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ejozl
Denmark3486 Posts
What they should do is increase the Cyclone's damage to 15, so that it's actually consistent with how upgrades work and lower the attack speed, this would rightfully also nerf the Cyclone drop vs. Protoss, while making the mech composition stronger. I still think the Cyclone is buffed, Terran has so many glass cannon units and having more hp in the frontline can be super strong. The gas cost they chose on the Cyclone is what makes it overlap with the Hellion, they are both mineral sinks. | ||
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Nasigil
137 Posts
I will continue to advocate for following changes: Make Mothership not abductable by Vipers. Make Sentry Guardian Shield help against EMP (either by you need one EMP to remove Guardian Shield first, or by making it reduce EMP shield damage in general, something in that nature) Make Chrono Boost stackable. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10366 Posts
On March 21 2024 19:50 ejozl wrote: The Cyclone getting +2 pr. upgrade didn't make sense anyways. Why should the Cyclone get +2 on a 11 damage weapon, while the Stalker gets +1 on a 13 damage weapon.. What they should do is increase the Cyclone's damage to 15, so that it's actually consistent with how upgrades work and lower the attack speed, this would rightfully also nerf the Cyclone drop vs. Protoss, while making the mech composition stronger. I still think the Cyclone is buffed, Terran has so many glass cannon units and having more hp in the frontline can be super strong. The gas cost they chose on the Cyclone is what makes it overlap with the Hellion, they are both mineral sinks. Yeah that is fine, I agree it's weird and inconsistent, and as you said a good adjustment would be to rebalance the damage / attack speed so that it's 11 (+4 vs Mechanical) or 12 (+3 vs Mechanical). And moving more of its power away from its dps to HP is also great for weakening it for early pokes, drops, killing probes, etc, while making it synergize for later game mech instead of bio. Yeah hellion and cyclone mineral:gas ratio isn't ideal but I think it's fine. I find that I'm often a little short on gas if i spam purely only Cyclones, so mixing in a few hellions does feel like a thing. So you could still go with the more traditional Hellion/Hallbat + lots of tanks, or lots of Cyclones + fewer tanks. Cyclones also definitely don't need to be good at killing workers, the dps change and lock on cooldown should make a big difference. Being able to lock on instantly and chase probes down without having to stutter step attack is probably letting it kill almost 2x the workers than it should. Would be nice if Hellions got a slight damage buff vs non light now... I'm definitely still excited for the Cyclone, but damn if only it got +1 (+1 vs Mechanical)... that woulda been so much more helpful for TvP, and even in TvT i feel it would be fine since Mech isn't that popular still. | ||
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goldensail
132 Posts
Apart from all of the good suggestions made above, a way to improve fairness and entertainment value would be to require players to play random. Viewers will get a lot more variety and players will get to showcase their true skills regardless of race balance. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1276 Posts
On March 22 2024 13:56 goldensail wrote: SC2 has never had perfect balance, and at various times different races had their advantages. What annoys me is people refusing to admit that Zerg has been the strongest race since '18, and the apparent determination by the balance council to keep it that way. This is where the Zerg cabal theory comes from and I certainly didn't invent it. The Council is made up of people, representing interests, not some divine body that's beyond reproach. Apart from all of the good suggestions made above, a way to improve fairness and entertainment value would be to require players to play random. Viewers will get a lot more variety and players will get to showcase their true skills regardless of race balance. 1)There is no hard evidence whatsoever that Zerg is "the strongest race". Same amount of Zergs and Terrans have won Premier events last year for example (3 players from each race). Four Zergs have reached the Finals of Premier events, even five Terrans. Zerg had the lowest amount of players present at Katowice. Only slightly less Zerg dropped out of the Group Stage than Terrans in proportion (40% of the Terrans, 33% of the Zergs). After that it was mostly even dropouts. I know "Zerg OP" is important for the entire Anti-Serral narrative, but c'mon... 2)"Playing random" is a great idea for exactly the amount of time it takes until Serral and Maru clash each other and Serral happens to roll Zerg three times in a row. Then it is the worst idea ever and doesn't count and who came up with that stuff? For real though: Don't we want to see the highest level of Starcraft? Why would I want to see two players offracing each other in a Grand Final, always hoping for the lucky roll to get their main-race? Starcraft 2 (as all Blizzard RTS) isn't meant for multi-racing, never has been. If it was so easy to become great with another race and Zerg apparently is OP for sooooo long, wouldn't have all the pros switched by now? Maybe herO and co. are pretty convinced that they do better with Protoss than switching to another race for a reason... | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10366 Posts
