Blizzard have released the 5.0.11 balance patch for StarCraft II. The official patch notes are as follows:
Patch 5.0.11 has arrived, featuring a wide range of balance, quality of life changes and bug fixes. These changes were curated by our very own StarCraft II community which consisted of pro players, content creators, tournament organizes and moders. We want to thank all of them for all their efforts on this update.-StarCraft II Team
VERSUS
Worker Units
No longer need to wait for full deceleration before beginning to attack.
Developer Comment: Because of workers' slow deceleration as a result of their mining behavior, they felt very unresponsive when ordered to attack nearby units.
ZERG
Creep Tumor
Cooldown increased from 10.71 to 13.57 seconds.
Sight range reduced from 11 to 10.
Developer Comment: Clarifies where the vision provided reaches for the Zerg, as the sight range now matches the creep spread created by the tumor. Slightly reduces the amount of Creep Spread in the early game from the Zerg player, especially in situations with multiple Creep Tumors in a small area, or builds without units such as Hellions to delay the Creep.
Hatchery, Lair & Hive
Creep spread interval decreased from 0.3 to 0.25 (Increases the rate of Creep spread from these structures by 20%. Does not affect Creep spread from Creep Tumors).
Sight range increased from 10,11 and 12 to 12.
Developer Comment: Increases the vision to match the Creep spread radius similar to the Creep Tumor sight change. The Creep spread rate is increased to allow for more consistent wall-offs as well as help with early game defense.
Viper
After casting Abduct the Viper can not move or use abilities for 0.57 seconds.
Developer Comment: Prevents the Viper from being able to simultaneously abduct 2 units, as well as makes the Viper more vulnerable to being killed after abducting.
Ultralisk
Reduced size by 12.5%.
Increased distance target can move before Ultralisk's attack is canceled from 1 to 1.25 (Range to begin the attack is unchanged).
Developer Comment: Ultralisks often get stuck against the Zerg's own units due to their large size and slower movement speed than other Zerg melee units. This should help them get into a fight more easily.
Hydralisk
Muscular Augments move speed bonus off Creep increased from 0.79 to 0.98.
Damage point reduced from 0.15 to 0.1 (Damage Point is the time it takes for a unit to complete it's attack. Reducing it allows more time for movement in between attacks.)
Developer Comment: Hydralisk's high damage point combined with it's fast attack caused kiting to not be very effective. The speed is increased of creep to allow for easier retreating from engagements and repositioning of the army, as retreating from an engagement on the map would often result in many Hydralisks being picked off.
Brood Lord
Move speed increased from 1.97 to 2.24.
Duration of spawned Broodlings reduced from 5.71 to 3.57.
Developer Comment: Brood Lord's slow speed forces the Zerg to play defensive until the map is mined out, causing games where it is used to become very slow paced. The duration of Broodlings is reduced to weaken the unit in engagements where there is nothing to quickly clear the Broodlings, as well as preventing the Zerg from continuously sending waves of Broodlings from a longer distance than the Brood Lord's attack range.
Ravager
Build time increased from 8.57 to 12.14 seconds and removed the random delay of up to 0.36 seconds.
Developer Comment: Forces the Zerg to prepare slightly earlier to defend attacks, as well as reduce the strength of morphing Roaches into Ravagers during fights to heal them. Should make Roach based all-ins slightly easier to defend in ZvT and ZvZ.
PROTOSS
Shield Battery
Battery Overcharge shield recharge rate bonus reduced from 100% to 50%. (Reduces the total shields recharged from 1440 to 1080)
Developer Comment: Previously Battery Overcharge made it difficult to take an engagement regardless of army difference until it expired unless the Shield Battery could be destroyed. This should give the attacker a chance to take an engagement if they have a significant army lead.
Observer
Move speed increased from 2.63 to 2.82.
Gravitic Boosters move speed bonus increased from 1.31 to 1.41, maintaining a 50% speed increase.
Model size increased by 10%. (Visual size only, does not affect interactions with range or vision)
Developer Comment: Rewards use of Observers for active scouting and creep denial, and allows them to keep up with the Protoss army easier. The increased size helps the opponent be able to see when an Observer is present if they are actively looking for it, as it can be incredibly punishing to make a decision under the belief that the opponent is not aware of your action.
Archon
Reduced collision radius with structures from 0.75 to 0.56 (Allows Archons to pass through single tile gaps between buildings. Does not affect collision with other units)
Developer Comment: Makes the Archon better at defending within the Protoss base, against units such as Mutalisks. Also helps prevent frustrating scenarios where the Archon's can be stuck after being Recalled.
High Templar
Move speed increased from 2.63 to 2.82.
Developer Comment: Increases the speed of ground based armies with High Templar support, allowing more effective map movement. In combination with the Viper's Abduct nerf, should help at reducing the amount of value generated by Viper's over time when combined with Protoss air armies.
Disruptor
Purification Nova's radius reduced from 1.5 to 1.3575.
Developer Comment: Reduces the maximum potential damage a Disruptor can deal against an unaware opponent, while not significantly affecting it's usage of zoning away enemy ground units, or picking off stationary units from a distance.
Carrier
Interceptor attack target priority reduced from 20 to 19. (Attackers now prioritize other units over Interceptors)
Developer Comment: For the majority of players across skill levels it is too difficult to engage into Carriers with an army that is more focused on destroying the Carriers themselves (such as Vikings and Corruptors). This should allow players to use units intended for fighting Carriers to actually be used effectively and even the micro requirement in engagements between the players.
Sentry
Build time reduced from 26.4 to 22.9 seconds.
Move speed increased from 3.15 to 3.5.
Developer Comment: Allows for a slightly earlier scout in the early game with hallucination, as well as helps the Sentry keep up with the Protoss army when using Guardian Shield.
Forge
Level 1 upgrades research time reduced from 128.6 to 121.6.
Level 2 upgrades research time reduced from 153.6 to 144.6.
Level 3 upgrades research time reduced from 178.6 to 167.9.
Developer Comment: Recently Protoss have been heavily relying on Disruptors in ground engagements. With the nerf to Disruptors as well as Battery Overcharge, earlier upgrades should give some compensation for fighting strength on the ground.
Dark Templar
Shadow Stride attack delay reduced from 0.75 to 0.71 seconds. (Standardizes the time at Normal game speed)
TERRAN
Viking (Fighter Mode)
Damage point reduced from 0.12 to 0.04. (Fighter Mode is the flying mode of the Viking)
Developer Comment: Vikings have a slow speed and high damage point for a flying unit, making it hard to effectively micro them other than simply shift clicking the enemy air units. This should allow for more effective micro when attention is given to them.
Liberator
Cost reduced from 150/150 to 150/125.
Developer Comment: Liberator usage has fallen off over time as Zerg's have built more Queens in the early game, and the transition into Liberators against Protoss later in the game is too expensive.
Ghost
Enhanced Shockwaves upgrade removed.
EMP radius increased from 1.5 to 1.75.
Steady Targeting is canceled if the target moves more than 14 range away from the Ghost while casting. (The cast range of Steady Targeting is 10)
Steady Targeting can now be manually canceled.
Developer Comment: The maximum potential of EMP is reduced, weaking the Ghost against lategame Protoss armies and spellcasters, while giving it more power immediately, before the Enhanced Shockwave upgrade would have been researched. The Steady Targeting range cap reduces the punishing effect that Ghosts can have against biological units, where moving anywhere near the Terran army would require a full commitment, as retreating units would always die in combination with using Scan for vision. The ability is now manually cancelable to give more micro potential in situations where the Ghost is in danger, especially when it is clear it will not be able to finish casting regardless.
Banshee
Hyperflight Rotors research time reduced from 121.4 to 100 seconds.
Hyperflight Rotors cost reduced from 150/150 to 125/125.
Developer Comment: Reduces the investment to research the Banshee's speed upgrade, as it was too ineffective for the investment.
Cyclone
Mag-Field Accelerator damage bonus changed from +20 vs armored to +10 vs all.
Lock On will now prioritize Air Units that threaten the Cyclone (Air units with an anti ground attack, spellcasters)
Lock On Auto-Cast range increased from 7 to 7.5 (Similar to the change from Heart of the Swarm to Legacy of the Void with weapon 'Scan Range', the auto cast range is increased so attack-moved cyclones do not move below the actual Cast Range of Lock On before it acquires a target. The ability is still cast at 7 range)
Developer Comment: The Mag-Field Accelerator damage change attempts to make the unit slightly more well rounded, as many of Terran's Factory units are too specialized into certain roles. The Lock On prioritizing air units will help when engaging armies such as Mutalisks and Zerglings, preventing all the Lock Ons from being wasted on Zerglings and the mech army being overwhelmed in the air.
Sensor Tower
Radar range reduced from 30 to 27.
Developer Comment: Sensor Towers slow down the game by making it impossible to catch the Terran out of position defensively, especially in TvT. This will give less warning time for attacks or force the Sensor Towers to be built slightly more forward, giving the opponent a chance to destroy them more easily.
Raven
Gas cost reduced from 200 to 150.
Build time reduced from 42.9 to 34.3 seconds.
Corvid Reactor upgrade removed.
Anti-Armor Missile armor reduction reduced from 3 to 2. (Debuff color tint on affected units is reduced)
Auto Turret duration reduced from 10 to 7.9 seconds.
Auto Turret health reduced from 150 to 100.
Auto Turret armor reduced from 1 to 0.
Auto Turret is no longer affected by Neosteel Armor.
Developer Comment: Increases the viability of a Raven to be used as a detector unit, by reducing the investment. Some of the strength is removed from Anti-Armor missile as a result of the smaller investment, and Auto Turret durability is significantly weakened to prevent mass Auto Turret strategies from being too strong in TvT, while not significantly affecting the ability of the Raven to use Auto Turret for harass in TvP.
MISC. BUG FIXES / QOL CHANGES
Banshee
First missile is no longer delayed by 0.11 seconds after attack completes (Previously the Banshee could even start moving away before the first missile was launched. The second missile will also be 0.11 seconds faster, as there remains a 0.11 second gap between the 2 missiles)
Factory
Increase maximum spawn radius by 1.
Widow Mine
Reduced random unburrow/burrow delay from 0.36 seconds to 0.18 seconds. (The average time remains the same)
No longer targets Zerg Cocoons without a manual order.
No longer targets units affected by Neural Parasite without a manual order. This behavior is now consistent with other units.
Cyclone
Fixed an issue where Lock On could enter cooldown while the Cyclone is loaded into a Transport.
Lock On no longer targets Zerg Cocoons without a manual order.
Shield Battery
Fixed an issue where repeatedly issuing a Stop command could increase Restore's shield regeneration rate.
Fixed an issue where animation models created snapshots in fog.
Fixed Restore's tooltip not scaling values to the game speed.
Adept
Fixed an issue where Adepts could not be ordered to cancel the Shade ability when selected with Adepts who are warping in.
Can now be ordered to load into a Warp Prism while shading, automatically canceling the Shade.
Queen
Fixed an issue where initial Creep Tumors could be canceled.
No longer unable to receive basic orders for 0.6 seconds after spawning.
Lurker
Reduced random unburrow delay from 0.36 seconds to 0.18 seconds. (The average time remains the same)
Attacks will no longer be blocked by certain low ground terrain features.
Fixed an issue where units loaded into transports could be damaged.
Hydralisk
Now has the same attack cooldown and attack animation speed with attacks at melee and range. (Previously melee attacks had a longer animation and shorter cooldown)
Fixed an issue where Morph to Lurker would be canceled with a Smart command issued immediately after the Morph command.
Removed Morph to Lurker random delay and added average delay to base build time.
Stasis Ward
Attack target priority increased from 10 to 20. (Attackers will no longer prioritize other units over a Stasis Ward. Now they are prioritized equally)
Stasised Units can now be issued basic orders, executed after the Stasis effect expires.
Raven
Fixed an issue where units affected by Interference Matrix could not be issued Stop commands.
Fixed an issue where units affected by Interference Matrix would walk forward below their Attack range when given Attack Move commands.
Interference Matrix now pauses Immortal Barrier cooldown for the correct amount of time (from 5.7 to 7.9 seconds).
Swarm Host
Spawn Locusts no longer interrupts the current order.
Hatchery, Lair & Hive
Subgroup priority changed from Hatchery > Lair > Hive to Hive > Lair > Hatchery.
General
Fixed an issue where MULE could be cast targeting Refineries close to Command Centers.
Fixed an unintended behavior being displayed on Nydus Worms.
Fixed an issue where Mutalisk’s attack launch sound would play each time the attack bounced.
Fixed an issue where Morph to Ravager would be canceled with a Smart command issued immediately after the Morph command.
Fixed an issue where Morph to Lurker would be canceled with a Smart command issued immediately after the Morph command.
Fixed an issue where Zerglings could not receive queued Morph to Baneling commands.
Fixed an issue where Zerglings and Swarm Hosts could not be given commands while unburrowing.
Fixed an issue where Liberators could not be given certain orders immediately after being ordered to unsiege.
Fixed an issue where Thor in High Impact Payload mode would not collide with Locusts.
Fixed an issue with the attack animation of the Thor when using the Tyrador skin.
Fixed a variety of incorrect Upgrade and Unit scores (How much ‘score’ you get should equal the combined resource cost).
Fixed an issue where certain flying units/buildings did not cause water ripples when flying over water. Standardized the height at which an air unit will cause water ripples.
Fixed an issue where simultaneously using Mass Recall (Mothership) and Strategic Recall (Nexus) could move the recalled units to an incorrect location.
Fixed an issue where Ravager's Corrosive Bile animation would override Burrow animation.
Fixed Shield Battery Restore not showing its range when interacting with the UI.
Fixed an issue where changing warp in speed did not change the animation's speed.
Fixed an issue where Shield Battery's auto-cast targeted Dark Shrine.
Fixed an issue where Reapers threw KD8 Charges with the wrong hand.
Fixed an issue where Changelings would permanently switch sides after Neural Parasite. Neural Parasite now disables the morph.
Fixed an issue where burrowed Swarm Hosts and Ravagers collided with burrowed Movers. Roaches now change their collision after researching Tunneling Claws.
Fixed an issue where a Zealot's second hit could damage units that were in stasis, invulnerable, lifted, or very far away. The maximum distance to receive damage is now 2.1.
Fixed an issue where a Queen's second hit could damage units that were in a transport, stasis, invulnerable, lifted, or very far away. The maximum distance to receive her melee attack's damage is now 5.
Fixed an issue where a Reaper's second hit could damage units that were in a transport, stasis, invulnerable, lifted, or very far away. The maximum distance to receive damage is now 7.
Fixed an issue where a Thor's second hit could damage units that were in a transport, stasis, invulnerable, or lifted.
Fixed an issue where a Colossus's attack could damage units that were in stasis, invulnerable, lifted, or very far away. The maximum distance to receive damage is now 9 (+2 with upgrade).
Fixed an issue where Medivacs could heal units affected by stasis.
Fixed an issue where Shield Batteries could recharge units affected by stasis.
MAP POOL
The 1v1 Map Pool has been updated with the following new maps:
Meh, this doesn't look too promising for Terran and Toss. "Purification Nova's radius reduced from 1.5 to 1.3575." wonder if they meant 1.375 instead of 1.3575 since the initial nerf was to 1.35. Otherwise that extra .0075 radius seems inconsequential.
Also can't believe this patch came out right before Katowice, bleh.
While I'm happy to see some tweaks and the addition of developer comments, I still think that this patch is going to have a negative impact. It's still buffs and reworks to Zerg, nerfs and reworks to everyone else. This after Zerg wins 7/12 Premier international events this year + winning every World Championship since 2017?
______________ Still, it's incredible that they pushed these changes before Katowice.
Please considering fixing the issue with the adept/zealot in hold position between gateways not always blocking the entrance vs zerlings. If you're removing protoss from competitive play you can at least give us that. Thanks
The Zerg cabal has forced the patch through 2 weeks before IEM. All the hard work and games played on the previous match has gone out of the window. Congratulations to all Zerg players and the Zerg cabal.
Did the balance team just forget why the Brood Lord was made to be slow in the first place? All I see is the backbone of the Terran/Protoss lategames nerfed while Zerg got their lategame backbone lifted of its one weakness.
On January 24 2023 06:50 [Phantom] wrote: This pach is a disgrace.
Thankfully there were two last minute changes:
Carrier was only nerfed once, not thrice
Viper is stunted for .5 seconds after abduct.
Altough they changed the Ghost back.
______________ Still, it's incredible that they pushed these changes before Katowice.
Please considering fixing the issue with the adept/zealot in hold position between gateways not always blocking the entrance vs zerlings. If you're removing protoss from competitive play you can at least give us that. Thanks
Actually, the Viper was initially "nerfed" harder, but apparently that extra 0.14 seconds made the unit unusable.
On January 24 2023 06:41 {Frozen} wrote: Meh, this doesn't look too promising for Terran and Toss. "Purification Nova's radius reduced from 1.5 to 1.3575." wonder if they meant 1.375 instead of 1.3575 since the initial nerf was to 1.35. Otherwise that extra .0075 radius seems inconsequential.
Also can't believe this patch came out right before Katowice, bleh.
Wait YOU'RE RIGHT.
The original nerf was 1.5 to 1.35, then the change was made to 1.375
Purification Nova's radius reduced from 1.5 to 1.3575.
What a joke!
Hopefully, the patch notes are just wrong.
Edit...
I'll just say I'm just very dissapointed ....
We could have had something great. Sc2 patches by pros and continued support in a fair manner with great communication and a clear goal of making the game the best it could be for everyone. And yet, they choose to do this....
These changes suck. Even if T/P find some new builds or timings thanks to things like the cyclone/banshee changes on the T side or upgrade timings on the P side that's just shitty gameplay. They are basically nerfing T/P when they are already at their weakest vs Z (lategame) and buffing gimmick builds and timings. It's completely backwards from what should be happening which is T/P lategame buffs in exchange for maybe slightly weakening timings.
Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
On January 24 2023 05:09 TL.net ESPORTS wrote: </blockquote><h4>Brood Lord</h4><ul> <li>Move speed increased from 1.97 to 2.24.</li> <li>Duration of spawned Broodlings reduced from 5.71 to 3.57.</li></ul><blockquote><strong>Developer Comment: </strong>Brood Lord's slow speed forces the Zerg to play defensive until the map is mined out, causing games where it is used to become very slow paced. The duration of Broodlings is reduced to weaken the unit in engagements where there is nothing to quickly clear the Broodlings, as well as preventing the Zerg from continuously sending waves of Broodlings from a longer distance than the Brood Lord's attack range.</blockquote>
I just philosophically oppose the idea of making battle-winning air units good. Flying ignores all the tactical constraints of the map, which makes for one-dimensional play, so it should be saved for harass or support units (or have a massive mobility penalty like the Liberator). I'm mostly referring to stuff like Brood Lords, Void Rays, Carriers and Battlecruisers, but you can even see this effect in typical harass units, such as when Phoenix mirrors were used in PvP, or Mutalisks in Brood War ZvZ.
