On October 23 2024 03:41 CicadaSC wrote: What do you guys think of how OP protoss scouting could be now? Remember when protoss used to open Adept -> Sentry vs Terran? Now if you do that you can overcharge your sentry immediately and Hallucinated scout and then you'll have another Scout up at the old timing as well. You will never have to be caught off guard again. Then in mid game you can warp in Templar as soon as Templar Archives finishes, overcharge a Templar, then once ur research is finished you can overcharge again and have 2 extra storms. Now, this is a lot of Nexus energy to do all this. 1 less Chrono boost early, and 2 less Chrono boosts later on, but if you consider you would typically be banking or having to use 1-2 overcharges by the time your Templar were ready and finished before to survive through timings it's not *terrible* but I do think the Overcharge Energy cost should be reduced slightly. With the 60 second cooldown it already guarantees you can't just spam it.
My gut feeling is that the initial sentry scout wouldn't be worth cutting the chrono. It's probably not early enough to completely cover a probe scout and if your are facing an agressive set up you probably need your chrono and if it's a macro set up you are just behind.
I could imagine some clever stuff with the oracle or pheonix/oracle builds.
On October 23 2024 04:35 outscar wrote: It's 2025 almost. Just leave the game alone lol. Salvaging turrets and sensors? Stim pack for hydras? Wtf. Unecessary bloat. Way to kill a game further. This is why SC2 will never be popular in Korea unlike BW.
It's almost 2025, maybe it's time to drop the BW comparaison. We've been playing this game for 15 years with balance patches, obviously the player base like to see changes from time to time.
Uuhm you can't really assume that. Just because something has always been a certain way it doesn't mean that's what people want.
"All 45 US presidents have been male, clearly a male president is what people want"
Well we're still playing and/or watching the game aren't we? If the concept of patching and changing the game is an issue for someone I feel they would have abandonned SC2 a long time ago, it's never been the philosophy of the game.
I certainly have not seen a lot of people in response to this patch saying we should just stop patching.
Well, If someone quit the game due to it we wouldn't see him posting here. Player/viewer numbers are certainly going down. Also you can dislike one thing about the game and still like the package enough to still follow it. I have been against patching since like 2018 and I'm still here
Sure, but if they are gone it's not like those people will be lure back to the game by the prospect of no more patches being added to a version they have never seen, so it's not of much importance.
There are probably others like yourself who wish we stuck to the current version of the game forever, but it is fairly clear that the vast majority of responses to this patch (and discussions around sc2 in general) aren't advocating for this option.
No, but if we stop patching now we might still prevent some players from quitting who will quit if we continue patching.
Tbh I don't think the number of people who are absolutely against doing any patches is very high, however the number of people who'd prefer no patches over the patches we currently get from the balance council might be quite sizable. Some Protoss players will probably quit who would've continued if there were no patches
Another disappointing patch proposal by the Shadow Council.
Battery Overcharge is a boring but necessary ability. Subbing it out for Energy Overcharge will make for more interesting games, especially at the higher level, but at the expense of lower-level Protoss players dying to strong early-mid game timing attacks against Terran and Zerg, a problem which Battery Overcharge was added to address in the first place.
I'm not sure the Colossus change is even a buff considering they typically have their range upgrade by the time ghosts are out EMPing everything. Shields regenerate but hull damage is forever. Why not just give an extra +1 range (like during that time of the bug) and increase their shields and HP to give them more survivability (especially against Vikings). It would also be cool to give them some ability that temporarily increases their damage and/or AOE attack temporarily (maybe temporarily immobilizing them). The colossus should be buffed and made more fun.
The Disrupter is a poorly designed unit to begin with. I don't know how this will play out in lower-level games but it seems like a nerf for top-level Protoss players.
I like the Mothership attack buff (mostly because it looks cool), but the unit should get a better buff. Its main problem isn't needing its attack buffed it's that the unit is too vulnerable to attacks and spells.
In theory, I like adding salvage to Missel Turrets and Sensor Towers because it fits with the "feel" of Terran being scrappy and resourceful, but it's one of a few changes in this patch that contradicts one of the patches stated goals of discouraging turtle playstyles.
The Liberator has been a shitty and possibly OP unit for a long time, and I'm not sure changing the range upgrade to be a larger-area-of-attack-when-sieged ability addresses the issue. It seems like it will make Liberators more vulnerable but it might not matter. I don't know if this is a buff, nerf, or a wash.
I like a slight Queen nerf but it seems like with the decreased cost of Hatcheries and the buff to Spines and Spores, Zerg s will be very happy here and the Queen change won't really matter.
I like giving the Hydralisk an ability to make it more interesting and better with good micro with the Dash upgrade. But please change the ability name to something remotely-lore relevant.
In totality, it's disappointing. The Ghost wasn't nerfed. And when I look at the race changes as a whole, I'm not even sure Protoss got buffed, while Terran and Zergs did, which is concerning.
