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On March 21 2013 05:34 Bagi wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 05:23 Assirra wrote:On March 21 2013 04:54 Bagi wrote:On March 21 2013 02:58 Giantt wrote:
The issue with the infestor appeared 1+ year after the unit remained unchanged(and nerfed in terms of neural parasite). It was created not by the unit itself but by the way Zerg players learned to use it - in every situation with nearly perfect efficiency.
The case with WM on the other hand appears now - only a month-two so since the last major patch - when only a few people are near mastering WM control and tactics and most of what you see is mediocre usage that yields great results. The issue is only going to become more and more obvious as more and more Terrans improve their skills with the new unit.
The problem with the BL/infestor comp appeared immediately after the queen buffs. It wasn't so much the infestor as it much the early game buffs combined with the best possible lategame army. Your response, "let protoss and terran players sweat". Well, after a year of a broken zerg strategy going unchecked, I think its time for you guys to sweat a bit. No it didn't appeared after the queen buff, it was used way before. Its just cause zerg didn't get killed before they reached the composition that it became apparent. I never said the comp didn't appear before it, but its what really made it into a huge problem. The problem was that a ridiculously strong early game and a ridiculously strong lategame meant that there was only a small window in the midgame where the zerg was vulnerable. The whole metagame (2-2 mech timings, immortal sentry all-ins) started to revolve around that window. Before the queen buff terrans could significantly delay the 3rd and get a much better econ compared to the zerg. Many games were also outright won with early pressure builds. Yugioh was using it in 2011 to great success while streaming (but he is not your standard player. He forced the lategame back then, something no other zergs were really trying). If I remember right even David Kim made a comment in a report (I will try and find it) of some kind about how they were concerned about the potential power of infestor/broodlord (but that they didn't want to address it yet), but at the time people were so wrapped up in focusing on the strength of Terran that they ignored the issue completely because at the time it was more of a mythical lategame composition that would rarely occur compared to what it turned into after the queen patch. It was the advantages gained by the queen patch (or possibly even just the awareness of the strength of early game queens for defence and creep spread. Losira was going for 4-6 queens many games before the patch already and was showing the power of them) that allowed it to become such a problem.
Edit: Here is the thing I was talking about with David Kim talking about Infestor/Broodlord in 2011. Look at some of the replies to the thread hahaha: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=234187
People didn't think it was possible to get to a composition like that. Though this was before the ghost nerf. People weren't even thinking about it versus Protoss.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
On March 20 2013 21:15 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 19:56 eviltomahawk wrote:On March 20 2013 16:41 Rabiator wrote:
People are still ok with the obvious scale discrepancies between the units - which are there for gameplay reasons (because you wouldnt notice Marines / Zerglings on a map scale for Battlecruisers) - so why shouldnt a 12 unit selection limit be acceptable for gameplay reason? People who claim that unlimited unit selection is "necessary" because "technology has advanced" are just too lazy to learn controlling multiple groups. Well, I guess I'm a lazy bum for not preferring an unintuitive interface restriction revolving around the arbitrary number of 12. Maybe I should stop being lazy and start playing a mechanically challenging game with no production queues, no control group hotkeys, no rally points, hotkey requirements for every command, and a 4-unit selection limit. Surely such arbitrary interface restrictions should greatly improve my gaming experience. You completely miss the point ... it might be NECESSARY for BALANCING REASONS to limit the number of selected units to 12 because of the "unit density problem". Just a quick reminder about that problem: A Marine and a Stalker have roughly the same dps. Their differences in health, armor and mobility is balanced with the differing cost. The problem starts to appear when you have MANY Marines against a mediocre amount of Stalkers ... for the same cost. Since you can "stack" roughly 3 Marines in the space each Stalker occupies you end up with a vastly superior Marine force which has three times the dps. As long as the numbers stay small the Stalkers can win and use their shield regeneration, but as soon as numbers increase the Marines will have a far bigger power. The only thing that changes is NUMBER OF UNITS, but in the process the balance shifts from "balanced" to "totally one-sided". This is BAD because it makes the game harder to balance due to the shifting power depending upon numbers. If you dont see it and rather want to keep your stupid unlimited unit selection and super tight pathing then you are too lazy. A limit on number of units is NOT unintuitive, you are just too lazy to split your units into squads.
You're wrong, scaling factor was always there, units jumped from zero to hero with numbers all the time in bw.
Like, early in the game marines are the weakest unit to have with paper HP, totally countered by zealots for cost. Later in the game, BW marines are just as unbeatable as in SC2, barring some kind of AoE (go beat a bio terran with just zealots and dragoons, hint: you won't). Or zealots supposed to be a direct counter to tanks (and they did on a small scale), but being completely pointless without support once terran reached a critical mass of tanks. Those critical mass scenarios are what makes the game deep and interesting.
But on all other points, sadly, you're right.
The game suffers glaring economy problems right now, with everyone maxing out way too fast. Some people give sheer income per mineral field credit for that, but there's more - people expand too often and saturate too fast. Blazingly fast saturation is a problem - it basically mitigates all the costs associated with an expansion, since it pays off way too soon. In SC2, you need LESS workers to achieve MORE income and, thanks to inject larva and chrono boost, those workers build very very fast. Drone whoring was an art in BW simply because they were the most larva-inefficient unit in the game, but thanks to inject and the fact that you will build queens anyway (they are cool), you can saturate a fourth in literally one production wave. Terrans are a special case, receiving unconditional mineral income from just having CC's (leading to really stupid builds that have more CC's than bases), which too leads to larger income.
In BW, having 2 workers per crystal on a base doesn't give you the max income - thanks to the stupid worker AI, they still spend time going from mineral to mineral, not mining. In SC2, there's no point in ever having more than 2, since the income difference is neglible. Combined with the "macro mechanics" this makes saturation even faster, greatly reducing the timing window when your expansion still costs you more than it gives.
Thus, the only real factor that guides your decision to expand is position: defending 3 bases is harder than defending two. Otherwise, people would just expand all the time, the economical penalty for doing that is too small. In ladder replay packs you see people taking expansions they cannot protect all the time - chances are high that your opponent simply doesn't notice it before it already pays off. And when he goes to kill it, you can always rebuild. Yes, it's not always true for tournament games, but people with such level of awareness are too rare.
