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Northern Ireland25729 Posts
On December 24 2021 05:21 Vindicare605 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2021 03:31 WombaT wrote:
The statistics are, odd, as good a job as the Aligulac crew do, disparate regions and the added complication of weeklies adding a lot of noise.
Aligulac is useless and will remain useless as long as they treat the ESL Weeklies as if they matter. GSL players are consistently under ranked on Aligulac, European players are consistently over ranked, Chinese players are not even represented at all. Aligulac is useless. It's not even worth paying attention to. Saying their team does a good job is a joke. Their methods are not good.
They should exclude weeklies, 100% agreed.
It’s frustrating because they do a good job otherwise. I don’t understand why weeklies factor in. It’s still a great repository of all sorts of stats, comparisons and is a great archive, people work hard on it and I don’t want to shit on them.
It’s pretty obvious that the likes of Zest and Trap play weeklies for practice and a bit of extra cash, and the EU pros who aren’t Serral/Reynor treat them considerably more seriously because they’re realistically gated out of consistently placing highly in WCS by the aforementioned, and in international tournies by Korea’s best
Aligulac’s latter processes seem fine to me, but in terms of data well, garbage in, garbage out.
Trap’s won how many tournaments in the past year? He’s beaten Serral and Reynor in premier tournaments. He’s got the best PvT in the world, he’s put Maru out of Code S on, I believe more than one occasion
How the fuck is he worse at PvZ than Maxpax and Showtime? How is the player who’s won the most tournaments this year not even top 10 ELO?
I can’t think of any other reason other than including weeklies in the stats. Serral and Reynor and to a degree Clem will IMO still have a (slightly) inflated if weeklies were expunged just from playing WCS EU, but I don’t think it’d be too distorting.
The data is all there, I assume it would be possible to go back years and restart the rankings with excluding weeklies etc
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On December 24 2021 06:23 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2021 05:21 Vindicare605 wrote:On December 24 2021 03:31 WombaT wrote:
The statistics are, odd, as good a job as the Aligulac crew do, disparate regions and the added complication of weeklies adding a lot of noise.
Aligulac is useless and will remain useless as long as they treat the ESL Weeklies as if they matter. GSL players are consistently under ranked on Aligulac, European players are consistently over ranked, Chinese players are not even represented at all. Aligulac is useless. It's not even worth paying attention to. Saying their team does a good job is a joke. Their methods are not good. They should exclude weeklies, 100% agreed. It’s pretty obvious that the likes of Zest and Trap play weeklies for practice and a bit of extra cash,
Oh my god though when I state this OBVIOUS fact on reddit how downvoted I get.
People want so badly for Aligulac to be law, because Aligulac says that Europeans are better than they actually are. It's the same shit that it always has been.
I'm totally down to give foreigner players the respect they have EARNED, but thanks to sites like Aligulac there is so much empty calories that people that want Koreans to not be as good as they are, to eat up.
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The Aliglulac team have pointed out on many occasions that their system (or any rating system) doesn't do a good job of rating players between different regions that don't mix often enough. There's nothing they can do about it unless the different regions start mixing more regularly.
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If anything, this thread has convinced me that the main problem isn't protoss, it's zerg. Looks like the future of SC2 is going to be the top zergs trading wins amongst each other until the game dies, exciting!
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On December 26 2021 04:39 Athenau wrote:
If anything, this thread has convinced me that the main problem isn't protoss, it's zerg. Looks like the future of SC2 is going to be the top zergs trading wins amongst each other until the game dies, exciting!
Pretty much this, but any nerfs to Zerg would have to be specifically targeted for the match up, it can't hobble TvZ which is still as far as I know pretty balanced.
I think a poster somewhere a few pages back had the idea to make Storm do bonus damage against burrowed units to let Protoss ground armies push out/break out of Lurker contains. Honestly I think it's a really good idea, it's not elegant but I think it would be effective.
The real solution would be to buff Gateway units to allow them to pressure Zerg more in the early/mid game, but if Blizzard won't even put in band-aid fixes like the + burrowed damage, there is no way in hell they would ever do an in depth change like that.
Why will Blizzard not hear our cries? How does Heroes of the Storm get routine balance patches and hero reworks while having no competitive scene to speak of while Starcraft 2 and Brood War still have thriving (relatively) pro scenes and active player bases?
