En Taro Adun, We are releasing a Balance Patch which was put together by our very own SC2 community. Over the past couple months, we have been working with various members of the community and tournament organizers to create a balance update for the game. We would like to recognize and acknowledge the members of the group for the upcoming changes you see below.
Shield Battery Starting Energy reduced from 100 to 50 outside of the nexus field
Dark Templar Now have a 0.75s attack delay after blink
Void Ray Build time increased from 37 to 43 Mineral cost increased from 200 to 250
Queen Can no longer transfuse off creep
Widow Mine Reduce the effectiveness of drilling claws by from 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds
Lurker Reducing the effectiveness of adaptive talon from 0.71 seconds to 1.07 seconds
Nydus Worm Increased starting creep by 1 unit in each direction around the worm once it spawns
The nydus change may seem odd but it is clearly connected to Queen change as it allows transfusing targeted nydus.
Edit: They probably should have done more but if changes are done through community figures, getting people to agree on bigger changes and direction changes is most likely too hard.
Just encourages skytoss even more, since there no queen walk. No one wants to play 40min-1hr games all the time. If anything zvp is going to be even worse to play
On March 09 2022 04:27 91matt wrote: Just encourages skytoss even more, since there no queen walk. No one wants to play 40min-1hr games all the time. If anything zvp is going to be even worse to play
I dunno, it's going to take a full 36 extra seconds, and 300 more minerals to get the 6 void hit squad off a 2sg void opener.
From the zerg's AA preparation perspective, that's eons. Plus, it's going to delay the protoss third.
On March 09 2022 04:27 91matt wrote: Just encourages skytoss even more, since there no queen walk. No one wants to play 40min-1hr games all the time. If anything zvp is going to be even worse to play
I dunno, it's going to take a full 36 extra seconds, and 300 more minerals to get the 6 void hit squad off a 2sg void opener.
From the zerg's AA preparation perspective, that's eons. Plus, it's going to delay the protoss third.
You can't do anything aggressive except queen walk vs skytoss, It doesn't discourage it at all. Also delaying the third by 6 seconds is hardly going to change the meta.
Queen walk should go, but so should making voids and skytoss behind it and dragging the game out all the time. Patch just makes it even easier to play the lamest style in the game.
On March 09 2022 04:27 91matt wrote: Just encourages skytoss even more, since there no queen walk. No one wants to play 40min-1hr games all the time. If anything zvp is going to be even worse to play
I dunno, it's going to take a full 36 extra seconds, and 300 more minerals to get the 6 void hit squad off a 2sg void opener.
From the zerg's AA preparation perspective, that's eons. Plus, it's going to delay the protoss third.
You can't do anything aggressive except queen walk vs skytoss, It doesn't discourage it at all. Also delaying the third by 6 seconds is hardly going to change the meta.
Queen walk should go, but so should making voids and skytoss behind it and dragging the game out all the time. Patch just makes it even easier to play the lamest style in the game.
I recall Lambo or Showtime saying that the main reason skytoss is common is because lurkers are too strong against ground. perhaps the lurker burrow delay will shift it slightly towards ground armies
I could be completely misquoting them, so I apologize if i am.
Overall, these sound like pretty solid changes to me. The community is also very passionate/anal and if they've been involved for months, I have confidence it should play out with a net positive
Honestly, I think it's just really hard to rigorously test anything on PTR—you kinda just gotta let it into the wild and let it play out in true competitive settings over thousands of games to find out the TRUE ramifications.
On March 09 2022 04:45 Waxangel wrote: Interested to see how this plays out!
Honestly, I think it's just really hard to rigorously test anything on PTR—you kinda just gotta let it into the wild and let it play out in true competitive settings over thousands of games to find out the TRUE ramifications.
On March 09 2022 04:45 Waxangel wrote: Interested to see how this plays out!
Honestly, I think it's just really hard to rigorously test anything on PTR—you kinda just gotta let it into the wild and let it play out in true competitive settings over thousands of games to find out the TRUE ramifications.
The TRUE ramifications is that it lead to ling flood.
I love these changes personally. Nerfs all of the things that players hated the most. and the only "buff" (which not surprisingly went to Zerg alone) is to the Nydus Worm and only to its creep spread.
For the people complaining about Protoss, I still have a question that no one wants to actually answer. How do you buff Protoss so that it starts winning Championships without making its 50% of GM domination even worse?
Conundrum that doesn't have any good answers that can be fixed with a minor balance patch. There's nothing wrong with Protoss except that at the top level it sucks. It dominates every level below that including lower pro level, semi pro, GM and the rest of the ladder.
On March 09 2022 04:53 Vindicare605 wrote: I love these changes personally. Nerfs all of the things that players hated the most. and the only "buff" (which not surprisingly went to Zerg alone) is to the Nydus Worm and only to its creep spread.
For the people complaining about Protoss, I still have a question that no one wants to actually answer. How do you buff Protoss so that it starts winning Championships without making its 50% of GM domination even worse?
Conundrum that doesn't have any good answers that can be fixed with a minor balance patch. There's nothing wrong with Protoss except that at the top level it sucks. It dominates every level below that including lower pro level, semi pro, GM and the rest of the ladder.
Protoss isn't going to win championships because all the top Protoss players are gone. Only one left is Showtime I think?
These seem like decent changes. Late game PvZ will still be pretty boring but I think the slower void ray production combined with the end of queen walks will lead to more diverse openings in PvZ. Ideally I would have liked to see Protoss and Zerg air both nerfed to the ground, but doing that in a way that doesn't ruin anything else would probably be too much work.
Also looks like Terran will have a weaker middle game against Protoss and an easier time in the late game which is nice.
Well, the majority of the changes are OK. With the exception of the Queen nerf, which I believe is insufficient. It's by far considered the most imbalanced unit, and queen walks aren't the only reason for this. I don't see pro PvZ and TvZ becoming less Z favored if they don't further weaken the queen stats or abilities.
On March 09 2022 05:52 Pandain wrote: Thrilled about this actually - agree with Poopi if we get some decent maps ZvT should be in a great position as well.
Still not convinced this will make PvZ an entertaining matchup but SC2 is allowed to have one bad matchup.
We've had PvP since 2010 fool whatchu talkin bout?
On March 09 2022 04:27 91matt wrote: Just encourages skytoss even more, since there no queen walk. No one wants to play 40min-1hr games all the time. If anything zvp is going to be even worse to play
Can still queen walk just bring overlords with the queens and drop creep
Maybe this won't fix issues but i cant possibly see how this doesn't help P in PvZ. Queen walks are completely gone now -- not even a German taxi will work. Furthermore, the lurker nerf makes ground that much more viable against lurkers.
On March 09 2022 06:00 sirok_ wrote: Well, the majority of the changes are OK. With the exception of the Queen nerf, which I believe is insufficient. It's by far considered the most imbalanced unit, and queen walks aren't the only reason for this. I don't see pro PvZ and TvZ becoming less Z favored if they don't further weaken the queen stats or abilities.
The queen nerf is going to have meaningful ramifications beyond just queen walks. It's not uncommon to see queens caught off creep at various times in ZvT/ZvP or brought in lategame during certain scenarios. This nerf hard punishes the former and limits the latter (requires good creep spread still very late in the game)
On March 09 2022 05:52 Pandain wrote: Thrilled about this actually - agree with Poopi if we get some decent maps ZvT should be in a great position as well.
Still not convinced this will make PvZ an entertaining matchup but SC2 is allowed to have one bad matchup.
We've had PvP since 2010 fool whatchu talkin bout?
PvP can be hella entertaining nowadays when you get into disrupters - at that stage its proably the second most entertaining matchup
On March 09 2022 05:58 MockHamill wrote: All the changes seems reasonable. Anything that screws Protoss is a good thing in my book.
I do not play SC2 any more, mostly due to Protoss. But I still like watching the game, and nothing is more boring to watch than Protoss mass air.
I don't think this is going to hurt Protoss air haha - though I really hope the VR nerf somehow introduces new Z timings.
Just realized from a Twitter post that they wrote StarCtaft instead of StarCraft :x I knew none of them still working in the building knew about StarCraft
On March 09 2022 06:00 sirok_ wrote: Well, the majority of the changes are OK. With the exception of the Queen nerf, which I believe is insufficient. It's by far considered the most imbalanced unit, and queen walks aren't the only reason for this. I don't see pro PvZ and TvZ becoming less Z favored if they don't further weaken the queen stats or abilities.
The queen nerf is going to have meaningful ramifications beyond just queen walks. It's not uncommon to see queens caught off creep at various times in ZvT/ZvP or brought in lategame during certain scenarios. This nerf hard punishes the former and limits the latter (requires good creep spread still very late in the game)
I recognize that the patch will not be completely useless, but I don't believe it will have a significant impact on the majority of the games. Hence it wouldn't really fix the core balance issues. Indeed, it doesn't take exceptional macro or micro skills to keep queens from wandering too far away from creep. * The reason top Z currently allows it, is because they can. Also, in the late game, top Z often have mostly covered the map with creep and stands in a defensive position with more bases.
This seems really bad. PvZ is going to be a little better but PvT is going to be a lot worse, and TvZ is going to shift to terran somewhat. Terran will be the best race by far when they clearly weren't the ones in need of much help.
I would like to see a Cooldown on Terran Mules. At the current state Terrans wont get punished for bad macro. They can forget to Macro for a period of time and then drop the mule hammer, with no negative consequences. Its also frustrating to see that if you kill the Terrans worker lines, and he drops 16 Mules and has more Economy than you on 80+ Workers.
If Zergs miss one or more inject cycles they are basically dead and queuing injects wont give them more larvae instantly. If they miss a creep cycle the lose vision. If Protosses miss a Cronoboost they cant immediatly chrono 4 Times and get their research done instantly.
Bad macro should be punished. With a cooldown on Mules for the duration of gaining 50 Energy, the Terran players are forced to macro properly and if they dont, they will have to use the Energy for scans instead of Mules.
On March 09 2022 06:41 Nebuchad wrote: This seems really bad. PvZ is going to be a little better but PvT is going to be a lot worse, and TvZ is going to shift to terran somewhat. Terran will be the best race by far when they clearly weren't the ones in need of much help.
How is PvT going to change at all? The battery nerf only affects proxy void stuff, which won't be a thing at all. The only relevant P-nerf is the DT nerf which only kicks in late game (and that too not too much).
On March 09 2022 06:41 Nebuchad wrote: This seems really bad. PvZ is going to be a little better but PvT is going to be a lot worse, and TvZ is going to shift to terran somewhat. Terran will be the best race by far when they clearly weren't the ones in need of much help.
How is PvT going to change at all? The battery nerf only affects proxy void stuff, which won't be a thing at all. The only relevant P-nerf is the DT nerf which only kicks in late game (and that too not too much).
On March 09 2022 06:49 Metalmade wrote: I would like to see a Cooldown on Terran Mules. At the current state Terrans wont get punished for bad macro. They can forget to Macro for a period of time and then drop the mule hammer, with no negative consequences.
So Terran is the race that can get away with bad macro. OK lmao
I like the changes. They are subtle enough to not break anything, but they clearly address what has been considered problematic by the community for a while.
Personally, I mostly enjoy the increased cost and production time of the void ray. Everything which makes skytoss even slightly less convenient is a good thing.
On March 09 2022 04:44 vyzion wrote: I recall Lambo or Showtime saying that the main reason skytoss is common is because lurkers are too strong against ground. perhaps the lurker burrow delay will shift it slightly towards ground armies
I could be completely misquoting them, so I apologize if i am.
Though the myth of the lurker being the reason for the popularity of skytoss has been flourishing for some time, it is not widely endorsed among pros, and certainly not by Lambo. In fact, Lambo made a literal video whose sole point was to argue that the lurker is not the reason why skytoss openings are most frequently played.
Is this April fools joke? After all the recent struggles protoss gets nefred the most?No gateway unit buffs? And zerg actually gets a buff to the nydus and the queen is barley touched?
On March 09 2022 07:06 neptunusfisk wrote: I would like to see a Cooldown on Terran Mules. At the current state Terrans wont get punished for bad macro. They can forget to Macro for a period of time and then drop the mule hammer, with no negative consequences.
So Terran is the race that can get away with bad macro. OK lmao[/QUOTE]
Yes. Where do the other races get away with bad macro? As I said, if u miss injects or creep cycles you get punished by not having larva or vision. Protoss also cant chrono multiple times the same building at once. So exlain to me, where they get away with murder...
This is not what is needed, I don't like most of this. Protoss need help vs Terran right now, the DT nerf is stupid and in the wrong direction. Voids only make the transition to air better, the actual air lies with the Carrier, so sky toss is not nerfed, but a lot of cool builds are, tho one change might be warranted. Zerg is also nerfed vs Terran, so now Terran is just the master race. The Shield Battery and Queen nerf will probably remove a lot of variety which is much needed for a game that doesn't rely on changes.
Obviously the changes are not huge, but they are in the wrong direction
On March 09 2022 07:10 Cricketer12 wrote: Protoss...nerfs? Is there something I'm missing? Thought protoss sucked as evidenced by the last two years of competetive results...
What are you talking about -- the queen nerf is waaaaay more significant than the void ray nerf, and i don't really see the relevance of the other toss nerfs to standard play (battery nerf doesn't matter if you don't go for proxy stuff).
On March 09 2022 04:27 91matt wrote: Just encourages skytoss even more, since there no queen walk. No one wants to play 40min-1hr games all the time. If anything zvp is going to be even worse to play
I dunno, it's going to take a full 36 extra seconds, and 300 more minerals to get the 6 void hit squad off a 2sg void opener.
From the zerg's AA preparation perspective, that's eons. Plus, it's going to delay the protoss third.
You can't do anything aggressive except queen walk vs skytoss, It doesn't discourage it at all. Also delaying the third by 6 seconds is hardly going to change the meta.
Queen walk should go, but so should making voids and skytoss behind it and dragging the game out all the time. Patch just makes it even easier to play the lamest style in the game.
I recall Lambo or Showtime saying that the main reason skytoss is common is because lurkers are too strong against ground. perhaps the lurker burrow delay will shift it slightly towards ground armies
I could be completely misquoting them, so I apologize if i am.
