Balance suggestions for blizzcon update 2019

General Discussion
21

Be respectful guys, OP is being respectful. I apreciate your feedback but I wish to debate some of this because I desagree with some proposals:

Why this? That is bias talking, if the Viking has an issue it would be with Parasitic Bomb and Fungal, no need to upgrade armor.

I don’t know but I think this would break the game in favor of sieging units and Terran siege is already too strong.

Mantain their strenght? That is a huge nerf. What is Protoss suposed to do to defend Mutas? Mutas shuts down any Protoss harass, provides huge map presence, defending it is super micro depending and double Stargate opening would not exist anymore, poor Rotterdam.

Again, what is the Protoss suposed to do vs BLs Libs? To avoid being hit by Tempest just kill what is giving it vision, it’s not easy I know but its doable, in the other hand noting would hit Libs… 5 range nerf, my god, Blizzard nerfs is enough… This is not a viable sugestion to fight Mutas either, we simply can’t just build a Fleet Beacon and then build a Tempest to shut down Muta harass and they are realy fast that split is not a problem to them.

While it breaks my heart to nerf my HT, with this nerf I agree, I used to shutdown medivacs out of the sky midflight to my base with one HT killing 20+ suply just like that.

Blink Stalkers doesn’t stop Mutalisk, they are a bad response, Mutas will keep killing Probes for free regenerate and return and forcing Blink Stalkers to sit in the mineral line. And that would be a buff to Blink harass openers vs Terran, I don’t mind it, but Terrans might not like it.

Is there a reason for puting the Colossus in range of the Marauders or you just throw that without thinking about just because it’s a Protoss unit? It’s good the damage buff but idk if it would be kind of broken vs Roaches or Terran mech, but that would definetly not exclude other robo units. I like it overall even with the unnecessary early range nerf.

3 Likes
22

The problem isn’t the stats. The problem is the PDD ability itself. PDD only affects projectiles, and projectiles deal vastly different amounts of damage.

The direct consequence of this is that PDD’s strength varies widely based on which enemy you are fighting., and this makes PDD impossible to be balance to be useful in most cases without making it absolutely broken on edge cases.

An example of a good ability is Defensive Matrix. Defensive Matrix absorbs only 250 damage (for the BW version, 200 damage at half the cost on co-op), so it provides consistent absorption no matter what unit you use it on.

An AOE version of defensive matrix or a % reduction field would also be examples of good abilities because they have a consistent effect that the caster can be balanced around.

….Are you stupid?
Hellbats are already mechanical. The biological tag allows Hellbats to be healed by Medivacs and targeted by biological-only abilities like snipe and transfuse; and it also causes Hellbats to take extra damage from Archons (which deal a bonus against biological units).

Immortals deal anti-armor damage, and they are specifically not meant to counter light units like Hellbats (which are supposed to serve as a meat-shield for mech against Immortals).

1 Like
23

What? Mech in TvP is fine.

No thanks, Mag-Field is already a great upgrade that needs no buffs from where it is right now.

Vikings should already have 1 base armour. If they don’t it’s not intentional by design. All armoured units start with base +1 armour.

Remove utility, add an old ability that was stupid, and give the old ability an exception to its primary use. This goes against the design of the game in many ways.

So you buff the unit with +1 armour to compensate for, effectively a 3 range nerf (with upgrade). The cost reduction is nice, but not needed at all and does nothing to help the phoenix. Right now, it’s perfect in its current role and any changes to it wouldn’t help the unit, it would only be a change for the sake of changing things.

There was a reason this was removed. Because it was completely broken against every single air unit because all air units stack. This would also remove alter the tempests role, which needs to happen because the unit is so derpy, but not in a good way.

Blink is fine. This is a change for the sake of changing.

This change was the most perfect change blizzard has ever created. Feedback was strong because it instantly killed every unit that had over a certain amount of energy. This change helped so much for the other races, as feedback still removed all the energy, but kept the unit alive. Leaving it as dead supply.

Ok, I like this one. The build time shouldn’t change since it will be 10x harder to kill with the frenzied tag on it.

Not a fan of this change. It removes a lot of ground counterplay to the colossus. Protoss players like to complain about how bad the unit is, but it’s good as it is now. The new turret-tracking change was a huge buff to the colossus that made it a more responsive unit, and have an increase in DPS.

I mean, I hate disruptors so woot woot I love it!

24

These are the only good changes.

Everything else is awful, like some are just nonsensical, incredibly biased or borderline gamebreaking. This list of changes show you have done 0 actual testing and you should have made a balance mod to see just what your suggested changes would look like in game.

