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France12904 Posts
On December 10 2022 14:03 hjpalpha wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 12:41 warnull wrote:On December 10 2022 12:14 JJH777 wrote:On December 10 2022 11:40 Athenau wrote:On December 10 2022 11:17 warnull wrote:On December 10 2022 11:13 Athenau wrote: Lurker's Unburrow random starting delay was changed from [0, 0.5] to [0, 0]. This means Lurkers will be able to unburrow and move away up to half a second faster
Lurker's Burrow random starting delay was changed from [0, 0.25] to [0, 0.125]. They burrow on average 1 game update = 0.625 game seconds = ~44ms faster than before allowing them to attack that time earlier as well or escape fire from flying units Wtf? This means that Lurkers can now escape snipe after unburrowing. This shit is egregious. 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. 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. 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. - Scarlett creating the patch makes a lot of sense. Only a zerg player could have created this patch. It is so damn Zerg fav.
- Regarding the earnings stats for 2020-2022: Keep in mind they include tier 3&4 events. If you would only look at tier 1&2 events zerg leads by a good chunk.
- NA during ept NEVER fulfilled the criteria for being tier 1 (premier). They were always tier 2 by criteria. We only granted them tier 1 during covid restrictions as at that time the criteria were harder to fulfill.
- The Zerg ultra dominance goes back way longer. In 2017-2019 they had almost half of the yearly total earnings. In 2020-2022 they had the most earnings still but at a lower margin. If looking at tier 1&2 events they won the most and had the most finals in each year since 2017.
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 ...
Can’t really say it better myself but it is true. The earnings stats are the most telling, and while it is a bit of a trivia stat for us, earnings are very important for the players. With the lack of good funding in the scene except for some teams, having such an unfair game is detrimental to the scene in the long run since no new player with potential will even attempt to pick terran or protoss if zerg remains utterly overpowered (it’s only been even or slightly overpowered in 2022, but if we go back to 2019 level the game will die faster than we can throw money at it)
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France12904 Posts
On December 10 2022 20:23 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 14:03 hjpalpha wrote:On December 10 2022 12:41 warnull wrote:On December 10 2022 12:14 JJH777 wrote:On December 10 2022 11:40 Athenau wrote:On December 10 2022 11:17 warnull wrote:On December 10 2022 11:13 Athenau wrote: Lurker's Unburrow random starting delay was changed from [0, 0.5] to [0, 0]. This means Lurkers will be able to unburrow and move away up to half a second faster
Lurker's Burrow random starting delay was changed from [0, 0.25] to [0, 0.125]. They burrow on average 1 game update = 0.625 game seconds = ~44ms faster than before allowing them to attack that time earlier as well or escape fire from flying units Wtf? This means that Lurkers can now escape snipe after unburrowing. This shit is egregious. 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. 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. 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. - Scarlett creating the patch makes a lot of sense. Only a zerg player could have created this patch. It is so damn Zerg fav.
- Regarding the earnings stats for 2020-2022: Keep in mind they include tier 3&4 events. If you would only look at tier 1&2 events zerg leads by a good chunk.
- NA during ept NEVER fulfilled the criteria for being tier 1 (premier). They were always tier 2 by criteria. We only granted them tier 1 during covid restrictions as at that time the criteria were harder to fulfill.
- The Zerg ultra dominance goes back way longer. In 2017-2019 they had almost half of the yearly total earnings. In 2020-2022 they had the most earnings still but at a lower margin. If looking at tier 1&2 events they won the most and had the most finals in each year since 2017.
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 ... Can’t really say it better myself but it is true. The earnings stats are the most telling, and while it is a bit of a trivia stat for us, earnings are very important for the players. With the lack of good funding in the scene except for some teams, having such an unfair game is detrimental to the scene in the long run since no new player with potential will even attempt to pick terran or protoss if zerg remains utterly overpowered (it’s only been even or slightly overpowered in 2022, but if we go back to 2019 level the game will die faster than we can throw money at it)
Edit: about the balance council members, afaik there are Harstem, Lambo, Scarlett, Neeb, Astrea, SpeCial, maybe others?
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On December 10 2022 15:24 hjpalpha wrote:
[*] The creep "nerf" is utterly irrelevant. Not even Serral gets affected by the cooldown decrease more than a handful of occasions per game. It changes jack shit.