Overall, these sound like pretty solid changes to me. The community is also very passionate/anal and if they've been involved for months, I have confidence it should play out with a net positive
Don’t know about Showtime, Lambo said the exact opposite, or well he made a video arguing that Toss don’t go air because lurkers are too strong on the ground, but that airtoss and it’s fleshed out openers is both safest, and transitions to lategame smoother
Re changes, I like the DT change. One I suggested or agreed with, I think blink was intended as an escape tool to preserve DTs, not a way to juMp on things with no chance to react.
I mean 0.75s isn’t huge, but it’s something a player can at least sort of react to, especially when DTs jump on armies.
I like the battery change, in theory anyway. Makes some battery cheeses which are mostly obnoxious harder to pull off, but not impossible and keeps them basically as potent defensively.
Mine change, again you’ve slightly more time to react to mine drops
In summation. Not sure how this plays out at pro level, but I think some annoying builds and mechanics are slightly tweaked and PvT and PvT will benefit.
Making things slightly slower will make the game less frustrating for us mere mortals. But they may make it harder at the pro level in certain interactions, in certain matchups.
PvZ I don’t really see anything that would see a shift to make the matchup less garbage.
I think the Queen change will make for some really wonky play, and may change things too much in a very either/or sense.
Attack hits at an angle where you have creep, easy hold. You’re slightly off creep and get surprised, Queens get wiped instantly. Maybe you’re standing on the edge of creep and a tumour had been snapped, the creep recedes and you’re suddenly super vulnerable. BCs can maybe shark around and find spots where they can do damage and Queens can’t deflect it without transfuse.
I’m not sure how that ends up looking, I think my on the fence stance has an understandable rationale.
On March 09 2022 06:49 Metalmade wrote: I would like to see a Cooldown on Terran Mules. At the current state Terrans wont get punished for bad macro. They can forget to Macro for a period of time and then drop the mule hammer, with no negative consequences. Its also frustrating to see that if you kill the Terrans worker lines, and he drops 16 Mules and has more Economy than you on 80+ Workers.
If Zergs miss one or more inject cycles they are basically dead and queuing injects wont give them more larvae instantly. If they miss a creep cycle the lose vision. If Protosses miss a Cronoboost they cant immediatly chrono 4 Times and get their research done instantly.
Bad macro should be punished. With a cooldown on Mules for the duration of gaining 50 Energy, the Terran players are forced to macro properly and if they dont, they will have to use the Energy for scans instead of Mules.
The negative consequence is Terrans don’t have all the extra stuff they would have if they were muling.
If you’re in a position where a Terran with bad macro can drop the mule hammer and kill you, your macro isn’t on point either. Or a Terran with good macro would be absolutely stomping you already.
Terrans have the scan mechanic in addition to mules, as well as the supply drop, since WoL. There’s an element of choice, spend that energy here, there or bank it. You also mine out bases even faster, so banking mules for a base you’re about to take can be the smart play.
Protoss too now have that element of choice with recall, chronoing like a boss may give a production boost, but it leaves you vulnerable and closes your options. You may get caught out of position and shit out of luck, or you can’t send in a harassment squad and realistically hope they escape alive.
There’s elements of choice to it, which I like. The game’s hard enough without being punished for missing a mule cycle, especially given I think on balance the Terran macro/micro/rallying demands are probably the hardest of the three races.
I wanted to bring a slight problem to the attention of the SCII devs with the queen nerf.
It’s quite common in early game ZvZ to be in a position where you have to defend a large amount of zerglings with just 2 queens, while your own defensive lings are building.
The most common tactic to do this is to place both of your queens on the ramp between main and natural. These 2 queens can hold a large amount of lings for quite a long time due to their large health pool, and the ability to transfuse each other. Usually, this is enough time to morph defensive banelings, or get enough lings of your own out to not outright die to unscouted early ling floods.
The inability to transfuse off creep is going to severely hamper this defensive strategy.
Honestly I think this is unacceptable. But it depends on how frequent the balance patches are. Are we going to be stuck in this patch for more than a year/forever? Then this patch is unacceptable. If we're getting semi frequent patches then it's a good start.
There are a few interesting things, but overall it's...not enough?
The not being able to transfuse outside of creep is as band aid as you can get, but I'll take it.
The VR increased cost seems reasonable. The increased build time isn't, would that only make Protoss more vulnerable to early all ins?
Buffing the nydus is a terrible idea. It's like buffing the swarmhost. It's simply something that shouldn't be done.
One day the Zerg players will discover the nydus is simply a mass recall that you can make multiple off, put anywhere on the map and have zero cooldown.
The mine change is good.
The Lurker nerf is nowhere near enough. If they want ground protists to be viable talons need to be completely removed.
And I think Terran still needs some help vs Protoss.
On March 09 2022 08:10 [Phantom] wrote: Honestly I think this is unacceptable. But it depends on how frequent the balance patches are. Are we going to be stuck in this patch for more than a year/forever? Then this patch is unacceptable.
There are a few interesting things, but overall it's...not enough?
The not being able to transfuse outside of creep is as band aid as you can get, but I'll take it.
The VR increased cost seems reasonable. The increased build time isn't, would that only make Protoss more vulnerable to early all ins?
Buffing the nydus is a terrible idea. It's like buffing the swarmhost. It's simply something that shouldn't be done.
One day the Zerg players will discover the nydus is simply a mass recall that you can make multiple off, put anywhere on the map and have zero cooldown.
The mine change is good.
The Lurker nerf is nowhere near enough. If they want ground protists to be viable talons need to be completely removed.
And I think Terran still needs some help vs Protoss.
Harstem says this is not the last patch in his video here:
I wanted to bring a slight problem to the attention of the SCII devs with the queen nerf.
It’s quite common in early game ZvZ to be in a position where you have to defend a large amount of zerglings with just 2 queens, while your own defensive lings are building.
The most common tactic to do this is to place both of your queens on the ramp between main and natural. These 2 queens can hold a large amount of lings for quite a long time due to their large health pool, and the ability to transfuse each other. Usually, this is enough time to morph defensive banelings, or get enough lings of your own out to not outright die to unscouted early ling floods.
The inability to transfuse off creep is going to severely hamper this defensive strategy.
Yeah there's actually going to be a ton of situations like this. Queens are off creep more than you would think. Think like ZvT and you're trying to defend a building third/fourth hatchery against an attack. I'm still a fan of the change though because it just means we have to see adaptations and new strats.
Also @ phantom the nydus isn't getting buffed. Literally the only reason for the change was to allow queens to be able to transfuse nyduses that just built - which was the case BEFORE the patch anyway. This "buff" literally has no effect except to restore, not add, that possibility.
On March 09 2022 04:27 91matt wrote: Just encourages skytoss even more, since there no queen walk. No one wants to play 40min-1hr games all the time. If anything zvp is going to be even worse to play
Can still queen walk just bring overlords with the queens and drop creep
Ravager-Ling Queen walk is a Hatch tech build buddy. Having a Lair and Overlord speed not only delayed your timing about 1 entire minute, but also means you have Hatch occupied for 4.5 Queens' building time, and the gas for 2 Ravagers. What this really affects is Protoss can have 3rd base as early as possible without concerning any Zerg punishment. No need to build defensive canons early on and be much more well-prepared for the Nydus Queen timing. Considering the current ZvP meta, these changes definitely bring a positive effect on the ZvP match-up.
On March 09 2022 08:34 Nakajin wrote: Honestly I'd be quite mad if I was protoss. The void ray nerf is fair, but the battery and DT nerf with nothing in return feel like a random jab.
This is why I think this patch is actually perfect. It nerfs the "abusive" protoss strats which help make protoss predominate at lower levels, but it's actually probably a net buff for Protoss at the highest levels which is what we wanted to accomplish!
Interesting changes, excited to see how this would play out. I wish the instant burrow for lurkers would be removed all together, but who knows, maybe the new changes would help.
On March 09 2022 07:10 Cricketer12 wrote: Protoss...nerfs? Is there something I'm missing? Thought protoss sucked as evidenced by the last two years of competetive results...
50% of GM representation apparently doesn't mean anything to you.
Well it means a lot to the people who actually play the game.
On March 09 2022 08:34 Nakajin wrote: Honestly I'd be quite mad if I was protoss. The void ray nerf is fair, but the battery and DT nerf with nothing in return feel like a random jab.
Queen walk got straight up removed. How is that not compensation? That was one if not the most common answer to early stargate builds.
On March 09 2022 08:34 Nakajin wrote: Honestly I'd be quite mad if I was protoss. The void ray nerf is fair, but the battery and DT nerf with nothing in return feel like a random jab.
Queen walk got straight up removed. How is that not compensation? That was one if not the most common answer to early stargate builds.
I mean they nerf the void and deleated the queen walk, not sure why the battery rush nerf came into it. It's kind of the only pvt rush you can do.
On March 09 2022 09:03 Ziggy wrote: considering how long we've had to wait I refuse to get excited about half-arsed number tweaks
I think your expectations are too high since they aren't actively developing content and we've known that for years now. This should be exciting though, and I'll tell you why.
There has been a question hanging over Starcraft 2 if the meta will be fixed with respect to the actual game and only change going forward with respect to map pools. This is the situation Brood War has been in for many years now. What this shows is that the meta will continue to evolve, which is good for the game and its longevity because it's actually an additional degree of freedom in keeping the gameplay fresh that we thought may have been gone when they stopped developing content.
You can change the meta of a game immensely by tweaking the magnitudes along and not defining any new behaviors, so it helps to keep the game alive.
I also agree with his judgment that changes to ZvP should be such that at the highest level zerg is nerfed, whereas at the casual level protoss is nerfed. Removing queen walks and making void rays more expensive is a good step in this direction.
It is also great to hear that there is now apparently a consortium of pros and other experts in place having the capacity to suggest and implement balance changes in the short term.
On March 09 2022 08:34 Nakajin wrote: Honestly I'd be quite mad if I was protoss. The void ray nerf is fair, but the battery and DT nerf with nothing in return feel like a random jab.
No queen walk and way, way, way worse cannon rush into voidray/battery BS makes this whole thing worth it for protoss.
Pretty happy about these changes, obviously just happy for a patch in general but this is the type of patch I think the game needs at the moment. Obviously Protoss is feeling a bit salty because it's nerfs across the board but don't underestimate this Queen nerf. Removing Queen walks and kind of any hint of early/mid game Queen aggression opens up alot of possibilities for Protoss, and no fear of a Queen walk is going to let Protoss secure a third pretty safely and ease into the mid game on a more even footing economically with the Zerg.
It also makes sniping creep even more important before. Protoss is now going to have a very vested intertest in being out on the map and focusing on creep denial like Terrans do, to contain the Queens on their side of the map and eliminate the potential for Zerg to make big push outs supported by 12 full energy Queens.
Before eliminating creep as Protoss was more of a helpful feel good measure, now it will be alot more of a frontal task. This also means that Queens will need to probably dedicate alot more energy to laying creep, as Protoss will be actively sniping tumors, therefore keeping Queen energy lower for longer.
The Void Ray/DT/Shield Battery nerfs look pretty TvP centered. I'm no expert in the match up but I know the proxy battery into Void Rays thing was kind of abusive as well as DT planetary snipes being a thing. Didn't know any of it was OP enough to warrant a patch but aye, probably best to ditch dumb abusive things in general, like Queen walks.
Honestly not a fan of the widow mine change, seems like a change aimed at casuals like me who can just work on their micro and dodge mines better. Pros are pretty fucking good at dodging mines at the top level and I think the patches really need to focus on improving pro play only.
On March 09 2022 07:10 Cricketer12 wrote: Protoss...nerfs? Is there something I'm missing? Thought protoss sucked as evidenced by the last two years of competetive results...
50% of GM representation apparently doesn't mean anything to you.
Well it means a lot to the people who actually play the game.
It means a lot to people who are in GM, but what about Silver? Currently, the same dominance Protoss has in GM, Terran has in Silver. It must be annoying to Silver players to play XvT all the time. This is to make the point that the same way the balance change should not be targeted at Silver players, it should not be targeted at specifically GM players.
I agree with the sentiment that uneven distribution among races within a league is unfun and fixing that would mean a lot to people who play the game -- in any league. Several years ago I was in Diamond which used to be dominated by Zerg, and XvZ was ~50% of my games. I stopped playing the game because of this and it was a few years before I returned.
To me, the solution seems fairly clear -- balance the solely on the highest level.
However, when it comes to ladder -- separate MMR by matchup -- overall MMR results in the overall 50% winrate, but given the nature of the game, easily uneven winrate among matchups. However, if there was separate MMR per matchup, no matter what is the balance and consequently the race distribution within leagues, all players would have 50% winrate per game and would play against each race 1/3 of the time.
These are good balance changes. PvsT favors Protoss because of the rampant proxy void ray + shield battery openings, and the blink DTs in the late game that Terran can’t do anything about, even if Terran has a PF and multiple WMs to defend the PF. Glad the balance team is aware how OP Protoss had been against Terran in the last 1.5 years since the last balance patch.
At the same time, Terran WM drops with drilling claws will be severely weakened. I’m not sure if WM drops that depend on drilling claws will be viable anymore.
On March 09 2022 08:34 Nakajin wrote: Honestly I'd be quite mad if I was protoss. The void ray nerf is fair, but the battery and DT nerf with nothing in return feel like a random jab.
Queen walk got straight up removed. How is that not compensation? That was one if not the most common answer to early stargate builds.
Removing queen-walk is huge for PvZ.
In addition, lurker burrow speed nerf is a buff to ground-based units in PvZ. Lurkers have been commonly attributed to why Protoss do not favour ground-based comps.
Furthermore, the nerf to widow-mine burrow is also a buff for PvT. Mass mine-drops is a thing at the highest levels of play - something that Protoss have created a multipage thread filled with sweet sweet Aiurean tear.
On March 09 2022 05:13 Durnuu wrote: Can't wait to confirm that these change absolutely nothing to Protoss issues in PvZ.
exactly ^ this
Cannot agree more. RIP Protoss, the most nerfed race - again.
