Tell you what, why don’t you actually explain how you went from a list of AOE effects, to this:
Because you never explained that jump.
For Zerg, you have 1/6 sources of friendly-fire, although most of them explicitly don’t deal friendly-fire because they are on melee units, meant to be used alongside melee units, or deal a form of splash where friendly-fire would be impossible to avoid.
For Terran, you have 5/9 sources of friendly-fire splash, not including AAM (which is also effectively a damage ability), Somehow you change that to 1-1 with no explanation.
For Protoss you have 2/4 sources of friendly-fire splash. Storm usually won’t matter to Protoss because Protoss units are extremely durable and you have full control over it (so you aren’t likely to hit your own units). Disruptors do hurt, but you are also unlikely to hit any of your own units unless you very badly mess up your control.
No, there isn’t. You made a logical leap from one set of stats to another with no explanation.
Other people are not you. They don’t know what is going on inside of your head, so if you jump from one set of numbers to another with no explanation of the formula you are using (assuming there even is one), then you are just going to lose people. As far as I know, you pulled those numbers from thin air based on your own biases with no thought behind them.
Clearly the Zerg has a lot of area damage options, while protoss does not have many.
The numbers of the Zerg units are considerable more than the protoss units in comparison with the supply cost per unit.
If you are not capable to understand what is this post about, then you should make some research before commenting.
First, I’m not certain why the number of splash damage units matters. Their relative strength is more important; and Storms, Disruptors, and Archons are each relatively powerful. Most Zerg splash damage units tend to have larger radii, but lower damage or DPS (although this does not always hold).
Second, you still haven’t explained how you get that 1/2 - 1, 1 - 1, 2-1, etc. What is the formula behind that.
What do you mean by “supply cost per unit”, and what does it matter?
I’m not a developer, but design decisions can often be intuited through the way the race works as a whole. As pointed out, the fact that Zerg’s units are often melee units, which having friendly fire on things like banelings would cause a chain reaction of detonations that would make having friendly fire on them actively make the unit useless.
Or Lurkers, who’s spines have to travel through your own units to get to the enemy every time, and apply damage to everything in a line. Friendly fire there would directly negate any and all ability to use them too.
There’s more but these two are particularly pertinent.
Tanks, widow mines, nukes and EMP all friendly fire, as to ravens AAM. You explicitely state, and I quote:
We’ve seen multiple instances even in Pro play where nukes have friendly fired units. Innovation nuked his own Vikings accidentally a while back.
EMP directly effects energy; dropping an EMP accidentally on your army means you suddenly have no energy for medivacs, potentially erase energy on cloaking for ghosts themselves.
Ravens have a huge radius for their Anti-armour missile which makes units significantly more vulnerable.
Tanks and mines need no explanation, though both of these needed further context - specifically mines are short range and have a 30 second cool down on firing, while tanks have a minimum firing range and require spotters to use their full range, making “long range” harder to use.
No I’m saying that storm in the context of PvP is garbage because protoss units are extremely tanky.
Vs both Zerg and Terran, Storm is much more effective because - mech aside - their units are much squishier and every tick of damage is a much larger % of health.
The context of being unable to break shields is extremely important; especially when you regen shields rapidly only a few seconds after the fight, so any friendly fire is negligible at best from storm.
Again, you missed the point. Stating it is for one thing, but is not for another despite them sharing the same attribute is a direct misrepresentation.
Both the colossus and the ravager have 9 range - ravager from bile, colossus from its attack. And the colossus specifically is much more consistent in its damage.
I’m not whining; I’m pointing out that your comparisons are disingenuous at best because they leave out critical information.
What you explicitely stated was that you’re listing spells and abilities that do friendly fire:
Thus the raven is pertinent - and it’s also important to remember that despite it not being a damaging skill, it directly effects the outcome of the fight drastically, and it’s ability to friendly-fire can and has changed the outcome of the fight.
This post is ridiculous. I’d recommend you guys don’t interact anymore here because the basic premise of the post itself is a laughable comparison from which no conclusions can be drawn by anyone reasonable.
Its useless to try to compare the mere sources of friendly fire spash damage without taking into account the context of how each race functions, game design and the usability of said sources.
