better than the other, to do even results and that work for any race. It's impossible to accuratly quantify how better a player is playing from another, but when there's a huge gap in mecanics and game knownledge, you can notice it.
I really dont get how protoss was "weak" before the patch, espacially in pvt, and now it feels actually insane.
About the patch coming, i dont get the mech buff, it seems already very strong vs zerg and terran. I appreciate the ghost buff, but i think it wont fix the issue of early and mid game bio play. I think it will help a lot in tvz late game, but it will unfortunatly not help in tvp.
In general I feel that the sc2 dev team is forgetting too much about some very basics of the game. I think macro should have a bigger impact on the game and be less affected by game changer unit and in my opinion the game should have better defined strong and weak timing for each race like it used to.
I dont feel any of the change are going toward this, and to me fixing the gameplay should be more important than fixing the balance
No, you are wrong in saying that looking at tournament winners is more reliable at judging balance than looking at aligulac.
It's a basic, basic concept called probability, go back to school and learn what it is if you don't know.
Actually...it has, and if you look on aligulac, you'll see that PvT has generally been T favoured since the beginning of WoL.There have been stretches where Protoss was favoured, but it's generally been T favoured, and also the peak of T or P being stronger has the T having larger and longer peaks of being favoured.
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
They're experts at playing the game, not experts at evaluating balance objectively.
I fail to see how any expert at playing the game could succeed without an excellent understanding of the specific strengths and weaknesses of their own race in relation to the other races. Which is to say, balance.
On November 25 2017 17:25 Ej_ wrote: Thankfuly, online forums are full of expert game designers with years of hypothetical experience.
This. Nobody is perfect, but some are most definitely better than others. Twitch chat GMs and forum warriors claiming to know better than professional players and designers.....
This is just appeal to authority though, i think the community overall did a good job at looking at the game and "analysing" what are potential problems (there were countless of articles, blog posts, a lot of good stuff actually). We even saw blizzard giving in here and there (forcefields being way less of an issue, now the mothershipcore gone, etc). I don't think it is too hard to figure out design flaws, what's actually hard is to come up with solutions. (because the whole product still has to work well, even if you "fix" a potential flaw it might just create other problems) Would anyone here do a better job creating a game from ground up? No probably not. But that's not needed to look at certain things and find the pros/cons to the current iteration.
On November 25 2017 15:30 LDLCmiyako wrote: The thing is i'm not saying it prove any balance or imbalance, but it look way more reliable than aligulac. The exemple of one or two player winning most of tournament works for every races.
Although i disagree about what the other guy said, i mean, it's your fault, if you lose, but that doesn't mean it's balanced. Balance isn't 1 guy is able to play 10x better than the other, to do even results and that work for any race. It's impossible to accuratly quantify how better a player is playing from another, but when there's a huge gap in mecanics and game knownledge, you can notice it.
I really dont get how protoss was "weak" before the patch, espacially in pvt, and now it feels actually insane.
About the patch coming, i dont get the mech buff, it seems already very strong vs zerg and terran. I appreciate the ghost buff, but i think it wont fix the issue of early and mid game bio play. I think it will help a lot in tvz late game, but it will unfortunatly not help in tvp.
In general I feel that the sc2 dev team is forgetting too much about some very basics of the game. I think macro should have a bigger impact on the game and be less affected by game changer unit and in my opinion the game should have better defined strong and weak timing for each race like it used to.
I dont feel any of the change are going toward this, and to me fixing the gameplay should be more important than fixing the balance
No, you are wrong in saying that looking at tournament winners is more reliable at judging balance than looking at aligulac.
It's a basic, basic concept called probability, go back to school and learn what it is if you don't know.
You can say whatever you want from stats.
If aligulac winrates show for example P>T, but actually T win more tournaments than P, you can't say : "Actually, i take only the aligulac winrates".
You should take on consideration all data, not ignore which doesn't support your point of view.
Stats are meaningless if you don't have a serious design, for example take on consideration the level of the two players, it's not just about big numbers. A game between Rogue and Innovation tell you way more about balance than 10 000 games of masters.
The 10 000 games of master just show the state of the meta at this moment, but if some pro show different strategies on a tournament, the meta will probably change so the winrate too, while the balance hasn't changed at all.
On November 24 2017 02:21 LDLCmiyako wrote: [quote]
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
They're experts at playing the game, not experts at evaluating balance objectively.
I fail to see how any expert at playing the game could succeed without an excellent understanding of the specific strengths and weaknesses of their own race in relation to the other races. Which is to say, balance.
They have to understand the relative strength and weakness of their own race. You still make all the right decisions in a decision tree if all your utility functions are off by a factor of two (i.e you make the same decision if you think A gives you a 25% chance of winning and B gives you a 30% chance of winning, or if you think A gives you a 50% chance of winning and B gives you a 60% chance of winning) . Whereas balance would (in this imperfect analogy) be absolute utility.
In practice pros will generally have a pretty good idea of balance, but it isn't a corollary to being a pro, and when a pro gives an erroneous evaluation of balance it isn't necessarily because they're whining or being dishonest to get a buff from Blizzard.
Not sure about the decision tree analogy, personally. For SC2, I would tend to think along the lines of dynamic Bayes nets.
And I would disagree with the classification of balance as absolute utility; balance is inherently relative by definition. When players say a certain unit or comp is strong/weak they mean that it is stronger/weaker than others. Nothing is strong or weak in a vacuum.
