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Before patch 4.0, the raven was a strong unit because it had 3 varied abilities that served a common purpose: Zoning. The correct response for an opponent facing an auto-turret, PDD or seeker missile was the same: Just leave, the spawned ability will either expire or be out of range. That made the raven the best defensive unit in the game with the siege tank, and the two units had beautiful synergy.
Now the problem was that when a critical mass or ravens was attained, the amount of energy stored by all the ravens no longer meant you could only use it defensively, but you had enough energy to constantly spam the abilities, and the ravens became this crazy flock of unit that you could no longer engage with anything.
So Blizzard did what needed to be done and reworked it. Unfortunately, when they announced the changes I was very disappointed with the new abilities concepts, and they soon proved to be almost useless anyway. The raven isn't a zoning unit anymore: the repair drone is a non-factor in an actual army fight, anti-armor missile damage is too low and the armor debuff is a gimmick, and interference matrix role is niche because it can only disable mechanical or psionic unit and the single target make the energy cost as well as the apm cost too prohibitive (you have to target every important enemy unit compared to throwing a pdd and be safe against most form of damage)
Now if we focus on each of the new ability and try to judge their design regardless of current efficacy:
The repair drone: I actually love the idea. Bio has medivacs for healing during combat, why mech unit wouldn't? Yes, SCVs can repair, but they either do it at home after a fight, or you pull them with your mech army, but you're usually better off sacking them to have more army supply, as we all know workers become dead supply in late game. The repair drone brings another interesting dynamic to ressource management. In late game scenarios, protoss, zerg and terran bio units all have a way to go back to full health with either time or energy: protoss regenerates shields, zergs units slowly gains hp and queen can speed up the process for energy, finally bio units can get healed by medivacs for energy.If you were using mech as a terran before 4.0, you had to spend minerals and gas to repair your units. While it isn't much, in late game scenarios where bases are mining out, it can become a problem. The repair drone fixes that. Now if you buff the repair rate of the drone, you make it functions closer to the old PDD as a zoning tool, while not reaching its bullshit level as enough dps will always negate its repair rate.
The anti-armor missile: So this is the new seeker missile. While a flat damage nerf was necessary, I believe 30 is too low. To make the ability more interesting, Blizzard added the anti-armor effect, which I hate. I don't think a debuff spell has any place in a game like SC2, this isnt WoW or a MOBA. It's confusing, not intuitive at all and it doesn't fit with the raven's role. Ravens always had synergy with mech because of the abilities but also because of the soft lock created by the need for tech labs on starport (too gas intensive for a mineral focused comp like bio). As every mech unit except the cyclone are low attack speed, high damage, the armor reduction is almost meaningless. Marines benefit from it the most, but a marine/raven comp is impossible for the reason I just mentioned. So remove the anti-armor effect. Damage only is too boring? Fine! Make the seeker missile a killable unit Think of it as an automated flying single use widow mine. You could still split or run from it like before, but now you have a new form of counter play. And since seeker missile do friendly splash damage, you could use it to your advantage. Someone massed 15 ravens? Blink 5 stalkers under it when the seeker missile fires and watch 15 ravens commit explosive seppuku. Now that sounds more interesting to me than "this unit has lost 3 armors points, attack it quick before the effect disappear!"
The interference matrix: Right now the ability isn't really an issue because it's mostly not used. Although with the next upcoming buff it could become very powerful, and to me even more bullshit than mass seeker missiles. Yes, mass seeker was OP and annoying to deal with, but you could always disengage or split properly. Interference matrix offers almost no counter play, and that's generally a big no-no in SC2. There is a reason we moved away from anti-micro spells since WoL, it's too easy to abuse and feels incredibly frustrating to play against. Remember the instant cast time, 8 seconds duration 100% slow of WoL fungal? What about the instant cast, giant double time warps that would inevitably appear out of a mothership core during the golden era of hots blink stalkers all-ins and would render any micro basically useless? Or the worst offender of them all, the archon toilet? They were either removed or heavily nerfed because they provoked game ending moments and a lot of the time, there was no way to avoid them. I could be wrong, but I feel this is the kind of ability interference matrix will inevitably become if it starts being viable.