On January 24 2023 05:09 TL.net ESPORTS wrote:</blockquote><h4>Archon</h4><ul> <li>Reduced collision radius with structures from 0.75 to 0.56 <i>(Allows Archons to pass through single tile gaps between buildings. Does not affect collision with other units)</i></li></ul><blockquote><strong>Developer Comment: </strong>Makes the Archon better at defending within the Protoss base, against units such as Mutalisks. Also helps prevent frustrating scenarios where the Archon's can be stuck after being Recalled.</blockquote>
Can people who play more than me tell me if this is actually a thing? Archons are a quasi-melee unit, even if there were no base clutter at all, I don't think they'd be very effective at chasing off Mutalisks. I swear I've seen pro games where the Protoss player used a Warp Prism to help the Archons chase, and the Mutalisks were still fine. I know they do a tonne of damage if they actually connect, but they're really easy to avoid, and I don't know how this changes that.
On January 24 2023 05:09 TL.net ESPORTS wrote: </blockquote><h4>Brood Lord</h4><ul> <li>Move speed increased from 1.97 to 2.24.</li> <li>Duration of spawned Broodlings reduced from 5.71 to 3.57.</li></ul><blockquote><strong>Developer Comment: </strong>Brood Lord's slow speed forces the Zerg to play defensive until the map is mined out, causing games where it is used to become very slow paced. The duration of Broodlings is reduced to weaken the unit in engagements where there is nothing to quickly clear the Broodlings, as well as preventing the Zerg from continuously sending waves of Broodlings from a longer distance than the Brood Lord's attack range.</blockquote>
I just philosophically oppose the idea of making battle-winning air units good. Flying ignores all the tactical constraints of the map, which makes for one-dimensional play, so it should be saved for harass or support units (or have a massive mobility penalty like the Liberator). I'm mostly referring to stuff like Brood Lords, Void Rays, Carriers and Battlecruisers, but you can even see this effect in typical harass units, such as when Phoenix mirrors were used in PvP, or Mutalisks in Brood War ZvZ.
On January 24 2023 05:09 TL.net ESPORTS wrote:</blockquote><h4>Archon</h4><ul> <li>Reduced collision radius with structures from 0.75 to 0.56 <i>(Allows Archons to pass through single tile gaps between buildings. Does not affect collision with other units)</i></li></ul><blockquote><strong>Developer Comment: </strong>Makes the Archon better at defending within the Protoss base, against units such as Mutalisks. Also helps prevent frustrating scenarios where the Archon's can be stuck after being Recalled.</blockquote>
Can people who play more than me tell me if this is actually a thing? Archons are a quasi-melee unit, even if there were no base clutter at all, I don't think they'd be very effective at chasing off Mutalisks. I swear I've seen pro games where the Protoss player used a Warp Prism to help the Archons chase, and the Mutalisks were still fine. I know they do a tonne of damage if they actually connect, but they're really easy to avoid, and I don't know how this changes that.
You're right people don't use archons to defend against mutas. The only time people do is when they recall them or when mutas fly in and they panic storm and morph their HTs that are sitting in their main/nat.
The Broodlord should have starting armor of 3 (coming from a corruptor with starting armor of 2 as well as being faster) and roughly 400 health. The Viking's extra damage should be against giants, it is what it is most used for and Thor should change from damage against giants to armored. Interceptors should be affected by using abilities directly on carriers like EMP or Raven's anti-armor. These ideas are my opinions, I don't know if it affects the ladder at high levels.
Yeah, this isn't a community patch. After the notes were submitted, we were assured that there'd be so many changes that we really shouldn't worry about it. Then the changes became smaller and there was still plenty backlash, but they pushed it through anyways. And all because they want it implemented before Katowice. We could have had bigger and better changes, had we just been patient and waited till after Katowice. Instead now we will have a joke tournament and a bad patch, the toxic Katowice twitch chat will be the best part of the tournament.
On January 24 2023 06:44 QOGQOG wrote: It's still buffs and reworks to Zerg, nerfs and reworks to everyone else.
This is just factually untrue. Why do you people post things like this?
How is that not true? Very few non Zerg units got truly buffed and the buffs were mostly qol changes aka reworks. Did a single T/P unit actually get buffed in a way that will make them potentially win a fight they would have lost pre patch? Zerg got the ultra/hydra buffs which will absolutely change the outcome of engagements that previously they would have lost. T/P did not get any changes that will swing engagements their way. In fact, they got the exact opposite.
On January 24 2023 06:44 QOGQOG wrote: It's still buffs and reworks to Zerg, nerfs and reworks to everyone else.
This is just factually untrue. Why do you people post things like this?
How is that not true? Very few non Zerg units got truly buffed and the buffs were mostly qol changes aka reworks. Did a single T/P unit actually get buffed in a way that will make them potentially win a fight they would have lost pre patch? Zerg got the ultra/hydra buffs which will absolutely change the outcome of engagements that previously they would have lost. T/P did not get any changes that will swing engagements their way. In fact, they got the exact opposite.
No no no, don't go shifting the goalposts and talking about who wins what engagements. I'm not interested in getting into the weeds again about who the patch favours overall. There was a severe lack of good-faith posting in the previous thread and this one looks to be no different.
What I'm saying is that it is factually untrue to say that Protoss and Terran received no buffs. Terran had more units buffed than nerfed (3 buffs, 2 reworks, 2 nerfs). Stop lying.
Some of these changes are actually really good, Sentry and Upgrade buff will be good for Protoss, not sure about the Purifier nerf but I guess in some situations it is extremely punishing to play against but I don't know, feel like there could have been a better change but I guess they just played it safe with that one.
The Terran changes are very extensive and I would have to watch alot of TvEverything to come to a conclusion on that, the Ghost is a central late game unit in all the match ups so any changes to that are big, AND combining that with the Raven rework is just crazy to me, very ambitious for a single patch. Any buff to the Viking and Liberator is good I guess?
I'm a Zerg player, and some of these changes just really don't line up with what they are saying. The creep changes seem effectively meaningless, less creep spread in the beginning? I just don't see the logic there, creep should either be made to cost more energy or (imo) spread slower and recede faster.
Ultralisks kind of sucked so they changes feel okay but the Hydralisk change is just really throwing me for a loop. This feels like a pretty significant set of buffs for a unit that seems to be in a relatively healthy place in the meta, Ling/Band/Hydra still seems viable in this current meta so I'm like, is it just being buffed because it's not great at retreating? Then buff the speed a bit, why do they have to be able to kite? That makes them alot stronger overall, plus Lurkers while expensive are just an insane power house of a unit that dominates the ground in all matches, ZvZ can easily devolve into Lurker vs. Lurker stalemates.
Viper change is..yea I guess, better then nothing everyone can see that in the hands of the top Zerg's Vipers are insanely cost efficient so any little thing to tone down their late game power seems appropriate. Infestors are way slept on in this current meta imo Microbial Shroud is outrageously strong.
All in all it's good to still see the game getting patches but the balance council needs to be quick to react to any unforeseen consequences of this patch, if Zerg looks too strong after 2 tournaments it's time for a band aid patch, not a, "wait 6 months and release a patch" kind of patch.
On January 24 2023 10:28 Beelzebub1 wrote: All in all it's good to still see the game getting patches but the balance council needs to be quick to react to any unforeseen consequences of this patch, if Zerg looks too strong after 2 tournaments it's time for a band aid patch, not a, "wait 6 months and release a patch" kind of patch.
If there were any doubts about Zerg being too strong, maybe they shouldn't haven't pushed it out before the biggest tournament of the year? Nah, that would be silly!
On January 24 2023 06:44 QOGQOG wrote: It's still buffs and reworks to Zerg, nerfs and reworks to everyone else.
This is just factually untrue. Why do you people post things like this?
How is that not true? Very few non Zerg units got truly buffed and the buffs were mostly qol changes aka reworks. Did a single T/P unit actually get buffed in a way that will make them potentially win a fight they would have lost pre patch? Zerg got the ultra/hydra buffs which will absolutely change the outcome of engagements that previously they would have lost. T/P did not get any changes that will swing engagements their way. In fact, they got the exact opposite.
No no no, don't go shifting the goalposts and talking about who wins what engagements. I'm not interested in getting into the weeds again about who the patch favours overall. There was a severe lack of good-faith posting in the previous thread and this one looks to be no different.
What I'm saying that it is factually untrue to say that Protoss and Terran received no buffs. Terran had more units buffed than nerfed (3 buffs, 2 reworks, 2 nerfs). Stop lying.
Then stop being deliberately obtuse. All buffs are not made equal, just as all nerfs are not made equal. Counting them is not a good way to evaluate what impact the patch will have.
The "nerfs" that Zerg got are inconsequential. Meaningless creep tweaks and some tiny delays added to a couple of units. I won't say that these changes will make literally no difference, but it's close. Meanwhile Hydras, Ultras, and Brood Lords (along with, for some reason, buildings) got buffs, even though all of them are used on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, both Protoss (with Carriers and Disruptors) and Terran (with Ghosts) had the core units for their lategame nerfed significantly. What have they gotten in return?
Protoss: Other than a more vulnerable early game, uh... movespeed buffs to spellcasters that either aren't worth using (Sentry) or are in Warp Prisms/on defense anyway making move speed largely irrelevant (High Templars). The only changes that are genuinely good for Protoss are (partially) reverting previous, unjustified nerfs to things like upgrade times and observer speed. It's like punching someone in the face, then punching them less hard, and expecting them to be grateful.
What's Terran gotten? Weaker vision, weaker spellcasters, but a weird attempt to push towards Air Terran? While nerfing the Raven? What?
As I've said before, I don't think any individual change is terrible. But all of them together serve to make the game even more Zerg favored, because Zerg is getting no meaningful nerfs while the others are.
On January 24 2023 10:28 Beelzebub1 wrote: All in all it's good to still see the game getting patches but the balance council needs to be quick to react to any unforeseen consequences of this patch, if Zerg looks too strong after 2 tournaments it's time for a band aid patch, not a, "wait 6 months and release a patch" kind of patch.
If there were any doubts about Zerg being too strong, maybe they shouldn't haven't pushed it out before the biggest tournament of the year? Nah, that would be silly!
Luckily, we've established that Zergs dominating everything for 5+ years is due to them just Being Better.
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
Luckily, we've established that Zergs dominating everything for 5+ years is due to them just Being Better.
Yeah, Zerg is just OP. That's why Solar, DRG, Ragnarok and Lambo constantly win those big titles...
They do a hell of a lot better than their equal ranked T/P equivalents.
To me the most damning evidence that Z has been OP since 2019 is that if you make a list of like the top 8 Zerg based on results from 2019 forward and you make an equivalent list for either T/P and you compare the equal ranking Z/T/P player each Z has had better results down the whole list. That's insane and basically impossible in a balanced game state.
Luckily, we've established that Zergs dominating everything for 5+ years is due to them just Being Better.
Yeah, Zerg is just OP. That's why Solar, DRG, Ragnarok and Lambo constantly win those big titles...
So in order for Zerg to be OP every Zerg has to "constantly win those big titles"? What?
Edit: Let's pretend this is meant in good faith for a moment. Just in the last year, Solar won his first GSL (Super Tournament, admittedly, but still), RagnaroK made his first GSL finals, and DRG had an all-around fantastic year, becoming a mainstay of the GSL bracket. Lambo got a top 4 in HSC and DH EU.
If you go back a bit further, Elazer got a 2nd place at GSL vs. The World and Scarlett won an IEM.
So yes... even Zergs other than Serral, Rogue, Reynor, and Dark have been doing very well for themselves if you exclude the big four for some reason.
A daring and ballsy patch would completely remove vision from tumors and tweak overlord and overseer to fill scouting for half of their role (then help by queen tumors).
If Zerg constantly wins big tournaments, it s only because of this awareness advantage (despite their units have been designed specifictly in consequence )
LOL at anyone describing creep changes as inconsequential. Everyone knows how important creep spread. And it effects every matchup, every game. Carrier changes were only gonna affect 1 in 7 (pulling a number out of my butt) games anyhow. The creep changes are massive.
Have to side with Turbovolver here. Why make bad faith arguments?!
Creep nerf alongside observer buff and raven changes are massive... they just may not play out immediately. Balance always takes time.
On January 24 2023 13:56 Gescom wrote: LOL at anyone describing creep changes as inconsequential. Everyone knows how important creep spread. And it effects every matchup, every game. Carrier changes were only gonna affect 1 in 7 (pulling a number out of my butt) games anyhow. The creep changes are massive.
Have to side with Turbovolver here. Why make bad faith arguments?!
Creep nerf alongside observer buff and raven changes are massive... they just may not play out immediately. Balance always takes time.
Balance always take time.... Yeah you mean 1 month and a half ?
I have patience, but i would have trusted this team balance if they took more time to implement this patch.
I like some changes : raven (TvT especially), ultra (even if it s only a buff), battery shield (even if it s only a nerf), and i promote every work done to prevent air decisive fights for the game (attempt to tweak carriers).
I also think ghost nerf is fine, even if i m not confident on how Terrans can handle late game now.
On January 24 2023 12:55 Vision_ wrote: A daring and ballsy patch would completely remove vision from tumors and tweak overlord and overseer to fill scouting for half of their role (then help by queen tumors).
I actually really like the idea that creep tumors provide zero vision by default, but have the ability to grant vision when needed. imagine each of the tumors have one big eye hidden inside them, like a dormant overseer. by default, their eyes would be closed, so to speak... but by spending some small energy, perhaps -- or better yet, the creep tumor is destroyed after this ability is used once -- you can selectively open the eye of a creep tumor which grants vision for a brief time.
On January 24 2023 13:56 Gescom wrote: LOL at anyone describing creep changes as inconsequential. Everyone knows how important creep spread. And it effects every matchup, every game. Carrier changes were only gonna affect 1 in 7 (pulling a number out of my butt) games anyhow. The creep changes are massive.
Have to side with Turbovolver here. Why make bad faith arguments?!
Creep nerf alongside observer buff and raven changes are massive... they just may not play out immediately. Balance always takes time.
When the PTR dropped Heromarine went through replays from Solar and Serral demonstrating that even they don't spread creep on anywhere near the old cooldown. In an interview with Ragnarok he said he didn't feel the cooldown nerf at all, though he did notice the vision nerf. And in all the patch games over the last few weeks, creep spread has looked completely unchanged.
Even the patch notes call the change "slight":
Developer Comment: Clarifies where the vision provided reaches for the Zerg, as the sight range now matches the creep spread created by the tumor. Slightly reduces the amount of Creep Spread in the early game from the Zerg player, especially in situations with multiple Creep Tumors in a small area, or builds without units such as Hellions to delay the Creep.
But hey, feel free to avoid that inconvenient evidence.
On January 24 2023 12:55 Vision_ wrote: A daring and ballsy patch would completely remove vision from tumors and tweak overlord and overseer to fill scouting for half of their role (then help by queen tumors).
I actually really like the idea that creep tumors provide zero vision by default, but have the ability to grant vision when needed. imagine each of the tumors have one big eye hidden inside them, like a dormant overseer. by default, their eyes would be closed, so to speak... but by spending some small energy, perhaps -- or better yet, the creep tumor is destroyed after this ability is used once -- you can selectively open the eye of a creep tumor which grants vision for a brief time.
The idea of granting vision for tumors is so cool.... Like a race spell, love it
Luckily, we've established that Zergs dominating everything for 5+ years is due to them just Being Better.
Yeah, Zerg is just OP. That's why Solar, DRG, Ragnarok and Lambo constantly win those big titles...
So in order for Zerg to be OP every Zerg has to "constantly win those big titles"? What?
Edit: Let's pretend this is meant in good faith for a moment. Just in the last year, Solar won his first GSL (Super Tournament, admittedly, but still), RagnaroK made his first GSL finals, and DRG had an all-around fantastic year, becoming a mainstay of the GSL bracket. Lambo got a top 4 in HSC and DH EU.
If you go back a bit further, Elazer got a 2nd place at GSL vs. The World and Scarlett won an IEM.
So yes... even Zergs other than Serral, Rogue, Reynor, and Dark have been doing very well for themselves if you exclude the big four for some reason.
But you can make the same argument for each race? If you look at the results of 2022, Zerg really hasn't stood out except for the big four (well, three now of course). Every premier event this year except for GSL ST2 (Solar) was won by a player you would expect to win something big: Serral, Dark, Reynor, Rogue, Maru, Clem, herO and Zest. Those players also got a lot of the Runner-Up places. Sure, RagnaroK getting a 2nd place was unexpected, but so was Astrea, Creator, Bunny or maybe even Cure.
Lets just face it: The game has gotten a lot smaller. And the top is just a very slim group of 2-3 players for each race that constitute as "if none of them wins a tournament, it is a huge surprise". If Zerg truely was OP on a base-level, you would see a lot more breakthrough performances from mediocre (on a global scale ofc) Zergs. But you don't get that. So yes, even if it hurts people: Maybe Serral, Reynor and Dark are just that tiny bit better. It surely also helps that herO had a military break and Maru seems to always fall off when he leaves Korea...
Luckily, we've established that Zergs dominating everything for 5+ years is due to them just Being Better.
Yeah, Zerg is just OP. That's why Solar, DRG, Ragnarok and Lambo constantly win those big titles...
So in order for Zerg to be OP every Zerg has to "constantly win those big titles"? What?
Edit: Let's pretend this is meant in good faith for a moment. Just in the last year, Solar won his first GSL (Super Tournament, admittedly, but still), RagnaroK made his first GSL finals, and DRG had an all-around fantastic year, becoming a mainstay of the GSL bracket. Lambo got a top 4 in HSC and DH EU.
If you go back a bit further, Elazer got a 2nd place at GSL vs. The World and Scarlett won an IEM.
So yes... even Zergs other than Serral, Rogue, Reynor, and Dark have been doing very well for themselves if you exclude the big four for some reason.
But you can make the same argument for each race? If you look at the results of 2022, Zerg really hasn't stood out except for the big four (well, three now of course). Every premier event this year except for GSL ST2 (Solar) was won by a player you would expect to win something big: Serral, Dark, Reynor, Rogue, Maru, Clem, herO and Zest. Those players also got a lot of the Runner-Up places. Sure, RagnaroK getting a 2nd place was unexpected, but so was Astrea, Creator, Bunny or maybe even Cure.
