That’s a huge nerf to storm. LIke, a massive nerf to storm, since storm currently ticks at 20 damage a tick and lasts for 4 seconds.
Hmm. This is a pretty good point, something I didn’t think about at all.
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Did’nt it always do 10 damage per tick for 8 ticks in 2.86 seconds or am i getting my facts wrong ?
Nope. It’s always been 20 damage over 4 as far as I can remember.
I think it does 10 damage per tick Liquipedia says “it does 10 damage to the target area every 0.41 second” not 100% sure though.
here’s my problem. like it or not, this change impacts TvZ, yet again. and this time it isn’t just a 10% nerf against marauders and whatever else, banes now do 25% less damage vs those units, which WILL have an impact, in yet again, what blizzard considers a balanced match.
Though we had some concerns regarding the matchup going into the current patch, the changes to Zerg seem to have been offset by changes in the map pool
so. are we supposed to expect that zerg will get zerg favored maps against terran from here on out? what happens if a map pool favors terran.
Blizzard already said the only reason they believe its balanced is because the map pool OFFSETS the changes.
well now they are nerfing Zerg again, so what happens if we get a Terran favored map pool? this is why balancing via map pools is a TERRIBLE idea.
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What? You tricked me into reading the update. You must have wrote it. Must have missed me. “Please Playa, come back and play our satanic, soul crushing game that is designed to make you hate life. You too can learn to love worshiping casters and plagiarism. We need more stuff to steal.”
Buffing the void ray, huh? Like driving around in a van and offering candy to lil kids. I don’t know about taking that bait. I feared being tempted like this, given my hate about everything that is this game. Maybe one day I’ll briefly play just to confirm whether or not P vs Z is still unwinnable in macro games or not.
I haven’t even used the “new” shield battery ability or w/e it is. I haven’t played a game in ages.
I feel like I had more or less figured out the game, in a macro sense, before I quit. But, in P vs Z, that obviously just means reaching a higher understanding of how unfair/unwinnable it is, thus not playing.
Wouldn’t that be the dream, though? You can finally win the amount of games on ladder that you should, so then you go to play in a qualifier to play against hacker after hacker, and you’re just supposed to act like it’s not a thing.
I guess positive change is a process of steps. Maybe 40 years from now we can acknowledge another problem.
The only thing I think is cost effective in P vs T is the dark templar. There is only a cost effective composition in P vs T, and that involves carriers, disruptors and colossi. If it’s not that… you’re at the mercy of the guy having a bad comp relative wise, which is hard to manage when marines and marauders own everything.
But, I was the only guy opening void rays and massing them throughout the game vs Zerg. I was always opening up with void rays vs Toss, to great effect.
50 minerals less for the void ray is a big deal, IMO. To talk about making it faster and what not? Easy guys. I’m too old and noobie to be made into the next Serral. Appreciate the effort. Imagine getting to feel like a Zerg prodigy for a day or even getting to feel like noregret. A-moving my way to GSL every year. Pinch me.
In P vs Z… I can’t really fathom just how big of a change that would be if I still played. Just that change alone would greatly buff my MMR, but everyone else was born hating the void ray… so one could probably make the void ray the liberator and pro Toss players would still refuse to use it. Gotta wait till they see Rifkin endorse its use.
The tempest? It used to do a lot of damage to massive units. It was useless/worthless then. I feel like the tempest would be an okay unit if Toss had viable options. It could serve as an intelligence test: those who are dumb will lose because they made a tempest and never figured out it was the reason they lost…
If the tempest is going to stay in this game in that role, though… I just wish the other races had land mine units, too. Like Zerg should have a unit that steals 50 minerals from them every minute and offers no value in return. That’s the tempest. Would be a way to weed out the brainless micro or bust clowns from GM.
In mid to late, FF + storms are the way to go against banes.
Also if you buff colossus against hydras/banes, you make them overperform against marines upon reaching lesser and lesser amounts of them (supposing that’s not already the case).
+1, BF Hellions would 2 shots banes, while hellbats would OS them at +3. Z are already required to be quite active vs mech, let’s not make PF bane snipes near impossible with just hellions.
I’ve given more thought to the VR speed buff.
The devs suggest to give the VR a map control creep/overlord cleaner role. But :
- Current proposal (3.85 / 5.11 speed with fluxvanes) make them as fast than vikings in early, and faster than cyclones or stimmed marines in late (I already feel the base-trade trolling potential with marines unable to reach voidrays, and stalkers being inefficient against them). And that while still being slower than mutalisks, or than corruptors before fluxvanes.
- An intermediate (+0.175 speed = 3.67 / 4.82) speed buff wouldn’t break early viking kiting possibilities that much, but would still allow fluxvanes voidrays to reverse counter cyclones and to escape even stimmed marines.
- Buffing the viking’s speed would preserve their interaction against VR, but while still breaking the one with cyclones and stimmed marines, and affecting the one of the other units meddling with vikings, such as corruptors & capital ships (which wouldn’t be that bad), but also oracles’, medivacs’, warprism’ which would certainly affect balance.
