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On July 08 2019 17:31 Z3nith wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2019 15:53 Pentarp wrote:On July 08 2019 09:16 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 08 2019 08:47 washikie wrote:On July 08 2019 07:41 StarscreamG1 wrote:
Those 2 rax stim versus Zerg are going to be EVEN MORE nasty. How, people keep saying this but I don’t get why. 2-1-1 is a build that is bottlenecked by when the medivac finishes not when stim finishes. The Terran always gets to the zerg base with stim done and the timing does not change at all because they are waiting on medivac not stim. Also 2-1-1 is currently a dead build since zerg have figured out the correct reaction and queen range was buffed. If you push before medivacs it’s an Allin and a bad one at that since 30 zerg lings and 4 Queens will crush your face. Terran has many better allins than a build like this anyway. Maybe we see some 3 rax timings but I’m not even sure those will work. We’ll have to see. My instinct is that most potent other timings are bottlenecked by other benchmarks. Can you specify which benchmarks? Instinct is no basis to make an argument against this patch.
If there is a new potent timing it might be strong, but it’ll be scoutable as a pretty obvious deviation I imagine, such as hypothetical early 3 rax stim timings.
It does make stim less vulnerable to sniping in PvT but outside of a few occasions I don’t recall it happening all that often where a snipe wouldn’t have occurred anyway.
We might see a cumulative effect where weaker Warp Prism and the changed stim timing opens up certain trends. A combo of weaker P offence and stronger T offense might change things.
It’s for the above rationale I don’t like this pre-patch combo at all. I think looking at the WP is a good idea, but try it in isolation.
Changing things and opening up new trends sounds like a great rationale for liking the pre-patch combo.
If Protoss just get dumpstered on the test server by Terrans it will be difficult to ascertain how much each change is playing a factor, especially with the better ghosts too.
If I was a Terran I’d rather the WP tested in isolation, if the nerf is too much that can be figured out and tweaked. If it’s a combo of a weaker WP plus a stim buff plus a ghost buff, well I think that increases the chance of a ‘oh well, back to the drawing board situation.
Regardless of that I can’t see the prism change go through in its current state. It will neuter Protoss far too much in PvZ. The Carrier buff isn’t sufficient to make Stargate openers into ground army and Templar’s into sky toss good enough to compensate for the neutering of Robo tech.
It is possible to ascertain how much each change is playing a factor. If Stim change is too strong, stim timings will dumpster Protoss. If Ghost change is too strong, lategame Terran will dumpster Protoss. I agree that WP will affect PvZ negatively, perhaps too severely since Zergs need the threat of strong offensive timings from opponents to keep them from going full greed. And this will be easy to see as Zergs don't respect Protoss early game and dominate them with dumpster Protoss with un-earned econ leads. The effect of carrier buff will also be possible to ascertain. Increased rate of interceptor production = increased rate of trading Protoss minerals vs opponent gas units (especially with focus fire). Instead, I propose a nerf to widowmine friendlyfire. It is too random; can hit amazing shots, or dud shots, or terrible friendlyfire. It is punishing enough if mines do not land good hits since they are now visible after shots. No widow mines shouldn't be buffed. They are already one of the most cost effective units in the game and one of the few units in the game that have such a disparity between the skill required to use it and the skill required to defend against it.
While I agree that the Widow Mine probably is in a really good spot again since receiving the latest buff I want to point out that there evolved nice interactions both on offense and defense, the only level where this 'disparity' you're talking of can be felt must be rather low.
Micro and quick reaction time severely diminish the randomness of encounters with a Widow Mine, it is most prevalent when there is no micro involved, at all (or in a really big engagement). As soon as the defender starts to either split and therefore isolate the unit targeted or intentionally try to bait a shot it's suddenly up to the aggressor to react by unborrowing to prevent the mine from wasting its charge, which makes for a quite interesting multi-layered 'mini-game', so to say.
