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Hi guys, after watching quite a lot of pro games, I am starting to see the biggest problem a deathball can cause.
Two important facts I just want to point out about deathball:
The first is the transition into a deathball.
How fast/safe it is to get to that strong deathball.
Zerg for example in WoL, tries to rush into broodlord infestors because it is relatively fast to get to and ride on that momentum to continue building up that deathball because they know the opponent almost cannot attack into them once the broodlord infestors are out.
It takes time for the other race to get their appropriate unit composition.
(or for some, they would just try to end the game right there. Which is also where zerg deathball often get beaten because they skipped upgrade for the faster tech, the immobility makes drop stronger and pushing out that early means the bases do not have enough spines/spores ready)
This is why TvP we almost never see any sky deathball, it's too vulnerable to millions of timings.
But if the map allows, then both would try to get to that air deathball asap, example being MVP vs Squirtle in the GSL final. But as of now, there is almost no other games that goes to mass air deathball in TvP other than on some progamers' stream.
With the new units addition available for Protoss such as MsC, stargate grants detection, mobile harassment, it allows protoss to have a much more safer opening and stargate becomes a very legitimate tech choice
The second fact is the strength of the deathball.
Sky deathball is the strongest deathball, it's not about how many air units there are, but it's about who can dominate the air fight. Once you have the air, you have the game.
In TvZ for example, you can't really engage the ultra zerg deathball which has 10+ infestors and some broodlords with lots corruptors, especially if they are 3-3, unless you have the BCs raven etc deathball.
Broodlord infestor corruptor queen is the zerg air deathball.
Terran has BCs Vikings tanks thor and raven (sometimes with ghosts)
Toss is much more sky units heavy, a mix of void ray, tempest/carriers, HTs and archons.
The WoL protoss deathball is much more ground heavy and has the hardest time to get to mass air, which is why Z always wins in the late game.
even if Protoss managed to do a full air transition Zerg air deathball was still relatively strong because of infestors. (full air transition was popular once in Korea but was found ineffective due to fungal killing interceptors and ITs were too strong)
That is imo, why a "broken" mechanic of archon toilet was kept to make sure Protoss still has a way to engage it and now that in HoTS there is other air units for Protoss, vortex is not needed anymore.
What's the problem?
This means whichever race has the Strongest air strength, that race will always be unbeatable in the ultra late game air deathball vs air deathball situation assuming both are equally skilled and no one makes a major mistake
(we should not rely on opponent's mistake to call it balanced)
I have yet to see a zerg managed to beat a skyterran after the infestor nerf and rarely before the nerf. A slow push of missile turrets, raven HSMs and pdds, vikings snipe and BC's yamato, makes it impossible to engage.
But how is it all kind of "balanced" in the ZvT case? The transition into skyterran is difficult, there are lots of vulnerable timings that the Terran will lose out right, which is similar to TvP.
You also cannot just simply open with air tech as terran, making the transition slow.
Zerg on the other hand can get to that broodlord infestors much earlier and safer.
But if the Terran managed to get to sky transition, then the massive momentum that the zerg had suddenly matters little because it all comes down to one huge engagement and it is incredibly difficult to have a relatively equal trade.
One good example is Thorzain vs Targa epic match here:
http://drop.sc/279567
Showcasing almost all my points about the timing to transition and the strength of the deathball etc
Key point summary of the game:
+ Show Spoiler +Thorzain went mech, went for almost maxed push against TargA's 4th. Lost horribly and went down to almost maxed on roaches zerg vs a 130ish supply terran.
TargA goes to broodlord transition, back stabbing with some roaches etc
saw thorzain with high vikings and some thors and ravens, build up more corruptors and broodlords.
eventually died to slow sniping by yamato, HsM, Pdds, missile turrets and tanks slow pushes.
So just a final sentence to end this topic, the game will have one more expansion after this but it will not likely to ever get rid of the 'who has the stronger deathball' problem.
What should Blizzard do? Or what Can they do?
TL;DR:
Air deathballs are too powerful in SC2
Fundamental design flaw that cannot be fixed by expansions alone
The only limiting factor is the ability to transition (how safe and fast)
At ultra end game situation, the winner of the game is too dependent on who has the strongest air deathball for the respective race.
[edit] reorganised and reworded a little to make it more clear
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What should Blizzard do? Or what Can they do?
Nerf the Nexus Cannon. The problem are not the air units itself, the problem is that it is too easy to be very greedy and survive any not allin midgame timings with it.