Just reducing the number of patches per base won't help - it will unbalance mineral to gas ratios and you will saturate even faster. Maybe make more cluttered minlines with outlying mineral fields farther from the main, so that workers spend more time moving. Maybe even reduce minerals per trip combined with a reduction of mining time so that 2 workers don't occupy 100% of a crystal's mining time. Until something is done, we are going to see 16/24 on every expo in every game. Furthermore, a less smooth saturation curve (that is basically linear until 2 workers per patch, then almost flat, a clear evidence of that is the decline of maynarding - there's no point of splitting your workers unless you are already saturated on your main, BW's curve is more smooth, so there's almost always an increase in efficiency if you split your workers evenly between the main and the nat) increases the gap between having a different amount of bases on the same amount of workers. Right now 2 bases is almost always 2x as good as one base, and 3 bases is almost always 1.5x as good as 2. It was less discrete in BW, so that you actually could have a macro style with say, 3 bases vs 2, with both players being reasonably efficient for a pretty large timing window.
200/200 games are not RTS. The game of "dump your army in the most cost-efficient was possible and remax faster than your opponent" is not fun (and it favors zerg with their unique ability to store production capability with inject larva), it leads to pointless engagements and abuse of production mechanics and it's not something I want StarCraft to be. Seriously, dumping your army so you can remax on different units that work better vs your enemy's current composition is the dumbest thing ever, you should be using your units to achieve strategical goals, not throwing them away.
Whew, finally spat it out.
And yeah, about mobility. Time and time again, I will continue ranting. Medivac is a terrible unit. You cannot have both combat power and mobility on the same unit at the same time, because it eliminates choice. Medivac's combat power is a given - you will have no doubts about building them with a bio army even if you never plan to drop anything anywhere. I understand that Blizzard has their "vision" of the terran race, but let's face it - terrans had no problem building dropships in BW when they could not do anything else but drop, and they were efficient enough. Having the ability to bring your units where they matter most is great enough already to pay for it without any bonus features attached. So now you don't choose between a "macro ground terran" (HotS tried to alleviate that with pure mech, let's see how it works, but biological hellbats don't help) and "micro drop-heavy terran that has fewer units", you always have both. And even though it doesn't remove anything from the skill ceiling, it removes something from player identity.
Oh and the joke that the protoss race is now... Don't even have the right words for that.
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On March 21 2013 03:01 Doodsmack wrote:
I'm a Terran player and I don't think Medivacs and mines should be nerfed yet, but I will say its really funny to hear Terrans complain about tvt because of drops, but then argue for tosses and zergs to just have patience and figure it out. Such a perfect illustration (similar to Giantt's contradictions) of how retardedly biased people are in balance arguments.
What's also funny is that the vast majority of these players are losing due to their own terrible mistakes rather than balance. For the vast majority of players, their mistakes far outweigh balance in determining game outcomes. If you want to argue about pro games that's one thing (even though its arguable that if your game knowledge isn't pro level, then your opinion isn't worthwhile), but please stop being terrible at the game before complaining about balance. As amid master myself, I will readily admit how bad I am. I've never cared much about balance because I know I can easily overcome it by outplaying my terrible opponents.
TLDR: balance arguments are retarded.
I haven't played HotS, and the point I was making about TvT is that with WoL positional play and the new medivac speed, doom drops and base trade scenarios could easily become much more common. If you actually read what I said, I didn't complain about medivacs being too strong or imba at all, and would like to see no patching for a while regardless, just to see how the metagame reacts. Please don't take someone's posts out of context to satisfy your own ego.
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On March 05 2013 09:24 baldgye wrote:Show nested quote +On March 05 2013 09:16 Lunareste wrote:On March 05 2013 09:12 SoOJuuu wrote:
its not that speedvacs are OP,
the fact that it doesnt use energy does. It would be like stim without the damage....
no risk to not use it
once again blizzard doesnt understand. [insert idra past comment with the tire iron] Why is this inherently bad? Saying Medivacs shouldn't be able to use Afterburners without cost is like saying that Blinking your Stalkers should cost shields. Units having useful abilities isn't a bad thing for the game, especially when their uses will eventually lead to differences in player skill. Clearly you don't understand the game, as those things are not even close to similar.
Yeah, because CLEARLY Blink never broke the game.
It made some maps completely one-sided for Blink all ins (remember Xel'Naga Fortress?) and it made P so strong in PvZ that they used ONE strategy and shat on every Zerg in existence (mass Blink Stalkers? free wins? okay then). It gave mobility AND durability during FIGHTS. Protoss players didn't even research armor upgrades and they STILL destroyed Zerg armies with minimal losses.
Fast Medivacs promotes splitting up the main army and multitasking to be aggressive and harass your opponents.
What did Blink do? Promote all ins, replace defensive upgrades with good micro, and create a GIANT unkillable Stalker BALL.
Fast Medivacs does what Blizzard wanted (break up the deathball), whereas Blink does the opposite.
So you're right, they aren't close to similar. One is better for the game, and the other one breaks it.
Medivacs just make it easier to get in a base to do damage and easier to get out to keep them as a reasonable threat. You STILL need to pay attention to the drop to pick it up and run in order to really maximize the effectiveness of the drop. Does it need a tweak? I feel like the consensus is tilted more towards buffing other races to compromise instead of nerfing it outright, because it's actually a good mechanic. I LIKE the fact that if you pick up quickly enough, you don't automatically get shut down by Mutas. I LIKE the fact that Terrans can actually get mass drops to hurt during the mid-game, instead of a desperation move during the late-game, praying that the enemy didn't drop a ton of static defense. I LIKE the fact that it thoroughly rewards Terrans for paying attention to their drops and picking up their units. It's a good mechanic. It just currently lacks some counter-play. Previously, you just flew Mutas into it or Blinked Stalkers under it and destroyed the drop. I'd rather Blizzard ADDED counter-play as opposed to removing the mechanic. And I'd rather it be a counter-play that required some skill to manage as opposed to "well, here's something that shoots air and moves twice as fast as your Medivacs, so you're not getting away if I don't want you to".