Like how the fuck is P supposed to survive early-midgame timings without battery overcharge? I've lost count how often MaxPax barely held on with it, now he gets a 60 sec gcd ability instead to restore 100 energy. Meanwhile T, which dies much much much less often to early timings because they usually have map control gets an 2 second delay full repair on their wall with added health? How about a 10 sec gdc on scan so T can't just lategame hack the entire map?
Then they talk about making other paths viable and give P a wash on the colossus, nerf disruptors against marauders and roaches, nerf Immos since marauders and roaches weren't good enough apparently and increase the cost of MS again so it won't see use again? Tempests get a slight buff, which still won't make them competitive against anything, the problem with the unit is that it is absurdly overpriced for it's actual fighting prowess, not that you can't micro it.
The liberator looses 0.75 range for +56% AoE and faster siege/unsiege time. Was that really the unit that needed a huge buff? The spore change is a huge nerf for PvZ air openings, which is like the majority. Guess P opens blink stalker again now. Then T gets buffs on sensor towers, buffs on missile turrets and another tool to kill 15 workers in 5 seconds.
Like I can't even see how half of these would be good in a vacuum without the huge implications for balance they have. And I really don't get how all of the oppressive units are basically untouched (or buffed in the case of libs).
The only good changes in this patch are the ones to tempests/thors/ultra and tbh I think only the ultra change is going to matter at all and very little at that. I get the queen nerf, but tbh I think the queen is essential and Z needs something else to offset that that isn't a static D buff. Static D is just too slow to deal with early game pushes or air rushes.
On October 24 2024 09:46 Archeon wrote: This patch is... something.
Like how the fuck is P supposed to survive early-midgame timings without battery overcharge? I've lost count how often MaxPax barely held on with it, now he gets a 60 sec gcd ability instead to restore 100 energy. Meanwhile T, which dies much much much less often to early timings because they usually have map control gets an 2 second delay full repair on their wall with added health? How about a 10 sec gdc on scan so T can't just lategame hack the entire map?
Then they talk about making other paths viable and give P a wash on the colossus, nerf disruptors against marauders and roaches, nerf Immos since marauders and roaches weren't good enough apparently and increase the cost of MS again so it won't see use again? Tempests get a slight buff, which still won't make them competitive against anything, the problem with the unit is that it is absurdly overpriced for it's actual fighting prowess, not that you can't micro it.
The liberator looses 0.75 range for +56% AoE and faster siege/unsiege time. Was that really the unit that needed a huge buff? The spore change is a huge nerf for PvZ air openings, which is like the majority. Guess P opens blink stalker again now. Then T gets buffs on sensor towers, buffs on missile turrets and another tool to kill 15 workers in 5 seconds.
Like I can't even see how half of these would be good in a vacuum without the huge implications for balance they have. And I really don't get how all of the oppressive units are basically untouched (or buffed in the case of libs).
The only good changes in this patch are the ones to tempests/thors/ultra and tbh I think only the ultra change is going to matter at all and very little at that. I get the queen nerf, but tbh I think the queen is essential and Z needs something else to offset that that isn't a static D buff. Static D is just too slow to deal with early game pushes or air rushes.
Obviously the balance council and ESL wants to punish Protoss for MaxPax keep missing offline tournament, and they wont get buff until he show up live.
We really need Blizzard or MS to put their foot down and revert to the last balance patch that wasn't dictated by the balance council. The whole thing is a failed experiment.
The game doesn't need more patches to stay alive. Just consistent map rotation.
On October 24 2024 15:44 MJG wrote: We really need Blizzard or MS to put their foot down and revert to the last balance patch that wasn't dictated by the balance council. The whole thing is a failed experiment.
The game doesn't need more patches to stay alive. Just consistent map rotation.
This wouldn't be a bad idea especially if things go more south than this. PvT seemed fine back then (i mean most MUs did winrate wise once they pulled back on the skytoss/void buffs slightly), then suddenly they not only nerfed Battery Overcharge from 100% to 50% increased healing, but also coupled it with cheaper and faster building Ravens, while keeping Interference Matrix the same 11 sec disable duration, effectively buffing early Raven pushes against Protoss and disabling Colossus faster and cheaper. And what did Protoss get in return for that? Something like stasis ward giving more vision, sentries moving slightly faster, some shit like that. It was obviously a bad deal and a huge nerf in PvT, this is what led to PvT winrate falling to ~40% for over half a year.
Then they pulled back a little by making Matrix a 50/50 upgrade where you'd want to commit to building 2 ravens to let the upgrade finish instead of 1 only partially reverts the buffs, this way you had to committ slightly to a 2nd raven to be optimal, instead of doing 1 raven and swapping to medivacs immediately. But a 2 Raven push is still cheaper and hits sooner. Only thing is that a 1 Raven push waiting for Matrix upgrade to finish is slightly slower than before.
But you look at PvT winrate and it was still like 40-45% for the rest of the year. They patched the game in the middle of this almost 1 year period, but failed to address the terrible 40% winrate, letting things continue for almost another half year until WMs got nerfed. So we got almost a whole year of TvP being one of the most imbalanced MUs at the pro level in the history of SC2. Rarely has david kim's team ever let pro winrate balance ever go beyond 45:55, and if it did it was only briefly, not nearly a full year. This is a huge failure and embarassment of the Balance Council and the Protoss bias is clearer than ever. Remember that while 40% might not seem to low; in a Bo3, the statistical chance of winning 2 games out of 3 ends up falls to something much lower like 35%.