Lets just face it: The game has gotten a lot smaller. And the top is just a very slim group of 2-3 players for each race that constitute as "if none of them wins a tournament, it is a huge surprise". If Zerg truely was OP on a base-level, you would see a lot more breakthrough performances from mediocre (on a global scale ofc) Zergs. But you don't get that. So yes, even if it hurts people: Maybe Serral, Reynor and Dark are just that tiny bit better. It surely also helps that herO had a military break and Maru seems to always fall off when he leaves Korea...
5 different Zergs have won half of the premier tournaments in 2022.
Edit: Solar, Lambo, DRG, and Ragnarok didn't win any tournaments in 2019, when Zerg was widely acknowledged to be broken. So by your metric, 2019 Zerg was A-ok.
On January 24 2023 12:55 Vision_ wrote: A daring and ballsy patch would completely remove vision from tumors and tweak overlord and overseer to fill scouting for half of their role (then help by queen tumors).
I actually really like the idea that creep tumors provide zero vision by default, but have the ability to grant vision when needed. imagine each of the tumors have one big eye hidden inside them, like a dormant overseer. by default, their eyes would be closed, so to speak... but by spending some small energy, perhaps -- or better yet, the creep tumor is destroyed after this ability is used once -- you can selectively open the eye of a creep tumor which grants vision for a brief time.
The idea of granting vision for tumors is so cool.... Like a race spell, love it
Although i am still concerned about zergs overall power level on this patch (especially in the late game.) I am really enjoying the builds that speed banshees enable in tvz and the large meta shifts going on in tvt. the game at least feels fresh, especially with new maps to boot. Im a little more optimistic after playing on the patch, but I am still worried that at the pro level this is a fairly zerg favored patch.
On January 24 2023 14:10 Balnazza wrote: If Zerg truely was OP on a base-level, you would see a lot more breakthrough performances from mediocre (on a global scale ofc) Zergs. But you don't get that. So yes, even if it hurts people: Maybe Serral, Reynor and Dark are just that tiny bit better.
If ZvZ didn't exist and I argued "Playing Zerg = Free Win Always for Everyone," this argument would make sense. Unfortunately, I'm not arguing either of those things.
But I'm not going to have a debate about whether or not it's coincidental that of the five best players of the last several years, four of them (you left out Rogue) are Zerg. If you believe that the tournament results don't indicate anything about balance, but do 100% indicate who the best players are, well, I can't force you to make that make sense.
On January 24 2023 13:56 Gescom wrote: LOL at anyone describing creep changes as inconsequential. Everyone knows how important creep spread. And it effects every matchup, every game. Carrier changes were only gonna affect 1 in 7 (pulling a number out of my butt) games anyhow. The creep changes are massive.
Have to side with Turbovolver here. Why make bad faith arguments?!
Creep nerf alongside observer buff and raven changes are massive... they just may not play out immediately. Balance always takes time.
Balance always take time.... Yeah you mean 1 month and a half ?
Sorry I meant players adopting to the balance on live server. I suspect we'll all laugh at this moment in 6 months! ;} Hehe. Wishful thinking maybe, but surely people are saving some neat banshee or sentry openings to razzle-dazzle with.
On January 24 2023 13:56 Gescom wrote: LOL at anyone describing creep changes as inconsequential. Everyone knows how important creep spread. And it effects every matchup, every game. Carrier changes were only gonna affect 1 in 7 (pulling a number out of my butt) games anyhow. The creep changes are massive.
Have to side with Turbovolver here. Why make bad faith arguments?!
Creep nerf alongside observer buff and raven changes are massive... they just may not play out immediately. Balance always takes time.
The creep change makes barely a difference because even Pros weren't so much on top of their creep spread for the cooldown to matter. Ragnarok himself said he couldn't notice the nerf at all while playing
On January 24 2023 14:21 Athenau wrote: 5 different Zergs have won half of the premier tournaments in 2022.
5 different Zergs have won not half but even more - 8 out of 12 major global tournaments this season (i.e. after Katowice 2022). GSLs, DHM Finals (not regionals) and the smaller tournaments that had all best players from all regions - HSC, TSL, KoB. It's on Liquipedia main page, 2022 Korea and 2022 Global.
If Zerg wins Katowice (and let's be honest, how many of you would bet on T or P winning it?) it will be 9/13 or 70%.
I Hope that people who Hope for New openings with sentry with a slight movespeed buff and a training Time buff are joking. I fail to sée how 4 seconds of training Time allow anything than an 4 second earlier scout for the P. This patch does not break thé game for us mortal, but its still a shame considering state of pro play
Releasing a patch just before the finals of a year-long tournament is a disgrace. Katowice is no longer a Premier tournament, it's merely an Asterisk tournament.
Yeah, whatever anyone might think about this patch, IMHO there's simply too many changes that even probably need to be QA'd again first to have it pushed out with Katowice right around the corner... This is super unprofessional and screams 'IDGAF' on Blizzard's part, which is very disappointing... again.
On January 24 2023 20:29 InfCereal wrote: Are we all just going to ignore Spirit winning the "first" tournament after the patch went live?
Yes? Okay, just checking. Let me know when something fits everyone's narrative.
Imagine saying the game is balanced based on the results of 1 ESL cup. We'll see at IEM Katowice, wanna bet the winner will be Zerg? I'd bet 50$ on it, are you in?
On January 24 2023 20:29 InfCereal wrote: Are we all just going to ignore Spirit winning the "first" tournament after the patch went live?
Yes? Okay, just checking. Let me know when something fits everyone's narrative.
Imagine saying the game is balanced based on the results of 1 ESL cup. We'll see at IEM Katowice, wanna bet the winner will be Zerg? I'd bet 50$ on it, are you in?
Imagine not seeing that 2023 is the year of Piotr. Unbelievable.
On January 24 2023 20:29 InfCereal wrote: Are we all just going to ignore Spirit winning the "first" tournament after the patch went live?
Yes? Okay, just checking. Let me know when something fits everyone's narrative.
My narrative is that releasing any balance patch right before the finals of a year-long tournament is a ridiculous decision. The specific content of the balance patch is irrelevant.
On January 24 2023 20:29 InfCereal wrote: Are we all just going to ignore Spirit winning the "first" tournament after the patch went live?
Yes? Okay, just checking. Let me know when something fits everyone's narrative.
My narrative is that releasing any balance patch right before the finals of a year-long tournament is a ridiculous decision. The specific content of the balance patch is irrelevant.
It's not really released just before katowice. It's been in testing for 4 weeks, and it's been played in tournaments the entire time.
If Zerg wins Katowice 2023, it will be a 9th Zerg world champion in a row, if we count major IEMs and Blizzcon Finals. And these tournaments grant about the same amount of money to the champion as all other major tourneys of the year combined. 150k at Katowice vs 176k for all other 12 global tournaments of 2022.
On January 24 2023 20:29 InfCereal wrote: Are we all just going to ignore Spirit winning the "first" tournament after the patch went live?
Yes? Okay, just checking. Let me know when something fits everyone's narrative.
My narrative is that releasing any balance patch right before the finals of a year-long tournament is a ridiculous decision. The specific content of the balance patch is irrelevant.
It's not really released just before katowice. It's been in testing for 4 weeks, and it's been played in tournaments the entire time.
It's hardly a surprise to anyone.
In the context of a year-long series of tournaments, four weeks isn't a very long period of time. Notwithstanding the fact that the balance patch has been iterated multiple times during that testing period, and the fact that the community is nowhere near a consensus on whether or not the changes are actually good for the health of the game. This is why holding back the patch until after Katowice, whilst continuing to monitor the impact of the changes in minor tournaments like the ESL Weekly Cups, would've been a much better decision.
Releasing the patch now reduces Katowice to the status of a balance-test tournament, because people will inevitably use the results of the tournament to validate their views on the balance patch. This is a great shame because Katowice should instead be a culmination and celebration of a year-long series of regional qualifiers and tournaments.
Luckily, we've established that Zergs dominating everything for 5+ years is due to them just Being Better.
Yeah, Zerg is just OP. That's why Solar, DRG, Ragnarok and Lambo constantly win those big titles...
Please explain your vision of "Zerg Overpoweredness" that, if it happened, would allow Solar, DRG, Ragnarok and Lambo to take tournaments from Rogue, Serral, Dark and Reynor.
Luckily, we've established that Zergs dominating everything for 5+ years is due to them just Being Better.
Yeah, Zerg is just OP. That's why Solar, DRG, Ragnarok and Lambo constantly win those big titles...
So in order for Zerg to be OP every Zerg has to "constantly win those big titles"? What?
Edit: Let's pretend this is meant in good faith for a moment. Just in the last year, Solar won his first GSL (Super Tournament, admittedly, but still), RagnaroK made his first GSL finals, and DRG had an all-around fantastic year, becoming a mainstay of the GSL bracket. Lambo got a top 4 in HSC and DH EU.
If you go back a bit further, Elazer got a 2nd place at GSL vs. The World and Scarlett won an IEM.
So yes... even Zergs other than Serral, Rogue, Reynor, and Dark have been doing very well for themselves if you exclude the big four for some reason.
But you can make the same argument for each race? If you look at the results of 2022, Zerg really hasn't stood out except for the big four (well, three now of course). Every premier event this year except for GSL ST2 (Solar) was won by a player you would expect to win something big: Serral, Dark, Reynor, Rogue, Maru, Clem, herO and Zest. Those players also got a lot of the Runner-Up places. Sure, RagnaroK getting a 2nd place was unexpected, but so was Astrea, Creator, Bunny or maybe even Cure.
Lets just face it: The game has gotten a lot smaller. And the top is just a very slim group of 2-3 players for each race that constitute as "if none of them wins a tournament, it is a huge surprise". If Zerg truely was OP on a base-level, you would see a lot more breakthrough performances from mediocre (on a global scale ofc) Zergs. But you don't get that. So yes, even if it hurts people: Maybe Serral, Reynor and Dark are just that tiny bit better. It surely also helps that herO had a military break and Maru seems to always fall off when he leaves Korea...
Wait, if a Zerg wins a lot of tournaments, like Rogue, Serral, Dark or Reynor do, they are "just better" and therefore Exceptional. And if a Zerg wins only 1 tournament, like Solar did, then that's too small a number to count and is just an aberration, and therefore also Exceptional. And if you exclude all the Zerg who win many or few tournaments for being Exceptional, no Zerg has ever won a tournament, and therefore Zerg is not broken.
Not a fan of the timing of the patch. Generally Zerg struggles a bit right after a patch until they adjust to the new timings etc, but I dont feel there is going to be a big shakeup due to this patch. Same reason why I think weekend tourneys also strongly favor Zerg, they see other players builds over the weekend and adapt to them. Once they see the builds its hard to catch the Z off guard and youve got to go late game and we see how that goes generally.
Personally I think the default of Zerg having to be the strongest race lategame has really warped the last few years of the game.
So until now nobody was able to give a logical explanation for why they want to have the World Championship played on a entirely new map pool AND a new patch? Not Scarlett, not Harstem, not Lambo, not ESL nor Blizzard representative (whoever the hell that is)? Like there must be a good explanation for this, right? Do we have the same thing done for WC3/AoE before?
On January 25 2023 01:02 tigera6 wrote: So until now nobody was able to give a logical explanation for why they want to have the World Championship played on a entirely new map pool AND a new patch? Not Scarlett, not Harstem, not Lambo, not ESL nor Blizzard representative (whoever the hell that is)? Like there must be a good explanation for this, right? Do we have the same thing done for WC3/AoE before?
They want to shake things up so we finally have a chance at a Zerg champion.
There's probably a decent reason for releasing the patch before Katowice. People are right tourneys and weeklies have been played on the maps/patch for some time.
I personally find it refreshing to have the community members work on the patch, breathing some new life into the game. Great work team/people.
I was a little concerned re disrupter, played a few Diamond ladder games yesterday and it seems to work just as well as before.
On January 24 2023 20:29 InfCereal wrote: Are we all just going to ignore Spirit winning the "first" tournament after the patch went live?
Yes? Okay, just checking. Let me know when something fits everyone's narrative.
My narrative is that releasing any balance patch right before the finals of a year-long tournament is a ridiculous decision. The specific content of the balance patch is irrelevant.
It's not really released just before katowice. It's been in testing for 4 weeks, and it's been played in tournaments the entire time.
It's hardly a surprise to anyone.
A patch hasn't been truly tested until it's been played in high stakes tournaments, which ESL cups simply are not. If there are broken new strategies, the best players will be hiding them for Katowice. Players probably knew that the patch would go through before the rest of the community did, but that doesn't solve the problem of hiding strategies.
Problems like these are inevitable whenever a new patch is released, which is why right before a tournament like HSC would have been the perfect time to release a patch. The prize pool would be high enough to bring out players' best strategies, and players wouldn't have their yearly earnings ruined if something was seriously wrong.
I'm not nearly as pessimistic about the patch as some others but releasing it ahead of Katowice is insane.
I don't play Zerg, and I don't like Zerg, but I am super happy with the patch, specially before Katowice, it feels like Christmas came back again before leaving again until December.
A lot of people here are so salty it feels they are going to lose their jobs... damn, if TL is like this I don't even want to check the BNet forums right now.
The mag-field change still isn't in the game. Understandable, since Reynor lost a couple of games to Heromarine's battlemech, so they probably want to be extra cautious about that one. Maybe they'll wait till after Katowice in the interest of fairness?
On January 25 2023 04:59 Sprog wrote: There's probably a decent reason for releasing the patch before Katowice. People are right tourneys and weeklies have been played on the maps/patch for some time.
I personally find it refreshing to have the community members work on the patch, breathing some new life into the game. Great work team/people.
I was a little concerned re disrupter, played a few Diamond ladder games yesterday and it seems to work just as well as before.
And what is that "decent reason"? I believe most of us want to hear it as well. Normally the new patch is apply before IEM when is was NOT the World Championship (Blizzcon was) and its the start of a new season. But since this is now the Global Final, I dont feel the need to get a new patch in, whether it favors Zerg or not, unless something went really wrong and need immediate attention, which clearly isnt the case here. Actually there might be another good reason, and that is everything ends after this IEM, no more EPT and they want to get the final tournament ends with a "splash".
On January 25 2023 04:59 Sprog wrote: There's probably a decent reason for releasing the patch before Katowice. People are right tourneys and weeklies have been played on the maps/patch for some time.
I personally find it refreshing to have the community members work on the patch, breathing some new life into the game. Great work team/people.
I was a little concerned re disrupter, played a few Diamond ladder games yesterday and it seems to work just as well as before.
And what is that "decent reason"? I believe most of us want to hear it as well. Normally the new patch is apply before IEM when is was NOT the World Championship (Blizzcon was) and its the start of a new season. But since this is now the Global Final, I dont feel the need to get a new patch in, whether it favors Zerg or not, unless something went really wrong and need immediate attention, which clearly isnt the case here. Actually there might be another good reason, and that is everything ends after this IEM, no more EPT and they want to get the final tournament ends with a "splash".
My guess would be that it's probably mostly an internal scheduling thing. Like they already started working on the patch, if they don't do it now, they would need to keep the team on the project for like 3 more weeks since you need to keep a buffer before Katowice for debugging and you can push the patch live during Katowice, so that would put them late february.
The teams could have other project to work on at that point.
Hmmm, alright, I can live with these changes, especially after being toned down a bit. Still think it's a bit odd balance-wise when the balance was so good beforehand, but hopefully this shakes out alright.
(I hope the bugs people pointed out with the Disruptor radius possibly being wrong and/or the Cyclone changes not going through are fixed, though!).
Also not a fan of the big patch and maps changes always happening before Katowice, but I guess this makes sense inasmuch as the time before Katowice is basically the closest thing SC2 has to a true "off-season," such that the pros have more time to debate changes and test them than at any other time in the competition cycle. Which is fine I guess, if not optimal.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
0% chance serral loses to anyone except maybe dark. yes i know he just lost to byun but honestly he got really lucky. games go late and serral will cake him. Serral will cake anyone. but lets buff ultras and broods and nerf ghost and disrupter.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
Do you actually know this is the case or are you just making stuff up? If you do know this is the case then does everyone get a chance to vote on the patch as a whole and not just each change? Each change is fine in a vacuum it's the overall package combined with the current meta and 4 years of Zerg winning >50% of events that makes it terrible.
If it's a pure majority vote that's incredibly dumb, as it favors whichever faction has the most members and/or is the most motivated to show up on any given day. I hope that if they're voting, they require a majority of each group to agree on a change.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
Do you actually know this is the case or are you just making stuff up? If you do know this is the case then does everyone get a chance to vote on the patch as a whole and not just each change? Each change is fine in a vacuum it's the overall package combined with the current meta and 4 years of Zerg winning >50% of events that makes it terrible.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
Details on the balance council are few and far between. It's clear that a lot of good players are involved because all of the changes by themselves seem like good or smart ideas. It's as a whole the patch ended up looking like a zerg players dream. There's no buff/nerf balance.
It's strange how an over represented protoss can come out with a patch that looks freakishly zerg favoured. So who actually makes the final decisions? The zerg cabal may be a meme but with the patch ending up how it did it's hard not to wonder why. What is the genuine reason behind the race with 8 world championship wins in a row getting buffed right before the 9th?
Also why this abominable map pool. Does the balance discord discuss that as well or is it someone else who's deciding these things based on undisclosed reasons.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation. So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
How many of those people have professional game design experience with a major game development company?
EDIT:
Even though they're detached from reality, I really enjoy the Zerg Cabal memes. Great stuff.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation. So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
How many of those people have professional game design experience with a major game development company?
To be fair, neither arent us, in term of having game design experience. I do believe that pro players are definitely more equipped to talk about balance then us general viewers. But that doesnt mean they are not without bias, and trying to say that Protoss have the most players in balance discord doesnt mean much if they dont work in unity, rather just accept the status quo or listening to a few individual. Lets be real, before or after the patch, there are only about 2-3 Protoss players that has a real shot at winning tournaments, so even if the change might hurt/help the Protoss players in general, some (or most) wont care much because they are just not good enough to win.
But the lack of transparency and goal path is something that need to be done better imo, so that we can share the vision of the team and seeing how it will come into fruition. At the moment, it just seems that they are making buff/nerf/rework on a whim and see how it goes moving forward. Coupled with how awful ESL has done its job in organizing/implementing the patches and its timing, I dont blame people for feeling frustrated.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation. So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
How many of those people have professional game design experience with a major game development company?
Nobody have a design experience and even in a professionnal firm some has only to follow a bunch of rules and only do what their manager ask for. If you really wanna design something, you can, just ask yourself what game you would love to play if you were a player.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
I'm open to any examples from the recent PTR matches or recent matches (Like the ESL finals between Dark vs. Hero which was AMAZING) that imply that Zerg is going to be pushed over the top from these changes.