I do agree with what you said in practice though, but I would attribute that simply to individual bias which is of course impossible to eliminate.
On November 24 2017 02:21 LDLCmiyako wrote: [quote]
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
They're experts at playing the game, not experts at evaluating balance objectively.
I fail to see how any expert at playing the game could succeed without an excellent understanding of the specific strengths and weaknesses of their own race in relation to the other races. Which is to say, balance.
On November 25 2017 17:25 Ej_ wrote: Thankfuly, online forums are full of expert game designers with years of hypothetical experience.
This. Nobody is perfect, but some are most definitely better than others. Twitch chat GMs and forum warriors claiming to know better than professional players and designers.....
It's all different from person to person. Just because someone is a high level player doesn't mean their points automatically hold more value than those from someone of lower skill. avilo is GM but I don't think he's more qualified to talk about balance than let's say a Gold league player.
Certainly rank is not a causatory factor with regard to opinions on balance, but I would definitely argue a correlation. A GM is more likely to have a better opinion, not guaranteed to do so.
On November 24 2017 02:21 LDLCmiyako wrote: [quote]
to be fair aligulac isn't very reliable. If you look at results http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Premier_Tournaments protoss has been heavily favored on 2015 hots, and slightly favored since lotv. I'm not sure what basis aligulac uses but it's hard to define if it's normal for one player to beat another.
any person who says tournament wins are a reliable source of balance information is just plain, 100% wrong.
that's like say protoss is OP all of 2017 because neeb was twice as good as all wcs players while other protoss wcs players can't make top 8s in 2017. Or saying soo isn't very skilled because he isn't winning finals.
alligulac is the closest thing we got to a large sample set, and only blizzard has the ladder winrates I believe.
Winning a tournament means your race is able to compete at the best level, so losing as protoss is "your fault" :
Neeb can win, he plays protoss so if you lose, that's your fault, so "stop blaming balance."
A balance issue is when you can't simply beat one race/one strategy no matter of how skill you are, and as a result no pro manage to beat it.
Rogue won Blizzcon, Zerg got huge buffs to late game, and Scarlett STILL complains about late game ZvP.
Pros balance whine like everyone else. If anything, they have more incentive to whine because the strength of their race directly affects how much money they make.
That being said, pros do have a far better understanding of the game (by virtue of being pros) and if they so choose, are perfectly capable of giving accurate assessments of balance. But whether they want to be accurate or just whine is obviously their own choice.
I disagree with that. While pros do understand the game much better than anyone else, they also view it through lenses biased by both the race they play, and by their personal experience (which may or may not be representative of the experiences of everyone else at the highest level). So I'd say it's completely possible for pros to sincerely believe in a state of balance that isn't true.
It's certainly possible for a pro to be biased, I would just think it is far easier/more common for a lesser player to be biased. Nobody is perfect, and pros are the best we can get.
Same story with any expert in any field. No, they are not omniscient. Yes, they do know better than nearly everyone else. Certainly better than laymen.
Whether the pros choose to be honest or to whine is another story entirely.
They're experts at playing the game, not experts at evaluating balance objectively.
I fail to see how any expert at playing the game could succeed without an excellent understanding of the specific strengths and weaknesses of their own race in relation to the other races. Which is to say, balance.
On November 25 2017 17:25 Ej_ wrote: Thankfuly, online forums are full of expert game designers with years of hypothetical experience.
This. Nobody is perfect, but some are most definitely better than others. Twitch chat GMs and forum warriors claiming to know better than professional players and designers.....
This is just appeal to authority though, i think the community overall did a good job at looking at the game and "analysing" what are potential problems (there were countless of articles, blog posts, a lot of good stuff actually). We even saw blizzard giving in here and there (forcefields being way less of an issue, now the mothershipcore gone, etc). I don't think it is too hard to figure out design flaws, what's actually hard is to come up with solutions. (because the whole product still has to work well, even if you "fix" a potential flaw it might just create other problems) Would anyone here do a better job creating a game from ground up? No probably not. But that's not needed to look at certain things and find the pros/cons to the current iteration.
You misunderstand me. The community can, does, and has provided valuable insight on the balance situation. I'm not saying that pros or Blizzard are always right, only that when the community disagrees with them, I'm more inclined to believe the former. Because they have a greater stake in the outcome.
On November 28 2017 12:34 StarscreamG1 wrote: I just hope they nerf blink but not the new ok damage and scaling of the Stalker.
If they oracles, shield batteries, AND blink, Protoss is going to swing well into the realm of under powered.
Hell, if you look at current aligulac balance stats, Protoss is balanced in PvT (50% 66-66) and under powered in PvZ (43.91% 119-152) which would indicate the race needs tagetted PvZ BUFFS.
On November 28 2017 12:34 StarscreamG1 wrote: I just hope they nerf blink but not the new ok damage and scaling of the Stalker.
If they oracles, shield batteries, AND blink, Protoss is going to swing well into the realm of under powered.
Hell, if you look at current aligulac balance stats, Protoss is balanced in PvT (50% 66-66) and under powered in PvZ (43.91% 119-152) which would indicate the race needs tagetted PvZ BUFFS.
We're only 4 days into the current aligulac period...if we also include the results of the previous fortnight we get a 56% win-rate for Protoss in PvT.