Something like having Fungals doing more damage to Medivacs would be cool, since they're no longer instant cast, it would require micro from both sides. Or perhaps Fungal applies a debuff like Parasite where the unit cannot be picked up until it's been removed via heal (or for a set duration). That way, once you've been Fungaled, you can't pick up the entire group right away and the threat of that drop returning later is diminished.
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Wow just came back from watching 3 hours of Jaedong stream. I SAW A TOTAL OF ONE TANK IN 3 HOURS!!! And only because his opponent stationed it as base defense vs Ultras.
Why are you such a big liar and retard Dustin Browder?!
User was warned for this post
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buff corruptor damage vs armored. they're just so bad now at everything except killing colossus and stopping drops. it wouldn't be so bad if there were another option for a/a or g/a but as it's been said before a gazillion times, infestor double nerf requires a buff to corruptors in some form. they just do no damage to armored air. specifically a ZvP problem.
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For all you screaming that sc2 is horribly imbalanced compared to BW. Please do your research. If you took a timeline of BW major Korean championships and lined up the dates of BW And SC2, July would have just won zergs first title. Compared to about 20 titles for toss/Terran. This fact alone means y'all need to cut back on the balance whine and general QQ big time.
Don't be a part of this religion if you ain't read the bible!
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I don't know I just think storms need to get out of the game <3 <3
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On March 21 2013 05:20 Zorgaz wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 04:16 Rabiator wrote:On March 21 2013 04:05 Umpteen wrote:
I guess I must have imagined all those cool games I just watched where the better player won. The game (SC2) has been about luck all the time. You had to be lucky to look at your Marines when the Banelings started rolling in, you had to be lucky to not move your bio blob forward too much to be split by forcefields, you had to be lucky to catch that doom drop of the Terrans ... Sure enough you can make up for that with skill and experience, BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL. Everyone else gets to roll the dice because the game is too fast at killing stuff due to too many units on the battlefield in too small an area. In BW you had drops as well, but there was enough time to react for everyone and the same is true for anything else you can come up with in a game between players of equal skill, but in SC2 the massive numbers and super tight formation simply kills that and replaces it with LUCK. Since there are more non-pros playing the game than there are pros it is safe to say that it is a game more about luck than strategy. Your overdoing it Rabiator, I understand what your saying even though i don't agree with most of it. But dude it's not that those banelings could teleport on your marines. You can watch the minimap, have a marine in front etc.
You arent one of the wood league, right? Watching the minimap isnt that easy for people at the lower end of the scale. If you understand the "problem" then maybe you could argue with the "unit denity problem" and maybe say that it is wrong. That is the core of it all and the reason for the need for 12 unit selection limit and a forced spreading of units while moving.
On March 21 2013 07:04 BluzMan wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 21:15 Rabiator wrote:On March 20 2013 19:56 eviltomahawk wrote:On March 20 2013 16:41 Rabiator wrote:
People are still ok with the obvious scale discrepancies between the units - which are there for gameplay reasons (because you wouldnt notice Marines / Zerglings on a map scale for Battlecruisers) - so why shouldnt a 12 unit selection limit be acceptable for gameplay reason? People who claim that unlimited unit selection is "necessary" because "technology has advanced" are just too lazy to learn controlling multiple groups. Well, I guess I'm a lazy bum for not preferring an unintuitive interface restriction revolving around the arbitrary number of 12. Maybe I should stop being lazy and start playing a mechanically challenging game with no production queues, no control group hotkeys, no rally points, hotkey requirements for every command, and a 4-unit selection limit. Surely such arbitrary interface restrictions should greatly improve my gaming experience. You completely miss the point ... it might be NECESSARY for BALANCING REASONS to limit the number of selected units to 12 because of the "unit density problem". Just a quick reminder about that problem: A Marine and a Stalker have roughly the same dps. Their differences in health, armor and mobility is balanced with the differing cost. The problem starts to appear when you have MANY Marines against a mediocre amount of Stalkers ... for the same cost. Since you can "stack" roughly 3 Marines in the space each Stalker occupies you end up with a vastly superior Marine force which has three times the dps. As long as the numbers stay small the Stalkers can win and use their shield regeneration, but as soon as numbers increase the Marines will have a far bigger power. The only thing that changes is NUMBER OF UNITS, but in the process the balance shifts from "balanced" to "totally one-sided". This is BAD because it makes the game harder to balance due to the shifting power depending upon numbers. If you dont see it and rather want to keep your stupid unlimited unit selection and super tight pathing then you are too lazy. A limit on number of units is NOT unintuitive, you are just too lazy to split your units into squads. You're wrong, scaling factor was always there, units jumped from zero to hero with numbers all the time in bw. Like, early in the game marines are the weakest unit to have with paper HP, totally countered by zealots for cost. Later in the game, BW marines are just as unbeatable as in SC2, barring some kind of AoE (go beat a bio terran with just zealots and dragoons, hint: you won't). Or zealots supposed to be a direct counter to tanks (and they did on a small scale), but being completely pointless without support once terran reached a critical mass of tanks. Those critical mass scenarios are what makes the game deep and interesting.
The thing is that SC2 makes it EASY for this "massing up of Marines" to occur while you kinda had to work for it in BW. Since Marines are 1 supply only they take up A LOT of the control groups if you have a lot of them and that doesnt leave much for the rest of your army. You still needed a few control groups for your comsats (I had 2-3 usually) and you are left with "control group space" for maybe 70 Marines ... which did not even stack perfectly tight when you tried moving them closer.
In BW you had to WORK for your maximized damage output. Mutalisk micro was A SKILL OF THE PLAYER, Reaver dropping was A SKILL OF THE PLAYER ... in SC2 they really get the "grab all your units and then move them into the enemy and win if you have more than he does" for free. 12 unit selection limit and forced unit spreading while moving really push the skill requirement back into the game while giving the chance to create a defenders advantage by meticulously stacking your defensive units in a tight formation.