On March 09 2022 06:16 Freeborn wrote: The dark templar change must be removed, whoever thought of that especially without any other buff, must be retarded.
The rest is worth a try.
On March 09 2022 06:41 Nebuchad wrote: This seems really bad. PvZ is going to be a little better but PvT is going to be a lot worse, and TvZ is going to shift to terran somewhat. Terran will be the best race by far when they clearly weren't the ones in need of much help.
On March 09 2022 07:10 Cricketer12 wrote: Protoss...nerfs? Is there something I'm missing? Thought protoss sucked as evidenced by the last two years of competetive results...
On March 09 2022 07:11 TheCheapSkate wrote: Is this April fools joke? After all the recent struggles protoss gets nefred the most?No gateway unit buffs? And zerg actually gets a buff to the nydus and the queen is barley touched?
On March 09 2022 07:23 ejozl wrote: This is not what is needed, I don't like most of this. Protoss need help vs Terran right now, the DT nerf is stupid and in the wrong direction. Voids only make the transition to air better, the actual air lies with the Carrier, so sky toss is not nerfed, but a lot of cool builds are, tho one change might be warranted. Zerg is also nerfed vs Terran, so now Terran is just the master race. The Shield Battery and Queen nerf will probably remove a lot of variety which is much needed for a game that doesn't rely on changes.
Obviously the changes are not huge, but they are in the wrong direction
On March 09 2022 08:34 Nakajin wrote: Honestly I'd be quite mad if I was protoss. The void ray nerf is fair, but the battery and DT nerf with nothing in return feel like a random jab.
Looking at these a little more: I'm glad to see some changes being made. And I even think the individual changes are all good. I just don't think that they make sense as a package.
PvZ: Weakens the Protoss early game. Helps them not die to "economic" units strolling across the map midgame. It's okay, I guess. But I'm not sure Protoss was exactly crushing it early game as-is, and I'd hoped for a more comprehensive set of nerfs and buffs that might allow something other than turtling to airtoss to be viable mid- to late- game. Lurkers burrowing 0.3 seconds slower ain't going to do that.
PvT: DTs not as good lategame, widow mines and void rays not as good early game? Seem like good changes. No real complaints here.
TvZ: Might actually be the worst-impacted matchup, though obviously it's hard to say right now. I don't see these changes doing anything other than hurt Terran. The Queen and Lurker nerfs I don't think will have much impact (other than maybe discouraging Zergs from charging in and burrowing Lurkers on top of everything, a tactic that already rarely works) while it makes the already questionable choice to go Widow Mine over Tank even worse.
On the whole, while they address a few specific problems, I don't think the changes do a lot to nerf Zerg, which is what has been needed for years at the pro level.
I really like the shield battery changes. I am looking forward to seeing some cool micro with drop overlords to move queens across the map and drop creep so they can transfuse. It adds another step to queen walks, but i think it will be cool to see. I could be wrong. Perhaps the void ray is being hit too hard, maybe just one of those changes would be good enough. I'm very happy to see some development!
Excited to see a PTR patch but a bit disappointed with the proposed changes.
- Shield battery nerf seems good to discourage mass proxy battery cheeses - DT buff seems unnecessary but not a big deal - Void ray nerfs seem too much. Pick one nerf, not both. But really they should be changed to be more interesting and have more micro potential. - Queen nerf seems decent but not sure how big of a deal this will end up being - Widow mine nerf seems good for lower levels but not sure about it being good for pro level - Lurker nerf seems okay but probably not enough. I think having slower movement speed would be better. Maybe both slightly nerfed? - Nydus buff seems fine, especially because of the queen nerf
Harstem overall thinks the nerfs to shield battery and nerf to blink for DTs was a good nerf and it was needed.
I think all the individual changes are good (except idk why they did that widow mine nerf?), but the patch overall is maybe missing something
I heard this patch has been in the works for *ages*, with roughly the same changes the whole time, and it seems like a patch that a year ago everyone would have loved (people complaining about blink dts, clem destroying serral/reynor with mines, etc.)
It's a decent patch for the starcraft community though, it switches the game from Z >> T >>>>>>>> P to T > Z >>>>>>> P, which historically is what people want.
On March 09 2022 15:04 Nebuchad wrote: It's a decent patch for the starcraft community though, it switches the game from Z >> T >>>>>>>> P to T > Z >>>>>>> P, which historically is what people want.
I don't see how this patch affects TvZ much, and I think the issues with TvZ are more about maps anyways
Overall looks quite decent I think. The only thing, I realy Don t get is the DT Nerf. If you want to nerf P Late game, make the carrier weaker, like increase the interceptor build time a second or two and make carriers practically useless. But why nerf the only Protoss ground unit, that was somewhat decent in Lategame before? If they want to Help Protoss in high Level while nerf them at lower Level, they need to nerf A- move units like the carrier and buff units you actually have to control to do damage.
On March 09 2022 07:06 neptunusfisk wrote: I would like to see a Cooldown on Terran Mules. At the current state Terrans wont get punished for bad macro. They can forget to Macro for a period of time and then drop the mule hammer, with no negative consequences.
So Terran is the race that can get away with bad macro. OK lmao
Yes. Where do the other races get away with bad macro? As I said, if u miss injects or creep cycles you get punished by not having larva or vision. Protoss also cant chrono multiple times the same building at once. So exlain to me, where they get away with murder...
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
Look at it the other way: nobody was complaining when DTs didn’t have blink that « they absolutely need blink ». Making it less obnoxious than it is atm and allow more time to react / thus more counter play and making it less of a « free meal » move for protoss is probably a good thing.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
Look at it the other way: nobody was complaining when DTs didn’t have blink that « they absolutely need blink ». Making it less obnoxious than it is atm and allow more time to react / thus more counter play and making it less of a « free meal » move for protoss is probably a good thing.
Yes, I think this is the most relevant point. Nobody was complaining when DTs didn't have blink. Just as nobody was really complaining when WMs were invisible. For whatever reason, the Blizzard balance team decided to give DTs blink, and take away the invisibility of WMs (but they gave back invisibility to WMs via the armory in a later patch), when nobody was asking for this.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
Look at it the other way: nobody was complaining when DTs didn’t have blink that « they absolutely need blink ». Making it less obnoxious than it is atm and allow more time to react / thus more counter play and making it less of a « free meal » move for protoss is probably a good thing.
Yes, I think this is the most relevant point. Nobody was complaining when DTs didn't have blink. Just as nobody was really complaining when WMs were invisible. For whatever reason, the Blizzard balance team decided to give DTs blink, and take away the invisibility of WMs (but they gave back invisibility to WMs via the armory in a later patch), when nobody was asking for this.
The DT change is an extremely welcome one tbh. There is not enough counterplay to DT squads slicing through PFs in lategame, expensive though those squads may be.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
Look at it the other way: nobody was complaining when DTs didn’t have blink that « they absolutely need blink ». Making it less obnoxious than it is atm and allow more time to react / thus more counter play and making it less of a « free meal » move for protoss is probably a good thing.
Yes, I think this is the most relevant point. Nobody was complaining when DTs didn't have blink. Just as nobody was really complaining when WMs were invisible. For whatever reason, the Blizzard balance team decided to give DTs blink, and take away the invisibility of WMs (but they gave back invisibility to WMs via the armory in a later patch), when nobody was asking for this.
The DT change is an extremely welcome one tbh. There is not enough counterplay to DT squads slicing through PFs in lategame, expensive though those squads may be.
Agreed. The nerf to blink for DTs was definitely needed and will help to balance PvsT much more.
In general, I like the fact that there *is* a patch. I think these changes are definitely interesting. I don't claim to be able to predict everything. (I am a bit saddened, even though I play Z, that one gat expand void ray in pvp is nerfed, but I guess that's a side effect.)
I do hope that, in general, they will be a bit more ambitious for pvz late game. In that: the goal should be that (about) equally difficult armies to control-late game scenarios are won by the player with the better control. Currently, this doesn't seem the case. This is why top Z's generally dominate P: they have more to do and thus more ways to show their skill. It would be better if P's army control was *more difficult* but also in a way that if you *do* it better than your opponent, you can gain more value out of it.
Harstem's suggestion of getting rid of the career is a radical but probably a good idea. Or, in any case, change something.
My general philosophy is that units should be designed with diminished marginal utility in mind. So that there is a treshhold where 'more' is not better. Broodlords can be amazing, but they are easily countered... because they don't actually shoot air units.
One way of doing this with carriers could be: make their damage output to either air or ground weaker so that if you have (almost) pure carrier or whatever, you are weak against either ground *or* air. (Obviously this should be paired with buffs on other fronts.) But the idea is: it should never be a good idea, like with broodlords, to get more than a few. I'd even be fine that you buff carriers a bit in the area where they are 'good' as long as you make them weaker in the area where they are 'bad'. So that you need more diversity. I am not saying this is the best or only way, but the idea of diminished marginal utility (and even negative marginal utility) should definitely be something to keep in mind. Allmost all other good designed units have it. But with carriers it just feels like: let's just get more with a little bit of support from templars and we are good to go. (Again: not true on the highest level.)
Edit: a different way of doing this - again, just spitballing - is to nerf the damage of interceptor attacks but give them an ability that lowers the damage output of opponents. This means that a few carriers are a good thing, but you need something *else* to actually kill the opponent units. Again: this is just me spitballing to explain the concept of diminished marginal utility, not saying that his is the end all by all that will end all discussions.
On March 09 2022 19:27 AdrianHealeyy wrote: In general, I like the fact that there *is* a patch. I think these changes are definitely interesting. I don't claim to be able to predict everything. (I am a bit saddened, even though I play Z, that one gat expand void ray in pvp is nerfed, but I guess that's a side effect.)
I do hope that, in general, they will be a bit more ambitious for pvz late game. In that: the goal should be that (about) equally difficult armies to control-late game scenarios are won by the player with the better control. Currently, this doesn't seem the case. This is why top Z's generally dominate P: they have more to do and thus more ways to show their skill. It would be better if P's army control was *more difficult* but also in a way that if you *do* it better than your opponent, you can gain more value out of it.
Harstem's suggestion of getting rid of the career is a radical but probably a good idea. Or, in any case, change something.
My general philosophy is that units should be designed with diminished marginal utility in mind. So that there is a treshhold where 'more' is not better. Broodlords can be amazing, but they are easily countered... because they don't actually shoot air units.
One way of doing this with carriers could be: make their damage output to either air or ground weaker so that if you have (almost) pure carrier or whatever, you are weak against either ground *or* air. (Obviously this should be paired with buffs on other fronts.) But the idea is: it should never be a good idea, like with broodlords, to get more than a few. I'd even be fine that you buff carriers a bit in the area where they are 'good' as long as you make them weaker in the area where they are 'bad'. So that you need more diversity. I am not saying this is the best or only way, but the idea of diminished marginal utility (and even negative marginal utility) should definitely be something to keep in mind. Allmost all other good designed units have it. But with carriers it just feels like: let's just get more with a little bit of support from templars and we are good to go. (Again: not true on the highest level.)
Edit: a different way of doing this - again, just spitballing - is to nerf the damage of interceptor attacks but give them an ability that lowers the damage output of opponents. This means that a few carriers are a good thing, but you need something *else* to actually kill the opponent units. Again: this is just me spitballing to explain the concept of diminished marginal utility, not saying that his is the end all by all that will end all discussions.
Does this apply to lurkers? When talking about carriers we need to mention lurkers, they are linked together
I like this. Its great that we actually get a patch and if this really is the first step towards more patches I think its really good for the game. People are so negative but with the "progamer balance council" cooking up more patches I feel a bit hopeful about the future of this game for the coming year.
On March 09 2022 21:24 Andi_Goldberger wrote: I like this. Its great that we actually get a patch and if this really is the first step towards more patches I think its really good for the game. People are so negative but with the "progamer balance council" cooking up more patches I feel a bit hopeful about the future of this game for the coming year.
If it's the same progamers that have given us only gigantic maps where you don't have to fight to expand until you take a 5th base for the past 5+ years, excuse me if I'm not feeling hopeful.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
Look at it the other way: nobody was complaining when DTs didn’t have blink that « they absolutely need blink ». Making it less obnoxious than it is atm and allow more time to react / thus more counter play and making it less of a « free meal » move for protoss is probably a good thing.
Yes, I think this is the most relevant point. Nobody was complaining when DTs didn't have blink. Just as nobody was really complaining when WMs were invisible. For whatever reason, the Blizzard balance team decided to give DTs blink, and take away the invisibility of WMs (but they gave back invisibility to WMs via the armory in a later patch), when nobody was asking for this.
Lol there were definitely complains when mines were invisible. If u say there weren't then I say there weren't complains when ghosts didn't have sun sized emps so we can remove those as well
On March 09 2022 19:27 AdrianHealeyy wrote: In general, I like the fact that there *is* a patch. I think these changes are definitely interesting. I don't claim to be able to predict everything. (I am a bit saddened, even though I play Z, that one gat expand void ray in pvp is nerfed, but I guess that's a side effect.)
I do hope that, in general, they will be a bit more ambitious for pvz late game. In that: the goal should be that (about) equally difficult armies to control-late game scenarios are won by the player with the better control. Currently, this doesn't seem the case. This is why top Z's generally dominate P: they have more to do and thus more ways to show their skill. It would be better if P's army control was *more difficult* but also in a way that if you *do* it better than your opponent, you can gain more value out of it.
Harstem's suggestion of getting rid of the career is a radical but probably a good idea. Or, in any case, change something.
My general philosophy is that units should be designed with diminished marginal utility in mind. So that there is a treshhold where 'more' is not better. Broodlords can be amazing, but they are easily countered... because they don't actually shoot air units.
One way of doing this with carriers could be: make their damage output to either air or ground weaker so that if you have (almost) pure carrier or whatever, you are weak against either ground *or* air. (Obviously this should be paired with buffs on other fronts.) But the idea is: it should never be a good idea, like with broodlords, to get more than a few. I'd even be fine that you buff carriers a bit in the area where they are 'good' as long as you make them weaker in the area where they are 'bad'. So that you need more diversity. I am not saying this is the best or only way, but the idea of diminished marginal utility (and even negative marginal utility) should definitely be something to keep in mind. Allmost all other good designed units have it. But with carriers it just feels like: let's just get more with a little bit of support from templars and we are good to go. (Again: not true on the highest level.)
