Imagine Devourers

[TerranicII-1450]

@NinjaDuckBob-1315

What I think the difficulty is in is making it both useful and not overpowered, and in a way that is not too strong in lower levels while not strong enough in higher levels. That mainly has to do with the DoT aspect more than anything.

In BW, often Science Vessels can dip in and out, often in between engagements, and that’s how they get the damage done. That kind of unit dancing plays out differently in SC2, where most abilities where that happens are immediately impactful (whereas DoT takes time by nature), and where Abduct exists which makes that kind of play very risky against Zerg particularly.

Also, because of pathing and easier unit management in SC2, DoT in SC2 is generally best against clumps of massable units where more effort needs to be made to split, which also reduces DPS of the units being split in an engagement.

Yeah, those difference would make Irradiate less useful and more difficult to balance in SC2 compared to how it functioned in Brood War. The Terran player probably won’t have the full 25 seconds (editor time, 18 seconds actual) for Irradiate to deal its full damage in combat; assuming it was used on a target where it actually needs to deal that much damage.

@NinjaDuckBob-1315

Now, think about the most important targets of Steady Targeting. Brood Lords, Ultralisks, and Zerg spellcasters. These aren’t often in large, tight clumps, except maybe Brood Lords sometimes, and some have lots of HP. The fact that Transfuse exists means that if damage does not occur in bursts, it’s going to be easily negated by Queens, and that’s going to happen more in higher levels where Queen control is better than in lower levels.

Unless Irradiate’s damage is significantly nerfed, it would take 2 transfuses to fully negate one Irradiate on one target. However, the spell still has a long “time to kill” against such units either way, and that could be a problem on its own.

I do believe that Irradiate’s cost and the fact that it stops dealing damage if the main target dies can both be used to discourage massing Irradiate against anything too small or inexpensive. The splash damage basically stops if the main target dies first, so pretty much any change that causes the main target to take damage faster than the surrounding targets would weaken the spell against units such as Zerglings, Banelings, Hydralisks, etc. Two such examples:

• Irradiate could be changed to deal some instant biological damage to the main target as it is applied.
• Irradiate could be changed to deal relatively less splash damage and slightly more damage to the main target.

@NinjaDuckBob-1315

So with those things in mind, how do you make Irradiate actually effective against the units it needs to be effective against at high levels, without making it too strong against other units or too strong at lower levels?

I can give you a few suggestions, but those would require testing and tweaking to get right either way:

• As suggested above, the spell could be tampered with to make it better against the main target compared to splash targets (an instant component or just different damage numbers for the main target and splash targets are options).
• Bonuses versus massive or psionic could help.
• The spell may be tweaked to explicitly reduce healing effects, if that is possible in the SC2 engine.