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goldensail
132 Posts
On March 22 2024 14:09 Balnazza wrote: 1)There is no hard evidence whatsoever that Zerg is "the strongest race". Same amount of Zergs and Terrans have won Premier events last year for example (3 players from each race). Four Zergs have reached the Finals of Premier events, even five Terrans. Zerg had the lowest amount of players present at Katowice. Only slightly less Zerg dropped out of the Group Stage than Terrans in proportion (40% of the Terrans, 33% of the Zergs). After that it was mostly even dropouts. I know "Zerg OP" is important for the entire Anti-Serral narrative, but c'mon... 2)"Playing random" is a great idea for exactly the amount of time it takes until Serral and Maru clash each other and Serral happens to roll Zerg three times in a row. Then it is the worst idea ever and doesn't count and who came up with that stuff? For real though: Don't we want to see the highest level of Starcraft? Why would I want to see two players offracing each other in a Grand Final, always hoping for the lucky roll to get their main-race? Starcraft 2 (as all Blizzard RTS) isn't meant for multi-racing, never has been. If it was so easy to become great with another race and Zerg apparently is OP for sooooo long, wouldn't have all the pros switched by now? Maybe herO and co. are pretty convinced that they do better with Protoss than switching to another race for a reason... 1) Your methodology is flawed - it doen't take into account how many top Terran/Zerg players there are. You should look at the *relative* performance of Zergs before and after the inflection point (through '18 vs. from '19). You can also remove Serral/Maru as outliers and look at the rest. From the data that I saw on Premier events, Zerg as a whole, with or without Serral, has done better relative to other races for the last 5 years. 2) What is fun is obviously subjective and I'm not going to tell you what you'll like. But I watch this show called "So you think you can dance", apart from contestants doing their own genre, they also make them perform routines from other genres e.g. getting a hip hop dancer to do contemporary, and the performances are surprisingly good/entertaining. 3) Switching is easier said than done, especially with the top Koreans at the end of their careers. But I imagine the top players are at least proficient outside their main races. I remember Reynor playing Protoss was able to take at least one map from Solar . | ||
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jack_less
78 Posts
On March 22 2024 13:56 goldensail wrote: SC2 has never had perfect balance, and at various times different races had their advantages. What annoys me is people refusing to admit that Zerg has been the strongest race since '18, interesting Zerg has been the "strongest race" since 2018? on the other hand Serral journey starts since 2018... | ||
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ejozl
Denmark3486 Posts
On March 22 2024 18:39 jack_less wrote: interesting Zerg has been the "strongest race" since 2018? on the other hand Serral journey starts since 2018... Dark as well.. and SoO wins his first tournament there as well. You're right that is interesting. Actually Zerg dominance starts with LotV. I would say moreso in 2018 and forward, what happens is the irrelevance of Protoss. And if you only have to excel at TvZ, ZvZ/TvT then this would propel some players to the top. Serral and Maru are absoulte experts in TvZ, Clem and Dark as well. | ||
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ejozl
Denmark3486 Posts
On March 22 2024 05:53 Nasigil wrote: I am okay with Feedback change removal, it doesn't make much sense anyway. But you still need to buff them in meaningful way that helps the top players. I will continue to advocate for following changes: Make Mothership not abductable by Vipers. Make Sentry Guardian Shield help against EMP (either by you need one EMP to remove Guardian Shield first, or by making it reduce EMP shield damage in general, something in that nature) Make Chrono Boost stackable. I think that's buffing EMP, if you can also use it to remove Guardian Shields. In the fight of Sentries vs Ghosts, I wouldn't want to be the guy thinking that Sentries will beat Ghosts. I prefer making Inject non-stackable and decreasing cost of both MULE and Chrono to 25E, but reducing their duration by half, the MULE hp should also be halved. On March 22 2024 07:58 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Yeah that is fine, I agree it's weird and inconsistent, and as you said a good adjustment would be to rebalance the damage / attack speed so that it's 11 (+4 vs Mechanical) or 12 (+3 vs Mechanical). And moving more of its power away from its dps to HP is also great for weakening it for early pokes, drops, killing probes, etc, while making it synergize for later game mech instead of bio. Yeah hellion and cyclone mineral:gas ratio isn't ideal but I think it's fine. I find that I'm often a little short on gas if i spam purely only Cyclones, so mixing in a few hellions does feel like a thing. So you could still go with the more traditional Hellion/Hallbat + lots of tanks, or lots of Cyclones + fewer tanks. Cyclones also definitely don't need to be good at killing workers, the dps change and lock on cooldown should make a big difference. Being able to lock on instantly and chase probes down without having to stutter step attack is probably letting it kill almost 2x the workers than it should. Would be nice if Hellions got a slight damage buff vs non light now... I'm definitely still excited for the Cyclone, but damn if only it got +1 (+1 vs Mechanical)... that woulda been so much more helpful for TvP, and even in TvT i feel it would be fine since Mech isn't that popular still. I don't know why this solution is so appealing to me, but I like the idea of 90 mineral Hellions. I would also put Hellbat behind an upgrade, remove it from the Factory, make 4 of them fit in a Medivac, and remove the Bio tag. