which nerf? bio - direct buff: upgrade time reduced, indirect buff: aoe from P/Z got real nerf.
and if you mean Wm, there was only one real nerf under that is almost a buff again because T gets less friendly damage.
new map pool also helps with shorter distances and base distribution for split map.
people complain about privilege pillar, but every map has one (if not 2-3) cliffs for reapers… Amphion beats that with a privilege path.
Upgrade time didn’t get reduced lmao. Just the upgrade cost reduction. 25/25 less on +2 weapons/armour and 50/50 lesson +3 weapons/armour. You know, bringing that in line with everyone else (specifically, protoss ground upgrades and Zerg melee/attack upgrades). Oh, and 50 less gas for an armoury. Gee, such big buffs.
Meanwhile, more cyclone nerfs, liberator nerfed again, mine nerfs.
Raven is situationally a nerf but a buff in some niche cases.
There were 4 direct nerfs to the mine. 3 of them I agree with, because it makes counter-play easier and is generally quality of life for players that have to play against them.
More obvious targeting - easily the least impactful one, this allows players to more easily single out which unit is being targeted and react accordingly.
Cloak post fire changed to drilling claws - this delays how early cloak comes in and makes not having detection far less punishing for players.
Targeting alert change - probably the 2nd biggest change of the four, this directly increases the amount of time you have to react to the widow mine being im your mineral line. Now, instead of having 1.5 seconds to react (the length of time it takes for the mine to acquire and fire on a target) you have anywhere between 3-5 seconds to react (depending on if drilling claws is researched) because the alert is given when the mine starts burrowing, rather than when it targets something. That is a huge change and frankly if you’re losing to mines, it’s a skill issue at this point.
Splash radius (the one I disagree with) not only reduces how much damage a successful mine shot does, but also punishes the opponent by reducing the amount of damage mine-dragging will do to the terran.
That said, part of the reason I disagree with it is because we have already seen this nerf in play before in HotS, and it went VERY badly. Now, to play devil’s advocate, the landscape is completely different from then, but the point still remains, its not a nerf that I think should ever have been implemented, especially in tandem with the other 3 nerfs happening simultaneously.
And those, barring crimson court, are all very easy to wall off, because theyre one square wide, making denial of information pretty easy on a unit that has 60 HP.
Pillars were a prpblem because they often directly allowed the Zerg to see what you were building for free, at no risk to the Zerg because they were positioned directly over your natural - this was particularly pertinant for protoss who often had to use their tech as part of their wall. Now they’re fine, because theyre only partially over your base, or they’re slightly further away so you have to poke in and risk the overlord.
Sure, I’ll give you that. IMO we have a few maps that are definitely terran favoured. Not all of them, but there are a few.
Some maps, like last season’s Radhuset Station, were very obviously anti-terran though. No reaper cliff, wide open swaths of terrain, impossible to take 4th, unharassable 3rds for Z… that was a disgusting map lmao.
There aren’t any in this current map pool yhat are so overtly favoured for Zerg, but not all of them are bad for Zerg either.
The more they are buffed, the lazier the players become. Ironically there is a dampening effect on the imbalance that reduces how bad the imbalance is. That’s why there are toss in gsl using 1 army hotkey. You can play that lazily only because the race is imba. Take away the 300 mmr advantage that Protoss has in PvZ and you can be certain top protoss will magically remember “Oh yeah, I can actually use two army hotkeys for multiprong.”
I always find TvZ easiest on maps where terran is advantaged because their push styles become extremely predictable which makes them vulnerable to hard counters. For example you can burrow banes in their third mineral line on maps where terrans get free thirds.
I think TvZ is pretty balanced with the exception of mass ghost and mass orbital. Mass ghost is an unstoppable army. The way to beat an unstoppable army is to get it out of position. You can’t get it out of position due to mass orbital allowing for mass scans. So in that scenario, there is literally nothing zerg can do to win and he’d better just kiss his mmr goodbye. Outside of that scenario, it’s pretty balanced. Both races have a lot of options, and this includes economic plays, tech rushes, and cheeses. You can actually do a 1 or 2 base cheese vs terran & win, you can’t do that vs protoss. That’s the consequence of a balanced game: both races have a lot of options & the strategy is very diverse.
PvZ on the other hand, it’s suicide for Zerg to do anything except a third hatch & you need to hit pinpoint precise timings with perfect build orders or the protoss will f2 amove you and win.
I sent you a friend request in sc2. I’ll hook you up with a discord invite if we happen to be online at the same time. I won’t post the invite here because I’d get some crazies spamming hate mail at me. I exposed the imba of protoss so I am practically hitler as far as they are concerned, lol.
that part hits the nail on the head and I agree.
but it’s ridiculous how some Terran act like the WM nerf is harder compared to Bane as an example. Imagine instead of dmg/ hp nerf, bane are now glowing red and doing an alert on workers. do you think P would have said is fine?
I also find it partly questionable how thoughtless Terran can play without cosequences, simply because the units are efficient.
a bit older, but still found it interesting.
https://terrancraft.com/2021/03/21/zvx-the-effects-of-scouting-pillars/
Imagine that, instead of an HP nerf, Banes now alert you not just when they’re in vision, but five seconds before they attack your units, instead of what they do now, which is alerting you only after they’ve hit your units. That’s what happened to the widow mine.
