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I think that Queens probably do need some adjustment. The issue isn't that Zerg are getting their 3rd at 3 minutes or slightly before. It's that the 3rd facilitates mass Queen production super early.
You can't touch Queen AA range because BC openers are a very strong opener still. Not overpowered but they could easily become overpowered if Queens lose their AA range and instead have to build multiple Spores per base.
You can't really mess with their health, supply or cost either...even a -1 armor nerf could be bad news. You know what could be done though? Giving Queens an Armored or Light tag. This way, when a Zerg player opens super greedy and tries to defend their greed with pure Queens, there's counter play. Because right now, there is no punishing Zerg greed, assuming they play well.
So if it was up to me I'd start with changing Queens to Armored or Light, if that's not enough, then increase the energy cost of Transfuse so if you do mass Queens, you have less Transfuses available to keep them alive through things they have no business surviving through with no impact to the macro mechanic of Inject Larva.
Currently, the Queen is basically the Zerg MSC, a gigantic bandaid that causes a lot of issues by snowballing early game into mid game faster than normal.
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Thank you again for the positive and constructive feedback. I'll reply to just one post to answer the negative.
On January 11 2020 01:37 Executer08 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 14:41 RoninKenshin wrote: I'm just talking about very minor changes that would make Zerg do a teeny tiny bit more to scout you're actually delusional if you think these are "very minor changes"
On January 11 2020 01:37 Executer08 wrote:Show nested quote +I just think free scouting until their P or T opponent has high ground vision is too much free scouting of the natural wall off until P or T has high ground vision is too much? wat?
How can you claim the changes are not minor, and then at the same time claim that the Overlord ONLY provides free scouting of the natural wall-off until high ground vision? It's either one or the other. If you truly believe that it's only to look at the wall off and no other information is gained, then cutting out the perch for the Overlord in the natural is an easy decision.
On January 11 2020 01:37 Executer08 wrote:with an upgrade that completes way past the initial scouting phase. how is this any relevant!?
Ling speed is currently delayed way beyond the phase that it was researched in WoL and HotS (not the timing obviously, but the phase). That decision is made blindly because of the Overlord's ability to perch. I believe Zerg too should put in the effort to send a drone out and collect proper information during this "initial scouting phase".
On January 11 2020 01:37 Executer08 wrote:Show nested quote +You see a lot more active scouting in ZvZ, why not have that same requirement in ZvP and ZvT as well? you see that in zvz because walloffs dont exist (until a way later point in the game than in the other MUs) and you can actually scout with lings. your proposed changes dont address that, they only weaken the one reliable scouting option zerg has in zvp and zvt.
Wall-offs or Queen/other unit blocking exist, and in high level ZvZ it's actually quite a feat to slip a ling into the main during the early mid phase when it matters. My source is most pro matches.
Now perhaps it's my fault that the negative reaction is so large for making a list of possible changes when I mean to choose only 2 from the list. If you take away the perch and make the Queen Armored, will that dramatically alter Zerg win rates?
Also, the timing window when this is relevant is a couple minutes, not the entire duration of the game. I am not trying to break the game. I'm just trying to make the early-mid game ever so slightly more fair.
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I don't understand the point of those changes. Zergs don't build queens because they're a potent unit, they build them because they're a safe unit suitable against any openings from the opponent. Zergs rather build the minimum amount of queens to stay safe, then build other units such as Lings/Ravagers or transition to Lair, which would give them offensive power.
If you nerf queens and/or scouting, Zergs would just end up building more queens to stay safe against those openings, resulting in an even more stagnant early-game because extra resources will be spent on queens rather than units that can attack.
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Canada8767 Posts
On January 11 2020 07:09 INWRifle wrote: I don't understand the point of those changes. Zergs don't build queens because they're a potent unit, they build them because they're a safe unit suitable against any openings from the opponent. Zergs rather build the minimum amount of queens to stay safe, then build other units such as Lings/Ravagers or transition to Lair, which would give them offensive power.
If you nerf queens and/or scouting, Zergs would just end up building more queens to stay safe against those openings, resulting in an even more stagnant early-game because extra resources will be spent on queens rather than units that can attack.
Well it's kind of the point, if queens are worst, then you probably need to make others more expensive attacking units like zerglins to stay safe, but building those also put the zerg in a position where they need to make something out of these units. It's not like you can all of the sudden have 2 extra queens in your build just because they are weaker.