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Northern Ireland23351 Posts
On July 08 2019 15:53 Pentarp wrote:Show nested quote +On July 08 2019 09:16 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 08 2019 08:47 washikie wrote:On July 08 2019 07:41 StarscreamG1 wrote:
Those 2 rax stim versus Zerg are going to be EVEN MORE nasty. How, people keep saying this but I don’t get why. 2-1-1 is a build that is bottlenecked by when the medivac finishes not when stim finishes. The Terran always gets to the zerg base with stim done and the timing does not change at all because they are waiting on medivac not stim. Also 2-1-1 is currently a dead build since zerg have figured out the correct reaction and queen range was buffed. If you push before medivacs it’s an Allin and a bad one at that since 30 zerg lings and 4 Queens will crush your face. Terran has many better allins than a build like this anyway. Maybe we see some 3 rax timings but I’m not even sure those will work. We’ll have to see. My instinct is that most potent other timings are bottlenecked by other benchmarks. Can you specify which benchmarks? Instinct is no basis to make an argument against this patch. Show nested quote +
If there is a new potent timing it might be strong, but it’ll be scoutable as a pretty obvious deviation I imagine, such as hypothetical early 3 rax stim timings.
It does make stim less vulnerable to sniping in PvT but outside of a few occasions I don’t recall it happening all that often where a snipe wouldn’t have occurred anyway.
We might see a cumulative effect where weaker Warp Prism and the changed stim timing opens up certain trends. A combo of weaker P offence and stronger T offense might change things.
It’s for the above rationale I don’t like this pre-patch combo at all. I think looking at the WP is a good idea, but try it in isolation.
Changing things and opening up new trends sounds like a great rationale for liking the pre-patch combo. Show nested quote +
If Protoss just get dumpstered on the test server by Terrans it will be difficult to ascertain how much each change is playing a factor, especially with the better ghosts too.
If I was a Terran I’d rather the WP tested in isolation, if the nerf is too much that can be figured out and tweaked. If it’s a combo of a weaker WP plus a stim buff plus a ghost buff, well I think that increases the chance of a ‘oh well, back to the drawing board situation.
Regardless of that I can’t see the prism change go through in its current state. It will neuter Protoss far too much in PvZ. The Carrier buff isn’t sufficient to make Stargate openers into ground army and Templar’s into sky toss good enough to compensate for the neutering of Robo tech.
It is possible to ascertain how much each change is playing a factor. If Stim change is too strong, stim timings will dumpster Protoss. If Ghost change is too strong, lategame Terran will dumpster Protoss. I agree that WP will affect PvZ negatively, perhaps too severely since Zergs need the threat of strong offensive timings from opponents to keep them from going full greed. And this will be easy to see as Zergs don't respect Protoss early game and dominate them with dumpster Protoss with un-earned econ leads. The effect of carrier buff will also be possible to ascertain. Increased rate of interceptor production = increased rate of trading Protoss minerals vs opponent gas units (especially with focus fire). Instead, I propose a nerf to widowmine friendlyfire. It is too random; can hit amazing shots, or dud shots, or terrible friendlyfire. It is punishing enough if mines do not land good hits since they are now visible after shots.
I just don’t know is the answer, I’m not going to make authoritative statements as to the impact of potential changes because multiple things are all happening.
Protoss early/midgame flexibility is really neutered, fine by me as I’ve said I think they’re too flexible with the prism, Terran are slightly safer blindly via the stim change, which may or may not open up new timing attacks (I mean it does by default, but I mean actual good ones), Terran are a bit stronger in late game with the ghost change by default. Protoss are a bit constrained in optimal tech path too, by the looks of it.
It’s quite a lot to introduce at once, if they do. I rewatched Trap vs Inno last GSL season again there, which I felt was a good even series. The changes would slow every warp in Trap made out on the map, unless he went Robo bay and the upgrade, which really adds up to a lot over the length of a game.
It might be alright for all I know, I’m skeptical. If Protoss can’t slow down the Terran powering stage as easily, reinforce on the map as easily, while Terran have other buffs, and if Protoss want the old prism they have to get a Robo den, seems certain things are likely to happen. Protoss has weaker harassment and get overwhelmed slowly in a macro game, or they go collosus down the constrained tech path and are weak to being hard countered with raven disable timings (as we saw Inno execute against Stats’ style last season).
It’s hard to ascertain the effect of changes even if it’s just one, and the prism change will be harder than most to do so, never mind adding other stuff than that.
