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When Wings of Liberty first came out, Zerg had a really tough time. First of all, the maps were smaller, spawn positions were closer, overlords were slower, queens had lower range, lower dps (attack speed), were slower, and creep tumors spawned almost 50% slower.
Stronger Reapers, Stim Timings, 1-1-1, 4-gates, all made a zerg's life hell. Zergs often had to aggressively scout, barely tie a fight while gaining an economic/upgrade advantage, and snowball a slight edge to victory. It was tough to be a Zerg, and the race was almost purely reactionary in real time.
To help out the Zergs in the early-mid game, 2 main things were done. First, there is a spot by every natural expansion where Zerg can park an Overlord without it being killed. The Overlord gives a pretty good idea of what the opponent is doing for the next few minutes, thus swapping out the need to 2-4 lings, and swapping them out for drones, boosting the economy. Next, the Queen was made significantly stronger. Not just in one or two areas, but essentially every single way opposing the items in the first paragraph. The Queen is the most well rounded and cost efficient unit in the game, scaling very well to the mid game.
Fast forward to today, and the maps are much larger, there is much more care given to the placement of spawn positions. The early game threats of the reaper, 4-gate, and early timing attacks have been nerfed out of the game. Other early game interactions have largely been eliminated due to the mobility and DPS of the Queens, as well as the significantly easier scouting abilities of Zerg. Zerg no longer needs to react well on the spot, because the information is coming way too quickly. This needs to be remedied. I believe that it can be remedied very easily without breaking the race.
The following solutions would contribute strongly to requiring Zerg players to scout as much as the other races:
1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
and 1 or 2 of the following:
1) Decrease Queen Health from 175 to 125/150 depending on other nerfs 2) Decrease Transfusion from 75 to 50 and have the 50 health over time occur outside of combat 3) Decrease Overlord and Overseer speed/health by 10-15% 4) Decrease Queen Speed by 10-15% 5) Revert Creep Tumor spawn time to 15s 6) Decrease Queen Range by 1 to both Ground and Air 7) Give Queen Light or Armored designation
These are slight changes that will force Zerg to be more diligent, and allow more exciting early game interactions. I don't think they will break the race or cause immense swings in balance. I'd like your feedback to see if this makes sense or what different minor changes can occur in the game to revive early game interactions vs Zerg. I am excluding the complete all-ins of the 3 rax proxies and cannon rushes when I say early game interactions.
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hmm good points. After all, a zerg made it through the IEM qualifier recently, so that's a problem.
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On January 08 2020 19:12 ThxSub~ wrote: hmm good points. After all, a zerg made it through the IEM qualifier recently, so that's a problem.
Instead of all these ingame nerfs to zerg why not just limit the amount of zergs allowed into tournaments? We would get the results much more effectively.
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We've had like 1 major tournament, immediately after the patch, in which major changes occurred (many of them substantial nerfs to Zerg).
How about we just... you know... actually watch and see how things play out before nerfing the linchpin of Zerg defense / map control?
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On January 08 2020 19:12 ThxSub~ wrote: hmm good points. After all, a zerg made it through the IEM qualifier recently, so that's a problem. There are TWO ! ! allready, don t forget Dark
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Why should Zerg even be nerfed?
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If you want to swing the zerg winrates in the other direction, just ban serral from tournaments.
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Canada8772 Posts
On January 09 2020 00:32 InfCereal wrote: If you want to swing the zerg winrates in the other direction, just ban serral from tournaments.
Ya I mean it's not like the last 3 events Serral won were zvz finals
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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).
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I wholeheartedly agree with your point about early game vision for zerg players. You have adressed the core issue of playing vs zerg really well in the opening post.
Since removing the highground at the natural is not even a change to any zerg unit, but simply to maps, it might even go accepted by the community. And it is also quite easily implemented by changing a few tiles on the map.
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It's nice to see posts like this, i gotta save it, and whenever I would get upset at the Blizz team for the proposed changes, I can remind myself, that it could be worse, guys like OP could be involved with balancing an RTS
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The only change needed to happen is just to adjust the maps selected for each map pool. A lot of them favor Zerg or make doing a tank push much harder because you're prone to being surrounded really easily. Only other issue is some maps are too difficult to defend things like Bane Ultralisk when you're playing ghost lib, Zerg otherwise isn't too too bad just yet
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Is this battlenet now where everyone makes new threads with balance whines that have no reason because huge patch just went out and there are literally 0 numbers on how the state of balance is since the patch?
