winter has presented an idea for a balance patch.
there is also a mod for it on Na/ Eu if you want to test it.
The mod is called: “Winter Balance Dreams”.
pick a map, and add the mod at custom game.
he talks about how he envisions the match up.
what do you think?
do you like individual ideas or directions?
or do you already see things that can be exploited?
Summarizing most important things:
…MEANWHILE…
No thanks… Like really… After watching (most) of this I’m shocked, instantly tired and literally out of words. Sometimes I ask myself if I’m a real troll or actually everybody is trolling… Or everybody is dumb… Well sumarizing SC2 balance patches, XXI century logic thinking and overall current worlds events… I don’t really know anymore. It’s like watching a comedy but it’s actually not a comedy but a “facts” just flippped 180 degress.
bit dramatic or not?
Ok the Ultra Terran interaction can be problematic.
but that everything is bad?
some changes like Observer, the idea was already here in the forum.
The idea of Viking that they also benefit from medi upgrade and lib upgrade? it would be a late buff if you only look at this idea.
Do people not understand that a “balance patch” is for balancing and not for changing things at random unnecessarily?
Btw would appreciate if someone could give a non-meme summary of all the changes in a few sentences cus I’m not going to watch a video.
in all honesty,
then don’t randomly quote some units name without context and accuse people of something.
just ask before you start trash talking. what kind of prole are you, first screaming: “lie” then asking: “what is this about?”
https://imgur.com/a/GOLu7Tq
So let me guess. Increase Obs speed, then giving Viking an ability to catch the Obs. Trash changes. Obs and Viking are already fine as is.
EDIT: Alright, I looked your image and yeah these changes don’t address any actual balance problem in the game. I don’t know what to call this… politically correct design changes that don’t actually have anything to do with balance. Obs on Nexus? Bad.
Massive terran nerfs, carriers will be useless and minor Zerg adjustments. Winter has become a variety streamer, his gameplay has really dropped off and thus game understanding too.
The shield battery buff alone seems absolutely insane in general (vs T or Z), but I guess that is “balanced” elsewhere(???). Sorry, I can’t take these changes seriously. Looks like trying to fix things which aren’t broken.
Oh my bad it’s not a “buff” it’s a duration change. Except it is a buff if you’re getting attacked and you’re only going to cast the ability once anyway.
People really underestimate how much a range increase improves a unit. Verse your average scrub protoss player and stalkers are meh, go against Parting and they feel legitimately broken. 7.5 range Stalkers is crazy and it won’t be just for late game timings. The same applies to vikings, Clem has them kiting carriers non stop when the range difference is 1 now imagine 10 range vikings and a speed boost.
first there are winter´s changes.
secondly, in the video he also explained his ideas.
example: Winter thinks ghost/lib should not be the main part of the late army. therefore nerf and wants to focus more on viking/tank.
With ghost I agree. with lib I have not been so aware.
DukeNukem has made a good argument: ultra positive change, but 2 counters get nerf.
not so good.
on the other hand, i am myself.
thought there could be an interesting discussion, or people could give good arguments why what is good or bad.
or if they test the mod what they make for experiences.
but Sc2 forum shows me the humanity on the net.
Imagine playing Tanks+Vikings in TvP instead of Libs+Ghosts vs buffed Stalker. Now imagine never winning another TvP again. Bit of an exaggeration but yeah. Carriers are already kind of bad in PvT so idk why those would get the nerf, and then buff the Stalker of all things which is already strong and all-purpose.
Also not a huge fan of increasing supply as a nerf, like happened to Cyclone. Very annoying.
The problem with Ultras (in ZvT anyway) is that they can be sort of beaten with Marauders. But the Terran has to be microing pretty decently to do that. So it forces micro. But if you nerf the Marauder (like before), then the Ultra for sure gets a bit too strong. Not sure how to solve this or if it’s even a real problem. Decreasing the Ultra’s size is just a sort of buff to it and makes it get more attacks in.
do you mean Ghost? because Marauders are unchanged according to the picture.
watch the video,
the idea if i remember is it lasts longer that toss can build another round of gate units.
but in return toss can’t use it as often. so you attack overcharge → wait back and then you have a bigger time window without overcharge.
i thought if you snip sb with overcharge then it hurts toss more.
the idea was to buff ground toss and weaken skytoss. or do you think that was too much in both directions?
i.e. skytoss with carrie is no longer possible and stalkers are too strong from mid to late?
Nah, I meant like I’ve kited Ultras with Marauders before and they die, if done properly. Wasn’t even thinking about Ghost. Just was talking about how the Ultralisk can be weak vs microed Marauders. Like talking about a weakness the Ultra has sometimes.
Far too much.
Stalkers don’t need any more range than they already have.
The only “problem” with Carriers is that the Interceptors interfere with targeting AIs. Reducing the attack priority on Interceptors fixes that problem completely.
Most of the other changes seem unwarranted:
If there is a problem with Ghosts, it can be solved by adjusting (or replacing) the spells. There isn’t a need to increase the supply.
Ravens? Adding a weapon is not “bad”, but it is unnecessary. It isn’t that hard to avoid suiciding Ravens, particularly when paired with Vikings where the player can a-click quite far away from the target.
Increasing the supply of Liberators is overkill. They just aren’t worth that much.
Winter seems to expect Tanks to magically replace Liberators because of a supply change and a build time decrease, and I don’t see that happening.
