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On October 28 2019 09:20 ThunderJunk wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 09:10 Justinian wrote:On October 27 2019 21:57 Z3nith wrote: I just don't understand why they've decided to nerf Protoss when PvT seems to getting to a decent place now and PvZ is utterly imbalanced. If you look at the statistics for the global finals PvT is at 53% in favour of Protoss while PvZ is 61% in favour of Zerg. For low level players Terran vs Protoss feels very frustrating to play, perhaps even as bad as PvZ is for Protoss. Pros feel the same way as far as I can tell (Maru being the possible exception). Personally as a Terran player I find TvP a lot harder than TvZ, so I'm hoping the nerfs to Zerg are actually targeted to help Protoss (not Terran), so that Protoss can safely be nerfed in PvT without further reducing Protoss viability vs Zerg. I am surprised that people are losing interest in the game because of balance, as it's obvious that Zerg will be nerfed significantly after Blizzcon. A consensus has emerged and there's no way the balance team will ignore that. It's just a shame that the players had to compete at Blizzcon on this patch/map pool. Seems like you got what you want coming though. Vikings that go up to 150 HP will be very very useful. Colossi will be way less easy to defend. And the higher HP means that battles will last longer, which is what the Terran generally wants anyways. Plus, observer movement speed is being drastically reduced, so more Terran sorcery can emerge that we'll need to be able to scout out some other way. Yea, this is a really bad change for TvP, any way you look at it. I don't think they should try to mess with TvP at all for the time being.
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On October 28 2019 06:37 Z3nith wrote: I wonder if one of the ways to make Protoss viable in the late game would be by giving gateway units late-game upgrades. The Blizzard team seem to want to move towards this as evidenced by the adept changes but maybe if they gave a similar upgrade to the stalker which could be locked to say, the dark shrine, which would make it a viable unit in the late game could actually cause some really interesting changes design wise. This is actually something several of us brought up in a previous thread. I'd like to see upgrades that make gateway units themselves more useful in the lategame. For terran and zerg, the core units tend to keep being used throughout the game and remain useful, but that's not really the case with protoss. Zealots are essentially the only unit of the four core gateway units that actively gets used, and only really for suiciding into bases, or being used to absorb damage with the main army. There is stalker use against terran but not so much for sentries or adepts. Against zerg, stalkers, sentries, and adepts aren't all that useful outside of very specific compositions like recent blink/disruptor style. Prior to that stalkers were basically used as panic defense against brood lords, and neither sentries or adepts get made past 8-10 minutes.
I think some of the ideas people threw around in the last thread like a lategame upgrades for zealot movement speed so they can flank, stalker damage, or something to make adepts more useful like a damage boost upgrade would all be cool. Anything to move protoss away from essentially being forced to go for slow deathballs or mass air. Right now lategame protoss harass only really consists of throwing a bunch of zealots at bases either by walking them across the map or via a warp prism. Stalkers are too expensive to use as sacrificial harass units, and unless you have like 16 adepts with glaives, you aren't really ever going to do substantial damage with adepts unless the person messed up badly.
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On October 28 2019 09:20 ThunderJunk wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 09:10 Justinian wrote:On October 27 2019 21:57 Z3nith wrote: I just don't understand why they've decided to nerf Protoss when PvT seems to getting to a decent place now and PvZ is utterly imbalanced. If you look at the statistics for the global finals PvT is at 53% in favour of Protoss while PvZ is 61% in favour of Zerg. For low level players Terran vs Protoss feels very frustrating to play, perhaps even as bad as PvZ is for Protoss. Pros feel the same way as far as I can tell (Maru being the possible exception). Personally as a Terran player I find TvP a lot harder than TvZ, so I'm hoping the nerfs to Zerg are actually targeted to help Protoss (not Terran), so that Protoss can safely be nerfed in PvT without further reducing Protoss viability vs Zerg. I am surprised that people are losing interest in the game because of balance, as it's obvious that Zerg will be nerfed significantly after Blizzcon. A consensus has emerged and there's no way the balance team will ignore that. It's just a shame that the players had to compete at Blizzcon on this patch/map pool. Seems like you got what you want coming though. Vikings that go up to 150 HP will be very very useful. Colossi will be way less easy to defend. And the higher HP means that battles will last longer, which is what the Terran generally wants anyways. Plus, observer movement speed is being drastically reduced, so more Terran sorcery can emerge that we'll need to be able to scout out some other way. I like the observer speed change a lot, as the speed is too forgiving currently in my opinion. They already give permanent, cloaked, F2-friendly vision of a large area, so they should not be so fast. I lose games to them all the time, even when I am looking for them.