Hope this won´t be the new TL standard. :-(
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On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested.
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On January 09 2020 02:07 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested.
If single mapmaker chose not to have Overlord spot at natural's choke on a map, then that map will probably receive lower score from Zerg judges at least, because the map deviates from standard by not having very recognisable feature, that helps to guarantees normal gameplay in XvZ. This is the case even if other measures are done to keep the impact of missing spot minimal, because judges would be unsure about how it would play out. For standard and macro categories that are the most competitive difference between finalist and others can be a 100th of a point. Also, even if the map got to finalist, the tournament for testing the maps could have possibly worse games, because players didn't adjust correctly. Thus, taking such a risk is not really something, that a mapmaker would want to do.
If we want to test it out, we would probably have to have a tournament with current maps with modifications to minimise other parts of the map effecting the gameplay in unknown way. Running such tournament would be hard just because Zerg players probably would not want to participate in a tournament that exists only because of perceived problems regarding Zerg and maps. Also there would not be many games to look at without tournament being bigger. Thus, only true way to address the issue would probably be that Blizzard chooses to remove some of the spots from maps, when adding them to the ladder pool. This of course would still be risky.
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Why would this be needed?
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On January 09 2020 04:24 Legan wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 02:07 Harris1st wrote:On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested. If single mapmaker chose not to have Overlord spot at natural's choke on a map, then that map will probably receive lower score from Zerg judges at least, because the map deviates from standard by not having very recognisable feature, that helps to guarantees normal gameplay in XvZ. This is the case even if other measures are done to keep the impact of missing spot minimal, because judges would be unsure about how it would play out. For standard and macro categories that are the most competitive difference between finalist and others can be a 100th of a point. Also, even if the map got to finalist, the tournament for testing the maps could have possibly worse games, because players didn't adjust correctly. Thus, taking such a risk is not really something, that a mapmaker would want to do. If we want to test it out, we would probably have to have a tournament with current maps with modifications to minimise other parts of the map effecting the gameplay in unknown way. Running such tournament would be hard just because Zerg players probably would not want to participate in a tournament that exists only because of perceived problems regarding Zerg and maps. Also there would not be many games to look at without tournament being bigger. Thus, only true way to address the issue would probably be that Blizzard chooses to remove some of the spots from maps, when adding them to the ladder pool. This of course would still be risky.
Or you could submit the map with an overlord pod and delete it during the iteration phase. Besides, given that it's mostly a matter of optics and not actually balance (because let's be honest it's mostly a bunch of terrans being angry about mapmakers/TLMC judges treating overlord pods as compulsory and reaper spots as optional more so than the tangible balance impact), not putting overlord pods sounds like an okay move strategically for the upcoming TLMC.
Also why would you want to run a tournament to test removing overlord pods? You wouldn't see a difference. Sure, TLMC judges strict insistence on overlord pods has been a bit overblown in the past, and so has the reaction from terrans on their Twitter soapboxes, but that doesn't change the fact that overlord pods are but a small part of a map and the impact of strong overlord pods (like on Simulacrum), weak overlord pods (like on Nightshade) or no overlord pod can only really be viewed holistically as part of the map. So leaving strategic mapmaking for TLMC purposes aside, it really comes down to what suits the map not which people you want yelling at you.