My hope is that regardless if you agree or not on my proposed changes, the thread will spawn meaningful discussion and maybe give Blizzard some ideas on how to reshape the raven, a unit in dire need of a new identity.
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TL;DR Keep the repair drone and buff its healing speed to be meaningful during army fight, but don't turn it into a mobile shield battery. Reintroduce the auto-turret in its new less harass heavy, more defensive oriented state. Get rid of the anti-armor debuff for the missile, buff damage slightly but not to pre 4.0 level, make the missile killable to offer exciting counter play opportunities.
My apology for the less than stellar writing, it's now 5am here.
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I really hate how they put the autoturret back in instead of the repair drone.
I loved the repair drone :-/
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Terran players are fucking mental.
User was temp banned for this post.
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The real problem with the Raven is that it takes valuable Starport time. The opportunity cost of getting a techlab and producing a Raven or two simply doesn't justify it. Medivacs/Liberators/whatever are just more valuable.
I've seen the analogy made a few times and I rather like it: Starport is the Terran robo–always overtaxed.
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On January 24 2018 06:21 pvsnp wrote:
The real problem with the Raven is that it takes valuable Starport time. The opportunity cost of getting a techlab and producing a Raven or two simply doesn't justify it. Medivacs/Liberators/whatever are just more valuable.
I've seen the analogy made a few times and I rather like it: Starport is the Terran robo–always overtaxed.
This is a good point that I briefly mentioned, to expend on that: I am fine with ravens being mostly only viable with mech comps once you have secured the 8 gas necessary for multiple starports. The only exception would be tvt early game, where double raven became the standard defensive play.
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I expected a different OP.
I don't see why an armor de-buff has no place in sc2.
I think the idea is good besides the fact that it's useless right now.
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On January 24 2018 06:17 Ej_ wrote:
Terran players are fucking mental.
their superhuman mechanical skill has psychological side effects, where do you think the psi ops program came from? terran players are irl Ghosts
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I thought it was avilo thread.
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whatever changes are made to the Raven to make it better.... the last thing i want to see is another Air-To-Ground attacker in the Terran arsenal.
i like how they nerfed the Autoturret before bringing it back. this weakens the Raven as an Air-to-Ground attacker.
i strongly prefer the Raven as a flying support unit.
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Could we get around the overloaded starport by allowing ravens to be reactored, balanced against a cost increase + build time nerf? If you consider the extreme example of doubling raven build time, then massability should be similar to status quo but just less mechanically demanding/annoying (don't have to add as many starports/tech labs)...
The overloaded starport is def the issue though, if you compare to e.g. factory, people have no problem tech labbing that and building extra factories to increase tank production
Edit: please don't kill me, I'm aware that there would be violent repercussions but maybe there's a particular tweak of numbers that would be playable
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I want the repair drone to stay in there aswell. I really love that spell and it somehow enables new mech strategies.
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I just want the Raven to function as an observer. For 50/50 cost.
Maybe give it an ability to tag another unit (allied units) as observer status. Sort of inverse of Revelation.
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Came here expecting Avilo, was slightly Disappointed, I'm not sure Ravens will save E-Sports though sir..
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On January 24 2018 06:15 Psychobabas wrote:
I really hate how they put the autoturret back in instead of the repair drone.
I loved the repair drone :-/
yeah the autoturret should have replaced the interference matrix if anything.
then it would still feel like the old raven - it would still drop a turret, fire a missile, and deploy a drone.