Th problem with brood/infestor was not (only) the units it was the fact that you could go 12 minute hive with 70 drones and almost no units thanks to the power of spines and long range queens.
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I would love to see some sort of nerf to the mechanic of air units, maybe a faster spread so they can't attack all stacked up which is what gives the strength of the deathball. I am not so sure about nerfs to units stats, since then no one will build them for non-deathball use as well, which is not what we want.
I would like to have air as an option, but it should only be the better option based on the map and playstyle, I think a ground based army should be stronger when fighting in open space, while the air should win if it gets into a good position like the high ground near the 3rd in daybreak where ground units can't reach.
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maybe some use of vipers, infestor, 3/3 corruptors, and spores are the solution I guess. Maybe a few hydra or queen since you have corruptors to tank the BC shots and nothing on the ground to prevent a good concave.
His army is very weak spread out so that can be a place to abuse. Hes got sensor towers, Pfs, and turrets that dont cost supply so that might not be the ideal way to handle it especially since units you would drop arnt extremely ideal vs split up BCs (hydras do meh vs them).
Id probly focus on a micro intensive fight where u try to use viper energy to pull BCs, then use spore crawlers to regen energy on the spot. Then if you have a ton of excess gas you can make like 10 overseers to contaminate his starports if u know where they are. Then morph just a few broodlords to help you push and you can probly make a dent.
Thats all I can think of at the moment about zvt vs sky terran.
Overall yea deathballs are pretty favored which is annoying, but the medivac speed boost, oracles and phoenix +1 range are all pretty good reasons to do small counter attacks.
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I think in ZvP when Protoss gets that massive air army then you might want to try and kill as many bases as possible with a ground army so that they can only have that army once, and then just try and kill them through a slow grind down with Hydra/Corrupter/Queen and a forest of spores.
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[...]What should Blizzard do? Or what Can they do?
They should and probably will wait and see how the metagame actually develops and not rely on theorycrafting too much before the game has even been released.
Also, I think you use the words "impossible" and "unbeatable" a little too much.
There were quite a few "unbeatable" strategies in WoL, if I recall correctly. People will need more time to figure out how to deal with those deathballs.
You alfeady mentioned timing pushes yourself, but there are probably Otter possibilities. They might involve clever positioning, drop play (Harassment/ tech building snipe), mass expanding, etc to abuse the immobility of such a deathball.
We've seen those deathballs in WoL and often times the opponent was not able to defeat ist in a direct engagement but still win the game by being able to reinforce faster/hit and run on expansions or production facilities and eventually tearing down the deathball piece by piece if necessary.
I don't think that there is supposed to be a "counter-deathball" for every army out there.
Also, we have seen far too little HotS gameplay yet to claim how the game is going to develop. Most pros have Not even switched to HotS yet as there are still Tons of WoL tournaments.
I agree with you that the MsC and the Oracle open some new Stargate tech paths, but that those 2 units make a transition back to robo unecessary seems like a pretty bold statement to me.
To put it in your words, I have yet to see a teching toss to hold off some big swarmhost attack without the splash from colossi/ht, whatever that means.
PS: should there be any really strange words in this text, my iPhone is to blame for that.
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On January 29 2013 16:36 shockaslim wrote:
I think in ZvP when Protoss gets that massive air army then you might want to try and kill as many bases as possible with a ground army so that they can only have that army once, and then just try and kill them through a slow grind down with Hydra/Corrupter/Queen and a forest of spores.
Base race only works so much. Since if you bypass his deathball to kill his bases. He will either defend if he feels he can. Or go kill your bases. So by the time you kill all his bases, most (if not all) of your bases are probably gone as well. So it still comes down to 1 army vs 1 army with no chance to rebuild on either side. Of course, if your army is strong enough to kill his bases while also defending your own, it works. But if this was the case, your army could probably take his army head on anyways.
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Why does protoss even need the Planetary nexus anyways? This make it so much easier for them to turtle up (as if it weren't so before). Like what does the nexus even do? Gateway expand is still less eco friendly than an ffe so it really doesnt change much besides the fact that Toss can now have a pf.