All that said, the creep nerf wasn't good enough. It should have been at the level of the Transfuse nerf which absolutely was massive, especially for ZvP.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
"zerg is getting preferential treatment" is your opinion vs every professional gamer. It's pretty obvious whose opinion is more valuable.
Plenty of pros have said Zerg is getting preferential treatment at certain points. Inno, TY, Trap, Heromarine, uThermal, and even Rogue have all made statements suggesting Blizzard favors Zerg. Pretty sure Classic did shortly before his military service as well.
We all agree harmstem at least tries to be objective and is generally reasonable right?
Watch this video from minute 21:30 to 23:00.
A quote that stands out:
"Protoss players are all losers cause we accept the units that are given to us. I feel we have too many content creators that take responsibility for bad play and don't complain on reddit so we're buffed"
He says it half jokingly but I believe there is truth to it.
People like him will try to be objective and remove their biases in balance discussion. This might lead them to overcompensate and end up being slightly biased against themselves.
Even if he doesn't overcompensate, if he is trying to be objective and others are not and are pushing hard for subjective changes, it's inevitable he would be pressured to accept at least some of the changes under the guise of being "reasonable".
If other protoss players are like him, no wonder we get this shitshow.
And let's be honest, Protoss is frustrating to play against. Throughout the game history, regardless of balance or actual winrates, Protoss has had strategies nerfed because they were frustrating to play against, even if the overall winrate for the race wasn't that good.
So it's very possible that a bunch of zergs and Terrans ally together to nerf something that feels frustrating, and the protoss players lack the insistence or are not outspoken enough to get actual compensating buffs to get through.
I believe that's what happened here. Zerg pros are very outspoken (like that harms term video where they rank units and Scarlet wants to put every Zerg unit in C and D tiers) they just live in their little world and are very spoken about it. And Protoss is frustrating to play against so zergs are more outspoken about their issues. Zergs end up getting a lot of buffs, Terran changed end up being a mess, and Protoss ends up with terrible changes that force you to all in in every pvz.
Which btw I'm doing. I've always been a macro player like stats but I'm fed up. If the game wants me to all in I Will
If u think about it, if Serral or Reynor doesnt win anymore, SC2 scene outside of Korea would probably die, so they decided to keep buffing Serral and Reynor so that you English speakers would keep watching the game lol. But yes it is embarassing that Serral needs all these buffs over the years just to barely beat Maru. Maru is built different.
On January 26 2023 00:50 TurtleFish wrote: If u think about it, if Serral or Reynor doesnt win anymore, SC2 scene outside of Korea would probably die, so they decided to keep buffing Serral and Reynor so that you English speakers would keep watching the game lol. But yes it is embarassing that Serral needs all these buffs over the years just to barely beat Maru. Maru is built different.
Now this is a true Zerg cabal mindset.
If serral and reynor don't win anymore the game will die?? What??
On January 26 2023 00:50 TurtleFish wrote: If u think about it, if Serral or Reynor doesnt win anymore, SC2 scene outside of Korea would probably die, so they decided to keep buffing Serral and Reynor so that you English speakers would keep watching the game lol. But yes it is embarassing that Serral needs all these buffs over the years just to barely beat Maru. Maru is built different.
As much as I love a good meme conspiracy, this is probably going a little too far. It's not like there aren't any good Korean Zergs.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Only 1 person can win a tournament, you can't use it as a metric of balance.
Protoss should maintain about a 50% win rate in pro games.
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
A Zerg player happy about the patch? I'm so surprised.
Won't answer to the mental gymnastics of you trying to argue one race winning 50% of tournaments is fine. We both know you'd be up in arms about it if your race was on the other side.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
"zerg is getting preferential treatment" is your opinion vs every professional gamer. It's pretty obvious whose opinion is more valuable.
Plenty of pros have said Zerg is getting preferential treatment at certain points. Inno, TY, Trap, Heromarine, uThermal, and even Rogue have all made statements suggesting Blizzard favors Zerg. Pretty sure Classic did shortly before his military service as well.
Ahh that are not the players he meant. He just meant the objective and unbiased players like Lambo and Scarlett, only their opinion should be considered as opposed to biased terran players
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
A Zerg player happy about the patch? I'm so surprised.
Won't answer to the mental gymnastics of you trying to argue one race winning 50% of tournaments is fine. We both know you'd be up in arms about it if your race was on the other side.
I don't know how you can argue about tournament winners when serral has won 89 of the 201 tournaments he's even participated in.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
A Zerg player happy about the patch? I'm so surprised.
Won't answer to the mental gymnastics of you trying to argue one race winning 50% of tournaments is fine. We both know you'd be up in arms about it if your race was on the other side.
I don't know how you can argue about tournament winners when serral has won 89 of the 201 tournaments he's even participated in.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
"zerg is getting preferential treatment" is your opinion vs every professional gamer. It's pretty obvious whose opinion is more valuable.
Plenty of pros have said Zerg is getting preferential treatment at certain points. Inno, TY, Trap, Heromarine, uThermal, and even Rogue have all made statements suggesting Blizzard favors Zerg. Pretty sure Classic did shortly before his military service as well.
INnoVation proclaimed Zerg OP and is impossible to beat. INno had 85+% winrate in TvZ at the time. That's close to the opposite of "impossible to beat." TY has claimed both Zerg OP and Protoss OP. He himself chose replays to highlight these imbalances in SC2 shows, and the people there were poking holes in everything. Example: TY: Terran can't keep up economically. Others: You have 108 SCVs with oversaturation on every mining base and still producing SCVs. You also have a lot of resources in the bank with several spare Orbital Commands. Why not stop at 80 SCVs and make bigger army? TY: If I lose SCVs to harass I'll be behind. Others: You have a lot of CCs and a bank. TY: I guess... Trap made claims of Protoss being weak, won several tournaments and kept claiming Protoss is weak. Trap, INno and TY are among the worst individuals to name drop in this contexts. They have a history of hypocrisy in this topic.
Rogue is a genuine OP claimant. "Zerg seems strong so I applied myself and won."
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
A Zerg player happy about the patch? I'm so surprised.
Won't answer to the mental gymnastics of you trying to argue one race winning 50% of tournaments is fine. We both know you'd be up in arms about it if your race was on the other side.
I don't know how you can argue about tournament winners when serral has won 89 of the 201 tournaments he's even participated in.
and Reynor and Dark and Rogue. Weird how when Zerg is dominating Zerg players are just better but it's different when another race dominates
No, not like reynor, dark, and rogue.
Serral's combined Premier/Major medal count is 66 top 3 finishes.
For comparison:
Rogue: 30 Dark: 41 Reynor: 33
Maru: 48 Byun: 33 Innovation: 41
herO: 32 neeb: 51 Zest: 39
I don't understand how you people can't just like... go to liquipedia yourselves and see that the game's pretty fucking balanced, and serral's an enormous outlier.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
"zerg is getting preferential treatment" is your opinion vs every professional gamer. It's pretty obvious whose opinion is more valuable.
Plenty of pros have said Zerg is getting preferential treatment at certain points. Inno, TY, Trap, Heromarine, uThermal, and even Rogue have all made statements suggesting Blizzard favors Zerg. Pretty sure Classic did shortly before his military service as well.
INnoVation proclaimed Zerg OP and is impossible to beat. INno had 85+% winrate in TvZ at the time. That's close to the opposite of "impossible to beat." TY has claimed both Zerg OP and Protoss OP. He himself chose replays to highlight these imbalances in SC2 shows, and the people there were poking holes in everything. Example: TY: Terran can't keep up economically. Others: You have 108 SCVs with oversaturation on every mining base and still producing SCVs. You also have a lot of resources in the bank with several spare Orbital Commands. Why not stop at 80 SCVs and make bigger army? TY: If I lose SCVs to harass I'll be behind. Others: You have a lot of CCs and a bank. TY: I guess... Trap made claims of Protoss being weak, won several tournaments and kept claiming Protoss is weak. Trap, INno and TY are among the worst individuals to name drop in this contexts. They have a history of hypocrisy in this topic.
Rogue is a genuine OP claimant. "Zerg seems strong so I applied myself and won."
I could go claim by claim and argue about why I disagree and try to justify the pros statements but ultimately you are in a way correct. Every pro is biased and inclined to believe they aren't the problem. Whether they are winning too much or too little. Hence why pros probably shouldn't be involved in balance and balance patches should be based purely on attempting to produce the most possible variety and interesting gameplay/results in high level tournaments. Zergs winning 9 world championships in a row isn't interesting.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
"zerg is getting preferential treatment" is your opinion vs every professional gamer. It's pretty obvious whose opinion is more valuable.
Plenty of pros have said Zerg is getting preferential treatment at certain points. Inno, TY, Trap, Heromarine, uThermal, and even Rogue have all made statements suggesting Blizzard favors Zerg. Pretty sure Classic did shortly before his military service as well.
INnoVation proclaimed Zerg OP and is impossible to beat. INno had 85+% winrate in TvZ at the time. That's close to the opposite of "impossible to beat." TY has claimed both Zerg OP and Protoss OP. He himself chose replays to highlight these imbalances in SC2 shows, and the people there were poking holes in everything. Example: TY: Terran can't keep up economically. Others: You have 108 SCVs with oversaturation on every mining base and still producing SCVs. You also have a lot of resources in the bank with several spare Orbital Commands. Why not stop at 80 SCVs and make bigger army? TY: If I lose SCVs to harass I'll be behind. Others: You have a lot of CCs and a bank. TY: I guess... Trap made claims of Protoss being weak, won several tournaments and kept claiming Protoss is weak. Trap, INno and TY are among the worst individuals to name drop in this contexts. They have a history of hypocrisy in this topic.
Rogue is a genuine OP claimant. "Zerg seems strong so I applied myself and won."
Love this, you just said unironically what I said ironically
Ahh that are not the players he meant. He just meant the objective and unbiased players like Lambo and Scarlett, only their opinion should be considered as opposed to biased terran players
so predictable. You say we should listen to pros but if the pros have a different opinion than you you say their opinion doesn't count because they're biased. But the pros who have the same opinion as you are of course unbiased. Also your argumentation makes absolutely zero sense. So if Fruitdealer said Zerg is weak after winning the first GSL his opinion would be invalid because he just won?
Can we all agree that world championships are a culmination of the season, and every player gives their all to win it because of the huge prize for 1st place? You can win it and "cruise" next year more or less in terms of winnings. Stakes cannot get any higher. They're at least 5x times higher than any other tournament.
And somehow last 8 times it was always Zerg who won it. Your "enormous outlier" Serral won only 2 of them, other 6 were won by 4 different other Zergs.
On January 25 2023 22:27 Charoisaur wrote: [quote] I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
A Zerg player happy about the patch? I'm so surprised.
Won't answer to the mental gymnastics of you trying to argue one race winning 50% of tournaments is fine. We both know you'd be up in arms about it if your race was on the other side.
I don't know how you can argue about tournament winners when serral has won 89 of the 201 tournaments he's even participated in.
and Reynor and Dark and Rogue. Weird how when Zerg is dominating Zerg players are just better but it's different when another race dominates
No, not like reynor, dark, and rogue.
Serral's combined Premier/Major medal count is 66 top 3 finishes.
For comparison:
Rogue: 30 Dark: 41 Reynor: 33
Maru: 48 Byun: 33 Innovation: 41
herO: 32 neeb: 51 Zest: 39
I don't understand how you people can't just like... go to liquipedia yourselves and see that the game's pretty fucking balanced, and serral's an enormous outlier.
Even if you exclude Serral Zerg has won the most premier tournaments by a lot. But if you exclude Serral you'd also have to exclude the biggest outlier for the other races (Maru and Trap) and that wouldn't look pretty. Btw Trap and Maru are bigger outliers for their races than Serral for Zerg. You should take your own advice and look at liquipedia Premier Tournaments
On January 26 2023 03:05 ZeroByte13 wrote: Can we all agree that world championships are a culmination of the season, and every player gives their all to win it because of the huge prize for 1st place? You can win it and "cruise" next year more or less in terms of winnings. Stakes cannot get any higher. They're at least 5x times higher than any other tournament.
And somehow last 8 times it was always Zerg who won it. Your "enormous outlier" Serral won only 2 of them, 6 other were won by 4 different other Zergs.
At least we terran and protoss get to experiment hope for a few days until it inevitably goes back to the expected zerg winner, this year won't be different. We will get to see the likes of herO and Maru beat up weak zergs in groupstage and be hopeful that a T/P can win Katowice, and I guess we will see if it happens this year?
It’s too early to balance whine for me, but I don’t understand why they buffed Zerg late game so much. Thors are more derpy than the ultralisk , but that’s “fine”. Let’s see how it goes in the next months.
"Protoss players are all losers cause we accept the units that are given to us. I feel we have too many content creators that take responsibility for bad play and don't complain on reddit so we're buffed"
He says it half jokingly but I believe there is truth to it.
People like him will try to be objective and remove their biases in balance discussion. This might lead them to overcompensate and end up being slightly biased against themselves.
Even if he doesn't overcompensate, if he is trying to be objective and others are not and are pushing hard for subjective changes, it's inevitable he would be pressured to accept at least some of the changes under the guise of being "reasonable".
If other protoss players are like him, no wonder we get this shitshow.
And let's be honest, Protoss is frustrating to play against. Throughout the game history, regardless of balance or actual winrates, Protoss has had strategies nerfed because they were frustrating to play against, even if the overall winrate for the race wasn't that good.
So it's very possible that a bunch of zergs and Terrans ally together to nerf something that feels frustrating, and the protoss players lack the insistence or are not outspoken enough to get actual compensating buffs to get through.
I believe that's what happened here. Zerg pros are very outspoken (like that harms term video where they rank units and Scarlet wants to put every Zerg unit in C and D tiers) they just live in their little world and are very spoken about it. And Protoss is frustrating to play against so zergs are more outspoken about their issues. Zergs end up getting a lot of buffs, Terran changed end up being a mess, and Protoss ends up with terrible changes that force you to all in in every pvz.
Which btw I'm doing. I've always been a macro player like stats but I'm fed up. If the game wants me to all in I Will
He's being sarcastic, you can't truly be this dense can you?
Like he's literally talking about how bad the stalker and how broken the hydra is while winning with mass blink stalkers........
It’s a decent patch. Even though I feel my toss got the shit end of the stick
The terran complaining has began since the beginning of SC2
When terrans wins, they tell toss and Zergs to “git gud or l2p”
When terran loses, it’s cause “imbaaaaa or ez A move etc”
This is what happens when the majority of terran community was following whatever Avilo said, then innovation, now Maru (who are all well known complainers/whiners)
Funny that majority of the time it’s always a terran player/fan that starts the QQ. Ryung GSL Imba spam was one of the most embarrassing display of professionalism in sc2
On January 26 2023 04:05 TossHeroes wrote: It’s a decent patch. Even though I feel my toss got the shit end of the stick
The terran complaining has began since the beginning of SC2
When terrans wins, they tell toss and Zergs to “git gud or l2p”
When terran loses, it’s cause “imbaaaaa or ez A move etc”
This is what happens when the majority of terran community was following whatever Avilo said, then innovation, now Maru (who are all well known complainers/whiners)
Funny that majority of the time it’s always a terran player/fan that starts the QQ. Ryung GSL Imba spam was one of the most embarrassing display of professionalism in sc2
it does seem like a bit of boy who cried wolf but no doubt terran and toss objectively nerfed in this patch, zerg buffed.
Man, these forums have really turned into cancer, as they're dominated by like the same 4-5 bad faith posters making the same tired arguments. Pretty sad, considering browsing these forums used to be really enjoyable.
Also, balance has certainly tended to tilt toward Zerg at various points, but the largest factor in their dominance boils down to:
They have the largest pool of remaining S-tier talent and have for YEARS. At various points, Terran lost Innovation/TY and Protoss lost Stats, SoS, Classic (yes he's been back but not the same), Zest, and Trap. Zerg only had to say goodbye to Soo (and recently Rogue). Also, Rogue, Serral, Dark and Reynor are all-time SC2 talents, and have remained titans throughout the duration of their careers, with Rogue/Serral as GOAT contenders. These days, Terran and Protoss have only 1 realistic contender in Maru/Hero.
On January 26 2023 04:38 Glorfindelio wrote: Man, these forums have really turned into cancer, as they're dominated by like the same 4-5 bad faith posters making the same tired arguments. Pretty sad, considering browsing these forums used to be really enjoyable.
Also, balance has certainly tended to tilt toward Zerg at various points, but the largest factor in their dominance boils down to:
They have the largest pool of remaining S-tier talent and have for YEARS. At various points, Terran lost Innovation/TY and Protoss lost Stats, SoS, Classic (yes he's been back but not the same), Zest, and Trap. Zerg only had to say goodbye to Soo (and recently Rogue). Also, Rogue, Serral, Dark and Reynor are all-time SC2 talents, and have remained titans throughout the duration of their careers, with Rogue/Serral as GOAT contenders. These days, Terran and Protoss have only 1 realistic contender in Maru/Hero.
yes, the zerg players are just more talented and arguing the race is too strong is bad faith. 100% agree /s
On January 26 2023 04:38 Glorfindelio wrote: Man, these forums have really turned into cancer, as they're dominated by like the same 4-5 bad faith posters making the same tired arguments. Pretty sad, considering browsing these forums used to be really enjoyable.
Also, balance has certainly tended to tilt toward Zerg at various points, but the largest factor in their dominance boils down to:
They have the largest pool of remaining S-tier talent and have for YEARS. At various points, Terran lost Innovation/TY and Protoss lost Stats, SoS, Classic (yes he's been back but not the same), Zest, and Trap. Zerg only had to say goodbye to Soo (and recently Rogue). Also, Rogue, Serral, Dark and Reynor are all-time SC2 talents, and have remained titans throughout the duration of their careers, with Rogue/Serral as GOAT contenders. These days, Terran and Protoss have only 1 realistic contender in Maru/Hero.
yes, the zerg players are just more talented and arguing the race is too strong is bad faith. 100% agree /s
Yes the current Zergs players are just superiors
It’s the terran fan base trying to justify players such as bunny and cure should be winning. That’s like us toss players complaining why Astrea or classic isn’t winning the GSL. It’s just ridiculous.
And your argument for why top-4 zerg are so much better than Bunny and Cure is.... because they win more? They win so much because they're so good, and the proof of them being super good is "because they win so much"? Is this correct?
What if Bunny is better than Serral, and he's just being held back by balance all these 5 last years?
You'll say "don't be silly, Serral is obviously much better than Bunny". But give marines +15 hp (breaking the balance) and top-5 terrans (including Bunny) will win most of the tournaments. And then I'll say it's because they're just better than other players. How would you prove it's not the case and there's a problem with game balance?
