WOL 4v4 was better than LOTV 4v4

General Discussion
44

That is absolutely false. A combination of Brood Lords and Infestors could consistently lock enemy units (including Ravens and High Templar) out of range to do anything substantial if the Zerg player was paying attention, and that combination with a few additional Corruptors could handle anything that Terran or Zerg could try to throw at it.
Once the first Fungal hit, there was no escape for the afflicted units, and Broodlings would further prevent any ground units from getting close enough to retaliate. That design gap is a major reason why HOTS reworked Seeker Missiles as a longer-ranged spell, and added the Tempest (the only Protoss unit which was not outranged by Brood Lord + Infestor compositions).

In WOL PvZ, the only way for Protoss to contest with a Brood Lord + Infestor composition was to attempt an Archon toilet gambit with the Mothership. If that failed to kill enough of the Zerg army then Protoss was guaranteed to lose.

In WOL TvZ, Terran could only contest Zerg by attempting to kill the Zerg player before they built up a Brood Lord + Infestor army. Anything else would be hard-countered by Fungal, Infested Terran, Neural Parasite, or Brood Lords once the composition was complete. Units such as Vikings and spells such as Seeker Missiles simply couldn’t reach unless the Zerg player wasn’t looking.

Even with the changes in HOTS, Brood Lord + Infestor was still a problematic composition, and it is still very dominant in LOTV despite the removal of Infested Terran and other changes that enabled Terran and Protoss to finally contest it.

No, it only came down to the Zerg player’s “skill”. A Terran or Protoss player’s skill did not matter because the combination of Infestors and Brood Lords could zone out and kill everything they could even attempt if the Zerg player was simply paying attention. The efficacy of an Archon toilet depended on Zerg’s ability to split their army in half, and the efficacy of gambits like Seeker Missiles depended on the Zerg player to fall asleep.

It’s telling that you main Zerg. No one who plays another race should ever want to go back to the balance nightmare that was WOL.

A slow moving, 125 energy projectile with only 6 range. Ravens could never get close enough to throw an HSM at a Brood Lord + Infestor army unless the Zerg player was asleep.

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45

Huh? Ravens were never used in WOL? What on earth are you talking about? Have you ever actually played this game or watched late game GM Terrans and pros play WOL? I’m speechless. There are still tons of videos of WOL Raven play at GM and pro level all over the internet. Players like Avilo, Ruff and Ketroc made it to top 25 GM playing late game Tank Viking Raven in both WOL and Hots, just to name only a few GM/Pro Terrans that played Ravens a lot.

46

Did you really just use Avilo and Ruff as points of balance for WoL? Really? Of all the players, you used people who were barely even considered “decent” players at that time, let alone later when foreign players actually started becoming competitive? That’s hilarious. Frankly the only thing Ravens were used for in WoL was PDD. And you almost never went raven in the first place outside of dedicated mech terrans which were at best few and far between and at worst nigh nonexistant.

About the only Terrans who played mech were Ruff - who was barely even a thing in WoL and peaked in HotS - Avilo - who was about as competitive as Ruff (that is to say not at all), Demuslim, who rarely if ever used Ravens and primarily went Bio, and Gumiho who is… well, Gumiho. Everyone else played bio, and for good reason.

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47

There is HOTS Raven play, because the HOTS improvements to Seeker Missiles made that a viable option (albeit a very toxic one, as mass-caster play is generally toxic).

Mass Ravens was not viable in WOL. The opponent had to be an idiot to let a Raven get close enough to Infestors or Brood Lords to launch a Seeker Missile, and PDD wasn’t going to help any other unit get through Fungal, Infested Terran, Broodlings, etc.

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48

Can I just say that I can’t help but laugh at his absolutely desperate attempts at proving his point by necroing… 5 ish threads that are a minimum of 3 or more years old with only one having any form of discussion. It actually makes his point more flimsy because of how old the threads are and how few there are, let alone how few replies there are.

And the only one that had discussion wasn’t even a request to bring WoL ladder back, but an observation at how different the game is.

WoL Ladder was dead. So was HotS ladder, and rightfully so. Let it stay dead.

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49

I don’t think you ever played WOL. When fighting infestor with Ravens, you would use auto turrets to keep the infestors back and spread split your ravens to go in and seeker the infestors, sometimes one at a time, if you had the skill. Every game and opponent doesn’t play 100% the same, with the same skill and people make mistakes and don’t always pay attention.