Are you pro ? How can you be sure about the core dynamic in matchs up against Zerg ?
Have you take into account raven changes ?
Honestly, Serral and Reynor are top players because of their tumors skill, they are able to micro actions longer in the game without been tired. I haven t read every thread considering vision and tumors but actually, these changes are pretty wise, not too big and not too light
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Is there a balance test mod / map out that doesn't require the PTR?
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On December 10 2022 20:40 Vision_ wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 15:24 hjpalpha wrote:
[*] The creep "nerf" is utterly irrelevant. Not even Serral gets affected by the cooldown decrease more than a handful of occasions per game. It changes jack shit.
Are you pro ? How can you be sure about the core dynamic in matchs up against Zerg ? Have you take into account raven changes ? Honestly, Serral and Reynor are top players because of their tumors skill, they are able to micro actions longer in the game without been tired. I haven t read every thread considering vision and tumors but actually, these changes are pretty wise, not too big and not too light
The creep nerf being useless was commented and confirmed by at least two pro terrans - uthermal and heromarine.
HM even showed some replays as examples
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On December 10 2022 20:40 Vision_ wrote:
Are you pro ? How can you be sure about the core dynamic in matchs up against Zerg ?
Honestly, Serral and Reynor are top players because of their tumors skill, they are able to micro actions longer in the game without been tired.
hjpalpha is absolutely correct.
Heromarine checked a few replays from Serral and Solar, top-top Zerg players.
They usually spread creep every 16-20 seconds, _very_ rarely they use creep tumor right when ability is ready.
So even for them this change will have almost zero effect on their creep spread.
Nobody, even Serral and Reynor, can spread creep every 11 seconds.
At best they do it every 15-20s - even in the early game. So you could nerf it even more, to 15s from 11s - and this still would have very little effect even for top pro zerg.
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After listenting to/reading a lot of feedback over the last couple of days regarding the proposed patch I currently have to agree that Zerg seemingly got a really good bargain compared to the other races while not really in need of buffs other than QoL changes.
I'd really love to have some more transparency regarding the process involving the 'balance council', as this is now pretty much community-driven, having this type of information available to the community makes even more sense IMO. Also excellent point made by tigera6 that they probably should have given a little context comment for every change to convey an idea what their thought process and the intended direction for it was.
How much freedom regarding proposal changes does the community have? I mean they said the Raven got a rework, but it's technically NOT a rework, as none of the spells were changed at a fundamental level, they only made them worse to justify a cost/production time reduction. But are real unit reworks possible in theory? Or just stat adjustments to not break stuff?
Would be cool if this was a more regular thing so there's room for adjustments and testing stuff before calling the shots and I'd also like something like a survey to incorporate community sentiments to a certain degree, like what's the top 3 issues for you currently with SC2 balance per race and list some options for people to pick, then you have a general idea what plagues people outside of the progamer bubble and MAYBE can take a look at what's going on there.
In general I'd like the game to be as untouched balance-wise as possible (like BW) but only when it's in a really good state, which sadly seems to be really hard for SC2 to achieve.
All in all getting a patch is a good thing and maybe we're all proven wrong after we see some actual data how the changes play out, but guess we have to wait and see.
PS.: Why did they even put up a PTR client for this when we have the completely unused testing tab in-game? Wouldn't this have been much better to get more people to test?
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On December 10 2022 20:55 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 20:40 Vision_ wrote:
Are you pro ? How can you be sure about the core dynamic in matchs up against Zerg ?
Honestly, Serral and Reynor are top players because of their tumors skill, they are able to micro actions longer in the game without been tired. hjpalpha is absolutely correct. Heromarine checked a few replays from Serral and Solar, top-top Zerg players. They usually spread creep every 16-20 seconds, _very_ rarely they use creep tumor right when ability is ready. So even for them this change will have almost zero effect on their creep spread. Nobody, even Serral and Reynor, can spread creep every 11 seconds. They do it every 15-20s - even in the early game.
Seriously ? I m absolute fan of HM and Clem but they are defending their own church.
