force field? 5rr pretty much dies out in diamond because it's bad
Roaches may be able to fire over a force field after this patch (FF has a diameter of 3.4 now, so a 4 range roach would shoot over it).
The force field is only to seperate the roaches and so the 2/3 in the front can't run away from the stalker smashing their face in. The ones in the back will be able to shoot their roach buddies in a sort of mercy kill, but won't be able to hit anything on the otherside.
or it can make it so that they can't see up the ramp. despite what people claim here 5rr is a very all in that can really cripple you in the early game, and it doesn't even work against anyone with marauders/sentries out.
I'm not sure how I feel about uping the roach's range. Why not just allow them to shoot up and call them hydralisks with all their green goopy shooting glory again. I understand the balance aspect, but I had always understood Blizzard wanting the units to have a unique feel to them. For me it reminds me of BW Hydras with roaches being in Tier 1.
Zealots and bunkers got the same speed nerf though :P
And dammit I'll overreact if I want to!
but yeah I guess it's not so bad, except the reaper stuff that's dumb, reapers lose all impact post factory tech.
Reapers will still be good scouts, good at early harassment around 11-15 food, and will still be great at murdering unprotected worker lines.
They're really a great unit if you can remember to have 2-4 of them ready to hit someone in the back in the middle of a fight. I've won numerous games by simply right-clicking a small group of reapers as a fight starts elsewhereand letting them do their work.
Actually yeah, you're right about still being able to FF roaches on a ramp. However now Roaches may be able to hit Cannons placed one space behind a wall, which kind of kills Forge FE.
edit: wait no, I'm misstating that. They might be able to hit the wall itself when the Cannon is one space behind.
it also eliminates one of the openings terran has and if so many people are complaining it has too many openings, this should be a relief to them very much so.
Someone made this comment on TL and I would have to agree with. There's always a ruckus over what terran has over races, and when Blizzard clamps down on that, people generally seem against it....
it also eliminates one of the openings terran has and if so many people are complaining it has too many openings, this should be a relief to them very much so.
Someone made this comment on TL and I would have to agree with. There's always a ruckus over what terran has over races, and when Blizzard clamps down on that, people generally seem against it....
I suspect most players would be happier if other races had more options instead of terran having less.
Overall, even though I usually use rax 9 depot 10, I won't really miss the stupid all-in reaper builds that you have to plan for every time you see someone pick terran.
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
I dunno about the zerg beating terran thing. I guess terrans are just generally bad players? :P
That's kinda what I'm thinking. I play a lot of rather seemingly "noobish" terrans on the ladder who seem to rely heavily on 3-4 rax type pushes off of one base. These I can normally deal with easily by three gate expanding and then getting storm. It doesn't help that they don't get ghosts. Or they try reaper rushes, or banshee rushes, or hellion drops, or other various harrassment ploys that I've gotten good at dealing with and I beat them rather easily as well. Then there's the macro terran who expands as early, or earlier than me. I can never seem to touch them early game (with their walls and bunkers and lots of marauders). And by mid to late game they just roll over me with infantry. Storm can sometimes lead to a narrow victory, but if they are good with micro or get ghosts, then not so much (bait storms, bait zealots, can never get slow ass templar into range, run out of the storm, etc). It's these PvT matchups that I just can't seem to do anything to win. I can often tell my odds of winning with his first push. If he just a moves and sits, I'll kill him. If he comes just into range and runs and shoots back out, then I'm prolly going to lose. The best is when you storm everywhere, but they have their micro timing down so well, that they can just run and gun out of the storms.
it also eliminates one of the openings terran has and if so many people are complaining it has too many openings, this should be a relief to them very much so.
Someone made this comment on TL and I would have to agree with. There's always a ruckus over what terran has over races, and when Blizzard clamps down on that, people generally seem against it....
I suspect most players would be happier if other races had more options instead of terran having less.
Overall, even though I usually use rax 9 depot 10, I won't really miss the stupid all-in reaper builds that you have to plan for every time you see someone pick terran.
