EPTBalance Patch 5.0.11 PTR Patch Notes - Page 8
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warnull
United States280 Posts
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Athenau
571 Posts
On December 10 2022 11:17 warnull wrote: Would you mind explaining why? Was it computed or tested in PTR? And why is it a bad change? Lurkers move at speed 4.543 when upgraded. Snipe is 10 range. A lurker needs to unborrow and move 3.5 units away in the 1.43 seconds that snipe takes to go off. That leaves .93 seconds to cover that distance, which they can easily do. Why is it bad? I'm not sure if this is a serious question. Maybe you should ask yourself why handing out yet another unnecessary buff to the race that's won 6/13 premier tournaments and taken 13/26 finalist spots in 2022, and has dominated the professional scene for the last three years is a good idea. | ||
Nakajin
Canada8990 Posts
On December 10 2022 11:13 Athenau wrote: Wtf? This means that Lurkers can now escape snipe after unburrowing. This shit is egregious. If its actually the case that's insane | ||
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warnull
United States280 Posts
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JJH777
United States4418 Posts
On December 10 2022 11:40 Athenau wrote: Lurkers move at speed 4.543 when upgraded. Snipe is 10 range. A lurker needs to unborrow and move 3.5 units away in the 1.43 seconds that snipe takes to go off. That leaves .93 seconds to cover that distance, which they can easily do. Why is it bad? I'm not sure if this is a serious question. Maybe you should ask yourself why handing out yet another unnecessary buff to the race that's won 6/13 premier tournaments and taken 13/26 finalist spots in 2022, and has dominated the professional scene for the last three years is a good idea. Four years* 2019-2022 and 2019 was actually the most dominant Zerg or any race has ever been in single year by trophies and prize money. | ||
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QOGQOG
834 Posts
On December 10 2022 12:14 JJH777 wrote: Four years* 2019-2022 and 2019 was actually the most dominant Zerg or any race has ever been in single year by trophies and prize money. Yeah, it's been bad for a long time. I really hope the changes that make Zerg even stronger lategame don't go through, though with Rogue and (soon) Dark going to the military I'm worried.. | ||
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warnull
United States280 Posts
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hjpalpha
Germany339 Posts
On December 10 2022 12:41 warnull wrote: Except for 2019, the prize distribution is pretty even among races. Source:  Statistics/2021A big reason why Zerg appears dominant this year in Premier Tournaments is because the DreamHack NA regionals were reclassified as non-Premier. If they are kept Premier then Z has won 6/15 premiers instead of 6/13. 6/15 is indistinguishable from a 3 sided die roll.
tldr: Zerg is the strongest race by far already and they get significantly buffed with this patch while the race having the worst results in the last years gets their late game practically removed vs Zerg. I sure hope that the patch never goes live in the current form. You basically could just remove any non Zerg from any tier 1 event and would achieve the same ... | ||
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warnull
United States280 Posts
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hjpalpha
Germany339 Posts
On December 10 2022 14:13 warnull wrote: >Scarlett creating the patch makes a lot of sense. Only a zerg player could have created this patch. It is so damn Zerg fav. To clarify the balance changes were decided by the balance panel as a whole. Scarlett created the implementation for the patch. Scarlett did not single-handily decide which balance changes made it in or not. would be interesting to get to know who is on that balance panel. at least the race representation with corresponding mmr range would be relevant my guess is that it is heavily dominated by zerg players | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16121 Posts
On December 10 2022 14:18 hjpalpha wrote: would be interesting to get to know who is on that balance panel. at least the race representation with corresponding mmr range would be relevant my guess is that it is heavily dominated by zerg players It wouldn't matter if it was or not, someone at Blizz has to green light these balance patches, and their pattern of Zerg favoritism goes all the way back to the David Kim era. 2012, 2019 the two most imbalanced years in SC2's history that favored Zerg and they were far enough apart for there to be convincing evidence that it's not just these pro "council" responsible for Zerg favoritism in SC2's balancing. Although Scarlett having a lot of familiarity with the balance changes makes a lot of sense considering she was one of the first if not the first Zerg I saw abusing the 2019 Nydus Worms at Katowice. That was in February of that year, and they were allowed to remain in that broken state all the way through to Blizzcon that year. The infamous ZvZ Blizzcon that Dark won, where every pro was abusing the shit out of the Nydus Worms. | ||
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hjpalpha
Germany339 Posts
On December 10 2022 14:13 warnull wrote: >Scarlett creating the patch makes a lot of sense. Only a zerg player could have created this patch. It is so damn Zerg fav. To clarify the balance changes were decided by the balance panel as a whole. Scarlett created the implementation for the patch. Scarlett did not single-handily decide which balance changes made it in or not. To me the PTR patch is well thought out and balanced. Right now the main complaints for each race are: Ghosts, Disruptors, and Queens. The patch nerfed the first two, and because of the difficulty in directly tuning Queens, nerfed Creep and Ravagers instead.