It s possible that these changes doesn t make enought sense. If future confirms, the best solution would be to reduce by a very very few the speed creep like in the past, because creep ability of pro players allow them to cover the most tiny maps in 6 minutes or less.... I m pretty sure some pros players will change their mind after HSC and a correcting patch will be done.
On December 10 2022 00:22 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Disruptors
...
Sure maybe getting a perfect disruptor shot is a little punishing, but as we see in pro play, even if a player blows up 15-20 supply of Zerg with each hit, multiple hits in a row (Creator vs Solar at GSL Super), it still really isn't even game ending. In what games are we seeing where hitting a perfect disruptor shot is game ending or heavily shifts the state of the game? It's very rare, I can't recall any off the of my head. And how many games do we see where a Disruptor hit is dodged, and then it ends up not having any impact? Why are we straight up nerfing the AOE rather than simply tweaking them?
It s not rare but enought often to kill most of the tier 2 or 3 pros players, at least in Terran.
The problem of your analysis is to only take account pro players even if you were right. SC2 is too much punishing for a game, there are simple solution to keep nova usefull without touch too much his impact.
Adjusting his area of effect will affect his overall strength while you need to affect the critical amount of damage with for example adding a stun effect (and prevent some units like roachs or marauders to be one shot).This kind of change is interesting because it would ask to the protoss player of finishing off units (so he has to decide if he kills some dying units or if he let them alive)
I like the direction of this patch anyway because the team looks wise and carefull
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On December 10 2022 20:56 Creager wrote:
PS.: Why did they even put up a PTR client for this when we have the completely unused testing tab in-game? Wouldn't this have been much better to get more people to test?
In my opinion, it would have been better. Maybe they altered/updated things in the engine as well which could only be tested on PTR. Maybe this way was documented and the testing tab was not? Heroes used a PTR as well, so it is not far fetched that the person at Blizz knew that process already.
Also, moving changes from a mod into the game can introduce new bugs as well. This is the more secure approach
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On December 10 2022 21:13 Ahli wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 20:56 Creager wrote:
PS.: Why did they even put up a PTR client for this when we have the completely unused testing tab in-game? Wouldn't this have been much better to get more people to test? In my opinion, it would have been better. Maybe they altered/updated things in the engine as well which could only be tested on PTR. Maybe this way was documented and the testing tab was not? Heroes used a PTR as well, so it is not far fetched that the person at Blizz knew that process already. Also, moving changes from a mod into the game can introduce new bugs as well. This is the more secure approach
Yeah I also figured that it would just be 'safer/more feasible' to deploy a PTR client for technical reasons, but just sad that this feature was only used once or twice and now is just sitting there taking up screen real estate :D
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I'm also seriously hoping that this patch will only go live after Katowice, although I'm hearing way too much noise that it's going live after HSC. If that's the case, it's going to be another Zerg winner. The Hydra and Ultralisk buffs make them significantly more powerful than most people give it credit for. It's the same with the nerf to Ghosts.
Katowice is supposed to be the culmination of a year-long campaign. For them to introduce such a huge patch that effectively changes the game is played in a huge way is not optimal, nor is it fair for the players. I think it should only go live after Katowice.
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On December 10 2022 21:07 Vision_ wrote:
Seriously ? I m absolute fan of HM and Clem but they are defending their own church.
You cannot argue with facts.
Heromarine checked several replays of best zerg on the planet - and they do NOT spread creep right on cooldown.
Usually they do it 5-10 seconds after ability is ready to use. Once in a while they do it on cooldown, but it's not even 1 out of 10 cases.
So increasing the cooldown by 2 seconds will change absolutely nothing in 95% cases even for Serral.
His creep spread will be 2-3% slower than usual at most - which is way too little of a change to affect anything.
Creep spread should get slower by 10-20% to make any significant difference.
It's data from Serral/Solar replays - it's not an opinion or defending their own church, it's a fact.
You can find Serral/Reynor/Dark/Solar replays and check it yourself if you want.
