[Suggestion] (PTR currently) Reduce AAM cost to 50 energy

So with the new proposed rework of Ravens, there comes an issue where they really become flying paperweights and dead supply (although they at least provide detection) after they lose all of their energy, either by EMP/Feedback or just simply spending it all. The main concern is the spamming of Auto-Turrets, and I’m sure there’s plenty of suggestions regarding those, but let’s put those aside for the moment.

The one ability that can’t be spammed is Anti-Armor Missile, and it mostly just causes the enemy army to disengage for a short time. Since this too has been nerfed slightly (affected units lose 2 armour rather then 3), I would like to suggest its energy cost be reduced from 75 to 50, so if a Raven does lose all of its energy, it can return to doing something useful as a support unit more quickly. Additionally, if you do end up with a Raven with 200 energy, you can spend it all in one go if you so choose (e.g. an Anti-Armor Missile and 2 Auto-Turrets as a response to some Ultralisks).

On the flip side, it can also be used to drain a full-energy Raven if you capture one with an Infestor. You could either throw down two Auto-Turrets or use Interference Matrix a couple of times then spend the remaining 50 on an Anti-Armor Missile, or just spam 4 Anti-Armor Missiles in random directions.

Thoughts?

2 Likes

I like it. And considering all the other nerfs the Raven is getting, this only seems right. It lines up well with the energy increases for the other abilities.

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Maybe reduce the area if its 50 energy. Im all for giving the raven some extra love but we still need to ensure it takes skill to use and can be countered with skill.

I don’t think that will be necessary, since the effect has already been nerfed from -3 armour to -2 armour (33%, which will equal the energy cost reduction). It’s also an ability that’s somewhat double-edged because during the time that the missile is airborne, you can try to break away the targetted unit to minimise the number of affected units, or attempt to charge straight into the enemy army so they too are affected by the armour reduction.

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Don’t you like it?
now you have the feeling of Infestor when everything costs 75+.
hope you now have more understanding when people in the forum say Infestor feels clunky, weak when has no energy, instead of immediately blame him.

At least Raven is a flying detection dead supply when energy is gone.

I have the feeling that aam has always been underrated. Would also be an interesting point for late game.
But would say that it could be dangerous if AAM is always available in early-mid-late at push etc…
let’s see what happens on the PTR.

AAM also gives the most utility, as a zerg I would have said take Interference Matrix for 50, then T/ P can get annoyed.

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Funny…
Ghost got 4 skills like a LOL character.
Raven got 3 skills and also a Detector.
Terren player still not satisfied and they want it will never out of energy.
Why not just let people win once they pick T?

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It’s probably best to keep AAM as it is with 3 armor shred. That ability doesn’t see much use.

The nerfs to the other two abilities are fine though.

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That would seem pretty reasonable. :thinking:

But honestly, where are we going here ? Anti-armor missile is already the least damaging AoE spell in the game, coming from 130 dmg to zero. Are there still people complaining about AoE that does zero damage on its own ? Is the spell getting spammed to utterly dominating tournament results ? If not… then just why should it be nerfed in the first place ? O_o

Same for the interference matrix. Who complained about that ? 75 energy for 8 seconds of attack interruption (which does nothing on its own), when for 100 energy an infestor gets 11s of full control (which allows the unit to be turned against his own, or at the very least to unload its abilities into the void)…

Just who complained about the raven ? Mech players who enjoyed being AFK once their tanks were sieged ? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

The only nerf I could understand is the auto-turret one, yet coming from the 240s it once lasted it looks like some form of joke to nerf it again. Seriously : no unit has been nerfed as violently as the raven though the years. None. :neutral_face:

  • 130 dmg AoE → 0 dmg (can’t even translate in a multiple)
  • 180s of attack nullification → 11 and maybe 8s (22x less)
  • 240s auto-turrets → 8s (30x times less)

If the Viper had been nerfed into similar proportions, the parasitic bomb would deal no damage (-2 armor), the blinding cloud would last ¼ of a second, and the abduct would attract the opponent towards the viper on only 1 radius distance. That’s what a Viper would look after getting the Raven treatment. :neutral_face:

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Uthermal said that 50 energy would be OP with the new cost while 75 makes them useless maybe 65? The idea being 2 not good enough 4 too good. Maybe so they can spawn 3 or make it 50 and make them weaker so its like having 3?

AAM was a garbage because its projectile is very slow, it have friendly fire, enemies under debuff can simply run away (and debuff wears off quickly) and among Terran army only marines and BCs could benefit from it in any realistic scenario.

In late game where Marines are phased out of Terran army no Terran unit benefits from AAM (BCs can be kited by everything and thus can’t be used either unless you teleport on top of enemy army… which means using AAM is impossible) AAM is completely useless.
Range and burst damage are what late game is about.

AAM currently is used in already very rare Raven push in TvP (very rare because this push is not particularly strong even with pre-nerf Raven) which will become unviable, and in early-mid game TvT to discourage your opponent to charge his Marines towards your Marines.
It doesn’t matter at all after tanks number grows, or after +2 vehicles weapons is done (with it siege tanks begin to one-shot stimmed marines with splash).

No amount of manacost change will make AAM useful

Infestor spells are actually very strong and useful compared to Raven spells which already were situational at best.

Imagine that Fungal now costs 200 mana, reduce movement speed by 30%, doesn’t do any damage, does do friendly fire (apply debuff to friendly units) and works only on creep.
That would be Raven-grade spell.

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From a logical standpoint this particular change was a TvT oriented change as Raven openings are reasonably dominant in that matchup, so it was likely a nerf done for TvT. Unfortunately it also has adverse reactions in TvP as well by effectively eliminating the only actual use the Raven had in the matchup.