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There's just too many bad ideas here to parse through. Give light to queen? Really? As if hellions don't already wreck zerg enough, you need zerg to be completely eviscerated unless they build a ridiculous early roach warren and roaches that would massively stagnate zerg economy? Stop it. Leave the work of changing any aspect of the game to people that actually understand the game at a deep level. Would much rather get some ideas from artosis or neeb about balance than some randos who think they understand the game.
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On January 11 2020 07:58 tigon_ridge wrote: There's just too many bad ideas here to parse through. Give light to queen? Really? As if hellions don't already wreck zerg enough, you need zerg to be completely eviscerated unless they build a ridiculous early roach warren and roaches that would massively stagnate zerg economy? Stop it. Leave the work of changing any aspect of the game to people that actually understand the game at a deep level. Would much rather get some ideas from artosis or neeb about balance than some randos who think they understand the game.
I don't think anyone is qualified to be making changes to sc2 currently...
The balance team is messing up right now, that's not even debatable, they even had to revert one change because it was blatantly bad (Adept) while others are cropping up to be problematic (11 range HIP Thors vs nerfed Tempests and Broodlords comes to mind).
That's why you have balance threads popping up, because they aren't taking action and when action is taken, it's usually against things which aren't balance issues, such as the Observer (they even called it frustration) and Charge being nerfed (yes it was a nerf, they lost 33% of their damage which means they have to tank more attacks since they kill things slower).
Not that I'm insulting the balance team...but I don't understand how they went from making fantastic changes that everyone universally loved to nerfing stuff because of "frustration"...something doesn't add up.
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Northern Ireland20726 Posts
On January 11 2020 09:30 BabelFish1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 07:58 tigon_ridge wrote: There's just too many bad ideas here to parse through. Give light to queen? Really? As if hellions don't already wreck zerg enough, you need zerg to be completely eviscerated unless they build a ridiculous early roach warren and roaches that would massively stagnate zerg economy? Stop it. Leave the work of changing any aspect of the game to people that actually understand the game at a deep level. Would much rather get some ideas from artosis or neeb about balance than some randos who think they understand the game. I don't think anyone is qualified to be making changes to sc2 currently... The balance team is messing up right now, that's not even debatable, they even had to revert one change because it was blatantly bad (Adept) while others are cropping up to be problematic (11 range HIP Thors vs nerfed Tempests and Broodlords comes to mind). That's why you have balance threads popping up, because they aren't taking action and when action is taken, it's usually against things which aren't balance issues, such as the Observer (they even called it frustration) and Charge being nerfed (yes it was a nerf, they lost 33% of their damage which means they have to tank more attacks since they kill things slower). Not that I'm insulting the balance team...but I don't understand how they went from making fantastic changes that everyone universally loved to nerfing stuff because of "frustration"...something doesn't add up. Observer change was bad, just because it seemed to be nerfing that wasn’t an issue at all.
Rest are interesting and worth seeing how they play out. Adept change didn’t work as intended so they reverted it before it went live, which is fine by me.
Charge change I like, it’s a nerf to A-moving Zealots yeah but they’re speedier and more effective at sharking around the map, retreating etc so they fill other holes for Protoss a bit better.
Nobody has an unbiased view on balance, and even the best pros have completely ridiculous ideas, and some complete scrubs might have great ideas.
My personal bias is wanting Protoss to be mechanically harder, but with a higher ceiling if you’re mechanically solid, been that way since WoL. Hence why I like the charge change as I think it opens some possibilities up to good players. I’d love chronoboost to be a bit better but more punishing if you’re sloppy, a bit like inject works.
But as I said, biases. It’s pretty fun, though hard to micro all of Terrans microable units. There’s a certain satisfaction to nailing injecting and spreading your creep as a Zerg, Protoss just isn’t as fulfilling to play in a purely mechanical sense to me. Which is annoying as I much prefer them aesthetically, played them in Brood War etc
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On January 11 2020 07:32 Nakajin wrote: Well it's kind of the point, if queens are worst, then you probably need to make others more expensive attacking units like zerglins to stay safe, but building those also put the zerg in a position where they need to make something out of these units. It's not like you can all of the sudden have 2 extra queens in your build just because they are weaker.
Zerg does have to get more queens if they are weaker, because queens are the only early-game unit zerg has that can hit air. Battlecruiser and Stargate openings are common, and especially if scouting is nerfed they'll have to compensate by building more queens. They'll just have to slow down their build by thirty seconds to a minute to get more queens.