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The Nexus cannon is incredibly good at defense, as are the new void rays since they have such high damage output off the bat now. This allows for Toss to tech directly into their late game deathball while being as greedy as they want (fast third base, double air upgrades, ect)
Terran now has widow mines as well as no upgrade on siege tanks, this allows for them to also be extremely greedy off the bat (tripple cc, double ups, ect)
Zerg still has queens which are extremely good, also burrow at hatch tech makes it a coinflip for your opponent to be aggressive in the early stages as a few burrowed banes could be insta gg.
Add to this the fact that 3rd bases on the new maps are so damn easy to take, it all justs leads to boring 200/200 turtle fests into a big a move battle. If each race is to have amazing defensive capabilities then 3rd bases NEED to be challenging to take, otherwise small engagements will not be happening (I don't count oracle harass, or suicide hellbat drops as engagements).
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On January 29 2013 16:41 wongfeihung wrote:
I haven't run into too much trouble (i.e. completely unbeatable) when facing mass air units. Here's my take on going against an opponent with a mass-air composition.
Take advantage of the mass-air composition's natural immobility (excluding mass Muta). Wherever their main army is, you're not. Attack their main/expos whenever they move to the middle of the map. Destroy their income; destroy their production; destroy everything except their army. Occasionally, they'll attempt to leave a group of units behind in order to try to defend their main or expos; pick those off with your entire army (strength in numbers, your army > their half army), as well as any potential reinforcements before they reach the main army.
I tried that once against toss air deathball in HotS with terran.
It wasnt very succesfull, some of the problems:
Skytoss doesnt lack minerals, he will have enough cannons at each expansion to make sure you wont do damage with just 1-2 medivacs, you really need to bring a significant force.
The moment I did saw his main army move out, I also moved out, went past his army with more mobile bio (lol at trying that with mech), and flattened his third, natural, and did quite some damage to his main. He did exactly the same to my base. So at this point we severely hurt each others infrastructure/income, but he still had a vastly superior army, that didnt really improve my position in any way.
Sky armies arent that immobile, since they can bypass terrain (my opponent mixed in quite some colossi, which also bypass most terrain), there mobility is better than what you would think with only looking at movement speed.
Aditionally, what my opponent didnt do, but what he should have done, toss armies have the best mobility of any army. You say if he leaves behind some units to defend you should pick them off with your main army. Small issue: toss armies can teleport around.
I agree the main problem is the nexus cannon for toss. For zerg it would be queen, and for terran there probably is some similar problem (as terran not most unbiased there, but I would guess widow mines, especially the threat of them, they dont even need to be there). If I look at WoL, for me personally there werent problems zerg until the queen range boost, which allowed them to play alot more greedy to get to that deathball.
Although it isnt just these few units, but the entire (meta)game, which allows for very greedy openings to 3/4 base turtles to 200/200 deathballs.
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United Kingdom12021 Posts
The way to reduce the power of an air deathball is bigger, wider maps.
The reason why Broodlord infestor was so strong is that every map was bloody tiny in terms of width (see Ohana, Daybreak, Cloud Kingdom, Antiga Shipyard), so you could never actually avoid the damn army to go around and kill all the bases.
Air deathballs are slow and on a well designed map you can completely avoid them and go do what you need to do.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On January 29 2013 19:12 Qikz wrote:
The way to reduce the power of an air deathball is bigger, wider maps.
The reason why Broodlord infestor was so strong is that every map was bloody tiny in terms of width (see Ohana, Daybreak, Cloud Kingdom, Antiga Shipyard), so you could never actually avoid the damn army to go around and kill all the bases.
Air deathballs are slow and on a well designed map you can completely avoid them and go do what you need to do.
This this this this this.
Mapmakers have an incredible power to influence balance through their design, if the ladder map pool was changed more often and tournaments were quicker to change theirs we would see more varied games, particularly if there are maps where traditional builds do not work i.e. Arkanoid.
+ Show Spoiler +I understand the reasons for the ladder pool not changing quickly and the same for tournaments, but this would alleviate the problem somewhat. So please don't call me out saying "but you can't change the map pools often because X" or "Day9 said that we should do Y" cause we've all heard it all before.
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I don't understand this obsession with finding "deathballs" and then crying in agony once you see someone play that way.
You know what happened to PvZ?
It became the most amazing matchup IF Protoss was competent enough to make something happen, abusing the slow pace and weak defensive capabilities against multi-pronged attacks.
Rain playing PvZ looks SOOOO good to me.
He pressures one base while attacking another from a proxy Pylon only to distract Zerg and get a Warp Prism in to snipe tech and Queens.
