That only really works when the ability design itself is not problematic. Tweaking a “problematic” ability until it becomes non-problematic often results in an ability that is so underpowered that it is not worth keeping.
Take the scrapped PDD ability for example. If we assume PDD was balanced when it absorbed 240 damage (a very big “if” considering the spell stacks), then the ability would only really be “balanced against Tempests” if it was limited to between 3 and 5 shots. The ability would be practically useless against everything else, so no one would ever use it.
To be blunt, 120 damage on Parasitic Bomb may be too high. As Asamu pointed out, that high damage basically renders Vikings useless as a potential counter to Brood Lords, forcing the Thor-Ghost-Liberator mess that we currently have.
Thor based compositions would also be useless without Ghosts considering that Blinding Cloud, Abduct, and Neural Parasite all hard-counter them, so we have a match-up that is entirely controlled by casters, and whether or not Steady-Targeting gets off without interruption.
Interference Matrix is like a weakened Lockdown. Snipe and Lockdown are nothing alike. Snipe/Steady-Targeting has more in common with Irradiate (apart from no AOE and killing targets faster).
Ultralisks and Brood Lords would be manageable if Zerg spellcasters weren’t so strong.
Marauders, Thors, or large enough Tank groups all have the potential to deal with Ultralisks. If they can’t, then that would mean that Ultralisks are overtuned.
Vikings or Thors could potentially deal with Brood Lords, although Vikings can also result in dead-supply against Ultralisks and some other ground units as you pointed out.
The bigger problem is that Vipers and Infestors are so dominant that none of these options can be relied upon. Current TvZ balance is dependent on Steady-Targeting & EMP because otherwise most of Zerg’s spellcasters are powerful enough to render any combat units useless.
Removing Steady-Targeting would require changes to Zerg alongside it, or an effective replacement for Terran. I don’t think anyone actually has an effective replacement in mind.
Yeah and you can also get your infestors EMPed from miles away. Not a valid point, ghosts are OP nerf that’s it. They can’t be an insane fighting unit, insane caster, insane anti caster, insane anti protoss.
Let’s be honest, if it was zerg getting these same tournament results there would be 3 different zerg nerfs already on ptr and the community would be demanding more.
That’s either years old statements or just terran bias, terran lategame went from weakest in hots to trumping both protoss and zerg’s in present lotv, while retaining their midgame priority, except now they can open bc/lib on top of viking/banshee/drop vs z.
I agree on this, although dark is a very unique player and has shown some excellent lategames in the past with infestors, I want to see what happens on a different map pool or with serral/rogue.
You do not, you only need to properly position lib/tank.
This is still supply efficient for terran, and whereas ultralisk has set role of meatshield ground splash, ghost’s versatility is magnitudes greater, being able to trade well vs all 3 of zerg’s tier 3 combat units (hive lurker, ultra, bl), neutralize casters zerg relies on, as well as do decent dps vs ling/hydra. The only units strong against ghost for zerg is bane and infestor. Bane is very costly in lategame and encourages terran to turtle and inch forward under protection of lib/tank and vision from scan, infestor is very micro dependent and more forgiving for terran as infestor’s fungal only makes ghost vulnerable to other units while emp’d infestor is a free snipe.
Z vs ghost interaction lategame can easily result in binary trades in favour of terran due to snipe, but it is rare for zerg to have as efficient trades vs terran.
No, it is not instant, if it was you’d still be able to rapid fire it, and ghost is supposed to emp viper, snipe is for on zerg’s retreat when they are oom.
While ghost is necessary vs zerg casters, even if zerg did not rely on casters terran would still be fine massing ghost vs zerg every game when it’s safe.
Furthermore infestor massing is a response to thor/ghost/bc because zerg has no other counters, but terran has plenty of counters vs all zerg t3 combat units as they all only hit ground and are armoured. Ghost is only essential vs zerg casters, but it’s also good against pretty much everything else zerg has. Viper is closest zerg has in comparison, but viper is entirely reliant on supporting army and weak to ghost (tank/lib > infestor).
