First and foremost, we hope everyone is staying safe in these unprecedented times. While we’ve been hunkered down and large-scale live events have been temporarily halted, we’ve been very fortunate that the community's content creators have stepped up to provide us with a seemingly endless amount of StarCraft. We're always thankful for your passion and creativity. With that said, we wanted to take the time to provide an update on our current thoughts about the state of the game as well as our plans for the next Balance Test Mod.
TVZ
Though we had concerns with TvZ in last season’s map pool, considering the current maps, the matchup looks healthy both from a gameplay and a balance perspective. After last year’s big patch, we saw a steep rise in Mech strategies followed by a steep decline. Though Bio is still the most prominent strategy for Terran, we’re seeing a slight resurgence in Mech in recent months, possibly inspired by some of the new maps. From the Zerg side, mid-game strategies seem very diverse as well. But perhaps most notably, end game seems to have improved drastically, with Brood Lord turtling seeming like a thing of the past, and scenarios where both sides fight tooth and nail for small pieces of territory commonplace.
TVP
While we view TvP to be relatively even, and games tend to end less abruptly than last year, we still believe there’s room for improvement for this matchup in terms of design. For instance, even though we’re seeing fewer games that end abruptly with two-base tank pushes, a lot of the mid game gameplay still centers around the threat of this type of push, which tends to lead to one-dimensional mid games. Any significant changes we’d want to make to impact this matchup would primarily have the goal of opening it up, rather trynig to balance it.
ZVP
First, the good news. We’re seeing a ton of diversity from both sides in the early and mid-game stages of the matchup. From the Protoss side, we’re seeing many varied openers and small refinements to those openers. And from the Zerg side, we’re seeing greater diversity in mid-game unit composition than we’ve possibly ever seen in the history of StarCraft II.
However, we do view this matchup as favoring Zerg, especially in the late game, as evidenced by the lack of late game PvZ play in recent months. And after talking to professional-level Protoss players, we’ve identified the most common threads in their complaints about the matchup as a whole:
The effectiveness of the Queen in defending early game pressure.
The efficiency of the Baneling, both as a combat unit and in a harassment role.
The inability of clearing Creep throughout the mid/late game without necessitating the presence of the entire Protoss army.
The difficulty of late game with a focus on the risk versus reward of the Abduct/Feedback interaction.
TVT AND ZVZ
We view both these matchups to be in a good place, with TvT especially notable for having slightly more dynamic games compared to last year.
PVP
We believe PvP has two core issues:
The volatility of early game and resulting difficultly of holding a natural expansion. The difficultly of holding a third. Ever since the removal of the Mothership Core and its replacement with the Shield Battery, we’ve run into some stability issues with PvP. From what we gather, the current general understanding of early game seems to be that proxy Robotics Facility builds are extremely strong in the matchup, to the point of overcentralizing the metagame. This build is also a large part of why holding a natural expansion is so difficult and the resulting games seem to be so volatile.
Another prevalent concern is the ability for Protoss to hold three bases. In the past, when the key heavy hitters in PvP were Colossi or Disruptors, the defender had a significant advantage in that they would generally have one or two additional Colossi or Disruptors in their defense due to travel distance. But now that Zealots and Archons are primary mid-game units (with Immortals being much less potent than either Colossi or Disruptors), this travel distance is negated, and the defender often can’t make up this difference when slightly behind.
With all these thoughts in mind, here are some changes we’ll be featuring in the next Balance Test Mod to be potentially added to the live game in a future patch.
Specific Changes
TERRAN
Widow Mine
Drilling Claws upgrade no longer grants Widow Mines invisibility. Instead, the existence of an Armory will grant Widow Mines invisibility. The red laser attachment for Widow Mines will now communicate the existence of an Armory instead of the existence of the Drilling Claws upgrade. Terran players often talk about feeling economically behind, especially in the TvP matchup. While we are open to making changes to Terran economy, a blanket buff is not something we're currently looking at considering the state of TvZ, as well as planned changes for Zerg. Though TvP economy is a complicated issue, we believe the primary reasons for Terrans feeling behind in this matchup are changes made in the transition from HotS to LotV. Some key ones include changes to Chrono Boost/MULEs and Widow Mines revealing themselves after detonating, thus reducing the importance of early-game detection, which allows Protoss players to take a third earlier and more easily. With that line of thinking and TvP in mind, we're looking to make this change for the following reasons:
To encourage more dynamic gameplay in TvP. First, we believe Widow Mines naturally lend themselves to more multiprong tactics and drop play over their Siege Tank counterparts. In addition, because of the increased strain placed on Observer placement, we believe this change will create more openings for Terrans to drop in general.
To put indirect economic pressure on Protoss by increasing the number of potential Terran openers and putting strain on their defenses across multiple bases. We believe this change could encourage more thoughtful positioning of Stalkers as well as force earlier Photon Cannons, both of which detract from the power of the Protoss' primary army.
To help ease the transition to 2-2 Infantry upgrades.
ZERG
Queen
Anti-air weapon range decreased from 8 to 7.
The Queen's increased anti-air range was introduced at a point in the game when defending both Liberators and range-upgraded Liberators were a concern in early-game. But with both map design tightening up to account for Liberators and range-upgraded Liberators receiving -1 range, now might be a good time to revert this change to more empower early-game air harassment from other races.
Our biggest concern is how instrumental large numbers of Queens typically are at dealing with Battlecruiser openers, which did not exist in the past. However, if this becomes an issue, our current thinking is that we’d prefer to address it from the Battlecruiser side than the Queen side.
Baneling
Centrifugal Hooks no longer grants Banelings +5 HP.
Centrifugal Hooks cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100.
Similarly, Banelings originally gained +5 HP at a time when Zergs were struggling in mid game. Fast forward to today, where the most common piece of feedback we receive from both Terran and Protoss players is the strength of the Baneling in a variety of roles. Internally, we considered a variety of options to adjust either the Baneling or the units that interact with the Baneling in more targeted ways, but because the feedback that we received was that the Baneling was so generally strong, we decided to take a more generalized approach.
In initial feedback from professional players, a concern brought up was the difficulty of holding onto fourth bases against a three-base Terran bio push with this change. As the feedback surrounding Banelings centers around their strength over the course of a long game rather than an initial power spike, we’d like to try decreasing Centrifugal Hooks’ cost to mitigate this concern.
Infestor
Microbial Shroud no longer requires an upgrade.
In general, when trying to craft novel abilities, we try to tune them towards being powerful. However, with the perception of Zerg last year, we tried to be more careful. This change is one further step we’d like to take towards un-gating the power behind Microbial Shroud, and we’re open to future alterations should we see the need.
Creep Tumor
“Armored” tag removed.
“Light” tag added.
This experimental change is intended to promote interactivity with creep. It targets Adepts, Oracles, and Hellions, and puts greater importance on the Zerg to defend their Creep Tumors. This is one of the changes we're more interested in feedback for, and we’re especially curious as to how much it would impact the Creep-clearing minigame of Terran and Protoss.
PROTOSS
Nexus
New ability: “Battery Overcharge”
Effect: Overcharges a target Shield Battery, increasing its shield restoration rate by 100% and causing it to regenerate 100 energy over 21 seconds.
Cost: 75 Energy.
Cooldown: 0 seconds.
Range: 8.
This addition is intended to generally reinforce Protoss' defender's advantage and help Protoss players stabilize in PvP, both on two bases and on three bases.
The initial numbers for this ability were specifically designed with PvP and Proxy Robotics builds in mind; as a testament to the strength of this ability, a Stalker being restored by an “overcharged” Battery will often survive over seven volleys from a typical 4-Stalker, 1-Immortal poke off of Proxy Robotics, up from two when compared to a uncharged Shield Battery. This allows a defending player with two Nexuses to leverage their Nexus energy as a key resource to defend against aggressive attacks, granting them the leeway to build fewer Shield Batteries, and providing them with time to reposition their units while the opponent bounces back and forth between their main and natural.
Against typical two/three base aggression in PvP, we see this ability as a powerful form of defender’s advantage, effectively quadrupling the effectiveness of a Shield Battery, allowing it to restore 1200 shields.
However, this ability still has counterplay in the form of:
Bursting down the targeted Shield Battery, such as with Corrosive Biles, Banelings, or simple focus fire (if it is insufficiently protected).
Sieging the Protoss base, such as with Siege Tanks, Lurkers, or Disruptors.
Backing off until the effects of the Battery Overcharge are over.
EMP Round.
We view this addition as having the most impact on PvP, because options 1, 2, and 4 are generally not as valid for the current typical mid-game PvP army. At the same time, we also expect effective use of this ability especially against Zerg all-ins, typical mid game Zerg attacks, and Terran attacks when Tanks and Ghosts aren’t involved.
We’re also aware that this new ability will draw some obvious comparisons with Pylon Overcharge, but we believe there are two keys differences. First, unless you get extremely creative, you will not be able to offensively Battery Overcharge rush your opponents. Second, defending harass (especially Terran drops) will require additional commitment, both in the form of units in position to help support the Battery and the investment of building the Battery itself.
Of all the changes in this update, this is the one we’re looking for the most testing and feedback about, both regarding its effectiveness in each matchup (especially PvP), and how we should tune the numbers.
Oracle
Revelation energy cost decreased from 50 to 25.
Revelation cooldown increased from 2 seconds to 10 seconds.
Revelation duration decreased from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
This redesign of the Revelation ability is intended to grant it improved utility for clearing Creep Tumors. There are many subtle implications with this redesign, but a key one we’ll be looking out for is how much more effective Revelation will be at detecting Widow Mines, Banshees, and Dark Templar. As a precaution, we’ve preemptively increased the cooldown of this ability to make it more difficult for a single Oracle detect multiple spread-out cloaked units.
This change also interacts directly with our proposed Widow Mine changes, and we’re hoping the net result falls in favor of the Widow Mine.
Finally, we’ll be flagging this change as another one we’re especially looking for feedback on and one we’re likely to tweak before it hits live.
High Templar
Feedback range increased from 9 to 10.
When we ask professional-level Protoss players why they’re reluctant to go into late-game, the most common response is that the Feedback/Abduct interaction currently favors Zerg. We believe increasing Feedback range to 10 is the healthiest way to balance out this interaction, as it would allow High Templar to more effectively zone out Vipers, whose Abduct range is 9. In the past, we would have been cautious about bringing Feedback range closer to EMP Round range, but with the new Enhanced Shockwaves upgrade, we feel more comfortable making this change.
When this post goes live, the Balance Test Mod will have been updated with these changes. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and watching the resulting games that are played. As always, keep in mind that these changes are subject to change before they hit the ladder.
I support all these changes. Especially the widow mine change is good since it will make it possible to take the 3rd on time vs Protoss instead of always being behind.
Feedback change is also good since it helps both vs vipers and vs emp.
Baneling nerf is needed since baneling are too good vs almost anything.
Queen nerf is a good thing since Queens are much too good vs everything in the air. Maybe now it will be possible to use banshee vs Zerg again.
I like the new shield overcharge ability as well since it will make PvP more strategic and not always givning the advantage to the agressor.
So I hope all of these changes go into the live version, it will improve the game a lot.
the widow mine change is ridiculous and will result in the game being much less fun for non professional players. defending mines is already a sufficient and fair challenge for sub-pro players.
not sure exactly what it would do at pro level, but it seems like it would necessitate blind defensive observer play in every game since proxying an armory in tvp for invisible mines feels like a trivial tradeoff if the meta favors blink or stargate
The protoss buff is kind meh, except the feedback, I don't think it's gonna change much, I am not even sure if the oracle change is really a buff, especially in late game. I think zvp will be fine. But holy shit, zergs got a hammer nerf while terran who were already dominating got a big buff especially against toss, they are the strongest race by a fair margin now.
Anyway, Life was winning when zerg was shit. Let's see if Serral can do the same.
I just hope Blizzard doesn’t screw Terran with this patch, given that about 1/3 of the GSL qualifying spots were Terran, after only 5 Terran qualified for IEM out of 24 spots for the group stages, and only 4 Terran qualified for the GSL Super Tournament out of 16 spots.
Terran was weak throughout 2018 and 2019 after the November patch and that’s why Blizzard spent 2018 buffing Terran, and then spent 2019 buffing Terran. In 2018, only 2 Korean Terran qualified for Blizzcon out of 8 Korean spots. In 2019, only 1 Terran (Maru) qualified for Blizzcon out of 8 Korean spots.
Since Blizzcon represents the points from tournaments accumulated for the entire year, Korean Terran struggled somewhat in 2018, while Korean Terran really, really, struggled in 2019. Despite Maru winning in 2018, Korean Terran as a whole struggled in 2018.
2020 did not start out great either for Terran, as I already mentioned only 5 Terran qualified for IEM group stages out of 24 spots, and only 4 Terran qualified for GSL out of 16 spots. Finally, about 1/3 of the qualified spots in this GSL are Terran, so Terran finally has a fair and fighting chance, after being shafted by the balance team for 2 years, So I hope the balance team don’t shaft Terran for the 3rd year in a row.
On April 29 2020 06:21 ssg wrote: Feel like widow mine is going to be game breaking at lower levels.
It wasn't game breaking in HotS when you had to have detection to clean it up. It's not like it's free drilling claws.
You can still avoid most of the damage if you're paying attention and pull away quickly. Cleaning up will be more annoying but I have to imagine most Protoss builds already have (at least access to) detection by the time widow mine drops with an armory start happening.
I like all changes except the Battery Overcharge for the following concerns:
1) 75 energy is a lot and it will be tough to use when build orders rely on casting Chrono Boost whenever available. Saving energy could result in being too behind economically.
2) It's also tough to manage energy by location since the battery needs to be in the range of the Nexus. Currently, everyone has all Nexuses on one hotkey and just casting Chrono when available. Now, one will need to make sure that it is the Nexus in the front that has energy available -- possibly it will need not to be in the control group, but then it's harder to build probes.
3) If I remember correctly - the old Pylon Overcharge had large mana cost and long duration, but there was the problem of the attacker just waiting it out. Then it was changed for much lower mana cost + lower duration.
I have the same concern - e.g., Zerg does Ravager all-in. The Protoss will be able to use this ability once, after which the Zerg can just wait outside and amass more units before actually attacking. I fear this window of time won't change anything.
___
However, I am glad they are not afraid to experiment with new abilities. Personally, I would welcome something (a building or an ability) that would allow for better walling. There are so many games that end abruptly with lings flooding into the base because of misplaced Zealot in the wall.
This is not a good experience not only for low ranked players for whom it really is hard to manage the walling - but also for viewers of pro games. I've a bad memory, but I believe it was Neeb vs Reynor very recently, where two games in a row (until that point) a regular game just ended because of a misplaced Zealot. If even Neeb cannot do this reliably, 99% of the player base cannot be expected to do that. The games end suddenly, unexpectedly, and whatever happens until then is irrelevant. Obviously, it is unintentional (it's not just a bad decision) by the defender and it feels very random. This causes volatility of similar nature that's probably criticized as an issue in pvp.
I will say, while I like the general direction of the patch, if they released it like this it would undoubtedly be the true #TerranPatch. But I don't expect this to be the final product.
Dude! It's like I wrote these patch notes myself. Everything aside from the weird Widow Mine buff and the new Nexus ability were things I said should be things a long time ago. I can dig up old reddit posts and battle.net posts to prove it.
Awesome patch! I hope the Queen nerf sticks, it's been a VERY long time coming.
I like most everything in the patch but I am worried about the baneling change will do in ZvT. much needed in zvp but I'm not so sure it was necessary for ZvT. so many of those midgame Terran pushes already feel so close that I'm afraid this will overdo it.
i dont know about the widow mine: permant cloaked unit with splash damage against both air and ground. outranges most of the zerg units. for 25 gas. now available with hellbat timing. probably makes perfect sense for pro level. imbalanced in diamond league, imo.
I also would have liked them to change the nydus in some way. In its current form it just feels awful because you get the feeling that the worm supply is never-ending and especially in conjunction with swarm hosts it feels like the first time you mess up the game completely spirals out of control with basically no hope of recovery.
On April 29 2020 06:45 Elentos wrote: I also would have liked them to change the nydus in some way. In its current form it just feels awful because you get the feeling that the worm supply is never-ending and especially in conjunction with swarm hosts it feels like the first time you mess up the game completely spirals out of control with basically no hope of recovery.
Swarm host is fine, but its just a painful unit to deal with. Its made to make your death painful and slow.
On April 29 2020 06:45 Elentos wrote: I also would have liked them to change the nydus in some way. In its current form it just feels awful because you get the feeling that the worm supply is never-ending and especially in conjunction with swarm hosts it feels like the first time you mess up the game completely spirals out of control with basically no hope of recovery.
Swarm host is fine, but its just a painful unit to deal with. Its made to make your death painful and slow.
That's why I want to see the nydus changed. I think SH without nydus aren't game breaking but the combination is just no fun to watch or play against.
Zerg is probably still quite favored in ZvP with these changes, but will also get absolutely slaughtered in ZvT. And the widow mine change just makes TvP more miserable and revolving around Terran ending it early.
On April 29 2020 06:58 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Zerg is probably still quite favored in ZvP with these changes, but will also get absolutely slaughtered in ZvT. And the widow mine change just makes TvP more miserable and revolving around Terran ending it early.
Well at least Blizz is talking to us again.
I fail to see how after Protoss gets a significant late game buff in the High Templar and the Queen got nerfed which is a significant nerf for the entire game in addition to the Baneling nerf, that Protoss is still complaining.
These are the biggest changes I've seen for a single match up in a LONG time. The fact people are saying "it's not enough" without testing them is frankly laughable.
On April 29 2020 06:58 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Zerg is probably still quite favored in ZvP with these changes, but will also get absolutely slaughtered in ZvT. And the widow mine change just makes TvP more miserable and revolving around Terran ending it early.
Well at least Blizz is talking to us again.
How is it going to make PvT more difficult if you open robo first?
Ok, the widow mine change is weird and low level players are gonna hate it, but tbh, we dealt with invisible mine drops for all of HotS and it was fine. The thing is, nexus overcharge (and pylon overcharge in early LotV) were good failsafes as you could have screw up your army split on the defence and still have a strong defensive ability to make up for it if necessary. Shield batteries are obviously useless against mines so I do see it being harder to defend compared to HotS, but we are also much better players these days with our splits and spotter pylon placements so we'll see. It's not the end of the world by any means.
Really like the queen and bane changes. The bane change is huge and I think that might actually tip the scales for once since I feel like Terran will finally be able to hold their fourth easier. But even if that's the case, I think we'd all rather that they address the matchup with other tools and keep the baneling in its nerfed state.
I'm kind of skeptical about the battery overcharge but it's so hard to predict its strength, just based on numbers alone. I'm also wondering how strong the visual indication is, is it something the opponent can recognise really quickly and snipe off?
Widow mine change in combination with baneling hp nerf and less effective creep spread + queen anti-air range is going to be pretty apocalyptic for TvZ. Pretty interested to see how badly it plays out at the professional level. Though it's probably needed for ZvP, I don't see how it doesn't completely throw the former out of whack, if you nerf three elements of zerg simultaneously.
Also good luck to ladder players defending mines, haha.
Seems odd how Blizzard does these sweeping changes all at once, instead of incremental tweaks.
On April 29 2020 06:58 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Zerg is probably still quite favored in ZvP with these changes, but will also get absolutely slaughtered in ZvT. And the widow mine change just makes TvP more miserable and revolving around Terran ending it early.
Well at least Blizz is talking to us again.
I fail to see how after Protoss gets a significant late game buff in the High Templar and the Queen got nerfed which is a significant nerf for the entire game in addition to the Baneling nerf, that Protoss is still complaining.
These are the biggest changes I've seen for a single match up in a LONG time. The fact people are saying "it's not enough" without testing them is frankly laughable.