This. I don't want T to have less options, I want to have more. Maybe take their intelligence advantages away or nerf them (scan, good turtle so impossible to scout)
I still dislike how so much of the game evolves around ramps, and how zerg units have whole tons of melee guys, and terran and toss can just clog up these ramps with buildings or armored units and use their ranged everything to kill your guys trying to break in making it so hard to go in and win 1-base games as zerg. You have to lure them out of their bases before you can kill their guys.
I dunno about the zerg beating terran thing. I guess terrans are just generally bad players? :P
That's kinda what I'm thinking. I play a lot of rather seemingly "noobish" terrans on the ladder who seem to rely heavily on 3-4 rax type pushes off of one base. These I can normally deal with easily by three gate expanding and then getting storm. It doesn't help that they don't get ghosts. Or they try reaper rushes, or banshee rushes, or hellion drops, or other various harrassment ploys that I've gotten good at dealing with and I beat them rather easily as well. Then there's the macro terran who expands as early, or earlier than me. I can never seem to touch them early game (with their walls and bunkers and lots of marauders). And by mid to late game they just roll over me with infantry. Storm can sometimes lead to a narrow victory, but if they are good with micro or get ghosts, then not so much (bait storms, bait zealots, can never get slow ass templar into range, run out of the storm, etc). It's these PvT matchups that I just can't seem to do anything to win. I can often tell my odds of winning with his first push. If he just a moves and sits, I'll kill him. If he comes just into range and runs and shoots back out, then I'm prolly going to lose. The best is when you storm everywhere, but they have their micro timing down so well, that they can just run and gun out of the storms.
This has been how I've been dealing with Protoss lately... basically I just early expand with a couple marauders and a bunker or two, then mass macro and sprinkle a few ghosts in for EMP's here and there. If I scout a colossus, I'll toss out some vikings from my reactor'd starport and go to town.
hydras are good on creep if you have a nice econ advantage, but they just die so quickly to the new aoe of death abilities. which goes back to that zerg has no ultimate units that 3-4 of can kill off like 50 units.
Hydras were used for everything. You know, back in the day, when people didn't put their entire army in one control group.
infinite selection shoulda been there from the beginning. I remember back when starcraft1 first came out it annoyed me that I could only select 12 (whereas C&C and Red Alert let you select infinite, Age of Empires let you select 30, and total annihilation also let you select infinite).
hydras are good on creep if you have a nice econ advantage, but they just die so quickly to the new aoe of death abilities. which goes back to that zerg has no ultimate units that 3-4 of can kill off like 50 units.
hydras are good on creep if you have a nice econ advantage, but they just die so quickly to the new aoe of death abilities. which goes back to that zerg has no ultimate units that 3-4 of can kill off like 50 units.
Broodlords are an ultimate unit that can kill shitloads of things but they come out far too late to be relevant in many games.
Broodlords give you a huge tactical advantage, they're basically flying siege tanks.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
You know, I love to see Blizz changing things that need fixed (Roaches, and the supply depot change is nice), but I can't help but think that they're just ignoring some very large issues. Such as:
ZERG ARE TOO COMPLICATED. Hell their PR guy said as much: they're not as fun to play. They need to change how the larva mechanic works.
Mauraders are still too good. Their combination of range, health, damage, stim, and slowing ability is way too much for their cost. They need to cost more, or be toned down.
Banshees are too hard for non-Terran to deal with. They just need to deal less damage, or be much later tech (like T3, which is what Dark Templars are, the other high DPS cloaked unit!).
Void Rays need to be slightly later tech; late game they're just good, but early game, a void ray rush can end the game easily.
These are just my thoughts as a high Plat who often faces (and beats) diamonds. I think some parts of T are still a little too strong, some parts of P are a little too strong (but not the parts they're nerfing), some parts of Z are still a little too weak.
My fear is that Blizz is going to see these numbers, leave Zerg unchanged, nerf Toss into the ground, and change T, and make the game unplayable. They already have players switching off Zerg because they feel too weak. They need to stop paying attention to ladder, and pay attention to tournaments, because there's where the real balance issues become apparent; at the highest level of play.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
edited October 2010
Also, the roach change worries me a little, because it will make early roach pressure that much harder to deal with as P.
