EPTNow, at some point with micro and positioning and stopping them from egtting critical mass, you can stop cyclones with stalkers. But it's a pain in the ass. And Hellbats are already good vs zealots. So if you make cyclones better vs mechanical units you just delete protoss..
New SC2 Balance Test Mod (along with new map pool) - Page 7
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[Phantom]
Mexico2170 Posts
Now, at some point with micro and positioning and stopping them from egtting critical mass, you can stop cyclones with stalkers. But it's a pain in the ass. And Hellbats are already good vs zealots. So if you make cyclones better vs mechanical units you just delete protoss.. | ||
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Beelzebub1
1003 Posts
On August 27 2023 08:33 [Phantom] wrote: I dont know why some people here want to make cyclones better vs stalkers. There is already an incredibly annoying cheese with cyclones that is a pain in the ass to deal with that takes advantage of the fact that cyclones do bonus damage vs stalkers. Now, at some point with micro and positioning and stopping them from egtting critical mass, you can stop cyclones with stalkers. But it's a pain in the ass. And Hellbats are already good vs zealots. So if you make cyclones better vs mechanical units you just delete protoss.. I kind of agree with this, I don't see why they are taking this approach when dealing with Stalkers isn't (imo) one of the issues that Terran's have going mech against Protoss. I want them to take a more mobile anti-air route with mech, one of mech's longstanding weakness is that it's very hard to deal with aerial armies early on without just hard turtling, SC2 mech misses the Goliath. | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15829 Posts
On August 27 2023 09:23 Beelzebub1 wrote: I kind of agree with this, I don't see why they are taking this approach when dealing with Stalkers isn't (imo) one of the issues that Terran's have going mech against Protoss. Yes they are, Stalkers make it impossible to take a reasonably timed third atm, right now the only way to do that is with Marine tank, but you have to spend lots of resources on useless unupgraded Marines and in consequence have 0 map control I agree with Goliaths being desperately missing | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10290 Posts
I don't think early air is a problem in any Mech MU. Buffed Thors and Vikings both give reliable and strong AA coverage. WMs, Cyclones, BCs, and Ravens also have their roles. The only Factory unit that can't shoot up is the Tank, but you can get Turrets. Mech is just really expensive to get your third while getting your gas heavy production buildings up, while trying to also muster an army to defend. If they have a stronger early game, such as by having cheaper and more efficient Cyclones, that would make enemy air switches even less of an issue, since you have more gas to get your AA like Thors up. HotS TvP was actually very solid and doable, you were able to use Hellions/WMs/Banshees to gain map control and force the Protoss to stay in their natural and slow down their third while getting yours. But now the economy changes don't allow that window anymore. If you get 1 reactor Factory, you don't have enough Hellions/WMs quick enough anymore to keep as much map control. And you don't really want to get a 2nd Reactor Factory if you can help it. Meanwhile, Protoss can muster up a lot more Chargelots or Blink Stalkers quicker than before, while you still only have a few tanks at most. In LotV, you're more forced to go with unupgraded Marines than HotS, because you can't get as much Hellions/Hellbats up fast enough relative to HotS. A cyclone that is stronger earlier on and cheaper on gas could potentially help compensate for the LotV economy/timing changes that made Mech relatively harder in the earlier part of the game. | ||
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Lyyna
France776 Posts
On August 27 2023 13:58 Charoisaur wrote: Yes they are, Stalkers make it impossible to take a reasonably timed third atm, right now the only way to do that is with Marine tank, but you have to spend lots of resources on useless unupgraded Marines and in consequence have 0 map control I agree with Goliaths being desperately missing From my perspective (as said in prev posts, highly experienced mech player, M1/GM & Meching TvP since WOL) stalkers have never been an issue outside of specific meta/mappools where blink stalkers were overall overpowered The only other exception is when we fall into the "over committed harass opening required" case i gave, since you don't have any defense at home Otherwise, stalkers are always extremely easy to fight, as it is about the only thing small amount of mech units + unuppgraded bio can fight well Interestingly enough, even at the time of my WoL TvP guide, it was blink stalkers that were most often raised as the hard counter (usually by people who admitted they had never been on either side of the matchup) - although i considered seeing blink stalkers as a free win, or at the very least a free ticket to a strong lategame for me | ||