THIS is the way the matchup would have evolved if not for HotS.
Sooner or Later more and more Protoss would mimic this style and get more and more successful with it.
At one point Zerg would have to adapt and realize that a incredibly slow army will only win if your opponent allows it.
At your first game of starcraft what do you do?
You get some buildings and some units, keep everything together and at one point win or lose.
The same thing happens at Pro level, in the beginning you try to get a big army that wins against the other dudes army.
At some point people figure out that one race has the better but slower army and after losing enough they try to develop ways to still beat it.
How the HELL do you expect to be a game that has a few months of Beta to be ANYTHING OTHER than a turtle fest.
Sure a few players will try to find other ways to play the game, but without all the knowledge and experience that is just inferior style.
Do you HONESTLY believe that Starcraft 2 can be at the same level of quality as BW after less than a fifth of the same time of gathering experience?
Sure Starcraft 2 evolves really quickly compared to the early BW but it will still take a ton of time and a couple of special people that understand the game far better than the rest to make this happen.
Starcraft always gets compared to other sports, Soccer 30 years back was incredibly terrible.
Compared to what you see now it was simply shit! That is how we will think in 5 years.
Hell that is how we already think about what happened a year ago.
In all honesty, calm your beards! This game WILL at some point not rely on deathballs in a lot of matchups.
HotS and hopefully LoV will give more options for cool strategy that can be used to outplay someone who turtles and hopes to win with a single attack.
TL;DR
Don't expect anything BUT deathballs for at least another year of HotS, no matter what happens to the game, this is the easiest way to secure victory over a lot of people no matter what.
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^
I guess you are somewhat correct.
But there are two main problems
One is it appears fighting bits and pieces against a deathball aren't working too good in all matchup except TvT.
We have terran constantly dropping against an immobile deathball in TvZ or TvP as well, but the problem is, from what I can see, limited by map design, more vision and the strong defensive capability of spine spore cannon PFs bunker, a few zealots + HTs etc.
We do see toss warping zealots against Terran late game, Terran doing marine marauders runby etc. But none can end the game against a deathball and it always have to end with a deathball vs deathball fight.
The only one where abusing immobility works well is in TvT bio vs Mech. whether it's because it's easier to catch mech unsiege than broodlord infestor bad positioning, I am not sure
The 2nd is IF one managed to get to the deathball that is the best for their respective race, then should this deathball be unbeatable?
In that TvZ I posted, the Targa vs Thorzain game, once Thorzain gets to that high BCs and raven counts, there is almost nothing Targa could have done to break that.
PFs and tanks shut down runbys, sensor gives early warning. Killing off add ons were all he could do. He needed a lot of supply to kill off Terran air units as well.
The reason why I used that game is because Targa could have got drop and maybe finish the game earlier, but when it gets to that ultra late game situation, he has no way to break out.
Should the game be designed this way?
There are indeed situation where both can get into their best unit compositions, should one overpower the other just because of unit design?
It's very likely that these issues won't be solved no matter what LotV gives us because WoL has laid down the foundation and if we don't tackle these questions, nothing will change.
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United Kingdom12021 Posts
On January 29 2013 21:06 ETisME wrote:
^
I guess you are somewhat correct.
But there are two main problems
One is it appears fighting bits and pieces against a deathball aren't working too good in all matchup except TvT.
We have terran constantly dropping against an immobile deathball in TvZ or TvP as well, but the problem is, from what I can see, limited by map design, more vision and the strong defensive capability of spine spore cannon PFs bunker, a few zealots + HTs etc.
We do see toss warping zealots against Terran late game, Terran doing marine marauders runby etc. But none can end the game against a deathball and it always have to end with a deathball vs deathball fight.
The only one where abusing immobility works well is in TvT bio vs Mech. whether it's because it's easier to catch mech unsiege than broodlord infestor bad positioning, I am not sure
The 2nd is IF one managed to get to the deathball that is the best for their respective race, then should this deathball be unbeatable?
In that TvZ I posted, the Targa vs Thorzain game, once Thorzain gets to that high BCs and raven counts, there is almost nothing Targa could have done to break that.
PFs and tanks shut down runbys, sensor gives early warning. Killing off add ons were all he could do. He needed a lot of supply to kill off Terran air units as well.
The reason why I used that game is because Targa could have got drop and maybe finish the game earlier, but when it gets to that ultra late game situation, he has no way to break out.
Should the game be designed this way?