I am also glad that Blizzard are looking at helping vs Colossi, but the Viking is problematic in TvT so I am not sure how I feel about that change.
Of course some of our current problems are due to the map pool rather than balance. The current maps are too big. Then in TvP there's the fact that map makers have embraced the blockable reaper jump gimmick which denies Terran scouting information. I'm not sure why these are a thing as there's no skill or interaction involved on either side - once any half-decent player knows where the buildings need to go, they are guaranteed to deny the reaper scout. Meanwhile it's considered obligatory to give Zergs a spot to park an overlord for free vision of the natural on every map.
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On October 28 2019 09:51 Justinian wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 09:20 ThunderJunk wrote:On October 28 2019 09:10 Justinian wrote:On October 27 2019 21:57 Z3nith wrote: I just don't understand why they've decided to nerf Protoss when PvT seems to getting to a decent place now and PvZ is utterly imbalanced. If you look at the statistics for the global finals PvT is at 53% in favour of Protoss while PvZ is 61% in favour of Zerg. For low level players Terran vs Protoss feels very frustrating to play, perhaps even as bad as PvZ is for Protoss. Pros feel the same way as far as I can tell (Maru being the possible exception). Personally as a Terran player I find TvP a lot harder than TvZ, so I'm hoping the nerfs to Zerg are actually targeted to help Protoss (not Terran), so that Protoss can safely be nerfed in PvT without further reducing Protoss viability vs Zerg. I am surprised that people are losing interest in the game because of balance, as it's obvious that Zerg will be nerfed significantly after Blizzcon. A consensus has emerged and there's no way the balance team will ignore that. It's just a shame that the players had to compete at Blizzcon on this patch/map pool. Seems like you got what you want coming though. Vikings that go up to 150 HP will be very very useful. Colossi will be way less easy to defend. And the higher HP means that battles will last longer, which is what the Terran generally wants anyways. Plus, observer movement speed is being drastically reduced, so more Terran sorcery can emerge that we'll need to be able to scout out some other way. I like the observer speed change a lot, as the speed is too forgiving currently in my opinion. They already give permanent, cloaked, F2-friendly vision of a large area, so they should not be so fast. I lose games to them all the time, even when I am looking for them. I am also glad that Blizzard are looking at helping vs Colossi, but the Viking is problematic in TvT so I am not sure how I feel about that change. Of course some of our current problems are due to the map pool rather than balance. The current maps are too big. Then in TvP there's the fact that map makers have embraced the blockable reaper jump gimmick which denies Terran scouting information. I'm not sure why these are a thing as there's no skill or interaction involved on either side - once any half-decent player knows where the buildings need to go, they are guaranteed to deny the reaper scout. Meanwhile it's considered obligatory to give Zergs a spot to park an overlord for free vision of the natural on every map.
Yes. I say bring back Metalopolis, Desert Oasis, and other cool maps from history. It's a shame that balance has been forced on such large maps all the time. Let's get more strategic variation in the map pool please.
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I checked the TvZ, ZvP and PvT winrates using liquipedia for WCS Global finals, GSL, IEM WC, ASUS ROG, GSL vs the World and Super tournaments (felt like WCS and WESG would've taken me too much time so I omitted those). I probably made some mistakes here and there because I added everything up in my head and it is probably possible that I got the races mixed up every now then when recording the matchup (most likely my most common error). Also, I guess just to make my process more transparent, I used the matchup statistics given in the GSL Code S and the rest I manually counted. Anyway, I hope i didn't make too many mistakes and that someone who has good grasp of technology could check if the numbers are okay. All said, the records I found were as follows:
By Matchup TvZ: 109-126 ZvP: 163-151 PvT: 150-115
By Race Z: 289-260 T: 224-276 P: 301-278
I don't really know when people started saying zerg was imba but if we just look at GSL Season 2 and 3, Super Tournament 2, ASUS ROG and WCS Global finals so far then the records are:
By Matchup TvZ: 60-79 ZvP: 103-94 PvT: 90-65
By Race Z: 182-154 T: 125-169 P: 184-168
Hope this post contributes to balance discussion.