Edit: a different way of doing this - again, just spitballing - is to nerf the damage of interceptor attacks but give them an ability that lowers the damage output of opponents. This means that a few carriers are a good thing, but you need something *else* to actually kill the opponent units. Again: this is just me spitballing to explain the concept of diminished marginal utility, not saying that his is the end all by all that will end all discussions.
Does this apply to lurkers? When talking about carriers we need to mention lurkers, they are linked together
Lurkers have diminishing value (in a way): one void ray kills them effortlessly.
But yes, these concepts also apply to lurkers. One way of nerfing lurkers is that the splash of lurkers doesn't stack (as much). That would, imo, be cool design. You could even increase their base power a bit, yet nerf them as a mass like that. So the power of one lurker goes up, but the power of 15 goes down.
Again: I am not married to any of these ideas. I am not a game designer. But those are ways to create diminishing marginal utility in army compositions.
No, just disappointed that this is all they came up with. It imo won't do much to truly help potential balance concerns and it certainly doesn't do much to bring in a fresh experience either. The former ofc remains to be seen, it's mostly conjecture at this point, the latter is probably outside this "team's" reach, arguably the more important aspect to keep people playing though. It's at least nice to see that there is potential for new patches, but this one doesn't get me excited.
So I actually really like that they're doing a "small" numbers-y balance patch.
IMO SC2 is not at a state where it needs or would benefit from another "shake it up" "refresh the game"-style balance patch. In part bc there's no longer a team in place to instantly react to problems, in part just bc the game imo has been in a pretty good place since the last big patch, in part bc I find a good 90% of the big "design" complaints and suggestions ppl have terrible and game-breaking, and in part bc, idk, I was watching BW in 2007, I like stability.
As for the individual changes, they seem overall very good I think. I'm extremely glad that Queen walk is being addressed. I was never sold on the idea that Void Rays were such a huge problem--I liked that (with the obvious exception of VR all-ins, which it's good that they addressed) they were a mostly defense-oriented unit that stabilized the matchups and wasn't just another all-in--but apparently everyone hated that esp the Toss pros so fine. But the Queen walk imo was the main thing making the PvZ matchup cancer, and hopefully both sides now have some room to breathe and actually try strats that don't revolve around this one terrible doom push with the literal slowest units in the game.
All the other changes look good with the proviso that I have no idea how impactful they'll actually be. Making Toss less vulnerable to WM drops and timing pushes in the mid-game is good, obviously. Making it a little harder to burrow-unburrow Lurkers also seems fine. These are small numbers though?
The only change that I might disagree with is the DT late game change. IMO PvT lategame seems to me to be on the verge of becoming Terran-favored for a while, and I'm a bit afraid that with the DT crutch removed that might become very apparent. And just anything that gives Toss lategame something to do out on the map besides the Air Deathball is very good. But again, apparently all the Terran pros hated it so fine, I just hope lategame DTs stay relatively viable anyway.
Thanks to everyone who worked to make this actually happen! Very good to see the scene continuing to be Not Dead. Let's keep it up.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
He is firmly in the "lower league stats are irrelevant but GM stats are magically important" camp. I suspect that he doesn't like that "lesser" Protoss are in the same league as him.
On March 09 2022 08:39 honorablemacroterran wrote:
On March 09 2022 04:16 The_Red_Viper wrote: lol
Are you upset?
No, just disappointed that this is all they came up with. It imo won't do much to truly help potential balance concerns and it certainly doesn't do much to bring in a fresh experience either. The former ofc remains to be seen, it's mostly conjecture at this point, the latter is probably outside this "team's" reach, arguably the more important aspect to keep people playing though. It's at least nice to see that there is potential for new patches, but this one doesn't get me excited.
Disagree, people are really down playing the Queen nerf when it more or less deletes Queen walks from the game. That has huge implications for Protoss. Being able to more reliably secure a third is a huge buff to Protoss in the match up.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
On March 09 2022 08:39 honorablemacroterran wrote:
On March 09 2022 04:16 The_Red_Viper wrote: lol
Are you upset?
No, just disappointed that this is all they came up with. It imo won't do much to truly help potential balance concerns and it certainly doesn't do much to bring in a fresh experience either. The former ofc remains to be seen, it's mostly conjecture at this point, the latter is probably outside this "team's" reach, arguably the more important aspect to keep people playing though. It's at least nice to see that there is potential for new patches, but this one doesn't get me excited.
Disagree, people are really down playing the Queen nerf when it more or less deletes Queen walks from the game. That has huge implications for Protoss. Being able to more reliably secure a third is a huge buff to Protoss in the match up.
Well as i said, it remains to be seen how this really develops, i certainly can see that no queen walks removes one big threat for protoss, i am just not convinced that it'll be enough to truly work out matchup problems, even with the lurker change in mind. But what is imo more important is delivering a fresh way of playing the game with patches, something to truly get people excited about the game, give room for experimentation, etc. That's partly on maps, but there i also don't see any bigger movements towards that. It's simply a little disappointing to see sc2 go into this mode of operation where one cannot expect any real shakeup whatsoever, though it ofc makes sense from blizzard's business perspective, and one cannot expect too much from this community team either for obvious reasons.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
Wait what -- this patch is i think clearly a buff in high level PvZ for P. Watch Lambo's video about the reason P plays skytoss, and we know from watching serral dunk on every toss in existence that at the highest level of play, late game skytoss just isn't it.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
Wait what -- this patch is i think clearly a buff in high level PvZ for P. Watch Lambo's video about the reason P plays skytoss, and we know from watching serral dunk on every toss in existence that at the highest level of play, late game skytoss just isn't it.
Did we watch the same video?
Lambo’s reason for saying Toss play Skytoss isn’t purely a compositional thing, it’s a transitional flow and timing thing as well.
Void builds got tightened and refined so they are the catch-all, safe builds against most of what Zergs can throw at you in early aggression.
You have Voids pushing back overlords and sharking, they pump out a lot of DPS and they’re super mobile at bouncing between the first three Toss bases in a way ground forces aren’t. You’re safe to expand quickly against most frontal busts and you’re safe against attempts to plop nydus’ in your bases if you’re paying attention.
To my knowledge, no Robo or Twilight/Templar tech opener is nearly as versatile and as strong as a catch-all solid opener.
If you already have a void fleet intact, and multiple Stargates, plus some air ups the natural transition is to Skytoss
Protoss’ catch-all opener is now nerfed against anything other than Queen walks, although to what degree that’s impactful remains to be seen.
Batteries are also weaker. There are certain positions where a Protoss will have some stretched between bases, and out of Nexus range, so they can control the threat of a Zerg bust rotating around defences. Some pushes will almost certainly be tougher to hold. I think this was a necessary change.
A few changes are good because they cut some real bullshit out. DT blink, Queen walks, battery cheeses. IMO these are silly mechanics, I’m down.
Protoss doesn’t really have anything that’s a buff to make ground stronger though. At all. PvZ in a nutshell:
1. Stop the Zerg growth through the ability to pressure and contain. 2. Turtle defensively and tech hard while being safe so despite Zerg growth you get up a comp and upgrades that you have a standing fleet that’s so strong that Zerg growth isn’t as important. 3. Cheese
Skytoss is number 2, in a nutshell, and is weaker minus the notable exception of Queen walks. 3 is weaker outright. 1, enabling ground toss to be more dynamic is just not a thing with this patch at all.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
Wait what -- this patch is i think clearly a buff in high level PvZ for P. Watch Lambo's video about the reason P plays skytoss, and we know from watching serral dunk on every toss in existence that at the highest level of play, late game skytoss just isn't it.
I didn't argue that it wasn't a buff for PvZ. It is, queen walks were strong. My point still stands, and if protoss isn't still by far the worst race after this patch, then you will get to say that I was wrong about it.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
Wait what -- this patch is i think clearly a buff in high level PvZ for P. Watch Lambo's video about the reason P plays skytoss, and we know from watching serral dunk on every toss in existence that at the highest level of play, late game skytoss just isn't it.
Did we watch the same video?
Lambo’s reason for saying Toss play Skytoss isn’t purely a compositional thing, it’s a transitional flow and timing thing as well.
Void builds got tightened and refined so they are the catch-all, safe builds against most of what Zergs can throw at you in early aggression.
You have Voids pushing back overlords and sharking, they pump out a lot of DPS and they’re super mobile at bouncing between the first three Toss bases in a way ground forces aren’t. You’re safe to expand quickly against most frontal busts and you’re safe against attempts to plop nydus’ in your bases if you’re paying attention.
To my knowledge, no Robo or Twilight/Templar tech opener is nearly as versatile and as strong as a catch-all solid opener.
If you already have a void fleet intact, and multiple Stargates, plus some air ups the natural transition is to Skytoss
Protoss’ catch-all opener is now nerfed against anything other than Queen walks, although to what degree that’s impactful remains to be seen.
Batteries are also weaker. There are certain positions where a Protoss will have some stretched between bases, and out of Nexus range, so they can control the threat of a Zerg bust rotating around defences. Some pushes will almost certainly be tougher to hold. I think this was a necessary change.
A few changes are good because they cut some real bullshit out. DT blink, Queen walks, battery cheeses. IMO these are silly mechanics, I’m down.
Protoss doesn’t really have anything that’s a buff to make ground stronger though. At all. PvZ in a nutshell:
1. Stop the Zerg growth through the ability to pressure and contain. 2. Turtle defensively and tech hard while being safe so despite Zerg growth you get up a comp and upgrades that you have a standing fleet that’s so strong that Zerg growth isn’t as important. 3. Cheese
Skytoss is number 2, in a nutshell, and is weaker minus the notable exception of Queen walks. 3 is weaker outright. 1, enabling ground toss to be more dynamic is just not a thing with this patch at all.
I completely agree that it is a transitional thing, and I thought that this patch greatly assists in this. I thought Lambo said that the reason toss cannot open into ground is because of queen walks on the third -- this is no longer an issue.
While the void ray opening is nerfed into maybe not existing, this is fine -- P can open oracle into ground toss safely. Furthermore, this opens the door to ground comp mid/late games. P ground can fight okay against lurkers, and moreover if Z takes the time to tech into lurkers this lets P get skytoss out.
For these reasons, I feel like P is just going to do better against Z at the highest levels.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
Wait what -- this patch is i think clearly a buff in high level PvZ for P. Watch Lambo's video about the reason P plays skytoss, and we know from watching serral dunk on every toss in existence that at the highest level of play, late game skytoss just isn't it.
I didn't argue that it wasn't a buff for PvZ. It is. My point still stands, and if protoss isn't still by far the worst race after this patch, then you will get to say that I was wrong about it.
Did anyone take your Katowice bet incidentally haha?
Its like half of a good patch. They neutered some silly, infuriating gimmicky aspects of the game state.
The general feel of Protoss players (here at least) seems to be cutting the floor and the bullshit to some degree, giving more ceiling potential for good players to really push things.
If this was an essay I was marking my feedback would be ‘A grade on this first topic, good work, good suggestions. Unfortunately you appear to have not answered the second question at all.’
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
Wait what -- this patch is i think clearly a buff in high level PvZ for P. Watch Lambo's video about the reason P plays skytoss, and we know from watching serral dunk on every toss in existence that at the highest level of play, late game skytoss just isn't it.
I didn't argue that it wasn't a buff for PvZ. It is. My point still stands, and if protoss isn't still by far the worst race after this patch, then you will get to say that I was wrong about it.
Did anyone take your Katowice bet incidentally haha?
Yes but we had a clause that it would be voided in case of a patch, which makes sense, so it's voided now.
I could take another bet I guess but I'm not as confident that protoss will be weak as I was before, so I wouldn't give 10 to 1 this time, probably like 6 to 1 or something like that.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
Wait what -- this patch is i think clearly a buff in high level PvZ for P. Watch Lambo's video about the reason P plays skytoss, and we know from watching serral dunk on every toss in existence that at the highest level of play, late game skytoss just isn't it.
Did we watch the same video?
Lambo’s reason for saying Toss play Skytoss isn’t purely a compositional thing, it’s a transitional flow and timing thing as well.
Void builds got tightened and refined so they are the catch-all, safe builds against most of what Zergs can throw at you in early aggression.
You have Voids pushing back overlords and sharking, they pump out a lot of DPS and they’re super mobile at bouncing between the first three Toss bases in a way ground forces aren’t. You’re safe to expand quickly against most frontal busts and you’re safe against attempts to plop nydus’ in your bases if you’re paying attention.
To my knowledge, no Robo or Twilight/Templar tech opener is nearly as versatile and as strong as a catch-all solid opener.
If you already have a void fleet intact, and multiple Stargates, plus some air ups the natural transition is to Skytoss
Protoss’ catch-all opener is now nerfed against anything other than Queen walks, although to what degree that’s impactful remains to be seen.
Batteries are also weaker. There are certain positions where a Protoss will have some stretched between bases, and out of Nexus range, so they can control the threat of a Zerg bust rotating around defences. Some pushes will almost certainly be tougher to hold. I think this was a necessary change.
A few changes are good because they cut some real bullshit out. DT blink, Queen walks, battery cheeses. IMO these are silly mechanics, I’m down.
Protoss doesn’t really have anything that’s a buff to make ground stronger though. At all. PvZ in a nutshell:
1. Stop the Zerg growth through the ability to pressure and contain. 2. Turtle defensively and tech hard while being safe so despite Zerg growth you get up a comp and upgrades that you have a standing fleet that’s so strong that Zerg growth isn’t as important. 3. Cheese
Skytoss is number 2, in a nutshell, and is weaker minus the notable exception of Queen walks. 3 is weaker outright. 1, enabling ground toss to be more dynamic is just not a thing with this patch at all.
I completely agree that it is a transitional thing, and I thought that this patch greatly assists in this. I thought Lambo said that the reason toss cannot open into ground is because of queen walks on the third -- this is no longer an issue.