Hydras were used for everything. You know, back in the day, when people didn't put their entire army in one control group.
infinite selection shoulda been there from the beginning. I remember back when starcraft1 first game out it annoyed me that I could only select 12 (whereas C&C and Red Alert let you select infinite, Age of Empires let you select 30, and total annihilation also let you select infinite).
I'm not poking fun at infinite selection. I'm just suggesting that hydras seem weak at the moment because when people clump them all into one control group, it makes them more prone to AOE damage.
oh ok. then yes, that is correct. Also doesn't help that they are weak to marines AND tanks.
hydras are good on creep if you have a nice econ advantage, but they just die so quickly to the new aoe of death abilities. which goes back to that zerg has no ultimate units that 3-4 of can kill off like 50 units.
I thought that's what infestors do?
Fungal only does 45 damage, has a relatively small radius, and can't be stacked.
The power of fungal is delaying a push by throwing fungals at their base and locking down units in the big confrontation so that 1) they can't form bigger concaves and 2) your melee/low range units can get in surrounds and such.
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The roach change is supposed to give zerg an option to pressure P early game. Currently, I can put 1 zeal and block off. What can zerg do? I can eliminate an infinitely number of lings, and roaches are near worthless with their current range vs a stalker or a cannon.
Even as a P player, this is great news for the matchup in general. As for the supply depot, that's interesting.
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
The roach change is supposed to give zerg an option to pressure P early game. Currently, I can put 1 zeal and block off. What can zerg do? I can eliminate an infinitely number of lings, and roaches are near worthless with their current range vs a stalker or a cannon.
Even as a P player, this is great news for the matchup in general. As for the supply depot, that's interesting.
I guess that's true. I'm always paranoid about changes that affect matchups with P because P are so middle of the road right now, compared to Z's lolwut and T's kindatoogood
Also, really not sure how I feel about the supply depot change. I guess it's good? It means early reapers will probably be a lot less of a problem, especially with Nitro Packs requiring a Factory.
Hydras were used for everything. You know, back in the day, when people didn't put their entire army in one control group.
infinite selection shoulda been there from the beginning. I remember back when starcraft1 first game out it annoyed me that I could only select 12 (whereas C&C and Red Alert let you select infinite, Age of Empires let you select 30, and total annihilation also let you select infinite).
I'm not poking fun at infinite selection. I'm just suggesting that hydras seem weak at the moment because when people clump them all into one control group, it makes them more prone to AOE damage.
Hydras really need support units to soak damage (e.g., lings or roaches) or superior positioning and creep to mitigate AE potential. I've been going back to roach/hydra for my midgame army against toss with some success, especially with burrow roaches to extend the life of my front line.
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i'm glad that reaper rushes are getting nerfed. but thats only because i think theyre annoying to play against.
but what would reapers be useful for then? some people have builds that use one for scouting but hm. I do think their mid-late game viability hasn't been explored as much as it should. using one production cycle to just pump reapers for mid game harrass could be effective imo.
The roach change is supposed to give zerg an option to pressure P early game. Currently, I can put 1 zeal and block off. What can zerg do? I can eliminate an infinitely number of lings, and roaches are near worthless with their current range vs a stalker or a cannon.
Even as a P player, this is great news for the matchup in general. As for the supply depot, that's interesting.
The roach change doesn't really change zerg's early game rush potential. It makes roaches a viable mid- and late-game cornerstone of your army against toss and terran (moreso toss than terran) when all 350/350 upgrades have been purchased for them.
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
The roach change is supposed to give zerg an option to pressure P early game. Currently, I can put 1 zeal and block off. What can zerg do? I can eliminate an infinitely number of lings, and roaches are near worthless with their current range vs a stalker or a cannon.
Even as a P player, this is great news for the matchup in general. As for the supply depot, that's interesting.
I guess that's true. I'm always paranoid about changes that affect matchups with P because P are so middle of the road right now, compared to Z's lolwut and T's kindatoogood
Also, really not sure how I feel about the supply depot change. I guess it's good? It means early reapers will probably be a lot less of a problem, especially with Nitro Packs requiring a Factory.