Edit: lol realized I messed up and counted Dark vs TY as a 4-0 for Terran so I fixed the numbers for now.
Edit 2: Since the data is not exactly accurate, I would only take away that it does look like Zerg and Protoss have been strong this year while Terran has been weakest.
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On October 28 2019 10:46 Anc13nt wrote: I checked the TvZ, ZvP and PvT winrates using liquipedia for WCS Global finals, GSL, IEM WC, ASUS ROG, GSL vs the World and Super tournaments (felt like WCS and WESG would've taken me too much time so I omitted those). I probably made some mistakes here and there because I added everything up in my head but the records I found were as follows:
By Matchup TvZ: 113-122 (48.1%) ZvP: 163-151 (51.9%) PvT: 150-115 (56.6%)
By Race Z: 285-264 (51.9%) T: 228-272 (45.6%) P: 301-278 (52.0%)
I don't really know when people started saying zerg was imba but if we just look at GSL Season 2 and 3, Super Tournament 2, ASUS ROG and WCS Global finals so far then the records are:
By Matchup TvZ: 64-75 (46.0%) ZvP: 103-94 (52.3%) PvT: 90-65 (58.1%)
By Race Z: 178-158 (53.0%) T: 129-165 (43.9%) P: 184-168 (52.3%)
Hope this post contributes to balance discussion.
how about the data of present patch? prism nerfed and overlord buffed
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On October 28 2019 10:50 emperorofwild wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 10:46 Anc13nt wrote: I checked the TvZ, ZvP and PvT winrates using liquipedia for WCS Global finals, GSL, IEM WC, ASUS ROG, GSL vs the World and Super tournaments (felt like WCS and WESG would've taken me too much time so I omitted those). I probably made some mistakes here and there because I added everything up in my head but the records I found were as follows:
By Matchup TvZ: 113-122 (48.1%) ZvP: 163-151 (51.9%) PvT: 150-115 (56.6%)
By Race Z: 285-264 (51.9%) T: 228-272 (45.6%) P: 301-278 (52.0%)
I don't really know when people started saying zerg was imba but if we just look at GSL Season 2 and 3, Super Tournament 2, ASUS ROG and WCS Global finals so far then the records are:
By Matchup TvZ: 64-75 (46.0%) ZvP: 103-94 (52.3%) PvT: 90-65 (58.1%)
By Race Z: 178-158 (53.0%) T: 129-165 (43.9%) P: 184-168 (52.3%)
Hope this post contributes to balance discussion. how about the data of present patch? prism nerfed and overlord buffed
good idea. I checked and the patch was August 16-17 but I don't know when it was implemented in tournaments. If someone could let me know that'd be great. Certainly, I'd have to omit GSL Season 2 and ASUS ROG but I'm not sure about GSL Season 3 as the patch happened in the middle of the tournament.
If we just look at WCS Global finals and Super Tournament 2 then
TvZ: 8-19 ZvP: 28-22 PvT: 13-13
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On October 28 2019 08:32 ThunderJunk wrote: You know, I remember a time when Lategame PvZ was unplayable for the Z!
The oft-mentioned Fist of Neeb was literally unstoppable. We had carriers that made all other units in the game obsolete.
Let's not forget that there was a very long period of time in which Zerg had to Hydra bust on the 4th every game.
I'm a Protoss player, and yes it has been a miserable year... but things are gonna be improved with the next patch. Literally every patch has been an improvement to get us to the point where we are now: An ever improving RTS game.
If by "improved" you mean "Protoss are dead" then yes I agree.
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Northern Ireland23763 Posts
Blizzard really need to stop buffing units to make them get used and look at where gaps are in race’s options and fill them that way.
Lurkers are good units, at least in ZvZ and ZvP, they don’t get made because Infestors and Broods are just way better.