Tanks and Liberators have slightly different jobs based on their mobility and how they target and attack.
For the most part, Liberators are specialized for more mobile compositions, and to kill larger/tougher units. This makes Liberators better support units for Bio in a number of circumstances where Tanks are just a liability (lower mobility, friendly-fire, can’t keep up with Bio during a retreat, etc).
Siege Tanks are effective defense against a larger variety of units, but you need decent numbers of Tanks for that, and you need to protect them properly if you don’t plan to just keep losing Tanks. I doubt a build time decrease is going to encourage players to use Tanks in situations where they aren’t using Tanks already.
…Vikings really don’t need the kinds of buffs that Winter is suggesting. They are a fairly powerful anti-air unit already.
The microbial shroud change is fairly strong, but I don’t have a problem with it.
you watched the video? (only goes that we have similar context).
on the one hand it’s about balance on the other hand it’s a design question.
just this tank / viking theme → either you say I think it’s good I imagine so. or you say no so I do not imagine. and all opinion in between.
such things are rather a help for weaker players, that they also play caster. and should hit professional level less.
more player/beginner friendly.
only tested against ai as it looks. (not in a serious case). it does microbial shroud, but i think corruptor remains the better answer against skytoss.
you can do things like shroud on ultra and then let it attack. your units have protection on engage and escape without constant spam of shroud.
Of course the Corruptor is usually the better option against Skytoss. Hydralisks are most vulnerable to splash and often get into situations where most of them cannot shoot back against threats like Carriers (assuming you don’t abduct targets one by one). Microbial Shroud makes ground units tougher against air damage, but it doesn’t directly address either problem with Hydralisks.
That seems to be the better use of Microbial Shroud. Sky comps often rely on aerial damage to support a weakened ground comp, and Skytoss in particular has a tendency to rely on HT or Disruptors. Hydralisks or Corruptors can engage better if you take out those units first.
Winter said something quite important at the start of the video « the point is not so much to have perfect balance, but instead, to change the game to become more dynamic ». We’ve had a lead designer who shared the same vision in the past. His name was David Kim.
While some of his ideas (about new units in particular) were indeed addressing gaps and stales in the gameplay design-wise, the way he implemented it, and a lot of the design changes for existing units were catastrophic balance wise. I mean in TvZ early LotV were the times where a terran was supposed to all-in the Zergs before they could get 3 ultralisks, or the game was lost. And part of the ways use to achieve that were imbalanced reapers. In HotS he had also introduced the Tempests, whose sole threat at that time was enough to completely dissuade any BC or BL play ; permacloaked +40shields damage widow mines ; flying tanks (!). Nexus overcharge which allowed for timing pushs cancelling with no defending army. Siege units that outrun regular troopers (and still do btw). Burrowed constantly spawning swarm hosts which turned the game into 2H+ stalemates during which pro players where spotted tweeting in tournaments…
This is no longer the time for “redesigns then balance” patches, as SC2 just won’t get balance patches as frequently as before entering long term support mode. Let’s face it, it has taken years to recover from that “cool, fresh and dynamic stuff” priority over balance. And playing against imbalance, however dynamic it might be is NOT fun. So for me this kind of approach is a no-go ≥ 2022
This being said, in the details now :
Overall those are net buffs for toss (just producing observers from a Nexus and Stalker range upgrade are massive) ; slight buffs to Zerg ; and strong nerfs for terrans. I mean I don’t know if that’s the intent, but through Ghosts supplies/EMP/cloak nerfs, mines liberators nerfs, those would mean an important blow to bio styles in TvP/Z, while the nerfs for mech are minute. The mind behind those proposals does not want bio to have a lategame.
Interestingly enough, ghosts (which are the most nerfed units of those proposals) are a mobile unit whose countering revolves around not being immobile and having detection, and thus make the gameplay much more dynamic than it would if their power were deported to mech units such as tanks and thors. So those nerfs ideas don’t come from an idea of making the game more dynamic, IMO. Just think about it, nerfing the EMP so that the effect would attenuate with radius like a siege tank would mean you’d get only -100 energy on 3 templars if they are packed, and on 1 if they’re unpacked. Meaning you’d need maybe 8 to 16 EMP instead of 2 to 4 to avoid losing to a single storm. I mean suggesting that isn’t caring about dynamics nor even balance, it’s wanting to be able to amove bio players peacefully, without caring about the counters. And it’s not the addition of autoattacks to ravens and vipers, nor the size reduction of the ultralisks that will make me think otherwise.
As for buffing toss ground in order to make it more attractive, I’d say if something became broken to the point it reduced the metagame, nerfing what’s OP is the correct approach. It’s not because of stalkers being weak (they already got redesigned and rebalanced btw) that PvZ oscilates between ≈52 and 60% since 2021, but mainly of the skytoss/voidray buffs. If those are still too much, then revert more of them directly, don’t introduce other imbalances in other places.
However, some ideas are interesting. The currently underused microbial shroud would get an important boost and more micro interactions from both parts if being linked to an unit, and having interceptors mess less with AI-targetting would be something a lot of players could relate to. Those are the only two suggestions I’d consider not detrimental to balance in those proposals.
TL; DR :
« The age of “dynamic and fresh designs” patches is gone. The time of “balance above all” patches has come. »
And not all of those proposals go towards a more dynamic SC2.
Overnerf lib, ghost, and especially carrier. Other changes are meh.