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On March 22 2024 19:17 ejozl wrote: Dark as well.. and SoO wins his first tournament there as well. You're right that is interesting. Actually Zerg dominance starts with LotV. I would say moreso in 2018 and forward, what happens is the irrelevance of Protoss. And if you only have to excel at TvZ, ZvZ/TvT then this would propel some players to the top. Serral and Maru are absoulte experts in TvZ, Clem and Dark as well. Protoss has sucked much more than Zerg has been actually a dominant race in this particular epoch, IMO anyway. I’d say Zerg have had an overall edge but it’s way less pronounced than some make out: 1. A lot of that perception comes from big World Championships, if Zerg are winning there they’re OP. But there were long stretches in SC2 history where Zerg couldn’t buy a GSL, this big prestige tournament but people don’t seem to weigh that in mitigation. 2. Ultimately it’s literally 4 Zerg players who’ve really won anything in this period. Well, not literally, at the one end soO finally gets that big statement tournament, and a few months ago Solar got his A game together and got that GSL. 3. Trap won tournaments at a borderline Serral level for a period, Zest made a few World finals, we’ve had multiple Terran GSL champs. Clem won multiple Euros against 2 of the monster Zergs and eventually a big international too. Maru has made Ro4+ multiple times in WCs only to come up short, most times from obvious errors rather than hitting a balance wall. 4. At lower but still pretty skilled levels, GM, or pro scenes that aren’t the best of Kr/EU Zerg’s been performing worse and worse over time. In a crude sense they have basically been unable to nerf a Serral or a Reynor/Dark into not being WC contenders, but those nerfs have started to bite elsewhere. As I said I think on balance Zerg has been overall strongest in this period, albeit carried by a few outliers. Just not nearly as ez mode dominant race as some try to frame it. I think its main advantage is that generally it’s just strong overall. How strong, varies but it rarely has periods it’s actually bad in the interracial matchups. Terran has had struggles in vZ at times but mostly it’s bounced between TvP being a favoured, or unfavoured matchup. It’s just harder to be consistent if 50% of your non-mirrors you’re potentially playing from a deficit if you draw that. Protoss it’s more pronounced again, PvT has bounced in and out of their favour, but PvZ has generally been at best a 50/50 and frequently worse than that. Zerg will naturally profit from being relatively stable in this sense, even if it’s not actually OP in either matchup. It would be different if it was like Z > T > P > Z, which would actually be more imbalanced but you’d probably see a better distribution of champions. It sounds somewhat counter-intuitive but it feels Zerg is the imba race by being well, the more consistently balanced one across matchups. Ofc I’m exaggerating its had strong periods, but you’re way more likely to win tournaments with two 55% favoured matchups, than like a 65% one and a 30% one. I’m just pulling out arbitrary numbers but Trap was both exceptional skill wise in PvT, in a good PvT meta and was consistently winning against all comers in that matchup, IMO the last time the best player in that matchup was from the Protoss side. It didn’t really matter in his quest to win a GSL in his two finals because he ran into a Zerg and got stomped by players just as good/better, when the matchup was awful. Whereas Serral in Katowice, and let’s assume both ZvP and ZvT are mildly Zerg favoured (although IMO PvZ is in way, way better shape, and also TvZ isn’t really too bad at all). If Serral plays his A game, well he’s Serral and at worst the balance is relatively even no matter who he faces he’s got a very good shot. He’s already basically better than almost everyone and he’s not having to compensate for one imbalanced matchup. Compounding imbalance has been as big an issue as much as outright Zerg strength IMO. As per the aforementioned when Trap was in PvT god mode, and TvP was just generally hard anyway he knocks out Maru in GSL, which happened more than once iirc. But Maru would have a much better shot winning a TvZ against Dark or Rogue than Trap would have in winning a PvZ against either at that time. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1276 Posts