I can also say that all the units that are not protoss are weaker than protoss units because the latter have shields whiile the terran and zerg units don’t. I can even list all the protoss units that have shields to prove my point! What an imbalance right?
Clearly people that does not understand, instead of debating will just try to attack the other, thats an Ad hominem attack.
Nothing you said, has any relevance in the data presented, just mere opinions and supositions.
The ONLY value that AAM has is that it increases the damage that affected units take. AAM is a damage spell. It is a conditional damage spell, but it is still functionally a damage spell.
I didn’t properly read this thread before writing this reply. I keep getting interrupted and not able to finish gathering my thoughts. I’m intending to write elaboration towards most of the thread.
Well, yes, I do think Widow Mines, Vipers, and Disruptors all are very imbalanced. But on the ‘fun’ and ‘game design decision’ sides, not much in ‘power level’. They’re powerful in a way that centralizes game plans around them/the fact they exist, but that’s also true of like… Marines, Tanks, Thors, Zerglings, Ultralisks, Broods, Adepts, Immortals, Carriers.
“X is bad because Y exists and is easy for my opponent to grab” is very real when you’re looking at the design of these things - and it is actually okay for things to not be “fair” because the point is to be asymmetric.
As a Protoss-primarily player, this just isn’t… true. Outside of Zealots, your army really isn’t at risk of being Psi-Stormed nor Purification Nova’d. I genuinely think, that at… even at mid-diamond, you would see almost zero change if you made Purification Nova not have friendly fire.
While, sure, you can throw a Psi-Storm on your own Zealots, you won’t, which already absolves you from 20 of the button’s 80 damage. Strategically, this is why you want to place the storm inside the ball of Marines.
Just from these two bullets, I don’t understand.
Ravager Bile is close to the same range as Storm. 8-9 cast range, though Bile’s smaller in radius. Both races have melee units for their mineral dump unit, that are vulnerable to these AoE sources.
If you’re arguing that Corrosive Bile is a long range spell then basically definitionally, Purification Nova and Psionic Storm are as well. If we’re arguing that you can easily not Bile your own stuff, then you can also just as easily not Storm or Nova your stuff by not aiming at it. This argument’s also true for EMP & Nuke.
Yes, Protoss has the lowest number of splash sources, the highest percentage of self-damage on hitting itself with spells, and no decaying splash that hits its own team.
It also has, arguably, the splash source with the most favorable difficulty to efficacy ratio, because HT are not hard to build due to WG’s mechanics and I think it’s debatable that Storm is the best area damage spell.
Each race is different, and what matters with the numbers is how they correlate to the other races. Storm simply does not deal meaningful amounts of self-damage, I’d be pretty often surprised if it was more than 30 damage on two or three units.
Your argument is along the lines of that since Zerg has the lowest supply density in its units, it has the most units, therefore its opponents need more splash, therefore it in turn should have the least amount of splash; correct?
Except this is accounted for in the unit stat blocks. It’s why Roaches are such noted mediocre damage units, why Zerglings have 35 HP, etc.? Quantity doesn’t really directly reflect the need for splash damage!
Particularly, consider how the Marine, not the Zergling, is more in danger from area damage spells. This is directly because it is ranged, so it clumps up more - and there is far less of a penalty to having ‘too many’ of that unit so you’re incentivized to get more.
100 Zerglings don’t deal more DPS than like 20. They sustain that damage for longer, since they get replaced - it’s not really different than “the only HP that matters is the last” in principle. The fact that there is that amount of extra time to create additional fortifications, units, or bring back units means that you “need less splash” to deal with Zerglings than Marines per HP, which in turn is made fair because Zerglings have more HP and DPS per mineral than Marines do.
Looking at how Protoss is the most supply-dense per-unit while Zerg is the least so as a reason why Protoss needs more splash damage sources doesn’t make sense. As long as each race has splash damage access, what actually matters is how functional that damage is at countering units that would be problematic to deal with in absence of that splash damage.
These two paragraphs, alone, are a much more eloquent way to say at least half of what I said in that massive block of text above. Thank you so much.
Protoss does not need more sources of splash damage because it has the highest supply density. That argument doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t need more sources of splash damage because Zerglings are so numerous – that’s why it needs any amount of splash damage, but Psionic Storm and Colossi are extremely good at dealing with that particular problem - and that is what is necessary.