While the void ray opening is nerfed into maybe not existing, this is fine -- P can open oracle into ground toss safely. Furthermore, this opens the door to ground comp mid/late games. P ground can fight okay against lurkers, and moreover if Z takes the time to tech into lurkers this lets P get skytoss out.
For these reasons, I feel like P is just going to do better against Z at the highest levels.
Going back a bit further, we had a really brief Robo-centric meta, then that period where Stats and Serral especially had a fun and pretty even rivalry, where Stats was leaning really hard on oracle play.
Those seemed pretty figured out by top Zergs as time passed, there are flaws in those kind of openings. It remains to be seen now this patch actually plays out absolutely, no substitute from tons of skilled players and minds pushing for advantages over time.
Aside from committing to a Queen walk, multi SG Void openers were never really figured out. Zergs certainly got better at killing Protoss overall by playing better, but the opening was pretty rock solid.
I don’t personally like SG into Skytoss, but it’s neutering Protoss’ best stable opening against Zerg, they have other nerfs and not a huge amount to compensate.
In most other matchups there are builds and openers that are very stable. Not invincible, not necessarily pushing the limits of your advantage, but taking you into mid and lategame reliably in a pretty strong spot.
Void openers certainly ticked that box. Oracle into various transitions may well reliably do this, or something else people figure out that works, and the Zerg hive mind doesn’t pick apart.
What players figure out, and indeed what future map pools look like mean most of this is still to be seen either way.
While that's a good analysis, you're slightly overselling Skytoss. It wasn't some great build Protoss did because it was so strong. They went that build because everything else was terrible.
IMO a good way to meaningfully buff protoss - and this idea was mentioned many times in a few threads here - would be to nerf warp a bit (unit warp speed outside of Nexus/GW range maybe?) and buff 1-2 gateway units a bit. So you could still warp units inside opponent's main or to flank or to defend at home - but it would take more time so if your opponents react in time they can defend it better.
We need stronger Gateway units but it's obviously impossible without nerfing warp in some significant way.
And I think Lurkers also need a movement speed nerf (i.e. make Adaptive Talons less effective). They are way too fast and nimble for supposedly siege units.
I think queen nerf (no transfuse out of creep) will make cannon/bunker rush so much more powerful...Sometimes u just need to tank dmg with queens and transfuses while attacking with lings. Now it will be inpossible, as often this defence is happening out of creep.
On March 10 2022 03:49 Jerubaal wrote: While that's a good analysis, you're slightly overselling Skytoss. It wasn't some great build Protoss did because it was so strong. They went that build because everything else was terrible.
That was basically what I was saying, albeit more diplomatically haha.
Without Skytoss, or at least the openings being weakened and with not a huge amount of other tweaks elsewhere, and no actual Protoss buffs.
Hm, I dunno Kev, getting horrific flashbacks to the times of Trap getting absolutely smacked in GSL finals and Zest doing his ‘I have a new build I’ll win until people adjust’ thing at Katowice.
Top Zergs have already figured out Oracle openers, bloody ages ago. Robo-centric openings can work but have huge exploitable holes where you can just die.
I would enjoy being proven wrong on this, but I’m currently extremely skeptical we’ll see any improvements in PvZ, indeed I think it will get worse.
This really just feels like a "see we did do a patch" gesture instead of a well thought out change to the game. Disappointed but it is what it is at this point.
Remember that everyone has their own idea of which set of changes is needed. What one person thinks would be great for the game, someone else would call biased rubbish.
This is not the last patch, according to Harstem, so gradual changes might be better than radical ones. I.e. if they see it wasn't enough, they may add more changes later.
On March 10 2022 04:53 Moonerz wrote: This really just feels like a "see we did do a patch" gesture instead of a well thought out change to the game. Disappointed but it is what it is at this point.
Well I think they swiped at all the low hanging fruit. I'm curious as to what they might tackle next.
Wow, I love all those suggestions <3 Only the queen one not. Would love to see the queen quantity to be depended to the hatchery quantity instead. Like maximum two queens per hatch. Or one queen per hatch but buff her.
1. Nerf larval inject so that Zerg has to build macro hatches even if they aren't Dark, thus slowing the Zerg macro snowball.
2. Make Time Warp speed friendly ground units attack and movement speeds, thus making late game ground and the Mothership less terrible.
Trying to keep these in the realm of "very easy and simple to implement" which is probably all that will happen with this patch.
Edit:
On March 10 2022 06:15 Big-t wrote: Wow, I love all those suggestions <3 Only the queen one not. Would love to see the queen quantity to be depended to the hatchery quantity instead. Like maximum two queens per hatch. Or one queen per hatch but buff her.
Might work with just having the Queen cost Larva rather than build directly from the Hatchery, so that there's more of a cost to getting them out.
On March 10 2022 07:00 QOGQOG wrote: Two suggestions for actually improving PvZ:
1. Nerf larval inject so that Zerg has to build macro hatches even if they aren't Dark, thus slowing the Zerg macro snowball.
2. Make Time Warp speed friendly ground units attack and movement speeds, thus making late game ground and the Mothership less terrible.
Trying to keep these in the realm of "very easy and simple to implement" which is probably all that will happen with this patch.
The third part of that realm is ‘has limited knock-on impact and relatively predictable effects’
Making any kind of significant tweak to larva/injects is close to the biggest knock on change one could make, second only perhaps to a complete change or removal of Warpgate
All early game Zerg builds are tailored around the income/larva dynamic that is currently at play. High level Zerg play in general is centred around nailing injects with a number of hatches that corresponds to mining locations.
Now, as with Warp Gate I actually agree that a more wholesale re-evaluation is needed, but the one thing that isn’t is simple, and easy to observe the impact of.
How do you assess the impact of other changes at a time where Zerg are effectively having to relearn basically all of their builds and adjust to having macro hatches be a necessity?
On March 10 2022 06:15 Big-t wrote: Wow, I love all those suggestions <3 Only the queen one not. Would love to see the queen quantity to be depended to the hatchery quantity instead. Like maximum two queens per hatch. Or one queen per hatch but buff her.
Might work with just having the Queen cost Larva rather than build directly from the Hatchery, so that there's more of a cost to getting them out.
That would make Zerg absurdly vulnerable at certain points in time.
In early game against T let’s say, you’re by default going to be down 8 lings, or 4 drones, or a mix of the two by going up to only 4 queens.
We’re used to the boring 4 lings dancing with a single reaper until that first Queen pops, to the extent that Tastosis make fun of it being so uneventfully
Now a Zerg will have to drone cut for that specific timing, or be left with 2 lings in defend, which isn’t actually enough to shoo off the reaper. 3 rax reaper gets super nasty, or a naked three rax rush will be bloody difficult to hold if you’re cutting eco or army to get a Queen out.
Queens are too catch-all as a defensive unit. I certainly don’t like that but Zerg also need them, they’re too integral at this point to defending certain timings.
Zerg still need a Queen by default, it’s not a corner they can cut, currently. This proposal just makes Zerg have less stuff, and lategame this change would IMO be fine, but early game there’s some razor thin timings at play and Zerg can’t afford to have less stuff, nor not have Queens
On March 10 2022 07:00 QOGQOG wrote: Two suggestions for actually improving PvZ:
1. Nerf larval inject so that Zerg has to build macro hatches even if they aren't Dark, thus slowing the Zerg macro snowball.
2. Make Time Warp speed friendly ground units attack and movement speeds, thus making late game ground and the Mothership less terrible.
Trying to keep these in the realm of "very easy and simple to implement" which is probably all that will happen with this patch.
The third part of that realm is ‘has limited knock-on impact and relatively predictable effects’
Making any kind of significant tweak to larva/injects is close to the biggest knock on change one could make, second only perhaps to a complete change or removal of Warpgate
All early game Zerg builds are tailored around the income/larva dynamic that is currently at play. High level Zerg play in general is centred around nailing injects with a number of hatches that corresponds to mining locations.
Now, as with Warp Gate I actually agree that a more wholesale re-evaluation is needed, but the one thing that isn’t is simple, and easy to observe the impact of.
How do you assess the impact of other changes at a time where Zerg are effectively having to relearn basically all of their builds and adjust to having macro hatches be a necessity?
I mean, I think Zerg should get some high impact changes, given it's been years of them dominating at the pro level. Making tiny adjustments might eventually fix things, but who knows how many patches will actually happen? The issue wasn't fixed with that approach the last time Blizzard felt like patching the game regularly.
Beyond that, the other changes are all pretty small. Queen walks go out of the meta being literally the only thing matters for Zerg. I don't want to say that change is meaningless—I think it's a good idea, and will improve PvZ—but even that ostensibly big change only really matters in PvZ and even then not in every game.
If there's a time to try one big thing, it would be with this patch.
On March 10 2022 07:00 QOGQOG wrote: Two suggestions for actually improving PvZ:
1. Nerf larval inject so that Zerg has to build macro hatches even if they aren't Dark, thus slowing the Zerg macro snowball.
2. Make Time Warp speed friendly ground units attack and movement speeds, thus making late game ground and the Mothership less terrible.
Trying to keep these in the realm of "very easy and simple to implement" which is probably all that will happen with this patch.
Edit:
On March 10 2022 06:15 Big-t wrote: Wow, I love all those suggestions <3 Only the queen one not. Would love to see the queen quantity to be depended to the hatchery quantity instead. Like maximum two queens per hatch. Or one queen per hatch but buff her.
Might work with just having the Queen cost Larva rather than build directly from the Hatchery, so that there's more of a cost to getting them out.
That would make Zerg absurdly vulnerable at certain points in time.
In early game against T let’s say, you’re by default going to be down 8 lings, or 4 drones, or a mix of the two by going up to only 4 queens.
We’re used to the boring 4 lings dancing with a single reaper until that first Queen pops, to the extent that Tastosis make fun of it being so uneventfully
Now a Zerg will have to drone cut for that specific timing, or be left with 2 lings in defend, which isn’t actually enough to shoo off the reaper. 3 rax reaper gets super nasty, or a naked three rax rush will be bloody difficult to hold if you’re cutting eco or army to get a Queen out.
Queens are too catch-all as a defensive unit. I certainly don’t like that but Zerg also need them, they’re too integral at this point to defending certain timings.
Zerg still need a Queen by default, it’s not a corner they can cut, currently. This proposal just makes Zerg have less stuff, and lategame this change would IMO be fine, but early game there’s some razor thin timings at play and Zerg can’t afford to have less stuff, nor not have Queens
Yes, if the Queen cost Larva, you'd need to make some other adjustments for early game stability. Didn't say otherwise. But I think it's important to talk about changes that make Zerg have to make difficult choices and slow their snowball, and adjusting the Queen is central to making both those changes.
Praise be to the intern that poured his determination into creating changes that could improve PvZ.
Guys... We got a queen nerf. We actually got a queen nerf. This is a big deal.
And void ray nerf. Good!
Also, lurkers are the reason PvZ needs to transition into air toss, and lurkers got a nerf.. so maybe the transition window from ground to air will open up a bit.
On March 10 2022 07:00 QOGQOG wrote: Two suggestions for actually improving PvZ:
1. Nerf larval inject so that Zerg has to build macro hatches even if they aren't Dark, thus slowing the Zerg macro snowball.
2. Make Time Warp speed friendly ground units attack and movement speeds, thus making late game ground and the Mothership less terrible.
Trying to keep these in the realm of "very easy and simple to implement" which is probably all that will happen with this patch.
The third part of that realm is ‘has limited knock-on impact and relatively predictable effects’
Making any kind of significant tweak to larva/injects is close to the biggest knock on change one could make, second only perhaps to a complete change or removal of Warpgate
All early game Zerg builds are tailored around the income/larva dynamic that is currently at play. High level Zerg play in general is centred around nailing injects with a number of hatches that corresponds to mining locations.
Now, as with Warp Gate I actually agree that a more wholesale re-evaluation is needed, but the one thing that isn’t is simple, and easy to observe the impact of.
How do you assess the impact of other changes at a time where Zerg are effectively having to relearn basically all of their builds and adjust to having macro hatches be a necessity?
I mean, I think Zerg should get some high impact changes, given it's been years of them dominating at the pro level. Making tiny adjustments might eventually fix things, but who knows how many patches will actually happen? The issue wasn't fixed with that approach the last time Blizzard felt like patching the game regularly.
Beyond that, the other changes are all pretty small. Queen walks go out of the meta being literally the only thing matters for Zerg. I don't want to say that change is meaningless—I think it's a good idea, and will improve PvZ—but even that ostensibly big change only really matters in PvZ and even then not in every game.
If there's a time to try one big thing, it would be with this patch.
On March 10 2022 07:00 QOGQOG wrote: Two suggestions for actually improving PvZ:
1. Nerf larval inject so that Zerg has to build macro hatches even if they aren't Dark, thus slowing the Zerg macro snowball.
2. Make Time Warp speed friendly ground units attack and movement speeds, thus making late game ground and the Mothership less terrible.
Trying to keep these in the realm of "very easy and simple to implement" which is probably all that will happen with this patch.
Edit:
On March 10 2022 06:15 Big-t wrote: Wow, I love all those suggestions <3 Only the queen one not. Would love to see the queen quantity to be depended to the hatchery quantity instead. Like maximum two queens per hatch. Or one queen per hatch but buff her.
Might work with just having the Queen cost Larva rather than build directly from the Hatchery, so that there's more of a cost to getting them out.
That would make Zerg absurdly vulnerable at certain points in time.
In early game against T let’s say, you’re by default going to be down 8 lings, or 4 drones, or a mix of the two by going up to only 4 queens.
We’re used to the boring 4 lings dancing with a single reaper until that first Queen pops, to the extent that Tastosis make fun of it being so uneventfully
Now a Zerg will have to drone cut for that specific timing, or be left with 2 lings in defend, which isn’t actually enough to shoo off the reaper. 3 rax reaper gets super nasty, or a naked three rax rush will be bloody difficult to hold if you’re cutting eco or army to get a Queen out.
Queens are too catch-all as a defensive unit. I certainly don’t like that but Zerg also need them, they’re too integral at this point to defending certain timings.