Now they’re contemplating giving Zerg 10 range lurkers via an upgrade, cutting research times etc. Which is fine if you’re significantly nerfing other things, which they’re not really doing, so Zerg get a buffed unit (ok unupgraded range is less), because it’s ‘not used enough’, which is because the other stuff they already had that isn’t hugely being nerfed is OP to begin with.
Ok they’re not ‘OP’ or anything now but teleporting BCs in an attempt to force them to be viable just makes for a silly gimmicky unit, you don’t have to have every single unit be frequently used for the game to be rich and vibrant.
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18 pages on this topic (here) and millions of posts on reddit.. this is why SC2 has never been a balanced game. Blizzard caters too much to the public's opinion. Balance the game around the highest level of play and get feedback from the most knowledgeable (keyword here) progamers.
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On October 28 2019 09:51 Justinian wrote: I like the observer speed change a lot, as the speed is too forgiving currently in my opinion. They already give permanent, cloaked, F2-friendly vision of a large area, so they should not be so fast. I lose games to them all the time, even when I am looking for them.
No offense, but the game isn't and shouldn't be balanced around you (or me) unless youre GM or something.
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On October 28 2019 11:57 Wombat_NI wrote: Blizzard really need to stop buffing units to make them get used and look at where gaps are in race’s options and fill them that way.
Lurkers are good units, at least in ZvZ and ZvP, they don’t get made because Infestors and Broods are just way better.
Now they’re contemplating giving Zerg 10 range lurkers via an upgrade, cutting research times etc. Which is fine if you’re significantly nerfing other things, which they’re not really doing, so Zerg get a buffed unit (ok unupgraded range is less), because it’s ‘not used enough’, which is because the other stuff they already had that isn’t hugely being nerfed is OP to begin with.
Ok they’re not ‘OP’ or anything now but teleporting BCs in an attempt to force them to be viable just makes for a silly gimmicky unit, you don’t have to have every single unit be frequently used for the game to be rich and vibrant.
Regarding the Lurker buff - they are actually heavily nerfing the Infestor and BL.
I was watching Wardi's balance patch tournament in which it was all Pros taking part. In the games I saw, the traditional Zerg lategame (BL, infestor, corruptor) was getting absolutely stomped by the Protoss lategame. at like 30 minutes in, the units lost tab showed 40 infestors dead vs 4 carriers dead....insane.
The infested Terran nerf is huge. They are far less potent in direct engagement since they do not flood the ground space anymore and, despite having more dps per energy, still die to a single storm/liberator hit. It is FAR easier to control them now. The BL and Neural range nerfs are massive too. lower range neural makes the infestors insanely exposed. Brood lords can no longer zone HTs out/pick them off easy meaning storm is spammed non stop. Time Warp on Brood Lords is insane as now it basically means they are instakilled, since protoss army has greater range and can just move backwards and kill the already slow brood lords. I even saw mana's flux vane void rays, which were roaming around the golden armada deathball and zoning out any corruptors trying to get a good angle on carriers.
I think 10 range lurkers might be able to help in a lot of this, especially zoning out high templar.
After watching that balance patch tournament I think the infested terran nerf might be way too much. IDK how they are supposed to stand up to mass Terran range/Protoss AOE
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On October 28 2019 14:28 TT1 wrote: 18 pages on this topic (here) and millions of posts on reddit.. this is why SC2 has never been a balanced game. Blizzard caters too much to the public's opinion. Balance the game around the highest level of play and get feedback from the most knowledgeable (keyword here) progamers. The game can't be balance becausethe game is built on bad base(again forgot what's the right term). Queen is the biggest bandaind in history of SC2 and it's still in the game. Macro-vision-speed_boost-anti_air-anti_ground_healer OMG uber unit that has to do it all. And on top of that it doesn't cost larvae. How can you build a solid balanced game when every Zerg related issue was - just change the queen?
OK, I'm taking it slightly too far, but seriously?