I think you underestimate how deep in a hole Protoss is in ZvP. Infested terrans got removed leading people to think skytoss is viable? Oh it turns out zerg can still deal with it very easily. Nydus/Swarmhost looks crushing against Protoss each time we see it (and is mostly untouched by this patch), and yet it doesn't get played that often since ling/bane/ravager can overrun Protoss with less effort currently.
I do think the changes to creep tumors/baneling and queens are significant. But also that terran is so much better placed to exploit them currently--to the point that I'm not sure how Blizzard can balance both ZvP and ZvT.
If both queen range and baneling nerfs happen, zerg is a dead race. Those 2 units, and vipers, have been carrying zerg for years. Everything else is trash now. After those 2 nerfs, zerg will be unplayable. At even skill level zerg will lose most of the games, and will only be able to win if they are better than their opponent by quite a bit.
Balance team forgot that the +5 baneling buff happened same time as the siege tank damage buff, to make up for it.
Siege tank+ marine 3 base will be super hard to hold after this nerf.
Battlecruisers will also be incredibly strong.
Those changes would be fine if there was some sort of compensations somewhere (BC nerfs,)
Infestors need a low energy spell, or a passive attack ability. Right now, an infestor with 70 energy is 100% useless. 10 infestors with 70 energy each is tons of dead supply and useless.
Right now, all spellcasters have something they can do when low energy, not infestor.
They removed low energy usage spell and added high energy support vs air ability. Infestors are one of the cooler micro dependant zerg unit that can make fights look alot different depending who is controlling them; pushing them off the meta is a bad design decision IMO.
I repeat, Zerg has been super carried by banelings and queens for years, especially at super high level. If those 2 changes happen, zerg will become way weaker than anyone imagine. Everything else sucks for zerg.
What are they going to win with? Roaches and hydras? Its still gonna be banelings..because everything else sucks.
New oracle buff will make cloaked banshees pretty usuless no? A single oracle can hit multiple revelations for the stalkers/phoenix to kill. No real observer placement needed and for the big investment cloaked banshees are.. I doubt we will see them considiering how popular oracle into phoenix is in pvt atm
On April 29 2020 08:37 ilax30 wrote: New oracle buff will make cloaked banshees pretty usuless no? A single oracle can hit multiple revelations for the stalkers/phoenix to kill. No real observer placement needed and for the big investment cloaked banshees are.. I doubt we will see them considiering how popular oracle into phoenix is in pvt atm
Protoss goes Twilight first as the meta build right now. As long as that is true Cloaked Banshees are good.
If Protoss goes Stargate first that has ALWAYS meant that Banshees were countered, this patch doesn't change that dynamic.
I don't like shield battery overcharge. I am already of the opinion that shield batteries are bad game mechanics. I do appreciate how helpful they are for all ins but they are there as a crutch... so now we are buffing a crutch. I'm curious to see if others think that it will impact pvp at all. Actually, now that I think of it, I bet players are just going to end up cannon rushing more with a shield battery.
really love this nerf to Zerg, much needed in deed how is it possible that a Race can win games just by massing lings and banelings absurd if u ask me, now zerg players finally will learn other hotkeys in their keyboard
love the creep spread will be easier to stop as well zerg already have too much vision of everything
On April 29 2020 08:37 ilax30 wrote: New oracle buff will make cloaked banshees pretty usuless no? A single oracle can hit multiple revelations for the stalkers/phoenix to kill. No real observer placement needed and for the big investment cloaked banshees are.. I doubt we will see them considiering how popular oracle into phoenix is in pvt atm
Protoss goes Twilight first as the meta build right now. As long as that is true Cloaked Banshees are good.
If Protoss goes Stargate first that has ALWAYS meant that Banshees were countered, this patch doesn't change that dynamic.
Twilight could be the meta. But I still see loads of stargate first v terran just because phoenix are such a safe and effective opening. And normally the 1 oracle would revelate a single banshee. But considering its costs 50 it would give the 2nd banshee some time. Now a single oracle is enough to defend multiple cloaked banshees. So I feel for sure it will change the dynamic. We'll see
On April 29 2020 08:50 BonitiilloO wrote: really love this nerf to Zerg, much needed in deed how is it possible that a Race can win games just by massing lings and banelings absurd if u ask me, now zerg players finally will learn other hotkeys in their keyboard
love the creep spread will be easier to stop as well zerg already have too much vision of everything
There should be adjustments made, but all three of these at once seems a bit much. Lately, there's been examples of all kind of TvZ late-game with these maps where Terran keeps expanding and harassing with bio + mine + medivac while going toe-toe with Ultra-Viper. That's fine now, but if it's viable with Zerg reaching the late game in their current position, that same situation is going to be a lot weaker post-patch as they'll arrive in measurably worse shape every game.
Terran doesn't really need buffs, nerfing queens is not a good idea now that air harassment can be extremely effective and I don't know how to judge the shield battery overcharge.
Blizzard has the right take on the matchups, not sure if the solutions are the right ones on the other hand.
Queens are only back to what they had before 3.2 which isnt even a nerf because of range cuts to libs and prism.
Widow mine production buff will need to be reversed. They are now stronger in eco damage than in Hots.
Why are oracles getting a late game nerf!!???
Shield battery change is the new dt blink/speedray - everyone thinks it's going to be super op and then it'll never be seen again. Plus you're forcing protoss to change all their build orders AGAIN, something you aren't asking of other races.
Creep change is very impactful for Terran, useless for protoss.
Vipers have consume. Hts need their damage back, not more range on a neutured feedback.
What a giant disappointment. They are screwing up tvz and providing little impact to pvz.
I would have preferred a much simpler version of Battery Overcharge:
Nexus Ability: Battery Siphon (2 energy/0 cooldown/0.2s) Recharges 5 energy on the targeted shield battery. [10 energy energy/25 battery energy/second]
This allows tuning exactly how much of your macro you want to siphon into bolstering your defenses, and can be left on auto-cast like a shield battery-battery of sorts, which gets triggered whenever a shield battery hits 0 energy. Could maybe give a range limitation.
Alternative: Nexus or Cyber-core Research (100/100): Battery Network
Once researched, batteries powered by the same pylon grid will share energy pools. Can be used to network batteries across multiple pylon grids. This allows defensive players to build batteries outside of the range of fire to bolster front-line batteries, and the counter play would involve hitting from a different angle or focusing on depowering the network.
The sacrifice would be the nexus build time, and of course the gas cost. Could be placed on Cyber-core if nexus macro is too expensive to lose.
I don't like battery overcharge for a variety of reasons, biggest one being range limitation + 75 energy being an awful lot when you're normally trying to stay at 50 unused max (why would it cost more than recall or chrono?)
More importantly, why can't this ability just be merged into chrono-boost? It makes sense for a chrono-boosted shield battery (or even photon cannon) to just be souped up for defense at the cost of macro.
On April 29 2020 08:37 ilax30 wrote: New oracle buff will make cloaked banshees pretty usuless no? A single oracle can hit multiple revelations for the stalkers/phoenix to kill. No real observer placement needed and for the big investment cloaked banshees are.. I doubt we will see them considiering how popular oracle into phoenix is in pvt atm
Protoss goes Twilight first as the meta build right now. As long as that is true Cloaked Banshees are good.
If Protoss goes Stargate first that has ALWAYS meant that Banshees were countered, this patch doesn't change that dynamic.
Twilight could be the meta. But I still see loads of stargate first v terran just because phoenix are such a safe and effective opening. And normally the 1 oracle would revelate a single banshee. But considering its costs 50 it would give the 2nd banshee some time. Now a single oracle is enough to defend multiple cloaked banshees. So I feel for sure it will change the dynamic. We'll see
The entire early and midgame is different if Protoss goes for an early Stargate. Drops become less effective, Marine ground pushes become more effective, Thor pushes become a thing.
The point is that, a single change to one tech path doesn't need to massively impact the entire match up for it to be a significant factor.
I think Zerg has been so dominant for the last 2 years that something as drastic as this is totally necessary and if it turns out to be too much they can just revert one of the changes in a month or two after a couple big events. As much as I'm not a big fan of balancing by alternating which race is OP I do think Zerg could spend a little time as the weakest race. I also doubt these changes will outright stop Z from winning events too. Serral, Dark, and Rogue are still going to win stuff on this patch. They just aren't going to win literally everything.
On April 29 2020 08:37 ilax30 wrote: New oracle buff will make cloaked banshees pretty usuless no? A single oracle can hit multiple revelations for the stalkers/phoenix to kill. No real observer placement needed and for the big investment cloaked banshees are.. I doubt we will see them considiering how popular oracle into phoenix is in pvt atm
But with less duration and longer cooldown, stargate opener into stalkers defending cloaked banshee will be quite a issue if you use only oracle
On April 29 2020 06:58 ZigguratOfUr wrote: Zerg is probably still quite favored in ZvP with these changes, but will also get absolutely slaughtered in ZvT. And the widow mine change just makes TvP more miserable and revolving around Terran ending it early.
Well at least Blizz is talking to us again.
I fail to see how after Protoss gets a significant late game buff in the High Templar and the Queen got nerfed which is a significant nerf for the entire game in addition to the Baneling nerf, that Protoss is still complaining.
These are the biggest changes I've seen for a single match up in a LONG time. The fact people are saying "it's not enough" without testing them is frankly laughable.
I think you underestimate how deep in a hole Protoss is in ZvP. Infested terrans got removed leading people to think skytoss is viable? Oh it turns out zerg can still deal with it very easily. Nydus/Swarmhost looks crushing against Protoss each time we see it (and is mostly untouched by this patch), and yet it doesn't get played that often since ling/bane/ravager can overrun Protoss with less effort currently.
I do think the changes to creep tumors/baneling and queens are significant. But also that terran is so much better placed to exploit them currently--to the point that I'm not sure how Blizzard can balance both ZvP and ZvT.
Have you ever tried to deal with skytoss as Zerg easily? It is INSANELY hard to control multiple spellcasters and not get stormed to hell or have archons splash your whole army..serral makes it LOOK easy but it’s VERY difficult, especially for lower level players.
These changes are really cool and I look forward to seeing stuff like archon drops or banshees in PvZ and TvZ. I also like how they added something for protoss to hold the first terran stim +1 push a lot easier but in turn, made drop play behind it much better. I think this exchange in strengths will play to be very interesting. I'm not quite sure why people dislike the shield battery overcharge thing. I think it could perhaps be cooldown based instead of energy-based but it is not a nerf it is just a new thing protoss players have to use. I can't wait to see most of these changes on the ladder though well done Blizzard
The queen anti-air range change is good and should have been done when they nerfed liberator range. It will open up more harass opportunities for Protoss and Terran, which is good. The creep change is reasonable too because creep has seemed bordering on too strong for a long time, and the previous change didn't seem to have as much of an effect as was hoped. I still think a vision change for creep tumours would be a far better way to go about dealing with that issue.
The baneling change is concerning because it will make tanks, mines, and other splash damage far better against them, and with how close TvZ is right now, it could tip the favour toward terran. I agree with the Blizzard folks that banelings have been somewhat problematic but I think some type of damage-related tweak would be better than lowering their health like this. But yes, I am glad they are looking at banelings. Having seen pro games where the zerg just makes a bajillion banelings then proceeds to bulldoze armies that would theoretically counter banelings, it's something that's needed some looking at.
The mine change seems iffy. They talked about wanting to move TvP away from sudden game endings but cloaked mines are one of the units that strongly contributed to games ending in a couple of seconds in the past. This change may cause Protoss to have to expand slower and make sure they have detection. However, when paired with the oracle change, it doesn't seem as bad.
The revelation change is very good. It lasting a shorter period of time might cause issues against lurkers and the like but being able to cast two spells for the same amount of energy can solve that issue. It also makes revelation seem like much less of an all-or-nothing spell since it is both cheaper to cast and thus get energy for, and it allows you to detect more units for the same energy. Every Protoss has played against lurkers and missed hitting one or two lurkers with the spell only to lose a chunk of their army because they didn't know they missed them and didn't have energy for a second cast.
The feedback change is logical and makes sense. That battery change doesn't seem like it solves much and I can see proxy robo still being an issue in PvP. The suggestion someone had before to have a nexus spell to transfer energy to the shield battery seems better and has actual tradeoffs.
On April 29 2020 06:02 brickrd wrote: the widow mine change is ridiculous and will result in the game being much less fun for non professional players. defending mines is already a sufficient and fair challenge for sub-pro players.
not sure exactly what it would do at pro level, but it seems like it would necessitate blind defensive observer play in every game since proxying an armory in tvp for invisible mines feels like a trivial tradeoff if the meta favors blink or stargate
I mean in hots, terran mines had perma stelth and early on biger aoe, and toss was considered favored in pvt. I don't think this is nearly as big a deal as you make it out to be, the only big diffrence is that now toss wont be able to go roboless double upgrade fast third, the existence of which force terran to always have the option to do a big 2 base allin to deny a third because if toss gets away with it unchecked they become nigh unstoppable. I think especially with the oracle change you wont see this be a large balance issue.
Additionally consider the fact that this still requires Terran to build an armory while on 2 base and nowhere near 2-2 upgrades. Because of the overall meta game Terran tends to be broke as a joke in the early game of tvp so spending money on a mostly useless building that might be good if your opponent skips observers seems not that great to me. I really don't think this change will do much.
On the other hand toss is getting a huge defensive buff with the shield battery overcharge that may turn out to be way way to good vs tank pushes that are central to terran's game-plan. I don't see this patch at all helping terran in tvp, its a massive nerf in an already slightly toss favored matchup.
Honestly I'm not even sure if the widow mine change will be impact full at all in tvp. I think it could be much bigger in tvz however were cloak is actually really strong on mines because often it allows them to survive an engagement during a terran push and then get a second round of hits latter, I'm honestly a little worried that nerfing banes at the same time that they are giving mines this buff will be to strong for bio tvz.
I think I like the batterie overcharge thing, it's not something I had thought of but I think it could help pvp a lot, it's kind of like giving protoss bunker that they can repair.
Not sure about giving it 75 energy tho, I feel like 50 energy would have been enough. Although I guess 75 energy makes it even more hard to do any kind of proxy thing with it.
honestly I think that this patch will make toss way to strong in tvp, high level toss players realy wont be impacted much by the cloack change since it requires armory.... why would a terran on 2 base ever want to build an armory? on the other hand the shield battery overcharge will help to reinforce the extremely greedy fast thirds that lead to the bad dynamic the mu currently has. This is a bad patch for Terran in tvp. Toss already had to make detection any way because Terran were opening banshees which are just as accessible than an armory if not more so.
Also rip zergs, bio tvz was already strong on this patch with these maps, now they have to deal with free cloak on mines, in an mu were terran almost always will be going for 3 base and +2/+2 ups so they will always get the benifit of cloak on mines. In adition banes are nerfed. Im sure zerg will find a way, the race has so many strengths it always does but this is a prity large and probably uneeded buff for terran in tvz.... (edit, also now terran has the option to mix in widow mines with cyclone helion battle mech much earlier which will make it much better vs banes.)
On April 29 2020 09:25 Xain0n wrote: Terran doesn't really need buffs, nerfing queens is not a good idea now that air harassment can be extremely effective and I don't know how to judge the shield battery overcharge.
Blizzard has the right take on the matchups, not sure if the solutions are the right ones on the other hand.
spores are your best friends build then, the same way i need to put turret when u do mutalisk
Banelings need a straight up damage nerf vs armored targets and a hard one. They are way 2 cost efficient vs anything ground units and buildings.
Baneling runbys are smashing entire nexuses or planetary's, calculate the amount of banelings you need to blow up and expand with 30 workers in 1 go and you can tell just from math perspective how broken this unit is.
Imagine banelings were never in the game and then you patch in a new unit called the baneling and first pro games you watch zergs blow up entire expansions with little investment that unit would be nerfed hard within a month.
You get 100 banelings for 50 supply, just roll that around in your head a little as I feel most people have forgot.
I understand Blizzard are scared of drastic changes but this is really getting out of hand I don't know why people can be so blind to things obviously broken in this game.
As for the Widowmine I don't understand why you want widowmine drops to be even stronger vs protoss, widowmine harass is already too strong vs protoss. Even if you scout WM drop builds and you go phoenix or blink stalkers, Terrans are still finding their way in at times if protoss is unlucky or is looking somewhere else just at the wrong time and ending a game in a few clicks because widowmines wipe out their entire economy in one move. Baneling works the same way here, and is also way to strong at economy harass.
Personally I feel that giving a small number of units the ability to completely end games within seconds when the risk of doing so is very small is not healthy for gameplay , bad balance and if fair is fair, give protoss a damn unit that can demolish an entire mineral line within 2 seconds. ( And before you say Protoss can storm drop then you need to understand protoss have tried to use this as a build but it is to expensive and not viable until the later stages of the game )
If you are wondering why the best protosses we have are so inconsistent these past years you need only look at units like widowmine drops and banelings ending games they shouldnt.
Ravager also need a heavy nerf, Zergs should be forced to use more of their tech tree, they can fight high tier armies with pure ling bane ravager for way to long before they get forced to switch, in this time they eat up the entire map.
On April 29 2020 09:25 Xain0n wrote: Terran doesn't really need buffs, nerfing queens is not a good idea now that air harassment can be extremely effective and I don't know how to judge the shield battery overcharge.
Blizzard has the right take on the matchups, not sure if the solutions are the right ones on the other hand.
spores are your best friends build then, the same way i need to put turret when u do mutalisk
Spores versus battlecruisers that can shoot while moving.
On April 29 2020 09:25 Xain0n wrote: Terran doesn't really need buffs, nerfing queens is not a good idea now that air harassment can be extremely effective and I don't know how to judge the shield battery overcharge.
Blizzard has the right take on the matchups, not sure if the solutions are the right ones on the other hand.
spores are your best friends build then, the same way i need to put turret when u do mutalisk
Spores versus battlecruisers that can shoot while moving.
I mean they do zone them away, I think weve reached a point where bc open usualy does not do alot of dmg, but zerg has to invest enogh into defense that its still a solid choice for terran as long as they dont get rolled by a ravager allin before hand.
While I like early game buffs for terran vs protoss, I'm not sure what they achieve by that.
While thinking that stupid shit like proxy armories and hellbat timings will actually be a thing (really guys) its just a strange change overall, by the time you have an armory you aren't doing WM drops really, it still leaves tank pushes as the best option.
Rushing for armories for WM drops would just be a stupid weird meta build, akin to going fast lib range.
If anything the WM buff just makes tank pushes (and general mid game) the terrans best options even more, because you can transition to WM and 2/2 easily than before. Wich is not the change the game needs.
Defending mines is harder to defend than to drop, and they are already low cost and effective - buffing them makes no sense. Maru has shown us they are already devastating.
Zerg need a nerf so this looks overdue. At so many pro tournaments, it has been so predictable that the other races just try to kill Zerg early as they know late game is no chance against smart good Zerg.
I like the direction of trying to stablise PvP , Im not sure that is the way though, worth a try.
On April 29 2020 12:53 Dedraterllaerau wrote: Banelings need a straight up damage nerf vs armored targets and a hard one. They are way 2 cost efficient vs anything ground units and buildings.
Baneling runbys are smashing entire nexuses or planetary's, calculate the amount of banelings you need to blow up and expand with 30 workers in 1 go and you can tell just from math perspective how broken this unit is.
Imagine banelings were never in the game and then you patch in a new unit called the baneling and first pro games you watch zergs blow up entire expansions with little investment that unit would be nerfed hard within a month.
You get 100 banelings for 50 supply, just roll that around in your head a little as I feel most people have forgot.
I understand Blizzard are scared of drastic changes but this is really getting out of hand I don't know why people can be so blind to things obviously broken in this game.
