I think they need to evaluate lategame zvp when they are on equal ground. While carrier arent good vs terran it doesnt matter as much because they are generally speaking not that frequently used in that matchup. Even in lategame.
Vs zerg its completly different. While carriers arent exactly good without catapult they still arent sure if they are good or not vs zerg because zerg lost the infested terran and therefore protoss doesnt need a quick damage ramp anymore.
The protoss will almost never activate the prismatic alignment in proxy batteries SG situation, since they want to be able to go back and forth within batteries range, and the slowdown would prevent that. But yeah, it’s a tough hold at home for the terran, so I’m concerned about those of us that do temporize it with vikings, mines ± turrets while awaiting to get stim.
Widow mines aren’t cloaked after firing at that point, and do not OS neither VR nor Tempests. By themselves, they can be avoided. Vikings can’t be avoided, but need to be kited very precisely for a quite long time against VRs. That’s why vikings + mines (while waiting for stim) are synergic, since vikings can force the VRs to take damage, while the mines can force them to stop, allowing to draw a defensive line in that back and forth game.
Cyclones are faster than slow rays, but there’s a small pause with you trigger your lock, while the VRs do not pause while moving. So like against BCs, it’s not that easy to get and maintain locks without taking a few hits. And against VRs’ leeway and considering cyclones paper durability, a few hits mean what your cyclone will be half dead upon breaking the leeway, while killing mostly shield. So I’m not too eager at seeing VRs getting more efficient in that situation either. That being said, it’s not as critical for the cyclone as it would be for the viking.
It’s an effective idea against protoss that have never seen that, and that would somehow panic. In your case, the protoss does pull the probes, and the nexus starts emitting blue light, and protoss does recall ONE void ray. You’ve got one less viking at home and your mine did just uncloak, the other four VRs are getting dangerously close to your CC. What will you do then ?
My guess is because they don’t want tempest to be too good at killing bunkers or turrets in proxy SG situations. Hence the upgrade, which delays the moment that efficiency will kick in to timings where spore forests or mass PF/Turrets are more common.
Carrier did receive one nerf by the removal of graviton, which was then mitigated with an intermediate interceptor release speed, a strong buff in carriers production time, and a buff in interceptors production time. They also had a reduction in interceptors cost which was tuned since 2.5.5 till 4.0.0. Isn’t that enough tinkering for you ?
You cant do that. You should increase speed voidray under 3.85 because voidray should not have the same speed as viking. Viking is the counter of voidray since WOL. If you change that, terran will not be able to counter proxy stargates.
Or they could buff the viking’s aerial speed by exactly the same amount, and thus preserve the interaction.
The thing is, they want to incite the protoss to use VRs to clear creep and overlords. But at one hand overlords are extremely slow targets ; and at another hand the deterrents to VRs as creep cleaner would be :
Queens (3.5 speed on creep) in early game
hydras (3.15 → 3.93 off creep ; 4.09 → 5.11 speed on creep (damned, they made them so much faster than they used to be… @_@)
Mutalisks (5.6 speed) in midgame
Corruptors (4.7 speed) in lategame.
Current VR speed is 3.5 → 4.65 with flux vanes. Coming from there :
VRs would need to be only slightly faster than 3.5 to outspeed queens in early.
In midgame, slight speed buffs would not suffice anymore, but flux vanes would be enough to save them from hydras as long as they don’t venture too far on the creep. Corruptors do slightly outspeed them even with fluxvanes. No way to avoid mutalisks but that’s the way it should be.
With proposed buff (3.5 > 3.85 / 4.65 → 5.11), what changes is that the VR would now be able to avoid both queens, corruptors and offcreep hydras. However that would break the interaction with vikings early game, and cyclones once flux vanes are out.
Alternatively, I think they could go :
for an intermediate +0,175 speed buff, which would lead to 3.67 / 4.82, implying they would still be able to avoid queens/corruptors and offcreep hydras, but without breaking too much the kiting possibilities of the early game viking. Cyclones and stimmed marines would have a tougher time catching them though…
or go for their +0.35 speed buff, but increase vikings’ speed from a similar amount. That would still break the lategame interaction with the cyclone though, but also with stimmed marines (4.72). Not to mention having a 5.11 speed unit with the VR’s DPS against buildings could be a nightmare to play against due to the tradebase potential (since VR aren’t stopped by static), and that for both protoss and terrans (zerg would fare better with infestors, queens vipers and mutas).