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On December 26 2021 05:24 Beelzebub1 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2021 04:39 Athenau wrote:
If anything, this thread has convinced me that the main problem isn't protoss, it's zerg. Looks like the future of SC2 is going to be the top zergs trading wins amongst each other until the game dies, exciting! Pretty much this, but any nerfs to Zerg would have to be specifically targeted for the match up, it can't hobble TvZ which is still as far as I know pretty balanced. I think a poster somewhere a few pages back had the idea to make Storm do bonus damage against burrowed units to let Protoss ground armies push out/break out of Lurker contains. Honestly I think it's a really good idea, it's not elegant but I think it would be effective. The real solution would be to buff Gateway units to allow them to pressure Zerg more in the early/mid game, but if Blizzard won't even put in band-aid fixes like the + burrowed damage, there is no way in hell they would ever do an in depth change like that. Why will Blizzard not hear our cries? How does Heroes of the Storm get routine balance patches and hero reworks while having no competitive scene to speak of while Starcraft 2 and Brood War still have thriving (relatively) pro scenes and active player bases?
Maybe TvZ was semi-balanced on the previous map-pool, but not on this one. As of this writing, TvZ on the new maps (https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/Maps):
Berlingrad: 45.3%
Curious Minds: 47.0%
Glittering Ashes: 46.7%
Hardwire: 42.3%
Pride of Altaris: 45.6%
The problem in both match-ups is the lurker. Lurkers in their current form are completely degenerate. A lurker with adaptive talons burrows in 0.7 seconds. To give you an idea of how absurd this is, siege tanks were nerfed to take 1.43 seconds before firing when dropped from a medivac, and this was still considered bad enough for the game that Blizzard later removed tankivacs altogether. And when tankivacs were a thing tanks were way weaker than they were now (this was when they had 160 hp and did 35+15 damage instead of 40+30).
The lurker is a 200 hp, 10 range "siege unit" that moves faster than a stalker off-creep, burrows faster than a drilling-claw widow-mine, and deals full splash damage to anything along the line of its attack. And Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, saw fit to give this tool to the race whose production is limited only by money and larva.
In what universe does this make sense?
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Nerfing Adaptive Talons is the one thing I can say in a vacuum is a good idea. There is no reason a Siege Unit should be anywhere near as mobile as the Lurker is, ESPECIALLY when Zerg already has access to 5 other forms of splash damage.
The problem I really have with doing that is that I think the Lurker is a good thing for making ZvZ watchable, and that if Lurkers are nerfed we'd have to take a second look at Skytoss because Skytoss IS a thing because of Lurkers making late game Protoss ground less effective. If Lurkers are toned back we don't know if that small change will cause of a cascade of problems that ends with Protoss being OP in the match up. It's something that needs to be delicately adjusted, you can't just use a sledgehammer on this.
TvZ is actually the least of my concerns when it comes to Lurkers. Terran can already handle them anyway, it's actually a harder style to play than just abusing Banelings all the time.
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On December 26 2021 09:30 Vindicare605 wrote:
Terran can already handle them anyway, it's actually a harder style to play than just abusing Banelings all the time.
Half the time they're used like giant banelings anyway. How many times have you seen pro-zergs take their ball of lurkers and burrow them right in front of their opponent's army?
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I've been a proponent of removing Adaptive Talons entirely for a long time. It was an ability that was needed when the Lurker was first introduced into SC2 but times have changed, sometimes things that are good and undiscovered become overpowered when fleshed out and that's exactly what happened with the Lurker.
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On December 26 2021 12:29 Beelzebub1 wrote:
I've been a proponent of removing Adaptive Talons entirely for a long time. It was an ability that was needed when the Lurker was first introduced into SC2 but times have changed, sometimes things that are good and undiscovered become overpowered when fleshed out and that's exactly what happened with the Lurker.
Well let's not forget, Lurkers got 10 range in a balance update and it was THAT change that when mixed with Adaptive Talons is how we get the modern Lurker we have now.
It's just that it's obvious that for a siege unit like the Lurker, upping their range makes more sense than making them faster. I mean for crying out loud they are faster than fucking Hydralisks on creep. How does that make any sense?
So yea, with their additional range included they are a very powerful Siege Unit that Protoss has a hard time dealing with because Protoss' only detection options are very easy to snipe down and when mixed with Vipers, Lurkers are a nightmare for Protoss to deal with on the ground because of how strong Vipers counter their "death bally" style, a style they are dependent on because Warp Gate... but I've made this argument enough already in this thread.