As for the Widowmine I don't understand why you want widowmine drops to be even stronger vs protoss, widowmine harass is already too strong vs protoss. Even if you scout WM drop builds and you go phoenix or blink stalkers, Terrans are still finding their way in at times if protoss is unlucky or is looking somewhere else just at the wrong time and ending a game in a few clicks because widowmines wipe out their entire economy in one move. Baneling works the same way here, and is also way to strong at economy harass.
Personally I feel that giving a small number of units the ability to completely end games within seconds when the risk of doing so is very small is not healthy for gameplay , bad balance and if fair is fair, give protoss a damn unit that can demolish an entire mineral line within 2 seconds. ( And before you say Protoss can storm drop then you need to understand protoss have tried to use this as a build but it is to expensive and not viable until the later stages of the game )
If you are wondering why the best protosses we have are so inconsistent these past years you need only look at units like widowmine drops and banelings ending games they shouldnt.
Ravager also need a heavy nerf, Zergs should be forced to use more of their tech tree, they can fight high tier armies with pure ling bane ravager for way to long before they get forced to switch, in this time they eat up the entire map.
protoss has the disruptor a unit that if you oponent is cought not looking at thier army they can lose 20 supply or more of units in an instant, I think that's fairly even.
So in order to help protoss we're going to improve tvz for terran, buff one of the most volatile units in tvp, make protoss players manage energy for specific nexuses for some niche situations, and give the high templar 1 range. Mmmk. We're totally not going to be the lagging race anymore.
I really like these Changes, a bit unsure about the overcharge but if it costs 75 energy to buy yourself 21 seconds maybe it isn't so strong that I initially was worried about. Most protoss builds makes use of chrono, if they want to save for the an overcharge they will likely lack an early upgrade or a unit or two instead.
The widow mine change feels incredibly good to me, I can understand that WM drops dont really need a buff and that the drops are obnoxious however please take a moment to consider WMs role in the terran army.
Widow mines are meant as traps, either throughout the map or if your harassment unit needs to back off. They are designed to be used freely as multiprong all over the map however the way they are designed now with an upgrade needed for the cloak the cloak is pretty much useless. At the Point that you have an armory and enough Money to upgrade WM cloak you already have such a large army that the small scale skirmihes all over the map are over, we are looking at late mid game here at which Point WMs role is mostly over (besides random traps or harass defense).
WMs role should be early-mid game where this upgrade just isn't viable, you need an armory AND a factory with a Tech lab meaning you also need to go double factory because if you are only producing WM from a simple factory with a Tech lab its clearly not Worth to upgrade cloak.
A the moment WM in early-mid game which is the phase were they are supposed to be used is basically a throw away unit. You hope you get one great shot off, pretty much an expensive gambly baneling.
Any change that moves the game more towards a lot of small skirmishes and away from all or nothing tank pushes are good in my book.
On April 29 2020 13:47 Parcelleus wrote: Defending mines is harder to defend than to drop, and they are already low cost and effective - buffing them makes no sense. Maru has shown us they are already devastating.
Zerg need a nerf so this looks overdue. At so many pro tournaments, it has been so predictable that the other races just try to kill Zerg early as they know late game is no chance against smart good Zerg.
I like the direction of trying to stablise PvP , Im not sure that is the way though, worth a try.
you d want to defend a slow but invisible WM drop build than the one that got both tho i think mine style in TvZ would benefit this buff which is unnecessary but in TvP ? not so much may be it would make double WMs drop moar annoying
On April 29 2020 06:02 brickrd wrote: the widow mine change is ridiculous and will result in the game being much less fun for non professional players. defending mines is already a sufficient and fair challenge for sub-pro players.
not sure exactly what it would do at pro level, but it seems like it would necessitate blind defensive observer play in every game since proxying an armory in tvp for invisible mines feels like a trivial tradeoff if the meta favors blink or stargate
I mean in hots, terran mines had perma stelth and early on biger aoe, and toss was considered favored in pvt. I don't think this is nearly as big a deal as you make it out to be, the only big diffrence is that now toss wont be able to go roboless double upgrade fast third, the existence of which force terran to always have the option to do a big 2 base allin to deny a third because if toss gets away with it unchecked they become nigh unstoppable. I think especially with the oracle change you wont see this be a large balance issue.
Additionally consider the fact that this still requires Terran to build an armory while on 2 base and nowhere near 2-2 upgrades. Because of the overall meta game Terran tends to be broke as a joke in the early game of tvp so spending money on a mostly useless building that might be good if your opponent skips observers seems not that great to me. I really don't think this change will do much.
On the other hand toss is getting a huge defensive buff with the shield battery overcharge that may turn out to be way way to good vs tank pushes that are central to terran's game-plan. I don't see this patch at all helping terran in tvp, its a massive nerf in an already slightly toss favored matchup.
Honestly I'm not even sure if the widow mine change will be impact full at all in tvp. I think it could be much bigger in tvz however were cloak is actually really strong on mines because often it allows them to survive an engagement during a terran push and then get a second round of hits latter, I'm honestly a little worried that nerfing banes at the same time that they are giving mines this buff will be to strong for bio tvz.
we shall see but my guess is if terran get siege tanks in right position the outcome is still likely a dead protoss they might be even deadier if some dudes try to use the new overcharge to defend tanks push without naruto running chargelots
I just don't understand why they had this idea that they should help Terran in ZvT. For god sake Clem just won vs Serral, which was impossible before Blizzcon patch. Just watch Clem vs Reynor lately. Reynor was basically helpless vs those massive bio+mine pushes. On Thior cancels infinity of mutas... This changes are to hard for Zerg and are basically insanely bad.
Just stop saying about HOTS ZvT, which was horrible because of mines being OP. They nerfed it later for a reason. Second thing is how much the game changed since then, esoecially with Protoss abd Terran buffs in harrasment, which were the reason of Queen buff in the first place. Now they buff the harrasment still, and nerf the Queen. Where is the reason in that? Creep was already nerfed hard, and now they nerf it again? What the fuck is happening there?
Scarlett is right. Zerg will now vanish from high level tournaments. Seeya on your stream.
I think these changes may or may not have the desired effects on ZvP, PvT and PvP, but are definitely gonna ruin ZvT.
The creep tumor change makes 0 sense. They acknowledge TvZ being fairly balanced right now, go on to propose bane nerf, queen nerf and mine buff, supposedly to fix the other matchups, and then the creep-tumor nerf to top it off. I mean, i understand that it technically counts as a PvZ buff too, since oracles could kill it now, but just how often does a P go for early oracle (to clear creep or otherwise)? 1 in 10 games at most. How many games does a terran in TVZ go reaper and/or hellions to harass/keep check on the zerg? at least 9/10 times. It's a very big help for early TvZ, and a minor help for early PvZ.
Queens have been massively OP as combat units for years. Pro Zergs build large numbers of them regardless of map or build because they create excessive value both as macro units and as combat units. Zerg is lucky that only 1 air range was removed from this OP unit.
Having to make an Armory to get cloaked mines is much slower than the HotS cloaked fast mine drop, which was not really a problem in the first place. Faster burrow time is where 90% of the value of the upgrade is, and since Armory mines are much slower, this is not going to change pro defense against mine drops.
It's a good patch for helping every Zerg that already have painful experience beeing the punchingball of the other races, fighting the mech deathball, the skytoss, to quit the game.
I mean you see the Serral won, but the ladder experience of a Zerg is just not fun.
You are AFK for 6mins+ because they decided to remove every agressive options you had.
You can't attack as T/P defence is unbreakable (but they dare to say that you shouldn't be allowed to survive when they harass you, they had produced a unit, they rally into your base, and you should die).
In lategame, well between the turtle mech, and the skytoss guy, where you are just allowed to turtle harder and build spores, and wait to starve the deathball guy because you can't engage it (and balance team has made sure broodlords/infestor, or every T3 units you have is a trash unit, to make sure you can't beat them in direct fight, so you should be stuck playing for hours versus these guys playing anti-play).
Honestly, there is no point playing this game anymore, the community is the most toxic one i've ever seen, the balance choice are awful, this games had so much potential, but it's managed by people who has no knowledge, no passion for this game, so it's a disaster.
On April 29 2020 16:55 Tyrhanius wrote: It's a good patch for helping every Zerg that already have painful experience beeing the punchingball of the other races, fighting the mech deathball, the skytoss, to quit the game.
I mean you see the Serral won, but the ladder experience of a Zerg is just not fun.
You are AFK for 6mins+ because they decided to remove every agressive options you had.
You can't attack as T/P defence is unbreakable (but they dare to say that you shouldn't be allowed to survive when they harass you, they had produced a unit, they rally into your base, and you should die).
In lategame, well between the turtle mech, and the skytoss guy, where you are just allowed to turtle harder and build spores, and wait to starve the deathball guy because you can't engage it (and balance team has made sure broodlords/infestor, or every T3 units you have is a trash unit, to make sure you can't beat them in direct fight, so you should be stuck playing for hours versus these guys playing anti-play).
Honestly, there is no point playing this game anymore, the community is the most toxic one i've ever seen, the balance choice are awful, this games had so much potential, but it's managed by people who has no knowledge, no passion for this game, so it's a disaster.
I feel you.
If you're around Diamond like me then you can try something I did. I felt there's always so many answers to what I do and not so much I can do, so I decided trying the matchup from the other side and learn from other zergs that way. Queued up as terran and played mech and see what's effective. And I had some of the best games I've had in years.
Injected larva and creep are great boons, but holy shit they don't hold a candle to what's available as Terran. I don't want to come across as balance whining but I haven't felt this powerful in Sc2 in years. I had so many games where I just stood firm and blasted everything coming my way all the way until he's fully mined out, and I'd just stomp him down with a 3/3 200/200 army. I don't know why so many people complain about abduct, I found I could just let him abduct all he wants it doesn't make a difference. Any time he's not banging on the gates I just zip out with a couple of hellions and clear out a few mineral lines, and it doesn't matter if he holds them because by the time they're dead the next cycle of hellions are already built and on their way to somewhere else.
Thors, firebats and siege tank can seriously hold anything if you have their ratios right, which you can assure by scanning his army. Get a few ghosts and snipe/emp if he's heavy on the spellcasts. Use scans to find where they are. You have omnipresent detection and his can be sniped.
Balance whine or not, but terran mech plays very very similarly to WoL zerg. You can just sit at home until the other guy exhausts his options and then go for him. I don't know if this holds true for higher levels of play, I'm sure masters zergs are much smarter than me. Maybe someone else have similar experiences.
On April 29 2020 16:55 Tyrhanius wrote: It's a good patch for helping every Zerg that already have painful experience beeing the punchingball of the other races, fighting the mech deathball, the skytoss, to quit the game.
I mean you see the Serral won, but the ladder experience of a Zerg is just not fun.
You are AFK for 6mins+ because they decided to remove every agressive options you had.
You can't attack as T/P defence is unbreakable (but they dare to say that you shouldn't be allowed to survive when they harass you, they had produced a unit, they rally into your base, and you should die).
In lategame, well between the turtle mech, and the skytoss guy, where you are just allowed to turtle harder and build spores, and wait to starve the deathball guy because you can't engage it (and balance team has made sure broodlords/infestor, or every T3 units you have is a trash unit, to make sure you can't beat them in direct fight, so you should be stuck playing for hours versus these guys playing anti-play).
Honestly, there is no point playing this game anymore, the community is the most toxic one i've ever seen, the balance choice are awful, this games had so much potential, but it's managed by people who has no knowledge, no passion for this game, so it's a disaster.
Haha, exactly this. If this patch is gonna come it will be the final death blow to the game.
While I play teamgames only for several years, I here and then try to get back into 1v1s sometimes to see if it is any fun and inspiring, also to experience current builds and meta.
As zerg you then realize you have no attack options at all early. And even later you can hardly attack armies of the other races consisting of e.g. immortal/HT/disruptor, which do mass dmg against any unit you can have.
In lategame it is just bullshit to play against lets say Carrier/Tempest + HT/Archon ground support army. It just wrecks everything that comes close and you need a perfect engagement with perfect unit combination from perfect positioning and that 2-3 times in a row. That kind of Protoss army can be hold in one group to be a-moved around and spell casted at the same time. You probably need 2x the skill to kill it with Zerg than what protoss needs to win with that army.
I didn't have a chance to get many games of ZvT (maybe 1-2? ;D) so I can't go much into detail about that. And especially due to the passive queen meta I didn't like this matchup for a long time. But what is safe to say is, if you already now need like 6(?) queens stacked upon each other to defend a single T3 unit porting into your base in the early game (lol) and basically lose the game if you are only short one queen, you after that patch will need +1 or +2 queens and this will get even worse. Zergs don't like to build queens (at least me), there simply is no other option to defend all kind of stuff without getting massively behind. Thats a design flaw created by moving hydras to tier 2 in the very beginning of SC2.
Thors seem pretty strong these days. There is nothing that actually counters them other than lings and spellcasters, which can be easily deflected by hellbats. They feel like mammoth tanks in C&C back in the days. It is way harder to play against thors than to a-move thors around in company of a few hellbats.
Mines seem to be in a good position in ZvT as is. Terrans already now can easily abuse them if they know you are an offensive player and like to attack more often than average by simply mixing in some of them in any phase of the game (e.g. helion phase) and making all attacks (sacrificing drones for some more attack units) ineffective. Making them invisible with a building that is not a thowback but something you anyway want to have for tech and later options will remove the ability of zerg to do any attacks without massive loses from e. g. 3x 25 gas units. ZvT(mech) will become even more awkward. Your broodlords get 3-4 shot by 10-12 thors. Ultras do nothing. All you can do is moving around with double spell-caster and mind-control/pull and wait for attacks to deflect. How would that be any fun if a normal ling/roach/hydra army loses 100-120 supply vs. mech terran while the terran loses only ~30 supply in a 200 vs. 200 engagement without any spellcasters?
Nexus overcharge will completely eliminate the ability of zerg to ever deal damage to protoss other than with lucky baneling hits while the protoss doesn't see it and hence doesn't pull probes away in time. 1-2 units (e. g. a single left behind archon) or cannons with overcharged batteries will deflect everything long enough until the deathball arrives.
What I like is a baneling nerf, it is overdue. But it might need a compensation when done in that way, cause as others already mentioned you simply can't rely on them anymore if mines and tanks kill many more of them with a single shot again. Banelings with +1 or +2 damage attack upgrades should not be able to 1-shot (lol) peons. Maybe it makes more sense to nerf that damage instead of 5 HP which only makes them more reliable and less volatile. Imo banelings should be a unit that deal 20+2 damage (cost ~15 gas then) not the one of 2 units that whole zerg play evolves around and that makes you die when you have only 6 instead of 8 at an early terran timing.
I would like the queen nerf as well if there were any options of compensating for it with different playstyles (which there are not other than moving hydra to tier 1) and if that didn't result in just building even more queens.
Overall horrible patchnotes which probably result from one thing: EU has been very Z heavy in the past, I guess there were about as many Z players as T + P together. Resulting from that is that EU created a lot of high level zerg players. They benefit from each other due to networking effecfs (training with each other, advising each other, copying each other, etc.).
This is not a general case. Look at NA/America altogether. Who is noteable Zerg there? Scarlett. Probably I forget 1-2 other guys. Anyway it is pretty balanced.
Whats up in Korea? It seems pretty balanced. There are about 3 top players of each race. EU is different cause of personal preference of players which I haven't yet got to understand.
On April 29 2020 16:55 Tyrhanius wrote: It's a good patch for helping every Zerg that already have painful experience beeing the punchingball of the other races, fighting the mech deathball, the skytoss, to quit the game.
I mean you see the Serral won, but the ladder experience of a Zerg is just not fun.
You are AFK for 6mins+ because they decided to remove every agressive options you had.
You can't attack as T/P defence is unbreakable (but they dare to say that you shouldn't be allowed to survive when they harass you, they had produced a unit, they rally into your base, and you should die).
In lategame, well between the turtle mech, and the skytoss guy, where you are just allowed to turtle harder and build spores, and wait to starve the deathball guy because you can't engage it (and balance team has made sure broodlords/infestor, or every T3 units you have is a trash unit, to make sure you can't beat them in direct fight, so you should be stuck playing for hours versus these guys playing anti-play).
Honestly, there is no point playing this game anymore, the community is the most toxic one i've ever seen, the balance choice are awful, this games had so much potential, but it's managed by people who has no knowledge, no passion for this game, so it's a disaster.
I feel you.
If you're around Diamond like me then you can try something I did. I felt there's always so many answers to what I do and not so much I can do, so I decided trying the matchup from the other side and learn from other zergs that way. Queued up as terran and played mech and see what's effective. And I had some of the best games I've had in years.
Injected larva and creep are great boons, but holy shit they don't hold a candle to what's available as Terran. I don't want to come across as balance whining but I haven't felt this powerful in Sc2 in years. I had so many games where I just stood firm and blasted everything coming my way all the way until he's fully mined out, and I'd just stomp him down with a 3/3 200/200 army. I don't know why so many people complain about abduct, I found I could just let him abduct all he wants it doesn't make a difference. Any time he's not banging on the gates I just zip out with a couple of hellions and clear out a few mineral lines, and it doesn't matter if he holds them because by the time they're dead the next cycle of hellions are already built and on their way to somewhere else.
Thors, firebats and siege tank can seriously hold anything if you have their ratios right, which you can assure by scanning his army. Get a few ghosts and snipe/emp if he's heavy on the spellcasts. Use scans to find where they are. You have omnipresent detection and his can be sniped.
Balance whine or not, but terran mech plays very very similarly to WoL zerg. You can just sit at home until the other guy exhausts his options and then go for him. I don't know if this holds true for higher levels of play, I'm sure masters zergs are much smarter than me. Maybe someone else have similar experiences.
I have been reflecting on the current TvZ meta which has started to resemble the HotS era somewhat. The bio v baneling micro is heavily featured again. The extra boost that centrifugal hooks got in a former patch looks to have balanced out with the improved marine splitting of current terrans. To me, TvZ seems balanced as it is. The we have protoss. The banes are massive vs the protoss army. Force fields was the old way of stopping them. Ravagers can remove the ff + banes are faster, so the ff need to be quicker. Add to that the extra ~14% health, making them survive more on their way to the opposing army. The balancing of 3 races, givng more than 1 mu to consider, is hard.
in M3 you already should know all the bullshit which the other 2 race could do, you have to scout it and react perfectly, since they just copy one of Parting's robo build or something like that and kill you straight, for T its quite the same, they could copy a 2 base timing and kill you straight or make a huge advantage
but you probably dont know how to counter all these bullshits since you're in M3, in the highest level these changes probably makes sense, but in lower leagues zergs will suffer for sure
On April 29 2020 18:40 starkiller123 wrote: queue all the doom and gloom zerg players calling this patch the end of the world lol
yeah i see your point how invisible widow mines and less range on queens solves the problems they're currently having lol
maybe we should just wait and see before people start claiming this patch will kill the game, really the widow mine change is not even that big, its like people has forgotten that we played with cloaked widow mines for three years of Hots
On April 29 2020 18:47 starkiller123 wrote: maybe we should just wait and see before people start claiming this patch will kill the game, really the widow mine change is not even that big, its like people has forgotten that we played with cloaked widow mines for three years of Hots
Of course this patch won't kill the game and it's too early to say it will ruin everything, but could you point out anything in here that's beneficial to all the "gloomy zergs"
On April 29 2020 18:56 starkiller123 wrote: I'm sorry but expecting zerg to get buffs right now is just insane, pvz has been borderline broken for months now
I don't disagree. The biggest problems for zerg is over reliance on queens and having too few aggressive options.
As terran/protoss you can send out hellions/oracle/reaper and harass mineral lines. Zerg sorely miss this kind of option.
As terran/protoss you can set the opponent on the back foot by doing some kind of proxy or bunker/cannon. Zerg sorely miss this kind of option.
A warp prism with immortals is very powerful, as is a medivac with stim Marines. Zerg just can't put this kind of pressure.
