VERSUS (BALANCE TEST MOD ONLY!) Zerg Baneling Weapon damage changed from 18(+17 vs light) to 15(+20 vs light).
Protoss Oracle Revelation duration increased from 15 seconds to 20 seconds.
Void Ray Cost decreased from 250/150 to 200/150. Void Ray build time decreased from 43 to 37 seconds. Movement speed increased from 3.5 to 3.85. Flux Vanes movement speed increased from 4.65 to 5.11.
Carrier Interceptors belonging to a Carrier that has been Neural Parasited will no longer draw aggression from units belonging to the Carrier’s original owner.
Tempest New upgrade found on the Fleet Beacon: Tectonic Destabilizers Effect: Improves the Tempest's Resonance Coil to deal +40 damage vs structures. Cost: 150/150. Research time: 100 seconds.
BUG FIXES Campaign Fixed an issue for the “Contract Saviors” achievement in “The Moebius Factor” mission that caused it to be unearnable.
Fixed an issue with the “Hard Core” achievement in “The Moebius Factor” mission that caused it to be awarded improperly.
Killing the bonus structures with the Laser Drill no longer prevents you from earning the “Thanks for the Advice” achievement on “The Dig” mission.
Building Medics, Spider Mines, or Auto-Turrets will no longer cause you to fail the “Band of Brothers” achievement on the “Gates of Hell” mission.
The “Annihilation Now” achievement in the “Forbidden Weapon” mission no longer requires you to destroy all enemies, just buildings.
Losing Interceptors will no longer prevent players from earning the “Expert Phase-Smith, Perfect Templar” achievement in the “Templar’s Charge” mission.
The “Warp Incomplete” achievement in “The Infinite Cycle” now only checks for units warping in from Warp Prisms instead of all units being warped in.
Co-Op Missions General The Fear Mutator no longer lasts indefinitely on heroic units.
Commanders Alarak Canceling Supplicant warp ins no longer grants the bonuses provided by the Artificer of Souls prestige.
Stetmann Stetmann’s Oil Baron prestige no longer grants Stetellite Overcharge buffs to units when changing Stetzones.
Zagara The Scourge Queen prestige now properly grants Zagara extra Zerglings before level 7.
Zeratul Fixed a potential crash that could occur when a player targets a Legendary Legion rally onto Zeratul’s hero icon while Zeratul is undergoing transit via the Void Seeker or a Void Array.
Editor Fixed an issue where certain edge cases could cause a data editor crash. Fixed a memory leak related to Data Table Instances. Fixed a crash that could occur when the legacy converter was used to convert a map that has customized standard unit data. Fixed an issue involving Behavior Accumulators where an accumulator would be completely bypassed if the owning unit did not own stacks of that behavior. Instead, that portion of the accumulator should return 0. The GUI version trigger action, Value From Data Table (Unit Reference) – Instance, now works properly. The GUI version trigger action, Name Of Data Table Value – Instance, now works properly. Changes to the Duration Override field of the Buff Behaviors can now be saved.
Interesting stargate changes on the test mod, for reference stalker speed is 4.13 so it will be difficult for stalkers to run away from regular vrays that are locked on and even blink stalkers will have a hard time chasing or disengaging from Flux Vanes
So they're going in the direction of buffing Protoss air to fix PvZ? Not a fan.
How long has it been since void rays were really relevant in the early-midgame? Feels like a while at least, although i haven't watched a ton of games recently. I'm excited to see and use some.
That void ray buff. All the 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 players that go cannons straight into void rays are going to be really happy with that one! I honestly would love for blizz to fix/change gateway/robo units so there are more trading interactions with them. PvZ lacks the trading back and forth that is there in TvZ.
On August 07 2020 06:55 Cyro wrote: Not live on EU yet
Interesting stargate changes on the test mod, for reference stalker speed is 4.13 so it will be difficult for stalkers to run away from regular vrays that are locked on and even blink stalkers will have a hard time chasing or disengaging from Flux Vanes
So they're going in the direction of buffing Protoss air to fix PvZ? Not a fan.
How long has it been since void rays were really relevant in the early-midgame? Feels like a while at least, although i haven't watched a ton of games recently. I'm excited to see and use some.
Proxy shield battery/void ray was popular in PvT in 2018, and is still a fringe build nowadays. I guess it might make a comeback unfortunately. And void rays is the usual follow up to cannon rushes in PvP, but given that both players get them that doesn't change much.
On August 07 2020 06:55 mikedupp wrote: How often do we see mass spores in pvz anymore?
To be fair, the reason mass spore doesn't happen is that most Protoss commit to a push to end the game way before mass spore is relevant, specifically to avoid that scenario. That alone makes skytoss buffs needed imo.
And yeah, considering that the Void Ray has been arguably the worst unit in the game for years, some buffs are fine. If void ray all-ins become a thing, so be it tbh, provided that they are not imbalanced. Protoss all-ins especially tend to be figured out relatively easily anyway.
I'm glad they finally fixed the bugs for all the 10th anniversary achievements that made them unearnable. Seemed like a huge oversight on Blizzard's part to not QA the achievements for their own anniversary event.
On August 07 2020 07:28 Kinky wrote: I'm glad they finally fixed the bugs for all the 10th anniversary achievements that made them unearnable. Seemed like a huge oversight on Blizzard's part to not QA the achievements for their own anniversary event.
They weren't unearnable per se. Some of them (notably The Moebius Factor) were just incredibly difficult.
On August 07 2020 07:28 Kinky wrote: I'm glad they finally fixed the bugs for all the 10th anniversary achievements that made them unearnable. Seemed like a huge oversight on Blizzard's part to not QA the achievements for their own anniversary event.
They weren't unearnable per se. Some of them (notably The Moebius Factor) were just incredibly difficult.
People reported at least one that was literally impossible due to triggers being set up incorrectly
On August 07 2020 07:28 Kinky wrote: I'm glad they finally fixed the bugs for all the 10th anniversary achievements that made them unearnable. Seemed like a huge oversight on Blizzard's part to not QA the achievements for their own anniversary event.
They weren't unearnable per se. Some of them (notably The Moebius Factor) were just incredibly difficult.
People reported at least one that was literally impossible due to triggers being set up incorrectly
On August 07 2020 06:55 mikedupp wrote: How often do we see mass spores in pvz anymore?
To be fair, the reason mass spore doesn't happen is that most Protoss commit to a push to end the game way before mass spore is relevant, specifically to avoid that scenario. That alone makes skytoss buffs needed imo.
And yeah, considering that the Void Ray has been arguably the worst unit in the game for years, some buffs are fine. If void ray all-ins become a thing, so be it tbh, provided that they are not imbalanced. Protoss all-ins especially tend to be figured out relatively easily anyway.
But the proposed changes to the void ray isnt going to make anyone want to build them.(pro players)
On August 07 2020 07:28 Kinky wrote: I'm glad they finally fixed the bugs for all the 10th anniversary achievements that made them unearnable. Seemed like a huge oversight on Blizzard's part to not QA the achievements for their own anniversary event.
They weren't unearnable per se. Some of them (notably The Moebius Factor) were just incredibly difficult.
The achievement for Moebius Factor reads "Complete “The Moebius Factor” mission by training only SCVs, Medivacs and Mercenaries on Normal difficulty." To actually earn it before the bug fix, you had to ensure that the Zerg AI didn't train ANY UNITS at all. Someone at Blizzard clearly didn't test this achievement and it took the community to even figure out what was wrong with it by looking at the map editor.
On August 07 2020 07:42 Kitai wrote: Void Rays are considerably cheaper and they're gonna be faster than Cyclones and stimmed Marines now O.o
Will this entice anyone to use them? Probably not >.>
Will it change anything at the pro level? Probably not. Will it cause people grief on ladder because it's a buff to cannon rush into stargate? Absolutely.
I like these changes, esp for PvZ. Stargate has been seeing a bit of a resurgence as the adept stuff has largely been figured out.You'd see so many games where a zerg player goes for a roach or ravager bust earlier on as a response. Zest was one of the few players who'd use his stargate to make a void ray or two if he thought something like that was coming. These changes make that a significantly more viable response. They are cheaper, faster, and build quicker now. Makes it alot more likely that you can get some "oh shit rays" to hold off a zerg. Zergs have to either eat huge damage lossses, wait for hydras, or a full queen all in push.
That is so funny. Looking at the game from mostly a protoss perspective, the Baneling change would be exactly my approach to tweak pvz, but pvz while unfair is not unfun. PvT however...so they gonna keep that invisible widow mine?
On August 07 2020 07:28 Kinky wrote: I'm glad they finally fixed the bugs for all the 10th anniversary achievements that made them unearnable. Seemed like a huge oversight on Blizzard's part to not QA the achievements for their own anniversary event.
They weren't unearnable per se. Some of them (notably The Moebius Factor) were just incredibly difficult.
The achievement for Moebius Factor reads "Complete “The Moebius Factor” mission by training only SCVs, Medivacs and Mercenaries on Normal difficulty." To actually earn it before the bug fix, you had to ensure that the Zerg AI didn't train ANY UNITS at all. Someone at Blizzard clearly didn't test this achievement and it took the community to even figure out what was wrong with it by looking at the map editor.
Apparently monk got all of them on brutal, so i suspect that they just broke it somewhere between testing and uploading a release version. A hell of a screw up, but a funny one.
On August 07 2020 08:21 Charoisaur wrote: So they nerf Zerg even harder just because Serral/Reynor keep winning? Not a fan.
Man If only another zerg wouldn't have won the biggest Event this year, what's his Name again? I frogot Also Show me the ppl who don't think pvz needs changes.
Actually quite like these changes because even tho they are skytoss changes which are always risky, they're not that impactful for actually unit vs unit engagements so it doesn't seem like it would break the game in the other direction. The changes to the carrier and tempest are quite niche and specific, which is always good as i'm sure those units are a big pain to deal with in lower leagues already.
Void ray change is kind of different but at least void rays kind of suck so I don't see it being a big deal. That said, it sounds like it buffs cheese memes more than anything else so idk if this is exactly what we want.
Sounds to me like they look at the design of Protoss vs Zerg and the statistical numbers of units and believe firmly that the Void Ray will or should play a key point in the matchup, and that Tempest Endgame does not have enough purpose so they gave it an anti-building role on top of its previous role..
I'm not opposed to trying to open with some weird Stargate > Void ray plays to get map control / clear overlords / harrass like we did in WOL. I am skeptical of its efficacy, however I would like to trust that Blizzard isn't just pushing random, aimless changes.
On August 07 2020 07:28 Kinky wrote: I'm glad they finally fixed the bugs for all the 10th anniversary achievements that made them unearnable. Seemed like a huge oversight on Blizzard's part to not QA the achievements for their own anniversary event.
They weren't unearnable per se. Some of them (notably The Moebius Factor) were just incredibly difficult.
The achievement for Moebius Factor reads "Complete “The Moebius Factor” mission by training only SCVs, Medivacs and Mercenaries on Normal difficulty." To actually earn it before the bug fix, you had to ensure that the Zerg AI didn't train ANY UNITS at all. Someone at Blizzard clearly didn't test this achievement and it took the community to even figure out what was wrong with it by looking at the map editor.
Apparently monk got all of them on brutal, so i suspect that they just broke it somewhere between testing and uploading a release version. A hell of a screw up, but a funny one.
The 5.0 that they released live was actually a build that predated the PTR, so it introduced new bugs that had already been fixed for PTR (or beyond) testing.
On August 07 2020 07:02 phodacbiet wrote: That void ray buff. All the 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 players that go cannons straight into void rays are going to be really happy with that one! I honestly would love for blizz to fix/change gateway/robo units so there are more trading interactions with them. PvZ lacks the trading back and forth that is there in TvZ.
the way to me, that this can be fixed is just decreasing the damage in every unit for 10% this will make units last longer and u wont be afraid of harring with a few units other than waiting for a deathball.