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Lyyna
France776 Posts
On August 27 2023 16:31 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: Mech is totally fine TvP if they can get a decent/equal economy, it's just a bit too fragile earlier on. And unfortunately the LotV economy changes don't help either. Teching works at a linear speed, so the way the economy ramps up quicker benefits the opponent who can just mass army production without needing to tech. This makes even things like Chargelots stronger, whereas in HotS it was very easy to have plenty of Hellbats to make them not an issue at all. Also, with the way bases run out of resources quicker, Mech has to try to get a 3rd and 4th sooner than before, which of course is also hard because their tech/production takes longer relatively to get up than in HotS. I don't think early air is a problem in any Mech MU. Buffed Thors and Vikings both give reliable and strong AA coverage. WMs, Cyclones, BCs, and Ravens also have their roles. The only Factory unit that can't shoot up is the Tank, but you can get Turrets. Mech is just really expensive to get your third while getting your gas heavy production buildings up, while trying to also muster an army to defend. If they have a stronger early game, such as by having cheaper and more efficient Cyclones, that would make enemy air switches even less of an issue, since you have more gas to get your AA like Thors up. HotS TvP was actually very solid and doable, you were able to use Hellions/WMs/Banshees to gain map control and force the Protoss to stay in their natural and slow down their third while getting yours. But now the economy changes don't allow that window anymore. If you get 1 reactor Factory, you don't have enough Hellions/WMs quick enough anymore to keep as much map control. And you don't really want to get a 2nd Reactor Factory if you can help it. Meanwhile, Protoss can muster up a lot more Chargelots or Blink Stalkers quicker than before, while you still only have a few tanks at most. In LotV, you're more forced to go with unupgraded Marines than HotS, because you can't get as much Hellions/Hellbats up fast enough relative to HotS. A cyclone that is stronger earlier on and cheaper on gas could potentially help compensate for the LotV economy/timing changes that made Mech relatively harder in the earlier part of the game. The problem of the OP cyclone is the meta it creates : the era of the reactored cyclone showed its issues. At the start, people start making cyclones to cover a mech transition, then they realize overtime "more cyclones" is just the answer to everything. After all, why make other units past some point, when it has better overall ground damage than the tanks while being able to run away, equivalent anti air to the air while faster, and is cheaper, and faster to produce, and faster ? Or it turns out to be terrible, and then mech lost the one unit that enabled most non-harass openings defensive openings, and battlemech, and several other niche uses in the game (the number of games, particularly TvT, i've won with my 4 cyclone hit squad sniping expansions all over the map...) just for the sake of the balance council patting themselves on the back Solving the game by creating mobile kiting cheap bruisers isn't a solution, and it may be a personal thing but i don't consider it "mech", just bio with an OP factory unit and no drops, and is a symptom of the people behind the changes having no ideas about how the strategy works and its pitfalls, and trying to apply principles from their usual strategy (it must be mobile and able to kite and cheap !) and looking at the lowest hanging fruit | ||
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Vision_
840 Posts
the first design of cyclones have a firerate of 0.1 while in this patch, the ratio is equal to 0.49 and his attacks take the armor into account. But for now his overall damage seems pretty much too high. If the problem comes from TvP and stalkers opening, instead of giving a bonus to mechanical damage like Yoshi proposed, they can give them a bonus against "shields" (like widow mines). 11 + 2 against armored, attack cooldown = 0.49 10 + 3 against shield, attack cooldown = 0.54 Increasing attack cooldown will help against light armor units (decreasing his DPS from 22 to 18) Using bonus against shield to get a specific design against Protoss (while armored units like roachs, ultralisks, infestor or broodlords aren t affected) PS : It s a good idea to get an unit with only a bonus against shield (because Terran always have unit with dedicated role, like ghost with EMP against protoss or Mines against banelings and zerglings, etc..tanks piercing armored units, etc..) | ||
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Vision_
840 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23371 Posts
