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On March 04 2017 18:24 Olli wrote: Hydra buff might be troublesome for PvZ but we'll have to see - everything else is fine, I guess. Although mines deserve to be nerfed even harder.
I don't think the hydra buff will be too bad because of adepts + disruptors, but I definitely agree with the WM problem.
It should either do massive single-target damage, or massive AoE, but not both. The unit is oppressive in the extreme as it is.
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On March 06 2017 07:45 Ransomstarcraft wrote: - The basic problem i see with Terran design is that marine/marauder medivac works so well that if you add anything that will have synergy with it, it can easily get out of hand. The mine and the liberator are the best two options that work well with it, and as we've seen they are controversial because of that. All other units (hellbats, tanks, and thors especially) are left behind in balance because they won't work from a design angle. The problem seems to be "if bio is good, then bio plus anything else is too good."
This is due to factory-based units being poorly designed as a composition, but well-designed to complement bio. Again, this is counter-intuitive to the structures and upgrades but units like Liberators and Mines don't need upgrades to have good synergy with bio. This is part of the issue with mech as a whole: units from the factory (mines especially) are designed to be good with bio instead of with units from the factory.
It's precisely the conflict I'm talking about Blizzard resolving poorly. "Mech sucks, let's add an anti-ground unit from the starport that's better than tanks, but doesn't really require upgrades (though upgrades are awesome for it as well)." That's not going to solve the factory-based composition problem at all.
Many things could be done, but I think the most critical are these three:
- Hellions / hellbats need to be better map-control units Without any form of map-control, factory-based compositons will always be turtle-y bore-fests.
- Thors need to suck less (more mobility and more-reliable damage) Thors are the answer to any air units from the factory until the Terran can transition to adding air support. They simply don't work currently. This is the biggest problem facing any possible factory-based, long-term mid-game solutions: there is absolutely no good anti-air.
- Widow mines have a split personality They either need to be focused on single-target damage (having a large single-target damage with no AoE on a much shorter cooldown than today), or on splash damage (having a larger radius blast, no single-target damage, and a lower AoE damage, but on a much shorter cooldown than today). Either way, they're too high a reward for very little risk today. There's no real way to add meaningful micro to the unit, so they need to be toned down on the reward side, but toned up on the reliability.
On March 06 2017 07:45 Ransomstarcraft wrote: - I think what is being said here is that casters and "units that can kill other casters" (anti-casters?) are weak for zerg. Infestors and Vipers are everywhere in TvZ, so you must be referring to the other two matchups, but even in those I think this is in a good place.
I see infestors fairly rarely in TvZ as an anti-bio fungal machine, and vipers only when sky-terran is present. Zerg casters are far, far too niche and there are far too few of them. No one's terrified of infestors. No one's scared of vipers. Where's the inspiring spell micro and awesome abilities for zerg? They just don't have them. That's a travesty.
At the least, Zerg needs an area-denial spell (perhaps fungal gets a much larger AoE, and vastly slows units down [larger effect on-creep than off] instead of locking them in place?) and some sort of serious anti-ground damage spell (perhaps replace ITs with a burrowed-baneling-type bomb that is visible, but explodes for something like 90 damage in an AoE after a [very] short cooldown?).
On March 06 2017 07:45 Ransomstarcraft wrote: - As for the "anti-caster" issue, I think the main problem is that zerg* [fixed by Edowyth] doesn't have a good answer for high templar. If the viper "yank" ability is not working adequately, then that's as simple as a minor buff since strong single units are exactly what it's designed for.
The viper is directly countered by the High Templar. Making the "yoink" ability (abduct) longer-ranged than feedback would only result in a reversal of roles (where Protoss' anti-caster options were too limited, specifically against any composition including vipers).
Infestors, nominally, should be the Zerg caster of choice -- the tech is required to get to hive, yet so few infestors actually appear in-game because they suck so hard (even after the questionable decision to allow them to cast everything while essentially invisible ...). That's why I suggested a change to both fungal and the replacement of ITs above and it's why I'll suggest a replacement for NP here: the infestor simply isn't the unit it should be (and the viper comes too late to fill most of the roles Zerg is missing here).