The HOTS Raven was a massive nerf, they put a delay on the seeker missile and turned the enemy unit bright red so it could be pulled back easy and the seeker missile wouldn’t fire. They made the seeker missile 100% useless and the other player would take the targeted unit like a muta and fly it into the Ravens to kill them with their own seeker missile. The Hots Raven seeker missile was horrible and a major nerf to the WOL Raven seeker missile. sc2 got worse and worse over time after WOL with Hots and LOTV thanks to David Kim messing the game up for everyone.

50

There are thousands of posts of people wanting WOL and HOTS ladder back, it’s over whelming, I only replied to a few of them.

WOL and HOTS had a huge player base the day they removed the ladders, I played it everyday and the queue times for WOL ladder was faster than today’s LOTV, because more people were playing WOL the day they removed the ladder than people playing LOTV today.

But like everyone else I gave up, years ago when I stopped playing this game altogether because LOTV sucks bad.

And I will stop coming on this sc2 forum again for years at a time like I did after they removed WOL and HOTS ladder, like all of the OG sc2 players that quit the game because they hate LOTV. I am not alone. Hundreds of thousands of people quit sc2 because of LOTV being the only expansion that you are allowed to play.

And I bet that you will still be active on this forum, because it seems like it’s the only thing you do with your time.

51

If they’re so common, why was the most recent one replied to from 2021?

WoL and HotS ladder were both dead when they were removed. You would wait minutes at a time for one game, often one very lopsided game before going back into queue. I would know, I tried playing WoL and HotS ladder multiple times.

And you won’t be missed at all.

Eh, I’m on and off. I moved country recently so I’m working remotely and have little to do currently other than play games and talk to people.

I’m sure there were a few people who left with you, but it really wasn’t that many who were still playing WoL and HotS ladder.

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52

So you need about 175 energy per Raven. The Zerg player’s Brood Lords or Infested Terran can just kill the Auto-Turrets before they deal any significant damage, and Infestors can still Fungal or even NP the Ravens before they get close.

It’s the opposite. WOL’s 6 range, 125 energy seeker missiles were too big of a risk to reliably fire off against a competent player. Using Seeker Missiles with WOL Ravens was practically suicidal.

The HOTS Seeker Missiles were much safer to fire due to their range, and you could shoot twice as many of them due to their lower energy cost. If you really needed a Seeker Missile to go off (instead of whiffing), you sometimes had the option of getting closer or focusing down the target (with Tanks, Thors, Vikings, etc) so that the missile would travel to the target’s last location.

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53

You also could target your own unit with seeker missile and fly them into your opponent, which was a neat trick.

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55

LOL, not in Hots you couldn’t, only in WOL could you seeker your own unit and move it into the opponents units.

You just proved that you actually don’t know anything about sc2 and you never actually played WOL or HOTS, I bet you started playing sc2 in the last few years which would explain why you are here and don’t really know anything about sc2 and why you are defending the trash expansion that is LOTV.

56

You have have no idea what you are talking about or you are trolling. The HOTS Raven seeker was a huge nerf because past bronze league people just pulled the targeted units back and your Raven energy was lost because the seeker didn’t fire, unlike instant cast storm and fungal.

I know for a fact that you never played Wings of Liberty and don’t even try to pretend that you did. lol

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57

Ironically, you just showed that you’ve either never played HOTS, or you are just lying about it. Both the HOTS Seeker Missiles and the deprecated LOTV Seeker Missiles can target player, ally, or enemy units. Targeting your own unit and leading it into the enemy was definitely a valid option.

As opposed to never getting close enough to launch a Seeker Missile, rarely having the energy for one, or losing the Raven in a suicide run?

The WOL version of Seeker Missiles was practically useless. That is why Seeker Missiles were reworked in HOTS.

Seeker Missiles and PDD were outright removed in LOTV for an entirely different reason…Both spells could stack without penalty, which encouraged massing Ravens to abuse them. Mass caster play (particularly casters that can stack spells on top of each-other to deal with larger/stronger armies) tends to get very toxic, so the game is better without it. That is also why Storms and Fungal do not stack, but since Seeker Missiles dealt instant damage, there wasn’t a good way to remove that problem without completely reworking how it does damage.

If you were using Tanks, Vikings, or (against air) Thors; that usually meant that the Terran army could dish out damage without retaliation. The enemy would take damage attempting to get close, and most of the enemy army wouldn’t get to retaliate if it turned around to escape the missiles.