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Interference Matrix is disproportionately good against Siege Tanks because, like Lockdown of Brood War, it completely immobilises the unit if they are in Siege Mode (which is fairly likely). Against other units, the ability is fairly niche and situational. Though I off-race as Terran (I main Protoss), I used it against a couple of Colossi to remove them from the fight temporarily, and I twice used it in the same game on a Mothership that was in the midst of using Mass Recall (one time I was successful and it cancelled the teleportation, but the second time I was too slow and the recall was successful). I managed to use it on a Viper a few times, but against any good player, they’ll get off Abduct or Parasitic Bomb before they’re disabled.

I was wondering when someone would bring up Infestors! Indeed they don’t have an ability that costs less than 75 energy (gone are the days of 25-energy Infested Terrans). The saving grace they have is that they can burrow and tuck themselves out of the way. True, Ravens can fly into a corner, but they are still vulnerable to any anti-air that finds them, whereas Infestors at least need a Detector or a pair of very sharp eyes.

The comparison with Ghosts is not as strong because they do have a regular attack as well as Cloak that can work on about 30 energy or so (so they can potentially get to safety).

ADDENDUM: Ketroc, the king of mass Raven, mentioned that the designers have an aversion to energy costs that are not a multiple of 25. In his arguments, he suggested Auto-Turrets have a cost of 60 or 65 rather than the Anti-Armor Missile, but because of that design philosophy, I doubt we’ll see any spell with such a cost. Then again, who knows, it might be broken… I was surprised to see research costs that weren’t a multiple of 50 (first Drilling Claws, then Hyperflight Rotors).

To add to this, infestors also have several extremely powerful spells. Being able to slow units to increase splash effectiveness, as well as take control of an opposing unit (while burrowed mind you!) Are both far more dangerous than AAM or IM generally is at the best of times. Microbial shroud is a bit hit and miss because its designed for air units only, but unlike AAM you can generally guarantee the effectiveness of the ability because its cast on your own units making them more durable.

4 Likes

Yes, very true :+1:
I believe that this is the core problem with IM.
In TvT using IM on tanks or liberators in most cases means that you will kill them, unless you misjudged the situation significantly - because they are effectively immobilized.
In TvP using IM means that Colossus will walk away for ~10 seconds and then be right back.

For the same cost as Raven you can have almost 3 Vikings which are far more useful in dealing with Colossus. Having 10-12 Vikings allows you to get rid of Colossus permanently so why waste money and production time on Raven, when what you need is to get the required Viking count ASAP?

Raven in the best case can force a Viper to fly away for 10 seconds after which it will return and nuke your army with its spells (be it Blinding Cloud, Abduct or Parasitic all 3 of which can just win Zerg the game).

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is also to be expected or?
I mean this description:

how does an infestor feel in the mid game. no engerie upgrade? then you have extra dead time at build time because you are missing 25 energy.
no more energy? take a nap infestor i will come and pick you up later.
this is partly annoying. but because infestor is relevant at least in late, i could accept it.

the rework is an attempt with the idea early raven. i hope we see in 1-3 weeks changes on the PTR. evnetuell they drop the rework or adjust values.
and i hope they add comments in the next patch what is the idea behind the change just 1-2 sentences.

I will admit that one of my concerns with the reduction of AAM’s effect from -3 to -2 armour is air superiority battles in TvZ. Against mass Mutalisk or even mass Corruptor, mass Liberator is a reasonably good counter, but you need the Raven’s Anti-Armor Missile when against Corruptors due to their high base armour. But if this is the path the developers want to take, we’ll have to make do. Granted, in this case, a cheaper cost may not help much since the Raven is likely going to get focus-fired, although it increases the chance of having enough energy (e.g. 125) to throw down an Auto-Turret as well before it dies.

One problem is that a lot of lower-league games, and even some high-league games, are played differently to the professional league games. You get weird and wonderful builds where Hyperflight Rotors and the Corvid Reactor are researched, but which can be easily countered if the opponent knows what they’re doing and they don’t panic (e.g. I’m surprised at how many Zerg players don’t think to throw Blinding Cloud on Planetary Fortresses).

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Or, leave the costs, and allow Ravens some sort of recharge at a Reactor Core? This would mean that T has to build extra Cores, to keep Ravens viable.

I doubt that would work. The Raven has a few problems. One is that it is a designated detector, but it is prohibitively expensive for the purpose. The second problem is that the spells aren’t really good enough to make the Raven worth that cost. An energy regeneration ability may allow Ravens to spam more often, but it doesn’t actually fix those issues.

The balance test patch reduces the Ravens cost (which is good), but it also nerfs every Raven spell by approximately 1/3rd. If Ravens were really worth their cost as a caster that might be justified, but they’re not, so nerfing every spell is overkill.

I don’t mind the Auto-Turret nerf, it is a bad design for a spell, so it shouldn’t be encouraged.
The Interference Matrix nerf is also probably fine, since the duration is still long enough to swing a fight.
I think the AAM nerf is almost certainly unwarranted. The spell is generally much weaker than other AOE spells that come from cheaper casters.

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Main problem of Raven is that its spells are PoS.

If you want it to be built occasionally you can remove tech lab requirement thus Raven will be built as a $h!tty observer sometimes, but that’s it.

I’d argue that Raven spells are absolutely garbage.

IM has its use in TvT but even there its okay only in early game. In lategame Liberators are just straight better at the same job.
Anti-armor missile can change outcome on marine vs marine fight, but such fights happen only in early and mid game.
Autoturret is just bad spell. It exist as a consolation spell to get at least couple of worker kills after midgame phase is over so that 200 gas paid were not completely for nothing.

2 Likes

Nah. There is a reason viking Raven becomes meta in the lategame in TvT specifically (and only there really - though I do wonder if it would be useable vs toss) since ravens shutdown so many mech units with IM.

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