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On December 10 2022 23:40 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 21:07 Vision_ wrote:
Seriously ? I m absolute fan of HM and Clem but they are defending their own church. You cannot argue with facts. Heromarine checked several replays of best zerg on the planet - and they do NOT spread creep right on cooldown. Usually they do it 5-10 seconds after ability is ready to use. Once in a while they do it on cooldown, but it's not even 1 out of 10 cases. So increasing the cooldown by 2 seconds will change absolutely nothing in 95% cases even for Serral. His creep spread will be 2-3% slower than usual at most - which is way too little of a change to affect anything. Creep spread should get slower by 10-20% to make any significant difference. It's data from Serral/Solar replays - it's not an opinion, it's a fact. You can find Serral/Reynor replays and check it yourself if you want.
To be completely fair, tho, it should also be said that HM took TWO allegedly random replays to prove his point, which arguably is a very small sample size. While I believe that even checking hundreds of replays would not make much of a difference in the general observation made, technically he could just have cherry-picked extremely bad examples here.
In addition to that it's important to note that this is not necessarily just 'bad' mechanics from the players, but, as others here also pointed out, that the creep from the tumor is just not fully spread by the time the tumor comes off CD so in order to maximize distance it does not really make sense to spread it right away and, of course also can be delayed due to external factors as the opposing player just sitting on the edge of your creep hindering your efforts to optimally spread.
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On December 10 2022 21:07 Vision_ wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 20:55 ZeroByte13 wrote:On December 10 2022 20:40 Vision_ wrote:
Are you pro ? How can you be sure about the core dynamic in matchs up against Zerg ?
Honestly, Serral and Reynor are top players because of their tumors skill, they are able to micro actions longer in the game without been tired. hjpalpha is absolutely correct. Heromarine checked a few replays from Serral and Solar, top-top Zerg players. They usually spread creep every 16-20 seconds, _very_ rarely they use creep tumor right when ability is ready. So even for them this change will have almost zero effect on their creep spread. Nobody, even Serral and Reynor, can spread creep every 11 seconds. They do it every 15-20s - even in the early game. Seriously ? I m absolute fan of HM and Clem but they are defending their own church. It s possible that these changes doesn t make enought sense. If future confirms, the best solution would be to reduce by a very very few the speed creep like in the past, because creep ability of pro players allow them to cover the most tiny maps in 6 minutes or less.... I m pretty sure some pros players will change their mind after HSC and a correcting patch will be done. Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 00:22 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Disruptors
...
Sure maybe getting a perfect disruptor shot is a little punishing, but as we see in pro play, even if a player blows up 15-20 supply of Zerg with each hit, multiple hits in a row (Creator vs Solar at GSL Super), it still really isn't even game ending. In what games are we seeing where hitting a perfect disruptor shot is game ending or heavily shifts the state of the game? It's very rare, I can't recall any off the of my head. And how many games do we see where a Disruptor hit is dodged, and then it ends up not having any impact? Why are we straight up nerfing the AOE rather than simply tweaking them?
It s not rare but enought often to kill most of the tier 2 or 3 pros players, at least in Terran. The problem of your analysis is to only take account pro players even if you were right. SC2 is too much punishing for a game, there are simple solution to keep nova usefull without touch too much his impact. Adjusting his area of effect will affect his overall strength while you need to affect the critical amount of damage with for example adding a stun effect (and prevent some units like roachs or marauders to be one shot).This kind of change is interesting because it would ask to the protoss player of finishing off units (so he has to decide if he kills some dying units or if he let them alive) I like the direction of this patch anyway because the team looks wise and carefull
If we're going to nerf Disruptor AOE, then why not compensate with a small buff in another area, for example decrease the cooldown of Nova from 21.4 seconds to 20 seconds? That way it's less volatile, but also not straight up weaker, it just becomes more of a consistent splash unit. I just fear that the 1.35 AOE will really effect things. Think of how many times a Nova just barely clips 1-2 units running away and manages to get small kills. Think of the times where the opponent splits units, now some of those Nova will hit 0 units instead of 1-2.
Maybe I'm just biased but I don't see how Protoss got compensated in strength for this. HTs being faster doesn't help much, they'll still get EMP'd. And Hydras can now also move faster out of Storm. Quicker Gateway sentries and 7 seconds earlier +1 Forge upgrade doesn't make your units stronger.