Zerg can send in ravagers early and harass the front wall, which is okay, but it's similar to doing cyclone wall harass in that it sort of runs out of steam. Nydus with swam host harass is excellent, but it's terrible to play against so should be tuned somehow.
As a zerg you have a large army which slowly pushes forward on creep. This is fine from a race identity perspective but all zerg needs is some way to poke at the opponent that forces a response, like dropping Marines. What bored me as a zerg player was having few options here. I can't be cheeky and send out a few ghosts to nuke, or drop widow mines on top of workers. Zerg wants to be cheeky too.
And mass early queens is boring for everyone and needs to go.
On April 29 2020 06:32 seopthi wrote: I like all changes except the Battery Overcharge for the following concerns:
1) 75 energy is a lot and it will be tough to use when build orders rely on casting Chrono Boost whenever available. Saving energy could result in being too behind economically.
2) It's also tough to manage energy by location since the battery needs to be in the range of the Nexus. Currently, everyone has all Nexuses on one hotkey and just casting Chrono when available. Now, one will need to make sure that it is the Nexus in the front that has energy available -- possibly it will need not to be in the control group, but then it's harder to build probes.
3) If I remember correctly - the old Pylon Overcharge had large mana cost and long duration, but there was the problem of the attacker just waiting it out. Then it was changed for much lower mana cost + lower duration.
I have the same concern - e.g., Zerg does Ravager all-in. The Protoss will be able to use this ability once, after which the Zerg can just wait outside and amass more units before actually attacking. I fear this window of time won't change anything.
___
However, I am glad they are not afraid to experiment with new abilities. Personally, I would welcome something (a building or an ability) that would allow for better walling. There are so many games that end abruptly with lings flooding into the base because of misplaced Zealot in the wall.
This is not a good experience not only for low ranked players for whom it really is hard to manage the walling - but also for viewers of pro games. I've a bad memory, but I believe it was Neeb vs Reynor very recently, where two games in a row (until that point) a regular game just ended because of a misplaced Zealot. If even Neeb cannot do this reliably, 99% of the player base cannot be expected to do that. The games end suddenly, unexpectedly, and whatever happens until then is irrelevant. Obviously, it is unintentional (it's not just a bad decision) by the defender and it feels very random. This causes volatility of similar nature that's probably criticized as an issue in pvp.
Agreed on all of this
Walling problem happens all of the time even in pro games. With some walling positions it's merely annoying, with others it's damn near impossible to get the unit on the exact right spot so that zerglings can't walk past on either side - and then it has to be repositioned over and over again as you take units in/out of the wall so there is cumulative opportunity for errors.
This is fine from a race identity perspective but all zerg needs is some way to poke at the opponent that forces a response, like dropping Marines. What bored me as a zerg player was having few options here. I can't be cheeky and send out a few ghosts to nuke, or drop widow mines on top of workers. Zerg wants to be cheeky too.
Serral is really good at this and has decided many games using tools like overlord harass drops in the early to midgame. Zerglings are pretty good, banelings two-shot large clumps of workers and that turns into a one-shot when you have +1 melee. It's probably even scarier than widow mines because there is no burrow delay and it's more challenging to manage overlords than medivacs. If you don't see the dot on the minimap (which often comes in during other action) then the game can instantly end at the same time you get an audio alert and i don't think that's very good game design.
I think a lot of this is lack of imagination/multitasking since some players already have great success with tools like this and when they were buffed further - especially by making tools like drop and nydus available earlier in the game, often before warpgate - they just broke the game.
can't wait until building 6 contiguous bunkers give widow mines a green laser! i've been getting back into playing recently and realized I have no idea what the current upgrade situation with the widow mine is, ha. these changes look decent overall, i'm assuming these are just PTR ones so maybe 30% of them will go through (and sometimes in differing forms)?
All of these changes are great, except I dont really know how I should feel about the battery overcharge. But otherwise I am very surprised, really good ideas !
The Widow Mine is one of most toxic and uninteresting units in the game that promotes power without game play. I stopped playing when HOTS came out because of it, and returned when it wasn't invisible after firing. Buffing it is a terrible idea.
Even higher level players (in relative terms) like Winter admit to struggling versus Widow Mine drops as Protoss, so lesser players like myself who aren't Grandmasters who already get decimated by the coin flippiness of a Widow Mine drop, are going to face them more often. Even if you have a cannon up, it won't kill multiple Widow Mines before they ravage your mineral line.
Unlike a Banshee, Oracles or DT, Widow Mines do instant burst damage that can kill multiple Probes, leaving little time for reaction. If you react when the game provides warnings you're under attack to a Dark Templar or Liberator, you'll only have lost a few workers, but Widow Mines will have killed your entire mineral line. Sure the pros can handle them (as having the reaction time is requisite now for Protoss pro players), but most others struggle with this uninteresting dynamic.
On April 29 2020 21:38 BronzeKnee wrote: Time for me to go again.
The Widow Mine is one of most toxic and uninteresting units in the game that promotes power without game play. I stopped playing when HOTS came out because of it, and returned when it wasn't invisible after firing. Buffing it is a terrible idea.
Even higher level players (in relative terms) like Winter admit to struggling versus Widow Mine drops as Protoss, so lesser players like myself who aren't Grandmasters who already get decimated by the coin flippiness of a Widow Mine drop, are going to face them more often. Even if you have a cannon up, it won't kill multiple Widow Mines before they ravage your mineral line.
The risk-reward is all wrong. Just like Abduct and Blinding Cloud.
And this battery overcharge is absolutely going to the increase the number of proxies.
You should not be defending a widow mine with cannons. You should not be worried about an armory making them invisible because you should surely have a robo, or even now an oracle, before that is finished.
We’re also aware that this new ability will draw some obvious comparisons with Pylon Overcharge, but we believe there are two keys differences. First, unless you get extremely creative, you will not be able to offensively Battery Overcharge rush your opponents
Blizzard really underestimates the great book of protoss
On April 29 2020 21:41 -Kyo- wrote: You should not be defending a widow mine with cannons. You should not be worried about an armory making them invisible because you should surely have a robo, or even now an oracle, before that is finished.
You didn't read what Blizzard wrote did you?
"To put indirect economic pressure on Protoss by increasing the number of potential Terran openers and putting strain on their defenses across multiple bases. We believe this change could encourage more thoughtful positioning of Stalkers as well as force earlier Photon Cannons, both of which detract from the power of the Protoss' primary army."
Blizzard doesn't understand their game. And that's the problem. I don't build Cannons to defend Widow Mines, which I why I said even if you have on up... so their proposed solution doesn't solve the problem as I mentioned.
On April 29 2020 21:41 -Kyo- wrote: You should not be defending a widow mine with cannons. You should not be worried about an armory making them invisible because you should surely have a robo, or even now an oracle, before that is finished.
You didn't read what Blizzard wrote did you?
"To put indirect economic pressure on Protoss by increasing the number of potential Terran openers and putting strain on their defenses across multiple bases. We believe this change could encourage more thoughtful positioning of Stalkers as well as force earlier Photon Cannons, both of which detract from the power of the Protoss' primary army."
Blizzard doesn't understand their game. And that's the problem. I don't build Cannons to defend Widow Mines, which I why I said even if you have on up... so their proposed solution doesn't solve the problem as I mentioned.
That's the whole point.
?? Idk what you mean anymore. You've made two opposing conclusions in two posts.
If you're not building cannons, that's good. If you're putting stalkers in the correct position, that's good. Most standard blink openings have the power deny a drop completely if you're positioned correctly.
idk how the armory making them invisible would lead you to quitting when you'll a robo built before 40 supply in like... literally every pvt build o.o...
My understanding of your first post was that you didn't like window mines; now they'll be invisible without an upgrade, and that made you unhappy. I didn't understand that logic at all.
I thought bout it, and you could probably easily defend mine drops with the old twilight, forge opening if you just pull workers when they actually drop. If you're taking that risk to pull workers instead of use a robo for spotting then it's something you need to think about with your build, but you could probably easily play that sort of way until like 5k+... :/
you will not be able to offensively Battery Overcharge rush your opponents.
Awww come on
EDIT : Did someone test the Baneling nerf with tanks / storms ?
Doesn't change how fast storm kills banes and it doesn't really change how toss units kill them outside of some fringe combinations.
It does reduce the number of hits needed from a marine.
It's like blizzard didn't read their own notes from before. There is a reason they backed off the +10 health that somehow made it into the game years ago. This is a huge nerf for Terran and useless for protoss.
For Tanks the splash radiuses are: inner radius (14% of the area): 40 damage mid radius (25% of the area): 20 damage outer radius (61% of the area): 10 damage
After the patch you need to do 30 damage in a single shot or 31 damage with shots in quick succession (due to Zerg regeneration). So those scenarios where heavy red bane blops keep on rolling won't happen anymore. They usually happen when 2-3 tank shots bruise them in the outer radiuses.
On April 29 2020 12:53 Dedraterllaerau wrote: Banelings need a straight up damage nerf vs armored targets and a hard one. They are way 2 cost efficient vs anything ground units and buildings.
Baneling runbys are smashing entire nexuses or planetary's, calculate the amount of banelings you need to blow up and expand with 30 workers in 1 go and you can tell just from math perspective how broken this unit is.
Imagine banelings were never in the game and then you patch in a new unit called the baneling and first pro games you watch zergs blow up entire expansions with little investment that unit would be nerfed hard within a month.
You get 100 banelings for 50 supply, just roll that around in your head a little as I feel most people have forgot.
I understand Blizzard are scared of drastic changes but this is really getting out of hand I don't know why people can be so blind to things obviously broken in this game.
It s better to keep the unit unchanged (or look at these changes and..) and increase his gas cost (25 to 30 or 35 idk).
PS : Here, Some have mocked me about my posts about Banelings and creep tumors.. But now i know my suggestion were full of good sense.
Anyone else looking at this like, "Terran players often talk about feeling economically behind, especially in the TvP matchup." So they're gonna make a slight change to widow mines while massively buffing shield batteries? I don't know. I guess we'll have to see how it plays out in practice. I'm seeing protoss players comment that it's bad because it will complicate macro/nexus energy management. I'm the terran saying once the protoss players adjust it will be fine. Ever drop mules right before you realize there's dt's in your mineral line? You just have to save energy on your most vulnerable nexus. The strength of keeping that base seems much more important than losing a couple chrono boosts to me. It also seems to me like they're not really buffing the widow mine. Now if I want them to be cloaked while burrowed and have drilling claws I need an Armory and a tech lab upgrade. It forces detection but also delays the timing of widow mine drops. Protoss has such strong detection capabilities I feel like will hardly make a difference. Meanwhile denying expansions as terran vs protoss will be much harder. When already, "Terran players often talk about feeling economically behind, especially in the TvP matchup."
nerfing queen while not nerfing cattlebruiser power? i don't know, bro...
nerfing banes - maybe ok. but you have to consider, that banes are suicide units, having them is simultaneously being necessary and risky. you need them against certain t and p unit combos, but if you don't trade them okay-ish, you're just dead
HT feedback buff is really strong, as it counters each and every energy unit, affecting especially most lategame scenarios
oracle change seems good. you get something (versatility) and you loose something ("indefinite" detection)
battery overcharge - could have large impact on p turtling tactics, resulting into reduced dynamic gameplay
widowmine change - it's hard to say. will obviously make the mines invisible a tad earlier. making them a lot stronger against defending banes and mutas and ambushing rush paths. but i doubt they will have big impact on harassing the p eco
creep change - will possibly have a massive influence on z gameplay. the reactive race depends mostly on scouting information, especially in early to mid game state. increasing t and p ability to reduce creep in this phase of the game with cheap units is a big deal
as for the microbial tweak - the poll says it all: microbial what??? really made my day, bro!
you will not be able to offensively Battery Overcharge rush your opponents.
Awww come on
EDIT : Did someone test the Baneling nerf with tanks / storms ?
I tested earlier. If you roll through a storm your banes will survive with 1hp.
You didn't even need to test it.
Storm does 10 damage per tick. Ignores armor. Zerg regenerates 1 health immediately.
Three ticks - bane survives with 1hp vs 6hp. This is useless because it still is oneshot but pretty much everything. No change.
Four ticks - bane dies pre and post patch. No change.
It does reduce marine shots by one....
I was thinking, why not give the baneling the light tag? (currently it has no tag besides biological) it makes colossus kill them in 3 shots instead of 4 (2 with +1 attack) and adepts kill them in 2 instead of also 4.
The only terran units this will affect would be ghost and hellion/hellbat wich honestly is a small diference, since nobody makes them to counter banes.
On April 29 2020 21:41 -Kyo- wrote: You should not be defending a widow mine with cannons. You should not be worried about an armory making them invisible because you should surely have a robo, or even now an oracle, before that is finished.
You didn't read what Blizzard wrote did you?
"To put indirect economic pressure on Protoss by increasing the number of potential Terran openers and putting strain on their defenses across multiple bases. We believe this change could encourage more thoughtful positioning of Stalkers as well as force earlier Photon Cannons, both of which detract from the power of the Protoss' primary army."
Blizzard doesn't understand their game. And that's the problem. I don't build Cannons to defend Widow Mines, which I why I said even if you have on up... so their proposed solution doesn't solve the problem as I mentioned.
That's the whole point.
This buff doesn't changes any of that tho, WM change only matter AFTER they shot, they still have the same capacity to do that, only difference is that now you have to spend some resources into killing them (if they didn't save them with medivac after the shot).
Not saying its a good change (I dont like it) but the whole "WM ravage mineral lines" changes nothing with this mine buff.
Eh, not a terrible idea giving them light tag, but what they really need is a nerf against toss. Banes should do -50% damage against shields.
Blizzard already uses shield specific damage for race balancing. Fine for protoss to benefit from that instead of always getting there short end of the stick.
I was thinking, why not give the baneling the light tag? (currently it has no tag besides biological) it makes colossus kill them in 3 shots instead of 4 (2 with +1 attack) and adepts kill them in 2 instead of also 4.
The only terran units this will affect would be ghost and hellion/hellbat wich honestly is a small diference, since nobody makes them to counter banes.
I think the hellion and the baneling itself are the big factors here. Otherwise I think blizzard would have implemented them as light in WoL to begin with. Blue Flame Hellions would two shot 35 HP, light banelings, instead of five shoting them.
And banelings oneshoting each other would throw ZvZ completely under the bus.
Glad to see the baneling buff gone. That was a contender for the worst change in the game rivaled only by queen range. Broke TvZ for a year just so banes could survive a storm. In fact, considering the stupidly terran favored maps atm I'm not convinced TvZ would be in a good place on fairer maps. Iffy on the tumor nerf. Might make hellion/banshee openings too strong.
On April 30 2020 00:34 Vision_ wrote: Actually, if Blizzard want a patch regarding banelings, it s a good decision.
But it seems hard to rework this unit without changing supply cost.
Honestly the root of banelings problems is not its stats or cost efficiency.
The fights banelings crush or win usually had the zerg have a much higher army cost. And even if zerg appears to have destroyed the engagement, you look at ressources lost and its pretty even, even if zerg won a fight.
Problem is they are .5 supply. Which means when the game gets to the level where players start banking money, banelings become completely insane supply wise. You can have 2 banelings per marines on the field, 4 banelings per zealots or stalkers.
You could make 1 baneling require 2 zerglings, similar to archons. You could also make banelings created directly from larvas at 1 supply.
Obviously a change like that would have a huge impact on zerg, and compensations would be required. Maybe hydras could have upgrade merged again. Maybe broodlords could get a speed buff. Maybe infestors could get an utility when they are low on energy. Maybe ultras could have a cool gimmicks that make them sell boring.
It should have been part of a big design patch a while ago, just like offensive warp-ins should have as well.
Blizzard could help Zerg with a bonus +X armor to roach when they are burrowed in order to help against marines/medivacs. (also a little bit faster regeneration 7hp + X)
Against Terran, burrowed roachs could sustain a bit more, and the Terran could have a less cost efficient scan.
I would be happy to see Zerg micro-ing Roachs.
PS : @Snakestyle, you quote me :"supply cost change".. I talked about efficiency in my before last comment
I was thinking, why not give the baneling the light tag? (currently it has no tag besides biological) it makes colossus kill them in 3 shots instead of 4 (2 with +1 attack) and adepts kill them in 2 instead of also 4.
The only terran units this will affect would be ghost and hellion/hellbat wich honestly is a small diference, since nobody makes them to counter banes.
I think the hellion and the baneling itself are the big factors here. Otherwise I think blizzard would have implemented them as light in WoL to begin with. Blue Flame Hellions would two shot 35 HP, light banelings, instead of five shoting them.
And banelings oneshoting each other would throw ZvZ completely under the bus.
Forgot about ZvZ.
What unit interaction is the broken one vs protoss?
Maybe changing the damage from 20+15 vs light to 15+20 vs light will help but it would make marauders incredibly resistant to them.
Honestly splash damade seems like the biggest problem here because while terran also depends on them bio can actually stop them with pure DPS while gateway units are garbage vs banes.
How about removing life but adding 1 base armor? Makes them weaker vs splash but stronger vs pure bio dps.
I was thinking, why not give the baneling the light tag? (currently it has no tag besides biological) it makes colossus kill them in 3 shots instead of 4 (2 with +1 attack) and adepts kill them in 2 instead of also 4.
The only terran units this will affect would be ghost and hellion/hellbat wich honestly is a small diference, since nobody makes them to counter banes.
I think the hellion and the baneling itself are the big factors here. Otherwise I think blizzard would have implemented them as light in WoL to begin with. Blue Flame Hellions would two shot 35 HP, light banelings, instead of five shoting them.
And banelings oneshoting each other would throw ZvZ completely under the bus.
Forgot about ZvZ.
What unit interaction is the broken one vs protoss?
Maybe changing the damage from 20+15 vs light to 15+20 vs light will help but it would make marauders incredibly resistant to them.
Honestly splash damade seems like the biggest problem here because while terran also depends on them bio can actually stop them with pure DPS while gateway units are garbage vs banes.
How about removing life but adding 1 base armor? Makes them weaker vs splash but stronger vs pure bio dps.
I don't think the baneling is the core problem of PvZ. The baneling is a way to end the game before the endgame for zerg, off of an advantage. Another one is mass ravager which we see just as much of these days. Just like mass roach or mass muta or hydra/lurkers have been before. You can keep on nerfing all of those tools (or buff PvZ specific tools), because they are not important for TvZ. It is more delicate with banelings though. And eventually the game will be very boring when it is balanced around zerg being miles ahead, but without tools to end the game so that P can catch up and then they deathball into each other.
ZvP has always been a delicate matchup in the macro section from the moment zergs started to 3 base in WoL. Blizzard needs to keep on polishing in that department or return the matchup to the state in which Protoss has 5 different good allin options that turn it into a guessing game with a 50:50 winrate.
Since when is the balance team this good? So many very good changes here. Zerg queen/creep nerfs so necessary, oracle change is great, HT feedback should definitely help against late game zerg, etc. etc.
Very positively surprised by these changes. And great to see that Blizzard are still following the game
I think I pretty much like all of it. Don't know if the shield overcharge will work, but it's great to see that they're looking into making it easier to defend in PvP. Stuff like queen range nerf and baneling health nerf are so welcome, should have been done a long time ago. I'm not sure how much the widow mine change will actually be felt, but it will be a lot nicer for the terran macro to avoid the tech lab upgrade.
But taken together, these changes probably tip the scales too much in favor of terran. I hope the changes will go through anyway and that the game will be rebalanced by other means. Nerfing Battlecruisers would be fine, especially as an opener. Somehow reducing the strength of Terran pull-the-boys all ins would also make the game better.