I think the balance team is proposing to give the voidray a role that it isn’t meant to fill (not to mention it would still be bad at it due to mutas). The VR is an aerial heavy assault fighter. To clear creep and map control, a fragile but fast scouting/harassing unit, with enough speed to escape queens, speedhydras, corruptors, and not being too vulnerable to mutalisks would be better. And to me, that’s the oracle :
- Faster than queens
- Faster than speed hydras even on creep
- Same speed than mutas
- No interaction breaking with vikings, cyclones nor stimmed marines, and less cancer base-trade potential
- Aligns perfectly with your harass SG openers. Because cleaning creep is nice but it’s killing drones that you want in the end
Just incite the protoss to make more oracles and to clean the creep with them, by just reducing oracle pulsar beam activation cost from 25 to 10 or 15. Leave voidray’s speed untouched, but lower the corruptors’ one to match speedrays’ current (4.72 → 4.65) to improve their role as an assault fighter, and we’re good. 
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The counter to voidrays isn’t vikings.
It’s marines.
if anything, I’d be worried about corruptor vs Voidray interaction rather than viking vs voidray. Flux vanes makes voidrays move faster than corruptor which is going to be a bit iffy, now a single corruptor will never escape a single voidray.
It’s too soon to tell, but even when that is the case, it’s just like saying how viking counter tempest. You can’t outrun vikings, so, I doubt it would be too impactful, considering mass voidray is never going to be viable anyway, just make hydras.
That’s the thing. They can’t change oracle’s pulsar beam activation cost too much anymore, it would be too much of a hassle to deal with.
reducing it to 10 or 15 means that oracle will be even more annoying to deal with as a Zerg or Protoss player, that would make oracle to be “Active” at harassing 10 to 15 seconds faster, it would be like widow mine drop that deals less damage initially but very hard to clean up, and can stack up on damage.
Besides, this void ray buff might make it see play, so, why not?
Nobody makes voidrays against Zerg because hydra is a thing. With this buff, at least Voidrays are now like the Protoss’ version of mutalisk. Speedy, bad in straight up engagement, isn’t too cost efficient but good at map control. Which is indeed what Protoss need, map control, at least, until mutas come out.
It’s marines if you’re a bio player. Cyclones or vikings (± mines) if you go mech.
But guess what, with proposed buff, stimmed marines (4.72 speed) wouldn’t be able to catch speed rays (5.11 speed). Do you see the issue ? Not to mention, even before introducing fluxvanes, the aerial nature of the VRs still allowed them to escape by using dead spaces. Now they’d be impossible to catch by a terran, and could be inefficiently catched by suicidal blink stalkers/phoenixes as a protoss.
I 'm not sure about that. I mean, in almost every high level PvZ SG opener I saw, the limiting factor in harass performance wasn’t the oracle’s energy, but its tanking against queens and spores. And if you killed 3 drones in a pass, it would already be a good performance.
Anyway, even if reducing the pulsar’s beam to 10 was to much, you could go for 15, or 15+ a slight decrease in oracles’ starting energy (so that they don’t hit faster once produce, but can activate more often later). Or tweak the cost, IDK. Just don’t break the game by making the VR outspeed 95% of its counters…
That applies to midgame.
In early game, IMO nobody make VRs because your want to kill drones (-> oracles/phoenixes), unless roaches/nydus are spotted (and in that case immortals are better against queens).
In lategame, they have a role against corruptors, since VR are armored killers. With 250 HP, 4 supplies, and the highest anti-armored DPS of the game, they’re not scouting units !
Anyway, their design comes from their role. It’s as if I said : well reapers aren’t popular in lategame. Let’s give them +120HP and +2 range so they can be used as scouting units AND heavy assault infantry. That’d just be broken ; it’s not their role.
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Of course you love it, they are buffing your op race…
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“Though there’s some contention on this topic, our current belief is that given an even early game, the rest of the game also feels even, and there is a lot both races can do to impact the outcome of the match. Overall, this is another matchup that we think mostly needs some time to breathe and develop.”
Thats what blizzard seems to think. I guess you should just breathe and develop. Could be alittle difficult to develop your builds
We don’t need time to see Protoss is too strong and need nerfs. It’s fairly evident with 55% WR and overrepresentation in every tournament. What we need it HEAVY Protoss nerfs.
Blizzard seems to disagree with you. Sounds like they’re saying “hey terran players, we aren’t going to hold your hands anymore. You need to learn new strategies and adapt, just like zerg and protoss players did in the face of massive nerfs while terran was buffed intensely. It is on you to improve your stats”.
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Finally the revenge of sky toss coming
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Tasty tears about how patch not nerf protoss again
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Can I ask you when do you get stim upgrade?
If you get stim at the same time Protoss get flux vanes, that’s your problem really.
And really, thank you blizzard, now at least Voidrays isn’t given the death sentence whenever they see 4 marines.
Again, I’m seeing a problem with 5.1 movement speed against corruptor, but against T? Nah.
And it’s not like they come out with 5.1 movement speed. You still need that fleet beacon, that’s a huge investment in the mid game.
Honestly, these are some pretty good changes. Some small protoss buffs here and there and some big baneling nerfs. I really hope to pay attention to banes effectiveness vs battle mech after the patch. Maybe cyclones are going to get a little bit too effective vs banes but we shall see!
Good patch. Good to see blizzard begin to address key problems with overpriced and underperforming protoss units. The complaints about void rays and tempests have been ongoing for years.
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