DankTemplar's WHINGE thread

General Discussion
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In this thread I’m going to go over the stuff I personally think is busted or dumb in sc2. Some of this will be biased and make no sense.

Terran:

Widow Mines

The +shield damage is obnoxious vs Protoss and isn’t needed anymore. Oracles kinda suck now so no need to 1 shot them and if Charge gets nerfed, then they’re not really needed to deal with Chargelots. The +shield damage on Widow Mines is a relic from a different time and is a major balance flaw.

EMP

Good vs energy, broken vs Shields after the upgrade.

BCs

They are too good and it’s not Warp that makes them good. It’s that they force extreme reactions to deal with early, which opens you up to, say a bunch of Hellbats or Stim Marines showing up where the BC can join in with the army. Pretty obnoxious to deal with and there’s no real answer early that doesn’t leave you extremely vulnerable. BC openers are busted imo. Especially vs Zerg.

Interference Matrix

Locking down key tech units is silly. Especially in TvP…makes almost all timings utter garbage in the MU.

Reapers

Reapers are basically a scouting or cheese unit. They have no other purpose.

Zerg

Infestors

Fungal Growth can eat a fat, greasy one. What a dumb, broken spell. Slow+guaranteed DoT, which can be chained into more slow and more DoT…

Ultralisks

For an expensive unit it’s freaking garbage. Mostly because it has pathing so bad it makes BW Dragoons look good…

Give it the ability to walk over smaller units or make the Ultralisk realize it has a fat collision size so it stops thinking it can squeeze into a space where only zerglings can fit…

Protoss

Ohhhh boy this race is a mess right now.

Tempest

Unit is just bad. Want to know why? It’s because the unit has no viability outside of sniping air units. It might as well not have a ground attack with the overkill, slow projectile speed and slow attack speed. Why not give it an instant attack? Like a flash of lightning? This at least stops the absurd overkill it runs into once it’s role of AA is complete or minimized.

Adepts

Adepts are so lackluster right now. All they can do is kill workers and scout or allin. They’re not a core unit at all and if I remember right, they’re supposed to be a core unit.

Carriers

Want to throw a game? Make Carriers…they die to focus fire and only shine when you have enough splash damage to wash off the focus firing units. In other words, it’s a deathball unit and nothing else. It could use some TLC.

Mothership

What a trash panda unit. It’s too expensive for what it does. Way too expensive. Long build time is okay though.

Void Ray

Do people build these still? I only see maybe 3 or 4 of them in a game and then they get phased out for nearly any other unit later on.

Disruptor

All or nothing design is bad.

So yep. That’s my whinge list. Some of it you’ll agree with, some of it you won’t.

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Well since we are ranting about things that bother us

Terran:
Widow mines: it either kills your whole army/worker line or do nothing, and just the mere possibility of terrans having some of these spread is enough to make you fear of moving out of your base. I feel the only reason they added this abomination to SC2 is so we can have nostalgia feeling about BW mines

Reaper: have no role in the game

EMP: too strong versus protoss

Mass late game orbitals: or the legal maphack as I like to call it

Zerg:
Infestor: too good versus everything and the only spellcaster in the game that can be massable and fight on its own instead of being a support unit, like the other spellcasters

Nydus worm: too cheese and easy to abuse

Late game creep spread: zerg’s version of legal maphack

Protoss:
Cannon rushing: begone with this s**t please

Disruptor: RTS is no place to play dodge ball, also similar to widow mines, hit or miss, you either land a money shot and win or opponent dodges it and you lose

Oracle: have no role in the game

Tempest: trash unit, doesn’t counter what’s supposed to counter

Mothership: this is not warcraft in space, we shouldn’t have hero units

Lack of late game legal maphack: terran and zerg have it, protoss should too

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I’ll bite.

First and foremost… map folding mechanics like Tac Jump, Nydus, and warp prism have NO PLACE IN RTS and were terrible ideas from the get go. These mechanics should be defensive only unless you really have to commit into them with high risk. Combine this with something like the Swarm Host and its just awful.

Spell Casters. Smart-casting made casters far too strong in SC2 and they’re still a problem now (especially Zergs). Spamming spells (esp AoE/mind control) is way too powerful in SC2 as counter play is super difficult. The current infestor is a symptom of this poor design and things like the disruptor just don’t work in RTS without making the game solely about them.

Terran and harassment. I hate this forced harassment design for Terran and focus on econ damage overall. All races should be able to play passive if the opponent is doing the same. if you force a race to do damage it will make them predictable and frustrating to play as and against. No idea why they’re buffing the medivac or why they added tac jump in the first place. I’d much rather see Terran lose some mid game harassment power in return for some economic buffs or late game QL changes/buffs.

Gimmicks. LOTV introduced way too many super powerful abilities/units and gimmicks, I don’t like any of it and would rather play end of HOTS sc2. Gimmicks can be fun but when they’re powerful it just feels annoying.