On August 07 2020 07:02 phodacbiet wrote: That void ray buff. All the 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 players that go cannons straight into void rays are going to be really happy with that one! I honestly would love for blizz to fix/change gateway/robo units so there are more trading interactions with them. PvZ lacks the trading back and forth that is there in TvZ.
the way to me, that this can be fixed is just decreasing the damage in every unit for 10% this will make units last longer and u wont be afraid of harring with a few units other than waiting for a deathball.
Problem with this is it makes spatial control units effectively worthless. I remember playing TotalBiscuits mod with my friends that he put out ages ago that changed the game in drastic ways, and Terran was borderline unplayable. Tanks couldn't kill a single unit before they were just overrun for example. For all the complaints that the high damage stuff gets, it's really necessary / the game is designed around it. You must be able to punish mistakes / dissuade attacking into an entrenched position - the side effect of that is the "big battle" ends quickly.
Honestly though this isn't 2011 anymore, there isn't a "single big battle" and the game ends. SC2 is in a great spot with regards to how its played, IMO.
I don't like the void ray change. I honestly just think void rays are an annoying unit, and they should fill the role of the scout from brood war as a unit that's not actually viable for the most part but might maybe be technically viable in really really odd situations.
I'm Excited about the Tempest change.
Oracle change nice.
I mean, they're buffs to my race so I'm not mad about it... But I'd be fine with the void ray change not making it through
Love how the game has been evolving these past 2 years. There has been so much more variety in strategies and compositions. I have great trust in these devs. Happy to be in good hands. Thank you!
On August 07 2020 07:31 stilt wrote: Actually, the patch changes quite a lot in zvz, baneling 3 shotting themselves seems pretty bad.
I think this just encourages the roach v roach wars in zvz more. Also manual detonations will be more powerful here- more intensive micro required.
Not a fan of this change. If you don't pay attention, a baneling may survive with 1 hp while you lose two banelings. If you pay attention and detonate manually, then you get the kill. This seems like a huge change. They might as well drop 1 hp from the banelings to keep zvz the same if they really want to nerf banelings.
I agree with you that this will encourage roach vs roach since utilizing banelings effectively will require a ton more apm
I open SG almost every PvZ, and consequently have some experience chrono-ing out a voidray to help defend roach/ravager all-ins (and nydus all-ins). In those situations where you're cutting probes and cash-strapped, the reduced cost and build time is actually quite significant. The increased movement speed will also make them much easier to micro against ravager biles and to get to a burrowing nydus in time.
I wonder if similar logic might apply in PvT if the terran goes for a fast push to try to punish your flimsy SG opener. Maybe you survive a cyclone lock-on, or manage to snipe an extra unit or two without losing the void to marines? The tempest upgrade here will also reduce shots-to-kill on turrets, PFs, etc.
The exact numbers look like maybe too much, so we'll see how it shakes out. I'm cautiously optimistic. PvP is going to be nasty for a while, though. I'll take this opportunity to plug Harstem's recent anti-cannon-rush video to try to get more anti-cannon skill into the ecosystem.
'we've received feedback that it has gone mostly unnoticed in all matchups'
I knew I couldn't have been the only one who noticed zero difference before and after the last baneling nerf, despite people saying it was going to flip ZvT. It was like when people panicked about the creep nerfs and then every game past 10 minutes still ended up being all purple.
On August 07 2020 07:31 stilt wrote: Actually, the patch changes quite a lot in zvz, baneling 3 shotting themselves seems pretty bad.
I think this just encourages the roach v roach wars in zvz more. Also manual detonations will be more powerful here- more intensive micro required.
Not a fan of this change. If you don't pay attention, a baneling may survive with 1 hp while you lose two banelings. If you pay attention and detonate manually, then you get the kill. This seems like a huge change. They might as well drop 1 hp from the banelings to keep zvz the same if they really want to nerf banelings.
I agree with you that this will encourage roach vs roach since utilizing banelings effectively will require a ton more apm
I personally am not a big fan of how the change would drastically impact zvz; I think it's in an amazing spot right now with tons of variation, macro potential, and cheese potential. The extra bane required could definitely tip the scale back into pure roach wars, and even that might be an overestimation and players would just go for ling floods.
I don't know about the tempest upgrade. Seems too powerful against buildings, but I guess lategame PvZ is bad enough that it may be warranted. The VR buff is okay, but imo it's not the best approach for improving VR endgame viability. I get that the idea about a speed buff is that VR would only be stronger if your APM can keep up, similarly to mutalisks. However, mutas are never used in lategame PvZ, and VRs would be really hard to micro effectively, since protoss would have to constantly switch their attention between the main army and the VRs hit squad; unless they're together, which is a "fungal here" scenario.
I guess Bliz isn't going to give a chance to my +1 range research upgrade as substitute for flux vanes idea any time soon.
Hmmm I didn't see a buff on the zerg unit like infestor. The microbial shroud seemed useless against enemy's powerful spell like storm and also unaffected even with the help of spore forests underneath. Of course, zerg pro-players will no longer use this spell other than to help hydras or queens, especially when battles against carriers/Bcs because neural parasite or abducts are much flexible to use.
I thought the general problem with protoss air units is they generally just die way to fast in a PvZ to corruptors and parasitic bombs in the late game. This introduces void rays faster in numbers, but won't they still be easily countered in the late game?
To beat a dead horse, I wish adept PvZ all-ins was resolved. Somehow the adept needs to become a stronger mid-game unit instead of a harass only unit.
On August 07 2020 12:24 BonitiilloO wrote: in what does the baneling change affect TvZ?
may be mech comp? lot of players are still using mass blings against mech specially battle mech..
It takes approximately 20% more banelings to kill anything that's not light and has 0 armor now, and every point of armor for non-light units is also more valuable against banelings than before. They'll still interact the same vs marines and mines, but even for bio terran the marauders and ghosts will be more resilient against them. Against mech, everything but hellions is harder to kill with banelings now.
Might be time to come out of retirement and make more skytoss builds. Where is ret and tlo so I can get more famous YouTube casting time with husky, hdstarcraft and others... o wait everyone is gone and I'm an old man. only tlo lives on 😭😢
at least I can grief ladder at 5-6k. o wait I am the person everyone here is talking about.... 😅
oh boy so they are basically ruining the game for masters and lower...it will be turtle toss into skytoss / HT everygame in PvZ and lots of voidray all ins in PvT.
Buffing voidray in some way is fine, they are underused but this? Especially Tempest buff is insane, Zerg cant fight lategame without spores vs skytoss + archon + HT. I am all for getting rid of spore walls but you have to buff lategame Zerg antiair then.
Oracle. Vision and detection always nice Carrier. One neural could f up all army targeting Tempest. This might be a shroud kinda upgrade Void ray cost and build time decrease. Sometimes you need that emergency vray. Also maybe viable as an opener now instead of oracle.
Don't like: Baneling nerf. Don't do this. Will affect TvZ and ZvZ very much VRay speed. Don't do this. This will be so annoying. Faster than Corrupters and pretty much all ground units
EDIT: If it is all about fixing PvZ late game, do sth about Robo units. IMO give Coloss a second upgrade. HP, Shield, some sort of air armor? Like Immortal barrier but only vs air attacks. Or some cool laser focus beam that can target air? Similar to Ghost Snipe
On August 07 2020 15:32 elluel wrote: why would you nerf banelings? it's the only thing that keeps zerg from losing to every fucking timing push in the game
EDIT: I'm a protoss main and this is what i think
IMO Blizz wants to stop countering stalkers with banes. But what do i know
On August 07 2020 07:31 stilt wrote: Actually, the patch changes quite a lot in zvz, baneling 3 shotting themselves seems pretty bad.
Wait... seriously? In that case, this change is, to put it lightly, ****ing atrocious. Also while this makes spore forests irrelevant, tempests are still terrible units.
If all the changes goes through I'm getting nervous for TvP. It's already a matchup that Protoss are doing very well in and I could see Voidrays being very powerful here when just kept with the main protoss army: they will obliterate medivacs in seconds, and they will also deal with liberators and tanks very quickly. And then of course all the all-ins we're going to see at lower levels... I'm also surprised that they are so happy about the widow mine change from last time. It seems to me that it hasn't really worked as intended (making protoss less greedy), and since so many (non-Terran) people don't like it it would have made sense to look for a different solution.
It's great to see another nerf to the baneling, aka. the new warp prism, but I really would like to see them look at the structure damage. Banes rolling in and blowing up nexuses and planetaries like its nothing does not seem good to me.
These are aweful changes by the balance team. The changes to Protoss will just encourage more cannon rushes and shield battery rushes with Void Rays and Tempests, the last thing we need. Pretty disappointed in the balance team decisions for this patch. If they want to fix PvsZ, they made the wrong decisions because now they just made PvsT and PvsZ that much worse.
Weapon damage changed from 18(+17 vs light) to 15(+20 vs light).
Why would they buff Zerg in ZvT match up? What?!
Baneling get their damage reduced from 16-17% against non light unit while dealing the same damage against light units, woah, such a buff. They don't even 2 shooting themselves now, would be nice to nerf baneling without actually affecting the 3 fucking mu and especially zvz.
Edit : as expected, they don't mention zvz and don't even seem to realize they actually fucked it up, nice... The balance team does obviously a better job than DK but still, make the bane at 16 if you want to reduce its stats.
Looking at those changes it seems the balance team's vision for the future is to buff air armies and increase gimmicky play for the Protoss and it's really awful imo. Late game air armies are the most boring to watch and usually require little skill to control while being very difficult to dismantle (especially at lower level of play). On top of that it would be nice to see Protoss going for a straight up early/mid game and not having to resolve to gimmicky play and all-ins so often (PvZ especially).
These are horrible changes. Especially when we got literally 3 pro Zergs that are winning vs Protoss- Serral, Reynor and Rogue- arguably the best players in the world. So much effort to stop Serral from winning, seems to be ballshit not balancing the game. More and more nerfs for Zerg. It's ridiculous.
This in theory is going to be slightly nerf baneling against non light. However, the primary problem with baneling, due to game design, is a economy issue. In game, Z usually have more base, and thus more income. Baneling, even in pre 5.0 state (20+15) is never cost efficient unless you can kill a clump of high gas cost unit e.g. ghost, infestor, cyclone. The whole reason why baneling can be use is that the Z have a higher economy, so they can delete the opponent's army, even with a significant resource lost. This nerf does not address it properly.
The other thing the balance team should consider is to reduce baneling damage against CC or nexus. This is a big problem for T and P to get more than 4 bases against Z since there is no way for P (and to a lesser degree, T) to stop a s*itload of baneling from running in and nuke the nexus. While on paper it is cost inefficient for Z to do it, once the nexus / CC is killed, the worker have to long distant mining until the new nexus is done (71s). That is a long time with reduced mining rate. T can float the orbital command in, but there is nothing P can do.
2, oracle revelation change
decent change, not a big deal.
3, void ray decrease cost
This make void ray the cheapest air fighting unit per supply in game.
4, void ray speed change
base speed change make it same speed with viking, raven non-upgraded banshee, faster than medivac. May be P can open void ray to shut down T harress?
The speed increase with Flux vane upgrade make it faster than most unit in the game. It will be interesting to see how thing plan out, T probably will have hard time against it. For Z, if the Z loss the air battle, he will lost the whole army, there will be no point pulling anything back.
If you go to unit testing, on equal supply, void ray actually beat most air units on A move. The reason it is not use as much is the opponent can micro against it, I wonder if it is a good idea to make it impossible to micro againist?
5. Carrier neural change
Not sure how this change affect the balance. Feel like a buff to neural because the neuraled carrier will not loss its interceptor as fast?
6, tempest building attack upgrade. Look like a change to help break turtle position. hopefully it won't be use in base sniping and teleport out kind of tactic. it will be very frustrating to play against.