On August 27 2023 13:58 Charoisaur wrote: Yes they are, Stalkers make it impossible to take a reasonably timed third atm, right now the only way to do that is with Marine tank, but you have to spend lots of resources on useless unupgraded Marines and in consequence have 0 map control I agree with Goliaths being desperately missing Misses the vulture too, or something that fulfils that role. Something that helps to cover the tanks, gives some map control and slow down opponent advances, and gives harassment potential. With the downside that they’re not particularly strong on their own in any head-on engagement. Historically we’ve seen, amongst other factors the tank’s main compositional companion either be not effective enough at the above, making the composition too weak to be viable at the tip top of the game, or we’ve seen them overtuned to the degree they end up the core part of the comp at particular windows and stylistically it ends up playing like a less micro-intensive bio. Game 1 of Mvp vs Stephano at Gamers 8I think was much more instructive than most other games because it was an attempt at a pretty damn high level game where a player went a more traditional mech, the type we want to be viable, executed pretty well and still got picked apart eventually. On maps actually better suited for playing that way too! Along with the testimony of our resident GMs/high masters mech merchants, you got to see almost everything that makes it so difficult to play. Struggling to take out Zerg expos faster than they can just rebuild and relocate, how difficult it is to cover your own once you get beyond 3 bases as tanks don’t have mobility and aren’t strong enough in small numbers to hold repeated Zerg offensives that just keep coming when the economy kicks in. How ridiculously good and cost efficient vipers are against mech There is also just how SC2 works engine wise and economy wise versus BW. It’s perfectly viable to shore up on 2 bases and slowly take the third and beyond while covering holes in TvP in BW while Toss take base after base and come out on top. In a way that’s just not viable in SC2. Other experienced mech users have better outlined more specific issues. LoTV and its eco ramp-up is a pretty huge one. Spreading/clumping and unlimited unit control and overkill is another. Tanks in BW can be strong enough to be very potent in small numbers because it’s difficult to control everything in high numbers. In SC2 they can’t be tuned that way because a max would end up effectively unkillable by anything on the ground. As with a lot in this game the cute and cool counterplays stop being effective with armies scaling up. You don’t have ye olde mine drags, Zealot bombs aren’t as effective and get harder to do and less impactful with bigger armies. Phoenixes lifting tanks isn’t all that effective later on when they’re just temporarily taking a tank out of a fight and getting melted. Let’s also think of a simple unit role/specialisation breakdown and synergy if we talk of making the cyclone more of a core unit. What is the cyclone best at? Roaming, poking and kiting backwards, they aren’t full glass cannons but they are quite fragile once you’re on top of them. What is the siege tank best at? Defensive and offensive zoning and slowly pushing forwards. They don’t neatly dovetail together like vulture/tank does where the vulture can both use its speed to be annoying all over the place, but also in big engagements push out front and buffer and take advantage of its potency against light to keep tank killers like manlots away. The cyclone on a design level you kind of want them also staying away from the tip of the spear, you almost want them to be the same range away as the tanks they’re ostensibly covering. So you end up with this overlap that, depending on the numbers of the unit see cyclones either as too weak and not desirous to have versus tanks later in a game, or they’re too strong in which case why wouldn’t you mass cyclones with their mobility over building a tank-centric army with its downside of sieging/unsieging and friendly fire? | ||
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Athenau
568 Posts
What is the cyclone best at? Roaming, poking and kiting backwards, they aren’t full glass cannons but they are quite fragile once you’re on top of them. What is the siege tank best at? Defensive and offensive zoning and slowly pushing forwards. They don’t neatly dovetail together like vulture/tank does where the vulture can both use its speed to be annoying all over the place, but also in big engagements push out front and buffer and take advantage of its potency against light to keep tank killers like manlots away. The cyclone on a design level you kind of want them also staying away from the tip of the spear, you almost want them to be the same range away as the tanks they’re ostensibly covering. So you end up with this overlap that, depending on the numbers of the unit see cyclones either as too weak and not desirous to have versus tanks later in a game, or they’re too strong in which case why wouldn’t you mass cyclones with their mobility over building a tank-centric army with its downside of sieging/unsieging and friendly fire? Well, the theory is that you use the mobility of the Cyclone to to poke and draw units into your tank fire. So the synergy is not in full-on engagements, but in the posturing before. When the actual engagement happens, hellbats are supposed to block for the tanks, not the cyclones. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10290 Posts