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On January 09 2020 05:23 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 04:24 Legan wrote:On January 09 2020 02:07 Harris1st wrote:On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested. If single mapmaker chose not to have Overlord spot at natural's choke on a map, then that map will probably receive lower score from Zerg judges at least, because the map deviates from standard by not having very recognisable feature, that helps to guarantees normal gameplay in XvZ. This is the case even if other measures are done to keep the impact of missing spot minimal, because judges would be unsure about how it would play out. For standard and macro categories that are the most competitive difference between finalist and others can be a 100th of a point. Also, even if the map got to finalist, the tournament for testing the maps could have possibly worse games, because players didn't adjust correctly. Thus, taking such a risk is not really something, that a mapmaker would want to do. If we want to test it out, we would probably have to have a tournament with current maps with modifications to minimise other parts of the map effecting the gameplay in unknown way. Running such tournament would be hard just because Zerg players probably would not want to participate in a tournament that exists only because of perceived problems regarding Zerg and maps. Also there would not be many games to look at without tournament being bigger. Thus, only true way to address the issue would probably be that Blizzard chooses to remove some of the spots from maps, when adding them to the ladder pool. This of course would still be risky. Or you could submit the map with an overlord pod and delete it during the iteration phase. Besides, given that it's mostly a matter of optics and not actually balance (because let's be honest it's mostly a bunch of terrans being angry about mapmakers/TLMC judges treating overlord pods as compulsory and reaper spots as optional more so than the tangible balance impact), not putting overlord pods sounds like an okay move strategically for the upcoming TLMC. Also why would you want to run a tournament to test removing overlord pods? You wouldn't see a difference. Sure, TLMC judges strict insistence on overlord pods has been a bit overblown in the past, and so has the reaction from terrans on their Twitter soapboxes, but that doesn't change the fact that overlord pods are but a small part of a map and the impact of strong overlord pods (like on Simulacrum), weak overlord pods (like on Nightshade) or no overlord pod can only really be viewed holistically as part of the map. So leaving strategic mapmaking for TLMC purposes aside, it really comes down to what suits the map not which people you want yelling at you. I agree that the Overlord spot is only small thing and not a problem, but is being perceived as one because being Zerg specific feature, that is not liked, and has become something that people like to whine about. I just wanted to highlight that people want to play it safe and be lazy.
The tournament option is just alternative to avoid having TLMC linked to it. More of an afterthought than anything else.
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darn hit quote instead of edit..sorry.
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I think we should be getting to the point where we use maps to balance the game.
In my opinion the map pool should probably have a bigger variety of map sizes and chokier areas to deal with. We basically have 8 different variations of Fighting Spirit.
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Wow, I forgot who the audience was. Thank you to the couple people who read the post and gave input.
I'm just talking about very minor changes that would make Zerg do a teeny tiny bit more to scout rather than blind go 3 hatch with 4/5 queens. I mean do you think that Zerg will be broken by removing the natural Overlord spot and making the Queen an Armored designation?
Zerg has workers to scout too, and they also have the fast unit in the game, and they also have natural flying scouts. I just think free scouting until their P or T opponent has high ground vision is too much. You see a lot more active scouting in ZvZ, why not have that same requirement in ZvP and ZvT as well?
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On January 09 2020 05:23 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 04:24 Legan wrote:On January 09 2020 02:07 Harris1st wrote:On January 08 2020 18:18 RoninKenshin wrote: 1) Eliminate that spot where Overlords can perch without being seen at the natural expansion. I believe this is a must and the only mandatory change.
That is in the hand of mapmakers and a lot of people on TL.net already campaign for more race neutral maps. This really should be tested. If single mapmaker chose not to have Overlord spot at natural's choke on a map, then that map will probably receive lower score from Zerg judges at least, because the map deviates from standard by not having very recognisable feature, that helps to guarantees normal gameplay in XvZ. This is the case even if other measures are done to keep the impact of missing spot minimal, because judges would be unsure about how it would play out. For standard and macro categories that are the most competitive difference between finalist and others can be a 100th of a point. Also, even if the map got to finalist, the tournament for testing the maps could have possibly worse games, because players didn't adjust correctly. Thus, taking such a risk is not really something, that a mapmaker would want to do. If we want to test it out, we would probably have to have a tournament with current maps with modifications to minimise other parts of the map effecting the gameplay in unknown way. Running such tournament would be hard just because Zerg players probably would not want to participate in a tournament that exists only because of perceived problems regarding Zerg and maps. Also there would not be many games to look at without tournament being bigger. Thus, only true way to address the issue would probably be that Blizzard chooses to remove some of the spots from maps, when adding them to the ladder pool. This of course would still be risky. Or you could submit the map with an overlord pod and delete it during the iteration phase. Besides, given that it's mostly a matter of optics and not actually balance (because let's be honest it's mostly a bunch of terrans being angry about mapmakers/TLMC judges treating overlord pods as compulsory and reaper spots as optional more so than the tangible balance impact), not putting overlord pods sounds like an okay move strategically for the upcoming TLMC. Also why would you want to run a tournament to test removing overlord pods? You wouldn't see a difference. Sure, TLMC judges strict insistence on overlord pods has been a bit overblown in the past, and so has the reaction from terrans on their Twitter soapboxes, but that doesn't change the fact that overlord pods are but a small part of a map and the impact of strong overlord pods (like on Simulacrum), weak overlord pods (like on Nightshade) or no overlord pod can only really be viewed holistically as part of the map. So leaving strategic mapmaking for TLMC purposes aside, it really comes down to what suits the map not which people you want yelling at you.