On January 26 2023 03:53 RiSkysc2 wrote: He's being sarcastic, you can't truly be this dense can you?
Like he's literally talking about how bad the stalker and how broken the hydra is while winning with mass blink stalkers........
Man, the level gap between players is HUGE, you can't trully be this dense, can you? He is winning because the gap level is abysmal, and even with upgrades Stalkers are really bad in most situations which I don't think it is bad overall but the point on some Protoss units stands, his sarcasm is covering something quite real, but every nice thing Protoss get is used to cheese or all in usually so they don't want to overtune one of the more versatile units the race has.
so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
On January 26 2023 05:46 moonsjde wrote: so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
Better and earlier scout based on Sentries which can be used for some pushes later abusing ForceFields. Since the Ravager takes longer to morph the Force Fields will be better offensive and deffensive wise. Also the speedier Observer to keep as well scouting and denying creep. Maybe better use on Archons to counter Mutas (which I used to play a Zealot Templar Archon build en PvZ super good time ago) Now you need to micro better the Carriers and the Disruptors because of the nerfs.
There are changes that can't be analyzed on a vaccum, you need to wait to also see what other races go for and change.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
A Zerg player happy about the patch? I'm so surprised.
Won't answer to the mental gymnastics of you trying to argue one race winning 50% of tournaments is fine. We both know you'd be up in arms about it if your race was on the other side.
I don't know how you can argue about tournament winners when serral has won 89 of the 201 tournaments he's even participated in.
When you remove the top player of each race (Serral, herO, Maru):
Terran wins almost nothing.
Protoss wins absolutely nothing.
Zerg still wins the last 8 world championships (even the 2 that Serral won were off the back of ZvZ).
The idea that "It's just Serral" is completely stupid. How anyone can say that while terran and protoss success is much, much, more dependant on just one player. herO and Maru are bigger outliers than Serral has ever been.
On January 26 2023 05:46 moonsjde wrote: so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
Better and earlier scout based on Sentries which can be used for some pushes later abusing ForceFields. Since the Ravager takes longer to morph the Force Fields will be better offensive and deffensive wise. Also the speedier Observer to keep as well scouting and denying creep. Maybe better use on Archons to counter Mutas (which I used to play a Zealot Templar Archon build en PvZ super good time ago) Now you need to micro better the Carriers and the Disruptors because of the nerfs.
There are changes that can't be analyzed on a vaccum, you need to wait to also see what other races go for and change.
not asking anyone to analyze in a vacuum, i'm interested in people's play experience as the patch is live and presumably streamers have been showing gameplay as well.
On January 26 2023 05:46 moonsjde wrote: so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
You do raise a good point. This change doesn't give Protoss any chance for new and cool strategies. Even the stasis guard was nerfed under the guise of Quality of life changes. (Now it has more priority, and you can tell your units to do something after the stasis ends. So if you got all your workers in stasis like a noob, you don't need to wait until the stasis finishes to send them to mine, which is ridiculous).
There's only 1 type of strategy this patch promotes for Protoss: all ins, thanks to the upgrade buffs.
What I've been doing is just all ining everyone with +1 mass zealot with sentries to FF ramps ala early WOL Or +2 mass zealot archon all in. At least in pvz.
After all that's what the balance team wants us to do.
The upgrade buffs literally have no effect unless you're all ining or your opponent is doing a timing push. If you don't attack when you get your upgrades or attack later than 10 seconds after they finish then the "buff" is meaningless as you'd have the upgrade anyway by then in the previous patch, and what remains are just nerfs to the mid/lategame like you say.
With this strategy and the sheer power of my hatred for Zerg i've been able to maintain my pvz winrate, but we'll see how it goes after a while.
Regrettably Protoss can't enjoy a macro game anymore, So when you zergs are dying to shitty protoss all ins, don't you dare complain. You brought this on yourselves.
On January 26 2023 05:46 moonsjde wrote: so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
There's only 1 type of strategy this patch promotes for Protoss: all ins, thanks to the upgrade buffs.
Regrettably Protoss can't enjoy a macro game anymore, So when you zergs are dying to shitty protoss all ins, don't you dare complain. You brought this on yourselves.
This kind of meta is something a lot of people don't realise. If protoss is allin-ing every game that doesn't mean the allins are imba, it means that playing lategame is suicide.
Years ago when proxy every game was the meta in TvP it wasn't because they were imba either, it was because no one wanted to play macro.
Inevitably protoss will go 2 base or 3 base allin every game, and zerg will complain these allins are overpowered even if protoss wins one tournament every year.
On January 26 2023 05:46 moonsjde wrote: so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
There's only 1 type of strategy this patch promotes for Protoss: all ins, thanks to the upgrade buffs.
Regrettably Protoss can't enjoy a macro game anymore, So when you zergs are dying to shitty protoss all ins, don't you dare complain. You brought this on yourselves.
This kind of meta is something a lot of people don't realise. If protoss is allin-ing every game that doesn't mean the allins are imba, it means that playing lategame is suicide.
Years ago when proxy every game was the meta in TvP it wasn't because they were imba either, it was because no one wanted to play macro.
Inevitably protoss will go 2 base or 3 base allin every game, and zerg will complain these allins are overpowered even if protoss wins one tournament every year.
i simply don't understand why we can't have a protoss ground army that can do work at 4+ bases in pvz. every time they want to buff toss it's "void rays are faster now, carriers are better now" and when they want to nerf us they just nerf air back in the other direction. skytoss is notorious for being anti-fun at all levels, so why is it so often used as the crux of toss balance? this is for years now
this is why for SC3 i want separate air supply. i've been saying it for years and think it would improve every matchup and every race. air should be limited to like 30-50 supply and it should be separate from main supply. delete mass capital ships, mass muta, mass phoenix - all things that are silly, unfun, and either stomp or get stomped by nature, but keep the incentive to build a sensible amount of air by giving it separate supply. it seems obvious to me at this point!
On January 26 2023 04:38 Glorfindelio wrote: Man, these forums have really turned into cancer, as they're dominated by like the same 4-5 bad faith posters making the same tired arguments. Pretty sad, considering browsing these forums used to be really enjoyable.
Also, balance has certainly tended to tilt toward Zerg at various points, but the largest factor in their dominance boils down to:
They have the largest pool of remaining S-tier talent and have for YEARS. At various points, Terran lost Innovation/TY and Protoss lost Stats, SoS, Classic (yes he's been back but not the same), Zest, and Trap. Zerg only had to say goodbye to Soo (and recently Rogue). Also, Rogue, Serral, Dark and Reynor are all-time SC2 talents, and have remained titans throughout the duration of their careers, with Rogue/Serral as GOAT contenders. These days, Terran and Protoss have only 1 realistic contender in Maru/Hero.
The era of Zerg dominance started in 2019 when almost all those players were still active. Barely any of the players you mentioned were winning tournaments in the months/ the year before they retired
On January 26 2023 05:06 ZeroByte13 wrote: And your argument for why top-4 zerg are so much better than Bunny and Cure is.... because they win more? They win so much because they're so good, and the proof of them being super good is "because they win so much"? Is this correct?
What if Bunny is better than Serral, and he's just being held back by balance all these 5 last years?
You'll say "don't be silly, Serral is obviously much better than Bunny". But give marines +15 hp (breaking the balance) and top-5 terrans (including Bunny) will win most of the tournaments. And then I'll say it's because they're just better than other players. How would you prove it's not the case and there's a problem with game balance?
I like this comment, because it highlights how 'impossible' it is for anyone to really claim much regarding the importance of player skill vs balance when it comes to the success / lack of success regarding players and races. It's fairly reasonable to say that it could be that the top zerg players are actually more talented than the players of other races in an environment where basically no new talent is entering the scene anymore (or that there are more of them at least). It's also reasonable to think that even if this was true, that zerg could still be the race which allows player skill to shine the most / make it the easiest to be competitive on the regular (so maybe the most forgiving race when it comes to errors which could lose a game on the spot, stuff like that).
There isn't any particular proof for any position, it's all just interpretations of the scenario we have and had for the past few years.
I personally think that zerg is the race which allows someone like serral to be as dominant as he is / was. I don't think we'd talk about serral in the same way if he played toss or terran. Does that mean zerg is op? Depends on what you think op signals.
On January 26 2023 05:06 ZeroByte13 wrote: And your argument for why top-4 zerg are so much better than Bunny and Cure is.... because they win more? They win so much because they're so good, and the proof of them being super good is "because they win so much"? Is this correct?
What if Bunny is better than Serral, and he's just being held back by balance all these 5 last years?
You'll say "don't be silly, Serral is obviously much better than Bunny". But give marines +15 hp (breaking the balance) and top-5 terrans (including Bunny) will win most of the tournaments. And then I'll say it's because they're just better than other players. How would you prove it's not the case and there's a problem with game balance?
I like this comment, because it highlights how 'impossible' it is for anyone to really claim much regarding the importance of player skill vs balance when it comes to the success / lack of success regarding players and races. It's fairly reasonable to say that it could be that the top zerg players are actually more talented than the players of other races in an environment where basically no new talent is entering the scene anymore (or that there are more of them at least). It's also reasonable to think that even if this was true, that zerg could still be the race which allows player skill to shine the most / make it the easiest to be competitive on the regular (so maybe the most forgiving race when it comes to errors which could lose a game on the spot, stuff like that).
There isn't any particular proof for any position, it's all just interpretations of the scenario we have and had for the past few years.
I personally think that zerg is the race which allows someone like serral to be as dominant as he is / was. I don't think we'd talk about serral in the same way if he played toss or terran. Does that mean zerg is op? Depends on what you think op signals.
your argument should mean zerg is op to any sane person. If zerg has the tools to make you the best player in the world, and the other two races do not, then by default it is the strongest race. strongest ≠ easiest
On January 26 2023 05:06 ZeroByte13 wrote: And your argument for why top-4 zerg are so much better than Bunny and Cure is.... because they win more? They win so much because they're so good, and the proof of them being super good is "because they win so much"? Is this correct?
What if Bunny is better than Serral, and he's just being held back by balance all these 5 last years?
You'll say "don't be silly, Serral is obviously much better than Bunny". But give marines +15 hp (breaking the balance) and top-5 terrans (including Bunny) will win most of the tournaments. And then I'll say it's because they're just better than other players. How would you prove it's not the case and there's a problem with game balance?
I like this comment, because it highlights how 'impossible' it is for anyone to really claim much regarding the importance of player skill vs balance when it comes to the success / lack of success regarding players and races. It's fairly reasonable to say that it could be that the top zerg players are actually more talented than the players of other races in an environment where basically no new talent is entering the scene anymore (or that there are more of them at least). It's also reasonable to think that even if this was true, that zerg could still be the race which allows player skill to shine the most / make it the easiest to be competitive on the regular (so maybe the most forgiving race when it comes to errors which could lose a game on the spot, stuff like that).
There isn't any particular proof for any position, it's all just interpretations of the scenario we have and had for the past few years.
I personally think that zerg is the race which allows someone like serral to be as dominant as he is / was. I don't think we'd talk about serral in the same way if he played toss or terran. Does that mean zerg is op? Depends on what you think op signals.
your argument should mean zerg is op to any sane person. If zerg has the tools to make you the best player in the world, and the other two races do not, then by default it is the strongest race. strongest ≠ easiest
Well my position mainly focuses on the idea that i think there would be no way for a terran or toss to be as consistent. I think the other races have an easier time losing even if played on a very high level. Though in that scenario it might still be true that terran or toss played on the highest achievable level by a person would be stronger. People don't play at 100% at all times, the meta shifts too and potentially forces people into decision spaces which are more vulnerable than others / produce higher variances in outcomes, etc. I don't think it is particularly clear what people even really mean when they talk about a race being OP.
But yeah, i'd generally agree with you that i'd call zerg op in the sense that it seems to allow strong players to be more consistent than similarly strong players of other races. But i also cannot prove that serral isn't just better than maru for example, whatever 'better' would even mean outside of their particular skills with their race. It seems like an easy conversation, but it really isn't.
On January 26 2023 05:46 moonsjde wrote: so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
You do raise a good point. This change doesn't give Protoss any chance for new and cool strategies. Even the stasis guard was nerfed under the guise of Quality of life changes. (Now it has more priority, and you can tell your units to do something after the stasis ends. So if you got all your workers in stasis like a noob, you don't need to wait until the stasis finishes to send them to mine, which is ridiculous).
There's only 1 type of strategy this patch promotes for Protoss: all ins, thanks to the upgrade buffs.
What I've been doing is just all ining everyone with +1 mass zealot with sentries to FF ramps ala early WOL Or +2 mass zealot archon all in. At least in pvz.
After all that's what the balance team wants us to do.
The upgrade buffs literally have no effect unless you're all ining or your opponent is doing a timing push. If you don't attack when you get your upgrades or attack later than 10 seconds after they finish then the "buff" is meaningless as you'd have the upgrade anyway by then in the previous patch, and what remains are just nerfs to the mid/lategame like you say.
With this strategy and the sheer power of my hatred for Zerg i've been able to maintain my pvz winrate, but we'll see how it goes after a while.
Regrettably Protoss can't enjoy a macro game anymore, So when you zergs are dying to shitty protoss all ins, don't you dare complain. You brought this on yourselves.
That... isn't how this change works. The upgrade changes impact each subsequent upgrade as well. So +1 now comes out 7 seconds sooner, +2 comes out 16 seconds sooner (9 + 7), +3 comes out 26.7 seconds sooner (16 + 10.7). So +3 is hitting almost 30 seconds earlier than it did on the previous patch. Not that its a common build, but you could now get to 3/3 over 50 seconds sooner if you're working with a single forge.
I know most of this thread doesn't understand the concept, but also keep in mind that the late game doesn't happen in a vacuum, especially vs Zerg. Have efficient early fights vs Zerg means less drones early + more resources lost. All this is going to add up throughout a game, eventually limiting the resources zerg has to play with.
On January 26 2023 05:46 moonsjde wrote: so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
You do raise a good point. This change doesn't give Protoss any chance for new and cool strategies. Even the stasis guard was nerfed under the guise of Quality of life changes. (Now it has more priority, and you can tell your units to do something after the stasis ends. So if you got all your workers in stasis like a noob, you don't need to wait until the stasis finishes to send them to mine, which is ridiculous).
There's only 1 type of strategy this patch promotes for Protoss: all ins, thanks to the upgrade buffs.
What I've been doing is just all ining everyone with +1 mass zealot with sentries to FF ramps ala early WOL Or +2 mass zealot archon all in. At least in pvz.
After all that's what the balance team wants us to do.
The upgrade buffs literally have no effect unless you're all ining or your opponent is doing a timing push. If you don't attack when you get your upgrades or attack later than 10 seconds after they finish then the "buff" is meaningless as you'd have the upgrade anyway by then in the previous patch, and what remains are just nerfs to the mid/lategame like you say.
With this strategy and the sheer power of my hatred for Zerg i've been able to maintain my pvz winrate, but we'll see how it goes after a while.
Regrettably Protoss can't enjoy a macro game anymore, So when you zergs are dying to shitty protoss all ins, don't you dare complain. You brought this on yourselves.
That... isn't how this change works. The upgrade changes impact each subsequent upgrade as well. So +1 now comes out 7 seconds sooner, +2 comes out 16 seconds sooner (9 + 7), +3 comes out 26.7 seconds sooner (16 + 10.7). So +3 is hitting almost 30 seconds earlier than it did on the previous patch. Not that its a common build, but you could now get to 3/3 over 50 seconds sooner if you're working with a single forge.
I know most of this thread doesn't understand the concept, but also keep in mind that the late game doesn't happen in a vacuum, especially vs Zerg. Have efficient early fights vs Zerg means less drones early + more resources lost. All this is going to add up throughout a game, eventually limiting the resources zerg has to play with.
but what "efficient early fights" can protoss have while playing a macro game against a passive zerg? even low level zergs are mechanically proficient against pretty much every build these days. charge, glaives, archon drop, oracle - all of these builds require protoss to find a "gotcha" moment in the zergs defense which is just very uncommon these days when walking onto creep into 8 queens. gateway allins are often defended unscouted. blink can theoretically win games with efficient grinding but it's insanely taxing mechanically and if your tempo slips at any point/you don't know the timings perfectly you are probably dead
i think protoss players want to be active on the map, want to take fights with blink and forcefields, want to gain tempo with gateway skirmishes, etc. that's the more fun way to play! but the margin of error for doing damage is insanely narrow, and if you mess up an attack on creep you don't get a second chance, so people go straight to skytoss for stability. IMO ravagers always deleted the forcefield too easily from the very beginning, but because forcefields had an "abusive/feelsbad" reputation they were afraid to re-tune them into relevance
i get it, people hate splash damage, they hate skytoss, they hate forcefields. but when you take away these tools one by one and don't compensate by making low tech units stronger you end up with a neutered race that needs things like shield battery overcharge to survive while doing anything, and they're nerfing the battery too, so... i don't get it, how do you win if your compositins are never going to be efficient fast enough?
On January 25 2023 22:27 Charoisaur wrote: [quote] I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
A Zerg player happy about the patch? I'm so surprised.
Won't answer to the mental gymnastics of you trying to argue one race winning 50% of tournaments is fine. We both know you'd be up in arms about it if your race was on the other side.
I don't know how you can argue about tournament winners when serral has won 89 of the 201 tournaments he's even participated in.
and Reynor and Dark and Rogue. Weird how when Zerg is dominating Zerg players are just better but it's different when another race dominates
No, not like reynor, dark, and rogue.
Serral's combined Premier/Major medal count is 66 top 3 finishes.
For comparison:
Rogue: 30 Dark: 41 Reynor: 33
Maru: 48 Byun: 33 Innovation: 41
herO: 32 neeb: 51 Zest: 39
I don't understand how you people can't just like... go to liquipedia yourselves and see that the game's pretty fucking balanced, and serral's an enormous outlier.
How many of those tournaments are won by Serral when he had no real competition in the WCS/EU scene. I would do the same medal count but starting from late 2019/ early 2020 after Clem and Reynor has arrived.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment
So you think if Protoss would win 50% of tournaments they wouldn't be getting nerfed?
Reynor mentioned this in his stream the other day - to him this patch is more about breathing life back into the game, not about making drastic game altering changes.
A Zerg player happy about the patch? I'm so surprised.
Won't answer to the mental gymnastics of you trying to argue one race winning 50% of tournaments is fine. We both know you'd be up in arms about it if your race was on the other side.
I don't know how you can argue about tournament winners when serral has won 89 of the 201 tournaments he's even participated in.
and Reynor and Dark and Rogue. Weird how when Zerg is dominating Zerg players are just better but it's different when another race dominates
No, not like reynor, dark, and rogue.