Also, attempting any kind of early-game pressure with zerglings/roaches on hatchery tech almost always fails, unless you do an all-in.
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On January 11 2020 14:38 INWRifle wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 07:32 Nakajin wrote: Well it's kind of the point, if queens are worst, then you probably need to make others more expensive attacking units like zerglins to stay safe, but building those also put the zerg in a position where they need to make something out of these units. It's not like you can all of the sudden have 2 extra queens in your build just because they are weaker. Zerg does have to get more queens if they are weaker, because queens are the only early-game unit zerg has that can hit air. Battlecruiser and Stargate openings are common, and especially if scouting is nerfed they'll have to compensate by building more queens. They'll just have to slow down their build by thirty seconds to a minute to get more queens. Also, attempting any kind of early-game pressure with zerglings/roaches on hatchery tech almost always fails, unless you do an all-in.
Pretty much. Just nerfing queens won't solve the problem if you don't let other units fill up the gaps after. Zerg would be very vulnerable to air units if no other early anti-air unit is introduced, and reaper/hellion builds would demolish zerg as well.
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I do get bored with all maps sharing the same features, so I wouldn't mind a map in the pool that doesn't have an OV post at the natural entrance.
That said, it's not obvious to me that zerg requires additional nerfing at the moment. It's too soon to say that after they've already been nerfed recently.
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On January 11 2020 07:58 tigon_ridge wrote: There's just too many bad ideas here to parse through. Give light to queen? Really? As if hellions don't already wreck zerg enough, you need zerg to be completely eviscerated unless they build a ridiculous early roach warren and roaches that would massively stagnate zerg economy? Stop it. Leave the work of changing any aspect of the game to people that actually understand the game at a deep level. Would much rather get some ideas from artosis or neeb about balance than some randos who think they understand the game.
I would be interested in what giving queens an armored tag would do. It would at least make them a bit less of an all around unit since they take bonus damage from marauders stalkers and immortals. These units either come late enough or cost enough to get fast that it’s not a huge nerf and mainly helps players fighting 14+ Queens have some way to kill them in mid game and nerfs queens in nydus and proxy hatch aggression. Giving them a light tag would be insane I think it would make opening roach warren in zvt mandatory which is way to much of a change. It would also be a massive buff to adept aggression which does not need a buff of any kind. Zerg would be to predictable if they had to make 3 roaches early on to fend of hellions.
Still I think it’s fine as is. Now that Zerg don’t have an unbeatable late game I’m much more ok with them having a very safe early game. Queens were way more of a problem on the last patch were the snowball they provided from protecting zerg greed would lead in to a fast hive and unstoppable late game compositions forcing toss or Terran to exploit just a few timing windows as thier only opportunity to end the game before zerg got there. With stronger late game options vs zerg the balance is more alright now imo.
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Queens have to be potent defense tools because BC openings are a hop and skip away from imbalanced. Light tag would be terrible as they would offer no defense against Hellion/Hellbat all ins, armored tag would be bad because Stalkers and Maruader pressure would be much too strong, so go ahead and throw those ideas in the garbage where they belong.
"6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air"
Holy hell man, if there was a coffee cup for most insanely bad balance suggestion ever, I'd ship it to you for that humdinger. Zerg already has very weak early game AA and honestly, pretty weak for a good 2 minutes after Lair is up. This change would allow BCs, Liberators, Oracles and Banshees to harass borderline unchallenged.
So bad dude like I don't even know what to say, just no.
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On January 13 2020 01:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Queens have to be potent defense tools because BC openings are a hop and skip away from imbalanced. Light tag would be terrible as they would offer no defense against Hellion/Hellbat all ins, armored tag would be bad because Stalkers and Maruader pressure would be much too strong, so go ahead and throw those ideas in the garbage where they belong.
"6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air"
Holy hell man, if there was a coffee cup for most insanely bad balance suggestion ever, I'd ship it to you for that humdinger. Zerg already has very weak early game AA and honestly, pretty weak for a good 2 minutes after Lair is up. This change would allow BCs, Liberators, Oracles and Banshees to harass borderline unchallenged.
So bad dude like I don't even know what to say, just no. That's the issue though. If you don't nerf the queen she will still be the answer to every zerg issue in the early game. You need AA - queens. You need workers - queens. You need fighting units - queens. You need creep - queens. You need heal - queens.