But also going with the Vulture thing, that's also why I advocate for Hellion damage being changed from 8 (+6 vs Light) to 9 (+5 vs Light). It won't suddenly make them great at tanking for Tanks or to push back armies. However it'd make them slightly better at it, and anything helps. I do also hope that the Cyclone can find a good role that works particularly well as a compliment to Tank based mech. I don't want a Warhound that can move and shoot. I also don't want Cyclone Mech to look like marine tank. The Cyclone having slightly more HP per supply is kind of nice though compared to the old Cyclone. If money is not an issue, the new Cyclone has more HP than a hellion (and of course, is better at fighting many things). I still think that the best Cyclone might be one closer to the current one, or something in between. I don't like the idea of being pressured into constantly kiting Cyclones back and forth, that micro is tedious and repetitive, and it would just be similar to Stim MMM kiting but even more extreme. Having a longer range Lock On but with a small cooldown was cool. Maybe the new Cyclone can be rebalanced around having a Lock On range of 12, have the initial delay when locking on (so there is a small payoff to using it), cooldown at 3 seconds, and keep either its current or new patch damage. They would waste lockon vs small units like Zerglings, Marines, and Zealots, and wait for the 3 sec cooldown to re-engage, unless you turn off auto-casting and wait for expensive units before turning it back on. You can also manually target lockon so you don't stack lock-ons on the same units. It would be fine if they overkill Zergling/Marine/Zealots and are a little weaker at that but better at picking off expensive units, cus you already have Hellions/WMs/Hellbats to take care of the small light units. Or you could just make it so that Lock-On is like currently where each Cyclone locks onto a different unit, if there is a small cooldown. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23371 Posts
In a custom game where you pick your army and test it versus other compositions over and over you’ll definitely have pretty good results, but trickier when we’re talking a standard kinda game. @Yoshi yeah can’t really disagree with much of that! | ||
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Athenau
568 Posts
On August 27 2023 23:48 WombaT wrote: @Athenau yeah just feels it’s quite hard to get optimal composition ratios and cover the anti-air problem, as well as force the correct kind of engagements in a real game. In a custom game where you pick your army and test it versus other compositions over and over you’ll definitely have pretty good results, but trickier when we’re talking a standard kinda game. @Yoshi yeah can’t really disagree with much of that! I mean, that's the intent of the change, to make the Cyclone more of a generalist. It's fast (but very frail), has good dps vs ground and air, and is cost-efficient with babysitting. It's the mech stalker, with the traditional Terran emphasis on damage at the cost of toughness. The difficulty is in balancing it so that it doesn't overshadow the slower power units like tanks and thors. Overall, with the initial numbers they've landed pretty close. It seems a little overtuned in TvZ, so they could bump the cost up to 125/75 and either increase the base speed, or reduce the time it takes to get the upgrade to compensate, but I honestly think this direction is the right way to go given the way the game is designed. Brood War mech was a unicorn composition where you had a bunch of individually awkward units that somehow had enough synergy to make it work. Trying to replicate that in SC2 at this stage of the game is a fool's errand, IMO. | ||
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Kyadytim
United States886 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + This reminds me, I would once again like to suggest buffing Hellion damage from 8 (+6 vs Light) to 9 (+5 vs Light). It's such a small change but it really would help Mech players slightly. In TvT, Mech is pretty weak early on because Bio is much stronger than Hellions. And in TvZ, Banelings, Queens, Roach, Ravager, etc. take little damage from Hellions. In TvP, Hellion vs Stalker is already an interesting battle in bigger numbers, but if Stalkers split a little then they win easily. Giving Hellions just 1 more damage vs these units wouldn't make them suddenly beat them or make players mass Hellions, but it would soften one of Mech's weaknesses and make them more stable, and more supply efficient. That would also allow Cyclones to be more specialized and more powerful. And imagine the fun Hellion vs Blink Stalker micro battles! I totally forgot but one way to make Cyclones more targetted towards TvP (and less useless in TvT, since it probably won't be used much), is to make its damage give a significant bonus to Mechanical instead of a small bonus to