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First of all, if you're here to whine and bitch about it, this is not a balance thread, I'm going to give you a minute to do us all a favor and Alt+F4 at this time....
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Thank you and welcome to the positive discussion regarding the hellbat timing attack. This is obviously hypothetical, thus, nothing may actually come from it. However, I have considered some rather obvious alternative approaches to end the whining.
They include:
1.) Increasing the cost of the armory both minerals and gas solely as a means to delay.
2.) Increasing the cost of the armory in accordance with construction time (the difference being the cost is increased, just not as much as significantly increasing it alone as a means to delay hellbat tech/timing attack)
3.) Making Battle Hellion mode a researchable tech unit within the armory or perhaps the techlab of the factory.
While these ideas are clearly just that, ideas, I feel that there are many ways to approach the hellbat and its current status. I feel that most people agree that the hellbat is not only NOT overpowered, it is actually appropriately powered. However, I feel that most players feel that the hellbat tech is too available and can be reached at a time that other races or players are pigeonholed into forcing too much static defense, pulling of the workers, or hard countering, or perhaps in the TvT building hellbats to compete.
My solutions offers the best of both worlds in my opinion. The hellbats functionality remains intact, but it forces those who want to use it so aggressively to invest more time and more resources into making it work. This is the kind of game where a few minutes or a few seconds (seconds more so for professional or highly skilled combatants.) make a hell of a difference.
So, consider these ideas and chime in if you have any constructive ideas of your own. I would ask that you dont say things like "no healing, damage reduction, remove from the game." we're discussing the fact its already here and how you currently work to defend it, execute it, and if you could change it, how you would in a constructive and concrete (detailed) manner. Lord knows it doesnt work every time so i'm definitely encouraging hearing some brave tales of those who scouted it and worked to defend it and how they achieved that. With a positive discussion, a lot of people can learn how to properly execute this timing attack, defend this timing attack, and suggest ways it can be improved for the official release. So lets put our efforts to work for us and not against us. Whining does not get us far.
Mods, if you feel this too closely resembles a balance thread, please let me know so I can alter the content to conform to the rules and regulations of the board.
Thanks!
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Maybe I'm wrong but I think that the majority of the issue is hellbat drops in combination with new speed medivacs? Maybe if a medivac could only hold two hellbats instead of four, drops wouldn't be so game changing and hellbats could still be used in army compositions.
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On February 10 2013 06:14 Riverdragon0 wrote:
Maybe I'm wrong but I think that the majority of the issue is hellbat drops in combination with new speed medivacs? Maybe if a medivac could only hold two hellbats instead of four, drops wouldn't be so game changing and hellbats could still be used in army compositions.
Yup. It's been proposed a few times on the official forums. Seems like the obvious solution.
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I have different way to solve it - way Hellbat is, as units, its way too flexible. It needs massive increase of changing time(After all, hellbats are basicaly Area Attacking Zealots) to around 12~15 seconds(yeah, its hell lot of time, maybe 10 sec, after little thinking, but think about templar -> archon morphing) and make it so unlike Hellion, medv. can carry only 2 hellbats, not 4. While Hellbat itself is not nerfed, helldrop and change-mode play is.
Edit: Just Noticed River Dragon mentioned it. Well, I would still like to see longer changetime as well.
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I think people describe the speedas a problem, but in reality its the fact that they are so hard to kill as they are healed by the medivac. If you can eliminate the medivac they are much easier to clean up. However, around the timing attack there isnt many options other than static defense, by delaying that slightly I think more options would be available to players and the smoothness of the game would be rectified. I do not think medivac speed is at all an issue, and it does exactly what its intended to do.
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people would just load up medvacs with hellions and transform in a hidden area of the base. As a terran I will admit that the hellbat is really hard to deal with TvT, but I think this is because people haven't quite figured out how to defend. WM and marauders seem to work pretty decently. As for changing the cost/build time that would change the 2/2 timings for terran and make the upgrades harder to get and make thors harder to get to making mech TvZ less viable since mutas have more opportunity to strike before thors can defend. Making it researchable is not a good idea either since it would cost quite a bit to make hellions cost too much or take too much time to make them fully useful. BFH plus a Hellbat upgrade take too long when this upgrade would have to be in a tech lab. Overall changes to structural tech (buildings/upgrades) affects way more than you think.