On March 22 2024 17:11 goldensail wrote: 1) Your methodology is flawed - it doen't take into account how many top Terran/Zerg players there are. You should look at the *relative* performance of Zergs before and after the inflection point (through '18 vs. from '19). You can also remove Serral/Maru as outliers and look at the rest. From the data that I saw on Premier events, Zerg as a whole, with or without Serral, has done better relative to other races for the last 5 years. 2) What is fun is obviously subjective and I'm not going to tell you what you'll like. But I watch this show called "So you think you can dance", apart from contestants doing their own genre, they also make them perform routines from other genres e.g. getting a hip hop dancer to do contemporary, and the performances are surprisingly good/entertaining. 3) Switching is easier said than done, especially with the top Koreans at the end of their careers. But I imagine the top players are at least proficient outside their main races. I remember Reynor playing Protoss was able to take at least one map from Solar . Of course my "methodology" only applies to the last year, but you said "Zerg is the strongest race since '18", including last year and right now. But more importantly: Your methodology is also flawed - it completly removes players from the equation. Said it before, said it again: There is just no real reason to assume that skill and accomplishments would even itself out between the three races. So the fact that Zerg was "winning so much" is heavily influenced by a slight overhang of more S-Tier Zergs compared to the rest. If Zerg was "too strong" (and lets face it, you people don't talk about slightly too strong, it is generally about Zerg being way too OP), there should be much more of an imbalance in tournaments results. It shouldn't just be carried by very few names. | ||
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darklycid
3540 Posts
On March 22 2024 22:26 Balnazza wrote: Of course my "methodology" only applies to the last year, but you said "Zerg is the strongest race since '18", including last year and right now. But more importantly: Your methodology is also flawed - it completly removes players from the equation. Said it before, said it again: There is just no real reason to assume that skill and accomplishments would even itself out between the three races. So the fact that Zerg was "winning so much" is heavily influenced by a slight overhang of more S-Tier Zergs compared to the rest. If Zerg was "too strong" (and lets face it, you people don't talk about slightly too strong, it is generally about Zerg being way too OP), there should be much more of an imbalance in tournaments results. It shouldn't just be carried by very few names. I mean 2019 zerg was extremely OP (after the Robo nerfs) and you still didnt have random zergs getting massive success from it. And maybe we think of all of them s Tier zergs as s Tier zergs because they were performing that Well over Others in the Times of zerg being too good, even If it May only be slightly. (I still would say they are s Tier but maybe the perceived overhang was because of Balance as s Tier Players from t or p werent able to Show it). | ||
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jpg060519921
1 Post
On March 22 2024 05:53 Nasigil wrote: I am okay with Feedback change removal, it doesn't make much sense anyway. But you still need to buff them in meaningful way that helps the top players. I will continue to advocate for following changes: Make Mothership not abductable by Vipers. Make Sentry Guardian Shield help against EMP (either by you need one EMP to remove Guardian Shield first, or by making it reduce EMP shield damage in general, something in that nature) Make Chrono Boost stackable. The Guardian Shield idea has been spreading on Reddit a bit as well. I like both of those ideas, but I think I like the first one better only because if GS does a flat EMP % reduction then 1 Sentry can soft counter multiple Ghosts. Also would be weird to balance, would 2 GS totally invalidate EMP or take it down to 25%? What about 4 Sentries? Does 4 stacks of GS make EMP do 0%? I'd rather each GS provides one layer of 100% EMP protection, 3 Sentries casting GS? It's gonna take 3 EMP shots to take the GS shield down, then a 4th to strip shields/energy. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10366 Posts
Forcefield should also block buildings/units from bile damage. It should take a bile to clear a FF, before you can damage the building. This way you can protect your batteries and canons a little better than just being instantly sniped. Only thing is, I know that these "X ability blocks Y" things would require a more intensive code change, rather than just tweaking basic numbers/triggers in the editor... so it depends if we even have someone to code it and properly test it so it doesn't fuck the game up | ||
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ejozl
Denmark3486 Posts
Now Zerg is by far the hardest race to play and requires the most knowledge. But with how the cabal wants to balance the game, Zerg just needs to get to the late game, stack those Injects and grab that sweet ticket for the win. If I wanted to get into the ro16 of a tournament, I would pick Protoss. If I wanted to win a tournament, I would pick Terran. And if I wanted to win more than that, I would pick Zerg. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On March 23 2024 01:25 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: I think the Sentry GS blocking 1 EMP is a good idea. Sentries really fall off into the midgame because of EMP, and it would be cool to see them still around. It would make gateway scale slightly better. If this can be implemented, then if needed EMP upgrade to 1.75 aoe could be added back to the game. Forcefield should also block buildings/units from bile damage. It should take a bile to clear a FF, before you can damage the building. This way you can protect your batteries and canons a little better than just being instantly sniped. Only thing is, I know that these "X ability blocks Y" things would require a more intensive code change, rather than just tweaking basic numbers/triggers in the editor... so it depends if we even have someone to code it and properly test it so it doesn't fuck the game up In theory I’m not against the idea, but in practice I’m not sure how it looks. As you get a big visual prompt when a bile is coming, and where, it should be trivial to just re-cast force field if a Zerg is dropping one to get rid of the FF and being economical. Say you have multiple sentries and high energy and you’ve got 4/5 FFs on a combo of batteries and cannons, maybe a crucial pylon. Zerg aren’t going to have sufficient ravagers to bile down all those targets, and if they’re spreading them to remove FF you have plenty of time to just recast. Whereas if a Zerg just hits rapid fire and spams a bunch to kill a singular target, you’re tanking one extra shot and it’s probably not that impactful anyway. Even top Zergs are frequently overkilling rather than perfectly spreading biles because a super battery is such a priority to take down. Intuitively to me it feels like a mechanic that would be too strong in certain scenarios, and unimpactful in others in quite a binary sense. Either Zergs have sufficient firepower to one-volley down a target, or they don’t (or misjudge) and you have a new FF popping up. I use the word a lot but I feel it makes things a bit ‘wonky’. You can see a scenario like Zergs committing to kill something, being one bile short, and losing a bunch of ravagers, then FF being cast again and them being short ravagers to get that target with the next volley. I don’t have such an issue with EMP, I think the interaction is simpler but I’d change it in the following way to simplify making such a change: Force field no longer has its cost be instant, but has an initial cast value + a channelling cost 1. This way an EMP can just cancel the spell without having to code some specific interaction, as nuking a sentry’s mana pool will leave them nothing to channel it with. 2. I think you get the side benefit of some additional flexibility in using the spell. As it is it’s a relatively committal spell, not crazily so but offensively you either GS and go, defensively you’re kind of holding off to use it when absolutely necessary, and opponents can bait them/FFs out and just come back when your energy is too low to do it again 3. I’d make the initial cast value non-trivial so there’s still a risk/reward aspect to it. I don’t think it would be desirable if it was borderline free to turn on GS for a few seconds just in case it’s beneficial, turn it off again and rinse and repeat. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10366 Posts
On March 23 2024 09:07 WombaT wrote: In theory I’m not against the idea, but in practice I’m not sure how it looks. As you get a big visual prompt when a bile is coming, and where, it should be trivial to just re-cast force field if a Zerg is dropping one to get rid of the FF and being economical. Say you have multiple sentries and high energy and you’ve got 4/5 FFs on a combo of batteries and cannons, maybe a crucial pylon. Zerg aren’t going to have sufficient ravagers to bile down all those targets, and if they’re spreading them to remove FF you have plenty of time to just recast. Whereas if a Zerg just hits rapid fire and spams a bunch to kill a singular target, you’re tanking one extra shot and it’s probably not that impactful anyway. Even top Zergs are frequently overkilling rather than perfectly spreading biles because a super battery is such a priority to take down. Intuitively to me it feels like a mechanic that would be too strong in certain scenarios, and unimpactful in others in quite a binary sense. Either Zergs have sufficient firepower to one-volley down a target, or they don’t (or misjudge) and you have a new FF popping up. I use the word a lot but I feel it makes things a bit ‘wonky’. You can see a scenario like Zergs committing to kill something, being one bile short, and losing a bunch of ravagers, then FF being cast again and them being short ravagers to get that target with the next volley. I don’t have such an issue with EMP, I think the interaction is simpler but I’d change it in the following way to simplify making such a change: Force field no longer has its cost be instant, but has an initial cast value + a channelling cost 1. This way an EMP can just cancel the spell without having to code some specific interaction, as nuking a sentry’s mana pool will leave them nothing to channel it with. 2. I think you get the side benefit of some additional flexibility in using the spell. As it is it’s a relatively committal spell, not crazily so but offensively you either GS and go, defensively you’re kind of holding off to use it when absolutely necessary, and opponents can bait them/FFs out and just come back when your energy is too low to do it again 3. I’d make the initial cast value non-trivial so there’s still a risk/reward aspect to it. I don’t think it would be desirable if it was borderline free to turn on GS for a few seconds just in case it’s beneficial, turn it off again and rinse and repeat. Hmm that's true, it might end up funky haha. | ||
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