Excellent changes in my opinion, as a Zerg player I also feel Queens kind of auto shut down any form of air harass, and personally my favorite era of ZvT and ZvP was when Phoenix openers and Banshee harass was strong, it forced alot of micro intensive counter play that really upped the skill factor of both match ups. The baneling nerf is long overdue, it was simply to survive storms which seems dumb, storms should be good vs. banelings considering it's a tier 1 unit vs a tier 3 unit.
In my opinion, ZvP was far more balanced from a macro perspective when Phoenix openers were strong and not only forced multiple Queens but also forced a few spores, which kept the Zerg economy slightly in check. To me watching a top level Protoss harass and contain the Zerg while the Zerg furiously tried to remake drones while defending was the epitome of great ZvP, so hopefully the Queen changes reverts ZvP to that self opinionated golden era.
However, I'm nervous about coupling it with a significant defensive buff that is innate to the Nexus and seems to be more or less solely designed to fix a crappy mirror match up. I don't think balancing around a mirror is a good idea pretty much ever unless it's like extremely small quality of life changes of some kind. Let the players figure it out, if the match up is volatile, it's volatile, not all mirrors are equal in quality, but they are perfect in win rates so eh, kind of neutral to negative about this one.
A proposal if they want more harassment/defensive utility for Protoss, why not go ahead since we are doing small number changes on Revelation, just do some changes to the way that the Oracle interacts with units in general. Give the Oracles +1 range but reduce the amount of damage they do (i.e. not instantly incinerates workers) so that they can micro around static defense a bit but not be so punishing, creating (with the new Revelation) a very micro intensive and survivable unit.
Currently it kind of swoops in, get's batted away by Queens while scoring a few kills, kind of useless as soon as a spore is up. The increased range will circumvent this, but the decrease in burst will keep it balanced. I don't know, just figured I'd throw that out there, I think little quality of life changes on important units goes a little further then a drastic change for a damn mirror.
All in all, very happy with the patch besides the Nexus ability, the last thing Protoss needs is more abilities to keep track of, they need raw number changes like what they are doing with Revelation, fantastic changes to that.
On April 30 2020 05:34 Beelzebub1 wrote: However, I'm nervous about coupling it with a significant defensive buff that is innate to the Nexus and seems to be more or less solely designed to fix a crappy mirror match up. I don't think balancing around a mirror is a good idea pretty much ever unless it's like extremely small quality of life changes of some kind. Let the players figure it out, if the match up is volatile, it's volatile, not all mirrors are equal in quality, but they are perfect in win rates so eh, kind of neutral to negative about this one.
The problem with the PvP mirror is that it is so volatile, the better player doesn't necessarily have a greater chance of winning. That leads to situations where a Zest or a Stats gets eliminated by someone like Hurricane, who then gets murdered horribly in the next round by Innovation or Dark. I believe this is one of the reasons Protoss is usually well-represented in earlier rounds of tournaments, but the best Protoss players rarely make it all the way to the semis or finals. Ironically it also leads to situations where even at times when Protoss does well balance-wise (which is not the case right now), the best Protoss players don't necessarily make it far into tournaments because they get eliminated by one of the many weaker Protoss. Of course, this is a problem with all mirrors (just ask Maru or Innovation), but it is by far the worst for PvP.
you will not be able to offensively Battery Overcharge rush your opponents.
Awww come on
EDIT : Did someone test the Baneling nerf with tanks / storms ?
Doesn't change how fast storm kills banes and it doesn't really change how toss units kill them outside of some fringe combinations.
It does reduce the number of hits needed from a marine.
It's like blizzard didn't read their own notes from before. There is a reason they backed off the +10 health that somehow made it into the game years ago. This is a huge nerf for Terran and useless for protoss.
So if this doesn't change then... It's going to buff What... TvZ Bio and PvZ.... what ? Stalkers fights ?
I get they want to do something with the baneling for PvZ which is fine but if you watch pro ZvTs it´s already hard for banes to reach the target vs marines....which is the main reason they gave banes 5 more hp. The sad thing is that banes are such essential vs bio - if they buff Z in another area vs bio i am fine with banenerf, otherwise it will break ZvT which is already pending towards T (WM buff and Queen nerf will obv tip it even more in T favor).
Maybe give Hydras something that reduces healing of targeted units would be a great way to especially target bio.
As for microbial shroud - to give Z something that helps vs mass air units which come so late that storm / disruptor / colossus is available...well...wont help Z use the spell even if no upgrade is needed. Let it be an upgrade but buff it in some way it helps vs ground units. Make it "damage reduced by 30%" or something like that to help Z get away from banelings needed.
Other comps just dont kill stuff fast enough and die too fast themselves - this would help stuff like roach hydra, lurkers etc. survive longer without mass banes needed to kill opponent fast. Basically all Z units before BLs are bad in longer lasting fights. Its kill fast or die fast for Z bc of banes needed...
+2 Banes one shotting probes is stupid, i think that should be nerfed. Also one idea i have for pvp is giving probes some +dmg vs shields. I think adepts shading to main is too unforgiving. It also would give some defender advantage to PvP
Very good changes for the pro scene. Horrible changes for everyone below I guess. We may actually see Terran winrate below GM level rise quite a bit, widow mines and BC rushes will become absolutely atrocious to deal with
good changes but i predict blizzard will backpedal
im literally 90% winrate vs terran this season after about a 2 year break, i paly between 4k and 5k players and mine drops do nothing, even when i dont see them coming. i just keep making probes and doing my thing. buffing mines isn't terrible idea.. but low skill players will whine on bnet and here about how being "forced" into buying detection is so game losing for protoss
these same players neglect to realize that if you dont scan for observers/build a raven vs toss, they see everything you do and crush it hard, dt build ends the game vs zerg with nearly no risk for toss and every pvp build has detection of some kind. lol.
people just have PTSD from losses from mine drops where they more than likely had more than ample ability to defend it, but played bad, and are unable to recognize the difference between balance issues and their own lack of skill. hence, TL poll. havent posted here in a while.. just think its funny that people have literally thousands of posts whining about this game but when any meaningful change is promoted they vote it down.
I don't like that a lot of the balance changes are so related to destroying mineral lines. (widow mine and queen range changes)
It should be a dramatic moment, when one player is really playing better than the other or the other one totally drops the ball. Actual army vs army fights are way more interesting for both viewers and players.
If a matchup is broken in the lategame, the response should not be "well let's make it so that their economy is crippled in the early game"
Instead why not buff the carrier? We only see it PvZ anyway i think, or maybe vs Terran mech (rare). What about an ability which instantly builds or rebuilds and launches all interceptors, but costs a bunch of minerals more than the usual building? Some interesting economic ramifications there as well.
On April 30 2020 22:25 Harris1st wrote: Very good changes for the pro scene. Horrible changes for everyone below I guess. We may actually see Terran winrate below GM level rise quite a bit, widow mines and BC rushes will become absolutely atrocious to deal with
This also worries me, BC rushes are very strong and do 100% guaranteed damage, the Queen nerf (justified) will make this even worse. I predict a nerf to BC's very soon, honestly to me BC rushes are one of the stupidest things in this game for both the pro scene and for all the normies.
It's a tier 3 unit that can be rushed out to do harassment but still sucks once dedicated AA is out on the field? How dumb, let the BC be a late game powerhouse, not some gimmick unit.
On April 30 2020 22:25 Harris1st wrote: Very good changes for the pro scene. Horrible changes for everyone below I guess. We may actually see Terran winrate below GM level rise quite a bit, widow mines and BC rushes will become absolutely atrocious to deal with
This also worries me, BC rushes are very strong and do 100% guaranteed damage, the Queen nerf (justified) will make this even worse. I predict a nerf to BC's very soon, honestly to me BC rushes are one of the stupidest things in this game for both the pro scene and for all the normies.
It's a tier 3 unit that can be rushed out to do harassment but still sucks once dedicated AA is out on the field? How dumb, let the BC be a late game powerhouse, not some gimmick unit.
BC rushes aren't terribly strong to begin with because they delay the 3rd base for some guaranteed damage, they are easily scouted, lose to roach rushes and don't require a special setup from the zerg anyways. They rely on positioning, micro anf multitasking. Builds like this are exactly what make the game fun to play, unlike all-or-nothing DT allins or similiar high tech crap that you have to be extremely diligent about. Or sitting duck games where the nonzerg player has to wait for a critical mass until they can move their whole deathball on creep.
Also if your BCs suck once corruptors hit the field it means you wasted their jump on offense on the offchance to do slightly more damage on the first jump. And Yamato let's you trade quite nicely over time with corruptors, so BC hit squats can stay active all game long, chipping away on bases and armies.
On April 30 2020 22:25 Harris1st wrote: Very good changes for the pro scene. Horrible changes for everyone below I guess. We may actually see Terran winrate below GM level rise quite a bit, widow mines and BC rushes will become absolutely atrocious to deal with
This also worries me, BC rushes are very strong and do 100% guaranteed damage, the Queen nerf (justified) will make this even worse. I predict a nerf to BC's very soon, honestly to me BC rushes are one of the stupidest things in this game for both the pro scene and for all the normies.
It's a tier 3 unit that can be rushed out to do harassment but still sucks once dedicated AA is out on the field? How dumb, let the BC be a late game powerhouse, not some gimmick unit.
Blizzard literally said
Our biggest concern is how instrumental large numbers of Queens typically are at dealing with Battlecruiser openers, which did not exist in the past. However, if this becomes an issue, our current thinking is that we’d prefer to address it from the Battlecruiser side than the Queen side.
They would rather tone down the queen anti air and change the BC than have queen as the BC slayer.
I don t play anymore but BC feels game breaker as every teleportation function in this kind of game.
The simple solution is to "pre-cast" an illusion of BC when the ability is launched. Then the teleportation is cancelled if the illusion have received one damage or more during X seconds. It s uniform cause Ghosts has already this kind of function,
I propose these changes but i m not sure to know the issue ?
Is it because BCs spawns directly upon your Zerg creep (near bases i mean) ?
On April 30 2020 23:30 Zrana1 wrote: I don't like that a lot of the balance changes are so related to destroying mineral lines. (widow mine and queen range changes)
It should be a dramatic moment, when one player is really playing better than the other or the other one totally drops the ball. Actual army vs army fights are way more interesting for both viewers and players.
If a matchup is broken in the lategame, the response should not be "well let's make it so that their economy is crippled in the early game"
Instead why not buff the carrier? We only see it PvZ anyway i think, or maybe vs Terran mech (rare). What about an ability which instantly builds or rebuilds and launches all interceptors, but costs a bunch of minerals more than the usual building? Some interesting economic ramifications there as well.
??? i play protoss and i don't see any reason to buff the carrier... carriers are already strong, and i don't see any reason they need to be more common in pvp or against bio. the proposed creep, queen and feedback changes all theoretically affect lategame PvZ where carriers are meant to shine (feedback helps in lategame and queen/creep should help protoss to control the map and the zerg economy)
for non pro players on mid level ladder carriers can already be used with moderate success in both PvP and PvT. why do we need that at pro level? do we want more mass air turtle games?
however i agree about mines and that it's stupid to balance the game around spontaneous mineral line destruction
On April 30 2020 22:27 c0sm0naut wrote: good changes but i predict blizzard will backpedal
im literally 90% winrate vs terran this season after about a 2 year break, i paly between 4k and 5k players and mine drops do nothing, even when i dont see them coming. i just keep making probes and doing my thing. buffing mines isn't terrible idea.. but low skill players will whine on bnet and here about how being "forced" into buying detection is so game losing for protoss
these same players neglect to realize that if you dont scan for observers/build a raven vs toss, they see everything you do and crush it hard, dt build ends the game vs zerg with nearly no risk for toss and every pvp build has detection of some kind. lol.
people just have PTSD from losses from mine drops where they more than likely had more than ample ability to defend it, but played bad, and are unable to recognize the difference between balance issues and their own lack of skill. hence, TL poll. havent posted here in a while.. just think its funny that people have literally thousands of posts whining about this game but when any meaningful change is promoted they vote it down.
some people don't obsess over their skill level and rather want the game to be fun and not cause "ptsd," which is the same reason people hate cannon rushes and many things that are entirely possible to defend. half the time when i get cannon rushed in pvp i instaquit because microing probes to focus buildings isn't why i play starcraft. i don't care if it means i have no skill, because i don't play this game to make money. i have no clue why anyone acts like that matters if you don't make money
most people who aren't pro want interactions where there are multiple fluid stages of positioning and decision making so the game feels like it has a flow and a give-and-take, such as army engagements in the middle of the map. people dislike strategies that force a specific, practiced response that has to happen immediately within 2 seconds to prevent a massive mathematical disadvantage. pros practice for 12 hours a day so they can do those responses correctly, but for normal people it's nothing but an irritation that makes the game less fun
and yes, the game being playable for non pros is 8000 times more important than esportz balance. the game can be altered in ways that both address pro balance and don't shit on casuals, it's not mutually exclusive
TvP still mainly is based around the 2 base tank push from the terran as they feel behind in the eco game if they just stay at home and macro. Blizzard acknowledged this hence the widow mine change. Even though I rather saw the eco problem tackled in another way I dont think this is going to chance much.
As a revelation from the oracle now only costs 25 energy to combat creep spread. Besides shutting down cloaked banshee play a single oracle can pretty much shut down 2 widow mine drops at the same time only costing 50 energy, (after the 10 second cooldown ofc.)
And its not like tosses are going to use revelation for creep much. So forcing early detection for toss sounds to delay their 3rd sounds fun. But I feel with the revelation buff they will still feel fine especially with a few phoenixes that can pick up the mines straight away as well.
TvP still mainly is based around the 2 base tank push from the terran as they feel behind in the eco game if they just stay at home and macro. Blizzard acknowledged this hence the widow mine change. Even though I rather saw the eco problem tackled in another way I dont think this is going to chance much.
As a revelation from the oracle now only costs 25 energy to combat creep spread. But I think this is going to matter in TvP much more besides shutting down cloaked banshee more easily now a single oracle can also pretty much shut down 2 widow mine drops in short succession as 2 revelations only cost 50 energy, (after the 10 second cooldown ofc.)
And its not like tosses are going to use revelation for creep much. So forcing early detection for toss sounds to delay their 3rd sounds fun. But I feel with the revelation buff they will still feel fine especially with a few phoenixes that can pick up the mines straight away as well. So eh, will this really make toss get their 3rd later, or am I missing something. Ofc not every toss goes for stargate, a oracle followed by loads of phoenixes was already a popular strat which now could become the norm instead of blink stalker play.
TvP still mainly is based around the 2 base tank push from the terran as they feel behind in the eco game and at the start feel they need to deal damage (delaying or destroying the 3rd). Blizzard acknowledged this hence the widow mine change. Even though I rather saw the eco problem tackled in another way I dont think this is going to chance much.
As they changed the revelation from the oracle now only costing 25 energy to combat creep spread. But I think this is going to matter in TvP much more besides shutting down cloaked banshee more easily now a single oracle can also pretty much take care of two widow mine drops in short succession as 2 revelation will cost the same as a single revelation does now.
And its not like tosses are going to use revelation for creep much. So forcing early detection for toss sounds interesting as it delays their 3rd. But I feel with the revelation buff they will still feel fine especially with a few phoenixes that can pick up the mines straight away.
So eh, will this really make toss get their 3rd later, or am I missing something. Ofc not every toss goes for stargate, but stargate play with a single oracle followed by loads of phoenixes is already a popular strat which now could become the norm.
On May 01 2020 03:12 ilax30 wrote: TvP still mainly is based around the 2 base tank push from the terran as they feel behind in the eco game and at the start feel they need to deal damage (delaying or destroying the 3rd). Blizzard acknowledged this hence the widow mine change. Even though I rather saw the eco problem tackled in another way I dont think this is going to chance much.
As they changed the revelation from the oracle now only costing 25 energy to combat creep spread. But I think this is going to matter in TvP much more besides shutting down cloaked banshee more easily now a single oracle can also pretty much take care of two widow mine drops in short succession as 2 revelation will cost the same as a single revelation does now.
So forcing early detection for toss sounds interesting as it delays their 3rd. But I feel with the revelation buff they will still feel fine especially with a few phoenixes that can pick up the mines straight away.
So eh, will this really make toss get their 3rd later, or am I missing something. Ofc not every toss goes for stargate, but stargate play with a single oracle followed by loads of phoenixes is already a popular strat which now could become the norm.
TvP still mainly is based around the 2 base tank push from the terran as they feel behind in the eco game and at the start feel they need to deal damage (delaying or destroying the 3rd). Blizzard acknowledged this hence the widow mine change. Even though I rather saw the eco problem tackled in another way I dont think this is going to chance much.
As they changed the revelation from the oracle now only costing 25 energy to combat creep spread. But I think this is going to matter in TvP much more besides shutting down cloaked banshee more easily now a single oracle can also pretty much take care of two widow mine drops in short succession as 2 revelation will cost the same as a single revelation does now.
So forcing early detection for toss sounds interesting as it delays their 3rd. But I feel with the revelation buff they will still feel fine especially with a few phoenixes that can pick up the mines straight away.
So eh, will this really make toss get their 3rd later, or am I missing something. Ofc not every toss goes for stargate, but stargate play with a single oracle followed by loads of phoenixes is already a popular strat which now could become the norm.
A lot of good changes and updates but still things that need to be fixed. I feel like the developers don't play this game whatsoever to really know what needs to be changed. They somewhat nerfed zerg with queens and banes and creep. They helped toss to not get all-in'd all the time too. They need to fix the BC buff though. Still work needs to be done.
On May 01 2020 03:39 ActioN1 wrote: A lot of good changes and updates but still things that need to be fixed. I feel like the developers don't play this game whatsoever to really know what needs to be changed. They somewhat nerfed zerg with queens and banes and creep. They helped toss to not get all-in'd all the time too. They need to fix the BC buff though. Still work needs to be done.
With the decreased queen range, they can balance the BC by making it's shooting while moving feature part of the yamato upgrade. That way BCs are still good, can still kite, but require more care then just right-click moving to kill stuff.
On April 30 2020 23:30 Zrana1 wrote: I don't like that a lot of the balance changes are so related to destroying mineral lines. (widow mine and queen range changes)
It should be a dramatic moment, when one player is really playing better than the other or the other one totally drops the ball. Actual army vs army fights are way more interesting for both viewers and players.
If a matchup is broken in the lategame, the response should not be "well let's make it so that their economy is crippled in the early game"
Instead why not buff the carrier? We only see it PvZ anyway i think, or maybe vs Terran mech (rare). What about an ability which instantly builds or rebuilds and launches all interceptors, but costs a bunch of minerals more than the usual building? Some interesting economic ramifications there as well.
??? i play protoss and i don't see any reason to buff the carrier... carriers are already strong, and i don't see any reason they need to be more common in pvp or against bio. the proposed creep, queen and feedback changes all theoretically affect lategame PvZ where carriers are meant to shine (feedback helps in lategame and queen/creep should help protoss to control the map and the zerg economy)
for non pro players on mid level ladder carriers can already be used with moderate success in both PvP and PvT. why do we need that at pro level? do we want more mass air turtle games?
however i agree about mines and that it's stupid to balance the game around spontaneous mineral line destruction
Ah perhaps you're right.. I was just thinking how to buff protoss late game without it becoming too silly, but turtle air is not a fun game either...
On May 01 2020 01:10 Vision_ wrote: I don t play anymore but BC feels game breaker as every teleportation function in this kind of game.
The simple solution is to "pre-cast" an illusion of BC when the ability is launched. Then the teleportation is cancelled if the illusion have received one damage or more during X seconds. It s uniform cause Ghosts has already this kind of function,
I propose these changes but i m not sure to know the issue ?
Is it because BCs spawns directly upon your Zerg creep (near bases i mean) ?
On May 01 2020 01:10 Vision_ wrote: I don t play anymore but BC feels game breaker as every teleportation function in this kind of game.