Currently queen has so many roles she needs a nerf. Queen is the MSC of Zerg. And then, after this is done, we can start adding buffs to other units(or adding new units). In some cases in tandem with the queen nerfing as we can see the issue - example right here - doing something with the AA
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On January 13 2020 03:27 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2020 01:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Queens have to be potent defense tools because BC openings are a hop and skip away from imbalanced. Light tag would be terrible as they would offer no defense against Hellion/Hellbat all ins, armored tag would be bad because Stalkers and Maruader pressure would be much too strong, so go ahead and throw those ideas in the garbage where they belong.
"6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air"
Holy hell man, if there was a coffee cup for most insanely bad balance suggestion ever, I'd ship it to you for that humdinger. Zerg already has very weak early game AA and honestly, pretty weak for a good 2 minutes after Lair is up. This change would allow BCs, Liberators, Oracles and Banshees to harass borderline unchallenged.
So bad dude like I don't even know what to say, just no. That's the issue though. If you don't nerf the queen she will still be the answer to every zerg issue in the early game. You need AA - queens. You need workers - queens. You need fighting units - queens. You need creep - queens. You need heal - queens. Currently queen has so many roles she needs a nerf. Queen is the MSC of Zerg. And then, after this is done, we can start adding buffs to other units(or adding new units). In some cases in tandem with the queen nerfing as we can see the issue - example right here - doing something with the AA
Honestly though, is having too many roles a bad thing? The best units in the game imo are units that fulfill multiple roles. The worst and most difficult units to balance are always units that fill one role much to well but having very little wiggle room in what they can accomplish. Units like the Disruptor, the Oracle, the Colosus, the Thor, the BC (well not so much now...but the design on this unit is still trash imo) all binary a move units that are long running balance problems ranging from brokenly strong to useless.
It brings variety and allows player creativity and better mechanics to shine through, especially with Queens who are APM and micro intensive to manage in early/mid game fights and creep/injects are substantial APM sinks already.
Look at the marine, tier 1 unit with potent AA, cheap and easy to mass, great for harass, great as a front line fighter unit more or less throughout the entire game.
Look at the Zealot, tier 1, fantastic at both being a front line fighter and harass tool throughout entire game.
And then you look at the Queen..
Yes it has AA so it's on par with the Marine in terms of tier 1 defense utility, yes it has the ability to defend early game and supplement a Zerg army late game, so I'd say it has front line fighter capabilities start to end like the Zealot, but it has next to no harassment potential, so it more or less doesn't have more utility then either the Marine or the Zealot.
Obviously I'm speaking in generalist terms here, yes I know creep spread is strong and yes Transfuse is strong as well. But Transfuse is not only vital in holding all ins in the early/mid game but it's also vital for enabling units like the Ultralisk to do their job properly.
I feel like nerfing the Queen while buffing the rest of Zerg sounds great on paper, but in application would be extremely difficult. Units like the Roach can't really be buffed early game or they will be far too strong, units like the Zergling and Baneling being buffed would fundamentally alter the way that Zerg operates and plays as a race and thus the entire game.
Seems like a pretty big paradigm shift all for the sake of making the Queen less generally useful don't you think?
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On January 11 2020 09:47 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 09:30 BabelFish1 wrote:On January 11 2020 07:58 tigon_ridge wrote: There's just too many bad ideas here to parse through. Give light to queen? Really? As if hellions don't already wreck zerg enough, you need zerg to be completely eviscerated unless they build a ridiculous early roach warren and roaches that would massively stagnate zerg economy? Stop it. Leave the work of changing any aspect of the game to people that actually understand the game at a deep level. Would much rather get some ideas from artosis or neeb about balance than some randos who think they understand the game. I don't think anyone is qualified to be making changes to sc2 currently... The balance team is messing up right now, that's not even debatable, they even had to revert one change because it was blatantly bad (Adept) while others are cropping up to be problematic (11 range HIP Thors vs nerfed Tempests and Broodlords comes to mind). That's why you have balance threads popping up, because they aren't taking action and when action is taken, it's usually against things which aren't balance issues, such as the Observer (they even called it frustration) and Charge being nerfed (yes it was a nerf, they lost 33% of their damage which means they have to tank more attacks since they kill things slower). Not that I'm insulting the balance team...but I don't understand how they went from making fantastic changes that everyone universally loved to nerfing stuff because of "frustration"...something doesn't add up. Observer change was bad, just because it seemed to be nerfing that wasn’t an issue at all. Rest are interesting and worth seeing how they play out. Adept change didn’t work as intended so they reverted it before it went live, which is fine by me. Charge change I like, it’s a nerf to A-moving Zealots yeah but they’re speedier and more effective at sharking around the map, retreating etc so they fill other holes for Protoss a bit better. Nobody has an unbiased view on balance, and even the best pros have completely ridiculous ideas, and some complete scrubs might have great ideas. My personal bias is wanting Protoss to be mechanically harder, but with a higher ceiling if you’re mechanically solid, been that way since WoL. Hence why I like the charge change as I think it opens some possibilities up to good players. I’d love chronoboost to be a bit better but more punishing if you’re sloppy, a bit like inject works. But as I said, biases. It’s pretty fun, though hard to micro all of Terrans microable units. There’s a certain satisfaction to nailing injecting and spreading your creep as a Zerg, Protoss just isn’t as fulfilling to play in a purely mechanical sense to me. Which is annoying as I much prefer them aesthetically, played them in Brood War etc
The Observer nerf was a great example of why I am not hopeful about SC2's current trend. When you're nerfing things out of "frustration" then you better nerf all the frustrating things and not just the one Special whinged about after he didn't lead his scan and failed to kill an Observer with 3 stinking Marines.