armored. But yes, making mech stronger doesn't result in more turtly or more boring games. In fact, the reason why mech often leads to boring turtle games, is because mech is too weak to move out and interact, AND because the opponent doesn't often feel the need to even try to pick them apart before mech gets to its deathball. When one player has a stronger lategame, it incentivizes the other opponent to interact and stop the turtling player. As long as one of the players is being forced to engage, there can be intense action and the game isn't boring. As long as there are ways to interact and slow them down or halt their progress from transitioning into their deathball, then it isn't imbalanced for one player to have a stronger lategame or endgame. And if you do let that player reach their deathball, it's totally fine if it means you lose the game because that was their win condition. When a Zerg or Protoss has just as strong of a lategame as the Mech player, they won't be afraid to take the game late and to mass expand across the map. And that's when we get games where nothing happens for a long time until both players reach their ideal deathball. It isn't problematic for one race or playstyle to have a stronger lategame than another, as long as the MU is balanced. One thing that's great about Mech games (in theory anyway), is that there is a clear attacker and a clear defender. In other MUs where both sides don't have a strong incentive to attack the other, there can be less tension as both feel comfortable taking many bases before engaging. I really hope the new Cyclone can be strong enough to give some control and map control over the early game, similar to Hellion banshee in TvZ. In HotS, before the economy change, Mech actually was able to contain the Protoss a bit with just a combination of hellion banshee, or hellion and WMs. In the old economy, it took Protoss a while to get their Robo tech up and be able to move out and stabilize their 3rd. In this time it allowed the Mech player to get their 3rd, and if the Protoss wanted to attack, you had lots of time to complete a wall at the 3rd to be completely safe. HotS TvP was actually very solid and doable, you were able to use Hellions/WMs/Banshees to gain map control and force the Protoss to stay in their natural and slow down their third while getting yours. Sorry for the wall of quotations, but I wanted to collect it all in one place. Let me see if I have this right. You want
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Beelzebub1
1003 Posts
Yes, but everyone is entitled to their opinion I suppose. Don't get me wrong I'd like for mech to be even semi viable at the pro level for varieties sake but yea, it can't just be made imba for the sake of variety. It's Protoss that struggles against Terran right now, not the other way around. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10290 Posts
On August 28 2023 01:01 Kyadytim wrote: Replying to Yoshi Kirishima, + Show Spoiler + This reminds me, I would once again like to suggest buffing Hellion damage from 8 (+6 vs Light) to 9 (+5 vs Light). It's such a small change but it really would help Mech players slightly. In TvT, Mech is pretty weak early on because Bio is much stronger than Hellions. And in TvZ, Banelings, Queens, Roach, Ravager, etc. take little damage from Hellions. In TvP, Hellion vs Stalker is already an interesting battle in bigger numbers, but if Stalkers split a little then they win easily. Giving Hellions just 1 more damage vs these units wouldn't make them suddenly beat them or make players mass Hellions, but it would soften one of Mech's weaknesses and make them more stable, and more supply efficient. That would also allow Cyclones to be more specialized and more powerful. And imagine the fun Hellion vs Blink Stalker micro battles! I totally forgot but one way to make Cyclones more targetted towards TvP (and less useless in TvT, since it probably won't be used much), is to make its damage give a significant bonus to Mechanical instead of a small bonus to armored. But yes, making mech stronger doesn't result in more turtly or more boring games. In fact, the reason why mech often leads to boring turtle games, is because mech is too weak to move out and interact, AND because the opponent doesn't often feel the need to even try to pick them apart before mech gets to its deathball. When one player has a stronger lategame, it incentivizes the other opponent to interact and stop the turtling player. As long as one of the players is being forced to engage, there can be intense action and the game isn't boring. As long as there are ways to interact and slow them down or halt their progress from transitioning into their deathball, then it isn't imbalanced for one player to have a stronger lategame or endgame. And if you do let that player reach their deathball, it's totally fine if it means you lose the game because that was their win condition. When a Zerg or Protoss has just as strong of a lategame as the Mech player, they won't be afraid to take the game late and to mass expand across the map. And that's when we get games where