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Spider Mines were more dangerous to everything but Archons, Vultures, and workers back when they are around, so I’m sure you would be more afraid of moving out if those still existed. Brood War Spider Mines would be more fun, too bad they don’t work well in the StarCraft II engine and it is kind of too late to add them.

Technically Widow Mines were made to try to close several gaps in mech back when it had to use HOTS Thors or Vikings for anti-air and struggled in smaller engagements. Mech no longer “needs” the unit because of the addition of the Cyclone and Liberators, and the improvements to the Thor and Viking though.

Widow Mines are necessary for Bio against Zergling/Baneling, and they are useful for Bio in some other cases; so I don’t think they can be removed at this point. Tweaked maybe, but not removed.

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What’s your opinion on the Widow Mine in TvP?

I agree with most of what you said about the WM in TvZ (I don’t think it needs any changes for TvZ).

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Man, wth. Please, for the love of god people, stop hating on the void ray. Whether it sounds incredibly sad/wrong or w/e, the void ray is one of Toss BEST UNITS. The only downside is that it’s absolutely useless vs Terran.

If you guys keep decrying the void ray as a trash unit, they will change it to ACTUALLY be a trash unit like EVERY OTHER UNIT TOSS HAS, sans the disruptor.

But yeah, every other unit sucks pretty bad. The carrier is a god unit vs Toss, if you can get them, since ofc Toss isn’t allowed to have anti air. It’s okay, maybe even good, vs Zerg. Disruptor is good vs Zerg, stupid vs Toss. That’s about it for the good parts of Toss. Everything else… GL with the garbage.

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I don’t play Bio, so I am not used to using Widow Mines in TvP and I don’t see them very often outside of Widow Mine drops. As such, I don’t have strong opinions about the unit in that match-up.

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I think the idea of increasing vision capabilities as the game progresses if a player consistently invests in it throughout the game (like creep spread and massing orbitals) is a nice design idea. The problem is indeed that protoss has no such capabilities. That’s why lategame for Toss tends to be so deathbally and kind of boring (unless its a lategame PvP in which case youre probably in a crazy basetrade scenario - congratulations!). I’d prefer if they found out a way to give Protoss such a mechanic compared to just removing scans and creep. I do believe creep spread is a bit overpowered right now but it’s more a problem with Queens than with creep.

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lozl r u still try 2 pretend u r not a bias plantinam protons player?

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I have more of a general complaint rather than a specific unit or spell etc. As a non-Zerg who used to enjoy watching Zerg players throughout hots I find Zerg play style becoming increasingly boring overall (there are many exceptional players who do not fall into this category but i’m talking about the standard meta which is how most EU Zergs play at least). It looks like somehow we’ve arrived at a sort of fixed point for the Zerg meta in all non-mirror matchups. A fixed point meta is not a necessarily a bad thing but I feel that our fixed point has many bad characteristics.

Openings are predictable, greedy and defensive all at the same time. This is thanks to Zerg having potentially the scariest early aggression of all 3 races (early lings) coupled with the strongest early defense of all 3 races (Queens). It makes the entire early game heavily Zerg favoured. They basically start with a lead. Then in the mid-game things kind of even out. If the Zerg capatalizes on his lead by being greedy defending well and not making mistakes he ends up ahead (which is how most of the games look like) if he messes up however he’s usually in big trouble of course because he played greedy while other races usually play extremely aggressive in the mid-game vs Zerg so it will usually end badly. You would imagine that if the Zerg manages to get safely to the mid-game this is the point in the game where Zerg would want to capatalize on their lead and end the game. It could have been so if only there weren’t an even safer route to win by getting to the ancient army comp nobody knows how to counter still (broodlord/infestor). So the game prolongs for another 10+ minutes and if the Zerg doesn’t make any big mistake he wins a very boring stretched out lategame.

This meta is unhealthy for many reasons.

  1. It’s asymmetrical - one side (the Zerg) always plays defensive waiting for the aggression to come to him and all of the game is up to the opponent who has to come up with surprising strats/builds and avoid them being scouted to make something happen and deal damage because the more we approach the lategame the more his chances of winning are shrinking.

  2. It’s repetitive and favors skill of execution over strategy - the Zerg can play extremely predictably to the point where the opponent knows almost the entire opening in advance and it doesn’t matter because the opponent still has to make magic happen to break the defense and deal meaningful economic damage. Compare this fact (about ZvT,ZvP) to literately any other matchup where strategy and information are extremely important for both sides and you can’t just rely on skill of execution to carry you the game.

  3. It’s nonsensical - it used to be that Zerg played swarmy (sort of how it was meant to be) and then they needed to be up in economy to be able to win with inefficient trades. Now though with Queens/Nydus into Infestor/Broodlord Zerg has several of the most efficient aggressive/defensive capabilities in the game. Despite this the meta is still around Zerg being easily up on bases and workers and the opponent struggling to deal meaningful damage to them.