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i thought bring back the upgrade to terran bio that increases the healing and increasing the heal of the repair drone could be a good idea.. as it gives bio and extra something late game and mech a little extra late game.. as this new auto turret with 1 range .... i just disagree with as in any all in 200/200 your ravens if casting turret are just going to be dead weight now, i was excited for the auto turret but 1 range.. what why!... beacuse of harass.,... ok.. well prism have ranged pick up... terran and zerg have to deal with that and its only 200 minerals and no gas i sink 200 gas to get that raven harass.. where i get a few drones here and there at max
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Thank you for the post, I've been out of the loop for a while but still interested and hoping they sort this all out in a good way.
You brought up a lot of things I agree with. Many of the points I feel have been missed by most of the community and probably even the designers themselves, and are also things I haven't really been thinking about. For example the matrix locking down ability; it was a huge point/lesson in earlier SC2 years to remove anti-micro abilities like that. Abilities that don't have counter play.
And also you pointing out that the Raven has been a zoning unit and the new abilities aren't like that at all. I didn't feel the anti-armor thing was weird, but now I do. Starcraft never has really had debuffs, just status effects and crowd control. And the armor reduction, while it could help slightly, would be mostly negligible, and Starcraft/Blizzard design has always been about making simple, elegant, significant changes with impact, rather than adding a lot of things that do little. An armor debuff does little to justify its own existence as an effect.
I think the killable seeker missile could be a good idea, too.
The one thing I'm not sure I agree with is the repairing mech ability. I think of it less as whether it makes it fair for mech to be able to heal like other races, and more of a design perspective. Mech units were unique because they can't be healed they have to be repaired. To compensate for them being more fragile in this way, they are generally powerful units. You also have SCVs to repair, which I think is enough.
If they have a mech repair ability, I won't be super bothered by it, but I still feel it's out of place and not the ideal solution.
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Here are something interesting ways to tune the raven's current abilities so that they are actually viable and can compete with Protoss/Zerg casters
1. Auto turrets: Reduce the turret dps to around 12, but make it last longer like 180 seconds. Introduce an upgrade that turns the turret into a flame turret with AOE damage but with 2 less range (interesting tradeoff)
2. Interference Matrix: Raven launches a slow moving missile with AOE disruption (1 unit per second speed). Units within 4 unit radius of the missile cannot attack or use abilities. Missile dissipates after moving for about 15 units
3. Seeker missile: Seeker missile can give units negative armor and and stack up to 3 times. For example, if enemy unit has 1 armor and seeker missile hits it, its armor gets reducted to -2, possibly up to -8 with additional seeker hits. Units with negative armor, instead of taking reduced damage, take increased damage (1 additional damage for every point of negative armor).
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The raven wasn't only about zoning. It also filled other roles that no other terran units could fill. The extremely stupid thing is that blizzard seems to state that the problem with the raven is that you can't harass with the turrets early game anymore, which is the most backwards way to see the raven's role in the game. In fact, the raven roles are :
1) it was the only reliable late game terran anti air, especially when fighting masses of air superiority fighters. With the anti armor missile being way worse than the seeker, everyone can now see how the viking fucking dies to everything.
2) it defended terran armies against some overwhelming threats : the PDD allowed to defend tempest shots (which was the only counterplay to revelation+tempest), help poorly positionned mech armies to retreat, and helped vikings win air to air fights
3) it allowed terran to truly transition to T3. Often terran players get stuck on T2-T2,5 because it's just too dangerous or no worthwhile to go full T3. The raven often was an intermediate step to get there.
Now when we look at the new raven abilities :
- interference matrix : useless spell except againt BCs. Against protoss, you'll just get fedback, it's useless against zerg, but it really hard counters BCs.
- repair drone : it helps terran a lot (especially dealing with parasitic bomb), but it's the worse design idea i've seen in SC2. One of the fundamentals of mech is that you need money to sustain your army. Repair drone actually encourages you to sack more SCVs and turtle more because you can now maintain your troops with energy only. Why keep 2 scvs when you can have a raven that spawns 2 healing drones? It's a strong ability, but the design is terrible.