Even if BW wasn't perfect either it was far better than the "economy- and production-boosted unlimited unit selecting and perfectly tight moving SC2". They managed to make Stalkers and Marines fairly balanced, but only because they invented the crutches of Blink and Forcefield. Both of them require a lot of skill to use properly and this is bad for the balance in lower leagues and at least Forcefield has been at the center of a lot of whining AND it makes certain map features rather OP even in progamer level when they can simply block off the main base of their enemy and kill it easily.
The way I see it is that we would be far better off with a much easier to balance game which had a far lower unit concentration and fewer crutches disguised as "fun abilities". Kids these days have become lazy and dont want to work for their personal skills ... kinda like WoW was made ever easier (and more boring) to play by adding raid and dungeon finders.
Thank you for actually ARGUING with my core point ...
On March 20 2013 21:42 Sissors wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 21:15 Rabiator wrote:On March 20 2013 19:56 eviltomahawk wrote:On March 20 2013 16:41 Rabiator wrote:
People are still ok with the obvious scale discrepancies between the units - which are there for gameplay reasons (because you wouldnt notice Marines / Zerglings on a map scale for Battlecruisers) - so why shouldnt a 12 unit selection limit be acceptable for gameplay reason? People who claim that unlimited unit selection is "necessary" because "technology has advanced" are just too lazy to learn controlling multiple groups. Well, I guess I'm a lazy bum for not preferring an unintuitive interface restriction revolving around the arbitrary number of 12. Maybe I should stop being lazy and start playing a mechanically challenging game with no production queues, no control group hotkeys, no rally points, hotkey requirements for every command, and a 4-unit selection limit. Surely such arbitrary interface restrictions should greatly improve my gaming experience. You completely miss the point ... it might be NECESSARY for BALANCING REASONS to limit the number of selected units to 12 because of the "unit density problem". There is no real reason whatsoever that you would require it for balancing reasons. That would just be lazy balancing, and making the game worse because they would be too lazy to do proper balancing (luckily Blizzard doesnt seem to be inclines to ever introduce such a horrible idea). I got another balancing idea: Currently Terran bio is too strong (just as example). What if at random intervals your screen would become black for 2 seconds? And we increase the chance it happens when units start dying. I don't think I have to argue that bio is pretty high on the list of micro-intensive compositions. So we can nerf that by blacking out your screen for a few seconds at a time, and then relatively often during fights. That way bio becomes alot less effective, and for example banelings become a way better counter. And if you disagree you are just too lazy to remember where your units were before your screen turned black.
BW must have been excruciating to play ... (it wasnt).
BW must have been terribly dull to watch ... (it isnt).
Maybe the saying of your parents is true that "kids these days arent as tough as we were back then" ... (apparently so).
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On March 21 2013 06:25 cmcaneff5502 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 02:09 TheDwf wrote:Giantt on Broodlords/Infestors post-Queen patch one month after the Queen patch: On August 20 2012 01:40 Giantt wrote:
The problem of most Terran players in my opinion is that they refuse to change their mindset.
They go for "old strategies" - bio, tank marine, mech, variations of the mentioned, and drill with it until the game is decided by battle. Very rarely and very few players ever think about transitioning to starport or they do after the game has already been decided. They have little experience in these situations and fail most of the time - thats normal, dont cry about it. It takes practice to be good at it. There are already a few players that are good at it but majority are shouting about imbalance.
MVP just showed today that it is doable vs Vortix and Nerchio. It would take some months for the rest of the terrans to learn. ( Source.) TLDR: Terrans don't adapt. Give it time. Mvp beating euro Zergs proves that game is fine. Giantt on Broodlords/Infestors post-Queen patch sevens months after the Queen patch: Zergs are boxed in to playing infestor only builds because of stupidly weak hydras and mutas working only if your opponent fell asleep - of course that eventually most will figure out how to use them to their maximum potential and it would seem imbalanced - after all it took 2 years of practice. Let Terrans and Protoss players sweat a while figuring out solutions. I play on EU GM level and can tell you that the top Terrans have figured it out. For Protoss I think the issue is non-existent - players need to change their mindset away from the "before broodlord push - fingers crossed it works" to more balanced style of pokes, harrasment with macro and tech behind. ( Source.) TLDR: Terrans and Protoss don't adapt. Give it time. Giantt on the Widow mine one week after HotS release: On March 21 2013 01:47 Giantt wrote:
Widow mine is the most obviously OP thing that has ever been in the game since WoL Beta's end.
The fact that it can kill overseers is ridiculous - no way to deal with widow mines on more than 1 screen at a time because Z has to move the overseer one inch at a time or risk losing it. Given the current cost of overseers simply seeing widow mines makes Z burn 200-300 gas just to see.
The widow mine is too efficient vs everything.
Imo it should either have big damage on 1 target and really small splash dmg and radius or the opposite but not both as it does now. TLDR: Widow Mine is the most ridiculous thing in the universe. Several months after the Queen/Overlord patch, when European Zergs are allowed to play several levels above their real skill, everything is still fine; we need time, we need more time. Yet suddenly, when something problematic occurs for your race, you already know, one week after release, that Zergs adapted perfectly and are playing flawlessly against it, which of course means the thing is completely broken. Strong credibility you have there, my friend. Ahhhh this made my day. This is what every single balance thread is--people being hypocritical depending on if they feel advantaged or disadvantaged. Masters kids struggle with adapting, and will eventually figure it out after pros do, while whining the whole way though. Give pros time to figure it out; this Giantt kid's original advice is pretty good.
Don't know theDwf is guilty of hypocrisy or not, but it is hilarious to see Giantt's huge attitude turn around depending on whether if it is his race on the chopping block or not. 
Zerg was really really strong in WoL. I don't think that can be denied. You could see the control/micro/macro difference when Europeans Zerg played against Koreans Zergs in WoL. They lost. Yet surprisingly they suddenly had decent performances against Korean Toss and Terran...
HOTS who knows. Probably Terran is OP. But let's see if the metagame shifts a bit or not. Surely we can wait 2 months or so when we give a year to Zergs. Especially since Life just won the first major HOTS tournament, widow mines and medivac drops not withstanding.
