I understand the need to change up the Raven somewhat, and its nerf is sort of growing on me since its faster build time allows it to fit better into more TvZ builds (TvP is still a bit up in the air because it’s so easily sniped by Phoenixes), but I do wonder if it’s really necessary to remove its energy upgrade. Grandmasters and professionals may almost never get it, but sometimes it makes appearances in lower leagues and niche builds, so why not let the plebs have their fun? Researching it requires significant investment since you have to keep the Tech Lab attached to your Starport for longer than you might otherwise desire (so you can’t get it in situations where you need a fast, early Raven before switching to a Reactor), and I want to say that, unlike the Caduceus Reactor of old (Medivac energy), there is some value in researching it.
If there is concern about it encouraging mass Raven, maybe increase its cost to 200m 200g to offset the Raven’s cheaper gas cost.
On a similar note, I would suggest reintroducing Bosonic Core (+25 Oracle energy), maybe renamed to Argus Jewel for a Brood War callback, at the Fleet Beacon, since not everyone has the dexterity to keep their early-game Oracles alive. Granted, this one is not as useful since none of the Oracle abilities cost 75 energy and, by this time, there’s usually enough detection out to deal with Stasis Wards, but you never know.
Homestly yes, I feel that the utility of the raven is severely hampered without corvid reactor, since it means the timings you hit are greatly delayed. If it proves to strong, sure reintroduce it, but remember, all of the Raven’s abilities require 75 energy except the Auto Turret (which IMO should be replaced with something that isn’t a free unit in the first place - D matrix maybe?)
Without Corvid Reactor researched, you severely reduce the raven’s utility and competetiveness against things like banshee openings in matchups outside of TvT, which its already struggling to find a place in.
I don’t quite follow. Do you mean the Raven has it ready-researched (as in starts with 75 energy)? I’m just proposing returning the upgrade on the Tech Lab.
No, I’m saying that returning corvid reactor to the tech lab would make the raven worse, and it already struggles to compete as it is against banshee or medivac openers, even with the cost/build reduction.
Remember, all of it’s abilities aside from Auto turret cost 75 energy. Having corvid reactor off the bat actually allows it to be useful off the bat and opens up some potential timings that otherwise wouldn’t be as viable and gives it a little more of a foothold in TvX matchups that the opening was often overlooked in in favour of other, generally better, openings (banshee, 2/1/1, helion drop etc)
Interesting. I suppose it says a few things about psychology even if something else isn’t nerfed to compensate. I suppose if an upgrade is simply there for the taking, you’re tempted to keep the Tech Lab on for longer to try to get it, and thereby eat into Medivac production, say.
I want to say that, logically, at worst, it shouldn’t change anything since you don’t have to upgrade it unless you have something incredibly specific in mind and/or it’s something to research when you’re maxed out.
I would say you could research it if you’re committed to Banshees but the opponent has already scouted them (and built Spore Crawlers, say), but in that instance you’d likely go for Hyperflight Rotors instead to improve their survivability… or just doing a fake-out and getting a Banshee to cause the opponent to respond incorrectly.
While I’m somewhat in favour of replacing Auto-Turrets with something else (not sure what though… I did ponder about Point Defense Drones, but they would be pretty overpowered against Tempests… but maybe that’s not a bad thing!), however I have seen a recent game where an off-racing Astrea uses them surprisingly effectively against Neuro’s Infestors (mainly because they can’t be Fungal’d or Neural Parasited) - StarCraft 2: ABSOLUTE BANGER - Astrea's OFFRACES TERRAN vs Neuro! - YouTube.
PDD was busted previously. We really can’t implement that back into the game, hence why I mentioned defensive matrix. Even that has the potential to be problematic though. I wonder if you could scale it to their HP, rather than give a flat bonus shield…?
It’s possible. The original Defensive Matrix was a flat 250 HP shield, although damage did ‘leak’ through sometimes - I’m not quite sure what the equation is though/. Even if scaled to their HP, it might be a problem when you cast it on something with a lot of HP, like a Battlecruiser or allied Mothership. That discussion is for another topic though.
My worry is if it’s used as part of a Battlecruiser rush (if one can get an extra 150g fast enough). You build a Starport, hook it up from a Tech Lab (built on the Factory, say), and while waiting for your Fusion Core to build, you build a Raven, and then the Battlecruiser afterwards. By the time the Battlecruiser is out, you have the energy to cast Defensive Matrix on it (even at 100 energy) and jump it into the enemy base. Or even outside of a jump, just have the Raven follow it and cast the ability when needed while remaining in the dead space. True, enemy Corruptors could go after it, but it can cast the ability on the Battlecruiser before it goes down. It wasn’t really something you could do as efficiencly in Brood War since the Science Vessel required a Science Facility, and you had to get a Science Facility to build a Physics Lab to unlock the Battlecruiser (and the overall gas cost is significantly higher).
To go back to the original topic, if the Corvid Reactor upgrade was returned, are you saying it would make timings worse because players would feel compelled to hold off on building a Raven until the upgrade is almost complete (i.e. just over 30 seconds from completion)?
I’m basically saying that it’s going to make an already fairly mediocre and expensive unit less worthwhile to go into when it’s already struggling to compete with other openings as it is. By putting Corvid Reactor back as an upgrade, there is even less incentive to go for Raven openings in any matchup that’s not TvT.
