Remove Tactical Jump or Make TJ and Yamato Share A Cooldown

General Discussion
1

What happened to this game? The battlememes need to stop. Three armor with a nearly instant teleport is not okay. Remove this crap from the game already.

If a Zerg player decides to do anything other than build 15 queens right now, they basically just auto lose the game when two battlememes teleport directly into the mineral line, or the Zerg has to go two base corruptor which can just be Yamatoed out since yamato one shots corruptors and queens lol.

This game sucks right now. I hope they remove this junk soon. ZvT is basically unplayable.

11 Likes
2

Agree that the CD must be shared, but zvt/tvz is totally playable.

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3

The Zergs at the top level seem to have found a way to deal with it, but nonetheless, it’s still an awful design knowing that Terrans can easily get away with rushing a T3 unit and instantly teleporting it to your base. Imagine if Zergs could 1 base rush Terrans with brood lords. I don’t think 1-2 base carriers work either. Battlecruisers though? Pretty successful.

8 Likes
4

Maybe playable but is it funny?

T3 early unit with free blink will be always stupid.

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5

I understand that the BC can get to be a pretty frustrating unit to deal with. However the fact Zerg rely on economy to make-up of individually weaker units until T3 doesn’t allow for a comparison of strategies bases by base compared to Terran or Protoss.

If you think about it, DTs are T3, Tempests are T3, disruptors as well. Those two last one are a common follow-up to 1 base batteries cheeses, or cannon rush ; and DTs can perfectly be rushed on one base. As for the common BCs openers vs Z, it’s if I’m not mistaken most often on two bases, the 1 base variant is near exclusive to TvT, some extremely allin and unpopular TvP versions put aside.

I’d also like to highline that, contrary to what’s frequently said by some P/Z, MMM isn’t tier 1.

Now, I believe that there should be more strategics consequences about using powerful spells such as TJ or Yamato. Having the player to choose going either for immediate damage (by Yamato-ing), or rather for maximum safety (by jumping away) would be justified IMO. And so I’m favorable to Yamato’s and TJ’s cooldowns being shared. :thinking:

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6

The issue isn’t that you can yamato after jumping or vice versa, it’s that the unit has such high health and flies and has infinite range teleport. It can fly in and jump out or jump in and fly out and, unlike any other harass unit, it has high health so it can escape without dying at the last second whether it’s jumping or flying out. Very obvious design issue. Only fix is to remove tactical jump, since it will always be able to abuse cliffs/dead space and I don’t think people want to give queens the ability to fly so they can chase them, or to see zerg with t1 mutas/corruptors.

If an analogy would help: imagine oracles had like 1/4 of the dps but 8x more health than they do now. Suddenly it has all the same problems that BC’s do. Because having a flying harass unit with high health and an infinite range teleport ability is a design issue for starcraft. It’s not compatible with the rest of this games design.

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7

Nah, the issue is that it’s T3, but it still has such hardcounters that they had to implement the jump to make it worthy despite those. So the unit is in an awkward place where it’s extremely powerful and abusable against some compositions (marines…), and deceptively weak against some others (corruptors, hydras with neural support, Tempests or vikings).

The TJ is extremely visible because of its abusable nature (specially in intermediates to low levels), but as a matter of fact the are notable map teleportation means in the rest of the game : recall, mass recall (and this one can be used offensively, and there are some rare 2 bases applications with the 700HP MS), and nydus. And players don’t complain as much about those, although those can literally teleport medium size armies.

Yet recalls have a longer vulnerability period, and nydus can be prevented during casting. So, the devil is in the details. And I believe the BC could use similar tweaks, the shared cooldown being a possible suggestion.

BCs do not have 8x more HP than oracles, but 3.4x more (which is already a lot considering the oracle is a protoss unit).

But let’s go even further. What if your oracles had :
— 4.5x more HP
— 2 thirds of their previous DPS
— And if they had a teleport spell that could bring in not only them, but a whole army ?

And… no one complains. That’s why I think that it’s not the teleport itself that is problematic, but its balancing. Make it a researched spell, increase the vulnerability period similar to recall, or share the cooldown with Yamato ; pick one or two and people won’t complain as much about it. :balance_scale:

3 Likes
8

It had jump for years and was fine because it was a garbage unit not worth building. The issues came when it got buffs and, as a result, could reliably get damage as an opener.

Every unit in the game is good vs some comps and bad vs other comps. This is not a logical argument.

Because these are all balanced by other limitations and investment costs. The battlecruiser, on the other hand, is essentially a ranged lib or cloaked banshee opener on crack. You don’t invest that much more than any other standard opener, unless you are doing the 1 base version (which no one does anymore because it’s awful).