Like others have said, Zerg got a lot of good bargains. The creep tumor nerf will barely change anything. Perhaps they hope that a cheaper faster Raven and faster Observers will help players control creep, I hope so too. But I hate the weaker Auto Turrets and the ever weaker lategame potential of Raven, making it less unique of a unit. (Spellcasters are supposed to be powerful units if you control them well and keep them alive to regen energy!) I hate that Terran will have basically no gas sink the way Zerg has Infestors and Protoss have HTs. Having no strong gas sink limits playstyles where players want to get many bases to bank up lots of gas and go for a powerful army.
If it's a goal to strengthen Gateway comps, then why hasn't anyone thought of buffing Sentry damage? It will ruin nothing, but be more useful than the patch allowing your units to have +1 damage for 7 more seconds. What about increasing Guardian Shield range back to 6 to help protect zealots better, and needing to rely on Disruptors less?
Though I still really dislike how they're fucking with and breaking the design of certain units and interactions, the vision and goal of these changes seem to be pretty narrow minded. Which is of course, understandable compared to an in-house balance team with professional experience working in the field, rather than fans of the game. But still, it would be very nice to have small explanations of the goal for each change, that way we as a community can actually discuss the patches better and help find solutions for future patches.
If this patch goes through, I honestly think it'll be the worst patch in SC2 ever that I can remember. It's a lot of ideas that sound kinda nice individually, but together as a whole this patch barely makes sense. SC2 patches in the past used to have very clear and cohesive ideas and goals, and very carefully considered each unit interaction. When changing 1 unit, they'd address the side effects by changing other units too.
Nerfing Overcharge would make sense IF Protoss was overpowered and pushes weren't viable vs Protoss, or if attacking wasn't viable. However, we see how frequent pushes still happen in pro games and how often Protoss die to these pushes even with Overcharge. So if we're going to straight up nerf Overcharge, it needs to be compensated in some other way to make up for the lack of defense.
If people dislike not being able to outdamage Overcharge, then why not increase its duration by heck, 2 seconds to make up a little for the much decreased recharge rate? That way you can focus fire and outdamage the Overcharge, while Overcharge isn't straight up strictly weaker in all ways.
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So how is Terran going to win vs zerg late game?
Hydra/ling/bane to late game lurker tech will just roll over Terran now.
Faster hydras + faster broodlords + smaller ultralisks and nerfed ghosts. Ghosts was the only unit that allowed Terran to compete vs late game zerg, now they are nerfed and zerg gets significant upgrades to their units. Lurkers got a buff due to the ghost nerf too.
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On December 10 2022 23:56 allmotor1 wrote:
So how is Terran going to win vs zerg late game?
Hydra/ling/bane to late game lurker tech will just roll over Terran now.
Faster hydras + faster broodlords + smaller ultralisks and nerfed ghosts. Ghosts was the only unit that allowed Terran to compete vs late game zerg, now they are nerfed and zerg gets significant upgrades to their units. Lurkers got a buff due to the ghost nerf too.
How? We wait for Maru to show us how, if he cant then it means we are F.
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"Tell me you want more Zerg Champions without telling me you want more Zerg Champions"
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On December 11 2022 00:15 tigera6 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2022 23:56 allmotor1 wrote:
So how is Terran going to win vs zerg late game?
Hydra/ling/bane to late game lurker tech will just roll over Terran now.
Faster hydras + faster broodlords + smaller ultralisks and nerfed ghosts. Ghosts was the only unit that allowed Terran to compete vs late game zerg, now they are nerfed and zerg gets significant upgrades to their units. Lurkers got a buff due to the ghost nerf too. How? We wait for Maru to show us how, if he cant then it means we are F.
To be fair, even with these nerfs, Maru has still managed to beat Zergs in the late game in more unfavorable metas than this one looks like it will be. It'll simply go back to Terran winning in the late game only if they are just plain better than their opponent.
As I've been saying in this thread, Terran's strongest power, their midgame isn't being touched it's actually getting some small buffs with the Ravager getting nerfed as well as the Raven changes. Who knows, maybe the new Cyclone might be better now too since its damage scales better vs Zerg units overall now.
So what's most likely to happen is the meta for 99% of Terrans will go back to "Kill Zerg in the midgame or die trying" which is where it has been dozens of times in SC2's history. It's nothing new.
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Basically another patch where toss gets the shit end of the stick
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EPT