nothing happens for a long time until both players reach their ideal deathball. It isn't problematic for one race or playstyle to have a stronger lategame than another, as long as the MU is balanced. One thing that's great about Mech games (in theory anyway), is that there is a clear attacker and a clear defender. In other MUs where both sides don't have a strong incentive to attack the other, there can be less tension as both feel comfortable taking many bases before engaging. I really hope the new Cyclone can be strong enough to give some control and map control over the early game, similar to Hellion banshee in TvZ. In HotS, before the economy change, Mech actually was able to contain the Protoss a bit with just a combination of hellion banshee, or hellion and WMs. In the old economy, it took Protoss a while to get their Robo tech up and be able to move out and stabilize their 3rd. In this time it allowed the Mech player to get their 3rd, and if the Protoss wanted to attack, you had lots of time to complete a wall at the 3rd to be completely safe. HotS TvP was actually very solid and doable, you were able to use Hellions/WMs/Banshees to gain map control and force the Protoss to stay in their natural and slow down their third while getting yours. Sorry for the wall of quotations, but I wanted to collect it all in one place. Let me see if I have this right. You want
To clarify: 1) Terran doesn't necessarily need a stronger lategame than Protoss. However, considering Terran Mech is weaker in the earlier parts of the game vs Protoss, and mid game is about even (assuming both players can get into the midgame on relatively even footing), then shouldn't it make sense that Terran Mech should have a stronger lategame to compensate for the weaker early game? The other option is to strengthen the early game, and keep lategame roughly the same power. I should rephrase and say that it's less so about needing to make Terran Mech have a stronger lategame. I would prefer if Terran and Protoss had a similar power level throughout the early, mid, and lategame. However, the Mech army should be stronger in same way, but more immobile, so that opponents are forced to try to slow down and pick apart Mech to never allow it to siege up all of Protoss's bases. And the Mech player's job would be to try to put out all the fires the Protoss is starting. 2) Terran doesn't need to have complete map control early. However, if you want to go for a map control build, at the cost of having an army that is weaker in a straight up fight, such as opening with Hellion Banshee, you should be able to have potentially control more of the map and discourage the Protoss from leaving the base (otherwise they risk being harassed). However it doesn't mean the Protoss would be pinned down and doesn't have options to be aggressive and attack, or to counter the map control focused opener. Similarly, if Protoss goes Blink Stalkers (in any MU), it doesn't beat everything the opponent can do, but Blink Stalkers should give you relatively higher map control than most other builds. Or for example if you open Stargate, that should give you even more map control, or at least map control in the sense of vision. 3) Hellions are weak vs Stalkers as long as you don't hugely clump them up. Also you can do simple blink back micro to separate them before they die, forcing the Hellions to committ hard if they want to try to pick those weak ones off. In a realistic game, the Protoss would probably have some Immortal or Archon mixed in with the Stalkers, making Hellion presence even weaker at poking armies. Hellions are great for picking off Zealots and harassing of course, but Mech TvP is lacking a bit when it comes to being able to poke and gently discourage or slow down the opponent from moving around the map. Tanks have enough soft/hard counters in a straight up fight that in SC2, the opponent is able to take a head on fight, A-click, and come out roughly even (can lose or win depending on many factors, but roughly averages out to even). By suggesting the slight damage tweak from 8 (+6 vs Light) to 9 (+5 vs Light), it makes the Hellion less overspecialized slightly, and makes Mech more stable in the early and midgame when Hellions have more of a role (they become supply inefficient late game, unless used just for harass). 4) By design, mech should be stronger in a straight up fight OR be able to zone areas cost effectively if units are spread around, but less mobile and more expensive. However, since the case is that mech isn't stronger in a straight up fight (at least in the early and midgame), then it would make sense and help if mech's map control units like Hellions would be slightly stronger vs Protoss's map control units like Stalkers. And by slightly stronger I mean slightly less trash vs Stalkers. Mech is weak in TvP so it's either buff the raw power or buff the map control. I know reading my suggestions might just sound like I want Mech to be OP, but I hope that puts things into context a bit better ! Some of the comments I made were just comparing HotS and LotV. So I'm not saying to make every suggestion happen and to make every weakness better. But to implement a balanced mix of them. I'm also a strong advocate for Protoss getting buffs in general and post often about it usually, both against Bio as well as mass BCs. I'm just talking specifically about Mech TvP in a vacuum. | ||