I actually think Ghosts will be a bit too strong, but I'm excited to play against Terrans utilizing Ghosts. It's a heavy skill unit that requires you to actually hotkey your units, instead of mindlessly dropping all the time. In WoL Ghosts were slightly favoured vs High Templar style and at the time they cost 150/150, 1 shot HT's and almost didn't do any dmg to Zealots with Snipe. Now they come with Cloak, they are way faster, Snipe is about same power level, it's way worse vs HT's, but it can now 1 shot Zealots/Adepts, they also cost 150/125.
Terran will have a scary death ball whether they go for Bio+Ghosts, or Mech+Ghosts. Now it might be Protoss' time to drop and pull the Terran apart.
On November 28 2017 18:03 ejozl wrote: And we also have a patch on it's way...
I actually think Ghosts will be a bit too strong, but I'm excited to play against Terrans utilizing Ghosts. It's a heavy skill unit that requires you to actually hotkey your units, instead of mindlessly dropping all the time. In WoL Ghosts were slightly favoured vs High Templar style and at the time they cost 150/150, 1 shot HT's and almost didn't do any dmg to Zealots with Snipe. Now they come with Cloak, they are way faster, Snipe is about same power level, it's way worse vs HT's, but it can now 1 shot Zealots/Adepts, they also cost 150/125.
Terran will have a scary death ball whether they go for Bio+Ghosts, or Mech+Ghosts. Now it might be Protoss' time to drop and pull the Terran apart.
Except you can not really use Mech+Ghosts except maybe in late game since you need gas for so much else. Just getting factories and upgrades costs so much gas, and every tank and thor is also gas heavy. I know Avilo is using ghosts+mech but I doubt it works on pro level.
They haven't said just that they expect it to be out during the week commencing 27th November (aka this week) so i assume we will get a random tweet / post on forum saying it has been patched.
On November 28 2017 18:03 ejozl wrote: And we also have a patch on it's way...
I actually think Ghosts will be a bit too strong, but I'm excited to play against Terrans utilizing Ghosts. It's a heavy skill unit that requires you to actually hotkey your units, instead of mindlessly dropping all the time. In WoL Ghosts were slightly favoured vs High Templar style and at the time they cost 150/150, 1 shot HT's and almost didn't do any dmg to Zealots with Snipe. Now they come with Cloak, they are way faster, Snipe is about same power level, it's way worse vs HT's, but it can now 1 shot Zealots/Adepts, they also cost 150/125.
Terran will have a scary death ball whether they go for Bio+Ghosts, or Mech+Ghosts. Now it might be Protoss' time to drop and pull the Terran apart.
I think the Ghost will be weaker vs Protoss in the mid game, because the Ghost starts with less energie, so Toss has a larger time window befor Terran get's EMP. Cloak and Snipe are not very usefull vs Protoss.
against Zerg, however, the new Ghost will be much better.
On November 28 2017 18:03 ejozl wrote: And we also have a patch on it's way...
I actually think Ghosts will be a bit too strong, but I'm excited to play against Terrans utilizing Ghosts. It's a heavy skill unit that requires you to actually hotkey your units, instead of mindlessly dropping all the time. In WoL Ghosts were slightly favoured vs High Templar style and at the time they cost 150/150, 1 shot HT's and almost didn't do any dmg to Zealots with Snipe. Now they come with Cloak, they are way faster, Snipe is about same power level, it's way worse vs HT's, but it can now 1 shot Zealots/Adepts, they also cost 150/125.
Terran will have a scary death ball whether they go for Bio+Ghosts, or Mech+Ghosts. Now it might be Protoss' time to drop and pull the Terran apart.
EMP has been nerfed quite severely - both in radius and the energy damage. Since those nerfs, the ghost vs HT dance has not been ghost favoured. Plenty of times you'd see ghosts lining up the old snipe (0.5 sec animation) and get killed by feedback. Or ghosts landing EMPs but not hitting enough HTs or draining enough energy and HTs getting off storms.
Second, pulling off multiple drops is not mindless. That's one of the greatest mechanical-difference between Korean and Foreign Terrans (along with impeccable splits and target-firing; just off the top of my head.) I think their skill deserves a little more respect from you.
On November 28 2017 18:03 ejozl wrote: And we also have a patch on it's way...
I actually think Ghosts will be a bit too strong, but I'm excited to play against Terrans utilizing Ghosts. It's a heavy skill unit that requires you to actually hotkey your units, instead of mindlessly dropping all the time. In WoL Ghosts were slightly favoured vs High Templar style and at the time they cost 150/150, 1 shot HT's and almost didn't do any dmg to Zealots with Snipe. Now they come with Cloak, they are way faster, Snipe is about same power level, it's way worse vs HT's, but it can now 1 shot Zealots/Adepts, they also cost 150/125.
Terran will have a scary death ball whether they go for Bio+Ghosts, or Mech+Ghosts. Now it might be Protoss' time to drop and pull the Terran apart.
I think the Ghost will be weaker vs Protoss in the mid game, because the Ghost starts with less energie, so Toss has a larger time window befor Terran get's EMP. Cloak and Snipe are not very usefull vs Protoss.
against Zerg, however, the new Ghost will be much better.
The ghost is worse against Protoss since EMP is by far the most important thing about ghosts in the match-up. It's better against Zerg when played with bio, but bio is almost extinct. Ghost cheeses are much stronger generally admittedly, but I don't think it's a good thing.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
I'm not even mad about the Infestor nerf even though it will hit my lategame hard.