So, instead of NP, we could have something like an extremely-visible projectile-cast, range 8, AoE 1.0, drain of 200 energy for 100 energy from the infestor. Now things like mass-phoenix, mass-medivac, mass-ghost, mass HT have a soft-counter. In exchange for all these buffs, the infestor would be strong enough to no longer need burrow-cast so we'd remove it alongside this kind of change.
On March 06 2017 07:45 Ransomstarcraft wrote: Overall, I think zerg is the most cohesive and flexible of all 3 of the races right now. More varied unit compositions, and even choices of which composition to play in various matchups. Moreover, the units actually all work pretty well together. The same cannot be said of other races.
Zerg absolutely is the best-designed race in LotV. Lurkers and ravagers added some much-needed meat to the armies of Zerg so that the only things left to do would be beefing up spell-casting options and measuring the effectiveness of the race versus better-designed opposing races.
On March 06 2017 07:45 Ransomstarcraft wrote: - Protoss had been obviously lacking in the warpgate area up until Legacy of the Void. I can agree that some late game upgrades to warpgate units could be interesting to make the race more flexible, with particular attention to the zealot or the stalker. The crackling upgrade is a great example of something like this, and it brings me back to something I mentioned earlier.
Generally speaking, I agree that late-game upgrades are lacking from the game. Warp-gate units definitely have a problem here (but Protoss, in general, does not -- exchanges would be needed). Terran has an obvious problem here (with ghosts, factory, and stargate units).
On March 06 2017 07:45 Ransomstarcraft wrote: Other than these basic ideas, I think protoss is in a pretty good place. To me, Protoss should be played by those who have the best micro and precision. This trickster race should always still have this flavor to it.
"This trickster race" nicely sums up everything that's wrong with Protoss in SC2. Protoss' identity is "few but strong". What it has been made into is a joke compared to the original design.
Zealots are the perfect example of this problem:
- Marines are the first produce-able army unit, useful in main-armies, as harassment, and as map-control all game long. They are seen in every Terran game.
- Zerglings are the first produce-able army unit, useful in main-armies, as harassment, and as map-control all game long. They are seen in every Zerg game.
- Zealots are the first produce-able army unit, useful in main-armies versus Zerg, as harassment past 5 bases, and never as map-control. They are practically seen en-masse only in vs-Zerg mid-games.
Instead of using the basic Protoss units (Zealots, Stalkers, Sentries, Adepts) to form the back-bone of whatever tech Protoss is using, the race rushes to abuse the strongest upgrade timing possible for those units, then trades them away ASAP (if possible) for tech-units which actually do damage, scare the opponent, and are reliable.
Gateway units (those four listed immediately above) too niche. They simply don't scale well from the early into the mid and late game.
As long as gateway units are the "supporting" units for the bulk of the Protoss army, the race will continue to have the wildest swings in balance issues and will continue to be identified as the "trickster race" because this reversal of roles forces the Protoss tech-rushes that we see in every game and requires things like Photon Overcharge (gateway units scale like shit, and are very weak until their TC upgrade finishes = Protoss wants very few gateway units early = Protoss rushes some tech unit to do damage / survive more-powerful opposing units = Protoss has extremely low unit counts of any sort early = must defend somehow = Photon Overcharge).
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On March 04 2017 12:17 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2017 19:19 opisska wrote: I am strictly against any increase of movement speed of any unit. Everything already moves like it was on crack and this inflation spiral is rolling over and over. If they want to change relative speeds of units, they should just lower the movement of everything else accordingly. If this goes on for a couple more years, everything will have instant teleport. The acceleration is fine, but movement speed is stupid. I don't mind personally, but let's talk about alternatives. You know that you can't lower the speed of everything, as it'll mess with any interaction between units of different range. You'd have to rebalance the entire game from WoL alpha stage. Not viable option at this stage. What you could do though, is to just lower the overall game speed by like 5% or 10%. It'd mostly not change balance (it'd be a small buff to micro and multi-task heavy builds, which I guess is good?), so could be rolled out without too much effort from developers. I personally don't really see the need, but maybe it'd address your issue better than move speed changes?