Serral's combined Premier/Major medal count is 66 top 3 finishes.
For comparison:
Rogue: 30 Dark: 41 Reynor: 33
Maru: 48 Byun: 33 Innovation: 41
herO: 32 neeb: 51 Zest: 39
I don't understand how you people can't just like... go to liquipedia yourselves and see that the game's pretty fucking balanced, and serral's an enormous outlier.
How many of those tournaments are won by Serral when he had no real competition in the WCS/EU scene. I would do the same medal count but starting from late 2019/ early 2020 after Clem and Reynor has arrived.
this might be the funniest misrepresentation of stastics ive ever seen. and sorry i just realized i quoted the wrong message, i meant the guy you were replying to. This suggest Neeb is the best protoss when half his medals are probably from NA region locked tournaments.
On January 26 2023 05:46 moonsjde wrote: so, aside from all the boring balance whine from the same 3 people who have arguing on here for 15 years...
is there anything to try out or do differently with toss now in any matchup? new builds or strats? because it seems like mostly the plan is to play exactly the same except our tech is weaker
the only thing i can think of is maybe with ravager morph time being substantially longer there's a bigger window to do soul trains/force field based aggression again, which could be really cool, but haven't had a chance to test it out yet.
You do raise a good point. This change doesn't give Protoss any chance for new and cool strategies. Even the stasis guard was nerfed under the guise of Quality of life changes. (Now it has more priority, and you can tell your units to do something after the stasis ends. So if you got all your workers in stasis like a noob, you don't need to wait until the stasis finishes to send them to mine, which is ridiculous).
There's only 1 type of strategy this patch promotes for Protoss: all ins, thanks to the upgrade buffs.
What I've been doing is just all ining everyone with +1 mass zealot with sentries to FF ramps ala early WOL Or +2 mass zealot archon all in. At least in pvz.
After all that's what the balance team wants us to do.
The upgrade buffs literally have no effect unless you're all ining or your opponent is doing a timing push. If you don't attack when you get your upgrades or attack later than 10 seconds after they finish then the "buff" is meaningless as you'd have the upgrade anyway by then in the previous patch, and what remains are just nerfs to the mid/lategame like you say.
With this strategy and the sheer power of my hatred for Zerg i've been able to maintain my pvz winrate, but we'll see how it goes after a while.
Regrettably Protoss can't enjoy a macro game anymore, So when you zergs are dying to shitty protoss all ins, don't you dare complain. You brought this on yourselves.
That... isn't how this change works. The upgrade changes impact each subsequent upgrade as well. So +1 now comes out 7 seconds sooner, +2 comes out 16 seconds sooner (9 + 7), +3 comes out 26.7 seconds sooner (16 + 10.7). So +3 is hitting almost 30 seconds earlier than it did on the previous patch. Not that its a common build, but you could now get to 3/3 over 50 seconds sooner if you're working with a single forge.
I know most of this thread doesn't understand the concept, but also keep in mind that the late game doesn't happen in a vacuum, especially vs Zerg. Have efficient early fights vs Zerg means less drones early + more resources lost. All this is going to add up throughout a game, eventually limiting the resources zerg has to play with.
but what "efficient early fights" can protoss have while playing a macro game against a passive zerg? even low level zergs are mechanically proficient against pretty much every build these days. charge, glaives, archon drop, oracle - all of these builds require protoss to find a "gotcha" moment in the zergs defense which is just very uncommon these days when walking onto creep into 8 queens. gateway allins are often defended unscouted. blink can theoretically win games with efficient grinding but it's insanely taxing mechanically and if your tempo slips at any point/you don't know the timings perfectly you are probably dead
i think protoss players want to be active on the map, want to take fights with blink and forcefields, want to gain tempo with gateway skirmishes, etc. that's the more fun way to play! but the margin of error for doing damage is insanely narrow, and if you mess up an attack on creep you don't get a second chance, so people go straight to skytoss for stability. IMO ravagers always deleted the forcefield too easily from the very beginning, but because forcefields had an "abusive/feelsbad" reputation they were afraid to re-tune them into relevance
i get it, people hate splash damage, they hate skytoss, they hate forcefields. but when you take away these tools one by one and don't compensate by making low tech units stronger you end up with a neutered race that needs things like shield battery overcharge to survive while doing anything, and they're nerfing the battery too, so... i don't get it, how do you win if your compositins are never going to be efficient fast enough?
As a great example of taking efficient fights (early is a vague term, but I'm willing to say this isn't super early), the current ZvP meta of oracles into blink stalkers + zealot runbys. Alongside improved movespeed from sentries and HT to rotate around the map and force fights. It's not easy, but SC2 isn't an easy game. I'm honestly not interested in arguing balance regarding this, as there's just too many disingenuous and deceptive arguments going on here- I'm just saying this is the concept behind the patch; Encouraging fights around the map due to increased mobility and faster upgrades.
As an aside, I'm fully aboard the "remove the ravager" hate train that needs to get started. Sentries could be mildly interesting with the pacing of LotV, and honestly the negation of sentries are the far from the worst flaws of the ravager as far as I'm concerned.
On January 26 2023 12:55 Draddition wrote: As an aside, I'm fully aboard the "remove the ravager" hate train that needs to get started. Sentries could be mildly interesting with the pacing of LotV, and honestly the negation of sentries are the far from the worst flaws of the ravager as far as I'm concerned.
I don't necessarily think that the Ravager needs to be changed, but I've always thought that the Ravager should keep the Armoured tag that the Roach has, just because that makes more sense to me.
EDIT:
A "remove the Swarm Host" hate train would be something I'd willingly get behind though...
On January 26 2023 12:55 Draddition wrote: As an aside, I'm fully aboard the "remove the ravager" hate train that needs to get started. Sentries could be mildly interesting with the pacing of LotV, and honestly the negation of sentries are the far from the worst flaws of the ravager as far as I'm concerned.
I don't necessarily think that the Ravager needs to be changed, but I've always thought that the Ravager should keep the Armoured tag that the Roach has, just because that makes more sense to me.
EDIT:
A "remove the Swarm Host" hate train would be something I'd willingly get behind though...
Don't want to completely derail patch discussion, but sign me up for the SH removal train. It's mostly irrelevant at this point anyways. Since HotS I've wanted the SH to be a proper T3 class unit for ranged play with zerg, then we got the lurker instead- so I don't even see a pathway to reworking the unit into something interesting.
Regarding the ravager, I mostly hate what its done to ZvZ where the matchup is largely locked into both players making a ball of stuff and staring at it for 10 minutes. Not much in the way of positional play, and hardly any room to tech into more interesting units. I also think without the ravager, shield batteries could be hit even more and certainly shield battery + cannon rushes into robo stuff would have to be removed.
Is it a surprise we are getting a zerg biased patch again? Harstem, who is clearly part of the zerg cabal, is representing protoss in the balance council lmao, what else do u expect?
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
"zerg is getting preferential treatment" is your opinion vs every professional gamer. It's pretty obvious whose opinion is more valuable.
Plenty of pros have said Zerg is getting preferential treatment at certain points. Inno, TY, Trap, Heromarine, uThermal, and even Rogue have all made statements suggesting Blizzard favors Zerg. Pretty sure Classic did shortly before his military service as well.
INnoVation proclaimed Zerg OP and is impossible to beat. INno had 85+% winrate in TvZ at the time. That's close to the opposite of "impossible to beat." TY has claimed both Zerg OP and Protoss OP. He himself chose replays to highlight these imbalances in SC2 shows, and the people there were poking holes in everything. Example: TY: Terran can't keep up economically. Others: You have 108 SCVs with oversaturation on every mining base and still producing SCVs. You also have a lot of resources in the bank with several spare Orbital Commands. Why not stop at 80 SCVs and make bigger army? TY: If I lose SCVs to harass I'll be behind. Others: You have a lot of CCs and a bank. TY: I guess... Trap made claims of Protoss being weak, won several tournaments and kept claiming Protoss is weak. Trap, INno and TY are among the worst individuals to name drop in this contexts. They have a history of hypocrisy in this topic.
Rogue is a genuine OP claimant. "Zerg seems strong so I applied myself and won."
Love this, you just said unironically what I said ironically
Ahh that are not the players he meant. He just meant the objective and unbiased players like Lambo and Scarlett, only their opinion should be considered as opposed to biased terran players
so predictable. You say we should listen to pros but if the pros have a different opinion than you you say their opinion doesn't count because they're biased. But the pros who have the same opinion as you are of course unbiased. Also your argumentation makes absolutely zero sense. So if Fruitdealer said Zerg is weak after winning the first GSL his opinion would be invalid because he just won?
You read my post as if I thought Zerg is fine. That is only your assumption. I said that 3 of the mentioned players have shown extreme bias in this question. They are therefore bad examples.
I have the stance of Zerg being more powerful in the last few years.
You say my arguments makes no sense. I have seen what happens when I try to be thorough. The post becomes long and people skip past it. I have seen things I've proven to be false being part of the discussion after my post. I say that INno had very high win rate. I could find that exact point in time and post sources of the Korean scene having more wins for all Terrans, not just INnoVation. I could do the same for Trap. TY is harder to do since I do not remember exactly when this was.
I am not the best with words so I try to limit myself in order to be understood. My filter between what I want to have said and what I have written is not reliable for me. For that I am sorry. I should have included something about the state of the scene and not just the individuals in questions.
On January 24 2023 07:49 Charoisaur wrote: Yeah letting pros handle patches is just a bad idea, they clearly have a conflict of interest regarding balancing the game which results in the race that has the most influential community members getting all the buffs. Shameful
Protoss has the most players in the balance discord by far and every change is voted on. Every player from the Dreamhack regionals and GSL is in the balance discord (or invited and declined) and thus protoss has the most representation.
So yeah there's no zerg cabal.
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now? In 2019 there was one super tournament in which Protoss was doing really well and Protoss got immediately nerfed. Zerg has been dominating for 5 years and have never really been nerfed for it. All the nerfs they have received have either been counter-acted by buffs / nerfs to the other races or were extremely inconsequential. And now they are pushing a very Zerg favored patch 2 weeks before IEM Katowice, can you imagine that happening for Terran or Protoss? Honestly, I don't know what's the reason for this, if Zergs have conspired to get favorable balance, if certain decision-makers at Blizzard like Zerg, if they want Serral and Reynor to perform well or if Terrans and Protoss players are just too polite to vocally voice their opinion. However it's so clear that Zerg is getting preferential treatment by the balance team that I honestly think you are just arguing in bad faith if you try to deny this.
Answer my question:
I mean, can you really with a straight face say Zerg isn't getting preferential treatment by the balance team and that for a long time now?
I know it's a classic to attack the person instead of the argument when you have no arguments left
"zerg is getting preferential treatment" is your opinion vs every professional gamer. It's pretty obvious whose opinion is more valuable.
Plenty of pros have said Zerg is getting preferential treatment at certain points. Inno, TY, Trap, Heromarine, uThermal, and even Rogue have all made statements suggesting Blizzard favors Zerg. Pretty sure Classic did shortly before his military service as well.
INnoVation proclaimed Zerg OP and is impossible to beat. INno had 85+% winrate in TvZ at the time. That's close to the opposite of "impossible to beat." TY has claimed both Zerg OP and Protoss OP. He himself chose replays to highlight these imbalances in SC2 shows, and the people there were poking holes in everything. Example: TY: Terran can't keep up economically. Others: You have 108 SCVs with oversaturation on every mining base and still producing SCVs. You also have a lot of resources in the bank with several spare Orbital Commands. Why not stop at 80 SCVs and make bigger army? TY: If I lose SCVs to harass I'll be behind. Others: You have a lot of CCs and a bank. TY: I guess... Trap made claims of Protoss being weak, won several tournaments and kept claiming Protoss is weak. Trap, INno and TY are among the worst individuals to name drop in this contexts. They have a history of hypocrisy in this topic.
Rogue is a genuine OP claimant. "Zerg seems strong so I applied myself and won."
Love this, you just said unironically what I said ironically
Ahh that are not the players he meant. He just meant the objective and unbiased players like Lambo and Scarlett, only their opinion should be considered as opposed to biased terran players
so predictable. You say we should listen to pros but if the pros have a different opinion than you you say their opinion doesn't count because they're biased. But the pros who have the same opinion as you are of course unbiased. Also your argumentation makes absolutely zero sense. So if Fruitdealer said Zerg is weak after winning the first GSL his opinion would be invalid because he just won?
You read my post as if I thought Zerg is fine. That is only your assumption. I said that 3 of the mentioned players have shown extreme bias in this question. They are therefore bad examples.
I have the stance of Zerg being more powerful in the last few years.
You say my arguments makes no sense. I have seen what happens when I try to be thorough. The post becomes long and people skip past it. I have seen things I've proven to be false being part of the discussion after my post. I say that INno had very high win rate. I could find that exact point in time and post sources of the Korean scene having more wins for all Terrans, not just INnoVation. I could do the same for Trap. TY is harder to do since I do not remember exactly when this was.
I am not the best with words so I try to limit myself in order to be understood. My filter between what I want to have said and what I have written is not reliable for me. For that I am sorry. I should have included something about the state of the scene and not just the individuals in questions.
Fair enough, I mean I don't disagree that the mentioned players are biased but the thing is that probably most pro players are biased to some extent and some of the more biased players are confirmed to have been involved in some of the decisions done by the balance council.
Therefore, filtering pro feedback to only consider the suggestions from some pro players while ignoring others seems ... disingenous to say the least.
"Zerg Cabal"? Seriously? Of course, accusing a specific group of secretly being in a cabal that is running the show has never been a problematic position to hold (ya'll know where that shit comes from right?) but, why? Ashamed to see this crap on TL tbh.
Apparently Scarlett, Lambo (and Harstem? so Team Shopify, why specifically them?) have somehow (intimidation? bribery? what?) bent every other pro to their will and are plotting to make it easier for Zerg to win (because why wouldn't they, life is only enjoyable when everything is easy, right?) and murder the SC2 scene in the process, (prbly their main source of income, but I don't actually know that so I wouldn't presume to assert it like it was fact).
I'm happy we get patches for this 13 year old game, (and after Blizz went to shit I might add). Go play League with this toxic bs. The Loire Valley is pittance compared to this thread. Personally, I am excited to see fresh strats, excited to see fresh games, excited to be able to continue enjoying SC2 after all these years. Thanks to everyone that makes this possible (including the balance team) and fuck the haters.
"Zerg Cabal"? Seriously? Of course, accusing a specific group of secretly being in a cabal that is running the show has never been a problematic position to hold (ya'll know where that shit comes from right?) but, why? Ashamed to see this crap on TL tbh.
It's a meme from Reddit. Don't take it too seriously.
I saw Zerg Cabal first on TL, where I've read all of the posts about the patch. Then saw it mentioned in a tournament cast referencing TL, then I saw reddit talk about the Nathanias thing and it just blew up.
To put fuel on the fire. Stats finally returned, the only non-Zerg who could rival Serral and now we have a 50% nerf on his Shield Battery Overcharge and a 19% nerf on his Disruptor AoEs. Back when the game was more balanced Stats innovated Stasis use on Larvae and Eggs. Well that was nerfed and now it's even nerfed further with the inconsistent attack priority change and units being able to take order while in Stasis.
On January 30 2023 08:22 Arghmyliver wrote: This is the whiniest I've seen TL in a long time.
"Zerg Cabal"? Seriously? Of course, accusing a specific group of secretly being in a cabal that is running the show has never been a problematic position to hold (ya'll know where that shit comes from right?) but, why? Ashamed to see this crap on TL tbh.
Apparently Scarlett, Lambo (and Harstem? so Team Shopify, why specifically them?) have somehow (intimidation? bribery? what?) bent every other pro to their will and are plotting to make it easier for Zerg to win (because why wouldn't they, life is only enjoyable when everything is easy, right?) and murder the SC2 scene in the process, (prbly their main source of income, but I don't actually know that so I wouldn't presume to assert it like it was fact).
I'm happy we get patches for this 13 year old game, (and after Blizz went to shit I might add). Go play League with this toxic bs. The Loire Valley is pittance compared to this thread. Personally, I am excited to see fresh strats, excited to see fresh games, excited to be able to continue enjoying SC2 after all these years. Thanks to everyone that makes this possible (including the balance team) and fuck the haters.
After the first period in years where the game was watchable, a patch happens that looks like it might favor zerg, the race that made the game unwatchable for years before. Being surprised or annoyed by the fact that there is whining about this is insane.
On January 30 2023 08:22 Arghmyliver wrote: This is the whiniest I've seen TL in a long time.
"Zerg Cabal"? Seriously? Of course, accusing a specific group of secretly being in a cabal that is running the show has never been a problematic position to hold (ya'll know where that shit comes from right?) but, why? Ashamed to see this crap on TL tbh.
Apparently Scarlett, Lambo (and Harstem? so Team Shopify, why specifically them?) have somehow (intimidation? bribery? what?) bent every other pro to their will and are plotting to make it easier for Zerg to win (because why wouldn't they, life is only enjoyable when everything is easy, right?) and murder the SC2 scene in the process, (prbly their main source of income, but I don't actually know that so I wouldn't presume to assert it like it was fact).
I'm happy we get patches for this 13 year old game, (and after Blizz went to shit I might add). Go play League with this toxic bs. The Loire Valley is pittance compared to this thread. Personally, I am excited to see fresh strats, excited to see fresh games, excited to be able to continue enjoying SC2 after all these years. Thanks to everyone that makes this possible (including the balance team) and fuck the haters.
*Looks at profile picture* *it's a zerg* How unsurprising.
I don't think people here are saying the Cabal is real, But it's clear the patch is zerg favored, and pro players are biased, specially we've seen some western zergs be VERY biased in the patch. So it's clear that, even subconciously, zerg players pushed for balance changes and buffs that were not really necessary for their base.
Also, it is clear that terran, but specially Protoss players, didn't push as hard for meaningful changes that would help their race. Why does Zerg get unit reworks to make units more usable but Protoss doesn't, for example? Why Protoss doesn't get quality of life changes appart from the archon?
Even the Protoss buffs are highly dissapointing. They buffed upgrade speed, which will just innevitably result in more, and stronger all ins, and nerfed hard the mid and lategame strenght of the army by nerfing carriers and disruptors. Same with terran with the ghost nerf.
Meanwhile units like the hydra, that were doing perfectly fine and have been buffed a lot previously, are buffed even more, making them more micreable and faster, improving their performance against splash damage.
We don't know how the changes were selected, with some pros that are ON the balance council being surprised at some of the changes. We do know players like Scarlett were the ones programing the test mode, and coincidentally that included "unintended" lurker buff that were not (and still are not) in the patch notes.