Or… just incite the protoss to make more oracles and to clean the creep with them, by just reducing oracle pulsar beam activation cost from 25 to 10 or 15 :
Faster than queens
Faster than speed hydras even on creep
Same speed than mutas
No interaction breaking with vikings, cyclones nor stimmed marines, and less cancer base-trade potential
Aligns perfectly with your harass SG openers
All well considered, I think they are trying to give the VR a role that isn’t his. Lowering corruptors’ speed to be the same than speedrays to improve his PvZ air assault role, and slightly buffing the oracles’ pulsar beam activation cost would give an SG creep cleaning alternative that would break much less interactions in other MUs.
watching neeb vs scarlet i got the impression that late toss need something to micro to be effective. ATM late zerg seems a little better than late protoss only if zerg micro is over the top, with infestors/vipers being able to snipe skytoss units consistently avoiding HT feedback, it’s otherwise pretty close.
Toss should be able to fight back, but only if their micro is just as good, otherwise they fight on a lower ceiling than zerg players at the highest levels. So, it’s ok a little nerf on skytoss late units, but only if coupled with some spell/ability that balance their effectiveness.
Another minor issue due to spine crawlers map dominance has already been addressed with the tempest upgrade on this last patch.
IMHO terrans seem to be ok in TVP late, i fear ghosts/thors a lot, but in my low league i still haven’t seen someone using them effectively, so i cannot be that sure. Watching some high level games it seems that against mass thor + ghosts + marines + tanks + some cheesy bc the golden skytoss composition struggles a LOT.
They also mass stalkers or void rays. I’ve seen the occasional tempest and opening oracle. It’ll happen and it will be great trust me, especially the void rays
Yet, I do infrequently aslo indulge in 2v2, and flux VR based strategies are a thing : you wait for the opponent to make his timing, and then your just snipe all his CCs in a row. With current vanes speed, once the opponent comes back victoriously with his 16 probes kills, the VRs will be gone and he’ll discover his workers have stopped moving 'cause there’s no CC left.
Nice idea: to counter a unit that is nearly never built in PvT (outside cheese), buff Vikings that are the backbone of Terran air that with 9 Range counters Colossus, Phoenix, Tempest, Carrier and on top of that can be turned in ground fighting unit.
If Void is too much then don’t buff Void (it will not be used in PvT with or without speed). You don’t create 5 problems while try to fix one.
Graviton catapult affects interceptors’ release speed, so removing it while setting for an intermediate release speed means that carriers are weaker at full upgrades, but stronger than when not upgraded. That’s similar to what’s been done with the ultralisks, which lost 1 point on their max upgrades armor, but gained one on their base defense.
Carriers MS archons tempest is considered to be the strongest PvP lategame army (even stronger than disruptor comps), and carriers MS VR archons storm tempest to be a reasonably strong option in late PvZ (enough to induce spore forests at least).
When a M1/GM protoss says to you that in PvP, the only option against carriers is to make carriers yourself, that strongly implies that your amputee is still running quite fast after all.
I did say I didn’t like the idea of messing with the vikings’ speed just to keep up with the VR, since the VR’s speed would affect other units, and same for the viking.
So on this point we do agree : if buffing the speed of the VR that much creates more problems than it solves, better not buff it.
+1000000000000000000
That’s also the imbroglio with Tempest. They nerffed the Carrier to the ground and gave us the Speed-Tempest.
Now, after a year: we are still here with the comatose Carrier, Tempest that is something in between (original and speed-one - and sucking in both roles)…and the absurd Thor with 400HP and 11 Range (with the double of Carrier DPS)…
I agree, they invent preposterous roles for our Skytoss, break something and trying to fix their mess…create 3x more problems.
Just make Void 3 Supply and drop other changes…
That is true but that is not due to Carrier being too good, but because Tempes/Voids are not good enough to counter Carriers properly. GtA being ridiculously absent is also a factor.
A bonus for Tempest/Voids vs. Massive would take care of “Carrier” problem (and BC problem that is even worst than Carrier).
Years ago a poster had the interesting idea (i forgot his name) to make Tempest not able to kill even a probe, he proposed to change Tempest shot in a spell that removes 40-50% HP of attacked units.
That would take care of Mass-Tempest and also force micro on Protoss side with max 3-4 Tempests.
A lot of dimwits rejected his idea out of hand…
What a privileged little terran. Choosing the numbers to buff the VR should not be based on anything the viking can do. Terran has plenty of counters to the VR. WMs, cyclones, marines, turrets, and vikings. Maybe now terrans will have to use their brain as to which unit they want to buid against voids. Unbelievable
Cyclones and turrets only work while engagements remain small, and Widow Mines don’t work unless the opponent screws up.
That leaves Marines, Vikings, and a few edge cases for Terran to deal with Void Rays.
I am in favor of the Void Ray changes, but the Viking/Void case needs to be watched because if Vikings stop working against Void Rays then mech could be rendered non-viable.