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On February 10 2013 06:20 FreeTossCZComentary wrote:
I have different way to solve it - way Hellbat is, as units, its way too flexible. It needs massive increase of changing time(After all, hellbats are basicaly Area Attacking Zealots) to around 12~15 seconds(yeah, its hell lot of time, maybe 10 sec, after little thinking, but think about templar -> archon morphing) and make it so unlike Hellion, medv. can carry only 2 hellbats, not 4. While Hellbat itself is not nerfed, helldrop and change-mode play is.
Edit: Just Noticed River Dragon mentioned it. Well, I would still like to see longer changetime as well.
I just physically cant get over it, I mean the hellion has finite components, by changing the order of those components around it doesn't become twice the size so taking up twice the space in the medivac (their size is reflective of food cost typically as well) just doesn't make sense to me to make the hellion the only exception to the rule. I strongly argue that by delaying the timing of the attack the efficacy of the 4 hellion drop timing would be drastically less effective but still effective enough where if a player was not watching their map they could be punished with some nice harass. I believe oracle's do a great job of this as well, arguably in less time.
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On February 10 2013 06:24 Sircoolguy wrote:
people would just load up medvacs with hellions and transform in a hidden area of the base. As a terran I will admit that the hellbat is really hard to deal with TvT, but I think this is because people haven't quite figured out how to defend. WM and marauders seem to work pretty decently. As for changing the cost/build time that would change the 2/2 timings for terran and make the upgrades harder to get and make thors harder to get to making mech TvZ less viable since mutas have more opportunity to strike before thors can defend. Making it researchable is not a good idea either since it would cost quite a bit to make hellions cost too much or take too much time to make them fully useful. BFH plus a Hellbat upgrade take too long when this upgrade would have to be in a tech lab. Overall changes to structural tech (buildings/upgrades) affects way more than you think.
I think overall changes to building cost or build time is the best solution if we wanted to keep the timing attack qualities the same. My reasoning for this is that by costing the armory more, or making construction time longer, that will effectively delay the tech but shouldnt delay everything else. Afterall, the people who are executing it as quickly as they can are using it as a timing attack. A player should have consequences of choosing an attack that is not fruitful; A player should be conscious of what techniques to employ on the field. I think making construction time longer or costing more resources places a little more pressure on the executor. As it stands right now, there are no real consequences to a bad execution. This is of course dubious and the sample pool is somewhat low in beta stages. I have seen circumstances where players have not executed properly and did hardly to no damage at all and the game continued fine, I have seen instances where players failed, and then got steamrolled, basically, I have seen it work every kind of way possible.
That being said, it just makes a person wonder. If it can fail, and it does, and it can succeed and does, does it succeed too often, or fail too often? Is the success of the attack dependent on scouting? It seems to me it can be executed fairly blindly at the moment. However, some people do scout or expect this build and prepare accordingly and defend it. These are some of the stories I want to hear from players.
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I would change the Hellbat to be mechanical and then nerf the damage.
Reasoning:
a) drops are worse with no healing and less damage
b) still powerful in TvP since they don't get countered by Archons
c) it'll nerf them in TvZ where mech seems to be superior to bio.
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On February 10 2013 06:27 TheSwagger wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2013 06:20 FreeTossCZComentary wrote:
I have different way to solve it - way Hellbat is, as units, its way too flexible. It needs massive increase of changing time(After all, hellbats are basicaly Area Attacking Zealots) to around 12~15 seconds(yeah, its hell lot of time, maybe 10 sec, after little thinking, but think about templar -> archon morphing) and make it so unlike Hellion, medv. can carry only 2 hellbats, not 4. While Hellbat itself is not nerfed, helldrop and change-mode play is.
Edit: Just Noticed River Dragon mentioned it. Well, I would still like to see longer changetime as well. I just physically cant get over it, I mean the hellion has finite components, by changing the order of those components around it doesn't become twice the size so taking up twice the space in the medivac (their size is reflective of food cost typically as well) just doesn't make sense to me to make the hellion the only exception to the rule. I strongly argue that by delaying the timing of the attack the efficacy of the 4 hellion drop timing would be drastically less effective but still effective enough where if a player was not watching their map they could be punished with some nice harass. I believe oracle's do a great job of this as well, arguably in less time.
I physically can't get over it. I mean the hellion has finite components, by changing the order of those components around it doesn't make it into a biological unit that can be healed. See what I did there? I used blizzard logic too. If somehow it changing where it's mechanical parts are makes it biological then it can damn sure become 2x as big. Which actually it taking up twice as much supply in the medivac makes plenty of sense. If you cut a triangle in three and move the pieces around you can make it take up twice the area of a normal triangle.