Meanwhile we have had 0 communication about the patch and the reason why certain changes were made on how they were decided.
All we know is that Zerg, the same race that has won more tournaments this year than Terran and Protoss combined, and the year before, and the year before, and the last 7 world championships, is getting buffed, while terran and Protoss are getting nerfed specially on the lategame, and we get weird changes like the cyclone (which seems it's in the patch notes but not actually in the game) or strong but questionable changes like the upgrade change for Protoss which might do more harm that good and end up being nerfed.
On January 30 2023 21:03 ejozl wrote:
Back when the game was more balanced Stats innovated Stasis use on Larvae and Eggs. Well that was nerfed and now it's even nerfed further with the inconsistent attack priority change and units being able to take order while in Stasis.
Don't forget that the nerf is hidden in "quality of life fixes"
So it's a week from Katowice and the Cyclone change still isn't in. Plus the Colossus friendly fire thing was broken and then fixed in the balance test mod, but is still broken in the live game.
Regardless of what you think of the changes, having the balance council handle this has been a complete shitshow. Tons of undocumented changes, terrible communication of what changed (no one even knew about the balance test mod until a couple of weeks in, and they didn't even have an external changelog for way too long), and now they can't even deploy the correct version to the live game a week before the biggest tournament of the year.
At least they seemed to have pushed a new version (1.11) of the balance test mod that fixes the Cyclone and Colossus bugs, so presumably a fix to the live game is incoming:
Mod made compatible with the release of 5.0.11 The following bug fixes have been applied: Removed Follow Acquire Range change (caused issues with not attacking enemies) Fixed Reaper unable to damage targets at max range when inside a Bunker Fixed Colossus unable to damage own units Fixed an issue with Colossus not dealing damage when picked up away from its target Fixed Lair having sight range of 11 instead of 12 Fixed Cyclone Mag-Field Accelerator upgrade applying the old effects instead of +10 vs all
pivoting a bit from balance and back to the maps, i'm getting tired of the trend of maps having visually ambiguous or weirdly shaped ramps (or natural base openings). i'm all for maps looking attractive, but when it takes me game after game to figure out how to wall a ramp because the visual design makes no sense it gets old. walling is extremely important for toss and i do not see it as fun or interesting to keep having to re-learn it. either make pylons raise and lower like depots or standardize all natural base ramps, and for gods sake make it clear where the pathable terrain ends
On January 31 2023 05:13 moonsjde wrote: pivoting a bit from balance and back to the maps, i'm getting tired of the trend of maps having visually ambiguous or weirdly shaped ramps (or natural base openings). i'm all for maps looking attractive, but when it takes me game after game to figure out how to wall a ramp because the visual design makes no sense it gets old. walling is extremely important for toss and i do not see it as fun or interesting to keep having to re-learn it. either make pylons raise and lower like depots or standardize all natural base ramps, and for gods sake make it clear where the pathable terrain ends
Can't agree more. There is one map where if you put the pylon in the "normal spot" it blocks the nexus... In any other map it doesn't, so after I lost 2 games in 3 days because of that I just vetoed because I'm not going to be fighting my muscle memory and giving the occasional free win just because of bad map design.
There is a second map where if you get baneling busted and you need to make more buildings behind the front gates, there is a tree or something on the side where you cannot place a building so you'd assume if you place the gate beside that you'd complete the second wall, but it turns out zerglings can go through that place. So you either need a second gate if the pylon energy field let's you, or two more pylons just to block 1 square that's in a really awkard position and looks as if units shouldn't be able to pass there. And there goes another free win for Zerg.
That and the fact some map makers insist to put an invisible spot for overlord to permanently have vision over your natural entrance and sometimes even your gas until you can get air vision, which the only thing it does is make Protoss more succeptible in what already is their weakest spot.
On January 31 2023 03:10 Gescom wrote: My client just patched moments ago (to b#89720). Is this perhaps the bug fix patch, with the cyclone change etc?
After playing a bit I have to say I actually like the Raven change (definitely a buff) but really dislike the Cyclone change. Cyclones just feel worse. Considering Roaches and Stalkers are so easily mass produced, the extra damage to armor was more important imo. I don't really mind the Zerg changes tbh but still have the feeling the patch was a clear Zerg net buff. We'll see at Katowice I guess. I really like the TvP changes though so at least there's that
On January 31 2023 20:14 Charoisaur wrote: After playing a bit I have to say I actually like the Raven change (definitely a buff) but really dislike the Cyclone change. Cyclones just feel worse. Considering Roaches and Stalkers are so easily mass produced, the extra damage to armor was more important imo. I don't really mind the Zerg changes tbh but still have the feeling the patch was a clear Zerg net buff. We'll see at Katowice I guess. I really like the TvP changes though so at least there's that
I'd like to add that - as an enjoyer of Void Ray memes - the new Cyclone is much less useful defensively.
EDIT:
The reasons given for the Cyclone change seem to imply that they wanted to encourage battle-mech styles by making the Cyclone more of an all-rounder. Battle-mech was a very niche style before the changes, so I don't know how much appetite there was for such a change. I can't imagine there was much.
It's only a niche because it's easy to counter. Before they traded evenly with Stalkers, but now they will need Tank support to deal with Stalkers, but that's not the worst thing, because they deal with the rest of the Toss arsenal way better. The biggest buff is probably the auto cast range though. I think at least half the Terran playerbase would play mech if it was viable and so many play it regardless of its viability, this just shows the appeal of it. They buffed mech and Terran in general quite a bit, but the late game is simply gone. The Infestor alone deals with everything in a split situation. Fungal outranges all except Libs, Tanks and the Infestor can even take a hit from those units and still get the Fungal off and escape. EMP was what kept Fungal in balance, because it was just as imba in its AoE. And Fungal of course cancels Snipe, so there's no reason to get Ghosts unless you wanna mass Nuke and even that was nerfed, because of the faster Brood Lords. Maybe this is the intent, we can let Terrans turtle as long as they can't win late game, meaning they have to push out eventually. This is a solution, but I would prefer if Terran had the stronger late game, forcing Zergs to push the issue, this would be more dynamic, since Terrans are usually the aggressors prior to the late game and so it creates a nice shift in the matchup.
On January 31 2023 20:14 Charoisaur wrote: After playing a bit I have to say I actually like the Raven change (definitely a buff) but really dislike the Cyclone change. Cyclones just feel worse. Considering Roaches and Stalkers are so easily mass produced, the extra damage to armor was more important imo. I don't really mind the Zerg changes tbh but still have the feeling the patch was a clear Zerg net buff. We'll see at Katowice I guess. I really like the TvP changes though so at least there's that
You generally don't even want your cyclones to engage against light units, thats what hellions are for. The problem with battle mech is that cyclones reach a critical point in wich they become infective quite fast and you lose a ton of DPS, even massing roaches and stalkers can eventually deal with cyclones (even tough cyclones are supposed to beat those units).
Tha AI of lock-on makes it so you never want to make more than a few cyclones early game so these attack changes do nothing for them.
On January 31 2023 22:11 ejozl wrote: They buffed mech and Terran in general quite a bit
How exactly did they buff mech "and Terran in general"?
I'd say mech is just as unviable now as it was before. As others said above, you just cannot effectively mass Cyclones anyway. So basically 5/10 composition maybe became 6/10. It's still bad. I would be very happy to be proven wrong - but I doubt it will happen unfortunately.
Ghost was too strong indeed - but this was necessary because other T late game options are crap. Nerfing ghost (staple unit) and not buffing other late game options means T will probably use all-ins more often. And it's not like with ghosts terrans won 8 world championships in a row or won 50%+ major tournaments.
On January 31 2023 22:11 ejozl wrote: They buffed mech and Terran in general quite a bit
How exactly did they buff mech "and Terran in general"?
I'd say mech is just as unviable now as it was before. As others said above, you just cannot effectively mass Cyclones anyway. So basically 5/10 composition maybe became 6/10. It's still bad. I would be very happy to be proven wrong - but I doubt it will happen unfortunately.
Ghost was too strong indeed - but this was necessary because other T late game options are crap. Nerfing ghost (staple unit) and not buffing other late game options means T will probably use all-ins more often. And it's not like with ghosts terrans won 8 world championships in a row or won 50%+ major tournaments.
Incredible Protoss nerfs. Creep Tumour nerf when placing many of them. (nerf doesn't affect single tumour, because of the time it takes to spread its creep to its full range) Cyclone auto cast buff and dmg slight buff. Small buffs to Viking, Banshee. Major buff to Liberator and Raven.
Regarding TvP i do think the cyclone is just worse.
But I do think the raven change was good, and the Liberator change was good, if annoying as they are cheaper to do when Terran is making those 1-1-1 Allins..
One thing I would have liked is that they buffed viking responsiveness, and Hydras as well, would have been nice to see a similar buff to the tempest.
It seems some Terrans are trying mass liberators and in the mid/late and in some of these maps it gets really tricky to deal with. I would have liked for tempest to be buffed so they could do better vs liberators. You need like 5 of them to 1 shot them, and they are very bad at kiting BC and other things. Not supper common, I know, but other races got those usability buffs, I don't think the tempest is too strong to be buffed
Liberator being 25 gas is good but it's not "major" buff IMO, terrans usually have enough gas anyway. And I'd guess Raven changes will not make any significant difference outside of TvT. Cyclon damage buff - how it's a buff, they are worse now vs their main target roaches, stalkers and oracles. Yeah, they are better vs ravagers and queens, but I'd say it's an even trade at best.
Cyclones dumpstering Ravagers, Queens, and Mutalisks is huge in TvZ. Those were the problem units for battlemech, not roaches.
Go watch some of Heromarine's battlemech games. Being able to bully queens means creep control is way stronger, and mass ravager is no longer a soft counter (if anything it's the other way around now, Cyclones counter ravagers).
Is battlemech viable at the top level? Who knows. But it's way closer than it has been in years.
On the other hand, TvP mech is a lost cause, so the change doesn't matter.
It seems some Terrans are trying mass liberators and in the mid/late and in some of these maps it gets really tricky to deal with. I would have liked for tempest to be buffed so they could do better vs liberators. You need like 5 of them to 1 shot them, and they are very bad at kiting BC and other things. Not supper common, I know, but other races got those usability buffs, I don't think the tempest is too strong to be buffed
I have no clue on the patch feed back but it s pretty sure that range nerf from tempest in a previous patch was insane. Maybe Blizzard nerfed tempest so much in regard of the golden armada, so it would be quite difficult to improve this unit which isn t not looking so badly in the protoss army
On January 31 2023 05:13 moonsjde wrote: pivoting a bit from balance and back to the maps, i'm getting tired of the trend of maps having visually ambiguous or weirdly shaped ramps (or natural base openings). i'm all for maps looking attractive, but when it takes me game after game to figure out how to wall a ramp because the visual design makes no sense it gets old. walling is extremely important for toss and i do not see it as fun or interesting to keep having to re-learn it. either make pylons raise and lower like depots or standardize all natural base ramps, and for gods sake make it clear where the pathable terrain ends
Can't agree more. There is one map where if you put the pylon in the "normal spot" it blocks the nexus... In any other map it doesn't, so after I lost 2 games in 3 days because of that I just vetoed because I'm not going to be fighting my muscle memory and giving the occasional free win just because of bad map design.
There is a second map where if you get baneling busted and you need to make more buildings behind the front gates, there is a tree or something on the side where you cannot place a building so you'd assume if you place the gate beside that you'd complete the second wall, but it turns out zerglings can go through that place. So you either need a second gate if the pylon energy field let's you, or two more pylons just to block 1 square that's in a really awkard position and looks as if units shouldn't be able to pass there. And there goes another free win for Zerg.
That and the fact some map makers insist to put an invisible spot for overlord to permanently have vision over your natural entrance and sometimes even your gas until you can get air vision, which the only thing it does is make Protoss more succeptible in what already is their weakest spot.
It might be convenient, especially for players like me who don't play very regularly, if maps had some terrain decoration at the Pylon location, like they do for the Nexus/Hatchery/Command Centre. Don't know if this is a priority at all, or should just be considered a skill issue we should deal with on our own, but it's an idea.
I just looked at this HM replay, this video shows how strong the mech can be with the new cyclone. I m afraid of the income of Katowice 2023 because of the ability of cyclone to constantly dps the swarm. Interesting, i m surprised but wondering if the new cyclone isn t too harmfull ??
I just looked at this HM replay, this video shows how strong the mech can be with the new cyclone. I m afraid of the income of Katowice 2023 because of the ability of cyclone to constantly dps the swarm. Interesting, i m surprised but wondering if the new cyclone isn t too harmfull ??
Oh no, Zerg might possibly have some difficulty with a strategy for a month or two!
On February 01 2023 04:43 Fanatic-Templar wrote: It might be convenient, especially for players like me who don't play very regularly, if maps had some terrain decoration at the Pylon location, like they do for the Nexus/Hatchery/Command Centre. Don't know if this is a priority at all, or should just be considered a skill issue we should deal with on our own, but it's an idea.
yea we gotta do our homework at the start of the season and learn those walls. i had an idea previously, but did not have the time to make a good presenatation.
the basic idea is that whenever (any race) the player presses the build hotkey (either basic or advanced), the building grid would show immediatelly, with maybe stronger color tints showing unaccessible cells. choosing the first on this list: - darker brown or red tint for unbuildable terrain - blue tint near minerals - green tint near gas
additionally, there could be some additional helpers drawn near the cursor. - a visible 2x2 rectangle drawn on the grid showing where the pylon would go if the player selects pylon and left click where the mouse is at - a visible 3x3 rectangle showing the location of a 3x3 building (gateway/rax/evo) - a visible 5x5 rectangle showing the location of a town hall
3x3 is always centered inside the 5x5, the 2x2 helper always shares two walls with the 3x3 helper.
you know the extractor trick right? even before having 100 minerals to press build-pilon, you press build-assimilator, and use the red 3x3 helper to position yourself at the ramp to place the pylon. check Showtime's stream. or to place a hatch you press build-extractor and position the 3x3 and it's brown 3 cell wide border to get 1 cell close to the minerals and gas, before you place the hatch/town hall.
I just looked at this HM replay, this video shows how strong the mech can be with the new cyclone. I m afraid of the income of Katowice 2023 because of the ability of cyclone to constantly dps the swarm. Interesting, i m surprised but wondering if the new cyclone isn t too harmfull ??
I'm pretty sure this was done before they fixed the fact that the cyclone change wasnt actually in the map.
I just looked at this HM replay, this video shows how strong the mech can be with the new cyclone. I m afraid of the income of Katowice 2023 because of the ability of cyclone to constantly dps the swarm. Interesting, i m surprised but wondering if the new cyclone isn t too harmfull ??
I'm pretty sure this was done before they fixed the fact that the cyclone change wasnt actually in the map.
No, this was played during the EU ESL weekly a couple weeks back. All of those were on the 5.0.11 balance mod which had the change.
There's novelty that works first month, or maybe even first few times when your opponents are not prepared. And there are actually strong options that work even if your opponent is used to them. Time will tell but I strongly suspect Cyclone changes are the former case, not latter.
So many strategies and builds (especially vs Z) were viable just for a month or even less, but didn't affect the overall balance state long term.
The strategic role of cyclones is less overlaped with thors anti armored function. I find a similarity with Lurkers which are able to do well against all, but this kind of unit is risky for the balance.
I would be glad to see ultralisks carrying Zerg army in front of the Terran lines because of their cyclones damage nerf against armored units.
the Cyclone was supposed to be a counter to Ultras, this was when they also gave them super armour. This was so that Terrans would be forced to transition away from Marauder, Marines. The Cyclone is just bad late game tho so it could never be the counter to Ultras.
I'm not sure if I've ever seen Cyclons being a counter vs Ultras. When you've seen it last time, I wonder? It's possible in theory, on paper, in vacuum. But in real life this just doesn't work. Ultras are always supported by lings who hard counter cyclones. Maybe if hellions had a late game upgrade that would allow them to attack on the move... then battle mech would be more viable.
On February 01 2023 19:19 ZeroByte13 wrote: I'm not sure if I've ever seen Cyclons being a counter vs Ultras. When you've seen it last time, I wonder? It's possible in theory, on paper, in vacuum. But in real life this just doesn't work. Ultras are always supported by lings who hard counter cyclones. Maybe if hellions had a late game upgrade that would allow them to attack on the move... then battle mech would be more viable.
Well, you've never seen it because going Ultras against Battle mech is like the stupidest thing you could ever do.
On February 01 2023 19:48 Charoisaur wrote: Well, you've never seen it because going Ultras against Battle mech is like the stupidest thing you could ever do.
But also no one ever switches to battle mech when Ultras are out either. Ultras are late game tech, and nobody plays battle mech in the late game in last few years. My point was - ultras and cyclones almost never met, so Vision_'s point is moot.
On February 01 2023 19:19 ZeroByte13 wrote: I'm not sure if I've ever seen Cyclons being a counter vs Ultras. When you've seen it last time, I wonder? It's possible in theory, on paper, in vacuum. But in real life this just doesn't work. Ultras are always supported by lings who hard counter cyclones. Maybe if hellions had a late game upgrade that would allow them to attack on the move... then battle mech would be more viable.
No, we do not want to head down the road of giving more and more units the ability to attack while moving for obvious reasons.
On February 01 2023 22:08 Creager wrote: No, we do not want to head down the road of giving more and more units the ability to attack while moving for obvious reasons.
I understand, but then battle mech remains unviable in late game. It's how it was since forever, so maybe it's ok.
On February 01 2023 22:08 Creager wrote: No, we do not want to head down the road of giving more and more units the ability to attack while moving for obvious reasons.
I understand, but then battle mech remains unviable in late game. It's how it was since forever, so maybe it's ok.
Well I always thought Battle Mech was meant to be a way to get to a more traditional mech comp without just camping. Battle mech can win in the mid game by being efficient but if you could just battle mech the whole game it wouldnt be that different from bio
On February 01 2023 22:08 Creager wrote: No, we do not want to head down the road of giving more and more units the ability to attack while moving for obvious reasons.
I understand, but then battle mech remains unviable in late game. It's how it was since forever, so maybe it's ok.
What I always liked about Mech (mostly during WoL and HotS) was that it provided a completely different approach on how to play the game as Terran, and while the vast majority of people see it as a low-skill low-APM playstyle that promotes passiveness and turtling, which might be uninteresting to most, I've always seen it as a very methodical carefully executed strategical playstyle when you know what you're doing while making the game also more accessible for lower level players.