We don't need to slow the entire game, we just need to come back to the HOTS economy with 6 workers start. At 5 min mark if you don't have the Polt's skill you can't enjoy the game, that's why a lot of people had stop playing SC2. One mistake and you have ton of gas and mineral, a bad scout or if you don't play since 3 years at this game and all seems random, you can be attack by a fast Drop, fast Liberator, full Reaper, fast Cyclone etc..
If we slow the game with the 6 workers start, even the balance will be easier, cause army composition will be added more slowly, so it will be more readable for DK to see what's wrong. And casual player will come back on the game, on Twitch, on Youtube, so pro player will be more focus on the game, cause money will be back, and 6 pool, 4 gate, all the classic like the good old days.
We need this change, Starcraft 2 and RTS game's are not dead, it's just too fast, BW is slow at the begining, LOL, CS, HS, all the E-sport game start slowly. We need the same for Starcraft 2.
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Why would Obama increase corruptor speed? Sad!
User was warned for this post
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On March 04 2017 07:24 [PkF] Wire wrote: I really don't think the adept nerf that would help both PvZ and PvT post-mine nerf has to be huge. Like, a slight health reduction, a nerf to the upgrade efficiency, or removal of the possibility to cancel shades (ok, that nerf would be rather big, but I think this would be a wise move that would make adepts still quite mobile but a lot less abusable ; if you shade, you'll commit somewhere. Could go along with restoring shade vision). But I'm quite positive it would make for a better game overall - even as far as PvP is concerned. I totally agree. However I'd rather wiggle around whole shade thingy first than pure stats. I feel like the harass potential is what makes adepts broken and frankly stupid. I'd go for longer cooldown on ability or shorter duration of shade so adept would be able to make shorter "jump move" with shade making easier to follow it and catch.
Generally speaking I'd like to, iteratively with following patches so the balance is not broken, fade adepts and WMs out and "replace" this units with zelots and tanks for PvT. Weaker adepts and WMs would only be better for gameplay in every matchup imho.
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I still feel a limited number of reaper grenades would be much better than a longer timer. If it's 3 rax reaper the pack is still going to have more nades than they need to get clear. This way nerfs the legit reaper harass more than the "bad" kind of reaping.
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I still remember when the reaper grenade was added and the reasoning behind it was to make reapers useful in mid and late game. The grenade would let reapers be a part of your overall composition to help with zone control as well as harassing and chasing down fleeing units. It's kind of funny and a little bit sad to think about it now, didn't really pan out they way Blizzard wanted it.
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As a zerg player I think the 3 rax reaper is nerfed enough with this update. May be its because I'm confident with the 3 rax reaper even without the nerf, but it is something which require a bit of practice to defend.
Even Snute managed to win a game where Byun opened 3 rax reaper. So I don't think 3 rax reaper is a huge deal right now. I don't underestimate Snute, but after all its Byun's 3 rax reaper he faced with.
The mine nerf was only necessary because Terran got many other aggressive tools in the early game. I think TY demonstrated the best way of dealing with the phoenix adept combo which bothers Terrans that much. This composition expires at the late game, where TY took the games Stats played phoenix adept, and he bearly used mines as a defensive tool against it.
The initial nerf was too heavy, because mines couldn't one shoot oracles, but the way it is now seems good.
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Hello,
changes is good. but terran shot be nerf mulle. In game ByuN vs Stats, ByuN (~30SCV) - Stats (~60) - income is ~2000 vs 2000. Meddness
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On March 06 2017 23:18 bulya wrote: As a zerg player I think the 3 rax reaper is nerfed enough with this update. May be its because I'm confident with the 3 rax reaper even without the nerf, but it is something which require a bit of practice to defend.
Even Snute managed to win a game where Byun opened 3 rax reaper. So I don't think 3 rax reaper is a huge deal right now. I don't underestimate Snute, but after all its Byun's 3 rax reaper he faced with.
The mine nerf was only necessary because Terran got many other aggressive tools in the early game. I think TY demonstrated the best way of dealing with the phoenix adept combo which bothers Terrans that much. This composition expires at the late game, where TY took the games Stats played phoenix adept, and he bearly used mines as a defensive tool against it.