If you don't then that's blatant bias which imo makes sense, when it comes to the Terran and Zerg changes...most of them were good...but when it comes to Protoss, they consistently miss the mark. I don't think the balance team knows what to do with Protoss currently, it feels like that they'd just delete the race from the game if they were allowed.
I mean Charge for example, was a massive nerf. A somewhat small speed buff doesn't justify a 33% damage nerf...because that damage nerf means zealots are more fragile indirectly as they can't kill as fast which means they have to tank more damage.
The Adept change was just stupid, poorly thought through nonsense. Anyone could see that it wasn't going to be good in practice because it meant Shade has to complete and the value of the Adept is being able to cancel Shade. As a direct combat unit the Adept is freaking terrible.
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On January 13 2020 01:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Queens have to be potent defense tools because BC openings are a hop and skip away from imbalanced. Light tag would be terrible as they would offer no defense against Hellion/Hellbat all ins, armored tag would be bad because Stalkers and Maruader pressure would be much too strong, so go ahead and throw those ideas in the garbage where they belong.
"6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air"
Holy hell man, if there was a coffee cup for most insanely bad balance suggestion ever, I'd ship it to you for that humdinger. Zerg already has very weak early game AA and honestly, pretty weak for a good 2 minutes after Lair is up. This change would allow BCs, Liberators, Oracles and Banshees to harass borderline unchallenged.
So bad dude like I don't even know what to say, just no.
I didn't apply all of the options, ONLY 1 OR 2. If you think that's not the right option, there are others. But if you really want to go there, let's go there.
Queens are Tier 1 units. They can be made with spawning pool and without any gas. Tier 1. It takes 3 Queens to drive off the initial BC with 2 transfuse, though 1 is possible with good timing. 3 Queens with a spore support will have no problem, and 4 queens will decimate the BC. The Queens will usually be taking zero damage because the BC has to run. Even with zero scouting, Zerg will have this minimum because of how Queens operate, and their ease in going to a third (even gasless).
At that point, Terran has cut so many corners, they either have to hole up for a bit to build up SCVs and make other tech, or keep sending BCs. In both situations, Zerg can expand quite freely, and they can only be overrun by BCs if they decide to not address the situation at all. Queens outrange BCs by 2 and have 3.5 movement on creep vs 2.62 of the BC. Queens will scale better for the next few minutes than BCs due to the extra transfuses. Even if you believe that BCs have the edge after all of this, we are talking about a TIER 1 unit verses a TIER 3 Unit. 450-600 minerals worth of units vs 700 resources with almost double the build time. Let's get real here.
In regards to the Libs, oracles and banshees, "borderline unchallenged"? Range reduction to SEVEN would leave them borderline unchallenged? The current state is "easily warded off", and considering the tier of the units, the costs, mobility, HP, dps, Queens win every time. Furthermore, Zerg gets to enjoy a long reaction time with basic Overlord placement.
I don't understand in what possible manner you view Zerg having very weak early game AA, and I can't fathom why you think 2 minutes after Lair solves your viewed weakness, when the answer to all things air harass for Zerg are Queens and Spores.
For everyone else, please focus on the removal of the Overlord perch at the Natural, and understand that the other options are to be chosen as a single option. Or if necessary, just focus on that perch only, forget the rest of it.
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On January 09 2020 00:38 Snakestyle11 wrote: If you nerf queens, zerg will just mass more queens. You dont have a choice with battle cruisers in the game.