I used to believe this was possible. I don’t anymore. The fact that it has such high health, flies, and can be repaired means that tactical jump will always be a design issue on the battlecruiser.

It was an example, and since you did the math I find it curious that you left out the fact that the mothership has HALF the DPS of the battlecruiser. Which is why harstem didn’t go straight to mothership and fly it right into a mineral line by itself (it would not be able to kill much on it’s own).

Also it costs 100 more gas, 2 more supply, and takes twice as long to build… That’s why no one complains lol because you can’t actually do that as an opener and get damage anywhere close to reliably. Oh and you have to stop probe production while you’re building it because it builds from the nexus… If you watched that video you linked me you saw that harstem was using it several minutes later in the game than a BC would’ve hit and he’s mainly using it to mass recall his army.

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At one moment you said that tactical jump was fine when BC was balanced differently ; and the other you say that tactical jump will always be a problem on the BC because of characteristics the BC did have since 2010. You are contradicting yourself.

I’m starting to wonder if what’s disturbing you isn’t the TJ in itself, but the fact BC became a viable, regularly used unit .

An opener being capable to deal damage enables it as an harass timing, or timing push. Having more openers usables as harass/pushes implies more gameplay diversity, and is on the contrary good for the game. :slight_smile:

Well you must be a curious individual then, because I merely reused the comparisons you yourself provided. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

It is when you classify the counters as soft and hard, and by relative abundance at the unit’s timing. Vikings are common most TvT compositions. Blink stalkers, corruptors and hydralisks are common in TvZ and TvP as well. Only Tempest, though not rare, isn’t that often produced in TvP.

Coming from there if an unit’s hard counters are already common on the battlefield, producing the unit is a mistake ; specially if it’s a T3 unit. Hence, why the BC was never used prior to TJ, and never used in harass prior to TJ and fire-while-moving ability. Proof being that it’s still never used as an opener in ESL level TvP : because of the relative abundance of stalkers compared to BCs at that timing would make BCs production a mistake.

If you think about it two seconds, if you removed the tactical jump and let it at that, there is just no way the unit would be viable against Tempests, nor corruptors; nor infestors, nor vikings. And that because contrary to most T3 (carriers, tempests, colossus, HT, BLs, Vipers and Thors), it just doesn’t have a T3 range. And so if you want it to remain a slow moving, short ranged unit, it just needs an escape spell. :wink:

Now it could be discussed :

  • to trade the escape spell for a T3 range (but that would break its vikings counters, so unless you want to increase vikings’ range proportionally, which may induce other issues, it’s not really an option).
  • or to keep its short ranged T3 design particularities, but to tweak the balance of the viability escape spell :
    — Keep the teleport, but nerf its timing (research necessary) or cost, its downsides (4s vulnerability state just like recall), or its availability (shared cooldown with yamato).
    — Or transform it into some kind of non maneuverable afterburners (same speed than a corruptor, midmap range), but in return slightly increase its ATA dmg to compensate (5->6-7).

From the moment the objective is not to return it to a non viable/unworthy state, lots of balance tweaks who could be discussed. :balance_scale:

3 Likes
10

Rarely to the point that they are completely eliminated from play. In those cases the unit is just underpowered or its hard-counters are too strong;; thus something needs to change.

The Battlecruiser specifically would fall into that unplayable camp without TJ.

1 Like
11

worse rush T3 unit and build your 3 base.

What ?
the only hardcounter of zerg vs BC is corruptor and that is by yamato one shoot.
in general most T units do not have a hard counter, most of them have mechanisms that turn hard counter into counter or soft counter.

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12

if I understand him correctly, he does not contradict himself.

  1. He says that TJ is a problem because there is a lot of HP and it can be repaired.
  2. bc has always had TJ but was not good as a unit. The problems came when BC got buff.

means:
a broken ability that is very strong can be adapted by a bad unit.

old BC:

  • needs a lot of Tec for a T unit.
  • long construction time and high costs
  • no good fight unit (a lot of HP but no harm)

new BC:
all same except the last point + attack on moving.

13

L2P issue. BC open is solved, you just want to make the game boring and easier by removing options from your opponent.

14

That information is incorrect. Corruptors are efficient vs BCs despite yamatos, but neural parasite (often coupled to hydras) is the most efficient BC counter in the whole game. A BC who gets in neural range is a lost BC. Not to mention the viper, whose abducts and parasitic bombs aren’t a ZvP exclusive.

Yeah but in that case the problem doesn’t comes from the HP and repair, but of BC’s combined balance produced by TJ and it’s current DPS tweaks. And so that could be tweaked. Either way there’s something off with quoted logic.