Pulling back individual units could be countered by targeting a number of different units, which the 75 energy cost allowed.

I’ve been playing SC2 since it came out.

2 Likes
58

The WOL seeker missile was nerfed hard because David Kim said it was too strong. So they they put a caster delay on it and made the targeted unit bright red so the person could just pull their unit back and the seeker missile would just dud and fall to the ground. The HOTS seeker missile was a massive nerf to the WOL seeker missile and the HOTS seeker only worked in bronze silver league if you were lucky. I already know this fact and you can ask anyone. Ask Ketroc the streamer, he has been making mass raven and PF’s every game on stream since 2010-2011, he was very sad when the HOTS Raven nerf was released and it got worse from there. Now the Raven is useless and not any fun to play with at all anymore.

59

Of course you had fun. Wiping out everything with a simple button hold. What a nice balance it was in WOL, what a real RTS. Make one unit, spam turrets and missiles.

It’s good that 3 rax reapers were nerfed, 5 minerals interceptors, broodlord-infestors and all that unbalanced crap.

It’s good a real RTS actually forces you to make diverse armies.

61

Huh? I was random Masters 1 in WOL. All three races in WOL has good spell casters that are fun to play that could counter one another by them selves and came down to player skill and mistakes. Wings of Liberty was the best SC2 out of the 3 by far.

Trust me, I know more about this game and I have more experience playing it than you and I’m not biased. I am a realist, with no time for you and your friends world of make believe.

62

i wasn’t going to post but i had to respond to the last quote so i might as well post the rest of what i had already typed

This doesn’t make any sense?

If you have data for this I would love to see it, but {my understanding is that} the majority of hardcore SC2 players played on the live ranked ladder and not the previous game ladders; because that’s what pros play and the professionals are the most hardcore SC2 players so other people will emulate that naturally.

My only evidence of that, unfortunately, is very loose and weak - the number of online players, and that as compared to number of ladder games played - not changing dramatically in a patch, the drop-off and inclines tend to be linear and not cliffs.

That suggests that the player drop-off isn’t due to a collection saying that the game without X is a bust.

It’s because it’s old and lost all its luster of shininess, so people have gone to play other games they like or to experience things they enjoy.

But all of this doesn’t matter because the biggest most important thing to note is that to this day, the number of dedicated ladder players makes up less than one third of the game population. The overwhelming number of players play less than three ladder games a week despite being online and playing games, because most of them play arcade games. {This was true before the WoL/HotS ladders got removed, too. The backbone of RTS is the noncompetitive modes because dedicated players are actually a very small percentage of the game’s population.}

“Chess is 1500 years old” but also chess has a much more upheld legacy of, well, being that old; an ancient classic that’s also easy to play at first and conceptualize - it’s also turn based {so it’s much more accessible}, it’s not graphically dated (not that sc2 is), and there’s a significantly higher general turn-over for videogames just in general.

auto turret
cast range: 3
attack range: 5

fungal
cast range: 9
radius: 1.25

hmmm.

I also played this, and back then as Zerg; it was very funny every time terran built large numbers of ravens because PDD was useless, auto-turret’s clunky and can’t be spammed out, and while HSM was deadly fungal + ITs was really really easy.

???

edit: {added words} that are very important

3 Likes
63

I have no idea why do think that you have more experience in the game, as I have random M1 in 2vs2, 3vs3, 4vs4 too.

And yes the raven was broken, mothership + vortex was broken and a lot of other stuff.

It’s no wonder that in 2017-2018 any plat 1vs1 LOTV player could easily become masters playing WOL, but it would never work other way around.

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64

What on earth are you talking about? I take you never played Wings of Liberty. PDD was useless??? what? Auto Turrets couldn’t be spammed out??? what? That is what they were best for, you could spam them out and block off areas and make auto turret fields walls that lasted 3-5 mins before you had to recast them.

65

Correction:
cast range 3
attack range 6 (or 7 with upgrade).

Range 8, radius 2.

Yep, you could not realistically zone Infestors with Auto-Turrets:

  • Brood Lords still had the range to kill them, and their broodlings could prevent the Ravens from placing more.
  • Infested Terran could also kill them.
  • An Auto-Turret had about the DPS of an unstimmed Marine by the late-game, making it only a minor threat.

Ravens had to get within 6 range, with 125 energy, in order to cast Seeker Missiles; so Infestors could definitely stop them without worrying about Auto-Turrets or much of anything else from the Terran player.

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