PvZ I don’t think when Protoss sky toss and feedback got nerfed people predicted the Robo meta which was crafted without any balance tweaks at all, players figured out those builds and styles because they had to due to the late game nerfs Protoss got. So there’s plenty of scope for trends to appear that most of us haven’t seen as viable yet.
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As amateur/noob protoss players will tell you... It gets very tiring when we have to learn new builds every balance patch because their race just keeps getting nerfed. I can give many examples where my strats just get nerfed out, adepts, carriers, oracles, tempests.
After reading these patch notes I hit Master 2 and stopped playing, I have no motivation to play when I know my archon drops are gonna arrive 10 seconds later, or my protoss allins just won't work at all in any matchup, and my lategame PvZ will still not match that of zergs.
I know pros will adjust because the protoss pros always figure some new things out and get something else nerfed, but it's not worth my time.
What am I gonna do, learn the disruptor drop build which includes prism speed? learn another build for PvZ somehow kills in the midgame? nah, I'm gonna go play Fallout New Vegas because it's a better game. T_T
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Protoss players victim complex has reached new levels of ridiculous. ''Oh no, my race is getting nerfed! I'm gonna quit the game!''
Terran had the most important early game TvP unit removed from the game last year, no one was threatening to quit the game. Zerg had 2 of its most important units nerfed alongside creep last year, was anyone threatening to quit the game? This patch is already a couple months late anyway, Blizzcon is at 5/8 Protoss players, and the average Protoss player representation at Katowice and korean tournaments this year has been more than Zerg and Terran combined. They should have pushed for a smaller patch before GSL 3 and see what happens. Now they're testing huge changes BEFORE the small changes that could be patched in with less testing? Makes zero sense.
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The amount of people who didn't read the entire post is amazing 
This time, we’ll be trying something new as we plan to release two sets of changes for testing. We believe both sets could result in positive improvements, but as they alter different aspects of the game, we’re interested in your feedback before we determine what the best options are. The first (and more experimental) set of test changes will be available today, and the second set of changes will be available for testing on the week of July 15th.
They are saying that they have another set of changes that is more "safe" prepared as well, and those changes will be tested too, so it will actually be a looong time before the patch makes it into the game, probably not before the GSL season ends.
On the side note, I like most of these changes, as they are going in the right direction, but we shall see if they will create better playing environment. Even Artosis and NoRegret agreed with almost every proposed change. I don't think the stim research time will create any new timings, as Terran usually doesn't really have many bio units when the stim actually finishes with the current builds, and with 21 second reduction (about 1 and a half produiction cycle) there will be even less bio out by the time stim finishes. We'll just have to wait and see.
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has anyone here actually tested the changes? 15 pages on this thread and I haven't see anyone substantiate their opinion with replays or replay analysis. every time I queue the test server, it takes 5+ minutes to find a game, always a terran opponent and usually about 1k MMR lower than me. during the last big patch at the end of 2018, I spammed threads on reddit, TL and b.net forums in search of a testing partner and after all that effort, I eventually found an similar MMR zerg to play with. if Blizz were really serious about using test data for anything useful, they could lock the current-patch ladder for 1 day and call it SC2 TESTING DAY - give participants some cute portrait or skin for playing in the event?
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On July 09 2019 06:32 Morbidius wrote:
Protoss players victim complex has reached new levels of ridiculous. ''Oh no, my race is getting nerfed! I'm gonna quit the game!''
Terran had the most important early game TvP unit removed from the game last year, no one was threatening to quit the game. Zerg had 2 of its most important units nerfed alongside creep last year, was anyone threatening to quit the game? This patch is already a couple months late anyway, Blizzcon is at 5/8 Protoss players, and the average Protoss player representation at Katowice and korean tournaments this year has been more than Zerg and Terran combined. They should have pushed for a smaller patch before GSL 3 and see what happens. Now they're testing huge changes BEFORE the small changes that could be patched in with less testing? Makes zero sense.
You act like zerg doesn't just have the ability to do that same exact thing when they get "nerfs". Protoss builds are completely destroyed or made impossible when our units get nerfed or changed.
>Terran had the most important early game TvP unit removed from the game last year
what? no haha.