If anything, queens should be buffed and made more expensive and 3 or 4 supply.
I would also like to add that in a standard game, a scv scout/reaper opening followed by hellion will scout everything zerg is doing for first 6minutes, worst come worst you got scans.
For protoss, probe scout into adept scout into oracles scouts everything for the entire game.
Are you saying zerg should not have the same luxury? Overlord speed is good but come pretty late and is a big investment that slows down your lair and queen count.
Early game scouting is MUCH more important for zerg than the other races, since it dictates how many drones you need and if you need roaches.
Other races, you can blindy open the same opening every game and be safe against everything.
Adept into oracle defends everything zerg can throw early game with good control/scouting.
Reaper into hellion into banshees defends everything zerg can throw, even without scouting.
You are focusing on the wrong aspects of the game. Early game information is a good thing. You dont want your game to become RNG coin flippy. If you dont have scouting info early on, everything you do as a zerg feels like a huge gamble. For the other races, against zerg mostly, theres one goood build you can do everygame that will be good in every single situation. (Aka, wall off and get air units and zerg cant kill you before hydras). thanks for the well thought out response
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On January 13 2020 11:29 RoninKenshin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2020 01:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Queens have to be potent defense tools because BC openings are a hop and skip away from imbalanced. Light tag would be terrible as they would offer no defense against Hellion/Hellbat all ins, armored tag would be bad because Stalkers and Maruader pressure would be much too strong, so go ahead and throw those ideas in the garbage where they belong.
"6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air"
Holy hell man, if there was a coffee cup for most insanely bad balance suggestion ever, I'd ship it to you for that humdinger. Zerg already has very weak early game AA and honestly, pretty weak for a good 2 minutes after Lair is up. This change would allow BCs, Liberators, Oracles and Banshees to harass borderline unchallenged.
So bad dude like I don't even know what to say, just no. I didn't apply all of the options, ONLY 1 OR 2. If you think that's not the right option, there are others. But if you really want to go there, let's go there. Queens are Tier 1 units. They can be made with spawning pool and without any gas. Tier 1. It takes 3 Queens to drive off the initial BC with 2 transfuse, though 1 is possible with good timing. 3 Queens with a spore support will have no problem, and 4 queens will decimate the BC. The Queens will usually be taking zero damage because the BC has to run. Even with zero scouting, Zerg will have this minimum because of how Queens operate, and their ease in going to a third (even gasless). At that point, Terran has cut so many corners, they either have to hole up for a bit to build up SCVs and make other tech, or keep sending BCs. In both situations, Zerg can expand quite freely, and they can only be overrun by BCs if they decide to not address the situation at all. Queens outrange BCs by 2 and have 3.5 movement on creep vs 2.62 of the BC. Queens will scale better for the next few minutes than BCs due to the extra transfuses. Even if you believe that BCs have the edge after all of this, we are talking about a TIER 1 unit verses a TIER 3 Unit. 450-600 minerals worth of units vs 700 resources with almost double the build time. Let's get real here. In regards to the Libs, oracles and banshees, "borderline unchallenged"? Range reduction to SEVEN would leave them borderline unchallenged? The current state is "easily warded off", and considering the tier of the units, the costs, mobility, HP, dps, Queens win every time. Furthermore, Zerg gets to enjoy a long reaction time with basic Overlord placement. I don't understand in what possible manner you view Zerg having very weak early game AA, and I can't fathom why you think 2 minutes after Lair solves your viewed weakness, when the answer to all things air harass for Zerg are Queens and Spores. For everyone else, please focus on the removal of the Overlord perch at the Natural, and understand that the other options are to be chosen as a single option. Or if necessary, just focus on that perch only, forget the rest of it.
just play zerg. you will develop an understanding of how fragile the early game is for zerg, and maybe develop some respect for the race. zerg has a resource the other races dont, its called larvae. the way you spend your larvae locks you into the next few minutes of the game. because zerg works in waves. you make a wave of workers or a wave of units. the other races will trickle out a few here and there thorughout most of the game.
this is why zerg is reactive because if you get a production wave wrong.... you lose. because unlike the other races zerg cant just cancel a production cycle of 10 workers. maybe you didnt know this but when zerg cancels their units the larvae is not refunded. in the early game this is MASSIVE. to put it simply if you make a wave of drones when theres a push coming across.... you lose if you nerf zerg ovie scouting at the natural you break the race. this is what the other guy didnt have the patience to explain to you. changing the opening where every decison and action is unbelievably weighted for every zerg game is the most gigantic zerg nerf EVER.