I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base.
As for Ovie spots I think it’s so universal that it’s just excepted as an advantage zerg gets to have. With Ovie speed I’m not sure how much it matters to be honest, although I do find the few maps were even a fully surrounded overlord is hard to kill with stalkers or riens even if a player has vision. Usually this is due to the shape of the dead space around the spot being to big or awkward.
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On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. .
This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead.
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On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead.
If we're talking pre-medivac terran can ill afford spending 275 minerals on a scout that could entirely whiff.
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On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead.
Hallucination and Overlords. Who needs Reapers rofl
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On January 09 2020 17:02 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead. If we're talking pre-medivac terran can ill afford spending 275 minerals on a scout that could entirely whiff. I still 'member scouting rax It's less than 275 minerals! (at first glance, that is )
@OP The Ovie spot is needed to save the ovie otherwise you're removing a scouting option from Zerg. Which isn't as bad as it sounds at first, but considering you have to wall against Zerg... and here comes the issue Zerg would need another scouting option because losing ovie that early in the game is a problem.
So - remove the spot from naturals, fine with me, but add some safe spot around so you can take a risk and scout or prepare for the scout later(when it's walled, gas research on a hatchery when you have to build queens is, again, an issue).
Nerfing queens - sure, why not. But then we're back to the fact this has to have Phase 2 of adding/buffing other units which was not mentioned(or maybe I didn't see that, possible too considering my blindness).
@Whoever mentioned buffing queens Buffing the biggest bandaid in the game? Please no.
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On January 09 2020 18:48 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 17:02 ZigguratOfUr wrote:On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead. If we're talking pre-medivac terran can ill afford spending 275 minerals on a scout that could entirely whiff. I still 'member scouting rax It's less than 275 minerals! (at first glance, that is ) @OP The Ovie spot is needed to save the ovie otherwise you're removing a scouting option from Zerg. Which isn't as bad as it sounds at first, but considering you have to wall against Zerg... and here comes the issue Zerg would need another scouting option because losing ovie that early in the game is a problem. So - remove the spot from naturals, fine with me, but add some safe spot around so you can take a risk and scout or prepare for the scout later(when it's walled, gas research on a hatchery when you have to build queens is, again, an issue). Nerfing queens - sure, why not. But then we're back to the fact this has to have Phase 2 of adding/buffing other units which was not mentioned(or maybe I didn't see that, possible too considering my blindness). @Whoever mentioned buffing queens Buffing the biggest bandaid in the game? Please no.
Zerg can still fly an Ovie to the natural/ third. OP's point is more about the Ovie staying there. And on some maps with large doodads they are very hard to ever kill without Viking/ Phoenix
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On January 09 2020 17:02 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead. If we're talking pre-medivac terran can ill afford spending 275 minerals on a scout that could entirely whiff.
All other options for other races also cost minerals(and/or gas) and can also whiff. Scouting isn't free. Adepts are easily denied by a wall. Overlords are slow and can just be killed off by marines before they see anything. Reapers can be walled off on their main entry way. Scouting is an investment that doesn't guarantee a payoff until you get fast air as all races. Terrans have the option to scan if all else fails.
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On January 09 2020 21:12 abuse wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 17:02 ZigguratOfUr wrote:On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead. If we're talking pre-medivac terran can ill afford spending 275 minerals on a scout that could entirely whiff. All other options for other races also cost minerals(and/or gas) and can also whiff. Scouting isn't free. Adepts are easily denied by a wall. Overlords are slow and can just be killed off by marines before they see anything. Reapers can be walled off on their main entry way. Scouting is an investment that doesn't guarantee a payoff until you get fast air as all races. Terrans have the option to scan if all else fails. An important thing here is not that a scan has no way to be blocked, it is that the game is currently not balanced around the investment in scan. The mule is needed for the terran to keep producing. It doesn't matter if the scan sees something or not.