The baneling nerf is probably ok in non-mirrors. My main concern there is that battlemech might get a bit strong when you need more banes to kill cyclones. Making banes 3 shot banes seems like a terrible idea though, there's just no reason mess with early game ZvZ like that. unupgraded banes should never go below 16/35 damage imo. If bane damage has to be nerfed beyond that, it should be upgrade scaling or splash radius, really anything that leaves ling/bane wars as is.
The tempest upgrade seems like it could make a real difference. With it and at least, tempests will take 6/5/5/5 shots instead of 11/10/9/8 to kill a spore and it seems to me like that would make it quite a bit easier to keep spore forests in check; the revelation buff will help out there as well.
The void ray buff is big, I can't remember the last time a unit was buffed in so many different ways at once. The problem is that none of them should make a big difference where they really needs to: lategame PvZ. With these changes, voids could get stronger for some kind of PvT all-ins and for holding all-ins and general aggression with stargate openings vs. zerg but I doubt lategame skytoss will change much. maybe speed voids being able to chase down corruptors will be useful, idk
The carrier buff is difficult to judge without having seen it in play. On one hand, running all the carriers out of interceptors by neuraling a couple is a strong move right now and that won't work as well but on the other hand, neuraling carriers is always going to be strong, it's just so much dps that you're not just removing from your enemy but also adding to your own. It think it will make the biggest difference for those fight where zerg only manages to keep up the neural for a few seconds, enough to more or less get rid of the of the interceptors but not enough to completely break the fight. If protoss lets their carriers stay neuraled for longer than that, they're still gonna lose.
Then there's the general issue that protoss is actually doing alright against zerg outside of the tier 1 players. The European #20-#40 range is already overwhelmingly protoss and big tournaments everywhere tend to have strong protoss representation until the top 8 or 16. I know there's a philosophy of balancing the game around the highest level of play but does that mean the top 50 pros in the world or only the top 10? Based on recent decisions, it's starting to look like the latter. Does protoss need to be buffed until they start winning premiers and if so, what happens when Stats and Zest go to the military? At least part of the reason that protoss players aren't winning is that some of the best are gone. Classic was the #1 protoss when he retired and herO was up there. Soon, 2 of the current top 4 tosses will be gone, there would need to be massive changes to the game for the remaining players to win as much as the other races. If Maru, Inno and TY retired, you wouldn't expect terran to take a lot of trophies.
Reading the rationales for changes/non-changes Blizz specifically mentioned mech becoming more prevalent recently.
Ok they’re looking at more than purely the tip top of the pro game, but that echelon of competition has been really affected by cross server play and latency, with bio play taking the biggest hit in effectiveness.
Surely if ever there’s a time not to patch much it’s now? With the caveat that I know these changes aren’t set in stone:
Zerg: Baneling - ?/10 Rationale of this change is ok, I’m not as au fait with how numbers work in ZvZ specifically and apparently bane wars will be impacted which sounds an oversight (if true). Other impacts seem an improvement but even with lower damage 40+ banes will still be a potent threat.
Protoss: Oracle - 7/10 Probably doesn’t get enough love as a unit that’s ended up as a really good support unit that benefits from skill and diligence and has a ton of utility. Nice little boost that isn’t overboard and just gives Protoss a little love. Only 5 seconds so hardly gamebreaking but gives Protoss who are good with oracles more chances to gain vision of armies and get into good offensive/defensive positions.
Carrier - 6/10? A real nightmare of spawned units is them absolutely screwing with targeting, so I like that getting your carrier neuralled won’t trigger targeting. Personal preference there! As someone else mentioned presumably this means a neuralled Carrier will also keep more offensive capability for longer as it will not have its interceptors nuked as quickly. On the other hand, this isn’t a reaction we’ve seen much of this meta so I’m unsure what differences it will make.
Tempest - ?/10 In previous metas and patches this would have been an impactful change in lategame in vZ, vT and vP, especially. Equally those air wars + massed static scenarios kind of sucked so I’d rather we didn’t see a ton of them again.
Void Ray - 2/10 What’s so wrong about a unit being a meme unit, or at least a very niche one?
Build and cost time will help a little with really aggressive Zerg builds, have some use in PvP too. Equally it’ll probably be more useful in cheese with batteries.
Move speed buff, need to consult Feardragon about the move speeds of every unit in the game. It will give it more utility sure but I think it outruns some units it really shouldn’t outrun.
Flux vanes buff. Oh boi this is the real kicker. In combination with both a lower cost and lessened build time. Void Rays on crack flying around the map that can be recalled and basically cannot be caught by most Protoss units. Hell throw a speed obs lagging behind too! Flocks of Phoenix would shut down Void hitsquads, but then I guess it makes standing armies v standing armies a bit wonky as well. Like when Zerg and Terran overbuild corruptors and vikings.
General Thoughts - 5/10 I dunno Kev seems PvP is settling well into being a good matchup in all stages of the game now. Seems that lategame could return to a ridiculous clusterfuck.
Between easier transitions (well, if one wanted to mass these new Voids) and a slight Tempest buff it seems Blizz are veering back towards just making Airtoss the thing for the lategame and not addressing other root issues.
That seems the intent anyway, there may be things of benefit outside that apparent intent. Perhaps a quicker, cheaper void may come out in time off certain openers to make Protoss safer to a variety of Z allins for example and make more openers viable.
Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
On August 07 2020 21:13 ytherik wrote: Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
The only damage complaint I regularly see is that +2 banelings one-shot probes which this doesn't affect at all. I assume this is an attempt to make it so Zergs can't just go mass baneling against stalker/colossus and get away with it. But I really don't think that's the problem with Zerg or banelings.
On August 07 2020 21:13 ytherik wrote: Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
The only damage complaint I regularly see is that +2 banelings one-shot probes which this doesn't affect at all. I assume this is an attempt to make it so Zergs can't just go mass baneling against stalker/colossus and get away with it. But I really don't think that's the problem with Zerg or banelings.
Wouldn't lowering bane dmg vs mechanical fix the problem more elegantly then? Then it wouldn't affect ZvZ nor Bane vs Zealot interaction. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. It even makes sense lore wise since bane is full of some toxic substance that should not affect mechanical units and structures so much.
On August 07 2020 21:13 ytherik wrote: Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
The only damage complaint I regularly see is that +2 banelings one-shot probes which this doesn't affect at all. I assume this is an attempt to make it so Zergs can't just go mass baneling against stalker/colossus and get away with it. But I really don't think that's the problem with Zerg or banelings.
Wouldn't lowering bane dmg vs mechanical fix the problem more elegantly then? Then it wouldn't affect ZvZ nor Bane vs Zealot interaction. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. It even makes sense lore wise since bane is full of some toxic substance that should not affect mechanical units and structures so much.
That's an interesting idea when looking at the units that would be affected:
On August 07 2020 21:13 ytherik wrote: Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
The only damage complaint I regularly see is that +2 banelings one-shot probes which this doesn't affect at all. I assume this is an attempt to make it so Zergs can't just go mass baneling against stalker/colossus and get away with it. But I really don't think that's the problem with Zerg or banelings.
Wouldn't lowering bane dmg vs mechanical fix the problem more elegantly then? Then it wouldn't affect ZvZ nor Bane vs Zealot interaction. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. It even makes sense lore wise since bane is full of some toxic substance that should not affect mechanical units and structures so much.
That's an interesting idea when looking at the units that would be affected:
On August 07 2020 21:13 ytherik wrote: Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
The only damage complaint I regularly see is that +2 banelings one-shot probes which this doesn't affect at all. I assume this is an attempt to make it so Zergs can't just go mass baneling against stalker/colossus and get away with it. But I really don't think that's the problem with Zerg or banelings.
Wouldn't lowering bane dmg vs mechanical fix the problem more elegantly then? Then it wouldn't affect ZvZ nor Bane vs Zealot interaction. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. It even makes sense lore wise since bane is full of some toxic substance that should not affect mechanical units and structures so much.
That's an interesting idea when looking at the units that would be affected:
I look forward to Ravager bane being countered by mass immortal
It's not like you are making banes to waste them on Immortals anyway. They are there to counter Zealots/Adepts and zone out HT and this interaction wouldn't be affected if banes were nerfed vs mechanical.
On August 07 2020 21:13 ytherik wrote: Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
The only damage complaint I regularly see is that +2 banelings one-shot probes which this doesn't affect at all. I assume this is an attempt to make it so Zergs can't just go mass baneling against stalker/colossus and get away with it. But I really don't think that's the problem with Zerg or banelings.
Wouldn't lowering bane dmg vs mechanical fix the problem more elegantly then? Then it wouldn't affect ZvZ nor Bane vs Zealot interaction. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. It even makes sense lore wise since bane is full of some toxic substance that should not affect mechanical units and structures so much.
That's an interesting idea when looking at the units that would be affected:
I’d quite like to see manual detonations having some beneficial trade off vs attack-moving.
+2 banes rolling into worker lines feels insanely unforgiving for the defender right now. If the attacker could get a one shot kill with a manual detonation, but not with A-moving you could get a bit of a dance going, or at least the harassing player would have to keep eyes on it to maximise damage.
It’s not especially intuitive though, so there is that problem.
On August 07 2020 21:13 ytherik wrote: Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
The only damage complaint I regularly see is that +2 banelings one-shot probes which this doesn't affect at all. I assume this is an attempt to make it so Zergs can't just go mass baneling against stalker/colossus and get away with it. But I really don't think that's the problem with Zerg or banelings.
Wouldn't lowering bane dmg vs mechanical fix the problem more elegantly then? Then it wouldn't affect ZvZ nor Bane vs Zealot interaction. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. It even makes sense lore wise since bane is full of some toxic substance that should not affect mechanical units and structures so much.
That's an interesting idea when looking at the units that would be affected:
I’d quite like to see manual detonations having some beneficial trade off vs attack-moving.
+2 banes rolling into worker lines feels insanely unforgiving for the defender right now. If the attacker could get a one shot kill with a manual detonation, but not with A-moving you could get a bit of a dance going, or at least the harassing player would have to keep eyes on it to maximise damage.
It’s not especially intuitive though, so there is that problem.
we need them baneling cannons Ravager holding up to 4 banelings and shooting them with higher damage, banes denote upon impact. Skill shot = rewards.
On August 07 2020 21:13 ytherik wrote: Was anybody complaining about baneling damage actually? Banelings are de bombas, they are supposed to deal terrible damage, that's the design of the unit. Why not just make them more expensive or more squishy if they seem too strong? Weird decision with the damage nerf indeed.
The only damage complaint I regularly see is that +2 banelings one-shot probes which this doesn't affect at all. I assume this is an attempt to make it so Zergs can't just go mass baneling against stalker/colossus and get away with it. But I really don't think that's the problem with Zerg or banelings.
Wouldn't lowering bane dmg vs mechanical fix the problem more elegantly then? Then it wouldn't affect ZvZ nor Bane vs Zealot interaction. That's the first thing that comes to my mind. It even makes sense lore wise since bane is full of some toxic substance that should not affect mechanical units and structures so much.
That's an interesting idea when looking at the units that would be affected:
I’d quite like to see manual detonations having some beneficial trade off vs attack-moving.
+2 banes rolling into worker lines feels insanely unforgiving for the defender right now. If the attacker could get a one shot kill with a manual detonation, but not with A-moving you could get a bit of a dance going, or at least the harassing player would have to keep eyes on it to maximise damage.
It’s not especially intuitive though, so there is that problem.
we need them baneling cannons Ravager holding up to 4 banelings and shooting them with higher damage, banes denote upon impact. Skill shot = rewards.
Sick, and sentries get a new ability called ‘force umbrella’ to cast above the heads of its fellow Protoss warriors. I’m liking these changes man!
I'll freely admit to doing a proxy Void Ray Shield Battery build in every PvT. I have about a 80-90% winrate with it in D1/M3. With those changes to Void Rays, that build would be utterly ridiculous.