Its most iconic source of spread damage, the High Templar, are also fairly able to be built due to being producible out of Warp Gates.
hello yes have you read the text of your own post because it includes
While, yes, there is some degree of difference between the unit shot and damaged my stuff and i pressed a button and damaged my stuff; both are instances of friendly fire damage from a thing whose purpose is to provide the tool of multi-enemy damage.
And this is where I think it totally falls apart.
I do not think that Protoss’ splash damage that can theoretically hit itself matters as much as how Terran’s tanks hit themselves in terms of determining fight results.
Then why call either of them “long range”? We already know them, right?
That’s what Miro is specifically calling out. If you call attention to something, ie. that X skill is long range, then by not saying it for Y skill, you are implying that Y skill is not in possession of that trait.
Directly, “a big blue and a red square” implies that the red square is not as big as the blue one.
You started this trend by saying Miro didn’t have reading comprehension. “Treat others as you want to be treated”; leading with “you can’t read” when there’s a disconnect between what you put down and what you receive is … bad.
Indeed, these are true statements.
And, so what?
Why are those true statements important? What about them is important? Where is the problem?
If you just want to post trivia (heaven knows I do that plenty) that’s all good, but the opening post’s language to me as well implies that you think this is, in some capacity, a problem.
From that “X is true and is a problem”, we get to Miro’s post. I’m only going to particularly care about the first two blocks, and stitch them upside-down:
[…] [when you] list the amount of splash damage that friendly fires, […]
[…] it disregards game design decisions that directly influence the decisions made around the various splash damages for each race.
There’s really not much to add here. Each button that the race has considers both the other units the race has and also what units it needs to counter.
For example, High Templar don’t counter Battlecruisers at all, but both Infestors and Vipers are extremely good at hosing Battlecruisers. This is totally fine and only a tiny issue, because Protoss can use Stalkers and Tempests to beat them instead. Zerg does not have a Tempest-like unit, and while the Hydralisk and Corruptor are perfectly serviceable units there might be other reasons you don’t want to use them in that match-up.
Different factions are different, and Protoss having the least amount of splash, the highest percentage of self-damaging splash, and having the highest supply density are all completely irrelevant to any balance or design issues on an inherent level. That is not to say that there could not be massive issues from this trio of decisions, but that these decisions themselves are not what would be the cause of issues.
The rest of it is about how the exact specific post you made has deceptive elements from a casual read and therefore is deceitful / underhanded / dishonest if you don’t think critically or have the numbers memorized yourself.
a. i can’t believe it
b. i really can’t see how this could be an issue, do people rapidfire EMPs that imprecisely?
EMP doesn’t do damage - it can never kill a unit. It depletes shields, decreasing the unit’s survivability in that fight, but all durability lost due to EMP will be restored should the unit live that fight or disengage.
AAM doesn’t do damage - it can never kill a unit. It shreds armor, decreasing the unit’s survivability in that fight, but the lost durability will return should the unit disengage or live that fight.
Like, this is a really tongue in cheek pair I’m giving you, but AAM is an ability that reduces army survivability in an area, which is also true of every other action listed — If you want to address some issue present in splash damage, then some respect or note needs to be paid to anti-armor missile so that we know why you’re not including it in the analysis.
Please note the words “9 range” in Miro’s post, and read the following quotes from your opening post.
Do you notice how the 9 range Ravager Bile ability has the word “long range skill” in it, whereas the Colossus’ 9 range Thermal Lance attack is not given that same descriptor? How about how the High Templar’s 9 range Psionic Storm is also not given that tag?
I’ll see if I can find the clip, I think it was a game against rogue in the GSL back when innovation was still competing. it was pretty infamous.
As for EMP, when you are dealing with things like zealots or DTs jumping on your army it isn’t entirely uncommon to EMP your own units.
That aside, there were/are niche situations in which EMPing your own units can be beneficial too - back when Ravens still had seeker missiles, it used to be a strategy to EMP your medivac so it couldn’t be feedbacked, target it with seeker missiles and launch it at your opponent. Granted that was quite a while ago (we are talking well over 8 years ago at this point IIRC), but the point still stands.