Vikings are usable vs zerg, lib/thor/ghost are just better in most cases, but vs viper, viking has range advantage and takes 6 to one-shot. Considering their 9 range, it is not unreasonable to expect terrans to remove pb’d vikings when the top zergs are able to split more densely packed 3 range mutas from pb, although perhaps pb should have a marker for which unit it is attached to in selection to make it easier. In addition, pb takes an entire 7 seconds to deal its 120 damage whereas terran has multiple ways to stack anti-air aoe, but zerg is still using corruptors, mutas, vipers, and bl…
Vikings trade fine vs vipers as long as you’re not making like 20+, even just sniping overseers is beneficial for ghosts and costs 150/50 for zerg, and we see at high level even a player of solar’s caliber can lose his fleet of broods to one viking, again potential for binary positive trades for terran lategame is much higher than for zerg, and this is mainly because of 2 things:
Zerg’s t3 combat units only hit ground.
Ghost abilities are very binary in effect from opposing pov (snipe, emp, nuke).
This is on top of terran enjoying range advantages in most scenarios, vision advantage through scans becoming increasingly available while creep increasingly contested, more available army supply through mules and lack of inject queens, and magnitudes higher versatility in their t3.
Viking also is not gas intensive whereas zerg is starved for gas in lategame needing viper, infestor, and bl. In general terran’s t3 is just lax on gas costs compared to zerg’s.
If one’s goal is to make vikings more usable vs zerg, I would suggest changing the ground mode bonus from mechanical to armoured to encourage landing vikings vs ultras and lurkers to mitigate splash against the main force. This change, as well as reverting the widow mine build time buff, would also help put a check on the myriad of potentially game ending harass options terran has vs protoss.
Yeah, and that’s a problem, but it is because of the strength of casters on both sides that Ghosts are “necessary”, and thus cannot simply be reworked on their own.
A 1 range advantage on a projectile attack cannot prevent Vipers from casting PB on the group.
Mutalisks are 45% faster than Vikings, so it is somewhat unreasonable to expect a similar split. Mutalisks are also typically used for harassment (avoiding combat where possible), and not to try to counter Brood Lords (which requires engaging the enemy army directly).
Asamu’s point (that PB affects Vikings enough to render them near useless as a BL counter) is a valid one. The spell would also be too severe against Mutalisks, if Mutalisks were balanced for combat instead of harassment.
I agree but Terran has more broken things that need to be addressed 1st if the balance team was to try 1 thing at a time I would say the absolute 1st thing that needs to be fixed is the fact that BC warp ability makes massing them a 100% win for terran.
Terran can warp away after already doing damage which COMPLETELY NEGATE THE UNITS MEANT TO COUNTER THE BC. Corruptors and may be a few vipers. They are completely negated by the fact that terran can warp anywhere on the map.
So the very FIRST THING imo that needs to be done is
ITS MANDATORY THAT ZERG HAS AN ABILITY OR SPELL ON A FLYING THAT CAN PREVENT WARP SO CORRUPTORS CAN ACTUALLY KILL THINGS.
There is a point where terran will keep massing BC and then it wont matter anymore what you have because there is so much firepower, hitpoints, armor and in the mass BC army that corrptors lose still and vipers PB mean nothing.
WARP ALSO REMOVES THE PARASITIC BOMB FROM THE BC… AGAIN MAKES NO SENSE RIGHT NOW HOW IMBALANCED TERRAN LATE GAME IS.
Broodlord infestor was way less imbalanced than simply mass BC is now.
I would agrue BL infestors was completely balanced since zerg has ZERO OPTIONS VS TERRAN FROM EARLY TO MID-LATE GAME.
If zerg does anything terran has the effiecient counter. Widow mines, marines, tanks, etc anything you attack with is easily beaten by terran and then as a zerg you are behind and that means you just lost the game mathmatically speaking as terran is going to push to your main and kill you OR they simply macro and kill you a few minutes later.
BL infestors was balanced because this terrible rts game is designed around zerg being on the defense ALL GAME. So it only made sense that zerg wins when they get to late game. After all if not then then when the fk are they supposed to get the win?