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On January 13 2020 13:40 agripsss wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2020 11:29 RoninKenshin wrote:On January 13 2020 01:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Queens have to be potent defense tools because BC openings are a hop and skip away from imbalanced. Light tag would be terrible as they would offer no defense against Hellion/Hellbat all ins, armored tag would be bad because Stalkers and Maruader pressure would be much too strong, so go ahead and throw those ideas in the garbage where they belong.
"6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air"
Holy hell man, if there was a coffee cup for most insanely bad balance suggestion ever, I'd ship it to you for that humdinger. Zerg already has very weak early game AA and honestly, pretty weak for a good 2 minutes after Lair is up. This change would allow BCs, Liberators, Oracles and Banshees to harass borderline unchallenged.
So bad dude like I don't even know what to say, just no. I didn't apply all of the options, ONLY 1 OR 2. If you think that's not the right option, there are others. But if you really want to go there, let's go there. Queens are Tier 1 units. They can be made with spawning pool and without any gas. Tier 1. It takes 3 Queens to drive off the initial BC with 2 transfuse, though 1 is possible with good timing. 3 Queens with a spore support will have no problem, and 4 queens will decimate the BC. The Queens will usually be taking zero damage because the BC has to run. Even with zero scouting, Zerg will have this minimum because of how Queens operate, and their ease in going to a third (even gasless). At that point, Terran has cut so many corners, they either have to hole up for a bit to build up SCVs and make other tech, or keep sending BCs. In both situations, Zerg can expand quite freely, and they can only be overrun by BCs if they decide to not address the situation at all. Queens outrange BCs by 2 and have 3.5 movement on creep vs 2.62 of the BC. Queens will scale better for the next few minutes than BCs due to the extra transfuses. Even if you believe that BCs have the edge after all of this, we are talking about a TIER 1 unit verses a TIER 3 Unit. 450-600 minerals worth of units vs 700 resources with almost double the build time. Let's get real here. In regards to the Libs, oracles and banshees, "borderline unchallenged"? Range reduction to SEVEN would leave them borderline unchallenged? The current state is "easily warded off", and considering the tier of the units, the costs, mobility, HP, dps, Queens win every time. Furthermore, Zerg gets to enjoy a long reaction time with basic Overlord placement. I don't understand in what possible manner you view Zerg having very weak early game AA, and I can't fathom why you think 2 minutes after Lair solves your viewed weakness, when the answer to all things air harass for Zerg are Queens and Spores. For everyone else, please focus on the removal of the Overlord perch at the Natural, and understand that the other options are to be chosen as a single option. Or if necessary, just focus on that perch only, forget the rest of it. just play zerg. you will develop an understanding of how fragile the early game is for zerg, and maybe develop some respect for the race. zerg has a resource the other races dont, its called larvae. the way you spend your larvae locks you into the next few minutes of the game. because zerg works in waves. you make a wave of workers or a wave of units. the other races will trickle out a few here and there thorughout most of the game. this is why zerg is reactive because if you get a production wave wrong.... you lose. because unlike the other races zerg cant just cancel a production cycle of 10 workers. maybe you didnt know this but when zerg cancels their units the larvae is not refunded. in the early game this is MASSIVE. to put it simply if you make a wave of drones when theres a push coming across.... you lose if you nerf zerg ovie scouting at the natural you break the race. this is what the other guy didnt have the patience to explain to you. changing the opening where every decison and action is unbelievably weighted for every zerg game is the most gigantic zerg nerf EVER.
Thank you for your points. I would like to do away with the hyperbole, as the removal of the perch will not be the most gigantic nerf ever. But I understand that you want to say that it's huge.
I believe strongly in all of your points for WoL. However, I feel like the detriment is not as strong in LotV. As said before, the maps are larger and there is more care put into spawn locations, thus allowing plenty of reaction time for a reasonable scouter compared to before. Let's not forget that for all races, the game is designed so that even if you cannot get into a base, there are many indicators of what may come. And if a player takes great pains and create a less efficient or riskier build in order to hide their intentions, they should be rewarded if they succeed. I want to go a step further and note that the majority of rush and pressure options that existed pre LotV do not exist anymore because of how many workers we start with. Yet the perch is still there.