The simple solution is to "pre-cast" an illusion of BC when the ability is launched. Then the teleportation is cancelled if the illusion have received one damage or more during X seconds. It s uniform cause Ghosts has already this kind of function,
I propose these changes but i m not sure to know the issue ?
Is it because BCs spawns directly upon your Zerg creep (near bases i mean) ?
Is this the beginning of an answer?
Uniformity is an answer, don t you think so ? If you haven t ever made a strategic game you couldn t understand that
Imagine if Terran wasn't forced to do damage before 3base in both TvP and TvZ to not fall behind? Afaik, even going max greed with Terran can be punished by even more greed by P and Z, on top of being super vulnerable to early aggression.
I don't like buffing widow mines either, the unit is too hit-or-miss and frustrated to play against for my taste.
Zerg nerfs seem nice, they should open up for some fairer maps.
This GSL should tell us a lot about top level balance (maybe except pvp) as all 3 races are still very well represented.
Most of the changes look good on paper. Creep might be too easy to deny though, that will need testing.
The only change here I am absolutely against is that Widow Mine garbage. Look, let's be real here. How are faster invisible mines going to hold the 3rd in TvP more easily? Why wouldn't this instead be used to augment Widow Mine drops, where this WILL be a problem just like it was in the past.
You guys (the balance team) need to think about these things a little harder because this is a whole lot like licking an icy metal pole, losing a chunk of your tongue to it and years later, wondering if you'll get stuck by licking an icy metal pole again....it's kind of dumb. If this change goes through, you need to give Widow Mines the Hellbat treatment; make them take up 4 cargo space in a Medivac. That stops 4 invisible mine drops without completely killing off mine drop play while allowing Terran to secure their 3rd more easily.
On May 01 2020 07:03 BabelFish1 wrote: Most of the changes look good on paper. Creep might be too easy to deny though, that will need testing.
The only change here I am absolutely against is that Widow Mine garbage. Look, let's be real here. How are faster invisible mines going to hold the 3rd in TvP more easily? Why wouldn't this instead be used to augment Widow Mine drops, where this WILL be a problem just like it was in the past.
You guys (the balance team) need to think about these things a little harder because this is a whole lot like licking an icy metal pole, losing a chunk of your tongue to it and years later, wondering if you'll get stuck by licking an icy metal pole again....it's kind of dumb. If this change goes through, you need to give Widow Mines the Hellbat treatment; make them take up 4 cargo space in a Medivac. That stops 4 invisible mine drops without completely killing off mine drop play while allowing Terran to secure their 3rd more easily.
how it will hold the 3rd in TvP more easily? well protoss now needs to invest in a ROBO faster if the dont want to die to invisible mines that the reason behind that. also if i place a mine on top of your 3rd Protoss, Zerg wont be able to take it since u need detection... Protoss has been taking a 3rd with no drawbacks very ez all this time.
On May 01 2020 07:03 BabelFish1 wrote: Most of the changes look good on paper. Creep might be too easy to deny though, that will need testing.
The only change here I am absolutely against is that Widow Mine garbage. Look, let's be real here. How are faster invisible mines going to hold the 3rd in TvP more easily? Why wouldn't this instead be used to augment Widow Mine drops, where this WILL be a problem just like it was in the past.
You guys (the balance team) need to think about these things a little harder because this is a whole lot like licking an icy metal pole, losing a chunk of your tongue to it and years later, wondering if you'll get stuck by licking an icy metal pole again....it's kind of dumb. If this change goes through, you need to give Widow Mines the Hellbat treatment; make them take up 4 cargo space in a Medivac. That stops 4 invisible mine drops without completely killing off mine drop play while allowing Terran to secure their 3rd more easily.
how it will hold the 3rd in TvP more easily? well protoss now needs to invest in a ROBO faster if the dont want to die to invisible mines that the reason behind that. also if i place a mine on top of your 3rd Protoss, Zerg wont be able to take it since u need detection... Protoss has been taking a 3rd with no drawbacks very ez all this time.
The thing is that im not sure its worth it to spend 100/100 on an armory just for mine cloak until mid game. will this really help terran take a third instead of going heavy 2 base in tvp? The primary problem in the mu is how fast toss takes thier third, often with opening where they go twilight robo so they have detection any way. I think this might matter if toss were more afraid of 1 base attacks from terran but honestly between batteries, blink, and imortals one base is not realy threatening so thiers not a big risk in goinf twilight+robo+fast third. Its very common for toss to have a robo out by the time terran can finish an armory as is so I dont see this working as intended. Also even with cloacked mines i think if terran goes for mines and an armor they will be very vulnerable to 2 base blink allin, since stalkers can outmicro mines it may make any kind of fast armory build prity bad. It is a mid game buff, maybe a buff to mech since you can secure space earlier with widow mines, and moderate buff to tvz bio, which i dont think is needed.
Im also concerned about battery overcharge, this seems to good vs harass in mid and late game. It also seems to strong vs 1 base terran and zerg. and also to good vs 2 base tank push which i dont think the mine change will fix from being the dominant meta strat in tvp.
If you really want terran to take a third base the strength or timing of blink stalkers in the matchup needs to be looked at or the strength and timing of proxied gateway units, basically the whole metagame right now is created by how dominant just 5 or 6 blink stalkers are vs anything Terran can make until stim is done. The reason t started going 2 base tank builds is because 1-1-1 is still the most solid way to open since it gives you the tools needed to deal with toss 1 base allins and the 2 base blink allin, while terran is going 1-1-1 on 2 base they cant really do direct attacks until they get more infisturcutre and gas units made so during this time a toss with blink can grab a fast third, hence the meta.
Maybe, cloak mines help with this but with decent micro blink stalkers cant be hit by mines acept when blinking on to them so im not sure it helps all that much.
Also I think this is to many tvz buffs to fast for no real reason, tvz is very even right now even at the pro level. maybe consider these changes if the maps look more like last season.
Toss needs help vs zerg, but I don't think this is the right way to go about it.
Overall the oracle change is good toss needs help clearing creep, although im not a fan of infinite tags in tvp. maybe toss can use a small hit squad of 2 oracles to contain early creep spread much like hellions do for terran.
I also have mixed fealings about the bane nerf, banes are fine in zvt, they are strong, but some units should feel strong or a race just feels week and unfun to play. They are to good vs toss but Im not sure this is the right way to fix them, Maybe giving them the armored tag would help instead. stalkers and imortals both do + dmg to armored. Or maybe a specific interatction were banes don do as much dmg to shields, something more mu specfic is needed. I dont think banes need a tvz nerf at this time.
On May 01 2020 03:39 ActioN1 wrote: A lot of good changes and updates but still things that need to be fixed. I feel like the developers don't play this game whatsoever to really know what needs to be changed. They somewhat nerfed zerg with queens and banes and creep. They helped toss to not get all-in'd all the time too. They need to fix the BC buff though. Still work needs to be done.
With the decreased queen range, they can balance the BC by making it's shooting while moving feature part of the yamato upgrade. That way BCs are still good, can still kite, but require more care then just right-click moving to kill stuff.
Considering BCs are used mostly as harass and not so much as lategame and the fact Yamato had its upgrade time nerfed, I would say that would kill BC play, non-moving shooting BCs are incredibly useless.
the only way to reduce the strenght of the banelings over the game (no drastic changes...) is to increase the risk for a zerg player to waste his attack : It can be done by increasing a little bit the price of these units and with a small nerf (a tiny reduction on the area of damage). It s absolutely necessary for Banelings to reach their targets, so -5 HP doesn t feel necessary.
I already show you how reduce the strenght of Banelings here (LoTV Banelings is the case 1)
Despite this solution, Protoss units have a larger box collision in general so this effect couldn t work well. Banelings radius size is 0.75 of zealot (zealot = 1)
On May 01 2020 07:03 BabelFish1 wrote: Most of the changes look good on paper. Creep might be too easy to deny though, that will need testing.
The only change here I am absolutely against is that Widow Mine garbage. Look, let's be real here. How are faster invisible mines going to hold the 3rd in TvP more easily? Why wouldn't this instead be used to augment Widow Mine drops, where this WILL be a problem just like it was in the past.
You guys (the balance team) need to think about these things a little harder because this is a whole lot like licking an icy metal pole, losing a chunk of your tongue to it and years later, wondering if you'll get stuck by licking an icy metal pole again....it's kind of dumb. If this change goes through, you need to give Widow Mines the Hellbat treatment; make them take up 4 cargo space in a Medivac. That stops 4 invisible mine drops without completely killing off mine drop play while allowing Terran to secure their 3rd more easily.
how it will hold the 3rd in TvP more easily? well protoss now needs to invest in a ROBO faster if the dont want to die to invisible mines that the reason behind that. also if i place a mine on top of your 3rd Protoss, Zerg wont be able to take it since u need detection... Protoss has been taking a 3rd with no drawbacks very ez all this time.
the most common opener in PvT right now (blink) goes twilight -> gate -> robo. I don't know if there are any pro games that get a third base without getting a robo
and yes, the game being playable for non pros is 8000 times more important than esportz balance. the game can be altered in ways that both address pro balance and don't shit on casuals, it's not mutually exclusive
true but this change seems geared more towards casuals than pros who dont really have trouble defending this
also look at the pvz change... that change is geared more towards casuals as well. FB range vs vipers matters in like 2% of games because protoss every base protoss takes drops their win percentage by about 20. lol
Good changes overall, I like them. I am not sure about the overload spell, but let's see. No way the baneling nerf goes through, it'll promote Terran 2-base pushes a lot. I think a better solution is to increase its supply cost to 0.75 or 1. They are just too powerful for the supply cost, not too powerful overall.
BC openers itself are absolutely not okay in terms of balance. Yes the match up and the flow of the game is balanced... But having such powerful unit so early and you can not lose it, doesn't deserve a nerf of its counter, at all.
If you do this, there should be compensation to the BC or early game anti air options (zerg). Also changing ranges on units all the time is weird, nerf it ONCE or buff it ONCE (generally said), then let it be.
Additionally, it's hugely buffing Protoss Air indirectly! As Hydras are useless in general here, Queens are important. (...)
=> "bad"and "bad" - looking at the other changes and no compensations (the one that looks like one is useless).
Centrifugal Hooks no longer grants Banelings +5 HP. Centrifugal Hooks cost decreased from 150/150 to 100/100.
Serral lost to Zest in convincing manner using Banes. I don't agree such a small health unit should get less health. You need a big number of these units, and vs terran alot of zerglings, too........ to make them even reach the enemy... they just die really quick! Perhaps you want other units, too?
Edit: Fact, and then I go into But: Banelings are countered by Storm! They die extremely quick to any combination of storm-pro-micro without connecting! But The Zerg player has a chance: To micro ALOT, Juggle, Juke, Spread, Back and Forth, Zone, AntiZone, Swarm, 4prong Attacks, You name it - JUST to make this only chance that he has (here) work. If he doesn't the Bllings won't deal Any damage. So yes... it's possible, however basically the zerg has to has to have superior micro here, OR be just ahead by macro, positioning scouting etc. <- that was all the "But" - yes it can and does work , still not in favor.
The typical Immortal against everything composition (yes every game, they build it vs Hydras (...), I have tons of examples gathered up in my lists) together with the easy to warp-in Archons, supported by Storm and reinforcing Zealots is no where weak here.
Thus there is no reason to buff this protoss state of this particular scenario and unit composition more. The problems are else where, if you want to call them problems in the first place.
Removing the 5 bonus health of 30 is a 17% Health drop.
=> "bad"
Idea: Why don't you do something about cooky-cutter immortal-every-game compositions even vs compositions that are not armored anywhere? Balance starts with improving states, not fixing the current meta, imo.
New ability: “Battery Overcharge” Effect: Overcharges a target Shield Battery, increasing its shield restoration rate by 100% and causing it to regenerate 100 energy over 21 seconds. Cost: 75 Energy. Cooldown: 0 seconds. Range: 8.
I think shield batteries are already OP in starcraft which ought to not overtune defenses. I always feel shield batteries are too good in what they do (When I play them!, or also vs them). Just look at muta play lotv vs hots/wol... Look at proxy robo with shield batteries. Look at proxy air with shield batteries, these are all crank-strategies completely messing up ones base-build and macro, just enabled by a very very capable structure. Do I say the flow and match up is imbalanced, no, but you can clearly see the capability of said unit/defense. (here not even being used defensively)
Revelation energy cost decreased from 50 to 25. Revelation cooldown increased from 2 seconds to 10 seconds. Revelation duration decreased from 30 seconds to 15 seconds.
I think Revelation is an extremely powerful ability in terms of potential, because having vision without any unit being there is too good on high level. I don't see a reason to buff it even more by decreasing its energy cost. Yes energy cost buffs are cool, but compare them to other units.... Raven, Infestors, etc have quite high energy costs, too..
=> "bad"
################################################################################ Jeez even the overseer Changeling costs 50 energy... Why don't you buff Changeling one to make up for it? 25 energy, (down from 50), half duration. WHICH ENEMY WILL LET YOU HAVE THEM 100+ second??? One click by an SCV-> dead. (This is an emphasis and not an emotional outburst) slightly more cooldown (5 or 10, down from zero) - (You don't need 100 changelings at once)
Protoss Air is already soo powerful: Granting easy third, granting alot of vision and map control, granting the option to harass and forcing the enemy to defend. Additionally they are extremely good with their Stasis Traps in Pro Play (Zest, Special to name some plays), effectively reducing the enemies Surface Area to backdoor-the army. => The oracle is already SUCH a powerful tool and unit for little cost (you need very few...), it doesn't need to be buffed in being even more versatile. Despite its tech-cost (stargate, and some gas, uh). It's cool oracles can reveal any invisible, but should they be super versatile in also having such low cooldown and energy to do it?? (yes I know cd is increased, 10s is still super low).
I think the non-cancel-patch (last patch) was already pretty huge. A creep tumor dies easily when you focus it. A single reaper can kill a spawning creep tumor in the early game, easily.... with a queen nearby!
Additionally having the counter to the zerg early game also countering their creep-structures seems pretty out of the box. Besides: A structure should not be Light looking at this balance! Anti-Light units are here to counter quick nimble units not structures which require alot of multitasking to be layed.
Additionally I see many PvZs where the protoss easily completely put the zerg back to "stone age" (no creep), yes games of Pros like Serral . Simply by using observers.
BECAUSE WHY OBservers? The robotics produces the best unit of protoss: Immortals - they are even built vs pure hydra compositions! (Pro play, almost any I see). So.... Every protoss has observers anyways. No reason to super-simple-dumb-down their strongest defensive opening: Air.
=> "bad" !!
Idea: If anything make creep tumors be more targetable by: EMP for instance. I recently watched a best off: 2013, gumiho vs losira (Source: "2013 GSL Season 1 - StarCraft 2"). Awesome game - And while Terran's EMP is supposed to reveal invisible units, it doesn't reveal Creep. Would be good if it have worked against Losira back then, would work in general.
New Mechanic to EMP: EMPs reveal creep
As for the ZvP Rather change some mid game combat and all-ins, rather than 2x nerfs to the creep. (just in this Update, alone, 3x with the last patch)
Widow Mines “Drilling Claws upgrade no longer grants Widow Mines invisibility. Instead, the existence of an Armory will grant Widow Mines invisibility.
I like Terran, I love the widow mine, anyways again... I am sorry, but even this one I think doesn't fit... Drilling Claws is a good upgrade, it's nice that you have to commit a bit for this one, and combining it with tank play (having the techlab) is cool. I don't agree that balance changes should suit only the current meta - there might be other "meta"s coming, or even in work already which you don't know about. As far as this upgrade is concerned it will not be as strong as in HotS with Bio (because you want the fast armory/upgrades anyways). and I think it was too good.
=> I hate to say it, so I won't. Read the text.
Idea: - Rather improve it's synergies with tanks FOR INSTANCE: Reduce Splash vs Burrowed Units (like the widow mine) (would include any units, zerg, too, but hardly relevant, since not the direct damage, just splash - this highly profits for widow mines, which might eat friendly fire when the foe comes to close) or - its special task: Spotting (my first idea when seeing the widow mine, and it still persists until today after experiencing the game... give it the ability to Extra Ability "deep-burrow" - in that stance decreasing it's supply cost to 1: - Being Uncontrolable anymore (no unburrow), the only option would be to selfdestruct (auto-explode around the widow mine with it, when cooldown ready). To free up supply. This would allow you to use this unit as a spotting tool or even defensively, without worrying about your army size. (too much) To balance: There would be cooldowns and casting times for everything to not make this abuseable, i.e. right before a battle to reduce supply (and build more units) - so casting time could be 5 to 10 seconds (which is enough for defensive or spotting positions!)
Why is this important? Terran lacks a non-food defense compared to the other races. - MASS CANNON/SHIELD BATTERIES = 0 food - MASS CRAWLERS (spores) = 0 food - Widow mines = 2 food, tanks = 3 food, PAs are unreliable/big/long to build and weak for their cost - well they are quite tanky, but that is only good for defending your very mining position. Turrets only AA.
I completely ignored this one because it gave me a huge Laugh and I read on, :DD THIS ABILITY IS OVERPOWERED AS DRUGS ALREADY!!!!!!!! (this is not emotional, it just EMPHASIZES its importancy...). I won't go into details go figure or write me a pm if you are interested. >>>BUT...<<< - Blizzard didn't adress the main problem with it........ - That is: You won't stand in one spot with your Hydras, Ultras, you name it, against Disruptors, Storm, or having overroled the enemy in a few seconds (because the protoss has almost only air). - The design of this ability is completely not-useful - It doesn't help to BUFF, BUFF, BUFF it again, something you don't use. Like Buffing Space-Ships in Human Evolution, when (almost) no one intends to fly anywhere (huh? example out of thin air I know).
=> "BAD"
Imo if this was to be anywhere useful just a slightly bit, it would be when the Infestor could cast it while being burrowed... - In Result I believe Blizzard knows how strong it is (not useful but strong...) and with this update tries to make people actually discover it: "Hey I have an infestor, and Hey it can cast this orange button here, let's try"
My final conclusion is: This is way too many bads. Fixes: 1) Old idea: Don't listen to the pros about - what they want to nerf! (DON'T - it's extremely biased, imo) Instead listen to - what they think about their own race: "What is too strong about my race?" (DO) -> Rather ask a Zerg what he thinks is too strong (regarding PvZ). Not even to forget, that it might be the players making the race look very strong, rather than the race itself (SERRAL that had been burning through tournaments with revolutionary results, almost a Savior) -> or the Protoss what is too strong about 3 base vs 2 base terran (regarding TvP)
These things are a sum of vastly overpowered.
2) No clue who it is that works on Microbial-What (I know the term, but this is funny). - look at the design and the very deadly matchup, not the strength/cost of the spell.
tl;dr Hand-holding meta upd(gr)ades for terran 2x ! Zerg-unit-Ranges messed up more 2x... Protoss air buffed 3x ! (would be even more when including the previous "update") Creep nerfed 3x ! Zerg useless buffs! lool => I am sorry: bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad As much as I am positive with blizzard in usual, it still seems all the ideas from blizzard are "bad" this time this year, I can't lie about it. It's sad that I didn't find one cool thing. -> Just don't do anything.
Queen nerf is fair and kind. I would go ahead and preemptively nerf BCs a little though. Maybe gate tactical jump behind an upgrade.
Creep tumor change is pretty funny. I like it. I wanted vision to change, but this actually makes more sense in a way.
Oracle change is really interesting... 15 seconds of vision is not very much, so it'll be a lot harder to keep tabs on the zerg lategame army. But it'll also make clearing creep easier... It was a direction I was not expecting, but I'm not upset about it.
Battery overcharge ... I suppose it could be cool to bind a battery to a hotkey and target each unit to get healed up during a fight... I'd rather have the energy cost be a little higher though. Can we push it to a more difficult-to-manage energy cost like 85? That way defending comes at an attentional cost to macro management optimization, so attacking is more attractive.