Point being. Lurkers got buffed with more than just Adaptive Talons. It was that combo buff that led to them being how they are now.
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I'm not a fan of the +Burrow damage for storm because it does make killing things easier. If Adaptive Talons was slowed I think that would make a big change, possibly also splitting up the burrow speed upgrade, like it's faster burrowing on creep. Some alternative changes for Protoss I've been mulling are giving Storm detection to bring it in line with EMP and Fungal so it reveals cloaked and burrowed units. The other playing on forcefield's ability to push away units to let it force burrowed units to unburrow, giving Toss counter play with Lurkers as they otherwise outrange everything
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On December 26 2021 12:59 xPrimuSx wrote:
I'm not a fan of the +Burrow damage for storm because it does make killing things easier. If Adaptive Talons was slowed I think that would make a big change, possibly also splitting up the burrow speed upgrade, like it's faster burrowing on creep. Some alternative changes for Protoss I've been mulling are giving Storm detection to bring it in line with EMP and Fungal so it reveals cloaked and burrowed units. The other playing on forcefield's ability to push away units to let it force burrowed units to unburrow, giving Toss counter play with Lurkers as they otherwise outrange everything
Storm revealing burrowed units was a very creative idea. Storm reveals burrowed, EMP reveals cloak and Fungal Growth reveals every invisible unit. The storm moving earth around and making the holes in the ground bigger is a fairly straight forward lore description.
But the idea I liked even more was the force field pushing burrowed units as well. That fits so well with the force field mechanic that I got surprised that the force field didn't already do that, now that I started thinking about it.
The only thing affected outside of PvZ is in PvT. The Widow Mines burrow.
Burrowed mines already die to a single Psionic Storm, so that isn't changing much. The mines might die a bit faster because of Zealots swiping them 1 time, but that is such a small timing window that I think it's negligible.
Using Force Fields to deburrow Widow Mines might affect a bit. The Protoss player will get another tool to defend Widow Mine drops.
If the Force Field only pushed burrowed units instead of forcing them to deburrow the counterplay vs Mines gets a lot weaker. The counterplay vs Lurkers will also be changed a lot, but walling out burrowed Roaches and Infestors will still work.
However, these changes would make a huge difference for the PvZ matches between players that are not the top 15 in the world. The Protoss filled GM would get even more Protoss players. How does that affect the joy of playing the game for those people?
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Czech Republic12129 Posts
On December 30 2021 08:39 Drfilip wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2021 12:59 xPrimuSx wrote:
I'm not a fan of the +Burrow damage for storm because it does make killing things easier. If Adaptive Talons was slowed I think that would make a big change, possibly also splitting up the burrow speed upgrade, like it's faster burrowing on creep. Some alternative changes for Protoss I've been mulling are giving Storm detection to bring it in line with EMP and Fungal so it reveals cloaked and burrowed units. The other playing on forcefield's ability to push away units to let it force burrowed units to unburrow, giving Toss counter play with Lurkers as they otherwise outrange everything Storm revealing burrowed units was a very creative idea. Storm reveals burrowed, EMP reveals cloak and Fungal Growth reveals every invisible unit. The storm moving earth around and making the holes in the ground bigger is a fairly straight forward lore description. But the idea I liked even more was the force field pushing burrowed units as well. That fits so well with the force field mechanic that I got surprised that the force field didn't already do that, now that I started thinking about it. The only thing affected outside of PvZ is in PvT. The Widow Mines burrow. Burrowed mines already die to a single Psionic Storm, so that isn't changing much. The mines might die a bit faster because of Zealots swiping them 1 time, but that is such a small timing window that I think it's negligible. Using Force Fields to deburrow Widow Mines might affect a bit. The Protoss player will get another tool to defend Widow Mine drops. If the Force Field only pushed burrowed units instead of forcing them to deburrow the counterplay vs Mines gets a lot weaker. The counterplay vs Lurkers will also be changed a lot, but walling out burrowed Roaches and Infestors will still work. However, these changes would make a huge difference for the PvZ matches between players that are not the top 15 in the world. The Protoss filled GM would get even more Protoss players. How does that affect the joy of playing the game for those people?
Mine has 90 hp, storm does 80 damage. Explain how mine dies to a single storm.