There are indeed situation where both can get into their best unit compositions, should one overpower the other just because of unit design?
It's very likely that these issues won't be solved no matter what LotV gives us because WoL has laid down the foundation and if we don't tackle these questions, nothing will change.
Not that I disagree with you there, but that comes entirely down to map design, rather than game design.
Maps are simply not big enough and have either far too many bases or bases that are not spread out enough.
You can't abuse the mobility of big sky armies as none of the maps are wide or large enough to actually go attack a base where there army isn't.
Ohana for example you could sit your sky army outside your third and defend all your bases by moving left or right ever so slightly. Daybreak has the same problem.
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On January 29 2013 20:18 rEalGuapo wrote:
I don't understand this obsession with finding "deathballs" and then crying in agony once you see someone play that way.
You know what happened to PvZ?
It became the most amazing matchup IF Protoss was competent enough to make something happen, abusing the slow pace and weak defensive capabilities against multi-pronged attacks.
The abomination that is PvZ is the most amazing matchup? It is a toss doing a 3 immortal all-in and if it fails a 15 minute death animation starts, with the small possibility to cancel the animation with a good vortex.
At worst the zergs should spread out their overlords better so they see warp prisms coming (they have completely air superiority at this point), and use a few corrupters to intercept them. With good creep spread you can pretty much stop proxy pylons and can never be surprised over land.
@Qikz, just blaming map design is too easy. There are also large maps, and they still have the same problem. Attacking where the deathball isnt? In case of zerg they can always see you coming. And he can then always attack where your army isnt: defending your base.
Simply making larger maps wont help anything, you then need at least to combine it with requiring more than 3 bases for full saturation.
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Yeah I can easily see protoss being really strong to the point of OP going full sky and some ground army mostly sky
But at least in terms of ZvP going sky toss from the start means the zerg can go insane on the drones and expansions
Blizzard will tweak units stats if needed to ensure that skytoss unbeatable deathball is only unbeatable should you let them get it by making mistakes (like not scouting at all or making really bad trades)
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United Kingdom12021 Posts
@Qikz, just blaming map design is too easy. There are also large maps, and they still have the same problem. Attacking where the deathball isnt? In case of zerg they can always see you coming. And he can then always attack where your army isnt: defending your base.
The maps we have now, say Whirlwind may seem big but it still has the issue of the bases being far too close together.
If they were more spread out, you could expand virtually everywhere against a deathballing player and due to their mobility they wouldn't be able to instantly go kill all your bases in one swift move. They'd have to move around the map to do it in which case would put them out of position.
Say for example we had Fighting Spirit in SC2. I know it's not the perfect example, but it's an alright size of a map and it works great for stopping deathballing due to how spread the bases are to take your fourth. You need to take it behind a big push and if you're attacking into the fourth/fifth/sixth bases of your opponent, you're still pretty far from their main.
Against an air opponent Fighting Spirit isn't very good either due to the lack of clear defining air space (minus the small gap behind the naturals) and places to hide from ground units, but that's a discussion for another thread I guess. What I'm trying to say is if you saw and scouted someone going for skytoss for example (which wouldn't really be all that hard), you could take the three corners of the map and spread your production all over the place with all your extra money.
Due to how spread the bases would be it would be impossible for the slower, less mobile army to actually deal a killing blow to you without you being able to intercept/react as the bases are far apart and it'd be super hard for the air deathball to actually defend. Now take Ohana, or even Whirlwind as an example, due to the nature of the base layouts, a big air or ground deathballing player only has a short flight/walk from one base, into a domino effect heading straight into their main. If you lose one base to a massive army on whirlwind, you're pretty much going to lose the rest of them shortly after, where as on a map with more spread out bases, even as spread as say fighting spirit, there's travel time between them.
It's one of the reasons Ohana is such a joke of a map. If you take out the fourth base and they're trying to base trade a base for a base, you might as well go all in with your base trade as by the time you get back to your main, you've already lost all your mining bases as they're right on top of each other.
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I mean I am watching GSL now, ryung vs byun. imo, one of the best TvT so far in 2013.
That map is HUGE ass and exciting mid game due to how spread out the bases are.
All action stops once it gets to the sky transition.
SCVs are sac to make rooms for more air units.
no one can do much because it's too hard to engage.
Then the game just ends with the winner winning the air.
That's why I would argue it's more than just maps, it could be the vision, the static defense too strong etc
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EPT