It probably wouldn't ruin PvP as much. The higher you get in rating, the more easily Void Rays get shut down.
For PvZ, Void Rays haven't been relevant since sOs (and then Naniwa copying him) did a Void Ray/Chargelot/Storm build sometime in 2014, and Zergs realized they could just counter it with mass Queens. Nowadays Zergs make more Queens anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it. When I play Zerg, I find mass Void Rays pretty easy to beat as long as I remember to connect all my bases with creep.
--
In my eyes, only two things need to be addressed right now: the efficiency of using mass Bane against units it is not supposed to be efficient, and the ease with which Zerg can take out Carriers through Neural. Given these changes, it seems Blizzard has recognized that these are problems, but I'm not so sure about their solutions.
On August 08 2020 00:03 Aesto wrote: About the Void Ray changes:
I'll freely admit to doing a proxy Void Ray Shield Battery build in every PvT. I have about a 80-90% winrate with it in D1/M3. With those changes to Void Rays, that build would be utterly ridiculous.
It probably wouldn't ruin PvP as much. The higher you get in rating, the more easily Void Rays get shut down.
For PvZ, Void Rays haven't been relevant since sOs (and then Naniwa copying him) did a Void Ray/Chargelot/Storm build sometime in 2014, and Zergs realized they could just counter it with mass Queens. Nowadays Zergs make more Queens anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it. When I play Zerg, I find mass Void Rays pretty easy to beat as long as I remember to connect all my bases with creep.
--
In my eyes, only two things need to be addressed right now: the efficiency of using mass Bane against units it is not supposed to be efficient, and the ease with which Zerg can take out Carriers through Neural. Given these changes, it seems Blizzard has recognized that these are problems, but I'm not so sure about their solutions.
Banelings are highly cost inefficient vs anything that are not packed marines. However it's the only units Zerg can make in numbers. The 200 supply cap and the heavy supply cost of every Zerg units while they need more economy supply is limiting Zerg composition choice.
The deathball is way too strong in SC2, while not interesting at all. However, with this patch, Blizzard want to make it invincible, which is another step into killing SC2 (which is already become an awful game due to the balance team trying to follow any random dudes that whine loudly).
On August 08 2020 00:03 Aesto wrote: About the Void Ray changes:
I'll freely admit to doing a proxy Void Ray Shield Battery build in every PvT. I have about a 80-90% winrate with it in D1/M3. With those changes to Void Rays, that build would be utterly ridiculous.
It probably wouldn't ruin PvP as much. The higher you get in rating, the more easily Void Rays get shut down.
For PvZ, Void Rays haven't been relevant since sOs (and then Naniwa copying him) did a Void Ray/Chargelot/Storm build sometime in 2014, and Zergs realized they could just counter it with mass Queens. Nowadays Zergs make more Queens anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it. When I play Zerg, I find mass Void Rays pretty easy to beat as long as I remember to connect all my bases with creep.
--
In my eyes, only two things need to be addressed right now: the efficiency of using mass Bane against units it is not supposed to be efficient, and the ease with which Zerg can take out Carriers through Neural. Given these changes, it seems Blizzard has recognized that these are problems, but I'm not so sure about their solutions.
Banelings are highly cost inefficient vs anything that are not packed marines. However it's the only units Zerg can make in numbers. The 200 supply cap and the heavy supply cost of every Zerg units while they need more economy supply is limiting Zerg composition choice.
The deathball is way too strong in SC2, while not interesting at all. However, with this patch, Blizzard want to make it invincible, which is another step into killing SC2 (which is already become an awful game due to the balance team trying to follow any random dudes that whine loudly).
Fair enough, I should have written 'effectiveness' rather than 'efficiency'.
I like most of these changes, and the reasoning behind them seems solid.
Not sure about the baneling though.. it will affect ZvZ and ZvT also. If the problem is the +2 banes one-shotting probes I'd suggest to change its attack from 18(+2)/+17(+2) to 18(+2)/+17(+1), so that +2 banes would do 41 dmg. They would not kill a level-2 armored probe. This is a minor nerf to banes in all match-ups when upgrades kick in, but not unreasonable given that it is a tier-1.5 unit.
A solution to +2 banes vs probes could be making the banelings gain 1 less damage per upgrade (either base or bonus, depending on how much you want to nerf them). +2 banes would deal 41 damage to light, so if protoss has 2 armor or shield upgrades, +2 banes don't kill probes. Right now they need 4 which obviously never happens. +3 comes far later into the game but even that could eventually be offset by 5 armor and shield upgrades. I think it's fair for protoss to have to keep up with zerg's upgrades in order to avoid getting losing their probes. The question is if this change breaks other interactions with banelings and I honestly don't think it looks too bad. I just looked at light units to examine the softer bonus damage only version of the nerf and it seems fairly resonable to me:
In ZvZ, zerglings are completely unaffected. Drones, like probes, could avoid getting 1 shot by +2 banes by keeping up with armor upgrades. This mostly affects LBM. Drones, unlike probes, would still always 1 shot by +3 banes. Hydras with less than +2 carapace would no longer get 2 shot by +3 banes but that isn't relevant at all imo.
In ZvP, sentries and high templars would avoid getting 2 shot by +2 banes with 1 and 2 armor upgrades, respectively. This can make a huge difference in those fights where a few banes manage to slip through force fields and hit the casters. With maxed upgrades for both players, they also wouldn't get 2 shot. Adepts, DTs, and Zealots are affected with certain combinations of upgrades but the only one I find to be notable is +1 banes no longer 4 shoting unupgraded zealots.
In ZvT, SCVs without +3 armor would no longer be 1 shot which does make a real difference for lategame ZvMech. Mech is also helped out by hellbats not getting killed by 3 +3 banes, hellions with less than +3 armor would no longer die to 2 +3 banes. But all this probably wouldn't affect the matchup more than the base damage nerf imo. For bio, the pure bane vs. marine interaction would be unchanged, banes would still 2 shot marines in all common situations. The significant difference is that the marines that only get hit by 1 bane would sometimes take 1 extra hit from another unit to kill.
Then there are all the other interactions where the banelings don't kill their target in and the nerf would let it take 1 more shot from the other zerg units but the biggest strength of banelings lies in killing units off completely before the rest of the army comes in so except for marines I don't think those situations are as important as the number of shots to kill various units (for example, 20 marines taking an extra hit each makes a big difference. 6 adepts, not so much).
Edit: Oh, someone else suggested the same thing while I typed this up
I'm reading a lot of baneling remorse, so I want to point some things out.
I've watched so many series in PvZ where the Protoss only won because the Zerg carelessly wasted a bunch of banelings on an Archon, and that's what was needed to come to an even mid-game - and even then the lategame was going to be garbage anyways so the Protoss won by leaning on superior engagements in the midgame. The Stats vs. Reynor finals in the Cynical Death cup is a perfect example of that.
Also, in the time before damage-amped siege tanks, banelings had 25 hp, and ZvT was balanced. +10 hp on units that can be massed... that was a HUGE increase in hp. That buff affected ZvP also, and but Protoss never had a buff like the siege tank buff to balance it out.
The baneling nerf is literally getting Artosis to play Starcraft 2 again after years on the sidelines. It's a good change.
On August 07 2020 19:19 hiroshOne wrote: These are horrible changes. Especially when we got literally 3 pro Zergs that are winning vs Protoss- Serral, Reynor and Rogue- arguably the best players in the world. So much effort to stop Serral from winning, seems to be ballshit not balancing the game. More and more nerfs for Zerg. It's ridiculous.
Dark has an 85% series winrate vs Protoss this year. soO has a 71%. Solar has an 80%. All Zergs are doing amazing in ZvP right now. It's considered the worst balanced matchup for a reason.
Might be nice to get some motivation behind the changes.
Some I like, but some (like the Void Ray ones) I am not looking forward to as a sub 5k Terran player. Void Ray + shield battery cheese is already hard enough to hold off with my poor micro, and now vikings and cyclones will be less effective at kiting them.
I have a feeling that they may not go through with all the Void Ray changes. I can see them doing just one or two of them. The Baneling change also has a negative impact on ZvZ.
Proxy voids + batteries is already very demanding for amateur terrans to micro properly. A cyclone/vk die in seconds when slightly mismicroed. Now it is going to be even harder...And yet the balance team didn't even mention this in their notes at all. All they could think of is 'chasing down banshees' LOL. I am in serious doubt of how they appreciate tvp.
On August 08 2020 05:18 DuckS wrote: The game is not and should not be balanced around amateur terran player's inability to micro properly.
Luckily if you ask them any Terran in the world will report having roughly equivalent micro to ByuN at his peak, so it makes it easier to balance around micro requirements at least.
The baneling nerf was badly needed so that's good. In both PvZ and TvZ we were seeing ridiculous numbers of banelings being made and even when poorly used they seemed to be cost effective. We shouldn't be watching immortal/archon and mech armies getting wiped out by banelings. It's just silly.
The protoss air buffs outside of the oracle revelation one seem strange. They seem to be intended to buff protoss in PvZ but I'm not exactly sure how these changes do any of that. PvZ lategame isn't what's wrong right now. The issues are that protoss at the top level can almost never get past 3 bases without getting steamrolled by ling/bane/ravager compositions and that there are basically no effective pressure builds left that can't be comfortably dealt with in the majority of cases by zerg, making it difficult to slow down zerg's economy. Adept glaive builds have run their course and are being handled by zerg in such a way that these builds almost always end up with a zerg advantage/win now. Same with archon drops. The two stargate phoenix stuff pros were trying for a bit was even worse. We're basically at the point where anything less than the zerg player making a substantial mistake will result in the zerg by default having an economic advantage.
On August 08 2020 08:48 Ben... wrote: The baneling nerf was badly needed so that's good. In both PvZ and TvZ we were seeing ridiculous numbers of banelings being made and even when poorly used they seemed to be cost effective. We shouldn't be watching immortal/archon and mech armies getting wiped out by banelings. It's just silly.
The protoss air buffs outside of the oracle revelation one seem strange. They seem to be intended to buff protoss in PvZ but I'm not exactly sure how these changes do any of that. PvZ lategame isn't what's wrong right now. The issues are that protoss at the top level can almost never get past 3 bases without getting steamrolled by ling/bane/ravager compositions and that there are basically no effective pressure builds left that can't be comfortably dealt with in the majority of cases by zerg, making it difficult to slow down zerg's economy. Adept glaive builds have run their course and are being handled by zerg in such a way that these builds almost always end up with a zerg advantage/win now. Same with archon drops. The two stargate phoenix stuff pros were trying for a bit was even worse. We're basically at the point where anything less than the zerg player making a substantial mistake will result in the zerg by default having an economic advantage.
That specifically seems to be the problem, if indeed there is a problem.
We tend to see this a lot with Zerg. Protoss and Terran come up with solutions to slow the economic juggernaut, Zerg eventually become really adept at defending them and then steamroll when they do.
As you say, outside of games where the Protoss does a lot of damage or allins, the issue isn’t (as it was) that lategame P can’t fight lategame Z when things go to the air, it’s P being wiped out in the transition phase.
Imbalance or not aside, this cycle seems to repeat a lot with nothing more fundamental being addressed, if indeed it needs addressed.
Lol baneling dmg vs armored will do nothing to help top protoss vs top zergs.
The way the game works, protoss doesnt have enough supply to take a 4th base without losing all probes to ravagers/baneling run by.
Zerg can just mass ravagers and banes way faster than protoss can get immortals and templars with energy for storm. Zealots get melted by banes and stalkers get overwhelmed by zerglings. Nerfing baneling damage vs armored does nothing to help protoss in its weakest area in pvz. Theres just way too many zerg units, number wise, for protoss single target units to be able to kill fast enough. They just dont have enough dps until 170+ supply, but pro zergs are really good at taking advantage of the 120-150 supply phase of the game. Reason for that is their main single target dps units are zealots, that die to banes in 2 seconds and are outnumbered 1 to 4, and immortals take forever to mass up compared to ravagers and banes. Other units have terrible single target dps, and you cant have infinite storms at 140 supply.