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Hm honestly I don't think zerg is as weak as a lot of zergs say they are. I am a zerg player but I feel most zergs are playing hots incorrectly and thus dying to stuff.
For example there are some zergs who go roach/hydra/viper. It was good in beta, a good toss DOES NOT lose to this anymore. Roach/hydra is just such a trash composition that the later the game goes on the protoss should not lose. That is verse roach/hydra.
Zergs need to realize (it took me until january iirc) that roach/hydra is not the go to composition. They need to start expirementing and using swarmhosts or mutalisks when the toss doesn't go stargate. Voidrays are imo still to strong, but the voidray/templar composition is not unbeatable. I have beaten this many times (and have beaten Puck who does this all the time) as well.
imo zergs need to start using ultra/hydra/swarmhost/viper late game zvp vs voidray/templar/colossi. The ultra/swarmhosts can tank damage and dish it out to the colo/templar while hydras deal with voidrays. This works really well. I RARELY lose late game zvp. Where most zergs say protoss imba, I seriously almost never lose in a long zvp game and when I do it's not because of balance, it's because I fucked up and I know where I fucked up to lose the game.
zvt I was with the zergs saying widow mines op, terran op and so on. Then I started experimenting like I did back in beta. For example I have a really sick zvt win %, 91% win rate on NA, 70% on korea (on korea I have over 30+ zvt games and I have beaten GM korean terrans). I am using muta/ling/bane into swarmhost while teching to hive, about 10 swarmhosts. This is very strong verse bio + widow mine.
When I thought of this composition I thought it would be god awful, I feel invincible in zvt right now. I as of right now rarely lose zvt once my swarmhosts are out.
Zerg might be underpowered, but if they are it is not anywhere near as bad as everyone makes it out to be, if they are underpowered it's really not that bad at all.
Before anyone asks I am GM on NA and high masters on KR.
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On March 21 2013 15:25 blade55555 wrote:
Hm honestly I don't think zerg is as weak as a lot of zergs say they are. I am a zerg player but I feel most zergs are playing hots incorrectly and thus dying to stuff.
For example there are some zergs who go roach/hydra/viper. It was good in beta, a good toss DOES NOT lose to this anymore. Roach/hydra is just such a trash composition that the later the game goes on the protoss should not lose. That is verse roach/hydra.
Zergs need to realize (it took me until january iirc) that roach/hydra is not the go to composition. They need to start expirementing and using swarmhosts or mutalisks when the toss doesn't go stargate. Voidrays are imo still to strong, but the voidray/templar composition is not unbeatable. I have beaten this many times (and have beaten Puck who does this all the time) as well.
imo zergs need to start using ultra/hydra/swarmhost/viper late game zvp vs voidray/templar/colossi. The ultra/swarmhosts can tank damage and dish it out to the colo/templar while hydras deal with voidrays. This works really well. I RARELY lose late game zvp. Where most zergs say protoss imba, I seriously almost never lose in a long zvp game and when I do it's not because of balance, it's because I fucked up and I know where I fucked up to lose the game.
zvt I was with the zergs saying widow mines op, terran op and so on. Then I started experimenting like I did back in beta. For example I have a really sick zvt win %, 91% win rate on NA, 70% on korea (on korea I have over 30+ zvt games and I have beaten GM korean terrans). I am using muta/ling/bane into swarmhost while teching to hive, about 10 swarmhosts. This is very strong verse bio + widow mine.
When I thought of this composition I thought it would be god awful, I feel invincible in zvt right now. I as of right now rarely lose zvt once my swarmhosts are out.
Zerg might be underpowered, but if they are it is not anywhere near as bad as everyone makes it out to be, if they are underpowered it's really not that bad at all.
Before anyone asks I am GM on NA and high masters on KR.
You pretty much got it spot on. Every TvZ lately with bio + mine lately that i've played or bio + anything Zergs just realized "oh, mass ling/bane + muta kills that without even much micro" and then they go into the mega buff ultras.
Ling/bane/muta into mega ultra is ridic at the moment. Marine/tank is now obsolete and bio+mine sucks just as hard against it once the ultras are out or if the Zerg knows how to abuse the mine ai + manual detonate banelings when appropriate.
More Terrans going to be going back to mech soon i think. But yah, Zerg is just as powerful as the other races right now and there could even be arguments that as the game is more figured out Zerg will reign supreme again.
A lot of people will hate to hear this, especially with the fervor around "T OP" right now, but as the game gets figured out more Terran gets weaker because of being reliant on harrass that's reliant on "doing damage." That's why it's good they wait and see because right now it's prob a "learn to play" issue for all of us.
As for speed medivacs...they basically broke TvT mech and openings. It's weird because i think P/Z have more ways to deal with speed medivacs than Terran does. Planetary nexus, spine/spore, lings running around, speed muta, feedback, blink stalker.
Terran vs Terran right now there's basically no drawback to always building 1 medivac with your opening. And bio vs mech TvT is looking to massively favor bio or bio/tank because you can't afford to build 20 missile turrets just to deny 4 speedivacs lol. Though a lot of that could also have to do with how far away the thirds are on each map and how there's a lot of air space on all maps.
The only example i have of how ridiculous speedivacs are vs mech in TvT is when i played demuslim once, maxed out on mech vs bio, scanned and saw him load up about 12-13 dropships, saw the direction they were coming from and he speed boosts INTO 8 vikings and 5 missile turrets and manages to be able to unload half of his dropships into my base...
lol
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On March 21 2013 07:04 BluzMan wrote:
200/200 games are not RTS. The game of "dump your army in the most cost-efficient was possible and remax faster than your opponent" is not fun (and it favors zerg with their unique ability to store production capability with inject larva), it leads to pointless engagements and abuse of production mechanics and it's not something I want StarCraft to be. Seriously, dumping your army so you can remax on different units that work better vs your enemy's current composition is the dumbest thing ever, you should be using your units to achieve strategical goals, not throwing them away.
Then what the hell was TvP in SC1? Protoss in the late game would often lose far more units than the Terran in an engagement. They relied on having more Gateways to remax faster than the Terrans. 200/200 games were common in SC1.