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On July 09 2019 11:24 youngjiddle wrote:Show nested quote +On July 09 2019 06:32 Morbidius wrote:
Protoss players victim complex has reached new levels of ridiculous. ''Oh no, my race is getting nerfed! I'm gonna quit the game!''
Terran had the most important early game TvP unit removed from the game last year, no one was threatening to quit the game. Zerg had 2 of its most important units nerfed alongside creep last year, was anyone threatening to quit the game? This patch is already a couple months late anyway, Blizzcon is at 5/8 Protoss players, and the average Protoss player representation at Katowice and korean tournaments this year has been more than Zerg and Terran combined. They should have pushed for a smaller patch before GSL 3 and see what happens. Now they're testing huge changes BEFORE the small changes that could be patched in with less testing? Makes zero sense. You act like zerg doesn't just have the ability to do that same exact thing when they get "nerfs". Protoss builds are completely destroyed or made impossible when our units get nerfed or changed. >Terran had the most important early game TvP unit removed from the game last year what? no haha.
They're referring to the cyclone changes, technically it wasn't "removed," but it completely changed early game and the viable builds, and made the early game much more volatile.
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Btw, why not just make prism deploy ability has a cooldown of lets say 60 seconds? While an upgrade would bring it down to 20 (or just remove the cd)? It would be harder to abuse the prism for all-ins early game, but archon drop and other types of pokes would not be touched.
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On July 02 2019 07:41 Waxangel wrote:
Wow, seems like Blizzard really perceive Warp Prism pick-up micro as currently implemented as a positive and 'fun' part of the game. As an esports fan, I'd rather the immortal-prism shuffle (the new "beautiful fungals!" or "only ByuN could do this!" of esports) have been nerfed, rather than nerfing the speed at which 8 glaive-adepts can warp in at 6 minutes. We'll see how it plays out :o
In my eyes, the one thing that killed SC2 for me were buffs to aggressive cheese units.
Ever since Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard have been buffing dropships to absurd and frankly overpowered degrees with many of their buffs coming in Legacy of the Void. Stimivacs made any MMMM drop an instant game-endedr if one managed to land in your base. Cheap hatchery tech Ventral Sacs made the ZvX meta revolve heavily around the risk of being cheesed out by an ultra early ling/bane drop, and for Protoss the Warp Prism drop range was buffed to such absurd degrees that GSL Code S tier drop micro became something any mid league scrub could pull off safely.
And don’t even get me started on cheese units like Ravagers, Adepts, Liberators and Oracles which outright broke the game and made most existing openers outright unviable.
That’s why I’d rather have both the pick-up range of Warp Prisms and the speed at which they can flood waves of 8 Gladepts into your base nerfed. Because playing against this stilton was frustrating to the point where it made me quit Starcraft.
If you have to play a very specific opener to avoid being cheesed out by Oracle harassment or an 8 gate Gladept all-in, then that’s not a well designed game.
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Northern Ireland23351 Posts
On July 10 2019 07:55 Clbull wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2019 07:41 Waxangel wrote:
Wow, seems like Blizzard really perceive Warp Prism pick-up micro as currently implemented as a positive and 'fun' part of the game. As an esports fan, I'd rather the immortal-prism shuffle (the new "beautiful fungals!" or "only ByuN could do this!" of esports) have been nerfed, rather than nerfing the speed at which 8 glaive-adepts can warp in at 6 minutes. We'll see how it plays out :o In my eyes, the one thing that killed SC2 for me were buffs to aggressive cheese units. Ever since Heart of the Swarm, Blizzard have been buffing dropships to absurd and frankly overpowered degrees with many of their buffs coming in Legacy of the Void. Stimivacs made any MMMM drop an instant game-endedr if one managed to land in your base. Cheap hatchery tech Ventral Sacs made the ZvX meta revolve heavily around the risk of being cheesed out by an ultra early ling/bane drop, and for Protoss the Warp Prism drop range was buffed to such absurd degrees that GSL Code S tier drop micro became something any mid league scrub could pull off safely. And don’t even get me started on cheese units like Ravagers, Adepts, Liberators and Oracles which outright broke the game and made most existing openers outright unviable. That’s why I’d rather have both the pick-up range of Warp Prisms and the speed at which they can flood waves of 8 Gladepts into your base nerfed. Because playing against this stilton was frustrating to the point where it made me quit Starcraft. If you have to play a very specific opener to avoid being cheesed out by Oracle harassment or an 8 gate Gladept all-in, then that’s not a well designed game.