The initial nerf was too heavy, because mines couldn't one shoot oracles, but the way it is now seems good. In the midgame mines were his key defensive tool against phoenix/adept (except on Proxima Station where it's pretty much impossible to attack with phoenix/adept in the midgame).
Are the changes live yet? I saw on the battle.net site they were supposed to go live on March 6 on SEA and March 7 on NA.
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Corruptor -Movement speed changed from 4.1343 to 4.725. -Acceleration speed changed from 3.675 to 4.2. -Parasite Spore weapon damage point changed from .1193 to .0446.
What does damage point mean?
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On March 07 2017 21:33 redloser wrote:Show nested quote + Corruptor -Movement speed changed from 4.1343 to 4.725. -Acceleration speed changed from 3.675 to 4.2. -Parasite Spore weapon damage point changed from .1193 to .0446.
What does damage point mean? In essence, damage point describes the point during the attack animation at which damage is done. The lower it is, the sooner the damage happens.
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A lesser damage point adds micro potential to the unit. Stutter step wasn't possible if marines (or any other unis which do that) had high damage point.
In other words, the corruptor have more micro potential now.
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On March 07 2017 19:00 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 06 2017 23:18 bulya wrote: As a zerg player I think the 3 rax reaper is nerfed enough with this update. May be its because I'm confident with the 3 rax reaper even without the nerf, but it is something which require a bit of practice to defend.
Even Snute managed to win a game where Byun opened 3 rax reaper. So I don't think 3 rax reaper is a huge deal right now. I don't underestimate Snute, but after all its Byun's 3 rax reaper he faced with.
The mine nerf was only necessary because Terran got many other aggressive tools in the early game. I think TY demonstrated the best way of dealing with the phoenix adept combo which bothers Terrans that much. This composition expires at the late game, where TY took the games Stats played phoenix adept, and he bearly used mines as a defensive tool against it.
The initial nerf was too heavy, because mines couldn't one shoot oracles, but the way it is now seems good. In the midgame mines were his key defensive tool against phoenix/adept (except on Proxima Station where it's pretty much impossible to attack with phoenix/adept in the midgame). Are the changes live yet? I saw on the battle.net site they were supposed to go live on March 6 on SEA and March 7 on NA.
There were only 2 games where Stats played phoenix adept. On proxima and the underwater map. Both times mines were part of the mid game, but they were not the backbone which made TY defend there. They one shoot some units (which they will do after the nerf), they killed some probes (the nerf doesn't effect that at all), at some points stats didn't want to commit because there was a singe mine or 2 mines, but its no a backbone in TY's defense. He took both games to the very late game (playing quite defensively, with some mine drops and pokes at Stat's), and in the end game the Phoenix adept wasn't good enough. (a single EMP make the old mines and the new mines do the same amount of damage, and at this phase the damage rather be done with the bio force)
So your claim that it happened only on Proxima doesn't say anything (1 game out of 2, and the second was very similar to the proxima game).
Actually the fact that the games Stats won were those he went for early Robo tech rather then early Stargate (if we exclude the proxy stargate on Paladino), may tell something to the P players.
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Norway839 Posts
On March 06 2017 23:18 bulya wrote: As a zerg player I think the 3 rax reaper is nerfed enough with this update. May be its because I'm confident with the 3 rax reaper even without the nerf, but it is something which require a bit of practice to defend.
Even Snute managed to win a game where Byun opened 3 rax reaper. So I don't think 3 rax reaper is a huge deal right now. I don't underestimate Snute, but after all its Byun's 3 rax reaper he faced with.
take into consideration it was a gasless queen/spine defense on proxima station, the ONLY map in the map pool where such a defense is possible. on any other map you need to choose speedling defense or roach defense. regarding proxima, even spine queen looks pretty mediocre vs byun's reapers - i played some games in ladder vs him after our series and one actually needs to add in even more spines to not lose spines to spammed reaper grenades if they keep making a set amount of reapers. that's right, reaper grenades trade surprisingly well with spines and queens, the reapers don't die after all, even if i put my queens next to my spine and target-fire my queen and spine on single reapers they just get blown up together with the spine or out-AI'd by the knockback/ai/space clutter going on.