The only difference was what you mentioned with dumping an army to get a different set of units. But that's because in SC1, the particular units you got were already set in stone.
You don't go Marines against a Protoss. You don't go Marines against a Terran. You don't use Queens... ever. Most race matchups boiled down to 4-5 units that would be used. TvP was ST/Vulture/Goliath/Vessel vs. Zealot/Dragoon/Observer/Templar/Arbiter. That's it. Maybe sometimes the Protoss goes Carriers. Maybe. You might get a Reaver in there to harass them at the mineral line, but after a certain point, that Reaver isn't used anymore.
On March 21 2013 14:33 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 05:20 Zorgaz wrote:On March 21 2013 04:16 Rabiator wrote:On March 21 2013 04:05 Umpteen wrote:
I guess I must have imagined all those cool games I just watched where the better player won. The game (SC2) has been about luck all the time. You had to be lucky to look at your Marines when the Banelings started rolling in, you had to be lucky to not move your bio blob forward too much to be split by forcefields, you had to be lucky to catch that doom drop of the Terrans ... Sure enough you can make up for that with skill and experience, BUT ONLY IF YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL. Everyone else gets to roll the dice because the game is too fast at killing stuff due to too many units on the battlefield in too small an area. In BW you had drops as well, but there was enough time to react for everyone and the same is true for anything else you can come up with in a game between players of equal skill, but in SC2 the massive numbers and super tight formation simply kills that and replaces it with LUCK. Since there are more non-pros playing the game than there are pros it is safe to say that it is a game more about luck than strategy. Your overdoing it Rabiator, I understand what your saying even though i don't agree with most of it. But dude it's not that those banelings could teleport on your marines. You can watch the minimap, have a marine in front etc. You arent one of the wood league, right? Watching the minimap isnt that easy for people at the lower end of the scale. If you understand the "problem" then maybe you could argue with the "unit denity problem" and maybe say that it is wrong. That is the core of it all and the reason for the need for 12 unit selection limit and a forced spreading of units while moving.
We don't balance the game around "wood league". Punishing people for not having minimap awareness and so forth is the only way to make them learn it.
On March 21 2013 14:33 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On March 20 2013 21:42 Sissors wrote:On March 20 2013 21:15 Rabiator wrote:On March 20 2013 19:56 eviltomahawk wrote:On March 20 2013 16:41 Rabiator wrote:
People are still ok with the obvious scale discrepancies between the units - which are there for gameplay reasons (because you wouldnt notice Marines / Zerglings on a map scale for Battlecruisers) - so why shouldnt a 12 unit selection limit be acceptable for gameplay reason? People who claim that unlimited unit selection is "necessary" because "technology has advanced" are just too lazy to learn controlling multiple groups. Well, I guess I'm a lazy bum for not preferring an unintuitive interface restriction revolving around the arbitrary number of 12. Maybe I should stop being lazy and start playing a mechanically challenging game with no production queues, no control group hotkeys, no rally points, hotkey requirements for every command, and a 4-unit selection limit. Surely such arbitrary interface restrictions should greatly improve my gaming experience. You completely miss the point ... it might be NECESSARY for BALANCING REASONS to limit the number of selected units to 12 because of the "unit density problem". There is no real reason whatsoever that you would require it for balancing reasons. That would just be lazy balancing, and making the game worse because they would be too lazy to do proper balancing (luckily Blizzard doesnt seem to be inclines to ever introduce such a horrible idea). I got another balancing idea: Currently Terran bio is too strong (just as example). What if at random intervals your screen would become black for 2 seconds? And we increase the chance it happens when units start dying. I don't think I have to argue that bio is pretty high on the list of micro-intensive compositions. So we can nerf that by blacking out your screen for a few seconds at a time, and then relatively often during fights. That way bio becomes alot less effective, and for example banelings become a way better counter. And if you disagree you are just too lazy to remember where your units were before your screen turned black. BW must have been excruciating to play ... (it wasnt). BW must have been terribly dull to watch ... (it isnt). Maybe the saying of your parents is true that "kids these days arent as tough as we were back then" ... (apparently so).
... I don't see how that's an argument against his analogy. You're suggesting deliberately gimping the interface, for the sole purpose of making it harder for the player to do the thing the player wants to do: command his units. Not because it's necessary for any kind of performance reasons. But because it would make the game more balanced.
He's using your argument, just with a different form of interface gimping. Both of them would certainly make the game harder by making micro more difficult. But blanking out the screen is really not that much more ridiculous than limiting unit selection. They're both incredibly artificial. They're both interface restrictions. And they're both cheap ways of making the game harder. Any idiot can say, "just make the interface worse; then it'll be harder." It takes real game design skill to make the game harder by making the game harder.
My feeling is this. If your reasoning leads you to the conclusion that the only way to balance the game is to gimp the interface, then one of two things is true. Either your reasoning is incorrect; or the entire game genre is broken as hell and should be abandoned.
I don't see MOBA players running around saying that they should gimp the interface to make the game harder. Though I might be mistaken.
If Marines can't work with unlimited unit selection, then Marines need to be removed. You fix the units, not the interface. You fix the game rules to work with the interface, not the other way around. And if that mean some Sacred Cow units have to be slaughtered, well we're having Sacred Hamburgers tonight!
As for SC1 being "excruciating" to play, pain is in the eye of the beholder. If you've been suffering your entire life, how would you know? It's only when it's taken away do you really notice its absence. And when it comes back, it hurts all the worse.
SC1 is a lot more painful for me to play now than before SC2 existed. There's a reason for that.
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On March 21 2013 15:34 avilo wrote:
More Terrans going to be going back to mech soon i think. But yah, Zerg is just as powerful as the other races right now and there could even be arguments that as the game is more figured out Zerg will reign supreme again.
I don't actually think mech is a truly viable build right now. With mutas buffed and zergs tending to get extremely large numbers of them, a meching player can't leave their base. Even with multiple thors and widow mines, mutas could deal damage if they have three bases to target and the zerg splits well. And with vipers, swarm hosts, spine crawlers, etc a late game zerg could stall a mech army for an extremely long time, while using lings to ravage the terran's economy. Maybe I'm completely missing something, but it seems to me that going straight mech is almost completely inviable as a build right now.