I just don't see how anyone can call P middle of the road. I think they're right where they should be.
T has an excellent early game, Z an excellent late game. P can pretty much do all of it well, has a lot of flexibility (chronoboooooooost) and all of the T3 units are pretty boss.
i'm glad that reaper rushes are getting nerfed. but thats only because i think theyre annoying to play against.
but what would reapers be useful for then? some people have builds that use one for scouting but hm. I do think their mid-late game viability hasn't been explored as much as it should. using one production cycle to just pump reapers for mid game harrass could be effective imo.
For this to work out, they need to reduce the build time of reapers (which I hope they do if they stick with this rax/depot change). You'd need to do some significant damage or scare your opponent into their base for a lo ng time to justify the lost production time.
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MaratastikJust call me Mara, please!Registered Userregular
Since the release of Wings of Liberty, the StarCraft II balance team has been diligently studying how the game is being played, playing it ourselves, and seeing how evenly the three races match up on the battlefield. While we regularly examine Battle.net player data and statistics from all regions, the information we're examining in this blog was pulled exclusively from the North American region for simplicity's sake.
Protoss are played 38.5% of the time.
Terran are played 38.0% of the time.
Zerg are played 23.5% of the time.
These are overall percentages, but they're mirrored in nearly the same exact separation through each of the leagues. This clearly shows that zerg are played less often than the other races. When we look at things like the Top 200 we like to have this data in-hand so we can ensure that it's proportionate to the amount of each race actually being played. We don't want to have a huge chunk of zerg players sitting somewhere further down unable to rise through the ranks.
Let's take a look at win percentages on a race-versus-race basis. This is something else we look at to see how matchups are faring over many games. These numbers take individual player skill into account, which helps to avoid the 50% win/loss percentage effect that the matchmaking system can impart on straight win/loss ratios.
Win % in Diamond (accounting for player skill)
49.6% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran.
52.8% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg.
49.6% win rate for Terran when fighting Zerg.
Win % in Platinum (accounting for player skill)
56.3% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran.
47.3% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg.
44.5% win for Terran when fighting Zerg.
Win % in Gold (accounting for player skill)
61.0% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran.
61.1% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg.
49.5% win rate for Terran when fighting Zerg.
Win % in Silver (accounting for player skill)
63.6% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran.
50.7% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg.
51.6% win rate for Terran when fighting Zerg.
Win % in Bronze (accounting for player skill)
59.0% win rate for Protoss when fighting Terran.
55.1% win rate for Protoss when fighting Zerg.
45.4% win rate for Terran when fighting Zerg.
As you can see there are some issues with Protoss vs. Terran in many of the leagues. From our own play experience, as well as feedback from the community, this matches pretty closely with what we're already aware of. We're working on solutions. What we're also aware of is that while the numbers don't necessarily support the need for zerg changes across all leagues, the feedback from the community as well as our own play experience tells us that improvements are necessary to make zerg matchups feel and play better.
The balance changes in our next patch will primarily focus on improving the zerg.
Here are a few of the changes we currently have planned:
· We're increasing roach range. This will allow roaches to be more effective in large groups, giving the zerg more options in the mid to end game.
· Fungal Growth will now prevent Blink, which will give zerg a way to stop endlessly Blinking stalkers which can be very challenging to deal with in large numbers.
· The Barracks are going to require a Supply Depot, which will impact a lot of early terran reaper pushes.
· The reaper speed upgrade will require the Factory, which is meant to weaken a lot of the early terran reaper attacks that dominate so many matches, especially in team games.
· We're making a number of increases to the health of zerg buildings, which will make the very vulnerable zerg technology structures more resistant to raids. We don’t expect these hit point changes to have a super significant impact on the game, but the current numbers felt way too low.
We want our avid and talented StarCraft II players to know that we're here, we're listening, and that our intent is to continue making careful and measured approaches to balance based on community and fansite feedback, our numbers and data, watching pro players and tournaments, and our own time on Battle.net playing the game alongside you.