Zerg still need a Queen by default, it’s not a corner they can cut, currently. This proposal just makes Zerg have less stuff, and lategame this change would IMO be fine, but early game there’s some razor thin timings at play and Zerg can’t afford to have less stuff, nor not have Queens
Yes, if the Queen cost Larva, you'd need to make some other adjustments for early game stability. Didn't say otherwise. But I think it's important to talk about changes that make Zerg have to make difficult choices and slow their snowball, and adjusting the Queen is central to both making both those changes.
How many patches indeed?
Incremental tweaks may not fix things quickly enough. A really big, experimental patch may break the game, how quickly is it fixed in an era we weren’t even sure if we’d get this patch?
It’s very dependent on what support remains and is planned.
Being more radical I’m down with, if there’s a longer term commitment to shake things up for the better, and subsequently stabilise the game where (almost certain) broken interactions appear that pros can’t just figure out solutions for.
There are only a handful of patches in SC2’s existence that have really radically changed much, and that’s including the two expansions.
I wonder if one thing they might have considered is giving lurker (or, heck, maybe even widow mines) an unburrow time. While, it is kind of ridiculous when you catch unburrowed lurkers and they still are able to burrow and blow you up, it might be more significant that you can catch them in a bad position, even burrowed, and they can just scoot away.
People should pick up on this being done by community effort. At least pro players are part of this. However if these changes need to be agreed in some what bigger group then we should limit our expectations on changes we expect. There may agree that Void Rays need to be nerfed and do some numerical changes. They may even agree that unit X needs redesign, but disagree how the redesigned unit should play like. Thus changes will probably be much more limited. Personally I would expect them at most being able to agree on new simple ability or upgrade, like an upgrade that makes adept's attack reduce armor..But big changes like one that makes economy of one race totally different will not happen.
Another thing is that Blizzard clearly does not have much resources allocated on SC2, and based on the latest ladder pool the people aren't that familiar with the game and don't have time for frequent updates. Thus, them being able to implement some new design on unit etc. and iterate it based on feedback, is very unlikely. Even the mistakes in the post demonstrate lack of knowledge in the game details, like calling Shadow Stride blink and talking about effectiveness instead of burrow time.
On March 09 2022 11:50 TossHeroes wrote: Oh look another patch with more Toss nerf lol
Void ray more expensive, sure Toss can live with that
DT and battery nerf? Just so the terran fanboys stop crying?
1500min 1500 gas commitment just for a “chance” to kill a 550 planetary?
do you think harstem is biased against toss?
I don't know about Harstem but we can see how this patch feels about the races.
Terran: we love the gameplay. You guys rule. Keep doing what you do. Zerg: we love the gameplay except queen walks are stupid. Let's make the race slightly weaker, also don't do queen walks. Protoss: we see that you were doing a bunch of things that we don't like. You would still lose the game most of the time with those options but, nothing there's no but, we'll just remove those options. It'll be fine. Just be skillful like us.
This could be replaced by rogue warlock and druid in hearthstone...
Overall I'm really liking this patch! Such a nice surprise. These are mostly small numbers changes but they are significant and help!
Proxy shield battery stuff should still work but will be a little weaker. Draining battery energy can be more of a thing vs proxy void rays.
I always felt void rays having both the movespeed buff and the minerals/build time buff was too much, so this is just reverting that yay. It was weird having a 200/150 unit with 4 supply too. Void rays should be a little less of a go-to unit, and at the same time queen walks shouldn't be dead but will take a bit more work to pull off. Both void timings and queen timings will be delayed a little.
DT blink squads are cool, but them sniping PFs or jumping on your army was a little too punishing. Especially for mech on a big map, they really need to rely on PFs, so even if a 10 DT hit squad is expensive, it really makes things hard. Even less than a second delay will help with reaction times or allow you to kill 1-2 more DTs before they get away. And DTs blinking on small groups of bio and such should still work, but again they might lose 1-2 more DTs now. This should in general help Terran lategame TvP and not be as punishing if they try to break their forces into small groups.
WM drilling claw being nerfed is fine I think, it's a slight nerf to mech but it doesn't really matter for mech I think. Making drops a little more reactable is fine, makes it less stressful/punishing for everyone.
Lurker burrow upgrade nerf yay! Even 1/3 of a second slower should help. It was ridiculous before seeing a lurker army chase down a protoss/terran army, running forward and burrowing, unburrowing and running forward again. Now if they try to chase, say if before they were able to burrow/unborrow 3 times and get 3 hits off, now it'll take 1 more full second to do that. So the first 2 hits may hit a few less units, and the 3rd hit might not connect very well anymore.
I do wonder if Lurker mobility can be nerfed more though somehow. I wonder if they need to be as fast and mobile as they are if they are supposed to hold ground, or harass (in which case they can be dropped or such).
Queen not being able to transfuse off creep - never thought of it but it sounds good. There's plenty of ways to spread creep, like Nydus and Overlord. The only issue I can think of was the already mentioned 2 Queens at the ramp in ZvZ to defend vs early ling floods. That might be a problem...
Another idea is that Transfuse has 1 (or melee range) range when off creep. There can still be queen walks and they can still transfuse even without bringing creep, but a hurt queen can only be transfused by the queens touching them. So if you target the queens on the outside of the queen ball, the queens near them will run out of transfuses and you can pick them off. Maybe this won't be a big enough nerf to queen walks, but it'd allow the 2 Queens at the ramp in ZvZ to work. Also, with melee Transfuse range off creep, Queens can't support attacking Roach/Ravager and stuff as well. You'd have to try to have Queens spread out amongst the Roach Ravager, but doing so would mean the Queens can be picked off easier since they aren't balled up. With melee range off creep, Queens trying to move between bases early in the game can still support each other if they walk together.
On March 10 2022 09:45 Big-t wrote: Why do lurkers need a speed upgrade for burrow?
Because while Infestor/Broodlord was broken (for the second time) no Zerg was making Lurkers and so when Blizzard gutted Infestor/Broodlord they felt they had to compensate somewhere so they buffed the Lurker which didn't need buffs but Blizzard decided to do it so that it didn't feel like Zerg was getting gutted without compensation.
Unsurprisingly the Lurker is now overtuned and getting toned back again because it never needed a buff to begin with.
What do you think the standard opening will be in PvZ? We go back to the situation pre-previous-patch and I think there was no opening that gave P a fair game. There was a reason whyVoids were buffed back then. Multiple Oracle into Phoenix into Disruptor?
On March 09 2022 04:27 91matt wrote: Just encourages skytoss even more, since there no queen walk. No one wants to play 40min-1hr games all the time. If anything zvp is going to be even worse to play
I dunno, it's going to take a full 36 extra seconds, and 300 more minerals to get the 6 void hit squad off a 2sg void opener.
From the zerg's AA preparation perspective, that's eons. Plus, it's going to delay the protoss third.
You can't do anything aggressive except queen walk vs skytoss, It doesn't discourage it at all. Also delaying the third by 6 seconds is hardly going to change the meta.
Queen walk should go, but so should making voids and skytoss behind it and dragging the game out all the time. Patch just makes it even easier to play the lamest style in the game.
Voids are getting a huge cost increase though. That cannot be downplayed. Suddenly every Abduct and Parasitic Swarm is going to get even more valuable.
On March 11 2022 04:50 Xamo wrote: What do you think the standard opening will be in PvZ? We go back to the situation pre-previous-patch and I think there was no opening that gave P a fair game. There was a reason whyVoids were buffed back then. Multiple Oracle into Phoenix into Disruptor?
Oracle openers are going to reign supreme I think. Oracles are going to swoop in for their few early drone kills then I think they will be on creep control duty to contain Queens to their side of the map while the Protoss takes a fast third, especially now that they know the fast third will be safe from a Queen walk as long as the Oracles are being active.
Might start seeing the early Adepts be used defensively in conjunction with the Oracles to help clean creep aggressively while keeping tabs on the Zerg.
Pure conjecture obviously, but I honestly believe that without the threat of a Queen walk, Protoss is going to secure their thirds very reliably and enter the mid game on a better footing with a stronger economy.
I'm a zerg player and I think it's a bit disingenuous for Protoss to say that their ground build aren't "viable". Ever since Carrier got the interceptor cost buff back in 2018 the Skytoss meta has drowned out any need for Protoss to experiment with ground base composition in the end game. Skytoss is just so clearly the best composition that there's no point in trying to do anything else. It's like me complaining that I never ride my bike anymore since I got a car. Why would I when a clearly superior alternative is available?
I feel like we're been discussing balance the wrong way. A strategy isn't necessarily bad when it's powerful, it's bad when there's not enough of a meaningful risk in picking it versus something else. When there's clearly ONE best choice available it leads to a stagnated meta and that's the most harmful to the game. Voidray opening aren't bad because voidray are powerful, they're bad because they're clearly the best way to open at the moment. Skytoss/storm aren't bad because they're OP, they're bad because it's obviously the most powerful unit composition available in the match up, so why wouldn't you go for it 100% of the time. This is in contrast to TvZ lategame where both sides are constantly updating their army composition based on what the other side is doing, because there's no ideal composition for either races in this match up.
There's no need to nerf a strategy to the point where it's no longer viable, it just reduces the strategic complexity of the game and it frustrates player who are used to playing it. Instead it's better to make it more risky to deploy a particular strategy such as by buffing your opponent's ability to respond to it, or make it more of a commitment on your side if you want go for this build. To use my earlier analogy, I don't want to take away your car, but I might want to raise the price of gas to the point where you might consider riding your bike every once in a while.
On March 11 2022 22:39 jade11 wrote: I'm a zerg player and I think it's a bit disingenuous for Protoss to say that their ground build aren't "viable". Ever since Carrier got the interceptor cost buff back in 2018 the Skytoss meta has drowned out any need for Protoss to experiment with ground base composition in the end game. Skytoss is just so clearly the best composition that there's no point in trying to do anything else. It's like me complaining that I never ride my bike anymore since I got a car. Why would I when a clearly superior alternative is available?
Since protoss at the highest level has not obtained good results using the skytoss build, and you still think it's a "clearly superior alternative" comparable to a car vs a bike, I think you have part of your answer there.
On March 11 2022 22:39 jade11 wrote: I'm a zerg player and I think it's a bit disingenuous for Protoss to say that their ground build aren't "viable". Ever since Carrier got the interceptor cost buff back in 2018 the Skytoss meta has drowned out any need for Protoss to experiment with ground base composition in the end game. Skytoss is just so clearly the best composition that there's no point in trying to do anything else. It's like me complaining that I never ride my bike anymore since I got a car. Why would I when a clearly superior alternative is available?
I feel like we're been discussing balance the wrong way. A strategy isn't necessarily bad when it's powerful, it's bad when there's not enough of a meaningful risk in picking it versus something else. When there's clearly ONE best choice available it leads to a stagnated meta and that's the most harmful to the game. Voidray opening aren't bad because voidray are powerful, they're bad because they're clearly the best way to open at the moment. Skytoss/storm aren't bad because they're OP, they're bad because it's obviously the most powerful unit composition available in the match up, so why wouldn't you go for it 100% of the time. This is in contrast to TvZ lategame where both sides are constantly updating their army composition based on what the other side is doing, because there's no ideal composition for either races in this match up.
There's no need to nerf a strategy to the point where it's no longer viable, it just reduces the strategic complexity of the game and it frustrates player who are used to playing it. Instead it's better to make it more risky to deploy a particular strategy such as by buffing your opponent's ability to respond to it, or make it more of a commitment on your side if you want go for this build. To use my earlier analogy, I don't want to take away your car, but I might want to raise the price of gas to the point where you might consider riding your bike every once in a while.
Good post, I broadly agree there 100%.
The additional question is at the highest level what was Void into Skytoss.
Was it the obvious best way to play out of trickier, or harder to optimise styles, or was it increasingly the only viable way?
I don’t know, and we shall see. Do Protoss actually need that car? Maybe their commute isn’t that long and hey, riding this bike is ok actually and I feel more eco-friendly and healthier! Or maybe my daily commute is like 3 hours long each way and I’m exhausted and really, really would quite like my car back.
I think that’s the question at the crux of the matter and we’ll have to see how it all plays out.
Since protoss at the highest level has not obtained good results using the skytoss build, and you still think it's a "clearly superior alternative" comparable to a car vs a bike, I think you have part of your answer there.
And yet they keep using it. 100% of all protoss late game ends up in the same place, clearly because Protoss player THINKS that this is the best thing they have available to them, simply because it's the simplest, straightest path to the late game.
This is exactly my point, you have a strategy that on the surface is flexible, powerful, with the least amount of risk in getting you to the game you want to play, so why bother trying anything else? You say they have not received the best result, but this is against the top level players, against mid range players the composition still works exceedingly well. A car is not the best choice for all situation, but most of the time it's the most convenient one, so you just use it.
Look at lurker in TvZ and see how that meta played out. For a long time only Reynor was reliably using it and it took many months for the other pros to start adopting it. Why? Because it wasn't OBVIOUS at first what the potential of the range upgrade could do for the match up. It was something that encouraged experimentation and ultimately it helped grow the meta and made TvZ a much more dynamic match up, more than say if ling ultra was clearly the BEST option.
Now look at how the Skytoss meta developed. Practically from the moment Blizzard dropped the price of interceptor Protoss players immediately start massing carriers because it was the obvious thing to do. When Voidray got the build time and speed buff mass voidray immediately became the default meta because it was so clearly a good build. THAT'S the problem that we're talking about here. When you introduce changes that are so obviously meant to push the meta one way it drowns out the conversation and it discourages experimentation.
You ask "why bother trying anything else" rhetorically but I already gave you an answer. If you mostly lose vs the very best players using that strategy, then that's an incentive to try something else.
On March 12 2022 00:03 Nebuchad wrote: You ask "why bother trying anything else" rhetorically but I already gave you an answer. If you mostly lose vs the very best players using that strategy, then that's an incentive to try something else.
And how often are you (not you personally but the hypothetical player we're discussing) playing against the best player? Let's not confused the general player population with the very small segment of players who are consistently reaching that top level of competition. If 8 out of 10 games you're meeting opponents that you can beat with the "convenient" skytoss build, then you do that. If you're losing only 20% of the time against the handful of players who are capable of consistently winning against skytoss, then I consider that pretty good odds. It doesn't encourage you to experiment.