Widow mine change makes a lot of sense. It makes the armory a more attractive building to get earlier, which opens up options: Like 2/2 bio or even doing some cool stuff with hellbats.
"Battery overcharge ... I suppose it could be cool to bind a battery to a hotkey and target each unit to get healed up during a fight... I'd rather have the energy cost be a little higher though. Can we push it to a more difficult-to-manage energy cost like 85? That way defending comes at an attentional cost to macro management optimization, so attacking is more attractive."
Agree with this, this is a pretty big buff to Protoss defensive capabilities, and it's shockingly to fix a mirror march up that we all know is bad but it's just bad because Protoss design is just kind of "bad" in a sense with things like Gateway and such.
Ramble ramble, it should have some form of risk/reward, I really like your idea.
"Queen nerf is fair and kind. I would go ahead and preemptively nerf BCs a little though. Maybe gate tactical jump behind an upgrade."
Absolutely agree, time for BC play to go back to the late game in general imo. The BC harass thing is an insult to the spirit of the game to me and shows how desperate the balance team was to make tier 3 units feel important. As clearly evidenced by the massive buffs given to Carriers which are now strong as Hell and the well known power of the Brood Lord.
Seriously, get this unit back to the late game where it belongs. Nothing more demeaning in SC2 then a tier 3 unit being turned into a complete gimmick and used a form of low brain guaranteed, "Well now the BC will fly around and get 10 drone kills...the Zerg will wittle it down and it will Tactical Jump back to base to be repaired...rinse..repeat..." The play and counter play is very linear and boring and just plain stupid. It would be like Brood Lords sucking in the late game but powerful if you rush Hive? Like what the actual hell man..
This patch is actually quite a sizeable nerf for Zerg against Terran. The baneling will have a harder time connecting with bio, all the while the reduction in Queen range will certainly make aerial harassment much more potent. Terran is really going to be able to set the tempo and force the Zerg to potentially be very defensive.
BC has been used in various way with the new teleport ability, the combinaison with the auto-turret fire while BC is moving and his Yamato cannon isn t an absolute none sense.
I think we all agree BC is coming too soon and should be a little bit tweaked. I already say as proposal to cancel his teleportation if the unit recieves above one damage during the transfer.
A poll could be done to resume the idea of community.
The BC would be absolutetely terrible then. Its already a huge investmen to get them out and again queens should them down just fine most of the time. Nerfing it further would mean terran will just stop using it as a opener alltogether
On May 04 2020 03:26 ilax30 wrote: The BC would be absolutetely terrible then. Its already a huge investmen to get them out and again queens should them down just fine most of the time. Nerfing it further would mean terran will just stop using it as a opener alltogether
Who cares? The balance team should be changing the BC to fulfill it's original role anyways. A heavily armored late game starship unit, not an early game harass.
And in what world do Queens burn them down just fine? If you lose a BC to Queens or at the least aren't scoring 10 + drone kills you are doing something way way wrong.
Getting rid of BC rushes would be a very welcome change tbh.
Needing an upgrade for Tactical Jump could be a good solution. But something would need to be done about having two long upgrades on the Fusion Core, perhaps just moving BC upgrades to the Tech lab (while still requiring the fusion core ofc).
Without entering in a harrassement discussion, i think the "burrow upgrade" is under used.. I already thought to a bonus for some burrowed units as the roach to force more Terran scan. The ability will grants to the drone or the roach a +X armor bonus when burrowed. By this way, a unit with a fast cooldown on his attack will struggle during drones harrasement.
Then if a BC comes in the mineral line when drones are burrowed, his DPS (49) is : (49 - 6 * X) lesser. For +2 armor, you save 25% of your drone + scan cost.
On May 04 2020 19:11 Vision_ wrote: Without entering in a harrassement discussion, i think the "burrow upgrade" is under used.. I already thought to a bonus for some burrowed units as the roach to force more Terran scan. The ability will grants to the drone or the roach a +X armor bonus when burrowed. By this way, a unit with a fast cooldown on his attack will struggle during drones harrasement.
Then if a BC comes in the mineral line when drones are burrowed, his DPS (49) is : (49 - 6 * X) lesser. For +2 armor, you save 25% of your drone + scan cost.
I always wished burrowed units would take less splash damage.
I always wished burrowed units would take less splash damage.
Yes it could help because burrowed units are easy to see depending the maps.
PS : To balance the overall idea, Command Center with an orbital command and Planetary Forteress could go on to load SCV. To their side Protoss has battery shield.
On May 04 2020 03:26 ilax30 wrote: The BC would be absolutetely terrible then. Its already a huge investmen to get them out and again queens should them down just fine most of the time. Nerfing it further would mean terran will just stop using it as a opener alltogether
Who cares? The balance team should be changing the BC to fulfill it's original role anyways. A heavily armored late game starship unit, not an early game harass.
And in what world do Queens burn them down just fine? If you lose a BC to Queens or at the least aren't scoring 10 + drone kills you are doing something way way wrong.
With the exception of Yamatoing and Jumping BCs (wich got weaker since they added a cooldown before Jumping) are pretty bad as lategame; carriers, tempest and broods "work" (heavy quotations) because they have long range, BC having such a short range and being so slow makes them an awful lategame army.
On May 04 2020 03:26 ilax30 wrote: The BC would be absolutetely terrible then. Its already a huge investmen to get them out and again queens should them down just fine most of the time. Nerfing it further would mean terran will just stop using it as a opener alltogether
Who cares? The balance team should be changing the BC to fulfill it's original role anyways. A heavily armored late game starship unit, not an early game harass.
And in what world do Queens burn them down just fine? If you lose a BC to Queens or at the least aren't scoring 10 + drone kills you are doing something way way wrong.
With the exception of Yamatoing and Jumping BCs (wich got weaker since they added a cooldown before Jumping) are pretty bad as lategame; carriers, tempest and broods "work" (heavy quotations) because they have long range, BC having such a short range and being so slow makes them an awful lategame army.
The cooldown before jumping makes almost no difference, it was a pretty lolsy nerf all things considered. It's 1 second to teleport a flying fortress of 500 health and heavy armor. Yamato allows the BC player to kill like 20 supply immediately as the engagement starts, so it's a massive exception to be making. BCs also have pretty good DPS. They certainly 'work' better than tempests as a unit, and calling them bad in the lategame is a stretch at best.
BCs are also the only capital ship type unit that has any real value before you reach critical mass. A small handful of broods or carriers are just a liability, a giant sign saying 'target me for good value', while 2 BCs can instagib 2 targets, dish out a bunch of damage and then blink out if things go south.
The design of the tempest should allow Protoss to counter a siege army on the ground and deals correctly with massive air unit,... actually, tempest is as strong as a stimed-marine with +1 attack but with 5 supply cost. In addition, Tempest has no bonus against armored unit.
Maybe Protoss doesn t need anymore BIG unit.. In decreasing this unit to 3 supply cost and dedicated it to pound siege army at distance would be enought. It s like every BIG protoss unit from Blizzard must behave slowly. In addition, the role of the tempest isn t overlapped by any other unit, so it shouldn t be a problem to balance and design this unit at pro level. In PvP I remember to see tempest in the late game transition but i don t know how the metagame is now.
It sounds like every patch should be Terran buffs...
If a race is lagging, it's Protoss, but for some reasons, Zerg got heavy nerfs for ZvT which don't make a difference in ZvP.
And Terran got buffs versus Protoss !
And the main reason Protoss have problem vs Zerg is due to the nerfs they received last patch (WP nerf for example), that were supposed to balance only TvP...
Buffing Widowmines is like buffing Disruptors or Swarmhosts, it is the equivalent of taking a hostage to make sure you get every ones attention. Other than that, I am willing to give this patch a shot.
On May 04 2020 03:26 ilax30 wrote: The BC would be absolutetely terrible then. Its already a huge investmen to get them out and again queens should them down just fine most of the time. Nerfing it further would mean terran will just stop using it as a opener alltogether
Who cares? The balance team should be changing the BC to fulfill it's original role anyways. A heavily armored late game starship unit, not an early game harass.
And in what world do Queens burn them down just fine? If you lose a BC to Queens or at the least aren't scoring 10 + drone kills you are doing something way way wrong.
With the exception of Yamatoing and Jumping BCs (wich got weaker since they added a cooldown before Jumping) are pretty bad as lategame; carriers, tempest and broods "work" (heavy quotations) because they have long range, BC having such a short range and being so slow makes them an awful lategame army.
With the exception of storm and feedback, Templar are pretty bad at everything.
On May 04 2020 03:26 ilax30 wrote: The BC would be absolutetely terrible then. Its already a huge investmen to get them out and again queens should them down just fine most of the time. Nerfing it further would mean terran will just stop using it as a opener alltogether
Who cares? The balance team should be changing the BC to fulfill it's original role anyways. A heavily armored late game starship unit, not an early game harass.
And in what world do Queens burn them down just fine? If you lose a BC to Queens or at the least aren't scoring 10 + drone kills you are doing something way way wrong.
With the exception of Yamatoing and Jumping BCs (wich got weaker since they added a cooldown before Jumping) are pretty bad as lategame; carriers, tempest and broods "work" (heavy quotations) because they have long range, BC having such a short range and being so slow makes them an awful lategame army.
The cooldown before jumping makes almost no difference, it was a pretty lolsy nerf all things considered. It's 1 second to teleport a flying fortress of 500 health and heavy armor. Yamato allows the BC player to kill like 20 supply immediately as the engagement starts, so it's a massive exception to be making. BCs also have pretty good DPS. They certainly 'work' better than tempests as a unit, and calling them bad in the lategame is a stretch at best.
BCs are also the only capital ship type unit that has any real value before you reach critical mass. A small handful of broods or carriers are just a liability, a giant sign saying 'target me for good value', while 2 BCs can instagib 2 targets, dish out a bunch of damage and then blink out if things go south.
The insta TP removal made BC rushes almost obsolete overnight. It used to be a go-to build at pro level. The delay makes a big difference! It has to go home much earlier now to be on the safe side.
For being such an iconic unit, I like that it is viable! With all the counters which are around and the absurd amount of time you need to transition from anything, I can't see it be common as an endgame comp goal. If you can get 12 BCs, you could probably have won some other way...
The one big gripe I have with this patch is the wisow mine change.
If tvp is mostly fine, why buff a mechanic that tilts tvp in t's favor while rewarding low skill mineral mine drops and demanding 100% attention from protoss.
Isn't that against one of the stated game design goals about less unforgiving mechanics (or something like that :p)? In any case it's a terrible idea.
Other than that I agree with the sentiment that this patch mostly buffs terran and nerfs zerg vs terran, while it's mostly pvz that needs help.
Two more points that worry me a little bit: - the oracle change might turn out to be a big nerf because of the CD nerf and the fact that you have to revelate much more often, taking more hits on your oracle. - the queen range nerf plus, baneling hp plus widowmine buff might tilt tvz into t's favor too much.
The shield chrono is interesting but the current (mod) implementation seems weird. I would advocate for just using the chronoboost on the shieldbattery without an extra skill (for 50 energy) and then balancing around that (+50% energy recharge and + 50% shield healing & effectiveness doesn't sound too bad).
On May 04 2020 03:26 ilax30 wrote: The BC would be absolutetely terrible then. Its already a huge investmen to get them out and again queens should them down just fine most of the time. Nerfing it further would mean terran will just stop using it as a opener alltogether
Who cares? The balance team should be changing the BC to fulfill it's original role anyways. A heavily armored late game starship unit, not an early game harass.
And in what world do Queens burn them down just fine? If you lose a BC to Queens or at the least aren't scoring 10 + drone kills you are doing something way way wrong.
With the exception of Yamatoing and Jumping BCs (wich got weaker since they added a cooldown before Jumping) are pretty bad as lategame; carriers, tempest and broods "work" (heavy quotations) because they have long range, BC having such a short range and being so slow makes them an awful lategame army.
With the exception of storm and feedback, Templar are pretty bad at everything.
On May 04 2020 03:26 ilax30 wrote: The BC would be absolutetely terrible then. Its already a huge investmen to get them out and again queens should them down just fine most of the time. Nerfing it further would mean terran will just stop using it as a opener alltogether
Who cares? The balance team should be changing the BC to fulfill it's original role anyways. A heavily armored late game starship unit, not an early game harass.
And in what world do Queens burn them down just fine? If you lose a BC to Queens or at the least aren't scoring 10 + drone kills you are doing something way way wrong.
With the exception of Yamatoing and Jumping BCs (wich got weaker since they added a cooldown before Jumping) are pretty bad as lategame; carriers, tempest and broods "work" (heavy quotations) because they have long range, BC having such a short range and being so slow makes them an awful lategame army.
The cooldown before jumping makes almost no difference, it was a pretty lolsy nerf all things considered. It's 1 second to teleport a flying fortress of 500 health and heavy armor. Yamato allows the BC player to kill like 20 supply immediately as the engagement starts, so it's a massive exception to be making. BCs also have pretty good DPS. They certainly 'work' better than tempests as a unit, and calling them bad in the lategame is a stretch at best.
BCs are also the only capital ship type unit that has any real value before you reach critical mass. A small handful of broods or carriers are just a liability, a giant sign saying 'target me for good value', while 2 BCs can instagib 2 targets, dish out a bunch of damage and then blink out if things go south.
Thats the point, people want to add more cooldowns to the jump, if BCs stop being able to Yamato and Jump they get totally neutered in the lategame.
Nerfing Jump not only affects openers and harass it affects the whole utility of the unit.
If they wanted to be a capital ship without relying in jumping shenanings it would need more range, thats very simple.
On May 05 2020 06:55 Freeborn wrote: The one big gripe I have with this patch is the wisow mine change.
If tvp is mostly fine, why buff a mechanic that tilts tvp in t's favor while rewarding low skill mineral mine drops and demanding 100% attention from protoss.
Isn't that against one of the stated game design goals about less unforgiving mechanics (or something like that :p)? In any case it's a terrible idea.
Other than that I agree with the sentiment that this patch mostly buffs terran and nerfs zerg vs terran, while it's mostly pvz that needs help.
Two more points that worry me a little bit: - the oracle change might turn out to be a big nerf because of the CD nerf and the fact that you have to revelate much more often, taking more hits on your oracle. - the queen range nerf plus, baneling hp plus widowmine buff might tilt tvz into t's favor too much.
The shield chrono is interesting but the current (mod) implementation seems weird. I would advocate for just using the chronoboost on the shieldbattery without an extra skill (for 50 energy) and then balancing around that (+50% energy recharge and + 50% shield healing & effectiveness doesn't sound too bad).
TvP is decently favored resultwise, but as they said terrans feel behind and thus do a 2 base tank push most of the time to deal damage against the toss that's eco'ing up. So a change is needed imo, dunno if I feel this is the right one.
Plus you can say this tilts tvp is t's favor which I doubt, but the revelation is a huge buff in PvT for toss as dealing with cloacked banshees is made so much easier and also widow mine drops even with stealth can get cleaned up by a single revelation with energy left to spare. So not all bad
On May 05 2020 06:55 Freeborn wrote: The one big gripe I have with this patch is the wisow mine change.
If tvp is mostly fine, why buff a mechanic that tilts tvp in t's favor while rewarding low skill mineral mine drops and demanding 100% attention from protoss.
Isn't that against one of the stated game design goals about less unforgiving mechanics (or something like that :p)? In any case it's a terrible idea.
Other than that I agree with the sentiment that this patch mostly buffs terran and nerfs zerg vs terran, while it's mostly pvz that needs help.
Two more points that worry me a little bit: - the oracle change might turn out to be a big nerf because of the CD nerf and the fact that you have to revelate much more often, taking more hits on your oracle. - the queen range nerf plus, baneling hp plus widowmine buff might tilt tvz into t's favor too much.
The shield chrono is interesting but the current (mod) implementation seems weird. I would advocate for just using the chronoboost on the shieldbattery without an extra skill (for 50 energy) and then balancing around that (+50% energy recharge and + 50% shield healing & effectiveness doesn't sound too bad).
TvP is decently favored resultwise, but as they said terrans feel behind and thus do a 2 base tank push most of the time to deal damage against the toss that's eco'ing up. So a change is needed imo, dunno if I feel this is the right one.
Plus you can say this tilts tvp is t's favor which I doubt, but the revelation is a huge buff in PvT for toss as dealing with cloacked banshees is made so much easier and also widow mine drops even with stealth can get cleaned up by a single revelation with energy left to spare. So not all bad
What about what Protoss pros feel? Like LiquidMana
If protoss pros feel that their economy is too weak vs terran, do we need to make a change that will allow Terrans to hurt protoss economy even more in the widow mine buff?
Is a change needed to nerf Terran economy because Protoss pros feel it's too strong?
Also, the revelation change is a massive nerf with regards to banshee and mine counter play. A single revelation can only reveal an entire mine drop if the Terran player decides to drop them all in one area. Guess what the good Terran players will do?
The balance team itself literally said the major reasoning behind the revelation nerf is to tilt the balance in favor of WMs. From the copied official Balance update on the first page: "This change also interacts directly with our proposed Widow Mine changes, and we’re hoping the net result falls in favor of the Widow Mine."
On May 05 2020 11:45 BerserkSword wrote: Also, the revelation change is a massive nerf with regards to banshee and mine counter play. A single revelation can only reveal an entire mine drop if the Terran player decides to drop them all in one area. Guess what the good Terran players will do?
The balance team itself literally said the major reasoning behind the revelation nerf is to tilt the balance in favor of WMs. From the copied official Balance update on the first page: "This change also interacts directly with our proposed Widow Mine changes, and we’re hoping the net result falls in favor of the Widow Mine."
You should read well before complaining about the change mate.
The harassement and his impact on economy could be relatively smoothed if workers were less effective per mineral line. Indeed, a widow mine, a banelings or a storm will destroy 2 workers per mineral, it would be simplier to switch from a model of double-harvesting to a simple harvesting with half of mineral packs 2xtimes longer to gather. The IA of the worker will chose the easiest mineral pack to gather,
Currently the viking is good at things it should be bad at, and bad at things it should be good at.
Landed vikings should not trade well against thors or stalker, which they do currently. Units should lose not beat their own counters given similar supply. So I suggest either remove or lower their bonus damage vs mechanical units.
Instead give vikings one armor. It would make vikings more useful against units that they are supposed to counter, like Carriers.
On May 05 2020 20:23 MockHamill wrote: Currently the viking is good at things it should be bad at, and bad at things it should be good at.
Landed vikings should not trade well against thors or stalker, which they do currently. Units should lose not beat their own counters given similar supply. So I suggest either remove or lower their bonus damage vs mechanical units.
Instead give vikings one armor. It would make vikings more useful against units that they are supposed to counter, like Carriers.
Even if i don t know what a combat-test against thors could show, i agree overall, this is a good tweak (I also didn t remember why Vikings damage has been buff)
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
On May 05 2020 06:55 Freeborn wrote: The one big gripe I have with this patch is the wisow mine change.
If tvp is mostly fine, why buff a mechanic that tilts tvp in t's favor while rewarding low skill mineral mine drops and demanding 100% attention from protoss.
Isn't that against one of the stated game design goals about less unforgiving mechanics (or something like that :p)? In any case it's a terrible idea.
Other than that I agree with the sentiment that this patch mostly buffs terran and nerfs zerg vs terran, while it's mostly pvz that needs help.
Two more points that worry me a little bit: - the oracle change might turn out to be a big nerf because of the CD nerf and the fact that you have to revelate much more often, taking more hits on your oracle. - the queen range nerf plus, baneling hp plus widowmine buff might tilt tvz into t's favor too much.
The shield chrono is interesting but the current (mod) implementation seems weird. I would advocate for just using the chronoboost on the shieldbattery without an extra skill (for 50 energy) and then balancing around that (+50% energy recharge and + 50% shield healing & effectiveness doesn't sound too bad).