There are more reasons for why this is a bad situation but It’s becoming a long rant so I’ll stop now. I hope SC2 can overcome this sometime in the near future although I worry that the balance team do not really acknowledge this and if so they seem somewhat incompetent in dealing with this.

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Terran is struggling vs mass chargelots and its even getting adressed in patch notes so ur wrong.

Not enough to deal with mass infestors it seem so not that great vs mass casters aka energy, and vs toss it seems really strong against shields so ill agree there, however it still doesnt seem to break matchup so its not really an issue then.

BC openers only good vs zerg and even there they have been looking really week last couple of months in gsl so they seem to be figured out and theyre also getting nerfed after being deemed to weak to be used regularly.

Interference matrix is indeed silly ill agree there, if you want to see how silly just watch tvt where players even make up to 3 ravens purely to cuck matrix tanks, again getting adressed how many you can cast but it will be even stronger vs tech heavy protosses for timing pushes (most likely wont break the matchup but we will see).

Agreed, its possibly the strongest spell in the game and its not even getting touched in the patch that is specificly designed to deal with infestor lategame…

I prefer tlos idea at start of lotv, make a smaller, cheaper and weaker ultra so you can use it like a stronger zergling kind off.

I agree with basicly everything you said about toss, the race seems really weird right now. They are basicly dumpstering terrans but getting destroyed by zerg. In tvp disruptors are either god like or worthless.

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That’s one of the points in my post, either remove “mass vision” (let’s call it that way) of zerg and terran or give one to toss

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Though if you just add it now without doing other major changes it would break TvP (not implying you suggested that) to be super Protoss favoured so I can’t see that happening as not part of a really big design patch.

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I’m afraid you are right, the same reason why we can’t remove warp gate or redesign zerg production

I think the problem with zerg design lies in the production, terran and protoss production is linear; you build one worker at a time and add army production as your economy grow

Zerg production is exponential, you drone as much as you can and have a surge of income and pump out a maxed out army quick, this leads to a meta where T and P must deal economic damage to Z, this also means that zerg early aggression is more committed, because you had to cut drones to get an early army

So it’s like you said, Z already starts winning, it’s up to T and P to turn the tide in their favor

Redesigning Z production now is impossible without breaking the game, but if we ever have Starcraft 3 it would be better if Z had a separate building for workers and army (and also no more warp gate)

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Agree with everything except I have one caveat about this and that is that Protoss production is not really linear. The probe production is linear in the sense you said but warpgate production makes Protoss army production very spikey and highly non-linear (which is kind of what you said in the end about warpgate and all). The only truly linear race is Terran and honestly it really shows in how most of the design problems are with Protoss and Zerg. Terran is largely fine design speaking and most of its problems come from the non-mirror matchups where it interacts with the other races problems (that might have sounded biased but you get what I mean).

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Yeah it’s spikey, I said linear because it becomes linear when you trace an average curve

I also think terran is the best designed race, the design flaws with Z and P is what makes the game hard to balance, every minor buffs or nerfs makes them either too weak or too strong

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Voids aren’t as bad as everyone thinks but they fill no niche. At least with flux vanes, it’s easier to kill retreating corruptors.

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Void rays allow you to expand off 1 gateway in P vs P. The strength of void rays have basically turned P vs P into a free win. It’s like the photon overcharge of LotV, and they’re amazing at sniping warp prisms.

It’s the best all-around unit Toss has. It’s so dumb how people hate on the void ray. It’s like, Toss gets beaten like a slave every month of every year. Yet to lead a single period in LotV. Sub 50% every month vs every race, and what is the only unit they never make? Void ray. You know what really sucks? All of the units they make to achieve those stats: everything else.

I can beat top 16 Zergs with pretty much only making void rays in macro games. I don’t understand what people expect from the void ray? Wt f is it supposed to do? Is it supposed to teleport ontop of armies and then yamato everything and then tank 10000 shots, and then just teleport out again?

It’s a really good unit. It’s not the void rays fault that everything the other races have is stupidly broken on purpose, because it was designed by a Toss hater.

It just tilts me. A person has to be so stupid to hate on the void ray and then turn around and act like the tempest fills a niche or is good. The tempest does JACK S vs every race.

But people are monkeys and since they’re FORCED to try to make them vs Terran, they think they’re good or have a role… Congratulations you were forced to make a unit before you were shown the loss screen. Awesome niche.

Everyone is such a bandwagon douche. I could beat every Toss on the ladder 10-0 with void rays, and next game they will be all lol haha, void rays so bad. I’d never make that unit. End rant. Clowns (not directed at you).

Our race is this bad and they have to single out the void ray. A unit that can actually kill stuff/win games. My god. It’s akin to how long it took the monkeys to realize disruptors were the best “counter” to infestors. It’s not rocket science.

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Totally agree with the original poster. Hope Blizz does something about those units in the patch.

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See if they just done a full revert to wings keeping only the lurker, we’d have a far better game than we have now.