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Vision_
840 Posts
I mean seriously, stalker are so expensive compared to roachs that i can t imagine to balance an unit like cyclones (with lock on) between those two core armored units. If you allow mech terrans to deal with stalkers at start of mid game with the current cyclone, then terran versus zerg will be unbalanced and zerg will stop roachs pushes because they are garbage. So i m curious to know your point of view on this tweak, replacing an armored bonus to a shield bonus ? pro and cons ? | ||
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thorn969
5 Posts
I think damage of 16 with bonus of +4 vs armored and a cooldown of 0.71 would be fairer than the current 11 damage +2 vs armored and cooldown of 0.491. Buffs dps from 22.4 (26.5 vs armored) to 22.5 (28.2 vs armored). Maybe link the bonus vs armored with the cyclone speed upgrade so that cyclones don't come online quite as quickly? They seem possibly slightly OP for harass when they first come out (especially at lower levels) and not quite powerful enough when you get into mech/later game. I feel like making the first shot more impactful and firing slower will make the unit feel more like a cyclone and distinct from other units. | ||
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tigera6
3183 Posts
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10290 Posts
Cyclone Damage 11 + 2 vs armored -> 10 + 5 vs armored, +1 (+1 vs armored) per upgrade Speed 3.6 to 3.94, 5.1 to 4.96 after upgrade Upgrade now additionally increases health by 20, Cost 100/100 -> 150/150 Wow so it's more specialized vs expensive units which i agree with, the damage is such that attack upgrades will scale better (+2 dmg instead of +1), the base speed is buffed in return for only slightly worse upgraded speed, and the upgrade also gives them more HP so that they scale better and can also be better at tanking for Tanks I'm not really sure they know what they're doing, it still just seems like a Warhound that skates. Other than the HP buff how does this compliment Mech specifically? And what clear counters are there? The new update makes it move faster so that Zerglings are even worse at surrounding them, and Cyclones are even better vs Roaches. So they're even stronger in TvZ. The increased damage vs armored is nice in TvP because it started to falloff in larger numbers in the midgame, and we already have the Hellion to deal with non-armored units, but the upgrade also giving it +20 HP is weird for an upgrade, and makes it scale even better into the midgame and lategame... For the Cyclone specifically, it would be nice if they shared what their goal of the unit is. They said they want Mech TvP to be more viable and allow you to be more active, but how does the Cyclone facilitate that? Do they even agree that Mech TvP struggles in the early game, and that the Cyclone so far doesn't seem to compliment Tanks much, and just encourage mass Cyclone with a few Tanks as if it was MMM Tank? And yes Vision i do agree that changing it so that the damage gives a bonus to Shield or Mechanical would be better than Armored. We don't need it to be good vs non-armored, we already have Hellions and WMs for that. Harstem and Pig were pointing out a good point. Unlike the current cyclone (not the patch ones), which actually could be dealt with by Chargelot flanks/surrounds, the new Cyclone is really good vs Chargelots because they're so fast, can lockon infinitely, and lower supply thus take more space and are harder to surround. But we already have Hellions which are great vs Chargelots. And the new Cyclone will be pretty decent vs Stalkers and even Immortals now for how mobile they are, which Tanks already deal really well with. I'm just anxious and really hope that the new Cyclone will actually be more useful than the current one... the current one DOES fulfill the role of being useful early game in dealing with early air harass or early air armies, helping defend drops, being able to poke and scout, etc. And if you want to go for more Cyclone based mech, you can do that before transitioning more into Tanks later as the Cyclones get clunkier and harder to trade effectively. I don't think the current Cyclone is far off from what it could be to help Mech TvP more. I think mainly it's just a bit gas expensive and comes out a bit late, and you can't get many of them, so it's heavily taxing on your production, without scaling as well as Tanks, and they are also a bit supply inefficient. From what I'm seeing so far I'd prefer if they just tweaked the current Cyclone design to be more supply efficient, easier to pump out, and move some of its damage from Lock-On to the auto attack so it's less volatile, then it might be much better than the new Cyclone. | ||
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