It’s not, that’s why you rarely if ever see it. Removing the Bio-tag off Hellbats is an extremely simple and effective way to make TvP Mech far more viable because Hellbats would be able to survive longer against Archons which is huge.

Hellbats already have a Mechanical attribute tag and Immortals do a bonus vs Armored.

1 Like
25

What are you talking about?. Removing the Bio tag off hellbats only impacts the interaction between them and Archons, all other unit interactions remain exactly the same.

And you don’t see how that is completely gamebreaking for Terran and Zerg to not be able to use energy units vs Protoss with them dying with 1 simple click?.

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26

Did you really just ignore what he wrote before that.

They even say they agree with the nerf. I think they do see how it was game breaking and agree it should have changed.

3 Likes
27

“What we wrote”?

Right, and I was just pointing out how it shouldn’t go back to the state it was in.

28

Sorry that was a typo and I corrected it already.

If this is how you point out that something shouldn’t change, you might want to rethink how you talk to people. Forming the point in a question doesn’t seem like you are making a point. It seems as if you are questioning the persons understanding of the nerf.

2 Likes
29

I did in fact test some of the changes in the sc2 editor before posting. Most of the changes are easy to predict on their own. I think the two most “deceptive” changes are the Tempest and Mothership.

First, I would like to preface this by saying, I’m not Blizzard. I’m a lowly M3 Terran. Even if I had the time to spend all day fidgeting with the numbers – I’d never know when I’ve struck the right balance. It would take a lot of games, and pro feedback. So, not wanting to sound pretentious – I omitted these specifics in the original post.

Tempest

I figured the tempest’s splash needed to be more significant than the thor’s Javelin missiles - given the thor’s tankyness. I liked 1.25 for the radius, it felt significant regardless if mutas “magic boxed” the tempests. (for reference thor’s have 0.5 / 0.6 radius, widow mine radius is 1.75, upgraded emp is 2) The base splash damage per shot was 8 – bonus to light was +22 (by comparison thors deal 12 x 4).

In low numbers, Vikings with +1 armor traded fairly well with tempests. Here’s an example:

5 Tempest 1250 minerals 875 gas

vs

8 Viking 1200 600 gas

The outcome changed based on the arc/stack of the Vikings. Sometimes Vikings won with 3 remaining in orange/yellow health, other times tempests won with 2 remain in green and red health. The higher the quantities, the greater the scale tips in favor of the tempests. Changing the tempest’s acceleration was tested, but it significantly improved tempest results which I didn’t think was necessary.

Considering their larger radius, lower damage, and lower health - 10 tempests cleared 30 mutas only somewhat less cost efficiently than 10 thors. On the plus side, tempests are faster, can maintain high ground vision, and can more comfortably move between bases. One change I didn’t mention and I should is - I lowered the tempests damage point from 1.5 to 0.5.

Summary

Damage point is the delay between when a unit is in range to fire, and when it actually damages its target. Currently the tempest waits a whole 1.5 seconds

This made tempests more responsive when mutas skirted around the edges of their range. I gotta say, they felt cool - less one dimensional. Like the thor, the tempest didn’t feel like dead supply when it’s intended counter units aren’t remade - but with a roll totally opposite from its front line counterpart.

Mothership

The acceleration buff is more significant than some might think. TBH it came as a surprise to me. We all know the mothership can move while channeling mass recall – but its slow. I mean, really slow. This is a result of the motherships awful acceleration - not some channeling debuff or anything. With an acceleration buff of 3, the mothership can pick back up to its max speed in about ½ a second while recalling (4 second channel time). In edge cases, where enemy armies lack AA (or emp) the mothership could use recall as an engage tool – similar to corsairs in BW.

3 Likes
30

The issue with vikings is their vulnerability to spells not gta

2 Likes
31

This dosen’t help for pvz muta play but makes tvp worse for terran

No

pheonix changes arent bad except -1 base range

most of your changes make sense but wtf is with the tempest, its fine

33

Yes because ranged libs wont break the game with 10 range tempests

you stupid donut

2 Likes
34

Haha, I thought of Rotti when considering the phoenix changes too. I certainly don’t want to hurt phoenix openings - and I’d have to disagree that these changes would. I’d like to point out that - graviton beam has a range of 4, so their harass would largely stay the same. The -1 range would probably effect PvT more, but so would the +1 armor.