3 rax reaper won't be un-viable after the grenade change and might even still be too strong, it will just have some interactions make a bit more sense. such as 32 speedlings vs 8 reapers - it shouldn't look as miserable as it does today. zerg needs more ways to counter-play and micro against reapers and this reaper grenade change will make it more punishing when terran does mess up their positioning. today, 8 sloppily controlled reapers can still get away and even destroy 32 speedlings because constant reaper grenade spam followed by regeneration just voids the entire terran mistake.
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On March 08 2017 00:22 bulya wrote:Show nested quote +On March 07 2017 19:00 Elentos wrote:On March 06 2017 23:18 bulya wrote: As a zerg player I think the 3 rax reaper is nerfed enough with this update. May be its because I'm confident with the 3 rax reaper even without the nerf, but it is something which require a bit of practice to defend.
Even Snute managed to win a game where Byun opened 3 rax reaper. So I don't think 3 rax reaper is a huge deal right now. I don't underestimate Snute, but after all its Byun's 3 rax reaper he faced with.
The mine nerf was only necessary because Terran got many other aggressive tools in the early game. I think TY demonstrated the best way of dealing with the phoenix adept combo which bothers Terrans that much. This composition expires at the late game, where TY took the games Stats played phoenix adept, and he bearly used mines as a defensive tool against it.
The initial nerf was too heavy, because mines couldn't one shoot oracles, but the way it is now seems good. In the midgame mines were his key defensive tool against phoenix/adept (except on Proxima Station where it's pretty much impossible to attack with phoenix/adept in the midgame). Are the changes live yet? I saw on the battle.net site they were supposed to go live on March 6 on SEA and March 7 on NA. There were only 2 games where Stats played phoenix adept. On proxima and the underwater map. Both times mines were part of the mid game, but they were not the backbone which made TY defend there. They one shoot some units (which they will do after the nerf), they killed some probes (the nerf doesn't effect that at all), at some points stats didn't want to commit because there was a singe mine or 2 mines, but its no a backbone in TY's defense. He took both games to the very late game (playing quite defensively, with some mine drops and pokes at Stat's), and in the end game the Phoenix adept wasn't good enough. (a single EMP make the old mines and the new mines do the same amount of damage, and at this phase the damage rather be done with the bio force) So your claim that it happened only on Proxima doesn't say anything (1 game out of 2, and the second was very similar to the proxima game). Actually the fact that the games Stats won were those he went for early Robo tech rather then early Stargate (if we exclude the proxy stargate on Paladino), may tell something to the P players. I wasn't just referring to his match vs Stats in the finals. In the group stages, Stats won the 2nd game of their series with adept/phoenix because he completely circumvented the mines (TY didn't expect a frontal attack into his natural). In TY's match against Zest, on Newkirk Precinct, without widow mines TY would have never lived through the mid-game. And even the fact that it just discourages the Protoss to commit sometimes is a big help. Also I was specifically talking about adept/phoenix used for mid-game attacks, in the finals Stats just used the composition to get to the late game safely, not for attacking purposes.
Question regarding the hydra buff, has someone done the math to see how many unit interactions actually change with +10 HP?
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On March 08 2017 00:50 Elentos wrote:
Question regarding the hydra buff, has someone done the math to see how many unit interactions actually change with +10 HP?
I checked how will the new hydras deal with adepts (the main hydra killers in the P gateway aresnal). Seems like the +10 HP helps, but it requires to have carapce on the same level as the protoss ground upgrade.
Now, adepts 4 shoot hydras almost no matter what the upgrades are (an exclusion is if the P doesn't have ground upgrades at all while the zerg have +2 carapace). With the +10 HP adepts will 5 shoot hydras as long as the hydras have carapace on the same level as the P ground upgrade.
But not that many zergs go for carapace (unless its carriers), so I don't know if it will be a huge deal. As long as the P have one ground upgrade higher then the Z, its still 4 shoots.
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On March 08 2017 00:50 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On March 08 2017 00:22 bulya wrote:On March 07 2017 19:00 Elentos wrote:On March 06 2017 23:18 bulya wrote: As a zerg player I think the 3 rax reaper is nerfed enough with this update. May be its because I'm confident with the 3 rax reaper even without the nerf, but it is something which require a bit of practice to defend.