The PTR patch notes doesn't explain why each change was made. However after watching various patch analysis vods by pros, I can make a reasonable guess at the philosophy and design process behind it. To me, every change falls under one of 4 categories: 1a. Nerfs to the most complained about units: Ghost, Disruptor, Carrier, Battery Overcharge, Viper. Indirect nerf to Queens. There is no real nerf to Queens (the creep nerf doesn't have any effect) 1b. Buffs to underused units: Ultralisk, Raven, Banshee, Sentry. The raven change is a nerf not a buff. They will still be useless for clearing creep and their harassment options get nerfed as well as their late game potential. The Banshee change is utterly irrelevant. The upgrade will still not be used at all since it still is not a viable option. Ultras are not really underused in TvZ. 2. Nerfs that discourage late-game turtling: Ghost snipe, Sensor tower reduction, Interceptor shield reduction, Viper post-abduct stun, Brood lord damage. I would be okay with nerfing ghosts IF terran would get some compensation for it. With only nerfing ghost to the ground you remove terran late game (especially vs Z). 3. Changes that increase micro potential: hydra move speed, ultra size reduction. i am mostly okay with those, even though i do not really see the necessity for these. they buff units that are already used enough. 4. Changes that target lower level players without affect pro balance: Interceptor target priority, Archon size reduction. those are totally reasonable imo Viewed this way, the patch seems pretty reasonable. 1. If the community created a tier list for units, then nerfed the S/A units and buffed the C/D units, it would bear some resemblance to the PTR patch. I think that is a good motivation for this patch and future balance patches. if that were the case terran would have lots of units buffed and lurkers would get nerfed heavily too 2. Late game turtling is unfun to play and unfun to watch. It makes a lot of sense to discourage late game turtling. agreed, but removing all late game options of terran (and to some extend toss) while buffing zerg late game options is balnce breaking in fav of zerg (which is by far already the strongest race and that for over half a decade) 3. I think most would agree that raising the skill cap of strategies is good. 4. Decoupling diamond balance from gm balance makes a lot of sense. if it is doable yes I really like the overall concept of this patch. There's uncertainty in how the balance will turn out (for example it's possible that hydras will become too powerful if micro'd well), but I'm confident that those issues can be worked out when discovered. TL;DR Balance was decided by community panel. Scarlett only implemented the changes. Overall direction of the patch is outstanding, within reasonable uncertainties. Overall direction of the patch is outstanding imbalnce. I like the idea behind most of the changes if viewing them isolated, but the overall combination of the changes is just stupidly imbalanced. (imo) | ||
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warnull
United States280 Posts
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hjpalpha
Germany339 Posts
On December 10 2022 15:29 warnull wrote: All pro players were invited to the balance panel. So unless anyone declined the invite, the balance panel is exactly the current top pros. several pros were not asked. several pros already mentioned that is not really democratic/fair and hence left it funnily none of the zergs left to my knowledge... I would like to point out that just because someone plays a particular race, doesn't mean they can't make fair balance decisions. I understand that if you think the PTR patch is super zerg favored, then zergs can't be trusted to decide balance. I assure you it's not that cynical. People like Scarlett, TY, Lambo, Harstem can individually ensure balance without letting their biases get in the way. that they theoretically could doesn't mean they would. people tend to try to get advantages for themselves where ever possible. thats just (human) nature I hope that you can zoom out a bit and look at it from a higher level. it's not super zerg favored as some here are making it out to be. i think it is super zerg favoured and as said before each change on its own might be logical if accompanied by a reasonable overall composition but that reasonable overall view is exactly what is missing with that patch | ||
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allmotor1
153 Posts
how will Terran stop ling/bane/hydra to lurker late game? ghosts was T's main chance in late game vs lurkers. And hydras being faster along with disruptors nerf, I think protoss will just die to hydra pushes. | ||
