EPTThis will be a very long text and I have not read it since writing it. I wrote it over the past 2 days so don’t take it all at face value, especially considering that it is only one person’s opinion and may contain bias. However, I believe that being a random player makes my bias less impactful.
F it we ball
Hello, my name is HackErIsTop. I am a mid GM EU Random player and I got fed up with the nonsense that is going on in SC2 so I have decided to speak out about what was required from the patch and what IMO should have been the direction for sc2 versus what we got from 5.0.16.
VARIETY
As my friend Lorimbo said in his huge post, the patch does NOT add variety, but actually decreases it by throwing away 11 years of new buildorders. Theoretically, 8 worker start could give more possibilities but it will give more mediocre or bad possibilities and fewer good ones and ends up just promoting gambling.
For a short period, the pro scene will have more buildorders, but pro gamers will find the new “standard” and everyone will play that. We end up nerfing variety in exchange for balance instead of actually shaking up the meta. Starcraft is one of the most balanced games, and when something is considered “OP” in SC2 it is rarely worse than a 60/40 matchup (which is very rare).
To promote variety, I suggest that when a player cooks and invents something new, we refrain from nerfing it into oblivion. If a counter can be figured out, other pros will manage and if not we should nerf it only to the level of other options rather than completely out of the game.
So, what WERE the main issues?
1) Bugs
It’s good that we are slowly (but steadily) dealing with in game bugs, but we don't even consider huge bugs like the Masters Border bug.
QoL updates are not bugfixes, and typically have a significant impact on the game, so they should be separated from bug fixes on patch notes
2) Cheaters
The game has a lot of maphackers and drophackers and blizzard simply does not care about them. This is irresponsible and stupid. On top of that it is too easy to abuse the report system and get players who have done nothing wrong muted or banned. The automatic system does not work well and the lack of human moderation is a huge issue.
3) Gameplay issues
Now we can get into the issues with the gameplay. I will speak as a cheeser who isn’t the best macro player (still gm with macro as random), but I still have a good understanding than those who don’t even play the game (most of those who support the patch)
Balance and Design issues:
Obviously, protoss was OP, but killing gateway styles is not the way. I will discuss that later. Terran and Zerg were balanced well but *personally* I felt that terran was favored due to the design of the race.
Strategic variety of the old patch needed adjustment, as in each matchup there were one or two distinct strategies that were miles better than anything else. Defenders advantage was too strong which discouraged aggressive play and slowed the game down.
To discuss the matchups:
TvT:
This matchup was alright if a bit boring. I believe that nerfing the siege tank could make it more interesting but it would require more research than I’m willing to do to balance and design it properly.
TvZ:
Zerg didn’t have many good gameplans due to the race being reactive in the matchup. Terran always has proactivity and map control for the first stages of the game. After, the zerg usually gets map control but the terran has already gotten to a position where they can (and should!) camp indefinitely. Zerg has always been a bit of a punching bag until they have 4+ bases and lots of creep (30%+ of the map), but i believe that this is not a bad thing since it lasts for a relatively small portion of the game. The issue appears in the late game when terran can’t move out of their corner without losing a fight but zerg also cant attack into terran without losing a fight. The aggressive options of terran at this stage are too weak while the defensive options are too strong. I believe that a nerf to turtling behind buildings and a buff to sieging the opponent’s bases and other aggressive plays would make the matchup more interesting.
TvP:
Midgame toss was very OP as they can take all of the map control during this stage. Gateway man styles were too strong compared to other styles. I love this matchup and it probably has the most viable openings of all the matchups, but the matchup relying on terran to survive to lategame and protoss needing terran to fuck up to win is lame. I do like the idea of one race being better than the other at certain stages of the game, but TvP took it to the extreme. I believe we need to find a way to allow terran to expand easier and bring the strength of gateway man and other protoss styles closer together. I’m not sure the best way to do this.
ZvZ:
I have no idea what is going on in this matchup, ask someone else
ZvP:
Same issues as with early game ZvT, but protoss takes it to the extreme. Oracle openers were busted and protoss lategame was broken. This resulted in zerg’s best option to be to all in every game despite the huge defender’s advantage in SC2. I recommend greatly nerfing oracle openings and greatly buffing other protoss openings. On top of that, if zerg late game becomes more playable, the matchup will be much more fun.
BTW Tempest should be 5 or 6 supply
PvP:
GG
This matchup already has aggressive options and variety, it's actually a good matchup but there's just too much of it. Maybe a nerf to proxy robo and 3 gate robo would be good, but otherwise it is a fine matchup
Now, What did the PTR do?
The 8 worker start made ELEVEN YEARS of buildorders invalid, and the research that was done in early LotV will not happen again due to the smaller playerbase. This change will NOT add variety at the highest levels other than the potential for a few months of experimentation. Once a new standard is figured out, every player will simply play that and we are back where we started, but with different cheese and standard builds.
All the 8 worker start manages to do is make the game more coinflippy, it will be harder for a better player to make up for a bad build order matchup and promote upsets from worse players. And the worst part is that it adds 30 to 60 seconds of boring downtime at the start of every game.
The larva change makes up for the indirect nerf of cheeses that comes from the 8 worker start, but it has a huge impact on the rest of the game. This actually shows how well balanced the game was before the patch that something as small as a 5% improvement to production makes one race disgustingly OP.
Infestor’s autoattack is funny but it is not impactful at all, however the 12 range microbial shroud makes the spell a bit too overtuned. Over the last few months on the old patch we have seen more use of this spell, does it really need such a massive buff?
The ghost change is interesting but I believe it makes terran’s lategame too strong against zerg. Snipe not being cancellable makes the ghost a better free damage dealer than even the tempest. The 7 attack range on the auto attack is unreasonable. On top of that, ghosts rushes are nerfed; they are not a huge part of the game but are very fun, so I don’t see a reason to nerf them.
I don't think that nerfing storm damage is a good way to nerf storm. If we want to nerf storm we should revert the size and range buffs from 5.0.15.
A small note about the disruptor phantom attack: it is unnecessary and not even a buff as it makes it harder to get a huge hit with them.
FINALLY, Warp Gate:
We tried to nerf immediate warp ins to make gateway man styles less oppressive in TvP, but really all we did was nerf the race as a while. We did not compensate for the nerfs with changes to the robo or stargate. There is no promotion of variety. All that happened is that protoss is worse while forcing them to reinvent everything about the race. I believe the only acceptable nerf to warpgate is increasing the cooldown and nerfing the prism.
P.S. I do like the idea of gateway production being faster than warpgate, but it needs to by much faster and I’m not sure if it is possible to balance properly. On 5.0.16 there is no reason to produce out of gateways post-warpgate except not having money to transform them.
TL;DR the patch did NOT fix any of the actual issues in the game, it just make the game feel slow and temporarily new. To implement huge changes like the larva spawnrate, warp gate redesigns, and worker start changes, we need to have good communication and dedication from Blizzard. As it stands, I do not think that this is possible so these changes are not acceptable.
Quality of the post is definitely low, but idc. Hope for a feedback if someone manages to read all that. Thank you, I would love if someone reposts it on reddit because aint no way im making an account there. I will play new 5.0.15 ladder by HyperONE(huge shoutout to him) if they don't remove worker change. Other changes I'm alright with honestly, don't care too much, it's only the worker change that's just irritating because it does nothing except for making the game more like casino and prolonging the boring phase of it. I don't understand why i have to have that additional boring af minute of every game (playing a couple thousands per year on average, so thats actually a lot). P.S. mods pls dont close this one Kappa