This really worries me. Blizzard obviously looks at this and thinks hmm..protoss is very imba against terran. At best, if they just consider diamond, they think, hmm... everything is just fine. I feel the numbers for the lower leagues (and even low diamond) really skew this matchup. The reason being...terran infantry becomes SO much better against protoss with good micro. Ridiculously effective. At lower levels, I'm sure either their micro suffers for better macro...they just 1 a, maybe stim, and lose to storms/forcefields, chargelots. Or their macro suffers in exchange for better micro. Sure they are frustratenly good with kiting, but they don't ever build reinforcements.
Terran infantry micro can be so cool, but I hate how the only micro protoss can do in response(other than spells, which can be largely mitigated with good terran micro) is try not to lose too many zealots.
Hydras were used for everything. You know, back in the day, when people didn't put their entire army in one control group.
infinite selection shoulda been there from the beginning. I remember back when starcraft1 first game out it annoyed me that I could only select 12 (whereas C&C and Red Alert let you select infinite, Age of Empires let you select 30, and total annihilation also let you select infinite).
I'm not poking fun at infinite selection. I'm just suggesting that hydras seem weak at the moment because when people clump them all into one control group, it makes them more prone to AOE damage.
Hydras really need support units to soak damage (e.g., lings or roaches) or superior positioning and creep to mitigate AE potential. I've been going back to roach/hydra for my midgame army against toss with some success, especially with burrow roaches to extend the life of my front line.
I feel like thats a lot of work for a unit that's just going to explode at the first sign of aoe anyway.
to use hydras you must: have a meat shield, creep up the entire map, group your hydras into different control groups, flank, have corrupters to counter colossi, have a mythical unit that counters terran mech, have another mythical unit that counters psi storm, and then maybe they'll be useful? fuck that
you know what terran has to do to use marines? pump them. enough marines kill everything and everything and if you don't get the counter you're the fucked one. hydras cost twice the minerals PLUS 50 gas, double the food for double the damage, shorter range, same movement off creep (without stim). I think part of the problem, at least in ZvT is that marines/marauders counter their supposed counter (the baneling/FG) with stim and micro. Hydras have no counter to tanks or colossi. If tanks or colossi are out there's no kiting them, you just lose period.
plus the fact that they're tier 2 and so slow to get means their counters are usually already in play or on the way. yeah great fuckin unit :^: I knew there was a reason I never used hydras :P
I suppose roach/hydra is like marauder/marine? banelings are our tanks/hellions (ie ground aoe)? looking at it that way it doesn't seem so bad. there's no reason to expect to win by a-moving hydras. (after all terran has to press t, use 2 units AND A-move to win. :P) but in all seriousness if you look at hydras as just one component of a bigger army they seem a bit better I guess?
I didn't realize cannon wall ins were a thing. do you have time to tech to hydras? from my limited bw experience hydras > cannons
It isn't so much that the cannon/2x pylon delays zerg tech because the wall-in doesn't delay lair tech and a creep tumor + spine is sufficient to break the wall anyways. The problem is that it delays zerg's expo while allowing to get toss to get up their expo and saturate. This puts zerg behind economically in the mid-game in a way that is unavoidable save for blocking the cannon/pylon wall with an extra drone in the first place.
Sorry, this is from a few hours back. I'm still learning the game, but I was curious if it's fast enough to have your first queen drop a creep tumor or have an overlord vomit creep on your ramp so he can't build the pylon. Would that work, at least on some maps, or is it still an economy issue that slows you down too much?
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3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
The roach change is supposed to give zerg an option to pressure P early game. Currently, I can put 1 zeal and block off. What can zerg do? I can eliminate an infinitely number of lings, and roaches are near worthless with their current range vs a stalker or a cannon.
Even as a P player, this is great news for the matchup in general. As for the supply depot, that's interesting.
I guess that's true. I'm always paranoid about changes that affect matchups with P because P are so middle of the road right now, compared to Z's lolwut and T's kindatoogood
Also, really not sure how I feel about the supply depot change. I guess it's good? It means early reapers will probably be a lot less of a problem, especially with Nitro Packs requiring a Factory.
I just don't see how anyone can call P middle of the road. I think they're right where they should be.