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Czech Republic12116 Posts
On January 09 2020 19:00 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 18:48 deacon.frost wrote:On January 09 2020 17:02 ZigguratOfUr wrote:On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead. If we're talking pre-medivac terran can ill afford spending 275 minerals on a scout that could entirely whiff. I still 'member scouting rax It's less than 275 minerals! (at first glance, that is ) @OP The Ovie spot is needed to save the ovie otherwise you're removing a scouting option from Zerg. Which isn't as bad as it sounds at first, but considering you have to wall against Zerg... and here comes the issue Zerg would need another scouting option because losing ovie that early in the game is a problem. So - remove the spot from naturals, fine with me, but add some safe spot around so you can take a risk and scout or prepare for the scout later(when it's walled, gas research on a hatchery when you have to build queens is, again, an issue). Nerfing queens - sure, why not. But then we're back to the fact this has to have Phase 2 of adding/buffing other units which was not mentioned(or maybe I didn't see that, possible too considering my blindness). @Whoever mentioned buffing queens Buffing the biggest bandaid in the game? Please no. Zerg can still fly an Ovie to the natural/ third. OP's point is more about the Ovie staying there. And on some maps with large doodads they are very hard to ever kill without Viking/ Phoenix My point is that if the ovie is killable near the base it's an issue with scouting. Remove the safe spot, but add another around (it doesn't have to be next to the exit) so you can prepare for later scout and you're not forced to go ovie speed every damn game. I bolded it in the text in this quote
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On January 09 2020 01:33 Decendos wrote: Is this battlenet now where everyone makes new threads with balance whines that have no reason because huge patch just went out and there are literally 0 numbers on how the state of balance is since the patch?
Hope this won´t be the new TL standard. :-(
This.
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On January 09 2020 01:33 Decendos wrote: Is this battlenet now where everyone makes new threads with balance whines that have no reason because huge patch just went out and there are literally 0 numbers on how the state of balance is since the patch?
Hope this won´t be the new TL standard. :-( same.
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On January 09 2020 17:48 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead. Hallucination and Overlords. Who needs Reapers rofl
Reapers are honestly the weekest scouting option so the fact they can also be fully denied just by proper building placement on some maps is frustrating. Vs zerg they are great, vs Terran they can also sometimes get in and scout, but vs toss on some maps your almost better off not trying to scout at all and just opening with an Allin or extra units so that your safe vs potential aggression.
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Terran having the worst scouting is working as intended because Terran is not a reactive race. Other races react to Terran. Also, Terran is the best race at defending all-ins without scouting them. And on top of that, you simply cannot prepare for every possible strategy by your opponent - that's just part of Starcraft, and true for every race. It's just a matter of optimizing the probability of doing the right thing.
And the OP does have a point in saying that this may have become too easy for Zerg. You can agree or disagree with this, but it's not so ridiculous that it can just be dismissed. And if you think we don't have any evidence on the state of balance post-patch, you haven't been paying attention.
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Canada8772 Posts
On January 10 2020 04:27 washikie wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 17:48 Harris1st wrote:On January 09 2020 16:46 abuse wrote:On January 09 2020 16:37 washikie wrote: I am salty about the numerous maps where reaper spots are easily wallable by Protoss. Terran has to play extremely reactionary for the first few minutes vs toss since gateway units are so good at getting map control. When your reaper is walked out as Terran you are completely blinded until your first medivac drop and during that time a very large number of allins can already have reached your base. . This is the case for every race, except other races don't get reapers that are quick and can jump walls, and they don't get a scan to use (countering your "completely blinded"point). It's normal to either scout with workers, or your attacking units, and if that fails then you scout with air units. Also, there's more than one way to enter a reaper into a base, if you don't want to use medivacs. you can enter the base via the cliffs on the natural's side.Though terran does have the option to just scan instead. Hallucination and Overlords. Who needs Reapers rofl Reapers are honestly the weekest scouting option so the fact they can also be fully denied just by proper building placement on some maps is frustrating. Vs zerg they are great, vs Terran they can also sometimes get in and scout, but vs toss on some maps your almost better off not trying to scout at all and just opening with an Allin or extra units so that your safe vs potential aggression.