I'm however sad about Blizzard once again focusing on "meching it happen". Mech is just super boring watch and play against. It's not even that I can't beat it, it's that I don't want to. There really is no other playstyle that does this to me.
I'd rather get banerushed in ZvZ all day than face Mech even more often. :/
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
I don't like how they addressed the oracle, they weakened proxy oracle but also macro oracle openers and I'm not stoked to play against stalker openers from now on.
Also mech is not going to be viable meta in TvP no matter how bad bio might be because chargelot/immortal/archon still demolishes ground mech.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
Arguably PvP is in a similarly problematic state, but it gets much less attention since it's not a balance concern. The shield battery and all the other changes just aren't as good at protecting Protoss from dying early on against Protoss or Zerg, but are significantly better against Terran, which makes balancing things awkward.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
Arguably PvP is in a similarly problematic state, but it gets much less attention since it's not a balance concern. The shield battery and all the other changes just aren't as good at protecting Protoss from dying early on against Protoss or Zerg, but are significantly better against Terran, which makes balancing things awkward.
Balancing things is always awkward, but you do have a point with the whole SB being particularly awkward–there's a reason the balance team never dared to remove the MSC before now.
I think no matter what they did, the MSC removal was bound to cause imbalance, it was just a question of whether Protoss became way too weak or way too strong. In this case, it was the latter, so I would not at all be surprised to see more Protoss nerfs (or Terran buffs) in the upcoming future.
But iterative solutions are probably the best approach, so I'm reasonably satisfied with their current approach.
I'm pretty sure Infestors are worse off now than before 4.0. Fungal getting changed to a slow was a nerf already, and not being able to cast it while burrowed and an imperceptible radius change mean it's even worse than it was before. Infested Terrans can't even be spawned from out of range of Carriers or Colossi, so Infestors are just going to get melted when they try to do anything against Skytoss, which is what they're supposed to be good against. Zerg is in even more of a "kill them before they get there" situation than ever before in the matchup with no answer to Skytoss.
On November 29 2017 05:40 Solar424 wrote: I'm pretty sure Infestors are worse off now than before 4.0. Fungal getting changed to a slow was a nerf already, and not being able to cast it while burrowed and an imperceptible radius change mean it's even worse than it was before. Infested Terrans can't even be spawned from out of range of Carriers or Colossi, so Infestors are just going to get melted when they try to do anything against Skytoss, which is what they're supposed to be good against. Zerg is in even more of a "kill them before they get there" situation than ever before in the matchup with no answer to Skytoss.
I mentioned this in an earlier post, but Zerg should be just fine against Protoss even if Skytoss truly was a freewin (it isn't). LBH timings slaughtered Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans, and Oracles have been repeatedly nerfed since then whereas LBH is exactly the same as it used to be.
On November 29 2017 05:40 Solar424 wrote: I'm pretty sure Infestors are worse off now than before 4.0. Fungal getting changed to a slow was a nerf already, and not being able to cast it while burrowed and an imperceptible radius change mean it's even worse than it was before. Infested Terrans can't even be spawned from out of range of Carriers or Colossi, so Infestors are just going to get melted when they try to do anything against Skytoss, which is what they're supposed to be good against. Zerg is in even more of a "kill them before they get there" situation than ever before in the matchup with no answer to Skytoss.
The radius change is still a 25% area increase which isn't nothing, and slow vs lockdown isn't a huge deal in large fights. Infested terrans do deal much more damage against air too even if getting them into the fight is harder. And parasitic bomb is pretty good now (probably too good against vikings tbh). So I'm still hopeful.
So the Terran upgrade buffs seem a bit overdone. Upgrade pricing from 150/150 to 75/75, that's a huge price reduction for an upgrade to a unit that is already very strong and quite popular in the meta with Cyclone/Hellion/Medivac pushes. I'm alright with the drilling claws upgrade because let's be honest, visible while reloading while better design no doubt is a huge nerf.
The Protoss nerfs are in the right direction, changing Pulsar to damage that armor can mitigate is very smart and some shield battery rushes are becoming kind of cancer. Protoss is already stupidly reliant on oppressive units like the Oracle, I'm hoping the balance team can keep tweaking Protoss to not be so dependent on gimmick mineral line killers to be current in the meta.
And last but not least, more Infestor nerfs for Zerg. Why exactly, where they breaking the meta or something? Removing root from Fungal and making it a slow is a fantastic design change that should have been done back in WoL, but it's still a heavy nerf that wasn't compensated with any type of buff. Now on top of that, the radius is smaller, and it cannot be cast while burrowed? Not that I thought that burrow + fungal was very fun or fair so I'm happy with it gone, but there was a REASON that the Infestor was made that way in the first place, and it's because they are absurdly vulnerable.
Idk, it's not going to make Zerg unplayable by any means but this is 3 heavy handed nerfs in a row to the Infestor, at the very least they should buff the damage capabilities of Fungal at this point, the Infestor is still just as squishy and vulnerable as ever so I'm not sure why High Templars get the noob treatment with a attack command so they don't go wandering off despite being very strong units that are a regular in all 3 match ups vs the Infestor which seems to be taking the nerf bat pretty regularly.
Still having lots of fun, I feel like this balance team is on the right track, the game feels better.