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However, these changes would make a huge difference for the PvZ matches between players that are not the top 15 in the world. The Protoss filled GM would get even more Protoss players. How does that affect the joy of playing the game for those people?
Honestly man I'm on your side here, and I play Zerg.
But tough shit, Starcraft 2 is supposed to be balanced at the highest level of play and then it trickles down to everyone else. I see no genuine reason why that philosophy was abandoned by Blizzard, especially considering that HOTS gets regular balance patches AND reworks, so the whole, "Well there is nobody to do it" just strikes me as more Activision nonsense.
I love SC2 and BW, but I can't wait until Frost Giant releases their RTS and puts SC2 to bed. Brood War at this point I think might truly be immortal, Jaedong has like 25K people watching him every day lately.
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Well, to be fair the game is probably in it's most balanced state currently.
I agree that adaptive talons could be removed or reduced to work only on creep maybe.
Regarding Storm... more damage to burrowed units could be a bandaid fix.
A more sensible change is to decloak units under storm and if one would be ready for more drastic changes:
1. slow down units hit by storm
2. make storm do less damage per second but last longer
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Northern Ireland25729 Posts
On December 30 2021 13:37 Beelzebub1 wrote:Show nested quote +However, these changes would make a huge difference for the PvZ matches between players that are not the top 15 in the world. The Protoss filled GM would get even more Protoss players. How does that affect the joy of playing the game for those people? Honestly man I'm on your side here, and I play Zerg. But tough shit, Starcraft 2 is supposed to be balanced at the highest level of play and then it trickles down to everyone else. I see no genuine reason why that philosophy was abandoned by Blizzard, especially considering that HOTS gets regular balance patches AND reworks, so the whole, "Well there is nobody to do it" just strikes me as more Activision nonsense. I love SC2 and BW, but I can't wait until Frost Giant releases their RTS and puts SC2 to bed. Brood War at this point I think might truly be immortal, Jaedong has like 25K people watching him every day lately.
This confuses me too, perhaps HoTS is more monetisible, I’m not too familiar.
It seems odd the game Blizz abandoned as a competitive game gets patches, and the one they continue to support professionally doesn’t
BW doesn’t count, it’s a crazy outlier. It’s a great, great game don’t get me wrong but those have always been Korean specific numbers. Lightning in a bottle there and years of legacy.
Balancing for the highest level makes more sense when it’s stuff only the elite can pull off. A decent GM Zerg isn’t having to play against Maru’s lategame control or Clem’s crazy splitting, a decent GM Terran isn’t playing a Serral/Reynor who nail every inject and push creep relentlessly, so good fun can be had.
The equivalent level of PvZ Skytoss is relatively easier to do than kill, or holding a Queen Walk is bloody difficult to hold.
A decent GM Toss’ Skytoss will be worse than an elite player’s, but not to the same degree a Zerg will be worse than a Dark or a Serral’s control of technical casting armies.
It’s a tricky balancing act, and I agree balancing from the top is sensible, but it has to scale downwards properly too.
Purely hypothetical as one can’t really define such things, but a player 75% as good as Maru should be as good as a player who’s 75% as good as Rogue if they face off in ZvT
If we take say Trap as probably the best Protoss, it feels he’s (at least reasonably) unfavoured against the top Zergs, it’s not super balanced up there. But simultaneously it feels the folks who are 75/80% as good as Trap are pretty damn favoured vs their Zerg counterparts.
As I said it’s something that’s difficult to achieve. But if changes merely enable a Trap to achieve parity with other Zergs, but aren’t changes only a player of Trap’s level can make full use of, ladder is going to be brutal for Zergs
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I don't understand why people are proposing such convoluted solutions. Remove adaptive talons, roll back some of the void ray buffs, and call it a day.
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On December 26 2021 05:24 Beelzebub1 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2021 04:39 Athenau wrote:
If anything, this thread has convinced me that the main problem isn't protoss, it's zerg. Looks like the future of SC2 is going to be the top zergs trading wins amongst each other until the game dies, exciting! Pretty much this, but any nerfs to Zerg would have to be specifically targeted for the match up, it can't hobble TvZ which is still as far as I know pretty balanced. I think a poster somewhere a few pages back had the idea to make Storm do bonus damage against burrowed units to let Protoss ground armies push out/break out of Lurker contains. Honestly I think it's a really good idea, it's not elegant but I think it would be effective. The real solution would be to buff Gateway units to allow them to pressure Zerg more in the early/mid game, but if Blizzard won't even put in band-aid fixes like the + burrowed damage, there is no way in hell they would ever do an in depth change like that. Why will Blizzard not hear our cries? How does Heroes of the Storm get routine balance patches and hero reworks while having no competitive scene to speak of while Starcraft 2 and Brood War still have thriving (relatively) pro scenes and active player bases?