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On March 21 2013 17:39 Terrasmith wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 15:34 avilo wrote:
More Terrans going to be going back to mech soon i think. But yah, Zerg is just as powerful as the other races right now and there could even be arguments that as the game is more figured out Zerg will reign supreme again. I don't actually think mech is a truly viable build right now. With mutas buffed and zergs tending to get extremely large numbers of them, a meching player can't leave their base. Even with multiple thors and widow mines, mutas could deal damage if they have three bases to target and the zerg splits well. And with vipers, swarm hosts, spine crawlers, etc a late game zerg could stall a mech army for an extremely long time, while using lings to ravage the terran's economy. Maybe I'm completely missing something, but it seems to me that going straight mech is almost completely inviable as a build right now.
I disagree with avilo pretty heavily on terrans going back to mech.
But you must be doing something wrong, going mass muta vs a meching terran is suicidal to the max. Thors are super good, putting widow mines by turrets is also a great way to deal with them. Terran has more ways to deal with muta then in wol, and terran never struggled vs mutalisk play either.
Mech is a lot harder to pull off in hots then wol, if you don't spread siege tanks or anything viper + w/e unit comp will roll you over. It's a lot harder to do but not impossible. But Bio + widow mine is much stronger imo, I can't remember the last time I lost to mech let alone when I faced it though tbh.
Also terrans late game is a LOT stronger then it was in wol not just because of medivacs but the one composition they could never fight in wol was bl/corr/infestor. That was why late game tvz was so zerg favored, with those gone zvt late game is imo pretty damn balanced now. New ultras are good sure, but their not broken or overpowered unless terran is going pure marine then yeah they might seem that way.
Widow mine + bio still deals with ultralisks very well and zerg needs to have infestors and get fungals off or bio will kite ultra forever. + speed medivacs and imo even when zergs start dealing with early harass a lot better, terran will not be in the situation they were in wol where they could not beat zerg late game.
Now this is assuming that no big nerfs/buffs are handed over where that situation may arise, as of right now late game zvt is NOT zerg favored like it was in wol not even close, it's pretty balanced imo especially with how sick the new raven is.
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On March 21 2013 13:09 GaNgStaRR.ElV wrote:
For all you screaming that sc2 is horribly imbalanced compared to BW. Please do your research. If you took a timeline of BW major Korean championships and lined up the dates of BW And SC2, July would have just won zergs first title. Compared to about 20 titles for toss/Terran. This fact alone means y'all need to cut back on the balance whine and general QQ big time.
Don't be a part of this religion if you ain't read the bible!
I don't know where you got your research from, but first of all Zerg was very present even in the beginning of Broodwar. Out of 10 OSL finals from the start, we had 7 with a Zerg in it. Out of 10 MSL finals we had 6 with zerg in it. 2004-2006 we had 8 MSLs and 5 were won by Zerg. Also you must take into consideration that maps played a big role in Broodwar, a lot more than in Starcraft 2. We had maps that were utterly in favor and/or abused of certain races and did help greatly. Overall Broodwar obviously is the far more balanced game, but that also took a lot more time and especially more games to achieve.
Starcraft 2 is on a good path, but not as balanced as Broodwar. Also if you want to talk balance, even in 2000 and years after, there were lots of tournaments that you probably don't call major but a lot of people would and would be right. OSL and MSL were not the only big tournaments. Q-Starleague(s), WCG. 2nd Q-Starleague had a ZvZ finals as well as the WCG (2000). Overall at no point in time I would call a race to be inferior but the maps to be in favor of one of them.
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On March 21 2013 17:47 blade55555 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 17:39 Terrasmith wrote:On March 21 2013 15:34 avilo wrote:
More Terrans going to be going back to mech soon i think. But yah, Zerg is just as powerful as the other races right now and there could even be arguments that as the game is more figured out Zerg will reign supreme again. I don't actually think mech is a truly viable build right now. With mutas buffed and zergs tending to get extremely large numbers of them, a meching player can't leave their base. Even with multiple thors and widow mines, mutas could deal damage if they have three bases to target and the zerg splits well. And with vipers, swarm hosts, spine crawlers, etc a late game zerg could stall a mech army for an extremely long time, while using lings to ravage the terran's economy. Maybe I'm completely missing something, but it seems to me that going straight mech is almost completely inviable as a build right now. I disagree with avilo pretty heavily on terrans going back to mech. But you must be doing something wrong, going mass muta vs a meching terran is suicidal to the max. Thors are super good, putting widow mines by turrets is also a great way to deal with them. Terran has more ways to deal with muta then in wol, and terran never struggled vs mutalisk play either. Mech is a lot harder to pull off in hots then wol, if you don't spread siege tanks or anything viper + w/e unit comp will roll you over. It's a lot harder to do but not impossible. But Bio + widow mine is much stronger imo, I can't remember the last time I lost to mech let alone when I faced it though tbh. Also terrans late game is a LOT stronger then it was in wol not just because of medivacs but the one composition they could never fight in wol was bl/corr/infestor. That was why late game tvz was so zerg favored, with those gone zvt late game is imo pretty damn balanced now. New ultras are good sure, but their not broken or overpowered unless terran is going pure marine then yeah they might seem that way. Widow mine + bio still deals with ultralisks very well and zerg needs to have infestors and get fungals off or bio will kite ultra forever. + speed medivacs and imo even when zergs start dealing with early harass a lot better, terran will not be in the situation they were in wol where they could not beat zerg late game. Now this is assuming that no big nerfs/buffs are handed over where that situation may arise, as of right now late game zvt is NOT zerg favored like it was in wol not even close, it's pretty balanced imo especially with how sick the new raven is.
Have you played vs the new mech style though? Mech + mass widow mines to deal with roach/hydra/viper. Viper I agree is horribly imbalanced vs mech, it can make the mech effective army supply go from 140 down to 0 with just 4-5 vipers.
But widow mine + mech can get around that because the mines aren't affected by the cloud. I'm talking like 15-20 widow mines essentially replacing hellion supply.