Plus, this game simply cannot just be sustain with the top 1% of players. At the lower level there's no question that Skytoss is by far the best strategy to use, and that's really the issue. There's no denying that the PvZ meta has stagnated on the Protoss side for years. On the Zerg side there has been numerous changes in how to play the match up, with even microbial shroud/mass queen getting a fair amount of play recently. Why is this? Again this is because there's no obvious best way for zerg to fight skytoss, so it encourages experimentation. The moment Skytoss stops becoming the "default" option is the moment where the experimentation on the Toss side can begin. I'm not convince that with all the options that Protoss has at their disposal they can't put together a ground-based style that can go toe to toe with Zerg in the late game.
Last time I played the hypothetical player who doesn't play against the best was losing to my three adepts one oracle third base into only carriers build, I have zero interest in how balance affects him and you should too.
On March 12 2022 00:16 Nebuchad wrote: Last time I played the hypothetical player who doesn't play against the best was losing to my three adepts one oracle third base into only carriers build, I have zero interest in how balance affects him and you should too.
Ok so I don't care about the player at your level perhaps. But if I'm a mid level pro and I play in a tournament, how often am I running into a Dark or a Serral? Or it is more likely that I'll play a Ragnarok or Lambo, who are both solid players but I know that my Skytoss style can reliably beat? If I'm a smart player I'm going to play the strat that gives me the best overall chance of success, and for now that's Skytoss.
On March 12 2022 00:03 Nebuchad wrote: You ask "why bother trying anything else" rhetorically but I already gave you an answer. If you mostly lose vs the very best players using that strategy, then that's an incentive to try something else.
And how often are you (not you personally but the hypothetical player we're discussing) playing against the best player? Let's not confused the general player population with the very small segment of players who are consistently reaching that top level of competition. If 8 out of 10 games you're meeting opponents that you can beat with the "convenient" skytoss build, then you do that. If you're losing only 20% of the time against the handful of players who are capable of consistently winning against skytoss, then I consider that pretty good odds. It doesn't encourage you to experiment.
Plus, this game simply cannot just be sustain with the top 1% of players. At the lower level there's no question that Skytoss is by far the best strategy to use, and that's really the issue.
If pros earned their money through winning as many ladder games as they could over a season sure. Playing the odds with a stable strategy that works against most people and is pretty safe to cheese is the way to go.
They earn the big bucks, and the prestige from peaking at big tournaments though.
Trap and Zest know the ceiling where playing the odds isn’t enough, they’ve been smacked around enough by big Zergs (and taken the odd scalp) over the last couple of years.
They’ve 100% been experimenting, they both know that to take a Katowice or Code S there’s a high likelihood they can’t just dodge all the Zergs
They just haven’t found anything that reliably works, yet.
It’s worth noting that Zest refined the hell out of Skytoss to get it to its current state of use and stability.
What about if I'm the very best protoss and I play thé best zergs consistently? Wouldn't I then try ground, see that it's viable against the best players, and then conclude that it's therefore also viable against weaker zergs, at which point other protosses then adopt my build?
Also who is this second tier protoss who wins consistently against second tier zergs? Are you sure you're not talking about a top tier protoss winning against second tier zergs, but protoss has been underperforming so much lately that you view their top tier as similar level to zerg's second tier? I tried Mana, Harstem, Skillous, Gerald, and none of them have a winning record against Lambo or Elazer.
meh I think it's disengenuous to act as though Protoss is unique in having less strategic diversity in the ultra-late-game. All three races have ultra-late-game "peak" compositions where things settle down somewhat and the focus moves to holding ground with static d and slightly adjusting the comp in order to respond to slight adjustments in the enemy's comp or get an edge and preparing for army wipes and rebuilds. This happens just as much with Protoss as any other race, with the balance of disruptors, HTs, Carriers, Tempests, Archons, Voids, Immortals, Stalkers, etc depending on exactly what the Zerg is doing. Protoss comps in general are more "deathbally," but that's true in other phases of the game too and you definitely have late-game harass, etc.
The "problem" with Skytoss wasn't that it existed as a late-game comp but that with the Void opener Protoss could essentially vault into a strong lategame composition so much faster than the enemy that the opponent could not possibly have their own late-game composition ready and therefore most of the late-game strategic stuff doesn't apply. In effect it turns a late-game composition into a mid-game composition. There's a somewhat analogous position with Zergs rushing to Hive, but Skytoss is just a more stable and all-around (and less strategically complex) comp than being able to quickly get Lurkers with upgrades or a few BLs out.
If you can delay Toss getting into their late-game comp, though, by the time they do the game will be in a very different state and things will be generally more interesting.
There's an argument to be made that all ultra-late-game stuff should be rebalanced and changed (generally in SC2 Tier 3 stuff is much stronger relative to Tier 1 and 2 than it is in BW, as is Static D, and that changes the game a lot and makes late-game arguably more passive and different from other phases of the game), but just changing Protoss wouldn't accomplish that.
On March 12 2022 01:36 Riner1212 wrote: my only concern is that for queen transfuse. what if they get over lord to drop creep on them... during their early cheeses.
They would need lair for creep (overlord or nydus) which is OK. It delays the all in. It‘s not like you are not able to do any cheese or all on builds anymore. You have to adjust some things.
On March 12 2022 01:36 Riner1212 wrote: my only concern is that for queen transfuse. what if they get over lord to drop creep on them... during their early cheeses.
They would need lair for creep (overlord or nydus) which is OK. It delays the all in. It‘s not like you are not able to do any cheese or all on builds anymore. You have to adjust some things.
Yeah Zerg can still allin it’s just that they can’t do it unreasonably fast any more.
On March 10 2022 03:49 Jerubaal wrote: While that's a good analysis, you're slightly overselling Skytoss. It wasn't some great build Protoss did because it was so strong. They went that build because everything else was terrible.
Well at a high level yes in low gm and below they go it because it’s extremely effective at non pro levels of play.
Obv still quite early but this PvZ btw Harstem & Lambo on the new patch seems quite promising:
If Harstem's approach is right, the Void Ray will still contribute to stabilizing Toss early game, but going mass Voids early on will be difficult/unrewarding and it will be very difficult to transition straight into Carriers. At least in these games, tho, Protoss seems to be in a better econ position overall, and so able to play a true mid-game a lot more.
Seems pretty ideal to me, but we'll have to see how it turns out.
On March 12 2022 21:33 Jerubaal wrote: I feel like so many fucked up design/balance choices have revolved around Zergs lack of early anti air.
Yeah 100% especially as expansions have given either boosts to existing air units or whole new air units to play with.
Yes, Air units mustn t be as important than ground units. In my mind Carrier for example could cost 1 supply but each time you buy an interceptor, you increase the supply by +X. Kind of flying factory. But I have to say i m not really interesting in viewing air fights so....
Then even if patchs aren t fully usefull directly, maybe if community, casters and pros react well afterall, Activision could let the game evolve in different hands increasing the replayability of the game... Which is actually really suffering
On March 09 2022 04:53 Vindicare605 wrote: I love these changes personally. Nerfs all of the things that players hated the most. and the only "buff" (which not surprisingly went to Zerg alone) is to the Nydus Worm and only to its creep spread.
For the people complaining about Protoss, I still have a question that no one wants to actually answer. How do you buff Protoss so that it starts winning Championships without making its 50% of GM domination even worse?
Conundrum that doesn't have any good answers that can be fixed with a minor balance patch. There's nothing wrong with Protoss except that at the top level it sucks. It dominates every level below that including lower pro level, semi pro, GM and the rest of the ladder.
Don't care one bit about GM composition consisting of some 200 players that nobody even watches. Why is that even a big problem? I just wanna see protoss winning chapionships at least once in a while.
On March 13 2022 01:41 Captain Peabody wrote: Obv still quite early but this PvZ btw Harstem & Lambo on the new patch seems quite promising: https://youtu.be/c0cYCnEQGgI
If Harstem's approach is right, the Void Ray will still contribute to stabilizing Toss early game, but going mass Voids early on will be difficult/unrewarding and it will be very difficult to transition straight into Carriers. At least in these games, tho, Protoss seems to be in a better econ position overall, and so able to play a true mid-game a lot more.
Seems pretty ideal to me, but we'll have to see how it turns out.
This is wishful thinking, do you rly see Maxpax playing like this? I want to see them play this, but going for Carrier to rly show that Toss can't force skytoss vs spell casters, like before. I rly can't see how it shouldn't be possible. Even if Void Ray is back to úber trash like it was before, you can still open Oracle for your 3rd base go Phoenix and then into Carrier.
Alright time to put things in perspective for you guys again, I'll go through all the changes and what the results of said changes are and will be.
Shield battery change: While it is good that we nerf these cheesy openings that not only create bad gameplay for both players and viewers, Protoss now has even weaker early game aggression then before making the race even more predictable which is the biggest weakness of Protoss. The SC2 community is under the illusion that Protoss was "designed" by Blizzard to be the deceptive race that relies on all inns and strong timing attacks or harass, "mixing it up" as they say to win. All this is of course ironic considering Protoss is THE MOST PREDICTABLE RACE OF ALL THREE RACES. If Protoss is supposed to be deceptive then why is it the easiest race to scout and read.
Void ray nerf: So you want Protoss to stop going void ray all inns and sky toss we get it and I'm all for it, but where is the compensation? Have you been watching PVZ the past few years? Remember that little nerf you did to immortals and warp prism? sorry did I call it little what we should say is MASSIVE NERF TO PROTOSS if we are being totally honest. They buffed Void rays to help protoss PVZ now you revert the buff and don't even give a reasoning. And before you write a reply post saying they nerfed queens transfuse, zerg players are laughing right now, getting creep into the mix is not a problem for zerg it is a slight alteration in the build to keep doing the same thing they are already doing. This is weak and lacks foresight. If only you had me on your balance team you could avoid all these pitfalls you keep finding yourselves inn.
Dark Templar nerf: While I do agree it looks silly when a bunch of DTs jump in and 1 shot your planetary, I don't find it to be unbalanced, we have seen it deflected with good success with widowmines and good sim cities. I can already hear "It's to expensive Terran can't afford it" If Protoss can afford to warp in 10 DTs and right click them on your planetary like he don't care it means you probably lost the game already anyway OR you 100% can afford the defense on that base because you are now in the late game. But yeah whatever , if it makes Terrans cry less I guess have at it.
Widowmine nerf: I mean it helps, non drill widowmines are already winning games for Terrans they have no business winning anyway , looks good on paper don't really feel like it will be that impactful as a whole for the matchup.
Lurker nerf: Irrelevant, changes nothing , Lurker is to strong because when it reaches critical mass it demolishes anything on the ground and must be out ranged and can never be fought head on by a ground army. Lurker range and damage is to high. This will have little to no effect just a slight change in Zerg approach in engagements.
Nydus change: Well yes ofcourse we can't have 20 queens not being able to spam transfusing the same nydus because thats good game play and doesnt look stupid at all.
Welcome to SC2 ZERG EDITION in stores since 2010.
To summarize: HORRIBLE patch for Protoss, and as in true Blizzard fashion, while Protoss is the worst performing race also always gets the heaviest nerfs, its like tradition at this point? Someone over there really holds a grudge eh?`
For Terran kinda whatever, TvZ TvP got a little easier for them thats about it.
For Zerg small nerfs that won't really change anything at highest level of play.
Before I peace out I must ask, where are the names of the ones who worked on the patch changes?
Why do you give no reasoning behind the changes you made?
I agree with the above poster, the more I think about this the worse I think it is for Protoss.
Before the VR buff the only "viable" strategy was the shitty adept play, and I say Viable cause it had a terrible success rate.
Then they buffed the Vr and protohad some options. Now the VR is more expensive, takes longer to build and there is no compensation at all?
The VR is still slightly faster than originally but no other help for protoss? When Zerg was dominating the match up before? (And lets be honest, after the VR buff as well, just not as much).
The battery change and the increase build time of the VR and it's increased cost are also aimed at stopping the proxy push (which I agree is too strong), but are the 3 nerfs necessary? Really? All 3?
And again, with no form of compensation?
The nerf to the lurker is so small it's frankly ridiculous.
I think this will turn out very, very bad for protoss in pvz.
^ Did you guys conveniently forget that Queen walks were more or less deleted from the game? Protoss will now be able to secure their fast third bases after opening Oracle essentially for free now, that has huge implications for PvZ, not sure how you can't see that. Queen walks were a response to a greedy play, now Protoss get's to be greedy much easier.
Not saying Protoss didn't need help in PvZ because of course they did, but still, the Queen nerf is massive.
"Widowmine nerf: I mean it helps, non drill widowmines are already winning games for Terrans they have no business winning anyway , looks good on paper don't really feel like it will be that impactful as a whole for the matchup."
Exactly how everyone feels about proxy battery void ray cheese, down to the letter.
Agree about Lurkers though, this new balance council needs to really be paying attention to that unit in particular. Personally I think Adapative Talons needs to be nerfed further or removed entirely (I'm a 3.5K Zerg) but I think they are scared to really bring the nerf hammer down on the Lurker because Ghosts already own them so fucking hard.
I'd also prefer if the balance council started looking more into the Viper, Abduct was necessary back in the day to break up deathballs but Zerg have advanced greatly on fighting Protoss in the late game. Some type of change to Abduct I think would be healthy for the game, it's too effective against high value units in general imo.
- Make Abduct cost 50 energy
Simple, appropriate, would make Zergs have to choose between Abducting or using the other 2 of the Vipers insanely powerful spells.
But yea, to sit here and cry about Protoss cheese nerfs like Protoss got zero compensation is wrong. Protoss did get a buff through a Zerg nerf, and it was a big nerf especially at the top level which is obviously who this patch is meant for.
Considering there are queen walks timings with the lair so you cannot defend with DTs it's questionable how much it will be delayed for the top level zergs - namely Dark, Rogue, Reynor, Serral.
On March 14 2022 20:05 deacon.frost wrote: Considering there are queen walks timings with the lair so you cannot defend with DTs it's questionable how much it will be delayed for the top level zergs - namely Dark, Rogue, Reynor, Serral.