Also progamers? Progamers has their interest for their race to be the most OP as then they can focus on 1 MU and win it all. Progamers are biased the same way viewers are or bronze league players are. Also the funny thing is that being progamers doesn't mean they have the knowledge. Almost all the bugs have been reported by SOMEBODY ELSE THAN A PROGAMER. One would think they out of all the people would notice units behaving wrong way, but nope. Artosis is seen as one of the most knowledgable person in the public sphere... and he didn't either  (I'm not bashing on progamers, just saying being good at something doesn't mean they have the best knowledge in the game, in the end the game is balanced by team who is not progaming )
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On October 28 2019 18:48 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 11:57 Wombat_NI wrote: Blizzard really need to stop buffing units to make them get used and look at where gaps are in race’s options and fill them that way.
Lurkers are good units, at least in ZvZ and ZvP, they don’t get made because Infestors and Broods are just way better.
Now they’re contemplating giving Zerg 10 range lurkers via an upgrade, cutting research times etc. Which is fine if you’re significantly nerfing other things, which they’re not really doing, so Zerg get a buffed unit (ok unupgraded range is less), because it’s ‘not used enough’, which is because the other stuff they already had that isn’t hugely being nerfed is OP to begin with.
Ok they’re not ‘OP’ or anything now but teleporting BCs in an attempt to force them to be viable just makes for a silly gimmicky unit, you don’t have to have every single unit be frequently used for the game to be rich and vibrant. Regarding the Lurker buff - they are actually heavily nerfing the Infestor and BL. I was watching Wardi's balance patch tournament in which it was all Pros taking part. In the games I saw, the traditional Zerg lategame (BL, infestor, corruptor) was getting absolutely stomped by the Protoss lategame. at like 30 minutes in, the units lost tab showed 40 infestors dead vs 4 carriers dead....insane. The infested Terran nerf is huge. They are far less potent in direct engagement since they do not flood the ground space anymore and, despite having more dps per energy, still die to a single storm/liberator hit. It is FAR easier to control them now. The BL and Neural range nerfs are massive too. lower range neural makes the infestors insanely exposed. Brood lords can no longer zone HTs out/pick them off easy meaning storm is spammed non stop. Time Warp on Brood Lords is insane as now it basically means they are instakilled, since protoss army has greater range and can just move backwards and kill the already slow brood lords. I even saw mana's flux vane void rays, which were roaming around the golden armada deathball and zoning out any corruptors trying to get a good angle on carriers. I think 10 range lurkers might be able to help in a lot of this, especially zoning out high templar. After watching that balance patch tournament I think the infested terran nerf might be way too much. IDK how they are supposed to stand up to mass Terran range/Protoss AOE HAHAHA Looks like my predictions were correct. Zerg indeed do take the nerf bat in the face, while dumbasses on TL arrogantly scoffed that zerg is getting buffed again. Look back on a couple of my posts in this thread, and you see how every one of my predictions were proven correct. -1 range on neural is big. BL range reduction/correction is big. The IT nerf is the biggest of all. Meanwhile, beefed up vikings and speed VRs laugh at zerg.
It seems Blizzard's balance team can't help themselves from swinging the pendulum too far in any one direction.
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Northern Ireland23763 Posts
On October 28 2019 18:48 BerserkSword wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 11:57 Wombat_NI wrote: Blizzard really need to stop buffing units to make them get used and look at where gaps are in race’s options and fill them that way.
Lurkers are good units, at least in ZvZ and ZvP, they don’t get made because Infestors and Broods are just way better.
Now they’re contemplating giving Zerg 10 range lurkers via an upgrade, cutting research times etc. Which is fine if you’re significantly nerfing other things, which they’re not really doing, so Zerg get a buffed unit (ok unupgraded range is less), because it’s ‘not used enough’, which is because the other stuff they already had that isn’t hugely being nerfed is OP to begin with.