T has an excellent early game, Z an excellent late game. P can pretty much do all of it well, has a lot of flexibility (chronoboooooooost) and all of the T3 units are pretty boss.
The roach change is a good thing. Zerg need it
Sorry, maybe I could have been more clear about that. That's what I meant by middle of the road - in between the others, exactly where they should be. They're balanced, Z are a little underpowered, T may be a little overpowered.
I didn't realize cannon wall ins were a thing. do you have time to tech to hydras? from my limited bw experience hydras > cannons
It isn't so much that the cannon/2x pylon delays zerg tech because the wall-in doesn't delay lair tech and a creep tumor + spine is sufficient to break the wall anyways. The problem is that it delays zerg's expo while allowing to get toss to get up their expo and saturate. This puts zerg behind economically in the mid-game in a way that is unavoidable save for blocking the cannon/pylon wall with an extra drone in the first place.
Sorry, this is from a few hours back. I'm still learning the game, but I was curious if it's fast enough to have your first queen drop a creep tumor or have an overlord vomit creep on your ramp so he can't build the pylon. Would that work, at least on some maps, or is it still an economy issue that slows you down too much?
Unfortunately not. The pylon block happens too early to either creep your ramp or tech to lair. The only way to stop it is to win the micro war and block the pylon from going down with a drone.
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i'm glad that reaper rushes are getting nerfed. but thats only because i think theyre annoying to play against.
but what would reapers be useful for then? some people have builds that use one for scouting but hm. I do think their mid-late game viability hasn't been explored as much as it should. using one production cycle to just pump reapers for mid game harrass could be effective imo.
For this to work out, they need to reduce the build time of reapers (which I hope they do if they stick with this rax/depot change). You'd need to do some significant damage or scare your opponent into their base for a lo ng time to justify the lost production time.
it's going to be difficult to balance because the reaper is a unit with such high potential. 6 or 7 can clear a mineral line before you can react. they can run in snipe tech before you can do much about it.
they have the capacity to do a lot, but like you said the lost production time and general risk is viewed as too much right now. I think it needs to be explored more.
For Protoss, it also depends on what you're using your Chrono-boosts on. You can actually get more units out of 1 Gateway than 3 in the early midgame if you Chrono it constantly.
i'd *love* to see a replay doing this... does he not chrono any probes? or gateway research?
The only way Joe can put this argument to rest is to go win against a bunch of Silver/Gold players
if he doesn't get promoted after maintaining a 60% WLR vs silver/gold, there's probably something wrong with the league system
go prove me wrong, Joe.
You know what you should do Joe. Get a trial account and play the shit out of it this weekend. That would be a real nice experiment. Like the PA guy who made a trial and 6pooled all the time to see where he'd end up (he got high plat/low diamond I think).
I still have both my trials left to hand out if you're interested.
Also, I'm 5 pages late but I don't care. Damn you time zones! Damn you all to hell!!!
that has been suggested. i'd rather just play my account, and not waste time on a smurf/test account.
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The force field is only to seperate the roaches and so the 2/3 in the front can't run away from the stalker smashing their face in. The ones in the back will be able to shoot their roach buddies in a sort of mercy kill, but won't be able to hit anything on the otherside.
Reapers will still be good scouts, good at early harassment around 11-15 food, and will still be great at murdering unprotected worker lines.
They're really a great unit if you can remember to have 2-4 of them ready to hit someone in the back in the middle of a fight. I've won numerous games by simply right-clicking a small group of reapers as a fight starts elsewhereand letting them do their work.
edit: wait no, I'm misstating that. They might be able to hit the wall itself when the Cannon is one space behind.
Someone made this comment on TL and I would have to agree with. There's always a ruckus over what terran has over races, and when Blizzard clamps down on that, people generally seem against it....
I suspect most players would be happier if other races had more options instead of terran having less.
Overall, even though I usually use rax 9 depot 10, I won't really miss the stupid all-in reaper builds that you have to plan for every time you see someone pick terran.