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On March 21 2013 11:56 golgo_13 wrote:
Wow just came back from watching 3 hours of Jaedong stream. I SAW A TOTAL OF ONE TANK IN 3 HOURS!!! And only because his opponent stationed it as base defense vs Ultras.
Why are you such a big liar and retard Dustin Browder?!
User was warned for this post
Dustin Browder, making mech viable one expansion at a time!
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On March 21 2013 19:33 avilo wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 17:47 blade55555 wrote:On March 21 2013 17:39 Terrasmith wrote:On March 21 2013 15:34 avilo wrote:
More Terrans going to be going back to mech soon i think. But yah, Zerg is just as powerful as the other races right now and there could even be arguments that as the game is more figured out Zerg will reign supreme again. I don't actually think mech is a truly viable build right now. With mutas buffed and zergs tending to get extremely large numbers of them, a meching player can't leave their base. Even with multiple thors and widow mines, mutas could deal damage if they have three bases to target and the zerg splits well. And with vipers, swarm hosts, spine crawlers, etc a late game zerg could stall a mech army for an extremely long time, while using lings to ravage the terran's economy. Maybe I'm completely missing something, but it seems to me that going straight mech is almost completely inviable as a build right now. I disagree with avilo pretty heavily on terrans going back to mech. But you must be doing something wrong, going mass muta vs a meching terran is suicidal to the max. Thors are super good, putting widow mines by turrets is also a great way to deal with them. Terran has more ways to deal with muta then in wol, and terran never struggled vs mutalisk play either. Mech is a lot harder to pull off in hots then wol, if you don't spread siege tanks or anything viper + w/e unit comp will roll you over. It's a lot harder to do but not impossible. But Bio + widow mine is much stronger imo, I can't remember the last time I lost to mech let alone when I faced it though tbh. Also terrans late game is a LOT stronger then it was in wol not just because of medivacs but the one composition they could never fight in wol was bl/corr/infestor. That was why late game tvz was so zerg favored, with those gone zvt late game is imo pretty damn balanced now. New ultras are good sure, but their not broken or overpowered unless terran is going pure marine then yeah they might seem that way. Widow mine + bio still deals with ultralisks very well and zerg needs to have infestors and get fungals off or bio will kite ultra forever. + speed medivacs and imo even when zergs start dealing with early harass a lot better, terran will not be in the situation they were in wol where they could not beat zerg late game. Now this is assuming that no big nerfs/buffs are handed over where that situation may arise, as of right now late game zvt is NOT zerg favored like it was in wol not even close, it's pretty balanced imo especially with how sick the new raven is. Have you played vs the new mech style though? Mech + mass widow mines to deal with roach/hydra/viper. Viper I agree is horribly imbalanced vs mech, it can make the mech effective army supply go from 140 down to 0 with just 4-5 vipers. But widow mine + mech can get around that because the mines aren't affected by the cloud. I'm talking like 15-20 widow mines essentially replacing hellion supply.
Yeah, Tank/Thor + Widow Mine is really good vs Roach/Hydra/Viper.. They will eventualy switch to Broodlords, but you already have Thors + Mines, so reactored starports in case and there is not much Zerg can do..
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On March 21 2013 20:17 Everlong wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2013 19:33 avilo wrote:On March 21 2013 17:47 blade55555 wrote:On March 21 2013 17:39 Terrasmith wrote:On March 21 2013 15:34 avilo wrote:
More Terrans going to be going back to mech soon i think. But yah, Zerg is just as powerful as the other races right now and there could even be arguments that as the game is more figured out Zerg will reign supreme again. I don't actually think mech is a truly viable build right now. With mutas buffed and zergs tending to get extremely large numbers of them, a meching player can't leave their base. Even with multiple thors and widow mines, mutas could deal damage if they have three bases to target and the zerg splits well. And with vipers, swarm hosts, spine crawlers, etc a late game zerg could stall a mech army for an extremely long time, while using lings to ravage the terran's economy. Maybe I'm completely missing something, but it seems to me that going straight mech is almost completely inviable as a build right now. I disagree with avilo pretty heavily on terrans going back to mech. But you must be doing something wrong, going mass muta vs a meching terran is suicidal to the max. Thors are super good, putting widow mines by turrets is also a great way to deal with them. Terran has more ways to deal with muta then in wol, and terran never struggled vs mutalisk play either. Mech is a lot harder to pull off in hots then wol, if you don't spread siege tanks or anything viper + w/e unit comp will roll you over. It's a lot harder to do but not impossible. But Bio + widow mine is much stronger imo, I can't remember the last time I lost to mech let alone when I faced it though tbh. Also terrans late game is a LOT stronger then it was in wol not just because of medivacs but the one composition they could never fight in wol was bl/corr/infestor. That was why late game tvz was so zerg favored, with those gone zvt late game is imo pretty damn balanced now. New ultras are good sure, but their not broken or overpowered unless terran is going pure marine then yeah they might seem that way. Widow mine + bio still deals with ultralisks very well and zerg needs to have infestors and get fungals off or bio will kite ultra forever. + speed medivacs and imo even when zergs start dealing with early harass a lot better, terran will not be in the situation they were in wol where they could not beat zerg late game. Now this is assuming that no big nerfs/buffs are handed over where that situation may arise, as of right now late game zvt is NOT zerg favored like it was in wol not even close, it's pretty balanced imo especially with how sick the new raven is. Have you played vs the new mech style though? Mech + mass widow mines to deal with roach/hydra/viper. Viper I agree is horribly imbalanced vs mech, it can make the mech effective army supply go from 140 down to 0 with just 4-5 vipers. But widow mine + mech can get around that because the mines aren't affected by the cloud. I'm talking like 15-20 widow mines essentially replacing hellion supply. Yeah, Tank/Thor + Widow Mine is really good vs Roach/Hydra/Viper.. They will eventualy switch to Broodlords, but you already have Thors + Mines, so reactored starports in case and there is not much Zerg can do..
With the infinite gas hack, Tank/Thor/Mine seems a total legit composition to me!
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EPT