Basicly game is decided at 6-7minutes by economic stage. If zerg defends well, they have so many banes, lings, and ravagers that no matter how hard you nerf banes, they still never have enough units to defend perfectly, and they slowly die to ravager/bane split attacks.
No amount of dmg nerf to banes vs armored will change that, all you need banes to do is clean up the zealots/templars/sentries and soften up the army then ravagers and lings kill all left over units.
Problem is, you cant increase banelings supply because widowmines will become too strong.
The problems with T/Z/P balance is way deeper than all these unit tweak, and i feel the last few patches only break the game more than they fix it.
Shield battery overcharge is one of the worst bandaid ever, and has no place in this game.
BC teleport/shoot while moving was also a bad idea to make BCs relevant. BCs should be a late game slow and powerful all around unit that is not vulnerable to splash. Instead its another worker harass opening unit that you use to avoid army and kill workers in the early and mid game. Terran didnt have enough of those already?
Biggest problems right now in SC2:
- Banelings being 0.5 supply allows zerg to trade banks into guaranteed damage. Also overwhelms protoss easily in the mid game.
-Protoss production.: The biggest protoss weakness is how slow they are at remassing or even just massing their tech units in the mid game. If they lose their immortal army just once, they never get it back. Warp gates and warp prism being this strong makes it very hard to buff robo unit production, and gives a limit to how powerful gateway units are allowed to be.
Warp-gates should be redesigned in a *hero* building that you make one of, and it has a a set number of warpins available (4, upgradable to 6, for example). You can then buff gateway production, unit stats, and perhaps allow immortals to be made from gateways once you have a robo support bay. If warp gates are weak, something like that is possible. Additionnally, without warp gates, you can bring the old templar upgrade to get 75 energy at spawn.
- Zerg late game: Too reliant on incredibly powerful spells: abduct and neural are too strong and make it so zerg late game units have to be weak, Broodlords and ultras are very boring and weak and awkward units, Not good all around at all. Limit the possible targets of adbuct and neural to 4 supply units max, and buff broodlords and ultralisks.
-Terran harass unit overlap: Terran units have too many overlapping roles. Liberators, banshees, BCs, all serve the same role in the early/mid game. Its obvious Battlecruisers need a redesign to a true late game unit. I feel currently, design wise this is the only terran problem. Proxy 2 racks is pretty strong, and perhaps a bunker build time change is needed once again.
I strongly feel like sets of changes like this would be way better than what we have been presented for the last few years. Patches have not been addressing the real reason why all 3 matchups seem impossible to all balance at the samme time. Tweaking unit stats will never fix the core issues of ZvP.
Oh and lastly: Canons should take as long as spine crawlers to make, to help prevent abuse.
This will just make PvP unplayable, not because of it being hard but it will make it annoying. I already hate it because you get cannon rushed every game, to the point I literally don't bother and open forge now to counter cannon rush every single game. Then it becomes a game of they turtling massing VR and then Carriers into them making VR rush which I usually win against but it takes too freaking long to end a game I won in the minute 3.
Now VR will be more powerful whcih will just make those games last longer. Also you should always be careful with the VR, as it already counters everything Protoss has in the midgame, until you get storms and blink, and even then you need to be very careful. Now with the increased speed they will be stronger against storm and blinks, which maybe won't make them too strong, but definitely more annoying.
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The problem is not Protoss. The problem is Zerg. They are too strong vs both races. Banelings have too much health.
The core issue is zerg by desing is too strong. Their design is simply better than the other too races and this expantion made them even better because it punishes you if you don't expand, and guess which race has the easiest time expanding?
The ban-daid solution has always been to not let the zerg drone and harass him constantly, or making an all-in before they grow to much. Unfortunately the Queen is too strong, and zerg player have gotten better at macro. That alongside the baneling being an incredibly effective unit that cost 0.5 (!!!) supply, makes it very difficult to deal enough damage to the zerg, so they just keep growing and growing until they kill you.
As a main protoss player, I appreciate the buffs, but honestly as long as they dont give Protoss and Terran better tools to deal with Zergs, or nerf Zergs so they don't have such an easy time expanding and protecting their expantions, these changes will do nothing.
EDIT: Just read the two post before mine. Yeah, that's exactly the problem, and it's at the core a desing problem. Zerg's virtues as a race and it's core mechanics, are simply too good, specially against Protoss. That doesn't mean winrates can be balanced, they can be, but through either band-aid patches, or strong all-ins.
Like the other poster correctly points out, this has been the case since the game came out, hence Protoss all-ining most PvZ games since WoL. And right now, until a pro figures out another all-in it seems the options are running out. Hence why this will change nothing. There needs to be ways to stop the Zerg for growing or any other buff will either do nothing or just create another cheesy all-in build.
As a side-note.I will ask this question to Protoss players: don't you feel restricted? I've been playing random this past 2 months at you really feel like the different races have a lot of possibilities, but Protoss meta is always very fixed into a certain composition, and even then there is not a lot of variance, you basically end up with Zealot/Archon/HT/Carrier every game, this is in stark constrat to Zerg specially, but also Terran. This is just a side not comment about desing not so much balance though.
Funny how u all are happy because of Baneling nerf forgetting, that mass bane is the only way Zerg survives and can deal some damage. Over the years every fucking Zerg unit was nerfed, baneling is the last stand. If u want to nerf it, u must buff something else for Zerg to have an alternative.
It would be nice if Blizzard fixes worker count help on top of base in campaign. When you play multiplayer, it says 16 for minerals but in campaign it says maximum minerals (e.g. 24/24). Even in LotV campaign as far as I remember.
the only way to tweak banelings without break the game is to create a tag "touched by acid". Then an unit can t be affected multiple times by the additionnal damage, of course the result is to increase the unit banelings size, life and his supply cost. Then, the difference of fire-power between a marine with or without adrenaline has to be reduced in order to keep the "spirit" for splitting units. All these changes can be done around medivacs health-spell with care, allowing to adjust the force of the bio ball.
If problems still occurs, you can force Medivacs to load units one by one, which would be the answer to the next problem for Zergs.
On August 08 2020 16:40 hiroshOne wrote: Funny how u all are happy because of Baneling nerf forgetting, that mass bane is the only way Zerg survives and can deal some damage.
Over the years every fucking Zerg unit was nerfed, baneling is the last stand. If u want to nerf it, u must buff something else for Zerg to have an alternative.
Nope that's just not true. Queens helps Zergs tremendously with their defense(and Survival). I've seen countless Zergs defend very convincingly with Roach/Ravager/lings and just queens. This comp + Lingrunby's always seems to deal some dmg aswell while on the offence.
This nerf is promising and it will be interesting to see how things pace out.
On August 08 2020 12:52 [Phantom] wrote: As a side-note.I will ask this question to Protoss players: don't you feel restricted? I've been playing random this past 2 months at you really feel like the different races have a lot of possibilities, but Protoss meta is always very fixed into a certain composition, and even then there is not a lot of variance, you basically end up with Zealot/Archon/HT/Carrier every game, this is in stark constrat to Zerg specially, but also Terran. This is just a side not comment about desing not so much balance though.
Historically aye, more stylistically than compostionally though.
Not that my mechanics are/were good, just relative to me they were always my strength and especially in WoL and PvZ in general one can’t have a solid opening build and improvisationally grind down a Zerg in straight macro games efficiently past a certain level. Terran to a similar though slightly lesser degree. I remember hitting that wall after playing some of my (admittedly low) best Starcraft ever, giving up and learning the Soul Train, practicing the build a few times and having a way better WR immediately.
Feels like you almost go in to games just executing a few of your solid builds, rather than fluidly playing the game that’s in front of you. Like having to play chess with a set opener and developments instead of just having a normal game with all the options you can remember from your locker.
I’m slightly exaggerating but to me that’s where it feels the restrictions lie, but less so than in previous expansions and really it’s a PvZ issue primarily. PvT and PvP are pretty decent these days in compositional variety and stylistic variety.
Putting me more radical hat on, and hey no more expansions coming so pretty unlikely. But hey 10th year anniversary let’s be radica!
Just spitballing for fun, what if races got a single unit each for a specific matchup to fill holes? What are the holes indeed?
I’d rather Protoss get a new PvZ unit for example and fix that dynamic than we be stuck with a ‘Hm better make Airtoss good again’ kind of scenario.
My brain is yet to function so I can’t think of this unit, other than it should be something speedy, harass-based and sort of sucks at combat and comes from the gateway and is relatively massable but blows at cheesing.
Something that can excel at hit and run attacks and can be split off from your army in the mid game thru early late game basically.
We have good early game harassment options, albeit Zergs defend a lot better now. When the game goes long and the Zerg stretches out zealot runbys and DTs are great.
In the in-between phase, where the Zerg has defences, units and creep spread but hasn’t expanded too far outwards, there’s not a huge amount to do if the Zerg is playing well. AKA the ‘throwing away loads of Chargelots and DTs’ stage.
Just my poorly thought-out 50 cents really. Probably should have waited until I had coffee
On August 08 2020 16:40 hiroshOne wrote: Funny how u all are happy because of Baneling nerf forgetting, that mass bane is the only way Zerg survives and can deal some damage. Over the years every fucking Zerg unit was nerfed, baneling is the last stand. If u want to nerf it, u must buff something else for Zerg to have an alternative.
zergs usually get buffs when a unit gets nerfed though.
In theory a banelings can hit up to 37 marines in a same time (with burrow).. as you need two banelings with different positions to kill a group of marines, you approximatively kills 30 marines.
so one baneling can deal 1000 damage while a storm do 80...
On August 09 2020 00:18 Vision_ wrote: In theory a banelings can hit up to 37 marines in a same time (with burrow).. as you need two banelings with different positions to kill a group of marines, you approximatively kills 30 marines.
so one baneling can deal 1000 damage while a storm do 80...
You're comparing the absolute best case scenario for the baneling to a storm that hits one unit?
On August 09 2020 00:18 Vision_ wrote: In theory a banelings can hit up to 37 marines in a same time (with burrow).. as you need two banelings with different positions to kill a group of marines, you approximatively kills 30 marines.
so one baneling can deal 1000 damage while a storm do 80...
You're comparing the absolute best case scenario for the baneling to a storm that hits one unit?
no i haven t finished yet :
30 marines * 50 M = 1500 minerals 2 Banes = 100 minerals + 50 gas
Just kidding
To be serious, it s idiot to go on with half a supply cost... that s obvious for anyone who has played at a casual level / geek level.
On August 09 2020 00:18 Vision_ wrote: In theory a banelings can hit up to 37 marines in a same time (with burrow).. as you need two banelings with different positions to kill a group of marines, you approximatively kills 30 marines.
so one baneling can deal 1000 damage while a storm do 80...
You're comparing the absolute best case scenario for the baneling to a storm that hits one unit?
On August 08 2020 16:40 hiroshOne wrote: Funny how u all are happy because of Baneling nerf forgetting, that mass bane is the only way Zerg survives and can deal some damage.
Over the years every fucking Zerg unit was nerfed, baneling is the last stand. If u want to nerf it, u must buff something else for Zerg to have an alternative.
Nope that's just not true. Queens helps Zergs tremendously with their defense(and Survival). I've seen countless Zergs defend very convincingly with Roach/Ravager/lings and just queens. This comp + Lingrunby's always seems to deal some dmg aswell while on the offence.
This nerf is promising and it will be interesting to see how things pace out.
I see countless of Terran/Protoss defending with 3 units, but it's only a balance issue when The Zerg defend...