That's kinda what I'm thinking. I play a lot of rather seemingly "noobish" terrans on the ladder who seem to rely heavily on 3-4 rax type pushes off of one base. These I can normally deal with easily by three gate expanding and then getting storm. It doesn't help that they don't get ghosts. Or they try reaper rushes, or banshee rushes, or hellion drops, or other various harrassment ploys that I've gotten good at dealing with and I beat them rather easily as well. Then there's the macro terran who expands as early, or earlier than me. I can never seem to touch them early game (with their walls and bunkers and lots of marauders). And by mid to late game they just roll over me with infantry. Storm can sometimes lead to a narrow victory, but if they are good with micro or get ghosts, then not so much (bait storms, bait zealots, can never get slow ass templar into range, run out of the storm, etc). It's these PvT matchups that I just can't seem to do anything to win. I can often tell my odds of winning with his first push. If he just a moves and sits, I'll kill him. If he comes just into range and runs and shoots back out, then I'm prolly going to lose. The best is when you storm everywhere, but they have their micro timing down so well, that they can just run and gun out of the storms.
or are we theorycrafting here
i just wanted to call you guys stupid tbh
This. I don't want T to have less options, I want to have more. Maybe take their intelligence advantages away or nerf them (scan, good turtle so impossible to scout)
Agree.
wat. man this thread was all about the 5rr for so long. wasnt it designed by a diamond guy for diamond players?
ive never been able to use hydras ever--theyre too frail, and weak to AOE, and slow, and costly. what were they ever used for?
This has been how I've been dealing with Protoss lately... basically I just early expand with a couple marauders and a bunker or two, then mass macro and sprinkle a few ghosts in for EMP's here and there. If I scout a colossus, I'll toss out some vikings from my reactor'd starport and go to town.
infinite selection shoulda been there from the beginning. I remember back when starcraft1 first came out it annoyed me that I could only select 12 (whereas C&C and Red Alert let you select infinite, Age of Empires let you select 30, and total annihilation also let you select infinite).
I thought that's what infestors do?
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Broodlords are an ultimate unit that can kill shitloads of things but they come out far too late to be relevant in many games.
Broodlords give you a huge tactical advantage, they're basically flying siege tanks.
ZERG ARE TOO COMPLICATED. Hell their PR guy said as much: they're not as fun to play. They need to change how the larva mechanic works.
Mauraders are still too good. Their combination of range, health, damage, stim, and slowing ability is way too much for their cost. They need to cost more, or be toned down.
Banshees are too hard for non-Terran to deal with. They just need to deal less damage, or be much later tech (like T3, which is what Dark Templars are, the other high DPS cloaked unit!).
Void Rays need to be slightly later tech; late game they're just good, but early game, a void ray rush can end the game easily.
These are just my thoughts as a high Plat who often faces (and beats) diamonds. I think some parts of T are still a little too strong, some parts of P are a little too strong (but not the parts they're nerfing), some parts of Z are still a little too weak.
My fear is that Blizz is going to see these numbers, leave Zerg unchanged, nerf Toss into the ground, and change T, and make the game unplayable. They already have players switching off Zerg because they feel too weak. They need to stop paying attention to ladder, and pay attention to tournaments, because there's where the real balance issues become apparent; at the highest level of play.
oh ok. then yes, that is correct. Also doesn't help that they are weak to marines AND tanks.
yeah it made me look at broodlords in a different light. the dps difference between them and colossus is just depressing
Fungal only does 45 damage, has a relatively small radius, and can't be stacked.
The power of fungal is delaying a push by throwing fungals at their base and locking down units in the big confrontation so that 1) they can't form bigger concaves and 2) your melee/low range units can get in surrounds and such.
Even as a P player, this is great news for the matchup in general. As for the supply depot, that's interesting.
I guess that's true. I'm always paranoid about changes that affect matchups with P because P are so middle of the road right now, compared to Z's lolwut and T's kindatoogood
Also, really not sure how I feel about the supply depot change. I guess it's good? It means early reapers will probably be a lot less of a problem, especially with Nitro Packs requiring a Factory.
Hydras really need support units to soak damage (e.g., lings or roaches) or superior positioning and creep to mitigate AE potential. I've been going back to roach/hydra for my midgame army against toss with some success, especially with burrow roaches to extend the life of my front line.