Ok they’re not ‘OP’ or anything now but teleporting BCs in an attempt to force them to be viable just makes for a silly gimmicky unit, you don’t have to have every single unit be frequently used for the game to be rich and vibrant. Regarding the Lurker buff - they are actually heavily nerfing the Infestor and BL. I was watching Wardi's balance patch tournament in which it was all Pros taking part. In the games I saw, the traditional Zerg lategame (BL, infestor, corruptor) was getting absolutely stomped by the Protoss lategame. at like 30 minutes in, the units lost tab showed 40 infestors dead vs 4 carriers dead....insane. The infested Terran nerf is huge. They are far less potent in direct engagement since they do not flood the ground space anymore and, despite having more dps per energy, still die to a single storm/liberator hit. It is FAR easier to control them now. The BL and Neural range nerfs are massive too. lower range neural makes the infestors insanely exposed. Brood lords can no longer zone HTs out/pick them off easy meaning storm is spammed non stop. Time Warp on Brood Lords is insane as now it basically means they are instakilled, since protoss army has greater range and can just move backwards and kill the already slow brood lords. I even saw mana's flux vane void rays, which were roaming around the golden armada deathball and zoning out any corruptors trying to get a good angle on carriers. I think 10 range lurkers might be able to help in a lot of this, especially zoning out high templar. After watching that balance patch tournament I think the infested terran nerf might be way too much. IDK how they are supposed to stand up to mass Terran range/Protoss AOE Interesting, I really hope we don’t just swap one difficult to kill lategame comp for another one.
Were the Zergs trying new things on the patch build or were they just playing their usual styles with the changes anyway?
It’ll take a while to settle, there are so many moving parts in terms of unit interactions, especially with a few ranges being changed recently. As things stand Zerg are happy to sit back if they see Protoss going for their fleet because they know they can kill it relatively easily. If they can no longer have that guarantee it may see them approach the game differently in that phase, plus force a response to their response from the Protoss.
Does sound promising anyway I’ll have to check the VoDs. Instinctively feel that the Brood range bug fix is probably the biggest factor of individual changes, if you look at how far top players get them from harms way on the current patch.
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On October 28 2019 14:28 TT1 wrote: 18 pages on this topic (here) and millions of posts on reddit.. this is why SC2 has never been a balanced game. Blizzard caters too much to the public's opinion. Balance the game around the highest level of play and get feedback from the most knowledgeable (keyword here) progamers. Never been a balanced game huh? Sc2 for the most part was always pretty balanced, way more so than other games in the rts genre with a comparable amount of playable factions
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On October 28 2019 22:13 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 14:28 TT1 wrote: 18 pages on this topic (here) and millions of posts on reddit.. this is why SC2 has never been a balanced game. Blizzard caters too much to the public's opinion. Balance the game around the highest level of play and get feedback from the most knowledgeable (keyword here) progamers. Never been a balanced game huh? Sc2 for the most part was always pretty balanced, way more so than other games in the rts genre with a comparable amount of playable factions
Also the imbalances are small and only affects the top 50 or so players. For 99.9% of the playerbase the game is balanced or very close to balanced.
Basically if you are below high GM just playing just a few percent better will have a larger impact than any imbalance.
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On October 28 2019 22:39 MockHamill wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 22:13 The_Red_Viper wrote:On October 28 2019 14:28 TT1 wrote: 18 pages on this topic (here) and millions of posts on reddit.. this is why SC2 has never been a balanced game. Blizzard caters too much to the public's opinion. Balance the game around the highest level of play and get feedback from the most knowledgeable (keyword here) progamers. Never been a balanced game huh? Sc2 for the most part was always pretty balanced, way more so than other games in the rts genre with a comparable amount of playable factions Also the imbalances are small and only affects the top 50 or so players. For 99.9% of the playerbase the game is balanced or very close to balanced. Basically if you are below high GM just playing just a few percent better will have a larger impact than any imbalance. What motivation is there to get better when you know whether you are GM or platinum league, you're going to be playing against infestors, broodlords, and mass static for 40 minutes in many of your games? It's not fun to play against no matter what level you are. I just watched Harstem lose a PvZ on Thunderbird where he mined an entire extra base of resources, and killed nearly all of the zerg's bases, but couldn't end the game because the zerg camped out one base with mass infestors, broodlords, corruptors, vipers and static defense. It took over a half hour to finish the game off and ended with him losing despite having an economic advantage for 10 minutes and harassing his opponent's bases nonstop. Seeing games like that certainly does not make me want to push to get better at the game.