There are two significant problems with Point-Defense-Drones.
The spell can be stacked, so it encourages massing Ravens so that projectile units can never deal damage.
The effect is extremely variable depending on the attacker in question. Like you stated, the ability would absolutely be overpowered against Tempests. There is no way to balance this ability against Tempests (where a 20 projectile block could absorb up to 1840 damage against structures or 1340 damage against massive air), and still have it useful against weaker projectiles, such as the 5 damage Phoenix projectiles where the spell would absorb up to 100 damage.
Any “good” spell must have a consistent effect (allowing for things such as bonus damage to a particular tag), and it must be designed such that the spell does not stack and does not encourage massing the casters.
A flat bonus shield would actually be the easier option to balance, since the absorption is always consistent.
Squishier and lower-supply units are usually present in larger numbers, so the opponent can just pick off the unshielded targets first. Keep in mind that the squishier and more numerous the army is, the less of that army can be viably shielded.
For “tougher” units, the shield is less of a proportional benefit, and unit in question may be explicitly focused down.
And stacking like that is something I would personally like to avoid. That’s been my logic behind the suggestion of adjusting the Auto-Turret to fire a projectile, since it stops the Auto-Turret from scaling linearly with each one you throw down due to overkill potential (e.g. normally it takes 3 shots to kill a worker, but two dropped side-by-side will fire 2 projectiles each if they target the same worker, forcing the player to micro with them or be better with positioning in order to make them less wasteful).
Funny how this got off-topic quickly. I guess it shows that the Raven overall may still need work.
ADDENDUM: I also just remembered… PvT(bio)… if the Terran player has fortified a position with ranged Liberators and Ghosts, you need Tempests to break through (and maybe an Oracle to cast Revelation so the Tempests can use their full range). Add a Point Defense Drone to that and it’s nigh impenetrable.
What cracks me up is that they reworked the raven, which wasn’t a problem and was in a pretty good spot, but left the ghost mostly unchanged when it can melt entire lurker/brood/ultralisk armies in the blink of an eye and for energy cost only. I saw Byun play against Reynor and some ghosts shut down a ling counter attack with like 80 zerglings without losing a single ghost. Was there fancy positioning? No. Was there fancy micro? No. He literally cloaked the ghosts then a-clicked them at the zerglings. People would say “BUT REYNOR DIDN’T BRING AN OVERSEER” to which the obvious response is “the overseer would be the first thing sniped and the result would be exactly the same.”
The ghost is not in a good spot. The nerfs helped, but it’s still absolutely busted. For how great the reward is, it needs to have higher risk. They need to nerf the movement speed slightly so that a ghost is a bit more committed to his position when doing a snipe, or buff the overseer so it can’t be killed quite so easily by the unit it’s supposed to counter.
That seems a bit odd because the most recent ZvT matches I’ve seen - the terran player can have 10+ Ghosts with cloaking, so the zerg player brings 6 Overseers! Zerg has relatively readily-available mobile detection once you’re in the midgame. Granted there is a problem if all the Overseers die since you will probably end up supply-blocked. That’s for another topic though.
Overseers are one time use and cost gas, so it’s better to just use banelings which can target and damage ghosts. But, ghosts are actually really durable vs banelings. Countering ghosts is a complete clown show.
It’s like skytoss. You just can’t let them get to a mass ghost count because it’s unstoppable. The difference is, skytoss was hard to build up. For terran, the only thing he does is drop 1 building and poof he can make ghosts out of every tech lab barracks, and he has plenty of extra gas because marine marauder is very mineral heavy.
The ghost is what needed a massive rework and not the raven. The ghost does not have any counters in the current iteration of the game.
They rescinded the base energy buff and simply removed corvid reactor, probably in exchange for 50 energy auto-turrets. Op’s suggestion would be a straight buff.
The Raven wasn’t “problematic”, but it usually wasn’t a good detector because of its prohibitive cost. It is much better to have the lower cost and build time, even if the Raven is weaker in some areas.
It’s why it’s confusing me a bit. I hoped my suggestion was clear. The only thing I could get out of it was that he thinks Ravens start with 75 energy rather than 50, or that with the presence of Corvid Reactor on the Tech Lab, players would feel compelled to get the upgrade before building a Raven. I can kind of see that logic, since players research Pathogen Glands before getting Infestors, for example, but in that instance, you’re forced to build the Infestation Pit to get a Hive, so the circumstances are slightly different. Finally, you don’t have to research it. If you just want a fast, early game Raven, you just build one and then swap back to a Reactor on the Starport without touching the Tech Lab’s options. I’m only theorycrafting here, but I sense it would be something you get when you’re maxed out (and hence can’t build units for a while) or if you have a very specific build in mind.
Ya it was clear, I think he just didn’t know they reverted that change.
Your suggestion itself seems fine, I don’t think it will affect the strength of openings much, like you said it would probably be a lategame thing. In fact the tech lab looks kind of barren with only 2 upgrades.
Also saw you suggested an oracle energy upgrade, interesting stuff
Ah, my apologies, I didn’t realise that they don’t come with 75 energy. I thought it was included in the raven changes as previously mentioned, but I guess not.