Even Snute managed to win a game where Byun opened 3 rax reaper. So I don't think 3 rax reaper is a huge deal right now. I don't underestimate Snute, but after all its Byun's 3 rax reaper he faced with.
The mine nerf was only necessary because Terran got many other aggressive tools in the early game. I think TY demonstrated the best way of dealing with the phoenix adept combo which bothers Terrans that much. This composition expires at the late game, where TY took the games Stats played phoenix adept, and he bearly used mines as a defensive tool against it.
The initial nerf was too heavy, because mines couldn't one shoot oracles, but the way it is now seems good. In the midgame mines were his key defensive tool against phoenix/adept (except on Proxima Station where it's pretty much impossible to attack with phoenix/adept in the midgame). Are the changes live yet? I saw on the battle.net site they were supposed to go live on March 6 on SEA and March 7 on NA. There were only 2 games where Stats played phoenix adept. On proxima and the underwater map. Both times mines were part of the mid game, but they were not the backbone which made TY defend there. They one shoot some units (which they will do after the nerf), they killed some probes (the nerf doesn't effect that at all), at some points stats didn't want to commit because there was a singe mine or 2 mines, but its no a backbone in TY's defense. He took both games to the very late game (playing quite defensively, with some mine drops and pokes at Stat's), and in the end game the Phoenix adept wasn't good enough. (a single EMP make the old mines and the new mines do the same amount of damage, and at this phase the damage rather be done with the bio force) So your claim that it happened only on Proxima doesn't say anything (1 game out of 2, and the second was very similar to the proxima game). Actually the fact that the games Stats won were those he went for early Robo tech rather then early Stargate (if we exclude the proxy stargate on Paladino), may tell something to the P players. I wasn't just referring to his match vs Stats in the finals. In the group stages, Stats won the 2nd game of their series with adept/phoenix because he completely circumvented the mines (TY didn't expect a frontal attack into his natural). In TY's match against Zest, on Newkirk Precinct, without widow mines TY would have never lived through the midgame. And even the fact that it just discourages the Protoss to commit sometimes is a big help. Also I was specifically talking about adept/phoenix used for midgame attacks, in the finals Stats just used the composition to get to the late game safely.
Yeah pretty much, much like WM one shoting oracles the strenght doesn't come from WM actually killing the oracle (a good protoss players will never take huge WM hits anyway) but in deterring the protoss from simply jumping on top the terran and straight kill him. Something that may or may not be the case post patch.
On March 08 2017 00:50 Elentos wrote: Question regarding the hydra buff, has someone done the math to see how many unit interactions actually change with +10 HP?
Tanks take 3 shots instead of 2 to kill a hydra, with+2 attack they go back to 2 shot them, then when they get +3 armor you need +3 attack to 2 shot them again (due to zerg regen)
Blue flame hellions go from taking four shots with attack upgrades (any attack) to take 5 to kill hydra (any upgrade makes no difference).
Hellbats (with blueflame) take 4 instead of 3 shots again due to zerg regen until +1, and +2 attack again when zerg has +3 armor.
WM take 4 shots instead of 3 (3 instead of 2 if they trigger in time to avoid zerg regen)
Cyclones are pretty lineas I'd say.
Haven't checked other units.
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Instead of nerfing the cooldown on grenades, would it have been a good idea to nerf the amount of grenades reapers can throw to say 3-5?
this way you have to make strategical use of your grenades. however I dont know if the reapers would lose too much value during your transition to reactors/stim.
what do you guys think?
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It really comes down to what we want to achieve. Do we like these early game unit interactions at all? Terran spamming grenades, zerg trying to not lose too much. If we do then we probably cannot remove the grenade/make it a max supply on grenades. If we think it's an interaction which doesn't add anything interesting/fun to the game then we should change it that way. Reapers got grenades because the rts team thought it would make them viable in the mid to lategame. It did not. I think reapers being an early game scouting unit is fine. If you want to make it viable mid game it needs to be better than the current bio army. It will never be and it shouldn't (because bio is already strong exactly there)
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