And last but not least, more Infestor nerfs for Zerg. Why exactly, where they breaking the meta or something? Removing root from Fungal and making it a slow is a fantastic design change that should have been done back in WoL, but it's still a heavy nerf that wasn't compensated with any type of buff.
They don't want mass infestor styles back in the meta which we were already starting to see at HSC. The Oracle and Raven changes were specifically aimed at preventing massing spellcasters, there's no reason why infestors should be exempt from that rule.
Also, as has already been said, there was compensation, namely a large radius buff from 2.0 to 2.5. The new nerfed radius 2.25 is still larger than pre-4.0.
A 75% snare isn't all that different from a root anyway. You still can't split or kite snared units in any meaningful way, it only affects niche scenarios like fungal-bile or chain-fungalling a clump of air units at the very edge of your range. The 2.5 radius fungal was a net buff overall, which wasn't justified at all.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
another thing to note about zvp is that the lurker is once again quite strong against protoss, the new burrow speed means that once a critical mass of lurkers is reached protoss has little ability to contest the ground and has to switch into air to deal with them. Right now they are only gaining in popularity but I predict that they will become a core part of the meta as zerg figure out how to reach lurkers safely, and what lurker hydra timings you can hit protoss with to punish an air switch.
ByuN just played mech against toss on stream ( and lost to carriers ), but it looked strong in mid game. Cyclone held off oracles and stalkers pretty good.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
another thing to note about zvp is that the lurker is once again quite strong against protoss, the new burrow speed means that once a critical mass of lurkers is reached protoss has little ability to contest the ground and has to switch into air to deal with them. Right now they are only gaining in popularity but I predict that they will become a core part of the meta as zerg figure out how to reach lurkers safely, and what lurker hydra timings you can hit protoss with to punish an air switch.
The hive requirement makes it difficult, but it does make lurkers absolutely insane. It's an upgrade that I expect will be fine right now, but completely broken maybe six months down the line. Slaughters bio too, not that any terrans are going bio.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
another thing to note about zvp is that the lurker is once again quite strong against protoss, the new burrow speed means that once a critical mass of lurkers is reached protoss has little ability to contest the ground and has to switch into air to deal with them. Right now they are only gaining in popularity but I predict that they will become a core part of the meta as zerg figure out how to reach lurkers safely, and what lurker hydra timings you can hit protoss with to punish an air switch.
The hive requirement makes it difficult, but it does make lurkers absolutely insane. It's an upgrade that I expect will be fine right now, but completely broken maybe six months down the line. Slaughters bio too, not that any terrans are going bio.
Tanks murder Lurkers though and anytime Z goes Lurker, T will already have Tanks for the Hydras.
By Hive I would expect T to have Libs anyhow. I doubt Lurkers will be much of a problem for T.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
another thing to note about zvp is that the lurker is once again quite strong against protoss, the new burrow speed means that once a critical mass of lurkers is reached protoss has little ability to contest the ground and has to switch into air to deal with them. Right now they are only gaining in popularity but I predict that they will become a core part of the meta as zerg figure out how to reach lurkers safely, and what lurker hydra timings you can hit protoss with to punish an air switch.
The hive requirement makes it difficult, but it does make lurkers absolutely insane. It's an upgrade that I expect will be fine right now, but completely broken maybe six months down the line. Slaughters bio too, not that any terrans are going bio.
Tanks murder Lurkers though and anytime Z goes Lurker, T will already have Tanks for the Hydras.
By Hive I would expect T to have Libs anyhow. I doubt Lurkers will be much of a problem for T.
Since bio isn't being played I don't have games to base things on, but with the upgrade lurkers burrow in a quarter of the time it takes to siege a tank and move almost as fast as stimmed bio (and faster than banelings). So they might very well have a place in the match-up if bio were viable. Better harassment than banelings, and maybe even better in big engagements.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
another thing to note about zvp is that the lurker is once again quite strong against protoss, the new burrow speed means that once a critical mass of lurkers is reached protoss has little ability to contest the ground and has to switch into air to deal with them. Right now they are only gaining in popularity but I predict that they will become a core part of the meta as zerg figure out how to reach lurkers safely, and what lurker hydra timings you can hit protoss with to punish an air switch.
The hive requirement makes it difficult, but it does make lurkers absolutely insane. It's an upgrade that I expect will be fine right now, but completely broken maybe six months down the line. Slaughters bio too, not that any terrans are going bio.
Tanks murder Lurkers though and anytime Z goes Lurker, T will already have Tanks for the Hydras.
By Hive I would expect T to have Libs anyhow. I doubt Lurkers will be much of a problem for T.
Since bio isn't being played I don't have games to base things on, but with the upgrade lurkers burrow in a quarter of the time it takes to siege a tank and move almost as fast as stimmed bio (and faster than banelings). So they might very well have a place in the match-up if bio were viable. Better harassment than banelings, and maybe even better in big engagements.
Lurkers are formidable, no doubt about that, but are they really better than Ultras? Assuming the Terran goes for bio, investing in Lurkers will delay the standard Ultra transition that usually comes after Hive. Sure they are cheaper than Ultras, but 150/150 is not that much less gas than 300/200.
In any case, the Terran response should still be to build Liberators, and Lurkers don't shoot up.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
another thing to note about zvp is that the lurker is once again quite strong against protoss, the new burrow speed means that once a critical mass of lurkers is reached protoss has little ability to contest the ground and has to switch into air to deal with them. Right now they are only gaining in popularity but I predict that they will become a core part of the meta as zerg figure out how to reach lurkers safely, and what lurker hydra timings you can hit protoss with to punish an air switch.