The reality is during a long time, killing Zerg was way too easy (bunker rush, hellbat push, hellion blue flame, BC, proxy reapers etc...) but after years, Zerg become better and better at dealing with them (it's normal, it's just training,). But many people are nostalgic of the build order free win area then they try to deny the fact the Zerg improve. They blame queens, while queens are never been so weak since early WOL.
Which compositions are viable that don't involve baneling outside ZvZ ? None. They killed roach long time ago, they killed infestors, they killed Zerg T3.
But the whine fest never stop, they were countless of Zerg nerfs, and the second a patch arrive, the same players asked for another one. As a result, the Zerg population which was previously a quite popular race is now the least played race.
It's not surprising, why you want to play Starcraft as Zerg ? You can barely attack before hive, you spend your time defending, you have little viable strategy (LBM or ravagers/banelings ?).
On August 09 2020 02:34 Tyrhanius wrote: They killed roach long time ago, they killed infestors, they killed Zerg T3.
Strange how all of those keep winning games then.
Yeah, because Zerg is not allowed to win any games right?
Let's nerf marines, as they often win games.
My point is that those units have in no way been "killed." They're just not quite as overwhelming powerful as they once were. If you haven't noticed, pro level Zerg is still very strong, and acting like these units were nerfed into irrelevance is dishonest.
The most busted part about the Baneling is the 2.2 radius splash. Like it's actually so much bigger than everything else in the game besides Fungal Growth. But lets be real here, I want to see Burrowed Banelings, I want to see mass Baneling Overlord drops on armies. The Baneling SHOULD be busted, because it's perhaps the coolest unit in SC2.
So I've come up with something else we could nerf instead, so we could perhaps revert the Baneling damage back to 20/35 damage. If you really wanna help Protoss nerf the Cocoon build time of Ravagers. It's so ridiculously small, it's 9 seconds. Not to mention they have 5 armour during this time, I think though this is the case because the design team loves the BW micro you can do to cancel damage by doing Cocoon micro, so I can let that live. Though realistically I'd say both Lurker and Ravager cocoon should be 2 armour, just like the rest of the Cocoons. For those that don't know. Lurker have 1 armour in Cocoon form.
It happens quite often that Zergs just morph Ravagers in the face of Protoss, because it's never worth it for Protoss to try and target down these Cocoons, because a few seconds after, they pop with full health.
Overseer morph time is 12, Baneling: 14, Lurker is 15. So I suggest you put Ravager on 13 so it's easy to remember 12, 13, 14, 15.
I agree that Ravagers morp too quickly, I think that could be good.
I think I would reduce baneling health again. Also In TvZ I would increase Thor's AA atack ( they are so slow that when they do catch mutas they should do much more damge).
And I think I would change the Hellbat to make it better agaisn't banelings, they are really underutilized and they just die as easy as bio and I don't think that's intented.
Even though it is not being used as much these days we should not forget that Swarm Hosts are just a very bad unit and it should be removed from the game. It's not even about balance, it's just bad.
Some people really hate Zerg. I really hope Blizz doesn't listen to those ideas or Zerg will never win anything again. Reduce baneling health AND increase ravager morph time AND make hellbats better? On top of all the nerfs we already got recently? How the heck is Zerg supposed to defend 2 base all ins then? Do you guys even play Zerg or just take ideas out of your ass? :D
If the problem is that banelings are too strong in situations where they aren't expected to do well, I think the easiest solution is to nerf the range for the non-light damages. Eg, reduce range very slightly for normal damage and reduce range for structure damage by a lot. When you roll in 20 banelings into a planetary, you will forced to choose either the planetary or the SCV's.
I agree that Protoss doesn't have a good tool for these since Terran can float a backup CC into place. Perhaps we give Protoss a global spell across Nexus that requires 150 energy, using energy from up to 3 nexus, and lets them build a new Nexus at increased warp-in (similar to the chrono boost but only applies for Nexus).
There s no problem for Banes in term of positionning among the Z units. Blizzard should be more Uniform in the design of his units. Widow mines shoots automatically, why Banes don t (playing devil s advocate) ? Terran must micro heavily in fight, why Zerg hasn t so much to do ? simple ideas are the best, your idea is good on paper but it s already too complex.
Roachs could gain a little bit armor when they are burrowed in order to promote micro / Banelings could have a part of centrifugal hooks which has to be activated to reach contact against marines (while marines are useless without stimpack).
Uniform is simplicity. And simplicity makes good game.
Then, it wouldn t say features of units must overlap themselves. To me, Zergling advantage is his supply cost and in a certain way i think that low supply cost of a baneling overlap with zergling supply cost.
Of course as race, Zerg have been designed since SC:BW with the idea to overwhelm his ennemy, a baneling supply cost up could be balanced by an upgrade to increase the max population... why not ? and even if there are other balance consequences, a thought change will always impact some others ennemy units (while Blizzard has decided to only make small changes).
It's good to see that Blizzard at least acknowledges Protoss is really weak at the moment.
Protoss has not been competitive in the late game in both PVT or PVZ for a long time now.
The Protoss race right now has been all about choosing a single build that has to do critical damage or kill the opponent and even then that is sometimes only enough to make it a even game when Protoss deserves to be ahead by a large margin considering the damage they have done.
Mules and mass drones in a single production cycle are comeback mechanics Protoss do not have, chronoboosted probes takes a considerable amount of time to pay off while the Terran and Zerg can maintain more stable economies if they take heavy economic damage.
On the protoss side of things losing worker amounts that Terran and Zerg can "live with" is a game ender for Protoss and if you have knowledge of Starcraft you already know the game is pretty much over already.
So Protoss is the most fickle race when it comes to taking economic damage yet they have the worst defense capabilities of all three races.
This is problem number one.
Problem number two:
Protoss is an expensive race, units are expensive, techpaths are expensive, take a long time to get and you can not just change your techtree as you see fit since the investments are huge.
This makes reactive play very difficult because it is to expensive and takes to long to make reliable tech that can counter your opponents army.
Pro players know Protoss are locked to the decisions they made early in the game (techpaths) and for players who know how to scout and know how protoss works, Protoss is the most predictable race in the game, the only unpredictable thing about protoss is how hard are they going to commit to an attack causing a defensive overreaction the opposite.
So you would assume the downside of having expensive units, supply expensive units, expensive slow tech paths to more powerful units would be balanced out by the strength of the units.
Well this is where Blizzard dropped the ball,
They want Zerg to by "Zergy" mass amounts of units overwhelm you fast teching, tech switches living true to Brood war game play and lore for those who care about that. They carried this over into SC2 it's still their key strengths
Terran also has its core elements from Brood war, extremely strong defensively, parade pushes, good at sieging bases using terrain to their advantage even acquired new strengths with the medivac mobility.
Now for Protoss, this is where I want you to think a bit and reflect see if you come to the same conclusion as me.
We still have the expensive buildings, upgrades, and units.
We are still locked into techpaths for longer because of this.
Now this is supposed to be compensated by the strength of the units you make, but this is not the case, protoss units are not very versatile and easily countered by a scouting opponent because of how predictable Protoss techpaths are.
You do not pay more for stronger units as a protoss, you pay more to hardcounter a specific unit of the enemy, which the enemy in turn Zerg and Terran can make easily obsolete because of how quick and how easy access they have to whatever tech they need.
Which means protoss units only perform when the opponent is not prepared for them.
So you are in fact not paying more for anything other then hoping your enemy was not prepared for that specific unit.
Which again reinforces the fact that protoss must play based on deception and outsmarting your opponent, there is no brute force like Terran and Zerg playstyles.
Now I know most people well say well this is not Brood war so what is my point?
My point is why do you give Protoss the core mechanics of expensive supply demanding armies with slow techfrom brood war, and then expect us to use deception to beat the opponent when they have even better tools of deception then Protoss have.
You have the most predictable easily read race in the game and you want us to rely on deception to win games?
All of these things contradict themselves and is the core reason why Protoss has been a poorly designed race and it needs some heavy reworking if its ever going to fit into this game and make for fun matchups like TVZ is getting closer too.
On August 11 2020 03:21 kajtarp wrote: All this talk about Zergi being imba, can someone tell me why do i not see Hydralisks anymore even tough its supposed to be a "core unit" ?
I definitely think that after they are done figuring out the bane nerfs, hydras need their nerfs reverted. Both the dps nerf and remerge the upgrades.
Hydras are total trash right now and with new shield battery overcharge i doubt hydra all ins would be OP, especially if banes get nerfed.
Looking at tournament results, i dont think such a drastic change in the balance is needed. Protoss air buff is OK, but the baneling nerf is just too much, especially since it will screw with ZvZ. Loosing banes on marauders, ghosts, thors, immos or archons is super ineffective already and happens really often. The only time you can really pull that off is if you came through early and mid game unscathed, and if that happens, you should be ahead since it is so hard to do that as a zerg (unless you are Serral or Reynor)
On August 08 2020 12:52 [Phantom] wrote: The core issue is zerg by desing is too strong.
Hmm... I'm not sure I agree. Remove the Viper and see what happens. No other races depends so heavily on a single unit in late game.
I disagree with the that statement. I have seen zerg play passable late game without vipers vs various compsitions, but I have no recollection of ever seeing protoss late game being successful without psionic storm. Colossus and disruptor can help in the early stages of late game, but the protoss loses if they do not get the storms to dissuade mass surrounds. PvP being an exception to this.
I do agree with the viper being a hugely impactful unit. It is a near necessity.
On August 11 2020 03:38 Dedraterllaerau wrote: Which again reinforces the fact that protoss must play based on deception and outsmarting your opponent, there is no brute force like Terran and Zerg playstyles.
Now I know most people well say well this is not Brood war so what is my point?
My point is why do you give Protoss the core mechanics of expensive supply demanding armies with slow techfrom brood war, and then expect us to use deception to beat the opponent when they have even better tools of deception then Protoss have.
You have the most predictable easily read race in the game and you want us to rely on deception to win games?
All of these things contradict themselves and is the core reason why Protoss has been a poorly designed race and it needs some heavy reworking if its ever going to fit into this game and make for fun matchups like TVZ is getting closer too.
I’d largely consider that to be a PvZ issue over a PvT or even PvP issue. Protoss is still vulnerable in being very reliant on tech units vT yeah, on the other hand they have the remax speed, reinforcement speed, and generally a map vision advantage. Plus gateway armies, specifically chargelots with upgrade advantages are better in that matchup too. Plus especially lately in terms of trends Protoss are out-expanding Terrans in the lategame, sometimes by 2-3 bases so they can even trade cost-inefficiently and it still be strategically sound.
Plus Terran have similar vulnerabilities if they choose to over counter your tech units as well. Less pronounced now as ghosts are more generally really good with the EMP radius upgrade buff.
All in all I think you see pretty good back-and-forth macro games in that matchup with good options and variety from both sides, although Terran are a little hamstrung into timing atttacks and pushes.
Versus Zerg Protoss keep that tech reliance but lose basically all of the other advantages they have vT. Slower remaxes, fewer bases/resources and you’re generally less mobile and pure gate armies end up being bad. Zerg have a big vision advantage if they’re good at spreading creep etc. You see much less splitting of the Protoss army and sharking as you’re considerably slower than many Zerg units especially if creep is a factor and can’t afford to get surrounded and haemorrhage units, especially robo units.
I still think warp gate being implemented was a mistake and that so much of these problems come from balancing around it but in 2020 the game’s in a decent shape, very much despite it.
Cut some of your post to prevent this being a huge wall of text.
i tried playing ZvP without banes for a week now...macro games are basically unwinnable...no matter the unit comp but Z just sucks without banes.
Banes arent even a problem in low eco or even eco games....banes are a problem when Z has a huge eco advantage. On the other hand without banes every unit comp Z has sucks in late midgame. roach ravager etc. is all fine in early midgame but later on without banes...nope.