- anti armor missile : at first i thought it was useless, mainly because against zerg, corruptors can just magic box vikings and your army gets its armor wrecked. But actually, the fact that you can cast 2 of them per raven (and if the patch goes through, with 150 energy only and instantaneously), the anti armor missile seems like a strong option. It lowers corruptor armor, which is a big deal, it can wreck waves of locusts, and has good utility. But in the end it doesn't really do its job (yet).
In summary the raven doesn't do its job anymore. The matrix doesn't help defend mech from overwhelming threats or helps win air fights (except against BC which is irrelevant), the repair drone is a gimmick either to turtle extemely hard or mass thors and BCs to get an unkillable army or prevent parasitic bomb from killing all your stuff (which is its only quality), and the anti armor missile just doesn't do the trick yet.
Now bringing back the auto turret with 1 range only is the wrong move, because not only the raven being able to harass is close to irrelevant, but more free units from casters? Meh. Does it really helps the raven do its job? Not really, 1 range won't help winning air fights without dying. It'll only help prevent masses of corruptors from shoving into your air units. In the end, i fully expect 120 damage parasitic bomb + corruptors to slaughter vikings even harder without the help of the repair drone.
In conclusion : the raven doesn't do its job any more
What to say considering all that? The aim of the raven change was to make it more of a support, less massable caster, that would help other units perform. Now what it means is that the goal was to redistribute power away from the raven towards other units. Funny thing is that without the raven and without proper compensation buffs, the terran units don't do said jobs, especially in the anti air departement.
- vikings dies to parabomb+corruptors without any chance to counter broodlords, and they die to protoss capital ships + storm (or even without storm, carriers and tempests massacre vikings)
- liberators are irrelevant
- thors are good only against broodlords, but since vipers are countering vikings AND thors, you'll just face more vipers. Against protoss, they're terrible against carrier (14 leash range means you'll get kited) and tempests (tempests can stack and kite), while thors get massacred by immortals)
- ghost are much better now, but they don't synergize well with mech and don't help against protoss air much
- the cyclone's AA is less horrible but still doesn't help much
From there, there's two options : either the raven has to do the old raven's job, but differently, either power has to be shifted away from the raven towards other units that would assume these roles. Which means :
=> either you redesign the raven to fill its old jobs
=> either you buff/redesign other units to assume the raven's old jobs
What i'd suggest would be to do an overhaul of terran's mid-late game anti air, while giving the raven some of it's original purpose. For instance :
- redesign the thor's AA to counter enemy capital ships
- make the liberator's AA stronger now that it's AG has been nerfed
- give the viking more health to survive air fights (125 hp is a joke)
- give the cyclone more reliable AA
AND for the raven :
=> make interference matrix able to hit bio units too. Make the ultralisk immune to it through its passive ability, or sack the ability and give the raven some kind of defence matrix that shields a friendly units for a few seconds
=> bring back the PDD instead of the repair drone and have it cost 75 energy
=> increase the damage of the anti armor missile slightly (something like 45 damage), but lower its radius and keep its cost at 100)
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On January 24 2018 17:38 Loccstana wrote:
Here are something interesting ways to tune the raven's current abilities so that they are actually viable and can compete with Protoss/Zerg casters
1. Auto turrets: Reduce the turret dps to around 12, but make it last longer like 180 seconds. Introduce an upgrade that turns the turret into a flame turret with AOE damage but with 2 less range (interesting tradeoff)
As a Zerg this reads: Make it so you either have to pull all of your workers for 2 whole minutes or pull your workers for 10-30 seconds while you throw away army units to destroy it, and Introduce a researchable thing that changes it into something completely different that you can't revert back from that only does well against Lings?
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Seeker
Where dat snitch at?37032 Posts
Thread has been renamed in order to negate any possible attacks to the OP.
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keep the Raven as a support unit. i don't want another terran air unit with a strong air-to-ground attack.
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EPT