Larva used to be incredibly fragile to manage, and then the ability to queue injects came. Before missing an inject was a cascading series of disasters where you could be missing 12 Larva worth of units during a fight. Every miss added a few seconds delay between the Spawning of extra Larva that added up. Now Zerg does not miss any time aside from the initial missing inject. On a misread, Zerg will lose if they make 10 drones instead of units? Every race will lose if they over macro, why should Zerg have less risk when they go macro heavy without scouting?
And then the building of the Queen does not interact with larvae, and with the map layouts, it's very easy to go 3 hatch and have the equivalent of 3 Barracks with tech labs or 2.5 Gateways on top of your larva. Pre LotV it wasn't a big issue because of the strength of the Queen (DPS alone is currently about 50% greater than WoL HotS Queens), but now it is.
With all of this in mind, How far is the distance from the Perch to the next reasonable spot the Zerg can poke towards in order to get a scout off? How big is the window where the Perch is the most effective, and how hard is it for Zerg to make up for that window? How effective do Zergs feel that the Perch is? I think these are the items we really need to look at.
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On January 13 2020 04:11 jpg06051992 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2020 03:27 deacon.frost wrote:On January 13 2020 01:43 jpg06051992 wrote: Queens have to be potent defense tools because BC openings are a hop and skip away from imbalanced. Light tag would be terrible as they would offer no defense against Hellion/Hellbat all ins, armored tag would be bad because Stalkers and Maruader pressure would be much too strong, so go ahead and throw those ideas in the garbage where they belong.
"6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air"
Holy hell man, if there was a coffee cup for most insanely bad balance suggestion ever, I'd ship it to you for that humdinger. Zerg already has very weak early game AA and honestly, pretty weak for a good 2 minutes after Lair is up. This change would allow BCs, Liberators, Oracles and Banshees to harass borderline unchallenged.
So bad dude like I don't even know what to say, just no. That's the issue though. If you don't nerf the queen she will still be the answer to every zerg issue in the early game. You need AA - queens. You need workers - queens. You need fighting units - queens. You need creep - queens. You need heal - queens. Currently queen has so many roles she needs a nerf. Queen is the MSC of Zerg. And then, after this is done, we can start adding buffs to other units(or adding new units). In some cases in tandem with the queen nerfing as we can see the issue - example right here - doing something with the AA Honestly though, is having too many roles a bad thing? The best units in the game imo are units that fulfill multiple roles. The worst and most difficult units to balance are always units that fill one role much to well but having very little wiggle room in what they can accomplish. Units like the Disruptor, the Oracle, the Colosus, the Thor, the BC (well not so much now...but the design on this unit is still trash imo) all binary a move units that are long running balance problems ranging from brokenly strong to useless. It brings variety and allows player creativity and better mechanics to shine through, especially with Queens who are APM and micro intensive to manage in early/mid game fights and creep/injects are substantial APM sinks already. Look at the marine, tier 1 unit with potent AA, cheap and easy to mass, great for harass, great as a front line fighter unit more or less throughout the entire game. Look at the Zealot, tier 1, fantastic at both being a front line fighter and harass tool throughout entire game. And then you look at the Queen.. Yes it has AA so it's on par with the Marine in terms of tier 1 defense utility, yes it has the ability to defend early game and supplement a Zerg army late game, so I'd say it has front line fighter capabilities start to end like the Zealot, but it has next to no harassment potential, so it more or less doesn't have more utility then either the Marine or the Zealot. Obviously I'm speaking in generalist terms here, yes I know creep spread is strong and yes Transfuse is strong as well. But Transfuse is not only vital in holding all ins in the early/mid game but it's also vital for enabling units like the Ultralisk to do their job properly. I feel like nerfing the Queen while buffing the rest of Zerg sounds great on paper, but in application would be extremely difficult. Units like the Roach can't really be buffed early game or they will be far too strong, units like the Zergling and Baneling being buffed would fundamentally alter the way that Zerg operates and plays as a race and thus the entire game. Seems like a pretty big paradigm shift all for the sake of making the Queen less generally useful don't you think? First of all Queen is a bad design. She provides macro, movement, vision, defense and healing. Queen is the MSC of Zerg. That's why I advocate her change. And I know that Zergs without the queen are screwed(FYI I play random ) Protoss was screwed without the MSC either.
Now to that buffing thing. We can introduce new unit, we can introduce new building, we can introduce new upgrades etc. Sorry, but your view is very narrow. e.g. why buff roaches when you can bring hydras? (it's not the best pick ) There are options to do this, question is if Blizzard has the money and will to do this. If they don't we can't do much about it anyway.
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