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United Kingdom12025 Posts
On February 10 2013 08:07 ChillPhiju wrote:
I would change the Hellbat to be mechanical and then nerf the damage.
Reasoning:
a) drops are worse with no healing and less damage
b) still powerful in TvP since they don't get countered by Archons
c) it'll nerf them in TvZ where mech seems to be superior to bio.
Well mech should be superior to bio, it's weaknesses are mobility which on a lot of maps (minus like Daybreak) a good zerg will completely abuse. Lategame mech should certainly be the stronger option.
I'd say changing them to mechanical would be good, but nerfing the damage would make them bad at what they need to do, which is deal with zealots and lings and protect the tanks. It'd be better to just change how they synergise with drops as currently they're good in drops, but still managable outside of them.
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i have no idea why hell bats are biological, why not making vikings in ground mode biological makes just as much sense.
That said, Hellbat drops are getting predictable and are getting easier to defend, it requires you to upgrade to star port tech AND get an armory its super all innish if they rush for it. Its no different than one base muta, or one base DT, or one base cloakshee, all of these can give you an insta loss if not scouted and prepared for. This is why i doubt blizzard is going to nerf it.
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What really confused me was why the hellbat wasn't armored. Immortals spent ages killing a hellbat healed by medivacs, something that doesn't really make sense to me.
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United Kingdom12025 Posts
On February 10 2013 09:43 TokO wrote:
What really confused me was why the hellbat wasn't armored. Immortals spent ages killing a hellbat healed by medivacs, something that doesn't really make sense to me.
The reasons why hellbat isn't armored is because it's supposed to the unit that can actually help with immortals and zealots without insta dying like everything else in the mech arsenal if you don't get perfect EMPs :p
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I feel like Hellbats shouldn't be healed by medivacs. They just seem to be invincible in that combination early game. Also the Medivac Boost basically negates the sole disadvantage of Hellbats: being slow. Even if I pull all my drones in time, they can still re-activated Medivac Boost, reload all Hellbats and just drop them on top of the pulled drones. There's no way to do anything against that. Even if you split the drones well you're still losing way too much.
Reintroducing a required upgrade might also be a solution since the problem seem to be mostly early game. Overall there are many ways to approach this issue and I'm pretty sure Blizzard will soon come to the same conclusion that Hellbats+Medivac are too strong early game.
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Changing cost or build time on armory is so far out I can't even begin to imagin how it would change the entire game. Terran is already the race that has the hardest time upgrading in the midgame, making it even harder to prevent harass thats semi-easily stopped by good awereness and good unit placement is not at all the way to go. Battlehellions are incredibly strong right now and that should be adressed, but not by nerfing other units and strategies.
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Ill be honest i don't see this thread surviving long under the Beta sections rules but regardless ill give it a shot at what i think would have been better for it.
I think the biggest problem in their current design is ironically their tie-in to Hellions. This means that they are bound to be very cheap gasless units. Despite the fact that the hellion and the hellbat at this point shares nothing but their mech upgrades. They aren't even same unit type.
If the hellbats had been firebats then their cost could be adjusted for their power. Even marauders costs gas so why not fire/hellbats. They counter other mineral-only units in a ratio that is almost crazy.
David kim has been proposing a solution that could work. Make the hellion transformation perfect. Making them Hellbats would be a commitment. Could also cost reassources to do so.It is not like hellbats need the speed they are best used with medivacs.
I think that would be the way to go, but i wonder if it will happen in time.
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i think if you needed to reasearch Hellbat mode it would be a good first step.
Sure you j´could just nerf it because hellbat drops early game are way to strong and dominant but if you´d delay it by say 80 seconds by making it a upgrade, and making the Terran spend extra ressources on it would show wheather its really that op or if it is just the timing that is.
With the extra time that the research would need and the extra ress to spend for it the Terrans would have to really commit to hellbats and the oponent would get time to prepare.
Also i think Hellions/Hellbats should absolutly not be Mineral only (even just speaking of lore it makes no sense  )
a cost of 100/25 or even 100/50 // 75/50 to make hellbat drops or general early hellbat play impact your tech and economy more would only make sense to me.
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They don't need a nerf. What needs to happen is people need to learn how to defend them.
It's not hard. They have a range of 2.
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EPT