The hive requirement makes it difficult, but it does make lurkers absolutely insane. It's an upgrade that I expect will be fine right now, but completely broken maybe six months down the line. Slaughters bio too, not that any terrans are going bio.
Tanks murder Lurkers though and anytime Z goes Lurker, T will already have Tanks for the Hydras.
By Hive I would expect T to have Libs anyhow. I doubt Lurkers will be much of a problem for T.
Since bio isn't being played I don't have games to base things on, but with the upgrade lurkers burrow in a quarter of the time it takes to siege a tank and move almost as fast as stimmed bio (and faster than banelings). So they might very well have a place in the match-up if bio were viable. Better harassment than banelings, and maybe even better in big engagements.
Lurkers are formidable, no doubt about that, but are they really better than Ultras? Assuming the Terran goes for bio, investing in Lurkers will delay the standard Ultra transition that usually comes after Hive. Sure they are cheaper than Ultras, but 150/150 is not that much less gas than 300/200.
In any case, the Terran response should still be to build Liberators, and Lurkers don't shoot up.
I'd consider lurkers better than ultras under some, possibly most, circumstances since while they're squishier they're faster, have range, harass better and do so much more damage in large fights, but this is little more than guesswork while bio's trash.
And last but not least, more Infestor nerfs for Zerg. Why exactly, where they breaking the meta or something? Removing root from Fungal and making it a slow is a fantastic design change that should have been done back in WoL, but it's still a heavy nerf that wasn't compensated with any type of buff.
They don't want mass infestor styles back in the meta which we were already starting to see at HSC. The Oracle and Raven changes were specifically aimed at preventing massing spellcasters, there's no reason why infestors should be exempt from that rule.
Also, as has already been said, there was compensation, namely a large radius buff from 2.0 to 2.5. The new nerfed radius 2.25 is still larger than pre-4.0.
A 75% snare isn't all that different from a root anyway. You still can't split or kite snared units in any meaningful way, it only affects niche scenarios like fungal-bile or chain-fungalling a clump of air units at the very edge of your range. The 2.5 radius fungal was a net buff overall, which wasn't justified at all.
I'd only like to add that High Templars are extremely powerful when massed but for the most part these points are pretty fair.
I still think this balance team is moving things in the right direction, they at least seem to have a concrete vision of what they want to do as far as giving Terran more mech options, making Protoss more traditional (no hero units) and weaning them off of oppressive mineral line killers, and giving Zerg more ground holding potential with stronger late game Lurkers.
Though to be honest, the meta has already shifted significantly so I'm not altogether sure what kind of impact these changes will really have. The biggest shift in the meta has been on the Terran end, with mech largely replacing bio against Zerg and even Protoss. Of course, the Oracle and SB nerfs will help restore balance to TvP but I'm curious as to where that MU goes now–the Stalker and chrono buffs make for some devastating timings in the early game. Then again mech in TvP was always weird imo and maybe it was just a temporary coping strategy. The MU was heavily Protoss-favored before the changes, afterwards who knows? Balance team did say they were keeping an eye on Stalkers, Disruptors, and bio, so there's that.
Likewise, mech has similarly taken over TvZ and while a cheaper Ghost is nice and all I doubt that alone will bring bio back when Zerg still has LBH. And while averting BL/Infestor is always a great idea, Infestors aren't used nearly as often against mech as they are against bio. Still expecting lots of Tanks and SH in this MU for the foreseeable future.
If anything these changes might cause the biggest changes in PvZ, with Zerg once again facing its perennial Skytoss problem. On the whole it seems Protoss is in the best spot right now–Colossus deathballs and all. Is it just me or have the Protoss a-move memes started making a comeback? Just like old times.
Mech TvP isn't a real thing (at least so far)-some people have been trying it out of desperation mostly, but nothing that has made mech unviable in the matchup all these years has changed.
Also I think Zerg still has game against skytoss after the infestor nerfs--they're certainly better off than pre-4.0.
Tbh I doubt Zerg will be in trouble even if Skytoss becomes a freewin like the whiners claim. Zerg still has the exact same LBH pushes that were a nightmare for Protoss until they figured out how to do mass Oracle shenanigans–and Oracles have been significantly nerfed since then.
PvT is the most problematic matchup still, even the balance team knows it:
"...areas that we are especially keeping an eye on include things like: Widow Mine usage post nerf, Stalker/Disruptor power vs Terran, overall effectiveness of Terran Bio, timings with the new Chrono Boost, Raven strength and the late game strength of Zerg."
5/6 of those watched things are major factors in PvT. The Oracle was just the tip of the iceberg.
another thing to note about zvp is that the lurker is once again quite strong against protoss, the new burrow speed means that once a critical mass of lurkers is reached protoss has little ability to contest the ground and has to switch into air to deal with them. Right now they are only gaining in popularity but I predict that they will become a core part of the meta as zerg figure out how to reach lurkers safely, and what lurker hydra timings you can hit protoss with to punish an air switch.
The hive requirement makes it difficult, but it does make lurkers absolutely insane. It's an upgrade that I expect will be fine right now, but completely broken maybe six months down the line. Slaughters bio too, not that any terrans are going bio.