I think the biggest problem with toss is that there's a good number of one or two base push that you can do as terran that are very hard to stop and having to deal with a reaper jumping in and out of your base can screw you pretty bad and I understand the frustration as a terran myself but I feel like you can still scout a good bit; workers scout are very much an option in TvP since generally if you block the reaper cliff you won't wall off the ramp right at the start so a worker can scout at least until the stalker out.
I feel like it's currently much easier for terran to pull out a defense vs an aggressionthat he didn't quite identify than for Protoss to come back from a botched opening against a one base all in. I'm ok with that one honestly, better that than bringing back the MSC
On January 10 2020 00:32 ThunderJunk wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2020 01:33 Decendos wrote: Is this battlenet now where everyone makes new threads with balance whines that have no reason because huge patch just went out and there are literally 0 numbers on how the state of balance is since the patch?
Hope this won´t be the new TL standard. :-( This.
I don't think it's particularly more common than before, remember the avilo mech threads that use to come out every 2-3 months?
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On January 10 2020 04:49 Aesto wrote: Terran is the best race at defending all-ins without scouting them.
Historically this may have been true but I don't think I agree anymore. Play pool first and have non-stop queen production in the early game and I believe you'd be able to fend off any early game cheese. Whereas builds like 3 ravager rush still catches some terrans off guard.
But I think we can agree that overlord isn't the unit at fault here.
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On January 09 2020 01:33 Decendos wrote: Is this battlenet now where everyone makes new threads with balance whines that have no reason because huge patch just went out and there are literally 0 numbers on how the state of balance is since the patch?
Hope this won´t be the new TL standard. :-(
I honestly don't see any balance whine. These are some constructive points on changing the early game a tiny bit without hurting anyone really. I don't think I have EVER seen anything constructive on battlenet... Also this isn't patch related at all. The current state of Queens is discussed for years now...
I sincerely hope these kind of OPs will be TL standard
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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"
rather than blind go 3 hatch with 4/5 queens
unless the opponent is 1 base allining, zerg needs 3 hatches no matter what. everything else would be super allin from the zerg, so this question doesnt make any sense unless you want either of that to be more common
and they also have the fast unit in the game
with an upgrade that completes way past the initial scouting phase. how is this any relevant!?
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?
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.
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Win rates are almost completely equal right now outside of Protoss appearing ever so slightly weak against Zerg, but come on man, these changes are just ludicrous.
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On January 10 2020 04:49 Aesto wrote: Terran having the worst scouting is working as intended because Terran is not a reactive race. Other races react to Terran. Also, Terran is the best race at defending all-ins without scouting them. And on top of that, you simply cannot prepare for every possible strategy by your opponent - that's just part of Starcraft, and true for every race. It's just a matter of optimizing the probability of doing the right thing.
And the OP does have a point in saying that this may have become too easy for Zerg. You can agree or disagree with this, but it's not so ridiculous that it can just be dismissed. And if you think we don't have any evidence on the state of balance post-patch, you haven't been paying attention.
If there is any evidence to support that you need to present it and prove it. Terran has a lot of strong options right now: when it comes to mech based play, especially Thor based compositions. The balance is clearly better than it used to be and I highly doubt you have enough evidence yet to justify nerfing Zerg again. Perhaps you're the one who hasn't been paying attention and just blindly assume that Zerg is OP.
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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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Canada8772 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 Ireland20731 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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This is a very good and needed post. It's not about zerg's winrates, the balance, and things like that. The problem is that if we take a look at highest level ZvT/P games, the actual starting point for each game is when zerg has already taken 4 bases. There is a huge variety of strategies against zerg, but most of them either don't do much, or simply don't work. So the only reasonable response to zerg's greed is trying to be as greedy. This is not normal and simply makes the game less fun.
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On January 13 2020 05:15 BabelFish1 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2020 09:47 Wombat_NI wrote: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.