It’s 100% a nerf. It’s also fine, because of the way the mine does it’s damage, but realistically speaking, if you’re losing to mines now, you have 0 excuses.
Definitely an interesting article. Notably it seems to corelate with what I mentioned before, that the pillar was much more important in ZvP than it was in ZvT.
We’ve actually seen a direct evolution away from “on natural” pillars in several maps. While they definitely do exist, there’s several more maps now that have the overlord pillar slightly further out. It’s a small change, but an interesting one nonetheless.
This would only be a real comparison if the banes launched themselves at units and were invisible the entire time.
I would not agree.
so 1or 2 maps without cliffs, just to see how it works. If necessary, Reaper has KD8 to break the hold position.
In general, there are elements of older maps that you can test, such as main and natural at the same terrain height, etc.
Seriously, giving people a viable counter play to a unit that is extremely overpowered and only costs 75/25 isn’t a nerf. If you added an attack line to a roach, people wouldn’t be calling it a nerf, now would they?
You not agreeing doesn’t make it any less true.
Already had that. Radhuset station had no reaper cliffs and it was an awful map for Terran. But sure, why not. It’ll make dealing with blink stalkers somewhat easier.
The mine hasn’t been overpowered for a long time lmao. It’s had viable counter-play for a long, long time, now it’s just even more obvious than it already was, and you have at least 2-3x more time to react to it before it does damage.
The counter-play was simple - you bait the mine shot, or you kill it from outside its range. It was made even easier when you removed the need for any form of detection in LotV. Alternatively, you split your units. Like Terrans have to do against any form of splash. Something that even a half-decent Zerg player has been doing since 2014.
The comparison doesn’t work at all since they’re two completely different units, with completely different rolls, that work in completely different ways.
No, the comparison between the bane and the mine in this instance is perfectly viable - the point is that you have an absurd amount of time to react before it actually hits you, which you didn’t have before. If you have 5 seconds to react to a bane because the bane alerts you long before it’s actually going to kill your units, suddenly it loses its effectiveness by quite a bit, because you have significantly more time to react.
Imagine if you do a bane drop into someone’s mineral line, but instead of exploding, the bane sits there for 5 seconds, tells you it’s there during that time, and then explodes after. That’s what’s happening here.
Wait, it’s 2024 and we’re still whining about widow mines? Lmao. You realize they are hard countered with basic micro, right? They also give a giant red line & time to react so that it’s as easy as pie to counter micro. The siege tank on the other hand gives no such luxuries, so you’d think you’d whine about the tank but, no, you’re whining about one of the worst units in the game. Mines are also outranged by countless units. Basically mines haven’t been strong since 3 mines could delete 40 mutalisks. It’s been at least 9 years since they were good. Mines are so bad that I know a terran is memeing if he makes them. They are just absolute garbage.
It’s actually a little worse than that because Banelings can chase workers down, while Widow Mines are locked down to a radius of 5 once they choose a location to burrow.
Mines are literally out-ranged by two zerg units. lol, Hey fake GM Pee-Wee. You need to try harder with your argument.
Four Zerg units actually, and even units that can’t outrange Widow Mines can usually compete against them with some micro.
it’s true, because drop lord doesn’t have a boost button… like medi.
and by “compete” do you mean simply take dmg?
i don’t think zerg units under 5 range have abilities like blink.
but yes muta can do something about it, so all zerg units under 5 range can do it. solid logic.
No, because even if the Baneling issued a warning several seconds before it can attack like the Widow Mine does, the Baneling doesn’t have to immobilize itself in the process. The enemy’s workers aren’t safe just because they’ve moved 5 distance away, the Banelings can continue to chase them down until they are killed.
Zerg has been able to compete with Widow-Mine based compositions and win just fine since Widow Mines were first introduced. That is true whether you have 6+ ranged units in your army, or if you stick with short-range units like Zerglings, Banelings, Ultralisks, Mutalisks, or Roaches. It just takes a little micro to avoid some of the mines or to mitigate their splash damage, although that micro requirement is the very reason why many players hate Mines so much.
Widow Mines don’t even force players to modify their compositions. Compositions like Zergling/Baneling still compete just fine against compositions such as Bio-Mine, even when they don’t include something that can hit the Widow Mines from further away.
Wrong. Game knowledge creates your issue with widow mines, bud. You’d practically have to have a lobotomy to think they are overpowered. They are almost as useless as mutalisks, and that’s an amazing feat to achieve. The only advantage that they have is the element of surprise and the recent balance patch removed that with a giant red line. So the only way you are going to be REKT by them is if you either don’t know how to micro or you aren’t paying attention to your army as it moves out on the map. If the terran has to pray his opponent is either blind or narcoleptic, it’s a bad unit.
The siege tank, on the other hand, you can’t even see it when it hits you because its attack range is longer than the sight range of all zerg units. Good luck microing against an attack that hits instantly, gives no visual warning, and comes from such a range that it’s impossible to see there is even a unit there to begin with. If you understood the game, at all, you’d be whining about the siege tank.
I have four accounts in GM right now. Apop over here so jelly he’d melt if you put him out in the sun.
Obligatory metal music video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCQyMMzHpbo
Just for you, RustTank 
Minor correction, it always took 4 mines to kill mutas since mutas would survive on 1 hp as they’d regen through the damage.
It’s been too long since anyone has used them. Mines=giga trash.