Anyway, I’m wondering if Ace isn’t just disturbed by BCs being a part of current TvZ meta. If that’s the case his objectives and the ones of the devs can’t match. However, if the objective is to tone down TJ while still preserving BC’s worthiness and viability, as said above, lots of options could be discussed. :slight_smile:

1 Like
15

is not a good counter in my opinion.

  1. BC have armor. not good for hydra.
  2. air advantage
  3. neural needs an upgrade, start with 50 energy (neural need 100) → you need the 2 upgrade that makes infesor usefull (+25 energy at start).
    the upgrades block each other.
    instead of Microbial Shroud should be Neural base line would also increase the versatility.
    PB is no problem for BC, because PB does not stack and BC have a lot of life.

maybe we should differentiate between early and late.

I leave the logic behind, I can understand what he means.

to your statement BC needs TJ.
I don’t think so. BC means: Battlecruiser.
function tank in battle. otherwise Archon or Ultra needs an ability to get them out of the front line.

With the attack on moving Bc can be moved out of the fight (micro ) and the fact that BC is flying makes it even easier. So a solution to make BC to Battlecruiser is to remove TJ and make it a bit slower (BL speed) but buff the Base values of BC again.

1 Like
16

Lol your desire to see me as a whiner is why you cant understand this. Its pretty simple: when the BC was not viable tj was not an issue… Because it wasnt viable lol. Clear enough? Its really not that complicated lol. Now that the bc is a viable unit tj has become a design issue. It should be removed and then we should see if players can find a new role for the BC. If they cant then it will need a different buff. I’m not sure how much clearer I could be.

1 Like
17

What the… ? O_o
Neuraled BCs are sitting ducks during 11s. You make them yamato each other and then TP into your hydra army, a spore trap, or both. Armor points are irrelevant in that situation, it’s just as if you abducted a carrier into 30 corruptors, it doesn’t matter what’s the carrier upgrades are, it will die in a matter of seconds if not instantly. Having neural available basically denies BC harass or forces massive preemptive scans beforehand.

It’s not, but I still get what you mean.
— What you are effectively saying is that BC wasn’t viable before the DPS buffs
— But what you are wanting to say isn’t that, but rather that TJ wasn’t a problem because BCs weren’t worth it.

But what you don’t get is that their worthiness came from the DPS buffs, and their viability from the tactical jump. You remove tactical jump, they aren’t viable anymore, it’s as simple as that.

As for “my desire”, I have no wishes regarding you, I was surprised you tried to pick on me about the comparisons you yourself set previously, that’s all. The rest came from what you wrote, it being that in your eyes BCs became problematic at the moment they got regularly used.

That part is clear indeed. But I don’t see how then they could be made viable if corruptors, tempests or vikings are on the field without either some troublesome range buffs, or some kind of escape ability (which doesn’t have necessarily to be a teleport as I said). :thinking:

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18

how can Archon Ultra Roach stalkers be possible? if tank ghost lib have more range?

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It’s not as simple as that. They had tactical jump for years and weren’t viable. So it is not as simple as their viability coming from tactical jump. They are currently viable in a harass role due to the combination of their stats and tactical jump.

How can they be viable if the unit has counters? Simple, you use them as part of a real composition, not by themselves in a harass role… If this is not possible then the unit would need a buff in some way. The same way broodlords were viable for years even when things like vikings countered them… You don’t JUST make broodlords. Or how carriers are viable even though corruptors counter them. You don’t JUST make carriers.

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On equal supply, Corruptors will win.
Given Zerg’s production capacity, it is very easy to overwhelm the Battlecruisers.

Second point: Zerg has other hard counters, such as Vipers combined with Hydralisks or Infestors combined with Hydralisks or Ravagers.

Yes, Hydralisks lose 3 damage out of 12. They can also easily out-supply the Battlecruisers and become a very hard counter when combined with Vipers or Infestors.

As for Battlecruisers being an air unit, that doesn’t matter when the Battlecruisers are mind controlled or abducted right into the range of all of the enemy’s antiair.

You have more than enough time to research Neural Parasite and build up your Infestor/Hydra count before Battlecruisers reach a mass that is “dangerous”. Neural Parasite is an incredibly strong ability that is well worth that upgrade cost and wait times. It needs absolutely no buffs.

Both of those units are much easier to mass and protect until combat, and neither of those units requires a particularly large mass to be effective in combat like Battlecruisers do.

All of those units are much easier to mass produce into the numbers that they need to be effective, and they have the mobility to easily avoid those counters until the player finds or makes some weakness for them to exploit.

Battlecruisers do not. Battlecruisers are far slower than their counters and far slower to mass produce; such that they cannot be built into usable numbers for the mid or late game without an ability like TJ.

1 Like