Tanks murder Lurkers though and anytime Z goes Lurker, T will already have Tanks for the Hydras.
By Hive I would expect T to have Libs anyhow. I doubt Lurkers will be much of a problem for T.
Since bio isn't being played I don't have games to base things on, but with the upgrade lurkers burrow in a quarter of the time it takes to siege a tank and move almost as fast as stimmed bio (and faster than banelings). So they might very well have a place in the match-up if bio were viable. Better harassment than banelings, and maybe even better in big engagements.
Lurkers are formidable, no doubt about that, but are they really better than Ultras? Assuming the Terran goes for bio, investing in Lurkers will delay the standard Ultra transition that usually comes after Hive. Sure they are cheaper than Ultras, but 150/150 is not that much less gas than 300/200.
In any case, the Terran response should still be to build Liberators, and Lurkers don't shoot up.
I'd consider lurkers better than ultras under some, possibly most, circumstances since while they're squishier they're faster, have range, harass better and do so much more damage in large fights, but this is little more than guesswork while bio's trash.
I suppose you're right, it's might be an issue but that's something that can be addressed if and when bio returns to TvZ. I doubt we'll see.
Though now that I think of it, wouldn't upgraded Lurkers be good against mech too? Since a mech army functions similarly to a Protoss deathball and so forth.
Unlike Colossi, Tanks outrange Lurkers but with their upgrade I could see some potential for Lurker harass to force repeated siege-ups and so forth.
EDIT: I went and checked the numbers. Lurkers take 0.7 seconds to burrow, have a range of 10 and need 1.25 seconds to hit a target at max range. Assuming they unburrow and run as the Tanks siege up, that's another 0.5 seconds plus however long it takes to run out of Tank range (13). Total time is 0.7+1.25+0.5 = 2.45 seconds, plus a maximum of 0.75 seconds of random burrow delay. Tanks need 3 seconds to siege up.
So I'm thinking that even with some fancy micro to get the right range and burrow/unburrow timings, it won't be worth it. Especially because a success would deal 30 damage whereas a failure means eating 70 damage.
Well, I might as well work out the math while I've got the numbers in front of me. An upgraded Lurker has a movement speed of 4.54 off creep and 5.91 on creep. Assuming perfect micro from both players, a Lurker will be ten cells away from a Tank and so needs to cover three cells after unburrowing to be safe. This will take 0.66 seconds off creep and 0.51 seconds on creep. But since we are assuming perfect micro, we must also account for the fact that a Tank has 11 Sight and will see the Lurker one cell before it burrows, so we must add an additional 0.22 or 0.17 seconds depending on creep. Then we must factor in the random burrow delay. Assuming the delay follows a uniform probability distribution, then burrowing adds 0.125 seconds and unburrowing 0.25 seconds on average.
So at the end of the day even on creep, 2.45+0.51+0.17+0.125+0.25 = 3.51, meaning that the poor Lurker is going to get a Tank shot in the ass, upgrades or no.
One thing is for certain, those who whine the most get their changes the fastest.
A perfect comment from reddit, "...oh good, they lowered the cost of the absurd "free cloaked ranged unit that shows up at your base two minutes in" that is the ghost so its even stronger
also this panic nerfing to toss means terran never get to use "let the meta evolve" to justify when they're op as fuck ever again. - pastalegion
Reminds me of when PvT winrate was 40% that one specific period this year and terrans just told me to adjust to liberators ect. ect. but instead I had to wait months for that nerf.
On November 29 2017 07:40 jpg06051992 wrote: The Protoss nerfs are in the right direction, changing Pulsar to damage that armor can mitigate is very smart and some shield battery rushes are becoming kind of cancer. Protoss is already stupidly reliant on oppressive units like the Oracle, I'm hoping the balance team can keep tweaking Protoss to not be so dependent on gimmick mineral line killers to be current in the meta.
And last but not least, more Infestor nerfs for Zerg. Why exactly, where they breaking the meta or something? Removing root from Fungal and making it a slow is a fantastic design change that should have been done back in WoL, but it's still a heavy nerf that wasn't compensated with any type of buff. Now on top of that, the radius is smaller, and it cannot be cast while burrowed? Not that I thought that burrow + fungal was very fun or fair so I'm happy with it gone, but there was a REASON that the Infestor was made that way in the first place, and it's because they are absurdly vulnerable.
Idk, it's not going to make Zerg unplayable by any means but this is 3 heavy handed nerfs in a row to the Infestor, at the very least they should buff the damage capabilities of Fungal at this point, the Infestor is still just as squishy and vulnerable as ever so I'm not sure why High Templars get the noob treatment with a attack command so they don't go wandering off despite being very strong units that are a regular in all 3 match ups vs the Infestor which seems to be taking the nerf bat pretty regularly.
The Oracles' pulsar beam is no longer mitigated by armour. That change got reversed. If you are counting fungal no longer rooting and not being cast while burrowed as changes, then fungal radius should be counted as a buff. Radius when fungal rooted was 2.0. Radius now is 2.25. That is an increase, not a nerf.
On November 29 2017 07:40 jpg06051992 wrote: The Protoss nerfs are in the right direction, changing Pulsar to damage that armor can mitigate is very smart and some shield battery rushes are becoming kind of cancer. Protoss is already stupidly reliant on oppressive units like the Oracle, I'm hoping the balance team can keep tweaking Protoss to not be so dependent on gimmick mineral line killers to be current in the meta.