LMFAO the fricken irony behind this post. Everyone agrees you should never change something out of frustration, which is why it was extremely retarded to buff observer speed just because some 5k protoss caster kept whining on stream when losing to mine drops. The result is gumiho eliminated by parting because he couldnt catch a ferrari observer. Now that the balance team came to their senses and reverted that change, protoss apologists are calling it a "nerf".
chargelots got 2 buffs (damage on impact and cost reduction). Now that one of the buffs got CHANGED (not even nerfed), protoss starts complaining its a nerf LOL. Meanwhile marines are still same as WOL.
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Northern Ireland20731 Posts
On January 14 2020 03:03 atira_sc2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2020 05:15 BabelFish1 wrote:On January 11 2020 09:47 Wombat_NI wrote: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. LMFAO the fricken irony behind this post. Everyone agrees you should never change something out of frustration, which is why it was extremely retarded to buff observer speed just because some 5k protoss caster kept whining on stream when losing to mine drops. The result is gumiho eliminated by parting because he couldnt catch a ferrari observer. Now that the balance team came to their senses and reverted that change, protoss apologists are calling it a "nerf". chargelots got 2 buffs (damage on impact and cost reduction). Now that one of the buffs got CHANGED (not even nerfed), protoss starts complaining its a nerf LOL. Meanwhile marines are still same as WOL. How does observer speed affect these things? Defending drops is a matter of placing static observers and other spotters well, speed is basically irrelevant.
Faster observers only really pertain to you know, actually scouting across the map. Zerg have creep and now cheaper OLs, Terrans have scans.
Replacing lost observers costs Robo production time too, having speedier observers was fine.
Gumiho fucked up killing that observer, he knows he did. Literally just look at his reactions in that actual game. Entirely the reaction of ‘oh god I screwed up’ not ‘speed of observers is so frigging imbalanced’
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On January 14 2020 03:03 atira_sc2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2020 05:15 BabelFish1 wrote:On January 11 2020 09:47 Wombat_NI wrote: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. LMFAO the fricken irony behind this post. Everyone agrees you should never change something out of frustration, which is why it was extremely retarded to buff observer speed just because some 5k protoss caster kept whining on stream when losing to mine drops. The result is gumiho eliminated by parting because he couldnt catch a ferrari observer. Now that the balance team came to their senses and reverted that change, protoss apologists are calling it a "nerf". chargelots got 2 buffs (damage on impact and cost reduction). Now that one of the buffs got CHANGED (not even nerfed), protoss starts complaining its a nerf LOL. Meanwhile marines are still same as WOL. To be fair, the damage buff came in 2015. It has been there for a long time.
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With the new map contest we have to wait and see if some mapmakers try to do it without the overlord parking spot
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On January 08 2020 23:12 Ciaus_Dronu wrote: We've had like 1 major tournament, immediately after the patch, in which major changes occurred (many of them substantial nerfs to Zerg).
How about we just... you know... actually watch and see how things play out before nerfing the linchpin of Zerg defense / map control?
But this tournament had ZvZ final. AGAIN!
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On January 15 2020 02:19 Elantris wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2020 23:12 Ciaus_Dronu wrote: We've had like 1 major tournament, immediately after the patch, in which major changes occurred (many of them substantial nerfs to Zerg).
How about we just... you know... actually watch and see how things play out before nerfing the linchpin of Zerg defense / map control? But this tournament had ZvZ final. AGAIN!
The December TvZ winrate was 51.46%. While the winrate for PvZ was 49.89%. http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/
Not enough evidence. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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On January 15 2020 02:38 Hunta15 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2020 02:19 Elantris wrote:On January 08 2020 23:12 Ciaus_Dronu wrote: We've had like 1 major tournament, immediately after the patch, in which major changes occurred (many of them substantial nerfs to Zerg).
How about we just... you know... actually watch and see how things play out before nerfing the linchpin of Zerg defense / map control? But this tournament had ZvZ final. AGAIN! The December TvZ winrate was 51.46%. While the winrate for PvZ was 49.89%. http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/Not enough evidence. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Aligulac takes results from weekly tournaments that occur far more frequently than premier events (iirc 0 in december), which contains data such as NA GMS (e.g. hunta) losing to a 211 from other NA GMs( e.g. bossterran). These results aren't exactly indicative of balance.