BC’s warps could be a bit more balanced IF they could warp ONLY to a spot which is visible. AFAIK, currently they can warp on top of your mineral line straight from the Starport.
Ghosts are an excellent late game unit, no doubt. But to say that Zerg has “no answer” is simply delusional. Land ONE proper Fungal and the game is over, we can’t say that about snipe. Furthermore the skill floor for them is incredibly high, compared to their counters.
Like, what about Ghosts suddenly made them more impossible to deal with? The Smaller EMP radius or the newly cancelable Snipe? Zerg only have two favored maps in the entire pool is what’s made them harder. It’s not the unit.
Maybe Steady Targeting should cost 60 energy? That would give Ghosts 3 snipes at max energy instead of 4. For 300 energy you would get 5 snipes instead of 6. Notice that a mere +50 minerals to Void cost and the Transfusion change shifted meta in ZvP hugely.
more less than more or?
feel free to show me how you build 15+ vipers(40sup) and break down different army combos. i’ll leave it to you against T/Z/P, but think vs Z you have better chance with lurker/ viper against different Z combos.
maybe you make a meta change.
Air: Spam PB over and over.
Ground: Disable everything with range using BC.
High supply units: Kill by abducting into a group that can kill the target.
Vipers have a powerful spell for every occasion, like Ghosts do in both non-mirrors.
That is negligible
that would not solve anything. Terrans have scans using scans cost them little to nothing as is. Never mind later in the game where terrans throw away SCVs because they do not need them for income anymore as they have free workers on the map with zero supply cost.
@TeranicII
Its hilarious how “out of touch” you are with what is realistic.
Explain how zerg is going to be stopping multiple drops? how is zerg going to stay at a good economy with 80 workers?
Abduct and NP need to be removed from the game they are killing the race.
Zerg needs proper buffs which give solutions after removing abduct and NP or nerfing them.
Watching vipers abduct BC, Carriers, Broodlords is the dumbest and laziest thing I have seen. They literally DID NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO TO FIX ZERGS WEAKNESS VS AIR UNITS… SO THEY LITERALLY ALLOWED A BUG TO ABDUCT A BATTLECRUISER… TALK ABOUT STUPID DESIGN. It needs to be removed. At the least it needs to not be able to abduct BC, Carriers, Broodlords, Thors, (massive units)
PARASITIC BOMB COULD BE GIVEN A DIRECT DAMAGE INCREASE TO DEAL WITH CARRIER AND BC BROODLORDS INSTEAD OF SOME DUMB ABDUCT FOOLISH LOOKING THING.
lol what, the Viper and Infestor couldn’t be a more specialized spell caster. For instance, play Zerg and make Vipers vs a Thor/Siege tank army and you’ll cry as your entire army melts. Now make Infestors vs the same army and neural suddenly makes the fight winnable. Now make Vipers vs a Skytoss army and suddenly you can kill carriers and deal with Void Rays. Do the same thing with infestors? Literally pointless. It takes something like 15 fungals to kill a carrier.
This is where you made a mistake in your logic: Lockdown disabled and immobilized units for afaik 45 seconds (or was it 60) which effectively meant that this unit is dead - units in StarCraft don’t live so long during a fight.
IM is also a descendent from a Lockdown, but as if it suffered a birth defect. It’s a bad spell that don’t work well in SC2 (outside of couple scenarios in very small timing windows).
Snipe serves the same function as a Lockdown - to remove key units from a fight, but unlike with Lockdown you need several Snipes to land instead of one Lockdown missile AND Snipe can be cancelled.
No they won’t be: there are no spellcasters in ling-bane-Ultra unit composition and this unit composition walks over tank-marine army like its nothing.
If Terran builds marauder-WM army it would trade cost inefficiently with ling-bane-Ultra. Not to mention that Zerg can add units that would kill marauder-WM army like its nothing, and - unlike Zerg - Terran cannot remax on an instant.
If Terran looses army - he is dead - that’s why Terran army have to be universal.
No, even if Vikings vere good vs air they would cause T to loose the game because they are bad against ground.
Ling-bane are hardly a spellcasters but if Terran have let’s say Viking-Marauder army it would absolutely get steamrolled by pure ling-bane.