And last but not least, more Infestor nerfs for Zerg. Why exactly, where they breaking the meta or something? Removing root from Fungal and making it a slow is a fantastic design change that should have been done back in WoL, but it's still a heavy nerf that wasn't compensated with any type of buff. Now on top of that, the radius is smaller, and it cannot be cast while burrowed? Not that I thought that burrow + fungal was very fun or fair so I'm happy with it gone, but there was a REASON that the Infestor was made that way in the first place, and it's because they are absurdly vulnerable.
Idk, it's not going to make Zerg unplayable by any means but this is 3 heavy handed nerfs in a row to the Infestor, at the very least they should buff the damage capabilities of Fungal at this point, the Infestor is still just as squishy and vulnerable as ever so I'm not sure why High Templars get the noob treatment with a attack command so they don't go wandering off despite being very strong units that are a regular in all 3 match ups vs the Infestor which seems to be taking the nerf bat pretty regularly.
The Oracles' pulsar beam is no longer mitigated by armour. That change got reversed. If you are counting fungal no longer rooting and not being cast while burrowed as changes, then fungal radius should be counted as a buff. Radius when fungal rooted was 2.0. Radius now is 2.25. That is an increase, not a nerf.
Had to go back and re read the patch notes on the spell damage, I completely missed that. And I also didn't realize the + 0.25, to be honest there has been so many things changed with the last patch that there are some things that are still hitting me in the game and I'm realizing, "Whoa, totally forgot that ended up being changed to this."
...lol, like the Lurker Den being a separate building xD
On November 29 2017 07:40 jpg06051992 wrote: The Protoss nerfs are in the right direction, changing Pulsar to damage that armor can mitigate is very smart and some shield battery rushes are becoming kind of cancer. Protoss is already stupidly reliant on oppressive units like the Oracle, I'm hoping the balance team can keep tweaking Protoss to not be so dependent on gimmick mineral line killers to be current in the meta.
And last but not least, more Infestor nerfs for Zerg. Why exactly, where they breaking the meta or something? Removing root from Fungal and making it a slow is a fantastic design change that should have been done back in WoL, but it's still a heavy nerf that wasn't compensated with any type of buff. Now on top of that, the radius is smaller, and it cannot be cast while burrowed? Not that I thought that burrow + fungal was very fun or fair so I'm happy with it gone, but there was a REASON that the Infestor was made that way in the first place, and it's because they are absurdly vulnerable.
Idk, it's not going to make Zerg unplayable by any means but this is 3 heavy handed nerfs in a row to the Infestor, at the very least they should buff the damage capabilities of Fungal at this point, the Infestor is still just as squishy and vulnerable as ever so I'm not sure why High Templars get the noob treatment with a attack command so they don't go wandering off despite being very strong units that are a regular in all 3 match ups vs the Infestor which seems to be taking the nerf bat pretty regularly.
The Oracles' pulsar beam is no longer mitigated by armour. That change got reversed. If you are counting fungal no longer rooting and not being cast while burrowed as changes, then fungal radius should be counted as a buff. Radius when fungal rooted was 2.0. Radius now is 2.25. That is an increase, not a nerf.
Had to go back and re read the patch notes on the spell damage, I completely missed that. And I also didn't realize the + 0.25, to be honest there has been so many things changed with the last patch that there are some things that are still hitting me in the game and I'm realizing, "Whoa, totally forgot that ended up being changed to this."
...lol, like the Lurker Den being a separate building xD
I think they made the Lurker Den a separate building to mitigate the effect of getting it sniped. Though it does also mean you can get Muscular Augment at the same time as a Lurker Den if you want to.
On November 29 2017 15:17 youngjiddle wrote: One thing is for certain, those who whine the most get their changes the fastest.
A perfect comment from reddit, "...oh good, they lowered the cost of the absurd "free cloaked ranged unit that shows up at your base two minutes in" that is the ghost so its even stronger
also this panic nerfing to toss means terran never get to use "let the meta evolve" to justify when they're op as fuck ever again. - pastalegion
Reminds me of when PvT winrate was 40% that one specific period this year and terrans just told me to adjust to liberators ect. ect. but instead I had to wait months for that nerf.
Pls link to the pro game where Ghost rush was used. It's not a thing, it's just a troll build.
On November 29 2017 15:17 youngjiddle wrote: One thing is for certain, those who whine the most get their changes the fastest.
A perfect comment from reddit, "...oh good, they lowered the cost of the absurd "free cloaked ranged unit that shows up at your base two minutes in" that is the ghost so its even stronger
also this panic nerfing to toss means terran never get to use "let the meta evolve" to justify when they're op as fuck ever again. - pastalegion
Reminds me of when PvT winrate was 40% that one specific period this year and terrans just told me to adjust to liberators ect. ect. but instead I had to wait months for that nerf.
Pls link to the pro game where Ghost rush was used. It's not a thing, it's just a troll build.
I may be remembering this wrong, but didn't DeMusliM ghost rush Stats at HSC (killed like 9 probes, but still lost)? I'd still call it a really weak build though, since it basically (by DeMusliM's own admission) folds to a shield battery in the mineral line.
Is the Shield Battery really that strong early/mid game? I don't see a +25 mineral cost to be an issue in lategame for Protoss who are usually gas starved.
EPT![[image loading]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CM809rKWoAAiV0C.jpg)