TvP is decently favored resultwise, but as they said terrans feel behind and thus do a 2 base tank push most of the time to deal damage against the toss that's eco'ing up. So a change is needed imo, dunno if I feel this is the right one.
Plus you can say this tilts tvp is t's favor which I doubt, but the revelation is a huge buff in PvT for toss as dealing with cloacked banshees is made so much easier and also widow mine drops even with stealth can get cleaned up by a single revelation with energy left to spare. So not all bad
What about what Protoss pros feel? Like LiquidMana
If protoss pros feel that their economy is too weak vs terran, do we need to make a change that will allow Terrans to hurt protoss economy even more in the widow mine buff?
Is a change needed to nerf Terran economy because Protoss pros feel it's too strong?
Also, the revelation change is a massive nerf with regards to banshee and mine counter play. A single revelation can only reveal an entire mine drop if the Terran player decides to drop them all in one area. Guess what the good Terran players will do?
The balance team itself literally said the major reasoning behind the revelation nerf is to tilt the balance in favor of WMs. From the copied official Balance update on the first page: "This change also interacts directly with our proposed Widow Mine changes, and we’re hoping the net result falls in favor of the Widow Mine."
"We are hoping the net results falls in terran favor" They indeed hope so and guess only time will tell. Not really sure what a quote from Mana about TvP really says here. He was really frustrated that day and people balance whine about the races they face every day.
Its just a fact that that way too many TvP's end with a 2 base tank push allin, even with loads of scv's because terrans of equal skill level just dont want to go lategame v toss. And as you posted a clip of mana talking about this matchup, I'll just post one from Harstem as hes a toss as well.
I honestly cant comprehend how anyone can think Terran is stronger than Protoss. Gateway units do not die to Bio compositions. They will not lose a unit of significance because theres 30zealots in front of them just shredding bio armies.
The game really is broken beyond fixing and should be left to rott.
On May 06 2020 11:33 5ecured wrote: Anyone know when this patch will actually go live?
It likely wont. It will be modified before it does. When it doesn who knows? Wardi has a tournament starting tomorrow playing this patch
I might have missed it but Blizz should really say clearly, when the patch will go live ... Here I am wondering when will this patch ever go live, if ever
On May 06 2020 11:33 5ecured wrote: Anyone know when this patch will actually go live?
It likely wont. It will be modified before it does. When it doesn who knows? Wardi has a tournament starting tomorrow playing this patch
I might have missed it but Blizz should really say clearly, when the patch will go live ... Here I am wondering when will this patch ever go live, if ever
No. NOOOO. NOOOOoooOO Blizz should test and tweak and test and tweak and test and tweak and THEN consider applying it to live. Why make yourself pressure putting something on live? Haven't you learned NOTHING from Warcraft?
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
Absolutely, and to keep things consistant across races, EMP should definitely affects units inside a warp prism, including high-templars
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
Not while it's moving!
Seriously though, a 10 sec CD is too much to be effective against WM drops. Maybe lower the CD and also lower the radius?
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
Absolutely, and to keep things consistant across races, EMP should definitely affects units inside a warp prism, including high-templars
Isn't the warp prism like the SG Atlantis' wraith abduction ships? The units aren't materialized in the warp prism. If you want it to be consistent, either EMP does nothing to the units inside or it deletes them from the game. I think the latter is a tad too strong.
On May 06 2020 16:51 imsupervisor1 wrote: Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
Absolutely, and to keep things consistant across races, EMP should definitely affects units inside a warp prism, including high-templars
Yeah and storm will melt marines inside the medivac.
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
Not while it's moving!
Seriously though, a 10 sec CD is too much to be effective against WM drops. Maybe lower the CD and also lower the radius?
The CD is nowhere as big, you never stopped multiple WM/Banshees with a single oracle. If anything its a big buff, 25 energy is really low and it allows to still revelate even if you already used the pulsar beam. (Generally you never have 100 energy on the oracle for fast drops).
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
Not while it's moving!
Seriously though, a 10 sec CD is too much to be effective against WM drops. Maybe lower the CD and also lower the radius?
The CD is nowhere as big, you never stopped multiple WM/Banshees with a single oracle. If anything its a big buff, 25 energy is really low and it allows to still revelate even if you already used the pulsar beam. (Generally you never have 100 energy on the oracle for fast drops).
For me in wood leage this basically means
PvT -> Never ever open Stargate TvP -> 1/1/1 + armory and WM drops all day long
How does the cooldown matter for clearing mines? Mines recharge in 29 seconds. Waiting 10 (vs 2) more seconds for your second revelation (if needed) doesn't matter if in both cases you clear the mines before they go off again.
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
Not while it's moving!
Seriously though, a 10 sec CD is too much to be effective against WM drops. Maybe lower the CD and also lower the radius?
The CD is nowhere as big, you never stopped multiple WM/Banshees with a single oracle. If anything its a big buff, 25 energy is really low and it allows to still revelate even if you already used the pulsar beam. (Generally you never have 100 energy on the oracle for fast drops).
For me in wood leage this basically means
PvT -> Never ever open Stargate TvP -> 1/1/1 + armory and WM drops all day long
I do not think 1-1-1 + armory opening will be viable. It is already almost impossible to hold 2-base blink if you got for a 1-1-1 wm drop. Adding an armory early means you have almost nothing at home so how can you hold a 2-base blink attack?
Are you suggesting that the viking get a + damage vs armored instead of vs mechanical? That would make vikings worse vs sentries, SCVs, probes, hellions and hellbats. That would not change a viking vs tank interaction.
Are you suggesting that the viking get a + damage vs armored instead of vs mechanical? That would make vikings worse vs sentries, SCVs, probes, hellions and hellbats. That would not change a viking vs tank interaction.
Now i don t do it on purpose, then i even didn t know about the mechanical tag MockHamill in last page asked for a small nerf on vikings so i made the test against an emblematic unit.. All i remember after his recent health buff, is a community with a little bit unsatisfaction. All things considered, your proposition is interesting. Patch 3.8.0 [2]
Assault mode auto-attack now deals bonus (+8 vs mechanical) damage.
Patch 4.3.0 Balance Update[3]
Health increased from 125 to 135
NB : 3.8 is the last important patch from Legacy of the void 1, note patchs from 4.0 to 4.11 are called Legacy of the Void 2 (start of free-to-play)
On May 05 2020 16:40 Harris1st wrote: A nice interaction would be if you spot the Medivac early and cast revelation on it, every unit in the Medivac is also under the spell
This is a totally awesome idea. I think this is the kind of fun little interaction that opens up an extra window for skill and fun gameplay.
Sure, as long the Medivac can also now heal the units that are inside it, seeing as the units can now be affected by spells
Not while it's moving!
Seriously though, a 10 sec CD is too much to be effective against WM drops. Maybe lower the CD and also lower the radius?
The CD is nowhere as big, you never stopped multiple WM/Banshees with a single oracle. If anything its a big buff, 25 energy is really low and it allows to still revelate even if you already used the pulsar beam. (Generally you never have 100 energy on the oracle for fast drops).
For me in wood leage this basically means
PvT -> Never ever open Stargate TvP -> 1/1/1 + armory and WM drops all day long
Stargate openings actually get stronger IMO, being able to use 25 energy revelations means you can pulsar beam+revelate easily. Oracles start with 50 energy and would have about 60-70 upon drop, you'll never have 100 energy for 2 revelations for the cooldown to matter.
Also why do people act like rushing a 150/100 building is nothing? You'll die to basically anything.
I would be surprised if they go through with any Z nerfs or T buffs looking at recent tournaments like Gsl or tsl qualifiers etc
Sad thing is the baneling depency of Z against bio or zealots. I would be fine with nerfing banes while buffing lair tech zerg. hydras, mutas, infestors and shs are all more or less useless. It's always best to go Ling bane roach ravager into hive units...
- mutas seems a little bit useless than before also cause liberator do aoe damage. I m not a real fan of the collision design of air units, it seems coming from an another age.
- infestor redesign is a failure because community liked infested terrans. I m also for an infested terrans come back.
- i didn t see shs for a long time but in some case they can be used depending the map (i m not super aware of their place in all matchup). It seems they are situationnal but the difference between broodlords and shs in the tech tree and the smallest place of the mid game in LoTV regarding HoTS makes them more or less useless.
I would like to see more micro on zerg units with for example an armor bonus while burrowing (for roachs especially). Mutas have of course heavy micro management when they are stacked but not any special spells (even if the unit doesn t really deserve it). As stimpack marines, Hydras could have poisonous spikes but the role / function of all units aren t so different from any other units that it seems hard for Blizzard to uniformize that.
My question is more like,Aren t all zergs units a little bit useless for a design reason ? (involving their function to remax their 200 supply count very fast)
On May 16 2020 20:32 Decendos wrote: Is there any feedback regarding the testing?
I would be surprised if they go through with any Z nerfs or T buffs looking at recent tournaments like Gsl or tsl qualifiers etc
Sad thing is the baneling depency of Z against bio or zealots. I would be fine with nerfing banes while buffing lair tech zerg. hydras, mutas, infestors and shs are all more or less useless. It's always best to go Ling bane roach ravager into hive units...
No. Blizzard takes the longer view on balance patches, and afaik there is no precedent for cancelling a patch altogether because a week or two of results. They've explicitly spelled out their reasoning and intent: nerf Zerg and buff Protoss. Unless I've missed a sudden spike in PvZ macro games, that still holds true.
What there is precedent for is only some of the proposed changes going through, or specific numbers being tweaked after testing. The baneling change, for instance, might be altered or replaced since it affects TvZ more than PvZ. At the end of the day, there are likely to be Zerg nerfs and Protoss buffs. Though at a guess, they'll wait until the end of the GSL season to go live with them.
On May 16 2020 20:32 Decendos wrote: Is there any feedback regarding the testing?
I would be surprised if they go through with any Z nerfs or T buffs looking at recent tournaments like Gsl or tsl qualifiers etc
Sad thing is the baneling depency of Z against bio or zealots. I would be fine with nerfing banes while buffing lair tech zerg. hydras, mutas, infestors and shs are all more or less useless. It's always best to go Ling bane roach ravager into hive units...
No. Blizzard takes the longer view on balance patches, and afaik there is no precedent for cancelling a patch altogether because a week or two of results. They've explicitly spelled out their reasoning and intent: nerf Zerg and buff Protoss. Unless I've missed a sudden spike in PvZ macro games, that still holds true.
What there is precedent for is only some of the proposed changes going through, or specific numbers being tweaked after testing. The baneling change, for instance, might be altered or replaced since it affects TvZ more than PvZ. At the end of the day, there are likely to be Zerg nerfs and Protoss buffs. Though at a guess, they'll wait until the end of the GSL season to go live with them.
Queen range and baneling nerfs both affect ZvT immensely. And if we judge from recent TvZ results at top level, will completely ruin the matchup.
The feedback buff only is already pretty big. Protoss might be less scared to turtle and go late game, since it should give them the edge in deathball scenario.
Banelings runby are really strong versus protoss, just not sure what they can do to fix that without destroying ZvT.
Probes are annoying cause they have shield so it s difficult to answer with no progamming knowledge.
The only way to tweak banelings is to play on the size of units which is slighty different :
zealot radius = 1 marine radius = 0.75
Supposing we have a progressive damage reduction depending on the radius, as marines have two times less hit points, they are less impacted with this change;... of course sometimes if two banelings connect with half of the damage, (if the marine have a shield bonus comparing to the banes) rarely, you will need a third banelings to kill him, but in definitive the change is less drastic than - 5 hp (cause banelings doesn t reach their target) Now, it s easy to understand as zealots have bigger collision box, they will be more impacted (and recieve in proportion slightly less damage).
On May 16 2020 20:32 Decendos wrote: Is there any feedback regarding the testing?
I would be surprised if they go through with any Z nerfs or T buffs looking at recent tournaments like Gsl or tsl qualifiers etc
Sad thing is the baneling depency of Z against bio or zealots. I would be fine with nerfing banes while buffing lair tech zerg. hydras, mutas, infestors and shs are all more or less useless. It's always best to go Ling bane roach ravager into hive units...
Actually, you re right, there s nothing more than roachs ravagers banes,.. Hydras have not enought advantages to replace roachs, indeed.. with the ravagers, zergs can poke opponent and trade well if he s not on his army. Hydralisks are less tanky and zergs players benefits from ravagers damage.
I would really like if they implemented some change that made TvP more even if you do not not have pro level mechanics.
Maybe some upgrade that gave tanks bonus damage to shields. Pro players would still go bio in TvP but normal level player would have a viable alternative that would not require pro level mechanics to pull off.
The problem right now is that even though TvP may be balanced on pro level, for normal players being Terran is much harder than being Protoss, especially if you try to play a macro game.
On May 17 2020 00:42 MockHamill wrote: I would really like if they implemented some change that made TvP more even if you do not not have pro level mechanics.
Maybe some upgrade that gave tanks bonus damage to shields. Pro players would still go bio in TvP but normal level player would have a viable alternative that would not require pro level mechanics to pull off.
The problem right now is that even though TvP may be balanced on pro level, for normal players being Terran is much harder than being Protoss, especially if you try to play a macro game.
Yes for example, many of these upgrades would be only viable under diamond level.. There would be actually players in master which would have to play diamond but in this case, the lowest option is applied and they play together with these new upgrades.
Then, when you re ready to step up, you can play master or grand master as pro gamers.
I would be glad to see Blizzard dare to create a completely new multiplayer mod in the ladder, testing and why not, come back to previous state if the mod isn t popular.. The ladder could be divided into original SC2 and improved mod design by a new team in Blizzard. I don t think Starbow could be implemented with their own pathfinding but i can be wrong.
On May 16 2020 20:55 Vision_ wrote: Without talking hydra directly, i would say
- mutas seems a little bit useless than before also cause liberator do aoe damage. I m not a real fan of the collision design of air units, it seems coming from an another age.
- infestor redesign is a failure because community liked infested terrans. I m also for an infested terrans come back.
- i didn t see shs for a long time but in some case they can be used depending the map (i m not super aware of their place in all matchup). It seems they are situationnal but the difference between broodlords and shs in the tech tree and the smallest place of the mid game in LoTV regarding HoTS makes them more or less useless.
I would like to see more micro on zerg units with for example an armor bonus while burrowing (for roachs especially). Mutas have of course heavy micro management when they are stacked but not any special spells (even if the unit doesn t really deserve it). As stimpack marines, Hydras could have poisonous spikes but the role / function of all units aren t so different from any other units that it seems hard for Blizzard to uniformize that.
My question is more like,Aren t all zergs units a little bit useless for a design reason ? (involving their function to remax their 200 supply count very fast)
Mutas are far from useless, they see a ton of play in zvt, they also have a limited place in zvp as a surprise tech switch ragnorok used them to finish off zest after his Allin failed in the most recent gsl
Hydras are also a really strong option for zerg, I think the primary reason ravager are seen instead is that the transition to them is easier, since ravager are a hatch tech unit that performs about as well and better vs high tech units they tend to see more play, still if zerg feels safe enough to go hydra bane it’s definitely viable even at the pro level, ragnorok also used hydra bane vs zest in the recent gsl group.
Swarmhost are just a hard unit to tune either they look totally busted and opresive because zergs can get them at a point where the chip dmg they do is very significant or they are not made because the other races can reach an army comp capable of allins across the map before zerg can reasonably make them. They have pretty much always been either utterly oppressive or so bad players only make them by mistake. Frankly I prefer the mostly useless version for this unit, it just does not work well as a concept, in general free units have shown over the years to be really problematic especially when the race that get to take the most expansions late game, also has access to units that trade a cool down for resource based units. A few months ago we were seeing some fringe use in combination with the nydus, right now the units strength is heavily tied to the nydus, with nydus nerfs it really hit swarmhosts hard.
On May 16 2020 20:32 Decendos wrote: Is there any feedback regarding the testing?
I would be surprised if they go through with any Z nerfs or T buffs looking at recent tournaments like Gsl or tsl qualifiers etc
Sad thing is the baneling depency of Z against bio or zealots. I would be fine with nerfing banes while buffing lair tech zerg. hydras, mutas, infestors and shs are all more or less useless. It's always best to go Ling bane roach ravager into hive units...
No. Blizzard takes the longer view on balance patches, and afaik there is no precedent for cancelling a patch altogether because a week or two of results. They've explicitly spelled out their reasoning and intent: nerf Zerg and buff Protoss. Unless I've missed a sudden spike in PvZ macro games, that still holds true.
What there is precedent for is only some of the proposed changes going through, or specific numbers being tweaked after testing. The baneling change, for instance, might be altered or replaced since it affects TvZ more than PvZ. At the end of the day, there are likely to be Zerg nerfs and Protoss buffs. Though at a guess, they'll wait until the end of the GSL season to go live with them.
Queen range and baneling nerfs both affect ZvT immensely. And if we judge from recent TvZ results at top level, will completely ruin the matchup.
The feedback buff only is already pretty big. Protoss might be less scared to turtle and go late game, since it should give them the edge in deathball scenario.
Banelings runby are really strong versus protoss, just not sure what they can do to fix that without destroying ZvT.
Maybe +5 hp to probes could be a start?
I feel like the design in the balance is poorly misunderstood. Baneling runbys are not 'really strong versus protoss' because of banelings, they are really strong because it's not against Terran. If you run by a terrans mineral line he can just call down mules afterwards. The idea of nerfing Zerg in ZvP because Terran is stronger than Protoss is clearly and fundamentally flawed. This change, not in the grand scheme of things, is not a balance change but a broken change. This is going to nerf the baneling into the ground against Protoss, and even moreso in ZvT, where it is used more.
A funny thing is that at first they said, in 2016, that the bane hp buff wouldn't really affect the ZvT, back then we, terrans, were really mad about it, and now Z are defending the fact that a -5hp nerf is not fine at all, how the turntables.
The queen range nerf is 100% going through. Everything that it was introduced to deal with has been nerfed or removed since then. Liberator AtG damage nerfed, liberator ballistics range reduced, tankivacs removed, prism range reduced, and maps have changed on top of that.
am i the only one who thinks liberators are gonna be super broken after the queen nerf? there is already so many spots on the maps where queens can barely hit them or not hit them at all without getting shot. dunno. wouldve rather nerfed queen damage vs ground or whatever. or at least give a hydra buff in return. hydras are just lolbad.
On May 17 2020 09:20 freelifeffs wrote: am i the only one who thinks liberators are gonna be super broken after the queen nerf? there is already so many spots on the maps where queens can barely hit them or not hit them at all without getting shot. dunno. wouldve rather nerfed queen damage vs ground or whatever. or at least give a hydra buff in return. hydras are just lolbad.
"Super broken" is a very big stretch. More irritating for sure. Saw Bly lose 8+ drones to uthermal's lib in the balance tourney because he thought his queen could attack the lib without going through the "death zone" So it would def take some adjusting. Still libs are expensive and with good spore positioning/movement they shouldnt get out of control. We will most likely see a increase in banshee play as well because of this, zergs will be taxed more with defending, interesting to see how this pans out in the end
French version in the middle of the text : "Dans les gènes : Terrans contaminés et autres chancres" In english : " In the genes : Infested Terrans and other Banelings"
French version in the middle of the text : "Dans les gènes : Terrans contaminés et autres chancres" In english : " In the genes : Infested Terrans and other Banelings"
Why do they remove it ?
Literally who gives a fuck about the lore? The infested terran was a terrible units and the game is now unequivocally better without it. Should we add campaign Jim Raynor to terran and Kerrigan to zerg because they're also part of the lore?
If you at least read the article you could understand how important these units were for creator of SC2. Then, there is not black or white thing, "it s not unequivocally better" - and the infested terrans recent rework with a higher cost spell seemed to be the right direction. But they didn t try changes long enought