Oh yeah and remember the whole busted Cyclone thing giving TvP even more openings and harass abilities (1-22 cyclone drop micro in a medivac killing probes?)...
On October 24 2024 15:44 MJG wrote: We really need Blizzard or MS to put their foot down and revert to the last balance patch that wasn't dictated by the balance council. The whole thing is a failed experiment.
The game doesn't need more patches to stay alive. Just consistent map rotation.
More actually interesting maps would be cool, too.
I do agree with some of the sentiment. If sc2 is going to get half baked patches id rather it be left in some "legacy" state so when you come back to the game it isn't drastically different.
Especially when some of these changes end up breaking units like all the cyclone bugs.
Although in some respects all the chatter about the patch and balance council does make me want to play to see if the changes are as bad as they seem. So that's marketing I guess lol
I don't understand, is this some kind of conspiracy or why is the obvious OP of ghosts being ignored? Has a pew pew lover gotten to power or is there some other reason?
To be clear, PiG isn't advocating for buffing Protoss. He's advocating for the reversal of a few (not even all) of the nerfs the Balance Council has done to Protoss.
Buffing Protoss and reverting some nerfs are two different things.
And to be clear also, he's saying that he wants this done not even because he believes it will improve the results at the top level. More so that it will improve morale in the scene for casual fans who don't follow the game close enough and just believe that balance is bad for Protoss so they will have something to celebrate.
To be clear, PiG isn't advocating for buffing Protoss. He's advocating for the reversal of a few (not even all) of the nerfs the Balance Council has done to Protoss.
Buffing Protoss and reverting some nerfs are two different things.
And to be clear also, he's saying that he wants this done not even because he believes it will improve the results at the top level. More so that it will improve morale in the scene for casual fans who don't follow the game close enough and just believe that balance is bad for Protoss so they will have something to celebrate.
Well I mean even my "let's buff Protoss" stance is relative to the state of Protoss since these changes; and no, his point is much broader and more general about why there's been bias against Protoss and why people seem afraid to just straight-up buff core units as they do for Terran and Zerg. In that it would apply to more straight-up buffs, and he mentions that possibility. And likewise, with reverting past changes, he's not just saying that buffs would be a morale booster, he also very clearly states that these changes messed up PvT balance and build order diversity and should be reverted primarily for that reason. But yes, part of his point has to do with the negative effects on the scene of casual's perception of Protoss not being competitive.
Anyway, I'm increasingly thinking that the best thing would be to just add the Energy Overcharge ability to the Nexus without removing Battery Overcharge. The presence of another ability to compete for Nexus energy would in itself be a minor nerf.
On October 25 2024 22:14 BlackEyed wrote: I don't understand, is this some kind of conspiracy or why is the obvious OP of ghosts being ignored? Has a pew pew lover gotten to power or is there some other reason?
If we're beeing fair, I assume the arguments revolved around reverting back the BLord nerf and giving ultra a very slight buff, and doing the colossus + disruptor changes.
So they didn't touch the ghost, but they change the units with which the ghost interact.
JUST BUFF PROTOSS. what's the worst that can happen? Classic and herO win some tournaments? Oh no... It's not like Serral/clem have been winning everything for years.
Some questionable changes considering the goals mentionned at the beginning. Although I will say I at least appreciate the attempt to shake basic things up, like the queen cost change.
Why don't we remove the “regional lock”? Instead we make “race lock” tournaments. a premier tournament for Toss only. -> toss gets his tournament wins no matter if maxpax/ herO or Clem as off race Toss. you can train perfectly for this in Gm ladder.
On October 25 2024 23:08 Vindicare605 wrote: And to be clear also, he's saying that he wants this done not even because he believes it will improve the results at the top level. More so that it will improve morale in the scene for casual fans who don't follow the game close enough and just believe that balance is bad for Protoss so they will have something to celebrate.
He clearly said that the morale in the scene for casual fans is bad because even those people who don't really follow the game can tell that protoss is getting shat on consistently at the top level.
Edit: to be clear I'm just reporting what he's saying, I don't agree with him, I think if protoss is underpowered it's very slightly, and I would tend to side with Rotti that talks about the map pool being too terran favored, that makes a lot of sense to me. I also think that Maxpax not playing tournaments has a big impact, he dismissed that.
Patches like these are why I stopped watching SC2 at all and am now watching Brood War instead. Love watching Soulkey dominate ASL right now
What is the balance team thinking?? Everyone knows Protoss is the weakest race and they just nerf them again. It's completely unbelievable, guess I'll continue to never watch SC2 again, it was fun while it lasted.
Purpose of the patch "nerf defensive play across all races" in reality ONLY protoss got nerfed WTH blizzard protoss needs a buff not nerf!!!!!!!! No protoss won major tourney in years now
EPT