So if blizz really wants banes to become less effective in ZvP...go for it but compensate Z with some buffs on useless units like hydras or lurkers or infestors...
On August 11 2020 03:21 kajtarp wrote: All this talk about Zergi being imba, can someone tell me why do i not see Hydralisks anymore even tough its supposed to be a "core unit" ?
I definitely think that after they are done figuring out the bane nerfs, hydras need their nerfs reverted. Both the dps nerf and remerge the upgrades.
Hydras are total trash right now and with new shield battery overcharge i doubt hydra all ins would be OP, especially if banes get nerfed.
Even if all the changes in this update go through, we are still one more round of Zerg nerfs away from balance. Zerg buffs cannot even be discussed until we have time to adjust to those future changes. Design team had been much to conservative with fixing balance - something which they admitted to in the notes.
On August 11 2020 21:56 Decendos wrote: i tried playing ZvP without banes for a week now...macro games are basically unwinnable...no matter the unit comp but Z just sucks without banes.
Banes arent even a problem in low eco or even eco games....banes are a problem when Z has a huge eco advantage. On the other hand without banes every unit comp Z has sucks in late midgame. roach ravager etc. is all fine in early midgame but later on without banes...nope.
So if blizz really wants banes to become less effective in ZvP...go for it but compensate Z with some buffs on useless units like hydras or lurkers or infestors...
I mean you played without banes while they are only getting a small nerf.. So maybe just play with banes and you will be fine?!
I like the idea of vrs as a deffensive unit for protoss to help them hold of early game allins from zerg. I dont like the buff to proxy battery vr strats.
On August 11 2020 21:56 Decendos wrote: i tried playing ZvP without banes for a week now...macro games are basically unwinnable...no matter the unit comp but Z just sucks without banes.
Banes arent even a problem in low eco or even eco games....banes are a problem when Z has a huge eco advantage. On the other hand without banes every unit comp Z has sucks in late midgame. roach ravager etc. is all fine in early midgame but later on without banes...nope.
So if blizz really wants banes to become less effective in ZvP...go for it but compensate Z with some buffs on useless units like hydras or lurkers or infestors...
I mean you played without banes while they are only getting a small nerf.. So maybe just play with banes and you will be fine?!
that was the whole point. I tried to play without banes to not be dependend on them - problem (for me at least) was, that without banes in late midgame on equal footing with P (so neither me nor them took big damage before) my comp just got destroyed as in completely destroyed.
I would love Z to not be as dependend on banes and be lurker, hydras or infestors be more viable before hivetech....
On August 11 2020 21:56 Decendos wrote: i tried playing ZvP without banes for a week now...macro games are basically unwinnable...no matter the unit comp but Z just sucks without banes.
Banes arent even a problem in low eco or even eco games....banes are a problem when Z has a huge eco advantage. On the other hand without banes every unit comp Z has sucks in late midgame. roach ravager etc. is all fine in early midgame but later on without banes...nope.
So if blizz really wants banes to become less effective in ZvP...go for it but compensate Z with some buffs on useless units like hydras or lurkers or infestors...
I mean you played without banes while they are only getting a small nerf.. So maybe just play with banes and you will be fine?!
that was the whole point. I tried to play without banes to not be dependend on them - problem (for me at least) was, that without banes in late midgame on equal footing with P (so neither me nor them took big damage before) my comp just got destroyed as in completely destroyed.
I would love Z to not be as dependend on banes and be lurker, hydras or infestors be more viable before hivetech....
I mean, I understand your point but you have to realize it's no different for protoss. Protoss is essentially forced to play certain units every game also to survive. If protoss tried to play PvZ without immortals they would never win since surviving roach/ravager all-ins is incredibly hard without immortals.
Also, lurkers seem totally fine at the pro level. We've seen them used defensively quite well and with the hive upgrades, they become a potent zoning and offensive tool. Tinkering with lurkers is also quite dangerous because, like tanks, a small nerf could make them useless while a small buff could make them unbeatable on the ground. I view lurkers as the opposite of banelings in that lurkers are a unit that can be used to show skill differential between players. Good lurker play is easy to tell apart from bad lurker play (good lurker play being splitting before burrowing, positional control, ramp control, etc. and bad lurker play being moving a group of lurkers all together and then burrowing them all in one spot so they die to a couple storms or using lurkers purely with hope the opponent forgot detection rather than using them to supplement an army). As it is right now, it is more difficult to tell a bad baneling user from a good one because even badly used banelings come out on top most of the time in terms of efficiency.
I don't think hydras need help either. In 2018 we were watching pro zergs win PvZ games with almost pure hydra so something needed to be done, and the nerfs done were minimal. It's just that right now ling/bane/ravager is even stronger so hydras have become less popular to use.
On August 11 2020 21:56 Decendos wrote: i tried playing ZvP without banes for a week now...macro games are basically unwinnable...no matter the unit comp but Z just sucks without banes.
Banes arent even a problem in low eco or even eco games....banes are a problem when Z has a huge eco advantage. On the other hand without banes every unit comp Z has sucks in late midgame. roach ravager etc. is all fine in early midgame but later on without banes...nope.
So if blizz really wants banes to become less effective in ZvP...go for it but compensate Z with some buffs on useless units like hydras or lurkers or infestors...
I mean you played without banes while they are only getting a small nerf.. So maybe just play with banes and you will be fine?!
that was the whole point. I tried to play without banes to not be dependend on them - problem (for me at least) was, that without banes in late midgame on equal footing with P (so neither me nor them took big damage before) my comp just got destroyed as in completely destroyed.
I would love Z to not be as dependend on banes and be lurker, hydras or infestors be more viable before hivetech....
It's like saying, playing Protoss without Zealots cause it got nerfed then ask Blizzard to buff other units cause Protoss is so dependent on Zealots and it's unwinnable without them so lets buff other units to compensate. Oh wait, Protoss still wins games and zealots are still being used in every game.
See how flaw that argument is? Units get nerfed/buffed every patch, doesn't make them disappear or become useless.
Or lets look at a different angle.
Lets assume, Zerg finally can win late game without using baneling after the buff to other units. Then, wait... there is a race that can win a macro late game without the need of using one of its core unit?? Does that make them OP or balanced? Let that sink it.
There s obvious solution for Blizz to make Banes legit at geek / casual level but they are probably afraid to lose players if they are going deep. I checked the last patch consequences (patch 4.11 2019/10) on Zerg players and a lot of them have left the game because of the changes.
Zerg
Brood Lord Broodling leash range decreased from 12 to 9. Creep Active Creep Tumors may no longer be canceled. Infestor Removed the Infested Terran ability. New Ability: Microbial Shroud Creates a shroud that obscures ground units below, reducing the damage they take from air units by 50%. Lasts 11 seconds. Energy cost: 100. Cast range: 9. Radius: 3. New upgrade found on the Infestation Pit: Evolve Microbial Shroud Requirement: Hive. Research cost: 150/150. Research duration: 79 seconds. Updated visual effects and sounds for Microbial Shroud Neural Parasite range decreased from 9 to 8. Neural Parasite can no longer target Heroic units. Lurker Lurker Den build time decreased from 86 seconds to 57 seconds. Lurker range decreased from 9 to 8. New Upgrade found on the Lurker Den: Seismic Spines Increases the Lurker's range from 8 to 10. Requirement: Hive. Research cost: 150/150. Research duration: 57 seconds. Increased research duration of Adaptive Talons from 54 seconds to 57 seconds. Lurkers affected by Blinding Cloud will now only fire to melee range. Nydus Network Nydus Worm cost increased from 50/50 to 75/75. Summon Nydus Worm ability cooldown increased from 0 to 14. Nydus Network and Nydus Worm initial unload delay increased from 0.18 to 0.36. Nydus Network and Nydus Worm load period increased from 0.09 to 0.18. Nydus Network and Nydus Worm unload period increased from 0.18 to 0.36. Overlord Pneumatized Carapace research cost increased from 75/75 to 100/100.
I didn t studied every patch and his consequence but if i would have to give my opinion on this, the removal of Infested Terrans seems to be the drop of water that breaks the camel's back (funny expression...). Blizzard tried to resolve the issue of sky toss but after one try in changing the spell of infested terrans, they gived up..
If the spell works so well at pro level, it must be incredibly powerfull !!! cause i didn t see it once time since the last patch.
Can someone explain it ? (i must admit i liked the first idea concerning infested terrans, to make them powerfull but more expensive in mana)
On August 08 2020 12:20 Snakestyle11 wrote: Limit the possible targets of adbuct and neural to 4 supply units max, and buff broodlords and ultralisks.
The problem with this kind of change is that it removes the point of the spell. you use abduct and neural precisely to target the big units. If you can't, then nobody is going to pour the resources into it (unless you can somehow target multiple units, and then you're back in the same "supply-affected" range again).
a similar nerf would be storm no longer deals damage to sub-3 supply units, or pulsar beam no longer target workers.
On August 13 2020 20:36 120720 wrote: Limit the amount of alive queens per hatcheries, boost whatever units you need for that.
Increase Queen supply cost to 3. Increase Baneling supply cost to 1. Increase Zerg supply cap to 210.
Mass Banelings and mass Queen will now have clear drawbacks without Banelings or Queens becomming less effective in reasonable numbers.
+1
I agree, it s a reasonnable idea. supply cap could even be increased to 215 i guess (i would say 220 without your comments).
This kind of changes is something missing to Starcraft 2... It s a question of good sense to represent the effectiveness and the power of an unit with pragmatism. I would be super excited to watch these small changes into a Wardi tournament for example (with community donations)
What are we waiting ?
PS : even +6 supply from hatchery can be increased to +7 (to adjust spending minerals at start)
That said, it will probably help a lot the casuals / geek gamers but actually Zerg feel in a bad mood from a spectator view
Some changes I personally would like the balance team to address as well beyond just nerfing Zerg (For what it's worth, I am a Zerg player and have been since WoL.), because what I've always felt for Protoss is that the Oracle and Disruptor are in bad places design wise, and early Gateway units still suck. I'm not so sure that Zerg needs to be nerfed compared to Protoss just needing buffs and number tweaks. Plus, buffs are always more exciting for the community and the players beyond things that were just crimes against nature like Brood Lord/Infestor.
- Making sentries more useful overall combat units, they seem to be in a bad place concerning their interaction with Ravagers and early game gateway units still all these years later seems flimsy and unable to allow Protoss to apply meaningful ground based pressure to a Zerg player.
Perhaps buffing their damage and guardian shield to give some early offensive firepower and more ground based durability to small squads of Gateway units. Allowing Protoss to commit to early aggression more reliably and force the Zerg player to more carefully monitor their greed.
Giving the Oracle a range increase of +1 but a nerf in damage and/or removal of bonus to light units, along with removal of energy expenditure when attacking and the ability to attack air units. Oracles come out strong but then fall off drastically, the Revelation change lessens this a bit but the team could do more. This change would give greater versatility to the Oracle by doing the following.
1. Buffing range will allow micro outside of static defenses which will promote longevity to the unit, not allowing Spore Crawlers to hard counter them.
2. Energy removal will negate the decision of choosing to attack or to cast spells, why not do both? The Oracle is expensive, it shouldn't have such a binary choice between how to utilize it.
3. Nerfing damage and or removing the light tag would not make the Oracle completely broken with the two above proposed buffs, it should not instantly kill workers. The damage should be reduced to a point where a fast Zerg player can react and micro away to lessen the damage, while a slow or inattentive Zerg will be punished.
4. Allowing it to attack air units will take away the helplessness of the Oracle once a Spire is dropped, while allowing them to simultaneously fill in a more Phoenix like roll or killing and shooing away Overlords. Allowing the Protoss player greater vision, map control, and slowing the economy of the Zerg player.