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On January 15 2020 02:56 atira_sc2 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 15 2020 02:38 Hunta15 wrote:On January 15 2020 02:19 Elantris wrote:On January 08 2020 23:12 Ciaus_Dronu wrote: We've had like 1 major tournament, immediately after the patch, in which major changes occurred (many of them substantial nerfs to Zerg).
How about we just... you know... actually watch and see how things play out before nerfing the linchpin of Zerg defense / map control? But this tournament had ZvZ final. AGAIN! The December TvZ winrate was 51.46%. While the winrate for PvZ was 49.89%. http://aligulac.com/misc/balance/Not enough evidence. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Aligulac takes results from weekly tournaments that occur far more frequently than premier events (iirc 0 in december), which contains data such as NA GMS (e.g. hunta) losing to a 211 from other NA GMs( e.g. bossterran). These results aren't exactly indicative of balance.
BossTerran has never been GM nor has he ever beaten Hunta. You are fake news.
Riddler on the other hand can beat Hunta.
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On January 14 2020 03:26 Wombat_NI wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2020 03:03 atira_sc2 wrote:On January 13 2020 05:15 BabelFish1 wrote:On January 11 2020 09:47 Wombat_NI wrote: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. LMFAO the fricken irony behind this post. Everyone agrees you should never change something out of frustration, which is why it was extremely retarded to buff observer speed just because some 5k protoss caster kept whining on stream when losing to mine drops. The result is gumiho eliminated by parting because he couldnt catch a ferrari observer. Now that the balance team came to their senses and reverted that change, protoss apologists are calling it a "nerf". chargelots got 2 buffs (damage on impact and cost reduction). Now that one of the buffs got CHANGED (not even nerfed), protoss starts complaining its a nerf LOL. Meanwhile marines are still same as WOL. How does observer speed affect these things? Defending drops is a matter of placing static observers and other spotters well, speed is basically irrelevant. Faster observers only really pertain to you know, actually scouting across the map. Zerg have creep and now cheaper OLs, Terrans have scans. Replacing lost observers costs Robo production time too, having speedier observers was fine. Gumiho fucked up killing that observer, he knows he did. Literally just look at his reactions in that actual game. Entirely the reaction of ‘oh god I screwed up’ not ‘speed of observers is so frigging imbalanced’
Nailed it. The Observer nerf was...weird. By the balance team's own admission, it wasn't a balance change...it was a "frustration" change.
Well, maybe try leading your scans and committing more than 3 Marines to killing the Observer? Then they're not so frustrating.
And to me, if the balance team is in "nerf frustrating things" territory then that philosophy needs to be applied across the board. Widow Mine drops are "frustrating" where's the widow mine drop nerf? Swarm Host Nydus is frustrating. Where's the nerf?
This is why you don't nerf things out of frustration, because unless you nerf all the frustrating things, it's bias. And the balance team is not supposed to be biased...and the way the initial balance patch was written...yikes...it read like someone scribbled down ideas with coworkers at a bar on a cocktail napkin as everyone passed around ideas fueled by being absolutely sloshed. Those two things combined make me concerned with the balance team's direction. I hope they don't do this kind of weird stuff again, historically, outside of not dealing with imbalanced Infestor BL and Nydus allins earlier, they've been pretty solid. This EOY patch was uncharacteristically bad of them...and even then not all of it was bad...I'd argue only the Protoss changes could be considered bad. Maybe MS too, that ability was under cooked in the concept department.
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Since this has become somewhat of a general balance thread:
For a while now you have to walk careful on TL cause the floor is a bit slippery from Protoss tears. Most arguments are Protoss NEEDS to allin to win. So how about we do something with the lategame to motivate Protoss players to go for a macro game? Since most people are against mass air play in general, I would refrain from changing any air unit, even if carriers may need some love again. Disruptors and Templar are very powerful already and one or two good balls/ storms can change a fight. No buffing allowed That leaves us with the *drumroll* Colossus! Colossus haven't been changed in forever and since every lurker and their mother has now 10 range, 9 ranged Colossus have become somewhat of a joke. So how about we introduce another lategame upgrade? Be it another range upgrade (2nd tier thermal lance to 10/11 range), an offensive ability ( activate to have more range for short period? lock-on? ) defensive (immortal has that, I don't like it) or a flat buff to numbers
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