With regard to mutas… Sincerely, educate me guys – how does a unit that’s faster, has longer range, can shoot while moving, and deals bonus damage not considered a counter? Some of you seem to think they won’t be. Do people think mutas have 4 range? I know 1 range difference is only slight, but the direct engagements are more phoenix favored anyway, the 1 armor reduces muta damage by 3 and the price reduction helps close the gap between the phoenix-to-mutalisk ration. The +1 range given to phoenix in hots was imo a lazy balance band-aid.

Lastly, I’ll touch on opener diversity. Mutas have never been patched in lotv, so lets look at some of the differences with protoss between hots and now. Mothership was cut (no photon overcharge on nexus). Shield batteries were added, and stalkers now deal 14 damage (up from 10). Stalkers kill mutas in 8.5 shots, down from 12.0 (basically 13 shots). What do you guys think? Is this a net positive or negative?

I agree, if the muta count gets too big stalkers can’t deal, but in the early game, is blink not an answer? Would more changes be needed to protoss ground aa? Would protoss still be able to open robo or twilight in a muta viable meta? I think so, otherwise we’d be seeing spires about as much as we see nydus play vs stargate right now.

1 Like
35

Phoenix is a counter to Mutas, never denied that, all I’m saying is that 1 range difference is super inconsistent countering, because a Spire play the Zerg shows up with 7 mutas, forcing Stalkers warp in as a palatative response while you can get 3 Phoenixes and lose your time microing because if you don’t micro well the Phoenixes will die, 3 to 4 Phoenixes vs 7 to 12 Mutas guess who wins without micro.

With 2 range difference is already not that easy, you must give it attention, 1 range is super inconsistent, Protoss has already small room for miatakes, you just gonna make it shorter for no reason.

5 Likes
36

The PDD idea is interesting, i like that as it would help vikings/terran overall in the late game against things like tempests and corruptors without a new problem aoe spell… The hellbat one would be a big nerf though wouldn’t it? Medivacs can’t heal them if they have that.

I just want them to overall stop pushing Terran into harassing (no super vacs) and give them some QoL useability changes in mid/late game. This race feels terrible if you aren’t big into drops or harassing and is incredibly hard to use late game for anyone who isn’t a pro or doesn’t have a huge lead already. I’d rather them do things like make stim usable for bio while selecting ghosts (not for the ghosts themselves) or remove tac jump in return for some BC upgrades for late game or something.

Terran has two clear problems to me and harassment isn’t one of them. Why not do some economic changes or QoL? Why push them even further into a role they’re already good at?

37

That depends on how the Hellbats are actually used by the player. There are upsides and downsides to this:

The downsides:

  • Hellbat drops and all-in Bio pushes (TvZ pushes after the Hellions come back from harassment) could be a bit weaker.
  • Terran would not have the option to build 1 Medivac to heal their Hellbats without pulling SCVs or spending resources on repairs.

The upsides:

  • Hellbats will be a bit more resilient to Archons. This specifically helps Hellbat-Tank-x or Hellion-Cyclone compositions out a bit in TvP; but in Hellbat-Tank-x compositions it starts to matter less as the Tank count gets higher or if the player uses Liberators, Thors, or Battlecruisers to focus down the Archons before they get close to the Hellbats.
  • Hellbats can no longer be targeted by Steady-Targeting.

PDD was always a problematic ability, so it is a bad idea to bring that back. The scaling randomly changes for each projectile, so the strength of PDD is very inconsistent and it cannot be balanced to be useful in one situation without being overpowered in another.

There are plenty of more useful alternatives like Repair Drone or Defensive Matrix that do have consistent effects if a Raven spell is to be replaced.

1 Like
38

You know hellbats often get countered/fight banes. It adds some little variety to factory units too so there not all armored. Hellbats already don’t do well against stalkers or immortals and collossi should do extra damage to them. There’s just no reason to change it.

39

Banelings do a bonus vs light, which Hellbats are.

It adds nothing but a weakness vs archons when they never should have been a thing in the first place.

Colossus already do extra damage vs them because they are Light.

It’s already been explained. Archons wouldn’t do bonus damage vs them which greatly helps TvP Mech viability.

1 Like
40

Yes I know those things and that’s why I think they should stay light. Why would making them armored make mech better vs toss? Did you see Ty vs. Parting? Archons suck vs mech except for against hellbats,(and of course vikings) atleast give them that… Shiiii. They’re a gas dump that’s probably better spent on sg’s, blink dts, etc. They get wrecked by tanks, tthors, bcs, libs, even banshees

41

Who said they should be armored? The topic was removing the biological tag.

2 Likes