While I can acknowledge the frustration having to play against mech, it's really a test of patience, endurance and strategical thinking for the opponent and I feel that for a lot of players this isn't necessarily how they want to play the game. I think most people prefer faster-paced action-packed back-and-forth games, so it's kinda always been a pretty strong contrast to what SC2 is usually about and this is what I've always admired about it. Also it's a little more resembling to how Terran plays in BW and... yeah I like the Siege Tank. A lot. Such a great unit!
When battlemech became a thing with the addition of the Cyclone I at first I thought it was cool to have a more mobile strike force to kill Hatcheries and keep Zerg in check being active on the map, but ultimately I ended up not liking the style as it didn't fit into my personal definition of what mech should be about - deflect whatever the opponent might throw at you, slowly gain positional advantage and then basically just be as cost-efficient as possible and never get caught on the wrong foot. Battlemech just tried to kinda imitate Bio dynamic without being remotely as micro-intensive.
Ultimately I guess the more variety we have in choosing unit compositions, the better, but just giving Hellions attack-while-moving wouldn't even make battlemech viable, as the Hellion itself is just so fragile and scales badly throughout the game that I'm not sure it would make a difference in a straight-up fight, which would inevitably happen at some point.
On February 02 2023 05:01 Vision_ wrote: So what kind of Zerg army will you play (against mech with a dozen of mobile cyclone to constantly dps with a long range ?)
On February 02 2023 05:01 Vision_ wrote: So what kind of Zerg army will you play (against mech with a dozen of mobile cyclone to constantly dps with a long range ?)
Against hellbat + cyclones + tank... I won t bet on your tactics
I feel Hydralisks too much expensive to be considered as a good tier unit, and now cyclone get +50% damage against them... If the only unit able to catch cyclones are glings, i hope they got a training recently because they will have to run very very fast...
On February 02 2023 05:12 Vision_ wrote: Against hellbat + cyclones + tank... I won t bet on your tactics
Why do you think almost nobody uses cyclons past early and early mid game? Ravager / ling / bane crush it. Lings easily catch up on cyclons and surrounds them, and cyclons are made of paper. As soon as they're surrounded they're as good as dead. And they cost quite a bit and require tech-labs, so not easy to replace. Again, when it was last time you've seen tanks / cyclons / hellbats vs Zerg on high level? Maybe I'm missing some cool games but I don't remember seeing anything like this in years.
It reminds me of that one time when a guy was arguing a lot about SC2 balance, and how SC1 balance is so much better. Then he said that obviosly the main counter to ultras in SC2 are siege tanks, not ghosts / liberators. I asked him if he watched (or played above platinum) any SC2 in last few years and he said "well, no, but..."
Heromarine was playing tank - hellion - cyclone in his games yesterday and ravager - ling - bane absolutely does not crush it.
Battlemech hasn't proven to be viable, or even good yet, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that it's _better_ than it was, and if Zergs find a way to shut it down, it's not going to be by massing ravagers.
On February 02 2023 08:01 Athenau wrote: Heromarine was playing tank - hellion - cyclone in his games yesterday and ravager - ling - bane absolutely does not crush it.
Battlemech hasn't proven to be viable, or even good yet, but the preponderance of evidence suggests that it's _better_ than it was, and if Zergs find a way to shut it down, it's not going to be by massing ravagers.
One game isn't exactly a good sample size. Ling Bane Ravager has certainly crushed Battlemech in pro games pre-patch. We'll need to see more games to determine if that is still a viable composition.
I feel the balance council might have miscalculated. Zerg does best when a patch is figured out,. Making a patch just before Katowice has thet before Katowice give the other races their best chance of surprising zergs with new strategies and beating them. Of course that will still leave the rest of the year in missery for the other races but I do believe even if it's a Zerg favored patch there is a chance another race wins it
Protoss also need some time to fix walling and stuff like this for the new maps. In all instances, a patch & new map pool just before the biggest tournament which is meant to be the conclusion for the year, is a shitty idea. But I'm sure this isn't actually the balance commity deciding this, it's probably ESL deciding this, wanting more hype for their tournament.
What i would say last days about cyclones, it is about their support role with hellions (due to the bonus damage against light armor). Now Terran has two mobile mech units which can maybe disturb the play style of Zerg, it s balance effect inside the terran army (symetry with tanks, thors and vikings which have bonus against heavy armor). So Hellions and cyclones can be pair in the middle part of the game like a form of pressure (idk).
Could raven buff buildtime be a problem with auto turrets (against Protoss) ? I just saw HM smurf with an easy harassing play style.
Or maybe Cyclone might be effective enough now to support Banshee - Mech style, Banshee with speed can fight everything from Zerg other than the spellcaster and Mutalisk, Cyclone with MagField and cheaper Raven should be able to help with that.
Changes are nice and all but can we open up the conversation about the carrier once more please ? I made an angry rant post somewhere in this thread earlier so I will try and refrain from repeating myself... Toss can still go straight to Carrier in ZvP, turtle behind cannons and batteries, slowly take more bases and then a-move across the map once they have amassed enough stuff. "Unfair" does not even begin to describe to extremely imbalanced this strat is below a certain level (high masters / gm I guess). Have not noticed the interceptor buff making much of a change in my games against Carriers since the patch hit. Does that need to be in the game so people with less than 100 apm can also win games ? I am done playing against this nonsense, really kills my passion for sc2.
On February 12 2023 17:44 TequilaMockingbird wrote: Changes are nice and all but can we open up the conversation about the carrier once more please ? I made an angry rant post somewhere in this thread earlier so I will try and refrain from repeating myself... Toss can still go straight to Carrier in ZvP, turtle behind cannons and batteries, slowly take more bases and then a-move across the map once they have amassed enough stuff. "Unfair" does not even begin to describe to extremely imbalanced this strat is below a certain level (high masters / gm I guess). Have not noticed the interceptor buff making much of a change in my games against Carriers since the patch hit. Does that need to be in the game so people with less than 100 apm can also win games ? I am done playing against this nonsense, really kills my passion for sc2.
They also completely destroy teamgames. Should have just removed the unit in HotS when the idea was originally floated.
On the bright side - Stormgate devs don't want generically powerful air units like carriers, so there's hope there
On February 12 2023 17:44 TequilaMockingbird wrote: Changes are nice and all but can we open up the conversation about the carrier once more please ? I made an angry rant post somewhere in this thread earlier so I will try and refrain from repeating myself... Toss can still go straight to Carrier in ZvP, turtle behind cannons and batteries, slowly take more bases and then a-move across the map once they have amassed enough stuff. "Unfair" does not even begin to describe to extremely imbalanced this strat is below a certain level (high masters / gm I guess). Have not noticed the interceptor buff making much of a change in my games against Carriers since the patch hit. Does that need to be in the game so people with less than 100 apm can also win games ? I am done playing against this nonsense, really kills my passion for sc2.
Oh wow you have more than 100 apm as zerg that's impressive clearly you deserve to win all of your games.
Shameless Zergs complaining about carriers after they have been double nerfed.
Just make 1 or 2 base nydus, and 1 drop ovelord with 4-5 lings. Drop the lings first to distract, harass and then drop the nydus and protect it with the lings or distract the protoss so they dont seethe nydus, you'll never have to face carriers again.
On February 13 2023 00:43 [Phantom] wrote: Shameless Zergs complaining about carriers after they have been double nerfed.
Just make 1 or 2 base nydus, and 1 drop ovelord with 4-5 lings. Drop the lings first to distract, harass and then drop the nydus and protect it with the lings or distract the protoss so they dont seethe nydus, you'll never have to face carriers again.
Stop whining with your 3.4k metal league experience in every thread, please.
On February 13 2023 00:43 [Phantom] wrote: Shameless Zergs complaining about carriers after they have been double nerfed.
Just make 1 or 2 base nydus, and 1 drop ovelord with 4-5 lings. Drop the lings first to distract, harass and then drop the nydus and protect it with the lings or distract the protoss so they dont seethe nydus, you'll never have to face carriers again.
Stop whining with your 3.4k metal league experience in every thread, please.
You don't understand, just 1 base nydus to counter the carriers.
On February 13 2023 00:43 [Phantom] wrote: Shameless Zergs complaining about carriers after they have been double nerfed.
Just make 1 or 2 base nydus, and 1 drop ovelord with 4-5 lings. Drop the lings first to distract, harass and then drop the nydus and protect it with the lings or distract the protoss so they dont seethe nydus, you'll never have to face carriers again.
Stop whining with your 3.4k metal league experience in every thread, please.
I'm not in a metal league. Also I leave basically all pvps. I don't really care about mmr.
On February 13 2023 09:55 Azzur wrote: Imho, even though people complained that this patch did nothing to curb zerg dominance, I believe it did so in subtle ways and is a great patch!
toss player and i'm reasonably okay with the patch. based on what i've seen in tournaments and my own experience the ravager and sentry changes subtly altered the early midgame dynamic in a way that does matter. it didn't make the matchup perfect by any means, and i still think toss's strengths should be taken out of air and put more into ground for better gameplay, but it's not a terrible patch
No, it is a shit patch. Because it weakened Protoss even more than it already was. Terran is in even more of an allin position, even though that position have been buffed. It's still not a style every Terran wants to play every game (or so I hope). And Zerg will be invincible when they get to late game due to OP BL's and Infestors (now without an answer).
After Katowice I still don't know what to think about patch influence on the results.
- Serral was eliminated in ZvZ but didn't have any problems in ZvP or ZvT even vs really strong herO and Byun.
- Dark was clearly shaken and not himself - he lost to Neeb, almost lost to Creator and was destroyed by herO who didn't even play that good in those series. I'm not sure Dark's performance is indicative of anything.
- Reynor lost to a player who suddenly started playing like SC2 god (Oliveira) and who later destroyed herO and Maru. Before that he smashed his group full of P/T, but of course none of them were real top-player.
- Solar and Ragnarok looked really good until they met their nemesis in Maru, where it's more of a mental thing than anything else.
On February 13 2023 09:55 Azzur wrote: Imho, even though people complained that this patch did nothing to curb zerg dominance, I believe it did so in subtle ways and is a great patch!
I don't think you can make any conclusions about balance from a single tournament because of bracket luck and players making individual mistakes. Keep in mind Maru avoided all the top Zergs and Time went 1-2 against Zergs this tournament. If Serral didn't leave so early and Reynor played game 4 a bit more methodically instead of throwing continous Ling Ultra armies into the meatgrinder we could've been looking at a ZvZ finals with everyone compkaining and taking it as proof Zerg is overpowered.
Whether the game is balanced or not can only be said after a larger sample of tournaments but my gut feeling after watching the games says TvZ is slightly in favor of Zerg and TvP slightly in favor of terran. The few games we saw Broodlords they looked insane
Yeah, it looks like zerg is strong in both matchups while terran seems to have more dangerous mid game timings versus protoss because of the battery nerf. However we could not see herO vs top form Dark, or herO vs Serral in an elimination series.
Similarly, Reynor is too one dimensional in ZvT late game and didn’t try to use broodlords until it was too late. I feel like we were close to another ZvZ finals in Serral vs Reynor but somehow it didn’t happen. With Dark going to the military service soon and Solar being too afraid of Maru, we probably won’t even see the TvZ lategame at highest level until DH:masters.
Yeah, for me the only balance takeaway from the tournament is that Protoss is way too brittle against Terran pushes. Super charged battery isn't great design, but taking it away without larger compensation was a mistake.
Maru playing late game TvZ against Dark/Reynor/Serral would have been great to see to better understand the patch, but due to brackets that didn't happen.
EDIT: Hydras might also be too strong in PvZ, and there's a risk that play in the MU becomes either collosus or funky timings. I honestly wouldn't be opposed to some sort of storm buff that makes it more viable to go storm as your first form of splash but doesn't substantially change how storm works late game. That way viper timings from Zerg would be riskier, and more build order variety is always good.
My take away is that balance looks pretty good, Protoss ground game seems soooo close to being where it needs to be, Ghosts don't seem to be much worse at killing Ultralisks, Cyclones got alot more usage, and the creep "nerf" was predictably useless.
If a low level (lol) Terran player like TIME can up his game play and win convincingly against one of the best Zergs and the current best Protoss, you'd be pretty hard pressed to argue that the game is imbalanced. If it was imbalanced there would have been next to no way TIME could have made that run.
On February 13 2023 22:26 dysenterymd wrote: Yeah, for me the only balance takeaway from the tournament is that Protoss is way too brittle against Terran pushes. Super charged battery isn't great design, but taking it away without larger compensation was a mistake.
Maru playing late game TvZ against Dark/Reynor/Serral would have been great to see to better understand the patch, but due to brackets that didn't happen.
EDIT: Hydras might also be too strong in PvZ, and there's a risk that play in the MU becomes either collosus or funky timings. I honestly wouldn't be opposed to some sort of storm buff that makes it more viable to go storm as your first form of splash but doesn't substantially change how storm works late game. That way viper timings from Zerg would be riskier, and more build order variety is always good.
It really feels like Protoss could use a bit better defense. Zerg has queens to tank and transfuse, Terran has PFs and repair, and most of their units can be used very well defensively.
I thought this before and still do, I think the Overcharge nerf was too much. I know Raven AA missile got nerfed, but it's offset a little cus Interference Missile got buffed because Raven is cheaper now for disabling. If you compare those changes to Protoss getting a Sentry that keeps up a little better with Zealots, faster OBS but much nerfed Overcharge, it doesn't seem equal. (Sentry movement is a nice buff but still tiny overall, and also it helps moreso with attacking than defending).
Honestly, why couldn't Battery Overcharge have been compensated in another way, such as increasing the duration even by 1 single second? Or even increasing the range by 1? Just something to encourage it to be used in a more active and micro intensive way, such as fighting a bit with your army right outside your base to make use of the recharge, and to move away from it being something you use last second when the push is already at your base (which people don't like to play against/watch, and is the reason people didn't want it healing so fast and it being hard to outdamage).
Honestly, to everyone saying Overchard nerf was huge, yeah it is, build some more batteries, problem solved. It is not like Zerg has only 1 Queen and can deny any push, most of them spam them like Lings, and in most Cheese the Protoss do exactly that, spam Batteries with the push, but not for defense... like "Yeah I will try to Overcharge one Pylon and I will be fine"
On February 13 2023 22:58 Beelzebub1 wrote: My take away is that balance looks pretty good, Protoss ground game seems soooo close to being where it needs to be, Ghosts don't seem to be much worse at killing Ultralisks, Cyclones got alot more usage, and the creep "nerf" was predictably useless.
If a low level (lol) Terran player like TIME can up his game play and win convincingly against one of the best Zergs and the current best Protoss, you'd be pretty hard pressed to argue that the game is imbalanced. If it was imbalanced there would have been next to no way TIME could have made that run.
Time didn't really win "convincingly" vs Reynor. It was a close series where Reynor lost an opportunity to close it out by headbutting ling-bane-ultra into tank-liberator-ghost-hellbat for way too long, in typical Reynor fashion.
And Time is not "low-level", he's always been mechanically excellent, but his results have never reflected his skill.
He practiced incredibly hard for this (12-15 hours a day is insane) and the stars aligned for him.
Overall, I agree with Charoisaur, ZvT looks Zerg favored (though not unplayable), and TvP is strongly Terran favored (the battery nerf was too far).
On February 14 2023 00:23 Sogetsu wrote: Honestly, to everyone saying Overchard nerf was huge, yeah it is, build some more batteries, problem solved. It is not like Zerg has only 1 Queen and can deny any push, most of them spam them like Lings, and in most Cheese the Protoss do exactly that, spam Batteries with the push, but not for defense... like "Yeah I will try to Overcharge one Pylon and I will be fine"
That's true, and makes me wonder if Batteries themselves could have a tiny buff, even if it was just like 5-10% better. Because that would be a way to offset the power of Overcharge to the plain Batteries themselves. Also, since Batteries now already have a mechanic where they start with less energy if built offensively, you can buff Batteries slightly without worrying.
On February 14 2023 00:23 Sogetsu wrote: Honestly, to everyone saying Overchard nerf was huge, yeah it is, build some more batteries, problem solved. It is not like Zerg has only 1 Queen and can deny any push, most of them spam them like Lings, and in most Cheese the Protoss do exactly that, spam Batteries with the push, but not for defense... like "Yeah I will try to Overcharge one Pylon and I will be fine"
i think you're missing something critical about what makes overcharge effective. the healing rate (not the total shields healed, but how quickly they heal) is super important for keeping expensive units alive, and having extra batteries won't make a robo or stargate unit survive if the healing can't out-DPS your opponent's focus fire. extra batteries can provide longevity against extremely committed attacks with a lot of reinforcement, but they don't do anything to prevent something like a tank push from just bullying tech units or a nexus to death. this is where the "just one battery" meme comes from and why often pros don't care to build more than one per nexus - it's really specifically about the overcharge healing rate. the reason you build many batteries with cheese is because it extends the longevity of an attack which in theory extends your timing window
i understand why people dislike super batteries and why they were nerfed, but it does create a hole in protoss's defensive power that can make the econ/army balancing act really difficult. toss needs something else to fill that defensive role that isn't a feelsbad for the opponent and perhaps rewards execution more than pressing a button. maybe something like batteries healing buildings faster than units so toss can take more advantage of backward positioning behind their buildings (which benefits both zerg and terran immensely in defensive fights and is supposed to be part of basic RTS tactics and defender's advantage) but can't simply stand forward and take an unfair fight? not sure, but there has to be a solution better than "build more batteries," which just encourages even less active play by toss. toss players WANT to be active in macro games, but there has to be an incentive for it!
problem is people love to hate on turtling and toss deathballs but they also hate the things that discourage those playstyles, the things that allow toss to split army and harass. people forget that defensive tools are not just for turtling, they also enable counterplay. people bitch about prisms, recall, batteries, but without those tools protoss is a race of slow, expensive units that have to be positioned perfectly 100% of the time or a good opponent will very rapidly use faster units to find superior value. so either allow protoss to have the "cheats" everyone hates playing against or substantially alter the lower tech units to be faster and more efficient when actively microed. for my money i would prefer taking power out of high tech units and putting it into stuff like gateway/immortal and phoenixes, all of which are widely considered the most mechanically fun units toss has, but it has to be one way or the other. in a game as fast as SC2 you can't just click your way out of the limitation that unit speed puts on your micro potential. this is a huge reason mech struggles to be relevant and a common complaint from mech players as well. i get that "big giant laser robots and technology" is part of the assumed identity of the race, but if you ask me it's more important for matchups to be fun on both sides than it is to get the "flavor win" of carriers and colossus being core units. frankly if you want to talk about flavor i think the advanced technology race should be the one with scans and sensor towers and terran should probably have stuff like observers, but that's stepping out of matchup balance and into major redesigns that will never happen
EPT
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Statistics/2022
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