It was something that caused me great frustration personally, although over time I do think through changes and general understanding of the game, it is largely in a good place.
It felt to me anyway that Blizzard didn’t know how to fundamentally tweak things to make races have the ability to go multi-pronged and harass with stock units effectively (especially Protoss), so just kept giving stronger and stronger tools in the form of specific harassment units that could just outright kill you.
I can handle my losses pretty well but there have been really stupid periods of just dying to x proxy build that are just immensely frustrating to play.
Frustrating because, really it’s so much easier to execute some silly proxy all-in than it is to scout it and react properly, I could probably teach my 6 year old to execute some of them and still win the odd game.
I do think the game is miraculously good actually considering how much wonky stuff is in it, and the worst of it has gradually been figured out or patched out.
As to a previous point Protoss have had an insanely OP prism for ages, but that compensates for how limited the race is in other ways. It feels like rather than tweak the race in a more fundamental way, the balance team propped up the race with an [i]insanely[\i] overpowered unit, to keep up with other really overpowered harassment options such as speedivacs and bio
Terrans do tend to enjoy their whining but there were periods their aggressive options were so strong that Blizzard gave Protoss the mothership core because they couldn’t figure out another way to balance the matchup. Thankfully they figured out that shield batteries were a much better solution in a strategy game than a ‘click to defend your base’
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On July 10 2019 08:21 Wombat_NI wrote:
Terrans do tend to enjoy their whining but there were periods their aggressive options were so strong that Blizzard gave Protoss the mothership core because they couldn’t figure out another way to balance the matchup. Thankfully they figured out that shield batteries were a much better solution in a strategy game than a ‘click to defend your base’
Actually, when Terran aggressive options were too strong, the builds got nerfed pretty soon (bunker build time, rax requires supply depot, supply depot build time, etc.). The mothership core was originally introduced in HotS to encourage Protoss to actually expand in PvP, where almost every game in late WoL ended up being 1 base 4 gate vs 4 gate. The MSC rightfully got removed, as a hero unit does not belong in a strategy game like StarCraft and because its defensive potential was too strong for the state of the game. Its replacements however, did produce some unintended results.
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Thoughts from someone who is predominantly a viewer:
Stim:
I'd rather something much more TvP focused rather than just a straight up all round buff. Seems very blunt.
EMP:
A nothing change for me. Will obviously help, but isn't exciting at all. Also a weird change coupled with the Stim one. I agree with giving Terran a slight buff in TvP, but why buff mid game and late game together? Seems to me like late game is where Terran struggles so I'd rather just see something to help there.
Infested Terrans:
Anything that weakens the horrendous practice of mass Infestor in the late game is good. Mass Infestor with some Brood Lords, Vipers and mass spore is not appealing at all. Free units do not make a Swarm (another 1 supply unit would help though  ).
Carrier:
Good change. I get they were too strong, but doesn't mean they aren't too weak now. They could use something and this is a nice 'slowly slowly' approach to giving them some power back.
Recall:
Good. I hate recall on the Nexus. Anything that reduces gimmicks in a race full of them is good in my book.
Prism:
Don't like this change. Warping in units isn't a problem in my book - the pick up micro is. It's not exciting to watch AT ALL. The point of the unit is to warp things in, so let it do that properly. I like the idea of not letting it pick up/drop off when in phase mode as a first step, but I'd much rather they removed pick up range completely and buffed the race appropriately if required.
Overall, I'm so sick of all the gimmicks Protoss is built around. They kill the watchability of the race so much...
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I disagree so strongly with hate on range pick up. It enhance possible micro so its good. Dont get again the trend of 'i dont like this so its gimmick'. It seems mandatory in pvz and is very fun to play. Do you think people destroying expo and tech with drops in a few seconds cant feel gimmicky? Just stating my opinion because i see a lot of hate on it
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On July 10 2019 19:43 Kenny_mk1 wrote:
I disagree so strongly with hate on range pick up. It enhance possible micro so its good. Dont get again the trend of 'i dont like this so its gimmick'. It seems mandatory in pvz and is very fun to play. Do you think people destroying expo and tech in a few seconds cant feel gimmicky? Just stating my opinion because i see a lot of hate on it
The problem has to do with the design of the game, the wp is a gimick because without it the race would be to weak compared to Z and T.