If a game isn't fun to play, then whether it is balanced or not becomes entirely secondary. It'd be no different if it were turtle mech or mass protoss air that were too strong. In all three cases it'd be not fun to play against. This last four or five months of the state of the zerg is the first thing since I've come back two years ago that has actually reminded me of WoL infestor/broodlord or HOTS swarmhost turtling. If these issues aren't dealt with completely and in a thorough way, it could materially harm the prospects of a game that is already in a weakened state. That's why so many people, including longtime community members as we've seen above, are voicing their concerns. Highly passive styles becoming dominant seem to coincide with drops in popularity of the game, and that's the trajectory we are on unless things are corrected quickly.
In HOTS during the swarmhost era, there was a lot of "just play better" sentiment put out at first to people complaining about how horrible swarmhosts were to play against. That sentiment, combined with slow moves from Blizzard to deal with the issue, caused people to opt to look elsewhere and do other things than play SC2. We want to avoid that type of thing happening again.
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On October 28 2019 22:13 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2019 18:48 BerserkSword wrote:On October 28 2019 11:57 Wombat_NI wrote: Blizzard really need to stop buffing units to make them get used and look at where gaps are in race’s options and fill them that way.
Lurkers are good units, at least in ZvZ and ZvP, they don’t get made because Infestors and Broods are just way better.
Now they’re contemplating giving Zerg 10 range lurkers via an upgrade, cutting research times etc. Which is fine if you’re significantly nerfing other things, which they’re not really doing, so Zerg get a buffed unit (ok unupgraded range is less), because it’s ‘not used enough’, which is because the other stuff they already had that isn’t hugely being nerfed is OP to begin with.
Ok they’re not ‘OP’ or anything now but teleporting BCs in an attempt to force them to be viable just makes for a silly gimmicky unit, you don’t have to have every single unit be frequently used for the game to be rich and vibrant. Regarding the Lurker buff - they are actually heavily nerfing the Infestor and BL. I was watching Wardi's balance patch tournament in which it was all Pros taking part. In the games I saw, the traditional Zerg lategame (BL, infestor, corruptor) was getting absolutely stomped by the Protoss lategame. at like 30 minutes in, the units lost tab showed 40 infestors dead vs 4 carriers dead....insane. The infested Terran nerf is huge. They are far less potent in direct engagement since they do not flood the ground space anymore and, despite having more dps per energy, still die to a single storm/liberator hit. It is FAR easier to control them now. The BL and Neural range nerfs are massive too. lower range neural makes the infestors insanely exposed. Brood lords can no longer zone HTs out/pick them off easy meaning storm is spammed non stop. Time Warp on Brood Lords is insane as now it basically means they are instakilled, since protoss army has greater range and can just move backwards and kill the already slow brood lords. I even saw mana's flux vane void rays, which were roaming around the golden armada deathball and zoning out any corruptors trying to get a good angle on carriers. I think 10 range lurkers might be able to help in a lot of this, especially zoning out high templar. After watching that balance patch tournament I think the infested terran nerf might be way too much. IDK how they are supposed to stand up to mass Terran range/Protoss AOE Interesting, I really hope we don’t just swap one difficult to kill lategame comp for another one. Were the Zergs trying new things on the patch build or were they just playing their usual styles with the changes anyway? It’ll take a while to settle, there are so many moving parts in terms of unit interactions, especially with a few ranges being changed recently. As things stand Zerg are happy to sit back if they see Protoss going for their fleet because they know they can kill it relatively easily. If they can no longer have that guarantee it may see them approach the game differently in that phase, plus force a response to their response from the Protoss. Does sound promising anyway I’ll have to check the VoDs. Instinctively feel that the Brood range bug fix is probably the biggest factor of individual changes, if you look at how far top players get them from harms way on the current patch.
It was both.
I do remember one game where one of the Zerg players went hydra + seismic spine lurkers before Protoss could get capital ships. Long story short, groundtoss got completely EVISCERATED by 10 range lurkers + hydra support
Things are going to be interesting.
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i really hope the nydus change goes through. i would have liked to see it implemented before this tournament, really. i haven't played an sc2 game in a very long time so i'd like to think i am not biased. it seems very clear to me z>p>t>nothing in this meta and not many answers have shown up at the highest levels and it's just the same old song and dance each game. it might be maps but i think above and beyond maps the mentioned formula holds true.
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