Libs don’t work against Ultralisks because Ultralisk is not a stationary target and because Zerg units are not DOTA mobs who move in straight pre-difined path (at least above Gold).
Furthermore, Libs don’t work in general without Ghost support because Zerg would be able to kill them for free with either Vipers or Corruptors. Or just Hydras if there is no Liberator Range Upgrade done which is very lategame upgrade.
Which part of sentence “Terran army must be universal BY DESIGN” you don’t understand?
No, Abduct is casted instantly.
There is a very tiny delay until you can cast Abduct again but the spell is still instant.
By your logic siege tanks don’t counter roaches because roaches can just not go into their range.
That’s why I said properly position them, on aggro that means poking with marine/marauder and then retreating into lib zone, on defense it means sim-city to funnel ultras into their area, this isn’t exactly an uncommon tactic at high level play.
A characteristic implemented by design can still swing too far in that direction, eg zerg is supposed to be the most mobile race but that doesn’t mean mutas should have 8 speed.
If we go by your definition every spell in the game is instant, even snipe, because you are saying only the cast is relevant, not the effect. Emp and fungal, commonly referred to as projectile, would be considered as instant as feedback and storm.
Typically when people call a spell instant they either mean the effect is instant and/or the unit can be given another command immediately after, abduct is neither instantaneous in effect nor can the unit be given another action immediately after, thus it is not instant.
Um… are you aware that Liberators can shoot ONLY at targets in small circle that have radius of 5 units (that is also painted on the ground in a very visible way and can not be NOT noticed) and siege tank can fire at any target in range of 13 units?
That means that area that Liberator can fire at is 78.54 square units and that area that Siege Tank can fire at is 530.93 square units which is almost 7 times larger area.
Are you also aware that Tank have a splash attack and Liberator is single target? Even though Tank splash is very small (compared to that of Baneling, Parasitic Bomb, Fungal, Disruptor, Colossus, etc.) it still matters a lot in vs Roach fight.
Zerg IS the most mobile race and by far.
You can dodge Emp and fungal and you can not dodge or cancel abduct
This sounds like top tier lunacy because you have almost 2 seconds during which you can cancel Snipe by either dealing any tick of damage to the Ghost or just by moving away from the Ghost.
Your original point was because the liberator is stationary it does not counter ultralisks, but if we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of each interaction then the ultralisk can actually kill the tank and the burst damage of the lib is exactly what makes it good vs ultras.
That wasn’t the point I was making.
That doesn’t make abduct an instant ability.
Applying the logic you used for abduct to other spells sounds like lunacy? I’m glad you agree.
There are 3 ways to “dodge” abduct, if you do any of the following before the tentacle reaches you:
Blink
Tactical Jump
Load into transport.
However, killing the Viper will not cancel Abduct.
The first part of that is correct. The second part is blatantly wrong. Any wait that occurs after a spell is cast is irrelevant unless it is actively needed to channel the spell. Abduct continues if the caster dies, so the small wait Blizzard added after the cast does not count.
A spell can be considered instant under the following conditions (they are each using a slightly different definition of “instant”):
Instant-cast: The spell is applied without a cast time before it goes off. Under this definition, projectile spells also apply as long as the caster doesn’t need to wait before shooting the projectile. Channeled spells also apply as long as the spell channels itself without the need for the caster to actively keep it going. Abduct is instant-cast, and so are Feedback, Storm, and all three of the Raven’s spells.
Instant-effect: There is no delay between the moment the spell is started and the moment that the spell affects the target. There is also no charge up, projectile, or channeling applied to the spell. Feedback is one of the only spells that fits this definition.
Instant-damage: Applies to spells that deal damage all at once instead of a dot.
Abduct definitely counts as instant-cast. The minor delay after casting it has no effect on that definition.
That would be false. Skipper is going by instant-cast. By that definition, Abduct, Fungal, Feedback, Storm, Shredder Missile, and Interference Matrix are all instant; but Steady-Targeting (which needs to be actively channeled by the Ghost before it can fire) is definitely not.