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warnull
United States280 Posts
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hjpalpha
Germany339 Posts
On December 10 2022 16:05 warnull wrote: I'll try and explain what I think Blizzard's involvement is on the balance patch. This is my educated guess based on things I've picked up over the years (like the ladder fiasco last Christmas) and my experience working in tech. My guess may very well be wrong, although I do have some confidence in it. 1. Blizzard has allocated 0 headcount directly to StarCraft 2. Rather, StarCraft 2 is maintained by the Classic Games team that also maintains WC3, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo 2. 2. Nobody in that team is knowledgeable enough about StarCraft 2 to evaluate balance changes. It's likely that noone in the team plays StarCraft 2 or know what the units do. 3. Patches can still be built because there's enough people out there that know how the SC2 engine works (Scarlett, Arcade mapmakers, etc), and because it is similar to the HotS engine (which is a fork of the SC2 engine). 4. Patches can still be deployed because there's little that's StarCraft specific there. The devops team that maintains the WoW servers can deploy SC2 patches just as easily as WoW patches. The process for designing, building, and shipping a balance patch is then: 1. The balance panel (of pro players) comes to a consensus on what the balance changes should be. 2. Scarlett builds a balance mod for internal testing and works out the technical issues. She is assisted by SC2 arcade mapmakers and the remaining HotS developers at Blizzard. 3. The head of ESL SC2 approves the patch. 4. The product manager at Blizzard Classic Games rubber stamps the patch on ESL's advice. 5. The dev ops team ships the patch to PTR and then live. that esl approved this bs is pretty bad sign imo also i sure hope that point 5 is wrong and there are review procedures based on feedback and win rates from actual testing and the pros they ignored for the (im)balance panel | ||
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tigera6
3484 Posts
I dont want to name-calling pro players who contribute into this work, because they work hard on it while its literally not their job to do so. But we as community should be more informed of the work and a chance to give out thought about it. While I appreciate the players, their view on certain things ARE bias and its impossible to change that. I think in a recent video of tier list with Harstem/Lambo/Scarlett, they put Lurker as a C-tier unit (same as Lib/Thor/Colossi/Immortal/ Corruptor/ Hydra pre-patch) tell me enough about their bias. Just because Lurker got countered by Ghost/Libs and Carriers doesnt mean they are just "average" unit. And I dont trust Blizzard (or what left of it) nor ESL in these matter neither, who are really on those teams really care about game balance or capable of making the right call? Blizzard is pretty much just waiting for the hand-over to happen, while ESL only care about filling the seats at the events, I am sure ESL has ZERO problem promoting Serral or Reynor as the GOAT for the next 3 years even if they have to change the balance/map pool countless time. That because Serral and Reynor CAN beat top KR players and win global title. There was a time they want to promote Clem after his insane TvZ streak, but Clem is just not able to beat top KR players at global events, so the attention is now back to Reynor/Serral. If I have to sell my house and bet on an IEM winner this year, its 50/50 on either Reynor or Serral, because thats the way ESL want to head into apparently. | ||
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Vindicare605
United States16121 Posts
On December 10 2022 16:53 hjpalpha wrote: that esl approved this bs is pretty bad sign imo It doesn't surprise me at all. ESL allowed fucking Pride of Aldaris into the world championship map pool at Katowice last year. They fixed it so that in a Bo7 you would HAVE to play at least one game on it. They either do not know what they are doing or are the chief driver of the push to keep Zerg on top. And it makes perfect sense that they would be because they are afraid if they lose the foreigner vs Korean narrative they'll lose their European audience.They have a vested interest in keeping the European players competitive, and as I've been saying the way they've been doing that is by giving Zerg a handicap. | ||
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tigera6
3484 Posts
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