Maybe i'll dust off my hatcheries and go back to playing z for awhile =p
but what would reapers be useful for then? some people have builds that use one for scouting but hm. I do think their mid-late game viability hasn't been explored as much as it should. using one production cycle to just pump reapers for mid game harrass could be effective imo.
The roach change doesn't really change zerg's early game rush potential. It makes roaches a viable mid- and late-game cornerstone of your army against toss and terran (moreso toss than terran) when all 350/350 upgrades have been purchased for them.
I just don't see how anyone can call P middle of the road. I think they're right where they should be.
T has an excellent early game, Z an excellent late game. P can pretty much do all of it well, has a lot of flexibility (chronoboooooooost) and all of the T3 units are pretty boss.
The roach change is a good thing. Zerg need it
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For this to work out, they need to reduce the build time of reapers (which I hope they do if they stick with this rax/depot change). You'd need to do some significant damage or scare your opponent into their base for a lo ng time to justify the lost production time.
This really worries me. Blizzard obviously looks at this and thinks hmm..protoss is very imba against terran. At best, if they just consider diamond, they think, hmm... everything is just fine. I feel the numbers for the lower leagues (and even low diamond) really skew this matchup. The reason being...terran infantry becomes SO much better against protoss with good micro. Ridiculously effective. At lower levels, I'm sure either their micro suffers for better macro...they just 1 a, maybe stim, and lose to storms/forcefields, chargelots. Or their macro suffers in exchange for better micro. Sure they are frustratenly good with kiting, but they don't ever build reinforcements.
Terran infantry micro can be so cool, but I hate how the only micro protoss can do in response(other than spells, which can be largely mitigated with good terran micro) is try not to lose too many zealots.
I feel like thats a lot of work for a unit that's just going to explode at the first sign of aoe anyway.
to use hydras you must: have a meat shield, creep up the entire map, group your hydras into different control groups, flank, have corrupters to counter colossi, have a mythical unit that counters terran mech, have another mythical unit that counters psi storm, and then maybe they'll be useful? fuck that
you know what terran has to do to use marines? pump them. enough marines kill everything and everything and if you don't get the counter you're the fucked one. hydras cost twice the minerals PLUS 50 gas, double the food for double the damage, shorter range, same movement off creep (without stim). I think part of the problem, at least in ZvT is that marines/marauders counter their supposed counter (the baneling/FG) with stim and micro. Hydras have no counter to tanks or colossi. If tanks or colossi are out there's no kiting them, you just lose period.
plus the fact that they're tier 2 and so slow to get means their counters are usually already in play or on the way. yeah great fuckin unit :^: I knew there was a reason I never used hydras :P
I suppose roach/hydra is like marauder/marine? banelings are our tanks/hellions (ie ground aoe)? looking at it that way it doesn't seem so bad. there's no reason to expect to win by a-moving hydras. (after all terran has to press t, use 2 units AND A-move to win. :P) but in all seriousness if you look at hydras as just one component of a bigger army they seem a bit better I guess?
tl;dr I think hydras suck
What the hell does that mean exactly?
Sorry, this is from a few hours back. I'm still learning the game, but I was curious if it's fast enough to have your first queen drop a creep tumor or have an overlord vomit creep on your ramp so he can't build the pylon. Would that work, at least on some maps, or is it still an economy issue that slows you down too much?
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Sorry, maybe I could have been more clear about that. That's what I meant by middle of the road - in between the others, exactly where they should be. They're balanced, Z are a little underpowered, T may be a little overpowered.
Unfortunately not. The pylon block happens too early to either creep your ramp or tech to lair. The only way to stop it is to win the micro war and block the pylon from going down with a drone.
they have the capacity to do a lot, but like you said the lost production time and general risk is viewed as too much right now. I think it needs to be explored more.
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btw corki - thanks for this. may start experimenting with it...
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that has been suggested. i'd rather just play my account, and not waste time on a smurf/test account.
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Maybe they only included ladder matches where the ranking system determined the players were evenly matched.