Also, my last proposal, is to remove the Disruptor and replace it with the Reaver. Simple as that, the Reaver is awesome and the Disruptor just sucks to watch, play against and play with. Give Protoss the Reaver and make everyone happy, just like nobody properly understand why Lurkers were not in the game since WoL, the introduction of the Lurker has drastically improved the Zerg arsenal both for the players and spectators, I have no doubts that the Reaver would do the same.
On August 13 2020 20:36 120720 wrote: Limit the amount of alive queens per hatcheries, boost whatever units you need for that.
Increase Queen supply cost to 3. Increase Baneling supply cost to 1. Increase Zerg supply cap to 210.
Mass Banelings and mass Queen will now have clear drawbacks without Banelings or Queens becomming less effective in reasonable numbers.
Amazing....
What about increasing marine supply from 1 to 2 and mules from 0 to 1 to compensate ?
Seriously, you have no clue how the game works, and this suggestion is just "kill zerg i don't like them".
I agree that those changes are kind of ridiculous but people have been saying that nerfs are going to kill Zerg for ages and they are still winning the most and sitting on a pile of prize money $3million bigger than Protoss or Terran. While maybe not that posts suggestions specifically I do think Blizzard should try something bigger than what we've seen in the last few years.
On August 13 2020 20:36 120720 wrote: Limit the amount of alive queens per hatcheries, boost whatever units you need for that.
Increase Queen supply cost to 3. Increase Baneling supply cost to 1. Increase Zerg supply cap to 210.
Mass Banelings and mass Queen will now have clear drawbacks without Banelings or Queens becomming less effective in reasonable numbers.
Ah of course, mass Queen, the infamously most abused zerg strategy. Can't believe the entirety of 2019 was just all the zergs massing queens and a-moving across the map. Nobody could stop them, the Brendas were too powerful.
On August 13 2020 20:36 120720 wrote: Limit the amount of alive queens per hatcheries, boost whatever units you need for that.
Increase Queen supply cost to 3. Increase Baneling supply cost to 1. Increase Zerg supply cap to 210.
Mass Banelings and mass Queen will now have clear drawbacks without Banelings or Queens becomming less effective in reasonable numbers.
Ah of course, mass Queen, the infamously most abused zerg strategy. Can't believe the entirety of 2019 was just all the zergs massing queens and a-moving across the map. Nobody could stop them, the Brendas were too powerful.
Honestly, 16+19 or 18+17 doesn't really seem like it's going to make a huge difference. While I understand playing with these numbers is the easy "fix" the problem with banes is mostly that they are an easy way to utterly overkill everything on the field. In ZvT there is considerable micro involved in early marine vs baneling skirmishes, but lategame and vs P, the name of the game is the just use overwhelming numbers. And vs stalkers that number got a bit bigger, but was already thoroughly cost ineffective and only really feasible because Zerg (1) eat the map and (2) don't really have a mid game alternative for whiping out an army. It's the only zerg splash (ravagers are easily dodged). I guess fungals might start making more of a comeback, but everybody hates fungal as well. But there isn't really any other answer that works as well as splash, so Zerg will still make lots of banes (just as Terran make tanks and widow mines, and Protoss make Colossus and storm).
Also, why not look at shadowstride. DTs blinking on top of planetaries is really really dumb.
On August 14 2020 08:09 Acrofales wrote: Honestly, 16+19 or 18+17 doesn't really seem like it's going to make a huge difference. While I understand playing with these numbers is the easy "fix" the problem with banes is mostly that they are an easy way to utterly overkill everything on the field. In ZvT there is considerable micro involved in early marine vs baneling skirmishes, but lategame and vs P, the name of the game is the just use overwhelming numbers. And vs stalkers that number got a bit bigger, but was already thoroughly cost ineffective and only really feasible because Zerg (1) eat the map and (2) don't really have a mid game alternative for whiping out an army. It's the only zerg splash (ravagers are easily dodged). I guess fungals might start making more of a comeback, but everybody hates fungal as well. But there isn't really any other answer that works as well as splash, so Zerg will still make lots of banes (just as Terran make tanks and widow mines, and Protoss make Colossus and storm).
Also, why not look at shadowstride. DTs blinking on top of planetaries is really really dumb.
Pretty much. Historically bio/tank and subsequently bio/mine against ling/bane or LBM has been held up as the gold standard for compositional interactions. That and the numbers behind it haven’t changed massively over the years.
Difference nowadays is that huge Zerg economy that is more frequently obtained, and Zergs just being better. Creep spread is almost unrecognisably better from top Zergs now for example.
Outside of other matchups, historically it’s always felt an arms race for Protoss and Terran to keep Zergs exploding with their patent mechanics, and once Zergs figure out how to not be strangled the patent strengths of the race come to the fore.
One thing I will say in terms of balance is at least Zerg isn’t particularly cost-efficient. It has some strengths for sure, but the race only really becomes ridiculous when it has access to really cost-effective comps, BL/Infestor being the most infamous example.
As per shadowstride I have it filed in ‘silly, and will probably be shown to be broken once we see it more’. How would you tweak it?
Personally I think DTs shouldn’t be able to attack after striding through the shadows for a period, say 2 seconds to pick an arbitrary number.
You can still aggressively blink onto buildings. It’s not a huge window of reaction your opponent can counter, but there is a window. You retain the utility of the ability in terms of retreating and retaining your DTs, which I think should really be the main benefit of the upgrade. You lose the ability to blink onto small groups of bio and instantly wiping them out.
It’s beyond punishing and borderline impossible to react to for a variety of reasons. Unless your opponent runs around detection a bit and hits /dance, you have between a second or two tops and literally zero time to actually react.
Even a mine drop that you’ve missed you have more time to react, and that’s when you have only 2-3 bases to keep an eye on. Blink DTs come out when you’re spread across 4-5+ bases
I mean I’m a Protoss at heart but I feel they’re unreasonably good in lategame vT
On August 11 2020 03:38 Dedraterllaerau wrote: It's good to see that Blizzard at least acknowledges Protoss is really weak at the moment.
Protoss has not been competitive in the late game in both PVT or PVZ for a long time now.
The Protoss race right now has been all about choosing a single build that has to do critical damage or kill the opponent and even then that is sometimes only enough to make it a even game when Protoss deserves to be ahead by a large margin considering the damage they have done.
Mules and mass drones in a single production cycle are comeback mechanics Protoss do not have, chronoboosted probes takes a considerable amount of time to pay off while the Terran and Zerg can maintain more stable economies if they take heavy economic damage.
On the protoss side of things losing worker amounts that Terran and Zerg can "live with" is a game ender for Protoss and if you have knowledge of Starcraft you already know the game is pretty much over already.
So Protoss is the most fickle race when it comes to taking economic damage yet they have the worst defense capabilities of all three races.
This is problem number one.
Problem number two:
Protoss is an expensive race, units are expensive, techpaths are expensive, take a long time to get and you can not just change your techtree as you see fit since the investments are huge.
This makes reactive play very difficult because it is to expensive and takes to long to make reliable tech that can counter your opponents army.
Pro players know Protoss are locked to the decisions they made early in the game (techpaths) and for players who know how to scout and know how protoss works, Protoss is the most predictable race in the game, the only unpredictable thing about protoss is how hard are they going to commit to an attack causing a defensive overreaction the opposite.
So you would assume the downside of having expensive units, supply expensive units, expensive slow tech paths to more powerful units would be balanced out by the strength of the units.
Well this is where Blizzard dropped the ball,
They want Zerg to by "Zergy" mass amounts of units overwhelm you fast teching, tech switches living true to Brood war game play and lore for those who care about that. They carried this over into SC2 it's still their key strengths
Terran also has its core elements from Brood war, extremely strong defensively, parade pushes, good at sieging bases using terrain to their advantage even acquired new strengths with the medivac mobility.
Now for Protoss, this is where I want you to think a bit and reflect see if you come to the same conclusion as me.
We still have the expensive buildings, upgrades, and units.
We are still locked into techpaths for longer because of this.
Now this is supposed to be compensated by the strength of the units you make, but this is not the case, protoss units are not very versatile and easily countered by a scouting opponent because of how predictable Protoss techpaths are.
You do not pay more for stronger units as a protoss, you pay more to hardcounter a specific unit of the enemy, which the enemy in turn Zerg and Terran can make easily obsolete because of how quick and how easy access they have to whatever tech they need.
Which means protoss units only perform when the opponent is not prepared for them.
So you are in fact not paying more for anything other then hoping your enemy was not prepared for that specific unit.
Which again reinforces the fact that protoss must play based on deception and outsmarting your opponent, there is no brute force like Terran and Zerg playstyles.
Now I know most people well say well this is not Brood war so what is my point?
My point is why do you give Protoss the core mechanics of expensive supply demanding armies with slow techfrom brood war, and then expect us to use deception to beat the opponent when they have even better tools of deception then Protoss have.
You have the most predictable easily read race in the game and you want us to rely on deception to win games?
All of these things contradict themselves and is the core reason why Protoss has been a poorly designed race and it needs some heavy reworking if its ever going to fit into this game and make for fun matchups like TVZ is getting closer too.
Smart Post.
Lots of people agreeing it seems, except for the Devs...
- Sentry: remove forcefield ability, reduce price to 25/75, Attack: +1 range, reduces enemy movement speed by 50% (1 sec duration). - Warpprism: remove fast warpin and add as upgrade to robobay 150/150 121 sec - Stalker: +3 base damage, attack upgrades give +2 damage, reduce starting range by 1, add upgrade at twilight to research range +1 (for 100/100 121 sec). - Archon: add speed upgrade at templar archive 150/150 79 sec(equal to psi storm), speed equals speedlots - 4.725. - Adept: starts with resonating glaives, psionic transfer needs to be researched now instead(same price, duration), psionic transfer can now be trigger manually before the duration runs out. OR start with glaives and psionic transfer and offer manual transfer trigger as upgrade (mabye lock part of the current cooldown behind the upgrade as well) - voidray: starts with flux vanes, prismatic slignment need to be reserached instead of flux vanes (same price, duration), prismatic alignment grants +1 range while active. (The current patch proposals for the void are actually much better.) - Tempest: 4 supply (Current patch proposals are very valid as well.) - Mothership: removed - New ability, researched at the dark shrine: cloak of shadows 100/100 50 sec, which allows oracles to cloak any one unit for 9 sec for 100 energy.
Intended Results: - more dps early game(!!!) due to adepts starting with glaives and stalker having more dps and cheaper sentries - reduced stalker range to not make them dominate early game with their increased dps, +1 range on twilight allows for early range or blink - more mobile air defense & harrass options with speed voids (anti medivac + raven + mutas) - no more forcefields, less abuse but also much weaker defense - cheaper sentries have more range, slow down enemies can be more easily integrated into a high pure gateway army - less brutal adept harrass without upgrade, but more potential to use adepts in regular gateway armies without requiring an upgrade - more micro potential with manually triggered shades, after upgrade - archon upgrade to open up more strategical build options and raise protoss mobility in the mid/late game (zealot archon mobile playstyle), better air defense vs mutas - no early fast warpins, locking the power of offensive warp gate behind a second later game upgrade, accounting for early gateway units dps increase - tempest not quite as terrible for their supply anymore and might find a place in late game as long range air support
* necro because I couldn't find a more recent / relevant balance discussion thread
I want to test changes to the nexus that might improve the state of TvP
new structure: Nexus. costs 400 minerals. does what a nexus does (build probes and chrono), but with no recall / battery overcharge
new upgrade: Arbitral Core. costs 50 minerals / 50 gas, 25 seconds build time, requires a cybernetics core. unlocks the recall / battery overcharge abilities. while upgrading, the nexus cannot build probes
feels like a decent way to stabilize the early-game where terran often gets far behind in economy. it would make P a bit more vulnerable while taking new bases
EPT
Ravager holding up to 4 banelings and shooting them with higher damage, banes denote upon impact. Skill shot = rewards.
![[image loading]](https://www.myinstants.com/media/instants_images/hqdefault_70.jpg)