Protoss units and options early/mid game are so weak that for them to be able to fight on equal footing they need a unit that enhances its units costefficiency many times over.
Its basically a cheap unit that is pretty fast and easy to get that disables the opponents defenders advantage and gives all the protoss units blink without cooldown. If that unit is needed to balance the race does that sound healthy for the game?
WP pickup range gives endless none cd blink where it can stay far away from any AA while zoning with immortals/stalkers and keep getting insane value.
It is a gimmick because it is a cheap easy unit that gives value to the protoss army many times it cost. Its basically the power of a mothership at the cost of four marines, if that is needed to balance the game then it is a gimmick.
Edit: Just to be clear, I think the micro is too easy as it is today, it is so easy that its not very fun to watch. It rarely a "wow" thing nowadays, instead it is expected and basic to do. It doesn't really "enhance possible micro" like you say it only simplifies micro that were already possible before this crazy pickup range was introduced.
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Norway839 Posts
On July 10 2019 19:43 Kenny_mk1 wrote:
I disagree so strongly with hate on range pick up. It enhance possible micro so its good. Dont get again the trend of 'i dont like this so its gimmick'. It seems mandatory in pvz and is very fun to play. Do you think people destroying expo and tech with drops in a few seconds cant feel gimmicky? Just stating my opinion because i see a lot of hate on it
think of the other side too. Before, you could get key surrounds and focus snipes on units far away from the prism. Now as z you just get forced to let the unit go and you end up retreating instead because the prism has coverage out of this world.
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On July 10 2019 19:43 Kenny_mk1 wrote:
I disagree so strongly with hate on range pick up. It enhance possible micro so its good. Dont get again the trend of 'i dont like this so its gimmick'. It seems mandatory in pvz and is very fun to play. Do you think people destroying expo and tech with drops in a few seconds cant feel gimmicky? Just stating my opinion because i see a lot of hate on it
It lowers the floor of pick up micro though and makes those moments less impressive. Even though most pros nowadays can split marines vs Banelings well, it is still great to see it well done because it is hard to do. Warp Prism pick up micro misses those high points - especially when it is most often paired with Immortals, a unit already designed to be a straight up beast on the ground.
Gimmicks can be good when they aren't so prevalent and they feel good to see and play against (despite the inherent unfairness a gimmick brings). A permanently cloaked unit that one shots workers (and can blink!) has gimmick written all over it, but it promotes action on both sides, has very clear responses and preventative measures, is risky and most importantly isn't the core strategy of the race.
Drops don't feel gimmicky to me because every race can do them and every race can stop them. Doesn't mean it is easy, but at least it feels fair. For the record, I hate Medivac boost too.
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On July 10 2019 19:43 Kenny_mk1 wrote:
I disagree so strongly with hate on range pick up. It enhance possible micro so its good. Dont get again the trend of 'i dont like this so its gimmick'. It seems mandatory in pvz and is very fun to play. Do you think people destroying expo and tech with drops in a few seconds cant feel gimmicky? Just stating my opinion because i see a lot of hate on it
ofc you think its very fun to play. its disgustingly easy to use and strong.
if you're on the receiving end it will induce rage beyond belief since there is no real counter play.
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On July 09 2019 09:15 SHODAN wrote:
has anyone here actually tested the changes? 15 pages on this thread and I haven't see anyone substantiate their opinion with replays or replay analysis. every time I queue the test server, it takes 5+ minutes to find a game, always a terran opponent and usually about 1k MMR lower than me. during the last big patch at the end of 2018, I spammed threads on reddit, TL and b.net forums in search of a testing partner and after all that effort, I eventually found an similar MMR zerg to play with. if Blizz were really serious about using test data for anything useful, they could lock the current-patch ladder for 1 day and call it SC2 TESTING DAY - give participants some cute portrait or skin for playing in the event?
I've played about 2 dozen games. Nothing has changed from my first thought which was they might as well have said "Protoss removed from the game"
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EPT