I don't think Blizzard will actively patch sc2 anymore. Their last patch was in April and it was just cosmetics.
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On December 30 2021 09:02 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On December 30 2021 08:39 Drfilip wrote:On December 26 2021 12:59 xPrimuSx wrote:
I'm not a fan of the +Burrow damage for storm because it does make killing things easier. If Adaptive Talons was slowed I think that would make a big change, possibly also splitting up the burrow speed upgrade, like it's faster burrowing on creep. Some alternative changes for Protoss I've been mulling are giving Storm detection to bring it in line with EMP and Fungal so it reveals cloaked and burrowed units. The other playing on forcefield's ability to push away units to let it force burrowed units to unburrow, giving Toss counter play with Lurkers as they otherwise outrange everything Storm revealing burrowed units was a very creative idea. Storm reveals burrowed, EMP reveals cloak and Fungal Growth reveals every invisible unit. The storm moving earth around and making the holes in the ground bigger is a fairly straight forward lore description. But the idea I liked even more was the force field pushing burrowed units as well. That fits so well with the force field mechanic that I got surprised that the force field didn't already do that, now that I started thinking about it. The only thing affected outside of PvZ is in PvT. The Widow Mines burrow. Burrowed mines already die to a single Psionic Storm, so that isn't changing much. The mines might die a bit faster because of Zealots swiping them 1 time, but that is such a small timing window that I think it's negligible. Using Force Fields to deburrow Widow Mines might affect a bit. The Protoss player will get another tool to defend Widow Mine drops. If the Force Field only pushed burrowed units instead of forcing them to deburrow the counterplay vs Mines gets a lot weaker. The counterplay vs Lurkers will also be changed a lot, but walling out burrowed Roaches and Infestors will still work. However, these changes would make a huge difference for the PvZ matches between players that are not the top 15 in the world. The Protoss filled GM would get even more Protoss players. How does that affect the joy of playing the game for those people? Mine has 90 hp, storm does 80 damage. Explain how mine dies to a single storm.
My bad.
For some reason I was sure that it had 75 hp.
Since mines have more than 80 hp, the change of revealing burrowed units would have a much bigger impact in PvT.
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On December 31 2021 00:45 SC-Shield wrote:Show nested quote +On December 26 2021 05:24 Beelzebub1 wrote:On December 26 2021 04:39 Athenau wrote:
If anything, this thread has convinced me that the main problem isn't protoss, it's zerg. Looks like the future of SC2 is going to be the top zergs trading wins amongst each other until the game dies, exciting! Pretty much this, but any nerfs to Zerg would have to be specifically targeted for the match up, it can't hobble TvZ which is still as far as I know pretty balanced. I think a poster somewhere a few pages back had the idea to make Storm do bonus damage against burrowed units to let Protoss ground armies push out/break out of Lurker contains. Honestly I think it's a really good idea, it's not elegant but I think it would be effective. The real solution would be to buff Gateway units to allow them to pressure Zerg more in the early/mid game, but if Blizzard won't even put in band-aid fixes like the + burrowed damage, there is no way in hell they would ever do an in depth change like that. Why will Blizzard not hear our cries? How does Heroes of the Storm get routine balance patches and hero reworks while having no competitive scene to speak of while Starcraft 2 and Brood War still have thriving (relatively) pro scenes and active player bases? I don't think Blizzard will actively patch sc2 anymore. Their last patch was in April and it was just cosmetics.
Which is utter horse shit, like I said in the post, how the hell are you going to not even apply very small balance tweaks (imo all SC2 even needs) to a game with a still living competitive scene when HOTS has their dev team that..
Sits down and takes data...
Watches their extremely limited pro scene along with compiling ladder statistics...
Not only makes the changes, but also usually has 1 - 2 paragraphs on why they made the changes in the first place, usually all of them that I read are in the interest of buffing older heroes that have suffered due to power creep.
Seriously it just makes no sense, why couldn't the same team that does HOTS do SC2 as well? The complete lack of blue posts even regarding SC2 is an insult to the community.
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