A massive difference, you go from from 8 Queens surviving and all 4 Voids dying to all 4 Voids surviving and all Queens dying.
I'm not talking about any lair timings, I've watched damn near every major high level ZvP for the last 2 years straight and I can probably count on one hand the amount of lair timings I've seen that look imbalanced vs. the clearly imbalanced Queen walk all in that hits with 6 - 8 Queens off creep supported by lings/roach/ravager on hatch tech. Tbh I can't even remember a single game that had a Lair timing Queen all in that looked powerful, by that point Protoss should have had plenty of time to prepare or there were scouting/execution errors such as letting a cheeky Nydus get popped in their main or some other non balance related reason.
But this new meta of go to 6 minute Queen all ins? That build was broken, it was too punishing for Protoss to hold compared to the ease that pro Zergs were executing the build. That build is now going to be thrown in the trash where it belongs along with proxy battery Void Ray all ins.
On March 14 2022 19:50 Beelzebub1 wrote: ^ Did you guys conveniently forget that Queen walks were more or less deleted from the game? Protoss will now be able to secure their fast third bases after opening Oracle essentially for free now, that has huge implications for PvZ, not sure how you can't see that. Queen walks were a response to a greedy play, now Protoss get's to be greedy much easier.
Not saying Protoss didn't need help in PvZ because of course they did, but still, the Queen nerf is massive.
"Widowmine nerf: I mean it helps, non drill widowmines are already winning games for Terrans they have no business winning anyway , looks good on paper don't really feel like it will be that impactful as a whole for the matchup."
Exactly how everyone feels about proxy battery void ray cheese, down to the letter.
Agree about Lurkers though, this new balance council needs to really be paying attention to that unit in particular. Personally I think Adapative Talons needs to be nerfed further or removed entirely (I'm a 3.5K Zerg) but I think they are scared to really bring the nerf hammer down on the Lurker because Ghosts already own them so fucking hard.
I'd also prefer if the balance council started looking more into the Viper, Abduct was necessary back in the day to break up deathballs but Zerg have advanced greatly on fighting Protoss in the late game. Some type of change to Abduct I think would be healthy for the game, it's too effective against high value units in general imo.
- Make Abduct cost 50 energy
Simple, appropriate, would make Zergs have to choose between Abducting or using the other 2 of the Vipers insanely powerful spells.
But yea, to sit here and cry about Protoss cheese nerfs like Protoss got zero compensation is wrong. Protoss did get a buff through a Zerg nerf, and it was a big nerf especially at the top level which is obviously who this patch is meant for.
I think the problem is the Queen walk nerf doesnt feel compensatory, it feels like Protoss might actually wind up weaker because Queen Walks only happen vs Protoss but Void Rays are used vs Terran and Zerg, and its one of the few things Protoss was leaning on.
Sure, Im rarely sad to see cheese go and in a vacuum Im glad the Void Ray builds are getting a nerf, but... it really feels like Protoss isnt going to be all that much better off, it at all.
The good news is that someone from Blizzard is doing something.
the bad news is that they don't have a clue what they are doing.
I just hope the minesweeper team will step in soon and will make this game great again. SC2 is not that great nowadays and with the proposed changes it will get even worse
I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
Somebody should write a movie on this.
+1 to this
Besides, Harstem already alluded that these are not the final numbers and are subject to change, with this, "Council of Balance" kind of running things more or less, I think he made it pretty clear that changes are going to be tried and tested more rapidly in the future.
I think it's always best to start small and work your way up, you can always tweak numbers further if necessary.
But I think crying over anything that isn't a buff to Gateway units is a fool's errand and not worth your time or mental energy. Core units are difficult to change without dramatically affecting balance and those changes are probably not going to happen barring ludicrous imbalances in the win rates.
There was a time in the days of yore when Roaches were considered useless. Then they got +1 range buff and became staple units in all match ups for 10 + years.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
Somebody should write a movie on this.
Pro players are not enlightened, mystical beings. Do you think pros are immune to misperceptions based on what they find annoying? Did you really think that people who mock the lower leagues for complaining about "imbalance" were actually unbiased when it came to their own play? While I think most people mostly think the patch has a lot of decent changes, it's really hard not to look at it as a political document. It's hard not to look at the Queen and Void Ray nerfs as not being a matching set. And they nerfed the WM because, well, they had to nerf something. We've also heard enough from pros the last few months to know that some of them are really fanny-bothered about how many Protoss are in GM and about losing to who they consider to be "lesser" players.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
Somebody should write a movie on this.
Pro players are not enlightened, mystical beings. Do you think pros are immune to misperceptions based on what they find annoying? Did you really think that people who mock the lower leagues for complaining about "imbalance" were actually unbiased when it came to their own play? While I think most people mostly think the patch has a lot of decent changes, it's really hard not to look at it as a political document. It's hard not to look at the Queen and Void Ray nerfs as not being a matching set. And they nerfed the WM because, well, they had to nerf something. We've also heard enough from pros the last few months to know that some of them are really fanny-bothered about how many Protoss are in GM and about losing to who they consider to be "lesser" players.
Yeah, design/balance by committee is not a good solution either. It would help divert blame though.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
Somebody should write a movie on this.
You played zerg dude how are you going to post like this. You like the patch because it most likely keeps your players on top and you realize that, don't project your feelings onto us.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
Somebody should write a movie on this.
You played zerg dude how are you going to post like this. You like the patch because it most likely keeps your players on top and you realize that, don't project your feelings onto us.
Sir, have you even played the game this week/today/yesterday in 1v1? Have you even played other races? Do you even play at a level where you can think you understand balance? Be honest.
By hiding your feelings under false pretenses that you care about balance more even though you write 10 paragraph at least about your protoss love. At this point you have to pick one. You either care about your race in ladder more or about the pro balance.
Either way, judging by what's said by pro protoss players that were part of this patch, they want the race to be able to bring out their maximum potential.
However, if you have ladder players overperform multiple times over their punching weight and pro players suffering cause the race noticeably has a low "potential", we have to make changes.
Future patches are surely gonna continue making changes to further improve the situation. As multiple pros have already stated, there's a process already in place where there's good communication and discussion between pros and blizzard developer(s).
On March 14 2022 19:50 Beelzebub1 wrote: ^ Did you guys conveniently forget that Queen walks were more or less deleted from the game? Protoss will now be able to secure their fast third bases after opening Oracle essentially for free now, that has huge implications for PvZ, not sure how you can't see that. Queen walks were a response to a greedy play, now Protoss get's to be greedy much easier.
Not saying Protoss didn't need help in PvZ because of course they did, but still, the Queen nerf is massive.
"Widowmine nerf: I mean it helps, non drill widowmines are already winning games for Terrans they have no business winning anyway , looks good on paper don't really feel like it will be that impactful as a whole for the matchup."
Exactly how everyone feels about proxy battery void ray cheese, down to the letter.
Agree about Lurkers though, this new balance council needs to really be paying attention to that unit in particular. Personally I think Adapative Talons needs to be nerfed further or removed entirely (I'm a 3.5K Zerg) but I think they are scared to really bring the nerf hammer down on the Lurker because Ghosts already own them so fucking hard.
I'd also prefer if the balance council started looking more into the Viper, Abduct was necessary back in the day to break up deathballs but Zerg have advanced greatly on fighting Protoss in the late game. Some type of change to Abduct I think would be healthy for the game, it's too effective against high value units in general imo.
- Make Abduct cost 50 energy
Simple, appropriate, would make Zergs have to choose between Abducting or using the other 2 of the Vipers insanely powerful spells.
But yea, to sit here and cry about Protoss cheese nerfs like Protoss got zero compensation is wrong. Protoss did get a buff through a Zerg nerf, and it was a big nerf especially at the top level which is obviously who this patch is meant for.
The queen nerf is not massive what so ever, do you know how many options zerg have vs Protoss currently? if you think its hard for Zerg to read Protoss all inns , try reading when a zerg is gonna do a timing on you , its near impossible because you can't know what is being produced by zerg until it pops out of the eggs, Protoss you can read the incoming timing sometimes minutes before it even hits, and by then protoss changed their plan and play from behind because they got scouted, Protoss is the only race in the game that will basically have an auto loss when getting scouted because there is no middle way for protoss, you are either very greedy or very committed to a timing or all inn that must do damage or kill. Why do you think people think "Protoss players are so bad" , its cuss the game basically is designed and balanced that way right now and its really bad but noone seems to understand it. At Pro level players play of information at such an insane level most people can't even comprehend , this interaction of information war between the races Protoss is severaly underpowered and I am baffled noone else can see this, it is actually insane noone can recognize this simple fact.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
Somebody should write a movie on this.
You played zerg dude how are you going to post like this. You like the patch because it most likely keeps your players on top and you realize that, don't project your feelings onto us.
Either way, judging by what's said by pro protoss players that were part of this patch, they want the race to be able to bring out their maximum potential.
However, if you have ladder players overperform multiple times over their punching weight and pro players suffering cause the race noticeably has a low "potential", we have to make changes.
Future patches are surely gonna continue making changes to further improve the situation. As multiple pros have already stated, there's a process already in place where there's good communication and discussion between pros and blizzard developer(s).
You're not doing a lot to dispel the notion that the P nerfs weren't motivated by pride and ego.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
Somebody should write a movie on this.
You played zerg dude how are you going to post like this. You like the patch because it most likely keeps your players on top and you realize that, don't project your feelings onto us.
Either way, judging by what's said by pro protoss players that were part of this patch, they want the race to be able to bring out their maximum potential.
However, if you have ladder players overperform multiple times over their punching weight and pro players suffering cause the race noticeably has a low "potential", we have to make changes.
Future patches are surely gonna continue making changes to further improve the situation. As multiple pros have already stated, there's a process already in place where there's good communication and discussion between pros and blizzard developer(s).
You're not doing a lot to dispel the notion that the P nerfs weren't motivated by pride and ego.
Who's ego though? I don't think the pros aren't aware that there's a pretty significant race imbalance at the top levels that doesn't exist lower. They're just trying to thread the needle.
On March 15 2022 04:15 Railgan wrote: I love that we have a council of Pro-Players enact the Balance Changes they think are the best.
Then you have the Community who always wants to Balance the Game around those Progamers suddenly going against them.
Because in a unforeseeable Plottwist the Community never wanted the game to be balanced but for their chosen race to finally reign atop the Tournament Scene.
Somebody should write a movie on this.
You played zerg dude how are you going to post like this. You like the patch because it most likely keeps your players on top and you realize that, don't project your feelings onto us.
However, if you have ladder players overperform multiple times over their punching weight and pro players suffering cause the race noticeably has a low "potential", we have to make changes.
This would be fine, except that's not the reality. They only touched the "overperform" stuff and did nothing for the "low potential" stuff.
This speaks to their mindset, and people keep mentioning Harstem, I watch Harstem so I know it's his mindset as well. They aren't very sure that protoss is underperforming at high level. Maybe all protosses just suck, or get unlucky. This isn't a patch that is designed to improve the experience of people rooting for protoss, and it comes at a time where watching the game while rooting for protoss makes zero sense given how obvious it is that protoss is going to get rolled in any significant tournament. If you can't assign priorities correctly in those circumstances, when can you.
If you watch any pro player, the most common balance comments you hear are "there are too many Protoss in GM" and "too many 'bad' players win games". I don't think these are good reasons for balance changes, especially because these things don't seem to have an effect on major tournaments.
Didn't Harstem say that these weren't the final numbers and were subject to change? Also that the new balance team would be quicker to react and make changes?
This would be fine, except that's not the reality. They only touched the "overperform" stuff and did nothing for the "low potential" stuff.
This is a good wording for this patch, I agree with it. I'd rather have something over nothing though without a doubt, early game Queen walks getting patched out will only improve the ZvP metagame.
I said improve, not fix every problem or every grievance that Protoss players have with the match up. Hopefully as the seasons go on this year, we get some patches are indeed more so about improving the quality of life of low potential Protoss units.
It's actually a topic that I find interesting as to what can be done to improve say, Gateway units. There's alot of good ideas suggested by alot of people, but I think that the balance teams knows that the implications of changing core units is huge and the you're more or less totally rewriting the way the game is played.
Didn't Harstem say that these weren't the final numbers and were subject to change? Also that the new balance team would be quicker to react and make changes?
I've been wrong before.
Fuck it, the sooner we get to see matches played with it the sooner the conjecture can end.
On March 14 2022 19:50 Beelzebub1 wrote: ^ Did you guys conveniently forget that Queen walks were more or less deleted from the game? Protoss will now be able to secure their fast third bases after opening Oracle essentially for free now, that has huge implications for PvZ, not sure how you can't see that. Queen walks were a response to a greedy play, now Protoss get's to be greedy much easier.
Not saying Protoss didn't need help in PvZ because of course they did, but still, the Queen nerf is massive.
"Widowmine nerf: I mean it helps, non drill widowmines are already winning games for Terrans they have no business winning anyway , looks good on paper don't really feel like it will be that impactful as a whole for the matchup."
Exactly how everyone feels about proxy battery void ray cheese, down to the letter.
Agree about Lurkers though, this new balance council needs to really be paying attention to that unit in particular. Personally I think Adapative Talons needs to be nerfed further or removed entirely (I'm a 3.5K Zerg) but I think they are scared to really bring the nerf hammer down on the Lurker because Ghosts already own them so fucking hard.
I'd also prefer if the balance council started looking more into the Viper, Abduct was necessary back in the day to break up deathballs but Zerg have advanced greatly on fighting Protoss in the late game. Some type of change to Abduct I think would be healthy for the game, it's too effective against high value units in general imo.
- Make Abduct cost 50 energy
Simple, appropriate, would make Zergs have to choose between Abducting or using the other 2 of the Vipers insanely powerful spells.
But yea, to sit here and cry about Protoss cheese nerfs like Protoss got zero compensation is wrong. Protoss did get a buff through a Zerg nerf, and it was a big nerf especially at the top level which is obviously who this patch is meant for.
EPT
When talking about carriers we need to mention lurkers, they are linked together 
